Going Out again

I honestly tried to go out. Twice or so a year I feel strong enough, weird enough, foreign enough to head out the door alone on a traditional Night Out, without so much as a bag or coat for props. I ran to the bus stop with bulging dress pockets, hopefully countering the bulge I made all by myself from the dress's seams. The deadline was 10pm free entry. I merged into the crowds, counting bus stops in minutes, gambled to get off at this stop and run, rather than wait for the next one which might catch the lights. I ran the last bit, sloped into the door, and got told not only was it three pounds all night, but the gig I'm looking for isn't on.

Now, I've done this before. I've been had by the Digital Age and it's virtual 'flyers', unless it's in print it's not in, print, and facebook events are 'subject to change' but most normal people can track this on a smart phone. Not me with my 2002 Nokia. Shit, I scolded, storming back down the high street toward the bus stop I ran from, picturing the piles of old Guardian Guides on the kitchen table, willing traps for getting the wrong week. I walked a mile before I realised I'd been at the wrong place. A venue prefixed with a The seems to be boxed off into one giant venue of The Definite Article, non-important non-places, aka The Place To Be. Shit! I scolded again. It's not the gin and lychee I just drank, it's foolishness.

Once at The correct venue, I pleaded stupidity to save 5 quid. I'm not proud, in the face of a twenty-two year old girl with clip board and parody John Waters mustache. She wafted the clip board at me, I saw the line up. The band weren't on it. I felt STUPID. I topped up my Oyster and bought a street Pimms. Something made me double check my error; were this band not on tonight? I asked, they canceled, she deadpanned. Triple reasons for failure but I was glad to not just be an idiot. I added baklava to my Pimms and got the bus to find some dancing.

A Change

Since booking the course I have rested so insanely easy with myself that I'm scared for the time when I am no longer bathed in this contentment. If I hadn't heard of the Three Marriages I might in fact myself be alluding to the three marriages; work, relationships and the self, and how when in supreme balance you just feel so, light. Add no carbs and we're talking lite light. My 30s dress and this nail varnish and that book on the ratten chair next to the blooming tomatoes so perfect I just think it could all end at this moment and I'd die quite happy. I got my new license in the post this week and counted how many more dire photos until death; it didn't feel heavy but plain.

I've been floating all week. After watching an old coffee crush read in a new context on Monday, I just thought, that's it, this chasm between me and them, this ugly hero-worship that I'm slopping about in, this me being in the performers area as an admin and you being in the performers area as a talented truth, well it's got to stop. No more. After the reading I treated myself to solo Vietnamese (on a Monday!) and looked up the courses she mentioned. I checked my Croatia-bound week in August, and 'one possible female shared space, please call Dan' plus a tutor I am inspired by, made my heart rush. I want this, I thought. I think I really want this. It doesn't feel like a excuse or a trend following or a peer pressure or a trial or a suffering, but it feels like a chance. I have a chance to close this gap between where I am and where I want to be, and if it doesn't work, then not only have I tried but I will gladly go back to the day job because it's actually brilliant. I have a brilliant day job thanks and you'd want it.

I've been blaming the day job for my disquiet (yet another book I half-started...) for some weeks now, probably as it's the only thing I've had within grasp. The self was medicated with yoga but didn't yoke so much as curdle, the bliss coating the hard ground and running off the sides wastefully in the light of day. Relationships were dealt with trepidatiously. Not that 'a pull' (as she so lovingly put it) is the epitome and sole goal of 'relationships', but it's felt like it. So this week I started to Talk To Boys. Find ways to talk and engage and a reason to speak. In the tent at 1.30am it was a self-rhetorical question, is this band running over? Because I'd like to talk to you about my knowledge of the following band, and perhaps you will find me not only scintillating but cute, as I coincidentally find you on my better side.

I talked to the coffee crush author the day after, I need a reason I need a reason, I panted as he crowd-weaved, I made one up, another self-rhetoric which worked, despite not delivering a phone number or card swap. That was his girlfiend or his agent, I didn't know. The next day at dancing I pursued an old crush by way of his 'Virgina is for lovers' t-shirt. I was really pushing my luck and didn't work our if he had got married since I last saw him, or whether the ex-lover he went to Virginia with was also his ex-fiance. He withheld the vitals but did set me up a double-handed high-five that I wasn't quite cool enough to reciprocate. Yesterday I eyed up a gay boy before I knew he was, and another courier crush clocked me as he ran a bus lane on red and mistook my 'whoa that was close' for a, 'whoa you are hot'. It was funny. As it should be. I lay in bed last Friday asking for a change, and it came. I'm both watching it happen and not standing in its way.


*self-rhetoric is not the right word but I can't think what is. A question asked with a known answer as a conversational device*

Change

I lay in bed on Friday night, and called for a change. Out loud, I spoke to myself that change would happen, a new skin would form, a truer idea of the world with new inspirations and less old crap to drag around. I've been bored with myself for a while. It dangles it's legs on the council estate wall, bashing calves against bricks with pointing-sharp edges scraping skin. I'm bored. I'm hanging round waiting for something to happen. I called for a change and closed my eyes.

On the bus down from dropping off the car I saw streets in fresh lights, angles from anew, paths from another perspective. I made readjusted maps of the area in my head and cheered internally from the sight of the lights of the Rio, some pokey Dan Flavins above the rooftops. I'm here in that same old, but I'm seeing in different new. All it takes is a bit of country air, some truths, some laughs, some inspiration to help me ignite mine. I was banging on about humour not working in a vacuum. Neither do ideas or happiness. No man is an island. Senses are only made by reiterations and swaps and shares and generosities and illuminations and sparks. You can't make them happen. They are the ether.

I watched him surrounded by three girls on Friday; a sparkly jacket, a luscious head of hair, a familiar warm embrace. I watched like a fanatic, covertly in the room full of louche festival-goers. My jealousy questioned itself. I felt so far away from them, my context here paid and not born. It displeased me and I wasn't comfortable. I laughed at several versions of 'comedy' under other guises, and felt disatisfied that my way is not always actually that funny, and for this I was obviously doomed. I walked back to the tent chattering invisibly about my talentless, senseless existence. It didn't plague me, it was, just displeasing.

When the work bit finished I enjoyed watching several things that did please me, a mix that would usually happen over two weeks doing so between 10pm and 3am. I was reminded of that thing he said about the good stuff being inspirational, the so-so stuff just being frustratingly wasteful and confusing morally. I talked to strangers and enjoyed a new freedom. I chose a stranger who looked cute. I told him I was waiting for my bad patch to move along and that it hadn't happened yet, but it was probably happening at that precise moment. Free-flowing freedom is what drives me, potentials warming gently, the universe delivering.

It involves some effort. It involves stepping out of the habitual way things are set, recognising that this set is just one way, not the way. Her words made me want to be faithful to the sage again, to trust in something other than my weak ego. He asked me if I was available to work in coffee, it looped back to my 'finding value' in that time. Sometimes you just have to step into what you've got with the aid of a higher power. Offer a warmth to life and see if it mirrors. There has been a change I'm sure.

A scam?

Her face is still burning into me, like the face from the horror movie poster by the Basak Supermarket (which incidently came into my dream last night, along with carbohydrate-based meals). It's been over an hour and a half and I'm stuck in a groove of weighing up whether I should trust her, whether she's a hugely talented faker, whether twenty five quid is a worthy price for being made into a fool, Googling her pieces for some sort of lead to the truth. I think truth is the one thing I aim for, and open ends keep me dangerously hanging, brain whirring, a torture continuum.

I gave a stranger twenty five quid like it was £2. After saying just two days ago that I hate charity, never having given a penny to a homeless person and never warming to leaflet pleas, there I was on the way home from the car boot, head in bargain cookbooks, when an honesty pulled at my arm. I connected with it's real desperation, wherever it came from, and sat her on the wall by Tesco. A broken-looking thing, all bruises and swollen ankles, mashed in nail varnish and smudged eyeshadow, she jarred on the sunny Sunday street. She told (stories) as I listened and conferred with myself, wading in my views which were far from straight-up.

Perhaps I went out to spend some money this morning, and the car boot didn't provide objects. Perhaps I bought a person today, like the adopted-granddaughter my nan has in Africa, who's handwritten letters are likely scrawled by a left-handed scammer. Whatever. It teaches me a separate lesson, that even after an activity has passed, I must continue to process it and run in through until ultimate truths are reached. What I need to do is sacrifice the search, and all the effort it takes. Sometimes truth doesn't deliver.

I just followed a piece to Homerton Hospital admissions department, her maybe-I-didn't-quite-catch-it name wasn't on the discharged list. Maybe she was an excellent fake. Maybe she took the notes back to her mates in Maccy's and got full breakfasts all round. She definitely needed it. Maybe true fakes are the most true of all. I wasn't pressured into giving her money, in the moment, on the wall there. My cynic sat back for once, as I saw us the same. I don't care if I got robbed of one purple and one blue. I don't, really. It makes my cookbooks non-bargains if anything, or covers the ballet-lindy-ballet I didn't do this week because of my shoulder. But the truth, hanging, hurts. And which column does it fit in my accounts?

The Sneeze

This might be a little ridiculous, but I felt there was, really, some sort of, block. For just over two weeks, I've felt angry, pent-up, wrong, wound, bound, bored, blocked. I've been living for the weekends, realing (sic) in the weeks, I am this now? I'm blocked, bored, bound wound wrong. I don't know why! I'm making up little excuses in my head, seeing outside of the situation at suitable points to 'tell myself,(pause), it's OK (capital letters)', but I feel like all I need is a good shake. Put me in a bin bag and raffle me off. What sentiment.

Well it turns out, all I needed was a good sneeze. I just sneezed, cheered, kicked shoes off / folded legs up, signed out of Google and into Mac, here I am. I sneezed and I just felt free. I really did. It surprised me, it came up without my noticing, atop a belly churning avocado feta egg breakfast with nettle, and there is was. It was a sneeze. And it felt like the most freeing thing in the world.

To contextualise, I haven't been able to sneeze since Tuesday 21 June. Every time I've welled up for perfection, something has reeled me in; refrained; tightened; refused. I've sat there underwhelmed, disappointed, angry, pent-up, wrong,wound,bound,etc,etc. Carried on with my day, but ever so slightly more, tense. Tension in the arms, the sneeze moved down perhaps. Why shouldn't the body sympathise with itself? As a massage moves a knot outwards and away, the sneeze seemed to hide in the wrists. The hands are where the words come out. The words are where the work happens.

I am communicating daily. I speak barely a word. I am best wishes and hopefully's and my apologies and looking forward to's. Still words are happening. I told her I would start again tonight, two days ago. To begin, begin, he said. Don't be scared of the unknown it said, dull the ego and align. Everything takes practice, from making the perfect cup of tea, puffing the perfect pillow, to writing things both substantial and (not). I am not practicing, hence I am not improving nor trying to improve. Making one's own blocks seems foolish. If I should need an ego-driven result, I'll think of the excitation of having something to say when I next see them, placing myself contemporarily.

Connections

There's a story in everything, you just have to be looking for it. The birds are always in the trees, but you only hear them call when you're listening out for it. There's an awareness to be taken in everything, if you let yourself feel it in your own hands. Smells are particularly overwhelming when ill, nearly choked in the chemical products section of the discount store. Funny how taste is absent. Salt is good.

I made it out of the house for the first time proper in five days. I managed to buy a paper and ingredients without exhausting myself too much. Economics student, she asked, it took me a while to realise she nodded at my pink paper. I just like the magazines, I told her half heartedly. Walking past F Cooke's I wondered is now the time? It was, I double backed by the community garden and sloped in, unsure how I'd be received with the FT and these glasses. It was fine. A girl in late teens slopped me out a small pie (meat flavour) and mash, with liquor, yes. What it was exactly I'm not sure, a kind of watery parsley sauce. Extra salt and it was amazing.

The girl chatted about some guys passing on the street, kids she'd grown up with, look who has a job, she prided herself. They dipped into the door and I admired her power. She was sure as hell breaking the Personality at Work Act, swearing away as she swept sawdust, why sawdust, you know it's the third time someone's asked that today. Sorry I said, no don't be, I should know why it's there but I don't. She sings exact lyrics to bad r'n'b, and I kind of enjoyed it. She was one of my longest conversations all week. The first was was my parents, oddly.

I love Hoxton Street. Even if there are six police hanging out south waiting for something to come up. Even if I do feel awkward that my hair is this flowing and straight without relaxer. Despite existing in the very throes of a certain middle, I know where I'm from, I know about working. Pie and mash for half the price of posh corned beef in town, ready meals and digestives in place of homemade lasagnes and organic puddings, a whole week of iPlayer and Streetmate re-runs instead of activities I usually call culture. They're all the same really. This bout has loosened me up a little.

Slipped context

Amazing how quickly your context falls out when you get ill. You don't have to be anywhere, don't have to see anyone, so I'm going nowhere and not seen a friend for days. Is that a ready meal, she accused, and was right to, and yes there are chocolate digestives in the orange-lipped jar, and yes I did have two types of 'sauce' on my roast potatoes last night. Blurry contexts indeed. I walked past the reformed meat and Italian packages, these things still didn't break sense, but the chicken dopiaza just called out from amongst the panoply of Express atrocities.

Not normally would I eat crumpets and biscuits for lunch, and something which came from a factory and tasted rather sugary for a curry supposedly 2-chili-rated for dinner, though I did make pilau from scratch. Not normally would I watch Candy Cabs, Birds Britannica, A History of Celtic Britain, The Crimson Petal and the White, Railway Walks, Masterchef and two episodes of Eastenders. Not normally would I feel best for not leaving the house (through the front door) for two days. Not normally would I not brush my teeth or wash my face. Some things just make more sense when you're struggling to forget your body. Distraction techniques. Bad food, bad television, bad grooming. I don't need to condition my existence. I feel like shit hence I'm alive.

Strangely these are some of the things which make less sense when trying to be mindful. I spent the class on Tuesday, wishing I could leave my body, un-notice aches in wrists(!) and other parts which are normally self-governing. It felt like a taste of being old, clearing away chairs and almost needing a sleep directly. The other people there, and I'm generalising here, are high speed achievers, who just need to chill out. How nice it is to stretch, thought one, how nice it is to, think one thing at a time, another. It seemed we didn't have the same angle. I'm merging my body and mind several times a day several activities a week, and my problem is a one track mind, eating it's own possibilities quicker than I'm getting down these digestives.

The busy rushing world in which those city people are rapt, the calls of work and tasks and hobbies and people, buffers of our being, take them all away and one makes less sense. We can't talk about my lipstick, your sandwich, that record player, this event. Take it all away and you're left with your self. The same self you find shooting warrior arms diagonally adjacent over plane trail on a path in Kent, reciting poetry in a field, lying on an incline basking as nothing else matters but now. The same self now coughs up yellow and cries old lover indulgences, a lonesome example of what results when you take the extras away. This touching base with the body results in a certain elation on wellness. It would just be nice to not have to resort to ready meals.