So right now, I'm actually contemplating the appealing nature of both a short term let in an amazing sounding house, and a long term let with two nice sounding girls.Part of me is completely thrilled with the impermanence of a three month let, a sort yourslef out out, make plans, short burst of time which could feel like a holiday. What can you do in the time? How could you use this time to create something, whether it's a product, an idea, a feeling. A plan. Could it be really exciting and fresh, and the oppossite of domestic?
That's what Ir ea;l;y felt free about when I was away. I packed an excellent bag of perfect essentials which could have seen me through another 2 months of life. I had what I needed, and only 3 objects I didn't use out of about 50. I felt efficient and light, and satisfied that I carried with me all I wanted for appearance and entertainment. I didn't begrudge any object, wish I hadn't brought it, wish to send it home. I felt light and transient but mostly essential. Now I feel heavy.
I am back in the flat and objects gape out at me. REMEMBER ME. A sign from the past, a sign of your domesticity, your fake future, an imagining of a kitchen full of these ceramics which fill in the gaps. They sat in boxes for a year, waiting for their cupboards, but now the future is turned upside they have no purpose. They don't look beautiful and they don't work well. They are mashed, collected versions of a cossetted existence that is now void. They are souvenirs.
But I still am attached to them somehow. Boxing them up for a car boot sale, I wonder of a new house which collects Cadbury's bits, and how "I used to have some of those!" but I gave them away for my new existence, they didn't fit, or I skimmed where I shouldn't have. How many teapots do I need? Do things mean more if I found them, or if they were gifts? Does my broken, now severely impeded teapot go to the bin? Will I ever think about her if I don't use the teapot ever again? Am I even thinking about her when I burn my fingers on the stupid handle-less thing, or just how sad I feel that it fell out of the car on it's first trip outside in nearly twenty years?
A heaviness again. I cultivated a lightness away, and now it is buried under heavy clouds of indecision, confusion and cluelessness. I can feel the stress arms creeping back. Do I go for the scariest option? When I didn't know whether to steal away, it was the scariest option, the most exciting, the most unimaginable. That is the way taking a short let feels. I see him sitting on a rather orange creosoted fence, saying, moving twice in three months?? Twice?? Urgh, that sounds like a bit, you know. And then my own voice realises the argument is actually made up, my wariness is biting me. What would happen if I did the most scary thing?
Tuesday, 18 August 2009
Monday, 17 August 2009
Third person
Bloody hell everything is like MEMORY, everything, a song, a date, a cup, christ make it stop. I got back yesterday and I hadn't actually written anything for the whole of Germany, and I'm not really feeling liek I need to now. I am quite clear of mind on focused on ACTION but then these memories are like SLAM and I've got my frigging stress arms on again!?! Where did they spring from??
Anyway, having a declutter, really I don't need a melon baller, and I seem to have a rather large ratio of knives to other items of cutlery, and a penchant for them,,and wondering if that means anything. My 5ml Nigella spoon is missing and I want it back. What do I get rid of? What do you need in your life? Like a set of everything so if I was displaced in a country kitchen like the barn cottage (FUCK!) that I will never go to again, I could exist with this set of essential possestions. I can't even bloody spell, I've not missed typing I don't think. Possess. Possessions. There we go. So many people asked me when I was away 'do you speak English', like after I'd done a sentence, and I was like 'yes?'. But I'd not spoken at length for about four days so I'm sorry I've forgotten what to do.
I must have stopped thinking in Sweden? I don't know. I was just being. I was too busy in Germany to have thoughts and write them. Too busy to be having epiphanies. Or too busy having epiphanies to notice. Can one have multiple epiphanies? Or is that akin to being very unique? ANyway, when I spoke in France, it actually became easier, because I wasn't locked in my English head, oh oh, how to I, back up, and word it in French, and then speak it in French, oh. More like, I'm making communication here, I want you to know I'm saying this, in this country, so I will say it in your words. That was quite fun, though my French is AWFUL in sound. That would come in practice.
Anyway I am going to go and continue the sort and maybe my words will return soon and I will want to blog. But I actually just enjoyed writing to myself, and thinking about the next stage, rather than just pointless payless blogging and it's third person narrative disease. Bleugh.
Anyway, having a declutter, really I don't need a melon baller, and I seem to have a rather large ratio of knives to other items of cutlery, and a penchant for them,,and wondering if that means anything. My 5ml Nigella spoon is missing and I want it back. What do I get rid of? What do you need in your life? Like a set of everything so if I was displaced in a country kitchen like the barn cottage (FUCK!) that I will never go to again, I could exist with this set of essential possestions. I can't even bloody spell, I've not missed typing I don't think. Possess. Possessions. There we go. So many people asked me when I was away 'do you speak English', like after I'd done a sentence, and I was like 'yes?'. But I'd not spoken at length for about four days so I'm sorry I've forgotten what to do.
I must have stopped thinking in Sweden? I don't know. I was just being. I was too busy in Germany to have thoughts and write them. Too busy to be having epiphanies. Or too busy having epiphanies to notice. Can one have multiple epiphanies? Or is that akin to being very unique? ANyway, when I spoke in France, it actually became easier, because I wasn't locked in my English head, oh oh, how to I, back up, and word it in French, and then speak it in French, oh. More like, I'm making communication here, I want you to know I'm saying this, in this country, so I will say it in your words. That was quite fun, though my French is AWFUL in sound. That would come in practice.
Anyway I am going to go and continue the sort and maybe my words will return soon and I will want to blog. But I actually just enjoyed writing to myself, and thinking about the next stage, rather than just pointless payless blogging and it's third person narrative disease. Bleugh.
Monday, 20 July 2009
oink
The wonderful thing about being physically ill is that that it gives the mind a rest. The best days at school were always the ones after an illness, when body is not quite in line with the day, and mind is like a parent, holding its hand, going, come on, you can be in the world, and my do I feel clear, and like I'm in control! I am the mind and I calmly run this show!
When I had my annual chest infection last year, I couldn't breathe for more than a few spoken words, but once on the keyboard, I had a voice again. That amazed me. That total mechanical break down of something you see as 'talking', spliced into thinking-breathing-saying out loud, or in this case, thought to hand. The lungs cope, the hands realise they aren't really very ill at all, look at them dancing. Right now I'm doing it, though my mechanics are achy, but this is when lap tops do what they say, and the be covers are the greatest solace.
The mind is dealing with the most pressing problem, the survival of the body, but at the same time it surely gets a lesson on what's important. It surely realises that emotions are fun but sometimes they need severing.
When I had my annual chest infection last year, I couldn't breathe for more than a few spoken words, but once on the keyboard, I had a voice again. That amazed me. That total mechanical break down of something you see as 'talking', spliced into thinking-breathing-saying out loud, or in this case, thought to hand. The lungs cope, the hands realise they aren't really very ill at all, look at them dancing. Right now I'm doing it, though my mechanics are achy, but this is when lap tops do what they say, and the be covers are the greatest solace.
The mind is dealing with the most pressing problem, the survival of the body, but at the same time it surely gets a lesson on what's important. It surely realises that emotions are fun but sometimes they need severing.
Thursday, 16 July 2009
Trying, really
I feel tiredness is a state of mind. It's emotional tiredness a lot of the time. Remember getting up at 6am and traveling for hours to Alton Towers, hours and miles back, then going out to karaoke with a warm G glow (force that is), and feeling like you could stay up and on forever? Adrenaline takes over. But you have to let it. I think my stress arms are full of unexpired adrenaline. Pressure.
I was just thinking of booking a train ticket for Saturday night, coming back Monday morning. I don't know where, preferably somewhere cheap enough to go first class, so I can indulge in the Virgin lounge. Then I thought, no I'll be too tired. Then I thought, no, I'd be invigorating to take a trip out. ? .
Starting to get back to the work but super super critical of every word I write, every idea or thought I intone. What does it mean says my heavy existence. Do you mean it. And all it is is a sentence. i just don't want to have to look at anything I have tried to create as it just smacks of sadness, confusion and heaviness. The opposite of what good writing might be. But don't take my word for it, right now.
Another go...
I was just thinking of booking a train ticket for Saturday night, coming back Monday morning. I don't know where, preferably somewhere cheap enough to go first class, so I can indulge in the Virgin lounge. Then I thought, no I'll be too tired. Then I thought, no, I'd be invigorating to take a trip out. ? .
Starting to get back to the work but super super critical of every word I write, every idea or thought I intone. What does it mean says my heavy existence. Do you mean it. And all it is is a sentence. i just don't want to have to look at anything I have tried to create as it just smacks of sadness, confusion and heaviness. The opposite of what good writing might be. But don't take my word for it, right now.
Another go...
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
I'm scrabbling around on the internet, looking for a welcome home, how was your day, hug, acknowledgment of my reality, someone to talk to about my stress arms. Email is faceless information swapping, facebook is faceless commentary, neither are what I'm looking for, yet I'm still looking.
A empty house. Mismatched schedules. Perpetual non reward. The house doesn't care if I've had a hard day, if I got told off for weeing too many times, that I had that 'I;m listening to myself talk and I sound stupid' moment a gazillion times, that I'm worried I have an infection. The house doesn't care about my reality, and it makes me feel homeless. Home is where the heart is, mine is shriveled, I'd say say sitting back into my stomach slightly. It's nowhere near my brain, and the work feels physically and mentally difficult.
If there was a Wikipedia entry for 'Stress arms', it would also say "see 'Vodka arms' and 'Caffeine arms'". It's the same feeling, a buzzing through the veins downwards from the biceps through the top elbows, the forearms, collecting in the wrists, unable to be released from the tops of hands, fizzy fingers, then surging back to the elbow joint. I feel it heavy on the wrists and top forearms, it buzzes and they aren't quite sure what the message means. I'm stressed? What do I do about it?
"The failure of a human or animal to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats to the organism, whether actual or imagined."
This project has become a symbol of my inability. It has grown into an opposite meaning to that which it exists. It isn't provoking creativity, but stillness and fear. This post is very dull but I'm just trying to get writing out. Bluh.
A empty house. Mismatched schedules. Perpetual non reward. The house doesn't care if I've had a hard day, if I got told off for weeing too many times, that I had that 'I;m listening to myself talk and I sound stupid' moment a gazillion times, that I'm worried I have an infection. The house doesn't care about my reality, and it makes me feel homeless. Home is where the heart is, mine is shriveled, I'd say say sitting back into my stomach slightly. It's nowhere near my brain, and the work feels physically and mentally difficult.
If there was a Wikipedia entry for 'Stress arms', it would also say "see 'Vodka arms' and 'Caffeine arms'
"The failure of a human or animal to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats to the organism, whether actual or imagined."
This project has become a symbol of my inability. It has grown into an opposite meaning to that which it exists. It isn't provoking creativity, but stillness and fear. This post is very dull but I'm just trying to get writing out. Bluh.
Sunday, 12 July 2009
Incongruity feels good, still don't think good
You feel like you're alright? Want to test it? Look at it? How are you now? Fucked still right? GA GA GA GA GA GAAAAAAAA oo (infinity). I want it to stop now. I want it to stop and I want to start again. I am preoccupying myself with activities, totaling a grand amount of two tangos, three ballets (one slash jazz, one slash floor-barre), one each pilates and yoga, topped off with a tea dance. Sixty seven pounds and twelve hours of forgetting myself, not counting copious free minutes spent thrashing around to Jonathan Richman in my room.
I went to Granta talk at the Southbank,
I just wanted to say this is REALLY difficult at the moment, I am really not thinking anything, because if I allow myself to think I am thinking of the bad stuff straight away. Even though it's blended in tone, like the sour cream top layer on a Pret creme caramel, I am having to consciously cut through it and ignore the sharp taste, trying to tap into the sweetness beneath. It's REALLY hard and to be honest I'd rather be dancing to this song I'm listening to.
Anyway as I was saying, or trying to think about saying, I went to the Granta talk and I got the book 4 weeks before it's due out, and got it signed by A.L. Kennedy. I want to tell you (well me, but you) that please have something better to say when you meet someone you admire than 'I'm going to read your book of short stories because I don't have the memory for a full novel'. Stuff like 'have you got any gigs coming up?' or 'I like what you said about computer screens making the eyes oscillate differently', something interesting for fucks sake. Please. Interesting or nothing. Which could also apply here, I've said this before, but I'm trying to work through it, and who are you anyway, you 219 anons and 1 comment that I guessed.
I had a great day. It was a day off. And even trying to have a day off cycling didn't work, and I probably went further than I usually do after getting lost in EC1. Loads of really cool urban-developed parks, defo going to go back to that ridiculous one-seat alien pod swing, if I can remember where it is. I thought at the time how fun it was to get a bit lost, to have somewhere to go, but be quite relaxed about arrival. It reminded me of that thing I used to relay to people as though wisdom, 'it's no fun having nothing to do, only having things to do and not doing them!'I mean that rambling around town with no destination would be difficult, but having markers of time and places to be, gives even a loose structure that is pleasing to stray from.
I didn't know what to expect from the tea dance. Not quite neo knitting yet, give it a year I'd say. Those old boys are in for a right treat! I had such a fun time, spun around by a man who couldn't quite hear what I was saying and didn't know the rules, only the dances. He seemed to take a shine to me, and I wondered if his wife had died. I wanted to know how old he was, couldn't have been much more than ten years older that my dad, maybe mid 70s. There was a touch of Thai bride I suspected, mute-ish little wimps who came to life in spins. Don't hold me to that assertion, but it was a feeling I got. There was an small guy with a dropped waist and white wispy hair, who danced with a near 6 foot porcelain sailor size 6, and they were the sexiest couple going. He was amazing and I had a bit of a crush on him and he was about 90.
I felt quite special today. I picked up three Scandinavian-looking knives from the car boot, went to yoga in my matching jersey short suit. Had a really good coffee (Passeio, 'Ferrero Rocher on the sofa') with some re-toasted Turkish bread with lashings of salty butter. Read the papers online, danced around to Mary J. Blige a bit. Went into town on a new route full of parks and police. Danced fox trot, quickstep, waltz, rhumba and cha cha. Drank a LOT of tea, in china, and ate lots of margerine-light cake. Took off my red heels and rode home on my single speed bike, to a bag of lemon-salted almonds and a Julia Bradbury episode. Made a quick Nigel special, using that lovely Taste the Difference square spaghetti, very good. Had a shower and hung out my washing, and then remembered myself. Melancholy. I am an incongruous mix-up, but then I always preferred a 10p mix-up to a quarter of something samey.
I went to Granta talk at the Southbank,
I just wanted to say this is REALLY difficult at the moment, I am really not thinking anything, because if I allow myself to think I am thinking of the bad stuff straight away. Even though it's blended in tone, like the sour cream top layer on a Pret creme caramel, I am having to consciously cut through it and ignore the sharp taste, trying to tap into the sweetness beneath. It's REALLY hard and to be honest I'd rather be dancing to this song I'm listening to.
Anyway as I was saying, or trying to think about saying, I went to the Granta talk and I got the book 4 weeks before it's due out, and got it signed by A.L. Kennedy. I want to tell you (well me, but you) that please have something better to say when you meet someone you admire than 'I'm going to read your book of short stories because I don't have the memory for a full novel'. Stuff like 'have you got any gigs coming up?' or 'I like what you said about computer screens making the eyes oscillate differently', something interesting for fucks sake. Please. Interesting or nothing. Which could also apply here, I've said this before, but I'm trying to work through it, and who are you anyway, you 219 anons and 1 comment that I guessed.
I had a great day. It was a day off. And even trying to have a day off cycling didn't work, and I probably went further than I usually do after getting lost in EC1. Loads of really cool urban-developed parks, defo going to go back to that ridiculous one-seat alien pod swing, if I can remember where it is. I thought at the time how fun it was to get a bit lost, to have somewhere to go, but be quite relaxed about arrival. It reminded me of that thing I used to relay to people as though wisdom, 'it's no fun having nothing to do, only having things to do and not doing them!'I mean that rambling around town with no destination would be difficult, but having markers of time and places to be, gives even a loose structure that is pleasing to stray from.
I didn't know what to expect from the tea dance. Not quite neo knitting yet, give it a year I'd say. Those old boys are in for a right treat! I had such a fun time, spun around by a man who couldn't quite hear what I was saying and didn't know the rules, only the dances. He seemed to take a shine to me, and I wondered if his wife had died. I wanted to know how old he was, couldn't have been much more than ten years older that my dad, maybe mid 70s. There was a touch of Thai bride I suspected, mute-ish little wimps who came to life in spins. Don't hold me to that assertion, but it was a feeling I got. There was an small guy with a dropped waist and white wispy hair, who danced with a near 6 foot porcelain sailor size 6, and they were the sexiest couple going. He was amazing and I had a bit of a crush on him and he was about 90.
I felt quite special today. I picked up three Scandinavian-looking knives from the car boot, went to yoga in my matching jersey short suit. Had a really good coffee (Passeio, 'Ferrero Rocher on the sofa') with some re-toasted Turkish bread with lashings of salty butter. Read the papers online, danced around to Mary J. Blige a bit. Went into town on a new route full of parks and police. Danced fox trot, quickstep, waltz, rhumba and cha cha. Drank a LOT of tea, in china, and ate lots of margerine-light cake. Took off my red heels and rode home on my single speed bike, to a bag of lemon-salted almonds and a Julia Bradbury episode. Made a quick Nigel special, using that lovely Taste the Difference square spaghetti, very good. Had a shower and hung out my washing, and then remembered myself. Melancholy. I am an incongruous mix-up, but then I always preferred a 10p mix-up to a quarter of something samey.
Wednesday, 8 July 2009
I want people to love me like I love
He's amazing, picking me off the floor and throwing me into shapes like I care about life. Yes! I think I love dancing, I love Jonathan Richman, I love thinking don't get me wrong, but I love the opposite of thinking so much. The two splits of the mind and body, both should be worked at and nurtured and challenged. Extra curricular QUEEN me. Watch out Gwyneth. Bloody ridiculous paying 18 quid to 'pulse' my arms whilst springing back and forth on a machine, but so much fun and controlled and not thinking, I love it.
Tired now, gin in a tin and too many lemon salted almonds, not enough punctuation. Enjoying playing with language recently, using prose as poetry and changing its intentions and outcomes. You can only do it when you know the rules, and are clever enough to make new ones.
Right now I'm not and I'm listening to fun on Spotify having a bit of an upset and and melancholic time, but mostly just shimmying around and forget myself for a bit (and trying really REALLY hard to keep off TwiCkr, SFSG).
Tired now, gin in a tin and too many lemon salted almonds, not enough punctuation. Enjoying playing with language recently, using prose as poetry and changing its intentions and outcomes. You can only do it when you know the rules, and are clever enough to make new ones.
Right now I'm not and I'm listening to fun on Spotify having a bit of an upset and and melancholic time, but mostly just shimmying around and forget myself for a bit (and trying really REALLY hard to keep off TwiCkr, SFSG).
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