I came back

Oh it's all changed! Oh I left it and came back and Blogger is upgraded! I stopped writing because keyboards and screens are work, and real life comes in pizza nights and bad films, in weird secular meeting halls, in bowls of velvety soup and unusual ice cream mixtures served by a charming Lothario, in yoga classes stretched 2 hours long which melt me into some bliss that leaves me unable to function. I was just short of slapping myself yesterday, I swear after that class, you miss the last train, you drink a smoothie a week out of date that cost £2.20, and you don't care! Normally those things make me care in a rather wasteful post-rationalising (thanks Rory) way that sees the good the bad and all in between, but that class. Mellowed like butter mistakenly left out on an unusually hot day. Knife laid on it and falling into it. Dangerous. You can't make a cake with butter that's no longer solid. You can't Work in these times without a little adrenaline driving the insane load. Three days later I can't decide if I'm sick or tired or sick-and-tired.

The Ripe Brain

I didn't want to go to work this morning. I really wanted a duvet day. I felt ready and excited by ideas and I wanted to fulfill them. I wanted to agree to the urge and follow it. I wanted to let things flow, open a tap, let the natural thing happen. Forget yourself, he shouted, the only way to write the thing is to write the bloody thing. Or something like that. I was so rapt I forgot to minute-ise these wisdoms. Forget you, he said, it was all about Forgetting You, putting the tiny percentage aside, There, Tiny Percentage, sit, and opening up a flood of you-have-no-idea (yet). You. The conscious knows only part of the story. The conscious is trendy, post, after, over. The unconscious, that's where the cool new lies.

The problem is, it takes the conscious You to make the effort to sit down and begin. Stop checking the roast veg, stop researching doctors' surgeries and foreign flights, stop moaning that your back hurts, your shoulder hurts, there's not enough lemon in my water. Oh look, there's a pile of stuff that needs washing. No, boring conscious, boring You, take control and Just Write The Bloody Thing. He talked of momentum. Start, and it breeds, runs, blazes, catches, travels, goes bloody wild. You have the key, and these secrets just pour out. The You can't help it, because by then it's sitting back, removed, and barely even watching what's happened until it's done.

More research is needed here, if my brain can bend enough to get determinism. You have to take the (conscious) initiative to sit and place you hands above keys, or have pen hovering over paper. Put yourself in the potential position. Then, something catches. The unconscious sparks mix with the conscious and somehow get catapulted out as a thought. The unconscious sets alight, and it blazes a trail that feels a bit like fate. Stuff you knew 'needed' to be said is so. And when you don't take action to sit and do this, it kind of builds up and constipates itself. The natural course of events is faulting, moments overlapping and building up and driving each other deeper down, though never actually dissolving, but becoming knotted and dangerous.

So, the problem is time. When (stirs roast veg and does twelve sun salutations, ok, not the sun salutations, because White Heat starts in 11 minutes and they take at least fifteen) there's so much to do, and the largest chunk of one's day is given over to something not conducive to anything personally productive, this leaves little time to work out what's important. I want to read my new book, knit my cardi, cook a meal, watch a serial while I still pay for cable, and all this before even beginning to think of socialising and leaving the house. I want to write OF COURSE but it somehow falls to the bottom quite quickly because you can't eat it or wear it or talk about in at work tomorrow, and it's frigging terrifying.

(Boils rice, watches White Heat, reads some Philip Larkin, sleeps nine hours, does fifteen minutes of yoga, reads last weekend's paper, has a shower, eats a Basics fromage frais) (writes paragraph, becomes mildly late for work...)

I never could answer the question of what I wanted to be when I grew up, because I only just realised the answer is 'retired'.

Day 1

Indian philosophy says that what you do on the first of January sets the tone for your year ahead. As last year went, that seems quite apt. A 6 mile walk and yoga; 2011 saw me become a real yogi and solo Sunday walks fulfilled me wonderfully. The year before sits true, and the one before it. The year before that I have no recollection of, perhaps on thinking it was the year's eve I got the most drunk I ever have and will, passed out and was sick on myself, spent the next day just surviving. If it's the year I'm thinking of, I did spend that year just surviving.

So, I had grand plans for today naturally. I'm setting my tone I'm setting my tone, got to get all those flavours in to make the taste of my year a success. I mean I wasn't too stressed about it. I knew there'd be dancing at 3, I wanted to do my housekeeping duties, and the usual bracket of *writing* *knitting* *sewing that bloody duvet cover that is totally haunting me (just sew that frigging duvet cover will you for Christ's sake?!*. I'm now aware it's 9:22 and hoping I melded a good flavour...

Woke up early not hungover (quite usual but worth stating), did some research on buying a phono stage for my poor abandoned record player (poking actively into a challenging 'I don't know enough about this to make it happen so I'll leave it' area - good work), watched Charlie Brooker's review of the year (three-fold: 1 - iPlayer in bed = relaxation and nurturing actually and TV is the new no-TV 2 - I am laughing more this year. I am laughing everyday. Really laughing from the heart. I'm putting comedy on if I have to, or watch the George Dawes Baked Potato sketch 3 - I want to engage with the world's affairs and get out of mine), mild yoga, a lovely brunch (smoked salmon, eggs, soda bread mmm), did my washing and attacked the ironing guilt pile, arrived at dancing in good time, danced (bring on the ballroom, take off the girlfriends), had an enforced comfort break and read my book in the members bit with the sofas, ate a great dinner, writing/cheese/wine (and some Ben & Jerry's in a non-desperate manner), Clare Teal on Radio 2 (woo!).

I don't want to think the revelation of the year will be directly proportional to the amount of time assigned to said activities. Like I wrote intermittently for only an hour or so (in between George Dawes, Ab Fab, more Smooth Criminal) probably less time than I spent watching telly, and less time that I spent on the bus. I want me doing *things* to be a large part of this year. Making Thing Happen in reality. I was at dancing for 5 hours in the end, but I don't want that to be the majority of my tang for the year. Imagine if I attacked every day with this same fervour; must get things done! Must perpetuate calm, truth and greatness as far as possible. Would it be too intense, or would it be the best approach to life one could take?

A People Week

Well, once you extrapolate it, you're of the same demographic, and it is the busiest shopping day of the year. He flattened it slightly, one of those days where it seems like a Generation Game conveyor belt brings a string of tenuously-linked ex-people. Or now people, Or next people. Once is nice, twice is refreshing, third you begin to analyse. You're in a soap, and in any given episode, everyone that lives on the Square Street Close seems to come into the shop for a card gift book. My, today of all days, of all 365 days today is the one we all needa card book gift in order for us to gather like swarming beasts as though something is going to happen, or some force whirls us together. With them it's the writers, with us, the world.

Why do these people come into our lives? Our habitual or best friends seem to colour our pages on a permanent if patchy basis. The tone is kept sweet, topped up intermittenty, some times very internittmently (work, ills, geography). The guests of yesterday seem to drop dabs of pigment on a previously wet space, drips blotting and filtering, adding extra intention, diversity, and sometimes tangential brightness. You don't fit, you don't mean the sky or the earth, the birds or the picnic, but you add to my picture.

One of those days

It's when the objects you usually love look flat and cold. It's like closing one eye and only seeing in two dimensions, flattened shapes, rendered forms, where there used to be physical and emotional abundance. I don't want to put on an oufit. I don't care for quenching combinations, I don't want to paint my face in shades of normal with accents of the look, because I don't feel normal and I can't see the look. I want to draw a cartoon bag and cut some holes in it and put it on. I might tie a woolly belt around the middle, or I might not. I'll make a similar head covering, not too itchy, made a rough cool linen, with enough gap for vision, breathing and ingestion, but hidden enough from the world to suggest cowering, and caves.

I can't go to the canal side cafe because I am not carrying the plumage of display and flaunting a casual perfection. I am raw and open, seeping cleansing fluids, melding, meshing, nature happening. I'm shocking. I would cause questions. I don't want to put on a fine face when I don't feel fine. Think of how many people all over the city aren't letting themselves out into the world today, how many people are paralized by a lack of time, direction, desperation. One day before I give myself back to my definition. One perfect day is happening now, only I'm swollen and puffy and behind and just fucking tired actually.

"If you don't like your job, find another one. Stop looking for the love of your life, they'll be there when you start doing the things that you love." So much pressure to make everything perfect, and once you've made everything perfect, you'll be some sort of supreme being.

Illness

There's a filter which comes off when illness sets in. Interaction with the world softens, edges become candy floss fuzzy, delicate, porous, possibly sweet possibly salty, depending on the stage of illness (salty at the start, jagged attack at the gullet, sweet at the end as the juices start to caramelise and hang out in gaps in your face). Maybe it's more like popcorn, you're a walking popped kernel, all gaps and crags and places for the world to nest in. Ideas are free to roam, thoughts too, you feel like a child exploring a man-made bedroom underworld, all chairs and sheets and secrets.

When you're ill, logic falls by the wayside. Logic is in the gutter, kicking leaves and butts like an excluded year 10, bored and aware that no-one really cares that it's not at school today. Unemployed, impotent, excess. Logical left brain, is seemingly useless. Raucous right brain, is having a lovely fun time. It's as though the logical side of your self is absolutely involved with the operating of the body, Tom Hanks all serious as the captain of the ship, leaving the fun side to just play out. I walk past the school and see the mini people in glee, utter freedom, I'm jealous.

When you're ill, your ego, Ahamkara, takes it the worst. The part which normally acts as your super-shell, an annoying parent holding you back from both things that are actually bad for you (insert socially unacceptable situation) as well as things that would actually be very character forming (learning by doing/falling etc). The ego sits in bed, coughing and spluttering and moaning for pity, the intellect wants to play out in the sunshine like a 5 year old who really does not know what's happenning next, the mind admits that bed and iPlayer is the only option. With biscuits.

I was reading my book yesterday, aware of my fluffy outer layer, corroborating with my imagina4tion, pooling their resources for a ticket to good times. That part of my head which usually resists your meaning, other people's pictures and possibilities, today I take it on. Today I realise there's enough room in this brain for the two of us, and more, there's enough room for ideas ad infinitum, and so sweet they are too, they make a sundae with my own sweet ill juices. I'm cosy in all my coat layers, heading back to work prematurely, and I'm making a new little world. I'm reshaping my brain over here on the last but one seat on the drivers side on the top deck of the 73. I smile smugly around, I'm still ill, and I like it.

The downside, as one gets to work, back to rational life, well everything is so much harder. I seem to have both gone dyslexic and dropped several sets in maths and English I can't add up my two Cash v/s Card figures without the aid of Excel's dumb tools, I can't seem to transcribe telephone conversations onto Post-its, I cannot make hierarchical decisions with the Outlook flags and their shades of importance in red. But there's a cake downstairs I made, look how good my outfit is today, I really want to know how to curl my hair like yours, and can I please open the cardboard pinhole camera and give it a go? The screen hurts my face but life seems so alive right now.

Constellations

Starting is like joining the motorway; you see a gap in the traffic, and you just have to go for it and get in there. There's no stopping, no reversing, no options except ahead. There will never be an ideal time when the motorway is completely empty, and you can career on in any fashion you please. And faster. If you thought you were going fast enough, well you're not, go at least half as fast again. Also, you will never be master of it; it's dangerous, precarious, it waits to receive you, it allows you, it exists for you. Start, join, get involved, as they say.

I got home an hour ago after a thoroughly enjoyable morning of walking, swimming, a haircut, and a stroll around the often-too-lovely locale looking for posh stock cubes. The swimming was free by some trick of my out-of-date working tax credit still being loaded onto my membership card (a heavy repayment burden, but hey, free swimming!), and when things are free you both enjoy them more and expect less. I skipped to my haircut and am quite pleased with her skill and our chat, we talked figs, philosophies and visual intelligences, there was free cake as it was Thursday, and I found a kind of kin I wouldn't have predicted from the outset.

I got some satisfactory stock cubes and headed back, eating the scraps of rye bread piled with salmon and reduced avocado, as the French onions caramelised. There's a gap here, I felt. A constellation. Magical timing when things feel exciting and open and daunting and possible. Where everything's in line, you're in the car, you can see the sign for the motorway, you can see that there's going to be a chance to make things happen. It's one of those oft-parodied blue motorway signs, chunky white writing and smooth arrows directing you to The Zone, 300 yards. Oh, but hang on, I just need to watch my onions so they caramelise and don't burn, for a bit longer, so I'll just read Stylist and listen to Radio 3 raging war for a bit. Notice the non specified time of said 'bit'.

A little (?) later, the flow has ebbed, the potential got wet it seems, the baton floats in the foam, you didn't catch it then? Didn't keep it dry and honor it? Is the gap so small that it commands me? In fragile times, it seems so. The Zone is a delicate offering, sitting on a velvet cushion edged in gems, wafting around the room on a posh tray like a pile of not-for-you-madam Forerro Rocher. Look, people will point and Ladies will giggle, the Zone! How special if feels when it brushes past you, look how close it came, did you see how close it came to me, it was like this close!!

Not quite sure where this is going. Yes I am that's a lie. Where am I going I said last night, as he shoved me into a move I didn't recognise, Nowhere, he said, our feet hovered, shuffled. Yes I am, I countered, I'm going everywhere! Everywhere and nowhere. I was kind of still, not twirling it was true, but my feet were gentle and preparing to be everywhere, unfurling grossly like a pearl in a tea cup. So here I am again. I don't know where I'm going but I'm going to really try and give this time because not doing it is really choking me up. I'm going to honor it.