Symbiotic

I’ve got difficult feet; I know that. Not many shoes fit them, they hurt a lot, they demand attention. So I’d like to thank you, old pair of boots, for the support you’ve given me over the years. I’ve veered between giving you the attention you deserve; polishing, zip replacements, re-heeling, to taking you completely for granted for months at a time. You are just there. Your creases fit my creases, you protect me, keep me safe. I remember when you were new and exciting and I showed you off to everyone and made them all jealous. I don’t have to do that anymore and we're still both beautiful in our worn ways. We go together and sometimes I think you’re part of me. But you are your own thing, with your own life. Sometimes your dodgy zip drives me mad, and I have to do you up carefully these days. Sometimes you are cantankerous, which old boots have every right to be. Of course there have been others before you, but you are special, different, wonderful. You fit me perfectly and I hope you feel the same way, but I know you could have made many others equally happy.

Neither of us will last forever, but I promise I will take more care of you and do my best to keep us together for as long as possible. X X X

Helter-Skeltering

Let me off this roundabout, I want to catch my breath. I want to . . . pause. I’m having a panic about circles. My life is made up of regularity. Every day, every week, every year confirms, conforms. We are indoctrinated from the beginning of memory. Alarm clocks, coffee mugs, that spinning wheel  while the computer decides to wake up, the sun. Ruled by circles. I feel like Dorothy, without the drama and the snazzy red shoes, watching the Witch’s egg timer. My sands are running out. Well maybe I’m going to forsake circularity, maybe I’m going to become linear, liney-er, run to the edge of the horizon. Maybe today I won’t brush my teeth. Maybe I won’t do the washing up. Oh dear. Deadlines do something strange to my mind. Dead line, there is my line, my horizon or is it a brick wall? From this angle the line is a full stop. Another circle.

Hello from Yesterday

I heard from an old friend. Funny to hear from someone after a thousand years. He is not on Facebook either so like myself I assume he doesn’t have unnecessary connections. The past tends to stay put, but there’s nothing like a little nostalgia every now and again. So it was kind of nice to get an email. 

   He was the only boy in our gang, apart from boyfriends, who never quite counted. He was funny and kind and ate loads of garlic. He had crazy girls and nice boys. Everyone had a five minute crush on him. He wore cool retro clothes and had a traffic island in his room. I remember making up a dance with him to Octopus’s Garden which I still perform whenever I hear it. We kept up for a while, he came down to our Brighton fancy dress parties but then as people do I went away and he drifted away and the organised people in the group became more concerned with organising marriages and families. 

   He is in Brighton now, and happy and married and childed. Maybe I will coffee café him when I am next there. But too much nostalgia can make one nauseous (I site listening to 80s Cure or U2). 

   He played me this song once, which is just the right balance of then and now (give it half a minute): 

Train of Thought

Sun strikes clouds, strikes me, hard in the face. In the face of it. Then sadly the banks rise and for a while there is a subterranean feel. Mmm, nice pen, nice paper. Book a little small, but suitable for journeys, journals. The train is calming. When do you relax? When I am on a train. Swoops of birds over fields and buildings painted in golden light. The rhythm echoes the womb I can only assume. The toil of the day is realised and I could so easily sleep. This is also cutting down to one coffee. And there are the graffitied carriages, discarded, or are they home to the hermit? Slowly everything turns pink, but there will be no delight tomorrow, I know it is going to rain. Sheep sprout out of fields like mushrooms. A man pushes a skinny trolley full of temptation down the aisle. If I push my head to the window I can see a scribble of sunset. My phone sparkles a message; it is nice to be loved. Grey boxes of Basingstoke and tingles of pins and needles in my right foot. Orange ticking electronic clock counting my life away. The sky rolls from pink to purple to grey, which suits the land’s industrial mantle. Pylons are strange stick men marching along the landscape and we are out of town and can breathe again and are at ease again. Christmas lights light up little villages, the back drop to celebrations we are not party to. The last lines of fire make a dragon on the horizon and so maybe I will come back.

We are not aMused

I have been hunting ideas recently, in increasing fraticosity. I am snatching at whispers, dreaming of addendums, trying too hard. Ideas for me are very much like Douglas Adams’ instructions for flying, which are so brilliant I believe them:

‘There is an art, it says, or rather a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it.’
(Life, the Universe, and Everything, 1982)

It’s all about the moment of distraction. I’d also like to take a mindful approach, be all Zen about it, but it’s hard to relax when you have a deadline. (You know it’s bad when you decide you must go out and buy a new pen and writing book). I have a proliferation of writing, I’m writing right now, I have lots of possibilities, but what will work? What to pursue?

• Waking up with a different face every day
• Riffing off paintings, joined up Flash fictions
• A liar that lives in a cardboard box
• Resuscitating Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
• What about Witkacy?
• Time travelling cheese monkeys

I could just roll a die like Luke Rhinehart, I could close the book, did Bastian Balthazar Bux ever do that? Or I could just bloody get on with it!

Still Livid

They’re still chopping trees down because of the whim of some insane dictator. How can a tree hater make it to the top? That hater has infiltrated the Trust. And still they trust. Maybe that person is phobic of our entish friends, maybe a branch fell on their head when they were a baby. Now the same imbecilic people in charge are attempting to rob us of our park. It seems our rulers are unfashionably unenvironmental. Nature is your enemy. It is uncontrollable, unpredictable and far more beautiful than you, little lab rat, will ever be. But hey, we need a new leisure centre and hey, we need to get rid of every tree that isn’t indigenous. They are trying to rip the soul out of the city.  

And another thing that makes me angry. Cleaning. Hoovering. This fills me with fury, with a loathing at the world, at the house, at existence. Maybe we should shave the dog. Maybe next time we’ll get one of those really ugly bald dogs.

This day must improve, but as soon as I write that I remember that I forgot what came before. This day had a great start, before my happiness was hoovered away. At 9.00 this morning I was dancing around a badminton court. Niaing, jumping, punching, freedancing with a fantastic abandon. What joy!

9.00 – 10.00: so happy

10.00 – 12.00: so angry

12.00 onwards: so so. I’ll aim for philosophical.

Nia:

Hoovering Theme Tune: