Euphoric days are often followed by flat or edgy ones. I spend my life expecting things of myself. Expecting too much, mostly. Are you the same? I’m not good at just not doing, accepting that this day or that day is a down one. A coming down one from being so happy. Too happy. Can one be too happy? It brings me peace, you see, just to be with her. There is nothing complicated about us when she is in my sight. I asked her questions. I asked her everything. She was nonplussed by my interrogation. She was honest, open. My darling, darling girl. Can you know how I love you? And yet, I don’t know you. Not properly, not the day-in-day-out kind of knowing, the way I know him. Even so, there is this well, this deep, deep well of love. Can we move, my love? Can we move to where she is? I want those flying dreams that being with her bring me. Nothing else is as important. Can you see that? Can I ask it? Can I ask you to uproot yourself for me? Ah, I don’t know, I know nothing. Nothing.
My thoughts were about my work as I walked. Trying to solve it, solve the puzzle as I walk. My mind is stimulated by the movement, by the fresh air, the sea. What is it I want? I woke intent on trying to let be, just be. Let it fall away. Do not direct life, just let it be. It is hard for me. I like, no need to be, in control, to manage everything. To anticipate problems, to be ready with a solution. What if there is none? No solution, just a continuum of searching. What is it you want to do? To be involved, to be engrossed, to be at work. I need to work. I need to do, to be actively involved in something meaningful. And yet, I must now provide the meaning. Strip away its commercial viability and what do you have? A hobby? No, I thought, as I hung the washing on the airer, it is not a hobby, it is too important to me, it absorbs too much of my waking life to be relegated to a mere hobby. What is it then? A doing thing, something I do in order to be myself. Is this just wank? Excuse the language, but is it? I want this stripping-down, it is timely, but it is also painful. For by stripping the sense of oneself down, one is also questioning one’s ultimate purpose. Nurses, doctors, midwives, freedom fighters have a very direct purpose. They save, they protect, they alter the course. What of artists? What do we actually do? There are others who either chose not to, or could not, make a living from their art. Emily Dickinson, Vincent van Gogh, neither Emily or Ann Bronte, I believe made any money from their books. Emily, in particular wrote secretively, hated the idea of fame. And yet, do we not all crave some sort of notice. To walk invisible. Yes. That I understand. But the critical stuff, the response. I need to work for others. Not for their recognition but to be in their presence. To make a shift, to make a murmur of a difference. I think about performing my sewing in old people’s homes, hospitals, hospices. Only to baulk at the idea that I might be using them. I need to talk more about this. Yes. But work calls. Needs must. Needs must when the devil……
