Artist and writer currently living in Aberystwyth.
It is less and less under my control. It is sieve-like. I test myself over names. This mornng it was Sam Mendes’. I couldn’t remember it at all. I tried making connections. He was the director of American Beauty, he’d been the artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse, had married Kate Winslet and then Alison Balsam and then it came, just before I got into my bath. I forget to bring my milk from the fridge down to the studio frequently. A seed needs to planted daily.
She still isn’t eating and probably won’t now, ever. He says it doesn’t mean that she wants to die, but I am not so sure. Perhaps she isn’t articulating it as such to herself, but her body clearly does not want nourishment. She told him not to nag her about it. Let her be, let it be, even if it is hard to do so. She either cannot or does not want to eat. Let it be. Let it be.
It came last night. The summer is turning, and I have to switch on my anglepoise lamp in the studio. Do I mind? No.
I long to sort things out. To empty things – cupboards, shelves and boxes of all those objects, that stuff that I keep because I don’t have the time to decide whether I want to or not. I fantasise about empty rooms, about starting again, all over again. But I can’t. Not yet. Not yet.
It stopped. Nothing came out. I tried to sleep it away, to wake up and find the world as it was. But it wasn’t. And then that poor man took his life. The water came back but it wasn’t what it was.
Rest in peace. Forgive us for we knew not what we did. x
It’s almost a daily occurence. They say it comes with arthritis, that the back is affected by difference in posture and walking. Yoga helps, but mostly I just want to not move. It jabs, aches and pulses. My poor little body. How many years, I want to ask on its behalf?
It’s an accumulation of planetary stuff, I suppose, but it doesn’t half make me anxious, and the burst pipe on the main road was enough to set it off all over again. The sight of that precious water gushing out utterly threw me. We tried to report it but they wanted none of it. No one at the other end of the phone and the online software was hopeless. Does anyone care?
I knew it was coming, that call from the library to return all my books. It feels good to not resist. I fear letting them go. But must.
I think of her in there, in that ward. She said that there were just three other women. I hope it is more comfortable for her than last time. The last time that was only last week. It feels like something is rushing, rushing towards an end. Is it? She sounds just as low, though a little more defiant (in her refusal to eat the ice cream). How will it end?
She’s back in hospital. There was a secondary bleed in her brain. Her son jokingly said that it was all in an effort to avoid her birthday. It must be grim for her. I hope they are kind.