After the bleak blackness of Monday I had a rush of courage yesterday beginning with saying hello to H and then the firing off of emails in the afternoon asking to be recognised and ‘hired’. Then I sank. We diffident beings struggle to sustain audacity, it comes in bursts then we are spent and more than a little embarrassed by it.
These are parallel times. Such potential for joy for success and the opening of life and at the same time an awareness of others’ misery, fear, pain and despair. Can there really be a war? What of the brilliance of our diplomats, can they not stop it? Have we learnt nothing? Save us. Save them.
There’s so much grief in it, this business of living, of trying to find a path, an existence that is worthy, worthwhile, useful and true. Sometimes it utterly floors me. Yesterday afternoon was a weeping one. I haven’t had one of those for some time. When we lived in Cambridge he would often come back from work and I’d be a heap on the bed. But I pick myself up, I always have and begin again. As I am doing now.
I woke up saying it. I try to remember and know that if I don’t write it down instantly it will go, like smoke. I don’t know what it refers to, that post sleeping world is a liminal one. A magical one.
My laptop is playing and it agitates and unnerves me. I want to throw it all up and retreat. Can’t it be simple, this living thing? Can’t it be something true?
It wasn’t satisfactory. In fact, it wasn’t anything at all. The results haven’t been processed (there’s a paucity of people to read the scan findings at the hospital, apparently and there’s a six week backlog, he was told). So it was all a misunderstanding. A friend said that this full moon has the ‘devil in it’, so perhaps it is to blame. All this stirring up of life, of the sea, of the wind and the universe. And the threat of war. The big and the small, all so unsettling, so frightening. Perhaps it is the moon and when it calms down and the devil goes maybe, just maybe all will be peaceful again. Who knows?
A Monday morning and there is much to put in place and order. And the wind still howls outside, moaning like a wild animal scratching and mithering to come in to the warm.
I write down the sentences that come to me on waking. Two universes as incompatible as chalk and cheese. Interesting though.
I wish you all well. All of my loves. All of you.
And can there be more jaw jaw so that there can be no war war? Please.
There is a holding of breath, mine and the world’s it seems. The birds stopped singing. Do they know what it is coming? They have promised 70 mile per hour winds. This poor town by the sea will take some battering but it may be worse in Cornwall. I want to wrap everyone up and keep them safe. Does everyone feel as unsafe as I do? He doesn’t. And yet, being out there in such winds can also be so exhilarating. I know this, I have felt it but not recently. Not for a while.
Another night sweat last night. It has been going on so long. Will my body find peace soon? Or must it wait for my mind to gain such sagacity first?
More possibilities of work fall away like eroding cliffs and the conundrum of what to do (with myself) continues to gnaw away at me. Should I try this or that? I just don’t know. If you don’t know what to do, do nothing, he used to say. Bless him. I hope he is OK. What a beautiful man he was but what rage.
It’s still blowing out there and I take my comfort where I can from a warm bath, and smells, such as raspberry butter on my skin and lemon oil in my hair and radio 3 (though that can be a hit a miss experience though the voices are friendly). I talk myself through the fear I have built up around filling in the form (again). Take it bit by bit, I say. Treat it like a job, detach yourself and just do it. I made a start. The title is there, and my details and the amount I intend to ask for. A not inconsiderable amount, he said. And it isn’t. And it is public money, so why shouldn’t I bleed for it? And I do so want to do the work. To make the work. Shouldn’t that be inspiration enough? Look what it would give you, and others. And all from your little brain. That’s good isn’t it?
He texts his friend and the Chemo symptoms were not so bad. I am glad. I feel his fear too. And why shouldn’t he feel it? We are but children after all.
And now the threat of invasion is back again. Will they reach some sort of compromise? Can’t world peace be tried?
I need to gather my good dreams to me. The moon brought this one, I think. There are four, she said, and I knew that she included me in that number, though nothing was actually said. I also knew that she meant who were potential firsts. I was pleased but worried that I wouldn’t match up. And then she wanted to borrow my pen and I gave it and she left me with a red one, both of us knowing that my ability to draw would be impaired. Was it a test to still see what I could do? And then there was a child who came to tell me something had come in the post for me. And then I was there opening these strange envelopes with drawings, notes and hand-made objects in them. I was delighted yet bemused. And I tried to draw but couldn’t, all the while thinking of her belief in me.
I’d been waiting for his call all day, though I forgot about it for long swathes of time, being busy with other things. He’d been waiting too, in between doing battle with SP, again. By suppertime he still hadn’t called so he chased up the surgery. And it seems he never intended to, or maybe he changed his mind at the last minute. Let me explain. This, this thing with my arteries (and consequently, we believe, with my hips and legs) has been going on for over 9 months now, at least. And after an examination by him (and a promise that he would do some research) and two scans (an ultrasound and an MRI) all that I was offered yesterday, by the receptionist not the doctor, was the word satisfactory. That’s what he wrote on both scan reports. Satisfactory. Satisfactory for whom, I wanted to say, but didn’t. The falling out with them had already happened for he, my love, that is, lost it. I am more sanguine than him, not really expecting anything else. But he recommended this doctor. He values and likes him (they always talk cricket). Is it me? I want to ask. Is my dislike (no that’s not quite right, my distrust) of doctors at fault here? Can they sense it, smell it and do they act accordingly? Enough now. Enough investigating. Let it be. I can and will live with it. Perhaps I will go and see L. Or S. Or perhaps not. Let there be peace. No more wrangling. I am at war with the world and am discomfited by it. Enough now. Is it moon stuff? Or Eunice? Or the water tiger year rattling away at this water tiger’s particular cage.
As to the addendum (is it addendum or addenda?) to the title, I woke saying it to myself, went for a pee and thought I must write it down and did so, in the dark. The fib on 88. What does it mean? Nothing or everything? The dream that followed was more straightforward, falling out with an ex lover and then wanting to return, if only stay and make him fresh coffee. His flat was up high, and I had to get a lift to it. I found a dress to wear in the car in the car park below. Black. But I had no key to get in. Would he hear me knock? Would he let me in once again?
We have an old friend, well he is his strictly but we met through him and his then wife and he was kind to me during those early days, anyway he began a course of chemotherapy yesterday. I have thought of him often recently. He has lived well, embracing all that it had to offer with enthusiasm and courage, I think. As he is doing now, or appears to be via his text messages. I think of the poison filling his veins. I hope it kills the cancer with it its kindness.
She left three messages via the blog portal. They were kind. She’d taken the trouble to think of me and my drawings and respond encouragingly. The kindness of strangers is a constant source of wonder to me.
I wake with it. I think I always have. There have been brief escapes, such as when I thought I was in love, in lust, or when I was on holiday and I’d wake full of the joy of irresponsible adventure, but they are few and far between these days for I know more. And yet, there is trust, there is an awareness of deep, deep goodness and there is joy but the overriding sensation of life for me is fear. Is it so bad?
I can’t quite remember the words but I think the theme song to Cheers starts (or ends) with a sentence something like ‘a place where everyone knows your name’. The coffee shop where I go to draw (and he to read and drink coffee) has become rather like that. Not that everyone shouts out ‘Norm’ as they do when the postman comes into the Cheers bar, but it’s not dissimilar in that names are shared. And I, sitting in my corner, know them now too, though I tend to lend people my own pseudonyms so as to protect their identity. I like to be there. It is a place of challenge and pleasure for me. The bustle helps me to focus. There is energy and life and humour. I like getting to know the faces, their familiar chat, the places that they chose to sit and the drinks they favour. And when they don’t come in, such as the man who services fire extinguishers or the genealogist, I start to fret about them. But most of all I love to draw there. I am safe in my corner, and so far no one (apart from the man who runs the cider bar saying the other day ‘I’ll sit here so that you can get my best side’) really makes any reference to it or asks me to stop (though some do turn their backs to me, fair enough, I say). I miss being there on a Monday where emails have to be faced and admin done. Heigh ho.
Let them find a way to end the threat of invasion. Have we learnt nothing?
There are the precious moments, the ones in which we stop and look and pay attention. I knew that there were a pair for I’d seen their young of the last year feeding from the bird feeders on our neighbours balcony. And suddenly there was one then the other bathing in the big puddle that gathers in the wasteland (for want of a better word) beneath my bedroom window. They are such magnificent birds, plump, robust and with those glorious flashes of blue and white on their wings. We stood together at my window watching them dip and then throw the water over their bodies. He was as delighted as I was. Thank you, he said.
There has been so much clattering and banging and disrupting, both at home and at the coffee shop where I seem to be doing a kind of drawing residency. We’d leave our precious home to the mercy of either a decorator or a carpet fitter only to find that our table in the café was also under siege and taped off (they’ve also got the painters in, refurbishing it while it remains open). It dislodges me. I feel capsized. And then there is all the other swirling inside over my project. And now the man in the sports jacket has just emailed to suggest that I don’t give up on the digital element. Can’t he see that I don’t want it, that what I want is to be authentic? Anyway, back to the decorators. Our table was lost to us, you know the one in the corner where I can draw without attracting too much attention. So we had to sit in the next one along and immediately some shopfitters started to make comments. Don’t stand still too long, one said to his mate, or you’ll find yourself being drawn. They both turn to stare at me. Well, she’ll have to have a big pad to draw me, says his friend with the bald head and rotund belly. A4 at least, he added, clearly racking his brains to remember a particular size of paper. The decorators, who I was trying to capture as they pushed their rollers attached to poles along the ceiling, also stared. Are you drawing me? one asked eventually. I said I was but tried to diminish its significance by saying I was only practicing. I wondered why you kept looking at me, he said. Oh it was all too exposing and yet that is what I’ve decided to offer up. Am I mad? I tried to make a joke by shouting over to him that perhaps it was his ‘strange and unnatural beauty’ that made me look at him. He laughed and said, I don’t think so. And completely missed the Molesworth reference.
What can I say about him? I wanted to like him, or at least feel some human warmth. He was a challenge. Perhaps he found us to be so also. I made coffee, offered water. What was it about him? He was taciturn, unfriendly, and careless of our home. That was it mostly, that lack of care. And how I wanted him done and gone. It took so long. Too long. And then there was the phone call mid way. It is all about how one manages things, people, events, isn’t it? And even now my gut churns about whether I ought to do something or not. And now she wants to come and see the work. Ok, fair enough, then can we have some peace?
They felt and sounded like she’d put sparklers in my ears. I smelt the burning and then heard the fizzing and crackling. It was strangely restful. She makes me feel calm. We talk nonsense. We talk about light things and I am made calm, emptied out of me.
