Artist and writer currently living in Aberystwyth.
I know it’s irrational. Not all fear is, but this one definitely is. It isn’t important.Just techology stuff. But it gets under my skin. What’s it about? Not understanding? Feeling foolish? Being rejected? Found wanting? Not up to it? All of those things and more. I do my best but usually by a system of hit and hope more than anything. Give me courage today.
It’s part of the title of a Hubert Parry song, Radio 3 were playing it this morning. I think about my end and his often these days. I am, after all, immersed in death. And an acquaintance of his, perhaps friend, has been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and his body is failing. It is everywhere. But then it always has been. Let me know mine end. Does the writer mean to know what that end will be or when? Or is it a plea to know that an end will come. All things pass. They do, don’t they, even the anxious and terrible things. Let it be. All of it.
There are some books that I’ve given away and had to re buy, sometimes several times. It’s almost as if I don’t want them, be it viscerally or intellectually, but they want me. There’s still something to be learnt from me, they seem to be saying. Jonathon Frantzen’s The Corrections, is one of those books. I came across a quote from it today and realised that I will have to get it again having given it away a year or so ago to make room for my research books. It is a convoluted novel, but, even having only got halfway through it (twice), I can see it’s relevance to me and my work, and indeed, its sometimes brilliance. Is it because there is no one in there to like? Possibly. But to need that is puerile of me. I will endeavour with it once again. I promise.
I dreamt of beauty last night, beauty encapsulated in a sylph. She swam past me in the water, naked, a mermaid, sans tail, her skin was white her hair a pale yellow. She cut through the water like an eel. I watched her husband watching her. He knew her beauty, had perhaps even tired of its perfection. He watched lazily, almost bored by what he saw. She was his and yet she wasn’t. Of myth. A seal woman.
I want it to hold. Let it be so. Let there be peace for all concerned. Let those who have been made homeless return home and begin to rebuild what has been destroyed and let those who were taken be returned to their families. Let it be. Let it be.
I dreamt that a car salesman brought a car for us to look at. It was small. A tiny, grey little bubble car. Inside it was a baby. A huge baby. It filled the whole of the car’s interior. The baby came with it. It was part of the sale. Free. The other ‘hitch’ was that if we bought the car (and baby) we would have to move to Scotland.
The wolf moon has brought me very graphic dreams. A couple of nights ago I dreamt that I was wearing my little black leather boots but that the front of them had lost their colour. They’d taken on the look of skin. It was as if the black had been washed off. I was still wearing the boots, for I could feel the soles under my feet, but I could see my feet and toes through them. It was the oddest thing. I even brought it to the notice of others in my dreams. Look at my feet, I said.
I’m often walking in my dreams. It is usually daylight and I am generally walking through landscapes. I walk alone, as I do in the mornings. No one troubles me or speaks to me. I am calm during these perambulations, though I am usually going somewhere, though these destinations are rarely known. Last night I got there. Well, almost. I go to the city that I’d intended to go to and a man told me where to catch the bus. I imagined the journey in my head. I was almost there and that felt good.
I know it is ridiculous but it is a symptom of my malaise. He is coming today and I don’t want him to. I don’t want a stranger in the house no matter the usefulness of his appearance. I just don’t want it. And consequently I build such an event into a major happening. It is not. I know this. But I do it nevertheless. He says that he is the same. Possibly, though to a lesser degree. Oh, let it be over soon.
He was only 65 years old. I think he was a September baby like me. I used to like watching him on Whose Line is it Anyway? A good-looking man, if going-on-louche. He was quick-witted, a fast-thinker and naturally funny, I thought. He struggled with bi-polar, going grey too fast. Poor love. It was a steep fall. R.I.P.
I want it and yet I don’t. There’s always been this emotional paradox. It’s that being too ‘near’ people, physically and emotionally. That being known and knowing. It’s too much. I need my physical and pyschic space to be preserved. I am sponge. It’s been so for as long as I can remember. I take it all in, their stuff, as well as mine. It overloads me. And I want to run. And yet. And yet, I long to belong. To? Someone, family, friends. And when I feel I don’t, when I sense and feel that distance, I am sad.