Category: Writings

It is still niggling. Still not better. I am not quite myself. And yet, have I ever been? It is a nothing in the whole scheme of things, particularly in the light of today’s 20th anniversary of the bombings in London. Why can I not properly recall the details? It shames me that I cannot. We talk about it over breakfast and then it begins to come back to me. So much horror in one day. And then we talked of Gaza and the horrors they are currently going through. What is my back in comparison? Nothing.

It a lovely word – succinct, clipped, adept. And with many meanings from fast cars to fast women to holding fast. For me it means purging, cleansing and denial. Just rice. No tea. That’s the worst bit. As is the withdrawals, though they are nothing compared to ones I had with coffee once. Three days to heal. Let’s hope.

Does any of it really matter? My PhD, the fact that it steals my sleep and invades my dreams, L. and her silence, my continuing sore lower back, and all those other more important bigger things like wars and people going hungry – are they but a blink of an eye in the larger scheme of things? I don’t know. Shouldn’t we still care, do our best? Yes, I believe so, but detachment is good to. I am a worrier about the small things, always have been. Let it be and then just do what you can. That’s all.

He talks of how I make him feel safe. It is an illusion, of course. I cannot make him safe. We both know this. Life will do its thing regardless of the regimen we put in place to hold us. But, nevertheless I am glad that he thinks this and says it. He is the first for whom this has been the case. And, will probably be the last.

I tend him. I do. And it is a tender tending. It is an act of love, of care. I didn’t think I could do. Family paradigms, I suppose. The love is returned by doing it. Twofold.

I am touched by her kindness. She didn’t have to do it. She enfolds us. She is benificent in a way that I can never be. But I do try to share it. I sent some to her and her children. I wonder what she will think of this?

What looked like a lesser spotted woodpecker that had been feeding on one of their bird feeders flew off as they opened their front door. I watched from my studio window as she, her son and then her husband stepped out into the rain. She wore a coat, her husband didn’t. And it was she who accompanied her son to the waiting taxi. And it was she who stood waving him and the taxi goodbye long after they had driven out of the old school gates.

Is it an indelible trait of the human condition to always be longing for something other? We talk of trips away and yet we’ve only been back home a week. I want to be here in my studio working and yet I also long to be on the road, untethered to the weight of that work. The dreams are nice though, even if that is all they will remain.

Enough. When is enough enough? Enough drawing, enough to eat, enough sleep. It is hard to say, to be sure. And who decides? I didn’t get enough sleep yesterday. I wanted to attend the Slow Reading session but it does throw out my routine terribly. But it is an enriching experience and that is enough. So I do it. Can I take it easier today?

Today’s new moon has brought graphic dreams. Last night was about a little boy – maybe five or six. But it could also have been a little girl with a puddiing-basin haircut, as I used to have as a child. He was being returned. He or she had taken a long journey to be somewhere, or attend something but was being returned. On a ship. A huge ship. There were two adults who were attending him or her on their return journey. I watched this little child, who wasn’t at all distressed about being sent back, as it stopped at one of the bookshops on board to look at a display of picture books. I woke then, not wanting to. The journey, the adults had told him would take seven months.