I don’t know where it came from. It is not like me. He caught a nerve speaking to me like he did. I should have pulled back, delved, found out why he was so angry, so touchy. It all came out. He’d felt stupid. He’d done something incorrectly and my response had made it worse. He takes things out on me. And why not? I am a safe place to let rip. I should shoulder it better, detach myself from the emotion and pay attention, listen and then wait. It will pass. It always does. The love is there. It is sacroscant. Safe.
Embrace uncertainty, she wrote in her Instagram message. And I cried. It is hard for me to do so. I hold life, and indeed myself, so tightly. I understand why and can have compassion for myself for doing so. The past has involved so much chaos. I need these tramlines. But research is about risk and the discoveries that such unknowingness generates. And intellectually I love this. I do. But there is still this need for safety and to know that I am doing the right thing and being a good student. I think she understands. Her kindness means the world to me.
We’re home. There was a point in this, let’s call it ‘adventure’, when I thought we’d never get back again. They all return, those memories that are so painful to carry and revisit, sparked by similar sensations of alienation, being trapped, having to sleep in mean rooms, being lost and helpless. Yes, helpless, that is the thing. The thing. Angels did come. They always do but sometimes that take so long. I will write it out. But not now. Not now.
Sometimes I just want to write about tiny details. Today those details are all olfactory. They are the smells I encounter in the dark. My sense of smell is heightened in the early morning before the sun has risen. I notice more, and not necessarily with my eyes, but with my other senses. My ears and my nose become more acute, more alert at picking up resonances. The first of these smells is the air. The morning air is, more often than not, sweet and clear and clean, though the direction of the wind can make a difference. I walked over the Buarth this morning, delighting at a reflection of three lit upper floor windows thrown across a neighbouring wall. I love to see the town from the height of the Buarth. I can see the sea, the town clock and the glittering of lights. Coming down the hill past Holy Trinity and then through the little passage that takes me towards The Avenue, I caught the sharp stink of new paint. Emulsion, I think. There’s no damp leaves smell yet. In fact, there aren’t many leaves on the ground at all. Walking along South Road and then cutting through past the trailer of gigs that is always there, I made my way to the harbour. Salt and fish and the mucky reek of stored nets and lobster baskets hit me, as it always does. Brine. Briny. The stink of the sea, strangely hot and sandy. Sticky like salt on the skin and the hair.
I’m beginning to write. I’m beginning to write about drawing. It’s an unearthing process, clumsy at first. I cannot find the words. I watch the ones that I write too closely, weighing them up, picking at them before they are even born on the page. Let it come. Let it all come out. And it will. It will.
Sometimes I notice things, little things I would generally overlook or just not see. It usually happens when I’m raised up, when I in another, slightly transcendent, state. Yesterday it was because I was walking in sunshine, some drawing had been done and a little of my anxiety associated with it had passed. I caught sight of it from the corner of my eye and had to double-back to check I’d seen it properly. It was a tiny, single pansy that had taken root as a seed in the crack between two paving stones. It was purple and yellow. A beautiful little thing. Growing and flowering as if it were part of some bigger scheme, a planted container or even a garden. A brave thing. A noble thing. It gave me joy.
I’m still being floored by it. I think about Joan Halifax’s meditations around pain, go into it, she advises, feel it, own it. I shall endeavour to do the same with my fear of the systems that LBU has in place. To me they are impenetrable. There are so many layers. I cannot navigate myself around them. I am hemmed in. To paraphrase Rilke, all about me is stone. Ask for help, he says. And I will. Though from whom, I don’t, as yet, know.
I walk into the rain in the dark. Another fear. I dress up for it. Layers of waterproofing that are heavy to heave around in. I do it. That is enough for today.
My body has had enough of oranges. It is time to return the comfort of warm food and tea. Soon. Another few days?
She was looking out for me as I walked towards her front door. “It’s been so long,” she said, “that I wasn’t sure if I’d recognise you.” She’s rake thin. A child-woman. Tall with unaccountably thick ankles and feet encased in rather unexpected navy blue plimsolls, she wears her hair in a style akin to Shirley Temple with a row of curls along the bottom. A pink metal grip hold some of it away from her face. And her voice is child-like too – quiet, understated and high. I like her. There is goodness there. Her husband death three years ago doesn’t appear to have destabilised her. She is pragmatic, clearly. She keeps going. In her eighties now, she still walks everywhere, though she admits to finding the last bit of the hill up to her house challenging. Her thinness is due to her diet. “I’m gluten intolerant, so I live off toast and jam.” She can’t stomach fresh fruit or vegetables, she says. She bakes cakes with a special flour. “David used to say that it cost a pound a slice.” The cakes are for others. The students. She meets them at church and invites them round, one, an American even has a key. He stayed with her for months when he was recovering from cancer. “There’s plenty of room,” she says. Such openness puts me to shame. She talks about gathering for coffee after the service on a Sunday and used the word fellowship. It sounded so incongruous. She told me she loved to hear the liturgy. “The language is so beautiful,” she said. One of her daughters was training to be a priest. “I don’t hold with the use of the word priest,” she said, “to me Jesus is the only priest.” The daughter, the smiling one who lives a couple of houses along from her, gave up half way, the Welsh Church was too political for her. She’s a canon however and still ministers to others. “You’ve told me nothing about yourself,” she said, as I got ready to leave. As I said in reply, she is so much more interesting.
I drew her room yesterday. I drew its collections of paraphernalia and objects she has salvaged from her long life – the teddies mostly. She is a strange mixture of toughness and softness. She looked well. “I’ve never been beautiful,” she said. She looks pretty though. And she maintains a diffidence and feminity that is characteristic, at least for as long as I have known her. She is clearly well-liked. The carers joke with her and call her soft names. She in turn keeps her door open so that she can hear all their noisy comings and goings. There is acceptance now of where she is, though less so, perhaps of who or what she is. I know those latter feelings all too well. How I like her, even love her. Keep well, my love.
It floors me. It reduced me to tears yesterday. I had had enough. I cannot get on to the system. I don’t understand what it is telling me to do. It is not my language. I feel kept out, alienated. He tells me it will be alright and that all I have to do is ask for help. Yes. I know this. But from whom? I know that it is a nonsense to get so upset. It is only a means to an end but it reminds me of my innate sense of incompetence and my even larger fear of being thought badly of by others. Can I do this? Am I big enough, brave enough? I don’t know. Please let me in so that I can do what I need to do. Please.
