You know, I’m going to look back on this period of my life, in a few years and think of it as The Dark Ages. I can see it now. A foggy, confusing time, where I constantly stray from the path, from the straight and the narrow, from the meadow to the swamp, from clear vision to mirage.
I looked back on this year’s diary so far. I have selected a MUCH smaller notebook this year, as I was disheartened by my inability to fill up just one of what would normally have been several regular sized ones last year. I am less than half way through this first notebook, even though it’s April. The thoughts that I have often get lost. The thoughts that I have are often immensely boring or repetitive. I am amazed and in wonder that I never accounted for, in my previous mad onrushes of diaryland, how the hell I had so many fluent and seemingly neverending thoughts to fill up folder after folder with. The year 2003, for example, is contained in FOUR A4 boxfiles. Inside 3 of them are several fat A4 notebooks, filled with my chatty rambling. Stuck with pictures, postcards, tickets and any other memorabilia I thought fit to add to the overall sensory ambience. The fourth is an over-run filled with concert programmes, other tickets, pocket diaries and smaller notebooks, loads of photos of me with people, or photos from nature walks I went on. Guide books from places. I could argue with myself that I was unemployed at that time, in my position as semi-carer then, to Troubadour. We used to go and stay by the sea with Saint Mum a lot, and go places from there. Fry and I regularly jaunted about the place.
But then I look at 2006-7 diaries, when I was in full time work again, and having a very tumultuous time of it, having left Troubadour and moved in with Stanley. There are 3 A4 folders of typed diaries. (I had a lot of downtime at work.) Neatly typed, page after page of worrying, ranting, musing, the occasional not-poem and some spell works. Drawings. Meditations I did from books and my notes on how they worked. Reviews of things I read. And still, the stuck in tickets, programmes, guide books, postcards etc. Just different sorts of places.
Clearly, you could argue I’m in waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay full time work now, hence the nothingy nature of my current diary. There are hardly any outings, due to lack of time, money and logistical problems (living in a car area with no car is more annoying than you’d think; having a child and realising you have zero money left for child care so you can’t conceivably go back to work at all for ages is also limiting). So there are hardly any stuck in things from going anywhere. There are occasional ticket stubs from Fry taking me to the cinema (one this year). And one chop stick wrapper from Stanley’s surprise expedition with me the other week to the local Singaporean Restaurant at lunchtime (and lovely it was). There are several dried flowers and a leaf. A couple of locks of Fluffhead’s hair. There’s no photos at all – partly due to the takeover of digital technology and me not having a printer…or there would be too many of Fluffhead, basically.
Now, the thing is – I can’t wax lyrical to you about this – and say but life is so rich in so many other ways: I am building memories and postcards in my head, a lifetime of memories to do with gardening and the green green grass of my garden that I tend and haphazardly attempt to love; and to do with watching Fluffhead’s face and the way he moves, the way he grows and his fingers lengthen; watching Stanley in the kitchen as he talks to me when he comes home from work, watching his smile, loving his intellect, his sudden rude jokes. For example. Not really – not and it be really truly True.
For that is Entirely 100% true, what I just wrote there, but it doesn’t feel like the sum of the Truth I Live every day. The sum of the truth I live has a lot to do with massive swathes of time, and watching them tick incredibly slowly past, of my entire brain being given over to a fight between learning patience (clearly the entire reason for my incarnation this time round: and how aggravating is it that I am doing so badly at it that I will no doubt have to come back as someone similar to me [argh] and do it All Again?!!!!! TSK!) …And being bored shiteless/ resentful of the things I could be doing/ lonely like you wouldn’t believe. (And that last coming from a person who generally loves her own company – but the clear proviso being: when I can do what I like with the time I spend alone.)
No, I do generally think I may be doomed for a bit of a while yet, to live an odd half existence, where I snatch time to read, snatch time from the reading time to sleep, and spend a lot of life worrying (the way mothers annoyingly do). I feel like I have little to offer you here (Mr Hooting Yard – when are you going to see the Error of Your Ways???? Hmmmmmmmmmm?)…it’s not like I can go in every week and have a small yet scary operation that I can then relate in detail for you all. Or go on a bit of a trek to a family occasion, or have a few birthdays and a bumped Fluffhead to relate. Sometimes, for weeks and months – nothing at all happens much because I have very little ability to make anything much happen. For instance: this last month and a half has been almost entirely taken up with Fluffhead having one thing after another wrong with him. He starts to get better from a cold and gets a terrible stomach upset. Followed by another cold, a worse one. Followed by croup, that then lasts much longer than the doc said it would (Pah! Doctors!). And a lovely new stomach upset to go with that. During that period, there has been so little sleeping of me or him, so little reading, so little eating in fact (there were 3 days where all I ate each day was 1 bagel, in 2 separate half occasions – I was so incredibly tired that I had no appetite whatsoever)... that nothing could go on. Following this, and just when I though things were improving, Fluffhead kindly passed on the ailment and then I came down like the proverbial ton of bricks. Already run down, Saint Mum said sagely. Boring as hell, all this, in terms of writing. I mean: I never read books where the hero or heroine is sick for a lot of it (that I recall), because I find sickness incredibly boring and self absorbed. I hate the feel and sound of it on me, and I hate the feel and sound of it on most other people too. (On Fluffhead, its wrenching: croup involves a serious difficulty breathing at night and one of the world’s scariest sudden onset coughs…you expect blood into handkerchiefs and an opera, when you hear that cough. Horrible, horrible, terrible to be able to do so little as well, for them…you can only go so far with night air and a steamy bathroom as treatment.)
Now, I’m not telling you all this rather dreary poo in order for you to feel sorry for me (I’m sure you’ve gathered I am well able to do that for myself), but so you see how I am feeling there is little to say. I’m still getting better, Fluffhead has ANOTHER upset stomach (this time it’s once again those pesky never quite coming though back teeth – the child must be SO BORED of dry toast and similar foods), and I have, to put it quite plainly: been nowhere and done bugger all. Let alone thought of anything interesting for nice postage about psychology or history or even something that annoys me!
In fact, all I have really noted is how incredibly small the world can become when you have a small child. Stanley is here for about 1 and a half hours a day that I get the benefit of; not his fault, man has to do the outside working. Several of the friendships I used to rely on have drifted, for one reason and another (I can lay a lot of the blame at my own door in the sense I used to be a brilliant correspondent, but I’m not at this period, I’m erratic at best; as well as the fact I am very regimental about when people can visit – this tends to make them not visit at all) – so you could say I am noting who my friends are. During this latest period I have to note that consistent presences, not counting the Ever Wondrous Saint Mum and Stanley, stand at…Two. Alias True, who has been around for many many years at the end of a keyboard, and provides a very solid presence and wonderful skewy brain, careful with words and meticulous of observation. And the returned presence of Alias Spice and Bazaar, a woman who is in love with colour and art and sensuality, and who embraces the world with questions. A source of great warmth she is, from over the sea. Mr Hooting Yard is there in the background, and popped up at a significant moment to say exactly the right thing; and argued with me about politics at other moments (as we do – my goodness but he’s WRONG about so many things…wink wink). It’s strangely encouraging to see certain presences on the dreaded facebook around and about on my page, like birds protectively flying, checking up – I don’t think that Alias Gitarist und Dichter has any idea I find his presence so reassuring. Alias Dreamer is having a personal defragmentation, but still pops up here and there and tolerates my own erratic behaviour mail-wise.
But anyway…People come, people go, that’s the way the water flows (thankyou Wendy & Lisa). Still, I am all unruhe…[1]
So – one of the other reasons I wanted to make this interminable, and rather maudlin post, was to speak directly to the person who searches for my blog every week on Yandex.Ru…from Russia, I presume, or a country close to there (forgive my complete ignorance). I am very happy that you keep on popping back – I have No Idea what you are finding in my ranty old blog, but hello and thankyou for your visits! I still find it insane that I have no idea who reads this thing. Men, women…I suspect the counter thingy that tells me the amount of people who come by is inaccurate, as people often tell me they have been by and the counter hasn’t changed figure to account for them; yet they know what I blogged about, so clearly read it. Mysteries of technology! Anyway – hail and welcome Regular Person of Russia!
Lastly, since I have so little to say (and yet, have managed to waffle about this precise thing for 3 pages in Word, now, amazing[2]), I decided to join a Reading Challenge. I am here and there, getting some reading done. A lot of it this year is all mystical and magical and naturey, so I thought best to give myself an opportunity to earn some gold stars (I am one for reward systems[3]) while I’m at it. I’m 3 months late in joining it, but will be registering to the Challenge at The Domestic Pagan. Read and review so many books etc etc etc, in 2012. I do like a goal, here and there. If I can figure out how to put the little widgety thing on the side of my blog, I will do so…if not, you can fetch it from this link, if you wanted to do similar, and reward yourself for the reading you’d no doubt be doing anyway.
Anyhow…that’s that. Until I next have nothing to say at length, my friends, off I go. (Fluffhead’s waking up now, in other words.)
[1] I really like that word – ‘restless, agitated, unsettled’, in German. I really like German as a language. French and Spanish are pretty, but I always found German the easiest in school, and love the way it sounds…Plus, that was a very good episode of the X Files, you must agree…
[2] Is it really so amazing I used to fill up such vast chunks of diary, before these Dark Ages?!
[3] Something Stanley figured out early in our relationship, and often resorts to when I am sad – he feeds me chocolate buttons to regulate my mood and manner of discourse…I am happily Pavlov-ed in this respect, and will attempt to improve demeanour on the offchance of sweet treats…
Of course I am not wrong, about anything. Get a grip! (And keep writing, whatever pours forth.)
ReplyDeleteOf course...how could I fall from grace for even a moment!
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