The minute I said we were going to the playground this morning, Fluffhead got excited. There's a new Happy Dance. It involves spinning, and waving one hand about in a large circle, and the other hand as a floppy baton. Much smiling. Jumping up and down. He did that.
He has this little friend at the playground, we tease him, 'is this your girlfriend?'. His little girlfriend, aka Princess, is Sicilian. She's almost 2, and she has the smallest skinniest sinuous little form, and the largest deepest brown eyes. She has a very serious little face. She is a very climby girl, all over everything like a lizard. I think she's gorgeous. Her smiles are so cute. The way she speaks in a mix of English and Italian is gorgeous. Water is 'aqua', and its always 'ciao' at hometime. Fluffhead still doesn't speak hardly, he communicates with her by smiling and taking her hand. She usually shakes him off then takes it herself - she must lead HIM; its just the way she is.
When I watch them, with his Italian nanny, the ludicrously youthful looking aka Dove, who is also beautiful (the most amazing ringlets, pixie face, one of the most genuine smiles I have ever seen on anybody), we often do some gentle laughing - wondering if its a template we see of their future personalities. Will Princess always think all the toys are hers, and have to go first on the slide all the time, removing all the other children before her, with 'leave!' in Italian, and that imperious finger gesture? Will Fluffhead always be speculatively going up to children, and smiling at them, so openly, and looking over to see if its all ok, then following them off, as they lead him by the hand, gently happy to just be with company, easy?
It's not always like that with him. Sometimes, she shrugs him off, and he will seem to make a decision - you can see his moment of confusion, then stillness - to ignore her then. He'll run off to the furthest point of the playground and investigate the rubbish. There is always rubbish on the floor. I don't know if the foxes get it out at night, or whether the wind blows it all around. It looks like it has all been lunch - mother and children type lunches, and nappies, and all neatly bagged away. But then, whenever I get there, a lot of it is on the ground again. I usually spend the first 5 minutes tidying everything up, with a wrinkled nose and careful fingers, worrying about germs. I must look quite comical while I do it, all the things held out in front of me: rain drippy earth scuffed empty crisp packets. Water logged old nappies trying to reopen and shed wipes. Endless small containers of juice, or sandwiches, trampled and a bit bitten looking, but you can tell they haven't been there for long. The playground is up on a hill, so maybe its both: wind and foxes.
So he runs off to play with the rubbish with his foot, until I catch up to him and we tidy it, or I just repeatedly say 'dirty!' sounding nine shades of rather thick to hear myself, until he drops it. He'll examine the flowers at the far end, dandelions, or buttercups. He likes looking at plants and flowers. Or he'll want to climb up on the boundary wall's ledge and hold my hand while he walks round and round it. Usually at this stage, Princess decides he's being interesting again, and wants to come up too. I would not go as far as to say, he ignored her, so he became interesting (after being straightforward and friendly didn't work), so she wants to play with him now. I don't think there is anything that calculating about either of them yet. But to a grown up's eyes, it does look remarkably like that. Which lowers my spirits. I've always been crap at games of that sort, so has Fry. I hope Fluffhead will be crap at them too. Straightforwardness - and if necessary, the corresponding rejection, is ...painful, but honest and clear.
Anyway. Today Dove was a bit late, and I got cold waiting. Looking out at all the surrounding green - its a lovely spot for the playground: sloping green for dogs to run all about, and 2 other playgroundy bits above and below (one for younger children who want to climb and swarm a lot along ropes and tyres very near the ground; and one for more nearly teen children, where everything is bigger and higher). Off in the distance are 2 tennis courts, where I have never seen an actual game going on (I think I come too early in the day) - I always see a lone 40ish year old man, his belly flopping out of his navy blue tracksuit bottoms as he practices his serve, over and over. He must feel a little self conscious somewhere in his head, as though he never looks round, he is always pulling down his matching top to cover flesh. I am always wondering why he doesn't get some bigger clothes, that fit him better.
The sky was in that silvery state where its very bright and may rain, but may not. The air was chill. I kept blowing out to see the frosty puffs. Fluffhead had already fallen on the way here, and grazed both his knees, so whilst he was running carefully, he was at least looking where he was going, which was an improvement on usually. A little blond boy came with his father. I said 'hi'. The father nodded. Is it only the English that don't really relate, even in situations that are quite probably meant to be social? The child ran over to me, and I said 'hi' to him too, but I think my sunglasses freaked him out. He backed away. Fluffhead ran up to him and smiled, and the boy - who looked of similar age - backed away more, and ran back to his father, a look of uncertainty on his face. '....shy,' I heard the father say, before picking up his son and carrying him over to the slide.
Finally Dove and Princess arrived. Dove and I have taken to each other in a strange and quick way. Almost like when I met Time Traveller and we just started talking and carried on, and months later, there we still are, quite naturally. This was similar. I just started to talk to Dove, who I kept seeing around town - she was always just coming back from taking Princess to see the trains at the station (what is it with the children and trains - none seem immune from the noise, the speed, the blurry flash) when I was just going. Nodding became a sort of embarrassed giggling - 'here you are again!'. One day she asked me directions to somewhere I didn't know, in English she thinks isn't very good, but is in fact much more precise than lots of English people. One day we arranged to go and see the trains together with the children; it didn't quite happen, so we texted, and the playground was agreed on instead. I hadn't been to there before. It's clear over the other side of town and takes me 35 minutes to walk there.
The first time I saw it I had one of those perfection moments. All that green that had been hidden, suddenly there, splayed out - it was like walking into a bowl on its side. Fluffhead took off and ran shrieking through the grass. Princess, more haltingly, but picking up speed and confidence as she does, took off after. Fluffhead ran for joy of running and being off the reins. Dove and I hung back and talked of the children. Just because it isn't her child doesn't mean she isn't as conscientious as a mother. I thought she was as paranoid in concern for Princess as I am with Fluffhead - she has that 'but she is in my care, my responsibility' furrowed brow. She was a damn good choice as nanny. She takes it seriously, she watches all the time; she worries for Princess's development. If I ever had to employ anyone to be me for Fluffhead - she's my choice. (Why can't I win the Lottery? I joked with Dove that, today - I would take her home and she could help with Fluffhead, and I could have company; and she could have a proper contract, and a bloody good wage. Dove's working conditions are a bit like a cliche of nannie's bad working conditions. Her good nature is rather taken advantage of.)
So they arrived, and Fluffhead squirmed to be let out of the swing, where I had been soporifically pushing him back and forth singing 'row row row your boat' quite softly, which seems to send him into a trance. He ran over to Princess, doing a variation of the Happy Dance. She acknowledged him, but what was in her eyes was 'oh its you' and a sort of 'hmm', before she ran off to do something else. I felt stung on Fluffhead's behalf. But distracted him, and he ran off to the slide to progress with climbing. Dove and I chatted. We swapped worries (she had had some unasked for advice about her life that made her feel sad; I had a similar incident about Fluffhead, that smarted in just the same way).
We watched, as further down the playground, Fluffhead ran back up to Princess and repeatedly, very gently, tried to take her hand, as they had done on numerous occasions over the summer. She kept squirming away. He followed her anyhow and they climbed together, she commanding she go first, and he with bemused but happy smile, letting her after a checking look at me. Later, they discovered some chalk on the ground, and Fluffhead does as he tends to at home - laid himself full down on the ground to draw with it. She came over to see what he was doing, and he got up and gave her some. Smiling over at me, his expression clearly saying 'oh she wants to play now!', a joyful smile. They drew for a bit. Then we had to go.
I watched his little head in the pushchair as we went home. I had washed out his mouth from where he tried to eat the chalk, though I am convinced there is still some grit there. He was eating sweetcorn rings and drinking water. I asked him if he had had a nice time, out in the air, out with Dove, seeing Princess. He nodded enthusiastically. Perhaps he has forgotten, I thought.
I felt a niggly feeling. Perhaps to do with something Dove had confided that leads me to beleive she won't be here for much longer; I make a friend, and away she will fly. It seems to be the way. I will miss her a lot; just when I had a good companion for going out with the children, someone I really like. She has an innocence and an openness that you don't see much at all anywhere. An honesty. She's very real, and thoughtful. But also, I think, niggled niggled niggled, there is something else.
Later, back at home, I tried to rest while Fluffhead slept. I couldn't sleep. Suddenly, I sat up, and cried, hard, for a full 5 minutes, feeling broken. The image that popped into my head was Fluffhead reaching out, repeatedly, with his little smile, his face so open, so genuine. His hand constantly trying to curl around Princesses smaller one. Her rough shaking of him off. Her little haughty face. The way he put his head down on his shoulder, and then tensed his shoulder up and held his arm round himself, as if giving himself a hug. He swings away from her, his face looking confused. He runs off alone. I just keep seeing it. The only way to stop and calm it was to come here and write this.
Such a small thing. And it really broke my heart. It is times like these, that I truly truly hate being a mother. I hate feeling so utterly emotionally bound up with someone else's experiences. I hate the way I needed a nap and didn't get one. I hate the way I worry that he will continue to be so sweet and friendly and children just won't be friendly back. I hate wanting to hug him so much about it, but not wanting to make a fuss, because all this is at least partially me projecting, remembering a lonely school life, a bullied school life, remembering rebuttals. I don't want to give him my crap, so I won't over comfort him, when he seems to have gotten over it. But how would I know? He doesn't talk yet, and how do we know what they think? I hate the way I will never know if I am doing the right thing by him. I hate the worry.
Wednesday, 10 October 2012
Tuesday, 9 October 2012
Hmmm - it's nothing! Be excited!
It seems that whilst I have been doing remarkably little, the month has changed. Instead of the Indian Summer I was banking on (so as not to have to turn the heating on too early), instead, there was a sudden chill. And lots of pretty leaves going red and orange and yellow. But these leaves will cost us money (the heating has gone on - only for a 1 hour period twice a day; the rest of the time seeing me doing an interesting layering thing, on and off with the layers constantly).
So. My laptop quietly died a little while ago, hence part of the silence. I have been borrowing Stanley's. A bit. He is rather possessive of it and doesn't want it borrowed, really. He has been slowly rebuilding mine, but with not much time available, this is a slow process. I persuaded him to let me have his laptop this morning, so I could say something vastly meaningful and terribly well-written here.
Let's wait...
See, sadly, what with the fact I have a mouth full of (no, not shite, shut up Stanley!) someone else's enormous teeth (do injections not make you feel like that?) because of my dental visit this morning, it appears my brain has gone a bit south. So there's not much here for you. It's a tragic state of affairs. A massive gap in the blog, and when you come back - one of those unsatisfying wonky posts about how I have nothing much to say. I mean: I could go on about how Fluffhead had yet another headbang and we ended up down in casualty AGAIN, with the world's most plaguiest children. And I might actually be able to make it somewhat amusing. But I feel like we already had a Fluffhead headbang post; regardless of the changes, we've been there.
I could waffle about how I am having one of those intermittent crises I have about whether I should be devoting loads more time to writing or spiritual questing, in order to have both a sounder basis in pursuing life, and a sounder basis in thinking of it - all calm. I think most writers have a very good idea Who They Are, and this facilitates doing something as definitive as Writing A Book. I am constantly wavering back and forthly, and changing my mind and my emphases (adaptability or simply wishy-washyness - depends whether you are talking to someone who likes me, or someone who doesn't - and both those people are in my head, regardless of anyone outsidey like...). So - I could talk of that. But I won't. The amount of time I have is the amount of time I have - and its not much, and I often spend it sleeping, in order to better be able to do my Fluffhead job to the best of my ability (a Fluffhead is very draining). So really, I should stop kerfuffling, and accept I don't have much time and that I often quite rightly put the emphasis where it needs to be: mental alertness for Fluffhead job. I will have to get to the writing and spiritual questing whenever I do, and just be...adaptable. (Ha - take that, person in my own head who doesn't like me!)
I could detail and review for you exactly how scarily many Dr Who books I have been reading (of the original Target range, the Virgin New Adventures, the Virgin Missing Adventures, the BBC Past Doctor Adventures and the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures) - I'm sure *someone* would find those reviews interesting - but that will have to wait, as those files are backed up on my external hardrive. And I don't appear to have the right lead to connect it to this computer; only my original laptop. That would have been an almost ready written post too; and one I have been thinking of. Annoying.
You know what? I'm going to let this post stand as a lesson to myself: just cos I have a bit of time, don't imagine I have something to say!
I'll be back later. Hopefully WITH something to say. And a restored laptop. And a hard-drive full of partially written posts I can actually access!
So. My laptop quietly died a little while ago, hence part of the silence. I have been borrowing Stanley's. A bit. He is rather possessive of it and doesn't want it borrowed, really. He has been slowly rebuilding mine, but with not much time available, this is a slow process. I persuaded him to let me have his laptop this morning, so I could say something vastly meaningful and terribly well-written here.
Let's wait...
See, sadly, what with the fact I have a mouth full of (no, not shite, shut up Stanley!) someone else's enormous teeth (do injections not make you feel like that?) because of my dental visit this morning, it appears my brain has gone a bit south. So there's not much here for you. It's a tragic state of affairs. A massive gap in the blog, and when you come back - one of those unsatisfying wonky posts about how I have nothing much to say. I mean: I could go on about how Fluffhead had yet another headbang and we ended up down in casualty AGAIN, with the world's most plaguiest children. And I might actually be able to make it somewhat amusing. But I feel like we already had a Fluffhead headbang post; regardless of the changes, we've been there.
I could waffle about how I am having one of those intermittent crises I have about whether I should be devoting loads more time to writing or spiritual questing, in order to have both a sounder basis in pursuing life, and a sounder basis in thinking of it - all calm. I think most writers have a very good idea Who They Are, and this facilitates doing something as definitive as Writing A Book. I am constantly wavering back and forthly, and changing my mind and my emphases (adaptability or simply wishy-washyness - depends whether you are talking to someone who likes me, or someone who doesn't - and both those people are in my head, regardless of anyone outsidey like...). So - I could talk of that. But I won't. The amount of time I have is the amount of time I have - and its not much, and I often spend it sleeping, in order to better be able to do my Fluffhead job to the best of my ability (a Fluffhead is very draining). So really, I should stop kerfuffling, and accept I don't have much time and that I often quite rightly put the emphasis where it needs to be: mental alertness for Fluffhead job. I will have to get to the writing and spiritual questing whenever I do, and just be...adaptable. (Ha - take that, person in my own head who doesn't like me!)
I could detail and review for you exactly how scarily many Dr Who books I have been reading (of the original Target range, the Virgin New Adventures, the Virgin Missing Adventures, the BBC Past Doctor Adventures and the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures) - I'm sure *someone* would find those reviews interesting - but that will have to wait, as those files are backed up on my external hardrive. And I don't appear to have the right lead to connect it to this computer; only my original laptop. That would have been an almost ready written post too; and one I have been thinking of. Annoying.
You know what? I'm going to let this post stand as a lesson to myself: just cos I have a bit of time, don't imagine I have something to say!
I'll be back later. Hopefully WITH something to say. And a restored laptop. And a hard-drive full of partially written posts I can actually access!
Saturday, 15 September 2012
A Roundabout Rumination on Matters of Proppage
Thats a word I made up, by the way. Proppage. I'll describe what I mean.
The last few days I have been having one of my obsessive fits of watching a TV programme in a big gorging feast in every spare minute I get. What this usually ends up meaning, is that I start to get a sort of hangover where I feel that I am still in that imaginary world even when I am back in this one, the (lets not go there philosophically), 'real' one. I think it must be a similar phenomenon to an article I read on the BBC website a while back (but can't find now, to link for you, annoyingly), about gamers in Japan, who would do overnighters, weekenders, completely hooked in to their favourite computer or online game. They would thoroughly be living it, in their pyjamas, more in that world than this. To the point that when they tried to unplug, and go to sleep, or go to work on Monday, they couldn't quite do it. In their sleep, they would dream the game, and sometimes wake up confused. One gamer attacked his girlfriend who was in bed with him, believing her to be one of the alien monsters he had been seeing off all weekend. Another started to have sweats and paranoia at work, and was eventually sent home (and then to a doctor), after he kept seeing men with guns in Special Ops gear creeping about his office, out of the corner of his eye, coming for him. When he looked around and tried to catch them, they would be gone. But he knew he had seen them...See, now, this is fascinating stuff, this sort of temporary delusion (or tapping into another reality you co-created and being unable to put the cork back in the bottle for a while), aided and abetted by lack of sleep, eating loads of crap during these gaming sessions (and probably anyway)...These people usually recover, after a damn good rest, amazed at what happened to them. Amazingly, some still game!
Now that I've got you good and fascinated, and hopefully a little worried for my state of mind (nothing like a hook for the reading!), I will spoil the whole thing and say that what I am experiencing is a much lower level version of this, most of you have also experienced it, I'll bet, and its quite boring by comparison. I just thought I'd mention the Japanese phenomenon because its so incredibly interesting, and it is related. This sort of thing is all a spectrum of reactions to immersion in stories, interaction with them.
I'm going to complicate matters further, by not telling you what the prog was, that I was watching. You'll note I did this last time, I was obsessed with a prog too. I seem to find this info private, and I'm not sure why I do. My secret private buzz, I spose. A precious interior thing. I don't want these progs I love criticised, and loads of others seem to think they are crap. I don't need their opinion; yet I do seem to care, so I am quiet on the naming.
All I'll say about the prog was that its English made, I spose its a subject for girls (? that's actually confusing info because its not overfly filled with 'relationship' issues, though they feature), though I can guarantee men watched this in their droves because of the subject matter (until they realised not as much flesh would be shown as they hoped...hell, it was terrestrial TV, why be shocked at that?!). Other than being private about my obsessions with programmes, the other reason I'm not telling you exactly which prog, is that its actually a full post in itself - the subject matter. It roused very contradictory feelings and thoughts in me (and one actual nightmare, which surprised me). I may post on the prog itself much later on, simply because it's damn thought-provoking, and I'd need some time to gather some references and such.
But as for this post, the point is the effect it had on me. Considering the subject matter, it could have had several different effects on me, but everyone reacts to any stimulus based on what's going on in their lives at the time, memories triggered, semi-unconscious notions about 'rules' for appropriate behaviour in situations and that's how you judge what you see, etc. The prog showed a way of life that could have been very sordid, but glamourised the hell out of it. As TV does. And what I was taking away was not (as I can imagine several of my friends doing) a desire to emulate the lifestyle shown, even in spirit really (I simply know I do not have the temperament to carry it off), but small lifestyle elements of it. Small very silly ones.
So the Japanese gamers sit there, intently saving the universe from aliens of zombies or both, and then hallucinating them later, in temporary psychosis...whereas the BJ version of this (also aided, no doubt by chronic lack of sleep and not eating enough green veggies)...is to get infected with Proppage.
Remember Sex and the City? How it called thousands of us females to try and live lives if not of utter sexual liberation, then instead of ridiculous high heels, interesting fashion choices (though always short skirted ones) and incessant cocktail drinking in bars? How some of us became temporarily convinced this was in fact The Life To Be Living? There may be a boring as hell office job, there may be a boring boyfriend or no boyfriend - but you go out with your Girls, your Ladies, and you have your sparkly little bag (that really does not allow room enough for all the stuff we need - and I have never been a person content to carry a phone, a lipstick, a doorkey and a condom...if I had a tiny desert island bag, it would have a book in it, really...and the world's tiniest first aid kit, some scissors, and yes, the phone and the doorkey, a spare book and...oh...it just became a much bigger bag, didn't it? See why this all doesn't work for me?? I also, by the way, CANNOT walk in those heels, and I have tried, just to see what it felt like. I used to be able to, I used to wear moderate high heels to some of my earlier jobs, imagining it made me look more, er, officey and professional somehow...but you HAVE to be able to make the walk look natural, or those shoes look really stupid. By natural, I do not mean that artificially sway-ey hip walk. I just mean - do not totter. That looks ridiculous.)
Anywaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay...You have your sparkly little bag, and you go out with your girlfriends and sit in the English equivalent of an upmarket bar, sip cocktails, and talk about ....the usual stuff. (Another point where the scenario fails me: my usual stuff is psychology, philosophic type thoughts, any questions about anything I may suddenly want to ask - like the other day when Stanley came home, my computer was down, and I really wanted to know what happens to all the sewage, where does it go and how do they treat it and is it true that all the tap water has been through 8 bodies before it gets to us?? Or discussing about sci-fi TV shows, or fantasy books, or any kind of book...most subjects not considered generally good pub/bar conversation...Don't get me going on what most people consider good pub/bar conversation: memories of drunken stuff they already did, endlessly, as a group; sports; moaning about boyfriends - what do the men talk about during this segment: work? Dunno...I have one friend who is always told she is "too heavy" when in the pub, in her conversations; she is about the ONLY interesting conversations I have ever had in pubs/bars. I wish she lived closer, I wish we could go and have "heavy" conversations in nice sparkly environments alot more often.)
That last brings me to the point (which I am doing a very good job of not getting to, before now - Alias Time Traveller, this is like one of our coffee shop conversations!). So you're sitting in the bar, showing your legs, feeling all glittery, with your cocktail and your moussey eyeshadow, there with your Pack of Girlfriends, and you are really Playing a Scene. You are partly imagining that there you are: you are Samantha, you are Charlotte, you are Miranda, you are Carrie, you are IN Sex and the City, in a small way, a sort of imitatory, liberated female, I have a cocktail, its after dark, anything could happen my life IS NOT BORING kind of way.
That is Proppage. (By the way, I am a Sex in the City fan, just to set the facts straight - I may sound like I am mocking it, and I bloody am!!; but at the same time - its seductive and cute, and it did have alot of good points to make: the visuals being so sumptuous and its shock-value often got in the way of the actual points. Aside: Reginald D. Hunter did a very annoying sketch about Sex and the City 2, I think it was, a while back. He did that comic thing of stating the characters (approximate: 'so here we have SlutWoman One') and plot very baldly, thereby making it sound very shallow and very stupid indeed (approximate: 'so she thought she was going to overcome radical Islam with...slutty sex?'), instead of getting the oddly thought out but actually rather serious point the film was trying to make (that regimes seen as fascistic in some ways, especially towards women, can still inspire revolution from within, by means of liberation via colour, beauty, individualism with what you do have: your body, your clothes...which in the case of some of the Middle Eastern women depicted in the film, could be hidden by their burkhas. Big outcomes can start from small insignificant seeming things. Those Reginald D. Hunter quotes were approximate because I don't have the DVD of that gig, Fry does and he's not here; also, I tried to link it on YouTube for you, but the Gods of Copyright have decided that my country is blocked for that content, irritatingly. I shall ask Fry and get the proper quotes up when he tells me).
The thing is, for Sex and the City fans, I don't know what the major article of the Proppage is, I think it depends on each person. Is it the sparkly bags, the high heels, the little dresses, the grooming and the makeup? Or the hailing the cab? The cocktail drinking?
Proppage is, of course: using props and small smippets of scenario to get you in the mood, get you in the character, get you feeling like you are in the Scene you are trying to create. (Was it Alec Guinness who always used to feel like he HAD the character he was trying to play when he found the right hat? Or was that Peter Sellers? And false noses...? Anyhow...) The difference between being an actor and using props to get you all hooked in to your character's physicality and mindset, and the phenomenon of Proppage is real life. When you're out, at that bar, in those clothes, with your cocktail - you aren't trying so much to be Samantha or Carrie etc, as a part or a role...you are trying to take their essence of liberatedness (as it can be viewed) and exciting life into yourself. To nick the best bits and incorporate them into your actual real life. To try to make it truly real, but as yourself: just with these confident additions, add ons.
So here I am, very little sleep for two and a half years, practically zero social life outside of the house, NO social life after 6.30 p.m. at all - no night life...and memories of having one previously. I never was a clubber type person. Too many people, too loud (distorts the music: that's annoying), can't talk or listen much; am a crap dancer infront of people. But I do have memories of relaxing after work, on fabled Fridays where the sun took a long time to go down, smoking a cigarette, watching that curling smoke, sipping my drink, watching the people go by, the cabs flash past in a hiss of late light. Getting a bit beyond tipsy, seeing the beautiful way the streetlights stopped just being on and started to glow: gorgeous orange. Beacons in the night. Where rain on pavements became a wonderful shiny haze. My co-workers would laugh more, by about 8.30 p.m. (still early); someone standing on the very edge of the pavement in silly high heels would laugh just a little too much at something and miss her footing and tumble backwards into the road - where she would be fine as there was such a press of outside drinking, laughing, relaxing people in that late summeriness, that she would hit another group softly, embarrassedly apologise, and they would good-naturedly catch her, and there would be more laughter, some wry comments about the shoes, or the drink or the coming darkness, and the groups would re-form. Not a problem, all is well on the Friday night in that pub outside my old work where we used to stand. Not a punch up or loud arguments sort of pub: a nice one. Not posh, and had that icky pub smell (stale beer and old cigarettes: heave and shudder), but not a dive, either. Just the pub down the road from where I used to work, in Victoria.
Oddly, that atmosphere is what I took from my current obsessive TV viewing. I think this was helped by the fact the prog was filmed in 2 places where I used to live for 20-30 years, in and around Westbourne Grove and Notting Hill, and the West End. So I saw those familiar streets, reglamourised, all that light diffusion and sparkly lets make it look brilliant effects, and it reminded me of tipsy good nights out, the feeling of well-being, the feeling of finally fitting in somewhere (for a brief while). This is in complete contrast to my life at the moment which is, by necessity, very small in scope (I have the 24 hour Fluffhead and hardly any money to go anywhere or do anything; only very recent friendships have been made - none at the going out anywhere stage).
So the effect it had on me, the prop I got the urge to turn to, was my wineglasses in the cupboard. I have these wineglasses, from back when I was with Troubadour. They used to come free, one with every 4 books in a series I ordered online. The books were rubbish: I was in love with the glasses. Troubadour hated the glasses. (I have no clue why: I think their blue chunkiness and bigness is both beautiful and not tacky at all!) When I left, they uncomplainingly accompanied me. But I have no occasions that call for them. Really. So they sat about being dusty, after a while. Then this prog came, and I wanted to drink wine from a beautiful glass, and swan about the living room and kitchen, asking Stanley in chirpy yet slightly alluring tones, whether he had had a good day at work.
But I don't hardly drink these days. I have had migraines that last 2 days since I was 13. One of the triggers is too much - or sometimes ANY - alcohol. I can have whole years where I am fine to drink. And I can have whole years where I'm not. I think I may possibly be just emerging from one of my NOT phases. But I'm not sure, and added to the lack of sleep I already have, and my general state of run down-ness, I didn't want to chance it for no good reason. The other day, one of our rare visits from old London friends occurred (the first people to visit from some of the old lot, in oh....9 months). One of them was pregnant and not drinking. So she brought Schloer grape juice with her, which she left as a gift, as she was feeling a bit nauseous while here (the joys of pregnancy). I always loved Schloer. I also went through a 13 year period where I didn't drink at all, and during this time, whenever there was an event or Christmas or whatever, when other people would be wineglassing, I would produce my bottle of Schloer, and drink what looked like white or red wine, but was scrummy non getting you ratarsed fruit juice. So no headache, no silly behaviour, and no stomach upset or hangover! Great deal!
The point of this entire post has been to inform you, that under the influence of TV, I have been fannying about the living room and kitchen, holding chilled glasses of non-alcoholic Schloer grape juice, asking Stanley how his day at work has been...and its been making me feel quite happy. (And he has been asking me if I have been on the sauce: apparently I am genuinely exhibiting that tipsy good humour glow.) Just the stimulus of the chilled glass, that condensation running down it, over the ridges; that cool taste of sweet juice on my tongue and down my throat...the walking confidently from one room to the other: a sense of spaciousness within my circumstances opens up inside my head while I am doing it. Funny. Silly. I feel like a person, a woman, IN the world, not relegated to the outer edges, doing a 24 hour job that will no doubt feel terribly rewarding in retrospect, but which I also know I will likely never forgive myself for not enjoying as I wish I could, at the time...
During these moments though, all is forgiven. I am the old BJ in a way, the one who fitted for a bit, the one who had a whole life outside the home, and friends, I dressed in nice smart clothes (that annoyed the hell out of me at the time: I wanted to wear jeans and T-shirts all the time and be comfy...er: as I do now I am longing to dress up a bit....this does NOT indicate a complete lack of being contented no matter the circumstance. That's very uncharitable. It simply shows just how incredibly important having BALANCE in your roles and your life is. Not just all one thing all the time. You see?)
So: cheers, my friends! Here's to swanning about the house with my chilled glass, smiling in a slightly secretive way, and experiencing odd little bubbles of very good humour, where I manage to be quite amusing and happy in conversation. It's all good. A toast: to Proppage! All things in relative moderation (Japanese gamers, harken!), but go to it! Be the parts of yourself you need to be, lighten the load. Sometimes a small thing is oddly, all it takes...
The last few days I have been having one of my obsessive fits of watching a TV programme in a big gorging feast in every spare minute I get. What this usually ends up meaning, is that I start to get a sort of hangover where I feel that I am still in that imaginary world even when I am back in this one, the (lets not go there philosophically), 'real' one. I think it must be a similar phenomenon to an article I read on the BBC website a while back (but can't find now, to link for you, annoyingly), about gamers in Japan, who would do overnighters, weekenders, completely hooked in to their favourite computer or online game. They would thoroughly be living it, in their pyjamas, more in that world than this. To the point that when they tried to unplug, and go to sleep, or go to work on Monday, they couldn't quite do it. In their sleep, they would dream the game, and sometimes wake up confused. One gamer attacked his girlfriend who was in bed with him, believing her to be one of the alien monsters he had been seeing off all weekend. Another started to have sweats and paranoia at work, and was eventually sent home (and then to a doctor), after he kept seeing men with guns in Special Ops gear creeping about his office, out of the corner of his eye, coming for him. When he looked around and tried to catch them, they would be gone. But he knew he had seen them...See, now, this is fascinating stuff, this sort of temporary delusion (or tapping into another reality you co-created and being unable to put the cork back in the bottle for a while), aided and abetted by lack of sleep, eating loads of crap during these gaming sessions (and probably anyway)...These people usually recover, after a damn good rest, amazed at what happened to them. Amazingly, some still game!
Now that I've got you good and fascinated, and hopefully a little worried for my state of mind (nothing like a hook for the reading!), I will spoil the whole thing and say that what I am experiencing is a much lower level version of this, most of you have also experienced it, I'll bet, and its quite boring by comparison. I just thought I'd mention the Japanese phenomenon because its so incredibly interesting, and it is related. This sort of thing is all a spectrum of reactions to immersion in stories, interaction with them.
I'm going to complicate matters further, by not telling you what the prog was, that I was watching. You'll note I did this last time, I was obsessed with a prog too. I seem to find this info private, and I'm not sure why I do. My secret private buzz, I spose. A precious interior thing. I don't want these progs I love criticised, and loads of others seem to think they are crap. I don't need their opinion; yet I do seem to care, so I am quiet on the naming.
All I'll say about the prog was that its English made, I spose its a subject for girls (? that's actually confusing info because its not overfly filled with 'relationship' issues, though they feature), though I can guarantee men watched this in their droves because of the subject matter (until they realised not as much flesh would be shown as they hoped...hell, it was terrestrial TV, why be shocked at that?!). Other than being private about my obsessions with programmes, the other reason I'm not telling you exactly which prog, is that its actually a full post in itself - the subject matter. It roused very contradictory feelings and thoughts in me (and one actual nightmare, which surprised me). I may post on the prog itself much later on, simply because it's damn thought-provoking, and I'd need some time to gather some references and such.
But as for this post, the point is the effect it had on me. Considering the subject matter, it could have had several different effects on me, but everyone reacts to any stimulus based on what's going on in their lives at the time, memories triggered, semi-unconscious notions about 'rules' for appropriate behaviour in situations and that's how you judge what you see, etc. The prog showed a way of life that could have been very sordid, but glamourised the hell out of it. As TV does. And what I was taking away was not (as I can imagine several of my friends doing) a desire to emulate the lifestyle shown, even in spirit really (I simply know I do not have the temperament to carry it off), but small lifestyle elements of it. Small very silly ones.
So the Japanese gamers sit there, intently saving the universe from aliens of zombies or both, and then hallucinating them later, in temporary psychosis...whereas the BJ version of this (also aided, no doubt by chronic lack of sleep and not eating enough green veggies)...is to get infected with Proppage.
Remember Sex and the City? How it called thousands of us females to try and live lives if not of utter sexual liberation, then instead of ridiculous high heels, interesting fashion choices (though always short skirted ones) and incessant cocktail drinking in bars? How some of us became temporarily convinced this was in fact The Life To Be Living? There may be a boring as hell office job, there may be a boring boyfriend or no boyfriend - but you go out with your Girls, your Ladies, and you have your sparkly little bag (that really does not allow room enough for all the stuff we need - and I have never been a person content to carry a phone, a lipstick, a doorkey and a condom...if I had a tiny desert island bag, it would have a book in it, really...and the world's tiniest first aid kit, some scissors, and yes, the phone and the doorkey, a spare book and...oh...it just became a much bigger bag, didn't it? See why this all doesn't work for me?? I also, by the way, CANNOT walk in those heels, and I have tried, just to see what it felt like. I used to be able to, I used to wear moderate high heels to some of my earlier jobs, imagining it made me look more, er, officey and professional somehow...but you HAVE to be able to make the walk look natural, or those shoes look really stupid. By natural, I do not mean that artificially sway-ey hip walk. I just mean - do not totter. That looks ridiculous.)
Anywaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay...You have your sparkly little bag, and you go out with your girlfriends and sit in the English equivalent of an upmarket bar, sip cocktails, and talk about ....the usual stuff. (Another point where the scenario fails me: my usual stuff is psychology, philosophic type thoughts, any questions about anything I may suddenly want to ask - like the other day when Stanley came home, my computer was down, and I really wanted to know what happens to all the sewage, where does it go and how do they treat it and is it true that all the tap water has been through 8 bodies before it gets to us?? Or discussing about sci-fi TV shows, or fantasy books, or any kind of book...most subjects not considered generally good pub/bar conversation...Don't get me going on what most people consider good pub/bar conversation: memories of drunken stuff they already did, endlessly, as a group; sports; moaning about boyfriends - what do the men talk about during this segment: work? Dunno...I have one friend who is always told she is "too heavy" when in the pub, in her conversations; she is about the ONLY interesting conversations I have ever had in pubs/bars. I wish she lived closer, I wish we could go and have "heavy" conversations in nice sparkly environments alot more often.)
That last brings me to the point (which I am doing a very good job of not getting to, before now - Alias Time Traveller, this is like one of our coffee shop conversations!). So you're sitting in the bar, showing your legs, feeling all glittery, with your cocktail and your moussey eyeshadow, there with your Pack of Girlfriends, and you are really Playing a Scene. You are partly imagining that there you are: you are Samantha, you are Charlotte, you are Miranda, you are Carrie, you are IN Sex and the City, in a small way, a sort of imitatory, liberated female, I have a cocktail, its after dark, anything could happen my life IS NOT BORING kind of way.
That is Proppage. (By the way, I am a Sex in the City fan, just to set the facts straight - I may sound like I am mocking it, and I bloody am!!; but at the same time - its seductive and cute, and it did have alot of good points to make: the visuals being so sumptuous and its shock-value often got in the way of the actual points. Aside: Reginald D. Hunter did a very annoying sketch about Sex and the City 2, I think it was, a while back. He did that comic thing of stating the characters (approximate: 'so here we have SlutWoman One') and plot very baldly, thereby making it sound very shallow and very stupid indeed (approximate: 'so she thought she was going to overcome radical Islam with...slutty sex?'), instead of getting the oddly thought out but actually rather serious point the film was trying to make (that regimes seen as fascistic in some ways, especially towards women, can still inspire revolution from within, by means of liberation via colour, beauty, individualism with what you do have: your body, your clothes...which in the case of some of the Middle Eastern women depicted in the film, could be hidden by their burkhas. Big outcomes can start from small insignificant seeming things. Those Reginald D. Hunter quotes were approximate because I don't have the DVD of that gig, Fry does and he's not here; also, I tried to link it on YouTube for you, but the Gods of Copyright have decided that my country is blocked for that content, irritatingly. I shall ask Fry and get the proper quotes up when he tells me).
The thing is, for Sex and the City fans, I don't know what the major article of the Proppage is, I think it depends on each person. Is it the sparkly bags, the high heels, the little dresses, the grooming and the makeup? Or the hailing the cab? The cocktail drinking?
Proppage is, of course: using props and small smippets of scenario to get you in the mood, get you in the character, get you feeling like you are in the Scene you are trying to create. (Was it Alec Guinness who always used to feel like he HAD the character he was trying to play when he found the right hat? Or was that Peter Sellers? And false noses...? Anyhow...) The difference between being an actor and using props to get you all hooked in to your character's physicality and mindset, and the phenomenon of Proppage is real life. When you're out, at that bar, in those clothes, with your cocktail - you aren't trying so much to be Samantha or Carrie etc, as a part or a role...you are trying to take their essence of liberatedness (as it can be viewed) and exciting life into yourself. To nick the best bits and incorporate them into your actual real life. To try to make it truly real, but as yourself: just with these confident additions, add ons.
So here I am, very little sleep for two and a half years, practically zero social life outside of the house, NO social life after 6.30 p.m. at all - no night life...and memories of having one previously. I never was a clubber type person. Too many people, too loud (distorts the music: that's annoying), can't talk or listen much; am a crap dancer infront of people. But I do have memories of relaxing after work, on fabled Fridays where the sun took a long time to go down, smoking a cigarette, watching that curling smoke, sipping my drink, watching the people go by, the cabs flash past in a hiss of late light. Getting a bit beyond tipsy, seeing the beautiful way the streetlights stopped just being on and started to glow: gorgeous orange. Beacons in the night. Where rain on pavements became a wonderful shiny haze. My co-workers would laugh more, by about 8.30 p.m. (still early); someone standing on the very edge of the pavement in silly high heels would laugh just a little too much at something and miss her footing and tumble backwards into the road - where she would be fine as there was such a press of outside drinking, laughing, relaxing people in that late summeriness, that she would hit another group softly, embarrassedly apologise, and they would good-naturedly catch her, and there would be more laughter, some wry comments about the shoes, or the drink or the coming darkness, and the groups would re-form. Not a problem, all is well on the Friday night in that pub outside my old work where we used to stand. Not a punch up or loud arguments sort of pub: a nice one. Not posh, and had that icky pub smell (stale beer and old cigarettes: heave and shudder), but not a dive, either. Just the pub down the road from where I used to work, in Victoria.
Oddly, that atmosphere is what I took from my current obsessive TV viewing. I think this was helped by the fact the prog was filmed in 2 places where I used to live for 20-30 years, in and around Westbourne Grove and Notting Hill, and the West End. So I saw those familiar streets, reglamourised, all that light diffusion and sparkly lets make it look brilliant effects, and it reminded me of tipsy good nights out, the feeling of well-being, the feeling of finally fitting in somewhere (for a brief while). This is in complete contrast to my life at the moment which is, by necessity, very small in scope (I have the 24 hour Fluffhead and hardly any money to go anywhere or do anything; only very recent friendships have been made - none at the going out anywhere stage).
So the effect it had on me, the prop I got the urge to turn to, was my wineglasses in the cupboard. I have these wineglasses, from back when I was with Troubadour. They used to come free, one with every 4 books in a series I ordered online. The books were rubbish: I was in love with the glasses. Troubadour hated the glasses. (I have no clue why: I think their blue chunkiness and bigness is both beautiful and not tacky at all!) When I left, they uncomplainingly accompanied me. But I have no occasions that call for them. Really. So they sat about being dusty, after a while. Then this prog came, and I wanted to drink wine from a beautiful glass, and swan about the living room and kitchen, asking Stanley in chirpy yet slightly alluring tones, whether he had had a good day at work.
But I don't hardly drink these days. I have had migraines that last 2 days since I was 13. One of the triggers is too much - or sometimes ANY - alcohol. I can have whole years where I am fine to drink. And I can have whole years where I'm not. I think I may possibly be just emerging from one of my NOT phases. But I'm not sure, and added to the lack of sleep I already have, and my general state of run down-ness, I didn't want to chance it for no good reason. The other day, one of our rare visits from old London friends occurred (the first people to visit from some of the old lot, in oh....9 months). One of them was pregnant and not drinking. So she brought Schloer grape juice with her, which she left as a gift, as she was feeling a bit nauseous while here (the joys of pregnancy). I always loved Schloer. I also went through a 13 year period where I didn't drink at all, and during this time, whenever there was an event or Christmas or whatever, when other people would be wineglassing, I would produce my bottle of Schloer, and drink what looked like white or red wine, but was scrummy non getting you ratarsed fruit juice. So no headache, no silly behaviour, and no stomach upset or hangover! Great deal!
The point of this entire post has been to inform you, that under the influence of TV, I have been fannying about the living room and kitchen, holding chilled glasses of non-alcoholic Schloer grape juice, asking Stanley how his day at work has been...and its been making me feel quite happy. (And he has been asking me if I have been on the sauce: apparently I am genuinely exhibiting that tipsy good humour glow.) Just the stimulus of the chilled glass, that condensation running down it, over the ridges; that cool taste of sweet juice on my tongue and down my throat...the walking confidently from one room to the other: a sense of spaciousness within my circumstances opens up inside my head while I am doing it. Funny. Silly. I feel like a person, a woman, IN the world, not relegated to the outer edges, doing a 24 hour job that will no doubt feel terribly rewarding in retrospect, but which I also know I will likely never forgive myself for not enjoying as I wish I could, at the time...
During these moments though, all is forgiven. I am the old BJ in a way, the one who fitted for a bit, the one who had a whole life outside the home, and friends, I dressed in nice smart clothes (that annoyed the hell out of me at the time: I wanted to wear jeans and T-shirts all the time and be comfy...er: as I do now I am longing to dress up a bit....this does NOT indicate a complete lack of being contented no matter the circumstance. That's very uncharitable. It simply shows just how incredibly important having BALANCE in your roles and your life is. Not just all one thing all the time. You see?)
So: cheers, my friends! Here's to swanning about the house with my chilled glass, smiling in a slightly secretive way, and experiencing odd little bubbles of very good humour, where I manage to be quite amusing and happy in conversation. It's all good. A toast: to Proppage! All things in relative moderation (Japanese gamers, harken!), but go to it! Be the parts of yourself you need to be, lighten the load. Sometimes a small thing is oddly, all it takes...
Sunday, 26 August 2012
Snippets of Interesting Things: Rosebay Willowherb
The Luggage was made from the wood of the sapient peartree, a plant so magical it had nearly died out on the Disc, and survived in only one or two places; it was a sort of rosebay willowherb, only instead of bombsites it sprouted in areas that had seen vast expenditures of magic.
(Terry Pratchett, Sourcery, Corgi, 1988, p.63.)
The other day, Fluffhead and I were out in the sunshine. Coming home from town. I pushed the pushchair, and watched the world in front of me.
A woman ahead that I vaguely recognised as living in the same street suddenly stopped by the outside wall near her house. She took a tall happy looking plant growing there, ripped it out quite violently, and threw it down on the path beside her. Without looking back, without breaking stride. And disappeared off into her house, up some red steps.
She didn’t look like a cruel person, but I found this a heartrending thing to do.
I was going the same way, and wheeled the pushchair over to the plant, great clods of earth attached still to its thickish roots. It had soft green leaves, thin and wavy, and a high tall top, with gushes of small pink flowers, falling over themselves to bloom out, like a fountain at its apex. Droplets of flower. I thought it was beautiful.
I picked it up and took it home. When I got inside, before even taking Fluffhead out of the pushchair, and telling him I wouldn’t be long, I fetched a pot from the outhouse, and some compost, and spoke softly to the poor traumatised plant, and re-potted it, with some food and water. And put it outside in the yard, next to 2 other tallish plants, so that it would feel among its like, its peers.
It drooped for several days, then seemed to rally. Its bottom leaves browned a bit, but the top ones stood out again. The flowers all died, they never recovered. Strange fluffy curly things started to sprout from its mid section. Like shaved wooden slivers covered in a dust of cotton wool. At this point I thought – I need to look this odd plant up somewhere…it’s behaving a bit like a science fiction plant. Any minute the house will be covered in fluff and we’ll be trapped inside! It will take over the Earth, with its little pink flowers lulling us in, before going all fluffy and seeding everywhere, no more life as we know it – Planet of FLUFFPLANT! (As you can see, I’m still deeply enmeshed in reading my Doctor Who books, and therefore full of fanciful leaps of not-quite-logic.)
The tall ailing plant turned out to divide opinion neatly. It was either a dreadful weed – which clearly was what the woman down the street thought, in her ruthlessness when she saw it – not even IN her property, just near it, goodness me…Or it’s a fine herb, used for hundreds of years medicinally and mentioned in many botanicals.
Rosebay Willowherb. Also known as Fireweed[1], Blooming Sally, Great Willow Herb (as opposed to Small Willow Herb – which has less flowers and was used by herbalists for centuries to ease allsorts of prostate problems and bladder infections, by means of a simply made medicinal tea; repopularised by the Austrian Herbalist, Maria Trebens[2]). Also known as Ranting Widow, Apple Pie, Singerherb…
Louise Bustard, Assistant Curator Glasgow Botanical Gardens, tells this story of first seeing Rosebay Willowherb when she arrived in Glasgow from London to take up her position at the Botanical Gardens:
…they took me back to a time when, as a little girl, I sat listening to my grandmother as she told me of the first summer after World War Two had ended. It was nothing short of a miracle that, after the blitz, St Paul's Cathedral remained standing proud and virtually untouched surrounded by - nothing. Every home, shop, church and garden had been bombed to oblivion. St Paul's stood alone. As the summer got under way, however, the surrounding bombsites turned dusky pink as newly arrived and long hidden seeds of the rosebay willow-herb gradually covered the open wounds of the city. Through my grandmother's descriptive powers I
can still visualise in my mind an extraordinary sight that my eyes never saw[3].
A flower of hope, spread out in otherwise desolate spaces, speaking of regeneration, the possibility of fruitfulness again. She describes how attitudes to it have changed:
It is generally considered a native, but the rosebay willow herb only really arrived in Britain at the end of the last ice age. However, from that time to the present century it was considered a rarity. Today if it appears in our well kept borders it is immediately ripped out as an unwanted weed. It was perceived very differently in the seventeenth century when the famous herbalist Gerard was writing about plants.
Its scarcity then meant it was much more appreciated. Gerard
describes it as “A goodly and stately plant, . . . .garnished with brave flowers of great beautie”.[4]
Far from being a nasty weed overpopulating areas, I thought it was gorgeous. After reading that, I went and replanted it again – in the earth properly, along the edge of a completely fallow flowerbed. Fluffhead has been running up and down it all summer – everything I planted died, except some tiny wildflowers I have yet to identify, and a really amazing ‘weed’ that looks like coriander but isn’t, and grows in a sort of overground root system, with runners, like a strawberry plant would. I wondered whether it would survive, and fluff those little seeds over the flowerbed and to the barren areas of garden, surviving extremes of rain and draught, the way nothing else in my garden has properly this summer (except the buddleia; that I dislike for its incredibly bionic growth. It needs to be out in the street, I feel bad that I have to cut it back so strongly…)
I thought this could be a new experiment. The year before last, I let the borage go insane to see what would happen. What happened was that I had borders filled with absolutely nothing BUT borage, it crowded out everything, a very greedy plant. But the way I have been observing the Rosebay Willowherb – and I have since seen it along all the local railway embankments, and some of the more desolate front gardens of the area: it grows alongside other things, it doesn’t leave absolutely no room for anything else. Besides which, last year we had useful Borage; maybe next year we can have useful Rosebay Willowherb…
(In case you didn’t know, Borage is where we get Starflower Oil, so useful for women’s hormone balancing, and taken in capsule form to help even out periods, breast inflammation and cramping. This is due to its extremely high levels of GLA, a fatty-acid, the highest of any naturally occurring plant source[5]. It has many many other uses and is worth looking up, but that’s what I use it for.)
Rosebay Willowherb has its own uses. In her brilliantly useful 2008 book, Hedgerow Medicine, Julie Bruton-Seal also says: ‘It has not been used much in medicine in recent years but was a favourite of the American Eclectic physicians in treating diarrhoea and typhoid. Its soothing, astringent and tonic action is wonderful for all sorts of intestinal irritation, and it makes a good mouthwash’ (see the shortened reference version, online: http://hedgerowmedicine.co.uk/). At this site, you'll find ways in which it can be eaten, too.
Interestingly, too, this health scare I have been having, that thankfully so far has not turned out to be cancer or anything terminal, is all about intestinal irritation…and last year, when the borage was everywhere, due to my experiment then, balancing hormones was my problem. Things have a habit of presenting themselves to my perception when I’m primed to find them most useful. It’s a strange thing. What a useful little thing I found. And so beautiful.
[1] Because it likes to spring up to cover sites razed to the ground by fire. After the Great Fire of London in 1666, Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) in his Diary of Samuel Pepys, nine volumes, 1660-1669, related how the burned area soon filled with fireweed (see May 1667). http://www.pepysdiary.com/
[2] http://www.mariatrebenherbs.com/
[3] From Chickweed, Willow and Other Wild Glaswegians, by Louise Bustard, introductory notes, to be found at: http://www.glasgow.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/FA6DD876-EDAA-4B8F-9602-E3B8D83BA484/0/WildPlantsofGlasgow.pdf
Do go ahead and read this brilliant, accessible study. Lots of excellent interesting information.
Do go ahead and read this brilliant, accessible study. Lots of excellent interesting information.
[4] Ibid, p.61.
[5] James Wong is an ethno-botanist writing of herbal remedies safe for home use, in Grow Your Own Drugs, companion volume to the BBC series of 2009, p.159 (London: Collins, 2009).
Credit: The photo used at the top, is from this site: http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/organicweeds/weed_information/weed.php?id=116
Sunday, 19 August 2012
Partially for Hystery: Communication Via, and the Possibilities and Tyrannies of Stories
I wrote this post 3 weeks ago, just as the Olympics were starting. And decided it was too regular BJ-ish to post, i.e. a bit sad, a bit pessimistic, etc, despite its lighter bits. Then I read a post by Hystery, and decided maybe it should go up after all, for what its worth. Even a tiny point can be worth making. And I may not have made it at all well in the comment I left her (too much me, not enough point); so I make it here, instead. It's not a direct reply to what she said, but it's a related issue.
***
I was walking down the hill, and it started to rain. I had forgotten my umbrella. (I love my umbrella. Its completely see-through, with a white rim and handle. Like many I used to see in 70’s films. Took me ages to find it. A while ago see-through umbrellas were a bit in vogue again, but they were see-through with patterns and colours – busy looking. Not properly see-through alone. I finally found this one on one of those stalls outside London tube stations, that sell London bus fridge magnets, and those ‘my brother went to London and all I got was this lousy T-shirt’ stalls. Sitting there all perfect and see-through and lonesome. And cheap. Not anymore though. Now it’s united with me, its dutiful soul-mate. Every time it rains and I have this umbrella, I love that I can see up, and all the light comes through. I can see the raindrops. Hear them patter on the plastic. There I am, in my own dome of dryness. It’s a lovely thing.)
Anyway. I forgot it.
So I was walking down the hill. It started to rain, quite heavily, quite quickly. In a way this was just fine; I had just washed my hair, so I was all wet already.
Also it meant the sky did that great thing it does before rainstorms. It lowered. Grey grey blanketing sky. Deep dusky grey, softly heavy. Plush toy stuffing. Some rumbles of thunder. (Which explained why I had a headache too; I’m like a barometer: air pressure up or down – I can tell you from the throbbing of my temples.) So all the shininess went off everything. It was still light, but dull. Not boring dull, just restful dull. No strong edges on things, no glaring contrasts. Just a light that takes you mentally from the 10.30 a.m. in the August morning it was, and puts you in at about 4.30 p.m. on an October afternoon instead. You get an ‘oh, soon hometime, curl up’ feeling. A winding down light. Did wonders for my headache.
Rumbles of thunder. Sorry to be stereotypical, but it did, really. Cliches are there for a reason. There – it just did it again. It moved across the sky like rolling rocks, from left to right. Bowling balls of Thor (and I forgot the umbrella courtesy of Loki, of course).
I go down the hill, enjoying the feeling of my trainers making that slurpy sticky sound on the wet tarmac.
Against the lowered grey sky, I see a house roof, deep brown with dark green trees far behind, stark in the sky. On top of the roof stands a scrawny blackbird. Just mooching about. In a strutty way. For a second, as I see the bird, feel the rain on my hair and face, and listen to the gurgling of it running down the gutters at the sides of the road and swirling off to the drains at the bottom of the hill, I think: all I need is this. These moments of air and space, and small droplets of beauty. A scrawny bird, a grey sky, some rain.
Moments like these make me who I am. I could freeze time in tiny spaces like this and watch raindrops land in spirals on concrete, stretch it forever. Total peace.
*
But just in case you feel I am going a mite soft, there…the other side of the coin is something like this. A few days before that last bit…
You know how I’m always saying stories are the only things that make sense? Because regardless how Kafkaesque (and therefore almost lifelike) they are, they are still stories.
Stories are composed by one person at a time. No matter how different (and lifelike) the characters seem, they are all in one person’s head. Echoes of types/sorts/parts of that person’s self.
It is one person talking (at length, and doing all the voices/parts) to themselves.
By that token – if anything (any conflict, problem, misunderstanding – war) gets sorted out at the end, it will be because one person finally understood all the Points Of View of themselves (and was able to create some sort of compromise or resolution through arbitrating the relevance’s of those views).
I had the sort of day today, riven with conflict, where I got to a point of defensive closedown. I decided “only stories make sense, not real life” and shut up shop. Retreated therein.
This is also a lie, this tidy little defensive statement I told myself.
The reason stories make sense is that they are lies. Allsorts of conveniences and contrivances occur there, that in life, do not. Will not. Could not.
Because we don’t understand the 70 thousand shades of people of all ages and wisdoms living in our own heads. How can we hope to understand someone else’s colony?
I read the blog the other day, of someone who (possibly rightfully?) isn’t talking to me, or me her. I loved the blog. Yet I can’t have a peaceful conversation with her, we misread one another constantly. (I want to post a link to it here, it's so lovely, but I won't as she may be unhappy with that.)
We can all communicate VIA stuff as much as we like: adore each others writing, love each other’s art, dance, music, taste in humour or clothes or colours or lifestyle.
If we are careful to remain as empathic as possible, we can be friends with each other. It may even feel easy sometimes. For a while.
But you know what? Pessimistic thought for the day: I don’t think there will ever be peace.
Because stories are basically beautiful lies, patchworked senses of self, ventriloquism of our endlessly fragmented perceptions stretched flying; faulty memories sparkled as ‘truth’.
We can try. But each of us is a player in what to each of us is the epic story of our own lives. How can the arrogance and ego of each and every Hero and Heroine, Protagonists All, ever accept the bit roles (or worse, the utter non-importance) we have in the lives of others?
If I can’t even understand why someone I love very much was unreasonable today, twice, (and was I too?...probably…) – then what hope for…extrapolate outwards.
And have a gin.
Put on some music. You’ll think differently if you put on Handel or Mozart as opposed to Fields of the Nephilim or the soundtrack to 28 Days Later…so many variables.
But no peace, I fear.
No two stories tally. Eye witness accounts notoriously differ.
*
I shan’t leave it like that though. Goodness no! Because that’s the thing. The scrawny bird, the raindrops, the woollen grey sky (it’s that historical weather again) – and then those nasty sensations of dislocation, miscommunication, alienation. Both are entirely true. At the time. One does not cancel the other. One does not mean more than the other. The rather unpleasant truth (for me, at least) I feel, is that both are equally valid and mean something.
It is the bravery that is accepting them both as reality that will help mend the upset stomach that is my mind, so often.
And the fact that if I try my best to listen, to really hear other people when they talk – and to try and put myself in their shoes, I may not end up agreeing with them (no, not at all) – but I will be able to appreciate their standpoints and talk to them that much more effectively. From where they are.
If you read this, and for just a second, you saw that thin little black bird, dark against the rainy sky, and you heard the rain gurgling into the drains – then there is hope. For allsorts of things involving us humans.
Because I let you in my head, you came to visit and you went away again, unscathed. You might not have seen exactly what I described (of course not), instead your own approximation of it. But we shared a vision, which hopefully wasn’t horrible in any way?!
So whilst my feelings when upset were true, quite nastily true, for me – so is this, now. If we try to keep listening, and seeing, and not shoring up our own positions so much that we can no longer see anyone else’s, amazing things can still be done. Cities built, cathedrals, books written, films made – millions entertained and given breathing space, a holiday from their worries[1]. It’s not a little thing.
Like I said before, it’s all about empathy with each other.
That’s my tuppenceworth anyway.
[1] It may not be the start of world peace in particular, but people watching films and reading books and listening to music are not at that moment out being un-peaceful: they are communicating with another’s mind via…And things that help you try to make sense of other things – they are good for exercising the mind. Understanding anything is never bad, and may come in useful.
'Communication Via' (copyright!!) is an idea I've had since I was really little. I think we humans often have great trouble communicating with each other, and do it through other things instead, often much better.
Wednesday, 15 August 2012
Time-mining, Segment One, a short story from a few years back...
Don't bother with this blogpost if you don't like horror at all, or aren't interested in Italian horror films, it'll just tire your brain...
This is an old story I wrote, for an exercise in an Open University Course some time ago. It’s a short horror-ish story. More of a vignette than anything else. I’m going to give links about what I was on about at the end – only cos if you aren’t a fan of the films of Dario Argento, you will probably find the story daft and inexplicable. Hell – you might regardless of explanation!! Anywaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy…..Here you go.
Bit of teenagey gothness!
***
Cliche and Argento
They say starting is the hard part. That may be true of writing a song, or a soundtrack or making a film. It wasn’t true of my best friend. Starting, and finishing her, was the easiest thing I have finally let myself do.
She would sit in school, years I watched this: being the butterfly, being the one everyone loved. Spreading herself too thin. I would be sitting next to her, with my walkman hidden by my hair, the wires sneaking back and under my collar, easy; like so much else when I finally freed myself. Listening to her with one ear, her husky voice asking about someone else, a crisis, a wise comment…half of me would be listening to Goblin. I had to have it on quiet; it’s an intrusive sound, those Italian geniuses. I had a thing for Profondo Rosso for a while, then Suspiria. It was when I hit Tenebrae that I knew I had to kill her.
I would watch her, flicking her hair, lovely blond hair, genuine, not a dye. Like straw, the colour of straw, but soft like kitten fur…soft, so soft.
She’d turn to me, and say: ‘Do you mind if we go to Clare’s house tonight on the way home? Her dad’s away again, and she might drink, but she won’t if we’re there, and we cheer her up?’ She’d know that if she smiled at me, let it go to her eyes, that she’d have me. She always had me. She’d turn back to Clare (or whoever, the mother Theresa), and hunch forward, soft caressing hand on the arm, those soft smiles, soft words.
I used to live on those moments where we’d actually, finally be alone, and she would turn those smiles and words on me. I lived for that small time, last summer, when she let me touch her. Touched me back. She worried of course. That she was becoming a lesbian! I thought that hilarious. I have always wanted to touch, really touch, anyone I have ever loved: to me it felt normal. To her…she thought, I suppose, that it was an extension to caring, all that help she gave people, all that endless bloody peacemaking. Turned out that she enjoyed this particular help, but too much for her comfort.
I was insulted, and realised that…she didn’t really love me. Not like I loved her. I cried quite a bit. I played lots of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, trying both to calm down, and to experience some attenuated, clearer sort of consciousness. A pinnacle of suffering, where I would receive enlightenment. All the while I watched her, and behaved as the faithful sidekick, as I ever had. I didn’t ask for that time back, or her touch again. I touched myself, I thought of her. I started to want to be rough, to cut my nails to hard triangles and use them on her soft wetness, to scrape, to dig. Then I realised the next logical thing. I could help her out of her hypocrisy, her uncaring.
It was a few days after I began listening to the Tenebrae soundtrack that this dawned on me. It was she who was the filthy, slimy pervert the killer talks about. All I really needed was an old fashioned razor. Some black gloves. A white top for her to be changing into. Forget the fancy camerawork, the famous Luna crane sequence – obviously, I couldn’t replicate that scene. But she hated Goblin! I could make her yell to turn it off. Easy.
So I had the beginning of a stupid, but oddly easy plan. Do you really want to hear the rest? How even though I succeeded, and she is not with us anymore, and the feeling of slicing into the skin and muscle of someone you love is amazingly easy, both mentally and actually (providing the razor is sharp), I am still not happy? It was a great trip – it really felt like a film – being caught. I didn’t run, I sat, and I watched her die. I watched the blood congeal, I watched the edges of the wounds on her throat (it really does gout, it’s astonishing, be prepared to do a massive clean up if you don’t plan to sit and stay) change colour from that livid red, to a quite unattractive meat-sat-in-the-sun-for-too-long tone. Sort of purple pink orange. Not pretty. Not that beauty of death Argento talks about.
The more I sat, the more disappointed I got. She was beautiful to begin with, beautiful uncaring bitch. Then beautiful as I killed her, and she choked, and it all spilled – wow! But then, the more time passed, the more I wanted to do it again, she was starting to seem so…boring now. I got down on the floor and looked into her eyes, as you are told to in Four Flies on Grey Velvet, to see what the last image recorded on the retina was – whether she registered surprise or an emotion, something. Nope. Just empty, dead, stupid eyes.
When the policewoman came in – it was only about 45 minutes later, Merriam made lots of noise as she went down, after all, till I cut the cause – I knew I was going to have to try to do it again. I knew I didn’t have a plan this time, and I need forethought. So I knew it was probably going to fail. But even if I just got her hand when she put it up to defend herself – even just one slice…
I’m in for life. A filmic cliché. They say, what do they know, that I am criminally insane. They have not loved, they have certainly not possessed. They know nothing. They don’t know about love, or punishment, or music, or making things look perfect. Maybe I should have just tried to make a film? Or write a soundtrack? I do that now, sitting here, I get given paper.
They say starting is the hard part.
But there’s so much inside my head.
If they gave me something sharper than crayons, I could try and get it out.
(story copyright: me! BlackberryJuniper!, 2012)
***
I’m a bit in love with the last line there: I can really hear the voice saying it. (Aaaahhhhhh. Moment of adoration of own stuff....ehem, ok, I'm over it.) The whole thing is wildly cheesy, but hey – cheese is fun sometimes. Ok, bit of explanation…Dario Argento does Italian horror films, thrillers. He was most famous for his work of the late 60's through till early 80's, when he was more or less exclusively a horror director (he's done many other genres, as have alot of the classic Italian directors of the same generation). I love Italian horror cinema almost more than the English. Everything is so amazingly lurid, vivid and OTT. (And badly dubbed: joy!) Amazing style, and a complete lack of worry about believability too. Makes for some unforgettable cinema. (He's not the only great director there, either, for the genre: there are quite a few more: the Bava father and son, Lucio Fulci, and thats just 3 more famous ones - there are all sorts of hidden not so famous ones - go look, such fun!!)
Suspiria was always - and still is - my favourite: nothing like the setting of a German girls boarding school, all that red and green lighting, and evil witch covens led by an ageing Joan Bennett (my recommendation: see the incredibly atmospheric Secret Beyond the Door, 1948, with Michael Redgrave and directed by Fritz Lang: perfection...). Wonderful stuff! Closely followed by Profundo Rosso. So many good actors and actresses; and the creepy and bonkers music of Goblin.
Ah, the music of Goblin, yes, very important to my little tiny story. They did lots of work with Dario Argento on his films. (Depending on what version of Romero's original Dawn of the Dead you have seen - there are many more than the one, you'll hear more or less of them on that too, as a more mainstream way to hear them...). The soundtrack for Suspiria is terrifying and screechy; for Dawn of the Dead eclectic and memorable; for Profundo Rosso (aren't I lovely to have found you the whole film - don't watch if you don't like old schlocky bloody horror films; but you're safe to listen for the music over the credits at the beginning) catchy and nursery rhymeish one minute and hooky the next; for Tenebrae, the film I talk of alot in the story - well, you'll hear it in a minute, if you click the link. Try to imagine being teenage, very unstable, in love with your best friend - the love that, in a comprehensive school at least, still cannot speak its name...obsessed with these films and this music and...there's my story, really.
The thing about Tenebrae is that it is considered by some people to be a classic giallo type thriller. (I've referenced giallo before and won't go on about it again - think of it as a particularly unforgivingly violent thriller, early 70s style - and very very stylishly scored and filmed; its an Italian subgenre. Despite their grittiness in places, alot of it would of course appear tame by today's torture-porn standards. This is not a good thing.)
The section I mention, the Luna Crane sequence was about a famous sequence in the film where a shot continued, unbroken, for a very long time (by the standards of that genre, and those times), and was accomplished using the Luna Crane, a sort of support for a steadicam - here is the sequence. (Stanley Kubrick was famous for the same sort of work in his films, used differently.) Its the sequence that the protagonist in my tiny story gets obsessed with, and decided to emulate when it comes to killing her best friend. (Don't worry, its a more or less bloodless sequence - it's about the music and the camerawork, not Argento's adoration of 'the beauty of death' as filmed, surreally. By the way, this academic article here has some interesting things to say to the critics of Argento's love for killing off beautiful women in a very violent way. I'm a feminist, for sure, and I love his films: vive la paradox.)
I mentioned to a couple of people that this small story would have to go up with notes and they said, typical received wisdom, that if it can't stand alone it doesn't stand. I disagree. If it introduces anybody to the delights of giallo through these little notes - well and good! I wouldn't call my tiny story a fan fiction either - it's a reference to what to me, is very familiar (pop) culture: if you were all as into horror films or Argento as me, you'd all know what I was talking about without need of the notes! (There's a circular bit of logic!)
Anyway - there may be more time-mining soon, I'm reading over lots of old stuff at the moment; and its the old old story, I have precious little time to think of anything new, let alone be able to type it up right now...But don't fret, I shan't subject you to throat slittings every post. As far as I remember, this was the only story of this kind I ever wrote....I mean: there was a funny/silly one about a cursed locket or something...but I shan't bother you with that!
Er, I better do a disclaimer here: Here am I officially telling you its not a good idea to get obsessed with anything then go and kill people, for any reason. Tsk! That's what fiction is for, working stuff out therapeutically...
Till next time!
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