poetry

I am 21 days into lent. I have read 16 poems.

Part of the problem is cataloguing them and having one handy especially as I have been away at the weekends or staying at liam's a lot more. But enough excuses. I am going to write down my list here to keep track.

Done:

1. The Relic, Donne (Isherwood)
2. Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, Eliot (David)
3. Notes from a Deprivation Tank, Grady (James)
4. The Road Not Taken, Frost (Melly)
5. Prufrock again (Sonja) - does that even count?
6. R. Harper, Grady (Bill)
7. Tea, Duffy (Amanda)
8. Timor Mortis, Gluck (Liam)
9. All The Trees Of The Field Will Clap Their Hands, Sufjan Stevens (Cecilia)
10. Oh God Where Are You Now? Sufjan Stevens (Cecilia)
11. Holy Sonnet 6, Donne (Kate)
12. Holy Sonnet 5, Donne (Kate)
13. The Sunlight on the Garden, MacNiece (Jules)
14. 426-0619, Bukowski (Jill)
15. Non-sequetur, Wilberg (Bill)
16. Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night (B. Reid)

Left:
Scotland, Reid (Lois)
Blue Song, Williams (Liz)
Happy Were He, Devereux (Liz)
Love Arm'd, Behn (Janet)
The First Step, Cavaty (Patrick)
One Art, Bishop (Hillary)
Night, Montgomery (Mandy)

oh and:
Unspecified Dylan Thomas (Dylan)
Unspecified Pythagoras (Tom)


Easter is still weeks away. I think I'll have to do some hunting of my own. Perhaps I'll read Carol Ann Duffy's Rapture beginning to end.


PS - since when did Sundays not count? How did I not know that in all the years deprived of pop and ice cream and swearing? I think I have earned a spare lent in all that overtime.

does this mean I am going to be alien scientologist housewife? or secretly black?

too busy to breathe

there is something wonderful about seeing your work in print. even if its unfinished, even if its imperfect, a tangible delicate rendering of so many hours is precious. i love my job. (though i am glad it's only the first proof.)

though, work is taking over my life. in on saturdays, working all night sometimes. it's a big thing.

and i am to the point i can't go on like this. i am unwilling to give up everything, though i am proud to do what i am capable of. glad to give what i have, but refuse to let it take more.

so i'm cultivating some time for just me. while i sort out a lot of things. about me. about us. about who i want to be and how.

wednesday i took the day off and went to alnwick, a tiny town just south of the border in england. the kind of little place with a mercat cross in the cobbled square and a norman city gate still in tact. a castle in the gardens and all that.

and the most beautiful bookshop ever. the victorian train station is now rows upon rows of old dusty volumes in which to lose yourself. giant iron grated windows and a tiny waiting room with red velvet buttoned couches.

i read some of Sir Walter Scott's epic Marmion, dithered in the youth religious section over edwardian primer books of saints and reveled in childish amusement at the hidden "spicy" section wraught with James Bond type soft porn. Mostly russian nypho spies and wanton women of the civil war. It was positively hilarious. who knew their was retro manly romance novels?

i was going to write how you know you're in a couple when you stay home from work sick and you go to put in a favourite dvd, you have to eject Civ III and it makes you smile.

but not only is that a grammatical disaster, sadly unfunny, it is also a vaguely Jeff Foxworthy type cliche.

but i still think it's sweet.

missing: my life

it concerns me i have managed to lose my life. somewhere under couch cushions or perhaps down one of those weirdly long and useless pockets in the back of my handbag.

i just went to reach for it without even looking, like you'd grab a cookie while glued to an E!True Hollywood Story, and it was gone. lost. MIA.

what has prompted this sudden awareness? the oscars happened and i didn't even notice.

let me repeat: I (as in me, the closet celebrity gossip whore) forgot (as in didn't just miss them because we are a 8 hours ahead of LA, but actually didn't realize they were happening) the Oscars (a holiday on several of my past calendars).

Although a bad week or lack of wearwithall for a season is fine, I couldn't even name the nominees for Best Picture. I can assure you they were half deserved and the winner blew pretentious schlock out it's ears, but still.

I am grossly uninformed, sadly lacking sparkly denouncements and without my witty dressing down of red carpet fashion. what small talk am I going to make for the next month? More importantly, if I missed the Oscars, I probably have no pressing social engagements in which to deconstruct them because I HAVE LOST MY SANITY.

That said, I was whisked away for a quaint cottage weekend of rose gardens and castles as a brithday treat instead, so maybe it's okay. It was glorious.


...Oh my god. I am replacing my life with romantic rendez-vous and mini-break weekends! I don't know whether to feel glamourous and fab or one of those completely insane couple-blinded freaks.

a sigh on the breeze

today i am 25 fo the first time. one of the great 'beginning of the ends' is noticing your age before it fades into the near past.

and to be honest, nothing much has changed. it's the same life, the same me. but i like to use these obligatory and slightly irrelevent markers to take breath and really notice.

my birthday began with a hazy morning. slowly waking up to an odd, unfamiliar flickering light and distant soft sounds. as i adjusted to consciousness, i found it was the glow of 25 candles and the humming of happy birthday in my ear.

chocolate cake for breakfast is not to be scoffed at, but an antique typewriter is one of those rare gifts you never knew you coveted badly.

it was one of those simple moments, one of those mornings to remember.



i feel old often. the aching joints, the odd turn of phrase.

but regularly i feel infantile. too young for this. overwhelmed and slightly ecstactic. like wearing your grandmothers high heels for the first time.

it's an odd mix, this adult but not grown-up. and the newness constantly surprises me.

but i am optomistic. i always thought 32 and 36 would be my years (i don't know when or how i chose this, it's just a thing i have always known), but 25 is starting out on a high, if unexpected, note.

like those tones in indian music halfway between two keys. not any part of the western scales but somehow not outside the nodal truths my ears recognize. a limbo, but a calm, somehow sweet one. like a hibernation den for the soul. hiding in the margins of here and now.

i'm spouting shit now, i can't deny it. i so often am without the words.

but i am content.






...and maybe slightly tipsy.

looking back, moving on

last weekend something possessed me to label all my old entries into a series of vague usually useless categories no one else will ever use.

i think my OCD tendencies played no small part (my co-workers have begun to notice i clean my desk every night before i leave and systematically tap the desktop while composing important emails). but more than that, i was in the mood for a little retrospective.

suddenly i catch myself so completely enraptured this life. a life that i never imagined or could possibly have thought was mine not so very long ago. little moments where he tucks me into bed as he gets up so no drafts get in. or as i quickly sign off on my taxi account in the back of a cab, late for a board meeting. or when i tell him i love him and know that i mean it. fleeting moments of some other pretend life. like scenes from a movie or more appropriately, some other twenty-something with a job and a partner and none of the things i ever really considered to be part of my reality.

from the outside it seems so unlike me, so impossible to be here, that when i suddenly see it, the shock is overwhelming. and it never completely disappears. or it hasn't yet anyway. i do realize 5 months isn't really a forever by any means. frankly i have my doubts about me and forever too. but i guess that's part of my point. when i am suddenly jerked out of this misty haze of contentment and day-to-day and see myself from a distance being comfortable with a hand on mine and giving presentations without my tell-tale right knee quiver, I see someone else and wonder how I got here. How i can still feel and be me and yet have grown into something I never could have dreamed for myself.

i guess it's that i've so quickly become accustomed to a life wholly unconnected with what came before in so many ways. that i already take it for granted when only six months ago i was the same, but everything else was different. and that necessitates admitting i have no idea where the next six months will lead.

so, in this oddly worrisome and yet entirely unburdened mood, i wanted to look back on how i got here. as if seeing my moody scratches would give me a retrospective map of my path to her and now. to shed some light on what has become an utterly unbelievable journey.

suffice to say, i didn't tell me anything i didn't already know. i did grimace and wonder at the things i used to say and feel about him and me. i am still uncomfortable with our awkward past i guess, but better at now and trying to undo the things i did then. it's a miracle we happened the way we did i think, but somehow i am not surprised i did that backwards too.

and it's easy to see how desperately unhappy i was at my old job, as it slowly ate into me and my tone. and worrisome how the content changed from friends and escpapdes to a chornology of coupledom and ranting. and a relief to see the trickling away of wild desperate adventures just screaming out. clutching at need. and doubt.

i don't have any reason to be writing this. you don't care gentle reader. frankly, whether you read them or not, it's all still the rubbish in my head at the end of the day.

i guess suddenly the newness of it all struck me this morning. timely, what with my first valentines just past and our birthdays both next week. i'm marking time, noting change and assessing. like always, i overanalyze. the content may change, but the system stays in tact.

Middlesex

" persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if i keep writing I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar."

today seems like a day of trivialities.

of french pastry and mangoes in bed.
of languishing naps in the afternoon.
of kissed scars and bruised secrets.

and perhaps the silliest thing of all, i got a friendster update in my inbox. the kind you get every two seconds and promptly delete. i think i was last properly on friendster somewhere in 2005 , but it was my cousins birthday and i thought i'd drop him a line.

and while i was in , i did something daft. i changed my profile to state "in a relationship". a pointless excersize, possibly even a curse, now a ticking timebomb over this little love affair of mine. but somehow i wanted to see it in print for a minute. to claim him. to declare us. it's nothing really. a pointless act. a silly impulse. frankly i might just go change it back because it makes me uncomfortable, us being out there in that stupid slightly sad context.

uncomfortable. perhaps just a gesture of proper acceptence i've avoided. friday night we were out with a mutal friend and it was weird. that is to say, i was weird. it's still not right; being out in the world and being the us we have cultivated at home. like i don't fit in my skin. feeling watched and judged. and somehow finding the space for the rest of the world in my vision means i lose focus of him and we fall apart. or i walk away, i'm not sure there's a difference.

it's strange it only happens out with friends. sometimes i think we could have sex in front of strangers and i'd be unphased (rest assured, the v is not wholly dead). but somehow people knowing us before means i have trouble being us now. of marking the change. of performing this role for them. for me. for us. that somehow it's none of their buiness. it shouldn't affect my other relationships. it's so apart from the rest of life.

like i am proving there is still a me outside of this. but who am i proving it to?

it's cruel a little i think, being so seperate out there. like i'm hiding. like it isn't a big deal. like it can wait. mostly that i feel so awkward and distance myself for refuge. like i can turn us off. as if being with him is so segregated from my normal life i am incapable of doing both. it's something we still fight about. this otherness of ours. my lack of concern for us when others are about.

and perhaps today i am just deciding, in a virtual tickbox fashion, i want to be there. to be comfortable enough with me and him to exist together. here and now, no matter what the context.

like i say, a trivial thing.

someday

I'm getting pretty crap at this.

The oh so glamourous career move has (temporarily?) put a damper on my social life, my sleep patterns and my ability to while away entire evenings on the internet.

Mostly all I live and breathe is logistical nightmares and trying to get my head around the burocracy of arts funding in the public sector. It's a completely other planet.

But all that aside, it's starting to be those crisp clear winter days that make me happy to look out the window, but loathe to leave him in bed. One of these mornings when he begs me to stay I just will, damn the consequences. Oh how I miss the casual schedules of student life. Carpe Diem feels a world away lately.

I just keep holding my breath for the day we can hop in the car, drive to our cottage, and unplug the phone for a whole week. A holiday in the country seems idyllic; all long walks and cozy nights and bright stars. Cable knit sweaters and babbling brooks. Homemade soup and log fires. It's like an 80s Lands End catalogue, except the whole dirty sex part.

(Of course I want to stay in an ancient cathedral turned flat in the wilderness because that's fabulous and weird (and has a gothicy wrought iron bed), but his Catholic sensibilities make it difficult to do what I plan to, there of all places. le sigh. But perhaps the private island scenario will work out after all. There no one will hear me scream.)

But today it just feels forever away.

More than 2 months. More than 300 miles. More than a list of print deadlines and proof reports.

More like a lifetime.

being left alone has some odd consequences (or, the return to greece)

so in an effort to regain some sanity (and mostly our own individual lives) liam and i are spending our first night apart in a month. it feels like longer.

but the whole constantly moving house/scared to be bothering flatmates/don't get anything done because all we do is hang out with each other/lack of personal space has left both our lives in absolute shambles.

so, i am home in the big empty quiet. and decided some life maintenance was in order. things like bagging up clothes for charity. throwing away the flowers he gave me weeks ago which were v. dead on the dresser. neatly stacking the book pile by the bed. etc etc.


which slowly dissolved into sorting out the collage pile. let me explain:

the sofa in my room is in a massive bay window. so around the sides and back there are large person-sized gaps between the angled walls and furniture. they tend to accumulate person-sized piles of crap that need regular purging.

the whole lefthand side became the collage pile because i used to stack old magazines or calendars or things that would come in handy for crafty projects and wrapping paper and the kinds of useless modgepodge related activities i fill dull evenings.

part of me is still 6. i know. just be glad it's the part that likes to paste things for fun, not the part that likes to eat paste for fun.

but so back there became home to magazines, newspaper clippings, postcards, flyers, photographs, ticket stubs. anything pertaining to craftiness, preserving memories or vaguely arty went down the blackhole behind the sofa.

and today was the day i craved bare floor, so i started sorting.



it was like a trip down memory lane.

notes from my dad, a weird and hilarious letter form my uncle james, sonali's wedding invitation, my carmen tickets. a postcard from spain, my pass to turnberry, my diploma.

some were hilarious. i found a rhinoceros card from phil from when we first met. back when he had a crush on maggie and when he ruptured his eardrum in a violent flu we went and took care of him. in his drug induced haze, his mother (back in canada) convinced him to send us thank you cards. i found one slid under my door with a mom and babi rhino on it reading:

"sarah -

(prewritten text) May your day be very enjoyable and the year ahead bring everything that means happiness to you (crossed out: HAPPY BIRTHDAY) (end prewritten text)

Thanks for all your help with tea and soup and stuff. My mom was relieved to know I have a few girls taking care of me.

- philip

ps I didn't know this was a birthday card when i bought it"




and of course the icing: the greece book.

in the tradition of the road trip journal of 2001, i took a little notebook with us on our fornight tour of the greek islands back when i barely knew mandy and had the money to jetset europe on someone else's dime.

it is a highly detailed account of our trip written mostly drunk in diners, bored on ferrys and hungover on beaches. that is to say, it's mostly games of MASH, diagrams of six degrees of kevin bacon and our all time best "NCAA double elimination finals" (aka bracketing all your male friends into a tournament of who you would sleep with in a table of either/or pairings leading to the ultimate fuck buddy; usually written with little hearts around it)

and a lot of stupid quotes of our insanely witty selves. i seem to remember us being giddy from sunlight, lack of sleep and too much greek beer pretty much all day. i shall record here some of the most brilliant for posterity, just in case the book falls behind the couch for another year (or twelve):

- "is loitering in god's house a sin?", mandy

- in response to a spotted pigeon: "why can't you mix a black lab and a poodle and get a dalmatian?", sara

- "we are swimming against the grain", sara

- "taste the water. it's like goat cheese or some shit", mandy

- "it's like a vermeer gone wrong", sara (on a picturesque mandy in yellow turban)

- "shafts of light sounds dirty. unless you mean like Samuel L. Jackson Shaft. SHAFT! (insert showy kate hand gesture)

- "is jesus gay?", a drunk us

- "that's fucked the fuck up", mandy

- this is heavy as fuck. it's a fucking baby", mandy (on her heavy and overpacked purse)

- "don't use that swear phrase", sara

- "everyone will be so happy to have us home. you're the crux of their social existance and i'm really fun too!", mandy

*** i am coming to realize (a little late) we sounds retarded. like kirsten dunst and michelle williams in Dick retarded. but i am really really amused so fuck off. ***

- "What the Christ?!?", sara

-"I'm getting so dark I don't even recognize myself. I look like a black lady!", mandy

- "so hold on. i am going to give you the short version of my near death experience with dolphins.", mandy

- "at worst i am my own 12th cousin", sara (on the grady-grady incest possibility)

- on a beach campsite, bored, drunk and with no tent "we don't need no stinkin' tv see? we got a cat. we just need a mouse on a string", mandy (to be fair, there really was a cat)

- "if you have'nt picked out your song what defines you as a couple?", mandy

- "because i'm a beer whore", sara

- "you could find a real mannequin with man-bits", mandy

- "back in the habit man, like sister act 2", sara



and in case you care, I am going to marrry Gerard Butler and drive a mercedes 320 in new zealand with no kids. i had a salmon wedding dress. And Mandy wed Matt Dillon. They'll have 'the square root of pi' number of children and live in North Dakota.

Our hottest friend by far was Maria's boyfriend Dave (think Chris Martin but actually attractive), I spent 787.35 euro (which at the time was £527.52) and lost my virginity.

it was a good trip.

stranger than fiction

life is at its best when you see the cogs turning.

when you can feel the hum of life, the ins and outs and ups and downs that made today, right now, what it is.

my mother always told me it took 14billion years to make me. Every evolutionary step that could have been to elsewhere. Every sperm down the line that was the one, bringing me here. As I am to this place and time and life instead of someone else.

and in the moments I feel its truth, this unending string of conincidence and luck and choice and reason that go back to the beginning of time whichhave made my life what it is today, is such a gift rather than the burden it sometimes seemed as a child.

Today, where I can lie in bed and run my fingers through his curls. Today, where I can have cookies for breakfast because we can't be bothered to go to the kitchen. Today, where I can see the shadow of my brother in the cinema. A year ago, a world away, but it's a hazy grayness of him that makes my heart skip a beat. Today, where I can fret over laundry and argue over dishes. Today, where I can feel ready for tomorrow.

It truly is remarkable I've been given this life. An odd one, a mad dash, a random collection of incidents, an unknown. But it's mine. And it's a wonderful thing.

conundrum

it has occurred to me, considering the number of nondisclosure agreements on my desk, perhaps being interviewed in the paper complaining of government neglect in the visa programme i applied for may not be in my professional best interest.

the question now is how to do i tactfully and discreetly cancel the interview without marring my reputation with the press i will soon so desperately need?

a conundrum indeed.

i am going to implode. the amount of information i have consumed in the last 8 hours is folding in on itself and my brain will shortly collapse into a blackhole, sucking up everything in its path.

that said, my first day was brilliant. well terrifying and so incredibly out of my league i dont even know where to begin. the main phoneline doesnt even ring on my desk (the IT guy says I am too important to field calls from the public) and the secretary asks if I need more tea.

i have a beautiful desk (with french windows looking out on trees) and a fabulous assistant (well, he is only partly mine but is fabulous none the less) and you should see our glorious georgian building with gated elevator and cobbled street! not to mention my perfect tweed pencil skirt and wingtip heels.

the job is already a dream and the life that goes with it is so close I can taste it. last night as i drifted off all i could think was how perfect my life was. well, or how perfect it will be when we have a place of our own and i can walk along the river to my wonderful new job and come home to someone who loves me.

suddenly it all seems to fit.

and i know that's naive. and i know you are sick of my gushing. but i dont remember the last time i was happy. was looking forward to something, not just the end of something. ive always been ready to move. to finish. to go. and now i feel like ive arrived. it might only last for a minute, but i am going to enjoy it damn it. and remember what it felt like to be alive.

i have become a domesticated british octogenarian version of my mother.

so i'll give you the little update:

new years has come and gone. we spent it curled up in bed with champagne and cheesecake. it was a shame they cancelled the fireworks here due to destructive weather, but all in all I think it one of one my best in it's simplicity.

i've left my old job (which i could rant on about, but frankly it's over and i am glad) and begin a new one on monday (which i am not really ready to face with all its lifechanging big step exciting terrifying butterflies of death connotations).

so i'm revelling in a long weekend of limbo

this morning liam and i went for tea and scones at a cafe overlooking the castle...and to see a flat. i am not ready to move in together. but still, the temptation of looking in other peoples homes is overwhelming. i love househunting, especially when i have nothing at stake. so we went for the fun of it and found the picturesque riverside cobblestoned village of turreted flats and windowboxes we may someday move into. (good lord don't tell the gradys.)

tomorrow i think will be a jaunt to a watercolour exhibition and possible the shore, fitting for our drippy gray skies and my fluid lackadaisical moods.

and that my friends, is about all i've got. not thrilling, not even news really. but there you go. i'm here. and it's a little bit random and a little bit odd and usually quite scary and weird, and sometimes just so very perfect. and i am okay with that.

so lots has happened, and yet i've still done nothing.


christmas eve with the cousins was cuteness and awkward and disgusting baby pangs at dinosaur hide and seek the almost 2 dominic. creepy.

then christmas day was tom's family birthday. rocky balboa and junk food. thst feel good kind of grossness.

then boxing day laziness with jennie (nicolas cage and crazy bread. ooh baby. american glory.), a visit from sonja, and one from anika and much festive preparations because kate and jimmy got home at last.

then today was christmas. highly festive and fun. dad subjected us to more kareoke and i introduced christmas crackers - the musical kind. i played sign language conductor. woohoo.

the presents were a bit on the random side, but still some jems. mom's gifting theory is a bit beyond me at this point, but what can you do? it's the season of giving and much happiness was exchanged, what else matters? we're all here. there is a plethora of indulgences, and only a couple of days until i am back home, an ocean away where i'll misremember and miss all of it all over again.

so happy grady christmas world. carpe diem.

Hello world.

Let's see if I have any news.

Well, after whirlwind leaving of home (before any of the festivities really even got underway), I came back and lost like 3 days to sleep and readjusting to the familial weirdness.

Then Tom and I went to Columbus for his 21st, where we dressed in three piece suits and drank martinis (siberian huskies thankyouverymuch) at the shady Little Bar and spent the next two days on the couch watching a voyager marathon interspliced with scrubs on dvd. a little pot, a lot of pizza, and we were back home a couple days later all the better for it. Well he wasn't, but then his ambition was a drink an hour for the 24 hours of his birthday. Shocker.

Then I had a huge icky day at the doctor with prodding and poking and a lot of "hmmm" because there is nothing wrong with me. at all. except the whole bleeding fainting unending pain thing. that is unexplained and hopefully new hormones will sort me out. and get this - the miracle feminine regulator is called Portia. I find that highly amusing, but then I am a nerd.

(addendum) Oh, and totally cool weird thing: I had to have an ultrasound - but no jelly on the belly, no crazy camera thing I always thought looked like a commerical address stamp - no, it was a newfangled internal ultrasound - which was essentially a sleek industrial dildo with sensors inside. Not only that, she had me insert it myself for comforts sake. Talk about awkward.

And then the annual cry and fight fest with mom this morning and now am christmas crafty goodness.

oh, and I totally got the job. I now run the biggest children's book festival in the world. how fucking amazing. merry christmas to me!

Cruella

i know i should write about how i am home.

with the family and the cousins and the christmas joy. how i hate the noise and the bright. how i miss him already.

but at the moment i am shocked the psycho ex-flatmate actually bothered to remove me as a friend on facebook. she wrote me a letter once. for "closure". to say i am the worst person she's ever known.

she really does hate me. and it's such a shame she wastes here life on that kind of thing. who has time for that?

nothin much

I just keep thinking I should say something.

Now we have the internet back I keep logging in and thinking "I should update the journal" only to find I have nothing to say. No wisdom to impart. No tales of insanity with which to amuse. Or maybe I do, I just can't think of any right now.

(Or perhaps more likely, I think back on my week and mostly I go to work, hang out and do stupid things with Liam, we go to bed, i get up and do it again. It's completely boring and I don't want anyone to know how lame I have become.)

Generally I check up a couple of other people, and then re-read my last entry. I think it's supposed to inspire me by seeing how long ago I wrote last and remind me of something terribly interesting that happened since. But mostly it's just boring and slighly sadistic.

So sorry.

Here, I'll give you some at least halfway amusing things
- there are pigmy deer in the forests of argentina who are small as house cats and the males horns are like chopsticks
- there are trees in the tiga over 5000 years old. Older than Jesus. Older than the rockies. Older than the pyramids. Older than pretty much anything on the planet. I bet they have thrilling conversations in the frozen wasteland.
- don't you think michael palin is a little bit sexy in a dorky old man kind of way?
- i am wearing scary fuzzy electric blue socks my grandmother sent me for my birthday. i hate socks. (well, i hate wearing them, as apparell goes they can be quite cute. but not these things. no tasteful ann taylor argyle here. no dainty AE flower prints. these are great beastly things dreamt up in a cotton swathed coke dream.) but it's fucking freezing so i have decided keeping all my toes in tact is worth looking like cookie monster from the calf down.

I am, for once you may say in recent memory, in a good mood.
.
yes, it's 8pm and i am still at work. yes i think i am allergic to potatoes. yes i didnt sleep last night at all and havent even started christmas shopping.
.
but i just spent a couple hours ranting about childhood literacy and influential fiction, which always gets my engines revved.
.
plus for some reason i feel okay. not because of eyeliner or sunshine or my salary.
.
i just do.
.
and i am going to revel in it. (and by revel in it you know i mean go have sex)


ps - i really will change this hideous layout. i promise. i think i need an online makeover. my profiles are dull, this thing is a blight on blogging everywhere (if such a thing can exist). perhaps it's like a weirdo dorian grey thing. or maybe the reverse. i'm not sure. but i know there is some philosophical literary illusion to be had here. i'll get back to you on that one.

i thought i could

i just keep thinking things should be perfect.

here i am on a sunny blustery morning sitting in my favourite turquoise nightgown on my boyfriends bed. He's feverishly writing an essay due friday with his curly hair still damp from the shower. It's my day off. I have toast with honey in my hand and two weeks til I go home for Christmas.

And I am supposed to be working on a serious job application. One I feel is way out of my league, but have been recommended for by people at the Book Trust and other influential and important artsy places. I am flattered they think I am capable of running the book festival, but it scares the shit out of me even if I didn't hate the self aggrandizing sycophantic balance of the job hunt proper to begin with.
.
So here I am, in what seems like the best of all possible worlds and am paralyzed by doubt and dread. I just have to keep telling myself it'll get better. But sometimes I don't feel like the little engine that could anymore.

so it's been an upy downy kind of week. i am reveling in the small things and blindly ignoring the horrors of the big picture. okay, it's not that bad but i didn't get the job and work is unbearably bad and my stomach has gotten worse - something i wasn't sure was possible a week ago.

but, possibly as karmic balance for such ick, my regular life has been beyond compare.

thursday night was a brilliant thanksgiving. even though i still managed to fling a mixer of cheesecake batter all over myself and sonja and over bake the sweet potatoes. but i did make the best stuffing of all time and the soporific effects of turkey soothed my ragged self.

and this was the first weekend liam didn't have to work sunday. so we had a lie-in and cafe brunch and wander through a beautiful graveyard holding hands at sunset. granted, not the normal sunday for someone else but so nice and so right for us. especially when he got creeped out i wanted to crawl into a crypt. but still, a lovely sleepy sunday.

plus yesterday was the scottish childrens book awards so i spent most of the day blathering with friendly publishers and librarians over too much champagne. ooh, and a 2nd grade class acted out the winning picture book which was so cute it almost made me cry. suffice to say it was a cowboy cyotote who "bumped his bottom" on a cactus. ridiculously cute if badly written and a little psychotic. (ps the baby pangs are fucking scary. start worrying. )

actually, total baby related sidenote; sunday night (while moving furniture in a fit of coupley domesticty) we started naming babies. right now he is inclined to the classics while i am rooting for oddment words. so far kaleidoscope ann and anemone fugit will be joined by the twins rampart and meniscus in my mad lady house over run with scary children probably in pinafores. it is a frightening future. thank god i am on the pill.

I am still in my pjs at 7:49 pm. Thank god for sundays.

In other news, yesterday I checked my email at work. My mom had CCed me on an email to Grammy about how yes, our family was coming to Thanksgiving, yes she would bring cookies, and yes green bean casserole was desired.

I almost cried. Seeing in no uncertain terms they'd all - even Doug - be there cozy, together and eating food I don't really like suddenly made it true. Two days ago I didn't miss thanksgiving. I didnt really need it and have vague plans to maintain the movie-going tradition alone, but otherwise content to be home in a month.

And all of a sudden I was aching for handprint turkeys, balsa wood planes and unidentifiable fowl carnage.

Wet eyed and wobbly I tried to explain how something so silly can suddenly seem so important. And Kate decided then and there I was having Thanksgiving. She's bringing pie and I need to call my mother for a stuffing recipe. She may have been driving me up a wall lately, but when the chips are down she is such a dear.

So apparently I am having a dinner party. With butternut squash risotto and a hodgepodge of brits. Liam has already promised to make sweet potatoes and Kate's called pumkin bread.

It may not be bird platters and saturday night at the Grady's, but it's the best I've got and they've already given me something to be thankful for.

it's 16th of November. the trendy generic bistro cafe across from my desk is playing muzak christmas.

i am covered in blue glitter from bundling baubles into groups of three to then be placed 2 inches from the end of the garland branches around gondola unit 3.

i want to stab my eyes out with a biro.

progress report

i don't even have the nerve to check my stat tracker i've been so rubbish about updating. but i seem to start every entry these days with apologies or excuses. enough of that. here are today's headlines:

- job interview at the book trust. not a sure thing, but a step forward and a dream gig. am afraid to gush too much in case i build myself up for a fall, but suffice to say i'd be planning author tours to go all over scotland and then them. like take the words on wheels van (it's bright yellow and possibly has a giant bookworm on the side) to orkney to phillip pullman can talk to the children of the isles. how brilliant is that?

- home is suddenly very soon, not soon enough and entirely unplanned

- it's fall. in all the blustery rainbow ways. it's perfect. if only it didnt make me break out like a 13 year old or blow my perfect pleated school girl skirt over my head.

- i keep dreaming of babies. my baby. and she looks so much like steffie and mom it hurts to wake up.

- it's been ten days and i am bleeding again.

- jack and i are distant these days.only partially on purpose. mostly just out of neglect. i filled out some stupid myspace quiz he sent on just as a general update. it was the first time i wrote down i wasn't single. it's such a tiny thing, but for me to be taken is already big, and for my best friend not to know is even bigger somehow.

- starter for 10 is a brilliant british john hughes a like. you should totally see it. especially if your name is jennie.

i think that is all i have to say for now. besides, liam is just out of the shower.

news

so things are the same.i hate my job, my inards are having a battle of epic proportions (although the doctors say i am fine), it rains all the time and i totally have gross out dry skin.

but somehow it feels okay.

this is in no small part to my employment prospects (there are two jobs i totally want up for grabs). or that i am on new meds and can see a real highly paid doctor in america who might be able to fix me. or that i will be home in six weeks (i think tom and i should go away for a few days before chrismtas - perhaps to neferiously scope easternseaboard schools? don't tell him i said that. if only kate would be home too). or that my mother has totally joined myspace (which i find endearing and completely weird). or that i am addicted to cheese on toast.

and of course, it does't hurt i had an amazing weekend. in three days liam and i managed to do nothing but somehow the kind of nothing that makes you feel better. and gives me hope. maybe we're not so broken as all that.

it's funny how playing domestic and having regular naps can change the color of the world.

Seasonal

I know it's been awhile.

We've been without internet, and frankly life is simultaneously too fast to substantially record and so unremarkable and trudging I don't have much to say.

Without sounding cliche, the coming of fall and the impending winter find me rather cheerless lately. Things are just a little flatter, duller. And it takes more and more effort to bother with the day to day.

But enough. Today I am going to make a concerted effort. So, here I am. And as always, I will be probably descending into a vague and varied list form at any given moment.

Liam and I are still rather up and down. But we're on the same ride. Together. Which feels like progress. Actually, things have been quite good in all honesty. But last night he whispered "why do you like me?" and I dont yet have a satisfactory answer. I just do. We are trying to decide where to go on holiday. Probably to a remote cottage in the Lake District.

In other news, life is turning fall. There was the musk of fox this morning and red leaves litter the street. Jules and I are making lamb stew and pumpkin cornbread tomorrow to celebrate.

Oh, and I've started eating cheese. Nibbling a platter at my sister's began the long decent to normalcy and dairy loving madness. Monday night I couldn't be bothered to cook so had cambazola on charcoal crackers.

It's the first fall of my life where everything is staying exactly the same. And I don't like it. So yeah, I am okay, but ready for change.

some things

so it's been a while.

i know. i got distracted.

and this morning i woke and instead of jumping into the fray of uncertainty, i refused to get out of bed until i'd actively thought through some shit and now i feel better. on this list, with no concern for importance are the following:

- i hate my job
- ergo, i will look for a new one
- i miss school
- therefore, i will pursue the long awaited return to academia. for real.
- (i can't wait)
- i am glad i revamped my fall wardrobe in california with pencil skirts and lace. It's a nice look with tweed.
- i miss home. in a big way. like maybe i won't stay here forever way.
- i kind of have begun a relationship which simultaneously freaks me out, makes me retarded and has the potential to take over my life (in the best and worst senses)
- i am coming to realize i adore him. (not only because he says he will move to boston with me to do my phd.)
- jane eyre part two is airing tonight. things like this make life worth living.
- cheese platters are a new found source of happiness. it's good i am growing out of my food phobias. i ate an olive this weekend, to an aghast liam who lauded my bravery. i ignored the condescention, but welcomed the congratulatory kiss.
- i am coming home for christmas even if it means quitting my job. i'd like to hope by chrismtas i wont be working there anyway.
- i miss my siblings more after i see them.
- i need hobbies. my sanity cant take the silent meaningless tranquility of retail
- i am ready to settle down. not like barefoot with babies or anything (though can it be far off?) but, like, get a job I want to have. for a long time. invest in real estate. buy china. have a life i made, not just floating around. and it really wouldn't hurt if that life had an upper middle class income with a partner, a brownstone, and possibly a volvo.

Arrrgh

pirates are awesome.

a pirate musical extravaganza of participatory dinner theatre (with coconut monkey drunk holders) is heaven.

that is all.

the glory of the gradys

i am in LA.

i love my siblings.

i am drinking miller high life light with a screw top lid.

we are going to a pirate musical extravaganza not unlike medieval times.

i love it.

done me in

so i've finally crashed. all that stuff that's been freaking me out? well, it ate away at me until there was nothing but acid and bile left and last night i almost fainted in a jacket potato shop.

rewind. let's review shall we?

monday was tired (sunday day with liam then midnight roof picnic tuckered me out) and had a goodbye with mandy. she left for greece and now her room is empty and i miss coming home to bitch together and watch costume dramas.

but, then had fabulous bookfestival party. lots of champagne, amazing dress and everyone i know. in fact, ended up with keith and hot scot, like so many nights before, where keith decided hot scot's girlfriend, who isnt george glass of leeds after all, is so not good enough (she is a little on the dowdy school teacher side) and his personal mission is to do her in and convince him i'm much better. which of course i am, but it is still sweet of keith to say it. still, another night of no sleep.

tuesday was work. wretched. it's become so corportate we are no longer allowed to carry pens that aren't blue black or red. seriously. soon i wont be able to have decent novels either.

then that night had to have people round to see the flat. seriously, i had to advertise online and everything. it blew. but they were all nice and sonja came for emotional support and apple crumble, and now Catriona is moving in next week to grow herbs in the garden and take walks with.

then liam called (his family is in town and that stress of hosting plus incongruous limbo of tourism at home freaked him) so he came over and we cuddled until we both felt better. better than sleep, but still, no sleep.

wednesday work was equally crap and i didnt feel well. i rallied tolerably for girly movie night (newsies!!!) but when we were watching the extras after and he called, i suddenly wanted to be home in bed more than anything.

so jules and i left, i called him back, he came over and we spent all night curled together whispering secrets and feeling the edges of each other.

but, i was so stressed about leaving and movings and work and kate and everything all at once my brain was going a mile a minute. plus the added anxiety of someone next to me. to feel my every move. to ache to hold. generally i have been of the up and out mentality and this whole togethering thing threw me for a loop and rest illuded me.

and (and if you ever tell anyone this i'll deny it) in the safety of the dark i admitted the only thing that makes my brain shut up is really loud sex. and although we had decided we aren't ready for full on sex, he was certainly more than obliging. i almost screamed and after that felt much much calmer.

i called in sick to work thursday. i hadnt slept, my stomach was being worse, i might be starting my period, i'd just spent the night on pretty much a mental roller coaster and the last thing i needed were more office dramas and corporate bullshit.

i slept and made lists and lolled about in bed. in the afternoon he came back, better rested, and we napped and goofed off and planned on going to a friends leaving do.

we were hours late. we hadn't eaten all day. i was feeling worse.

with kate and julian we decided to get dinner. a foursome i've grown accustomed to. one i will miss now he is leaving. but i looked at my jacket potato with vegtable curry and was ill.

my hearing went, my vision was spotted, i blanched and couldnt hold my head up.

i went out to the fresh(er) air of cockburn street and liam rubbed my back and plied me with water until i could see straight.

i said my forever goodbye to julian with my head between my knees and his hand on my shoulder. it was ridiculous. but overly dramatic and retarded seems to be my calling card. they went on their way, back to his party, and liam stroked my back until i could stay upright.

then we caught a taxi where i slept with my head in his lap, until i got home. he put me to bed and insisted he go get bread and important things i will need. he came back later with beautiful flowers and my favourite juice and rubbed my back til i fell asleep.

he says he loves me. and he's been so wonderful i am inclined to believe it for all of our weirdness. and i woke up this morning missing him.

i don't pretend it's not weird. and broken. i know we both really need somebody right now in all the ever changing mess. and have no idea if it will stay this way when he goes to school and i sort out my bullshit.

but it is so wonderful to have someone to hold and to hold me. and the promise of us is so very very good. so, i know i'll deserve flack. but right now i am happy. like it'll be okay.

so wait to shoot me for being blind and mushy. wait until i'm ready to give this up.

the berenstein bears' too much fun

for once i'm not writing because i have too much to say.


my job is rubbish, and i can't even get an interview, though i keep applying elsewhere.

my flatmate hates me and probably won't ever pay me the money she owes (which is a lot) and it has become some fucked up passive agressive battle.

i am going to visit my sister in a week. (!!!!)

i haven't found someone to fill the lease and i've got a week to sort something or i'll be liable for rent.

i can't say i've fallen back in, but liam and i are something. something new. something maybe.

the book festival is all fancy parties and 4 course dinners and too much name dropping and celebrities and all round party hopping madness. this is my first night in a week, and the only one for 4 days to come. i never thought i'd see too much champagne (or meet Sir Angus - the antiques dealer, castle owner, and orange turban wearing dirty old man at a fancy dress Sultan's Bazaar party). i just keep hoping all this networking leads to a job.

j

in honour of jennie's birthday (and in recompense for not shipping malteser packing peanuts this year), i'm going to do that horrible thing where i make lists of references no one will understand but is infinately fun for me in remembering. in no particualr order, the random moments of jennie currently in my head, a tribute:

- lying on her bedroom floor at kingsley, furiously finishing the cd party cds, in all their deco glory. two computers, three women, a papercutter and she was still ridiculously late.

- lolled on my freshman futon, fairylights above us, listening to billy joel and pointedly not talking about joe.

- standing in my parents house, her first visit, in front of an open fridge. hungry and bored, she grabs one of the many unlabed styrofoam boxes , finds some congealed mac and cheese and begins to eat straight from the box. a look of distaste crosses her face, she puts the rest of the clump, until now precariously skwered on a fork, back in the box and shuts the fridge. my eyes scan the room, my sibling stands in the doorway, aghast at this stranger eating our food and then putting it back, an act she has yet to live down.

- sitting in the michigan theatre watching some merchant ivory film. i think it must have been house of mirth. and she began pulling apart that curl behind her left ear. running her fingers through it over and over, making an incesant like shhhhinkth noise. the first time i could hear her bored and uncomfortable.

- nintendo, waffles, and beanbags. what should have been a tradition.

- waking up in u towers, giggling about buffy, not knowing what time it was, when we fell asleep, or why we were still on top of the blankets, with all the hay sticking out of her hair from our jaunt to the cider mill the day before.

- posing, arms spread, silly cap askew, in that blasted tweed coat, in the frosty scottish countryside while i snap a photo. a boring, fruitless, three mile walk to "town" became a photoshoot and goat quest. only with jennie.

- but one of my all time favourite moments, is leaning our backs on the vatican, waiting for the sunrise and her quiet amused silence at my stupidity:






this isn't all. this isn't even some. probably if i thought about it, it isnt even a fair representation. but today, this is her for me. fragmented and fondly remembered.

missed.

happy birthday bitch.

i just checked my email for the first time in days.

mostly it was freecycle posts, the random promotion from amazon, and the film festival update. but in amongst the rubble was a casual reminder of my 10 year middle school reunion.

there is no way we are having one and there is certainly nothing on earth to entice me to go, but it still felt really weird. like remembering something you didnt know you forgot. a concrete reminder of someone else, some other place and time and life. like some other me.

ten years ago i stood, poised for high school, in britain for the first time. i had
- newly minted teeth,
- eyes unshackled by lawyer glasses,
- was fresh off the track team,
- was deserpately and secretly in love with anders
- and was wishing more than anything to be an academic for the rest of my days.
i also wore pleated cuffed shorts in colours like sage.

and now, i live here, where i decided i belonged that summer
- my teeth are stained and false,
- my eyes are (finally?) open,
- i've the bones of a geriatric,
- i am sadly smitten and trying to grow out of it,.
- and wishing i knew what was held in the rest of my days.
my fashion may be slightly better (in a neo-prep ironic/retro way), though only time will tell.

and most of all i find i miss the surety that came in those days before high school. i remember the ultimate contentment life held when there was the promise of a future far away and every possibility i would eventually get it right. the belief in someday.

but it seems i have no talent for certainty.

but i guess that is okay too. there is some comfort in having come out of that shell, that isolated existance where there was nothing outside my immediate impulse and no one on earth who saw me.

i am drifting away now. it must be the whisky. but anyway, all i meant was that seems like a lifetime ago. and i wonder if i am really at all any different. i suppose i still believe in someday.

canucks are good for something

last night i had one of my weird adventures.

no, i still haven't gotten laid, but i did not loll about, and more importantly i went out and met new people.

see, garbage liz (as in the first party at uni was "dress as someone scottish" and she came as shirly manson from the band garbage and nobody knew if she really did fishnets and minikilts or if it was a costume and the name stuck) joined the peace corps and moved to lesotho (as in that dot of a country smack in the west of south africa i totally thought was a lake) last year.

and out of the blue emailed to say a friend of hers was headed to edinbugh for a couple days and wanted to mail his plane tickets to a UK address, would I mind?

I said sure, and we emailed and he seemed nice and vague and Canadian and named Jamie. I figured I'd milk him for a pint or two in exchange for doing absolutely nothing and go on my merry way.

last night we met up for said pint and not only was he hot, he was fun. So instead we got ridiculously stoned off some weed we scored from a chav outside the pub and went to see a high school rendition of 1984 at the fringe festival. Afterwards we had nachos and had to finish the weed (since the absolute lameness of the play had killed our buzz) and went our merry way many hours after i had planned with me in a very happy place.

but it was good. i am glad he and his girlfriend are moving to town in the fall, they will be fun. better yet, he can play eucre.

though, important things to note on why a cute, fun potential new mate front:
1, he is canadian
2, he is a total druggie
3, he is way too political (in the arrested at protests way, which i suppose of political bents, is one of the better options)
4, there is the girlfriend, who i am destined to like. she is trailer trash from minnesota.

it's nice we have these clear boundries at the beginning.

i haven't written because mostly i haven't anything to say.

work is utter hell, but then i am actually actively applying for others, so it seems silly to moan on about it.

festival season is gearing up but i am too tired, poor, and hormonal to book any tickets.

and the general nebulous discontent with this deadend life seems to really just be a gap year gone on too long and no plan for a legitimage future.

not to mention i am so incredibly horny it's hard to see straight.

so yeah, i am walking around in a distracted daze hoping by some miracle to wake up with a better knee (so i can wear cute shoes again), a better job (so i can afford them) and a better (or arguably any) man (so i can have wild raucous sex very very often).

yeah i know. it's not like we are together. not really. not when it counts. he may bring me flowers, ask me to meet his mother and pet my head, but when the chips are down, i'm still not getting laid.

but i am so starved (and we are so weird) a goodnight kiss turned into a sleepless frustrated night and scratches he still bore the next day. i am equal parts embarassed, unsatisfied, and pure lust.

it's sick. it makes no sense (jesus ask jennie. what am i doing?). and part of me really has to ask, what the fuck is he waiting for? he must seriously be asexual if the vixen in heat still gets nothing. i give up. and worst, i just don't get why he wouldn't want me. he is obviously retarded. and i can't take it.

i want sex. now. and for the forseeable future. at my beck and call. until it hurts to move. is that so much to ask?

looks like i need to get a move on.

death of a dream

so, i am not ashamed to admit i love shitty blockbuster heist flicks. anytime, anywhere, i'll watch slick bastards damn the man and possibly wield naughty weapons.

so in a day of nostalgia and joy, i slipped in Mission Impossible for the first time in years. A mainstay of my video collection, and an early member of my adoration of all things espionagy.

fair enough the make-up is dated, the technology looks archaic, and the soundtrack gimicky. these are the small things one must forgive - like with Sneakers or Charade.

but i cannot get over what the last year or two has done to tom cruise.

i used to see that wild enthusiastic look in his eye and think "gosh, it's so crazy it just might work! you clever bastard." (and want to name my sons ethan hunt) and now i see it and think "that man possibly ate placenta and believes aliens came to earth. you psycho fucker." (and want to never see that manic look again).

it is truly scarring.

invalid

i am not a necessarily active person. in fact i often am the human embodiment of lethargy and sloth (my second favourite sin).

i can do a pride and prejudice marathon without batting an eye, and often without even switching positions. a day off, more often than not, is pretty much 8 solid hours of silent sitting and reading. one of my best talents is forming nests (not unlike the home of the mad sleeping demon) from any available textiles and nestling for days on end.

but enforced rest is climbing the charts of tortures i cannot endure.

the second i am required to sit, unable to move, restricted from action, i seriously freak out. i feel caged. panic sets in. i am restless and lonely and regularly crave active hobbies i wouldnt dream of attempting when at my full capacity.

it is claustrophobic, this lack of mobility. i have never wanted to run or scream more.

i am trapped. teathered. arrested.

i remember when i was on swim team, we would have a taper in training before league meet. everyday would be easier until i swear to god we floated around for half an hour and then got sent home. my body was used to swimming at least 5 miles a day. That friday, at my grandmas house, I went for a walk on her treadmill to stretch my restless joints while she sat on the adjecent bed and we chatted. Before I realized it, I had run 3 and a half miles and had barely lost my breath.

I just needed to get it out of my system. I never ran that far again.



tuesday i could limp. wednesday i could walk short distances with only a slight wimper. so by friday i thought i could have an easy day at work. by lunch i was sent home for hobbling.

i think i am the first person to ever go to work out of boredom - and fail.

so now i am back on my sofa, determined to have a full day of recovery so i can get the hell out of here tomorrow.

it's slowly killing me, but i am determined to try. i have gathered comforts around me and take yoga breaths everytime i think about the fact i cant even get to my backyard (megan, the fear of paralysis is becoming all too real).

and part of me wonders if i could keep this active energy when not propped up by pillows and antinflamatories, would i? i think a world of yes. from the retrospect view of the sofa, it's a shame i waste so much time lolling about. i cant afford to waste my good(ish) health only to feel like this in my decrepit rag of a body for years to follow.

it's sickening. the only time i am halfway inspired to contemplate excersize is when i am physically incapable of doing it. that's irony for you. welcome to my life.

stories

my new friends (aka the ones who met me in a professional capacity and have not yet (or at least rarely) been exposed to my drunken lunacy, vixenish mania, or general idiotic frivolity outside the office) have begun remarking with regular frequency how all my stories are weird, ridiculous, and sometimes frightening.

fair enough, the hole in the picture of my brain i don't remember getting because my sister hit me on the head with a hammer is weird.

or the dog running away from the boy in the bodycast and the lady with no memory not knowing how to pick him up, so calling her high school best friend's mom (the only phone number she remembers) can be uncomfortable (but very funny).

the time andy got drunk and complained how drew got laid more than him is a good one too, but only when one explains the entire andy-andy height comedy value.

or when bridget and i smuggled greasy mozzerella sticks in to see the hours under my shirt and i burned my stomach. that's classy.

soon Cruella (her heavy make up runs when her eyes water. a lot.), the psycho flatmate who hates me for kicking her out (she took it kind of personally), and slept with all my friends, will be in regular rotation too, but not til she actually leaves.

even small everyday occurances like how the special ed kid proposed to me in the lunch line everyday for a year or i broke my arm playing gym class soccer and my teacher didnt believe me or even just the fact i used to be a butterfly swimmer gets a chuckle. these are now hilarious anecdotes well and truly out of the scope of these tame british people. i am like a sitcom without the studio audience.

i was mostly amused at my novelty act, that any awkward pub conversation or bad encounter can be salvaged by a sara-story is a handy weapon when one knows mostly tools.

i was getting used to idea that i was just a better storyteller than i used to be, and the fact that i laugh through most of the horrific and sometimes gory memories of my childhood and beyond i thought was a step forward from the cowering and crying that occupied my early years.

julie once said (i think i was in the midst of the broke-the-arm-falling-off-the-vaccuum-cleaner story) "don't you have any normal stories?".

i don't think i do, and i am totally okay with that. at first i thought maybe this was just my schtick, but turns out i was wrong.

jennie came last weekend. and she told the bat story and mentioned both the time i passed out and threw up jungle juice in our dorm and the time she puked on our kitchen floor. in fact we did a lot of reminiscing and at our picnic i missed my lady death strike nails a lot.

and it could have been julie again, but i don't remember, anyway someone said "god, don't your friends have any normal stories about you either?".

and then i got a letter from my brother. a real hand written ledgible letter (i know. i got all weepy happy) and the whole first page was a story about how mom was excited to see the strangers with candy movie and the only interview with amy sedaris was in playboy, so she bought it. not only bought it, bought it from the 7-11 at jolly and okemos so now the kid behind the counter (who tom went to school with) gives him the shifty eye all the time because he knows our mom buys porn.

and although this is a very funny story, especially if you know mom, it made me realize the storytelling isn't just my thing. it's how we all are. it's how everyone at home i know is and is possibly one of the things i miss most.

maybe it's my secret password, this ability to have ridiculous embarassing things happen and then laugh about it later. lord knows no one would survive with me very long if they couldn't laugh at kate's double broken feet or being cast as the lover of your arch-nemesis in the school play. (especially that time my skirt fell down in the school talent show). i break, ruin, or screw up a lot. and it's funny.

lordy, if jennie hadn't been amused or at least tolerant of my destroying the car, being convinced we were going to be raped in a cornfield, and positive obsession with fazolis within the first 24hours of our roadtrip, i don't think we'd be friends. but she did. and we are. and i am glad.

anyway, you may wonder (if you are still reading) why i am ranting on and on about stories and screw ups and silliness.

because, yet again, i have done it.

i am bedridden.

last night i helped liam move - from one 5th floor flat to another - and all the stairs and heavy boxes were too much for my knee. my patella tendon is so seized up i can't move my leg without grating pain not unlike the staples that used to hold it together. and i had to call into work because i could not stand up this morning. seriously. no good deed goes unpunished indeed.

so here i am, stuck in bed, writing an email to my boss since i cant reach the phone, and all i can think is, she will so not appreciate the hilarity here within.

ready for something

i didn't know you could be overwhelmed by nothing.

nothing has changed here. same job, same glorious weather, same stupid boy making stupid mess i don't want or need. same missing my sister, same joy at having had visitors, same flatmate drama (well not exactly the same. she's taken it to a whole new level of 7th grade passive aggressive. but its the same story with the same ending.) same humous picnic lunches and freckles on my nose.

and somehow, every flicker of movement, every glance, every everything seems heavy and burdensome. and my brain, already overactive to the point of dangerous (have you seen the brainscan?), is in overdrive. i am pretty sure cartoon steam is about to come out my ears. my spidey-senses are tingling at the slightest twinge of anything and it's highly distracting.

perhaps what i need is a little distraction. today's line-up: superman-stormbreaker double bill, and a manuscript copy of the new artemis fowl. nothing feels better than a little comicbook action and teen fantasy to lighten the load.

hatched

lauren has inspired me. of course i shamefully eat up any likeness to celebrity hoping it'll shed light on what i look like as no two cameras, mirrors or pairs of eyes seem to agree. and my unending fascination with celebrity whoredom always helps.

so, in the lazy summer sunlight i started recalling all the past ingenues and vixens i've resembled or replayed.

1 - Anna Chulmsky (in My Girl). I think perhaps the neurotic conotrolling pre-teen image may have had something to do with it as much as a nose i've still barely grown into, as this was from the nanny who insists i almost killed her baby.

2 - Claire Danes. I'm pretty sure we're talking My So-Called Life here which is also fittingly neurotic and angsty with the uber-nose. One thing I am sure of, it was before her Mod Squad makeover when she lost all that weight. I am still the proud owner of that round Iowa face and the tits she forsook for Hollywood.

3 - Kate Winslet. Again, I am pretty sure the curvy women of Hollywood (in this case with both the nose and shocking eyebrows of my high school years) are called into play mostly because i am not nor ever will be waifish. that said, this was back when she was famous for empire waisted dresses and swooning.

4 - Kathy Ireland. My bunk buddy at camp likened me to a super model junior year. I was new to mascara and the perfected 90s side part of messy sexy glory (well, as much so as any 16 year old had the right to have. too bad I was almost a decade behind). I still wonder if she was hitting on me as no one looks that good in the blue lake polo.

5 - young Brooke Shields (no I don't believe in island incest). A brunch-friend who I barely know mentioned the other day, but as she was fucking hot (and this was before the disaster of a sitcom, the baby drama, or the cocaine), I'll take it. Though, I was just off a holiday tan and glowing from retail therapy, brownie kebabs and gossip. A good mood makes anyone more attractive. Unless of course you are one of those broody sexy men i find myself messily attracted to who are usually a disappointment when they finally smile.

6 - and now Kathleen Turner. And I'll take Joan Wilder with her 80s hair and Michael Douglas in white pants so long as no one mentions The Graduate or Baby Geniuses and I get Jessica Rabbit's legs. Christ, in the white dress from BodyHeat, I'd do her.

So I think we can all say I have grown here. In everything but sense (and especially vanity).

But all in all, I think we are headed in the right direction (and yes jennie, that is away from cable knits and plaid, too tight cut up tshirts, paisley velvet pants, and various other disasters of my previous incarnations. i shudder at the thought and blame all of you for not talking me out of these things but waiting for me to realize and relive the embarassment for years to come.).

but hallelujah. the duckling has sprouted. or at least stopped molting.

persephones poison (and other trivial bits)

there are many things to be said. but i seem to constantly be out of words and lost for breath. too little time.

but one, i am wishing all the best for my sister
two, i am in a calm(ish) place. the panic has left and i am ready to try now. i get so seized up with doubt and worry i forget to be me. and there is no point in beating myself up over it, just let it go. try again. i am worth more than this.
three, jennie will be here in roughly 10 hours. i must sleep and prepare myself for mania and fun (i just hope she isnt shocked i havent cleaned.). life is on hold for a reunion - and my secret patented daquiris (hint: there are pomogranates involved)

i am entirely zen. or as close as anyone in a week long stretch of insomniatic bleeding can be i guess.

there is a clarity in the incredibly ludicrous. when you have to distance yourself from the decent into madness for lack of other options. when suddenly you breathe in, blink or otherwise change nothing at all and in that moment see how superfulous its all been. and just laugh.

its a good feeling, this free fall.

and it allows me a minute of quiet - a moment of absolute thoughtlessness.

when you dive in a freezing cold pool and the shock of it overwhelms. when nothing exists but the cold, that's one thing. but when you resurface to the balmy air and suddenly your skin feels alive again, you feel connected. when there is nothing but the whisper of life over every inch of you and there is nothing else but that warmth.

i ain't no fucking dolly parton

i have officially become a working girl. no, i don't mean a lady of the night, though at this rate it has it's appeal. more the melanie griffith type - except less hairspray and harrison ford.

i come home from work, put on sweats, crack a beer and look forward to nothing more than emotional masturbation and the possibility of a bath if i can be bothered, which is unlikely. it's the opening of a pathetic girl movie in technicolor glory. cue carol king or kate bush or some shit.

to be fair though, i drink hoegaarden and have sexy hair today, which is better than girls like this usually do.

let us hope that is a sign this a temporary phase. that someday soon i will look back and laugh at my 9 to 5 heel wearing grin and bear it life. that someday i will do better than this. be better than this.

night of the living hedgehog (an ode to gameshows gone by)

so once upon a time, i lived with lauren. when she didn't hate me for filling the kitchen with ants or forgetting to pay the phone bill, it was really really great. especially when she could get drunk off 2 sminrnoff ices or indulge ourselves in flavo-ice and temptation island 2. or that time she needed help to band-aid over her nipples because her dress was too low for a bra and lord knows she wasn't going to nip out.

but all good things have a price, and hers was the random medical scares. (though, this is not the time for the insulin scare story where we went to the hosiptal in the middle of the night and i watched "aliens in the wild wild west" on disney only to run into a friend who got a broken beer bottle in the face while watching a child throw up in the waiting room. that's a different time.)

but once, when the pump was still newish lauren had to stay awake until her bloodsugar chilled the fuck out.

i don't remember what happened or why. what time of year it was. or what inspired us to watch TBS, back when it had just nixed it's "superstation" logo. But curled in our basement hell hole cubby; lauren, bridget and i wiled away the hours with old school Family Feud.

oh yes, it was the night of crazy grandma.

Now, I am not a huge family feud fan. But years of gameshow network with the girl had taught me to find Richard funny rather than pathetic and the retro-ness (sidenote: can you have a word that is only prefix-suffix without any actual content? is this postmodern lingusitics now?) of it all had it's charm. I still of course refused to watch the ones with Al from Home Improvement (except that time there was the Stars on Ice face-off. that was amazing.) and if anyone thinks Louie Anderson should still be alive, stop reading now.

Anyway, it was 3am. And it was old school family feud with the "ooh cheek or mouth Richard?" suspense and this tiny mad woman became my hero.

I wish I remembered more of it (It is times like these I miss diary-x for having lost all such carefully recorded memories I wrote down expressly so I wouldn't have to store them in my brain any longer), but her best two were:

question: Name a favourite pet
answer: hedgehog

question: Name someone you would leave your keys with
answer: mailbox
Richard notes this is not a person and gives her a rare, possibly unprecedented, do-over while trying not to fall over in gin-soaked, coconut-oiled laughter
new answer: mailman
she may have hastened to change this to "stranger" or I may have added that in later for effect. I have a tendency to do that.

Anyway, I wish I remembered more of that night. For all the drama of lauren's brushes with sugar-less death, it did make for some good times.

And I thought of it today because I found this. A pale comparison, but a fresh reminder of those classic gameshow days gone by.

worthy

i had always believed, or rather, hoped, adulthood would come with some degree of self awarness and possession.

i find i was yet again desperately wrong.

of course i also used to believe i would only have one overpowering feeling at a time.

today i find i am entirely tranquil, pleasant even, after a morning at the van gogh premiere at the dean and a lazy afternoon nap.

but neither of these glorious things has negated or even balanced my thick black anger-disappointment double header. It is unreasonable I can care so much when the last thing in the world I want is this unbridled attachment. It is unfair. It is bullshit. I want out.

I want to believe me.

death of the bookseller?

it is 18:18.

i am still at work.

it is my first day back.

i need a new job.

that said, i am killing time until a book dinner where i am contemplating getting ridiculously drunk on free wine and possibly making enough of a fool of myself to bar me from the publishing world forever.

if that isn't passive aggressive masochism i don't know what is.

addendum:

so after the ranting (and a furious email to my mother), i calmly cleaned my room, made my bed, and proceeded to get directly back in it for a do over. i read a little, napped a little, thought a little, and got up a few hours later ready to begin again.

and it ended up okay. i ran my errands, visited my favourite graveyard, did the ironing, and now have taken a nice long bath.

and things are okay.

perhaps jean grey wasn't a total cunt

didn't you ever wonder if the phoenix was really jean grey just snapped? she was sick of the fake and the wimpy and the dictation and the lame sweetness and just fucking flipped and went on a rampage? that the whole suspended animation thing was just a flimsy cover up?

because scott wouldnt put out and the professor wouldnt let her use cerebro and the team shunted her to recon and research. that she fainted at every breath and constantly had to fend off logan. that 20 years in that school and she was still just an assistant. that she had to wear nude colored cargo pants. i'd have done more than a poorly executed apocalypse, that's for sure.

today it feels like that.

like the well of frustration is running over and this tub of me has no overflow drain.

i feel in a rage. or rather, like in the very near future i soon will be.

granted, part of this will be it is the morning of my last day of vacation and i have done absolutely nothing. and part of me is still a whinging toddler who hates the end of things.

but it is seriously more than that.

i bit liam saturday. hard. he was mad at me for something i hadnt done and stormed out of a party. i left soon after in a drunken rage of disappointment and libido. i ran into him on the street, my mind too fuzzy to know if it was on purpose. i didnt have words. i had what equates to pg angry sex. standing on a street corner. hot and fast and rushing and a little bit violent. i felt caged. and it felt great. and if fucking scares me.

sometimes he is so terribly frustrating. harsh. cruel. cold. and most the time i am yoga-goddess weatherer of storms. but every once in a while he gets in and tears me apart and i flood like the hoover dam. and it makes me hate both of us. and i dont know which frightens me more; that we got ourselves here or that when the chips are down and i've lost control, i hurt him.

it also doesnt help i was in a mood that whole night because it was phils goodbye party.

and for all our mess and his silliness and everything we have ever screwed up between us, he was so easy. to be with and not be judged or used or feel compelled to talk. he was a guy in the very best of ways and i will miss him.

plus, he gave me his return of the jedi pillowcase. i have no words for how much this means to me. he has had it since 1983. it was always the one i used. on drunk nights when i crashed on the sofa. on the infamous walk of shame morning i was too hungover to go home and lay around his all day, grateful he didnt ask. as a seat cushion for arrested development marathons. my arm rest for blue jays games. my pillow that one night we "napped". and he gave it to me. he was always a sentimental guy. and now it sits on my chair, and i dont have the heart to use it.

and of course there should have been a party to see him off. he always complained he had no friends but me and jack. and truth be told it was sarah's friends and my co-workers and random neighbors. girls he'd slept with and pub aquaintences. the party went on for hours after i waved goodbye to the taxi. but a little piece of me wanted to say goodbye to my boys - for jack took him to the airport - on my own. not with strangers passing a fag an armsbreath away and my own drama waiting for me upstairs. it felt rushed. cramped. amputated. and he was worth more than that. i hope he knows it.

sorry, i am just full on whinging now.

last night having to talk on the phone right before bed was horrible. which dont get me wrong, it can be lovely. but it can be so full of heavy silences and pregnant phrasology i rarely have the energy for much less sleepy hung over and lonely. plus, it is infinately worse when it is all just flippant chatter and errands i dont want to address from bed on a sunday. sometimes it only reminds me how far away you are. i know i am a freak about the phone, but it put me in a mood straight away today.

anyway, i should stop. cut myself off before i say something really horrid i dont even mean. just to feel it in my mouth. let me watch the dominoes fall. pick at the scabs and watch them bleed.

i am going to have breakfast and pay my council tax and play my violin and then i think take a bath. and hopefully this tar, this thick creeping bile, will be seeped away. gently excreeted from my every pore until my insides are clear again. i am clear again. i am clean.

moorish moods and lowland libido

this morning, i got up and went to the beach.

something i regularly contemplate as a bumpkin who craves wild space, but never actually do because in reality i am a lazy son of a bitch.

but, as i had the last 3 days off to work up the energy, today i went.

and it rained. sticky hot incesant drizzle.

the vaguely gothic and dead romantic scottish summer of a desolate beach in the fog will always leave my speechless. (and it didnt hurt the humidity was so high i came home with amazing and freakishly natural farrah fawcett hair.)

brilliant really. too fucking bad i am now all wet, hot, and bothered and completely alone. sigh. seriously. i need a dial-a-fuck-buddy for these type of emergencies.

i feel like holly hunter but with all my fingers.

sara the obscure fanatacist

it has recently come to my attention my love of fiction in all it's manifestations, is possibly nothing more than egomania.

every book, every film, television or website is about me.

is a painting of my life as it is, was, or could have been. how i would be or may become given the right inscentive and opportunity.

in hopeful, ironic, or desolate ways, i consume in an ongoing search for someone who gets it.

and when one aspect of my life seems bent on overwhelming my every sense, it is the only thing i see no matter where i look. everywhere voices are echoing my current tempestuous heart.

am i jude? am i sue? arabella? her bitch ass husband i cant even be bothered to remember the name of? is it temptation, fate, or lust? does it matter? what is true?

a 200 year old book about fucking wessex farmpeople and here i am feeling pinned. my selfishness knows no bounds.

whatever way the wind blows in my current headcase, sue is just now on par with amy march.

this is me meditating:

- i just want someone to spoon
- i cannot fucking believe jennie will be here soon. let the party begin!
- phil is leaving. i have known for months but it feels raw and harshly true now.
- i miss my sister
- i want to know i wont cave and be something i'm not for someone elses sake
- i dont want to worry about maggie in the war torn congo.
- i am scared i am not capable of being myself if we do this.
- i feel guilty for not seeing more of mr. detjen this week
- i wish i wasnt so crap at ironing. how can you be bad at it?
- i cannot believe i just joined myspace. jesus fucking christ.

marvels and wonders

today, maggie came.

my heart leapt when i saw her. and suddenly everything was okay. maybe just tabled, but i was okay. she can do that you know. she is like a breath of fresh air and a hand to hold and so incredibly perfect in everyway i wish i could be her. i wish i could marry her. i wish i could have her around forever. i wish i could give her to everyone and share what she means. anne didn't know the half of it when she called diana a kindred spirit. she is truly the best woman i know and i am proud and glad and overwhelming thankful to have her. even just for the weekend.

the only other person i feel i know like this is my sister. she is like that. the sororial link. one look and the world could spin backward for all i know. it makes me miss kate. but more so it makes me grateful women like this exist.

whether lolled on the couch watching football or walking home arm in arm, i glow when she is around. just a reflection of her wonder i am sure, but i feel like i could fly.

the salisbury steak of life

i am tired a lot.

but only just recently have a hit a level of fatigue that negates all other life.

i am tired of pretend. of everyday taxing. of anticipated monotony.

i don't want this pseudo-life. with will-they-wont-they relationships, and mediocre careers. cute work outfits and wild work nights-out. the routine of disappointment, distraction, and denial.

ready made life packets now available in your grocers fridge. it's so easy, so mouthwatering and tempting. so cheap and lo-carb. promising you can be sated in minutes, the e-numbers veiling the lifelong regrets that will follow.


i have a week off starting tomorrow.

a week on my own. no holiday. no flatmates. just an empty canvas. and i want to come out the other end sure of something.

it might take a spirit guide in the woods goddammit, but i am not going back to that.

i am unwilling to settle.

week of weird

such a random week. out three nights in a row like it's college and i need to get laid - only half of which is still true. also, freckles galore from lunch hour picnics in the graveyard and other anomalies of scottish life.

monday
- dinner at author friends. we had mexican and coronas, i apparently am now a reviewer for his new magazine, and his cockatiel thing is adorable. and named bellamy. sigh.

tuesday
- cam home from work feigning illness because the tsunami of cramps crashed into my abdomen rendering me entirely useless
-slept for ages
- practiced - and by practiced i mean screeching wails that made cats cry - my violin

wednesday
- wore the polka dot dress in all it's glory
- made killer moroccan zucchini couscous
- watched my beloved bruce campbell

thursday
- had dinner at liams
- went to weirdo pubquiz and was hailed the master since all the questions were things like who's on mount rushmore (and i didn't even have to specify which roosevelt) and the theme tune from gummy bears.
- hooked up again. for once not feeling rejected, denied, broken, or drunk. but i am undecided and horny. seriously. i kind of love it and i kind wish i'd grow up already.

friday
- tried not to be awkward at work after the fact. and kind of just wanted to have sex in the stationary cupboard all day.
- watched the football with jules
- went to massively weird leaving-do/ continental house party with amazing daquiris, enforced casualness with liam, and the guys from work including ugly sexy (whose new hair cut makes him look like a rugged tintin). maybe we should have left early nad just had sex, but instead just completely tabled it (probably because i was the worse for rum) and went home totally PG.

saturday
- work blows. i hate my job. i so had been looking forward to locking ourselves in an office to do grade 2 paperwork (and not anything more nefarious. probably.) but had to serve stupid school kids all day.
- went to fancy-pants debut authors party in the rehersal dinner dress. had fabulous gin martinis. hobnobbed a bit and then got bored of small talk and went to the movies.

and now i am home for what feels like the first time in days, glad to have slept and wondering what my next move is.

culture clash

since when did office casual "i'm not trying but damn sexy anyway" ever involve
a, me
b, blue pinstripes
c, paisley?

and yet, in the land of uk fashion, i am so going to get away with it.

either i am going blind or have finally assimilated the anti-matching genetic code of the british.

but so help me god, if i wear leggings all bets are off.

should any of you actually watch the world cup, you should all be cheering for holland.

not only because they have the most complex ethnicity etymology - oh the dutch from holland who are the netherlands - or because their football kits refer to a political event hundreds years old. seriously. william of orange is old news boys.

but because the are my team in the office pool. and not only do i want to kick fuck-heads ass, but i could win money. and money is a good reason to like sports.



well, that and one of theif forwards is hot.

vie melodien

in the dappled sunlight of my gold coifed room (perhaps we have finally out run the porn dungeon title), i was moved to music this afternoon, and picked up my violin.

an instrument (and object) with which i have had one of the most tumultuous relationships of my entire life, leading to our five year estrangement. a separation i felt compelled to reconcile these last few weeks.

as i opened the ridiculous case, still tattered from tiny locker jams, the complete familiarity and yet entire foreignness of it was overwhelming. it was all there - the massive sponge stain, the fancy import rosin that'd been a christmas gift, the spare Dominant strings in their hideously retro packaging, the suzuki books covered with garish stickers.

i won't pretend i was ever a prodigy. by the beginning of high school i'd given up practicing all together and within two years was relegated to the back of the orchestra with the stoners and dropouts (where a whole different piece of my education began). but even in the later years, in fleeting moments, it was perfect.

the right tune, the right note even, and i could just soar. it was a voice opening in me. an unanswered truth.

sometimes, just for a minute, when playing something breathtaking, i felt whole.

and perhaps it was the fleetness of these moments that pushed me away. my lessons were chunks of prescribed classics chosen for their modal shifts. our orchestral pieces were heavy on cello melody because everyone knew they were the only halfway decent section, and mostly 40 minutes too long for anyone with ears.

and i was uninspired. the one thing it promised seemed to be forever beyond my ability and not even a concern for my teachers.

so i left it. a nostalgic relic, a closed possibility. a dream.

and as i lifted it to my shoulder today, i thought perhaps i should have left it there. to rot in my parents closet.

i am absolutely rubbish. clunky. out of tune. slow. airy. childish.

the hickey on my neck of which i was so secretly proud is long gone, the grooves in my bowfingers filled back in. we no longer fit, my violin and i.

we are like reunited lovers, trying to find where we were. how we were. limbs akimbo. bodies out of joint.

and of course we can't. i am not the same size or shape or player i once was. we'll have to begin again, finding our voice, seeking the sweet spots. retuning ourselves.

it hurts a little the songs i scrape through now are dated in mr. dewey's sharp masculine scrawl '02/25/94'. that i can hear the strength behind notes that come out as whispers makes me wince.

but oh, the promise of that power. that expression is what brought me back. that it's still there, this voiceless singing and challenging flight. the possibility of momentary transcendence.

if i am patient, we can, once again make music.

Stephen Slays

i know i am less than politically active in my daily life.

i live in a bubble of my own making consisting mostly of castle ruins, fictional romances, and very hot shoes quite content to ignore the "hell in a handbasket" scenario towards which i would be otherwise inclined.

this completely voluntary ignorance, coupled with my living abroad (i keep wondering if i'll ever get to refer to myself as an ex-pat) lead my information to be sorely outdated if not entirely made up.

that said, today sonja pointed me to Stephen Colbert's White House Corrospondents Address. holy mother fucking hell. That man has balls the size of Montana and as Chris says, we all know one man who is going to get audited this year. Damn he is clever. Though I must say, it's a shame the biggest laughs came at the safest jokes. Where is Gilbert Godfried when you need him?

I've always had a thing for Stephens (well, the few of that moniker that are straight...). But give me a well informed wise ass Stephen (especially with bowtie) and i am equal parts awe, lust, and fear - a stunning combonation.

summer love

it's fucking sweltering.

the dense humid air, ripe and full. the teasing promise of rain and agonisingly long days of lethargy.

in this heaviness and sticky weight, all i can think of is sex.

the moist air of sleepy breath. the damp pockets of skin between shoulders or below collars. the hot weight of a limb thrown carelessly across my body.

fuck me.

on my mind

- there is a mouse in my room. and most disturbingly, it looks kind of cute scurrying from shadow to shadow.
- it is both a relief and a burden i decided to drop the teen-years drama i skipped the first time around smack in the middle of my otherwise incredibly okay 20s. a relief they have come and i am not some anomolous android and a massive waste of my fucking time.
- even i can only survive on left over pizza for so long
- i lied. there are two mice.
- i cried today. in front of someone. and he held me and pet my head. thank god the weirdness factor didnt surface until after. i would be even more bothered if he thought my weepy face was sexy.
- i know. we were doing so good. i am disappointed in myself.
- actually i am most disappointed that he's gone and got all hot on me. sneaky libido. i don't need this shit.
- also, this is my "artie strongest man in the world visits a stone circle" re-enactment:





i adore my newly rediscovered stupidity

i've still got sand in my shoes

i have not written because i don't know what to say.

the last week and a half have been overwhelming. three vacations in a row will do that to you, even if they aren't as loaded as mine. they've been amazing. but hard.

first i had 3 days completely alone in the highlands. a freeing solitude which rekindled my love for scotland and even brushed with "finding myself in the wilderness" cliches. it was amazing and good for me. and i found a new favourite place at cawdor castle.

then i had a weeks road trip through gorgeous country with one of my favourite people. beautiful and fun. i was relaxed and at home being silly in the mountains and basking on waterfalls. i liked being together every minute of everyday and not needing the guards and shields the city and other people inspire in me. being alone together.

so much so coming back was a bit of a shock. and disappointment. i told us we could stay that simple and content here, but i know the pressures of town and life wont let us. i am trying not to miss him though we see each other everyday. (ps, no it was completely platonic despite our past transgressions. and it was really good for us to be normal again)

but it was a short lived doubt as the next morning i picked up dad for a whirlwind weekend of touring and adventure and entertainment. he is so easy and yet so taxing. so wonderfully there for me and knows me and wants me it was incredibly perfect, and yet the second he left now i miss him and everyone else i have that closeness with even more. its like he reminded me what i am missing and it hurts.

it was great. i did love it. i am so glad he came. but now i miss him.

and so for a week now almost i have been back. and feel tainted. outside. disallusioned and alone. it is still the same silly job and the same pretty flowers and the same cute shoes. and it doesnt feel like it is enough anymore.

i am not enough. i am not who i was free in the mountains. and i dont like it.

perhaps it will pass. the romance of a holiday will wear thin. real life will regain meaning.

but i think more than anything i am sick of the hollowness. i want to be inspired.