6.27.2012

Again

Sometimes I get the feeling that the universe brings things into my life just to point and say, Ha! You can't have that.

6.24.2012

I can set bread on fire with just a bit of parchment.

Yes. I am just that good.
(The oven helped.)

Cooking is something I've always enjoyed. I hosted my first dinner party at 8 (yes, a real proper one with real, proper food and real, proper people. Well. Real people, anyway). The ten years I was on my own I did all the major holiday meals for our patchwork family, and still do Thanksgiving (step-dad enjoys cooking as well so we split holidays). Probably if I enjoyed massively fast-paced working environments and other people messing about in my workspace it would have been a career path, but as it is it's just something I do whenever I have enough people around (ie more than me) to feed.

Being that step-dad has been away, I took over the cooking duties for the weekend and succeeded more or less without incident until tonight's caramelised chicken with ginger bread (which is amazingly lovely, by the way). You have to cut the bread into thin slices and toast them on a baking pan, which I did. But, in preparation for the impending move, the AGA's been turned off so I had to use the oven, which we rarely do and is somewhat perplexing to operate (probably why we rarely use it, not to mention that the AGA is lovely to cook with). While the bread was toasting, I did my customary puttering around, we took the furry escort out for a smoke and generally went about our business. At one point I thought I noticed a vaguely fiery smell, but told myself, nooooo... Nothing could be on fire. 

Then I pull out a pan of flames. With brilliant reaction skills, I took the pan to the sink, then stopped. I couldn't exactly just put the water on, or the bread would get all soggy but there didn't seem to be any other way of putting it out. La-la, fellow firebug, came over to assist, but the same conclusion was reached. Nothing to do but watch it burn itself out. So we very responsibly stood and watched every bit of parchment paper burn up, leaving the toasted ginger bread slices (which hadn't exactly burnt) with a few errant flames which were easily put out with a saucepan lid. 

Fire bread is totally the new thing. 

We've also decided the village (which we are still convinced has a Hot Fuzz-esque underbelly) is really a television show. The village itself is technically two roads, but really more of one L-shaped road because once you go beyond the L you're not in the village anymore. Population-wise, there were more people in my 9 AM lecture on Renaissance lit the last week before Christmas term. In theory, you should walk down the street and always run into someone you know. 

Not so. This occurred to me around walk 5, which meant I'd been wandering around the village with the dog pretty frequently over the past two days, encountering various people on the street and not once was it the same person. I also managed, this entire weekend, to not encounter a single person I know. And I'm pretty sure it was the same black car doing a loop of the village Saturday afternoon just to create the illusion of traffic. So I thought about it, and realised that all the main figures in the village are only seen 1. when in the pub 2. in the post office and 3. in someone's home (namely ours because we live in the big house party house). Naturally, of course, this makes sense. Why put out the money on the main cast as background when you can just pull in extras to people the streets? You don't. You only bring the main cast in to further the plot, and walking down the street (typically) isn't going to do that. Our contracts weren't renewed because the show's demographic found the occasional influx of "those odd, artsy young people" a little too unsettling for their viewing pleasure, thus we've been ousted from the house to make room for the much more conventional nephew of the lord. This weekend's episode, by the way, featured the parents' trip to London, with a brief cut-to of the fire bread incident just to show we haven't disappeared. 

Five minutes away from Darlington station, and La-la had ratted me out on the fire incident. Karma got her back when she drove past the turn off to the village and we took a 15 minute side-trip down the A19 and back. 

I have to say, it was nice having the parents back. This house is entirely too big for one person and the furry escort, or even two people. La-la and I have barely edged out of the kitchen except to sleep (and for her to watch the football match). But the rest of the evening was spent hearing about their trip, David Almond and various stories, with several interjections of bantering, anecdotes and the Sashi and La-la sideshow. As much as I love my flat (and I do very much so, just not the city it happens to be in), and am more comfortable there on a long-term basis, it's easy to forget how nice it is to have to compete with four or five other people to be heard, keep up with a group of highly intelligent and creative people and the general comfort of belonging to a pack. 

My family is a pretty awesome pack, too, if I do so say.  

6.23.2012

The Ocean

There is nothing in this world but hope:
a threadbare life vest ping-ponged between us.
Hold your breath and hold my hand –
                       [just another small wave crashing through, dear]
– I can breathe well enough for two.

                                       Today I listened to every song you ever gave me,
                                       and tried to conjure nights spent prowling
                                       for whatever came our way
                                       aching lungs from all the smoke
                                       all the talk
                                       all the things we never have to say
                                       (but sometimes do anyway).

What if we can never be free? you ask,
the salt on our lips. fish nibbling our toes.
What if this is all there ever is?

                                        Twenty years ago a man I never met
                                        pressed my soul between the pages of a book
                                        and twenty years later I drank his voice
                                        with cinnamon tea until it became my own.
                                        I would read to you the language
                                        he carved into my bones:
                                        because I love the taste of his words
                                        because he writes between the lines
                                        like you.

We can float here – you and I –
and if the ocean swallows us whole –
well, we’ll still be whole, won’t we?
And the ocean will still be changed.

6.22.2012

There's always that one that gets under your skin...

House-sitting for my parents means knocking around a too-big house with just myself, some cats and a dog for company, with the added curious discovery of how ill at ease and oddly reassured a born-and-raised country boy can be plopped back in the middle of nowhere. 

No matter where I've lived, though, it's always the lights that keep me.

There's a man I know who has this way with words so they dig right through your soul. And maybe the real power is he knows when not to use them, so when he does, you can't escape the meaning. 

Every time he does it my typically unflappable self is quite thoroughly flapped and I spend at least a day or so rolling them over my tongue and shifting the weight on my shoulders to see how they feel. Every time I realise too late I didn't say the right thing back. I would worry about that more, except I know for the most part I don't have to, because he knows what the coded statements mean, but just once, I think, he deserves to hear what should be said and not just what my fear produces. 

I've developed this practice of keeping relationships just far enough away I can cut the tethers if the ship starts sinking and just close enough they never know.  Because I leave places (and consequently the people in those places) behind too much and there really are only so many times your heart can break before you start losing pieces. Because once upon a time I was far too trusting and fought with everything I had for all the wrong people. Because I suppose to a certain extent I'm just wired that way. The reasons don't really matter (this is going to be a recurring theme, children: knowing the reason doesn't necessarily fix the problem). The point is: I do. 

Except this one. The man with the words.  He is and probably always will be the most important person in my life. I can't cut him loose. I've tried. He's tried. We always swing right back into orbit, and there's something reassuring about that. The constancy of him as a feature in my life. But the missing... The missing sometimes can be too much. Because I can only listen to him hurt over choppy connections and try to describe the world I'm in with useless language and wonder if we'll ever see each other face to face again. 

The connections are interesting. People. I could say we have x things in common, and y, q and r traits  but that doesn't really explain what draws certain people together, or makes certain relationships survive hurricanes while others crumble at a light breeze. Out of everything in life, relationships are the things that tug me toward the idea of some sort of destiny. 

I know there's that argument that with hindsight you can add significance to even the most insignificant moment, and randomness probabilities and names for things I never remember but all my science-y friends like to throw at me. Half the time I see the world that way, too. The rest of the time, logic and reason just don't seem to cover all the bases. I still think there's a logic behind it all, but don't discount the possibility that it's a logic we haven't discovered, or won't discover, or just can't understand yet. 

All of this from the fact that a man as squeamish with emotions as I am managed the words 'I miss you,' and wrote a poem that punched me in chest, which left me very, very homesick for the closest thing to a home I've got. 

The Floundering Epic

I'm afraid to write. 

I can't tell you why. I haven't figured out why, only that the layers and layers of muddly things I put between me and what I actually intend to do exist solely to stave off that fear of actually sitting down and committing to something. 

It's risky, of course. It's huge. I've already been piecing it together for nearly two years now and can't even claim to be halfway done. To actually finish it will undoubtedly take several more years of my life, and I've been down that road before. Committing myself to a project wholeheartedly only to have it ripped from my hands at the last moment, nearly there, almost finished still slick and smooth with months of my blood poured in it. 

If I pull this off, there'll be no hiding. It's getting harder to hide as it is; people are starting to catch on that I'm not just all right at stringing a few words together into a passable aesthetic. Word is starting to get out I'm pretty damn great at it. And if I sit down, if I commit to all those words and lives and worlds and minute details I have to figure out because I'm not just creating something new - no, I'm changing the past ten years of what is and dear God 2002 was a long time ago -

If I do that, and finish it, then I'll have to sell it. Sell me. Put myself out there and not shrink back. Not skirt the shadows. I'll have to go chasing it. And what then? What do I do then? It's pass or fail at that point, no grey area to linger in. 

I do so love the grey areas. 

Maybe that's what I'm afraid of. Succeeding and failing. Aren't both equally terrifying? Either way, you don't have what you did anymore. Either way, you have to change. 

I said last time my words aren't worth listening to, and that's true. Mine aren't. But my creatures... That's another story. 

The other question is, and perhaps this is really where the heart of my fear lies - what if I sit down to do this thing and realise I can't?

6.17.2012

Connectivity

There's this fundamental need to connect. To communicate. To share whatever shit we're going through with someone, anyone. Another person we can see, touch and hear, who validates our perceptions and experiences. Our existence.

Everyone's talking about disconnection. Disconnection and globalisation. The world gets smaller and we get further apart. We don't buy birthday cards or drop by for coffee. We like status updates and send text messages. For a lot of us, our most significant relationships are with people who don't share the same post code. Maybe not even the same country. For a lot of us, we look at new friendships with suspicion and distance because we know each of them has a shelf life. 36 months, 24, 12. That's the amount of time before one of us moves somewhere else so let's not get too close because this is all just temporary. 

My best friend. Soul mate, really. Lives on the other side of the world and I know the amount of times we see each other in person will be stretched out over years and measured in days. Sometime over the next couple of years I'll have to decide where I'm going to live somewhat permanently, and yeah, sure. I could use his city. I have pieces in my heart planted all over the continental US and I've thought, at one point, how much I wish I lived in the same city as every one of them. Following that thought is the fear of being too close. I've gotten so used to them all being voices on phones and text on screens, the idea of doing the face-to-face terrifies me. 

This week has been rough. My cat's been sick, and at one point, I spent an entire day contemplating what the quality of my life would be like if she died and how much I depend on her for stability. Yes, I know. A cat is the basis for my stability. She's been the only consistent thing in my life for the past ten years. Everything else has changed every 6-12 months. 

There was a blow up with my ex/former collaborator. It didn't need to be like that, but he's not the easiest person to talk to. A lot of things were said purely out of spite and malice. As per my usual wounded-animal routine, I hid from everyone who would refute what was said about me. Not the best move, but at least I'm consistent. 

Somewhere along the line I plateaued in a depressive episode. Brought on by one or the other or just shitty timing, I've really stopped trying to pick out whether or not there's a reason for each chemical malfunction because it really doesn't change it. 

Today is Father's Day. 7 months and 4 days after my dad died. I know there are a lot of things I haven't resolved about that. I haven't deleted his phone number from my contacts yet. We're rounding out the year of firsts, though. His birthday in three months. The anniversary of his death a month and a half after that. 

There's no reason anyone should have any interest in what I have to say. In fact, there's a lot I don't say on a daily basis for that very reason. But there's that impulse I mentioned. To take whatever is rolling around in my head and inflict it on someone else.