Life

Listen.

21st April 2020 · Leave a Comment

There’s a lot of talk about the birdsong, and how it can be heard now, along with the blueness of the sky, and the silences that descend at night. We all listen and look, and then listen harder because we like the idea that there is good coming from ‘all this’. My wise friend Dawn said of the clear, supposedly fish-filled canals of Venice, that the water clarity was because the mud had settled, with no boats to churn it up, rather than it being a reversal in environmental quality. She’s no expert, but for sure, there is something to be said for settling. And listening. And when the most pleasing of the available choices of daily activity is walking, it’s no wonder we can all hear the birdsong. Even in the city.

Going to the city seems like a distant thing now, let alone leaving the country. The island-ness of living on a island feels more acute. Whilst I can’t travel to the city, I do surreptitiously take myself to the water ‘s edge look at the sea, after a bike ride or on a walk. All the locals do, I dare say, and I wonder what will happen when the weather really heats up and there will be the lure of swimming.

So instead, there is reading and watching. I finished Joan Didion’s ‘The White Album’, a series of social commentary essays written in the late 60’s/early 70’s. I have been mildly obsessed with her since watching the Netflix documentary ‘The Centre Will Not Hold‘ which I have written of before. I have a tendency to loop back to writers. The essays speak the truth, and I suppose this is the best thing for an essay to do. On the same day, I binge-watch ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians’ with my daughter, and feel smutty afterwards. But the exposure of modern life in these two mediums is the same; things must be recorded as representative of the time in which we live. This is the high/low referred to in the title of the best podcast for chat. Dolly and Pandora talk with such surety and cleverness that it makes me wonder if that is the product of a good education or genetics or societal conditioning. I remain as fascinated by Millenials as I am by teenagers. The truth of the generational divide never more evident in the response to this adversity.

I have turned my notifications off on WhatsApp as the noise of a hundred emptied out lives had become deafening. And ordinarily I love WhatsApp; I’d live for its inclusion in daily life. I am selective now, and only dip in and out of the good stuff. On rare journeys out in the car the radio is blasting, disturbing the peace, in what I see as a small act of anarchy, and it’s Marvin Gaye or Otis Redding and I am taken back back in time.

At dinner in the evenings, we sift through the Spotify playlists; my children know to skip certain songs, but then, in recent weeks, I find, I can actually listen to some. There is a gradual resetting of being able to hear music that triggers old emotions, or old habits, but we persevere and I notice they check my face for signs of response, and acceptance. Later on, I strain to discern my son’s nocturnal footsteps on the landing, in the middle of the night, as his teenage body clock has shifted to adjust. None of us are sleeping well, but for all sorts of different reasons.

What follows, of course, is the morning waking, an overnight inventory of sleep, and the messages from others who can’t either, and instagram posts from Australia, from those who have faced the day already, and turns out: it’s ok. Being tired matters less, but surely matters a lot more for those who are working through this, and I feel guilty for my inactivity. But, I can hear the birds and the weather is holding, and that feels like reaching the ground after a long fall.

Photo by Unsplash

Reckoning

28th March 2020 · Leave a Comment

Well, we didn’t see that one coming. For all the build up, the conjecture, the awareness that something was going on, somewhere a long way from here, it now seems impossible to recall a time when this virus, this lockdown wasn’t a thing. Now, for eternity it seems, I remain in our rural bubble. When I venture into town for a run or to get food am I reminded that the whole country is at home (or should be). I worry about the NHS, I worry about their staff who don’t have a choice, I worry that they will think we are all killing time baking, playing board games, watching Netflix and complaining, whilst they do what is grim and necessary.

Latterly, I consider myself adept at managing sweeping life changes, well-versed in that unique sense of disquiet that comes from knowing that nothing will ever be the same again. It revisits daily – actually hourly – now, even when I have a moment when my thoughts turn to something normal, routine, standard, they are whipped back to reality. It’s a peculiar time, and we talk of nothing else. My children and I wander around the house making exclamations of things we might do in this enforced time at home. Or at least my daughter does. Presently she’s considering how well-conditioned our hair will be, or whether there will be time to learn to do the splits, or perfect Beyoncé’s dances in ‘Homecoming’. My son says less and makes fewer productive plans; for a fourteen year old boy, being stuck at home with his mother and sister is about as bad as it gets.

The reality of our family circumstance has been starkly illuminated, made glaringly bright, and looking at that truth is a bit like staring at the sun. There is no escape, not that there ever was, but now we know.

I am listening to Joan Didion’s essay collection ‘The White Album‘ on Audible, and she writes of the late 1960’s when Sharon Tate was murdered, the Black Panthers agitated, and society shifted. She writes of that defining moment of time, of it being ’emblematic’ to an era. I realise that this virus will be the emblematic to our era, a thing we didn’t take seriously enough, can’t see, and don’t really understand.

Ashamedly, I find myself idly fretting about beauty, and the outward regime. Hair roots, bare nails, face and body as nature intended, and I suspect many feel the same, but don’t really want to say. It’s not important right now, but then, actually these smaller rituals had formed the punctuation marks to life, and we must all examine what our rituals were. What propped us up. That might be freshly coloured hair, or the ‘right’ clothes, or the knowledge, when you fall into bed at night, that you have ‘achieved’ something in any given day. Achievement has become something different overnight. I wonder about FOMO, and find that I have surprising moments of contentment in lockdown, I’m sure because I know everyone else is in lockdown too. How messed up is that? How telling.

What we are to others is changing. There’s a fresh sense, don’t you think, of refined social appropriateness? What was OK, tolerated, subject to a blind eye, is no longer, and there’s a new method of being courteous when in public, of giving space and denoting respect. So many curious outcomes will develop in coming weeks and months; I wonder who and what will herald a ‘return to normal’? I think of all the lockdown books that will be written during this time, and it propels a fresh wave of panic that I might not use the time wisely enough. Productively. And there is that FOMO again, rearing its head as reliable as envy or guilt.

Before this, there had been a quickness to my life, which I was enjoying I’ll admit, but which I was secretly wondering about. I felt as if something was coming, or at least that something had to give. I sensed it, but couldn’t place it. A friend of mine calls this a ‘fuckening’, rather than a reckoning. The cosmic universe toying with me. Now, there is a necessary pause. A slowing down which many of us could have taken beforehand, but were in fact incapable of.

Instead, a sudden proliferation of FaceTime calls, ones which I historically would not have chosen to pick up, as I was never ready for a full frontal with anyone, unplanned. Now I do pick up, and we smile and laugh and feel self-conscious and I wonder why they designed it so that you are never gazing directly into the camera, but always in a shifty downcast way. For most of us too, there is the shocking realisation that selfies are brutal, regardless, and it makes me want to shy away and return to the old fashioned method of speaking on the phone. I walked on the beach at sunset and it was so empty and so beautiful that it felt like a privilege I had never experienced before. To be in nature but without all the people. Yet it is the people that I miss. Emblematic of an era.

Photo by Filip Kominik on Unsplash

In between

9th March 2020 · Leave a Comment

Writing is such a strange and introverted pursuit, you might be surprised at how much I think about what I produce before I produce it. It’s like the wordy equivalent of massaging kale before putting it in a complex salad, which let’s face it, is quite pretentious in design. Who wants kale in a salad? Suffice to say there is mulling over and considering what I might write about, and then when the instinct takes me, it spills out. All this whilst I am meant to be finishing a book which feels to me like a polemic. I never intended to write a polemic, and am dubious about that.

I was advised early on, when I started writing seriously, that spending anything more than a year on a first book was a mistake. Get it done and then move on. Any writer will plunder their own experience (those who say they don’t are lying) and so spending years sloshing around in the waters of your own life will not be years well spent. Better to take only what you need from it and get out. I remind myself of this often, and yet continue to paddle, such is the root of my intrigue about my own circumstances and past.

However, as things stand my circumstances have a unique set of nuances that only apply to me, and so sharing that can feel jarring and indelicate. I think a lot about processing thoughts and feelings and work hard to distill any view I have down to something palatable for others. What I have learned is that even when you think something is processed, distilled, considered, measured, it probably isn’t. Not until time has passed and taken off the edges, like a riverbed pebble made smooth by friction. There is always an analogy in nature which will illuminate my point. Nature and the seasons, and the weather.

Each morning at daybreak I scan the sky for clouds, check the forecast for rain, adjust my choice of coat according to the temperature. I intimately know the growth status of the wisteria outside my bedroom window, of which I have written many times. Local friends whose houses are on the water – a bearing which is the epitome of privilege in Sussex life – know the weather, and they know the tides. Both are relevant when the paint on your back door risks peeling from salt spray. I like to keep the tides a surprise; I like to arrive at the waterside and be struck with the beauty of a high tide, to feel it is a sign, a circumstance relevant to my mood. High tide means full up, maximum, a swollen version of itself, compared to the lacklustre opposite of low tide. Who wants low tide? Same as kale in salad.

Each time I write, I comment on the season, this interminable winter which wears on and on and on. No need to wash the car (it’s still winter), no need to wear silk (it’s still winter), no need to plan for anything other than the cold and mud (it’s still winter). But I know it will end, one day. It is – and I am – seasonally, in between.

There is no rushing loss, there is no way to get through it, to understand its impact other than to live it. I read about bereavement and grief, and compare and contrast. I feel the clutch of panic in my chest when it revisits, months after the initial truth became clear. It’s nearly been a year. How long will this take? If there was a guide, that is what I would ask.Of course there is progress, and things which were unimaginable then are commonplace now, but still, but still…

It’s still winter.

They say (and I pay attention to these platitudes, as discussed), that change comes in the alteration of small habits. It’s not the big things, but the small. This provides comfort as I find myself in a daily routine which I would not have recognised as my own had someone given me to glimpse a year ago. Within the chrysalis of change, there are new routines, new people, a new normal. It was suggested to me that I should not become too attached to new habits, as they too will change, and my reliance upon them could become a hindrance. Isn’t that how I got myself into this mess in the first place? Too reliant on a status quo? I now spend my time observing others who think their status quo will stay, and I catch myself feeling a sickening sympathy for them which I try hard to banish. Who am I? It’s not as if I have the monopoly on the topic.

In the mornings, in the coffee shop I visit, I find myself eavesdropping on a couple whom I can only assume are an ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’ sponsor and charge. They discuss temptation and being able to see it clearly; triggers and sensibilities. When they are talking one confesses to the other that she misplaced her thread, that her mind wandered, and whilst I am sitting with my back to them, I imagine her eyes rolling back and her companion noticing that she has lost her way. I wonder whether I do that when I am being told what to do by friends, family and well-wishers who want to talk about my progress. Never before has the question ‘how are you?’ been accompanied with such weightiness. The AA couple get back on track and drain their coffees, that froth at the bottom which is nauseatingly chill, but they drink anyway. I don’t feel too bad for listening in, as I am fairly certain that in my own endeavours to describe my predicament, coffee shop strangers have gleaned salacious detail about me. Tit for tat.

But the small habits are the glue. The coffees, the cooking; chopping and seasoning, the pensive nightly baths, the lyrics, the turn of the tides. Some days melancholy, but to be honest many are not, and the sense that when dwelling in this in between space, there is respite. I am learning not to trust the respite, it doesn’t mean it’s over, it just means that my mind can only do so much thinking, and then there must be time spent swaddled in unreality. This is the same as the summer’s day, when early on in this, my friend told me I needed to be sure to wear a scarf, so that my amygdala, at the back of my neck was comforted. I had to google what my amygdala was, and what it did (it processes emotion). And she was right.

The in between won’t last forever.

Photo by Fallon Michael on Unsplash

Hate

4th February 2020 · Leave a Comment

I’ve been watching the ‘Goop Lab‘ on Netflix. Gwyneth Paltrow, who has been on my awareness radar since forever – as we are the same age – heads this series of programmes about self-betterment. Goop is the domain of privilege and moneyed responses to life’s challenges, and employs what seems to be an army of staff. They check stuff out on everyone’s behalf, and make unsolicited recommendations. Concepts like micro-dosing psychoactive drugs, or how to best achieve orgasm (this episode is hands down the Goopiest; the most out there). I try to imagine what emails fly around the ether in their achingly cool Californian office. I try to imagine Gwyneth, as CEO, directing an overrunning meeting, or a wayward agenda, wearing good dresses, with good hair.

The show has been met with a torrent of judgement, nay-saying and what can really only be described as hate. I am interested in the emotion of hate and often say to people who express it: ‘hate is a strong word.’ It is, and I know it, I sometimes carry it around with me, slip it under my tongue to dissolve, but I don’t succumb to it. The hate for Gwyneth and her peers is curious because it borders on hysterical. Perhaps people don’t like what they don’t fully understand. Or what goes against accepted wisdom. Of course life won’t be that much better, day to day, just because of vaginal steaming, but what I find fascinating about those who hate Goop is that they feel it so very keenly. My view on watching, was that Gwyneth comes across as more likeable than expected, that she is evidently self-aware, that she is actually similar to a lot of women I encounter, who in their midlife grapple their way through a myriad of challenges. Ageing, bodily changes, diet, health, relationships, self-analysis. There is nothing new here, it’s just that it’s packaged in a sublimely galling way for those who don’t share her money or her opinions or her preoccupations. And perhaps, she does not acknowledge that what is being presented by Goop is, in effect, the highest form of frippery.

But back to hate. There is a conflict, an ongoing tension between our new ‘woke’ tendency to feel tolerance for all facets of society, and the polarity of hate. Hate towards those who injure us, or hate towards those who exhibit values which are at odds with our own. Or towards those who don’t take responsibility for their actions. Part of being woke is not only developing an awareness, but it is also understanding one’s own place in the world, and taking ownership of it. This is something I think a lot about as I have been forced to carefully consider my own actions in recent months. I don’t act without consideration, even in what I write here. What could be called overthinking translates into deliberateness, acting with diligence in what I do, say, and write. The irony is not lost on me also, that Gwyneth is the founding proponent of ‘conscious uncoupling’, a methodology now embedded in our appreciation of what it is to leave a marriage with your sense of family intact. For all that we may judge this term as ludicrous and impossible to replicate, what it appears to have achieved for she and her ex-husband is a way in which to live in harmony after divorce.

Meanwhile, a sojourn into the world of TikTok (the app where people post short lip-synched videos) is worth noting, purely to see how hate is being metabolised by the younger generation. The emotion is being taken up, owned and repurposed in a way that is almost incomprehensible to those of us in midlife. There’s something about living with and being around teenagers that keeps me abreast of their cultural development. Their generation’s ability to adopt new methods and to exceed expectation is unsurpassed. Although conversely, I note they only get dressed when they are actually leaving the house. In between time, they stay horizontal, in bed or on the sofa, with their phones or a laptop. They do not subscribe to accepted times of the day at which to eat; cereal for lunch (Crunchy Nut), lunch at 3pm (carbs), dinner, snacks, more cereal. They live for their friends. But their lens on the world is worth considering. Caring what people think of me is increasingly less important as this phase of my life wears on. This is not uncommon amongst my cohort but nonetheless I care startlingly less than I used to. But whilst all of us may care what people think, my children are simultaneously open and accepting of new concepts. And they are willing to poke fun at themselves. I can not see them objecting to their own version of Gwyneth in twenty years time. Live and let live, they’ll say.

TikTok is, to the uninitiated, a terrifying, liberating, sensory overload of what the young truly think. It is an exposé into the inner workings, the private thoughts, the eye-wateringly candid truth. My overriding feeling is one of incredulity, but also of quiet awe because it takes bravery to say what you think. And to post it. Nothing on the forum is private. It is open to anyone, and of course this provokes hate in some, adoration in others.

Take Beyoncé (because all roads lead back to her in the end). The hate she felt when she wrote her ‘Lemonade’ album was channeled positively, reframed, taken forward like a jettison of feeling. She knows. And when you know, you know. But my point is, it is deliberate, it is not a strewn garment, it is not haphazard. I guess it’s a matter of deciding whether you want to hate or not. Resist or not. Accept or not. Give thought and consideration, or not. See the bigger, longer-term picture, or not. As she’d say, eyes narrowed and looking forward: ‘think about it’.

Photo by Wilfried Santer on Unsplash

January 2nd

2nd January 2020 · Leave a Comment

Happy 2nd January.

One thing with social media, I note, is the extrapolation of the ‘me too’ thing. I don’t mean the hashtag movement, I mean the sense of solidarity, you’re not alone. This has become increasingly prevalent, and as such we start, as the the habit forms and strengthens, to look for it. When you are feeling alone, know this: you are not alone. Instagram says so. Celebrities say so. If you are miserable, do not worry! Others are too. Misery can be shared! We have learned to accept that although it looks like everyone is having a great time, they are not. Not always, anyway. Happiness is a moment, not a permanent state. #motivationalquote.

Have you noticed the distinction between the Instagram grid and Instagram stories? The grid is for beauty and curation; a ‘this is me at my best’ truth, for gratitude, contentment and favourable camera angles. Stories, which fleetingly disappear after a day, are more for reality; ‘this is me, for real’. The same applies to teenagers, whose behaviour I am fascinated by. They have their ‘main’ account, and then their ‘private’. The main is the public show. The private – well, the mind boggles. It’s a space they have carved out that is away from prying eyes, and where they can be themselves in all their hormonal glory. Anyway, don’t worry, most of them have graduated over to ‘TikTok’, where we will be in a year’s time, thinking we invented the place. Regardless though, we have become adept at understanding that we are being fed different glimpses, different vistas of the same happy/sad/multitudinous life.

This was never, ever more obvious than at Christmas. During the festive season we present life in all of its false magnitude. Scrolling over the last month has, on the whole, made me feel utterly alone. Christmas, when everything is fine, is fine. When it is not, it is torturous. The truth – that life is not all that much fun all the time – is systematically smothered in a smiley, perfection-laced basting. It is remarkable. On Christmas Day, I saw goodness projected on the grid, to then receive a message from the very same individual, to be told that they were having a downright miserable time. Uncanny. Yet we all press ‘like’ and comment gleefully ‘Happy Christmas’! Santa emoji.

Layered on top is the perception that to call bullshit on Christmas is to resemble Scrooge; thank you Charles Dickens with furnishing us all with a lifelong fear of behaving like Jacob Marley, the miserly nay-sayer. This fear is so rooted in our Western social conscience that there is no escape from the merriment. The world becomes Mr Fezziwig himself; along with a spray of champagne mist, and loving kiss under the mistletoe. And this is counterbalanced with a nod to charity for those less fortunate, and to taking stock as we approach New Year’s Eve, made even more potent for being the end of a decade, yay, a ten year review! It is literal madness.

My personal subscription to madness was to do the same thing but to expect different results. Road to insanity, apparently. In many ways this Christmas was the same as ever; we were at home, there were traditions observed, a set of festive routines and regularities that gave the comforting air of repetition and surety. Yet underneath, it was a seething, emotional mess with a gaping hole in it. My overriding feeling come daybreak on Christmas Day: we should have fled, done something totally different, gone to the Outer Hebrides, another hemisphere, the moon, literally anywhere but here. But there was no escape – even in the Outer Hebrides – one must go through the motions, despite the pain or loss or confusion. The requirement to ‘do’ Christmas is so ensconced in us, in our childhood selves, in our societal constructs, in our obligation to our own children, that we succumb, and participate, even though it is an endurance like no other.

So happy 2nd January. Thank f**k that’s over. For those who loved it and had a social media presence to match, I applaud you. I have been there! It’s fabulous isn’t it? But know that one day the paper crown might slip. It’ll be OK when it does, you will learn new things, you will broaden and welcome its lessons, despite yourself. These milestones, these markers, they are necessary in human life however you come to experience them. Then, you may be like me, welcoming in the new year sat in your dark garden by candlelight, with your surly fourteen year old son and two dogs (one of whom was wearing the cone of shame because he has a warty tail). You’ll be in your pyjamas and a big coat, hood up, cheap Prosecco in hand (because you won’t wanna waste the good stuff on this shit show), and as midnight strikes, you’ll look at the stars, and the fireworks bursting on the horizon and you’ll know (hope?), despite all evidence to the contrary: you are not alone.

It’ll be OK. Welcome 2020, I’ve got high hopes for you.

Photo by Stanislav Kondratiev on Unsplash

Inertia

18th December 2019 · Leave a Comment

Last minute decisions are a good idea. It seems, with seismic life change, that things which used to be insurmountable, are less so. I now look back on what I’ll call ‘The Years of Inertia’. I’d trace this from the point I left my corporate job/turned forty/had teenagers, and spent the best part of five years trying to figure my shit out. There are subtleties to each of those elements; not working gave ample time for reflection, and ceased a monthly salary which had, until then, defined me. Turning forty was a blizzard of feelings about life, myself and what it all meant. Do you know what it all means? Having teenagers is a profound shift to the all-consuming role of mother; children start to emerge as fledging adults, they are their own people, part of your work is done.

These three preoccupations, along with a long, long term marriage, conspired to form a mucky, opaque entanglement which led to inertia. Literally speaking, I could not move quickly in any direction for fear. I was sloth-like, hanging on, willing the world to stop changing around me. I now recognise this affliction in many others I observe, I see it all over, especially in my cohort of educated women. There is a sense that we have everything we always wanted, don’t we? Why mess with it? Yet, with inertia comes stagnation and frustration. Inertia is, by definition, not good long term. Meanwhile fear, which had dressed up in all sorts of guises, was a guest persistently lurking in the corner. An external force needs to come along to challenge the existing state.

Then, I can report, all bets are off.

I used to read and reread a book called ‘Feel Your Fear but Do it Anyway‘ (I did love a self help book or two – or fifty – when I was living ‘The Years of Inertia’). Self help books provided the kind of theoretical forward motion that inaction hides in its folds. The premise of the book was, as described in the title, to do it anyway and to keep doing it. That, the author said, was the answer.

But when the fear is a lurking presence, and not an obvious trigger (like spiders, or heights), it’s hard to know whether you’re facing it. It’s too easy to turn your back on it, or pretend it’s not there. I have a blonde-haired friend who is a no-nonsense kind of person. One could describe her as fearless as she doesn’t manifest the usual kind of trepidation that is common in women. In a way she behaves more like a man. She doesn’t question her occupancy in the world and is a proponent of ‘getting on with it’. She also doesn’t ‘do’ guilt, considers it as a bit pointless and even self-indulgent. Don’t feel guilty; do something more useful. I have huge admiration for this friend for that very reason. She is one of the most attractive women I have ever met. Fear is not an attractive trait. Whilst it can lead to better decisions in a long, drawn-out sense, it is unsexy in its application. If there is a crisis, we want a leader, someone who inspires. Maybe this is why the ubiquitous ‘mid life crisis’ is lauded as an existential mess, it’s rooted in fear and there can be no leader to take you out of it, other than yourself.

I think a lot about this.

Here are some good things to do when you feel fear or intertia, or both.

Go for a run. Book a trip to a place where nothing is the same as where you are from. I have had the good fortune to do this repeatedly and it works. Sell stuff on Ebay, even the good stuff that you are attached to. Sell more. Completely alter your routine. Inertia loves sameness. Make your sleep a priority; all sleep is good sleep. But the kind of sleep which guides you through change is restorative, purifying, worth every second. Watch those around you. Identify inertia in the faces of others. Question and challenge them. Stop giving a f*ck what people think. What people think is one of the biggest prohibiting factors in everyone’s minds. Why does it matter so very much? I smell a conspiracy. Clash leopard print with florals. Smile at every person who serves you in public; and ask them how they are. They will be shocked to have been asked and then they will ask you back and you will have a conversation and be reminded that the world is big. There is more. It does not begin and end with the narrative you are telling yourself, on repeat, in your head. Identify those friends who don’t do fear and guilt and watch what happens. How do they live? Get good wifi, speed is of the essence. Practice kindness – throw that stuff around like confetti, as the saying goes – give even to those who really, truly don’t deserve it. Listen more, speak less. Have a place, be it a journal you write in, or if you’re me, a Patreon page where you publish, and speak your own truth. Savour the liberation. Watch Beyoncé’s ‘Homecoming‘ on Netflix because seriously, it’s like liquid gold, mercurial, the opposite of inertia. Make a last minute decision. Go on.

Photo by Sylvie Tittel on Unsplash

Reading, listening, thinking…

1st December 2019 · Leave a Comment

I listen to audiobooks now more than I read in the static, sit with a book kind of way, purely because it can be done during parts of the day when I am otherwise engaged. This means I have to concentrate really hard on the language when I am driving, or ironing, or walking. On certain routes of my morning run, come pivotal parts of stories, and now when I revisit those places, the words of those writers still ring in my ears.

I listened to the audiobook of ‘Three Women’ by Lisa Taddeo, a complex work written after the author spent eight years immersed in the stories of three women in America, exploring the complexities of their sexual desires, and their relationships. It’s not aways what it seems, the myriad factors of female sexual desire are presented in an almost-too-much manner, mirroring that exact moment when something feels almost too much. The way in which this book saunters between the tales of the women works particularly well for audio, notably because Mena Suvuri reads one part so evocatively. The idea that women are open about what they want is a fallacy; it exposes a hidden inner life to the one women present to the world, because so many female sensibilities have been suggested, through decades, generations, centuries of societal behaviour. By the way, I have written more in depth about this on my Patreon page, for those readers who wish to subscribe.

The flip side of this is that I am also reading ‘The Descent of Man’ by Grayson Perry, which I am doing in old fashioned form. This is short, densely clever polemic on the concept of masculinity. Grayson Perry, who is known for being an artist, for cross-dressing and I suppose, for being married to Philippa Perry the psychologist. So rarely are men known for the woman they are married to – more often the other way around. This book is something I dip into, usually when I am killing time on the train or in a coffee shop, and it houses concepts which again, are almost too much to take. He unpicks with deft and clarity the ways in which we accept gender principles in society that have been passed down for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Blew my mind.

My writing has been split into weighty (gender politics and memoir), and light (the book with ‘fuck’ in the title) and I love the contrast. After oh-so-many-years of procrastinating about what to write, it’s becoming more clear, and I see it’s true what every motivational Instagram site says in quotes: some shit has to go down in your life before you sort yourself out. Get forward propulsion. Learn. Open yourself up. Trust the cosmic universe. Whatever the hell it is. I note that for me, it’s coming together in words, as I suppose I always suspected, or hoped it might.

I also note that the influence of podcasts is becoming pervasive. People now talk, referring to what they have heard in podcasts, or at least I find that amongst conversations I overhear. The candour with which podcast guests speak when in conversation is the key; it’s not the same as being interviewed for TV or radio. It is a medium entirely different and as such, it gives a perspective which feels shared, and willing, rather than forced or monitored. Favourites for revelation are How to Fail, The High Low, Happy Place, Esther Perel, So Lucky by Dawn O’Porter (newly launched).

I guess with podcasts you need never be entirely alone, there is always someone to listen to and be ‘with’. But for me it’s about the openness. When writing, it is that route into consciousness that matters. For reader (or listeners) to either learn something new, or to recognise something known.

Otherwise life is spent in a series of days working it out, and gently avoiding the prospect of Christmas which looms large every year, but this year in particular. I already have a slight longing to be half way through January, or in next June, or even next December, when maybe life might have regulated. But then, with that regulation may come the procrastination again, so I should make the best of the decisiveness that exists now.

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Changes

28th October 2019 · Leave a Comment

There’s a lot of talk about change and growth. It goes like this: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. This is what informs a gazillion Instagram quotes. They say if times are hard, it will pass, and you will survive. In this form of self-realisation, which I suspect comes mainly in mid-life, you will be broken down first, and remade. This is the sort of thing people say to me. Oh and also – did you know? Time heals. Thank you very much. My favourite platitude in this regard is one which describes the life cycle of the butterfly; from caterpillar to chrysalis and onwards. A series of weird elemental processes which turn the grub into a pod, containing only itself. Let’s sit with that for a moment. A chrysalis full of oneself. There’s an emergence afterwards, a reformation to a beautiful butterfly. A trippy concept, I grant you. We like this idea, it’s an enduring touchstone to anyone who grew up reading ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ which can, I now see, be considered a guidebook to life. The caterpillar didn’t chose its transformation, it was subject to a greater force of change, determined by nature. Spoiler alert: it all turned out ok.

This sort of cosmic, mumbo-jumbo bullshit is what makes my days go quicker, and I spend time observing my reaction to change by telling myself, without blinking, that the universe sent me a shit-bomb just so that I could become the chrysalis. It’s all part of the wider plan. Surely? I will reach the butterfly stage, one day. Although, I’ve got to say, I was fairly happy being the caterpillar. I thought that was just fine. Little did I know that caterpillars don’t stay caterpillars.

There are so many nuances and swings of emotion right now, it’s impossible to keep hold of any feeling for any amount of time. Feelings peddle through (‘you are not your thoughts!’), as if there is a Tour de France of emotion cycling through my mind. Who is wearing the infamous ‘yellow jersey’? Presently taking the lead, is my husband, from whom I am now separated, followed by our children. What is the term in cycling; slip-streaming?

When everything you knew to be solid ground is quaking (see previous post on tectonic plates for an extension of this concept), it can be hard to stay upright. I’m told that this is also OK. Do not worry. The tremors will lessen and eventually, everything will settle. Look at San Francisco, which has stood on the San Andreas fault for millennia. All OK. Golden Gate still up. Alcatraz still spooky. Pier 39 still laden with seals basking in the afternoon sunshine. Incidentally, I’ve been to San Francisco a few times with my husband. I’ve been – with him – to pretty much every holiday/city break destination in the Northern Hemisphere.

Mental note: explore the Southern Hemisphere in future. See what I did there? Switch it up. ‘Embrace the new! Alter your habits!’

There are many, many words, some of which I write down, some of which will form my next book. I go to London, to a writing course and learn about myself and others, about their versions of a chrysalis, and we try to ascertain whether the world is ready for a written expression of our experience.

It’s all a bit high brow, but there is also, as ever with me, the frippery. Too much googling for clothes. Eyelash extensions. Puppy school. Roast dinners. Ikea on stormy nights with my daughter, just for the meatballs. Frothy films featuring Nancy Myers interiors. Dinner parties frequented by married friends. Improving my running times. Far too much googling. Falling asleep more slowly than I used to.

In the midst, my house started to inexplicably stink. The kind of acrid stench that makes your eyes water. I searched everywhere for the source, turning out cupboards, disinfecting floors, but nothing. I smelled a mouse or a rat. I thought it might be stuck in my drainpipes, which are, in an old farmhouse, a law unto themselves. The prospect of dealing with this unseen odour seemed to me to be unfair. Why the smell? Why my pipes? Who must I call to sort this problem? Then I reminded myself that sometimes in life there’s an unseen contributor, one you might fear but, in the end turns out to be insignificant and basic. It went on for a week. My children and I looked at each other crossly; why must we live with this? Whose idea was this? To live in the country, with rodents. This shit doesn’t happen in the city.

Then, when my husband had come to the house to drop off our son, the new puppy (a bundle of sweet-smelling fur, all puppy-dog eyes, love and tussle) bounded out with something dangling from her mouth. It looked like a skinny, grey rag. We cornered her, my husband and I, and did a strange dance to catch her with her prize. A dance which might have been normal and funny when he lived here, but now seems bizarre. An estranged couple in a shared, domestic pursuit. The puppy had a decomposed rat! The smell is lessening now, the air clearing, the rat a memory, still sharp but also discarded. I scroll through my Insta feed, I call my buddy, I have coffee with a friend, I text someone I used to know, and in future those I don’t, and the days go by in this chrysalis of mine.

Photo by Nick Tiemeyer on Unsplash

Dispatches

5th September 2019 · Leave a Comment

Those waking moments, half in and out of sleep, seem like they have a tone-setting influence to my day. I reach for my phone (who doesn’t?) and review overnight messages. Instagram plays too-important a role, but accounts like this one help. I saw a deceptively clever art installation at Glastonbury by Notes to Strangers. Something about it; the rawness, the humour and the honesty made me smile, to nod in appreciation. I tell anyone I meet about it. I ordered a print (you can pick from any that he publishes on his feed). Mine says ‘there’s a whole lot of muddling through’, which pretty much sums it up right now.

I started watching ‘Euphoria‘, which to a parent of teens is a bit like riding a terrifying amusement park ride; slick, heart-bumping, grinding and will unsettle you to your core, until you get off, and then it’s all great. When the adrenaline seeps away, you feel kinda dirty, but in a good way. Like when you eat Kentucky Fried Chicken.

So many things seems to refer to the Maldives at the moment; a place I went when I was a different person, just eight months ago. It crops up in all places, what I read and what I see. Or maybe I just notice because it was a screen saver to my dreams, in another life.

We collect a new puppy this weekend, a fact that I struggle to believe, but nonetheless the breeder diligently sends me photos of the gorgeous growing fur ball that will become ours. Our existing dog regards me with curiosity. My daughter messages me constantly in a state of abject excitement.

A crop of new books are delivered; a reading list for an endeavour I start in October. Nothing quite like that feeling of possibility; of pristine unread books.

The shells from Thailand still grace my dressing table, one in particular, a small stingray-shaped creamy arc, which I found on a deserted, untouched white island, somewhere in the waters beyond Koh Pha-Ngan. The shell reminds me of the place, bathing in the lukewarm waters off the shore, sifting the sand through our fingers, incredulous at the beauty. Still incredulous that such a place exists, right now. The world is large.

The kindness of strangers and friends floors me at this time of need, and I take deep, cleansing breaths of it, when I can. I roll the words grace and humility around in my mind, like you would a hold a sweet on your tongue. Feeling the weight of them and then they dissolve.

Building flat pack furniture, I slice my finger. My son says ‘are you going to faint, mummy?’ reminiscent of the time I sliced my hand delving in the dish washer and span out. I shake my head, and we go night time skateboarding down by the water, a wad of kitchen roll wrapped around my index finger. Children store up what they’ve experienced before, and it forms their expectations. Maybe it’s a good thing that this time, I remain conscious.

Photo by Julia Joppien on Unsplash

Fine

28th August 2019 · Leave a Comment

If you saw me and asked, I’d say I was fine. For as long as I remember, writing here was a normal, somewhat quiet pursuit for me. People would enquire if I wrote and re-wrote, or heavily edited what I published, and the answer was usually ‘no’. I wrote about my life, and later, about my studies, and writing books. My personal circumstances were in the foreground; no one writes on the internet and maintains absolute secrecy, it comes with the territory to be open. I realise now that writing in this way was all fine, as long as I was fine. If the ebb and flow of my life made me introspective, there was always something to write about to bridge the gap. As such, lots of people read along for years, and many of them have become my good and precious friends.

Of late though, I’d say that some shit has gone down in my life, and it’s caused everything to tilt on its axis. I realise how opaque that sentence sounds, and how irritating it is when those of us who curate an online presence clam up, and won’t share. The unspoken contract in social media is that honesty should prevail. But I have come to see that when life deals you a blow, you abruptly become aware that there’s a big audience watching. Something in human nature provokes us to lean in to the lives of others, and watch closely, especially when something bad has happened. I’ve done it before, for sure. But then I was part of the audience, whereas now I am an unwitting actress, in the main act.

Therefore, I might not write here so much, for a while. Let’s not be overdramatic, this revelation is hardly going to break the internet, but for those who wondered or who are interested, I am still here, still writing. The novel I previously wrote, in conjunction with the concept I’ve been carrying around in my head, has now been pumped full of oxygen, and I see that I have a book to write by Christmas. This feels as if it has been building, and my hesitation and inaction is turning to an urgent need to get what’s happened down on paper (or on screen at least). It was Hemingway who said; ‘write hard and clear about what hurts.’

Know that meanwhile, there are the dog days of summer, travel and reflections, teenagers and exam results (she smashed it). Bare feet, a fading tan from Thailand, white-washing my house. Amsterdam nights. A new puppy, arriving soon. There’s a crumpled linen feel, good and true but not perfect, as my children and I forge towards September; an impending sense of there being a new season ahead.

Photograph by Yoann Siloine on Unsplash