On the shelf

Ever thought how many people live their lives in books?

We are sailing...

So I'm all packed. Bright orange neoprene waterproofs, wellies, four jumpers, tights, long socks, a torch, three books, sunscreen, mossi guard, three woolly hats, a pair of gloves (no scarf as risk of strangulation) etc etc, and this time tomorrow I'll be sailing on the Corryvreckan off the West coast of Scotland. I'm excited, but slightly dreading it - what if I fall overboard? or have to eat squid? I'll post some pix when I'm back and you can all laugh at the tangerine package before you.

Papier Maché Life

There’s a heaviness in the air tonight. A lukewarm breeze floats through yawning sash windows, grazing soft white petunias as it comes. Our character sits on the sofa, tired but content , sated by Chinese noodle soup with salty chicken and rubbery spring onions. He thinks he’s happy, though the weight of the night air sits uneasily on his legs and there’s an ache in his head that he can’t shake. The sounds of the city drain in from outside, a microcosm of displaced life on an anonymous street. The gay Irish man next door is dining al fresco with a friend this evening. Their cutlery clatters amicably on solid plates. He envies their freshness, lounging outside in the cool night air. He wishes he could see them, but the hawthorn is prolific and sick, obscuring the view. They deserve privacy, he decides. Two ‘phone calls add to the hum of white noise, one from the friend he loves. She’s sad, contorted inside with paranoia and fear. He listens and sends clouds and petals – soft things – her way. He imagines here smiling, as he tells her for the thousandth time that it’s ok to feel down, that life is a papier maché lantern, beautiful to the eye, an iridescent glow emanating out, yet fragile as duck eggs, the delicate paper ready to ignite at any opportunity. We live between times, love, unloveliness, pain, fear, truth, beauty. They’re strangers yet they’re every bit at home on this journey of theirs through life and love. She listens graciously and agrees. They part, he bites his lip and gulps cold tea from a chipped mug. The breeze caresses his face, and he wipes it away with the back of his hand.

Saturday, 5.45pm

It's Saturday, 5.45pm. I'm indulgent, living a new kind of life. I lie under angora-soft covers and listen to the rain outside my window. It sounds like fresh peas being poured into a steel collander. Upstairs my flatmate is watching TV, ensconsed on blue sofa staring through a glass screen. For a moment our paths meet in unconscious thought, then diverge. The gentle pounding of the rain on the laurel hedge echoes a sadness feelings its way through my torso. But I love you. I love you. I don't care if you love me or not. I'll love you anyway.

Home

Late last night, in the cool familiarity of speckled London air, I dragged my weary, thinner-than-usual frame towards a silent doorway. I have never been quite so happy to be home, especially as hard purpley-blue creatures were scraping their way through cramping intestines with their rough pincers. My ride smiles and waves, so I turn and lift a yellowly hand in his direction. Keys are reunited to embrace familiar locks, two soft clicks and I'm in. The tiled hallway has an elegant quality at this hour - faint blue light accentuates 1940s charm held in crumbly walls. Three bags are half-pulled, half-carried to the top of the stairs and I slouch as the last one falls from weak shoulders. I love this house, I always have. My bed invites me in, beckoning with friendly sheets, the warm familarity of a pink herringbone coverlet. Hmmm. Sleep. A wave of increasing deadness caresses grateful limbs and I'm home. I'm home.

Friends

How did I grow up so fast? I woke up yesterday to the reality that I have among my friends:
some bankers
three youth workers
a singer
a paediatrician
six doctors
several nurses
a dentist
some lawyers
a womaniser
a musician
an ex-convict
a TV presenter
a florist
two models
and a magician.

Life was a whole lot more simple when we were all defined by the colour of our PE kit.

Honesty

We hide
Under our
Canopy of
Honesty,
Sometimes.

(A)long

Does love deplete? Like lonely eggs floating away each month? Do I love you any less today than yesterday, though we've never met? I think of you often; I see your smile on a hundred strangers. Grey-blue eyes search their faces in vain. You may not exist. You may not ever notice me, let alone love me. Time affects slow change here, and a year later I remain. Sitting, reading. Looking, being. Another year, and the first warm salt tears begin to work their way out of the corner of each eye. Seven months on, it's Christmas and the light is short and grey, the kind of light that invites sleep. It's just after two in the afternoon, and as I stir dark flakes of green tea into lukewarm water I look up from my book to see small intriguing eyes entering mine. Slowly, graciously, ordinarily, I realise you've been here all along.

Actions

This week I've been:

swimming in a lido, cold water grazing shocked skin
dancing
wearing too much lyrca
falling over
sitting with my leg up on the desk with an ice pack on my knee
enjoying the reaction of those who've never seen my hair straight before
eating lentils and raspberries
missing you
chatting with Italians
sleeping
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Will

Have you ever noticed how some people are way more stubborn than others? We wrap up this character trait in other terms - determined, driven, willful, headstrong, persevering - but they all mean the same thing. This filled my thoughts this morning, as I prised aching muscles and a fuzzy head out of bed earlier than normal. Clothes left out the night before hung on tired limbs, and the door shut behind me into blinding sunshine. An hour and a half, two bottles of water and much sweat later, I reach my destination. Cool azure water, shouting children, the Sunday paper and a good friend greet me. I'm overwhelmed - sunshine this good belongs in Italy, Greece, Spain, not in North London! I'm reminded of a cold winter's day, walking with my gorgeous sister on the heath, looking for Parliament Hill. We walked and walked, hands grew stiff and breath floated white on the air. Three hours past, yet my pleading to stop, give up already, was ignored. She was bashful, alive, determined, stubborn... Yet she was right, eventually we gradually ascended to the rounded peak. We stood, catching our breath in the cold and allowed the horizon to scan our eyes. At the bottom of the hill there was a pool, grey water lapped to the edges and the wind caressed a spiritless surface. Another day, another season. It feels like another life.

Disappointment

Man: Sorry to trouble you, but do you have a mirror I could borrow please?
Girl: A mirror, ummm, I think so, hang on [pause] It's in here somewhere...
Man: It's just that I had a tooth out yesterday and it's very sore, I'm not supposed to smoke, but I just smoked today and it's hurting.
Girl: Oh, I bet that's horrible. Here you go.
Man: Thank you. Do you mind if I take it over there, near the light?
Girl: No, that's fine, go ahead.
[a few seconds pass, the coffee machine hisses over piped music]
Man: Thank you very much. You are very beautiful, what's your name?
Girl: [hesitant] Julia.
Man: I'm Ted. Nice to meet you. I have terrible pain in my tooth. What do you do?
Girl: I work nearby, at X.
Man: Oh, yes I know it, you are very beautiful. How old are you?
Girl: Listen, I have to go. I have a meeting to get to. Nice to meet you though.
Man: Yes, nice to meet you. Thank you for the mirror.
[the door closes and clean air greets young skin]

Question

Why is it that all the guys who ask me out aren't ever the ones I actually want to have dinner with?

Anwers on a postcard.

Ballet

Next week I'm going to submit my body to a week's worth of plies, stretching, barre work, arrabesques... the arches of my feet enhanced by bloch elastosplit canvas, you can hardly call them shoes. I love ballet. I can't understand, or explain why... there's no freedom, only restriction. Muscles are forced unnaturally and feet wrecked, yet there's grace behind the pain, light creeping through the darkness. Far corners of my mind awake from years of slumber, feet and arms beat unfamiliar rhythms, sweat slides down my back, and in the corner of my eye I see someone in the mirror. She isn't me. For a flighting moment I leave myself and find newness in an assemblé.

What a difference a day makes

This weekend I've hopped on a Virgin Pedalino and leaned my way out of the city to my former life. I'm spending a few days with my family in the house I grew up in. My room is no longer my room. Each time I go back more of my hoarded belongings seem to have entered obscurity, lost forever to a charity shop. I don't really mind. Though I love the city like the paving stones are my long-lost friends, after Thursday's events I was kinda relieved to be breathing different air. London has changed. I have changed. Things will never be the same again. On the tube to Euston on Friday evening, I caught myself getting up way before my stop, so eager was I to leave the coffin underground that was choking my breath. I've never been one of those claustrophobic tube-haters, or a Ken Livingstone grumbler moaning about the price of a travelcard. I loved the tube, it was a bit exciting burrowing underground every day with thousands of others, watching strangers in stranger clothes with stranger habits, all pretending not to look at each other. I'm not sure it will ever be the same again. For now, I'm sweaty from cycling in the park with my sister, on the bikes we rode as teenagers. Now slightly less fit and more unsure of the way to the lake, we ride side-by-side reminiscing. Punctures and falling off miles from home, mum letting us swim in a lake with a red danger flag, the adrenelin of rushing down a steep incline with the wind in our air. People grow up. Bicycle chains rust. Lungs get smaller. Cities cry.

Control

Her life is out of control. She has no time. No space. No grace. Strangers grasp at her clothes as she walks past, shouting their demands and flailing in front of her dying eyes. She sees them but doesn't respond. She has no clean clothes. The fridge is bare. She hasn't called her parents for weeks. At lunch, she eats out at a scruffy Chinese cafe to save the bother of ingredients, collanders and greasy pans, an infinite choice of sauces. Once, she loved cooking - the hiss of sesame oil on a hot wok. Life has been overtaken by appointments, expectations, wrong motives, no meaning yes. She's sad and powerless. Her life is formless and empty. She begins to weep, slowly and deliberately, silent salty tears staining warm cheeks. She loves you.

city of lies

"When I lie on the floor and relax by listening to my breathing, I can hear the slower respirations of the city itself, a sound like the rumble of a surf: subway trains crowded with people who are teaching themselves how to be here."
Jonathan Franzen, 'First City' in How to Be Alone.

The city teaches us how to be, how to walk through its streets, run down train platforms, eat unfamiliar food until unfamiliarity becomes part of our familiar experience. We learn to feel at home even though we need an A-Z to find our friend's flat and Streetmap to get to a bar we never knew existed that's ten minutes walk from our front door. We live in blocks, hamster cages stacked up to the sky, our neighbours known not by name, but by irritation: the lady upstairs with the screaming baby, the family with the yapping dog, the girl who plays Xfm too loudly on Saturday mornings. We feed off the unfamiliar - it excites us to know there are infinite as yet undiscovered places within half-an-hour, yet the unfamiliar is not natural. By virtue of postmodern life we live in fear. We only buy latté from Starbucks, lest the feel of a strange cardboard cup disorientate. Lunch in a thousand cafés means a Prèt-a-Manger chicken and avocado wrap and a yoga bunny detox. I'm scared, not of the strange, or the new, but of a resignation, a subtle eroding of choice and experience that comes from living too long too fast too ugly in a city of lies.

Do you speak English?

Earlier today I stood up in front of 60-or-so people, of varying ages, heights, social classes, tastes in clothes, religious backgrounds, and talked for just less than an hour about a subject I'm more than passionate about. Ok, it was hot. Ok, it was 10am on a Saturday morning and the coffee was lukewarm. Ok, they got me and not Bono or Tony Blair... but they were so unresponsive! I couldn't believe it! I could have been demonstrating how to clean out a hamster's cage for all the interest they showed. During my talk I noticed:

1 woman asleep (later awoken by friend)
2 football-hooligan lookalikes scratching their heads repeatedly in uncomprehension
3 people leaving, 1 politely creeping out the side, two making a noisy exit
1 guy looking at his watch
my mate Phil smiling at me encouragingly.

Thank God for Phil! That's all I can say.

Uncontrollable

My life is out of control. Muzak hums constantly providing white-noise, a blanket on which I lie, powerless, as worlds, words, people, emails, voicemail rush past like gangly schoolboy legs flailing in a 100-metre sprint.

Where?

Where has all the silence gone?
Words fight through tired ears,
City-rumblings grind,
Ear-drums involuntarily vibrate.

Where has all the space gone?
People float past paranoid skin, bones,
Warm, squishy bodies dance,
A guy in a raincoat grazes an arm.

Where has all the truth gone?
Posters shout lies, half-truths
Once dismissed, now believed,
Lest we should have to think for ourselves.

You Elevate Ants

There's a bridge that
Reaches its thin finger
Over The Thames,
Graciously, selflessly,
Elevanting ants like me.
I'm alone, a speck in the eye
Of this diseased city
Breathing in quasi-fresh air
Blowing across muddy water.
I pause, turn sideways and
Lean against the silvery edge.
A sky full of promise
Of brighter times looms
Over building-block streets.
Skylight, not-quite-sunlight,
Echoes underneath pinafore-grey irises,
And for twenty-six seconds
Stillness graces my thoughts.