London Calling?

I came back from San Francisco and I hated London.  I've never had that feeling about London before, but where it had always been exciting and vibrant, it was suddenly closed in and narrow and full of hollow people.  I'm sure that in large part the reason for this was what I'd left behind in San Francisco.  Who.  But more than that.  I loved how, at least in the parts I was hanging out in, I could really feel that it was a city for everyone, from all walks of life and all backgrounds.  The London I know is a homogeneous place of well educated well off people - often monotonous and at worst stagnant.

I fully admit that this is a mere impression, limited as much by my own background and what I have so far found in London.  There's a lot more to the place than the people on the train and the people in the offices in the City, but they are the ones I see all the time.  And they all have more to them I would hope than the commute, the job and an expensive bed they hardly see.  I'm just worried that many of them don't.  I love my friends, and I know them well enough to know that they have dreams that go further than what they happen to be doing right now.  That the job isn't the be all and end all.  We are all of us in that circle the middle class products of a middle class upbringing and a thorough education.  Factory made, almost.  There hasn't been a lot of space for mutation or variation to appear.  I guess I'm concerned that where such things do appear they are either ignored or papered over, rather than grown and developed and encouraged and valued.  

[Ha.  Picking something more or less at random to listen to while writing, I hit The Clash and find myself listening to London Calling, all about the other bits of London - which definitely exist even if I don't see them so much for myself.]

It's comforting and reassuring and impervious and safe, that fairly moneyed, fairly engaging existence.  That's good as far as it goes.  I'm very lucky indeed to have been born when I was to who I was, I know that.  I'm allowed to be a free independent modern woman, able to make my own living.  But it's a well-worn path - exactly what each of us was expected to do when our parents sent us all off at good schools at the age of 4.  The people who start out as the children of one earnings bracket step up to take their parents' places.  They even do the very same jobs their parents do.  Both of my close lawyer friends are the children of lawyers. Of course there are logical reasons for this to happen even though we all might rather it was rather less rigid than it seems to be.  Elaine (who is Irish) said to me a few months ago that she was always amazed at how class ridden British* society is, how little social mobility there is.  I am intrigued to find that it is less so in other countries, though relieved that it isn't the same everywhere - perhaps Britain can change.

Tom put it the best - 'people are following life, not chasing it'.  It's very easy to keep putting one foot in front of the other along the clear course and never to look to right or left.  I don't want to be that person.  I want to take in the view at the very least and wonder all the time about whether it would be better to drop out of the race and try out the path I can see over there.  It's not the path itself that is wrong, it is the blind choosing of it.  The passivity of never imagining anything different.  I should say that I haven't had this conversation with any of these people - it may very well be that everybody I know has thought long and hard about what else they could be doing and is well aware of what else is out there and how other people live, for them to choose if they want to.  It's what I'm doing, after all, or will be if my civil service job ever materialises. I am not in any way indicting or judging my friends for following it.  Just hoping that they are active in choice.

But it is awkward to keep looking around you.  I remember a conversation I had with my dad when I was 14 or so, when I said I believed that there was always hope, whatever happened.  He said that that was an uncomfortable way to live because it meant that one would never be content with what one actually had.  Maybe the day-dreaming about life as a chef or a gardener, both of which are well outside the ordered 9am to 1am city job spec, is the same - never content with the good of what is in front of me, not quite grateful for what I have.  I'm trying to avoid that too, without numbing myself.  Perhaps what I'm really saying is something I've talked about before, about ringing everything out of every experience and being aware of what experiences are available - not letting them roll on by without a glance.

*Yes, British.  I think this certainly still happens in Scotland and Northern Ireland and Wales, too.  The Irish Republic is different.

Repetitive.

It's amazing, music. How a single song will take you somewhere you never imagined you could remember that clearly.

'Graceland', and my stomach is knotting that I won't see her again, that she's gone. Until I remember she hasn't, and I can just feel the intensity of that original emotion still there and squirming.

'Blessed be the God and Father' and I'm 10 in the choir stalls in Ashwell. 'Lead me Lord' and I'm a similar age, in my cabin bed with my dad singing me to sleep.

'Walking in Memphis' and I'm in a sunny room in an ancient college, watching someone sing his heart out for the love of it, with one of my best friends in the whole world ever playing the piano and enjoying it just as much.

'The Sunscreen Song' and I'm 14 in an RE class, watching the eyes of one of the most short-lived but influential teachers I ever had as he played it to us at the request of a girl whose presence shaped my teens, albeit indirectly.

'I don't know how to love him' and I'm 17 or so, on stage and singing it wrong.

'Living on a prayer' and I'm 16 walking along a street in Melbourne with 4 other girls dressed in tracksuits (lacrosse tour), singing at the tops of our gravelly hungover voices.

'I will survive' and I'm in a hotel on the Isle of Wight, aged 9 again, fighting with the girls I shared a room with that trip. Or I'm in the kitchen in St Albans, shouting at my dad while the TV plays the Weetabix ad version of the song, about alligator dentistry.

Bellowhead's 'Prickle-Eye Bush' and I'm in a car with T and singing because we've listened to the song so many times we know it by heart.

'Canonball' (Damien Rice) and Andy's playing it next door. Or I'm crying, from a far earlier moment - that passed, and is now important for something not sad.

Eel's 'I like Birds' and I'm sitting with Dan and Steve in that funny flat with two presences so different but related and definitely faded a little now.

How many times will it strike me? I love that music has this kind of effect. I should write a real post, or finish a poem, or both... A list of songs and moments is not really worth public consumption, except for those who might remember the same moments. I must take more photos.

Clean slates and baglust.

I've been a bit useless. I think if I had a more regular life I'd be better at the blogging thing. I do enjoy it, but I haven't had a great deal of time recently. Not enough time to think about things deeply enough. I've written bits and pieces in my journal, but nothing very much on here. I haven't read a great deal that has excited me and I haven't had any great cultural experiences. Mostly, I've been eating, sleeping, spending time with people I love and making things for people I care about. I'm making Carl a cookery book for his birthday. His email asking for it went as follows:

Subject: For myyy birthdaaayyy

You can get me some sex! Not, you know, directly, but through referred
skill.

I cook, occasionally, and most of what could be deemed impressive
knowledge has come from you (eg, frying veg with cumin or chilli flakes,
veg chilli, ubercrispycake, frying salmon...). But I keep having to ask,
cause my filing system is flawed, so I think to save the frequent
lunchtime emails to you getting the information again, here's what you
could do:

If you write down in a hardback notebook or something the recipes for
things that suit my particular cooking limitations...
including all the stuff I should already know but probably have
simplified in my head to be not quite as good as they originally were...

So stuff like:
veg chilli,
ubercrispycake,
curry
fajitas

Anything else you can think of that's easy and doesn't take too long
(cause it'll take me twice as long as you) and can be carried out by
someone relatively clever but not at all good at multitasking and
generally mentally slowed by a day at work.

This will be an awesome thing you could do that no-one else can. :¬)

xx

...Carl

I can't work out whether this is a present for him or just him being nice to me. He DOES ask me for cooking things sometimes, and putting those things together in a good way is something I can do. I cook for and with him on a something approaching weekly basis [exciting aside: will be more often if we DO end up living together, but that's a whole other story...] - nothing very dramatic, just ordinary things that I like to eat, that fill me up and are reasonably healthy and (important) quite cheap. But I'm so flattered to be asked. I like that it means that Carl likes the food I cook, and the fact that he has gone so far as to ask me to write down my recipes so that he can use them himself has given me one huge warm fuzzy glow. For the record, the boy is a perfectly acceptable cook, he just doesn't really get excited about food in the same slightly obsessive way that I do. This is not a bad thing. Anyway. Thanks, Carl. :-)

I like making things that people enjoy eating and that I enjoy eating. Something of the mother in me, I guess. Or just something of the instant gratification of seeing people enjoying what I make. I love food, and I like to share things that excite me with my friends, so that they can be excited about it too. In reality, I don't know THAT many people that are excited by dried beans or peculiar Mexican herbs (at least ones that you can't smoke), but when I make them into things I like to think that people begin to see the point. And everyone can be excited by interesting sorts of chocolate and things you can do with that.

If I ask you if I can turn up at your house and cook you dinner, it really isn't me doing you the favour but me asking you for the favour. Just a warning, though, if I ever cook for you: I am possessive of my kitchen, even if it's your kitchen. I'm very, very bossy when it comes to cooking. Comes of caring about it, I guess. I'm better behaved than I used to be, which is a product of knowing more people who really care about cooking. If I'm in your kitchen getting in the way or genuinely being nagging or jumping to change things, REALLY don't feel bad about telling me to go next door and not get involved, or to attach me to the sink and the washing up by a short leash. That way, I can't annoy you by leaning over your shoulder and going 'I think it needs some chilli and lemon juice' (the two things I usually consider ANY dish to be in need of). Do not let me patronise you, I don't mean to, I just get over-enthusiastic.

I like the fact that I can cook something every day, so disasters get written over and I can forget about them and move on. Any cringeworthy mistakes can be anhilated with successes, or just by the sheer volume of non-disasters. This is important...I need to be able to overlay bad errors with better achievements. I'm dependent on past experiences for current self esteem. Does everyone have that? I'm fine provided the LAST thing I did, in any area of my life, wasn't one I'm ashamed of. There are many things in my life I'm ashamed of, but provided the LAST one in any given category went ok, then I'm ok. I'm stuck if the last thing in a category is the Last Thing, and I can't over-write it. THAT is the point when my self-esteem takes a permanent knock and I look to see if I can re-assign categories to overlap the one where I failed. Sometimes I can and sometimes I can't. In food, I can. Always. I eat every day, and I cook meals for people regularly enough that I can overlay food memories. At least in MY head, which is what matters for this purpose.

Moral: Things that could be regarded as repetitive can be incredibly satisfying. It's probably a life lesson, if only for me.



In other news, I have developed an obsession with this bag. I want the green version* but it appears to be out of stock. There's an offer for the People Tree in this Guardian article. Such things are dangerous. I thoroughly approve of the People Tree. They make beautiful clothing (they even have and outlet via Topshop), and they have ethics I'd love to be able to afford to endorse more in my clothing shopping - fair trade and responsibly sourced from organic cotton. Everyone knows garment workers are some of the most poorly paid in the world, and cotton is one of the world's most chemically treated crops. Wikipedia says that it uses 'approximately 25% of the world's insecticides and 10% of the world's pesticides', which is more or less what I've heard elsewhere. So if possible, I'd like to support the People Tree. BUT, I can't afford to until after the end of the month (cars are very expensive things, this month). And I have a SEVERE case of baglust. BUT, even after the end of the month, I mostly need summer tops, not new bags. *sigh*. But all of my 3 readers, YOU should all go and look at the People Tree website and see what you think. I reckon they're close to the most affordable of the ethical clothing outlets out there, not that I've conducted exhaustive research, and they're doing an important job.


*I ALWAYS want the green version

Not finished, I suspect.

My Easter

Make the best of it, my father said.
As though it were no hotwater mislaid keys sixfeet
of snow carcrash (no one hurt).
As though earth did not shake rocks
crack curtain split
and light did not flash
over silver (bromide) like nova through history.
He was keepcalm and carryon stiff
upperlip terror__________alert
No glow (worm): the blinded.
Me she we splitlocked
the blowtorch blue Light of the world.

Did you see the unknown soldieress walk again?

Heartbeat.

I was sitting in peaceful, dim old Great St Mary's. GSM. The Grim. I love large empty spaces. Auditoria are great. I used to go and sit in the pitch pitch black of the Abbey Theatre, with even the exit signs switched off, and just drink in the silence. Warm and dark. Womblike, I suppose, though I never felt enclosed by it. I have always felt much more free and safe in the dark. I spent my teens walking about the dark streets where I lived, sometimes with a friend and sometimes not. I was often miserable, and I walked and cried and felt sorry for myself in a wonderfully teen-aged fashion. It really wasn't a very safe thing to do, as a young girl on reasonably dodgy roads chosen specifically because they were deserted and dark. But I felt a weight lift every time I did it. I could look up at the dark and the moon and remember that things were bigger than the here and now. It's not a feeling I get in ordinary daylight - the light has to be special if it's there, making the humdrum stranger. Bright summer sunlight through leaves, the perfect reflection in glass water, the dark light in a storm. These things do the same. Big, quiet, man-made spaces have a similar effect. They stand, bigger than their purpose, something beyond what they were created for. There is a permanence to them that does not exist in their creators. That church is not particularly old, or even that beautiful. There are beautiful things in it - the magistus above the altar is one of the more lovely of its type and though the lights weren't on it, the gold leaf gleamed in the dull of the winter twilight. It wasn't even that quiet in there, so central as it is and it still being fully afternoon. But it was peaceful, and I was alone. I do not have connections enough to it as a place to feel real affection for it - not like St Mary's in Ashwell, that is still on several levels the home of my heart, if that had to be somewhere physical. So many memories it holds, and such a feeling of being rooted, there. But GSM is important to me. I went there when Paddy died. I needed to feel as though I was doing something and the ritual of evensong was soothing. And there was music. There still is music. It was time for choir practice.

Music in the dark.

Darkness is important. It is freedom. No-one to see me. I can hide in it. I don't have to see anything and or understand anything. Icy moonlight on the half-sunk river boat by the old iron bridge that is itself relaxing into the embrace of the water does not require anything from me - even in my contorted mind.

My mood had been following the music tonight. We started with Purcell 'My beloved spake', which sets the Song of Solomon, 2:10-13 ([10]My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. [11]For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; [12]The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; [13]The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.). Controlled and renaissance, but complex. The tone of the music and the tone of the words are at odds, and it slips out of perfect comprehension. The Song of Solomon always gets me - a confused and incomprehensible love poem written 3,000 years ago and still potent. Tablets of stone. Who cares to whom the speakers refer? Then there was Harris - 'Strengthen ye the weak hands' (Isaiah 35), which is dramatic and strong and lyrical. And the writer of Isaiah understands poetry - imagery and beauty through it, which the composers point up. That passage is stern and demanding, but offering comfort with conditions. Hard. And as we left, there was a copy of Cosi Fan tutte in the narthex, with 'Una donna quindici anni' in it, for me to sing with frenetic teenage false confidence. It took the distance home from church to calm down from the crazy Mozart, through dramatic Harris to melancholy and luminous Vaughan Williams, which reflected in the moonlight from the boat and showed me gentleness. I wish I had recordings of all of them - I have sheet music of some, at least.

I know the world does not ask the things of me that I imagine it does. I know that the relationships that matter are not the ones where anyone is making any account of who does what for whom when. I know there is no need to try to achieve the nebulous success without a form that drives me. I know these things with one half of my mind. But on the other side there is that illogical unbending wrong belief that these are things that matter, and I swing around it like a dog on a chain - only able to move so far.

I am not an animal; I can think my way out of here. Can't I? Eventually, I can work out how to unclip the chain, wear out the collar or uproot the bar. With help, because paws aren't good for that. I can do that. I think. But I must ask for that help. It is there. I have to understand how the chain is made and put together, and then I will be able to see the weaknesses of it.

Ringing practise.

Something about bells over London. Walking along Borough High Street, tired to my bones with head aching and eyes itching on an unforgiving grizzly February evening, I suddenly heard the Southwark bells tumbling out over the sound of traffic and trains. They cut through the garish colours and lights and battered at concrete and the dented steel. They brightened dingy puddles in the patched pavements. They reminded me how much more there is to this existence than the humdrum and everyday grind of vehicles and mundanity. A glittering flash of sound among the half-blanked hiss reminding me to live for the moment and the experience - not in money or work or past or future or other unconnected people's existences. A life full of oil drops on fishing line. A necklace of memories. Glittering like beads. Each one as close to the last as before, so that the whole thing is dense with life. This is the aim of being alive.

Questions of self.

This is fascinating. I don't know very much about multiple personality disorder*, but this is an amazing picture of it. It's a fascinating literary device, turning up all over the place in books and films and so on. Terry Pratchett uses it a fair amount, and then there's Fight Club - though having read the article I would suggest that most of these depictions are nowhere close to accurate. To be fair to them, I suspect they're not really intended to be.

The question I want to ask is how does that woman name her 'alters'? Because they clearly all do have names and are recognisable to her and her therapist. Is it like the Pratchett concept - that when you name something you give it existence on a higher level? Everyone has aspects to themselves; you're a different person in every situation with everyone you meet or know. It's a carefully judged performance based on assessing your relative status, expectations, motives and so on - Stanislavskian given circumstances. That's how we make up ourselves, so often, in relation to others around us. The core of an individual I guess can be regarded as those elements which can always be found in each persona we put on.

This woman has elements of her character that take on aspects of her life - several are children; several are part of her career; one takes on her aspect as a mother. I'm intrigued to know about the mechanics of how it works. Is there a centre self that carries the memories? The way that the article runs, it seems there must be. Do the alters retain memories? But she tells us that there are huge black spaces in her life, where she has been someone else. It's a difficult thing to comprehend. I suppose I could go an read the book, but I don't actually want to. Reading someone else's neuroses would be hard. It would feel very prying. The article is enough for a flavour and to prompt some thinking about definition.

I remember getting quite upset when I was 18 or so, that I didn't know who I was because as far as I was concerned I become someone entirely different with each group of people. And they were very different too - are still in some ways. The biggest split for me is the person I am around my family and the person I am around everyone else. As far as my relationship with my parents goes, 18 was the worst point. They had declared they were moving to Cornwall and that I could do as I liked, and I was distraught. With them, I was sullen and closed and dutiful and dull. All to do with protecting them and trying not to disturb the image of me that they were comfortable with. I was one person there. It was different outside; I could choose more. I could be the clever weird one at school, the obsessive still slightly weird but mostly accepted one with the youth theatre crowd, the enthusiastic naive youngster with the theatre adults, the unpopular but sort of useful one with the lacrosse crowd, the goodie-two-shoes in choir...and more. Is it part of growing up, weaving those aspects together into some sort of whole? I remember noticing when I saw people who'd been away at uni for any length of time that they seemed to have become more themselves than they had been at school. They were more concrete. Quite a large part of that is just to do with becoming more comfortable with themselves having settled into a new situation where nobody knows their history and they can be accepted without question. Quite a lot of it too is to do with getting used to oneself...aligning all the thread of persona together into a rope that wears itself denser as time goes on and the strands rub together - a more coherent whole.

I don't remember that happening to me in the way I noticed it happening to others. A lot of people commented to me that I'd barely changed since I was 12. I hadn't in many ways, but in many ways neither had they. As I said, they had just become more themselves. I have always been a bit afraid of change. Everyone is, I guess, but I have a suspicion there was something unhealthy about the way I viewed it. I did a fair amount of growing up through being forced to re-examine my assumptions about myself in therapy, and was thence kick-started into trying to understand myself a bit more. I don't in any way think I'm there. The day that I feel I understand will be the day that life ceases to be worth living. Ditto the day I feel I have grown up, though the two concepts are nearly synonymous.

This woman suffered terrible terrible abuse, and came out of it able to function. Our bodies and our minds are amazing things. She found the strength to carry on giving to the rest of the world, despite that. It's almost mindboggling. Despite everything, to remain that strong. Makes one feel humbled, really.


*Can anyone help me to the name of a film where the central male character has the illness and commits a series of murders? I remember it being a great film but I can't remember the name. Typical. It wasn't Fight Club. I'm SO bad at names.

This is for you. Called: I love you.

Three tiny words. Eight letters or ten characters. Five vowels and five distinct vowel sounds (count them). Three consonants, none of them plosive or percussive or in any other way harsh. One glottal stop, or 'voiceless glottal plosive', according to Wikipedia. Why does so much hang on them? The softness of the phonetics means they're easy on the ear and easy to say, once you get past the awkward glottal at the beginning - which makes them hard to start to say. 'Je t'aime' ('I like you') or j'adore ('I adore you') are not the same. 'T'estimo' (Catalan - 'I esteem you') is even worse. Liking, adoration, esteem, are fine emotions, but they are aspects of love and not the whole. Adoration puts an object on a pedestal; liking does not convey the urgency; esteem is formal and distant. Gaelic makes more effort - there's a whole list.*

- Gráím thú (I love you)
Simple enough, that. Like the English, though, it's imprecise. A cipher for a million things. Shorthand, in the way that a hug or a touch is, for feelings that would take a lifetime to express in words. That would never be complete. That can't be precise or complete, because words don't cover all of the elements in the right ways, all at the same time. Everything that follows is part of this phrase - it has to be all-encompassing, in as many senses as I can think of. But it remains a code.

- Tugaim cion duit (I give you affection)
- Tá cion agam ort (I have affection for you)
- Tá mé ceanúil ort (I have affection for you)
Three ways of saying 'I care', but 'care' is not enough for the whole feeling. 'Having affection' is better than 'adoring' or 'esteeming', though. Better even than 'liking', because one can like many things in a purely cerebral way; it does not demand the involvement of emotions. Affection is human and warm. Close, safe, content. It's curled up on the couch under a blanket watching a film with that person and the cat. It's not about thinking or analysing. It is coming down to find your breakfast laid out for you in the kitchen. It's not about pain. It is safe and easy and content and close. This is love, too, on one day or at one time. Not all the time. It doesn't show the pain or the danger or the exhilaration or the need or the mania, the heights and the depths. It is level, safe. A part, not the whole.

- Tá grá agam duit (I have love for you)
- Táim i ngrá leat (I'm in love with you)
The distinction between loving and being in love is important. If I have ever said 'I love you', I have been certain of meaning the first of these - nobody ever believe otherwise. I love easily, for reasons I am rarely able to fathom until I get some distance. I may not have been certain about the second. I may have believed that I knew what I was talking about, but I may not really have known underneath. Almost, not quite, every time I fall in love, I feel that I have never been in love before. Maybe I just fall harder each time. I certainly understand more, and seem to stretch and grow with each time. So that the last time I expand so much I feel enormous. Great. Empowered. Alive. Loving someone is the extension of affection, going deeper and further, but it ultimately lacks the urgency of being in love. I'm not sure that the need is there in loving, and it is fundamental to being in love. It hurts when you give up something you love, and you miss and you hurt - but you aren't made less in the same way? Being in love is mutual, and you can love someone who doesn't love you back - and if they don't love you in the same way, then you can never be more than yourself, because they do not give totally of themselves. Being in love with someone, makes you more than yourself. I think that could almost be the definition, at least for me. [How much 'romance', in the most pejorative way of inflecting that word, can I betray in myself? Quite a lot, probably. I only like to pretend I'm a cynic, I suspect.] The two become more than the sum of the parts, in the way that two building blocks can interlock and form something entirely different. One brick is a brick; two bricks can be a wall, and if their shapes are right, they need never come apart once they have come together. And it is circular, never ending conversations that have to stop because it's four hours past too late where there isn't a moment's silence and you have gone so many places that you wouldn't be able to visit even with anyone else and you have held one another and talked with touch as well as voices aware of nothing outside the compass of yourselves, but since the whole world is in that space what is left? and it is sex that makes your body shiver with just the thought and it is when you have found out the souls of one another and discovered them fractal and total and it is silence understanding without contact and the reason to get out of bed and the reason to go back and it is finding yourself stripped naked and it being ok and stripping the other to their core in your turn and finding them beautiful and being beautiful because they find you so and this list is trite and partial. It is the whole of these and more, and it changes and it ebbs and it flows, always greater than it would be possible to be alone. And people settle for 'affection', for 'comfortable', for 'suits me', for 'safe' - for an image of happiness that they think they fit, if they fit at all. I have learnt that I want more than that.

- Tá mo chroí istigh ionat (My heart is within you)
- Ádhraím thú (I adore you)
'My heart is within you' is probably reason that this list is in Gaelic and not any other language I could have found. That's the poetry of the Irish right there, written into their idiom. You can think like a poet when that kind of phrase is built into the everyday lexicon. I wish I could pronounce it - maybe I should learn. It says, "The centre of my being is part of you. I do not hold it back - cannot, now. It goes with you. I cannot live without it, but it is in your keeping. I am incomplete without the part of myself that is in you. Stunted. But with you, I am fully alive. More than it was possible to be, away from you." To me, this is 'true' 'romantic' love. What is the phrase from Oranges? 'Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone.' This is one of those tablets, in an ancient language.

I was going to write about Greek love, too. About 'storge' and 'philia', which encompass friendship and affection; about 'eros', which is total devotion as well as erotic love; and 'agape', which sounds better as 'caritas' in Latin though I suspect it's then slightly different, but which covers an unconditional love often used to describe religious devotion. See here for more. It's a bit Christian (C.S. Lewis), but it's worth reading for the underlying themes, that aren't about religion. I found I'd written them, mostly, though.

Oranges, again:
'The emperor, walking round his theatre, could see them all at once, if he wished.
Round and round he walked, and so learned a very valuable thing:
that no emotion is the final one.'

I only had one RS teacher at school who said anything I remember. He was called Mr Campbell, and someone had weasled him out of retirement to come and teach us. I rarely remember us keeping an RS teacher at school for more than a couple of terms, and he was no different - but the whole school begged him to stay. There were letters and impassioned pleas and all sorts. For a man older than most of our dads, in a school full of spoilt little rich girls in the south east of England. He never taught us anything that seemed to be part of any curriculum, we just sat and debated. He started every lesson with a 'wise saying', many of which I remember. There was 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/ Than are dreamt of in your philosophy'**, and the passage that starts at Luke 12 verse 27 'Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these', and there was 'Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free' (here). There were more, and I still have the exercise book that I copied them down into with the rest of my class, somewhere. They weren't all religious, either. I must dig it out again. He spent a whole lesson teaching us about love and its types. An odd thing for a 60 odd year old man to spend his time discussing with 14 year old school girls, really. I don't think I ever realised that he was using C.S. Lewis as a pattern until I did that search, but he was. I am grateful to him for the time he took to teach me and my schoolmates about things that were more than our exams or our curriculum and for the thought he put into our lessons. I never liked RS unless it was philosophy, and he seems to have been the only person who thought it necessary to try and make us wonder about the world around us and our place and our lives, the entire time we were at school.

*See here for source.
**Hamlet, Act 1, scene 5

Costume.

I've written about clothes before, but it's a subject that fascinates me. The whole thing is to do with costume. Do people ever dress anything other than aspirationally? Aren't you, whatever you put on, choosing how the rest of the world is to perceive you? If I'm wearing old tracksuit bottoms and ancient t-shirts for sitting around at home, it's because I want to feel comfortable and not on show and the clothes underline that to me and anyone else around. The removal of my public self with the removal of my public clothes. I can be much freer, dressed in soft tracksuits that I've had for half my life. People who see me dressed like that, I have to be incredibly comfortable with, because I have to trust them not to judge the clothes. It's like people seeing you in your pyjamas. I do on occasion go to the supermarket or whatever dressed in the more presentable version of lying around the house clothes, but in a way, I'm still lying around the house - it's still not public, at some level. The amount I feel on show to some degree correlates with how much discomfort I'm willing to put up with, I suppose. I'm the least 'dressy' at work (aside from at home), always in ancient trainers and often quite baggy jeans and t-shirts. I would dress up even more than that to go to the ADC or wherever, unless what I'm doing when I get there is a get-in. I don't wear hoodies to work, or tops that are definitely designed for sport, but that's about my only concession. I'm not on show at work, much. And it depends on my mood. I don't usually have the energy to put the effort in. The more tired or fed up or stressed I am, the less colourful or considered is what I wear. Probably the less low cut, too. I don't want to attract notice in any way when I feel like that, and the easiest way is to dress as dully as possible, I guess. If I'm going out or going somewhere or going to see someone or am going to be in a situation about which I'm not entirely comfortable, I will dress up. Lower cut tops, skirts, boots, colours, scarves, jewellery. It's hard to unpick why those things should make me feel more confident. Something about the clothes doing some of the talking for you, or distracting from the actual impression someone might get if they had access to the unshielded character underneath. Glamour in the archaic sense, I suppose, though I sort of hope to be subtle about it.

But all of these aspects of clothing make nudity incredibly intimate. I suppose that's why we as a society find it quite so sexy, beyond the crass 'I can see your BITS' routine. Because being naked with someone is access to their most private self, without a projection or any attempt to mislead. That's not about sex, though I suppose when there are people you feel that intimate with, sex is a progression. But being naked, in itself, is a big deal. Vulnerable, snails without shells, a declaration of trust. Even being naked alone, for something other than washing, is significant. Isn't it? Something about being able to look at oneself and know oneself. Symbolic only, I think, but not nothing. I suppose plastic surgery would ruin the ability to be naked in this sense - you would never be able to take off the image. I have no desire for tattoos or surgery, and am uncomfortable about the idea of dying my hair, in a way. Though the hair-dying is mostly to do with the fact that my hair is fragile enough without soaking it in chemicals. Something about the recognition of self.

An honest Burns Night.

I've actually never been to a proper Burns Night. I think it would be fun, though I draw the line at meaty haggis. Veggie haggis is actually really quite good, so I don't feel the need to eat too many innards. Even if it's slightly against my principles to waste parts of any animal. I come up against an ick factor too strong there. If you're curious about the actual content of a haggis, try this though (Guardian picture gallery with amusing captions, not too gruesome I promise!).

I also feel that at some stage I should try and read some Robert Burns, rather than just the famous stuff. The poem below is one of the famous ones, often sung or recited after the meal. The sentiment is sort of the hackneyed 'poor but happy' one that can be rather unpleasant in the wrong circumstances. Burns avoids the patronising tone by refocusing the idea on 'poor but honest', which is much less unpleasant.


Is there for honest Poverty
That hings his head, an' a' that;
The coward slave-we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Our toils obscure an' a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The Man's the gowd for a' that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an' a that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man's a Man for a' that:
For a' that, and a' that,
Their tinsel show, an' a' that;
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.

Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a cuif for a' that:
For a' that, an' a' that,
His ribband, star, an' a' that:
The man o' independent mind
He looks an' laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their dignities an' a' that;
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
Are higher rank than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.

If you're after the more unintelligible Scots, try here. It's not perfect, but it should allow the sense of the poem to come through.

I like the pragmatism that comes across in this poem. It celebrates a independence of mind, common sense and self-respect as those qualities that make a man. The implication in the poem is that being a man (read, 'human') as hard as you can is the height to which we must aspire. I like the note that a prince can make a duke or a lord or whatever, but he can't make an honest man; that comes from somewhere else. It comes from the inside, and that is more powerful than the most outwardly powerful man in the world.

Honesty is important to me. The more things that happen, the more I believe that. I've had conversations about this several times recently. Some people suggest that hiding things from people for their own benefit is to be valued. I can see the logic. It's one that says, if you really care for this person, you will save them pain as far as possible; you will bear whatever it is for them. But this only works if you have faith in your ability to keep things to yourself and your ability to deal quietly with the ball of knowing that inevitably grows the more you don't talk about it. I'm hopeless at keeping secrets, and hate for other people to be keeping things from me - if I suspect there is something there, and I'm good at picking things like that up, I will needle until I know, even if it might be bad for me. It also depends a bit on the nature of the secret. If it's something that's going to fester, or that won't sort itself out on its own, then hiding is no help. Easy to say; damn near impossible to do. It's taken me a very long time to learn, in my bones rather than in my mind, that it really is better to find that way of sharing, no matter how hard the search might be, because otherwise the mass of the secret gets so large it completely blocks out everything else and there is no way forward. Relationshipness. Difficult.

I think that hiding things, in work, in relationships, creates suspicion - because anyone perceptive will sense something hidden, and anyone curious will try and find it out. And they might find out the wrong thing in the wrong way. At least if one does the telling oneself, one can make sure that things are put in the right way, and no details are confused. I think it saves worry in the future. If there is something that requires lying about or hiding, then it is something wrong, with virtually no exceptions. Keeping things from people for the purposes of surprising them and fun and whatever is entirely different. That goes for honesty with oneself, too - if there is an issue that has to be not thought about, then there is something to think about. Avoiding the issue does not make it go. This is something I have yet to teach myself, properly.

It's kind of hard to explain it. The level at which honesty is important to me goes very deep, and it's always hard to fit words around deep things. It's something that I remember my dad telling me in a 'lessons for life' kind of way. Not patronising or pompously, just telling me because he felt it was an important thing to say. If you're honest with the people around you, and with yourself, then you can't go too far wrong. Yorkshireman.

The importance I give to honesty feeds my need to share quite as much as I do with all sorts of people. I should perhaps do less of that, because other people think it's odd and sometimes intimidating. I did hide things, for a very long time, and all I found it achieved was pain of various sorts, so this is part of trying something else. But there's something about having no qualms about telling people things about myself, because it feeds an honest impression about me in their eyes, and because they're things that I have looked at for myself and feel comfortable about, I guess. That, and I appear to have had a fairly dramatic life over the last six or so years. Not stupidly so, in the context of some of the horrendous things that happen in the world, but enough I hope to have come to an understanding with myself about what is important and what can't hurt to share. And the more that people share of themselves, the better we will all understand one another and the more we can help one another. This is the number one reason, for example, for discussing mental illness and depression. It should be so much less of a taboo, because if more people were able to talk about their experiences then fewer people would feel alone in their pain, and the world would be a better place.

This post is preachy. I'm sorry if that's really how it's coming across. I'm more intending it as an interrogation of something I deeply feel. I'm not trying to convert anyone else to the same beliefs, though I am trying to explain myself a bit. Probably to myself more than anybody else.

When the wind changes.

Today, I'm slightly irritated with the world. Frustrated with its solidity. Confined by it. Cross to have come up against boundaries I don't often have to remember are there. I'm bright, and my family is reasonably well off. I live in one of the most enlightened countries in the world at one of the most enlightened times in history. If you argue with that, find me places that could be better. I have always been able to believe that I can do whatever I want. Not in a selfish way - well, I could, but that's not what I mean. I have more opportunities than very nearly everybody else in the world. But still, there are limits. Where is the infinite, that the child knows? Today I can't see it.

I'm restless. I need to move on - pick a different life and live it for a while. Not sit couch potatoed in this rut. Find the energy to pick up new ways of being. I could try and do that in ways that perhaps nobody else would notice, but I am getting toward needing to do something big. I need to gather the energy for it. Wind myself up for a trigger. But I know from long experience that I can keep winding for a very long time before I set going, and there's no guarantee that something won't snap or unwind all at once with no progress. For a woman, I'm surprisingly bad at doing two things at once. Thinking two things, fine, but less good at doing them. I will find it difficult to give the energy to finding a new way while I'm still stuck with this way. I suppose part of my difficulty is purely my indecisiveness. I have made unequivocal statements here, but that doesn't mean they're the side of the argument that my ever-divided mind will eventually come down on. So much is dependent. A pot that could boil over or keep roiling away never quite making it but never settling. That's not a perfect metaphor.

I am going to switch my mind off, in the hope that a break will make the decision. Leave things in limbo. I dither, always, because I need to find a way of going forwards that does not cut off the way back. Continuity is a necessity for me. If I don't have it, I will become unstuck.

I suspect I have stopped making a great deal of sense. That life switch off button.

Old things, re-found.

Edinburgh in August

Gentle, shiny August evening – a Saturday so no hurry.
That sceptre of our land the umbrella is held loosely in hand,
And jackets are removed to hang beside.
The passersby slip serenely through glinty shimmering tunnels of air
Towards evenings of blameless conviviality and simple pleasures.

I’m curled up half tired in a seat by the door to this weekend world;
Eyes squinting against the westering glare, musing
With a sort of unhurried elation, like familiar morning sex,
On simple, smooth, and gliding words to describe in glistening lines
The luxury of one evening’s decadent freedom.

The trailing fingers of the sun brush the hills and hollows of the town,
And warm breath leeches tension from frenetic life.
Through my half-closed eyes, I watch brilliant fireworks of orangey gold
Slipping behind buildings with a silent magnificence
That drowns the bumbling traffic and the bleating human voices.
I shiver a little as the light dims and the twilight lethargy fades out
To the glare of darkness.


This must be 3 years old at least. I can't find the original date. I remember it though. I need to find that simplicity again. I have it, but never the leisure to put it down.

What I think it means to be alive.

Do other people understand what I do by reality, and being awake, and experiencing? I know some do, but they seem few. It's like the Oscar Wilde quote - 'Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life a mimicry, their passions a quotation.' Maybe other people just don't talk about it in the way I feel compelled to. That is why I want to make more of those quotations than just posting them here without interrogation. They are there to try to interpret my 'passions', but they fall so short.

By reality and being awake and experiencing, I mean living not existing. Living is about honesty. About feeling. About noticing. It is not about 'pastimes', which is a turn of phrase illustrative of a way of thinking I don't like. Nothing in real living is undertaken 'just to pass the time'. Time is incredibly precious, and not to be squandered on things that are not worth every second it takes to complete them. Complex value. Real life is about being switched on to the surroundings, poking your head above the crowd. Seeing the architecture above the glitzy shop fronts. Hearing the wind or the birds in the cities. A violin from a 4th floor window. People having sex in a field as the train goes past. Living is about living like a child, where the world is still raw and everything is interesting and new and equally fascinating. It is about thinking just a little bit further than the next pay check or the next task. It asks why? of everything. The answer is never 'because'. That is one of the biggest lies-to-children that adults perpetuate. Even if the answer is unknown, it can be a story, or a dream, or an idea. It tells children to accept that there are things that they are not to examine and try to comprehend. It quashes imagination.

Living is painful. Which is why we, I, shut it off. The painful parts, honestly experienced, are nearly more than we can bear. Feeling properly, it seems we cry every tear in our bodies and then some more. Ever cried so much you've been sick? But the flip side of that is that when living is beautiful and perfect, you get to experience the incredible buzz. High on life. Really high. Where everything becomes brighter and purer and clearer and just breathing can be exciting. When every sense is enhanced. You have to take the highs and the lows. And know that that is reality. The fog in which most people seem to pass their lives is not real.

Writing.

I read this back, this blog, and it is insipid. I censor things, so as not to hurt people. I have other writing that's more personal, but even less considered. In some ways it is less important. I want to think harder about what I write and make more of an impact. I hide behind quotations of various sorts. I do group them around things I'm thinking about, but I have been failing to interrogate them properly, so that nobody else understands them (which is partly in self-defence, that I wish I could get past), but it means that I might forget why I found them important at a particular moment, too.

I try and write blog entries in half hours, and I need to find several hours. Time for finding the references that have influenced my day or my week or my life, time for typing them up (!), time to sit down and think about why they are important to me. If I did that, though, I would find all of the points where the quotations I use are not enough for the thoughts I'm thinking, and I'd try and write my own. Which would be a good thing, but I'd need to be writing all day, all of the time. I found the poem I wrote when Paddy died, after a bit of a hunt. I was pleased with that, despite how painful it was to write. I could concentrate on writing about the fear of a damaging love just then, because I was escaping from feeling for her to a certain extent. Still feel I should have done more for her. Another story. But I wrote that fast. I often don't write very fast, not that kind of writing. I have a million ideas for thinking about, and can't get them on to paper before the next one comes along. I end up sloshing prose, or approximating with other people's poetry, when what I want to do is focus and distil and make pictures that say what I think and feel.

I have lost something unbelievably important. At least lost in one way. I know I haven't lost it entirely, because I have also for a while had possession of the greatest thing anyone ever can have. It is lending an urgency to my need to write. This height of feeling does not, must not, last, and I want to be able to remember the shape of it, while I can just bear the pain of it. Before I have to put it aside and forget about feeling for a bit. I must be numb for a while, in order that when I come back to all of this (I will come back to all of this) the raw edges of the wound where it has had to rip away have had a chance to heal a little.

I'm sorry. I probably share too much. I'm safe enough while few enough people who know me and my life well read this, and I need to say these things, somewhere. Not just to myself, where I can imagine I imagine. I could go back to LJ and lock things, but I don't like LJ. Let me know if (when) I go too far.

Life as art. Control of existence. The thrill of the individual.

'One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.'

Oscar Wilde, 'Phrases and Philosophies for the use of the Young', first published in Chameleon in December 1894

'What is abnormal in Life stands in normal relations to Art. It is the only thing in Life that stands in normal relations to Art.'

Oscar Wilde, 'A few Maxims for the instruction of the Over-Educated', first published in the Saturday Review in November, 1894

'To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.'

'It will be a marvellous thing - the true personality of man - when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flowerlike, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. It will not be always meddling with others, it will help all, as a beautiful things helps us by being what it is. The personality of a man will be very wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.'

'The message of Christ to man was simply 'Be thyself.' That is the secret of Christ.'

'There is no one type for man. There are as many perfections as there are imperfect men.'

'Man has sought to live intensely, fully, perfectly. When he can do so without exercising restraint on others, or suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to him, he will be saner, healthier, more civilised, more himself.'

Oscar Wilde, 'The Soul of Man under Socialism', first published in the Fortnightly Review in 1891

'I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art. I altered the minds of men and the colours of things; there was nothing I said or did that did not make people wonder: I took the drama, the most objective form known to art, and made it as personal a mode of expression as the lyric or the sonnet, at the same time that I widened its range and enriched its characterisation; drama, novel, poem in rhyme, poem in prose, subtle or fantastic dialogue, whatever I touched I made beautiful in a new mode of beauty: to truth itself I gave what is false no less that what is true as its rightful province, and showed that the false and the true are merely forms of intellectual existence. I treated Art as the supreme reality, and life as a mere mode of fiction: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all systems in a phrase and all existence in an epigram.'

'At every single moment of one's life one is what one is going to be no less than what one has been.'

'It is tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man,' says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life a mimicry, their passions a quotation.'

'...every moment should be beautiful, that the soul should always be ready for the coming of the Bridegroom, always waiting for the voice of the Lover.' (NB the references here are to the The Song of Songs)

Oscar Wilde, 'De Profundis', the letter written from Reading Gaol to Lord Alfred Douglas in the spring of 1897

'Preventing oneself from dying is not living.'

'Nothing is really beautiful unless it is useless; everything useful is ugly, for it expresses a need, and the needs of man are ignoble and disgusting.'

'I am among those to whom the superfluous is necessary.'

Théophile Gautier, from the preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin, published in Paris in 1835

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley, 1849–1903

I'm tired today. I suspect some people will read the Wilde quotations especially as displaying a great arrogance in the man, which they do, out of context. But he was a great artist and an incredible man. What's the difficulty with him realising that? He was in enormous pain of the soul when he was writing 'De Profundis', and died not a great deal later. These quotations are, to me, about the relationship between living, truth and art. Ways I would like to be able to be, I suppose.

Here is the opposite, to the optimism of 'Invictus' above. We've moved on by more than half a century, and I suspect the pride and might and strength that was Britain in the late C19 has given way to post-war, post-colonial modernist and post-modern loneliness. I almost feel like writing a piece of comparative practical criticism, there's so much that could be taken from the two of them. If I ever have to set an essay for an English student of any sort...

Both poems express the isolation of humanity, but 'Invictus' imbues the solitary state of man with a proud dignity, whereas in Gunn's poem the 'individual' is resolute, guarding and wary. Both figures are soldiers, and imagery of war is present in both. The soldier of 'Invictus', though, is stalwart, proud, almost optimistic in the face of the enemy. Gunn's soldier is a guard; suspicious, alert - surrounded by mercenaries whose motives and intentions are not to be trusted. The figure is cut off and waiting for things to happen. He seeks, but does not find. 'Invictus' is much more engaged with his world - things happen to him. He is a victim of chance and circumstance, and suffers the buffets of time. But whatever menace the years bring, this man is certain of himself and his mastery of that. Despite the undoubted influence of chance, he himself has control. Gunn's speaker is not certain of himself, he tells us that he 'must/ Find out the limitation/ Of mind and universe.' He does not even suggest why, just that he does not know. There is no mastery here. This is the point at which the dates of the two poems can most clearly be felt; post-Freud and psychoanalysis, the self has become a frail thing. Before the 'discovery' of the subconscious, a man could be certain of his own mind. He need not be scared of it. Undoubtedly, many people in the C19th did feel scared of their own demons, but it was a much more nebulous and less universal thing than it became with the modernists.

The two endings are interesting, partly for their similarity. The epigrammatic two lines at the end of 'Invictus' must be some of the most oft-quoted in all English poetry. Their triumphant air in the face of the adversity of life is uplifting. But it is unrealistic. We know that we are not masters of our fates or captains steering the unknowable course of the soul. The Gunn ending is far more enigmatic but far more realistic, it seems to me. We are born into an unknowing, unformed, vaguely sinister existence - a fog, perhaps a barren wasteland or the possibility of a wasted existence - walk without assistance and alone through all the might-bes and the might-have-beens - all the hypotheses. The final line could be read bitterly, decrying the fate which cuts us off from the world with moats and sentries and darkness, or it, too, could have an element of triumph about it. By the end, the poem has moved past the point where the speaker is 'condemned' to individuality. It is recognised that no problem must be faced until it has occurred. Therefore, with eyes open, despite the fog, which echoes the darkness that Henley recognises in the other poem, we walk through our lives for ourselves - individual, in control, with nobody else responsible for our path. The thought is comforting and terrifying, and the two pieces catch the nuances.

Human Condition

Now it is fog. I walk
Contained within my coat;
No castle more cut off
By reason of its moat:
Only the sentry's cough,
The mercenaries' talk.

The street lamps, visible,
Drop no light on the ground,
But press beams painfully
In a yard of fog around.
I am condemned to be
An individual.

In the established border
There balances a mere
Pinpoint of consciousness.
I stay, or start from, here:
No fog makes more or less
The neighbouring disorder.

Particular, I must
Find out the limitation
Of mind and universe.
To pick thought and sensation
And turn to my own use
Disordered hate or lust.

I seek, to break, my span.
I am my one touchstone.
This is a test more hard
Than any ever known.
And thus I keep my guard
On that which makes me man.

Much is unknowable.
No problem shall be faced
Until the problem is;
I, born to fog, to waste,
Walk through hypothesis,
An individual.

Thom Gunn, something like the 1950s (I WISH I could find better references for this poem, I'd love to read the rest of whatever collection it's in)

Acting

a part. Again. I have this feeling sometimes. Divorced from the world, being two different people, somehow. Acting cheerful and happy and hyper and ignoring the screaming part of me that wants to do the opposite - curl up in a dark place and make myself small and hide and cry like a child. Or being miserable and weepy when half of me is saying 'go out and play', though that is less common. Acting happy is a way of staving off real misery for a bit, of packing things away that can't be dealt with until they're at greater distance and better able to be understood. Sometimes it falls apart, usually when I'm tired. If I was being particularly successful at being happy, sometimes I haven't realised the pain is there and it all crashes down at once.

None of that is happening, nobody worry. I have epic mood swings, as anyone who has spent ANY time around me knows, and it's not like the world has been exactly stable for the last few months. It was just a thought that occurred to me, really, about things that sometimes happen.

Link day, and something about guts.

This amused me at work today. It's a lovely little story, if you take it from the children's point of view, though their poor parents must have been frantic. It's an attitude I would have love to have to life, really. The childish simplicity of 'I want to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm not even aware of the fact that it is impossible.' There's a slightly hackneyed saw out there that says something about everything being possible until someone tells you it's impossible - that the idea of impossibility is a learned one. Terry Pratchett suggests that the answer to achieving the impossible is never to find out that it is so - because if you try something, believing it to be possible, it might prove so. Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass underlines the importance of believing the impossible by having the White Queen pitying Alice, who is already exhibiting the grown-up tendency to categorise as impossible things which might merely be unlikely, especially if one tried hard. He suggests that one has to practice believing the impossible - implying perhaps that without practice the knack leaves us:

' "I can't believe THAT!" said Alice.

"Can't you?" the Queen said in a pitying tone. "Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes."

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one CAN'T believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." '

Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll, 1871 (UK originally, available on Project Gutenberg - see earlier link for text)

The 'six impossible things before breakfast' tag is one of the most quoted in the Alice books. A quick google reveals a load of blogs with it as the title. I seem to remember a series of religious lectures and/or pieces of writing with that title, too, though I can't seem to find many references to them. I'm sure they are there - it's too tempting an idea to pass up, for similar reasons that I've found it such a useful quotation to use here. I dislike it as an argument for faith though, I think if faith must be reduced to an 'impossible thing' requiring merely belief and no interrogation, then it is not worth it. I'm not trying to get at that here, there's a difference between coming at something with a fresh and open and unhindered outlook, and merely trying to believe the impossible if detailed scrutiny of the subject in question does not in the end encourage you (personally) to believe it. Of course, if detailed scrutiny of the object in question leads you towards belief, if you've come at it without any agenda whatsoever and evidence that satisfies you with regard to accepting the hypothesis that God exists, then belief is by all means to be encouraged. The jury's out, there. But that's another story.

I showed that link to Jenny at work. She called it dumb, and said that even at 6 she would have realised it was a bad idea. I thought that was kind of sad, actually. Limiting your younger self, holding back its freedom to have been innocent of any idea of constraint. I sort of hope that if the idea had occurred to me and suitable friends hadn't dissuaded me, I might have done something like it. Of course, practical things like remembering you would need a plane ticket are likely to have hindered me - the perils of being organised even as a 6 year old (though I'm not sure I was a very organised 6 year old, I think I grew into that particular element of my personality). I suspect that's where Jenny was coming from, really, even if it wasn't the way it came across to me in the Skype conversation where we talked about it. But something else, equally adventurous, I hope I might have tried. Wishful thinking, maybe, to envision in one's childish self ways of existing that it would be nice to embrace now. Something about, if they'd existed once before, it being easier to dredge up and reinstate those traits in one's current self.

Curious.

Would you ever give yourself a new name? Like, just start introducing yourself to new people as something different and answer to that? I can't work out why I'm attracted to this idea. I'm sure it's something about wanting to be different and to change - pop-psychology for you. I dislike the idea that this would just be to escape from this self. I don't think I think that. Maybe I do? I had to work very hard not to hack my hair off with scissors yesterday. I mostly didn't because Carl was lying across my legs. I wish I had the balls to do some of these things, and do them properly. (I shall resist on the hair front at least until I can afford to go to a hairdresser and get them to do it properly. I know what I want it to look like, and I've wanted it to look like that since LAST time I got it cut. Trouble was I didn't know until I got home and realised that what I'd asked for wasn't what I wanted. Bah.)

I just like the idea of the freedom of having an entirely different name - somewhere, with some people. It could never be EVERYWHERE. But wouldn't that be cool? Wouldn't it give you license to be a completely different person somewhere? Or is it a recipe for some sort of split personality thing? (No Discworld references, I'm *actually* being grown up...)

Maybe I will. I was reading a book today and found a name I just thought would be fun. Just a first name, I don't need to quarrel with my surname. I'm not QUARRELING per se with my first name. I just fancy being someone else for a bit. Next time I meet a whole new set of people, maybe I'll just introduce myself as that. No, I'm not going to tell you what it is, that's the point...

Never entirely fictional, but don't over-read.

Oil Slick

You coalesced; slid together like oil -
so subtle, I never saw it happen.
When I glanced about you were everywhere
slick across the world, a slippery lens
before my vision, tinting slight pastels
technicolour, gifting movement to still
life, skittering light into dim hollows
unnoticed in previous pallidness.

Half dazzled by you, I pushed my eyes shut -
Only for a moment! - and your blaze seared
electric stripe against a greyed-out soul.
Gasping, I let tensed eyelids snap open:

Pictures clarified, new colour shaded;
the kaleidoscope had sudden faded.