I’m finding this whole ageing* business a bit of a nightmare. The older people get, the further into themselves they seem to tunnel. I used to think that tunnelling into others was a viable solution to an identity crisis, but these days I’m just trying to dig my way out and into the light. I’m not sure if anyone or anything lives up there, or whether I’m actually tumbling disoriented inside a dark sea, swimming my way down, the air and answers at my feet steadily gaining distance.
This weekend I watched a film called It’s Kind of a Funny Story – it was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest meets 500 Days of Summer, if you can imagine such a thing. It was at once heartening and completely irritating to see a film try so earnestly to normalise the experience of being admitted to a psych ward. There were familiar elements to the story (Who is that figure beneath the blanket, are they dead, and do I really have to share a room with him/her?) and elements that make a mockery of mental illness, however unintentional (the David Bowie sing along, and the Hasidic-Jew-with-sensitive-hearing shtick, for instance).
As I said, I did enjoy the film, and I think it’s a fairly good primer for the uninitiated, but if you come away thinking that suicidal feelings, mental illness, depression and personality disorders are the binding agents of universal solidarity in an institutional setting, you’d be wrong about that.
I’m not going to arrive at an actual point, or weave these into an afghan to hide beneath, in case you were holding out for something of that nature. This is simply an unhelpful map of my tunnelling – a kind of You Are Here for anyone who crash-landed on Planet Me today. Apologies, Earthlings - themes and variations, themes and variations.
I’ve been busily inventing new forms of self-alienation (I don’t know, I’m not Freud, am I?) and one thing that occurred to me before the weekend hit, which I think might be true, is that some houses are dead. Am I right? Just as it would be wrong to manipulate the arms and legs of a corpse and call that corpse alive, I also think that people mistakenly believe that moving their shit into an accommodation that died decades ago will somehow turn that place into a home**.
Wanna come over and watch movies? Didn’t think so.
*‘Aging,’ not ‘getting old,’ I hasten to add; it’s an important distinction. Especially if you’re old. Which I am not. (Yet.)
**I don’t believe my house is dead, but I’ve lived in a fair few dead homes, and this is the only explanation. Shut up and let me have my explanation.
11 July 2011
25 June 2011
Systematic unpicking
Other people frighten me. I approach them and pull faces and they react and I back away slowly. Sometimes I’ll lie right up against the glass and trace their topography for hours, imagining they spent their childhoods hypnotised by the dirt clods that sprung off their bicycle wheels as they bounced over broken tarmac slightly faster than their reaction times dictated, and then I can almost feel the barrier dissolving.
Our lives are predicated on this underlying assumption that we are known, and that we can know others. We think that because we can agree to certain fundamentals that keep the motorway generally unclogged, we must also conduct more or less the same symphony beneath our shirts. But regardless of which parade we succumb to, amidst the props and paints and perfumes, the vagaries of continuity will invariably betray a lie that remains most invisible to even ourselves. I’m talking about our souls here.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not a religious person. I don’t think you can peel away the pragmatic layers of a human to reveal the frightened inner specter of their gossamer truth. Life winds its expert fingers around the lip of our trembling essence and we emit a tone that answers in the only way that it can. Others glimpse our identity through a whirling zoetrope that blurs our static moments into a unified narrative, into a seamless 'you', until one day...
Well, one day I discover that you’ve saved every tissue your mother has ever sneezed into inside a desk drawer. And there is nothing in my toolbox of experience that can answer the 'why?' of this one anomaly. I’ve pulled a thread, and the entire fantasy of knowing you unravels and spools around my feet. A realisation swims up from the deep: You are not me. And, furthermore, I am alone. This gives me a terrific sense of vertigo, and then I must wait for the normalising properties of time + space to whitewash the graffiti this notion produced.
If ever you find yourself seeking your reflection in the shallow pool of someone else, instead see if you can appreciate the illusion that you’re not buried alive inside a fiction of your own making. Scatter the crumbs of your history and watch the birds make off with them, one by one.
Our lives are predicated on this underlying assumption that we are known, and that we can know others. We think that because we can agree to certain fundamentals that keep the motorway generally unclogged, we must also conduct more or less the same symphony beneath our shirts. But regardless of which parade we succumb to, amidst the props and paints and perfumes, the vagaries of continuity will invariably betray a lie that remains most invisible to even ourselves. I’m talking about our souls here.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not a religious person. I don’t think you can peel away the pragmatic layers of a human to reveal the frightened inner specter of their gossamer truth. Life winds its expert fingers around the lip of our trembling essence and we emit a tone that answers in the only way that it can. Others glimpse our identity through a whirling zoetrope that blurs our static moments into a unified narrative, into a seamless 'you', until one day...
Well, one day I discover that you’ve saved every tissue your mother has ever sneezed into inside a desk drawer. And there is nothing in my toolbox of experience that can answer the 'why?' of this one anomaly. I’ve pulled a thread, and the entire fantasy of knowing you unravels and spools around my feet. A realisation swims up from the deep: You are not me. And, furthermore, I am alone. This gives me a terrific sense of vertigo, and then I must wait for the normalising properties of time + space to whitewash the graffiti this notion produced.
If ever you find yourself seeking your reflection in the shallow pool of someone else, instead see if you can appreciate the illusion that you’re not buried alive inside a fiction of your own making. Scatter the crumbs of your history and watch the birds make off with them, one by one.
22 June 2011
Not waving
I’m meant to be writing a blog for work, but it’s not happening just now.
How do you say "I had a strange dream last night" without a hundred ears tuning out before you’ve even gotten to the significant bit? Nightmares, wet dreams, dreams specifically about the listener – you might entice a few more ears to stick around, but not many. I’ll listen to your dreams, in as much detail as you can provide, because I enjoy the thought processes that go into the telling, and you can sometimes even glimpse a hidden feeling that marbles the convex underbelly of its imagery. Dream imagery is certainly more stunning than any I’ve experienced tangibly.
But I had this strange dream last night (goodbye, gentle readers, until next time); it was terrible, actually. My niece and nephew were little children again, and I could see by my tracking system that they were still on the beach playing, and specifically where they were playing (in the tide, and Christopher is only a toddler), so I went to check on them. I knew before reaching the shore that my nephew wouldn’t be there, and my mind scrambled to assemble the narrative - abduction.
I spent many hours crying and shouting and looking inside horrible containers, all the while knowing that he’d never be found. At some point he stopped being Christopher and started being Hartley, and then I had to wake myself up.
Sometimes my dreams will trail their coattails through my waking life, and their details can inform things that I feel or think about. I once thought I was in love with a real person because of a dream, and I acted on it, and that’s the last time I will ever do something so foolish. If anything, now I worry that the symbolic sediment left to dry on the surface of consciousness may prove fatally prophetic, if ignored. I’ll tell Bruce to keep a more careful eye on Hartley or I’ll wait for the green man before crossing a familiar intersection, and I’ll still wish I’d kept everyone at home, wrapped in cotton wool.
On the flip side, real life issues can find monstrous architectural counterparts in dream threads that get woven into the fabric of one's psyche, so that you don’t always know if you’re awake or asleep or somewhere in between. Though life has a way of dispersing the clouds and making that distinction immediately, and sometimes even painfully, apparent.
How do you say "I had a strange dream last night" without a hundred ears tuning out before you’ve even gotten to the significant bit? Nightmares, wet dreams, dreams specifically about the listener – you might entice a few more ears to stick around, but not many. I’ll listen to your dreams, in as much detail as you can provide, because I enjoy the thought processes that go into the telling, and you can sometimes even glimpse a hidden feeling that marbles the convex underbelly of its imagery. Dream imagery is certainly more stunning than any I’ve experienced tangibly.
But I had this strange dream last night (goodbye, gentle readers, until next time); it was terrible, actually. My niece and nephew were little children again, and I could see by my tracking system that they were still on the beach playing, and specifically where they were playing (in the tide, and Christopher is only a toddler), so I went to check on them. I knew before reaching the shore that my nephew wouldn’t be there, and my mind scrambled to assemble the narrative - abduction.
I spent many hours crying and shouting and looking inside horrible containers, all the while knowing that he’d never be found. At some point he stopped being Christopher and started being Hartley, and then I had to wake myself up.
Sometimes my dreams will trail their coattails through my waking life, and their details can inform things that I feel or think about. I once thought I was in love with a real person because of a dream, and I acted on it, and that’s the last time I will ever do something so foolish. If anything, now I worry that the symbolic sediment left to dry on the surface of consciousness may prove fatally prophetic, if ignored. I’ll tell Bruce to keep a more careful eye on Hartley or I’ll wait for the green man before crossing a familiar intersection, and I’ll still wish I’d kept everyone at home, wrapped in cotton wool.
On the flip side, real life issues can find monstrous architectural counterparts in dream threads that get woven into the fabric of one's psyche, so that you don’t always know if you’re awake or asleep or somewhere in between. Though life has a way of dispersing the clouds and making that distinction immediately, and sometimes even painfully, apparent.
11 June 2011
Killing tigers
I read somewhere that there are only 3,500 tigers left in the world. Could that be true? We haven’t even brought about the extinction of whales, and look how long we’ve been in the process of saving them. How did tigers manage to slip through unnoticed? Those blunt, vicious heads of dusty pumpkin whorled with salt liquorice, mouths open and dripping black gums – can you even imagine the absence of tigers?
Today on the bus, I watched Hartley sleeping and tried to visualise the world in another thirty years. It frightens me to think of all the things he might lose, even though I’ve only the faintest idea of what we’ve inherited from centuries of civilisation. What will he fear? What will he love, and how? His atoms will weld themselves to the circumstances of whatever shapes them until the two are indecipherable, and we will spend our final years palming that smooth obelisk without any hope of penetrating its mysteries a second time.
Last night I fell asleep thinking: The social media celebrities are the pied pipers of the counterculture, leading the rats straight to us - to the beating heart of our secret inner lives. When I woke up, I had an entirely different thought, which was: humans are essentially here to die and replenish the earth’s resources; we are this planet’s living fertiliser. Gee, thanks brain! I deprive you of alcohol for weeks at a time and you repay me with nihilism.
If you thought that children could throw mortality off your scent while you hid out in the countryside of familial paralysis, think again. Now you need answers faster than you can keep up with the questions, and each day that angelic clay you threw with such hope and abandon just hardens around the features of everything you still can’t account for. Your son is human, and one day he might never see a tiger. One day...
You try to pull back from these thoughts but you rub them in faster, and they explode into a million points of ink. You use that ink to write love poems in the dark, and you hope that it’s enough.
Today on the bus, I watched Hartley sleeping and tried to visualise the world in another thirty years. It frightens me to think of all the things he might lose, even though I’ve only the faintest idea of what we’ve inherited from centuries of civilisation. What will he fear? What will he love, and how? His atoms will weld themselves to the circumstances of whatever shapes them until the two are indecipherable, and we will spend our final years palming that smooth obelisk without any hope of penetrating its mysteries a second time.
Last night I fell asleep thinking: The social media celebrities are the pied pipers of the counterculture, leading the rats straight to us - to the beating heart of our secret inner lives. When I woke up, I had an entirely different thought, which was: humans are essentially here to die and replenish the earth’s resources; we are this planet’s living fertiliser. Gee, thanks brain! I deprive you of alcohol for weeks at a time and you repay me with nihilism.
If you thought that children could throw mortality off your scent while you hid out in the countryside of familial paralysis, think again. Now you need answers faster than you can keep up with the questions, and each day that angelic clay you threw with such hope and abandon just hardens around the features of everything you still can’t account for. Your son is human, and one day he might never see a tiger. One day...
You try to pull back from these thoughts but you rub them in faster, and they explode into a million points of ink. You use that ink to write love poems in the dark, and you hope that it’s enough.
06 June 2011
Blog of Revelations
Have you ever gone to bed for a month wishing that you could just wake up a saner person? That happened to me today. It was awesome.
Unrelatedly (perhaps), I spent Sunday alone, and in spite of still feeling flu-ish (on top of the effects of a late night out) I managed to propel myself out of bed for breakfast and an early-morning film on television. I chose Un Poison Violent - a coming-of-age story that sounded a bit saucy (young girl explores her sexuality amidst family drama), but which actually turned out to be much better than it sounded.
The narrative explores themes of flesh/spirit, mind/body, old/young and the necessary tensions of these apparent dichotomies when called upon to behave themselves. Unexpectedly, the most poignant scene involves neither the young girl nor the dying grandfather, but the parish priest - a peripheral character that by rights should have had these issues tied up tight.
Early on, the film lays the groundwork for his impending crisis (he spends a lot of time silently ruminating in wet or dripping locales), and demonstrates that although he’s serious about his vocation, he’s also human, and especially invested in the mother (with whom he shares a [chastened] past) and her fast-blossoming daughter. You don’t see much evidence of his internal struggles until quite a bit later on, when he lies on top of his single bed and begins fervently praying for God to bring him peace, an activity that ends with him curled up and weeping.
The characters all spend a lot of time holding each other up to these rigid codes of conduct with varying degrees of dismay and alarm when expectations are thwarted, but with none so much as they reserve for their own perceived shortcomings (except maybe the father, who only seems repentant towards the end, after his father dies).
I suppose the idea is that no matter how good we try to be, not one of us is godlike in nature, and we are ever in danger of being thrown off our paths by these so-called sins of the flesh.
31 May 2011
Hello Blog
It's been a while. Yep.
For those of you waiting for something more, you'll be waiting a while yet. I'm actually composing this in Blogger's unreliable editor, if that tells you anything about my commitment to these words.
There is nothing inside me that I want to transcribe here. Furthermore, I'm not sure that what's inside me is transcribable. Evenfurthermore, each time an untranscribable issue emerges that I'm not comfortable *sharing, I tend to create an anonymous journal for that issue...and then it magically disappears (the issue, not the journal, though I wish they would).
So it appears that by concretising my tempestuous insides by way of transcription, I can make issues disappear. Good to know for the long term, but there are things I'm not ready to let go of yet. I'm terrible at living without something resistant to push against, and hence I must reserve a little, purely for **pedantic purposes.
Now that you're wishing you could go back in time and unread these cryptic and senseless-to-all-but-me sentences, I'll leave you with one final thought:
I'm starting to fear old age. I've never given it much thought, because I've always been young, but in the last twelve months, the fact that I'm aging has finally dawned on me, and it's terrifying. I've always known that I'd make a terrible old person, and I'm not someone who is going to celebrate ***laugh lines and grey hairs, because all of these things signal the end of what little I feel I have that's worth celebrating. I'm not saying I dislike the aged as a whole, but in the same way I feel I wouldn't suit blonde hair, I don't think that I will suit old age. But I will wear it like a moth-eaten suit and that will be that.
Anyway, so if you think I'm behaving strangely, it's just me working out a way to own the old. I guess? Fuck, I'm starting to wish I hadn't bothered with this entry either.
Okay, ending on a positive:
I'm very much in love with my job, my town, England and all their ensuing complexities. It makes the hard stuff a lot easier to cope with.
*of course I mean ' sharing with my mother,' who I strongly suspect reads here now. Hi mom! Nothing personal. It's just, you know. Well...hi!
**untrue
***well, grimace
For those of you waiting for something more, you'll be waiting a while yet. I'm actually composing this in Blogger's unreliable editor, if that tells you anything about my commitment to these words.
There is nothing inside me that I want to transcribe here. Furthermore, I'm not sure that what's inside me is transcribable. Evenfurthermore, each time an untranscribable issue emerges that I'm not comfortable *sharing, I tend to create an anonymous journal for that issue...and then it magically disappears (the issue, not the journal, though I wish they would).
So it appears that by concretising my tempestuous insides by way of transcription, I can make issues disappear. Good to know for the long term, but there are things I'm not ready to let go of yet. I'm terrible at living without something resistant to push against, and hence I must reserve a little, purely for **pedantic purposes.
Now that you're wishing you could go back in time and unread these cryptic and senseless-to-all-but-me sentences, I'll leave you with one final thought:
I'm starting to fear old age. I've never given it much thought, because I've always been young, but in the last twelve months, the fact that I'm aging has finally dawned on me, and it's terrifying. I've always known that I'd make a terrible old person, and I'm not someone who is going to celebrate ***laugh lines and grey hairs, because all of these things signal the end of what little I feel I have that's worth celebrating. I'm not saying I dislike the aged as a whole, but in the same way I feel I wouldn't suit blonde hair, I don't think that I will suit old age. But I will wear it like a moth-eaten suit and that will be that.
Anyway, so if you think I'm behaving strangely, it's just me working out a way to own the old. I guess? Fuck, I'm starting to wish I hadn't bothered with this entry either.
Okay, ending on a positive:
I'm very much in love with my job, my town, England and all their ensuing complexities. It makes the hard stuff a lot easier to cope with.
*of course I mean ' sharing with my mother,' who I strongly suspect reads here now. Hi mom! Nothing personal. It's just, you know. Well...hi!
**untrue
***well, grimace
09 March 2011
9 hours
- Hot air balloon mishap
- Freefalling and looking through a bag for instructions on how to land
- A play w/ 3 new characters related to The Talented Mr Ripley
- A dead kitten on the sidewalk
- The bus is threatening to leave and I can’t find my case
- A man helps me down the awkward steps of the bus
- Remembering that I forgot my travel case on the bus
- A hidden stash of notes and clean clothes in the slotted drawers of my caravan
- Disco vomiting up a pile of dry cat food
- Unable to see the time on our mobiles
- Asking why electronics never work in dreams
- Combing giant nit eggs out of the baby’s hair
- A cloaked figure, like an Orc with long metal gloves, on a deserted road at 6AM
- It’s death up the road and I can’t shake him
- It’s 9AM and I’m going to be late for work
- It’s 8AM and I’m going to be late for work
- It’s 8AM and I ask Bruce to call me a taxi so I won’t be late for work
- The shower is broken and the bathroom is massive
- There’s nothing to wear; the drawers are full of baby clothes
03 March 2011
Mosh pit of rubbish
It’s funny how something you really want to say in the morning can become irrelevant by lunch. I know you’re supposed to be lucid and inspired during the earlier hours, but that’s the time I’m more likely to come up with a phrase like “Mosh pit of flowers” and then share it earnestly with others. If you want to feel like you’re getting anywhere, with documentation and whatever else, please don’t waste your inspiration on describing what tulips do on your way to work.
I’ve been eating lunch at my desk against my better judgment, so that I have more time to bash these out, but instead I have interested parties staring over my shoulder because they assume that I’m still working. And then I hope they’re short-sighted and can’t easily read text at 30%. I certainly can’t. Also, I have one ear to the office and suspect that they are right at this very moment having an impromptu web meeting without me, which cannot happen. Just a second.
Nope, it’s 'hideous stuff,' apparently. So where was I?
Oh yes, I was going to tell you about the little girl I saw emerging from the station; this singular, sensational figure who moved steadily against the grain of early morning commuters rushing in to catch their train to London. I wanted to stop her and say, “Wait! Don’t do a single thing more, because I am going to make you very, very famous.” Except, of course, I’m nobody, and know nobody who is anybody who is making movies in need of child stars. Not as far as I know, anyway.
Then I became obsessed with why she was coming into Hitchin at that strange hour on her own, when it’s most common to see children commuting in groups, closer to the time when school begins. I started to imagine that she was being stalked online by a sexual predator, and that she was on her way to meet him on the pretext of him being a child himself. And I took note of the time (8.07AM) and the date (3.03.11), and then wondered if there was something inherently creepy in that. So of course I came straight to you with the information. Maybe she was on her way to an audition.
I am going to see Deerhunter in 28 days and I’m very excited about this still. Do you remember how, when I first moved to the UK, I bought tickets to see The Sea and Cake on my birthday and then forgot about the show by the time it came around? And they haven’t played in London since? Yeah, that isn’t ever happening again.
I’ve been eating lunch at my desk against my better judgment, so that I have more time to bash these out, but instead I have interested parties staring over my shoulder because they assume that I’m still working. And then I hope they’re short-sighted and can’t easily read text at 30%. I certainly can’t. Also, I have one ear to the office and suspect that they are right at this very moment having an impromptu web meeting without me, which cannot happen. Just a second.
Nope, it’s 'hideous stuff,' apparently. So where was I?
Oh yes, I was going to tell you about the little girl I saw emerging from the station; this singular, sensational figure who moved steadily against the grain of early morning commuters rushing in to catch their train to London. I wanted to stop her and say, “Wait! Don’t do a single thing more, because I am going to make you very, very famous.” Except, of course, I’m nobody, and know nobody who is anybody who is making movies in need of child stars. Not as far as I know, anyway.
Then I became obsessed with why she was coming into Hitchin at that strange hour on her own, when it’s most common to see children commuting in groups, closer to the time when school begins. I started to imagine that she was being stalked online by a sexual predator, and that she was on her way to meet him on the pretext of him being a child himself. And I took note of the time (8.07AM) and the date (3.03.11), and then wondered if there was something inherently creepy in that. So of course I came straight to you with the information. Maybe she was on her way to an audition.
I am going to see Deerhunter in 28 days and I’m very excited about this still. Do you remember how, when I first moved to the UK, I bought tickets to see The Sea and Cake on my birthday and then forgot about the show by the time it came around? And they haven’t played in London since? Yeah, that isn’t ever happening again.
02 March 2011
Girl I see on the train
Now might be a good time to tell you about this girl I see on the train every morning. I’ve been wanting to write about her for ages, because I find her intriguing in a way that I can’t put my finger on, at least off-paper.
The first time I saw her, I thought she might be drugged. Her head rested against the window, and her face mimicked an expression of sleep (glazed, narrowed eyes; a drowsy, permanent smirk), even when she occasionally sat up straight, or stood to disembark. It worried me a bit, because she was clearly school-aged, maybe fourteen or fifteen, but when I saw her again the following morning, I realised that this was simply her natural expression (at least before 9AM).
Other aspects of her appearance lend themselves to an overall impression of a sleep-walker, such as the blonde tendrils of hair that escape a hastily trussed ponytail and the soft, worn fabric of her leggings and t-shirts, outward-turned feet nested inside slouching UGGs. Her telephone number “in case of loss” is printed in black marker directly onto the cotton of her pink, drawstring rucksack (one of three that she uses – none of the others bear a visible number), and has bled and turned purplish in the wash, or the rain.
And that’s it, really. I’m not sure why this lanky teenaged girl with an odd dress sense and enigmatic fatigue has made such an impression on my imagination, but maybe that’s all it takes. I see her so often now that I almost feel I know her; part of me hopes that she’s somewhere across town in a classroom, sketching her own private portrait of that strange woman who steals glances at her while she time-releases the universe into her consciousness.
The first time I saw her, I thought she might be drugged. Her head rested against the window, and her face mimicked an expression of sleep (glazed, narrowed eyes; a drowsy, permanent smirk), even when she occasionally sat up straight, or stood to disembark. It worried me a bit, because she was clearly school-aged, maybe fourteen or fifteen, but when I saw her again the following morning, I realised that this was simply her natural expression (at least before 9AM).
Other aspects of her appearance lend themselves to an overall impression of a sleep-walker, such as the blonde tendrils of hair that escape a hastily trussed ponytail and the soft, worn fabric of her leggings and t-shirts, outward-turned feet nested inside slouching UGGs. Her telephone number “in case of loss” is printed in black marker directly onto the cotton of her pink, drawstring rucksack (one of three that she uses – none of the others bear a visible number), and has bled and turned purplish in the wash, or the rain.
And that’s it, really. I’m not sure why this lanky teenaged girl with an odd dress sense and enigmatic fatigue has made such an impression on my imagination, but maybe that’s all it takes. I see her so often now that I almost feel I know her; part of me hopes that she’s somewhere across town in a classroom, sketching her own private portrait of that strange woman who steals glances at her while she time-releases the universe into her consciousness.
01 March 2011
Since I left you (I've not found a convenient coffee stop)
Recently, a friend on Facebook posted a video to my wall for a song that I used to listen to obsessively back in 2004. A pixie-like girl - who was obsessed with all things to do with Iceland, and who did data entry with me for a few months between semesters - first introduced me to Avalanches that summer, and I never looked back (to a time before Avalanches, I guess). Anyway, in contrast to the light and exotic scenarios my imagination painted around that island-beach-party noise you hear thumping away in the background, the video does something dreamlike and far more substantial:
I don’t often enjoy music videos (I quite liked Grizzly Bear’s ‘Two Weeks’ until I saw this video, for instance), but sometimes I get lucky.
Speaking of dreams (don’t worry, I’m not going to describe them), I’d like to find out why mine thematically revolve around distance lately. (Fine, I lied, but I promise I won’t bore you with superfluous detail). For instance:
-- I must return to work (in Hertfordshire) on foot from Vancouver, which becomes Regina and then turns into a steep, red-earthed logging road in Oregon.
-- I have to find my way back home (in Hertfordshire) from work (Regina) by city bus. I get off at the Cornwall Centre and then panic once I realise the enormity of my journey.
-- I have to find my way to a McDonalds across town in order to do a coffee run for work, and I have to take Hartley with me. (Town = home = central London in this scenario.)
Okay, so that last one was negligible. And fortunately, even my dream self recognised that there is a McDonalds on every corner, because I chose to invent one just up the road. Also, I stepped on a pizza that was displayed on the steps leading up to the cashier. (I thought I'd add that in because it's at least an interesting dream detail.)
So what have we learned?
I don’t often enjoy music videos (I quite liked Grizzly Bear’s ‘Two Weeks’ until I saw this video, for instance), but sometimes I get lucky.
Speaking of dreams (don’t worry, I’m not going to describe them), I’d like to find out why mine thematically revolve around distance lately. (Fine, I lied, but I promise I won’t bore you with superfluous detail). For instance:
-- I must return to work (in Hertfordshire) on foot from Vancouver, which becomes Regina and then turns into a steep, red-earthed logging road in Oregon.
-- I have to find my way back home (in Hertfordshire) from work (Regina) by city bus. I get off at the Cornwall Centre and then panic once I realise the enormity of my journey.
-- I have to find my way to a McDonalds across town in order to do a coffee run for work, and I have to take Hartley with me. (Town = home = central London in this scenario.)
Okay, so that last one was negligible. And fortunately, even my dream self recognised that there is a McDonalds on every corner, because I chose to invent one just up the road. Also, I stepped on a pizza that was displayed on the steps leading up to the cashier. (I thought I'd add that in because it's at least an interesting dream detail.)
So what have we learned?
- Unexpected music videos can reveal a familiar song’s hidden depth.
- My subconscious is anxiously preoccupied with distance and conflicting notions of home.
- I am a cheapskate who would rather buy my colleagues shitty McDonalds coffee than spend an extra tenner at Costa.
28 February 2011
Welcome Citizens of 2011
I am back at work, and goodness knows I don’t have nearly as much time or energy to expend on extracurricular anything – even things I find enjoyable. When you fill ten hours of your day with work (including commute) and then glue these hours together with full-time child-rearing, your actual free-time priorities become very apparent very quickly:
1. Sleep
2. Eat
3. Television/Angry Birds.
Agitate the Magic 8-ball as often as you’d like, but those are the only three answers that could conceivably surface as a working parent, at least in the first years.
Last week, whilst eating lunch in the communal area, I thought to myself, You know, I really miss writing. I wish I could fit it in somewhere. And then I looked up from my sandwich and realised that you are not actually required to socialise with colleagues over your lunch hour. I’d been out of the loop for so long that this minor-but-contextually-massive stipulation had somehow slipped my mind, and so today I’m at my desk, typing for my life, the remnants of pickle and avocado still tacky between my blurred fingers.
I don’t have an entire hour to spend on an entry, so you might only get a few paragraphs like this. But it’s a start, and with more practice, I may work up to telling you about my sandwich in greater detail, or a myriad of other things you’d be interested in knowing, if you know me. Which, chances are, if you’re reading this, you do. I am covert like that.
1. Sleep
2. Eat
3. Television/Angry Birds.
Agitate the Magic 8-ball as often as you’d like, but those are the only three answers that could conceivably surface as a working parent, at least in the first years.
Last week, whilst eating lunch in the communal area, I thought to myself, You know, I really miss writing. I wish I could fit it in somewhere. And then I looked up from my sandwich and realised that you are not actually required to socialise with colleagues over your lunch hour. I’d been out of the loop for so long that this minor-but-contextually-massive stipulation had somehow slipped my mind, and so today I’m at my desk, typing for my life, the remnants of pickle and avocado still tacky between my blurred fingers.
I don’t have an entire hour to spend on an entry, so you might only get a few paragraphs like this. But it’s a start, and with more practice, I may work up to telling you about my sandwich in greater detail, or a myriad of other things you’d be interested in knowing, if you know me. Which, chances are, if you’re reading this, you do. I am covert like that.
30 December 2010
December 18 - Try
What do you want to try next year? Is there something you wanted to try in 2010? What happened when you did / didn’t go for it?
Yeah, okay. So next year, I’d like to try...
I’m drawing a blank. A blank has been drawn, and my poor pillaged Advent calendar rests eternally in that great recycling facility in the sky.
Next year, I’d like to try putting action before thought. As someone who lives almost exclusively in their own head, I can tell you that I probably spend about 90% of my time imagining, projecting, fantasising and a whole host of other unhelpful frontal lobe activity that only gets in the way of clean dishes and a tidy house.
Of course, once I begin stumbling through life like some Frankenstein’s monster of poor impulse control, the humiliation factor is guaranteed to increase exponentially, which is not something I will document here. So although my resolve might not make me wildly popular online, I’m sure I will reap the rewards of this hasty promise tenfold in my real life. Yes.
There was something I wanted to try in 2010. Nothing happened though, because I didn’t go for it. There’s a lesson here somewhere. Oop, right there.
Written in participation with #Reverb10. Read my complete set of posts here.
Yeah, okay. So next year, I’d like to try...
I’m drawing a blank. A blank has been drawn, and my poor pillaged Advent calendar rests eternally in that great recycling facility in the sky.
Next year, I’d like to try putting action before thought. As someone who lives almost exclusively in their own head, I can tell you that I probably spend about 90% of my time imagining, projecting, fantasising and a whole host of other unhelpful frontal lobe activity that only gets in the way of clean dishes and a tidy house.
Of course, once I begin stumbling through life like some Frankenstein’s monster of poor impulse control, the humiliation factor is guaranteed to increase exponentially, which is not something I will document here. So although my resolve might not make me wildly popular online, I’m sure I will reap the rewards of this hasty promise tenfold in my real life. Yes.
There was something I wanted to try in 2010. Nothing happened though, because I didn’t go for it. There’s a lesson here somewhere. Oop, right there.
Written in participation with #Reverb10. Read my complete set of posts here.
December 17 - Lesson Learned
What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward?
It was really great to discover that I’m not actually required to put up with people who make me feel bad about myself, or who try to take advantage of my congenial nature. Going forward, I vow to spend no energy whatsoever on these types, who turn up rather too often in my life, but thankfully not so often that their presence would overwhelm the vast majority of sane people who either like me or stay out of my face if they don’t. I think that by having more boundaries, I can probably sidestep these gate crashers altogether, though I’m still working out the difference between boundaries and bullet-proof glass. That can easily backfire if I'm not careful.
Written in participation with #Reverb10. Read my complete set of posts here.
It was really great to discover that I’m not actually required to put up with people who make me feel bad about myself, or who try to take advantage of my congenial nature. Going forward, I vow to spend no energy whatsoever on these types, who turn up rather too often in my life, but thankfully not so often that their presence would overwhelm the vast majority of sane people who either like me or stay out of my face if they don’t. I think that by having more boundaries, I can probably sidestep these gate crashers altogether, though I’m still working out the difference between boundaries and bullet-proof glass. That can easily backfire if I'm not careful.
Written in participation with #Reverb10. Read my complete set of posts here.
29 December 2010
December 16 - Friendship
How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was this change gradual, or a sudden burst?
I learned very early on that if you continuously stew your brain in a stock made up of old ideas, you will one day open your mouth to speak and nobody will understand a fucking thing you say. Because your mouth will be full of crazy soup. To keep crazy soup off the menu, you need a kitchen full of diverse, competent chefs, which is to say that I may deal in lousy metaphors, but my friends are like saffron to my life. You know – a rare and expensive seasoning you sometimes have to go to Southwest Asia to find. That’s actually not too far off the mark.
My most important perspective shifts have almost always come from friends. Boyfriends (and fiancées and husbands) are stuffed into the same perspective pot as you within about thirty seconds of your toothbrushes mating in a cup on the bathroom windowsill, by which time you should be finishing each other’s sentences and arguing about whose turn it is to use the communal brain. So whilst you can rely on your partner to tell you that No, you are not getting fatter, that doorway is just contracting because it's cold in here you certainly wouldn’t expect them to come home one day and hand you the meaning of life. That would be inconceivable, and also wrong, as it is your job to retain the upper hand at any cost.
The first time I can remember another human being seriously changing my perspective on life (which in turn changed me into a whole new person, practically) was in university. We were actually in the university. I’d just skipped another one of my electives to sip coffee sludge and smoke cigarettes in the student’s union bar and he was on his way to class. I was trying to be cool about the fact that I was wasting my tuition money, and he told me that, actually, he really liked school. I thought this was a novel idea, or maybe I was just being polite, so I asked him to elaborate. He said something along the lines of enjoying being able to amass as much knowledge about the world as he could. And I was like: huh.
And that ‘Huh’ stayed with me all day, until I too was eager to become a vessel for enlightenment, and to see how far I could stretch my mind. It turned out to be much further than I ever thought possible, actually, and to this day I still believe that anyone can learn anything they want, if they go into it with the right mindset. Determination is important, but mostly you need to give yourself over to the fact that you don’t yet know something, and then (here’s the tricky part) make a home of indeterminate dimensions for that something, because whatever it turns out to be, you’ll want it to feel welcome when it arrives. Wax on, wax off. That sort of thing.
Anyway. All this to say: friends can change your perspective in both small and profound ways, and that’s something you have to be open to as well. It’s also something you need to make time for, which I’ve been rubbish at doing this year. It’s mainly because I’ve got this kid to look after. I love him to bits, and soon I will need to learn how to live my life as though that love doesn’t take up every metric inch of space I own. So I’m looking at ways in which other mothers achieve that balance, and I’m taking notes. Mentally, in my big old empty pot of soup, which by now is a reduction of Thomas the Tank Engine and Sudocrem. It’s also because of social anxiety, and soon I guess I will need to learn how to deal with this in ways that don’t involve resveratrol.
Written in participation with #Reverb10. Read my complete set of posts here.
I learned very early on that if you continuously stew your brain in a stock made up of old ideas, you will one day open your mouth to speak and nobody will understand a fucking thing you say. Because your mouth will be full of crazy soup. To keep crazy soup off the menu, you need a kitchen full of diverse, competent chefs, which is to say that I may deal in lousy metaphors, but my friends are like saffron to my life. You know – a rare and expensive seasoning you sometimes have to go to Southwest Asia to find. That’s actually not too far off the mark.
My most important perspective shifts have almost always come from friends. Boyfriends (and fiancées and husbands) are stuffed into the same perspective pot as you within about thirty seconds of your toothbrushes mating in a cup on the bathroom windowsill, by which time you should be finishing each other’s sentences and arguing about whose turn it is to use the communal brain. So whilst you can rely on your partner to tell you that No, you are not getting fatter, that doorway is just contracting because it's cold in here you certainly wouldn’t expect them to come home one day and hand you the meaning of life. That would be inconceivable, and also wrong, as it is your job to retain the upper hand at any cost.
The first time I can remember another human being seriously changing my perspective on life (which in turn changed me into a whole new person, practically) was in university. We were actually in the university. I’d just skipped another one of my electives to sip coffee sludge and smoke cigarettes in the student’s union bar and he was on his way to class. I was trying to be cool about the fact that I was wasting my tuition money, and he told me that, actually, he really liked school. I thought this was a novel idea, or maybe I was just being polite, so I asked him to elaborate. He said something along the lines of enjoying being able to amass as much knowledge about the world as he could. And I was like: huh.
And that ‘Huh’ stayed with me all day, until I too was eager to become a vessel for enlightenment, and to see how far I could stretch my mind. It turned out to be much further than I ever thought possible, actually, and to this day I still believe that anyone can learn anything they want, if they go into it with the right mindset. Determination is important, but mostly you need to give yourself over to the fact that you don’t yet know something, and then (here’s the tricky part) make a home of indeterminate dimensions for that something, because whatever it turns out to be, you’ll want it to feel welcome when it arrives. Wax on, wax off. That sort of thing.
Anyway. All this to say: friends can change your perspective in both small and profound ways, and that’s something you have to be open to as well. It’s also something you need to make time for, which I’ve been rubbish at doing this year. It’s mainly because I’ve got this kid to look after. I love him to bits, and soon I will need to learn how to live my life as though that love doesn’t take up every metric inch of space I own. So I’m looking at ways in which other mothers achieve that balance, and I’m taking notes. Mentally, in my big old empty pot of soup, which by now is a reduction of Thomas the Tank Engine and Sudocrem. It’s also because of social anxiety, and soon I guess I will need to learn how to deal with this in ways that don’t involve resveratrol.
Written in participation with #Reverb10. Read my complete set of posts here.
22 December 2010
December 15 - 5 Minutes
20 December 2010
December 14 - Appreciate
What’s the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it?
We have been in the shit now for almost two years. Perhaps that’s not the most gracious way to describe parenthood, but sometimes it really does feel like all-out war. We battle with sleep and diet (Hartley’s and our own), during nappy changes and baths, with staying on top of dishes, laundry and toy cars, in and out of shops and push chairs, cots and high chairs, in the bedroom and in the kitchen. Life is made up of long strings of days chock full of such battles, at the end of which we put our small dictator to bed and throw ourselves into a black hole of television. It’s the only logical way to cope with the complete loss of perspective.
So when I occasionally lift my head and notice that the dishes are washed, the laundry folded and put away, and Bruce and Hartley are peacefully coexisting without any need of me whatsoever, I really do appreciate the sudden harmony. In these moments, I try to just enjoy the vista of calm and recognise that although it’s rare, it is also possible. This is what I signed on for when I first made the decision to start a family, and although it’s not the minefield of golden moments I was expecting, I feel all the more thankful whenever I come across one of these precious gems.
Written in participation with #Reverb10. Read my complete set of posts here.
We have been in the shit now for almost two years. Perhaps that’s not the most gracious way to describe parenthood, but sometimes it really does feel like all-out war. We battle with sleep and diet (Hartley’s and our own), during nappy changes and baths, with staying on top of dishes, laundry and toy cars, in and out of shops and push chairs, cots and high chairs, in the bedroom and in the kitchen. Life is made up of long strings of days chock full of such battles, at the end of which we put our small dictator to bed and throw ourselves into a black hole of television. It’s the only logical way to cope with the complete loss of perspective.
So when I occasionally lift my head and notice that the dishes are washed, the laundry folded and put away, and Bruce and Hartley are peacefully coexisting without any need of me whatsoever, I really do appreciate the sudden harmony. In these moments, I try to just enjoy the vista of calm and recognise that although it’s rare, it is also possible. This is what I signed on for when I first made the decision to start a family, and although it’s not the minefield of golden moments I was expecting, I feel all the more thankful whenever I come across one of these precious gems.
Written in participation with #Reverb10. Read my complete set of posts here.
17 December 2010
December 13 - Action
When it comes to aspirations, it’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen. What’s your next step?
What is this new obsession with ideas and making things happen? When did a nice way of delving into the hearts and minds of regular people turn into a rat race for some hazy, distant prize of...what? I’m still trying to figure this out. Is it money? Fame? Recognition? It’s not enough that we get to live a life largely without constant hunger, pain, grief or hopelessness – we want our big fat future reward too. We want a trophy that will prove to ourselves, and to those around us, that this life of ours really means something.
I’ll tell you what: my biggest idea that I want to make happen in 2011 is to get us through another year alive. Not because we’re poor or unhealthy, and not because we live in a country with appalling human rights or natural-disaster-prone geography, but for the simple fact that life is fucking random. Pardon my language, but this is something that has yet to cease mattering more to me than anything else I can distract myself with. You could be standing on solid rock or hanging by a thread, but you will never know which it is; the treadmill stops for nobody, and it’s both hard and easy to put a foot wrong when you’re perpetually stepping into the future.
If I can make it through the next fifty years without dying (or losing the people that matter most to me before I do), then I will consider that my greatest achievement. My next biggest idea-turned-action is to raise a boy who can know all this without having it break his heart; who can live as though each day matters, and be grateful if that’s the only thing he has to feel grateful for.
I've been forgetting to include my advent calendar prompts, which are meant to propel these ideas along. Today's calendar door revealed a pair of chintzy, glass ornaments. So there you go.
Written in participation with #Reverb10. Read my complete set of posts here.
What is this new obsession with ideas and making things happen? When did a nice way of delving into the hearts and minds of regular people turn into a rat race for some hazy, distant prize of...what? I’m still trying to figure this out. Is it money? Fame? Recognition? It’s not enough that we get to live a life largely without constant hunger, pain, grief or hopelessness – we want our big fat future reward too. We want a trophy that will prove to ourselves, and to those around us, that this life of ours really means something.
I’ll tell you what: my biggest idea that I want to make happen in 2011 is to get us through another year alive. Not because we’re poor or unhealthy, and not because we live in a country with appalling human rights or natural-disaster-prone geography, but for the simple fact that life is fucking random. Pardon my language, but this is something that has yet to cease mattering more to me than anything else I can distract myself with. You could be standing on solid rock or hanging by a thread, but you will never know which it is; the treadmill stops for nobody, and it’s both hard and easy to put a foot wrong when you’re perpetually stepping into the future.
If I can make it through the next fifty years without dying (or losing the people that matter most to me before I do), then I will consider that my greatest achievement. My next biggest idea-turned-action is to raise a boy who can know all this without having it break his heart; who can live as though each day matters, and be grateful if that’s the only thing he has to feel grateful for.
I've been forgetting to include my advent calendar prompts, which are meant to propel these ideas along. Today's calendar door revealed a pair of chintzy, glass ornaments. So there you go.
Written in participation with #Reverb10. Read my complete set of posts here.
16 December 2010
December 11 - 11 Things
What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?
1. Self-importance – been there, done that. Bring on the silent struggles and mindless telly!
2. That sort of eliminates any potential the rest of this list might have had. Oh well. Let’s see though.
3. Unwanted advice – I am going to take unwanted advice much less seriously, when it comes to Hartley. Like if someone says: do not feed him red foods, red foods will make him spin in circles and lose muscle mass, then I will feed him nothing but beetroot and lipstick. So you’d better think very carefully before you offer unwanted advice about child-rearing. Think in opposites, for instance.
4. Self-recrimination – I am the queen of over-thinking, but only if it means I get to be the bad guy. This next year, I will stop listening to the voices inside my head (metaphorical voices, not crazy ones!) and instead remember that I am actually a kind, polite and caring person who would rather swallow my own handbag than harm another human being. I think I should probably add /worrying to this item.
5. People who drain the life out of me –I’ve made one or two cuts this year and haven’t regretted my decision. In fact, I feel a whole lot better. To all the people I’ve yet to meet: the drawbridge will remain in an upright position unless I’m positive you’re not here to trash the place.
6. Rules – I live my life by rules. These rules are self-imposed and mostly arbitrary, and lately I’ve been breaking one or two, just to see if they’re meaningful. I quit smoking in 2006, and in the last six months, I have smoked two cigarettes. Did the world come to an end? No. Am I going to start up again? No. Will I smoke another cigarette? Maybe. I will make up my mind on a case-by-case basis, and that’s how I plan to do pretty much everything for now.
7. Pining – What a completely useless activity!
8. Empty promises to myself – Who am I trying to fool? I accomplish far more when I go behind my own back and just do something, rather than intimate that I’ll do something and instead watch five episodes of The Hills.
9. Conflict – Life with a toddler is hard enough without additional drama. I am going to do my best to avoid situations that could escalate and eat up what precious little time I have for myself and for Hartley, even if it means backing down and washing ten loads of dishes when it’s not even my night to wash them. Did I just put that in writing?
10. Mind reading – Did I go to psychic school? No? Well then I don’t know what you’re thinking, and I’m just going to assume that we’re tight, unless you tell me otherwise. Deal? Great. No, just the bill, thanks.
11. Complaining – This is a hard one for me, because I spent my childhood squashing negative emotions wayyyy down, for a variety of reasons. Now I want the world to know that I’m miserable! Even though I’m actually quite happy! What’s up with that? If you know, maybe you have a psychology degree. Or maybe you went to psychic school. Yup, in 2011, I am going to be one little happy ray of sunshine. Just see if I’m not.
Written in participation with #Reverb10. Read my complete set of posts here.
1. Self-importance – been there, done that. Bring on the silent struggles and mindless telly!
2. That sort of eliminates any potential the rest of this list might have had. Oh well. Let’s see though.
3. Unwanted advice – I am going to take unwanted advice much less seriously, when it comes to Hartley. Like if someone says: do not feed him red foods, red foods will make him spin in circles and lose muscle mass, then I will feed him nothing but beetroot and lipstick. So you’d better think very carefully before you offer unwanted advice about child-rearing. Think in opposites, for instance.
4. Self-recrimination – I am the queen of over-thinking, but only if it means I get to be the bad guy. This next year, I will stop listening to the voices inside my head (metaphorical voices, not crazy ones!) and instead remember that I am actually a kind, polite and caring person who would rather swallow my own handbag than harm another human being. I think I should probably add /worrying to this item.
5. People who drain the life out of me –I’ve made one or two cuts this year and haven’t regretted my decision. In fact, I feel a whole lot better. To all the people I’ve yet to meet: the drawbridge will remain in an upright position unless I’m positive you’re not here to trash the place.
6. Rules – I live my life by rules. These rules are self-imposed and mostly arbitrary, and lately I’ve been breaking one or two, just to see if they’re meaningful. I quit smoking in 2006, and in the last six months, I have smoked two cigarettes. Did the world come to an end? No. Am I going to start up again? No. Will I smoke another cigarette? Maybe. I will make up my mind on a case-by-case basis, and that’s how I plan to do pretty much everything for now.
7. Pining – What a completely useless activity!
8. Empty promises to myself – Who am I trying to fool? I accomplish far more when I go behind my own back and just do something, rather than intimate that I’ll do something and instead watch five episodes of The Hills.
9. Conflict – Life with a toddler is hard enough without additional drama. I am going to do my best to avoid situations that could escalate and eat up what precious little time I have for myself and for Hartley, even if it means backing down and washing ten loads of dishes when it’s not even my night to wash them. Did I just put that in writing?
10. Mind reading – Did I go to psychic school? No? Well then I don’t know what you’re thinking, and I’m just going to assume that we’re tight, unless you tell me otherwise. Deal? Great. No, just the bill, thanks.
11. Complaining – This is a hard one for me, because I spent my childhood squashing negative emotions wayyyy down, for a variety of reasons. Now I want the world to know that I’m miserable! Even though I’m actually quite happy! What’s up with that? If you know, maybe you have a psychology degree. Or maybe you went to psychic school. Yup, in 2011, I am going to be one little happy ray of sunshine. Just see if I’m not.
Written in participation with #Reverb10. Read my complete set of posts here.
December 10 - Wisdom
What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?
(I've skipped a few prompts, mainly because they felt too cheesy to contemplate, but also because I wanted to catch up. Which is clearly working out great!)
There is a marked difference between ‘wisdom’ and all other words that imply thoughtfulness; to be wise is to make choices in life based on experience, which is something I still feel I’m amassing in most respects.
Our decision to move out of London in early March was the best decision we made this year, though it was a bit of a crap shoot, since we didn’t actually know how things would pan out. All the reasons we could think of to stay (friends, nightlife, proximity to work) were pretty flimsy in comparison to what we got by leaving (3x the space, proximity to family, better amenities for Hartley). Our lives have improved drastically since moving out of our tiny, expensive flat, and although Hartley is generally easier to manage now that he is older, I still can’t imagine what we would have done in that filthy, roaring sprawl. Though I do miss that filthy, roaring sprawl sometimes.
Written in participation with #Reverb10. Read my complete set of posts here.
(I've skipped a few prompts, mainly because they felt too cheesy to contemplate, but also because I wanted to catch up. Which is clearly working out great!)
There is a marked difference between ‘wisdom’ and all other words that imply thoughtfulness; to be wise is to make choices in life based on experience, which is something I still feel I’m amassing in most respects.
Our decision to move out of London in early March was the best decision we made this year, though it was a bit of a crap shoot, since we didn’t actually know how things would pan out. All the reasons we could think of to stay (friends, nightlife, proximity to work) were pretty flimsy in comparison to what we got by leaving (3x the space, proximity to family, better amenities for Hartley). Our lives have improved drastically since moving out of our tiny, expensive flat, and although Hartley is generally easier to manage now that he is older, I still can’t imagine what we would have done in that filthy, roaring sprawl. Though I do miss that filthy, roaring sprawl sometimes.
Written in participation with #Reverb10. Read my complete set of posts here.
08 December 2010
December 6 - Make
What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?
I think we won't bother with the advent prompt this time around, as the last thing I made needs no prompting. It also needs no repeating, but I spent a small fortune on some tubes of oil paint and should probably make some time to squeeze out their contents. So without further ado...
The last thing I made was a poor oil-on-canvas reproduction of Landscape, Outskirts of Paris (Christopher Wood, 1901-1930). I am not even sure if this is the proper way to cite a painting, which, as you can see, is the least of my problems.
I can't tell you why I took the class, or even what I expected to get out of it. The last thing I painted prior to this was – I shit you not – a winged unicorn flying above its own reflection in a lake, the laboured arc of a rainbow dominating much of the background (in acrylics, none the less). I was seven, and didn't know that paintings had names. If I did, I might have called mine Flying Unicorn Sees Himself, With Rainbow. All unicorns are boys, FYI. It's why they dig the young virgins and have horns and whatnot. Filthy, filthy beasts.
SO. I did this art class, which I was fairly confident would cater to my inexperience, it being called Oils for All and not Oils for Experienced Artists Looking For Reassurance, for instance. The room was small, the instructor said things like “Mm, 'tis” when faced with assertions like “It's a lovely light coming over that hillock now,” and actually, everyone else had a talent for saying very little and yet somehow still managing to squeeze in painting terminology that made me feel inadequate, such as “knock it back” (no whisky, no comprende) and “that's coming on well.” There were five of us in all - mostly women over the age of 50 (well over, in some cases) and all were properly what you'd call artists. All but one.
Fortunately, I intuited that there would be little to no actual instruction in these lessons and chose a painting that I thought I'd have a slim chance in Hell of blagging my way through from beginning to end. I tore Chris Wood out of a book and thanked the Baby Jesus on a skateboard that I'd recently watched an instructional video on how to block in objects with a pencil - for scale, and a general idea of where to put paint down. I thought I could get away with overworking my background over the course of four weeks (skylines require a deceptively large amount of detail), but after my first lesson, she brandished her number 2 paintbrush at me and commanded me to paint faster.
By lesson three, she'd wrestled my brush from me and was showing me how to put paint on the canvas with an eye to efficiency and completion - it was THAT painful for her to stand and watch me drizzle smoke from my tiny smokestacks and edge in blue highlights hour after hour. Eventually I saw that in order to get this woman off my back, I was going to have to try to tackle the wild jungle of the foreground – jagged cliff, impressionistic figure and all. I launched into it with a kind of recklessness I didn't know I was capable of, and at one point she leaned over my painting and said, “You've really cracked that.” I've never felt more proud of something in my life, and that includes my 100% final mark in Film Theory and Aesthetics – a bit of trivia I like to pull out every five years to remind people of how exceptional I once was.
A moment of silence for that person.
It was at the eleventh hour, after several failed attempts to make brown by mixing cobalt blue, lamp black and yellow ochre that I finally squeaked, “Excuse me? I think I might need another colour.” She looked at my canvas and nodded and said “Yes, I do believe you're ready to add another colour,” and she daubed a bit of 'light red' onto my palette paper so that I could do a rock.
It wasn't until I took the painting home (still wet, carried gingerly at one edge between thumb and forefinger), and mustered enough enthusiasm to purchase some oils of my own several weeks later, that I realised the original painting was pervaded by a kind of subtle, purplish hue, whereas my own was – from sky to the sandy beaches of my foreground - a wash of atonal greens. This is the peril of painting as a non-artist who does not realise she is missing out on an entire wheel of the colour spectrum, and so I sheepishly reworked these parts for a few hours one evening, having lost the magic of that so-called lesson, which really only taught me that painters are a strange bunch of people that don't use the internet and are afraid of mobile phones because of radiation poisoning.
The end?
This post was brought to you by the colours Lamp Black, Yellow Ochre, Light Red, Cobalt Blue (Hue), Titanium White and the smallest bit of Lemon Yellow.
Materials:
10x14” stretched canvas
G24 round brush
G36 short flat brush
No. 27 palette knife
Glass jar of white spirit
Paper towel
A lotta nerve
Written in participation with #Reverb10. Read my complete set of posts here.
I think we won't bother with the advent prompt this time around, as the last thing I made needs no prompting. It also needs no repeating, but I spent a small fortune on some tubes of oil paint and should probably make some time to squeeze out their contents. So without further ado...
The last thing I made was a poor oil-on-canvas reproduction of Landscape, Outskirts of Paris (Christopher Wood, 1901-1930). I am not even sure if this is the proper way to cite a painting, which, as you can see, is the least of my problems.
I can't tell you why I took the class, or even what I expected to get out of it. The last thing I painted prior to this was – I shit you not – a winged unicorn flying above its own reflection in a lake, the laboured arc of a rainbow dominating much of the background (in acrylics, none the less). I was seven, and didn't know that paintings had names. If I did, I might have called mine Flying Unicorn Sees Himself, With Rainbow. All unicorns are boys, FYI. It's why they dig the young virgins and have horns and whatnot. Filthy, filthy beasts.
SO. I did this art class, which I was fairly confident would cater to my inexperience, it being called Oils for All and not Oils for Experienced Artists Looking For Reassurance, for instance. The room was small, the instructor said things like “Mm, 'tis” when faced with assertions like “It's a lovely light coming over that hillock now,” and actually, everyone else had a talent for saying very little and yet somehow still managing to squeeze in painting terminology that made me feel inadequate, such as “knock it back” (no whisky, no comprende) and “that's coming on well.” There were five of us in all - mostly women over the age of 50 (well over, in some cases) and all were properly what you'd call artists. All but one.
Fortunately, I intuited that there would be little to no actual instruction in these lessons and chose a painting that I thought I'd have a slim chance in Hell of blagging my way through from beginning to end. I tore Chris Wood out of a book and thanked the Baby Jesus on a skateboard that I'd recently watched an instructional video on how to block in objects with a pencil - for scale, and a general idea of where to put paint down. I thought I could get away with overworking my background over the course of four weeks (skylines require a deceptively large amount of detail), but after my first lesson, she brandished her number 2 paintbrush at me and commanded me to paint faster.
By lesson three, she'd wrestled my brush from me and was showing me how to put paint on the canvas with an eye to efficiency and completion - it was THAT painful for her to stand and watch me drizzle smoke from my tiny smokestacks and edge in blue highlights hour after hour. Eventually I saw that in order to get this woman off my back, I was going to have to try to tackle the wild jungle of the foreground – jagged cliff, impressionistic figure and all. I launched into it with a kind of recklessness I didn't know I was capable of, and at one point she leaned over my painting and said, “You've really cracked that.” I've never felt more proud of something in my life, and that includes my 100% final mark in Film Theory and Aesthetics – a bit of trivia I like to pull out every five years to remind people of how exceptional I once was.
A moment of silence for that person.
It was at the eleventh hour, after several failed attempts to make brown by mixing cobalt blue, lamp black and yellow ochre that I finally squeaked, “Excuse me? I think I might need another colour.” She looked at my canvas and nodded and said “Yes, I do believe you're ready to add another colour,” and she daubed a bit of 'light red' onto my palette paper so that I could do a rock.
It wasn't until I took the painting home (still wet, carried gingerly at one edge between thumb and forefinger), and mustered enough enthusiasm to purchase some oils of my own several weeks later, that I realised the original painting was pervaded by a kind of subtle, purplish hue, whereas my own was – from sky to the sandy beaches of my foreground - a wash of atonal greens. This is the peril of painting as a non-artist who does not realise she is missing out on an entire wheel of the colour spectrum, and so I sheepishly reworked these parts for a few hours one evening, having lost the magic of that so-called lesson, which really only taught me that painters are a strange bunch of people that don't use the internet and are afraid of mobile phones because of radiation poisoning.
The end?
This post was brought to you by the colours Lamp Black, Yellow Ochre, Light Red, Cobalt Blue (Hue), Titanium White and the smallest bit of Lemon Yellow.
Materials:
10x14” stretched canvas
G24 round brush
G36 short flat brush
No. 27 palette knife
Glass jar of white spirit
Paper towel
A lotta nerve
Written in participation with #Reverb10. Read my complete set of posts here.
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