All entries for January 2010

It has flickered beyond morning and forgotten to inform me.

It has flickered beyond morning and forgotten to inform me. My alarm clock is blinking defiantly at me, holding up its metaphorical hands as if to say “you never told me.” I roll over to face the window in hope I remembered to draw the curtains, only to be greeted by two large pigeons engaging in something no one ever needs to witness on the extension roof. They’re having better luck than I am though. It is almost 2pm before I manage to battle out of the sea of sheets to rehydrate my mouth, which subsequently feels like a family of tobacco flavoured rats have fornicated in whilst I slept.

No ones in, which is a relief because after a glass of water I proceed to vomit into the sink. What a mess, what a fucking awful mess I am. After 20minutes of dry heaving I step into my customary freezing shower to shift the odour of sweaty bed sheets and cheap wine. I let the cold water rush over my bruised back, war wounds from nights out. I notice a new swelling on my right knee and a flashback of stairs and stilettos ensues. What a mess.

Yawning ferociously I sit down to my breakfast of dry, seedy toast and black coffee.

I am wishing to expel all the ideas and patchwork, poorly sewn together plans that I tried to tell myself were feasible. Futures can only be built upon pasts and most certainly presents. It is all subjective. What is reality at this hour, the sixty minutes between two o’clock and three, may not be so by tonight. The world could collapse by then. What is fact and fiction flirts with deception. Nothing is truly here or settled or assured. The wooden floor that secures my place could splinter before the day is through. The microwave in my new kitchen may break and Mum might cry because she finds out I drink concoctions of red wine and beer and vodka and anything greasy, acne plagued boys feed me.

I may be planning a train journey to stay with my aunt because my Dad thinks I have a drug problem but I would enjoy it because I’d eat bagels and smoke cigarettes and write pretty things on the train and play the game when you make up peoples lives. Like the man with the briefcase and badly shaped eyebrows whom is about to come into a small fortune but will waste it on a fast, polished red car instead of his wife and will be lonely because he forgot what it was to feel and only remembered what it is to spend. Perhaps I will be betrayed by someone most loyal or perhaps I should not doubt them but myself instead. It is possible that I may disown someone who when I woke up this morning was beautiful and untouchable and precious beyond materialistic surroundings, but I don’t think I’d do a thing like that. I do not feel like I need to prove myself or make some brash decision. I feel magnificently reckless in a most floral and sparkly way. The world is at one with me from as far as I can see from this sofa made from cow. I’m sure that’s quite the juxtaposition and that nature is actually angry at for being seated so comfortably but whilst nature can only communicate to me through weather and bird song and appearance and that outside today is fresh and sunshine filled and the leaves are pleasantly waving in the wind and the birdsong is shrill enough to be heard but not so shrill that it aches my ears it’s as I said, the world and me are at one.

I am loveless in a most satisfying way. I recall what it is and how overwhelming and perfectly poignant even the small worlds of “can I see you tomorrow?” felt but that is dead and decomposing now in a scentless, tactful style. It is not blotting my being or making everything illegible, in fact it is sparking a creativity born from the ache that was residual. I am scornful but witty and meaningful and my senseless acts of summer nights need be no more than a memory that makes me smile. My head is pounding in a dull, wonderful manner that captures the previous evening’s occurrences better than photographic evidence. I remember what it is to enjoy my own company and revel in the uncertainty of tomorrows tomorrow. It is all a product of Summer and smoke and trying to quit it in a most effortless, “I’m not actually trying to quit I’ll just say that so people find my new habits less revolting and resist the need to lecture me on things I got an A grade on without trying” sort of way. My sentences are most marvellously long and very likely grammatically incorrect in a purposefully accidental fashion. I think Dickens would be disapproving but irresponsibly intrigued with my character and though I would never make it into a published book, I’d be at the least a scribble on a page to return to at some later date. A kind of working project that was never going anywhere and never will develop into a Pip or Dombey.

I am sleepy and covered in dew and morning even though we are well into the second half of this Saturday in April. This occasion may not be memorable like the loss of your virginity or the first time you get told “Well maybe our love is just different” but within this hour it is treasured and will be stored away somewhere that will never forget. There are pancake wrappers and empty cups that desire filling and an empty packet that once contained drugs and shoes that should probably be on my feet and carrying me home to do more practical and beneficial things but in actuality this right here seems to be the most beneficial thing I will ever do in all my life. No one could taint this and I will admire them for trying. One seems malicious within my vicinity of life. I seem a little lost and a little unsure if lost is an emotion and a little unsure if uncertainty is an admittance of cowardice. I adore the world and appreciate that this adoration will soon be spent and I will return to being mocking and malevolent and quietly optimistic, but deafeningly cynical. The fabric of my existence is at peace.

: 19 Jan 2010 22:51 |  Tags: Journal |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

An Early Grey catastrophe.

I do not what overcame me, perhaps the shock of the burn from the piping kettle steam, cunningly cool to the touch at first, but then suddenly clawing an additional scar into my arm. It stings still, nestling beside my war wounds, one from being sent to my death with only a poorly designed oven glove for armour, that left my freckled wrist exposed, a white gash, singed with pink, now left. Another from a wedding reception, crying in a B&B amongst yellowing, floral wall paper, because my first boyfriend told me he didn’t believe in “the entrapment of marriage”, and so the wine glass shattered, and I accidentally on purpose dug a shard into my engagement ring finger, an attempt to hollow out the gap I feared, at just 14, would be forever vacant.

The shock of the kettle steam was alluring at first, not so much a shock but the sudden remembrance of physical pain, an externalised sensation I was thankful to feel. I do not know what overcame me, but I thought of you, my legs suddenly weak, and my cheek unexpectedly laying on the orange linoleum floor, my eyes focusing on the world from this new perspective, a foreign land of autumn leaves, curled red onion skins and snowflakes, of coriander, sugar and salt, gently exfoliating my bare face.

I had not fainted, but suddenly succumbed to a captivating glimpse of the past, overturning the myths played out in my head to romanticise an already fairly dreamy childhood, to unearth a discarded snapshot of domesticity. You were making tea in the kitchen of your first cottage (well, not your first, but the first home of yours I can recall), and the cat, not yet fat from your love like the previous had been, with the majestic nonchalance of feline pride, leapt upon the tiled counter, knocking the just-boiled water over your elbow. You were leant placidly on the counter, that pink and wrinkled elbow, blanketed in excess skin, supporting the chubby arm and surprisingly delicate hand that placed the cigarette in your mouth, bathed in the lava of an Earl Grey catastrophe.

You did not flinch, but shut your eyes very slowly, as though wearing your death-mask and an impassive funeral director was respectfully shielding your dead gaze from the living world. The cat, Lionel, was unaware of his part in the disaster, and arched his back obliviously, scaling the net curtains to finally wriggle out of ever so slightly open window, cleverly left open for his escape. That cigarette was held between your pierced lips for what seemed like an eternity, and I remember I did not get up from the make-shift kitchen table, consisting of a cracked plastic garden table and two wooden stools. I remained still also, awaiting a reaction.

You relished that pain, and taught me to relish it that day too. After several seconds you moved your arm from the counter, and stubbed the cigarette out in the sink. Your hand waved in front of your face, dispelling the smoke, and you apologised for the habit, asking me not to tell my Mother you’d started again. You turned, your elbow almost bubbling in pain, and poured what was left in the kettle into two china mugs depicting bluebirds. “Just enough left in the kettle for the both of us.”

You sat down at the table beside me, absent-mindedly spooning too many sugars into your tea and raining the grains down across the white plastic surface, like you were gritting it for snow, making it safe for me. You were my aunt, and today I thought of you. I do not know what overcame me, but the kitchen floor felt cool on my skin, and I remained there, curled up momentarily, comforted by the misplaced recollection. I then sighed, tutted just like you would of, and climbed downstairs to smoke a cigarette in the Warwickshire snow.

: 13 Jan 2010 22:19 |  Tags: Creative |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem