23:06

The strange thing about blogging, like tweeting, and whatever absurd verb someone will invent for the next 'social interface' is that you have only two extremes: either taking yourself too seriously, or not seriously enough. And it's all supposedly the truth, whatever that is, and wherever it is.

It's very quiet, and watching kitsch movies and listening to strange romantic songs that remind me of painful moments in my childhood, as well as the whole sudden messy awareness of love and skin, is not helping.

Art says things so much more effectively. Even if it's over the top. Another collection of letters, words and sentences isn't going to do it.

Yet I am compelled to write half meanings and large hints, impotent brushstrokes and projections.

All in these last few moments of freedom before tomorrow drags me along for the ride.

Sunday, everywhere.

Sunday. As always, wanting it to be a little bit more. Unusually, it is. I am listening to jazz, looking at pictures of Paris, of all the philosophers and musicians who tried, in the midst of post-disaster, to push out the boundaries, to make more of what was there. Self-questioning and improvement can mean so much more than just another run, or another healthy meal. I read an article the other day about women and the new obsession with not revealing your age through your hands. I guess we could say, on one level, that this is the epitome of happiness. Our richest and best have nothing more to worry about than whether their hands reveal their age and near-skeletal frame. The ugliness of the world is rarely more revealed than when someone is trying to profit from fear and pride. And the plastic surgeons are sailing in the salty breeze, their thin-thighed partners smiling dazzling smiles at them.

Looking at the pictures of Sartre and de Beauvoir, thinking of the ultimate failure of their experiment, makes me consider how their desire to transcend social norms eventually disintegrated, bringing them both down to symbolise their age and gender. The woman facing pain, aging and reality, as de Beauvoir did in her book on her mother’s death. The man escaping into abstractions and younger women, as Sartre did in his later works and adopted ‘daughter’. Does it matter? None of the bright young things pouring on to the Heath, with their picnics and some wine, the women tottering along in high heels over the grass, the menfolk strutting alongside in shorts that reveal dangerously skinny knees and the fact that they don’t shave their legs, although it might look better if they did, seem to be worried about gender divisions and pushing any boundaries.

I wonder why I still think about it sometimes. The media has made it so clear that these concerns are outdated and passé. Therefore, why should I still reflect on inequalities and difference? The beauty of art, of thinking, is that it erases these questions, or it should. Or should it explode them, expand the weird thinking of male/female opposites in some social supernova? I’m all for it, until I see a picture of someone I went to school with, happy at a barbeque, surrounded by artists and fat lesbians, and hairy, asexual men.

She’s happy, right? They are all happy with the way it is. I had a friend who used to reproach me, every time I questioned the way the world worked out. His question was that if they were happy, what did I care? This was also the same man who claimed I wasn’t a real woman if I couldn’t have vaginal orgasms. The sad part? For a long while, I believed he was right.

Walk away, walk away.

Mala beads, poetry and spiritual guides

The sun is finally out, and for about 40 seconds this morning, I felt that cool throbbing pleasure of summer; the bright light of blue sky and green trees reaching right into you and smoothing everything down, the way that first joint used to oh so long ago. Right? I’m lying. Of course, I wouldn’t know. Like the easy enjoyment of summer, that was a long time ago. Or was it? I keep hoping I’ll remember how to have fun, or maybe I will sustain these moments of awareness. Maybe that’s all you get – a few brilliant flashes, like the best view you pass by doing 70 on your road trip. There it is…and it’s in the past.

I’m spending some of my week off trying to recover from a bad cough which seems to cling on, annoyingly. I’d like to blame it on dust, or global warming, or volcanic ash, but I think the truth is that one too many people coughed on me at my work, on the tube, passing by on the street. Probably if I didn’t wake up at 3am, restless and anxious, strange structural dreams forming a barely remembered road map to somewhere I don’t know yet, I’d get better faster. Of course.

So I can’t say I’m enjoying my holiday. Too much is going on, yet not enough.

I should be doing what I am meant to be doing. At the moment I’m working on wresting control of myself back from whatever self-destructive elements seem to be fighting me. I’m mostly winning, I guess. I think I need to put flags on my victories. That might make it better.

So on to doing something more absorbing than idly turning over my neuroses in my hands, while I watch the birds fly past, and listen to the water filling the washing machine. I do wonder what it is that stops me though. Is it fear of not measuring up? Sheer laziness? Exhaustion? Depression? Wishing I knew for sure you were out there? Patti Smith said we choose our spiritual ancestors, and they walk with us. I think I need to make friends with these genius sparks that I’ve turned into shadows. Again.

Ok, Patti, let’s talk. Help me out here. A little Whitman, a little Baudelaire, a little Zola, Camus, de Beauvoir, Aristotle, Annie Proulx, Emily Dickinson, Castenada. Oh a whole list. Oscar Wilde. Radclyffe Hall. Mary Daly. Lorca. The divine Lorca, who kept me company all last August. Hard to write about poets while listening to the grating lyrics of Sting. No offense, Mr. Sting. I like your music. I like The Police. But I think I’m looking for a line that isn’t meaningless and trite, one that I won’t remember over and over in my head like indigestion.

Maybe that’s the problem. Searching for numbness. Dulling the pain, the fear, the needling anxiety that one nice meal with wine would probably dispel. But that’s it, isn’t it? The dissolution of pain spreads it around, like a cloud, like an oil spill, like the bad smell in the train tunnel. The source becomes too hard to identify.

Of course, when you find the source, or you know where it is, there’s not that much you can do with it. Is there? I watched an interview this morning, and when the person being interviewed talked about something they liked, they twisted one of the beads on the mala bracelet they were wearing. I wondered why. Was it to acknowledge and escape attachment? Or to gain energy to admit desire and individuality without fear and pain? Or was it just a nervous tic? No, it didn’t happen again. It seemed a very deliberate action.

Silence and meditation are necessary. I can’t create in a frizzly, electrically static state of mind. Or can I?

I know I have a long string of mala beads. Maybe it’s time to ask for some spiritual help. Lorca, Lama, here I come.

Am I truly this dull?