Hours

Since five o’clock I have been in a bliss of wordless silence. I read alone in the art writing seminar room (a book called silence nonetheless), drank peppermint tea, munched biscuits, returned to my flat after dozing on the bus, the rain always outside the windows, on the panes but not touching me, the flat so toasty and warm it flushes my face…

Could anything be more satisfying than peppermint tea after a hard day of painful leg injuries, aching backs, heavy bags and loud London life?

Beautifully energising day (despite injuring myself yet again, what is it with me and pulling muscles? this time it’s a point of unknown origin on the outside of my left knee) spent meeting an old role model I haven’t seen in a while, intellectually and socially stimulating. One of the most dazzling of combinations. Like solitude and happiness. Or silence and flourishing.

Why the silence? I am still here, writing for my assessment date, worrying about all the things piling up, dreaming of getting away, escaping to somewhere warm as it is not the month of May, how can it be when it is so gloomy and May is such a beautiful word and beautiful promise?

But wow there is the most beautiful golden two penny piece full moon hanging like a disc of grecian coinage over the sea that I trust is there but is entirely black.

Buy, read, exhibition, film, buy, waste time, eat, watch the clock, dress, undress, phone, buy, eat, read, watch, travel, buy, mope, talk on phone, sleep, write, while away… my days, my april.

Rain rain you have made me melancholy today, it has been too cold like winter and I wonder why I still live in this country where my fish-boned feet cannot take the chills. We say ‘Oh wouldn’t it be nice to…’ and are cowards for never leaving, for wishing and doing nothing about it. Possibly I could not do anything about it and that is why I have not tried to leave, but maybe there is a little place for me in a foreign country of heat and dryness and simpler existence.

For a week and a few days I have been festering in some kind of virus at my mother’s home… I use such an awkward turn of phrase to denote the sense of restlessness which grew in the days there. I did not do much. I am in the big city now, ready to be engulfed, starting tomorrow. It is very likely that I may be engulfed by this onslaught of rain.

This week has been funny, bank holiday funny. I feel as though I have in fact been on holiday, the routine the same each day was comforting and I’m sad that it’s over now. I would breakfast, then write for an hour, go for a walk and perhaps pick up some lunch, prepare and eat lunch, then go out for some meaningless excursion in the afternoon.

I have been playing at being a writer for the past few days, but this afternoon the solitude became a little much. London was ugly in its easter smugness… it was full of people in places they wouldn’t normally be at on a friday. Train stations were empty, but public spaces were overcrowded. Strange smells were in places they aren’t normally. The too rich mixed with the hoi polloi in carriages and galleries. And there are three more days of it…

Monday morning, beautiful beautiful monday morning on the second day of april. April begun in such an unexpected bubble of sunday pleasures where it didn’t even feel like a sunday.

There’s going to be a scream, a deep and hollow scream from my three body parts with irreversible damage.
The bridge of my nose crushed by the piece of wood falling in the art room while I was painting at 18.
The outside of my right foot, torn or sprained leaving me hobbling for days.
The lowest intercostal muscle on my right, twisted at 22, screaming now on twisting again.

Their phantom pains return to me at intervals.

I have re-discovered the outdoors and the gentle pace of life that comes with weather which does not try to harm you. I’d forgotten one could walk for the sake of walking, with music or just your eyes and what they pick out, sit or lie in the sun in silence, with a friend or alone, with a book or ear-wigging on people sitting close by. Although it makes me ask why the hell I do not move somewhere that this can be appreciated all the time, surely it is worth it? But then I wonder if the delight is in its coming and blossoming, do the countries with the good weather all the time have the joyful cadence that comes with its surprise?

Life is treating me well…

I was told once by someone whom I did not like to stop being so damn romantic about things. This set me free on the path to romanticise everything as much as I could: to sillify myself even more, it was the release that allowed me to say – fuck you. Someone I dislike maybe even more, with a similar relationship of authority towards me, imparted their supposed wisdom onto me yesterday with a similar set of impositions at odds with my character. As a result, I want to cherish the lightness, to not tie things down, to float freely even more. She gives me a deadline, a point to worry about, a measure of time. I have spent so long freeing myself from time and panic about what I should be doing. It has taken me months to free myself enough to write for the sake of writing, now she suggests that this is worthless, because there is nothing at stake in it, there is no intended reader, it is not enough to write for oneself. Perhaps, but what a sad world literature would inhabit if no-one would write without justifying why they do so. mm?

• Write a 18,000 word novella. Apparently.
• Decide what is ‘at stake’. Apparently.
• Clear craft room and make room for desk
• Get desk, and typewriter/word processor of sorts
• Go home for a bit
• Do not buy the handbag, lavender hand cream, and boredom book
• Work out a writing pattern that I can stick to
• Portfolio proposal

With my mum

Happy birthday to Chloe, our wonderful garden tea party! (And I realise I am not the age I thought I was – a true sign of age, when the real number gets lost in insignificance!)

Cheer up Marianna. Why is it you feel so blue? It was a lovely day, but it is cold now. There was chai, good social interaction, note-making for tour guide training, bits of sunlight, words and reading and writing.

What is wrong? I have that feeling of foreboding I sometimes have. Like I’ve forgotten what it is that is troubling me and can’t for the life of me remember.

Today-
was a good day to be alive.

I sat outside in the garden whilst on the phone in the warm balmy morning, the cat next door called Woody that I cat-sitted for a week or so ago  was called in by his dad and ran past me miaowing loudly, lunch, warm walking, a film (Carnage-didn’t enjoy, only low point), walking with an audiobook, St. James’s Park, peppermint tea, writing, reading…

A sunny portion of my room

Reader: I’m so sick of being single! How do I find a date?

Lemony Snicket: Desperation is like a spilled drink; even if it’s delicious, no one will get near it. Cultivate an aura of glamorous unapproachability.

This does not work!

It has been magical thus far, and tonight is the full moon, but today has been so manic I have not noticed its pull on me. I feel as though I have not stood still for days, time has been in fast motion after the lull of february. I have been writing crazily, cold and warm, talking to so many people after the hermetic time.

I am still on my mission to watch the most anti-intellectualist films that I can, I think in protest against the pretentious arty-docu-quasi-something films I find lauded over me all the time from various sources. Sleepless in Seattle didn’t wow me, I enjoyed When Harry Met Sally. I just don’t know how she does it was quite dreadful, and I’m not enjoying Pretty Woman that much, nor Up in the Air.

Such is life, and things are warming up. I cleaned the windows today and the flat is looking nice. I still feel so fondly for my amazing past weekend in Devon.

Magical weekend in the city I grew up in with old amazing friends, nothing beats childhood friendships.

It’s all happening at once this week and next, moments on top of moments, toppling like dominoes when the rest of february has been barren. Words have filled my head too much today, I am getting like that again, as I start to write.

My jaw aches from clenching with tension. Tension over nothing, it is all so unimportant when there are so many more beautiful things to think of!

Is it so wrong to want to kill the man upstairs? He should be quiet as a mouse. Creeping around, he and I, for if I am a cat, and I truly want to be, then he has to be the mouse, as I am yet to find my owl.

I have an urge to watch all the (brilliantly) awful escapist movies that I have never seen. These are movies, not films. I am sick of being disappointed with all these docu-films that people tell me I should like. I want boy meets girl, bad american humour, impossibly attractive cast, something to take me away.

Last night I began with When Harry Met Sally.

Today was the warmest day of 2012 so far surely?

How is it going?

It’s not.

Saw A Dangerous Method. Thought it was ok at the time, but on reflection, not that fantastic.

Truly honestly, I did not eat pancakes. I had one on sunday though. All is ok.

I have moved into my new flat. There are squirrels and wild cats, parakeets, all outside my window. Florence has rushed in, I’ve gone a little mad, been up, been down, saw the David Hockney at the RAC, been in to university, pulled my back moving furniture, cried, laughed, been with people and been alone.

No no no, snow go away, do not disrupt my plans yet again tomorrow…

What is the memory on which all my life, thoughts, being is built?

inspired by Virginia Woolf’s diary musings.

Coming into my own space in London has at least brushed away some of the boredom my mind had accumulated. Little pockets of it. Left in my sleep and a flurry of particularly vivid and not unpleasant dreams. Dreams of practicalities and day to day nonsense are always amusing in their sheer lack of amusingness. (Something is always nothing was the phrase that was bandied about today. One of those axoms that is thrown about as though it means something by the people I now spend my time with)

The morning was breathtakingly sunny, I didn’t even feel the cold. However by the time I was released from the seminar at 3.30 it was bitter, but it was ok, I managed to fill my time with purchasing a new diary in readyness, and some other things.

The senate of negativity which has been a part of me for the last week may be drawing to a close, I don’t know.

Let books save me, oh I know I know it’s the 6th, my bad day, my evil day. It really is. I have wasted days this year, february started off so awfully. I was mad have been mad am mad.

I missed my train, had a terrible evening, had 5 days lolloping into one amorphous drab mass where I failed to make any sense of the nothingness. It was the start of february.
It snowed on saturday night and I couldn’t return to London as planned. It didn’t matter much, I am here now but my mind is floating in the ether. Tomorrow is full moon, and maybe it will get worse before I can pull my mind back in. The magnetic moon kills me each month. If it all ends tonight, well, so be it. I have laughed.

To return to my start, if I could get lost in a kind book right now, it could be a comfort.

Is it the snow? No, it came before the snow. My mind seems to be unfurling, fumbling, tumbling, tangling round and round on itself.
Others can sniff this out and take advantage. One person was charming to me today, I must not forget, but this doesn’t help me cast off the number of times I have been spoken to like a piece of fluff and nonsense over the past few days. A certain sadness has descended along with this snow.

Life is in suspension. The coldness is quite diminishing, debilitating, we are not built for it here. Vital signs will re-commence soon one hopes!

It’s the last day of January which is a little sad, and tonight, february doesn’t feel very hopeful. It seems to be a plethora of dates, schedules, clashing times, decisions. My eyes ache, my head is tight.

I escaped London today as it began to snow, and it had followed me to the sea. I missed my train as I messed up the times, february may be a mishapen mismatch of mistakes.

Listening to the Leonard Cohen interview released today, his voice, the mere sound of it, touches something so deep within me.

It is the voice of my long lost father from the grave, truly, what else can I say of it. Candlelight, Leonard Cohen, sunday evening, sweet tea.

The strangest sunday morning hush… there has been no noise since I woke, no-one has come nor gone, a bird, the same bird of every morning has been infuriatingly calling, but that is it. Even the whir of electrical items in my rooms seems to have hushed for once. The radiators have not clanked, the boiler hasn’t fired, no sirens, no-one is in peril, no smug sunday morning visitors to my neighbours.

What of today? Yesterday on my way to Tunbridge Wells I read some panic headlines: ‘Millions will die in big freeze!’, it is cold, but no frost! We can all sleep easily for the time being it is safe to say. I did get locked out of my flat for the first time last night though.

Well, possibly. But, no.

as long as it was warm… let me escape here.

And I am supposedly studying writing.

Ignorance

is

bliss.

I must practice no thoughts, as this thing called “discourse” does not allow them to remain my own.
All of my inner-workings are wrenched from me, forced to verbalise, it reveals too much, and I am fading.

Meanwhile,
the outside is pressing in. Impositions of abstractions, and I just want to point and laugh. Laughter is the only proper response to this!

And in that…                 a release.
Thank god!

There is too much thought floating about, I want to be superficial for a bit.

If I could sit outside in a guarantee of warmth, to not fear the chills, the wind, the cold that pervades my bones.

If I could guarantee that my blood sugars don’t ruin everything…

that I won’t be just me, always.

would I be happy?

I survived the weekend. Time went fast and midday hours seem lost. I changed my sheets, took my christmas roll of film to be developed, lost track of time reading in a book-shop, saw a friend, braved central London, experienced both rain and sunshine, wind and warmth. I lost my hat today, but have managed to replace it already. I love that hat and the city has it now.

A sense of silent foreboding weighs on this saturday. I feel I must be quiet to listen for some awful bomb to drop…

The Artist, what a gorgeous film. I usually don’t get on with films that have had the praise this one did, but I was so pleasantly surprised. I wish more films could be like this… it’s nice to walk out of the cinema with a smile, rather than with your head swimming with overlapping voices of conflict and violence.

On making my list of favourite films the other day, I realised that these are actually the films that I would like to watch the least. It would be a chore to go through the predictable patterns again, although I call them my ‘favourites’. They are the ones that I enjoyed the most out of the films I have seen. I see a lot of films, and I don’t like to re-watch any. I don’t tend to re-read books either. I am greedy in wanting to consume as many new ones as I can, I wouldn’t want to waste my flickering distractible anxious attention on something which I had already internalised.

Next film to see?

What a difference a day makes. Someone that had the same regime as me yesterday confirmed that she felt awful too… we decided something had slipped out of sync. That is exactly how it felt.

See, it started off so well yesterday…

Well, today was possibly one of the worst days of my life. For no one reason. Nothing particularly bad happened, it was uneventful, busy and tiring, but nothing disastrous happened. I was cheerful and happy in the morning. Cold and frosty with piercing beautiful hot sun. I lit new candles and put them in the jars. I enjoyed reading.

But then it all surfaced, all the terrible things that cannot be explained away in the usual brushing under the carpet.

beautiful name I hadn’t thought of in a while: Valentine, Valentina

meaning: healthy, strong

I feel such an undeserved hatred for Kate Moss. What is it about her?

No, hatred is an unfair word. I hate no-one, only the worst people deserve hatred. Animosity is more accurate. My perception of her suggests that she is completely over-rated in every respect. She seems to lack any personality, her personal style so celebrated I cannot even identify, her beauty held in such high regard I cannot see. She is undoubtedly attractive and pretty but not a beauty in my eyes.

She is probably entirely charming and lovely and my opinion is of course entirely speculation, but she seems a vacuous myth.

Q. A selection of television programs you do not care for:
It would be easier to list what I do like, I am picky and have a short attention span. Worst of the bunch: Glee, Ugly Betty, Gossip Girl, Sex and the City, anything with viewer interaction, the endless ream of nature or historical documentaries where it’s more about the ego of the presenter and the over-sensualisation of the wonders of the earth. The plethora of dry costume dramas transmitted as culture which people love to talk about watching more than actually watching.

Trash TV that you watch ironically, but then slowly morphs into seriousness so you realise how your mind has been tricked into liking it.

I could go on and on! I enjoy disliking shows more than I enjoy liking the ones I like. I have a love/hate relationship with American dramas such as Mad Men and 30 Rock, which leans more towards hate.

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.