How to mend a broken heart.

I know - I'm supposedly 'gone' but my other blog (yes, there is one) is just too 'themed' for this kind of entry. So I'm just going to shout my story into the ether and listen for an echo...

I've had a hard week. The hardest.

I've been rejected (and for some peculiar reason, that L kind of hit on, I have it in my head that this has never happened before) by somebody I'd... invested my hopes in.

Rich... untrammeled, as this tongue is, I can't find the words to describe the nuances of this particular strain of agony. For hours at a time, I'd be OK... and then I'd remember... and that horrible, sick, shocked, empty feeling would hit me with the force of a train. Monday, I successfully navigated through a day at work, only to suddenly, irreparably break down as I pulled onto the M67. Thursday, I made it to 4pm, where upon my mind started to wander...and I sat facing my computer screen in perfect silence while a pool of mute tears collected on the desk. Who knows what happened on Tuesday and Wednesday... my robotic alter ego and I switched places. Where was I? Oh, asleep upstairs, I guess.

I read the self help books (from the specific 'mend your broken heart' to the abstract 'ancient art of stoic joy'), I went to the gym and ran until my veins pumped battery acid. I couldn't reason through the pain... and I couldn't distract from it. By Friday I felt number than ever... like a largely empty shell... terrified to engage with the world lest the memories of my loss flood back. Oh and they did, as ever. What a hopeless place this is.

At days end, Friday... I left work and headed for the mall. As I was hurtling along the freeway, I noticed a car up ahead... a Scirocco. Oh, here we go... It was like that moment when you stub your toe... when you know you've done it, you know it will hurt, but there's that split second before it actually does. He always said I should get a Scirocco. And the wave of freshly remembered pain is coming.... He doesn't love me! He doesn't want me! It hurts no less than ever.

Without even realising it, I have craned a little to look at the driver of this vehicle as I draw level. He feels my eyes and cranes back. Argh. I look quickly away and speed up.

As for what happened next, I'm hardly sure of the sequence. I drove on for several miles, with the Scirocco speeding up, slowing down, changing lanes, overtaking, undertaking, pulling in front, dropping behind... all the while trying to catch my eye. Oh no, I thought... he thinks I was checking him out. This is embarrassing... and like I often do when embarrassed, I giggled... whilst making happy exclamations of weirdo and perv to myself.

And then... a traffic jam. His lane moved faster than mine... I watched him be carried reluctantly away... and I didn't think weirdo, perv anymore. I thought love, come back to me.

I forced my way across lanes and back again, edging closer, irritating en masse. The jam eased and I sped up and up. Where are you?

And there he was... he'd been waiting for me (as much as one can, in a moving vehicle).

This tale doesn't end with us pulling off the highway together and falling into each other's arms. I turned off... and he didn't follow. That's OK. I'll never see Scirocco man again... but I owe him the greatest debt of gratitude. He changed something in me. He reminded me that I'm not a plain, insipid creature who's last chance at love just tanked. I'm the girl you spot across two lanes of traffic, who can spark something, anywhere.

And the wave of perfect love I felt for this nameless man eclipsed all others.

Bye

This is my last ever post.

I'm someone else now.

A Grief Observed.

"Did you ever know, dear, how much you took away with you when you left? You have stripped me even of my past, even of the things we never shared."

Atoms & Stars (things I've been thinking about:)

1. Goodnight Irene by The Weavers, 1950.
Sometimes I live in the country
Sometimes I live in town
Sometimes I take a great notion
To jump into the river and drown.

2. Fosco Maraini's musing on K2;
"It is atoms and stars. It has the nakedness of the world before the first man - or of the cindered planet after the last."

3. Zhi Feng's commentary on the Chinese professor jailed for running a sex club:
"They confounded right and wrong and poisoned the social atmosphere. How dare you say they did no harm to others?"

Paradigm shifts

How am I supposed to face my own mortality without faith? I've been circling the idea for years, in a quasi-danse macabre. I spoke of reconciliation, of acceptance and anticipation... and how naive that was... because these conversations and flirtations were nothing more than a further, final denial. I haven't faced my own mortality... I've erected great bastions of distraction. It's like Winny Carr saying Flora, "Let me show you your wonderful death!"... and then flicking to page 62. It isn't the same thing at all.

When love isn't enough.

It occurred to me that sometimes being loved isn't enough. We have to be loved the way we want... or we may as well not be loved at all.

Last year, two different men told me they loved me within the space of a week. It didn't feel empowering or electric. I certainly didn't feel loved. And you know what, I wasn't loved. We have to be our own benchmarks. If you don't love me the way I love you then your love is nothing. I'm the only constant in this series of equations... and if I don't find my equal then what are you making of me? Nothing, nonsense, a scholars' smudged scribble.

A loved me... but A also ordered my food for me, chastised my flighty nature and gave long speeches on Homeric idioms. He loved me the most when I was mute; a blank and magical whitewashed wall that he could project his own character upon... magnified. He bought me things, he protected me, he was as proud of me as I was embarrassed by him. He loved me like a possession. When I received a phone call, he would demand to know who from, in his rages he would cast wide nets of aspersion on my sexual morality. He had carved a niche for me and I had better slot into it.

B loved me... but B was also jobless, broke and high most of the time. B didn't really know me... he thought I awesome and super cool. He also fell out of love with me pretty quickly when I showed him how fearsome and super callous I could be. From the moment he said "I love you" I needed to show him that he didn't. He desired me, he knew I was a good prospect on paper, he saw the way his friends looked at me and he was carried away on waves of infatuation, lost in his own moment. He sensed the spinning possibilities for adventure and chose to call it love.

M says she loves D... D says she's never loved him. To my outside eye I think she does... in her own convicted, particular way.. but that's the not way he wants to be loved... so is he loved? No. He isn't. Love is not what you think you give. There is no reality here; reality itself being that rare word that should never exist outside inverted commas. Love is what you are perceived to give. My interpretation of your love is the only thing that can validate it... and if I feel like you do not love me, if your 'love' is outside of my criterion then I cannot call it such. You do not love me.

Tragic Deaths

Just a little something to cheer you up on a Tuesday night. Ladies and gentlemen I present to you the sad tale of David Allen Kirwan.

It was July 20, 1981 and 24 year old David Allen Kirwan from La Canada, California and his friend Ronald Ratliff were driving through Yellowstone National Parks' Fountain Paint Pot area. Also on board was Ratliffe's dog Moosie. Round about 1pm they decided to pull over and get a better look at the hotsprings. Moosie escaped from the truck, ran toward Celestine Pool (a thermal hotspring whose temperature was measured at over 200F - that's 0ver 93C, practically boiling), jumped in and began yelping.
Kirwan and Ratliff rushed over to the pools edge to try and help. Bystanders later reported that Kirwans attitude indicated he was about to go into the pool. Several people yelled, warning him not to.. but he shouted "Like Hell I won't!" and dived head first into the boiling pool.
He swam out to the dog, attempting to take it to shore, but then disappeared underwater, let go of the dog and attempted to climb out of the pool. Ratliff helped pull him out (resulting in 2nd degree burns to his own feet) and another visitor led Kirwan to the sidewalk as he reportedly muttered "That was stupid. How bad am I? That was a stupid thing I did."
He wasn't wrong. He was blind, and when another park visitor tried to remove his one of his shoes, his skin (already peeling everywhere) came off with it. He sustained 3rd degree burns to 100% of his body and died the next morning at a Salt Lake City hospital.

And if you want to read about more disarming deaths, look at this.

Closing time.

I missed you since the place got wrecked

By the winds of change and the weeds of sex

Looks like freedom but it feels like death

It's something in between, I guess.

I loved you when our love was blessed

I love you now there's nothing left.

Doing it with Betty; Making an exit bag.

Because Betty, you're adorable x

Ana - A decade on.

I guess it's about time I gave Ana a nod. My old web page redirects here and I expect 90% of my visitors are looking for writings on the subject. Or tips, probably tips.

I don't have anything new to bring to the table. You wouldn't swallow it if I did (chew! spit!). I had my experience, you'll have yours. If you're here you came because you're following the pro-ana trail. I'd like to tell you please don't. You're sick... and I think you know it. I think you're positively howling for help.. but that you have to get thin...really thin, before anyone will take you seriously, before anyone will even try to help you. Oh it makes me wild angry that girls (and for all you know, fat ones) are propagating this pro-ana junkto you. A lifestyle choice??? Yeah right.

But what do I know? I'm just jealous because I lacked the willpower, the discipline and the drive to get.. to STAY skinny. I want you to be fat so I can feel better about myself. I mean, that's how your mind's working right now. Thats how it works whenever you read anything that takes an anti-ana stance.

So forget me even trying to offer you an insight... What you have here is my letter to my fifteen year old self. Here's what me now would tell me, then.

"Nobody really cares how thin you are. I know that half of what you're doing is a kind of passive revenge. Look! you're screaming, I am slowly disappearing and you'll be very sorry when I'm gone. But sweetheart, nobody will miss a self-involved, shrivelled shell of a person. Be a good daughter, mother, friend, teacher. Channel your discipline into being all you can be (not all you can't). Life is short and you're shortening it. Right now you're young and your body can take it. It won't be like this for long. Make it to 25 and you'll see.
Being skinny isn't the answer to your problems. That's a delusion of the disease. You'll be thin and lonely, thin and broke, thin and ignored. Sure, you'll experience all these things from the fat end of the spectrum too... life sucks, it's hard, it hurts. You feel out of control (you are out of control) but ana isn't the answer. She isn't even your friend. She's weakening your bones, screwing up your chances of ever having children, she's robbing you of your rites of passage, severing the bonds between you and your family, your friends. She's making an island of you... and noone can live like that. Say goodbye to your dreams of a career, of a family, of scholastic achievement, of fame and fortune. You're giving up everything for this bitch."

Dmitri Nabokov: The enemy of art.

Let me preface this entry by saying Dmitri Nabokov, that I am on the one hand, forever in your debt. The book I unwrapped this morning, The Original of Laura, is tangibly beautiful. Chip Kidd's sublime design provides as wondrous a showcase for these Penguin-termed fragments as I, for one could ever have hoped for.

Let me not omit to mention either how grateful I am for the opportunity to see, nay possess, these exquisite perfect replicas of God's your father's smudged index cards... these photostat perforations of his precise, pencilled print.

But Dmitri, Dmitri. Gay Dmitri of seventy three years. You are quite repellent; Your introduction to this tome is one of the most disturbingly deluded diatribes I've ever read (and I had the misfortune to read your insisted-upon introduction to Pia Pera's Lo's Diary, you predatory pedant). Your talk of lesser minds, half-literate journalists and inferior intellects is delivered without a hint of irony; You believe this bull. You're in orbit of your own ego.
Clearly Dmitri, lifelong batchelorette Dmitri, your father cast a long shadow. I envy you not the eternal race to cheat the sun. You model your lyrical style upon him, like VN on a bad day, VN with a summer cold. You're Nutella on toast - a poor man's chocolate bar.

All this Dmitri, all this emulation and idolisation (and who can blame you for that - not I) - it just, it just never worked did it? He never really liked you. Gay Dmitri, with his supercilious, superfluous nature, living off his father's reputation, his mother's adoration. It's a vacuous life you've lead Dmitri, one of shabby Swiss hotels and Viennese Bath Houses (My italics). You have nothing to say, much less a beautiful way to say it. I wouldn't share my pen name if I were you either. We've seen your style, we've seen you flounder on the rocky shore as the retreating sea carries away your past connections. There's so much time between him and you now that you're no closer to him than we are. I'm not the only one to notice your considered, contrived Laura introduction fails to mention money. Hey nice guy, how much did desecrating Pops memory net you?

Winnipeg Fading.

September 4th 2008

Little stabs at happinesss.

I was just thinking, pursuant to something I was thinking days ago... that a reflection of a reflection of a thing is actually truer to the thing than the reflection. A reflection reverses our thing and it's the reflection of the reflection that reverses the reversal.

YES! I understand everything now.

By the false azure of the window pane.

Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth, You owe me
Look what happens with a Love like that!
It lights the whole sky.
Hafez 1315-1390

I think love is dead. I think it died (collectively) sometime in the mid-late 20th century. I think it's a hollow word we coo at each other now. I think love flourished in a time of cholera and starved in the time of TV.

Memento Mori

I found this poem by Henry Scott Holland. Here's the first verse;

Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away to the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
That, we still are.

And I thought... really?

It's one of those pieces that from the moment I read it, I was overcome with the urge to rewrite it. It's that last line that's getting to me.... I'll explain;
I used to go to school with Freddie Mercury's niece.. and one day I overheard this exchange:

Boy: Are you Freddie Mercury's niece?
Niece: Yeah
Boy: No you're not! He's dead! Hahaha !

Did she stop being his neice when he died? Did he stop being her uncle when he died? Henry Scott Holland doesn't think so.
But look at me! I am nobody's granddaughter. There's no one on earth who would claim I am that to them. If you asked me I'd say I don't have any grandparents and you'd accept that. We'd both unwittingly agree that the relationship between my dead grandparents and I has been severed.

So Mister Holland, here's how I think your poem should read:

Whatever we were to each other
That, has been voided.

By the way, this is the chorus to Alanis Morrisette's You live, you learn, which goes

You grieve you learn, you choke you learn
You laugh you learn, you choose you learn
You pray you learn, you ask you learn
You live you learn

But which is clearly suffering from an acute case of the jollies because it absolutely should go:

You grieve you learn,you choke you learn
You laugh you learn, you choose you learn
You pray you learn, you ask you learn
You crash, you burn.

That one has been bugging me for years.

Laughter and forgetting.

Memory; It's a wild concept isn't it?
You know, the word Nostalgia comes from the Greek nostos meaning to return home and algos, meaning pain or ache. So the very concept of nostalgia is suffering, is an insatiable longing to return to the past.
Makes me wonder if anyone draws comfort from memories the way they claim. Me, I shouldn't mind if I befell an amnesiac loss. I cower in their shadows, I bristle with disgust at their lingering touch.
But... forgetting. Forgetting is even wilder.
Say we met, fell wildly in love and parted. We meet again in twenty years. I remember jokes we laughed at. I've remembered them all these years... sometimes I heard things that reminded me of you, of us, of our jokes, our moments... and I'd stop to catch my breath, all the while never doubting for a sceond that it's been this way for you too. That you've been reminded of me by the same things, that you've felt the same way and now, La! you're hoping just like I am that we could take on nostalgia together... and win.
But we meet... and it's strange. You don't remember the jokes I resurrect, those private themes that seemed so drenched in meaning. You talk about things we did, people we met... I shake my head and look at you with vacant eyes.
We realise our memories do not match.
It was all just stabs in the dark, who knew what would stick and for whom. You forgot all the moments I cherished and I erased all the times you enjoyed.
I made a new memory right there; a snapshot of a sorrow so sumptuous it feels like pleasure.... you didn't.

Cornuto

In Sicily, one of the worst insults you can throw at a man is Cornuto!*
It means cuckold (and if you're like me, you probably need a translation of that too... it means you're an ineffectual little man who's wife is cheating on you... brazenly.)

*so said Paul from Canada

I am the shadow of the waxwing slain

It's a moleskine week... it's tiny precise letters in a peculiar red ink. I've eaten too much Nabokov and I'm burping little pockets of synesthetic prose.
See you soon blog, it's not a goodbye.

Spin

I don't have many regrets in life. I subscribe to that horribly hackneyed idea that everything past made me what I am today. Yes, yes I know. Why on earth would I not regret that?
There is one thing though and it occurred about a year ago.
I happened to meet James Meredith. I'll level with you - I'd never heard of him before. My extensive knowledge of key civil rights players began with King and ended with X.
Upon learning I was British he asked me What's the difference between Great Britian and The United Kingdom? I told him. So far so good.
Then he began to tell me how in the olden days, well-to-do English ladies had little black boys as pets. That they would parade the streets of London, bedecked with finery and leading a little black boy along on a piece of string. Like a dog.
I shook my head, no no no that's not true. It is true he solemnly informed me, nodding. The man had a stately way about him. What could I say... no no no that's not true again? It didn't sway him the first time around. So I gave him a small shrug and a furrowed brow and somebody else entered the conversation and the topic changed.
That's my small regret; That I didn't have an answer or a proof to give him. When I think about it I feel almost angry. He should have proffered a proof to me. He made the outlandish statement, he's the one telling a tall tale and labelling it Fact. Well it's not fact, James Meredith, it's spin.

Hey Hombre! You put a hole in me!

Yep, Chump. That's sums it up. You did a number on me. Nice one. Well done. Gotta hand it to ya. A compliment on your shooting. Good game. Good game.

Oh no, Hey, Wait a second! What's wrong with this picture? Why am I the walking wound? Why has everybody got just what they wanted... except me? Why do I lose? If we had to pick just one of us who broke the rules, I wouldn't pick me. I'd pick you. You're the bad guy. Now I'm the fall guy. It's not right. It's not fair.