Monday, 29th March 2004
Dictaphones and their switches
I wrote a letter to Nick today and I mentioned how I feel as though words are becoming superfluous to me. They are starting to become meaningless in so many ways, which is really quite frightening since I am so possessed by them too. Always there have been internal monologues where I am frantically recording all goings on, all thoughts, reactions and feelings into a Dictaphone that doesn’t truly work as it has no playback function. Always I have repeated to myself what I was experiencing. Always this reiteration. Always this confirmation. Always this drone in a space inside of me that remains, throughout all traumas, throughout all joys, unaffected by it all. It is almost like a vacuum, sucking all known descriptions of all of life’s experiences into a void where they jostle and rotate, increasing and decreasing in size, colours and textures, but the space is always clean from contamination. The walls are always unsoiled, seemingly lacquered with an anti-climb paint, the words hit it and go flying backwards into the room once more…
So all these words inside of me, always, and now I question what for..?
Now I see that they are really only the same as a photograph. They reflect back an image without ever truly being able to be that which they cast themselves to be. They cannot capture the essence of anything, only a vague approximation that is truly dependant upon the Other to have any meaning. They are a strange little pantomime of the soul…
Maybe I have been reading too much information on Zen or maybe I am undertaking a new kind of study, but all I know is that I don’t need words at all. I can sit for hours and watch the way the spring breeze ripples through the daffodils, making them chatter and knowing that were each to contain a bell inside their beautiful, yellow noses, that I would be overwhelmed by a sea of noise. Did you know how much life there is inside an orchid? How much perverse pleasure one can get from frightening themselves by watching a beetle colony up close? How much fun it is to get completely lost in the French countryside, whilst out on your bike after visiting a Roman church, and lament only the fact that you forgot to bring water? None of these things require words; they require only a strict attention to your environment…
Maybe I am just enjoying the fact that I do not have to speak anymore. Days can go by and the only words I utter are to myself or my cats and I so adore that. I so adore this jubilant feeling of safety I get from being so utterly alone here. I don’t want to communicate with people anymore and for once in my polite life, I am allowing that to be. I don’t have to be responsive to external stimuli; I have merely to allow myself to function. I have merely to feel the sun settle strongly across my back. I have merely to avoid the Pimm’s and lemonade as it makes me sneeze! I have merely to bring my seedlings out every morning to enjoy the beautiful sun. I have merely to continue doing the things that make me lighter and lighter until, one day, perhaps, I can tell you what it looks like from way up high, holding onto my red balloons, and laughing into the sun…
Unfortunately though, I still have not found the off switch for my Dictaphone, or rather, for the voice that feeds it…
Ultimately though, I am so very lucky and grateful to have made this be my life…
Tuesday, 23rd March 2004
Reusing the land
What I especially love about France, in contrast to the UK and America, is that I am producing virtually no waste whatsoever. Practically everything I have finished with can be recycled and once the compost heap framework has been built, I might actually have to start getting creative in order to find things to dispose of…
Streets around here don’t seem to have names; you just turn by the Fois Gras sign, or by the large, white stone cross or by the sign that signifies you are leaving a towns borders. However, at the end of “my street” aka the hamlets borders, (hahahahaa), are two large dumpsters – one for the recycling (plastic, paper, cans) and one for the actual waste. I deposit in each receptacle when needed and so far that has been only one tiny, plastic shopping bag of rubbish and two slightly larger bags of recycling. The only pain in the arse about it all is that the mounting box full of glass must be taken somewhere which I can’t get to without a car…
In Philly, so long as you lived “downtown”, the city would come and pick up your paper, glass and cans every other week and whilst that was fan-cunting-tastic, I still found myself producing such a huge amount of waste, namely in the form of plastics. So it is a marvel to find that practically everything you buy here, comes with that beautiful recycle logo on it. In London, the city never provided any recycling at all. You had to go to a Sainsbury’s or some other supermarket car park from what I can remember…
I guess this is an update for you e.b. 
I was out this afternoon picking flowers to dry and send to someone and also to start using in my homemade paper mixes. I picked daffodils, whatever those fragrant pink things are (lilies?), primroses and as I got deeper into the orchard I found a sea of purple orchids. I nearly passed out from trying to focus on all the tiny majestic little blooms, every time I felt as though it were safe to rest my eyes, that my surroundings were accounted for, it would seem as though the sea would grow. As if the every act of my eyes resting upon the crest of petals created a ripple and pushed the flowers out further, multiplying as they left a stain of themselves upon the ground…
After snipping a few for my little bouquet, I suddenly realised I was standing on part of the forbidden truffle patch. BOLLIX!!! I legged it off as fast as I could and I hope I didn’t do any damage to those expensive and elusive buggers…
In other news, it does appear that I have a new monster at the end of the garden! On my quest for flowers today I found large clumps of earth dug up and this was not on the truffle patch so it wasn’t the Truffle Mannie and his dog, who I actually have not yet seen. So I think there is some rabid pig or cow or ginormous, hairy, hunky woozle, snuffulufagus (sp?), heffalump type thing roaming the end of the orchard. Pray for me my lovelies, for I may well be mutton to a hungry, vikonic (woah, new word!), dinosaur…
(PS: The Hits Tape RAWKS!!!)