Wednesday, 27th April 2005
Near closure
I’ve figured out the problem with my arse: it was less of a pair of dead ferrets gnawing away at my derrière, arse crack on out, than a bigger arse enveloping my smaller arse from the outside inwards. I must of caught it mid-embrace, seen the mini strips of old arse, and so formed the obvious belief in dead ferrets hanging off my back. Crazy! To celebrate the nearish victory over ugly arse of hell, I thought I would post this here picture of a fouine I just found rotting in the alley. It’s ferret-like, no? I wonder if it is the one I displaced before..?
The Monsters That Created Me are here and this means the countdown to my new-new life is on. I’m not sure how many posts I am going to have the time to write before we leave next Friday morning. We have been busy gardening and busting jokes - my mother has back cleavage.
In preparing to leave I am finally having to use the French I have learnt and finding I am a lot better than I think. I’ve had to change name and banking information for the telephone account, close my bank account and other bits and bobs. I’ve done it all with ease! Obviously I prep myself before calling or visiting, but my big fear of not understanding what someone is saying is proving to be a rather large exaggeration. I’m impressed with myself. I am hoping that when I get to the UK I can find someone to practise with (the irony!) so as I can keep improving my conversational French. I asked Leon (he’s French and I met him in Philly but he now lives in London) to speak French with me but he refused asserting that I am too slow and would annoy him. Hahahhaa and 
all at once…
Anyway, if it is nice we are going to Rocamadour tomorrow - this will mean I have seen both Miller’s and my Dordogne and my time here will therefore be complete. Actually, we will be going there before next Friday whether it is raining or not. I have to see what he saw so as I can know what he knew to cause him to write that opening passage to Colossus. And so say I. Adieu.
Saturday, 23rd April 2005
Life begins at 30?
Most people leave home when they are 18 to go to university. Not me. Nope. I left home when I was 17 to embark on a grand adventure that saw me live in London, Philadelphia and rural France, only to return home at the age of 30 (minus 2 weeks) in order to be able to afford to go to university.
Here are a few of the things I have learnt along the way:
- Provincial people make some extremely bad choices in the name of style.
- Bad pop songs are bad pop songs no matter what language they are sung in.
- American’s really are generally ignorant of the world outside of their borders.
- Britons really are generally uptight, repressed conformist wankers, especially the English.
- The French really are a generally arrogant nation.
- Hot food should never be on the same plate as cold food nor sweet with savoury.
- Peanut butter does not go with everything, you do not have to eat every part of an animal and London is the best city (so far) to eat out as a vegetarian.
Recently someone asked me, “what’s taken you from England to America to France and soon back to England?” Here’s what I told them:
“I was looking for my home and for people like me, or maybe the people like me were to be my home. I did not find them.
Philadelphia was just an extension of London, only with worse lessons. It has been France that I have grown so madly and so wildly. I would have always ended up here though, Travelling Tank or not - I just wonder if it would have been so quick?
I see now the journey is the point because horizons are not static things. I never realised that when I was younger. I was always looking for this mythical Xanadu - some place where I could feel safe enough to exhale. Now I’m not sure that place exists externally, at least, I am no longer looking for it.
I’ll keep travelling though, because part of my journey is to feel like a stranger. I like the feeling best when I am in a strange land with strange people. Feeling like a stranger at home is less comfortable for me. I live by analogy. By and for.”
So it is odd to me to have come full circle. It is strange for me to be 30 and to have made the decision to go back to the place that I bolted out of as soon as I could: I hate the town I grew up in and everyone in it. Recently, when I told an incredibly rich, conservative architect, who bought a hamlet around these parts, where I grew up, his eyes lit up and I ascended 3 social rungs. “Not that end of []”, I said, “I come from the other end.” “Oh”, he said. Oh indeed, and down I fell. [] is the kind of place people have heard of, not because I am from it, as one might imagine, but because it is one of the wealthiest towns in the entire of England.
When I was a kid, they asked us to imagine where we would be when the new millennium came. That little girl me, (who, I might add, had even less problems imagining things than the woman with the wayward imagination she became), widened her eyes and she could not think of a thing. 25! I would be 25 in that dream, and it was not an age I could imagine being. I’ve mentioned before a lack of belief in my own future, yet not mentioned why, and whilst I doubt that is something I will ever discuss here, I can say that, had that little girl been able to imagine that she would stay alive this long, she certainly would never have imagined or hoped that she would be going back to a place she never wanted to be in the first place.
I used to have all these plastic ponies. I would lay in bed at night and I would imagine them coming to life and we would escape the room, the house, the human race, and we would run so hard and so fast and we would keep on going and we would never stop. No one could touch us, direct us, or even see us for long enough to know who we were, we were just running and we were just free. I didn’t even need to sleep to have these dreams, nor close my eyes, I needed only to wish and to watch and then a part of me would get up, open the window and out we would fly. Only dawn could change us, contain us, send us back where we “belonged”. So it was always about escape, you see? About how I could get away. Get free.
But there is no real freedom in flight when the flight is from and not to. There is only a certain exhaustion, an ability to see many things and to hold nothing. There can be no real direction when you are running that hard and that fast; there is only the next open door and the next and the next…
I kinda had a plan once. I was 21, I had my own council flat in a fantasic part of London, and I did a year long access course so as I could go to university. The plan got as far as being 22 and going to university for a whole year. I’ll probably never understand what possessed me to throw it all away like that, other than a guess at habit. I’ve now come around from my regrets at the the discarding of dreams, because whilst I may have been secure, I know now that I was not free.
Life breeds a fight in the blood. In others, that same life breeds a surrender. Those that surrender must learn to fight and those that fight must learn to surrender. My hands are scarred and they are worn and there is another hand on my shoulder that I have been shaking myself free from for years. There is also a person who I have been screaming at to not fucking touch me, but you know what I think now? That is not the same person whose hand is on my shoulder. I got free of that first hand a very long time ago and this new hand just wants to pull me into to a person who will embrace me, keep me safe and free. It is time for me to trust in that hand…
I do not know what it is like to not have a mother, but I do know what it is like to not feel safe, to not be protected. I do know what it is like to have to fight for really basic things like breath, sanity, life, sanctity, survival. I’ve gained and I’ve lost ground over the course of the many years, but the one thing I have never done is give up. I’ve tried, but the reflex to get up is something only death will remove from me. I am fierce, but you gave me that. I am fierce and I will not tolerate any untoward or underhand behaviour - I will call you for what you are. And I will say your name as loud as I fucking can for the all times I did not and for all the people who cannot. And I will cry and I will be angry and I will not keep anyone’s secrets ever again.
Life begins at 30 - it’s a complete fucking cliché, but if by life they mean plans that involve an investment in a future you always had, then it is certainly true for me. If they mean by life an inviolable space in which to operate from, to orchestrate from, to stand still and breathe clearly and deeply in, then I have that too and I have always had it, even when it seemed like I did not. It’s all about perspective, about taking each moment as a new one, discarding all assumptions for it. It’s about trusting yourself to pick the right one and not punishing yourself for all the times you have and will not. It’s about telling the truth and your story and trusting in the process of change. It’s about knowing that turning your back on the bastards will not cause you to come face to face with the pin that will puncture your lungs to cause you to lose the only non-polluted breath left in the world. Turn the fuck around girl, turn around and look and see that it was only ever me, and all I wanted was for you to see the pink and gold horizon and the way the beautiful, blood-red sun rises as often as it sinks…