Journal 15th-16th October
By purplehaze
- 902 reads
15th-16th October
Fuck it. It's the only thing keeping me sane and not all urges have to be acted upon. It's a form of self restraint in fact.
No bolting.
Not even from the blog.
I can't switch it off anyway, am writing constantly in my head, taken to carrying 'round a mini tape recorder like a spy. The urge is to expand not to stop, to re-write old stories, invite new ones in, get it all out of my head, words and words and words.
I can't switch it off.
And I ain't gonna.
The Universe wants me to write. This is just the practice, the shocks before the biggie. I am well used to Richter scale earthshocks now. Nothing holds any fear for me. Coz I will write it out. Crap, inane, spiralling, holy fuck, full of Spirit hymns of words, where the devil catches you by the throat.
Or maybe I'll just stop drinking so much Rescue Remedy.
LB called for a chat on Friday night, and we celebrated our monthiversary with cosy texts of love and kisses. We are nauseating. Saturday, he sent me a photo of the beach he walked before going to work. Dawlish. It looks lovely. Saturday was v. fine in Dawlish. He says he feels that it's been a lot longer than a month.
Not sure if that's good or bad, but I do feel like I've known him forever and I love it that I can tell him anything and he doesn't freak out. He's a special person my LB and I have vowed to have no more thoughts of bolting. I recognise his wounds and finally understand the phrase 'kindred spirit'. We have stuff to teach each other, me and LB.
We won't be lovers though, it's not like that.
So, I say Whoa there horsey, bolt not, and instead, gee up thoughts of 'let's see what happens next'.
Coz I already know what happens when I bolt.
I need a new ending for that story.
So Friday I take piggly wiggly rear view windscreen wiper and license plate lamp to be fixed.
'Twenty minutes Mrs McSporran.'
I don't do the Dick Emery correction, but it's tempting, I take a seat instead. I'm flicking through magazines and come across a problem page.
"We are expecting our first child¦ and it hits me.
That zooming in, the world suddenly too close and the radio clacking on too loudly, and it hits me. Can't breathe.
The first wave; the difference between saying 'I don't want a child at 44' and ' I can't have children, ever again.' That choice, that I chose not to make, taken away from me overnight and the world is full of 'we' and 'our'.
The aftershock; I am nowhere near being part of a 'we' or having 'our' in my vocabulary. That's the stinger. I'm an 'I', a 'me', not a 'we'.
I stand up coz I have to get out of the building, glass walled as it is, I can't breath in the suffocating new car showroom smell. Why do cars look so big in showrooms and why are they all silver grey? Like so many tin rhinos waiting at a water hole. Why do find myself walking quickly round them hoping the brakes are on, like they could snort and charge at me at any moment?
I safari walk towards the desk to ask if my car is ready yet, and I can see on the receptionist's face that she's forgotten all about me.
She shoots up from her seat,
'I'm just off to read the riot act to them. They were on their tea.'
She has ESP as well.
She comes back fifteen minutes later.
'Just five minutes Mrs McSporran.'
So I stay and read on, December 2004. An article about some times in your life being Winter periods. When things seem to fall about you, the important thing, is rest, don't fight it, use it, and to never lose faith in yourself.
I'm mad at the garage for poking my useless button, my 'who'll want me now' tape, 'I'm invisible anyway' self pity dance which is SO not my colour, so I tear the article out to keep.
Vandalism and theft now.
Am a klepto. Who cares?
Sue me, am pre-menopausally drugged up.
Come ahead.
I was there for over an hour in the middle of a Microsoft emergency release.
Stress is not my colour.
£126 later I got out.
£126 for a windscreen wiper?
If I catch the prick who did it, well, let's just say the menopausal drugs are kicking in and I'd get away with it.
Bollockectomy.
Look it up.
What the hell, I spent more than that on a portable printer for when I'm recuperating in the countryside and writing truly madly deeply.
Money discipline only seems to apply in the supermarket so far. Although I have not bought clothes (that's a lie, peridot green velvet skirt in Tesco, also Friday coz it was peridot green velvet and I was pissed off at the £126 so spent more money, excellent logic of the overdrawn). But at least the crap I don't need is reducing. No more self help books.
Green velvet skirts are a necessity.
Just need the charcoal grey top to set it off now.
Was forced to buy those pick your own glasses in Boots, mostly as can't read the Guardian TV listings without getting a headache. Still managed to mis-time the machine for Kate Bush's exclusive new video on Saturday, v.v.v. pissed off. Tis the season for Kate songs though. Mistapes of simeon-faced actors are simply no substitute.
Drove out to Kincardine O'Neil. Oldest village on Deeside. Since Queen Victoria made this area the favourite spot for her McHolidays. There is a wee shop called 'Treasures' full of crystals rough, polished, jewelleryfied. An Aladdin's Cave. It's run by a woman and her son - who won't shut up.
"We're both dyslexic, he shouts. I so want to say KO, but I don't. Why he feels the need to share that I don't know, I think I asked the price of a huge piece of lilac lepidolite. He's in a kilt and has a pony tail, he makes a lot of the jewellery and can fix or transform lost earrings into pendants. It's a lovely shop with stones I've never heard of in my life before, so silent inside. Once they shut up. I buy a bracelet for the birthday girl and leave the lepidolite behind the counter - they don't take cards. My kind of shop. At last.
The old Smiddy is also a shop so I wander up the 50 yards of main street and go in. Again she won't stop talking, but then she gets interesting. The back of the shop is a listed building with two huge forges, in white-walled cottage. She's selling knick knacks, crap you don't need. She says the horses were brought in the front door, fed, then brought through here to be shoed, then went out the other door. I can hear the clip clopping the shoes must have made on the stone pavings. She complains it can't be kept clean and children hurt themselves when they fall.
I'd have made it a tearoom. It has hot scones and clouds of cream written all over it.
Full of history. A woman came from Australia in the summer and was quite emotional, she lived next door as a child and could see it all apparently, the working smiddy. I could feel it myself. Hear the clip clops.
Lovely gentle energy of horses in that building. Horses, heat and rhythmic clanging.
I often wonder if farming went back to using horses, not tractors, would there be no glut. No European mountain. No waste. No noise. No pollution. No farmers committing suicide. There is a poem about the return of horses, coming over the hill to help man once all the energy is used up.
They'll be back.
Country party on Saturday night, God they make great food in the countryside, all those Agas or something. It was such a lovely community event, a 40th in the village hall. All done up with fairy lights and bits of trees, candles and a too loud DJ. Babies to pensioners and the country kids so friendly and funny. I'm looking forward to being part of their wee community for a while. It snows a lot out there in Winter. Log fires and what's the latest PTA issue. Who's chickens are laying and what's ready in the poly tunnel.
I am looking forward to shutting down this Winter run-up to the Solstice, shutting down like the trees. Not fully, but secretly, full of Spirit down deep, going inside, invisible workings, letting the sap rise slow but sure, internally. Those strange and magical secret energies in the core of me to heal myself, bud me for the Spring. Trusting in it's knowledge, it's Gaia-like wisdom, balancing out and healing itself. Healing me. Trusting Spring will bring blooms to my cheeks, without me having to even think of it. Despite me thinking of it even.
I'm blessed.
But I couldn't stay in the house full of children.
It was the noise!
Although they are all cute as buttons. Obviously.
Also felt a bit sad watching them.
I had thought I'd have a wee son one day.
Sunday
Spiral tree is losing it's leaves, all yellow green and golden orange. I've still not been able to place what kind of tree it is, but I pick up eight leaves to take with me to the country recuperation. It dawns on me standing there that I want to have things about me to remind me of my favourite haunts, and how important my environment is to me. How I need it to be colourful and creative, relaxing and serene. With heaps of books.
It also crosses my mind, that this glorious tree with it's core missing, is just as beautiful, just as unique, if not more so, than all the other trees who are still intact. I feel an affinity and rest my head on it's spiral cradling branch. I'm sure it's spiralling lower than last year. I see how this will rot and break one day, but not today. Today, it is glorious and unique. It's the missing part that makes it what it is. Unique and wonderful.
It's my teacher.
The Drum forest walk is a ticker tape parade of shimmering beach leaf coins, which makes me feel great, because I feel like it's saying 'good luck' as I walk through it, back to the car. I come home, chilled out and I have a text that LB has sent me a media message. I'm on O2 website so check my mail too.
Email from green eyes, sent Saturday evening.
Six 'royal we's' and one 'our'.
Putting the 'we' in my weekend.
Just to finish it, and me, off.
I was happy.
Then I wasn't.
"We are having the neighbours round for a meal. We don't have much to do with them but I thought as we are moving away we should get to know them.
He'll write 'properly' when he's feeling more inspired. My shredded heart can hardly wait.
Actually, I think it's more my ego that's smarting.
Good sign.
Do men not think of what they are writing, or is this code for 'back off, I've had enough'?
Like when they say terrible things and behave really badly to make you chuck them coz they don't have the balls to say they want out.
In which case, why is he writing at all, half an hour before 'they' have guests and she's probably making the hot pot? Is it all part of the fantasy?
Why say I'll write more later?
Why did he write back at all?
Why tell me this?
"We are moving into our dream house in a few weeks, problem being it won't be a dream when we're in it.
Does it mean the house will no longer be a dream, or their relationship isn't any more?
Is green eyes a bastard?
Am I the biggest idiot that ever walked the earth?
Quite possibly.
I'm not writing back.
He's in a relationship. The kind of relationship where they dreamed a house together, and now they have it. Even if they are going to drive each other nuts in it. He ain't leaving. He's just looking to get laid, maybe not even that. Just an ego tickle fantasy coz I'm tucked up safe on the end of a modem in Aberdeen.
Not any more green eyes.
I'm not writing back.
He can do the waiting for emails this time. They ain't coming. This is my lesson.
Walking away.
It's a wall not a door.
Even if it is gorgeous, supporting, nurturing, soothing to lean against and grabs me and kisses me, it's still a wall, not a door.
God the ache of it.
Am I together enough to say thanks and c'est la vie baby?
Am I on the edge enough to do it?
Jump off.
Fly.
Can't catch me green eyes.
I ain't playin' this game anymore.
I want a man of my own.
God it hurts.
Being adult.
The important thing about being told you're open and honest, is to really GET how that might be useful if you start being open and honest with yourself. First of all.
He's gorgeous, seems interested, can't have him as my one and only.
Walk away.
Feel how that makes you feel.
Walk away.
Am I allowed to scream?
Walk away.
How many times can one heart break?
Walk Away.
What the fuck is the Universe playing at?
The walking away is the lesson. It's not bolting this time, it's choosing happiness not suffering, it's trusting something better is out there even if that means some alone time, it's giving up the tantrum of not getting what you want, it's feeling the grief and moving on. It's what I've been doing for a year and a half.
It's letting go.
I hate this 'being adult' stuff.
Have to get up and walk about for a while, think my dignity is crawling back out from under the couch and wants to make up with me.
In Gabrielle Roth's book 'Maps to Ecstasy' she tells the story of a monk who falls in love with a woman. He goes to another monk, tells him then asks
'What should I do?'
The older monk says,
'Follow your ecstasy.'
Obviously, I think he chose to be with the woman he's in love with, no matter what else he had to give up.
I don't understand why he wouldn't.
I don't.
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