I've not done any substantial writing for a long time now, it feels. I've spent most of today and yesterday either at, or at least hovering around my piano keyboard in some tense, exploding state of consciousness. Creating makes me feel like the bird that has just broken out of an egg. Exhilarated, breathing, insane.
I pace the flat for something to distract me from the inevitable truth of those black and white keys. And still I haven't written anything of note for a long time now. The novel, or at least the drive towards a novel, on the 'back burner', that is, crept back into the recesses of my mind. A book of short stories, is reduced to two ideas only: birds' nests and windy places.
The post sinks into the ground. I am more preoccupied with things that make no sense than those that do. I walk to the shop. I walk back.
This thing I call creativity makes me happier than any sex, is as great as the greatest love. And sadder than all sorrows put together. I like myself a lot when I write, because I am not hindered by my own 'thereness', I am free to wander into whichever room of experience I please, untroubled by my own preferences and predelictions. And I sometimes hate all that I am too, saddled by my insecurities and cracking bravados, on nights like these.
Tonight, experience is painful and the rain dances.
But creating is giving birth, it is about something being birthed, born. And as I feel like the chick out of the egg, I also feel like the bloody mother, I can feel my body torn in labour. So this is a necessary pain, a necessary tension. Like new teeth pushing through gums. Skin ripping open.
And for what? For what reason do we give birth in this way? For sure, there is no fulfllment for me without it, to let the words or the song come into fruition without the tension of struggle, without working for it. Those slippy slidy works of supposed art, that trip so easily and so correctly off the smoothest tongue, they leave me unmoved by their composure, by their lack of a crime scene. No dying bull to trace in the sand, no ideal to stretch to the limit. Art can never be hidden behind, but exposes it all, all the workings. Ah, we are all so clever at this, still we try and tame the animal, lassoo it all so it belongs to us, not the other way round. Idiots, we are.
Can we make poetry with the head? Some people seem to think so. We can stare out to space with special instruments, we can calculate the mass of the world. We can float in space suits far above this bluest planet and watch the gases and the atmosphere, imbibe the greens and the corals and the turquoise patches, sail the infinite seas above, notating the wonders with a biro pen. And what does that make us? If we don't see it, it is all just another TV show, just an interesting experiment.
Poetry is not an interesting experiment. It is living, life itself. It is the often agonising process of opening up to what this universe is made of, and looking around, taking it in.
It is a space ship that travels to places otherwise unreachable, no other vehicle has the engine power, the correct design. It brings this human back, with the wonders and horrors of the world, of space, to write shakily some 'feeble approximation of starlight'.
It also travels underwater, to where the plants and the jellied fish grow. To where light cuts out under the ice, where sound is an ancient song from far above tides.
Descends, descends, past trees and caves and earth and matter and stone, into the stone it goes, the greyest, smoothest stone. Then the peat, and the ashes, the burnt out coal, the embers, the black chalk in the fire, soil and worms. Feel it in your hand, cool dark and sodden.
To the people, the stares, the unrelenting dreams. We say we are a million miles from the sky and the wood and the ground, from under the water.
No, we are the same life. In the human, there is always the valley and the rock, the repetitive seasons and the swimming fish. Discovered lakes, so much unchartered territory. The horrors of the flesh, the sinking stone, buried under ivy, human sleeps with fur and paw, eats its brother, dazzles with the sunlight and becomes dawn itself.
We are the night and the day, the afternoon, Northern Lights. We are neutron stars, gas and pollution. Moving in a haze of cloud. Whiskers. Dead creatures. Our own faeces. The blazing cottage. The never born girl child, left in a dream. A window, this book you hold, spent, spent, always spent.
This is all poetry to me. And to sit with that, is to sit with life itself. And the bravest poets are the Captains of the Boats at roughest sea. They bring the words home, they inspire, touch the fabric, rub the thread between their old warm fingers.
If I ever doubt poetry has a purpose, I think of this. I think of the bold. The death defyers. On a night like tonight, that I can be so bold, take these controls and launch again, is all I ask.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Sunday Best
Well, the afternoon Tea Party went down a storm on Sunday, with cakes, Assam and ginger cake galore. It was a magnificent afternoon, the weather holding out, and the sun daring to shine. We all wore our Sunday best and I even put on a bit of Edith Piaf and Django Reinhardt to add to the atmosphere. An eccentric affair, the kind that always bring the biggest smile to my lips. More afternoons should be spent like this - there is something poignantly beautiful about such a spread on the beach, with all your friends, watching as the sun sinks behind the horizon and Summer ebbs its way from the tides of the shore.
I finally have some more time off, so today I am working on a song at my keyboard. Oh, the joy of solitude.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Thursday, September 21, 2006
The Leaves Are Starting To Fall..
Autumn is coming. Walking up Ditching Road this morning, I felt it in the breeze, saw it in the cracked orange leaves that circled round my knees and bag.
This morning I am a girl of the sea. Sweet and strong with a head full of wonder, an eye for light: I sparkle on water. Tomorrow I may be Andalucia, with a body of blood like aged red wine from the cellar, a heart of ardent rapture, sitting by a ring of sand, watching the bull toss his head with bleeding pride.
Yesterday was a bad day. Today, so far, my heart is alive and breathing once again, remembering it can take care of itself, and that, in the midst of pain, there is still love, if you can persist to find it. This can take some looking.
But as there is a season about to end, there is another beginning. I will make it a new beginning. And to mark it, this Sunday I hold A Tea Party on the beach, with fancy frocks and friends to say goodbye to what has, in many ways, been a memorable and beautiful season.
And I am not quite ready for snow, but the thought of chocolate coloured days and walks by the green cooling river fill me with a new joys. Trips to London to see the new Rodin collection, Tate Modern, my sister and the Thames. Kittywakes calling from Seaford cliffs, quiet afternoons writing, berries and hot tea late at night.
And the beach will change its flavour, but will still be there, chugging and churning, my solace in this greedy busy town, peace in the burning car headlights.
Who knows what will actually become of this Autumn, but perhaps I don't have to opt for complete hibernation just yet, or can do so in another way. I think they call it Recuperation. I call on all my animals of the forest, of the ice, of the road. Let them take care of this little soul when it grows littler, when the rocks start falling and I need a place to hide, some fur and strong paws to bury my face in.
And all being well, it won't break my heart to see Mum in the new nursing home where she'll soon be residing, with her child-like vision, the flower pots on the patio. I am so glad there will be flowers for her there. And though it feels a devastation to think we all might be in for another long haul, because we know she will not get better, but could stay in some twilight world for years to come, I am glad she will be settled somewhere where there are no nurses, too busy to give my mother a second glance, to really look after her, where I can leave behind wards, the clinical smell, the dreadful taste of death and withering in my mouth. At least there are hills there.
And I have joined a Writing Circle. And I soon begin a little writing course. And life moves onward. I never stay the same. And even in one day, who I am shifts and changes. I am Clare, and I am reborn with every tear, every pain.
This morning I am a girl of the sea. Sweet and strong with a head full of wonder, an eye for light: I sparkle on water. Tomorrow I may be Andalucia, with a body of blood like aged red wine from the cellar, a heart of ardent rapture, sitting by a ring of sand, watching the bull toss his head with bleeding pride.
Yesterday was a bad day. Today, so far, my heart is alive and breathing once again, remembering it can take care of itself, and that, in the midst of pain, there is still love, if you can persist to find it. This can take some looking.
But as there is a season about to end, there is another beginning. I will make it a new beginning. And to mark it, this Sunday I hold A Tea Party on the beach, with fancy frocks and friends to say goodbye to what has, in many ways, been a memorable and beautiful season.
And I am not quite ready for snow, but the thought of chocolate coloured days and walks by the green cooling river fill me with a new joys. Trips to London to see the new Rodin collection, Tate Modern, my sister and the Thames. Kittywakes calling from Seaford cliffs, quiet afternoons writing, berries and hot tea late at night.
And the beach will change its flavour, but will still be there, chugging and churning, my solace in this greedy busy town, peace in the burning car headlights.
Who knows what will actually become of this Autumn, but perhaps I don't have to opt for complete hibernation just yet, or can do so in another way. I think they call it Recuperation. I call on all my animals of the forest, of the ice, of the road. Let them take care of this little soul when it grows littler, when the rocks start falling and I need a place to hide, some fur and strong paws to bury my face in.
And all being well, it won't break my heart to see Mum in the new nursing home where she'll soon be residing, with her child-like vision, the flower pots on the patio. I am so glad there will be flowers for her there. And though it feels a devastation to think we all might be in for another long haul, because we know she will not get better, but could stay in some twilight world for years to come, I am glad she will be settled somewhere where there are no nurses, too busy to give my mother a second glance, to really look after her, where I can leave behind wards, the clinical smell, the dreadful taste of death and withering in my mouth. At least there are hills there.
And I have joined a Writing Circle. And I soon begin a little writing course. And life moves onward. I never stay the same. And even in one day, who I am shifts and changes. I am Clare, and I am reborn with every tear, every pain.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Hibernation
What a heavy hard week it's been. After the big thunderstorm last Wednesday, which would have been an exhilerating tour de force of nature right outside my bedroom window had huge cracks in my ceiling not appeared, and water, in various sized rivulets and streams, flowed down my walls, doors and light fitting, nothing in my heart has felt quite right.
In fact, as I cowered in my bed waiting for the roof to cave in, I realised, I simply cannot cope with such practical calamities at the moment. Ordinarily I may be a bit wobbled by the sight of water dripping through my electrics, but not phased, always up for a touch of dramatic catastrophe. But somehow, it all felt too close to the bone, too close to home, cracks and holes appearing in my world, no way to keep the violent storms out.
This is not the first extreme happening to occur in this flat. A couple of months ago, in fact when I was right in the midst of the immediate trauma of my Mum's near fatal stroke, I arrived home to find that my living room window, in its entirety, had been blown off. The whole thing lay sad and glass-less in the garden below my attic flat, luckily, I reflected later, with nobody lying underneath it. But it was weird, because, at my most vulnerable and insecure, feeling in need of self-protection and a sense of home, my window goes and blows out, and I am left with a gaping void where the frame and pane was, a room full of swirling papers and a sense of large holes appearing in my world whether I like it or not.
And so, with the ending of the Summer drawing ever nearer, the events in my family still fresh and harrowing, I find my flat is once again manifesting the state of my heart and my mind, cracks appearing, not enough bowls to hold the water that is filling them up.
So after last week I have been very aware of my need for some sense of safety, from somewhere, anywhere, to counter balance the huge fears and stresses of the last months, which are, to some extent, continuing. If I refuse to see the writing on the wall, my flat is spelling it out for me ( it likes to do that occasionally, see "Blood" ).
And I feel terribly upset, I have sailed far too close to those edges which we hope to only come up against a few times in our lives. So not just one abyss of facing death and disaster to stare into, but several, all coming at once, shocking, cruel, frightening.
I've coped well this Summer, I never felt stronger. But somehow, with the knowledge of this season coming to a close, I am tired, too tired. I want to sleep for about six months. Hibernate and come out again when it is Spring and the buds are bursting upon the branches of the cherry blossom trees and daffodils lace the parks that my bus sails past on my route home.
Maybe I just want another season that is not this one so I don't have to face the present moment, or maybe even the changing of the seasons remind me too strongly of how nothing ever stays the same, and how,in the end we hold onto nothing that we long to keep, no one who we love most dearly.
If I could, I'd pick up my tail, climb my way between the ferns and the fir cones, the sheep wool and the bracken, down into a tunnel of dark, where no sound can travel. And there I'd sleep, and maybe dream, but the days would no longer own me, memory would fade, my bones replenish and my fur would grow strong once again. Here, I'd close my eyelids, there'd be no more weeping for a season.
I'd wrap my tail around myself, a dark brown brush of life, softly, silently, sleeping.
In fact, as I cowered in my bed waiting for the roof to cave in, I realised, I simply cannot cope with such practical calamities at the moment. Ordinarily I may be a bit wobbled by the sight of water dripping through my electrics, but not phased, always up for a touch of dramatic catastrophe. But somehow, it all felt too close to the bone, too close to home, cracks and holes appearing in my world, no way to keep the violent storms out.
This is not the first extreme happening to occur in this flat. A couple of months ago, in fact when I was right in the midst of the immediate trauma of my Mum's near fatal stroke, I arrived home to find that my living room window, in its entirety, had been blown off. The whole thing lay sad and glass-less in the garden below my attic flat, luckily, I reflected later, with nobody lying underneath it. But it was weird, because, at my most vulnerable and insecure, feeling in need of self-protection and a sense of home, my window goes and blows out, and I am left with a gaping void where the frame and pane was, a room full of swirling papers and a sense of large holes appearing in my world whether I like it or not.
And so, with the ending of the Summer drawing ever nearer, the events in my family still fresh and harrowing, I find my flat is once again manifesting the state of my heart and my mind, cracks appearing, not enough bowls to hold the water that is filling them up.
So after last week I have been very aware of my need for some sense of safety, from somewhere, anywhere, to counter balance the huge fears and stresses of the last months, which are, to some extent, continuing. If I refuse to see the writing on the wall, my flat is spelling it out for me ( it likes to do that occasionally, see "Blood" ).
And I feel terribly upset, I have sailed far too close to those edges which we hope to only come up against a few times in our lives. So not just one abyss of facing death and disaster to stare into, but several, all coming at once, shocking, cruel, frightening.
I've coped well this Summer, I never felt stronger. But somehow, with the knowledge of this season coming to a close, I am tired, too tired. I want to sleep for about six months. Hibernate and come out again when it is Spring and the buds are bursting upon the branches of the cherry blossom trees and daffodils lace the parks that my bus sails past on my route home.
Maybe I just want another season that is not this one so I don't have to face the present moment, or maybe even the changing of the seasons remind me too strongly of how nothing ever stays the same, and how,in the end we hold onto nothing that we long to keep, no one who we love most dearly.
If I could, I'd pick up my tail, climb my way between the ferns and the fir cones, the sheep wool and the bracken, down into a tunnel of dark, where no sound can travel. And there I'd sleep, and maybe dream, but the days would no longer own me, memory would fade, my bones replenish and my fur would grow strong once again. Here, I'd close my eyelids, there'd be no more weeping for a season.
I'd wrap my tail around myself, a dark brown brush of life, softly, silently, sleeping.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
china
There is a white china cup that sits on the wooden table. A pile of papers lie to the right, their edges softly blowing up in the breeze. Apart from these, a china cup is the only object sitting on this scraped old wooden table, with its legs that wobble, its planks that heave with cold. The china cup is shaped like a small well and it gleams in the morning sun filtering through the open bay window. It leaves a ring in the unpolished surface.
I mark my seasons by the white china cup. April is for green tea, flowers in the top, floating. Summer is for sweet hot apple cider, straight from the piping urn. September is berries and darjeeling, taken black. Autumn seeps into flavours of licorice and anise star, hot water doused cardammon, cinammon sticks, cloves, milk. December is cracked ice, Baileys poured over.
I live the seasons like this, until the winds drift over and March appears, a blighted snow drift on the horizon. And the drinking stops, the china cup is filled with lighter hue, which hails, in its thin lipped taste of biting white, the onset of a distant Spring.
This is the month where the china cup sits empty on the wooden table. Where I lie on the moth bitten sofa, with its Japanese throw and its smell of jasmine and pink wafer, and I watch, as the cup tows its empty china through another cycle, its life, a bequeathed rim of silver, to another year.
I mark my seasons by the white china cup. April is for green tea, flowers in the top, floating. Summer is for sweet hot apple cider, straight from the piping urn. September is berries and darjeeling, taken black. Autumn seeps into flavours of licorice and anise star, hot water doused cardammon, cinammon sticks, cloves, milk. December is cracked ice, Baileys poured over.
I live the seasons like this, until the winds drift over and March appears, a blighted snow drift on the horizon. And the drinking stops, the china cup is filled with lighter hue, which hails, in its thin lipped taste of biting white, the onset of a distant Spring.
This is the month where the china cup sits empty on the wooden table. Where I lie on the moth bitten sofa, with its Japanese throw and its smell of jasmine and pink wafer, and I watch, as the cup tows its empty china through another cycle, its life, a bequeathed rim of silver, to another year.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Every Time You Go Away
Tonight I watched Celebrity Masterchef. Marie Helvin, the model, some guy that I think may have been in the pop band Imagination and, love of my life at age 10, the one and only, Paul Young, all competing to come up with the perfect culinary dish to win the title of this BBC2 cooking competition.
Jesus, it was strange seeing him. I used to actually keep a notebook to record my obsession with Paul Young, making a note of each new poster that I bought, which eventually covered the entire walls of my bedroom, (except for an increasing number of Aha ones, but I don't talk about that little betrayal). I even had a life size one which I got in installments through Smash Hits - one week his feet, the next his legs and groin etc. I firmly believed I was going to marry him and was devastated when he got together later with Supergirl actress Helen Slater. The cow. I even had a Paul Young scarf, with a very distorted picture of his face on it, as well as his pretend signature which I ordered through his fan club, of which I was, of course, a member.
The only other club I remember joining through the postal service when I was young was the Desperate Dan Club. I'm not quite sure where my fascination for Desperate Dan arose from, as it wasn't exactly a popular girl's thing to be into. I remember getting all the stuff through the post, and how excited I was to open it. There was this picture of him on the front of the Membership Card with a big bristly chin, about to tuck into a Cow Pie. As I opened the pack, I was confronted by a test that said unless you can answer these three questions, you cannot join. You are not a true Desperate Dan fan as you are not tough enough. It was three jokes, of which you had to guess the punchlines. Easy probably. But I didn't get one of them, and I remember the shame, the utter humiliation of the fact that I had this stupid membership pack, which I'd been so excited to receive, and yet I had just exposed myself to the fact that I wasn't worthy to join it because I wasn't tough enough. Ok, no body else knew, but I knew, I knew I wasn't up to the job. I remember thinking it's because I'm not a real boy - now they've found me out. I slung the membership pack into the back of my sock drawer, hoping it wouldn't be discovered by my Mum or any other potential Askers of Difficult Questions, who might realise the truth that I was trying to infiltrate some secret boyhood that I could never truly belong to.
I never wore dresses growing up, except on the odd occasion, and they were still somehow ungirlish and unflattering, with frills or flaps on them too large that they engulfed my entire chest. Me and both my other sisters all had our hair cropped short, a trio of little pseudo boys, until I finally protested against being constantly mistaken for a 'sonny' and decided to grow my hair long. That was when I was ten, and I have never worn it short since, some kind of life long compensation for feeling for so long like I'd been born into the wrong body.
I didn't look like other girls, and I was sure as hell at the time that I didn't feel like other girls. I did like playing with my Sindy dolls, but my favourite game used to be 'let's tie Sindy up and pretend a train is coming to drive over her'. That was one of my favourite film themes as I was growing up - the silent movie 1920's starlet tied to the train tracks whilst the black caped baddie chuckles on the sidelines rubbing his hands in glee, and the train hurtles towards her whilst the hero grapples dotingly with her ropes. I think I wanted to be that curly haired girl, dressed in some flimsy negligee, squealing silently and struggling in black and white as the piano tinkled on and on in the background. I think I also wanted to be the baddie in the cape, and the dashing hero as well. How kinky.
So yes, I did like playing with dolls, but that was about it as far as my girlishness went. I was strikingly tall for my age, and very strong, not delicate at all. I remember playing kiss chase in the little school when I was six or seven and finding it a highly erotic experience, but whenever a boy caught me, I would punch him in the chest and run off shouting "NO!". I hated those namby pamby girls that would just relent and giggle and toss their pigtails in the air. The boys loved them. I never wore pretty shoes, and the boys never fell in love with me.
My two best friends at that age were Jamie Pope and John Stewart. John Stewart was the Pete Doherty of Sandford House School, the bad boy amongst a classroom of seven year olds. God he was sexy. He used to swear and use words like 'shit' and I was terribly impressed, amongst this bunch of mainly drab and dreary girlies and boys. My favourite lunchtimes were when him and Jamie said I could join in with their games (no other girls were allowed the same privilege), which mainly involved dragging Action Man in and out through the holes in the wire fence behind the playground bushes. God I felt cool and I loved playing with Action Man. John Stewart NEVER tucked his shirt in.
I used to have fantasies at night of staying behind at school to play alone in the shed that was in our playground. In my fantasy, John Stewart would appear, and he would tie me up in the shed. This tying up thing seems to have been a bit of a theme for me. I didn't know why the idea of being tied up by this boy was so exciting, and nothing else would happen but that, but it gave me a feeling in my body I liked a lot. At night I would pull my arms out of the sleeves of my nightie and slide them underneath it so that my hands could roam freely over my body. I didn't know why I liked this either, but I did.
John Stewart never did find me in the playground as I wanted him to, and I moved up when I was eight to the big school next door, where boys were no longer allowed. But it started to really perturb me that I didn't really feel like other girls seemed to feel, and still looked the gawky young boy in the brown round toed shoes. Little Lord Fauntleroy, my sister used to call me. In fact, she still does, when she's feeling fond.
When I was eight I also got a silver bike for my birthday. I remember being so chuffed that I had a fancy cool bike, and so disturbed when I realised it was a boy's bike. For a while boys from around the council estate across the road would come and play with me, and admire my bike and take a ride in my Police Car, which you could sit in and peddle and it was cool and it had a flashing light on the back. But they never fancied me.
In fact, the only people I remember there being any kind of fancying scenarios with, were girls. There once was this girl, who for some reason came to play round at mine one time, whom I hadn't the foggiest who she was, and for at least half of the day I thought, was in fact a boy. She was so androgynous with her short hair and jeans. I remember feeling curiously drawn to her, finally asking her outright whether she was a boy or a girl. When we sat together on my Dad's reclining chair, I still remember a strange feeling in my belly as we sat squashed together, our arms pushed up against each other.
The only other frisson was with one of my best friends at the time, whom I played with a lot. She was Indian and I would go round to her house and her Mum would dress me up in saris and I'd like it because I felt pretty and feminine for once, and her parents had a Hindu shrine in their bedroom with a picture of Ganesh in front of their mirror. I was fascinated by him with his big long elephant nose and the smell of incense that wafted around him. Sometimes we would eat curry for tea but mainly we had Findus Crispy pancakes which I adored, particularly the ones with cheese inside. Sometimes she and I would play 'peeping tom', where one of us would take our clothes off and have a shower and the other would pretend to come in by mistake and look. It seemed to always end up being me in the shower. One sunny day in my back garden, my friend confessed she was in love with me. By this point I was ten, and absolutely horrified by her confession. Sadly, in a blind panic and confusion, I stopped being friends with her that summer, denouncing her a 'lezzy'. Oh dear.
Looking back, I see that in certain ways, my life plays out now pretty much in the same ways it did then. The parallels are unnervingly striking. Perhaps the only difference is that now my hair is longer and I most definitely look like a girl, I made sure of that. And I'm not so into tying my dolls to imaginary train tracks, at least not all the time. And that sometimes, when I'm caught by a boy, I won't always punch him in the chest, but let him kiss me on the lips. But only if he kisses like John Stewart.
And ah I remember, the actual point of this meandering post, was to tell you about Paul Young. Well, my beautiful animus, my soul singing icon of sexiness who set my heart and loins a flutter with "Wherever I Lay My Hat" in 1983, he won through to the quarter finals of Celebrity Masterchef with his dish of Cajun Prawns with a basil coulis and wild rice. Despite looking somewhat haggard, he had tears twinkling in his eyes. Bless his cotton socks.
Jesus, it was strange seeing him. I used to actually keep a notebook to record my obsession with Paul Young, making a note of each new poster that I bought, which eventually covered the entire walls of my bedroom, (except for an increasing number of Aha ones, but I don't talk about that little betrayal). I even had a life size one which I got in installments through Smash Hits - one week his feet, the next his legs and groin etc. I firmly believed I was going to marry him and was devastated when he got together later with Supergirl actress Helen Slater. The cow. I even had a Paul Young scarf, with a very distorted picture of his face on it, as well as his pretend signature which I ordered through his fan club, of which I was, of course, a member.
The only other club I remember joining through the postal service when I was young was the Desperate Dan Club. I'm not quite sure where my fascination for Desperate Dan arose from, as it wasn't exactly a popular girl's thing to be into. I remember getting all the stuff through the post, and how excited I was to open it. There was this picture of him on the front of the Membership Card with a big bristly chin, about to tuck into a Cow Pie. As I opened the pack, I was confronted by a test that said unless you can answer these three questions, you cannot join. You are not a true Desperate Dan fan as you are not tough enough. It was three jokes, of which you had to guess the punchlines. Easy probably. But I didn't get one of them, and I remember the shame, the utter humiliation of the fact that I had this stupid membership pack, which I'd been so excited to receive, and yet I had just exposed myself to the fact that I wasn't worthy to join it because I wasn't tough enough. Ok, no body else knew, but I knew, I knew I wasn't up to the job. I remember thinking it's because I'm not a real boy - now they've found me out. I slung the membership pack into the back of my sock drawer, hoping it wouldn't be discovered by my Mum or any other potential Askers of Difficult Questions, who might realise the truth that I was trying to infiltrate some secret boyhood that I could never truly belong to.
I never wore dresses growing up, except on the odd occasion, and they were still somehow ungirlish and unflattering, with frills or flaps on them too large that they engulfed my entire chest. Me and both my other sisters all had our hair cropped short, a trio of little pseudo boys, until I finally protested against being constantly mistaken for a 'sonny' and decided to grow my hair long. That was when I was ten, and I have never worn it short since, some kind of life long compensation for feeling for so long like I'd been born into the wrong body.
I didn't look like other girls, and I was sure as hell at the time that I didn't feel like other girls. I did like playing with my Sindy dolls, but my favourite game used to be 'let's tie Sindy up and pretend a train is coming to drive over her'. That was one of my favourite film themes as I was growing up - the silent movie 1920's starlet tied to the train tracks whilst the black caped baddie chuckles on the sidelines rubbing his hands in glee, and the train hurtles towards her whilst the hero grapples dotingly with her ropes. I think I wanted to be that curly haired girl, dressed in some flimsy negligee, squealing silently and struggling in black and white as the piano tinkled on and on in the background. I think I also wanted to be the baddie in the cape, and the dashing hero as well. How kinky.
So yes, I did like playing with dolls, but that was about it as far as my girlishness went. I was strikingly tall for my age, and very strong, not delicate at all. I remember playing kiss chase in the little school when I was six or seven and finding it a highly erotic experience, but whenever a boy caught me, I would punch him in the chest and run off shouting "NO!". I hated those namby pamby girls that would just relent and giggle and toss their pigtails in the air. The boys loved them. I never wore pretty shoes, and the boys never fell in love with me.
My two best friends at that age were Jamie Pope and John Stewart. John Stewart was the Pete Doherty of Sandford House School, the bad boy amongst a classroom of seven year olds. God he was sexy. He used to swear and use words like 'shit' and I was terribly impressed, amongst this bunch of mainly drab and dreary girlies and boys. My favourite lunchtimes were when him and Jamie said I could join in with their games (no other girls were allowed the same privilege), which mainly involved dragging Action Man in and out through the holes in the wire fence behind the playground bushes. God I felt cool and I loved playing with Action Man. John Stewart NEVER tucked his shirt in.
I used to have fantasies at night of staying behind at school to play alone in the shed that was in our playground. In my fantasy, John Stewart would appear, and he would tie me up in the shed. This tying up thing seems to have been a bit of a theme for me. I didn't know why the idea of being tied up by this boy was so exciting, and nothing else would happen but that, but it gave me a feeling in my body I liked a lot. At night I would pull my arms out of the sleeves of my nightie and slide them underneath it so that my hands could roam freely over my body. I didn't know why I liked this either, but I did.
John Stewart never did find me in the playground as I wanted him to, and I moved up when I was eight to the big school next door, where boys were no longer allowed. But it started to really perturb me that I didn't really feel like other girls seemed to feel, and still looked the gawky young boy in the brown round toed shoes. Little Lord Fauntleroy, my sister used to call me. In fact, she still does, when she's feeling fond.
When I was eight I also got a silver bike for my birthday. I remember being so chuffed that I had a fancy cool bike, and so disturbed when I realised it was a boy's bike. For a while boys from around the council estate across the road would come and play with me, and admire my bike and take a ride in my Police Car, which you could sit in and peddle and it was cool and it had a flashing light on the back. But they never fancied me.
In fact, the only people I remember there being any kind of fancying scenarios with, were girls. There once was this girl, who for some reason came to play round at mine one time, whom I hadn't the foggiest who she was, and for at least half of the day I thought, was in fact a boy. She was so androgynous with her short hair and jeans. I remember feeling curiously drawn to her, finally asking her outright whether she was a boy or a girl. When we sat together on my Dad's reclining chair, I still remember a strange feeling in my belly as we sat squashed together, our arms pushed up against each other.
The only other frisson was with one of my best friends at the time, whom I played with a lot. She was Indian and I would go round to her house and her Mum would dress me up in saris and I'd like it because I felt pretty and feminine for once, and her parents had a Hindu shrine in their bedroom with a picture of Ganesh in front of their mirror. I was fascinated by him with his big long elephant nose and the smell of incense that wafted around him. Sometimes we would eat curry for tea but mainly we had Findus Crispy pancakes which I adored, particularly the ones with cheese inside. Sometimes she and I would play 'peeping tom', where one of us would take our clothes off and have a shower and the other would pretend to come in by mistake and look. It seemed to always end up being me in the shower. One sunny day in my back garden, my friend confessed she was in love with me. By this point I was ten, and absolutely horrified by her confession. Sadly, in a blind panic and confusion, I stopped being friends with her that summer, denouncing her a 'lezzy'. Oh dear.
Looking back, I see that in certain ways, my life plays out now pretty much in the same ways it did then. The parallels are unnervingly striking. Perhaps the only difference is that now my hair is longer and I most definitely look like a girl, I made sure of that. And I'm not so into tying my dolls to imaginary train tracks, at least not all the time. And that sometimes, when I'm caught by a boy, I won't always punch him in the chest, but let him kiss me on the lips. But only if he kisses like John Stewart.
And ah I remember, the actual point of this meandering post, was to tell you about Paul Young. Well, my beautiful animus, my soul singing icon of sexiness who set my heart and loins a flutter with "Wherever I Lay My Hat" in 1983, he won through to the quarter finals of Celebrity Masterchef with his dish of Cajun Prawns with a basil coulis and wild rice. Despite looking somewhat haggard, he had tears twinkling in his eyes. Bless his cotton socks.
Saturday, September 09, 2006
I Guess I Just Wasn't Made For These Times
In a post a couple of days ago I wrote about forgetting. How I want to keep remembering the bigness that I chose to forget the day my shoes became to small for my changing feet and the taxman came a calling.
Maybe this is just a process that happens over time, a gradual erosion of innocence in the mind, as experience rakes us over the coals and we become 'adult'. But I can also see how it can just take one or a few single experiences to do this to us, where life can never then be the same again and it feels like there is no going back. You can never go home again.
The dream is lost, the love is betrayed, the dog gets run over, the parent leaves, the child is never born, the talent goes unrecognised. Even the seemingly tiniest of things can change us irrevocably - that harsh joke at your expense from an otherwise all loving grandparent, that schoolyard taunt that never went away, the way he held you that one time and it made you feel all dirty and bad.
And yet on and on we go, forgetting because we don't want to remember it, the bad things, those embarrassing moments, the shame of the past, and how our innocence and naivety led us, again and again, into trouble and pain.
But if we ever stop to think of such moments, where everything got changed, where we made a decision somewhere to close down, or run away or be tough or never let anyone near again, we'd realise how often they'd been made in an instant, and a moment of intense or sometimes not so intense disillusion and betrayal has marked our future forever.
But we can open up the vaults and let the past through. We can sit in the complexity of our selves and let them be. If we can just give them space. Let the hordes through, let them rampage our streets and tear up our neat new lawns. And then let them leave, wave them off, show them the door - after all, you don't want to be stuck with that death metal listening teenager forever.
But I wonder, I wonder about what happened before even all the trials and terrors of childhood and adolescence, of birth even.
What about before life even came?
When I see pictures or footage of Antartica, I feel a sense of that, of the wilderness that was before life came. Before there was language and a civilisation of the senses. When I look at the blueness of glaciers, the whiteness of ice, the stillness of freezing water, I have some sense of what it means to be unborn. What it means to be deathless. Such landscapes are the gateway into a state that lives in the human psyche and beyond it. I recognise it when I see it and I say: there I am, there it is, this is it.
Nature mimics the mind, or is the mind. But my mind has forgotten itself, it has forgotten what it is, it has (necessarily) left behind its true identity, in search of Life and Order and the World. Because that is the way of things, that is the nature of living. And once you are born, it may fill you with awe to stare upon a glacial wilderness, but it is also terrifying, because it is all whiteness, it is ferociously uninhabitable.
And the only animals alive in these places seem like creatures from a childrens' story book, fantastical, hilarious, unearthly, zoomed straight from the unconscious into a billowing white pillow of nothingness.
The vast and uncivilised places will always have answers to the questions we seek or run from, will know more than we can ever hope to, with our silly clever minds, with our hard hats and our compasses. They are always beyond our reach.
I remember feeling this way as I looked across the Almerian desert last year, as I felt it all around me, amidst its stark branches and crystal rocks, a bigness I could not comprehend, but felt, that knew me better than I knew myself. It was eerie.
There is a place in the desert, perhaps the Sahara, where, for the time you stand there, all your memory of who you are and what your past was is erased. And there is only that moment. Apparently it is deeply unsettling, disturbing, and one who has stood there can never be the same again.
I don't know how true this is, but of course my first reaction to hearing it was "I want to go there". To a place beyond the reaches of the mind. And partly I do, partly I want it so bad that when I do see footage of wild places, such as Antartica and the desert, I am immediately in tears. Because it reminds me, of something I know but I have forgotten, somehow chosen to forget. And it grieves me - remembering a little more of who I am reminds me of how much I forget it most of the time.
And so also, I do not want to go to some place that wipes your memory, and maybe replaces it with a truer one. Where there is perfect recall. Because it is frightening. So I look at pictures instead, and dream of a day when I will set foot on the ice, of when I will let the sands take me.
But, as it is in the tiniest moments that we can forget who we really are, it is also in them that we can remember. I have been to dramatic places, literally and symbolically, that have changed me irrevocably. And yet also I have seen a picture or heard a sound or song which, in one moment has changed my life forever. We do not have to cross ten thousand miles to find what we are looking for.
But somewhere I want to. More and more I identify with the myth of the explorer, of the expedition, the journey to the centre of the earth. I want to pilgrimage. I want to cross the seas for no other reason than because my heart is moved to. I want to do it alone. I want to do it with others. I want to discover uncharted territory and bring back treasures. I want to live out with my arms and legs the poetry that brims in the corner of my eye.
My Grandpa and Great Uncles were Captains of ships throughout this century, and some of them died at sea. I like to feel I have adventure in my blood. Or maybe I've done enough travelling inside myself, I want the world too. I want it all in my arms like a greedy girl, with its red stained seas, its whitewash walls and frozen waterfalls. With its flippers and its mites, its dungheaps and its leopard's kill. The end of the road. The mouth of the river. The trail of dust.
And dreams are beautiful, messed up things. After all, they're what brought us out of the womb in the first place: and it is this beautiful hunger that makes us seek, and search, and want to live, and fall in love, and that desires it all and desires none of it, that is foolishly, heroically, doomed. It is what makes us both forget and remember, seek out the best and the worst and tie them both together in the strangest kind of knot. It is what makes us run away like cowards and stay and fight, right to the end.
And I can't help that naive, sometimes grandiose, romantic streak, that engulfing passion that sometimes swallows me up whole.
Beautiful, doomed creatures we are. Like penguins on the ice, we risk our lives every year to take the journey to the breeding ground, to find the mate, hatch the egg, and, if we are lucky, and still alive, see the baby born.
Maybe this is just a process that happens over time, a gradual erosion of innocence in the mind, as experience rakes us over the coals and we become 'adult'. But I can also see how it can just take one or a few single experiences to do this to us, where life can never then be the same again and it feels like there is no going back. You can never go home again.
The dream is lost, the love is betrayed, the dog gets run over, the parent leaves, the child is never born, the talent goes unrecognised. Even the seemingly tiniest of things can change us irrevocably - that harsh joke at your expense from an otherwise all loving grandparent, that schoolyard taunt that never went away, the way he held you that one time and it made you feel all dirty and bad.
And yet on and on we go, forgetting because we don't want to remember it, the bad things, those embarrassing moments, the shame of the past, and how our innocence and naivety led us, again and again, into trouble and pain.
But if we ever stop to think of such moments, where everything got changed, where we made a decision somewhere to close down, or run away or be tough or never let anyone near again, we'd realise how often they'd been made in an instant, and a moment of intense or sometimes not so intense disillusion and betrayal has marked our future forever.
But we can open up the vaults and let the past through. We can sit in the complexity of our selves and let them be. If we can just give them space. Let the hordes through, let them rampage our streets and tear up our neat new lawns. And then let them leave, wave them off, show them the door - after all, you don't want to be stuck with that death metal listening teenager forever.
But I wonder, I wonder about what happened before even all the trials and terrors of childhood and adolescence, of birth even.
What about before life even came?
When I see pictures or footage of Antartica, I feel a sense of that, of the wilderness that was before life came. Before there was language and a civilisation of the senses. When I look at the blueness of glaciers, the whiteness of ice, the stillness of freezing water, I have some sense of what it means to be unborn. What it means to be deathless. Such landscapes are the gateway into a state that lives in the human psyche and beyond it. I recognise it when I see it and I say: there I am, there it is, this is it.
Nature mimics the mind, or is the mind. But my mind has forgotten itself, it has forgotten what it is, it has (necessarily) left behind its true identity, in search of Life and Order and the World. Because that is the way of things, that is the nature of living. And once you are born, it may fill you with awe to stare upon a glacial wilderness, but it is also terrifying, because it is all whiteness, it is ferociously uninhabitable.
And the only animals alive in these places seem like creatures from a childrens' story book, fantastical, hilarious, unearthly, zoomed straight from the unconscious into a billowing white pillow of nothingness.
The vast and uncivilised places will always have answers to the questions we seek or run from, will know more than we can ever hope to, with our silly clever minds, with our hard hats and our compasses. They are always beyond our reach.
I remember feeling this way as I looked across the Almerian desert last year, as I felt it all around me, amidst its stark branches and crystal rocks, a bigness I could not comprehend, but felt, that knew me better than I knew myself. It was eerie.
There is a place in the desert, perhaps the Sahara, where, for the time you stand there, all your memory of who you are and what your past was is erased. And there is only that moment. Apparently it is deeply unsettling, disturbing, and one who has stood there can never be the same again.
I don't know how true this is, but of course my first reaction to hearing it was "I want to go there". To a place beyond the reaches of the mind. And partly I do, partly I want it so bad that when I do see footage of wild places, such as Antartica and the desert, I am immediately in tears. Because it reminds me, of something I know but I have forgotten, somehow chosen to forget. And it grieves me - remembering a little more of who I am reminds me of how much I forget it most of the time.
And so also, I do not want to go to some place that wipes your memory, and maybe replaces it with a truer one. Where there is perfect recall. Because it is frightening. So I look at pictures instead, and dream of a day when I will set foot on the ice, of when I will let the sands take me.
But, as it is in the tiniest moments that we can forget who we really are, it is also in them that we can remember. I have been to dramatic places, literally and symbolically, that have changed me irrevocably. And yet also I have seen a picture or heard a sound or song which, in one moment has changed my life forever. We do not have to cross ten thousand miles to find what we are looking for.
But somewhere I want to. More and more I identify with the myth of the explorer, of the expedition, the journey to the centre of the earth. I want to pilgrimage. I want to cross the seas for no other reason than because my heart is moved to. I want to do it alone. I want to do it with others. I want to discover uncharted territory and bring back treasures. I want to live out with my arms and legs the poetry that brims in the corner of my eye.
My Grandpa and Great Uncles were Captains of ships throughout this century, and some of them died at sea. I like to feel I have adventure in my blood. Or maybe I've done enough travelling inside myself, I want the world too. I want it all in my arms like a greedy girl, with its red stained seas, its whitewash walls and frozen waterfalls. With its flippers and its mites, its dungheaps and its leopard's kill. The end of the road. The mouth of the river. The trail of dust.
And dreams are beautiful, messed up things. After all, they're what brought us out of the womb in the first place: and it is this beautiful hunger that makes us seek, and search, and want to live, and fall in love, and that desires it all and desires none of it, that is foolishly, heroically, doomed. It is what makes us both forget and remember, seek out the best and the worst and tie them both together in the strangest kind of knot. It is what makes us run away like cowards and stay and fight, right to the end.
And I can't help that naive, sometimes grandiose, romantic streak, that engulfing passion that sometimes swallows me up whole.
Beautiful, doomed creatures we are. Like penguins on the ice, we risk our lives every year to take the journey to the breeding ground, to find the mate, hatch the egg, and, if we are lucky, and still alive, see the baby born.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Tiny minds and Umbrellas
When I was little, I thought big. As I grew bigger, I learnt to think smaller. I realised that the visions I had as large as the Himalayas, I could never ultimately keep climbing. My knees would always break down somewhere half way up, or the snows would bury me. That no matter how many times I jumped off my front steps clutching an umbrella, I would never take flight across the roofs of Hawarden. Because there are certain laws to this universe that cannot be overruled even by imagination, such as gravity, and these laws are tougher than even our stongest idealism. There is always a pragmatic wind blowing through the landscape of our dreams, pulling it apart. Physics makes us all its bitches.
And so, from this perspective, this fatherly advice, creeps in that terrible phenomena which seems to haunt our world - the tinying of the mind.
I remember standing at my bedroom window when I was young and pointing to the night sky outside and saying to my Mum " but what about all this?"
I distinctly remember her reply " We all think about such things when we are young. You will forget. Life takes over".
I remember being devastated by this, more so because my mother had actually contemplated such things as the universe and what this life means, but then promptly seemed to set it aside when the correct time came. But I also felt defiant that I would never become what she said I would become - a forgetter.
Are we all forgetters, wandering the streets with convenient amnesia? It is a necessary condition of existence, huh, if we are not to go mad, run through the streets, our clothes torn to shreds, the predator of truth chasing us, chasing us to the edge of the endless drop? Every angel is terrifying, after all.
We are hardly going to look up from our bedsheets and our spreadsheets and our tiny calculations of life to stare at this winged being flapping its giant wings at us. But then, what about the loss? What is left when the dreaming departs, when imagination is crushed to the ground, and we stop believing in things we cannot see?
In and out of vision we can go. Grasp the mantle of a spiritual quest and follow until we are forced to let go, until we see even through the limitations of yearning for a quest at all. It is crushing. It is liberating, if you can stand the loss.
And so everything that ever meant anything, at some point, gets stripped away. And will continue to, as long as it is held and cherished as the answer clear. So that we can move on.
Dreams are born to live and to age and to finally, like everything else, to wither and die. We keep none of it.
And yet that is still not the end. How can it be? The walking is the best bit, we often just don't see it until the journey's over.
And so, when I was little, I thought big. As I grew bigger, I learnt to think smaller. Then I learnt to think big again, with the shadow of death and ending by my side, taking in all the little beauties on the way, whilst still walking the line, at least most of the time.
We bring into daylight the dreams that haunt our sleep, knowing even they will come to an end. To remember, and keep remembering, to keep jumping off that step, umbrella in hand, no matter what.
This is deep beauty, with these tiny, fragile eyes of ours, to embrace all that we love, all we know to be true, falling forever into the abyss.
Let us never forget.
And so, from this perspective, this fatherly advice, creeps in that terrible phenomena which seems to haunt our world - the tinying of the mind.
I remember standing at my bedroom window when I was young and pointing to the night sky outside and saying to my Mum " but what about all this?"
I distinctly remember her reply " We all think about such things when we are young. You will forget. Life takes over".
I remember being devastated by this, more so because my mother had actually contemplated such things as the universe and what this life means, but then promptly seemed to set it aside when the correct time came. But I also felt defiant that I would never become what she said I would become - a forgetter.
Are we all forgetters, wandering the streets with convenient amnesia? It is a necessary condition of existence, huh, if we are not to go mad, run through the streets, our clothes torn to shreds, the predator of truth chasing us, chasing us to the edge of the endless drop? Every angel is terrifying, after all.
We are hardly going to look up from our bedsheets and our spreadsheets and our tiny calculations of life to stare at this winged being flapping its giant wings at us. But then, what about the loss? What is left when the dreaming departs, when imagination is crushed to the ground, and we stop believing in things we cannot see?
In and out of vision we can go. Grasp the mantle of a spiritual quest and follow until we are forced to let go, until we see even through the limitations of yearning for a quest at all. It is crushing. It is liberating, if you can stand the loss.
And so everything that ever meant anything, at some point, gets stripped away. And will continue to, as long as it is held and cherished as the answer clear. So that we can move on.
Dreams are born to live and to age and to finally, like everything else, to wither and die. We keep none of it.
And yet that is still not the end. How can it be? The walking is the best bit, we often just don't see it until the journey's over.
And so, when I was little, I thought big. As I grew bigger, I learnt to think smaller. Then I learnt to think big again, with the shadow of death and ending by my side, taking in all the little beauties on the way, whilst still walking the line, at least most of the time.
We bring into daylight the dreams that haunt our sleep, knowing even they will come to an end. To remember, and keep remembering, to keep jumping off that step, umbrella in hand, no matter what.
This is deep beauty, with these tiny, fragile eyes of ours, to embrace all that we love, all we know to be true, falling forever into the abyss.
Let us never forget.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Dungeness
Dungeness is haunted. It is the most haunted place I have ever been to. And the most haunting. Everything is a ghost here, everythng hangs in the shadow of death. Life is built upon discard and decay, memory and emptiness. Only artists and murderers can live here. Only the crazy or the really crazy. Only the dying and the wayward.
Of course I'm talking metaphorically here. For me, the whole place is an artwork, and being here, is like moving through a Dali painting or waking up and finding yourself in a David Lynch movie. It is a place of dark soundtracks, where fish eyes look up at you, dead and resigned. Where everything is disheveled and dissolving. Where a smoking oven stands abrupt in a desert wilderness. Black pylons so beautiful you could weep. Where British flags fly from every wooden house, ragged and torn apart by harsh winds. Where people build houses without windows and make gardens out of jelly shoes and rust and empty green bottles.
Where mouldering sheds spew green fishing nets and grey plastic casing that haven't been touched for years, where boats are left on the shingle to slowly rot, and a train track abruptly begins from the side of the road, all the way down to the sea - a railway that is going nowhere, a train track that is taking nothing.
Where a film maker and artist built his living room so he could look out over the huge infernal power station that casts its dread over the whole place, that shines at night like an ancient palace, that makes a constant hum, and never sleeps, plutonium death at its core.
Where it feels like the end of the world, no coming back, and the gulls rise and fall on the mud flats, wild flowers grow from every corner. This is one of my most favourite places in the world.
Of course I'm talking metaphorically here. For me, the whole place is an artwork, and being here, is like moving through a Dali painting or waking up and finding yourself in a David Lynch movie. It is a place of dark soundtracks, where fish eyes look up at you, dead and resigned. Where everything is disheveled and dissolving. Where a smoking oven stands abrupt in a desert wilderness. Black pylons so beautiful you could weep. Where British flags fly from every wooden house, ragged and torn apart by harsh winds. Where people build houses without windows and make gardens out of jelly shoes and rust and empty green bottles.
Where mouldering sheds spew green fishing nets and grey plastic casing that haven't been touched for years, where boats are left on the shingle to slowly rot, and a train track abruptly begins from the side of the road, all the way down to the sea - a railway that is going nowhere, a train track that is taking nothing.
Where a film maker and artist built his living room so he could look out over the huge infernal power station that casts its dread over the whole place, that shines at night like an ancient palace, that makes a constant hum, and never sleeps, plutonium death at its core.
Where it feels like the end of the world, no coming back, and the gulls rise and fall on the mud flats, wild flowers grow from every corner. This is one of my most favourite places in the world.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Dungeness 2
, 
I couldn't quite believe it when I stumbled across the picture on the internet last night. 'Lighthouse For sale'. And there it was, the Old Lighthouse of Dungeness, for sale for the meagre price of £150,000. Dammit, if it hadn't been snapped up, and 'this property is no longer available' printed across its peak.
This is the same lighthouse I climbed on Sunday with B. We stood in the gale force winds at the very top, looking out over the bleak landscape and mused with him about how it would be to own such a magnificent beast of a place.
"You could throw some great parties here" he considered.
The only kind of parties I could imagine B throwing were ones he could immediately depart from, even if he were the owner of such a cool pad. No, he would be slinking off as the champagne corks popped, up to the very top, alone, watching out to sea or maybe spotting passing gulls in the darkness with his binoculars, pointing out star constellations.
I've wanted to be a lighthouse keeper ever since I can remember. Preferably somewhere off the coast of Scotland or Wales, wild and rugged, only reachable by a wobbly, dangerous rope bridge. I imagined the copious amounts of tea I would drink, alone and startled awake through to dawn. I imagined sailors I would save and the shipwrecks I would salvage from days gone by, pieces washed up on the shore. I imagined the joy of absolute solitude, and the beam of light that I would direct all around the stretch of coast, keeping all sea farers safe for another night.
Another fantasy went like this. One night whilst rambling out on my own, I would stumble across a lighthouse via the dangerous wobbly rope bridge. I'd pull at the clunky door and find to my surprise and delight that it opened. I'd then climb the tower of steps up to the top and find the Old Lighthouse Keeper sitting there. We'd sit together through the night, and he'd regale me with exciting tales of sea and shore. Occasionally he'd get too drunk (for he like a tipple), and I'd be forced to take over, hence saving numerous sailors from certain death had I not been there.
There is something mad about lighthouses, something deranged. And something so beautiful, I can only compare it to the cracked glacier or the uncrossed desert. Yet it's man made, the last outpost of humanity in an inhuman natural world. The Lighthouse Keeper is the last person to stand between this world and that.
I heard recently that before lighthouses became automatic, they employed three men at a time to work in them. Apparently, at first they were manned only by two men, but in one occasion a Keeper died up there (or was murdered by the other Keeper) and so the other was left to man it alone. Since there was no communication with the outside world for months at a time, he sat, alone, and slowly went insane. So apparently they changed it so that lighthouses had three men at a time, just in case one man dies or loses his mind.
So when B and I found the 'new' working lighthouse at Dungeness at nearly midnight on Saturday evening, that stands only a few hundred metres from the old disused one, we were excited. A beautiful thing. Its beauty is a perfect balance of masculine and feminine, towering upwards in spirals, a curved thing of wonder yet tall and erect, reaching high and proud upwards in the sky. I wanted to break in.
We were both convinced that if we did indeed hop over the fence, pull the door, find that it had been mistakenly left open, that what we would find when we reached the top would be my very own flat, supernaturally transported from Hove through time and space to Dungeness. For there appeared to be a curtain in each of the lighthouse windows that was coloured Brighton Rock pink, and behind that, a wall of duck egg blue, both colours just like I have in my living room. I imagined tiny white polka dots on the curtains and an ageing Keeper in a smoking jacket and pipe up there, listening to Parisien cafe music and doing the Times crossword. He would smile as we stumbled in and offer us Port.
But we didn't break in, instead crossing the heavy shingle to the shoreline, where in the wind and darkness, the waves looked huge and ghostly. They looked as though they were moving backwards rather than towards the shore. Strange and chilling.
I couldn't quite believe it when I stumbled across the picture on the internet last night. 'Lighthouse For sale'. And there it was, the Old Lighthouse of Dungeness, for sale for the meagre price of £150,000. Dammit, if it hadn't been snapped up, and 'this property is no longer available' printed across its peak.
This is the same lighthouse I climbed on Sunday with B. We stood in the gale force winds at the very top, looking out over the bleak landscape and mused with him about how it would be to own such a magnificent beast of a place.
"You could throw some great parties here" he considered.
The only kind of parties I could imagine B throwing were ones he could immediately depart from, even if he were the owner of such a cool pad. No, he would be slinking off as the champagne corks popped, up to the very top, alone, watching out to sea or maybe spotting passing gulls in the darkness with his binoculars, pointing out star constellations.
I've wanted to be a lighthouse keeper ever since I can remember. Preferably somewhere off the coast of Scotland or Wales, wild and rugged, only reachable by a wobbly, dangerous rope bridge. I imagined the copious amounts of tea I would drink, alone and startled awake through to dawn. I imagined sailors I would save and the shipwrecks I would salvage from days gone by, pieces washed up on the shore. I imagined the joy of absolute solitude, and the beam of light that I would direct all around the stretch of coast, keeping all sea farers safe for another night.
Another fantasy went like this. One night whilst rambling out on my own, I would stumble across a lighthouse via the dangerous wobbly rope bridge. I'd pull at the clunky door and find to my surprise and delight that it opened. I'd then climb the tower of steps up to the top and find the Old Lighthouse Keeper sitting there. We'd sit together through the night, and he'd regale me with exciting tales of sea and shore. Occasionally he'd get too drunk (for he like a tipple), and I'd be forced to take over, hence saving numerous sailors from certain death had I not been there.
There is something mad about lighthouses, something deranged. And something so beautiful, I can only compare it to the cracked glacier or the uncrossed desert. Yet it's man made, the last outpost of humanity in an inhuman natural world. The Lighthouse Keeper is the last person to stand between this world and that.
I heard recently that before lighthouses became automatic, they employed three men at a time to work in them. Apparently, at first they were manned only by two men, but in one occasion a Keeper died up there (or was murdered by the other Keeper) and so the other was left to man it alone. Since there was no communication with the outside world for months at a time, he sat, alone, and slowly went insane. So apparently they changed it so that lighthouses had three men at a time, just in case one man dies or loses his mind.
So when B and I found the 'new' working lighthouse at Dungeness at nearly midnight on Saturday evening, that stands only a few hundred metres from the old disused one, we were excited. A beautiful thing. Its beauty is a perfect balance of masculine and feminine, towering upwards in spirals, a curved thing of wonder yet tall and erect, reaching high and proud upwards in the sky. I wanted to break in.
We were both convinced that if we did indeed hop over the fence, pull the door, find that it had been mistakenly left open, that what we would find when we reached the top would be my very own flat, supernaturally transported from Hove through time and space to Dungeness. For there appeared to be a curtain in each of the lighthouse windows that was coloured Brighton Rock pink, and behind that, a wall of duck egg blue, both colours just like I have in my living room. I imagined tiny white polka dots on the curtains and an ageing Keeper in a smoking jacket and pipe up there, listening to Parisien cafe music and doing the Times crossword. He would smile as we stumbled in and offer us Port.
But we didn't break in, instead crossing the heavy shingle to the shoreline, where in the wind and darkness, the waves looked huge and ghostly. They looked as though they were moving backwards rather than towards the shore. Strange and chilling.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Dungeness 3
So we returned to the beam of the lighthouse, sat under its protection in the midnight black, rain and wind lashing our backs. We drank sweet tea from a flask, and when I looked up into the sky, above us, a giant shadow loomed, of the lighthouse made twice as tall, like a huge black dalek, come to take us into the massive night sky.
Next day, Dungeness looked different, less like you were walking into a scene from The Wicker Man. But the first thing I spotted as we drove in was a shack next to a tumble down house with a straggly porch and, bizarrely, a plush bright red velvet sofa sitting on it. The shack had been enirely built from scrap pieces of wood and old window frames. It even had a ripped out car seat on its roof. Upon closer, surreptitious inspection, it became apparent that someone was sleeping in here, if not living, its sleeping quarters dotted with a little rug and strange paintings, a plastic ET figure.
And so, after a flaccid baked potato in the Railway Cafe (yes, there is a steam train that runs through the centre of this place to the surrounding villages, and it hoots its horn through the night like something out of The Hound Of The Baskervilles), we ventured to the Old lighthouse, which IS open to the public for the princely sum of three pounds.
Wow. I finally get to go in a lighthouse. And it is just as magical and beautiful and romantic as I have imagined. Climbing the green metal spiral staircase, eventually brings you to an amazing room of mirrored glass.
Here is the room with shutters of green and red glass in the centre which would have reflected light all across the sea and coastline to direct the sailors and let them know when it was safe to continue ahead, red for stop, green for go.
And then up past the different levels, to the room at the top where the keeper would have sat and done his work, and beyond that, the glass room of light at the very top, where the beam of the lighthouse would have circulated.
Out on the outer rim of the lighthouse, you can see the whole distance in 360 degree rotation, of the spread of Dungeness. For the first time that weekend the sun had come out (I had started to think the sun would never reach a place such as Dungeness), and the landscape looked almost like an ordinary seaside village, if you didn't look too carefully at the weird houses that looked like they had been plonked down randomly by some drunken god, and if you didn't look in the direction of the Power Station.
I have been to Dungeness once before, on a similarly gloomy day (it must be visited in the gloom). It had a huge effect on me. I remember crouching over a dead fish on the beach and staring out at a solitary fishing boat that looked like it was about to capsize in the wind and crying hot tears because I had never before experienced this kind of extreme beauty. I had never before felt the terror of nature like this, the sea, not as a mysterious and beautiful immensity of power that was wild but that still felt like some kind of lover, but as an alien force that kills, that throws up ripped apart things, like ships and crabs legs and beetles with spines coming out of their backs. That smashes and is the keeper of waste, of the untold story, of darkness and rotting and those places in oneself that one is terrified to go. The disgusting. The unwanted. The dishevelled. That desperate shingle of radioactive brain cells.
I'd never thought a nuclear power station could look so beautiful. A dark, awesome spectre. That I could be entranced by the black threads of pylons. And there stood Derek Jarman's house and garden, in the midst of all this, in black and yellow, the poetry of John Donne, nailed, each letter individually, onto its wooden side.
This is what I wrote, the first time I was here, the first time I experienced this vision of insight into living and death that lay within this stretch of Kent coastline, between The Pilot Inn and the far tip of the shore.
" Sea-side awry. Fishes beating on the wind trodden sand, eyes dead, fin soft and small. Eyes looking through me. Pregnant.
The tide's coming in.
One fishing boat, three men. Rocks its way back towards shore, blown each way like a plastic bottle. It looks comic. It rocks and rocks and rocks looking comic and frightening. Fish on the sand dune.
Shed black and strutted, opening door, melting, dissolving, falling out.
Fish on the sand dune.
Its eye looks beyond me.
Tiny fin.
Small fish.
I don't understand much of this.
A view from a dying man's living room.
So many cables.
I crouched, couldn't stop the sobs, standing over the fish, watching the rocking boat, the tide is coming in now.
Railway track leads down to the sea, I balance on it and I'm crying, and the tide is coming in and I am in art itself, this can't be real, England flags at half mast, the trucks outside look American. I could be anywhere but England. I fell in love again with death and life. The sea offers up discard...fishermen...it's harder to fish now with alll the radiation..all left...like a holocaust..hanging in time...dead fish watching me, boat rocking
like its gonna tip
like its gonna go down
Ghosts everywhere. Union Jack. Broken sheds. Cast away. Left.
Place of the forgotten.
No absolutes here. Beauty is complicated factors and mutability.
It is the dead fish's eye looking through me.
It is a rocking boat.
It is terrifying comedy."
Next day, Dungeness looked different, less like you were walking into a scene from The Wicker Man. But the first thing I spotted as we drove in was a shack next to a tumble down house with a straggly porch and, bizarrely, a plush bright red velvet sofa sitting on it. The shack had been enirely built from scrap pieces of wood and old window frames. It even had a ripped out car seat on its roof. Upon closer, surreptitious inspection, it became apparent that someone was sleeping in here, if not living, its sleeping quarters dotted with a little rug and strange paintings, a plastic ET figure.
And so, after a flaccid baked potato in the Railway Cafe (yes, there is a steam train that runs through the centre of this place to the surrounding villages, and it hoots its horn through the night like something out of The Hound Of The Baskervilles), we ventured to the Old lighthouse, which IS open to the public for the princely sum of three pounds.
Wow. I finally get to go in a lighthouse. And it is just as magical and beautiful and romantic as I have imagined. Climbing the green metal spiral staircase, eventually brings you to an amazing room of mirrored glass.
Here is the room with shutters of green and red glass in the centre which would have reflected light all across the sea and coastline to direct the sailors and let them know when it was safe to continue ahead, red for stop, green for go.
And then up past the different levels, to the room at the top where the keeper would have sat and done his work, and beyond that, the glass room of light at the very top, where the beam of the lighthouse would have circulated.
Out on the outer rim of the lighthouse, you can see the whole distance in 360 degree rotation, of the spread of Dungeness. For the first time that weekend the sun had come out (I had started to think the sun would never reach a place such as Dungeness), and the landscape looked almost like an ordinary seaside village, if you didn't look too carefully at the weird houses that looked like they had been plonked down randomly by some drunken god, and if you didn't look in the direction of the Power Station.
I have been to Dungeness once before, on a similarly gloomy day (it must be visited in the gloom). It had a huge effect on me. I remember crouching over a dead fish on the beach and staring out at a solitary fishing boat that looked like it was about to capsize in the wind and crying hot tears because I had never before experienced this kind of extreme beauty. I had never before felt the terror of nature like this, the sea, not as a mysterious and beautiful immensity of power that was wild but that still felt like some kind of lover, but as an alien force that kills, that throws up ripped apart things, like ships and crabs legs and beetles with spines coming out of their backs. That smashes and is the keeper of waste, of the untold story, of darkness and rotting and those places in oneself that one is terrified to go. The disgusting. The unwanted. The dishevelled. That desperate shingle of radioactive brain cells.
I'd never thought a nuclear power station could look so beautiful. A dark, awesome spectre. That I could be entranced by the black threads of pylons. And there stood Derek Jarman's house and garden, in the midst of all this, in black and yellow, the poetry of John Donne, nailed, each letter individually, onto its wooden side.
This is what I wrote, the first time I was here, the first time I experienced this vision of insight into living and death that lay within this stretch of Kent coastline, between The Pilot Inn and the far tip of the shore.
" Sea-side awry. Fishes beating on the wind trodden sand, eyes dead, fin soft and small. Eyes looking through me. Pregnant.
The tide's coming in.
One fishing boat, three men. Rocks its way back towards shore, blown each way like a plastic bottle. It looks comic. It rocks and rocks and rocks looking comic and frightening. Fish on the sand dune.
Shed black and strutted, opening door, melting, dissolving, falling out.
Fish on the sand dune.
Its eye looks beyond me.
Tiny fin.
Small fish.
I don't understand much of this.
A view from a dying man's living room.
So many cables.
I crouched, couldn't stop the sobs, standing over the fish, watching the rocking boat, the tide is coming in now.
Railway track leads down to the sea, I balance on it and I'm crying, and the tide is coming in and I am in art itself, this can't be real, England flags at half mast, the trucks outside look American. I could be anywhere but England. I fell in love again with death and life. The sea offers up discard...fishermen...it's harder to fish now with alll the radiation..all left...like a holocaust..hanging in time...dead fish watching me, boat rocking
like its gonna tip
like its gonna go down
Ghosts everywhere. Union Jack. Broken sheds. Cast away. Left.
Place of the forgotten.
No absolutes here. Beauty is complicated factors and mutability.
It is the dead fish's eye looking through me.
It is a rocking boat.
It is terrifying comedy."
Wobble, wobble
I'm pissed off this morning. It all began gorgeously after I got up, having had a stupendously fantastic weekend away. I was positively beaming after breakfast. But the shiteing shitheads of doom have descended and I'm well fucked off. I've been hoovering furiously through my flat, which always gets me in a bad mood, as its the one thing a) designed to give me a bad back b) there will inevitably still remain, despite almost grinding the carpet to death with the end of the vacuum cleaner, a thousand cream coloured dangly bits all over my rug, which seem to need sandblasting off.
I then did my usual checking of my blog to see if anyone has deigned to comment on my last, or indeed, any recent post. Oh, what a surprise, no one had, and so I considered whether to spill my blood and guts and entrails out onto the blogosphere for all to see, to dredge up my deepest desires and longings and fears and thoughts from my innermost being about my weekend away, and post them onto the world wide web in the knowledge that, most likely, it will be once more met with a big fat silence at the end in the comments box.
It's been getting to me lately. Writing into the silence. Throwing my words and my soul out into a big gaping void. So today I have been considering turning my blog into a place for 'things that viewing figures demonstrate that the public seem to actually want to read about', eg: the hilarious minor mishaps of life such as missing the bus/dyeing your hair the wrong colour, pornography, gorgeous cuisine that you will never be able to afford, 'my husband ate my dog' stories, celebrity cellulite, close ups of car accidents etc etc. You know, a kind of This Beautiful Hunger/ Take A Break/ The Daily Sport, with a bit of Hello magazine thrown in for good measure. Or maybe I should have a live naked spoken word poetry web cam.
Sure as hell my existential ponderings aren't exactly gonna hit the mass market otherwise. I need to sneak it in between the fancy new knickers section and the 'funny things your pets do'. For it seems that the stuff of my own writing will never hook immediate interest in that same way. Hey everyone, come read about about loss and suffering and a mad bird who likes to swim out to sea as far as she can so she can scream at the top of her lungs in fury at how fucked up this life can be! Wey hey! Cheer up love!
It's a mass market, after all. Hey, we must promote ourselves and create a package the punters want. Even if it's an artsy, deep and meaningful package. Get the clothes right, get the photo just so, create the image, create the persona. She's poet, can't you tell?
I want to reach a lot of people. I know I have something worthwhile to say, something that I think is a helpful thing for people, that could have a positive effect. In this superficial, artificial, alienated and sanitised culture of ours, I still believe that people want tenderness and fury, fire and mystery and love. We are all alive and we all know what death means. And it is what interests me, this stuff of life, in all it's oddities and weirdnesses.
Though I realise I'm no great yardstick to go by. My idea of a good time is turning over giant centipedes on the beach til they wiggle their bums at me. My idea of romance is a humming power station at night. My idea of good pornography is the sound of a squeaking tea cup. Perhaps I've always been a bit strange. But I believe that ultimately all people are pretty weird when it comes down to it, whether they realise it or not, and life is pretty bonkers. And I couldn't stop my writing even if I wanted to. And so this blog continues, despite my frustrations because, at the end of the day, I need it to for my own sanity, and because I want to be able to offer other people a place where they can read about the nitty grittys of existence, because it's what I always want to read about, it's what always makes me feel a little bit saner.
I am pre-menstrual, I've just realised. That makes me feel better about throwing the hoover across the room and shouting "Die! Die" through the open living room window. And writing this post has made me realise that the fantasy of deleting my blog and writing a column for OK! magazine would probably not satisfy me for long. Voila! That's what I'm here for. Writing reminds me of my integrity, it is my integrity. And so I can only write from that. Aha! Life feels simple again. Till the next wobble.
I then did my usual checking of my blog to see if anyone has deigned to comment on my last, or indeed, any recent post. Oh, what a surprise, no one had, and so I considered whether to spill my blood and guts and entrails out onto the blogosphere for all to see, to dredge up my deepest desires and longings and fears and thoughts from my innermost being about my weekend away, and post them onto the world wide web in the knowledge that, most likely, it will be once more met with a big fat silence at the end in the comments box.
It's been getting to me lately. Writing into the silence. Throwing my words and my soul out into a big gaping void. So today I have been considering turning my blog into a place for 'things that viewing figures demonstrate that the public seem to actually want to read about', eg: the hilarious minor mishaps of life such as missing the bus/dyeing your hair the wrong colour, pornography, gorgeous cuisine that you will never be able to afford, 'my husband ate my dog' stories, celebrity cellulite, close ups of car accidents etc etc. You know, a kind of This Beautiful Hunger/ Take A Break/ The Daily Sport, with a bit of Hello magazine thrown in for good measure. Or maybe I should have a live naked spoken word poetry web cam.
Sure as hell my existential ponderings aren't exactly gonna hit the mass market otherwise. I need to sneak it in between the fancy new knickers section and the 'funny things your pets do'. For it seems that the stuff of my own writing will never hook immediate interest in that same way. Hey everyone, come read about about loss and suffering and a mad bird who likes to swim out to sea as far as she can so she can scream at the top of her lungs in fury at how fucked up this life can be! Wey hey! Cheer up love!
It's a mass market, after all. Hey, we must promote ourselves and create a package the punters want. Even if it's an artsy, deep and meaningful package. Get the clothes right, get the photo just so, create the image, create the persona. She's poet, can't you tell?
I want to reach a lot of people. I know I have something worthwhile to say, something that I think is a helpful thing for people, that could have a positive effect. In this superficial, artificial, alienated and sanitised culture of ours, I still believe that people want tenderness and fury, fire and mystery and love. We are all alive and we all know what death means. And it is what interests me, this stuff of life, in all it's oddities and weirdnesses.
Though I realise I'm no great yardstick to go by. My idea of a good time is turning over giant centipedes on the beach til they wiggle their bums at me. My idea of romance is a humming power station at night. My idea of good pornography is the sound of a squeaking tea cup. Perhaps I've always been a bit strange. But I believe that ultimately all people are pretty weird when it comes down to it, whether they realise it or not, and life is pretty bonkers. And I couldn't stop my writing even if I wanted to. And so this blog continues, despite my frustrations because, at the end of the day, I need it to for my own sanity, and because I want to be able to offer other people a place where they can read about the nitty grittys of existence, because it's what I always want to read about, it's what always makes me feel a little bit saner.
I am pre-menstrual, I've just realised. That makes me feel better about throwing the hoover across the room and shouting "Die! Die" through the open living room window. And writing this post has made me realise that the fantasy of deleting my blog and writing a column for OK! magazine would probably not satisfy me for long. Voila! That's what I'm here for. Writing reminds me of my integrity, it is my integrity. And so I can only write from that. Aha! Life feels simple again. Till the next wobble.
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