Saturday, August 29, 2009

Brunswick Festival

It's warm but blustery today, the kind of day I sit on the beach, but end up shivering. I woke at an ungodly hour this morning, to a small child patting my face and demanding Big Barn Farm videos. In the main, I’ve enjoyed waking up too early these last few weeks – it’s at these times I sometimes catch a whiff of inspiration that makes me crawl to my desk and write.
     
It's unbelievable to me that it's over four months now since Mum died. I always feel strange writing or saying 'Mum died' because that sounds so definite, so clear, so exacting. Of course it wasn't like that - pieces of her went missing every day. I'd set off searching for them with my torch and magnifying glass, but always came home empty handed. In the end, there was only a thin breath left, the warmth of her arm and a frightened look in her eye. She was a scared rabbit in the headlights of a car that never came.
     
Until four months ago. Most of the time I make myself forget. After all, amnesia is anaesthetic. But there are always moments when memory seeps through like an ugly stain beneath my newly painted wall. I searched for beauty and love in the situation, even after the end, to keep myself sane. And there it was, like one of Rilke's angels rising out of the blackness. But the ugliness, well, it's chiselled into my bones now like some kind of code, and no matter how I try to deny it, it's a part of who I am.

It shows itself in the most ordinary moments. I passed a woman in a wheelchair at the Brunswick Square Festival the other day - middle-aged, but looking much older. I noticed her limp, paralysed hand, the other making a fist around a Mr Whippy cornet. Sun scorched the grass. The woman had accidentally smeared ice cream all around her mouth and on the end of her nose. She looked like a ghoulish clown, a three year old going on a hundred. She was probably only fifty. Her weary husband pushing the wheelchair couldn't see her face.
     
All around people laughed with each other, dragging toddlers by the hand, sipping warm beer in the sunshine. The sight made me want to throw up. It made me want to cradle her husband in my arms. To lie down in front of them and ask them to run me over. Ridiculous, I know, but in flash, it was all there. Standing in that square, I was ridiculous and out of place, and so were they. For a few seconds, I loved them.
     
I think I seek out situations and people that make it okay to feel such irrational things; that will lift the skin from my body so I might run a finger along the white bones underneath. Perhaps this, for me, is consolation.
     
I'm never quite sure what I want out of life, if it's what I think I want. To be honest, right now I'd be happy just to put on this old Lou Reed record and let the words drain out of me until there are no more.

Monday, August 03, 2009

Hot latte in Freemont

Seattle. Full of wide fridges and parking lots; lacking decent tea and rain. I wander down 34th avenue, not daring to cross. I still don't get this rule about jaywalking, or how come everybody in this city seems so well-adjusted. The waitress tells me her life story. I cross my arms and feel my upper lip stiffen. I guess I'm a true Brit, after all. I love the tall wooden houses, painted grey and white. I imagine Norman Bates lurking in attic windows.
    
 I'm waiting for Jo to finish in the beauty salon. Today she's dressed in a grey vest that makes her hair stand out like silver. She is beautiful. She's nervous as hell about Thursday, lists flapping about her brain, wedding spreadsheets coming out of her ears. It's pointless me telling her all will be well. We've left William to get his hair cut and then we're off Downtown to watch men chuck huge fish across wet tables at Pike market and mooch about the waterfront. I feel clueless about Seattle, and my bearings are vague at best.
     
Correction. I am vague at best. I'm doing okay with the jetlag, despite having been up since 4.45am this morning. However, I do keep doing things like knocking my water over and spilling my cereal, and earlier I screamed at the top of my lungs when Jo disturbed me listening to music on my headphones. For several seconds I hadn't a clue who she was, or indeed, where the hell I was. I'm in an unfamiliar land, and yet, Brighton now feels unfamiliar. Crossing over, I still haven't arrived.
     
Oh Brighton, you can't help being what you are, can you? I blame you for a multitude of sins, mainly my own. You crystallise all that I do right in my life and all that I fuck up. I want to kick your pebbles into the sea and squash ice cream into your beaches.
     
I crave the green of the trees that line every avenue in Freemont. I want that green trickling down the back of my throat, flooding my veins, refreshing every tired, cracked bone inside me until I am new again.