The World Sleeps Until You Wake

You once wrote to me, “the world sleeps until you wake up,” as we lived our separate, parallel, lives, but we were somehow already joined by that gossamer thread that unites every couple. I’m a romantic, yes, but I know that what I feel about you is more than just some whizzing endorphins doing their thing when I feel your touch on my skin last thing at night and your eyes on me first thing in the morning even when we’re 10,000km apart. You’re a part of my consciousness, someone I think of involuntarily now throughout my day. Wondering about how you are is like taking a breath.

And then, the clock chimes 7, or 8pm, and it’s my turn to be without you. You’re usually going to sleep first, unless I’m awake into the wee hours of the next morning. So in my evenings I get to luxuriate in you. I get to wonder about you, and I’m well aware that in these spaces between seeing one another, touching one another and talking, we could be inventing false narratives, but then I look back at the words we’ve written to one another, and I think about the feeling I get when I listen to your voice, how my feet feel more solid on the earth, how I feel like I’m more inside my body and how my shoulders drop into their correct posture.

I feel warm when I think about you. And I’m usually a person with cold hands and feet, who needs an extra layer with her just in case.

***

As I read this back I know I have been GIDDY and drunk on you all summer, and I realise that I still am, but that it’s maturing into something deeper than “oh look how compatible the internet says we are”. I think of all of the combined hours we have now spent talking on the phone, each wrapped up in the thoughts of the other, and I find myself wondering if this time spent living thousands upon thousands of kilometres apart will be the thing that we look back on as the making and cementing of our bond. I wonder if it’s a blessing, because most other couples living in the same place might get lots more physical time together, but I wonder if they know one another's brains in the same way as we do after four months.

I suppose it’s not the comparison, anyway, that is important. What is important is that the world still sleeps until you wake, that as I write this I’m fully conscious of how much I desire you, and that although sometimes frustrating to not be able to reach out and touch your arm, lace my fingers with yours, look into your eyes, or stroke your head, noticing how much those moments are missed is as crucial to understanding what this – us – we – means to me. I’m very much enjoying letting that flow over me, and through me, today as I write at my kitchen table, waiting for you to wake up in the tomorrow that you’re already in.

Too Much Tomato Soup, or Cognitive Bias & Curvy Edges

Have you heard of the More Exposure Effect? It's one of our best-loved biases as humans. It's the tendency to express undue liking for things merely because of familiarity with them. It explains why you (probably) love Heinz tomato soup, and would actively choose it over another generic supermarket brand. You've probably had more Heinz tomato soup in your life overall then other generic brands, and now you associate Heinz with what canned tomato soup actually is.

So, of course, this got me thinking about relationships. Tenuous allegorical link incoming.

What if you've only had quite a lot of one kind of tomato soup, and you get stuck thinking that's the only kind of soup out there? (I watched the soup nazi episode of Seinfeld recently, that must be where all these soup metaphors are coming from. I'll stop with that now.)

This past year and a half I've had to re-evaluate so hard, with so much effort, what kind of relationship I'd like, or need. I've been a newly single woman, after being in successive relationships basically since the age of 15,  heading towards her mid-30s. Just writing that line makes me feel neurotic. And yet I'm not. This year (well, now 18 months of self-discovery and singular alone-ness) has been some of the most life affirming time I've spent. Of course much of it has been in the company of others, but really, mostly in my own company. And I've lived a lot of life-affirming moments. But usually as part of a couple.

I know that I have an innate desire to be paired up with someone - my own bias, I admit. I like time on my own, and I value my independence fiercely, but there's something in me that needs to be tactile, needs to hear the breathing of another, needs to look into someone's eyes before the lights go out. I'm someone who finds joy in making breakfast for two, who likes to think about what the other would like to do, or see, or watch, who lives for planning unplanned road trips and weekend breaks, who wants to touch, and smell, and taste the other person in their life, living moments with their hands in my hair, and our legs intertwined on the sofa, and cooking soup, or singing, or dancing together. I actually quite like having private jokes, knowing looks and winks shared only between us. I would hate to be one of the "smug marrieds" but I think I'd make a pretty excellent matching jigsaw piece for someone. You know, with the weird curvy edges.

However,  I'm fairly sure that this bias for the familiar, for the neatly sewn-up, for the happily ever after, has caused me to outstay many a welcome in less-than-healthy relationships. Sure, I've learned something from every guy I've been with, and I hope I've taught them things too. But my former need to be paired - like my less-than-reliable cheap bluetooth speaker - has meant that maybe I've missed facing the music. (Another terrible analogy. I can only apologise). What I'm trying to articulate is that I finally feel like I can be alone, and I can be OK with that. It doesn't make me a failure, even as a woman of 34 years old who has many,  many paired-up friends. And although my lovers might come and go, I'm not going to try to "catch" one or hold on to him to meet some kind of former standard, or some societal norm. No, he shall remain out of my road trip plans, and out of my bed, unless his crazy matches my crazy, big time. And right now, I feel more likely to be able to spot a true kindred spirit, by knowing myself better than I might ever have done, at a hundred paces.

And that feels like growth, and it feels as good as making someone soup. But not tomato soup.

Om Shanti

a sound we make
to make us whole;
a terrifying prospect.
that all of us are merely halves
and shadows of our former selves

we twist this way and that
hold poses strong and fast
breathe deep, look in, not out
and let it go, they say

but only one half of me believes
in the wholeness of the self
without shadows of you.

Harvest Moon + Lunar Eclipse = Songwriting

I woke up this morning from a dream crying, and had to catch my breath upon waking.

I have one or two of these a year. Usually they're anxiety dreams about not having spoken to my mum enough, and I dream something has happened to her, and it makes me pick up the phone immediately. to check on her. They're my brain's way of telling me that I've been too self-absorbed and that I need to connect with the people that matter most to me. Because my mum and I only have one another, I think this is mild only-child-of-a-single-parent woe. 

This dream was different. It was about my ex, and it told me very clearly that the door to our connection was closing, and that my mind and body are re-assessing his influence in my life. I've been inside that process for nearly a year and a half,  more "officially" for a year, but after seeing a photo I hadn't meant to see, making it very clear that he had moved on and is in another relationship,  my brain started doing calculations in the background about what that meant for me. Maybe this weekend's full moon just made sure I'd caught myself up.

The truth is that I've also moved on, and moved very far away from our life together. I've dated others this year, sure, but mostly I've been working on making personal choices I know my older self will look back on and be proud of, after a heartbreaking rupture last spring made me question so many of the choices I had made over the past six years.

Apparently we're all feeling the effects this weekend of a giant harvest moon timed, unusually, with a lunar eclipse.  Our watery bodies are supposedly affected by the push and pull of the moon and this is a time of re-setting the emotional dial.  Here's the forecast for all of us from foreverconscious.com

This Eclipse may stir up some painful moments or some fears, but know that this is all so you can grow and flourish in the direction that you need to.  

While this Eclipse is helping to release the truth, it may also release any angers or frustrations that have been simmering beneath the surface. Emotions will be very high around this Eclipse and it may be difficult to see clearly at first.  

Know that the best way to channel this energy is into something creative. Writing, art and music are all excellent ways to channel any anger, frustration or heightened emotions that appear. 

 So I wrote a song about it (It's pretty terrible, but it'll be good to sing, in a somewhat PJ Harvey sermonising-style). My co-band member even wrote music for it already. Here goes.

Harvest Moon

You got me looking like a fool

Harvest Moon

I wake crying salty tears

Big rushing tidal fears

All alone in a stolid room

Emotion pushing through the gloom

All out of sorts, in my bed

I can't seem to find my head

My soul as heavy as deadened lead

I miss all the things you never said

Oh, Harvest Moon, you got me looking like a fool

Wildnerness

I recently saw Wild. It’s not often I’m driven to write about a film, but I feel very moved by this one. It’s going to stay with me for a while.

I wasn’t expecting to even see it. I’d seen the trailer and thought that it was one of those trailers where you knew everything there was to know about the film before you’d seen it. I also thought it looked a bit worthy and a bit like Oscar-bait for Reese Witherspoon, who has been funny in other films but who I’d never considered much of a serious actress, except for her turn as June Carter in Walk the Line. I think it was Legally Blonde that did the damage. I liked her in Four Christmases, though. Mistletoe.

But that day it poured all day long, and it was a long weekend here as we had the day off for Martin Luther King day on the Monday. The weekend started out with plenty of activity; a Friday drink, dinner on Saturday with a lovely group of women I work with who are also now all my neighbours, and that day I met some of them again for a sweet little brunch at a nearby French restaurant. But after we all went our separate ways, and after I’d written some emails and thought about what E was doing, and I realised it was a bit too late to call my mum, I temporarily cheered myself up by buying a radio online,  but ye ole faithful – loneliness – set in. (The radio, I’m hoping, will assist with the loneliness but won’t kill all the brain cells that a TV would). Having seen all of the films at my closest cinema – save American Sniper, which I don’t really want to see, after reading all about what a hardened killer the guy was – I looked up the next nearest small cinema, which has only one screen and was showing two films – Wild and Birdman. I loved Birdman, so I took that as a good sign that whoever chooses whatever they show there had good taste. Turned out, that was correct.

I put on my waterproofs and my big boots and braved the rain to catch the bus down to the Beekman theatre. It’s a subterranean cinema in a concrete building (supposedly a location in Annie Hall, too) that looks like a 70s architect’s idea of a lively centre for the arts which has now become just an ugly concrete box. But still, the staff were very friendly. I took my seat in the dark, and realised just in time before falling over in the aisle that there was yellow ‘caution – do not cross’ tape in the first five rows. I couldn’t work out why, until I heard a persistent dripping noise during the quieter first moments of the film. I looked up, and in the half light I made out big patches on the ceiling where tiles were missing. It was leaking at a rate of knots, but once I got more involved in the film, it ceased to matter.

Our Wild heroine, Cheryl Strayer, is a character we can all identify with. Not that I can identify with being a heroin addict, or someone who cheats repeatedly on her husband, but there were some niggly little aspects of her character that I think many of us would grudgingly admit to, although we’d like to be better. Like being a bit sulky and mean to her mum, even as an adult. Or being susceptible to temptation, whether that’s sex or alcohol, or the call of something great that we know will challenge us but compels us anyway. The moment when Cheryl finds the book about the Pacific Coast Trail is a game-changer for her. She knows she must walk it. She’s reached her lowest ebb and it’s a chance at salvation.

Reese Witherspoon is fantastically normal and yet remarkable in this. She’s playing a feminist who quotes Emily Dickinson and is a brave, formidable woman who keeps walking despite all kinds of hardships and setbacks that would make any city-slicker throw in the towel. I was acutely aware of that, watching in a New York cinema, hearing popcorn being chomped behind me as we watched Cheryl run out of drinking water and have to purify liquid from a sludgy green stagnant pond just to survive. It made me think about how cosseted we all are. Especially in NYC, where you can dial some nice obliging person in a restaurant and have food delivered to your apartment door every day, if you want. Where some other nice obliging person will take your dirty laundry and smile, and give it back to you folded up all nice and sweet-smelling. What GOOD it would do us, you, me, all of us, to pare back our lives for a bit and live on our own wits, depending on no-one, at the mercy of the elements, of the wilderness, as we were built to do and as our ancestors did. And not even so many generations ago either. My great-grandparents had to work farmland and raise livestock to survive. Chances are, yours did too.

Cheryl’s journey touched me in a number of ways, and there were several moments of the film where I found myself with tears unexpectedly rolling down my cheeks. The most poignant moments were with her mum, with many telling flashbacks that painted a picture of the most normal and yet the most loving relationship they had, with of course the usual mother-daughter conflicts, and the small sparks that flew from a daughter who says it took time for her “to become the woman her mother raised her to be”, but who ultimately strives for true, lasting self-improvement, and who grieves her lost mother with such rawness and such true anguish that it makes anyone watching who still has their mother flinch and wonder if our love would also drive us to such despair. And in a way, minus the drugs and the cheating and the anger and depression, you would hope that you would feel that same anguish, because at its source would be a true, wholehearted love. 

There’s a scene where Cheryl meets a little boy walking in the woods with his grandmother (and their pet llama, randomly enough), and he and Cheryl have an innocent interchange that becomes life changing for her. He tells her he has problems he isn’t supposed to discuss with strangers, and she admits to him that she has problems too, and in his innocent way he asks her all the right questions that she hasn’t been able to voice the answers too, not even to her therapist. She admits to him that she doesn’t know her father, and that her mother has died, and he sings her an adorable little version of Red River Valley, which is so pure and sweet and lyrically perfect that after they part ways she breaks down and cries for all of her woes, in a way she hasn’t been able to for much of the journey. 

From this valley they say you are leaving

We shall miss your bright eyes and sweet smile

For you take with you all of the sunshine

That has brightened our pathway a while

Then come sit by my side if you love me

Do not hasten to bid me adieu

Just remember the Red River Valley

And the cowboy that's loved you so true

For a long time, my darlin', I've waited

For the sweet words you never would say

Now at last all my fond hopes have vanished

For they say that you're going away

Then come sit by my side if you love me

Do not hasten to bid me adieu

Just remember the Red River Valley

And the cowboy that's loved you so true

After that moment, there’s a realization that dawns anew on her, and urges her to complete the hike and re-start her life again in the way she hoped she would be able to after the purge.

The film ends with Cheryl standing on the Bridge of the Gods, her final stop, and narrating as her future self her achievements, that she could never have seen at that point in time, but which all happened because of that moment, it seems. She tells us that she was married not far from that spot, and had two children not long after, and we know that somewhere in the future we can’t yet see, Cheryl has healed herself and come out of her experience a better person. The film faded out, and there I was, left feeling I’d walked the same epic journey with Cheryl, and that I’d grieved with her, and learned with her. I thought about my own situation, alone in a city I don’t care for much, that oozes selfishness and stress and skewed life priorities, but I stepped out into the night and noticed that the rain had finally stopped. The overall sensation I was left with was one of lightness, and of learning gratefulness and courage in the face of adversity – even self-imposed adversity.

I write tonight with a renewed sense of purpose. We owe it to the universe to know our place. As humans, in the general scheme of things, we come and go – and the wilderness, which no longer defines our existence but could still mean the demise of any of us – is something we must respect and defer to. Ultimately though, the beauty of being here, on this incredible planet, and of being able to feel love and form relationships and discover kindness in others, as well as learning the art of self-reliance, is what it’s all about. Cheryl learned the hard way that sometimes being alone, truly alone, is the only way to learn the value of togetherness. That’s something that has been brought into sharp focus these past months, and I intend to cling tightly to all the love in my life.

Here’s to the wilderness.

Alone in New York

Back in mid-October, I was sitting in a southeast Asian restaurant, eating tom yum soup, waiting for a callback from the super, as the recent cold spell had sent the new flat's heating into hissy, obnoxiously loud overdrive. I was missing E acutely. There were other couples everywhere, and those uncoupled ones were at the bar watching a noisy game of football - the NFL kind with helmets, that's the most detail I could absorb. Coldplay's Yellow was the jaundiced soundtrack. I was reading about love; the pure and unconditional love of a mother for her child aged six, and suddenly I felt older and emptier. My life felt so comparatively narcissistic. Suddenly I wanted to grasp a small hand, more than anything. It was all rather sad.

It was so often in those early days that I caught myself sitting alone, eating some kind of soup-based noodle dish or another, thinking of the people I loved that were far away from me. Often at that time of the day it was long after my mother's bedtime in London, and E's in Spain, and I hadn't had any internet installed in the apartment yet, and I got to thinking, "I ought to write things down more often". Only from this kind of no-man's land of semi- boredom does creativity come for me. It's a place where the Internet, and cats playing banjos, and halfhearted instagram-posting cannot place its cold dread hand on my shoulder. So I usually found myself outside of the apartment, trying to pass the evening amongst others, but not really with anyone. Just watching and listening, making mental notes and trying to stave off the certain loneliness that came from arriving home to nothing and to no-one. My flat was missing furniture, life. It was missing E.

It's getting dark at around 4.30 now, and light at 7, and it's much harder to wake up. The window in the tiny corridor that passes for a bedroom in my New York apartment faces a brick wall, and as I'm on the 4th floor of a 6th floor walk up building, the sun must be far overhead to begin to reach the crevice between window and wall. Waking up alone makes my movements mechanical, automated. There's something so forlorn about not being able to turn, reach out and touch the warm body next to you in the bed, and to re-enter consciousness next to another human doing the same thing.

And then before I know it, the day has whooshed past in a flurry of activity - of work - and it's become time for bed again, and I sort of guiltily enjoy the luxury of getting ready in my own time. I idle in the shower, using lavish products I've treated myself to. Then I feel deep woe, thinking about all the people I've seen sleeping rough; those haunted, lined faces that New Yorkers hurry past every day; those forgotten children who wake up every day cold and hungry, and lost. And I think: this city is making me selfish. And lonely. And there is the state of being in this Big Apple - it looks lustrous and inviting, but when you take a bite, it's occasionally floury and maggoted. 

So what's the remedy? Time with family and friends, when they visit, as mine did for Thanksgiving last month. Regular calls, texts, sending photos of things you know would tickle them. Planning ahead for the next break. Joining things. Trying to do good, spending my time unselfishly. Donating a coat, clothes, or money for hot meals, and signing up to volunteer. And realising that I have things to be thankful for, in that I'm holding the maggoty apple in the first place.

32

Today is my birthday.

I arrived in New York 13 days ago, and I'm missing my family acutely. The Mister is still in Barcelona, working hard, and working on a plan to visit me here, as am I planning a half-term break to return to my beloved Barna. Today was also the first day at the new school with returning staff coming back (last week I was oriented amongst other brand-new staff only).

I am sleeping on a (very comfortable) friend's sofa until tomorrow, when I will move into a studio of my own, but it's one of the most uncertain birthdays I can remember. I really have no idea what to do with myself. I'm another year older, and far away from those I love.

The past few birthdays have been something of a celebration of self; maybe that's your late twenties for you; maybe that's the large dash of Leo in my character. I've allowed myself to be fêted, and have revelled in the attention. At my 30th, I remember telling a good friend, "I haven't had a wedding, nor a baby shower, nor an engagement party - and that's all fine with me, but I'll be damned if I won't have a big celebration for this."

Being alone and in a foreign place has brought home just how egocentric the past few celebrations have been. There's now a shift in how I'm seeing the function of this day, namely that without my nearest and dearest here, I don't feel much like celebrating myself, because I'm not nearly as much me without them.

Today's indulgences? An Italian ice cream eaten in the sunshine, and some facetime calls to my loved ones. A more selfless birthday than those past; perhaps that means I'm finally all grown up.

Ahora Caigo

HOLIDAY! CELEBRATE! And other words that end in an A sound...

We recently returned from a week in a teeny, weeny, holiday bungalini. It's been the making of this month. I calculated before we went that we hadn't been away on a holiday, just the two of us, without any computers, wifi coverage, nor much in the way of mobile phone reception, for the best part of 16 months. We didn't even....shhh... take any conditioner. (Straggly, unruly hair is a small price to pay for inner peace.)

The truth is we've not had much time, or many euros to spare. Oh, eff off, you live in a sunny place, I hear you protest. You can walk to a beach, you lucky biscuit. ¡Callate, puedes caminar a la playa, eres afortunada! OK, I admit, we can see palm trees from the living room, but we have chirruping emails to answer, rooms to clean, laundry to dry, ironing to do and several weekly food shops just like everyone else. Add some recent life/family/health/job insecurities to the mix and well, Little House on the Prairie it ain't.

So that's why ditching the city for this place for a bit was much needed. See how it makes the Mister look positively catalogue-model winsome?

The best bit was that there were two best bits: we could walk to a choice of two unspolit beaches along a rocky coastal path pretending to be mountain goats, and also - we had a barbacoa to put chicken on, something that took us right back to gnawing on jerk chicken with blackened fingers in our beloved Brixton. 
Oh, and a bonus thing. We learned loads more colloquial Spanish from the truly alien pleasure of watching telly in our little bungalow. We haven't owned a telly in more than a year. Ahora Caigo (quite literally, Now I Fall, or Now I Get It! - a game show where competitors fall through a hole in the floor at breakneck speed if they answer incorrectly - and  Millonario Anónimo (you know the format, but did you know it would be even more tear-jerking in Spanish? It's la crisis, you see) - were our favourites. 


I tell you what, we needed that holiday. Because the real work starts here. You remember that New York job I went for two posts ago?

They only went and gave it to me.

That's right, we're moving to NEW YORK FFS OMG ETC ETC.

I'll go first in August, and the Mister will follow in a few months, so now we are on EMOTIONAL HIGH ALERT and are bobbing wildly up and down like crazed trampolinists, veering between elation and woe at the thought of separating our lives - the ones we've just spent 11 months soldering together in this live/work space that has been our business and our home and our adventure and our comfort blanket all in one.

This is pretty big, yo.

Aftermath (Or, Why I Love This City)

true dat.

This past weekend, the Mister and I spent some of both Saturday and Sunday in Brixton. We don't live that much closer now than when we were in Streatham Hill, but somehow the bus journey or walk there seems easier, and it's our favourite place for many things: the amazing cinema; eating out in one of Brixton Village's many treasures; meeting friends; going to Morleys department store. I bloody love Morleys.

On Saturday evening we went to the Ritzy and saw Super 8 (if you want a review, I've not got time here - but this about sums it up). It was a lovely evening with a semi-sunset and we sat at the bar after the film and marvelled at how brilliant Brixton was.  Each time we come here since the redevelopment of Windrush square we always comment on what a good idea it was to just turn those benches t'other way around, so that no more shady deals go on, out of view from the road. Now the whole area is teeming with life; the area in front of the Ritzy is a social space, with nice plants and funky lights and people sitting on the grass playing games. It warms the cockles.

image credit: urban75.org

On Sunday we came back for a trip to the shops and to have a look at Brixton Splash. It had rained that morning and so it seemed like things got going a bit later than expected, but by the time we were out of Morleys around 5pm it was all going off. The sun had come out and there was a large crowd on Coldharbour Lane, dancing to a badass remix of Amy Winehouse's Rehab. There were even dancing Elvises. Elvises, I tell you!

The Kings, dancing in front of The Prince - cheers @voicefromspace

Standing in the sunshine that afternoon, swaying with the crowd, and knowing that Tottenham had suffered riots the night before, I felt lucky to live in such a peaceful, awesome, multicultural melting pot of cool. I tweeted as much, feeling safe enough to joke that riots in Brixton were 'so last century'.

Then the next morning I woke up to see this.

I felt utterly devastated.  As events unfolded throughout Monday and intensified that night, a wave of sadness came over me. Had we been completely wrong about the feeling in Brixton that day? Was the community really so quickly and easily on its knees, to be ripped apart by mindless thuggery?

The feeling that day was one of ever-increasing tension as reports of violence spreading to other areas multiplied. It was desperately scary across London on Monday with mass riots taking place in seemingly every corner of the city, twitter going crazy with chinese whispers of where the next mob would target, friends checking on one another via various mediums, everyone listening out for sirens, shouts, or the sounds of smashing glass. It was a dark night for London.

But here's the good news. In the days since then I am extremely pleased to report that the fantastic spirit I love about London and its people has been has been brought to the fore. In many cases, acts of mass care and kindness have been carried out with renewed fervour, matching any destruction and terror with peace and love, man. Especially in Brixton.

Some examples of this (and they are numerous) which have really warmed my heart:

• The @riotcleanup movement, started by people bound by a need to do something good to counter all of the destruction
• The Do Something Nice for Ashraf blog, which aims to help the Malaysian student who was filmed being mugged by youths who had initially helped him up from the ground after he was hit by a piece of debris thrown by rioters.
• The free cupcakes offered by a shop in Brixton, the free tea, coffee and sandwiches offered by the Battersea Arts Centre, the free storage offered to flailing businesses by a secure storage company - and there are many other examples - all show a human kindness that goes beyond 'good PR' or 'effective marketing' to just plain, simple, old fashioned community spirit and loveliness.
• Some MPs are out on the streets, doing their bit to reassure and comfort their communities. Some, like Chuka Umunna, do it even when there's no news camera rolling, because they're genuinely good people.
• This photo. Says it all, really. God bless this town. May she recover quickly.