Some people talk as if sunshine is the remedy to these ills. I haven't found that to be the case, quite the opposite in fact. I'm more introverted when the sun's out, more apt to pessimism, because even if I'm sitting inside the sun makes me feel more exposed. More likely to have judging eyes cast upon me. Somewhere. I can't even escape them in my flat; I can escape even less from carrying voices.
These eyes and voices are just going about their business aren't they? Yes and no, because should I want to be near the window I'll be an exhibit, despite the filmy curtain drawn to ward them and the light off. And their sonic voices break any silence I might have had until the midnight hour.
The curtains are really for the light and summer heat, when it arrives, and for saving the artwork on my almond-white walls, rather than the fact (or problem) of often feeling pried upon. I knew the score when I moved in nine years ago, but it was either this or a darker, smaller courtyard-facing flat and that I didn't fancy.
I must be quite tolerant mustn’t I? Though it has at times been through gritted teeth, particularly when a car alarm cries, engines rev and bottles clink in the dead of night. However, my patience seems more stretched during the day when I want to be productive. When I want to drown the world out to a certain extent to muse, but then due to unanticipated interference silently fume. My once coherent thoughts now thoroughly muddled, and which attempting to untangle only makes worse.
It couldn't happen at a worse period. Because it makes the hours of three till seven (when I finally give up) feel like the longest stint of time. Ever. When it's not, it's nothing. Though when you're firing on all cylinders you can get a lot done. An article written. The flat blitzed, as in cleaned top to bottom. Everything straightened and neatened. Ideas popping so you have to leave off tasks to jot them down. Constantly.
The opposite of that is: stuck. Anything you thought of gone to some far off land. Inertia and lethargy buddying up, and though you try in vain to fight against them hopelessness sets in. Creativity turns into a mushy substance and negatively redirects its unspent energy. At you. Its co-creator.
The afternoon quickly becomes a questioning session of everything you've done, where you're going and who you are, as well as everything you've haven't done, where you haven't gone (in spite of offers), who you're not and why aren't you, whilst outside the clinking and chattering continues oblivious to the big questions you're asking. Not only of yourself but of everyone. Because everything you ask yourself you wonder if others ask it of themselves also. Or even if, as implausible it seems to you, it never even crosses their minds, at least not while they're in the act of Doing. Doing something other than just sitting around contemplating life and humanity. Oh, if only we had the luxury, they might say, to waste away precious hours.
So, less about the how can I and more about the why do I? Because life, lived day-by-day, gives me that unreal feeling. I don't feel I'm living, I'm play-acting 99.9% of the time. Just making it up as I go along. A part of me always a step removed from myself. And wondering when, if ever, the roles I take on will merge seamlessly with my full person. Or will there always be some fuzzy disconnect?
There are too many moments to count where I still feel I'm playing house, where all that's changed is that I'm taller and older because the responsibilities that come with being adult don't feel any more real than they did when as a kid I played at them. Nothing is rehearsed, everything is improvised. A run-through on your own is only an indicator of how you want things to go and not how situations unfold when others involved also have their own script.
Picture credit: The Boarding House, Eric Ravilious
