Age of Explanation

'...these days everyone was writing a book, and there was no need to have the disaster or the unique experience before you wrote the book; in fact you could start with the film and then write the book and then have the disaster or the unique experience.'

I marked this passage in Janet Frame's Living in the Maniototo (on p.219) on the morning of St. George's Day 2018, the date also (though I didn't know it then for the news was still a few hours from breaking) of the birth of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's third child, a son weighing in at 8lbs 7oz, fifth in line to the throne and whom as far as I know at 18:15, present time, has been shown to the public and has met his brother and sister but has not yet been officially or royally named. I'm thinking it might be Arthur...because one thing's for sure it won't be George. And there is a novel called Arthur and George by Julian Barnes. I wonder if they know of it? Maybe they'll settle instead on Alfred or Philip. I'll tell you tomorrow, though of course by then, as in my time of telling, that news will already be old, and will be older still by time you read it where it will then be a well-known fact.

But back to my earlier marking of that passage not with pencil but with a yellow post-it immediately upon reading with a groan and thinking: So so true, even though I was relating it to now and not to when it was originally published in 1979, in the year before my own birth. No change then; it's only got worse. Books written as therapy: self-help, journals, memoirs, diaries, novels. Erm, what exactly am I doing? Well, yes...and it is a sheepish yes, but can't I question the authenticity of others' outpourings as well as this need to, well, pour, and then engage readers to pour over and create some kind of community? Could some of these be less private therapy made public than guaranteed marketing strategies, proven to work and gain exposure? Here's your fame and the shame, the pity parade and the support network. The word out and minor celebrities (talk show and radio hosts) endorsing your book and telling, or inviting you to tell, your story to a bigger audience that may be watching or listening.

Ooh, aren't we cynical? I have a critical eye, which I make no apology for (except on occasions to a part of myself that doubts its stern judgements even as they're being passed) because it's rare that it's verbalised; it prefers to have its observations recorded in black type, in Times New Roman or Georgia. Yet even here I'm speaking half in truth and half in jest.

Indeed, writing can be therapeutic. But does a book need to come out of it? An explanation. Of you. Of me. Of yours, or my family. Of a personal crisis that has been gone through, or might be. This is who I am. This is where I fit, or don't fit, in. This is where I've come from and this is where I hope to go. And it might not always be in a volume of words, it might be in far fewer characters, published piecemeal, or in uploaded pictures to show this is where I am and this is what I'm about to eat and oh, here's what I look like while I do so.

Tomorrow. My stomach still swollen from a salad and bread lunch at 1700 hours, and I'm pondering if it will be ready at its customary hour (20:30) to tackle dinner: a soy and ginger sauce defrosting in the fridge to go with some due-to-expire tenderstem broccoli, in the same moment as realising the name of the Queen's sixth grandchild hasn't yet been proclaimed, and so I won't as promised be able to verify it, long after the fact, here. A souvenir newspaper, a different essay, another book will tell it and record it for posterity and be of the time: witnessed, written and published then, and not announced, as I'm doing here, in the following year as if it were new, although the instant itself was lived through and written in.

How is this therapy? It's a purging of all the random thoughts my head contains, not that I think that you (or even I) benefit from it, not in that journeying sense – it doesn't take me to somewhere, from here to there. No, I'm still where I was like a mountain seen in the distance on a hazy or clear day, or a cliff-face which with each visit has eroded a little more, crumbled into the sea, on a par with my ebbing interest in other people's explanations. My own don't satisfy me, and yet, in this Age come round for a second, third or fourth time, they must be set down.

Picture credit: Cliff at Dieppe, 1882, Claude Monet (Source: WikiArt)

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Tortoise Shell

In moments when technology malfunctions I wish I could fall back on the 'old ways' but that's not always possible because the old equipment no longer exists (or there are no parts to help it function) or the brain has adapted so well I can't remember how to use it and look at it (if I still own such an antiquated item) with utter bewilderment, and a growing sense of frustration.

When it was the washing machine I wanted a mangle or a tub you manually operate; when it was the flat-screen TV, I a wanted a box where to change channels you had to get up and push the buttons; when it was the kettle, I wanted one you could heat on the hob (and a hob you could bring it to boil on) until it sung, rather than having to resort to a saucepan; and when it was the laptop I yearned for a manual or electronic typewriter. Just to be able to tap away, in spite of more pressing concerns.

We've been forced down this line and, for the most part, I detest it because when it goes wrong you're screwed, and have to take measures that are not as uncomplicated as they could be. Particularly if you're a single woman of a certain mindset and of limited means, including knowledge and confidence in these matters. Actually being single and a woman is not important, though I do think it still means you can be preyed upon or undermined, where sometimes even just being labelled so can make you feel small. But who's doing the labelling here? Oh, it's me! Hmm, interesting...

No, I will not follow this diversion, as diverting as it might prove to be because it could also be the undoing of me, and since this is being drafted by pen on paper my words are going uncounted and the space allotted to me is not the same as staring at a half-filled Word document or typewritten page. I do not want to harshly (or hastily) edit what I set down here now when I come to set it (and see it) in print. Though I know already that will indeed be the case: I will censor myself, cut or expand. We all do that, no, used to do that, unwittingly or knowingly, because these days it seems some people have removed those filters, from themselves and that of others. Is that or isn't it a good thing?

It's confusing, that's what it is. What can I say? What can't I say? What will offend, even if that wasn't my intention? What will be misconstrued from the slip of a tongue? and not from as is now usually the case a slip of a finger since the words here will have been dictated already to paper and I'll be merely copying.

I will not change a line! But then again, I might, because I might not be able to resist phrasing it better or doing away with it altogether. I've even struggled not to do that when typing an employer's letters. Are you sure you want to put it that way? Well, okay...said with a shrug and a rising of eyebrows... you're the boss.

This penning of words is rather freeing though I did have to adjust my brain upon picking up the ballpoint. Thoughts directed by pen somehow do not form the same as when directed by piano-playing fingers. And it looks a bit of a mess with poorly developed letters, scrubbing outs and interjected words. It's not so clean as a screen document and has to be gone back over more often. Yet this was once my standard practice: only committing handwritten papers to stark typeface. How quickly that can change! It's as if I've taken up a new sport that I'm, in a manner of speaking, not agile enough for. The ballpoint is miles ahead, less concerned with what is written than leaving a trail of black ink across the page. On the road (not Jack Kerouac's) you might say: Eat my dust! A pencil (and subsequent rubbing outs) would be a more suitable tool for that though.

I really should come to a close as I think by now I'll have eaten up a Microsoft Word sheet. And done so as a hare rather than as a tortoise. The latter being the objective of this exercise: to get tortoise in somehow. I had banked on getting shell in too. Maybe I still can...since I can only think and write at home, when I'm alone, so if Alberto Manguel's private library is his tortoise shell than home (wherever that might be) is most definitely mine.

Picture credit: Tortoise-A, 1977, Maki Haku (source: WikiArt)

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Tangles

If I followed my impulses as readily as my natural inclination to question it would lead, in the commitment of the act or in the fullness of time, to tangles. And probably worse than those in my thick curly hair, because even those that I do follow through on result in knots. That, I'm almost sure of (there's room for doubt), since if was only my hair in question I know the comb would find them and whilst there'd be a bit of yanking they would with some impatience and brutality be brushed out. Start at the ends; yes, but you can't do that with life.

Actions that begin with or from good intentions have a habit of breaking down, splitting into different choices, or growing matted with unforeseen and unimagined complications. And that's after I've paused or suffered a delay. There's no remedy like that of an untangling spray, not that I've found anyway.

There's no reliable place in which to start to prevent a split or solve a knot, unless you choose the 'permanent knock-it-on-the-head solution': to break it, the situation, by force, although even as you do so you may feel less resolute than tired, because it's dragged on, grown in size, as to whom or what it involves, and introduced doubt. Like a hair-band caught in your hair that has to be cut out, this is the only way to remove exhausting friction, of the internalising kind, and restore tranquillity.

It may not be in your best interests to approach the dilemma, opportunity, in this manner, but returning things to as they were overrides the external benefits that might have been had. The negatives were at the forefront anyway; had taken centre stage and brought terror. Not that whenever I've reacted and acted this way it's been rashly done. No, it's always been a very considered affair. I have my justifications, though everyone else, those they pertain to and those I tell, struggle to comprehend them.

I wish that in itself didn't matter so much, but it does. There's nothing worse than doubting yourself when others don't get where you're coming from, and you wonder how much energy you should put in to get them to. The frustration this leads to once something has already been done is not worth it, not really, and yet we all want our fellows to understand us. That they can't or just plain won't is a barrier to communicating fluidly. Words get more jagged or laced with invective. Or there's a reluctance to engage, on both sides. Words falter and fail.

What can people say anyway? It will never be exactly right. Perhaps in those circumstances our expectations of each other is wrong. People can't always know what to say: they will back you but won't altogether mean it, which you'll hear, or they'll choose not to listen and instead utter reassuring noises. Isn't that enough?

Usually. But when life has become a course of zigzags, you want more. You're not sure what you want people exactly to say (as perhaps there's nothing left of note that's different to what's been said before) yet you hope, faintly, they might provide insight or clarity, rather than answers, and put what's occurred into context somehow. Make you see you've missed something or there's another angle you hadn't considered or could be working on. Whether you take their suggestions seriously largely depends on your mood and how they're framed. Yes, in spite of the want, that hope, maybe none of us should articulate our feelings on another's experience. Because is it ever truly given objectively? Isn't everything coloured by our history? and moreover as we gather more experiences to us a perspective once thought firm may alter beyond recognition.

If only I could act impulsively before second thoughts take hold. And stay schtum rather than go looking for approval after: have I done the right thing?, and then look for holes. Or to take the hair analogy further: nits, those that stubbornly cling to individual strands. Circumstances and timing, however, are often outside your control, so when I begin to waver I automatically think: maybe it's no bad thing. My mind, although certain at the time and aglow with the taking, or even just the thinking, of affirmative action and its possible outcomes has lit up its uncertain regions, for good (and obvious) reasons that I, in the flood of impulse, neglected.

Picture credit: Girl Combing Her Hair, 1892, Edvard Munch

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Get Thee to Bed

Last year, during the Beast from the East to the advent of late spring, I participated in (and not always wholeheartedly or even willingly) some very strange job interviews and informal chats with all manner of companies, big and small.

Practice, they say, practice, I'd mutter, trying to force some of that ingenuity into me with which I had originally applied. Gusto I think is another term, but all to no avail. The invite had either taken too long to come about or had come about so quickly and unexpectedly I felt ill-prepared, and even now, to this day, I'm not sure which it's the better to be: prepared or inadequately so. Neither helped. Though I was usually ill: anxious, but not crippled by nerves, and doubtful. Very doubtful. As to the repercussions of this latest endeavour.

I'm not a think later person, I worry ahead of time. Before any thing is really mine.

However, I am presentable, just not of the business class mould. I hate feeling encumbered by business wear and appear, if I attempt it, stiff and uncomfortable. More awkward than usual. How do I expect to get anywhere if I don't adhere to that standard interview mode of dress? Well, I'm too old to want to get anywhere (old (and tired) as in head, not age) i.e. up a ladder, and on a note to that affect: if indeed there is one, balanced precariously against the building blocks of my life, I'm going down it. I've never been ambitious; and fidgeting, as far as my personal view in the matter goes, doesn't win prizes. Think of a child sitting cross-legged in assembly, squirming, distracting the headteacher's eye. In other words, if you know you won't (and can't hope to) carry it off with aplomb why bother? Not the right attitude, but that's what I had (and have) to work with.

I'd reach that point of no return: where you can't go back to doing all that, for appearances sake and because it's what's it expected, and yet you still need some sort of work, if not for money then for usefulness. It was for both in my case, except I couldn't make myself be something I'm not, nor ever was even when I tried to be; nor even put myself in situations which would alleviate certain pressures but bring a multitude of others. No! Those couldn't of been, and wouldn't of been, borne. So, it was all in all a hopeless case, where there were times, I admit, I felt more wicker basket than interesting study for a psychiatrist, convinced as I was that I was coming across as unhinged. My flying hands certainly testified to it, as did my moments of inexplicable dumbness when I needed to be at my most intelligent, or at least engaged.

It was a weird time. One where I lurched from one prospect to the next, not really knowing what I was seeking. It wasn't this...and it wasn't this. Could it be this?? Maybe...no. Alternating between relief and regret. Not getting what I wanted and getting what I didn't, and feeling generally unmoved by any opportunity. So what! if you need work? I know that's true, but it wasn't true of or for me. I've never been able to do that, and no, I haven't always had that luxury. My savings were, at that time, being steadily nibbled away, and I do mean nibbled; the fact that I had some was due to prudence and dealing mostly in cash, not credit or store cards.

But then I am my own worst enemy: I don't like accepting help, nor asking for it. This is my bed, I, in many regards, made it, or paved the way to it, and I won't, if I asked, like your solutions, so I will lie in this bed, the rumpled sheet smoothed, the pillows shaken and the covers pulled over, and continue to make it, though as an ex once said: why bother? It's like brushing your teeth, I guess, or washing your face, a habit. I want to go to sleep in a bed that's been aired and freshly made, so that no matter what has occurred during the day I can at least feel comforted, and will hopefully be rewarded with a good sleep. As well as dreams that might possibly point me in the next, the right, direction.

That rarely happens; everything, at night as it does by day, just gets more warped. It did then, it still, on occasions, does now. As if my compass, morally and ethically, is deliberately, in spite of episodic wobbles, keeping me to a, commendable but disadvantageous, fixed position.

Picture credit: In Bed, Frederico Zandomeneghi

Title: From Hamlet, Act I, Scene I

All posts published this year were penned during the last.