Wild Is The Wind

The wind roars down the chimney, occasionally whistles for a moment. Windy all day yesterday and again today, keeping the forecast heavy rain at bay. Bright sunlight, then dimmer light, as the dark clouds are hustled along over the sun. Yesterday managed a late walk, with my hat on. Today the wind keeps me firmly indoors. L and I have been constructing an IKEA shelving unit for the landing cupboard, putting things on it, deciding to get rid of (more) things, emptying the last few boxes (except the stack of book boxes in 'chaos corner' of the sitting room.) Later we will at last put some pictures on the walls. This job keeps dropping to the bottom of the list, but we know it will make the house feel more properly like home. Our friend S, who is moving next week, has given us another IKEA bookcase, which had to be dismantled to be transported, so now there's yet another construction job ahead... But which may just result in the emptying of the book boxes, so worth the pain!

Suddenly had to break off there to eat a bowl of Greek yoghurt with honey. Memories of breakfasts on balconies overlooking crystal seas. Wouldn't mind some of that right now...

Today my heart aches, my throat aches, and I'm trying to let be, even though it's really hard to bear, even though I'd really rather not feel like this. Even though I don't have any words for why I feel like this. It's grief, I recognise it. It's like that feeling you have when someone dies, that the world has no business going on being busy or beautiful or purposeful, when someone in your life is dead. The beauty, the business, the purposefulness hurt you in their obliviousness to the way you feel. I guess I am a welter of old griefs, stirred by the recent shock, pain and trauma of being forced to leave my job, of being betrayed by people I trusted, of being treated like a criminal, of (conveniently for others) carrying the can for all that was wrong in a project, and much that was wrong in an organisation. The hurt of all this, and the loss, and the total shocking disruption of my life from one day to the next, has left me maybe filled with echoes of the shock, betrayal, and total disruption of my father's suicide. I say 'maybe' because I can't see it clearly. I'm guessing really. But I feel as if nothing is worth doing any more, as if everything is futile and empty and pointless, as if I'm going through the motions much of the time. It's familiar, and it's dreadful, and, because it's so familiar, and I've done so much work around this stuff, I do now have a little space around it, some sort of capacity to keep at least some of myself out of that place, to hold another possibility even dimly ('it won't always be like this'...) And I know that under these kinds of feelings is a deep and violent anger that mostly feels too frightening to approach directly. Right now this process feels mostly exhausting.

Spring Forward

So tonight we do that strange thing - put the clocks forward. Messing around with time, which we usually persuade ourselves is somehow a fixed, absolute thing. We all get a bit confused. Some people never remember which is back, which forward, nor the effect of each on daylight at either end of the day. I don't find it hard as a concept, but find myself disorientated for a few days, the rhythm interrupted, disrupted, though soon resettling. L always refuses to change her watch straight away, whereas I'll do it when I go to bed the night of the change. She prefers to exist in two times simultaneously for a while, acclimatising, asking frequently what the real time is...

Not sure about springing forward, but I do feel a little heartened to have at last identified a job to apply for... I'd begun to wonder if there ever would be one again. You know the rules, but let's just say it is exactly the kind of work I want to do, and part-time to boot. Plenty of time to work on the application too. Uneasy feelings come into the picture - oh god, can I remember how to do this stuff, how to be this person?? The wounds of last year ache and itch, but I'm willing to try putting my weight on the injured foot now (if this is not to mix my metaphors too awkwardly...)

Try

My stomach is this distended thing
I keep pouring liquids into
to try to drown the screeching bird
of grief
but she will not die

More Rearrangement

Yesterday we constructed an IKEA flat-pack wardrobe with two good-sized drawers beneath. It took about five hours, a cut (cardboard), a blister (screwdriver), a headache (kneeling on floor, leaning forward), but not too much swearing, and no irretrievable mistakes! Then, after suitable refreshment, we at last began to unpack the many black bags of clothes that have been sitting in the landing cupboard since we moved, covered in plaster dust. I am reunited with all my shoes, my favourite trousers, and, also, L retrieved all the jewellery from a safe bag where she'd put it for moving, and I am at last wearing earrings other than the little silver rings I was wearing the day we moved... Two months on, I finally begin to get the feeling I'm not just visiting, but do in fact live here now...

The tree man came yesterday too, and removed several ugly and overgrown conifers, especially one leylandii that must have been 30 foot! We have a bigger garden, a wider view, even more light, and a rather lovely but unidentified tree (also a conifer, but the kind with elegant spreading branches, rather than a big tall clump) has been released from years of being smothered by the big l, and is now the new home for the bird life of the garden, once they'd stopped looking for the disappeared monstrosity that was their home...

Rearranged

Last night jazz at our inestimable little gig venue in town. Jenni Molloy's trio playing her Bach-inspired recent work. She is an amazingly skilled, energetic and passionate double bass player, her sax player and drummer superb, sparing, inspired. I love trios - not too much going on, and the way the three instruments talk to each other, respond to each other, fly and weave around each other, is so clear to hear, nothing cluttering it up. Now listening to her CD 'Bach ReLoaded', which it was essential to buy after the gig. Initially a bit put off by the 'inspired by Bach' tag, I found I was only dimly aware that classical themes were the starting point or inspiration for these pieces. Maybe because I'm not that knowledgable or familiar with Bach, but also because it's very very subtly done. And most definitely comes over as 'proper' jazz.

The music, the entire performance, was very exciting, and seemed to rearrange all my cells, including my brain cells, which began to give rise to a few sparks of the sort that ignite poetry (small sparks, but nonetheless...) Sadly, this rearrangement and spark kept me awake most of the night, buzzing. Rather counter-productive, since now I feel weary and miserable. Not helped by a dismal morning at work doing 'follow-up calls'.

Off to see my Mum tomorrow, taking a memory stick of photos of the house to show her on her digital photo frame. Here's one now of the kitchen!

Job?

L and I just spent the afternoon at the allotment in the sunshine. While L did lots of clearing, I forked over and weeded, then raked a bed for red onions and garlic, which L then planted - four rows of red onions, two of garlic. I had such a good time, forgetting about time. I'd forgotten how working the soil can do that. Digging, and pulling out and shaking earth off long roots, and drawing the rake across the dark crumbly soil, keeping me firmly in the moment, not thinking about being in the moment. I feel loads better. I went and bought yummy sandwiches in town, and we sat and munched them, looking down into the valley. Makes me not want a job at all!

Weekend(')s End

It was a good one, and now it's over I have hit the blues again, though L has gone off for an afternoon walk, and I'm settling fairly well into some solitary time, with old fave Joe Strummer CD and blogging. Some left over spag bol in the frig for lunch, planning a walk, taking in visit to old house for mail (almost certainly junk). A few possible little jobs around the house (L has discovered tomato ketchup is a rather good cleaning agent for manky old 'gold' taps such as we have inherited. She did one, and maybe I'll do the rest...) Could settle down with The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, which I've only just started. Could get out the poetry books. Could (gulp) get out my notebook. Could empty boxes in my room. Could, could, could - let's not turn that into should, should, should...

Old friends are a precious thing. R and I have known each other an alarmingly long time - 36 years??? Is't possible? How can we possibly be old enough? Anyway she has two lovely boys, and the best dog in the world, and they all arrived around 11.30 on Friday night (long story...) Honoured us by being our first house guests, brought brightness and laughter, conversation, card tricks, marvellous appetites, fabulous young energy, memorable moving images of cats crapping into toilets on the internet, boots made for walking, the presentation of a truly memorable mothers' day card, and it was all topped off nicely by seeing Astro Boy at the cinema in town yesterday afternoon. Green & Black's and cups of tea for us, Ben and Jerry's for the boys. A walk by the canal in sunshine, younger boy trying to out-wit courting male mallard, then declaring he actually isn't attracted to mallards!! And so to station for fond farewells. Sweet.

Day

The children walk past the window, carrying things home from school, precious things they've made, reading folders, backpacks. Or their parents carry the things for them as if the children had had such a hard day they can't be expected even to bring their possessions home themselves.

The sun slanting in through the dirty window, catches a strange assortment of things on the table. A toast rack, an enamel plate, a pestle and mortar, a star-shaped ice-cube tray. A label for pink rosemary, though we have none and can't remember ever having had.

This morning I did cold calls - part of my new temporary job - and it has had a dire effect on my well-being. It's calling schools to market something really good, so it isn't awful in the way trying to sell mobile phones or power is awful, but it touches a sore place in me about putting myself up for rejection, the fear of being dismissed without being able to explain, of making a nuisance of myself. Only two people I've spoken to have been dismissive in reality - no we're not interested said one, the other - we'd never be interested in anything like that, as if I'd proposed they acquire an instrument of torture. But the whole thing just gets my adrenalin and cortisol levels soaring, makes me feel tense and tearful, on a short fuse.

And today we have yet another man doing work in the house. Just putting up a few shelves, some coat pegs and a bathroom cupboard, and planing the bottoms of a couple of doors, but it seems to be taking all day, and something about his energy makes me very uneasy - kind of slow, heavy, depressive, a bit moany. Probably rather too close to the thing in me I'm struggling with. And strong body odour to boot. L is sorting cupboards and I'm writing here while we wait for him to finish for the day, and can fling open windows, get out the hoover, and then hang up our coats at last, put things on the new shelves and into the bathroom cupboard...

Stolen

The sun is warm on my back, and bright on the laptop screen, showing unforgivingly just how dirty it is. Both dusty and apparently spattered with who knows what vile liquid.

Washing on the line outside - sheet, pillow cases and duvet cover which will smell of sunshine on our bed tonight. Bluest sky. We walked down into town and back, picked up mail from the old house, visited friend E's house (she being in Tasmania), returned DVDs (Doubt, and The Secret Life of Bees) to the library, bought coffee, daffodils, rare breed pork chops, and baguettes, and L had a much-needed haircut. I saw a friend who was on her way to have a massage. I asked how she was. She said she would be much better in an hour's time. Maybe I should have a massage...

Nearly time to go to Guardian Jobs online for my first visit of the week. In a while we'll try to hang the last curtain in the kitchen. Improvised from a piece of material we've had for ages, (which just happens to go brilliantly with the colours in our kitchen), and an IKEA easy to fit curtain rod...

None of this is really what I want to say, but I want to say something rather than nothing, and it's these small everyday details that have saved me on occasion.

I want to say I just don't feel right. I try to let myself enjoy the sunshine, the daffodils, the house, the view, the air, the completely beautiful place where we live. But I just feel like weeping. I feel as though something has been stolen from me.

Juice

No creative juice. Just whisky, my father's evening tipple, and the salted peanuts he used to throw into his mouth, head tilted back, handfuls from the jar in the larder - an old Nappisan jar with a turquoise blue plastic lid, like the ones for the raisins and the flour and the red lentils.

Taste

Intermittent availability of Blogger continues. Anyone else having this trouble? Two days off one day on sort of pattern. Still this is two days on in a row, so maybe the sickness is subsiding. I try to see it as some kind of lesson in not taking things for granted.

I take things for granted all the time. I said to L I thought I took her for granted, wished I didn't. She asked what I meant. What it appeared I meant was I'm self-absorbed when I'm struggling. 'Forget' to give, to notice, to consider. Sending my attention away from myself could be a place to start curing the current ill, I'm sure. Focusing somewhere else.

I have felt for so long that I can't take in or give out as much as I would like. Look and can't properly see. Listen and can't completely hear. Read and can't absorb. Can't tune in, can't concentrate. Know that I have a lot of good stuff to contribute but often don't. Stay away, stay quiet, feel awkward. Then feel dissatisfied, as if only partly living.

What I'm noticing is that the sun is slanting into the room, highlighting the startling green of a bottle of mineral water, the liquid inside trembling as I type. Spring will come, it says, and I sense myself longing for and dreading its arrival, with its attendant demand to open and expand. No-one has been more vocal than I about winter outstaying its welcome, yet the actual taste of the early spring brings unease as well as relief.