I’ll Be Back

I just wanted to nip in quickly to apologize… I didn’t mean to go quiet as long as I did, but life caught up with me! First of all we went on holiday for the first time in years, which really interrupted my blogging and correspondence, and when I came home there was lots of paperwork, file reorganization and other loose ends to deal with. There are still some things I need to do, but the worst project for taking up time this month is NaNoWriMo!

That sounds a grudging thing for me to say about something so important from a ‘life experience’ point of view. It’s amazing that I’m finally writing some sort of book, even if it’s more of a ‘practice book’ than anything else.

Anyway, I am well behind… there’s a minimum word count I’m supposed to have achieved by the end of each day. That took a nose-dive on Day 3 when (1) I found myself sorting out someone’s laptop; (2) noticing things in the story that didn’t make sense. It was enough to make me stop short and think. I know we’re supposed to just write and write, and then maybe the ideas will come, but I only typed about 13 pages using that method, then ran into a wall. I couldn’t make my fingers keep on typing.

At one point I wrote about ‘an unmended fence’, and noticed the wavery red line under ‘unmended’. One online dictionary and my Microsoft Works dictionary told me that though ‘untended’ is acceptable, ‘unmended’ isn’t even a word. Yet it’s everywhere on the internet… nobody says it’s wrong, and it feels normal enough. Odd. I suppose I could change it to ‘a broken-down fence’, but the whole point I’m trying to make is that it’s neglected and nobody has repaired it. I could always add a bit saying “it looked as though it had been broken for a while and nobody had been round to fix it(!)” which would add a little padding to my word count! But it seems a bit of a palaver to go to just to explain something that the nice simple word ‘unmended’ would at least imply.

Similar niggles aside, I took a printout of my outline and other notes to bed with me (that’s where I do most of my best thinking!) and after scribbling and plotting and brainstorming, had fresh ideas for the plot… what I’ve written so far is already being turned inside out. There are two or three characters I may even have to erase. But for now maybe I’ll just move things around and add bits and keep writing, and then I can do some of the serious cutting and rewriting after making my final word count at the end of the month. Fingers crossed. I do feel better now that I worked things out a bit more.

Meanwhile I thought it would be unfair to go silent for a whole extra month without letting you know… I’ve been missing you all, and I’ll be back.

Ask Me No Questions

or

Hail Fellow Ill Met

 
A few weeks ago:

When we were going home on the bus, I was writing a message to Mum on our conversation notepad. An elderly man got on the bus and stood for a while, tucking his ticket away. I felt his eyes on me and looked up, and smiled. Then I went back to the message I was writing. Mum jerked her head towards him suddenly, and gestured apologetically, with a half-turn of her head towards me. I could imagine her saying, “I’m sorry, she can’t hear you.” He sat down across from us, where I couldn’t see him, and for the rest of the journey they talked politely, their voices lost in the roar of the bus. After a while I put my conversation notepad away, my message unread.

When we reached our stop and Mum moved towards the exit, I glanced at the man, intending to say goodbye. But he sat with his head turned away, so I said nothing. I didn’t ask Mum who he was or what they were talking about, and she didn’t mention him… he was just a passing ship.

 
Two days ago:

We were walking in single file along a narrow footpath, when we came across a bearded man on a ladder who was preparing to trim a hedge. He and Mum exchanged jolly-sounding greetings. Powered by her presence, I breezed past in my turn with a cheery smile. But I thought about how, on my own, I would either not look at him, or would raise my hand in a polite salute.

A little way further along, when we came onto the road, another man stood nearby. Again he and Mum made friendly noises. “People are so kind!” said Mum, as we passed on.

 
Yesterday:

We went into Costa’s for coffee, but it was quite busy. All that was left for us was a small round table for two, wedged between a lady in the corner (reading a newspaper) and two gossiping boys. The woman looked up and smiled, and she and Mum talked for a little… I wondered if they knew each other. Then the lady went back to her newspaper, and Mum and I wrote to each other in our conversation notepad.

“It’s hotter than I thought,” said Mum. “Have you noticed that the students get younger every year?”

“I never looked,” I said.

Mum rolled her eyes good-naturedly, while I thought about the old man on the bus, along with years and years of students passing me by, unseen.

After a while I said, “You know why I don’t look at people? I don’t want them to think they can speak to me just because I smiled.”

Mum laughed and shook her head at me. “They don’t always — and don’t smile,” she said. “Just observe.”

 
A small mystery cleared up:

When we left, the woman reading the newspaper didn’t speak to us again — she was a stranger after all. But Mum later volunteered the information that she’d told us (when we came in looking for somewhere to sit) she’d been watching a single student taking up a table meant for four.

Oh, I so know the feeling! Especially when we are meeting my sister, and the three of us have to huddle (with two shopping trolleys) round a tiny table for two, while a skinny kid stretches out blissfully in a tasty piece of café ‘real estate’… and stays there forever.

Lady next to us — I share your frustration.

A Nothing Day

Totally lacking energy right now…  nothing to say. Try to do things and they don’t work. Write a blog post and there’s nothing to blog about. Read a book and it’s full of dry bits. Friends and family on Facebook no closer than they were. Makes you wonder what Facebook is for.

I prefer quiet conversations with just one person at a time.

Sometimes feels as though life is something you are forced to do when you would rather keep out of it! There is no way you can say “I don’t want to do this, thanks…. I don’t have the right kind of brain.” I always wanted my life to be a book I could learn from without being hurt in any way.

I’m the heroine of my own story, and I don’t like it at all. I’d much rather read about it.

At the end of the novel I would turn round and be at home with my family. No other kind of existence is imaginable.

But for now the book is still open…. the next chapter could be filled with masked highwaymen (or did we just have that one?) Or howling wolves in a cold Scottish forest (think I’ve done that one as well). Or a shipwreck, and pirate’s treasure. Or there’ll be a hobbit and a gold ring.

Is that all just wistful thinking?

Letter to Myself

When I turned on the computer this morning, a surprise was waiting for me. iCal (my calendar) alerted me to a Letter to Myself that I wrote a year ago. And my first thought was, “oh no, do I really HAVE to read this?? I was going to get more work done on my drawing!”

I told myself off for being lazy, found the letter to myself, read it, and thought, “is that it? No blinding words of insight that will add something to my day? It’s all stuff I could have written yesterday (or could write tomorrow), though I do have glasses that work now (varifocals), and have found some (not all) of the books I was looking for.”

Unimpressed. Though that snippet about my father was of value, as I would have forgotten it otherwise.

I didn’t say much about it last year: Memory of a Garden. But below is the blog post I meant to post last year, and didn’t!

WordPress prompt:

“Write a short letter to yourself, to be read one year from now. You don’t have to post the entire letter, but you do have to:

(a) write it

(b) post about what surprised you the most about what you wrote

(c) whether you found the experience interesting or not…

…and don’t forget to set a reminder in your calendar to read it in one year.”

Thursday 21st July 2011

Dear Me,

I have no idea where you’ll be and what you’ll be doing, but I hope all of your current aches will have gone, and that you’re wearing glasses that work! (Right now I can’t read, write or draw well, with or without them). I hope you’ll have found and read the books on your ‘to track down’ list… Sean Thomas Russell, the missing Patrick O’Brian novels, Robin Hobb, Raymond E Feist and Janny Wurts.

I don’t know what else I hope for you, as I can’t wish a particular course in case it’s the wrong one. Que sera, sera, perhaps… but the newspaper article that Mum found today struck a chord… she handed it to me with a significant look.

Meet Generation X: Women born between 1965 and 1978 aren’t having children OR success in their careers… Why? (by Anna Pursglove).

After reading it, I was silent for a little, then said, “Obviously we haven’t flattened the men quite enough. I vote we start with [censored].

“Spoilt for choice!” said Mum, with a basilisk glare.

She said earlier today how men of previous generations did not like shopping — but my father ‘was unusual’ because he enjoyed it. I asked what was in it for him? Gadgets? And she said “I don’t know. Just enjoyed looking.” It lifted my heart to think of him enjoying such frivolity. Of course he always was warm and human, but it makes him seem even more so.

My main regret, I think, is that everything rushes by so fast — and sometimes you don’t fully understand or appreciate people, things or places till they are long in the past. To want them back seems useless — to fly in the face of how life is.

Regret is also futile in other regards — if I didn’t say or do certain things, I wouldn’t be me. Sometimes you read something bad you wrote, or find a depressingly poor picture you’d worked on for hours, but other times there’s a pleasant surprise or two. Today I found panoramic images I didn’t remember creating — of the garden and my bedroom! Rough, but evocative.

Just don’t give up on yourself… try to keep your ship afloat, like in this morning’s dream. It would have been easy to let it sink, but I kept on and was around to rescue someone who sank his own. Also, it’s such a cliche to say “you’re never alone,” but it’s true that you’re one speck among many who share similar experiences.

That last bit sounds detached and a little frightening, as though you could blow away at any moment and never be seen again through the swirling dust storm. But you’re still in there, along with people you know — the dust cloud is all of us.

I’m beginning to feel a bit lost in this message, and my pen has already run out, so I better stop. As you know, there is the blog and the private journal if you want to read more from the past! Asterix and Obelix are waving to you from the side trolley, as perhaps they are waving to me from wherever you are. The song in my head is ‘I Am, I Said’ by Neil Diamond, which is strangely apt.

Please keep blogging, reading, making pictures/videos, sitting in the sun outside, looking round the shops… enjoy life while you have it.

Lots of love,

Me.

To complete this assignment, I’m supposed to post about what surprised me the most about the above letter, and whether I found the experience interesting.

Previously I scoffed at myself, writing ‘…my entire journal is a letter to any future me who cares to read it.’ But some things came out in the letter that I was too lazy to write in my regular entry for the day… Mum’s words, the panoramic pictures and the newspaper article. I don’t mention my blurring eyesight much either, though it causes me problems every day. I wonder if it will be better a year from now, or worse? Will I have found a solution… bifocals??

Did anything surprise me about the letter? Yes, that it wasn’t longer and more waffly! That things like my dream fitted into what I was trying to say. That I wouldn’t tie myself down to anything more specific, such as a better career or a more organized life… as I know how life often isn’t what you expect.

Something I didn’t mention in either letter or private journal entry but which I found interesting… Apple is building what I would call a mini city or a Ringworld. Rather scary… but I wonder if there is room there for me. I could do a panoramic photo there…. “my new abode”.

Why Top Ten Lists are Lame

(Don’t blame me… it’s another WordPress prompt!)

1: Who reads other people’s lists?

2: My top ten lists change, often in the middle of writing them.

3: So many things are equally deserving… for instance, do I give xth place to Vincent (Don McLean), SOS (Abba), Sealand (OMD), White Flag (Dido), Soolaimon (Neil Diamond), Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel)…?

4: They are often brief by nature… summaries instead of a full piece of writing.

5: Probably a Top Ten List would look better if it was set to music, surrounded by graphics, counting down dramatically to Number One… but in most cases it wouldn’t be worth the time and trouble (see 1 and 2).

6: The dullest Top Ten Lists (probably including this one) are identical to everyone else’s. In a list of favourite things, most of us love chocolate, coffee, reading in bed etc.

7: Top Ten lists take a lot of time to write… either you have to pick the best from a plethora of options, or search your mind because there are too few.

8: When reading other people’s top ten (especially Top Ten Tips), I always wonder which important items weren’t included. I don’t want just ten tips, in that case… I want all of them!

9: Top Tens which are a general choice (from a public vote) are often disappointing: items that deserve to be high on the list never are.

10: It’s especially unsettling when you view a publicly voted Top Ten that is nothing remotely like your own (e.g. the funniest comedies)… you start to wonder if your own sense of humour or taste is so different from everyone else’s — are you so behind the times, and what it is that you are missing?

If I feel the urge to write Top Ten lists, however, I will write them.

The Point of a Grudge

WordPress continues to suggest possible blog topics (I enjoy this!) Some look interesting; others I’ve done already; yet others make my toes curl in horror! The latest one was, “What’s the longest grudge you’ve ever held? How long do you stay angry at someone or something? Why do you think we hold our grudges?”

I don’t want to describe any of my actual grudges, but I had a thought that although we eagerly forgive and move on, forgetting is quite another thing. We are taught that it’s a good thing to ‘forgive and forget’, and maybe most of the time we do, but some things are burned in our memories and continue to shape our lives.

In a somewhat less than Pollyannaish way, we may be mistaken about how negatively we were impacted by something. If we were done out of a job or promotion that we really wanted, our loss might have led to a better path in life, or to our meeting someone we otherwise wouldn’t have met. But to us the original sin remains… it was an an injustice, and will be remembered as such.

We may bear a grudge against someone without realising how much he/she has been hurt by us in turn. We don’t know everything that goes on in other people’s minds, so sometimes all we remember is our own pain.

In The Full Cupboard of Life (from the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels by Alexander McCall Smith), Mma Ramotswe said she believed in forgiveness. “Why, she asked herself, why keep a wound open when forgiveness can close it?”

Though I remember being confused by the way Mma Ramotswe approaches forgiveness… She forgives people and moves on, but cuts them out of her life. That’s something I can’t square with my notion of forgiveness. Perhaps it’s just another way of saying “I forgive but I never forget.”

I meant to say there are REASONS why we remember — we must try to avoid similar experiences in the future. We were always told pain has a reason… to stop us doing something damaging like putting our hand in the fire.

Most grudges should not be allowed to affect future relations, except where they safeguard us from future harm… they do have their uses. But we should not be TOO self-protective… if we remove people from our email lists for every slight — real or imagined — none of us would have any friends.

Mum says, “life is too short… the only acceptable reason one could have to end a friendship is boredom.” With our Grudgometers alive and ticking, I don’t think any of us will ever be bored.

Like a Kid

Art work… don’t know if I’m as talented as I would like to be, but your words are as balm. The jewelly wallpaper I was working on, well there’s a technique for such a jewel (there are a couple of tutorials on the wallpaper site). Though I have been trying for years and I think that one’s the best I managed so far… there were a couple of things I finally figured out!

Crossed my mind I keep putting the ‘postaweek2011′ tag on my posts even if I’m posting every day, or once a month, or haven’t taken up any of WordPress’s suggested topics. So I scrolled back through past suggestions till I found one I liked: “What makes you feel like you’re still a kid?”

Oh, let me count the ways…

(1) The temptation to take all the credit to myself.

(2) A certain perspective from halfway up a hill… when you look back down at a tiny building at the foot, and everywhere else is countryside. That’s an odd one, I admit. I know the view I’m thinking of (halfway up to visit my grandparents) but I’m not sure why it had the impression it did. Why not my first view of the cottage, when the car crunched round the tight, pineconey corner at the top of the hill and through the gates? Why was I so struck by looking back down the hill at the garage?? But every so often I see something similar, and there’s a feeling of magic.

(3) Remembering what enthusiasm feels like… for a few seconds!

(4) When something really tickles my funny bone and I laugh out loud. For instance, when I borrowed ‘Simon’s Cat’ from the library today.

There’s a second part to this topic: “What makes you feel like an adult?”

(1) Pain I think, more than anything else. Sullied memories, disillusion, fading hopes, eroding health.

(2) Realizing I can keep quiet and not ask for reassurance from anyone. The whole ‘keeping it to yourself and not worrying others’ thing.

(3) The feeling that you’ve seen it all… at least in your corner of the world. Boredom with things you thought funny or interesting when they were fresh and new.

I wonder if I enjoy playing in Photoshop because it absorbs my thoughts for a while, and I don’t need to think about anything else. I have control over a little world of my own — for instance, I’ve been making houses in Photoshop (not very well), but (when I finally got there) I loved creating the details. I’m looking down on the top of those houses, come to think, and I love them best when they look distant, as though I could pick them up and hold them in the palm of my hand.

They haven’t gone anywhere yet, but I did post the jewelly wallpapers:

Living Emerald

Lurking and Glowing

Perfect Sunday?

(Prompted by WordPress’s Post a Week 2011 challenge. I meant to post it last Sunday but didn’t like it… this is an edited version!)

What would my perfect Sunday be?

Achievement! Both in the practical sense and the creative. I would communicate well and happily, make some little discovery or learn something new and useful. I would successfully complete at least one project; have lots of energy and direction through the day; have reason to believe in a bright future; begin some wonderful book or series that inspires me and makes me want to know the characters forever….

Any concerns will have been laid to rest… the day is always a lot brighter when niggling worries have been cleared up.

How the above differs from my usual Sunday…

Usually I only achieve one or two things, maybe part of a thing. Then I get so tired or distracted that I spend the rest of my time reading a book or watching TV. I might start a project or explore new software, and get tired of it even though it’s supposed to be my hobby.

On a good Sunday I hear from friends and have a good chat with them; on a poor Sunday I get no response to anything, and even the forumites aren’t speaking to each other, so I feel bored, disappointed and peeved. Or I do hear from friends and they aren’t saying what I want them to say… when you want a long chat, you get a ‘yes/no/I suppose’ email. When you are hoping to discuss something specific, they ignore it and bring up a topic of their own. On especially bad days they might say something that makes you wonder “is he/she annoyed? What did I say?” And if you’re upset or worried, even mildly, your heart sinks slowly into your boots, even after you’ve stopped thinking about it, and you end the day at an all-time low. Which is why, if something sets your mind to rest the next morning, you can feel so good in comparison! “The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la!”

Some bad Sundays can trail on for months…

Anyway, I have decided to start a new hobby, one that might take me away from the computer and shake me up… scrapbooking! (Adds it to lengthening ‘To Do’ database). Oh, I asked Mum for ideas for a scrapbook theme, thinking it might spark her interest, and she said “Horrible TV Adverts,” and went back to peering closely at a stamp.

Sigh.

Crumpled Blog Post

I’m reading a book that says blogging takes no time as it’s just like writing a letter.

Hum.

I know what it means, but I think that ‘lack of time’ might have more to do with perceived effort (or lack of it). I could quite happily spend half the day writing emails and letters… you look up and it’s gone dark outside, with the neighbours’ lights appearing one by one.

I also read that we mustn’t blog when we are angry… I’m not angry now, but earlier I was peeved, disgruntled, flat, ruffled… and I didn’t know why. Everything seemed more effort than it was worth. Searching Google just now, I glimpsed, in passing, the words that happiness can be achieved through ‘love and work’. Also I glimpsed that boredom and loss of impetus can arise when feeling uncertain of your goals. Boredom — in its worst form — makes you feel that there’s no point to anything whatsoever. Trying to press on with a project when you’re in that kind of mood makes you feel like your brain is oozing out through your ears.

Love and work… just like writing letters… no perceived effort? A simple life, perhaps, living within rules that you understand? Is it that simple, or does it depend on the work? Perhaps having to constantly update our skills, learn new paths and become used to new environments makes everything seem a more uphill task? Especially if we have any doubts about the value of what we’re doing.

I’m not sure why I got so annoyed tonight, as though someone was stroking my fur the wrong way. My eyesight is not what it was… its inflexibility puts a spanner in the works, for instance when I’m studying a magazine article and then looking at the computer screen to type a URL or follow some tips. It becomes more of a peering, craning, removing-and-replacing-spectacles slog. You’re expending more effort trying to read something that’s not quite clear (especially when it jumps around on the screen because it’s a slow-loading site) and less energy just getting on with whatever it was you wanted to do.

It was a relief to pull off those glasses altogether and sit down with a book (Patrick O’Brian’s ‘The Surgeon’s Mate’) and lose myself in that world; reading about other people’s problems and joys. Some very big problems are reduced to “I’m a bit worried, I confess,” and “I’ll just have a word in the ear of a gentleman I know”. It’s not even that simple, as you have to read between the lines, but the calm language helps you reappraise the ups and downs of your own life. The energy and enthusiasm of the characters, along with their love and work, become mine… at least for a little.

The Pearls of Age

I’ve always liked the company of older people, and felt a little less at home with younger folks (who are more unpredictable in some ways).

Mum was talking about things from her childhood. She remembered buying dresses… they were taken ‘on approval’, and delivered in boxes and tissue paper. She kept missing trams and jumping on while they were on the move. The conductor would say “you’re not supposed to do that!”

I said I remembered double-decker buses with the door at the back with stairs — they had bus conductors with ticket machines. Mum said admiringly, “you’re quite old too!” and I said “thank you.”

I’m fascinated by any nuggets of wisdom older people decide to share… they are individual but have the ring of truth. Like from the rather worried old lady who said you know you can be perfect, but you must expect to make mistakes. Be kind to yourself. (I have a horrible habit of lying awake at night counting the very many mistakes I’ve made. Sometimes I think wistfully about Ally McBeal’s boss who said tactless things, then in the next breath he would mutter “bygones!”)

Liz Smith (elderly actress) had a lot to say that I was interested in. She said you can’t know why people react the way they do; it’s probably connected to things that happened to them. It’s rare to have true friends; people who know exactly who you are and what you’re about.

Liz wanted to talk with other passengers (while on her cruise) but couldn’t bring herself to make the first move — she was convinced they wouldn’t want her. I feel that more and more, even on the internet; I hesitate to comment, email or join in as much as I used to. I used to have an opinion on everything, but now I watch everybody else making mistakes and putting their foot in it, knowing that this time it isn’t me. More and more I decide it’s safer to pretend I’m not even here!

Perhaps it’s all part of getting older.

A friend and I were having a discussion recently — we were saying how we used to blithely do things that now make us curl up in horror and amazement. We were not mountaineers or explorers… but she used to ride rather nervy horses over jumps she wouldn’t even consider these days. Whereas I used to fill in those email letters that asked for your mother’s middle name!! Perhaps along with age we learn fear… but hopefully other, more positive things as well.

I wonder what pearls of wisdom might drop from my lips when I’m over 80 — everything I’m doing and thinking now takes me closer to those truths! It’s an interesting thought.