You should never turn down a chance to see God: that's the cardinal rule of soul searching. If God turns up, you should put down what you're doing and go and have a good look. Because you don't know when he'll turn up again.
"I just saw God!" one of my Japanese friends shouted suddenly in the car yesterday. I was slightly tipsy in the back seat, but this was enough to rouse me from my daydreams and get me to sit up straight. "Just now, I saw God!"
"You saw God?" I cried. "No way!"
"Yes - I saw God!" And then my friend pointed to the roof of the car, in case I didn't know who God was.
"Where?!"
He signalled out of the back window, and I turned round to where he was pointing, but I couldn't see anything. There was - however - quite a lot of light behind a particularly big cloud, so I looked at it as hard as I could.
"Shin, where?!" I repeated.
"Over there! You want to see God?"
"Of course I want to see God! Go back!"
So Shin did an emergency U-turn in the road - the kind criminals do - and drove back down the road.
"Are you excited?" he asked me.
"Hell, yeah!" I shouted.
Shin then pulled to the side of the road and opened his window.
"There," he said. "God."
There was a silence while I watched God munching on some grass and looking balefully at me from over a wire fence.
"That's not God," I told Shin. "That's a goat."
"Yes," he repeated. "God."
And then he pointed to the car ceiling again, except I realised he was actually making the sign of a horn with his right hand.
"No: it's a goat. God lives up there."
"God. Goat. Same."
"It's not the same, Shin. You're saying them wrong."
"You like Goat?"
I looked at the goat.
"He's quite an ugly goat, in fairness," I told him.
"Yes, ugly God."
"Goat, Shin."
There are moments of spirituality in life, where we all graze against religion in one form of another. And there are other moments where we miss it by a long shot.
And that goat on the side of the road, eating grass?
Maybe that was somewhere in between.
Sunday, 29 August 2010
Thursday, 26 August 2010
Service
There are many cliches about Japan and Japanese men and women, and most of them are true.
They do, indeed, love sushi. They eat buckets of the stuff. They adore Karaoke - most of them (although a few sigh, but participate anyway) - and the girls wear little fluffy things in their hair for no apparent reason. Hello Kitty is, truly, the nation's darling, and men do, actually, carry handbags. They drink sake, get drunk pretty quickly, go pink in the face, and then dance to Michael Jackson songs, even though they have no idea at all what he's singing about. They do slurp their noodles, they do eat with chopsticks, and they do pray before eating. All of this, true. True, true, true. Just as the Brits do, in fact, eat fish and chips, drink beer and fall over and hit each other for fun. True, true, true.
The biggest cliche of all, of course, is that Japan has the best Customer Service in the world. And let me clarify this, once and for all: this outlandish statement - this giant of declarations - is absolutely bang on the money. And while it might not seem quite as exciting as fluffy hair things and tiny, creepy cartoon cats, it's the thing that continues to shock long after you've attached something sparkly to your own mobile phone and pledged allegiance to the giant Kitty herself.
Excellent Customer Service is everywhere in Japan: in every single thing you do, every single day. It's Customer Service that would make John Lewis managers weep into their little buttoned shirt sleeves.
In supermarkets, the men behind the fish counter sing - literally sing - 'irrasssshiimmaaassseee' (welcome!) every thirty seconds, just for the pleasure of the people shopping. In restaurants, there are little buttons to press when you want to order something, and when you press it they turn up immediately. Not twenty minutes later, when you've screeched 'hello? helllooo?' fifteen times. Not huffing and puffing and declaring 'what?' as soon as they get to the table. Immediately. In convenience stores, the people packing the shelves will get up straight away and race to the till so that you don't have to queue, while apologising profusely that you had to even look at somebody being served before you were. In doctor's surgeries, the secretaries beaver away, sorting out your files, and there isn't so much as a whiff of 'yeah? Well we're all pretty sick round here, lady. You'll just have to wait your turn and die quietly on that seat over there.'
And it never, ever fails to astound me. After all, I'm British. If the waitress even notices I'm there in England, I'm grateful and thankful enough to leave her an overwhelming tip.
Yesterday, I went to a large shop to find a Yukata (a traditional cotton kimono for summer events), only to find that - because summer is drawing to a close - all the Yukatas have been put in storage.
'Do you have any Yukatas?' I asked the woman behind the desk.
Dunno, the English shop girl would have said. Maybe. It's not summer anymore, though, is it. So probably not. Stand there for twenty minutes and then I'll put my magazine down and pretend to look.
'Just a minute,' the Japanese girl said, and got her microphone out. 'We need some help here! Quickly!'
And out of the back ran - and I mean ran, at full pelt - another lady in an immaculate suit and high heels.
'What is it? Welcome! How can I help?!' she gasped.
'Umm, I'm looking for a Yukata.'
Oh not another bloody person looking for a Yukata, the English girl in my head moaned. It's not bloody summer anymore, is it.
I know, I told her: it's not summer anymore, Tracy.
Nah, we got no Yukatas here, lady.
'Yukatas!' the lady cried. 'Wait!' And then she legged it at full speed back across the huge shop floor, bowed at me as she exited the room backwards (it's rude to show their backs when exiting a room), and came back with three other small and perfectly dressed ladies, and three huge racks of Yukatas: pushing them with all their strength (they were much bigger than they were).
They all then bowed at me.
Now what do you effin' want, you pain in the arse?
'Can we help you in any way? At all?'
'I'll just have a look,' I said, and perused my way through them. Eventually, unable to make up my mind, I told them I would come back tomorrow.
You have got to be friggin' kidding me. I just went and got them all the way out of storage. Now I've got to put them all the way back again? I just stopped texting my boyfriend for this. Why don't you drop down dead, you indecisive son of a bitch.
My Japanese ladies looked delighted.
'Tomorrow! You'll come back tomorrow! Thank you so much!'
And then they pushed the Yukatas back out of the room, bowing as they went.
The moment, however, when I knew that Customer Service in England would never have a hope of holding its head up against Japan was last night, in MacDonalds.
In Japanese MacDonalds, the burgers look like they say they're going to look on the posters. The chips are hot. The men and women are polite, un-spotty, busy: concentrating on your order, instead of their (dirty) finger nails. Everything is spotless. When you order a 'drive through', a little lady in a beautiful suit and hat will run out, hand you your brown paper bag and bow as you drive away.
None of which, however, prepared me for this.
'Oh!' the lady exclaimed as I walked in. 'The ketchup!'
I blushed.
'The ketchup! I forgot last time to give you the ketchup!'
I nodded. She had, indeed, forgotten to give me ketchup.
'I'm so sorry. So sorry.' She put her hands together and bowed. Then she bowed again. 'So sorry!' She bowed again.
'It's okay. Honestly. I survived.'
'I'll give you two this time! Three!'
She started piling ketchups in a bag.
'Honestly, it's alright.'
She bowed again.
'My apologies.'
I put my hand out and smiled as widely as I could.
'Please. It's alright. It's just ketchup.'
And then - giddy with relief - she rushed off to sort me out my perfectly fresh and prompt hamburger.
Japanese Customer Service is nothing like Customer Service anywhere I've ever been in the world. And it never fails to humble me.
Especially because when I walked away with my Big Mac and my ketchup, all I could hear in my head was: Ketchup? You want friggin' Ketchup?
You're lucky I even remembered the burger, mate.
They do, indeed, love sushi. They eat buckets of the stuff. They adore Karaoke - most of them (although a few sigh, but participate anyway) - and the girls wear little fluffy things in their hair for no apparent reason. Hello Kitty is, truly, the nation's darling, and men do, actually, carry handbags. They drink sake, get drunk pretty quickly, go pink in the face, and then dance to Michael Jackson songs, even though they have no idea at all what he's singing about. They do slurp their noodles, they do eat with chopsticks, and they do pray before eating. All of this, true. True, true, true. Just as the Brits do, in fact, eat fish and chips, drink beer and fall over and hit each other for fun. True, true, true.
The biggest cliche of all, of course, is that Japan has the best Customer Service in the world. And let me clarify this, once and for all: this outlandish statement - this giant of declarations - is absolutely bang on the money. And while it might not seem quite as exciting as fluffy hair things and tiny, creepy cartoon cats, it's the thing that continues to shock long after you've attached something sparkly to your own mobile phone and pledged allegiance to the giant Kitty herself.
Excellent Customer Service is everywhere in Japan: in every single thing you do, every single day. It's Customer Service that would make John Lewis managers weep into their little buttoned shirt sleeves.
In supermarkets, the men behind the fish counter sing - literally sing - 'irrasssshiimmaaassseee' (welcome!) every thirty seconds, just for the pleasure of the people shopping. In restaurants, there are little buttons to press when you want to order something, and when you press it they turn up immediately. Not twenty minutes later, when you've screeched 'hello? helllooo?' fifteen times. Not huffing and puffing and declaring 'what?' as soon as they get to the table. Immediately. In convenience stores, the people packing the shelves will get up straight away and race to the till so that you don't have to queue, while apologising profusely that you had to even look at somebody being served before you were. In doctor's surgeries, the secretaries beaver away, sorting out your files, and there isn't so much as a whiff of 'yeah? Well we're all pretty sick round here, lady. You'll just have to wait your turn and die quietly on that seat over there.'
And it never, ever fails to astound me. After all, I'm British. If the waitress even notices I'm there in England, I'm grateful and thankful enough to leave her an overwhelming tip.
Yesterday, I went to a large shop to find a Yukata (a traditional cotton kimono for summer events), only to find that - because summer is drawing to a close - all the Yukatas have been put in storage.
'Do you have any Yukatas?' I asked the woman behind the desk.
Dunno, the English shop girl would have said. Maybe. It's not summer anymore, though, is it. So probably not. Stand there for twenty minutes and then I'll put my magazine down and pretend to look.
'Just a minute,' the Japanese girl said, and got her microphone out. 'We need some help here! Quickly!'
And out of the back ran - and I mean ran, at full pelt - another lady in an immaculate suit and high heels.
'What is it? Welcome! How can I help?!' she gasped.
'Umm, I'm looking for a Yukata.'
Oh not another bloody person looking for a Yukata, the English girl in my head moaned. It's not bloody summer anymore, is it.
I know, I told her: it's not summer anymore, Tracy.
Nah, we got no Yukatas here, lady.
'Yukatas!' the lady cried. 'Wait!' And then she legged it at full speed back across the huge shop floor, bowed at me as she exited the room backwards (it's rude to show their backs when exiting a room), and came back with three other small and perfectly dressed ladies, and three huge racks of Yukatas: pushing them with all their strength (they were much bigger than they were).
They all then bowed at me.
Now what do you effin' want, you pain in the arse?
'Can we help you in any way? At all?'
'I'll just have a look,' I said, and perused my way through them. Eventually, unable to make up my mind, I told them I would come back tomorrow.
You have got to be friggin' kidding me. I just went and got them all the way out of storage. Now I've got to put them all the way back again? I just stopped texting my boyfriend for this. Why don't you drop down dead, you indecisive son of a bitch.
My Japanese ladies looked delighted.
'Tomorrow! You'll come back tomorrow! Thank you so much!'
And then they pushed the Yukatas back out of the room, bowing as they went.
The moment, however, when I knew that Customer Service in England would never have a hope of holding its head up against Japan was last night, in MacDonalds.
In Japanese MacDonalds, the burgers look like they say they're going to look on the posters. The chips are hot. The men and women are polite, un-spotty, busy: concentrating on your order, instead of their (dirty) finger nails. Everything is spotless. When you order a 'drive through', a little lady in a beautiful suit and hat will run out, hand you your brown paper bag and bow as you drive away.
None of which, however, prepared me for this.
'Oh!' the lady exclaimed as I walked in. 'The ketchup!'
I blushed.
'The ketchup! I forgot last time to give you the ketchup!'
I nodded. She had, indeed, forgotten to give me ketchup.
'I'm so sorry. So sorry.' She put her hands together and bowed. Then she bowed again. 'So sorry!' She bowed again.
'It's okay. Honestly. I survived.'
'I'll give you two this time! Three!'
She started piling ketchups in a bag.
'Honestly, it's alright.'
She bowed again.
'My apologies.'
I put my hand out and smiled as widely as I could.
'Please. It's alright. It's just ketchup.'
And then - giddy with relief - she rushed off to sort me out my perfectly fresh and prompt hamburger.
Japanese Customer Service is nothing like Customer Service anywhere I've ever been in the world. And it never fails to humble me.
Especially because when I walked away with my Big Mac and my ketchup, all I could hear in my head was: Ketchup? You want friggin' Ketchup?
You're lucky I even remembered the burger, mate.
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
WAM
I'm on a new diet. It's called the WAM diet.
The Whatever and Multi-vitamins diet.
And it's my healthiest lifestyle choice yet.
This is how it works. You get up in the morning, and you eat whatever you can find. A yoghurt, a piece of chocolate, a pot noodle: the remains of last night's stir fry. At lunch time, you eat whatever is left over from breakfast: half a pot noodle, the crumbly bits from the packet of chocolate, the remains of this morning's stir fry, left over from the night before. If you're lucky, you find a packet of crisps in a bottom drawer, unopened, and you eat some of those as well (and leave the ones that fall out on the floor, because maybe you can fight the ants for them later). Then, for dinner, you drive to the local takeaway and you get the cheapest thing on the menu.
And then - and this is the key bit - you eat a multi-vitamin.
Not just any old multi-vitamin. Oh, no. You have to eat a good quality one, or who knows what kind of rubbish vitamins you're getting? All the bits of the alphabet you don't really want, like Q and W2 and F. No: a good multi-vitamin, with the right alphabet pieces, and you're there. Your body won't have a clue that you've just eaten a bowl of fried noodles, because it's busy going 'oooh, vitamin C! What shall I do with this? Perhaps a little clean out of the liver, might be a good idea' or 'potassium! Awesome! Just what I needed to get rid of this spot.' And before you know it, you're glowing with health and vibrant on the inside and on the outside.
Much more importantly, because you don't spend half of your day running around trying to find yams to peel and ginger to crush and coriander to chop up - because you don't spend the majority of your day standing in the middle of a supermarket screaming 'will somebody help me???' - and the other half trying to work out what the hell you're going to do with them, you have plenty of time for other things. Like life. And writing. And a sense of humour.
And it works an absolute treat. I've decided to drop 'being healthy' in favour of a nice period of 'being busy,' and by God it's cleared my health right up. Now, instead of running on a treadmill, I'm walking up and down in a straight line outside my house, smoking a cigarette and thinking of what's going to happen in my next chapter. Instead of eating brown rice neatly at my table like a responsible adult, I'm eating jelly at my computer and surrounding myself in empty packets and dirty spoons. And I'm infinitely happier as a result.
And infinitely more creative. I've written more today than I have in the last six months: two whole chapters, no less. Or, at least, I think I have. I can't quite see the screen over the top of the pot noodle packets, but it's looking promising.
The WAM diet. Beloved by writers, students and artists everywhere, for a goddamn reason.
Because it works.
The Whatever and Multi-vitamins diet.
And it's my healthiest lifestyle choice yet.
This is how it works. You get up in the morning, and you eat whatever you can find. A yoghurt, a piece of chocolate, a pot noodle: the remains of last night's stir fry. At lunch time, you eat whatever is left over from breakfast: half a pot noodle, the crumbly bits from the packet of chocolate, the remains of this morning's stir fry, left over from the night before. If you're lucky, you find a packet of crisps in a bottom drawer, unopened, and you eat some of those as well (and leave the ones that fall out on the floor, because maybe you can fight the ants for them later). Then, for dinner, you drive to the local takeaway and you get the cheapest thing on the menu.
And then - and this is the key bit - you eat a multi-vitamin.
Not just any old multi-vitamin. Oh, no. You have to eat a good quality one, or who knows what kind of rubbish vitamins you're getting? All the bits of the alphabet you don't really want, like Q and W2 and F. No: a good multi-vitamin, with the right alphabet pieces, and you're there. Your body won't have a clue that you've just eaten a bowl of fried noodles, because it's busy going 'oooh, vitamin C! What shall I do with this? Perhaps a little clean out of the liver, might be a good idea' or 'potassium! Awesome! Just what I needed to get rid of this spot.' And before you know it, you're glowing with health and vibrant on the inside and on the outside.
Much more importantly, because you don't spend half of your day running around trying to find yams to peel and ginger to crush and coriander to chop up - because you don't spend the majority of your day standing in the middle of a supermarket screaming 'will somebody help me???' - and the other half trying to work out what the hell you're going to do with them, you have plenty of time for other things. Like life. And writing. And a sense of humour.
And it works an absolute treat. I've decided to drop 'being healthy' in favour of a nice period of 'being busy,' and by God it's cleared my health right up. Now, instead of running on a treadmill, I'm walking up and down in a straight line outside my house, smoking a cigarette and thinking of what's going to happen in my next chapter. Instead of eating brown rice neatly at my table like a responsible adult, I'm eating jelly at my computer and surrounding myself in empty packets and dirty spoons. And I'm infinitely happier as a result.
And infinitely more creative. I've written more today than I have in the last six months: two whole chapters, no less. Or, at least, I think I have. I can't quite see the screen over the top of the pot noodle packets, but it's looking promising.
The WAM diet. Beloved by writers, students and artists everywhere, for a goddamn reason.
Because it works.
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
Cosmic humour
And the cosmic jokes keep coming. The universe is literally lobbing them at me now, and it's all I can do to duck so that they don't wallop me in the face.
Today, I got the following message from somebody I haven't seen for eighteen years. A message that began:
Am I the blonde eight year old? I just thought I'd check.
Twenty years ago, the love of my small, freckled life was a boy called Tom. In fact, he was the love of everybody's lives back then: I distinctly remember a girl's pyjama party (aged 9) where we all confessed - with increasing alarm - that we all intended to marry him, which could pose a problem what with British laws being what they were. There was a bit of an ego scuffle - a bit of 'well, I believe that I'll be marrying him because I've got the newest My Little Pony, not to mention that he borrowed two pencils off me last week' - and I promptly ducked out and decided not to compete. Not that you compete at the age of 9, obviously, because you're not sure what you're competing for: you just become vaguely aware that when you look in your desk on Valentine's day and there's nothing there, something is amiss (this feeling continues, incidentally. No matter how old you get).
Anyway, I didn't have the ego to scuffle with, so I just contented myself with furiously trying to beat him at everything: swimming, History, Maths, Geography, Art, whatever that subject is in primary school where you use a glue gun for no identified reason. Beating him, and thus gaining at least some kind of unwilling respect, which was one up on not knowing I existed: which was clearly the alternative.
You might have beat me at Maths but you didn't beat me at Geography, Tom added, twenty years later.
I wouldn't want to beat you at Geography, I told him. Geography's rubbish.
Anyway, twenty years ago the 8 year old Holly Smale had a rough deal of it. Not only was she freckled and shy and gappy teethed and knobbly kneed; not only did she have extremely prominent ears and an interest in Elizabethan History; not only did her fellow, pretty, female classmates think it was hysterical that she should like the same person that everybody else liked (she did try, for the record, to like somebody else - just to balance it out - but it turned out that even at 9 it doesn't work like that), but her mother also thought it was hysterical. So hysterical, in fact, that she took to making animal noises in the front seat of the car, because his last name was the name of an animal and thus she was ingeniously making the most obvious link possible and humiliating me with it. (For which, mother, I will be forever grateful.)
Thus, every single day at school was a rollercoaster of excitement and humiliation and shyness: spent blushing, hiding, quivering, watching. Spent going through that first terrible, wonderful crush.
It lasted.... Well. I don't know how long it lasted. Into my teens, I'd say. It was unrequited, but it remained steadfast: his dotted line lasted until I was at least 13, and then it got replaced by somebody else who was also adored by hundreds. (Clearly, I had not learnt my place on the ladder: and never did, actually. I'm always climbing up where I shouldn't be climbing.)
But - and this was the most important thing - he never knew. There was never one moment where he knew: not one confession at a school disco, not one secret little love note tucked into his satchel, not one rubber handed over with my a little heart doodled on it. It was my biggest romantic secret: the one I would have died rather than let on. Even the fates appeared to be unknowing: they made him Prince Charming when I was Cinderella in the school play, and then swapped another girl in for the half where they got to kiss.
Exactly.
Well: he knows now. Because it turns out that he reads this bloody blog. And that is not how I wanted the poor boy to find out. Twenty years ago, the freckled, shy Holly Smale would have been horrified - devastated - if she had known that the love of her eight year old life would find out that she liked him on the internet. Now, she thinks it's funny. Embarrassing, obviously, but funny.
Which leaves me to look at the sky again. It's still, apparently, laughing.
"Seriously? Are you playing silly beggars?"
Hahahaha. Ah, come on. You've had a rough ride of it recently. I'm throwing in as many laughs as I can find.
"Yes. I can see that."
Did you like it? Write 'I'm free' in the sand like a big old hippy and within two minutes get a miniature version of your ex turn up. Write about letting go of your romantic past, and the next day that writing drags up your romantic past. I'm doing good, aren't I? It's funny, right?
"Yup. Very funny. Can you stop now? Too much cosmic humour is just as bad as none at all."
I love irony: the building blocks of satire. But as long as you're laughing at yourself, you can't really go wrong.
Until, that is, you decide to tell the world about it.
Today, I got the following message from somebody I haven't seen for eighteen years. A message that began:
Am I the blonde eight year old? I just thought I'd check.
Twenty years ago, the love of my small, freckled life was a boy called Tom. In fact, he was the love of everybody's lives back then: I distinctly remember a girl's pyjama party (aged 9) where we all confessed - with increasing alarm - that we all intended to marry him, which could pose a problem what with British laws being what they were. There was a bit of an ego scuffle - a bit of 'well, I believe that I'll be marrying him because I've got the newest My Little Pony, not to mention that he borrowed two pencils off me last week' - and I promptly ducked out and decided not to compete. Not that you compete at the age of 9, obviously, because you're not sure what you're competing for: you just become vaguely aware that when you look in your desk on Valentine's day and there's nothing there, something is amiss (this feeling continues, incidentally. No matter how old you get).
Anyway, I didn't have the ego to scuffle with, so I just contented myself with furiously trying to beat him at everything: swimming, History, Maths, Geography, Art, whatever that subject is in primary school where you use a glue gun for no identified reason. Beating him, and thus gaining at least some kind of unwilling respect, which was one up on not knowing I existed: which was clearly the alternative.
You might have beat me at Maths but you didn't beat me at Geography, Tom added, twenty years later.
I wouldn't want to beat you at Geography, I told him. Geography's rubbish.
Anyway, twenty years ago the 8 year old Holly Smale had a rough deal of it. Not only was she freckled and shy and gappy teethed and knobbly kneed; not only did she have extremely prominent ears and an interest in Elizabethan History; not only did her fellow, pretty, female classmates think it was hysterical that she should like the same person that everybody else liked (she did try, for the record, to like somebody else - just to balance it out - but it turned out that even at 9 it doesn't work like that), but her mother also thought it was hysterical. So hysterical, in fact, that she took to making animal noises in the front seat of the car, because his last name was the name of an animal and thus she was ingeniously making the most obvious link possible and humiliating me with it. (For which, mother, I will be forever grateful.)
Thus, every single day at school was a rollercoaster of excitement and humiliation and shyness: spent blushing, hiding, quivering, watching. Spent going through that first terrible, wonderful crush.
It lasted.... Well. I don't know how long it lasted. Into my teens, I'd say. It was unrequited, but it remained steadfast: his dotted line lasted until I was at least 13, and then it got replaced by somebody else who was also adored by hundreds. (Clearly, I had not learnt my place on the ladder: and never did, actually. I'm always climbing up where I shouldn't be climbing.)
But - and this was the most important thing - he never knew. There was never one moment where he knew: not one confession at a school disco, not one secret little love note tucked into his satchel, not one rubber handed over with my a little heart doodled on it. It was my biggest romantic secret: the one I would have died rather than let on. Even the fates appeared to be unknowing: they made him Prince Charming when I was Cinderella in the school play, and then swapped another girl in for the half where they got to kiss.
Exactly.
Well: he knows now. Because it turns out that he reads this bloody blog. And that is not how I wanted the poor boy to find out. Twenty years ago, the freckled, shy Holly Smale would have been horrified - devastated - if she had known that the love of her eight year old life would find out that she liked him on the internet. Now, she thinks it's funny. Embarrassing, obviously, but funny.
Which leaves me to look at the sky again. It's still, apparently, laughing.
"Seriously? Are you playing silly beggars?"
Hahahaha. Ah, come on. You've had a rough ride of it recently. I'm throwing in as many laughs as I can find.
"Yes. I can see that."
Did you like it? Write 'I'm free' in the sand like a big old hippy and within two minutes get a miniature version of your ex turn up. Write about letting go of your romantic past, and the next day that writing drags up your romantic past. I'm doing good, aren't I? It's funny, right?
"Yup. Very funny. Can you stop now? Too much cosmic humour is just as bad as none at all."
I love irony: the building blocks of satire. But as long as you're laughing at yourself, you can't really go wrong.
Until, that is, you decide to tell the world about it.
Monday, 23 August 2010
Bells and sticks
God, or fate, or the stars - or whatever you want to call a larger power, bigger than the rest of us - certainly has a great sense of humour. You just have to be in the mood for laughing.
Which I now am.
After writing the last post, I promptly drove down to my favourite Japanese shrine, which lies in the middle of a deep cave near my house, next to the sea. It's dark, it's silent, water drips from the cave rocks into puddles, and it feels absolutely peaceful: it's impossible to go there and not feel as if something is listening, even if it's just an inner part of yourself. It's where I go to regenerate and think, and I often find myself praying. I haven't quite worked out what or who I'm praying to yet - I don't believe in God - but it feels natural and it feels right in this shrine, so I pray. Or, more specifically, I say thankyou.
"Thankyou," I said, ringing the bell, "for making me feel better today. Thankyou for making me feel alright to be alone. Thankyou for clearing the way so I can think more cleanly. Thankyou for making today seem like the start of something much happier. Thankyou because I don't hurt."
That's alright, the little voice - almost definitely just a part of myself - said. No worries.
And then I grabbed my cigarettes and made for the beach. I've been to many beautiful places in the last few weeks, but none of them match the little beach next to my house: a beach bordered with blue mountains and headed by a faint moon and a halo of pink. I walked past a very young, good looking Japanese boy on a bike - ignoring the fact that he swivelled to look at me (of course he swivelled to look at me: I'm foreign, nearly six foot and wearing bright orange MC Hammer trousers) - and walked calmly down to the water to smoke and gaze and smile and generally feel happier and more content than I have in an extremely long time. And then, when I had done smoking and gazing and smiling, I acted on a silly whim, grabbed a stick, walked down to the wet sand and wrote:
I am free.
In large, curly writing. And stood, completely still, and watched the sea edge towards it, until it finally wiped out the words: which seemed like exactly the right thing for the sea to do.
As I came back to my car, still smiling and feeling utterly peaceful, the young boy on the bike unexpectedly rode towards me and said - in an American accent -
"Where are you from?"
It took a few moments to process that he wasn't speaking Japanese, before I managed to reply:
"England."
"Hi," he said. "I'm Elliot. I'm American Japanese. I just got here." He told me that he came here for the surfing, that he didn't speak much Japanese, that he didn't know many people and that it would be great to hang out some time or surf. And then he asked for my number. So I gave it to him and asked him to come to a festival next week: I know what it's like to be young, to have nobody to hang out with, and - frankly - there simply aren't enough English speakers in Nichinan to say no to new friends. Even if I've just managed to get rid of one, considerably older, half Japanese boy who likes surfing and riding bikes.
As I drove away, I found myself laughing out loud and looking at the sky. And I swear that I could almost hear the sky chuckling back.
"Very funny," I told the sky. "Very fucking funny."
Ahahahaha. I thought it would be hilarious. All that bell ringing and praying and beach writing. Figured the irony would give you a good laugh.
"It did, actually. Cheers."
It's been said by many that life is not a tragedy, and it's not a comedy: it's somewhere in between. And - if that is true - there are always times to laugh. You just have to be looking out for them.
And now, at last, I am.
Which I now am.
After writing the last post, I promptly drove down to my favourite Japanese shrine, which lies in the middle of a deep cave near my house, next to the sea. It's dark, it's silent, water drips from the cave rocks into puddles, and it feels absolutely peaceful: it's impossible to go there and not feel as if something is listening, even if it's just an inner part of yourself. It's where I go to regenerate and think, and I often find myself praying. I haven't quite worked out what or who I'm praying to yet - I don't believe in God - but it feels natural and it feels right in this shrine, so I pray. Or, more specifically, I say thankyou.
"Thankyou," I said, ringing the bell, "for making me feel better today. Thankyou for making me feel alright to be alone. Thankyou for clearing the way so I can think more cleanly. Thankyou for making today seem like the start of something much happier. Thankyou because I don't hurt."
That's alright, the little voice - almost definitely just a part of myself - said. No worries.
And then I grabbed my cigarettes and made for the beach. I've been to many beautiful places in the last few weeks, but none of them match the little beach next to my house: a beach bordered with blue mountains and headed by a faint moon and a halo of pink. I walked past a very young, good looking Japanese boy on a bike - ignoring the fact that he swivelled to look at me (of course he swivelled to look at me: I'm foreign, nearly six foot and wearing bright orange MC Hammer trousers) - and walked calmly down to the water to smoke and gaze and smile and generally feel happier and more content than I have in an extremely long time. And then, when I had done smoking and gazing and smiling, I acted on a silly whim, grabbed a stick, walked down to the wet sand and wrote:
I am free.
In large, curly writing. And stood, completely still, and watched the sea edge towards it, until it finally wiped out the words: which seemed like exactly the right thing for the sea to do.
As I came back to my car, still smiling and feeling utterly peaceful, the young boy on the bike unexpectedly rode towards me and said - in an American accent -
"Where are you from?"
It took a few moments to process that he wasn't speaking Japanese, before I managed to reply:
"England."
"Hi," he said. "I'm Elliot. I'm American Japanese. I just got here." He told me that he came here for the surfing, that he didn't speak much Japanese, that he didn't know many people and that it would be great to hang out some time or surf. And then he asked for my number. So I gave it to him and asked him to come to a festival next week: I know what it's like to be young, to have nobody to hang out with, and - frankly - there simply aren't enough English speakers in Nichinan to say no to new friends. Even if I've just managed to get rid of one, considerably older, half Japanese boy who likes surfing and riding bikes.
As I drove away, I found myself laughing out loud and looking at the sky. And I swear that I could almost hear the sky chuckling back.
"Very funny," I told the sky. "Very fucking funny."
Ahahahaha. I thought it would be hilarious. All that bell ringing and praying and beach writing. Figured the irony would give you a good laugh.
"It did, actually. Cheers."
It's been said by many that life is not a tragedy, and it's not a comedy: it's somewhere in between. And - if that is true - there are always times to laugh. You just have to be looking out for them.
And now, at last, I am.
Butterfly
Today it all starts again. The clock resets.
Last night - suffering from severe jetlag and general confusion regarding what country I was in, what bed I was in, what time it was, and why I was considering driving to MacDonalds at 4am because I was goddamn starving - I decided to draw a graph. Things always make more sense in graphs. You take something vague, insubstantial and ephemeral, and you turn it into hard facts: transform random events into sequential patterns with links between them. You can argue with notions, but you can't argue with graphs.
So, perky as a brass button and wide awake at 4am, I opted against a BigMac and, instead, I drew a graph of my love life. I drew a time line, starting at seven years old (a blue eyed, blonde curtained lovely who used to compete with me in Maths - and lose - called Tom) and ending at twenty eight (a dark, curly haired Japanese boy called The Boy and many other names I'm not adding here). In between these two, I drew dots and lines for every substantial encounter I've had: a dot for each boy, and a line for how long they lasted. Included in these lines I added dotted lines for the bit before we got together, where I was thinking about them, and dotted lines for the bit after we broke up, where I was also thinking about them. I also - because I'm a total geek - colour coded each of the boys according to seriousness of relationship, how I felt about them, what the impact was, whether the word 'love' was ever used, and added arrows for decisions I had made accordingly.
And then, as an experiment, I got a different colour pen, and I shaded in the patches where I was particularly creative: when, for instance, I'd written a lot of chapters in a short amount of time, or written any strong short stories.
When I'd finished colouring and dotting and drawing, I stepped back and I held the graph up to my face. And then I gasped loudly and put it down again.
I'm not going to tell you how many dots and lines there were: I'm a nice girl, and that's my business. What's important is that there was no space in between. At all. Before the dotted lines of one had run out, dotted lines for another had started. True, none of the actual relationships (and I use this term, on occasion, loosely) overlapped, but the dotted lines before and after? The bits where somebody was in my head, snuffling around in the debris of my heart and mind? They overlapped. They always overlapped. And the only two occasions where the dotted lines were longer - weaker, perhaps, and fading away - that was where my creativity was. In the two bits where my thoughts were only vaguely attached to anyone, and waning rather than waxing. That was where I wrote and wrote well.
Worse, the decisions I had thought I was making for myself were almost always a reaction for or against one of the lines on my graph. Life choices - choosing jobs, cities, courses, Universities - were made, if I looked far enough inside myself, because of something happening at the time with somebody else: moving either with or away from them. Life decisions being made for me, rather than by me.
"You," my best friend said to me in London last week, "are like a romantic butterfly. You flitter from flower to flower, doing your best to love each and every single one of them, and then you flitter off again."
"Doesn't that just mean I'm a hussy?"
"Oh no. Not at all. It's not about anything seedy. It's about love. You feed off it: off the beauty, and the excitement, and the emotion. And then you fly off and land straight on the next one."
"It's not always very beautiful, though," I pointed out. "In fact, it's very often not beautiful at all."
"Well obviously. Butterflies tend to just land on the flower next to them, don't they."
Each of the lines on my graph, I've loved in my own way, because there are few people in the world you can't love if you try hard enough. There are always things to love in a person, and qualities to admire, and weaknesses to defend, vulnerabilities to protect: things that can make you care about them, and hurt when they hurt or when they leave or you have to. But in always loving, and always flittering, and always landing, I've not given myself any time at all to see how far I can fly, or what I can do when I'm not. I've not worked out what to do when I'm not flying away from or towards another flower.
I can't argue with a graph, and this graph has finally given me hard evidence of what I suspected: that if I don't know who I am, it's because I've never let myself find out, and if I don't know how high I can fly, it's because I'm always trying so bloody hard to land.
At 4pm this afternoon I woke up - still craving a MacDonalds and jetlagged to hell - and I felt free. For the first time since I can remember, I felt alone, rather than lonely. I still don't know what I'm doing, but I know - finally - that it's for me to find out: that I have all the time, and the space, and the freedom, to do just that. Me, and my hopes and my dreams. Me, and my writing. Me, and my creativity. Me, and the power I have to get exactly what it is I want, when I want it.
And that feels - oh God - it feels amazing.
At some stage - when I want to - I'll find another flower. But, by then, I'll be strong enough, and wise enough, and ready enough, to find the perfect flower - the one I want to stay on - and fly to it, rather than simply landing on the one next to me.
And I'll have chosen my life, rather than letting it choose me.
Last night - suffering from severe jetlag and general confusion regarding what country I was in, what bed I was in, what time it was, and why I was considering driving to MacDonalds at 4am because I was goddamn starving - I decided to draw a graph. Things always make more sense in graphs. You take something vague, insubstantial and ephemeral, and you turn it into hard facts: transform random events into sequential patterns with links between them. You can argue with notions, but you can't argue with graphs.
So, perky as a brass button and wide awake at 4am, I opted against a BigMac and, instead, I drew a graph of my love life. I drew a time line, starting at seven years old (a blue eyed, blonde curtained lovely who used to compete with me in Maths - and lose - called Tom) and ending at twenty eight (a dark, curly haired Japanese boy called The Boy and many other names I'm not adding here). In between these two, I drew dots and lines for every substantial encounter I've had: a dot for each boy, and a line for how long they lasted. Included in these lines I added dotted lines for the bit before we got together, where I was thinking about them, and dotted lines for the bit after we broke up, where I was also thinking about them. I also - because I'm a total geek - colour coded each of the boys according to seriousness of relationship, how I felt about them, what the impact was, whether the word 'love' was ever used, and added arrows for decisions I had made accordingly.
And then, as an experiment, I got a different colour pen, and I shaded in the patches where I was particularly creative: when, for instance, I'd written a lot of chapters in a short amount of time, or written any strong short stories.
When I'd finished colouring and dotting and drawing, I stepped back and I held the graph up to my face. And then I gasped loudly and put it down again.
I'm not going to tell you how many dots and lines there were: I'm a nice girl, and that's my business. What's important is that there was no space in between. At all. Before the dotted lines of one had run out, dotted lines for another had started. True, none of the actual relationships (and I use this term, on occasion, loosely) overlapped, but the dotted lines before and after? The bits where somebody was in my head, snuffling around in the debris of my heart and mind? They overlapped. They always overlapped. And the only two occasions where the dotted lines were longer - weaker, perhaps, and fading away - that was where my creativity was. In the two bits where my thoughts were only vaguely attached to anyone, and waning rather than waxing. That was where I wrote and wrote well.
Worse, the decisions I had thought I was making for myself were almost always a reaction for or against one of the lines on my graph. Life choices - choosing jobs, cities, courses, Universities - were made, if I looked far enough inside myself, because of something happening at the time with somebody else: moving either with or away from them. Life decisions being made for me, rather than by me.
"You," my best friend said to me in London last week, "are like a romantic butterfly. You flitter from flower to flower, doing your best to love each and every single one of them, and then you flitter off again."
"Doesn't that just mean I'm a hussy?"
"Oh no. Not at all. It's not about anything seedy. It's about love. You feed off it: off the beauty, and the excitement, and the emotion. And then you fly off and land straight on the next one."
"It's not always very beautiful, though," I pointed out. "In fact, it's very often not beautiful at all."
"Well obviously. Butterflies tend to just land on the flower next to them, don't they."
Each of the lines on my graph, I've loved in my own way, because there are few people in the world you can't love if you try hard enough. There are always things to love in a person, and qualities to admire, and weaknesses to defend, vulnerabilities to protect: things that can make you care about them, and hurt when they hurt or when they leave or you have to. But in always loving, and always flittering, and always landing, I've not given myself any time at all to see how far I can fly, or what I can do when I'm not. I've not worked out what to do when I'm not flying away from or towards another flower.
I can't argue with a graph, and this graph has finally given me hard evidence of what I suspected: that if I don't know who I am, it's because I've never let myself find out, and if I don't know how high I can fly, it's because I'm always trying so bloody hard to land.
At 4pm this afternoon I woke up - still craving a MacDonalds and jetlagged to hell - and I felt free. For the first time since I can remember, I felt alone, rather than lonely. I still don't know what I'm doing, but I know - finally - that it's for me to find out: that I have all the time, and the space, and the freedom, to do just that. Me, and my hopes and my dreams. Me, and my writing. Me, and my creativity. Me, and the power I have to get exactly what it is I want, when I want it.
And that feels - oh God - it feels amazing.
At some stage - when I want to - I'll find another flower. But, by then, I'll be strong enough, and wise enough, and ready enough, to find the perfect flower - the one I want to stay on - and fly to it, rather than simply landing on the one next to me.
And I'll have chosen my life, rather than letting it choose me.
Sunday, 22 August 2010
Queues
You can run as fast as you like, but when you stop - and you always have to stop - the truth catches up. And if you happen to be at the front of a sixty five minute queue in the middle of Le Louvre at the time: so be it. It will find you, and it will knock you right out of the queue again. Which probably won't impress the person you've been queuing with. Sixty five minutes is a long wait to have to do all over again.
I have had two and a half of the busiest weeks I can remember ever having. Two and a half weeks of everything: of Morocco and Shisha pipe and swimming and meat and orange juice and cigarettes and donkeys and camels and stars and Paris and wine and wine and wine and wine and cheese and wine and more cheese and bed bouncing and bread and more cigarettes and pain au chocolat and boats and umbrellas and laughing; of London and burgers and wine and pizza; of Bristol and dancing and cocktails and shouting and singing and starting a fight with a homeless man because he was rude to me. I've drowned myself in good food and good drink and good company: friends, family, and a host of peculiar strangers. I've received a chat-up line so accidentally funny that the poor guy thought it had worked ("God, you're gorgeous. You look just like Kate Moss.... Although you might not. To be honest, I'm pretty much blind"); I got given contact details by a nice looking and respectable 30 year old doctor and the afore mentioned homeless man ("Changed my mind. You're not stuck up after all. I like you. Come and see me again. I'll be.... here."). It was a fantastic holiday: great fun, and an enormous success. I laughed a lot, I saw a lot, and I travelled a lot. I know that, because I'm now far more tired than I was when I left and far, far poorer.
Five countries in 14 days, and it wasn't until I got into that goddamn queue that what I was running from came and grabbed me by the throat. And I mean as literally as a metaphorical thing can grab. I actually felt its cold little metaphorical fingers holding on to my windpipe.
"And," I continued mercilessly to my friend, fifty five minutes into talking at her: "there's a bit in this book that talks about this concept of immortality as being part of the wider..."
"Hol," she said tiredly. "Please. Stop."
"Stop what?"
"It's okay to be quiet, you know. It's nine am, I've not had coffee, the air conditioning isn't working in here and I'm sick of queuing. I really can't talk about immortality right now. Really. I can't. I just can't."
I looked at her with wide eyes.
"Oh."
"Just not right now, okay? We can talk about immortality and Eastern European works of literature later. When I've been to Starbucks."
My eyes got wider.
"Okay."
And then I looked at a far point of a naked statue and felt - strangely, inexplicably and completely unexpectedly - my chin wobbling violently. Just as I was trying to work out why my chin was wobbling, something invisible put its hand round my throat and I discovered that I couldn't breathe.
"Hol? Jesus. Are you okay?"
"Mmm."
I tried to get my breath, started shaking, realised that tears were pouring down my face, and discovered to my horror that - in front of approximately 2,000 French people and a handful of Americans - I was having what I could only assume was a panic attack. Having never had one before I couldn't be sure, but if I had been carrying a paper bag I would probably have reached for it.
"Oh fuck," my friend said, and dragged me out of the queue and into a corner behind a statue of a woman with an abnormally large bottom.
I sat on the floor behind a statue in one of the greatest museums in the world - surrounded by some of the most beautiful art in the world, in one of the most amazing cities in the world - and I huffed and I puffed and I cried as quietly as I possibly could, with my chest aching and my knees shaking, and my friend staring at me in astonishment. It was the last day of Paris: we had had a glorious, funny, comfortable, reassuring holiday. And nothing had prepared either of us for this.
"Shit," she said finally. "If you want to talk about Milan Kundera that badly then let's talk about Milan Kundera. I haven't had my coffee yet but I'll wing it."
I sobbed in silence a couple more times (I rarely make noise when I cry: I just sort of start... weeping. Literally weeping. As if I'm too full of liquid).
"Shit. Shit. Umm, have you read The Unbearable Lightness of Being? What did you think of the translation?"
I took a breath and managed to squeeze out, from in between the fingers of the thing holding on to me:
"It's. Not. About. Kundera."
"It's not?"
I shook my head.
"What is it, then?"
I opened and shut my mouth a few more times, like a little panicky goldfish.
"Is it dickhead?"
"No. Yes. No. Yes." I shook my head a few times. "No."
"No?"
"It's not."
"It's not?"
"No. It's not about him. It's about me. You're right: I can't be quiet. I'm scared to stop, even for a minute. I don't know who I am anymore, or what I want, or what I can do. And a big bit of it is because of him and how much he hurt me, but mostly it's because of me. I've never been on my own before. Not really on my own. Not since I was a teenager. I'm twenty eight, and I've jumped from relationship to fling to relationship to fling, and there has always been somebody: to think about, to try and love, to try and not love, to arrange my life around, to put first, to care about more than I care about me. Always a man in my life, stopping me from being.... just me. And now... It's all stopped, and I'm alone, and I'm me, and the minute I stay still I start to panic, because I don't know who I am without it. I don't know what I'm worth without being told by a man. I don't know how to love myself without seeing love in the eyes of somebody I'm seeing. I depend on being adored to feel like I am worth being adored. And I can't stop talking because as soon as the silence starts I start wishing I wasn't ... me. And I don't know how to make it better."
At least, that is what I was trying to say. What I actually said was a string of unrelated words, joined together by sobs and hiccups.
Nina rubbed my back for a few minutes, deep in thought. And then she said what I needed her to say, which was:
"Fuck."
I nodded.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
I shrugged. "What am I going to say? Hey, buddy, how's tricks? Long time no see. How's the house hunt/ job/ boyfriend? I want to die. Shall we get some cheese?"
"But you are loved. You should be letting the people in your life who do love you love you, Hol. We can't do that if you don't tell us what's wrong."
"I tell my blog."
"Your blog isn't going to queue twice in the Louvre so it can rub your back when you cry, can it. You need to tell people, Holly. Not internet sites."
"It's easier to write it," I sniffed.
"Of course it is! It's not real! Why aren't you telling the people who can help you?"
"Because I'm ashamed. For being weak. And for needing people."
"Be ashamed that you're talking about Milan Kundera at 9am without so much as a sniff of Cappuccino. Not because you're falling apart and need a few cuddles now and then."
So we talked. I stopped crying, the hand around my throat released itself, and we talked. And then - when we had finished talking - I went home and I talked, honestly, to my parents and my sister and my two other best friends. And I resisted the irrationally strong urge to text the cute Doctor back, because that's what I would have done at any other stage in my life: run straight to my next source of adoration, arms wide open. Straight into the arms of whatever I could find that would make me feel whole again, so I wouldn't have to do it myself.
This time, I didn't. I didn't need to. The love I need has been there all the time: it just hasn't been romantic. My family and friends sang my praises until I blushed. And, when I had stopped crying, I realised that the weight had started lifting already. Because it wasn't just me anymore, struggling against my own loneliness, and my own confusion, and myself. I had people to fight with me. And if I couldn't see my way out - despite the exercise, despite the yoga, despite the wine, despite the laughter, despite the cheese, for God's sake, and cheese normally does it - then I needed other people to stand up and show me the way. To hold up a torch so I could see in the dark.
I'm in a hole: a hole I fell into by accident, and haven't quite worked out how to get out of. A hole I've been digging for ten years: ten years of putting myself second, and needing somebody else to put me first. But I know I'm there, now, and so I know I can start climbing back out again; start putting myself first, and working out what it is I want to do with my life. This holiday hasn't just given me laughter and dancing and wine - all of which were much needed, and have done their part - it has shown me, finally, that I'm not on my own. That there is a rope, thrown in, ready to pull me out again. And it has forced me to take control, and start climbing. Because I have no other choice: not if I want to visit public museums without humiliating myself again.
I'm at the front of my life for once, and behind me I now have a very different kind of queue to the one I ran out of in Paris: a queue of people who adore me. Who believe in everything I do: who defend my mistakes, and cheer my moments of glory. Who see me with such adoring eyes that even the faintest reflection lifts and strengthens and inspires. Whose love I can feed off, and grow stronger. My very own, private army.
With an army the size and quality of mine - an army with so much wisdom, and so much affection, and so much ability to drink huge quantities of wine and eat boxes of Camembert - there aren't many things I can't battle against and win.
And that includes myself.
I have had two and a half of the busiest weeks I can remember ever having. Two and a half weeks of everything: of Morocco and Shisha pipe and swimming and meat and orange juice and cigarettes and donkeys and camels and stars and Paris and wine and wine and wine and wine and cheese and wine and more cheese and bed bouncing and bread and more cigarettes and pain au chocolat and boats and umbrellas and laughing; of London and burgers and wine and pizza; of Bristol and dancing and cocktails and shouting and singing and starting a fight with a homeless man because he was rude to me. I've drowned myself in good food and good drink and good company: friends, family, and a host of peculiar strangers. I've received a chat-up line so accidentally funny that the poor guy thought it had worked ("God, you're gorgeous. You look just like Kate Moss.... Although you might not. To be honest, I'm pretty much blind"); I got given contact details by a nice looking and respectable 30 year old doctor and the afore mentioned homeless man ("Changed my mind. You're not stuck up after all. I like you. Come and see me again. I'll be.... here."). It was a fantastic holiday: great fun, and an enormous success. I laughed a lot, I saw a lot, and I travelled a lot. I know that, because I'm now far more tired than I was when I left and far, far poorer.
Five countries in 14 days, and it wasn't until I got into that goddamn queue that what I was running from came and grabbed me by the throat. And I mean as literally as a metaphorical thing can grab. I actually felt its cold little metaphorical fingers holding on to my windpipe.
"And," I continued mercilessly to my friend, fifty five minutes into talking at her: "there's a bit in this book that talks about this concept of immortality as being part of the wider..."
"Hol," she said tiredly. "Please. Stop."
"Stop what?"
"It's okay to be quiet, you know. It's nine am, I've not had coffee, the air conditioning isn't working in here and I'm sick of queuing. I really can't talk about immortality right now. Really. I can't. I just can't."
I looked at her with wide eyes.
"Oh."
"Just not right now, okay? We can talk about immortality and Eastern European works of literature later. When I've been to Starbucks."
My eyes got wider.
"Okay."
And then I looked at a far point of a naked statue and felt - strangely, inexplicably and completely unexpectedly - my chin wobbling violently. Just as I was trying to work out why my chin was wobbling, something invisible put its hand round my throat and I discovered that I couldn't breathe.
"Hol? Jesus. Are you okay?"
"Mmm."
I tried to get my breath, started shaking, realised that tears were pouring down my face, and discovered to my horror that - in front of approximately 2,000 French people and a handful of Americans - I was having what I could only assume was a panic attack. Having never had one before I couldn't be sure, but if I had been carrying a paper bag I would probably have reached for it.
"Oh fuck," my friend said, and dragged me out of the queue and into a corner behind a statue of a woman with an abnormally large bottom.
I sat on the floor behind a statue in one of the greatest museums in the world - surrounded by some of the most beautiful art in the world, in one of the most amazing cities in the world - and I huffed and I puffed and I cried as quietly as I possibly could, with my chest aching and my knees shaking, and my friend staring at me in astonishment. It was the last day of Paris: we had had a glorious, funny, comfortable, reassuring holiday. And nothing had prepared either of us for this.
"Shit," she said finally. "If you want to talk about Milan Kundera that badly then let's talk about Milan Kundera. I haven't had my coffee yet but I'll wing it."
I sobbed in silence a couple more times (I rarely make noise when I cry: I just sort of start... weeping. Literally weeping. As if I'm too full of liquid).
"Shit. Shit. Umm, have you read The Unbearable Lightness of Being? What did you think of the translation?"
I took a breath and managed to squeeze out, from in between the fingers of the thing holding on to me:
"It's. Not. About. Kundera."
"It's not?"
I shook my head.
"What is it, then?"
I opened and shut my mouth a few more times, like a little panicky goldfish.
"Is it dickhead?"
"No. Yes. No. Yes." I shook my head a few times. "No."
"No?"
"It's not."
"It's not?"
"No. It's not about him. It's about me. You're right: I can't be quiet. I'm scared to stop, even for a minute. I don't know who I am anymore, or what I want, or what I can do. And a big bit of it is because of him and how much he hurt me, but mostly it's because of me. I've never been on my own before. Not really on my own. Not since I was a teenager. I'm twenty eight, and I've jumped from relationship to fling to relationship to fling, and there has always been somebody: to think about, to try and love, to try and not love, to arrange my life around, to put first, to care about more than I care about me. Always a man in my life, stopping me from being.... just me. And now... It's all stopped, and I'm alone, and I'm me, and the minute I stay still I start to panic, because I don't know who I am without it. I don't know what I'm worth without being told by a man. I don't know how to love myself without seeing love in the eyes of somebody I'm seeing. I depend on being adored to feel like I am worth being adored. And I can't stop talking because as soon as the silence starts I start wishing I wasn't ... me. And I don't know how to make it better."
At least, that is what I was trying to say. What I actually said was a string of unrelated words, joined together by sobs and hiccups.
Nina rubbed my back for a few minutes, deep in thought. And then she said what I needed her to say, which was:
"Fuck."
I nodded.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
I shrugged. "What am I going to say? Hey, buddy, how's tricks? Long time no see. How's the house hunt/ job/ boyfriend? I want to die. Shall we get some cheese?"
"But you are loved. You should be letting the people in your life who do love you love you, Hol. We can't do that if you don't tell us what's wrong."
"I tell my blog."
"Your blog isn't going to queue twice in the Louvre so it can rub your back when you cry, can it. You need to tell people, Holly. Not internet sites."
"It's easier to write it," I sniffed.
"Of course it is! It's not real! Why aren't you telling the people who can help you?"
"Because I'm ashamed. For being weak. And for needing people."
"Be ashamed that you're talking about Milan Kundera at 9am without so much as a sniff of Cappuccino. Not because you're falling apart and need a few cuddles now and then."
So we talked. I stopped crying, the hand around my throat released itself, and we talked. And then - when we had finished talking - I went home and I talked, honestly, to my parents and my sister and my two other best friends. And I resisted the irrationally strong urge to text the cute Doctor back, because that's what I would have done at any other stage in my life: run straight to my next source of adoration, arms wide open. Straight into the arms of whatever I could find that would make me feel whole again, so I wouldn't have to do it myself.
This time, I didn't. I didn't need to. The love I need has been there all the time: it just hasn't been romantic. My family and friends sang my praises until I blushed. And, when I had stopped crying, I realised that the weight had started lifting already. Because it wasn't just me anymore, struggling against my own loneliness, and my own confusion, and myself. I had people to fight with me. And if I couldn't see my way out - despite the exercise, despite the yoga, despite the wine, despite the laughter, despite the cheese, for God's sake, and cheese normally does it - then I needed other people to stand up and show me the way. To hold up a torch so I could see in the dark.
I'm in a hole: a hole I fell into by accident, and haven't quite worked out how to get out of. A hole I've been digging for ten years: ten years of putting myself second, and needing somebody else to put me first. But I know I'm there, now, and so I know I can start climbing back out again; start putting myself first, and working out what it is I want to do with my life. This holiday hasn't just given me laughter and dancing and wine - all of which were much needed, and have done their part - it has shown me, finally, that I'm not on my own. That there is a rope, thrown in, ready to pull me out again. And it has forced me to take control, and start climbing. Because I have no other choice: not if I want to visit public museums without humiliating myself again.
I'm at the front of my life for once, and behind me I now have a very different kind of queue to the one I ran out of in Paris: a queue of people who adore me. Who believe in everything I do: who defend my mistakes, and cheer my moments of glory. Who see me with such adoring eyes that even the faintest reflection lifts and strengthens and inspires. Whose love I can feed off, and grow stronger. My very own, private army.
With an army the size and quality of mine - an army with so much wisdom, and so much affection, and so much ability to drink huge quantities of wine and eat boxes of Camembert - there aren't many things I can't battle against and win.
And that includes myself.
Sunday, 8 August 2010
Hammam
I love Morocco. I love the heat and the smells; I love the food and the bustle, and the glass and leather and cotton and intricate candle holders. I love the pots the food comes in, and the stone washed walls and the tiles in my hotel bathroom and the stonework around the windows. I'm not so sure about the layout of the hotel computer keyboard - my typing speed has just dropped from 60 wpm to 2.5 wpm, and my blood pressure has risen proportionately - but I love Morocco. Even when it's storming and full of dust, as it is now.
I am, however, not quite as in love with their beauty treatments.
An entire day, it took me to persuade my sister to try a famous Moroccan Hammam with me. A full day, and in the end I only managed it by letting her have the left side of the bed, furthest from the door (women are biologically programmed to sleep on the side of the bed away from the door, in case of intruders. Interesting and little known fact, which spells trouble for sisters all over the world).
"I don't like being pampered," she told me crossly. "Especially by strangers. I don't even pamper myself, let alone pay other people to do it for me."
"It'll probably be just like an Onsen," I answered knowledgeably (and smugly). "Except in a different language. It will be very relaxing."
It wasn't.
First, we were stripped off and left on our own in a confusing room. Then, when we had climbed, shrugging, into a cold pool, the lady came in and shouted at us in French for getting into the wrong pool at the wrong time, and dragged us both out again, after which she sat my sister down, covered me in green snotty stuff and threw buckets of hot water over my head. Tara laughed heartily at my plight, until the woman started unsentimentally scrubbing at bits of me that women don't normally scrub at, at which point my sister stopped sniggering and looked absolutely horrified.
When we had both been professionally molested, we were thrown into a tiny, warm, stone room, told to sit on rubber mats, and then left to our own devices. For the rest of our natural lives, apparently.
"Do you think we're being punished?" Tara asked after twenty minutes. "For getting in the wrong pool?"
"Yes. And if we do anything else wrong, they will come back and make us sit in a smaller, even hotter room. And if we do anything wrong again, it'll be another, smaller one, until we're standing up in an oven."
"But what does it do?"
"Sweats out the bad stuff, I think."
"I don't have any bad stuff. Everything I have I want to keep."
Another ten minutes passed.
"This is not fun."
"No."
"It's not relaxing either."
"No."
"It's just a warm stone room."
"Yes."
"If I wanted to have a bucket of water thrown over my head and then get shouted at, fondled and then forced to sit in a box, I'd go home and hang out with my boyfriend."
Ten more minutes.
"Do you think this is relaxing because it makes life seem beautiful again just because you're out of this bloody room?"
Another few minutes.
"This is what hell is like, isn't it."
Two more minutes.
"I am going to break that goddamn door down and kick that woman in the face."
Another one minute.
"I haven't lost my bad stuff. I've sweated out my sense of humour."
Another ten minutes passed. I started pacing and swearing. My sister started scrabbling at the door.
Fifty minutes, they left us in the box. Fifty minutes, and then they dragged us out, scrubbed us viciously with some kind of brick, poured green stuff over our heads, threw water in our faces again and handed us our clothes.
Back in the real world, my sister and I sat on the pavement outside and lit two rather cross cigarettes.
"I've just been touched up, insulted, scrubbed by a stranger and trapped in a coffin for an hour."
"Mmm."
"Holly, I don't feel pampered."
"Me neither."
"In fact, I feel quite cross and stressed."
"Me too."
"Next time you want to relax, can you just take drugs or something? If you want to be mauled by another lady, there are clubs you can go to in London for that kind of thing."
I love Morocco, but as far as relaxing and pampering go, I'm not so sure that the African way is entirely compatible with English sensibilities.
Either that, or we actually were just being punished.
I am, however, not quite as in love with their beauty treatments.
An entire day, it took me to persuade my sister to try a famous Moroccan Hammam with me. A full day, and in the end I only managed it by letting her have the left side of the bed, furthest from the door (women are biologically programmed to sleep on the side of the bed away from the door, in case of intruders. Interesting and little known fact, which spells trouble for sisters all over the world).
"I don't like being pampered," she told me crossly. "Especially by strangers. I don't even pamper myself, let alone pay other people to do it for me."
"It'll probably be just like an Onsen," I answered knowledgeably (and smugly). "Except in a different language. It will be very relaxing."
It wasn't.
First, we were stripped off and left on our own in a confusing room. Then, when we had climbed, shrugging, into a cold pool, the lady came in and shouted at us in French for getting into the wrong pool at the wrong time, and dragged us both out again, after which she sat my sister down, covered me in green snotty stuff and threw buckets of hot water over my head. Tara laughed heartily at my plight, until the woman started unsentimentally scrubbing at bits of me that women don't normally scrub at, at which point my sister stopped sniggering and looked absolutely horrified.
When we had both been professionally molested, we were thrown into a tiny, warm, stone room, told to sit on rubber mats, and then left to our own devices. For the rest of our natural lives, apparently.
"Do you think we're being punished?" Tara asked after twenty minutes. "For getting in the wrong pool?"
"Yes. And if we do anything else wrong, they will come back and make us sit in a smaller, even hotter room. And if we do anything wrong again, it'll be another, smaller one, until we're standing up in an oven."
"But what does it do?"
"Sweats out the bad stuff, I think."
"I don't have any bad stuff. Everything I have I want to keep."
Another ten minutes passed.
"This is not fun."
"No."
"It's not relaxing either."
"No."
"It's just a warm stone room."
"Yes."
"If I wanted to have a bucket of water thrown over my head and then get shouted at, fondled and then forced to sit in a box, I'd go home and hang out with my boyfriend."
Ten more minutes.
"Do you think this is relaxing because it makes life seem beautiful again just because you're out of this bloody room?"
Another few minutes.
"This is what hell is like, isn't it."
Two more minutes.
"I am going to break that goddamn door down and kick that woman in the face."
Another one minute.
"I haven't lost my bad stuff. I've sweated out my sense of humour."
Another ten minutes passed. I started pacing and swearing. My sister started scrabbling at the door.
Fifty minutes, they left us in the box. Fifty minutes, and then they dragged us out, scrubbed us viciously with some kind of brick, poured green stuff over our heads, threw water in our faces again and handed us our clothes.
Back in the real world, my sister and I sat on the pavement outside and lit two rather cross cigarettes.
"I've just been touched up, insulted, scrubbed by a stranger and trapped in a coffin for an hour."
"Mmm."
"Holly, I don't feel pampered."
"Me neither."
"In fact, I feel quite cross and stressed."
"Me too."
"Next time you want to relax, can you just take drugs or something? If you want to be mauled by another lady, there are clubs you can go to in London for that kind of thing."
I love Morocco, but as far as relaxing and pampering go, I'm not so sure that the African way is entirely compatible with English sensibilities.
Either that, or we actually were just being punished.
Thursday, 5 August 2010
Home
Coming home is often as big a shock as going away.
It's 6.30 in the morning and I'm up and bushy tailed: my time, it's 2.30 in the afternoon and even my lazy bones don't sleep that late. It was the silence that woke me up, though. The sound of absolutely nothing: as deafening as any noise.
The first time I came back to England from Japan, the shock was the expected shock. Lots of white faces and light hair when I was used to Asian; direct eye contact from strangers; understanding conversations around me; rudeness from shop staff; knowing what was in the food I was buying; understanding road signs; adverts on television that didn't feature cute cartoon characters; nobody bowing at me (although I still frequently bowed at them). I gorged myself on Cadburys and fish n chips and Walkers crisps and found being able to communicate with everybody surreal: as if I was suddenly visible again, after so long as a ghost.
That was last time. This time, the shock is different.
The white faces, the eye contact, the food, the language: I've slipped straight back into it as if I never left. The things that have shocked me run deeper than that, and have left me reeling in a different way.
The light is different. The light I'm used to in Japan is golden and intense. It's warm and vivid: the colours of the sky, of the trees, of the sea, are strong and dark. Here, the light is silvery and gentle: clearer, more delicate. Everything is still bright, but it's in a fragile, slightly metallic way; the flowers are smaller, the smells are sharper and less powerful. The sky is pale and brittle; my skin looks a different colour underneath it.
And, just as the light is different, so too is the air. In Nichinan it's dense and solid: you pass through it consciously, as if swimming, and it is hot and sticks to you. The humidity means that breath doesn't feel like breathing: everything is warm and wet, inside and out. It's close, and rich, and there's no escape from it. At night, you can - and do - sleep on a beach with no blanket, and the air wraps around you; during the day, you run into shops for a few seconds of air conditioning. In England - even in August, because the seasons are the same - the air is cool and clear and calm: empty and snappy. Breathing feels like breathing: as if you're taking in something that wasn't there before. And when you pass through the air, you do it without thinking.
The silence, though: that's what woke me up. On the outskirts of London, I can hear nothing at all: a few pigeons cooing now and then, a couple of early birds, the distant, faint, roar of the motorway, and nothing else. In Nichinan, the morning is filled with the piercing screams of insects, of tiny birds on the tree outside, of my neighbours, yelling in Japanese. The air is as full of noise as it is with colour and heat, and I've grown used to sleeping through it. Here, the coolness, and the calmness, and the silence, have woken me up.
This morning, as I sat in the garden of the house that I grew up in, and I looked at the flowers and the sky and the colours, and I listened to nothing at all, I thought: I'm home. And while I have to leave - am not done with the world quite yet, am not done with the noise and the hotness and the sticky colours, am still hungry for more (even if not necessarily Japan) - these are the colours and the sounds that are part of me. The clearness of the sky, and the silveriness of the light. Just as beautiful, in their own ways, as anything golden and dark that Japan has to offer.
And, as I sat in the garden this morning and felt my toes get cold and a peace inside me that I haven't felt for a long time, I realised that England is still my home. It's still the place I run to when I'm hurting badly inside - as I am now - and it's still the place that makes it better, and calms it and soothes it in ways that I don't expect: in the light, in the noise, in the colours, in the sky. In the people I love who live here, and the land itself: a delicate, subtle, thoughtful land. A land that I came from, and that I return to whenever I need energy, and calmness, and peace, and the courage to go away again. A land that I draw strength from.
England is a part of me. And no matter where I am in the world, or how far I travel, it will always be the bit of me I come back to.
And that is what makes it my home.
It's 6.30 in the morning and I'm up and bushy tailed: my time, it's 2.30 in the afternoon and even my lazy bones don't sleep that late. It was the silence that woke me up, though. The sound of absolutely nothing: as deafening as any noise.
The first time I came back to England from Japan, the shock was the expected shock. Lots of white faces and light hair when I was used to Asian; direct eye contact from strangers; understanding conversations around me; rudeness from shop staff; knowing what was in the food I was buying; understanding road signs; adverts on television that didn't feature cute cartoon characters; nobody bowing at me (although I still frequently bowed at them). I gorged myself on Cadburys and fish n chips and Walkers crisps and found being able to communicate with everybody surreal: as if I was suddenly visible again, after so long as a ghost.
That was last time. This time, the shock is different.
The white faces, the eye contact, the food, the language: I've slipped straight back into it as if I never left. The things that have shocked me run deeper than that, and have left me reeling in a different way.
The light is different. The light I'm used to in Japan is golden and intense. It's warm and vivid: the colours of the sky, of the trees, of the sea, are strong and dark. Here, the light is silvery and gentle: clearer, more delicate. Everything is still bright, but it's in a fragile, slightly metallic way; the flowers are smaller, the smells are sharper and less powerful. The sky is pale and brittle; my skin looks a different colour underneath it.
And, just as the light is different, so too is the air. In Nichinan it's dense and solid: you pass through it consciously, as if swimming, and it is hot and sticks to you. The humidity means that breath doesn't feel like breathing: everything is warm and wet, inside and out. It's close, and rich, and there's no escape from it. At night, you can - and do - sleep on a beach with no blanket, and the air wraps around you; during the day, you run into shops for a few seconds of air conditioning. In England - even in August, because the seasons are the same - the air is cool and clear and calm: empty and snappy. Breathing feels like breathing: as if you're taking in something that wasn't there before. And when you pass through the air, you do it without thinking.
The silence, though: that's what woke me up. On the outskirts of London, I can hear nothing at all: a few pigeons cooing now and then, a couple of early birds, the distant, faint, roar of the motorway, and nothing else. In Nichinan, the morning is filled with the piercing screams of insects, of tiny birds on the tree outside, of my neighbours, yelling in Japanese. The air is as full of noise as it is with colour and heat, and I've grown used to sleeping through it. Here, the coolness, and the calmness, and the silence, have woken me up.
This morning, as I sat in the garden of the house that I grew up in, and I looked at the flowers and the sky and the colours, and I listened to nothing at all, I thought: I'm home. And while I have to leave - am not done with the world quite yet, am not done with the noise and the hotness and the sticky colours, am still hungry for more (even if not necessarily Japan) - these are the colours and the sounds that are part of me. The clearness of the sky, and the silveriness of the light. Just as beautiful, in their own ways, as anything golden and dark that Japan has to offer.
And, as I sat in the garden this morning and felt my toes get cold and a peace inside me that I haven't felt for a long time, I realised that England is still my home. It's still the place I run to when I'm hurting badly inside - as I am now - and it's still the place that makes it better, and calms it and soothes it in ways that I don't expect: in the light, in the noise, in the colours, in the sky. In the people I love who live here, and the land itself: a delicate, subtle, thoughtful land. A land that I came from, and that I return to whenever I need energy, and calmness, and peace, and the courage to go away again. A land that I draw strength from.
England is a part of me. And no matter where I am in the world, or how far I travel, it will always be the bit of me I come back to.
And that is what makes it my home.
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
Honesty
There is nothing I like in this world as much as honesty. Especially when it comes at the expense of the people offering it.
I'm on my long journey home now: I leave in 20 minutes, and won't be in England for another 24 hours. 24 hours of sitting: on buses, on trains, in airport lounges, in Seoul, in hostels. So it's obviously important which hostel I choose to sit in.
We are sorry, but our rooms are very small.
This was on the main page of one of the youth hostels in Fukuoka. I scrolled down a little further.
We are sorry, but our rooms are very hot. And our reception is very hot. We do not have air conditioning.
Impressed by the candidness of the hostel, I read a little further.
We are very sorry, but our guests say that one of our staff members is boring and creepy.
At which point I burst out laughing and immediately booked a room.
Long journeys are tiring and extremely dull. If I can jazz it up a little by staying in the world's most honest establishment, then I'm going to do just that.
It's going to be a small, hot and creepy night. And I'm really quite looking forward to it.
I'm on my long journey home now: I leave in 20 minutes, and won't be in England for another 24 hours. 24 hours of sitting: on buses, on trains, in airport lounges, in Seoul, in hostels. So it's obviously important which hostel I choose to sit in.
We are sorry, but our rooms are very small.
This was on the main page of one of the youth hostels in Fukuoka. I scrolled down a little further.
We are sorry, but our rooms are very hot. And our reception is very hot. We do not have air conditioning.
Impressed by the candidness of the hostel, I read a little further.
We are very sorry, but our guests say that one of our staff members is boring and creepy.
At which point I burst out laughing and immediately booked a room.
Long journeys are tiring and extremely dull. If I can jazz it up a little by staying in the world's most honest establishment, then I'm going to do just that.
It's going to be a small, hot and creepy night. And I'm really quite looking forward to it.
Sunday, 1 August 2010
Burnings
"You didn't mention the sunburn."
Maybe there was a little too much light after all.
"I didn't mention the what?"
"The sunburn. You didn't mention it."
"What sunburn?"
"The sunburn from the weekend. You know, with the stars and the algae and the ball and the turtle and the marshmallows and all that, you didn't mention the sunburn."
"Who got sunburnt?"
"You did."
"Oh yeah. I always get sunburnt."
"But you're really sunburnt."
"I know."
"But really, really sunburnt."
"I know. I can feel it. My face is on fire."
"You're bright red."
"I know."
"But you didn't mention it."
"If I mentioned it every time I got sunburnt, it would be a blog about the perils of having English skin in a tropical climate."
"No it wouldn't. It would be a blog about the perils of being too stupid to wear a hat and suncream."
"That too."
"When I woke you up this morning - you know, when you were lying in the sand, snoring on your little towel - I knew you were going to regret sleeping outside when everyone else went into the tent. A good three hours the sun had been up."
"A dog sniffed my face."
"So?"
"A dog sniffed my face at about 6am and I when I went back to sleep I rolled over and faced the sun instead of away from it."
"Well, you're sunburnt."
"I know."
"You should write that you're sunburnt."
"Fine. I'll write that I'm sunburnt."
"Good. And then maybe your mum can make you wear suncream too."
Stars and algae and balls and turtles and marshmallows, and apparently the most important detail of the evening was the colour it made my face go.
Red. There you go: bright, uniform, unflinching, strangers-laughing-in-supermarkets, red. I got sunburnt. With all my focus on the stars, I forgot about the one closest to me.
Maybe there was a little too much light after all.
Stars
Sometimes you see the light. And sometimes you see many.
Last night, seven of us stocked up on meat and onions and blankets and marshmallows, and drove to the most beautiful beach we could find; found a spot totally isolated - facing the mountains, jutted against the rocks - without a single footprint, and made as many footprints as we could. We paddled in the water, and we ate bbq steak and chicken until we felt queasy; we took our boards out of our cars, bobbed around in the totally waveless shallows and promptly put them back again; we dragged logs from the nearby wood and built a fire and sat round it, drinking plum wine and beer and toasting chocolate in bananas. We spotted a tiny turtle and followed it until it vanished: we threw a ball around until that did likewise.
And then, when the sun was down and the sky was dark, we sat and we looked at the million stars and we worked out which ones were moving and which ones were planets and which ones were satellites and which ones were planes.
When we had finished staring at the lights in the sky, we all ran into the dark sea and found that the stars had fallen and the water was full of them. Thousands of tiny pinpoints of light were in the dark above us, and thousands of tiny pinpoints of light were flashing around us whenever we moved: clinging to us, bubbling around us, and lighting us all up.
"Oh my God, the stars are in the sea!" somebody - not me - yelled.
"It's glow in the dark plankton. It lights up when it feels a movement because it thinks we're a threat."
"Sugoi!"
"I'm magic! Look at me! I'm magic!"
"I'm like a wizard!"
"Utsukushii!"
"If I shake my wiener it glows in the dark! Look! Look at it!"
"Ahaha."
"Can you see my toes?! It's pitch black and I can see my toes!"
"You've got a star on your nose!"
"Subaraashi, ne?"
"They've all got caught in my chest hair! Check it out! I'm like superman!"
"If you open your eyes underwater it's like you're flying through the sky at night!"
"I think something just stung me."
"This... is..."
"Daisuki."
"A shooting star! I just saw a shooting star!"
"Me too!"
"Oh goddamit. Something just stung me too."
"There's another one!"
"I saw it that time! A shooting star!"
"It's going to land in the sea. All the stars are landing in the sea!"
"It's plankton."
"This is..."
"What life is - "
"About."
"Isn't it?"
And then - when three or four of us had been stung - we fell out of the water and drank plum wine next to the bonfire until everyone had fallen asleep wherever they were sitting.
I took my blanket to a little spot away from the campsite, and lay on it, facing the sea where the sun was coming up. From my side, all I could see were mountains, a ridge of cloud hanging over the lightening sea and - as I nodded off - a rainbow, linking the sky and the sea all over again.
"It is," I told the rainbow. "It is what it's all about, isn't it? Moments like these."
"Go to sleep," said the rainbow.
"Don't be gone when I wake up. Please don't be gone."
"I will be. It all will be." And as I fell asleep, the rainbow added: "When will you learn that that's the point?"
Nights like that don't happen often: where everything is perfect, and everything is beautiful, and everything is magic. And - when they do - you want with all of you to grab them: to hang on to them and never let go. But all of it - the rainbow, the stars, the laughter - is precious because it disappears. Because it will be replaced. By a memory as utterly unexpected and unsought for as the last.
Whenever I lose faith in magic, the world gives it back to me. Whenever I stop understanding what life is about, the world explains it again. And when I woke up this morning and the rainbow and the stars in the sky and the stars in the water were gone, I realised that it didn't matter. That they had done what they had to do: they had given me a perfect moment. One of a life full of many gone, and even more yet still to come.
Moments that make the magic come back again.
Moments full of light.
Last night, seven of us stocked up on meat and onions and blankets and marshmallows, and drove to the most beautiful beach we could find; found a spot totally isolated - facing the mountains, jutted against the rocks - without a single footprint, and made as many footprints as we could. We paddled in the water, and we ate bbq steak and chicken until we felt queasy; we took our boards out of our cars, bobbed around in the totally waveless shallows and promptly put them back again; we dragged logs from the nearby wood and built a fire and sat round it, drinking plum wine and beer and toasting chocolate in bananas. We spotted a tiny turtle and followed it until it vanished: we threw a ball around until that did likewise.
And then, when the sun was down and the sky was dark, we sat and we looked at the million stars and we worked out which ones were moving and which ones were planets and which ones were satellites and which ones were planes.
When we had finished staring at the lights in the sky, we all ran into the dark sea and found that the stars had fallen and the water was full of them. Thousands of tiny pinpoints of light were in the dark above us, and thousands of tiny pinpoints of light were flashing around us whenever we moved: clinging to us, bubbling around us, and lighting us all up.
"Oh my God, the stars are in the sea!" somebody - not me - yelled.
"It's glow in the dark plankton. It lights up when it feels a movement because it thinks we're a threat."
"Sugoi!"
"I'm magic! Look at me! I'm magic!"
"I'm like a wizard!"
"Utsukushii!"
"If I shake my wiener it glows in the dark! Look! Look at it!"
"Ahaha."
"Can you see my toes?! It's pitch black and I can see my toes!"
"You've got a star on your nose!"
"Subaraashi, ne?"
"They've all got caught in my chest hair! Check it out! I'm like superman!"
"If you open your eyes underwater it's like you're flying through the sky at night!"
"I think something just stung me."
"This... is..."
"Daisuki."
"A shooting star! I just saw a shooting star!"
"Me too!"
"Oh goddamit. Something just stung me too."
"There's another one!"
"I saw it that time! A shooting star!"
"It's going to land in the sea. All the stars are landing in the sea!"
"It's plankton."
"This is..."
"What life is - "
"About."
"Isn't it?"
And then - when three or four of us had been stung - we fell out of the water and drank plum wine next to the bonfire until everyone had fallen asleep wherever they were sitting.
I took my blanket to a little spot away from the campsite, and lay on it, facing the sea where the sun was coming up. From my side, all I could see were mountains, a ridge of cloud hanging over the lightening sea and - as I nodded off - a rainbow, linking the sky and the sea all over again.
"It is," I told the rainbow. "It is what it's all about, isn't it? Moments like these."
"Go to sleep," said the rainbow.
"Don't be gone when I wake up. Please don't be gone."
"I will be. It all will be." And as I fell asleep, the rainbow added: "When will you learn that that's the point?"
Nights like that don't happen often: where everything is perfect, and everything is beautiful, and everything is magic. And - when they do - you want with all of you to grab them: to hang on to them and never let go. But all of it - the rainbow, the stars, the laughter - is precious because it disappears. Because it will be replaced. By a memory as utterly unexpected and unsought for as the last.
Whenever I lose faith in magic, the world gives it back to me. Whenever I stop understanding what life is about, the world explains it again. And when I woke up this morning and the rainbow and the stars in the sky and the stars in the water were gone, I realised that it didn't matter. That they had done what they had to do: they had given me a perfect moment. One of a life full of many gone, and even more yet still to come.
Moments that make the magic come back again.
Moments full of light.
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