Of all the things I wanted to be as a child - ballet dancer, scientist, astronaut, astronomer, paleontologist (geeeek) - writer was never one of them. I wrote because I loved it: diaries and poems and short stories from four years old upwards (perfectly rhyming stanzas at six? Hell yeah). But be a writer? It never even occurred to me. Writer wasn't on the career's list, and when I went to talk to my career counsellor she never suggested it.
'What do you love doing most?' she asked me, age 13 (me, not her. She was fully grown up).
'Writing,' I told her.
'Excellent,' she said. 'Have you thought about being a journalist? Or in PR? Or in advertising? Or an English teacher? Or an English lecturer?' She got a list out. 'These are all career possibilities that involve lots of writing.'
All, that was, apart from writer.
So it didn't occur to me. In fact, my intense love of writing actually pushed the idea further away, because it was so much a part of me already that I took it totally for granted, the way you don't realise how much you love somebody when you're with them all of the time. So I carried on writing - filling up pages and pages and practicing different styles - and simultaneously panicked about what I was going to do with my life. Chose English Literature as a BA because it involved reading books, and that seemed good, and Shakespeare as an MA because it involved reading Shakespeare, and that seemed good too. I was so shy that it took four entire years of University to submit anything to the Uni newspaper, and I was so shy about writing that I refused to apply for journalist jobs because it meant other people reading me. I went into PR because sometimes - when I was really lucky - I got to write a Press Release about compost, and when I applied for Best Job I had to do the take where I said "I'm a writer" six times, because I kept laughing. And I only started this blog because I was told that I definitely wouldn't win the 70 grand Best Job prize if I didn't. And the 70 grand carrot was enough to get this donkey moving.
It's taken 29 years for me to be able to say I'm a writer, because I am: regardless of whether I ever get published or not. I'm a writer because I write: because I get up in the morning and I write, and I write during my lunch breaks, and I write in my evenings. I'm a writer because it's what gives my life significance, and because without it I'm not sure I'd bother. I'm a writer because I have a passion for it that is greater than any passion I have ever had for any man, and will always be greater than any passion I have for any man. I'm a writer, not because I chose it - not because I came out of that career's adviser's office and said "I will be a writer" - but because it chose me. Because nearly three decades of running away from it and ignoring it and refusing to talk about it or think about it has done absolutely nothing to alter the following fact: writing is what makes me happy. And everything else in my life is just what I do when I'm not writing.
Just as the career's adviser didn't tell me to be a writer, though, neither is there a career adviser that has told me what to write. And so I have struggled horribly. When I eventually realised that my only dream was to write novels, I very sensibly started trying to write novels. And, as a girl who likes to think of herself as vaguely intelligent and has been known to take herself a little too seriously from time to time, I wanted to write good novels. Award winning novels. Critically acclaimed novels. Literary Fiction novels, as The Guardian calls them. Novels with really cool illustrations on the front; the kind that people pick up and say "you know, this really is so surprising coming from somebody so young" (I would have been young if I had managed it when I started trying) and "it just totally breaks all the boundaries of fiction, don't you think?" So I wrote. I wrote seriously. I wrote pages and pages of Literary Fiction, and then - when I was 26 - I wrote an entire book of Literary Fiction: 102,378 words of the bugger. Deep, moving, stylised, with no quotation marks around the dialogue because that seemed pretty clever and modern (I put them back in eventually because I didn't know who was talking). My Big Achievement. The novel to change all novels. And then I read it and realised it was a bit crap, and the agents I sent it to agreed whole heartedly. They did, however, really enjoy the funny bits, and suggested rewriting and editing the rest of it out, and that left me with about six pages from start to finish.
As far as concerned, I was therefore screwed. What the hell was the point in being a writer if I wasn't going to win a Booker Prize for it? What the hell was the point of writing a novel if it didn't prove to everyone how clever I was? So I sulked, and I got stressed, and I tried to start another Literary Fiction novel, and wore lots of black and smoked and told everyone how hard writing was, and how they didn't understand.
It was only as I started re-reading all of my favourite novels - Anne of Green Gables, The Borrowers, The Far Away Tree, Pollyanna, What Katy Did, Great Expectations, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Pride and Prejudice - that I realised the key to my issue: I don't like Literary Fiction. At all. If a book falls into nothing but Literary Fiction (Life of Pi and White Teeth, I am looking at you), it tends to be instantly forgettable. Impressive, yes, but untouchable. Because they're not the books that change lives. They change newspapers, yes, and they change award panels, and they change bestselling lists, but they don't change lives. They just make it look like they could do.
So I put down my serious face, and I put down my next work of Literary Fiction, and I put down all hopes of ever getting a Booker prize. I put down all of my stylised efforts, readopted the speech mark, and resigned myself to being ignored forever by readers of The Guardian. I started writing a book that made me laugh: created characters that I fell in love with. And you know what? It's been easy, it's been fun, and it's been exactly what made me love writing to start with: the ability to make myself happy, and hopefully do the same to others. And my novel, in all of its fluffiness, is very, very nearly finished.
Last week at a teacher training course, I met a boy who told me - within two minutes - that he was "writing a novel" (funny how quickly that tends to come up in conversation: I still don't know his name).
'Really?' I said. 'Me too!'
He looked at me sceptically. 'Yeah? You don't look like a writer.'
'Thanks,' I said cheerfully. I have zero interest in looking like a writer: I'm quite happy looking like I can barely read. 'So what's yours about then?'
'Oh,' he told me airily. 'It's literary fiction. I couldn't possibly sum it up.'
'Fair enough,' I said with a grin. 'Mine's not. Not at all. It's about a 14 year schoolgirl called Harriet.'
Understanding dawned on his face. 'Oh, so not like a real novel, then.'
'Nope,' I said happily. 'Not a real novel at all.'
'You're lucky,' he told me, patting me on the shoulder. 'Literary fiction is so hard. It's so slow, and so difficult, you know?'
'Nope,' I said. 'No idea. Mine isn't in the slightest.'
Being a writer may not be a choice, but what you write is. And I've finally chosen to write the kind of books I love reading.
It seems so much cleverer that way.
Saturday, 29 January 2011
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
Volcano
Last year I was a little upset when the volcano in Iceland erupted: 27 years in England, I'd spent - give or take six months here or there - and there'd been no impressive acts of nature at all. As soon as I was gone: poof! Volcanoes exploding, snow falling, heat waving: God doing as much as he ever does to the weather in Hertfordshire.
To make up for it - to say sorry for giving me no drama - the neighbouring volcano has just erupted. Poof! Just like that. And the first thing I knew about it was Baba screaming through my window.
'Ho-rrreeeeeeeeeeeee,' she was screeching. 'Ho-rrrreeeeeeeee.'
I was in bed, sick and reading my Kindle, so I didn't appreciate all the noise.
'Ho-rrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,' Baba shrieked again - and trust me, this lovely, cuddly old lady can shriek like a banshee - so I got out of bed.
'Mmmm?' I said in the international language of stop sodding shrieking at me.
'Look!' she yelled, and then pointed to the sky. At which point I realised that there was no sky, and it was a blanket of ash. Then - priorities firmly established - she pointed at my washing line. 'Take your washing in!' she yelled. 'It's going to get all dirty!'
I got my washing in, and then I went back to bed. Eventually, when I was hungry enough to require getting out of bed, I took myself outside and realised I couldn't see a thing. Not a single thing. The entire air was full of ash. It was all over my scooter, and all over the floor, and all over my face, an inch thick like snow. And - because I'm never prepared for any kind of emergency - I had to drive to the local shop to buy myself dinner: drive through air absolutely solid and grey, breathing through a mask. Thinking as I did so: thank God it's not a real emergency. Because when a real emergency happens, I am going to be totally screwed. All I've got in the freezer is icecream.
It's quite exciting, actually. It's getting thicker and thicker by the hour, and it's absolutely silent outside: the ash has muffled everything. In the six minutes it took me to drive to and from the shop, I managed to collect a coat of greyness so thick that I could - and did - draw patterns in it with my fingers.
'Oh,' the shop assistant said when I was asked him what the hell was going on. 'Just the local volcano erupting.'
Oh, just the local volcano erupting. Which is not a sentence we hear in Hertfordshire all that often.
As disappointed as I was at missing out on the English natural phenomenons, I'm quite certain I've held out for something a little more dramatic. And possibly a little more dangerous: I have no idea how healthy it is to be surrounded by a thick blanket of ash. I didn't give up smoking so that I could breathe a volcano into my lungs.
Whenever you forget you're abroad, there's always something to remind you all over again. A little bit of something you'd never expect in Welwyn Garden City. A little bit of foreign magic.
And as dangerous as it might be, it's also a little bit thrilling.
Poof.
To make up for it - to say sorry for giving me no drama - the neighbouring volcano has just erupted. Poof! Just like that. And the first thing I knew about it was Baba screaming through my window.
'Ho-rrreeeeeeeeeeeee,' she was screeching. 'Ho-rrrreeeeeeeee.'
I was in bed, sick and reading my Kindle, so I didn't appreciate all the noise.
'Ho-rrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,' Baba shrieked again - and trust me, this lovely, cuddly old lady can shriek like a banshee - so I got out of bed.
'Mmmm?' I said in the international language of stop sodding shrieking at me.
'Look!' she yelled, and then pointed to the sky. At which point I realised that there was no sky, and it was a blanket of ash. Then - priorities firmly established - she pointed at my washing line. 'Take your washing in!' she yelled. 'It's going to get all dirty!'
I got my washing in, and then I went back to bed. Eventually, when I was hungry enough to require getting out of bed, I took myself outside and realised I couldn't see a thing. Not a single thing. The entire air was full of ash. It was all over my scooter, and all over the floor, and all over my face, an inch thick like snow. And - because I'm never prepared for any kind of emergency - I had to drive to the local shop to buy myself dinner: drive through air absolutely solid and grey, breathing through a mask. Thinking as I did so: thank God it's not a real emergency. Because when a real emergency happens, I am going to be totally screwed. All I've got in the freezer is icecream.
It's quite exciting, actually. It's getting thicker and thicker by the hour, and it's absolutely silent outside: the ash has muffled everything. In the six minutes it took me to drive to and from the shop, I managed to collect a coat of greyness so thick that I could - and did - draw patterns in it with my fingers.
'Oh,' the shop assistant said when I was asked him what the hell was going on. 'Just the local volcano erupting.'
Oh, just the local volcano erupting. Which is not a sentence we hear in Hertfordshire all that often.
As disappointed as I was at missing out on the English natural phenomenons, I'm quite certain I've held out for something a little more dramatic. And possibly a little more dangerous: I have no idea how healthy it is to be surrounded by a thick blanket of ash. I didn't give up smoking so that I could breathe a volcano into my lungs.
Whenever you forget you're abroad, there's always something to remind you all over again. A little bit of something you'd never expect in Welwyn Garden City. A little bit of foreign magic.
And as dangerous as it might be, it's also a little bit thrilling.
Poof.
Tuesday, 25 January 2011
The Beholder
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.”
I'm a redhead.
Who knew? I certainly didn't. Up until recently, I hadn't seen my natural hair colour in fifteen years. From the first, tentative streaks of pink as a teenager, to the bleach blonde bob that was my trademark for half a decade, I've been dying my hair: both in the sense that it was dyed, and in the sense that I had killed it. Long, short, white, grey (by accident), red, fluorescent orange (by accident), brown, black, fringe, crop, bob: I have done it all. All, that is, but leave it alone. I'm nearly thirty years old, and I've just discovered that the mean boys at school were all absolutely correct and I am, in fact, ginger. Or auburn, if you're going to be kind (and they weren't). Which I suppose explains all the freckles.
Beauty causes great internal conflict for me. The shy, introverted, bookworm part of me finds beauty and the concept of it uncomfortable: finds the idea of chasing it, or bowing down to social expectations of it essentially dull, stupid and shallow. Judging the internal by the external - making any kind of evaluation based on our packaging - leaves me vaguely angry and self-righteous. There are things to be doing other than checking our nails and extending our eyelashes, after all, and the cerebral part of me finds oohing and aaahing over lipstick a little nauseating and inexplicable. That part of me would far rather read Dickens than Cosmopolitan; refuses, categorically, to wear make up if I'm just going shopping, and is happy to wear the same pair of army trousers for a week. The girls - the kind who judge the world and everybody in it by how pretty or how handsome they are - make me sick and bored and anxious. And the boys who like those kind of girls? They make me even more so. Which is all totally understandable: I wore knee length jumpers for my entire teen years, spent so much time buried in books I didn't see my own face from week to week, and my cerebral, shy mother used to tell me as a child that washing up liquid was "all I needed for my hair" and that she didn't "believe" in moisturiser (as if it was some kind of fairy, or Santa Claus).
The other part of me, though - the creative part, predominantly - tends to fall more towards the concept of personal beauty as one of the highest forms of art, and on that I'm more like my father. As Oscar Wilde claimed: "To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances." When nothing, really, matters - when life is so transient, and so short, and none of us really know what the point of it is - there is an ugliness and stupidity in ignoring what beauty already exists, or in not trying to find it or create it or augment it wherever possible. For if we can write beauty, and we can paint it, and we can sing it, and we can carve it, why the hell should we not embody it as well? How can the world be a beautiful place if the people in it are not becoming part of that? And in painting ourselves, are not women finding a creative outlet for self expression prohibited, by society, to most men? Are they not taking back a little of the creativity that they've been denied for centuries? Is it not, in that sense, the purest concept of feminism? Is beauty, then, not to be celebrated and treasured and protected just as a poem is, or a story, or a song: more so, in fact, because it is more natural and more temporary?
And that part of me - the part of me prone to making daisy chains and putting them in my hair - is the part that very much enjoys reading Cosmopolitan and painting my eyes with green metallics and reading the ingredients on fifteen bottles of moisturisers and discussing the best way to apply foundation. That part of me finds it incredibly offensive that my intelligence can be called into question in any way at all because I find skincare interesting, or because I know how to apply mascara properly. That my in depth knowledge of King Lear can in anyway be undermined by the fact that I enjoy dipping my fingers into sparkly eyeshadows now and then; that my ability to hold a coherent argument can be questioned because I like looking at shoes. And that part of me is also the part of me that develops girl-crushes on beautiful women constantly, and tends to fall horribly in love with horrible, beautiful men, and values beauty - all kinds of beauty - far more than it should be valued. Because I sometimes mistake beauty, in all of my love for it, as something than runs deeper than it does.
Beauty, for women, is hard. I'm sure it's hard for men too - what with all the daily shaving they have to do - but it's harder for women. We value ourselves by it more, and we are valued for it more. We have been brought up to both chase it and reject it: to prize it immensely, both for ourselves and as the means of Catching A Man And Having A Family, and yet also to fear it, because of what it often implies about our intelligence and what it will one day say about us when it goes. And it's a balancing trick all women have to try and perfect: being pretty, and being interesting, and yet not minding too much that one day we'll be neither.
The key, of course, is to work on both at the same time: to be beautiful where you can see it, and to be beautiful where you can't. To understand and love your own unique brand of it - the thing you bring to the world that nobody else does - without making it everything. Being able to rely upon the beauty we can't see. To be capable of enjoying external beauty, and loving it, but still retaining the ability to walk away from it when we have to, and hold on to what's inside.
Because red hair, blonde hair, dark hair, short hair, long hair, no hair, we should all be able to walk away from the outside kind of beauty. For there's only one thing we can all be sure of:
One day, it is going to walk away from us.
- Miss Piggy
I'm a redhead.
Who knew? I certainly didn't. Up until recently, I hadn't seen my natural hair colour in fifteen years. From the first, tentative streaks of pink as a teenager, to the bleach blonde bob that was my trademark for half a decade, I've been dying my hair: both in the sense that it was dyed, and in the sense that I had killed it. Long, short, white, grey (by accident), red, fluorescent orange (by accident), brown, black, fringe, crop, bob: I have done it all. All, that is, but leave it alone. I'm nearly thirty years old, and I've just discovered that the mean boys at school were all absolutely correct and I am, in fact, ginger. Or auburn, if you're going to be kind (and they weren't). Which I suppose explains all the freckles.
Beauty causes great internal conflict for me. The shy, introverted, bookworm part of me finds beauty and the concept of it uncomfortable: finds the idea of chasing it, or bowing down to social expectations of it essentially dull, stupid and shallow. Judging the internal by the external - making any kind of evaluation based on our packaging - leaves me vaguely angry and self-righteous. There are things to be doing other than checking our nails and extending our eyelashes, after all, and the cerebral part of me finds oohing and aaahing over lipstick a little nauseating and inexplicable. That part of me would far rather read Dickens than Cosmopolitan; refuses, categorically, to wear make up if I'm just going shopping, and is happy to wear the same pair of army trousers for a week. The girls - the kind who judge the world and everybody in it by how pretty or how handsome they are - make me sick and bored and anxious. And the boys who like those kind of girls? They make me even more so. Which is all totally understandable: I wore knee length jumpers for my entire teen years, spent so much time buried in books I didn't see my own face from week to week, and my cerebral, shy mother used to tell me as a child that washing up liquid was "all I needed for my hair" and that she didn't "believe" in moisturiser (as if it was some kind of fairy, or Santa Claus).
The other part of me, though - the creative part, predominantly - tends to fall more towards the concept of personal beauty as one of the highest forms of art, and on that I'm more like my father. As Oscar Wilde claimed: "To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances." When nothing, really, matters - when life is so transient, and so short, and none of us really know what the point of it is - there is an ugliness and stupidity in ignoring what beauty already exists, or in not trying to find it or create it or augment it wherever possible. For if we can write beauty, and we can paint it, and we can sing it, and we can carve it, why the hell should we not embody it as well? How can the world be a beautiful place if the people in it are not becoming part of that? And in painting ourselves, are not women finding a creative outlet for self expression prohibited, by society, to most men? Are they not taking back a little of the creativity that they've been denied for centuries? Is it not, in that sense, the purest concept of feminism? Is beauty, then, not to be celebrated and treasured and protected just as a poem is, or a story, or a song: more so, in fact, because it is more natural and more temporary?
And that part of me - the part of me prone to making daisy chains and putting them in my hair - is the part that very much enjoys reading Cosmopolitan and painting my eyes with green metallics and reading the ingredients on fifteen bottles of moisturisers and discussing the best way to apply foundation. That part of me finds it incredibly offensive that my intelligence can be called into question in any way at all because I find skincare interesting, or because I know how to apply mascara properly. That my in depth knowledge of King Lear can in anyway be undermined by the fact that I enjoy dipping my fingers into sparkly eyeshadows now and then; that my ability to hold a coherent argument can be questioned because I like looking at shoes. And that part of me is also the part of me that develops girl-crushes on beautiful women constantly, and tends to fall horribly in love with horrible, beautiful men, and values beauty - all kinds of beauty - far more than it should be valued. Because I sometimes mistake beauty, in all of my love for it, as something than runs deeper than it does.
Beauty, for women, is hard. I'm sure it's hard for men too - what with all the daily shaving they have to do - but it's harder for women. We value ourselves by it more, and we are valued for it more. We have been brought up to both chase it and reject it: to prize it immensely, both for ourselves and as the means of Catching A Man And Having A Family, and yet also to fear it, because of what it often implies about our intelligence and what it will one day say about us when it goes. And it's a balancing trick all women have to try and perfect: being pretty, and being interesting, and yet not minding too much that one day we'll be neither.
The key, of course, is to work on both at the same time: to be beautiful where you can see it, and to be beautiful where you can't. To understand and love your own unique brand of it - the thing you bring to the world that nobody else does - without making it everything. Being able to rely upon the beauty we can't see. To be capable of enjoying external beauty, and loving it, but still retaining the ability to walk away from it when we have to, and hold on to what's inside.
Because red hair, blonde hair, dark hair, short hair, long hair, no hair, we should all be able to walk away from the outside kind of beauty. For there's only one thing we can all be sure of:
One day, it is going to walk away from us.
Again?
My brain shook, and my brain shook, and my brain shook, and then I started hurting all over, and then I got a fever and started vomiting, and then my words started slurring, and then I decided that I wasn't so happy about all of these withdrawal symptoms and took myself to the doctor. Who told me not to be daft, because I wasn't withdrawing from anything: I had influenza and had to go to bed with medicine and water. Which I am now just about to do.
I'm starting to come to the conclusion that something has to change, because working with children in a country against which I have no inbuilt immune system is trying to kill me on an almost weekly basis. I am constantly ill.
But I'll think about that later. Right now, I'm going to wrap up and go to bed where I can enjoy all the shaking of what's left of my brain. And the destruction of what's left of my immune system.
I'm starting to come to the conclusion that something has to change, because working with children in a country against which I have no inbuilt immune system is trying to kill me on an almost weekly basis. I am constantly ill.
But I'll think about that later. Right now, I'm going to wrap up and go to bed where I can enjoy all the shaking of what's left of my brain. And the destruction of what's left of my immune system.
Monday, 24 January 2011
Singing
This morning, I sang in the shower. I sang in the shower. It wasn`t pleasant, and it was almost indecipherable (it was I`m blue dabadeedabadoow dabadeedabadow, which is in my friend`s Top Five Worst Shower Songs) but I sang. In the shower.
I haven`t sung in the shower for nearly eighteen months. I haven`t sung, in fact, since I left England originally, in the summer of 2009, where I was prone to singing in any kind of washing environment I found myself in: would set myself up in the bath with a shampoo bottle and happily warble my way through the remaining four Worst Songs. I was too on edge when I got to Japan to sing - too out of my comfort zone, too nervous - and then I was too stressed because The Boy kept inexplicably disappearing (to The Other Girl), and then too heartbroken, and then too sad. And for the last six months, I`ve been too drugged. Drugged right up to the eyeballs, which is only becoming clear now that they`ve finally left my system and I`m sober again. And, apart from occasional brain shake (common withdrawal symptom, where it feels sporadically like somebody has grabbed my brain and is shaking it around my head), the only really terrible side effect is: singing. And the only people who really suffer because of that are my neighbours.
Nobody takes anti-depressents because it`s fun: if you want fun, you go for the kind of drugs most doctors refuse to prescribe. You take anti-depressents because there`s no other choice, and so - because once you start having panic attacks in the middle of National art galleries there really is no other choice - the side effects have to be just ridden out. But (and trust me, I`ve Googled it) there hasn`t been a lot of research into the impact of anti-depressents on creativity. Mainly because you can do science experiments on a number of factors related to drugs until the cows come home, but just how sparky your imagination is or how many pages you write a day don`t tend to be two of them. They`re quite tricky to measure in a laboratory.
This morning, I didn`t just sing. I got out of the shower and I did a little bottom dance with my towel - for my own benefit, obviously, because I live on my own - and then I walked like Michael Jackson back into my bedroom. It was only as I did a little spin at the end and winked at myself in the mirror that I realised: I`m playing again. Not because I feel like I have to to maintain appearances and convince the world that I`m alright when I`m not, but because I am alright, and because I`m perfectly capable of having fun on my own. And because me dancing with a towel makes everybody laugh, because I can`t dance and I have zero towel-related coordination.
Better than that, after six months of being too anxious to write, and then six months of being too hurt to write, and then six months of being too numb to write, I`m suddenly not too anything at all: I`m Goldilocks with the right temperature porridge. I sat at my computer this weekend and I did what I haven`t done since I got to Japan: wrote from 8am in the morning until 11pm at night, burnt five slices of toast because I kept skipping back to the computer to alter a line midway through cooking, had my lunch with one hand still typing and forgot to have dinner completely. I couldn`t stop writing: got up at 2am because I`d suddenly thought of a great sentence, and my fingers were bored. My brain wouldn`t stop whirring: after so damn long asleep or hurting or licking its wounds, it was gagging for a little run around and refused to stop moving (especially during the brain shakes, which are very unpleasant and I`m very glad that Google says they`re normal because I thought for a little while that something had come loose). And while memories of Him are cropping up again after six months of absolutely nothing - vivid and powerful and so real I can smell him, which is unfortunate because smell was not one of his best qualities - I`ve realised: it`s okay. Because it`s a sign that my imagination is back again, and wide awake, instead of lying in a stupor in the back of my head somewhere, fanning its face. So whenever a romantic or painful memory pops up all colourful and shiny, I pat myself on the back, congratulate my imagination for being so vivid, and push it away immediately with all of my brand new strength. Instead of hating myself for not being able to control it, and hating the power of my own mind.
Everything is real again. Colours are real and smells are real and people are real. I suddenly have interest in the world again: want to go places and see things that seemed pointless a month ago. I want to climb those mountains and jump into those lakes and get lost in the middle of a desert somewhere. And, true: when I went to an onsen with Yuki last night I nearly passed out, because brain shakes and hot water are not a good combination, but for the time when I wasn`t clutching my head and swaying I was capable - finally - of holding a coherent conversation, because words fit together again. Writing, speaking, singing: words that had totally disjointed - like a jigsaw with no picture to follow - suddenly make sense. It`s like the writing version of Dangerous Minds, where all the naughty students abruptly start behaving, and it`s wonderful. I just can`t stop them all from spilling out.
Prescription drugs are great, but only for as long as they help. When they stop helping, and you`ve healed the way you`re supposed to, it`s time to try and take your life back again.
And it all starts with singing in the shower.
I haven`t sung in the shower for nearly eighteen months. I haven`t sung, in fact, since I left England originally, in the summer of 2009, where I was prone to singing in any kind of washing environment I found myself in: would set myself up in the bath with a shampoo bottle and happily warble my way through the remaining four Worst Songs. I was too on edge when I got to Japan to sing - too out of my comfort zone, too nervous - and then I was too stressed because The Boy kept inexplicably disappearing (to The Other Girl), and then too heartbroken, and then too sad. And for the last six months, I`ve been too drugged. Drugged right up to the eyeballs, which is only becoming clear now that they`ve finally left my system and I`m sober again. And, apart from occasional brain shake (common withdrawal symptom, where it feels sporadically like somebody has grabbed my brain and is shaking it around my head), the only really terrible side effect is: singing. And the only people who really suffer because of that are my neighbours.
Nobody takes anti-depressents because it`s fun: if you want fun, you go for the kind of drugs most doctors refuse to prescribe. You take anti-depressents because there`s no other choice, and so - because once you start having panic attacks in the middle of National art galleries there really is no other choice - the side effects have to be just ridden out. But (and trust me, I`ve Googled it) there hasn`t been a lot of research into the impact of anti-depressents on creativity. Mainly because you can do science experiments on a number of factors related to drugs until the cows come home, but just how sparky your imagination is or how many pages you write a day don`t tend to be two of them. They`re quite tricky to measure in a laboratory.
This morning, I didn`t just sing. I got out of the shower and I did a little bottom dance with my towel - for my own benefit, obviously, because I live on my own - and then I walked like Michael Jackson back into my bedroom. It was only as I did a little spin at the end and winked at myself in the mirror that I realised: I`m playing again. Not because I feel like I have to to maintain appearances and convince the world that I`m alright when I`m not, but because I am alright, and because I`m perfectly capable of having fun on my own. And because me dancing with a towel makes everybody laugh, because I can`t dance and I have zero towel-related coordination.
Better than that, after six months of being too anxious to write, and then six months of being too hurt to write, and then six months of being too numb to write, I`m suddenly not too anything at all: I`m Goldilocks with the right temperature porridge. I sat at my computer this weekend and I did what I haven`t done since I got to Japan: wrote from 8am in the morning until 11pm at night, burnt five slices of toast because I kept skipping back to the computer to alter a line midway through cooking, had my lunch with one hand still typing and forgot to have dinner completely. I couldn`t stop writing: got up at 2am because I`d suddenly thought of a great sentence, and my fingers were bored. My brain wouldn`t stop whirring: after so damn long asleep or hurting or licking its wounds, it was gagging for a little run around and refused to stop moving (especially during the brain shakes, which are very unpleasant and I`m very glad that Google says they`re normal because I thought for a little while that something had come loose). And while memories of Him are cropping up again after six months of absolutely nothing - vivid and powerful and so real I can smell him, which is unfortunate because smell was not one of his best qualities - I`ve realised: it`s okay. Because it`s a sign that my imagination is back again, and wide awake, instead of lying in a stupor in the back of my head somewhere, fanning its face. So whenever a romantic or painful memory pops up all colourful and shiny, I pat myself on the back, congratulate my imagination for being so vivid, and push it away immediately with all of my brand new strength. Instead of hating myself for not being able to control it, and hating the power of my own mind.
Everything is real again. Colours are real and smells are real and people are real. I suddenly have interest in the world again: want to go places and see things that seemed pointless a month ago. I want to climb those mountains and jump into those lakes and get lost in the middle of a desert somewhere. And, true: when I went to an onsen with Yuki last night I nearly passed out, because brain shakes and hot water are not a good combination, but for the time when I wasn`t clutching my head and swaying I was capable - finally - of holding a coherent conversation, because words fit together again. Writing, speaking, singing: words that had totally disjointed - like a jigsaw with no picture to follow - suddenly make sense. It`s like the writing version of Dangerous Minds, where all the naughty students abruptly start behaving, and it`s wonderful. I just can`t stop them all from spilling out.
Prescription drugs are great, but only for as long as they help. When they stop helping, and you`ve healed the way you`re supposed to, it`s time to try and take your life back again.
And it all starts with singing in the shower.
Sunday, 23 January 2011
Fortunate
On the first of January this year, I went to a temple in Kyoto and stood in a queue for an hour and a half, being hit by melting snow falling off the trees, in order to ring a bell for the New Year. This is normal in Japan, and our queue was considered a short one. When I'd done queuing for whatever ringing the bell brings you - general good luck for the year, I believe - I queued to stroke a big stone for good health, and then I queued to get my fortune. Because once I was into the swing of queuing, my theory was: I might as well make the most of it and get everything I can. Which isn't exactly in the true spirit of Shintoism, but is certainly in the true spirit of the British Queuing mentality.
For the uninitiated, getting your fortune in Japan involves giving somebody money, and then being presented with a big box. You shake the box, and a stick falls out of a hole in the bottom. On the stick is a number that corresponds with a number on a sort of ancient wooden filing cabinet behind the person you just paid. They retrieve the appropriate piece of paper from the appropriate file, hand it over to you, and you decide whether or not you like your fortune. If you like it, you keep it and it comes true. If you don't like it, you tie it up in the temple and The Gods take it back. Like a sort of exchange and refund policy, except without the refund (they don't return your money).
The fortunes tend to come in three general styles: great, okay, and terrible. Obviously on either end of the scale what you do with it is obvious. If it's a great fortune you punch the air, put it in your pocket and declare that it's absolutely unquestionable, and if it's a terrible fortune you tie it immediately to a tree and declare you don't believe in all that crap anyway. The problem comes, of course, when you get an okay one, because then it all depends on the specifics. And depending on the specifics is extremely problematic, obviously, when you don't understand the specifics in the first place. To most Japanese people, the ancient kanji, hand-written style of the fortunes makes them difficult to read: to me, it just looks like a lot of pretty scribbles. Worse, there is nothing more boring than reading somebody else's fortune, so the translations I got were lacklustre and vague to say the least.
"Good health," the wife of the friend of a sort of friend told me, after I had pestered her for ten minutes. She was busy with her own fortune, which is fair enough: she'd only met me a few hours before. "You get good health. Not great health, but okay. You're not going to die or anything."
"Well, I guess that's a good thing," I acknowledged. "What else?"
"Your dreams won't come true," she said, scanning my paper quickly. I was naturally appalled.
"Hey - what do you mean my dreams won't come true? What does it say? Exactly what does it say?"
"They won't come true." She went back to her own fortune.
"But that's terrible! I don't want my dreams not to come true! What else does it say?" I shoved it under her nose again. She looked like she wanted to smack me.
"It says the person you are waiting for will come."
"Right. Does it say anything about them? Name, address, telephone number?"
"No. It just says the person you have been waiting for will arrive, and you will have love. So this is a good fortune."
"But what about my dreams?"
"Not this year. You get love this year. No dreams."
"Do I get dreams next year?"
"I don't know. This is just the fortune for this year."
"So do I tie it up? I tie it up, right?"
"No. Because then you might not get love either, and you could end up with nothing. I'd keep it if I were you and just be happy with what you got."
I didn't know what to do with my fortune, as mixed as it was, so I popped it in my bag and decided to think about it. As far as I could see, there was probably some kind of 28 day return policy so I had time to ponder on it. And ponder on it I have.
This morning, I went to my favourite temple: the one in the cave by the ocean near my house. And I stood in the silence and the dark, bowed, put my hands together and then got the piece of paper out of my bag.
"I'd like to return this," I said as politely as I could, to whoever or whatever it is I pray to when I'm down there. "It's not really the fortune I was looking for. I mean, it's very nice and everything - finding the person I'm waiting for and love and all that, and I appreciate the nod towards my health and me not dying - but it's not really what I wanted. I can see where you were going with it, I really can, and I appreciate the sentiment: I know all my friends are getting married and you think I must be lonely etc. But I'm fine, and really I'd much rather have my dreams come true this year, if that's okay with you." I paused for a few minutes, and then continued, feeling guilty: like a spoilt kid returning a carefully considered birthday present. "I really hope you don't think I'm being ungrateful, and I know that by returning this I might just end up with nothing. But if I keep this in my bag... Well, it's accepting defeat already. And I can't do that. It's not even the end of January yet."
I looked at the scribbles on the paper, and then I took it over to the post and tied it firmly up. Then I came back to the bell, rang it and clapped my hands twice, which is what you do when you've been speaking to a Japanese divinity. It's polite. "Thankyou," I said. "Amen. Or whatever the Shinto version of that is. Really appreciate the no-quibble return policy."
After twenty two days I've decided to take the risk and gamble it all, knowing I may well end up with nothing, because that seems infinitely preferable to sticking with a fortune I don't really want. And if it all goes horribly wrong, I can always comfort myself with the knowledge that I get another one next year. And the year after that. And the year after that. And so on until my dreams come true.
Because as far as I'm concerned, that is exactly what is going to happen. I'm just going to keep returning them until I find a future I want to stick with.
For the uninitiated, getting your fortune in Japan involves giving somebody money, and then being presented with a big box. You shake the box, and a stick falls out of a hole in the bottom. On the stick is a number that corresponds with a number on a sort of ancient wooden filing cabinet behind the person you just paid. They retrieve the appropriate piece of paper from the appropriate file, hand it over to you, and you decide whether or not you like your fortune. If you like it, you keep it and it comes true. If you don't like it, you tie it up in the temple and The Gods take it back. Like a sort of exchange and refund policy, except without the refund (they don't return your money).
The fortunes tend to come in three general styles: great, okay, and terrible. Obviously on either end of the scale what you do with it is obvious. If it's a great fortune you punch the air, put it in your pocket and declare that it's absolutely unquestionable, and if it's a terrible fortune you tie it immediately to a tree and declare you don't believe in all that crap anyway. The problem comes, of course, when you get an okay one, because then it all depends on the specifics. And depending on the specifics is extremely problematic, obviously, when you don't understand the specifics in the first place. To most Japanese people, the ancient kanji, hand-written style of the fortunes makes them difficult to read: to me, it just looks like a lot of pretty scribbles. Worse, there is nothing more boring than reading somebody else's fortune, so the translations I got were lacklustre and vague to say the least.
"Good health," the wife of the friend of a sort of friend told me, after I had pestered her for ten minutes. She was busy with her own fortune, which is fair enough: she'd only met me a few hours before. "You get good health. Not great health, but okay. You're not going to die or anything."
"Well, I guess that's a good thing," I acknowledged. "What else?"
"Your dreams won't come true," she said, scanning my paper quickly. I was naturally appalled.
"Hey - what do you mean my dreams won't come true? What does it say? Exactly what does it say?"
"They won't come true." She went back to her own fortune.
"But that's terrible! I don't want my dreams not to come true! What else does it say?" I shoved it under her nose again. She looked like she wanted to smack me.
"It says the person you are waiting for will come."
"Right. Does it say anything about them? Name, address, telephone number?"
"No. It just says the person you have been waiting for will arrive, and you will have love. So this is a good fortune."
"But what about my dreams?"
"Not this year. You get love this year. No dreams."
"Do I get dreams next year?"
"I don't know. This is just the fortune for this year."
"So do I tie it up? I tie it up, right?"
"No. Because then you might not get love either, and you could end up with nothing. I'd keep it if I were you and just be happy with what you got."
I didn't know what to do with my fortune, as mixed as it was, so I popped it in my bag and decided to think about it. As far as I could see, there was probably some kind of 28 day return policy so I had time to ponder on it. And ponder on it I have.
This morning, I went to my favourite temple: the one in the cave by the ocean near my house. And I stood in the silence and the dark, bowed, put my hands together and then got the piece of paper out of my bag.
"I'd like to return this," I said as politely as I could, to whoever or whatever it is I pray to when I'm down there. "It's not really the fortune I was looking for. I mean, it's very nice and everything - finding the person I'm waiting for and love and all that, and I appreciate the nod towards my health and me not dying - but it's not really what I wanted. I can see where you were going with it, I really can, and I appreciate the sentiment: I know all my friends are getting married and you think I must be lonely etc. But I'm fine, and really I'd much rather have my dreams come true this year, if that's okay with you." I paused for a few minutes, and then continued, feeling guilty: like a spoilt kid returning a carefully considered birthday present. "I really hope you don't think I'm being ungrateful, and I know that by returning this I might just end up with nothing. But if I keep this in my bag... Well, it's accepting defeat already. And I can't do that. It's not even the end of January yet."
I looked at the scribbles on the paper, and then I took it over to the post and tied it firmly up. Then I came back to the bell, rang it and clapped my hands twice, which is what you do when you've been speaking to a Japanese divinity. It's polite. "Thankyou," I said. "Amen. Or whatever the Shinto version of that is. Really appreciate the no-quibble return policy."
After twenty two days I've decided to take the risk and gamble it all, knowing I may well end up with nothing, because that seems infinitely preferable to sticking with a fortune I don't really want. And if it all goes horribly wrong, I can always comfort myself with the knowledge that I get another one next year. And the year after that. And the year after that. And so on until my dreams come true.
Because as far as I'm concerned, that is exactly what is going to happen. I'm just going to keep returning them until I find a future I want to stick with.
Saturday, 22 January 2011
Swans
"If something is hard to do, it's not worth doing." - Homer Simpson.
Last spring, when I crawled back to the UK on my heartbroken hands and knees, I crawled straight into breakfast with my old boss.
Of all the things I got from working in PR, I count myself luckiest for two of them: Helen, my no-bullshit and frequently cross with me kindred spirit, and CJ, my old Account Director. I adored her with a passion: adored her even more because she seemed to be quite fond of me too, which made no sense whatsoever because I was not a particularly great Senior Account Executive. And yet: as prone as I was to screwing up - losing cuttings, crying in the toilets because I'd failed to get a story into The Daily Mail, getting stroppy with clients because they were quite obviously total imbeciles - CJ never lost her temper with me: fiercely defended me when I was told off by other Directors repeatedly and listened to all of my ideas, even when they were terrible (dogs in capes, for instance). She was and is a goddess of a woman - strong, feisty, clever, funny, scary and warm - and I found it difficult to believe that she could ever have been anything like me, but she claimed that she was: that it had taken her a good few decades to transform herself from a pissed off, tempestuous Account Executive with no shoes on and knots in her hair and pink round her eyes into the heart of the agency (which she still is).
'But you're so.... calm,' I said to her one day at the age of 25, as I necked another bottle of white wine to numb the pain of yet another disastrous, clingy (them, not me) relationship. 'So strong and together. So wise.'
CJ laughed. 'I wasn't always. And you know what? I'm still not. I'm like the swan. Floating calmly along the surface of the water with the current, but underneath sometimes my little legs are still going fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.'
So when I went home last March - thin, tired, heartbroken and in pieces - it was CJ I went to: got up early in the morning so I could get into the centre of London and have breakfast with her before she went to save the world of PR. And as I played with my croissant and distributed it, uneaten, around the plate, CJ took one hard look at me and told me to never speak to The Boy again, because he was and would always be poison.
'You know,' she said, 'I do understand. I understand what it's like to fall in love with bad people. Like you, I spent my entire twenties being thrown around and stomped all over: always in the middle of some kind of romantic drama. I was always the mistress, the rebound, the fling, the whipping boy: I was the girl boys called at 2am and never before, and the girl who they took out their past relationships on, and the girl who walked in on them with somebody else. I was always trying so damn hard, just like you. I was always trying to change them, and holding on for the day they would treat me well, or hoping for the day they would love me properly, and forgiving all of the days they hurt me in between. Forgiving infidelity, forgiving nastiness, forgiving just plain disinterest. Hating myself a little bit more every time.'
'I'm so tired,' I admitted. 'I can't keep doing it. I actually can't keep doing it.'
'Of course you can't. And you know what stage you're at now? You're at the stage I hit at the end of my 20s too. The stage where you think: you know what? Fuck it. Fuck it. I'm not trying anymore. I cannot be bothered.'
I pushed my croissant around the plate a little bit more. I was so exhausted that only a third of her words were sinking in: the rest were bouncing around the room.
'And then what happens?'
'Nothing.'
'Nothing?'
'Nothing. Nothing happens for a bit, and you rest from all the effort you've spent up. And then something happens.'
'What happens?'
'You realise the most important thing in the world.'
I looked at her in surprise. Was she going to tell me the most important thing in the world, just like that? Just thrown over a destroyed croissant? 'And what is that?'
'That good things are easy.'
I frowned. 'That doesn't sound very British,' I told her. 'Aren't we supposed to value difficulty? You know, sticking things out to the bitter end and all that?'
'Yes, and it's bullshit. If something is right, Holly, it's easy. I spent my 20s trying so hard, and it was only when I hit my 30s and gave up trying that I met my husband and realised I didn't have to do a damn thing. I didn't have to be somebody else, I didn't have to forgive him daily for being horrible to me, I didn't have to sit by my phone and wonder where he was. I didn't have to make him love me. He just did, and it was easy. Because let me tell you something: life is hard enough. It's going to throw its own crap in the way. Love shouldn't have to be one of them.'
It all seemed very wise, of course, but I was too tired to really understand: too exhausted to do anything with it. But I tucked the nugget away, like a little squirrel with a nut, and now that I'm awake and rested again I've been turning it over and over, and nibbling on it to see how it tastes.
And she's right. As always, CJ is perfectly right. And she's not just right about love: she's right about everything.
Everything I have ever had in my life that has been good and right for me has been easy. And the minute something becomes hard, it almost always means: it's not right for me anymore. My best friendships turn up on their own, naturally, and require no repeated effort (no effort beyond being a friend, which is easy when you are one). My best jobs fell into my lap, and barely required being applied for. The best items of clothes I have ever bought I bought without a second thought - picked up because I loved them, and kept them long after laboriously chosen items had been thrown away - and the best hairstyles I've ever had have required almost zero maintenance. The people I love the most make my life easier, and not harder, and spending time with them is never, ever an effort of anything other than geography. Life decisions that seem natural have been my best moves, and everything - everything that seems tough, or difficult, or uncertain - has been a mistake. Because that is exactly why they were difficult in the first place: it was nature's way of trying to tell me that.
And nowhere, I realised this morning, does it apply more than writing. The best writing I have ever done has been easy: fluid, natural, quick and almost embarrassingly effortless (as if it's been written already, and I'm just copying it out). The best ideas turn up on their own, and the best chapters take almost no time to write at all. When I'm stuck, it usually means: the idea I'm working on is crap, and I just don't know it yet. When I don't know what is happening next, it usually means: I'm trying too hard. When the writing doesn't work, it usually means: I've tried too hard. And - as with boys - I've spent many, many years feeling that I should be trying harder with my writing. Struggling with it because it seemed like the honourable thing to do: the dignified thing to do. Rather than accepting that easiness is a good thing, and nothing to be ashamed of. Because it's nature's way of saying something is perfect for you, and that you're doing it right.
If ever one sentence can change a life, that one is mine. I've always tried so hard, under some kind of impression that it was a good thing: to fight, and to hold on, and to struggle. But it's not. Constantly clawing against difficulty is nothing to be proud of, and it doesn't make you stronger, or more impressive. It doesn't make you better. Far more admirable is searching for a way, at all costs, to make life easy again, and to walk away if that's what it takes to get there.
Most of the good things in life are effortless, because it's how life shows you that they're right for you in the first place. The best thing any of us can really do is glide on the current, as smoothly as we can, and save our energy for when we have no choice: for the times when life throws crap in our paths, and our little legs really have to go fuck fuck fuck underneath the water.
And the rest of the time? The trick, I've finally realised, is to stay as serene and as calm as we can on top of it.
Last spring, when I crawled back to the UK on my heartbroken hands and knees, I crawled straight into breakfast with my old boss.
Of all the things I got from working in PR, I count myself luckiest for two of them: Helen, my no-bullshit and frequently cross with me kindred spirit, and CJ, my old Account Director. I adored her with a passion: adored her even more because she seemed to be quite fond of me too, which made no sense whatsoever because I was not a particularly great Senior Account Executive. And yet: as prone as I was to screwing up - losing cuttings, crying in the toilets because I'd failed to get a story into The Daily Mail, getting stroppy with clients because they were quite obviously total imbeciles - CJ never lost her temper with me: fiercely defended me when I was told off by other Directors repeatedly and listened to all of my ideas, even when they were terrible (dogs in capes, for instance). She was and is a goddess of a woman - strong, feisty, clever, funny, scary and warm - and I found it difficult to believe that she could ever have been anything like me, but she claimed that she was: that it had taken her a good few decades to transform herself from a pissed off, tempestuous Account Executive with no shoes on and knots in her hair and pink round her eyes into the heart of the agency (which she still is).
'But you're so.... calm,' I said to her one day at the age of 25, as I necked another bottle of white wine to numb the pain of yet another disastrous, clingy (them, not me) relationship. 'So strong and together. So wise.'
CJ laughed. 'I wasn't always. And you know what? I'm still not. I'm like the swan. Floating calmly along the surface of the water with the current, but underneath sometimes my little legs are still going fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.'
So when I went home last March - thin, tired, heartbroken and in pieces - it was CJ I went to: got up early in the morning so I could get into the centre of London and have breakfast with her before she went to save the world of PR. And as I played with my croissant and distributed it, uneaten, around the plate, CJ took one hard look at me and told me to never speak to The Boy again, because he was and would always be poison.
'You know,' she said, 'I do understand. I understand what it's like to fall in love with bad people. Like you, I spent my entire twenties being thrown around and stomped all over: always in the middle of some kind of romantic drama. I was always the mistress, the rebound, the fling, the whipping boy: I was the girl boys called at 2am and never before, and the girl who they took out their past relationships on, and the girl who walked in on them with somebody else. I was always trying so damn hard, just like you. I was always trying to change them, and holding on for the day they would treat me well, or hoping for the day they would love me properly, and forgiving all of the days they hurt me in between. Forgiving infidelity, forgiving nastiness, forgiving just plain disinterest. Hating myself a little bit more every time.'
'I'm so tired,' I admitted. 'I can't keep doing it. I actually can't keep doing it.'
'Of course you can't. And you know what stage you're at now? You're at the stage I hit at the end of my 20s too. The stage where you think: you know what? Fuck it. Fuck it. I'm not trying anymore. I cannot be bothered.'
I pushed my croissant around the plate a little bit more. I was so exhausted that only a third of her words were sinking in: the rest were bouncing around the room.
'And then what happens?'
'Nothing.'
'Nothing?'
'Nothing. Nothing happens for a bit, and you rest from all the effort you've spent up. And then something happens.'
'What happens?'
'You realise the most important thing in the world.'
I looked at her in surprise. Was she going to tell me the most important thing in the world, just like that? Just thrown over a destroyed croissant? 'And what is that?'
'That good things are easy.'
I frowned. 'That doesn't sound very British,' I told her. 'Aren't we supposed to value difficulty? You know, sticking things out to the bitter end and all that?'
'Yes, and it's bullshit. If something is right, Holly, it's easy. I spent my 20s trying so hard, and it was only when I hit my 30s and gave up trying that I met my husband and realised I didn't have to do a damn thing. I didn't have to be somebody else, I didn't have to forgive him daily for being horrible to me, I didn't have to sit by my phone and wonder where he was. I didn't have to make him love me. He just did, and it was easy. Because let me tell you something: life is hard enough. It's going to throw its own crap in the way. Love shouldn't have to be one of them.'
It all seemed very wise, of course, but I was too tired to really understand: too exhausted to do anything with it. But I tucked the nugget away, like a little squirrel with a nut, and now that I'm awake and rested again I've been turning it over and over, and nibbling on it to see how it tastes.
And she's right. As always, CJ is perfectly right. And she's not just right about love: she's right about everything.
Everything I have ever had in my life that has been good and right for me has been easy. And the minute something becomes hard, it almost always means: it's not right for me anymore. My best friendships turn up on their own, naturally, and require no repeated effort (no effort beyond being a friend, which is easy when you are one). My best jobs fell into my lap, and barely required being applied for. The best items of clothes I have ever bought I bought without a second thought - picked up because I loved them, and kept them long after laboriously chosen items had been thrown away - and the best hairstyles I've ever had have required almost zero maintenance. The people I love the most make my life easier, and not harder, and spending time with them is never, ever an effort of anything other than geography. Life decisions that seem natural have been my best moves, and everything - everything that seems tough, or difficult, or uncertain - has been a mistake. Because that is exactly why they were difficult in the first place: it was nature's way of trying to tell me that.
And nowhere, I realised this morning, does it apply more than writing. The best writing I have ever done has been easy: fluid, natural, quick and almost embarrassingly effortless (as if it's been written already, and I'm just copying it out). The best ideas turn up on their own, and the best chapters take almost no time to write at all. When I'm stuck, it usually means: the idea I'm working on is crap, and I just don't know it yet. When I don't know what is happening next, it usually means: I'm trying too hard. When the writing doesn't work, it usually means: I've tried too hard. And - as with boys - I've spent many, many years feeling that I should be trying harder with my writing. Struggling with it because it seemed like the honourable thing to do: the dignified thing to do. Rather than accepting that easiness is a good thing, and nothing to be ashamed of. Because it's nature's way of saying something is perfect for you, and that you're doing it right.
If ever one sentence can change a life, that one is mine. I've always tried so hard, under some kind of impression that it was a good thing: to fight, and to hold on, and to struggle. But it's not. Constantly clawing against difficulty is nothing to be proud of, and it doesn't make you stronger, or more impressive. It doesn't make you better. Far more admirable is searching for a way, at all costs, to make life easy again, and to walk away if that's what it takes to get there.
Most of the good things in life are effortless, because it's how life shows you that they're right for you in the first place. The best thing any of us can really do is glide on the current, as smoothly as we can, and save our energy for when we have no choice: for the times when life throws crap in our paths, and our little legs really have to go fuck fuck fuck underneath the water.
And the rest of the time? The trick, I've finally realised, is to stay as serene and as calm as we can on top of it.
Thursday, 20 January 2011
Buddy
Everyone has one thing they want more than anything else: one thing they follow through their lives, like the donkey after the proverbial carrot. Sometimes it's vague - a feeling of happiness or contentment they had as a child - and sometimes it's specific: a place, a beach, a square of a field in the sunshine, a person, a tree, a corner of a bed in the right room. More often than not nobody knows what it is but the person who chases, and even then they're not quite sure: propelled towards they don't know what, and they don't know how, but propelled just the same. And, every so often, it's a little easier to identify, and a little easier to name. A little easier to point at and say: that's my carrot, and always has been. It always will be, even after I've eaten it right up.
For me, it's a book with my name on the spine: a story I can leave behind. But for my sister it's even more specific than that. And his name is Buddy.
As teeny, tiny children - a couple of blonde heads, wearing identical clothes (thanks mum) - there was rarely a day that went past when my sister didn't ask for a puppy. When she wasn't asking for a puppy she was running towards a puppy; when she wasn't running towards a puppy she was hanging onto a puppy by the neck; when she wasn't hanging onto a puppy by the neck she was asking for a puppy again. Every Christmas, she would write a letter to Santa, and every Christmas - when my list stretched on, sometimes, for pages (I was often just writing for the sake of it, or because I wanted to test Santa's patience) - it would read: Dear Santa, I want a puppy, Love Tara. Sometimes, when she was worried that she wasn't being polite enough, it would read, Dear Santa, Please please please can I have a puppy, Love Tara. Or, when she got frantic, Dear Santa, Have I been bad? Please may I have a puppy this year. Love Tara. In fact, before she could write those infamous words, her letter to Santa involved a rectangle with four sausages coming out of the bottom of it, two circles attached to the top of it and a smiley face, under which - when she hit three or four - would be carefully written the letters DOG. Her first word was: doggy. As a toddler she would go into an adoring trance whenever a dog was anywhere near by, and no amount of "leave it alone, Tara, it's dirty" would keep her away from stroking whatever mangy mutt wandered past. And for many years she was devoted to the idea of being a vet, until she realised that she had zero interest in any other household pets, and so might be a little too exclusive to make a living.
Sadly, I simultaneously had a phobia of dogs - thanks to being 'attacked' by a Rhodesian Ridgeback at the age of three - so needless to say my parents spent a large proportion of our country walks trying to keep my sister from breaking loose and sprinting across the fields towards an errant dog, and to stop me from breaking loose and sprinting across the fields away from them. Our Sundays were therefore punctuated, frequently, with pre-school screaming: both enthusiastic and terrified.
My sister has never really been able to put her passion for dogs into words, other than the fact that they are unconditionally loving, happily dependent and capable of being fiercely loved without getting twitchy: similar reasons, in fact, to why I prefer cats. All she has ever known is that a puppy would complete her, and that her life would be perfect from that moment on.
And a month ago she finally, finally got one.
His name is Buddy. He's a Boston Terrier, and when she got him he was eight weeks old, and small enough to fit into a hand. I've met him, via Skype, and I've never seen a funnier looking dog: he's all wide set eyes and droopy cheeks and set chin, like ET but covered in fur. He's extremely naughty - has ignored all of the many, many toys my sister bought for him in favour of her best bra, which he carries around in his teeth - and goes into a heavy sulk whenever he is taken for a walk: has to be dragged along Brighton seafront, with his little bottom resolutely planted in the sand. Apparently he has zero interest in any kind of fresh air, and will only participate in any of it if he's wrapped firmly in a blanket and carried around, and Tara gets appalled looks daily by her neighbours as they watch her pulling a teeny tiny, furious puppy along the pavement with his paws dug into the cement. I bought him a Santa outfit for Christmas, and he destroyed it before it was out of the wrapping, and his favourite activity - from what I can tell, via a webcam - is either sitting on my sister's lap and trying to get down her top, licking her face, or sleeping.
All in all, he is, in fact, quite a lot like her boyfriend.
And my sister is in love. She's the happiest I have ever seen her; like a wax figure with a lamp in the back of her head. She doesn't just see a dog: she sees 27 years of wanting and chasing and hoping and dreaming and sending letters up the chimney, all wrapped up in a 12 week old bundle of alien-like, cross looking fluff. Something to love, and something to love her back: unconditionally, unrelentlessly. She finally has her carrot, and - honestly - I've been scared for her. Scared that she would be disappointed; that nothing could ever live up to a quarter of a century of wishing.
"Is he what you thought he would be?" I asked her at the weekend, as we chatted with Buddy curled up on her lap, snoring.
"Holly," she said, looking at him and pulling at his ear. "He's not what I thought he would be. He's so, so much better than that. He's absolutely perfect."
At which point Buddy woke up and looked at my sister with an expression that simply said: Likewise. And then he climbed up to her shoulder again and tried to get back down her top again.
We all have one thing we chase: one thing to make it all worth it. Be it a person, or an object, or a place, or a corner of world that's ours, we should all keep trying to find it. Keep pushing towards it, no matter how hard it gets, or how many letters we have to write, or how many wrong ones we have to chase and hold onto first. Because all we can ever really hope is that when we get it - if we're lucky enough to finally get it - it won't be just what we wanted: it will be even better.
And if we're really, really lucky, it will be a carrot worth every single second of the journey.
For me, it's a book with my name on the spine: a story I can leave behind. But for my sister it's even more specific than that. And his name is Buddy.
As teeny, tiny children - a couple of blonde heads, wearing identical clothes (thanks mum) - there was rarely a day that went past when my sister didn't ask for a puppy. When she wasn't asking for a puppy she was running towards a puppy; when she wasn't running towards a puppy she was hanging onto a puppy by the neck; when she wasn't hanging onto a puppy by the neck she was asking for a puppy again. Every Christmas, she would write a letter to Santa, and every Christmas - when my list stretched on, sometimes, for pages (I was often just writing for the sake of it, or because I wanted to test Santa's patience) - it would read: Dear Santa, I want a puppy, Love Tara. Sometimes, when she was worried that she wasn't being polite enough, it would read, Dear Santa, Please please please can I have a puppy, Love Tara. Or, when she got frantic, Dear Santa, Have I been bad? Please may I have a puppy this year. Love Tara. In fact, before she could write those infamous words, her letter to Santa involved a rectangle with four sausages coming out of the bottom of it, two circles attached to the top of it and a smiley face, under which - when she hit three or four - would be carefully written the letters DOG. Her first word was: doggy. As a toddler she would go into an adoring trance whenever a dog was anywhere near by, and no amount of "leave it alone, Tara, it's dirty" would keep her away from stroking whatever mangy mutt wandered past. And for many years she was devoted to the idea of being a vet, until she realised that she had zero interest in any other household pets, and so might be a little too exclusive to make a living.
Sadly, I simultaneously had a phobia of dogs - thanks to being 'attacked' by a Rhodesian Ridgeback at the age of three - so needless to say my parents spent a large proportion of our country walks trying to keep my sister from breaking loose and sprinting across the fields towards an errant dog, and to stop me from breaking loose and sprinting across the fields away from them. Our Sundays were therefore punctuated, frequently, with pre-school screaming: both enthusiastic and terrified.
My sister has never really been able to put her passion for dogs into words, other than the fact that they are unconditionally loving, happily dependent and capable of being fiercely loved without getting twitchy: similar reasons, in fact, to why I prefer cats. All she has ever known is that a puppy would complete her, and that her life would be perfect from that moment on.
And a month ago she finally, finally got one.
His name is Buddy. He's a Boston Terrier, and when she got him he was eight weeks old, and small enough to fit into a hand. I've met him, via Skype, and I've never seen a funnier looking dog: he's all wide set eyes and droopy cheeks and set chin, like ET but covered in fur. He's extremely naughty - has ignored all of the many, many toys my sister bought for him in favour of her best bra, which he carries around in his teeth - and goes into a heavy sulk whenever he is taken for a walk: has to be dragged along Brighton seafront, with his little bottom resolutely planted in the sand. Apparently he has zero interest in any kind of fresh air, and will only participate in any of it if he's wrapped firmly in a blanket and carried around, and Tara gets appalled looks daily by her neighbours as they watch her pulling a teeny tiny, furious puppy along the pavement with his paws dug into the cement. I bought him a Santa outfit for Christmas, and he destroyed it before it was out of the wrapping, and his favourite activity - from what I can tell, via a webcam - is either sitting on my sister's lap and trying to get down her top, licking her face, or sleeping.
All in all, he is, in fact, quite a lot like her boyfriend.
And my sister is in love. She's the happiest I have ever seen her; like a wax figure with a lamp in the back of her head. She doesn't just see a dog: she sees 27 years of wanting and chasing and hoping and dreaming and sending letters up the chimney, all wrapped up in a 12 week old bundle of alien-like, cross looking fluff. Something to love, and something to love her back: unconditionally, unrelentlessly. She finally has her carrot, and - honestly - I've been scared for her. Scared that she would be disappointed; that nothing could ever live up to a quarter of a century of wishing.
"Is he what you thought he would be?" I asked her at the weekend, as we chatted with Buddy curled up on her lap, snoring.
"Holly," she said, looking at him and pulling at his ear. "He's not what I thought he would be. He's so, so much better than that. He's absolutely perfect."
At which point Buddy woke up and looked at my sister with an expression that simply said: Likewise. And then he climbed up to her shoulder again and tried to get back down her top again.
We all have one thing we chase: one thing to make it all worth it. Be it a person, or an object, or a place, or a corner of world that's ours, we should all keep trying to find it. Keep pushing towards it, no matter how hard it gets, or how many letters we have to write, or how many wrong ones we have to chase and hold onto first. Because all we can ever really hope is that when we get it - if we're lucky enough to finally get it - it won't be just what we wanted: it will be even better.
And if we're really, really lucky, it will be a carrot worth every single second of the journey.
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
Maps
As a child, I didn`t know where anything was. In my immediate surroundings, yes, but also on a geographic basis: the world, to my tiny eyes, was Welwyn Garden City and the little bit of Hatfield we drove through to get to the swimming pool. I didn`t know where Norfolk was; I didn`t know where Ireland was, and I had no idea where or why Wales was; I knew where France was - because that was where my Aunty lived, and she bought me really nice presents - but I didn`t know where China was, or Russia, and I`m not quite sure I`d even heard of Japan. All I knew was that these places were very far away and had nothing whatsoever to do with me, and that was just fine thankyou very much.
Geography, in truth, was my least favourite subject at school. I wasn`t allowed to be creative when we coloured in maps - apparently I had to stick to the allocated colours and any attempted shading was not appreciated - and I had absolutely zero interest in anything that looked remotely like a symbol for a post office. For a child who loved every single moment of school that involved studying (and loathed any moment of school that involved any other children, which was unfortunate because there were quite a lot of them), I have no idea what kind of shocking techniques my Geography teacher employed, but I hated him and I hated his terrible subject with a passion I only otherwise felt for the art teacher who kept trying to draw on my work. So the world - after it was forced down my throat - simply bounced straight back up again. And at the age of 20 I still thought that Belize was in Europe and Nepal was in South America.
My love of the world and geography - of real Geography (which means, as far as I`m concerned, knowing where countries are and a little bit about each of them, and wanting to go there) - therefore came late. Really, really late. At around the age of 21, in fact, when I suddenly realised that if you went very far in any direction from any position in England you ended up in a much, much more interesting place: a place that wasn`t England. And that was a good thing.
So it`s ironic, really, that as a teacher of English abroad I`ve managed to do the absolute opposite for my students.
Encouraging a passion for the world - for different cultures, and different countries, and different people - is what keeps me going at work (that, and buying things on Ebay), so it stands to reason that the best thing I`ve bought to Kitago Elementary school is a Penpal exchange scheme with my sister`s class in Brighton. A Penpal exchange scheme that worked so smoothly - identical amounts of children, identical ages - that I barely even noticed we`d set it up. It started with mutual Christmas cards at the end of December, and now 34 nine year olds in Japan are Best Friends Forever with 34 nine year olds in England, and my sister and I barely had to lift a finger.
And the change has been astronomical.
Suddenly, England exists. I can stand as long as I like next to a blackboard, a living and breathing example of the fact that England exists, but I don`t think that any of the children in my second grade class actually believed me. One set of cards with little photos on them - their very own English person, to name and cut out and keep - and they suddenly know that England is real.
"Mine is so cuuuutttee!" one of my girls shouted, cuddling a photo of a girl from Hove called Hannah.
"Mine is cuter!" her friend yelled, trying to trump Hannah with Jessica.
"Well mine has red hair, just like Ron Weasley!" a little boy triumphed. "None of yours have red hair!"
"Mine could beat yours at skipping rope any day," someone else shouted.
"But mine has yellow hair like Holly Sensei, so I win!" another jeered.
And when I told them that my sister would be visiting in person in April, and that they would be getting new cards in a few weeks, they stood up, air punched and screeched "Whooooooooooohhhhooooooooo!" It is only a matter of time before they allocate each other points for various aspects of their Penpal, and start swapping them in the playground.
For my class, though, English children are exciting, but not unimaginable: they can speak a little English (I hope: I try, anyway), they know where England is (now: it`s taken me nine months of map pointing) and they see me every day, and I fly the English flag for them far more passionately than I would anywhere else in the world (I`m up against all the Americans here). For my sister`s class in Brighton, on the otherhand, the concept of writing to a Japanese class has - according to Tara - taken them to a level of excitement she doesn`t otherwise see unless chocolate is involved.
"I`m serious," she told me last night. "They`re obsessed. It`s scary. We`re talking about a class full of nine year olds who don`t know where London is, and they`re coming in to registration every morning full of facts about Japan, because they`re all going home and they`re looking it up on the internet every night. It`s all, `did you know that that in April the cherry blossoms come out and they`re called Sakura, Miss Smale` and `Tokyo is the capital of Japan, Miss Smale,` and `did you know that Manga is what they call their cartoons, Miss Smale`. They made me set up a Japanese display on the wall. They want me to play games in Japanese - I`ve had to learn basic words so that I can teach them - and today we`re making Origami. One Christmas card from a Japanese class and my students are absolutely in love with the entire country. I`m just terrified of the next question, which is going to be: Miss Smale, when do we get to go to Japan and meet them?"
And that, I think, is the whole point of teaching. Within a month, over 60 children who had no interest whatsoever in any part of the world other than Kitago and Brighton are fascinated in somewhere else, and in the people who come from there. They want to know everything: what they eat, what they wear, how they speak, what games they play. And they`re realising already what it took me 21 years to conclude: that the world isn`t a big flat bit of paper to shade in and stick pins in, but a place full of people to talk to and things to learn and fun things to do. That they can go there. That they can communicate with it. That they can be a part of it too.
So, while I may not have known where anything was as a child - or have been interested in any part of the world I wasn`t standing directly on - I think I`m finally making up for it now. By bringing the world to where I am, and giving it to my children.
And sending a little bit of it back home to England.
Geography, in truth, was my least favourite subject at school. I wasn`t allowed to be creative when we coloured in maps - apparently I had to stick to the allocated colours and any attempted shading was not appreciated - and I had absolutely zero interest in anything that looked remotely like a symbol for a post office. For a child who loved every single moment of school that involved studying (and loathed any moment of school that involved any other children, which was unfortunate because there were quite a lot of them), I have no idea what kind of shocking techniques my Geography teacher employed, but I hated him and I hated his terrible subject with a passion I only otherwise felt for the art teacher who kept trying to draw on my work. So the world - after it was forced down my throat - simply bounced straight back up again. And at the age of 20 I still thought that Belize was in Europe and Nepal was in South America.
My love of the world and geography - of real Geography (which means, as far as I`m concerned, knowing where countries are and a little bit about each of them, and wanting to go there) - therefore came late. Really, really late. At around the age of 21, in fact, when I suddenly realised that if you went very far in any direction from any position in England you ended up in a much, much more interesting place: a place that wasn`t England. And that was a good thing.
So it`s ironic, really, that as a teacher of English abroad I`ve managed to do the absolute opposite for my students.
Encouraging a passion for the world - for different cultures, and different countries, and different people - is what keeps me going at work (that, and buying things on Ebay), so it stands to reason that the best thing I`ve bought to Kitago Elementary school is a Penpal exchange scheme with my sister`s class in Brighton. A Penpal exchange scheme that worked so smoothly - identical amounts of children, identical ages - that I barely even noticed we`d set it up. It started with mutual Christmas cards at the end of December, and now 34 nine year olds in Japan are Best Friends Forever with 34 nine year olds in England, and my sister and I barely had to lift a finger.
And the change has been astronomical.
Suddenly, England exists. I can stand as long as I like next to a blackboard, a living and breathing example of the fact that England exists, but I don`t think that any of the children in my second grade class actually believed me. One set of cards with little photos on them - their very own English person, to name and cut out and keep - and they suddenly know that England is real.
"Mine is so cuuuutttee!" one of my girls shouted, cuddling a photo of a girl from Hove called Hannah.
"Mine is cuter!" her friend yelled, trying to trump Hannah with Jessica.
"Well mine has red hair, just like Ron Weasley!" a little boy triumphed. "None of yours have red hair!"
"Mine could beat yours at skipping rope any day," someone else shouted.
"But mine has yellow hair like Holly Sensei, so I win!" another jeered.
And when I told them that my sister would be visiting in person in April, and that they would be getting new cards in a few weeks, they stood up, air punched and screeched "Whooooooooooohhhhooooooooo!" It is only a matter of time before they allocate each other points for various aspects of their Penpal, and start swapping them in the playground.
For my class, though, English children are exciting, but not unimaginable: they can speak a little English (I hope: I try, anyway), they know where England is (now: it`s taken me nine months of map pointing) and they see me every day, and I fly the English flag for them far more passionately than I would anywhere else in the world (I`m up against all the Americans here). For my sister`s class in Brighton, on the otherhand, the concept of writing to a Japanese class has - according to Tara - taken them to a level of excitement she doesn`t otherwise see unless chocolate is involved.
"I`m serious," she told me last night. "They`re obsessed. It`s scary. We`re talking about a class full of nine year olds who don`t know where London is, and they`re coming in to registration every morning full of facts about Japan, because they`re all going home and they`re looking it up on the internet every night. It`s all, `did you know that that in April the cherry blossoms come out and they`re called Sakura, Miss Smale` and `Tokyo is the capital of Japan, Miss Smale,` and `did you know that Manga is what they call their cartoons, Miss Smale`. They made me set up a Japanese display on the wall. They want me to play games in Japanese - I`ve had to learn basic words so that I can teach them - and today we`re making Origami. One Christmas card from a Japanese class and my students are absolutely in love with the entire country. I`m just terrified of the next question, which is going to be: Miss Smale, when do we get to go to Japan and meet them?"
And that, I think, is the whole point of teaching. Within a month, over 60 children who had no interest whatsoever in any part of the world other than Kitago and Brighton are fascinated in somewhere else, and in the people who come from there. They want to know everything: what they eat, what they wear, how they speak, what games they play. And they`re realising already what it took me 21 years to conclude: that the world isn`t a big flat bit of paper to shade in and stick pins in, but a place full of people to talk to and things to learn and fun things to do. That they can go there. That they can communicate with it. That they can be a part of it too.
So, while I may not have known where anything was as a child - or have been interested in any part of the world I wasn`t standing directly on - I think I`m finally making up for it now. By bringing the world to where I am, and giving it to my children.
And sending a little bit of it back home to England.
Monday, 17 January 2011
Pink rashes
Drugs work.
Six months of drugs, and I'm no longer unhappy: I'm no longer in any kind of pain. I no longer pine for The Boy, or for love, or think about him in any way other than with distaste at my own weakness. I no longer hate myself, or agree that I am 'poison'; I no longer care what others think about me, or feel the need to claw for some kind of reassurance that I am worth loving. I don't cringe when I look in the mirror anymore, and I don't cry at parties; I don't sob in the shower, and I don't run to the toilets in the middle of class for any other reason than to go to the toilet. I don't wish I was smaller, or darker, or more American, or owner of a different shaped nose; I don't imagine what life would be like if I could be louder, or quieter, or much cleverer, or much less so. I don't look at the past and wish I could change it, and I don't look at the future I wanted and still wish I could have it. I don't play scenes over and over again in my head, as if I could ever change them. For the first time in my life I have started to believe that losing me is a loss, and that just because someone doesn't know doesn't make it any less true: it just makes them more stupid than they were for losing me in the first place.
And, while I'm still instinctively raw - while I still automatically shy away from any kind of romance or intimacy - it's in a scabbing, healed over kind of way: not in a fresh wound kind of way. And it's with the knowledge - a new strength that runs through the middle of me like the steel pin in a broken bone - that none of the past will ever happen again. Because I'm no longer a person who will let it.
The drugs work, but now it's time to stop. I don't need them anymore, and I don't want them anymore. I don't want to feel hard, and resilient, and distant. I don't want to feel impervious to everything around me: untouchable and unreachable. I don't want to feel calm, and serene, when I've never been calm and serene. I don't want to feel incapable of love, even if I'm also incapable of pain, and I don't like the smile I've started to believe is my own: a placid, peaceful smile, that doesn't reach my eyes. I don't like the fact that my own laughter surprises me, and I hate the fact that my writing has become so empty, and so emotionless, and so devoid of beauty, because I can't feel anything at all, and so when I write that's all that comes out: nothing.
I'm scared. I'm scared of going back to where I was: to the place where everything hurt, and I thought about him all of the time, and I hated myself all of the time. I'm scared of waking up in the morning and crying, and going to bed at night and crying, and walking around in the middle of the day and crying. But I'm far, far more scared of never crying again. And of never hurting again. And I'm terrified of drugging myself so far and so deeply that I forget who I was in the first place.
It's time to start feeling again: the good, and the bad. It's time to wake up in the morning and not know exactly how I'll feel at every minute of the day; to hear and see from the inside, instead of constantly on the edge. I want to get excited again, or upset if I have to. I want the pink rash on my neck that turns up when I'm embarrassed or shy or nervous or anxious - a rash I haven't seen in six months - because it means that I'm reacting to the world again, and letting it in. I want to feel as if things are real again, instead of running past me like a film I'm always, always watching. And I want to be inspired again, so that when I speak there's something to say.
I've had the rest I so desperately needed: the six months of sleep and nothingness, away from the hurt and emotion that wore me out. I'm finally ready to wake up again.
The drugs work.
And that is exactly why I don't need them anymore.
Six months of drugs, and I'm no longer unhappy: I'm no longer in any kind of pain. I no longer pine for The Boy, or for love, or think about him in any way other than with distaste at my own weakness. I no longer hate myself, or agree that I am 'poison'; I no longer care what others think about me, or feel the need to claw for some kind of reassurance that I am worth loving. I don't cringe when I look in the mirror anymore, and I don't cry at parties; I don't sob in the shower, and I don't run to the toilets in the middle of class for any other reason than to go to the toilet. I don't wish I was smaller, or darker, or more American, or owner of a different shaped nose; I don't imagine what life would be like if I could be louder, or quieter, or much cleverer, or much less so. I don't look at the past and wish I could change it, and I don't look at the future I wanted and still wish I could have it. I don't play scenes over and over again in my head, as if I could ever change them. For the first time in my life I have started to believe that losing me is a loss, and that just because someone doesn't know doesn't make it any less true: it just makes them more stupid than they were for losing me in the first place.
And, while I'm still instinctively raw - while I still automatically shy away from any kind of romance or intimacy - it's in a scabbing, healed over kind of way: not in a fresh wound kind of way. And it's with the knowledge - a new strength that runs through the middle of me like the steel pin in a broken bone - that none of the past will ever happen again. Because I'm no longer a person who will let it.
The drugs work, but now it's time to stop. I don't need them anymore, and I don't want them anymore. I don't want to feel hard, and resilient, and distant. I don't want to feel impervious to everything around me: untouchable and unreachable. I don't want to feel calm, and serene, when I've never been calm and serene. I don't want to feel incapable of love, even if I'm also incapable of pain, and I don't like the smile I've started to believe is my own: a placid, peaceful smile, that doesn't reach my eyes. I don't like the fact that my own laughter surprises me, and I hate the fact that my writing has become so empty, and so emotionless, and so devoid of beauty, because I can't feel anything at all, and so when I write that's all that comes out: nothing.
I'm scared. I'm scared of going back to where I was: to the place where everything hurt, and I thought about him all of the time, and I hated myself all of the time. I'm scared of waking up in the morning and crying, and going to bed at night and crying, and walking around in the middle of the day and crying. But I'm far, far more scared of never crying again. And of never hurting again. And I'm terrified of drugging myself so far and so deeply that I forget who I was in the first place.
It's time to start feeling again: the good, and the bad. It's time to wake up in the morning and not know exactly how I'll feel at every minute of the day; to hear and see from the inside, instead of constantly on the edge. I want to get excited again, or upset if I have to. I want the pink rash on my neck that turns up when I'm embarrassed or shy or nervous or anxious - a rash I haven't seen in six months - because it means that I'm reacting to the world again, and letting it in. I want to feel as if things are real again, instead of running past me like a film I'm always, always watching. And I want to be inspired again, so that when I speak there's something to say.
I've had the rest I so desperately needed: the six months of sleep and nothingness, away from the hurt and emotion that wore me out. I'm finally ready to wake up again.
The drugs work.
And that is exactly why I don't need them anymore.
Sunday, 16 January 2011
Amazon
It arrived. My scary electronic baby substitute arrived, just at the point when I wasn't ready and my flat was a mess again, which is probably what happens when it's a human being as well.
To celebrate my giant leap in technology - despite the fact that I can't quite work out which buttons to press - in 72 hours The Write Girl will be available in Kindle Blog format, on Amazon. Feel free to snap it up like cold cakes, because apparently they're going to try and charge you for it. It's simply there if you suddenly need a way to get it in four inch sized font (grandad), or on a bus on a far flung part and exotic piece of the world (Sarah), or on set location for your next blockbusting film (Johnny Depp or James Franco).
Me, I'll be reading something better. Because I'm going to be reading everything.
To celebrate my giant leap in technology - despite the fact that I can't quite work out which buttons to press - in 72 hours The Write Girl will be available in Kindle Blog format, on Amazon. Feel free to snap it up like cold cakes, because apparently they're going to try and charge you for it. It's simply there if you suddenly need a way to get it in four inch sized font (grandad), or on a bus on a far flung part and exotic piece of the world (Sarah), or on set location for your next blockbusting film (Johnny Depp or James Franco).
Me, I'll be reading something better. Because I'm going to be reading everything.
Friday, 14 January 2011
Delivery
It hasn`t been delivered yet, and in the interim I`m going a little bit bonkers.
I`m not even shopping for books in advance: I`m shopping in advance of advance shopping, which means making a mental note of everything I want, in advance of making a physical note of everything I want, in advance of purchasing it. That`s two stages removed from shopping, which is probably the furthest I`ve ever got. I`ve been browsing for accessories, even after I`ve already bought accessories. And the excitement - the stomach clenching Oh My God I Will Have Every Work by Dickens Right With Me All The Time, Like Seriously All The Time excitement - is making it difficult to function. Every time I try to speak to people, all I can think is: That includes A Christmas Carol. I`ve not read A Christmas Carol. I`ve always wanted to read A Christmas Carol. Which means that I block out the actual conversation I`m having and end it by staring in to the middle distance and muttering to myself about Tiny Tim. I`ve even cleaned my house, so that the Kindle feels nice and welcome. I don`t want the Kindle coming in to a mess, so I`ve arranged a nice chair, with a nice table, and a nice space on the nice table for the Kindle to sit on and feel happy and at home.
Worse, I`ve just - and I`m a little bit ashamed of this - stolen a piece of black card from the staff stationary cupboard and cut it into the shape of a Kindle with precise measurements so that I can make a little Japanese silk holder for it before it arrives, because I have a sudden almost uncontrollable desire to sew something. I`ve also practiced holding the card so that I get a feel for the size of it; a couple of times I`ve actually put the piece of cardboard into my bag and then pulled it out again with a flourish, pretending to show somebody with shy and yet tangible smugness. And, when that grew a little dry, I decided to actually show somebody. Regardless of the fact that it hadn`t arrived yet.
"Look," I told Harai.
"It`s a bit of black card."
"Yes. But look, isn`t that a great size?"
"It`s a bit of black card."
"But next week it will be my new Kindle."
"Ok. But now it`s a bit of black card."
"Use your imagination, and don`t be rude about my black card."
"Okay."
"And then next week you can hold it if you want."
"Ok."
"But only if you promise not to drop it."
"Ok."
"Do you want to hold it now?"
"No. It`s a bit of black card."
"Ok. You think I`m a bit mad, don`t you."
"Always."
And all of this would obviously be extremely worrying if I hadn`t just come to one, alarming conclusion:
I`m nesting for a Kindle. I`m 29 and while I`m by no means ready for a baby - or in a position to have one, get one or keep one, which is handy - clearly something biological has started happening to my chemicals, because now I`m nesting for a piece of electronic equipment. Preparing, fluffing, protecting, readying myself. Talking about it to anyone who will listen, thinking about it when somebody else is talking. Getting my surroundings perfect, just in case. So while I am going bonkers, it`s a relief to know that at least it`s in exactly the same way that most other female 29 year olds go bonkers: a predestined, natural kind of bonkers. A chemical kind of bonkers. Except that I`m doing it for a bit of plastic and not a human being, which makes it a little more concerning. Or less. At least this way I`m not roping anybody else into my mania, or prowling the streets looking for somebody to become co-owner.
According to delivery times, I`ve got another five days to wait, and it`s becoming uncomfortable. I just want it to arrive, now, because I`m anxious to see just how long I can keep this thing functioning before I break it, lose it, lose interest in it or decide that I hate it and give it to somebody else. Because maybe if I practice and practice and practice, then when I eventually get a baby I`ll have learnt how not to break it, lose it, lose interest or decide that I hate it and give it to someone else.
And the Kindle? If it`s lucky it`ll be the first in a long line of things I learn to look after properly.
I`m not even shopping for books in advance: I`m shopping in advance of advance shopping, which means making a mental note of everything I want, in advance of making a physical note of everything I want, in advance of purchasing it. That`s two stages removed from shopping, which is probably the furthest I`ve ever got. I`ve been browsing for accessories, even after I`ve already bought accessories. And the excitement - the stomach clenching Oh My God I Will Have Every Work by Dickens Right With Me All The Time, Like Seriously All The Time excitement - is making it difficult to function. Every time I try to speak to people, all I can think is: That includes A Christmas Carol. I`ve not read A Christmas Carol. I`ve always wanted to read A Christmas Carol. Which means that I block out the actual conversation I`m having and end it by staring in to the middle distance and muttering to myself about Tiny Tim. I`ve even cleaned my house, so that the Kindle feels nice and welcome. I don`t want the Kindle coming in to a mess, so I`ve arranged a nice chair, with a nice table, and a nice space on the nice table for the Kindle to sit on and feel happy and at home.
Worse, I`ve just - and I`m a little bit ashamed of this - stolen a piece of black card from the staff stationary cupboard and cut it into the shape of a Kindle with precise measurements so that I can make a little Japanese silk holder for it before it arrives, because I have a sudden almost uncontrollable desire to sew something. I`ve also practiced holding the card so that I get a feel for the size of it; a couple of times I`ve actually put the piece of cardboard into my bag and then pulled it out again with a flourish, pretending to show somebody with shy and yet tangible smugness. And, when that grew a little dry, I decided to actually show somebody. Regardless of the fact that it hadn`t arrived yet.
"Look," I told Harai.
"It`s a bit of black card."
"Yes. But look, isn`t that a great size?"
"It`s a bit of black card."
"But next week it will be my new Kindle."
"Ok. But now it`s a bit of black card."
"Use your imagination, and don`t be rude about my black card."
"Okay."
"And then next week you can hold it if you want."
"Ok."
"But only if you promise not to drop it."
"Ok."
"Do you want to hold it now?"
"No. It`s a bit of black card."
"Ok. You think I`m a bit mad, don`t you."
"Always."
And all of this would obviously be extremely worrying if I hadn`t just come to one, alarming conclusion:
I`m finally nesting.
I`m nesting for a Kindle. I`m 29 and while I`m by no means ready for a baby - or in a position to have one, get one or keep one, which is handy - clearly something biological has started happening to my chemicals, because now I`m nesting for a piece of electronic equipment. Preparing, fluffing, protecting, readying myself. Talking about it to anyone who will listen, thinking about it when somebody else is talking. Getting my surroundings perfect, just in case. So while I am going bonkers, it`s a relief to know that at least it`s in exactly the same way that most other female 29 year olds go bonkers: a predestined, natural kind of bonkers. A chemical kind of bonkers. Except that I`m doing it for a bit of plastic and not a human being, which makes it a little more concerning. Or less. At least this way I`m not roping anybody else into my mania, or prowling the streets looking for somebody to become co-owner.
According to delivery times, I`ve got another five days to wait, and it`s becoming uncomfortable. I just want it to arrive, now, because I`m anxious to see just how long I can keep this thing functioning before I break it, lose it, lose interest in it or decide that I hate it and give it to somebody else. Because maybe if I practice and practice and practice, then when I eventually get a baby I`ll have learnt how not to break it, lose it, lose interest or decide that I hate it and give it to someone else.
And the Kindle? If it`s lucky it`ll be the first in a long line of things I learn to look after properly.
Tuesday, 11 January 2011
Kindle
Addiction isn't pleasant, and it's taken me just 36 hours to crumble. 36 hours of chewing my nails and clawing at the walls and walking around school with a face like my sister's new puppy (Boston terrier. Cute, cross looking and dedicated to a life spent being carried whenever possible. My sister needs to drag him along the sea front for exercise). 36 hours of feeling panicky, and sticky, and unpleasantly anxious: as if something, somehow, somewhere, is wrong. Missing. Gone. 36 hours of feeling a bit sick, and I gave in. I've just bought a Kindle.
I don't want a Kindle. No: I want a never ending supply of English language books in a never ending library that stretches as far as I can see: much, much bigger than the stupid British library which smells of dust and weirdos and much, much more inviting than Cambridge University library which is full of the sound of people breathing too heavily through their mouths and licking their fingers so they can turn the pages over. I want my own private library: glorious and full of sunshine and books and books and books and the smell of paper and a million different stories, with a really cosy chair next to a fire, and - possibly - a sunken bath which is always ready made and yet the moisture never ruins my collection. I want a little oak ladder I can stand on and slide along the shelves with, and flowers in big pots next to the windows. I want to feel each and every page of the books that never end: because I can never, ever finish them all. To feel the immortality inside each of them, and breathe them in, and know that I can never be bored, and I can never be lonely, because the greatest minds and greatest characters and greatest places in the world - and outside of it - are all in one room. My room. That's what I want.
I don't want a little bit of grey plastic onto which I can download novels at $0.01 and then flick through with the click of buttons. That is not the fantasy. But I cannot be without books. 36 hours ago I ran out - I ended my collection with Catch 22, an epic satire - and the consequential breakdown was not pretty. At one stage I started reading the back of my box of tissues, like an alcoholic draining the last of the toilet cleaner. And then I found myself pawing at the Penny Vincenzi paperback - left behind by another teacher - before physically forcing myself to leave the house before I did myself anymore damage.
We all have our fetishes. My sister likes tv adverts: if she hasn't seen one in a few hours she gets jittery. My dad likes (men's) shoes: even when the shops are shut you have to drag him past, kicking and screaming to "just see in the window". Mum's a fan of Solitaire - it calms her down - but for me: it's books. The whole world could come to an end, and as long as I had a good collection of excellent novels I couldn't care less. I'd be escaping into a different one anyway.
36 hours of increasing desperation - of nervousness, of irritation, of genuine, obsessive stress (what do I do? what do I hold??) - and I've crumbled. Until I find my never ending library of real, paper books - and either stop moving around the world or get it to move around with me - I'll have to read from a Kindle. Another screen, which is just what I didn't want. And yet anything - anything - is better than the thought of another 36 hours with nothing to read.
Which is a shame, because that's exactly what I'll have to go through now. Hanging on Amazon's delivery service like a junkie waiting for their next shot. Hoping - shamefully - that it turns up before the weekend, even if it means missing my friend's house party because I'm at home, greedily stuffing my face on the works of Austen in a dark corner of the kitchen somewhere. Wondering if I can find another dark corner of the party and carry on when everyone else is asleep. Wondering if I can find an even darker corner and perhaps leave early in the morning so I can get home and carry on stuffing my face where nobody can see me.
Greed and obsession aren't pretty things, but you should never judge a book by its cover.
Because none of these will have one.
I don't want a Kindle. No: I want a never ending supply of English language books in a never ending library that stretches as far as I can see: much, much bigger than the stupid British library which smells of dust and weirdos and much, much more inviting than Cambridge University library which is full of the sound of people breathing too heavily through their mouths and licking their fingers so they can turn the pages over. I want my own private library: glorious and full of sunshine and books and books and books and the smell of paper and a million different stories, with a really cosy chair next to a fire, and - possibly - a sunken bath which is always ready made and yet the moisture never ruins my collection. I want a little oak ladder I can stand on and slide along the shelves with, and flowers in big pots next to the windows. I want to feel each and every page of the books that never end: because I can never, ever finish them all. To feel the immortality inside each of them, and breathe them in, and know that I can never be bored, and I can never be lonely, because the greatest minds and greatest characters and greatest places in the world - and outside of it - are all in one room. My room. That's what I want.
I don't want a little bit of grey plastic onto which I can download novels at $0.01 and then flick through with the click of buttons. That is not the fantasy. But I cannot be without books. 36 hours ago I ran out - I ended my collection with Catch 22, an epic satire - and the consequential breakdown was not pretty. At one stage I started reading the back of my box of tissues, like an alcoholic draining the last of the toilet cleaner. And then I found myself pawing at the Penny Vincenzi paperback - left behind by another teacher - before physically forcing myself to leave the house before I did myself anymore damage.
We all have our fetishes. My sister likes tv adverts: if she hasn't seen one in a few hours she gets jittery. My dad likes (men's) shoes: even when the shops are shut you have to drag him past, kicking and screaming to "just see in the window". Mum's a fan of Solitaire - it calms her down - but for me: it's books. The whole world could come to an end, and as long as I had a good collection of excellent novels I couldn't care less. I'd be escaping into a different one anyway.
36 hours of increasing desperation - of nervousness, of irritation, of genuine, obsessive stress (what do I do? what do I hold??) - and I've crumbled. Until I find my never ending library of real, paper books - and either stop moving around the world or get it to move around with me - I'll have to read from a Kindle. Another screen, which is just what I didn't want. And yet anything - anything - is better than the thought of another 36 hours with nothing to read.
Which is a shame, because that's exactly what I'll have to go through now. Hanging on Amazon's delivery service like a junkie waiting for their next shot. Hoping - shamefully - that it turns up before the weekend, even if it means missing my friend's house party because I'm at home, greedily stuffing my face on the works of Austen in a dark corner of the kitchen somewhere. Wondering if I can find another dark corner of the party and carry on when everyone else is asleep. Wondering if I can find an even darker corner and perhaps leave early in the morning so I can get home and carry on stuffing my face where nobody can see me.
Greed and obsession aren't pretty things, but you should never judge a book by its cover.
Because none of these will have one.
Friday, 7 January 2011
Tissues and radishes
I`ve always known that at some stage I would turn into my parents - both of them - but what I didn`t realise was that at some stage on the journey I would metamorphosise into an old man from a 90s BBC television drama.
It started with the underwear. As single as I am, as stuck in the middle of nowhere as I am, I`m only just 29: I should have many years of buying useless and scratchy and ill fitting lace items ahead of me. But it`s cold: the kind of cold where the only sound you can hear hundreds of times a day is the world "cooollllldd" repeated resentfully over and over again (which is unfortunate, because in Japanese it is also the name of my ex: which leaves me a teensy bit on edge and a bit grumpy for the majority of winter). So I bought a nice, slightly fluffy thermal t-shirt to go under my clothes: ostensibly to render nice, summery clothes still wearable in the middle of December. A pretty, faded pink colour. Delicate. Feminine. Warm. And then, when I had realised just how warm it was, I realised that my legs were cold, too. And they had matching fluffy leggings. Leggings, I told myself. And leggings are cool, right? Leggings are hip. And I chanted to myself on the way to the checkout counter: I`m 29: it`s okay to wear cool, pink leggings under my clothes. It`s okay. It`s okay. Just don`t look at the old women next to you. Just don`t look and then they`re not there.
Except that the leggings were so fluffy and warm, that I started wearing them everyday, under my trousers. And when I realised that there was no elastic and they were starting to sag somewhere around the crotch area - sag down to my knee area, in fact - I didn`t care, because I was so damn warm. And when the top started to sag, and both items started fading from a pretty, fluffy pale pink to a sort of off, dubious looking white, I didn`t care, because I was so damn warm. And when the fluffiness went sort of bobbly, and the bit that held them all up gave way and started sinking down to meet the crotch - forcing me to, with no notice, pull them up with both my hands and do a little jump in the middle to get leverage - I still didn`t care, because I was so warm. Until the moment when I climbed into bed for my 4.30 nap (this is all I can manage before my heating turns on), waddled back out like a penguin and spotted myself in the mirror: white bobbled crotch by my knees and waist sagging to meet it, and one hand tugging them up by lifting my right leg in the air. Oh Good God, I whispered to my reflection. They`re not leggings at all, are they. They`re old man knickerbockers.
The second sign was the radish. It`s bad enough that my scooter has - as my dad pointed out - a basket. It`s bad enough that there`s one mirror missing, because the dude at the garage tried to impress me by "fixing it," and snapped it right off in front of my eyes. It`s bad enough that my scooter makes VRRRRRROOOOOO-eh-eh-eh-VRRROOOOO-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh sounds when I try to go above 30kmh, as if I`m committing scooter cruelty, and that I`ve tried to make it more road worthy by sticking reflective red things all over the inner parts of the wheels like some sort of training bicycle. But nothing makes you look less like a hip young 29 year old and more like a little old man from the countryside than a 2 foot Japanese radish sticking out of your basket. I didn`t even eat it: that`s how embarrassing it was. I resented it too fiercely.
The third sign was sticking tissues up my sleeve because I was scared of being caught with a runny nose, and the fourth and final sign was this morning, on my faltering, wobbling drive to work. A large car waited until I had indicated to turn right, pulled to the middle of the road, and then nipped past me - catching the back of my jacket and giving me a fright - and yet I didn`t swear and stick my finger in the air. No: I raised my hand, and I shook my fist. My whole, clenched fist. And then I screamed "Oooh, you..." and faded out into nothing. Which is - as we all know - just one step away from shouting "Why I oughta". And nobody knows what they oughta do, because the sentence is never, ever finished.
It`s been a nasty shock, frankly. One month into my 29th year, and I`ve accidentally stepped into the armchair in Last of the Summer Wine or Only Fools and Horses. And it`s not been pleasant. So I`ve pulled the tissues out, replaced the underwear, thrown away the radish, and practicised sticking my middle finger up like a nice, ill mannered youth. For the few remaining years where I still am. And my lovely, middle-aged, slightly bonkers parents: one of which lives in a series of brown leather jackets and the other of which sometimes wears black PVC in public?
If all I do is turn into them, I think I`ll be counting myself lucky.
It started with the underwear. As single as I am, as stuck in the middle of nowhere as I am, I`m only just 29: I should have many years of buying useless and scratchy and ill fitting lace items ahead of me. But it`s cold: the kind of cold where the only sound you can hear hundreds of times a day is the world "cooollllldd" repeated resentfully over and over again (which is unfortunate, because in Japanese it is also the name of my ex: which leaves me a teensy bit on edge and a bit grumpy for the majority of winter). So I bought a nice, slightly fluffy thermal t-shirt to go under my clothes: ostensibly to render nice, summery clothes still wearable in the middle of December. A pretty, faded pink colour. Delicate. Feminine. Warm. And then, when I had realised just how warm it was, I realised that my legs were cold, too. And they had matching fluffy leggings. Leggings, I told myself. And leggings are cool, right? Leggings are hip. And I chanted to myself on the way to the checkout counter: I`m 29: it`s okay to wear cool, pink leggings under my clothes. It`s okay. It`s okay. Just don`t look at the old women next to you. Just don`t look and then they`re not there.
Except that the leggings were so fluffy and warm, that I started wearing them everyday, under my trousers. And when I realised that there was no elastic and they were starting to sag somewhere around the crotch area - sag down to my knee area, in fact - I didn`t care, because I was so damn warm. And when the top started to sag, and both items started fading from a pretty, fluffy pale pink to a sort of off, dubious looking white, I didn`t care, because I was so damn warm. And when the fluffiness went sort of bobbly, and the bit that held them all up gave way and started sinking down to meet the crotch - forcing me to, with no notice, pull them up with both my hands and do a little jump in the middle to get leverage - I still didn`t care, because I was so warm. Until the moment when I climbed into bed for my 4.30 nap (this is all I can manage before my heating turns on), waddled back out like a penguin and spotted myself in the mirror: white bobbled crotch by my knees and waist sagging to meet it, and one hand tugging them up by lifting my right leg in the air. Oh Good God, I whispered to my reflection. They`re not leggings at all, are they. They`re old man knickerbockers.
The second sign was the radish. It`s bad enough that my scooter has - as my dad pointed out - a basket. It`s bad enough that there`s one mirror missing, because the dude at the garage tried to impress me by "fixing it," and snapped it right off in front of my eyes. It`s bad enough that my scooter makes VRRRRRROOOOOO-eh-eh-eh-VRRROOOOO-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh sounds when I try to go above 30kmh, as if I`m committing scooter cruelty, and that I`ve tried to make it more road worthy by sticking reflective red things all over the inner parts of the wheels like some sort of training bicycle. But nothing makes you look less like a hip young 29 year old and more like a little old man from the countryside than a 2 foot Japanese radish sticking out of your basket. I didn`t even eat it: that`s how embarrassing it was. I resented it too fiercely.
The third sign was sticking tissues up my sleeve because I was scared of being caught with a runny nose, and the fourth and final sign was this morning, on my faltering, wobbling drive to work. A large car waited until I had indicated to turn right, pulled to the middle of the road, and then nipped past me - catching the back of my jacket and giving me a fright - and yet I didn`t swear and stick my finger in the air. No: I raised my hand, and I shook my fist. My whole, clenched fist. And then I screamed "Oooh, you..." and faded out into nothing. Which is - as we all know - just one step away from shouting "Why I oughta". And nobody knows what they oughta do, because the sentence is never, ever finished.
It`s been a nasty shock, frankly. One month into my 29th year, and I`ve accidentally stepped into the armchair in Last of the Summer Wine or Only Fools and Horses. And it`s not been pleasant. So I`ve pulled the tissues out, replaced the underwear, thrown away the radish, and practicised sticking my middle finger up like a nice, ill mannered youth. For the few remaining years where I still am. And my lovely, middle-aged, slightly bonkers parents: one of which lives in a series of brown leather jackets and the other of which sometimes wears black PVC in public?
If all I do is turn into them, I think I`ll be counting myself lucky.
Thursday, 6 January 2011
It
As passionate as I am about the English language, I never thought I'd get into a scrap over personal pronouns.
I was wrong. Today, I had a forty minute fight - verbal, emotional, extremely loud and verging on the physical - about the use of subject markers in the teaching of English to Japanese children. Harai was on one side of the argument, I was on the other, and the head of English was perched awkwardly in the middle trying to get on with some marking.
"They're too hard," Harai shouted at me.
"What are you talking about?" I shouted back. "You just used one! They're not too bloody hard. I. You. We. He. She. They. On what planet are personal pronouns too hard?"
"They won't understand!"
"They're eleven years old! Why won't they goddamn understand? There's a direct equivalent in Japanese! Anyway, it's my job to make them understand! That is why I'm here!"
Harai pressed his lips together, which is his sign for: I am angry but far too repressed to tell you that.
"Don't press your lips together at me," I told him fiercely, because I'm not repressed in the slightest. "It's my job to teach them the English language whether it's hard or not. If you want to tell me it's boring, that's fine. It is boring. But don't tell me it's too hard."
"Your job," he said in a hiss, "is to make English fun."
"Oh. Oh. Now my job is to make English fun, is it? Because a few weeks ago I was making English too fun, you said. They were enjoying themselves too much, you said."
"Well your job is to make it just fun enough."
"No. I know exactly what my job description is, Harai. I'm trained approximately a billion times a term in a neverending round of ridiculous meetings that I could run myself while unconscious. I am here to assist as a native speaker with Junior High school, to serve as an introduction to English for the kindergarteners, and to prepare the ground from which the beautiful flower of English will bloom for the Elementary school children. And I mean that exactly, because at one stage I remember seeing yet another goddamn Powerpoint presentation with soil and a little watering can and some dude spreading imaginary Powerpoint fertiliser."
"I don't understand you," Harai admitted after a pause. "You speak too fast."
"I know that." I paused and sat down in defeat. "Oh, I don't care," I muttered. "Teach them what you want. I just don't care." Then I furrowed by brow and shot back up again, even though Harai had done nothing other than tighten his lips again. "Actually, Harai, I do fricking care. My job is to make these children love English by getting them used to it and fond of it before they hit Junior High school. And what the hell is the point in making them love English by only teaching them useless bollocks just so they can go to Masa's class in three months, get confused, and spend the rest of their lives hating English and looking back on my class as the only time in their short lives when they didn't hate English because all we did was play card games? Well? What the hell is the point in that? Maybe if I incorporate things worth learning into my fun lessons, they won't find the next grade so hard and they won't be confused and they won't end up hating English, like the rest of the adults in Japan. And maybe if they don't hate bloody English then they won't be scared to ever leave Japan like 80% of the population, and they might actually get out into the world and see that there is still one out there. And their lives will be fuller and better and more rich because of it. Because they don't hate English. That's my goddamn job, Harai, and it starts with personal pronouns."
And I sat down again, feeling very much the way Bill Pullman must have felt after he made that rousing speech in Independence Day right in front of Will Smith.
Harai jutted his chin out.
"Personal pronouns are hard and unecessary."
"Really? You want to try and construct a sentence about anything interesting without one? I can make them easy, and I can make them fun. It's no problem. You just have to let me do it. They can all learn together."
The head of English butted in.
"She is making sense, you know, Harai."
"Just subject pronouns," I wheedled. "No objects. Just subjects."
Harai scowled.
"You can have one," he finally muttered. "One pronoun."
"What can I do with one fricking pronoun?"
"Okay, two. You can have two pronouns. But no more."
"Six. I need at least six. I need I, you, he, she, it, they, we."
"No. It's way too hard. Way too hard. Not fun. Three."
"So which ones am I going to leave out? She, perhaps? Just let them think that everything in the world is male? Four. I need four."
"Four. Okay, four. But no more than that. Or English won't be fun anymore."
"Fine." I stood up and dusted my trousers off. "Four."
Harai glared at me.
"It had better be fun," he said.
"It's going to be so fun," I told him. "It's going to be too fun."
"Not too fun," he corrected. "Just enough fun."
"Yes."
"English sucks," he told me.
"And you're the English teacher," I sighed. "And we wonder why the government employ me too."
Four pronouns. A forty minute fight and all I got was four pronouns. I've chosen I, you, he and she. And when Harai's not looking, I'm going to sneak in it, too. When it's too late for him to do anything about it. And too late for him to do anything about it.
I never thought I would have to fight, kicking and screaming, for the personal pronoun: but I do. And if anyone needs to know why: that was three in one sentence. A sentence that would have made no sense otherwise. And I'll be damned if I'm going to let Japanese children hate my language because I haven't had the balls to fight for the tools they need not to.
There appears to be quite enough people who hate English teaching them it as it is.
I was wrong. Today, I had a forty minute fight - verbal, emotional, extremely loud and verging on the physical - about the use of subject markers in the teaching of English to Japanese children. Harai was on one side of the argument, I was on the other, and the head of English was perched awkwardly in the middle trying to get on with some marking.
"They're too hard," Harai shouted at me.
"What are you talking about?" I shouted back. "You just used one! They're not too bloody hard. I. You. We. He. She. They. On what planet are personal pronouns too hard?"
"They won't understand!"
"They're eleven years old! Why won't they goddamn understand? There's a direct equivalent in Japanese! Anyway, it's my job to make them understand! That is why I'm here!"
Harai pressed his lips together, which is his sign for: I am angry but far too repressed to tell you that.
"Don't press your lips together at me," I told him fiercely, because I'm not repressed in the slightest. "It's my job to teach them the English language whether it's hard or not. If you want to tell me it's boring, that's fine. It is boring. But don't tell me it's too hard."
"Your job," he said in a hiss, "is to make English fun."
"Oh. Oh. Now my job is to make English fun, is it? Because a few weeks ago I was making English too fun, you said. They were enjoying themselves too much, you said."
"Well your job is to make it just fun enough."
"No. I know exactly what my job description is, Harai. I'm trained approximately a billion times a term in a neverending round of ridiculous meetings that I could run myself while unconscious. I am here to assist as a native speaker with Junior High school, to serve as an introduction to English for the kindergarteners, and to prepare the ground from which the beautiful flower of English will bloom for the Elementary school children. And I mean that exactly, because at one stage I remember seeing yet another goddamn Powerpoint presentation with soil and a little watering can and some dude spreading imaginary Powerpoint fertiliser."
"I don't understand you," Harai admitted after a pause. "You speak too fast."
"I know that." I paused and sat down in defeat. "Oh, I don't care," I muttered. "Teach them what you want. I just don't care." Then I furrowed by brow and shot back up again, even though Harai had done nothing other than tighten his lips again. "Actually, Harai, I do fricking care. My job is to make these children love English by getting them used to it and fond of it before they hit Junior High school. And what the hell is the point in making them love English by only teaching them useless bollocks just so they can go to Masa's class in three months, get confused, and spend the rest of their lives hating English and looking back on my class as the only time in their short lives when they didn't hate English because all we did was play card games? Well? What the hell is the point in that? Maybe if I incorporate things worth learning into my fun lessons, they won't find the next grade so hard and they won't be confused and they won't end up hating English, like the rest of the adults in Japan. And maybe if they don't hate bloody English then they won't be scared to ever leave Japan like 80% of the population, and they might actually get out into the world and see that there is still one out there. And their lives will be fuller and better and more rich because of it. Because they don't hate English. That's my goddamn job, Harai, and it starts with personal pronouns."
And I sat down again, feeling very much the way Bill Pullman must have felt after he made that rousing speech in Independence Day right in front of Will Smith.
Harai jutted his chin out.
"Personal pronouns are hard and unecessary."
"Really? You want to try and construct a sentence about anything interesting without one? I can make them easy, and I can make them fun. It's no problem. You just have to let me do it. They can all learn together."
The head of English butted in.
"She is making sense, you know, Harai."
"Just subject pronouns," I wheedled. "No objects. Just subjects."
Harai scowled.
"You can have one," he finally muttered. "One pronoun."
"What can I do with one fricking pronoun?"
"Okay, two. You can have two pronouns. But no more."
"Six. I need at least six. I need I, you, he, she, it, they, we."
"No. It's way too hard. Way too hard. Not fun. Three."
"So which ones am I going to leave out? She, perhaps? Just let them think that everything in the world is male? Four. I need four."
"Four. Okay, four. But no more than that. Or English won't be fun anymore."
"Fine." I stood up and dusted my trousers off. "Four."
Harai glared at me.
"It had better be fun," he said.
"It's going to be so fun," I told him. "It's going to be too fun."
"Not too fun," he corrected. "Just enough fun."
"Yes."
"English sucks," he told me.
"And you're the English teacher," I sighed. "And we wonder why the government employ me too."
Four pronouns. A forty minute fight and all I got was four pronouns. I've chosen I, you, he and she. And when Harai's not looking, I'm going to sneak in it, too. When it's too late for him to do anything about it. And too late for him to do anything about it.
I never thought I would have to fight, kicking and screaming, for the personal pronoun: but I do. And if anyone needs to know why: that was three in one sentence. A sentence that would have made no sense otherwise. And I'll be damned if I'm going to let Japanese children hate my language because I haven't had the balls to fight for the tools they need not to.
There appears to be quite enough people who hate English teaching them it as it is.
Wednesday, 5 January 2011
Irony
Here is the fundamental irony of writing: when things are happening there is no time to write it, and when there is plenty of time to write it, nothing is happening. It's the essential paradox of creativity: in order to be active you have to be inactive. Even war poets have to sit away from the bombs if they're going to get anything down worth reading, otherwise their poetry would get blown up.
I don't like travelling. I need travelling, but I don't actually like it. I think about it all the time, I dream about it, I research it, I look at photos, I save money obsessively. The thought of going to Nepal, or India, or Thailand, or Mexico, or Russia, excites the very bones of me, and at no point in any of my life plans do I intend to stop. It gives my life a meaning I can't find through anything else: seeing new things, new cultures, new adventures. It's fuel, in the most basic, fundamental way, because without it I dry up and shrivel. But do I like it? Not particularly. I often get bored, and I often get frustrated. I get annoyed with the people I'm travelling with, and when I'm on my own I get annoyed with myself, and I get annoyed at public transport, and at getting lost all the time. I am spectacularly bad at travelling - can land in a tiny, three person village and still manage to miss the main tourist spot - and indecisive, which means that I spend a large proportion of my time staring at a map and at the sky and then at a map, and then at the sky again, continuously, until I throw my backpack on the floor and sit on it, sulking. I pack the wrong clothes, I get grumpy because everything smells within two minutes, and I get tired looking at all of the things I'm supposed to be looking at. And - regularly - I skip looking at the things I'm looking at so that I can go and sit in a cafe and read a book, which I could do at home. And do do at home. So essentially the highlights of my trips are very often the things I do for free when I'm not travelling anywhere.
But the point is: none of that is the point of travelling. Travelling is about testing yourself. It's about seeing who you are away from your comfort zones, and pushing yourself out of the habits you fall into more and more easily as you get older. And it's about those tiny, fleeting moments - the sunrise, or the mountain, the wave, the shrine or the person - that you wouldn't have found anywhere else. The ones you can save up and store for a day when fleeting moments are the only things you have left.
I've just come back from ten days in Kyoto, Nara and Osaka: three of the most exciting places in Japan that failed, spectacularly, to particularly excite me. In all honesty, this is probably because Japan feels like a home, now: I understand the food, I'm starting to understand the language, and I understand the culture. I couldn't see any of the cities as I would have done a year and a half ago, when temples and huge shopping malls and karaoke and fried octopus balls would have shaken me to the core. This time it was: oh. Osaka is like Tokyo but smaller. Or: oh. Kyoto is like Hamamatsu but bigger with some nice shrines. Or oh: Nara is kind of cute, but my God the rain is heavy and ooh - is that a shop that sells falafel? There are fantastic things about living in a different country - becoming part of another culture, rather than just bobbing along on top of it - but the downsides are: travelling inside the country doesn't really feel like travelling anymore. It's like going to Norfolk for a holiday if you're a Brit: nice, and pretty, but that's about it.
There were, of course, the moments that made it all worth it. There almost always are. Sunlight pouring through the thousands and thousands of red shrines at Funishimi Inari in Kyoto; making mochi with a group of cheering men and talking to them all in Japanese; Todai-ji, the world's largest wooden building and buddha; standing on top of a mountain as the sun went down on Christmas eve; wandering the streets of Gion; watching a big black car pull up outside a large old house in Kyoto and seeing a real Geisha bow to a man through the swinging curtains; smelling the Octopus in Namba, Osaka, which seems to fill everything and everyone. The snow on New Year's eve in Kyoto; ringing the temple bell on New Year's day. Drunk and giggling with one of my old girlfriends from Tokyo in a Purikura at 2am. Taking a public bath on a 14 hour ferry with the water moving up and down and trying to drown me. All amazing and worth every single minute of the infinitely long hours spent listening to strangers fart in the capsule next to me.
But here's the truth: the moment that made it all worth the most was the moment when I landed back in Miyazaki, in the blazing sunshine, and smelt the rice fields and trees and fresh air. The train journey back to my house, with the mountains on one side and the sea on the other. And my house, filled with the computer I needed to start writing again, and my beloved books for me to carry on reading. And there's the crux of the irony. For those who truly love creating - who breathe through it, and live for it, and can't really function without it - living life is always going to come second to processing it. And yet nothing can be processed unless it is lived first.
Some people create things around the things they do, and some people do so that they can create around it. And my trip to Kyoto, Osaka and Nara - as expensive as it was, and as fun (and often as lonely) - was the latter for me, because everything always is. And I only really realised that as I sat on the train home and knew that I had gone away purely so that I could come back again and write about it. Because all of that fuel was needed to keep me going. Because all of those moments have been stored away to use, as I need them, in creating.
Because here's the truth: if creativity can only come from the inactivity of activity, then one has to be active first. In order to write poetry about bombs, you have to see and feel them to start with. In order to create, you have to live in a way that makes it almost impossible. In order to make anything, you have to start by pulling it apart, and prodding at it, and working out what made it work to start with.
And if you want to process the world, you have to be a part of it first.
I don't like travelling. I need travelling, but I don't actually like it. I think about it all the time, I dream about it, I research it, I look at photos, I save money obsessively. The thought of going to Nepal, or India, or Thailand, or Mexico, or Russia, excites the very bones of me, and at no point in any of my life plans do I intend to stop. It gives my life a meaning I can't find through anything else: seeing new things, new cultures, new adventures. It's fuel, in the most basic, fundamental way, because without it I dry up and shrivel. But do I like it? Not particularly. I often get bored, and I often get frustrated. I get annoyed with the people I'm travelling with, and when I'm on my own I get annoyed with myself, and I get annoyed at public transport, and at getting lost all the time. I am spectacularly bad at travelling - can land in a tiny, three person village and still manage to miss the main tourist spot - and indecisive, which means that I spend a large proportion of my time staring at a map and at the sky and then at a map, and then at the sky again, continuously, until I throw my backpack on the floor and sit on it, sulking. I pack the wrong clothes, I get grumpy because everything smells within two minutes, and I get tired looking at all of the things I'm supposed to be looking at. And - regularly - I skip looking at the things I'm looking at so that I can go and sit in a cafe and read a book, which I could do at home. And do do at home. So essentially the highlights of my trips are very often the things I do for free when I'm not travelling anywhere.
But the point is: none of that is the point of travelling. Travelling is about testing yourself. It's about seeing who you are away from your comfort zones, and pushing yourself out of the habits you fall into more and more easily as you get older. And it's about those tiny, fleeting moments - the sunrise, or the mountain, the wave, the shrine or the person - that you wouldn't have found anywhere else. The ones you can save up and store for a day when fleeting moments are the only things you have left.
I've just come back from ten days in Kyoto, Nara and Osaka: three of the most exciting places in Japan that failed, spectacularly, to particularly excite me. In all honesty, this is probably because Japan feels like a home, now: I understand the food, I'm starting to understand the language, and I understand the culture. I couldn't see any of the cities as I would have done a year and a half ago, when temples and huge shopping malls and karaoke and fried octopus balls would have shaken me to the core. This time it was: oh. Osaka is like Tokyo but smaller. Or: oh. Kyoto is like Hamamatsu but bigger with some nice shrines. Or oh: Nara is kind of cute, but my God the rain is heavy and ooh - is that a shop that sells falafel? There are fantastic things about living in a different country - becoming part of another culture, rather than just bobbing along on top of it - but the downsides are: travelling inside the country doesn't really feel like travelling anymore. It's like going to Norfolk for a holiday if you're a Brit: nice, and pretty, but that's about it.
There were, of course, the moments that made it all worth it. There almost always are. Sunlight pouring through the thousands and thousands of red shrines at Funishimi Inari in Kyoto; making mochi with a group of cheering men and talking to them all in Japanese; Todai-ji, the world's largest wooden building and buddha; standing on top of a mountain as the sun went down on Christmas eve; wandering the streets of Gion; watching a big black car pull up outside a large old house in Kyoto and seeing a real Geisha bow to a man through the swinging curtains; smelling the Octopus in Namba, Osaka, which seems to fill everything and everyone. The snow on New Year's eve in Kyoto; ringing the temple bell on New Year's day. Drunk and giggling with one of my old girlfriends from Tokyo in a Purikura at 2am. Taking a public bath on a 14 hour ferry with the water moving up and down and trying to drown me. All amazing and worth every single minute of the infinitely long hours spent listening to strangers fart in the capsule next to me.
But here's the truth: the moment that made it all worth the most was the moment when I landed back in Miyazaki, in the blazing sunshine, and smelt the rice fields and trees and fresh air. The train journey back to my house, with the mountains on one side and the sea on the other. And my house, filled with the computer I needed to start writing again, and my beloved books for me to carry on reading. And there's the crux of the irony. For those who truly love creating - who breathe through it, and live for it, and can't really function without it - living life is always going to come second to processing it. And yet nothing can be processed unless it is lived first.
Some people create things around the things they do, and some people do so that they can create around it. And my trip to Kyoto, Osaka and Nara - as expensive as it was, and as fun (and often as lonely) - was the latter for me, because everything always is. And I only really realised that as I sat on the train home and knew that I had gone away purely so that I could come back again and write about it. Because all of that fuel was needed to keep me going. Because all of those moments have been stored away to use, as I need them, in creating.
Because here's the truth: if creativity can only come from the inactivity of activity, then one has to be active first. In order to write poetry about bombs, you have to see and feel them to start with. In order to create, you have to live in a way that makes it almost impossible. In order to make anything, you have to start by pulling it apart, and prodding at it, and working out what made it work to start with.
And if you want to process the world, you have to be a part of it first.
Saturday, 1 January 2011
Countdown
You can say what you like about my parents, but nobody can accuse them of not having perfect timing. They wanted to wish me Happy New Year at midnight, and they were damn well going to wish me Happy New Year at midnight, regardless of my thoughts on the topic.
It was a quiet, sweet sort of New Year. A few friends, some great nabe (traditional Japanese winter casserole), some great sho-chu (traditional Japanese potato-based spirit) and some great comedy on television (traditional Japanese end of year show where eight comedians get locked in a resort for 24 hours and try and make each other laugh: if they laugh, a masked man runs in and whacks them very hard on the bottom with a large trojan. Very funny, and very Japanese. In England watching fully grown men bend over tables and get their bottoms whacked by other fully grown men is the sort of television you have to pay for on your credit card).
At thirty seconds to midnight, we filled our glasses, held them aloft and waited for the countdown.
And my phone rang.
"Happy New Year!" my dad shouted down the phone! "Where are you?"
"In Kyoto," I shouted back. "Happy New Year!"
"What time is it?"
"Thirty seconds to midnight." I looked at my friends, holding their glasses aloft and waiting for me to finish my conversation.
"Oooh, just in time! Did you get the packages?"
"No, not before I left."
"Oh. Well I got the camera lens you sent, but there's a problem, Hol, because apparently we have to pay VAT on it and they won't let me have it until I pay the extra seventy quid..."
Twenty five seconds! the tv cried behind me.
"Well, um, can we write to them, dad?"
"Maybe, but it's outrageous that I have to pay VAT on a gift - it's the bloody customs department - seventy quid VAT, I don't see why I should have to pay that on the..."
Twenty seconds!
"Dad, I love you very much, but I have twenty seconds to go before midnight and I don't want to start the new year talking about VAT."
"Well, we have to talk about it sometime, Holly."
"Yes, but please - " fifteen seconds! "not right now?"
"Okay, okay. Sorry. Thoughtless of me. Speak to your mum and wish her a Happy New Year."
"Dad- hurry up, I've got fifteen sec..."
"Happy New Year sweetheart!"
"Happy New Year, mum."
"Where are you?"
"Kyoto."
"Are you on your own?"
"No."
"Oh thank God for that."
"It's okay. I'm okay."
"Are you safe?"
"I'm in a living room, so: yes. Mum, I love you but I -"
Ten seconds! My friends were now glaring at me with their glasses still held in the same position.
"Darling, your Aunty Maine is here. Have a quick word."
"Mum, I really have to go -"
"It'll only take five seconds. Here's your Aunty Maine."
"Happy New Year!"
Five
"Happy New Year Maine. I love you! I have to go!"
Four
"Where are you?"
Three
"Kyoto. Happy New Year but I have to..."
Two
"What's the weather li..."
"Snowing!" I shouted, and slammed down the phone.
One
"Happy New Year!" my friends all cheered, with just enough time for me to pick my glass up and get glared at for creating such a celebratory, party atmosphere.
"Happy New Year!" I cried as the temple bells started chiming, and then sat down, exhausted.
It's going to be a good 2011, I can feel it in my bones. A year full of success and love and conversations I'm busy resisting. And the support of a family who offer it at all times, in all seasons, whether I want it then or not.
Which, as far as I can tell, is exactly a family is supposed to do.
It was a quiet, sweet sort of New Year. A few friends, some great nabe (traditional Japanese winter casserole), some great sho-chu (traditional Japanese potato-based spirit) and some great comedy on television (traditional Japanese end of year show where eight comedians get locked in a resort for 24 hours and try and make each other laugh: if they laugh, a masked man runs in and whacks them very hard on the bottom with a large trojan. Very funny, and very Japanese. In England watching fully grown men bend over tables and get their bottoms whacked by other fully grown men is the sort of television you have to pay for on your credit card).
At thirty seconds to midnight, we filled our glasses, held them aloft and waited for the countdown.
And my phone rang.
"Happy New Year!" my dad shouted down the phone! "Where are you?"
"In Kyoto," I shouted back. "Happy New Year!"
"What time is it?"
"Thirty seconds to midnight." I looked at my friends, holding their glasses aloft and waiting for me to finish my conversation.
"Oooh, just in time! Did you get the packages?"
"No, not before I left."
"Oh. Well I got the camera lens you sent, but there's a problem, Hol, because apparently we have to pay VAT on it and they won't let me have it until I pay the extra seventy quid..."
Twenty five seconds! the tv cried behind me.
"Well, um, can we write to them, dad?"
"Maybe, but it's outrageous that I have to pay VAT on a gift - it's the bloody customs department - seventy quid VAT, I don't see why I should have to pay that on the..."
Twenty seconds!
"Dad, I love you very much, but I have twenty seconds to go before midnight and I don't want to start the new year talking about VAT."
"Well, we have to talk about it sometime, Holly."
"Yes, but please - " fifteen seconds! "not right now?"
"Okay, okay. Sorry. Thoughtless of me. Speak to your mum and wish her a Happy New Year."
"Dad- hurry up, I've got fifteen sec..."
"Happy New Year sweetheart!"
"Happy New Year, mum."
"Where are you?"
"Kyoto."
"Are you on your own?"
"No."
"Oh thank God for that."
"It's okay. I'm okay."
"Are you safe?"
"I'm in a living room, so: yes. Mum, I love you but I -"
Ten seconds! My friends were now glaring at me with their glasses still held in the same position.
"Darling, your Aunty Maine is here. Have a quick word."
"Mum, I really have to go -"
"It'll only take five seconds. Here's your Aunty Maine."
"Happy New Year!"
Five
"Happy New Year Maine. I love you! I have to go!"
Four
"Where are you?"
Three
"Kyoto. Happy New Year but I have to..."
Two
"What's the weather li..."
"Snowing!" I shouted, and slammed down the phone.
One
"Happy New Year!" my friends all cheered, with just enough time for me to pick my glass up and get glared at for creating such a celebratory, party atmosphere.
"Happy New Year!" I cried as the temple bells started chiming, and then sat down, exhausted.
It's going to be a good 2011, I can feel it in my bones. A year full of success and love and conversations I'm busy resisting. And the support of a family who offer it at all times, in all seasons, whether I want it then or not.
Which, as far as I can tell, is exactly a family is supposed to do.
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