Welcome to the House of Fun

Time to put up a fun post, I suppose – not that I make any apology for the previous one or, indeed, any post that tells how it is with regard to M.E., ingrowing toenails or the state of my herbaceous border. For the record, I do not have ingrowing toenails or even, strictly speaking (for I have just looked it up on Wikipedia) a proper herbaceous border. But if I did and they were causing me grief, I would talk about it when the spirit moved. The word “fun” is jangling around as I was today reminded of the late Andrea Dworkin’s remark: “I am a radical feminist, not the fun kind,” and what a loss it would have been to us if she had been that kind instead of the ardent and fearless campaigner that she was. And then I considered that I don’t much like the “fun kind” of anything much, really. The word itself conjures up a weekend in some dreary hotel with organised games for tired business people to try and get them bonded and generally perked up so they can go back to whatever deadly thing they were doing and carry on making money for the company they work for. Or it conjures up a karaoke night out with people who don’t like singing and have nothing in common other than the desire to get out of their skins for a space (nothing wrong with that in itself, obviously) – and in case anyone is tempted to let me know what a supercilious snob I’m sounding: yes, I agree, each to his own – no blame, no judgement, this is just my take on things and if you give me a convincing story about a knockout and uplifting Murder in the Dark weekend or a Karaoke Night Out I’ll read and enjoy.

I’m not a miserable effer though, far from it, (she says, putting on her red nose and cracking open the party poppers). Ok, maybe I am, then. But if so, then I promise you I know how to enjoy myself because while I despise Fun, I love play – real, intense, lose-yourself-in-the-moment play. It’s why I started making up stories, I reckon. It’s something I have in common with my daughter who, in the playground at school, lamented the loss of her best friend who really understood how to “make it up as you go along” rather than decide in advance to play Ghostbusters or Hero Turtles (though admittedly these would have possibilities, but only if you diverged from the script). I like play because play has soul and Fun (the way I see it) doesn’t. It conforms to the idea one has of how something should be rather than creating out of the moment something new. I appreciate funny, playful posts and those that give an uplift to the spirits. Grief, anger and melancholy also have soul and when I find those set down truthfully in a blog post I appreciate those too, and yet so often people apologise for having expressed them, feeling that they have been indulging in self-pity (not the same thing at all). Or there is the sense that the expression of something lower than uplift is tantamount to a request for sympathy. For me, at any rate, this is not the case – though it is of course a gift to know that one’s words have been heard, received or appreciated.

So anyway – but if you want to do yourselves a favour, go and visit a place of horseplay and foolery (the Real Deal), in the house of The Periodic Englishman. Say I sent you – and beware: he’s a bit of a charmer. (But don’t tell him I said that).

Mind the Gap

There is no doubt in my mind that some people can't help but feel that having a chronic condition such as M.E. might be a bit of a breeze. When someone asks me what I’ve been doing and I say not a lot because I have had a to spend most the time lying or sitting down there is something wistful about the responses I have occasionally had: people tired and desperate for a break in their relentlessly busy lives, can’t help but feel (and say), I wish I could just do nothing. The picture they have is that one is lying on the chaise-longue, fresh out of a long soak in a scented bath, reading a good book or watching a film, while someone brings refreshing drinks and nourishing food. Of course, all or some of these details may apply, but they don’t add up to the truth of the situation. Obviously. If we are lying down all the time we are most likely far too ill to be able read and when we are up and doing, or even lying/sitting and doing, we are probably coping with varying degrees of pain and fatigue and risking more of the same or worse on the following day. The years pass and we long for life. If we seem content with our lot it is a hard-won serenity that has had to be practised over years of illness where so many hopes have risen like new moons, only to fade again. I believe that most of us do not look for sympathy. Empathy is good, but most people can’t possibly know what this is like, it takes a particular talent to feel oneself into another’s situation, one can’t bang on about it the whole time and when an illness just goes on and on it scares people. So now the deal is this: I let it be known that I have a condition called M.E. which impinges significantly on what I am able to do, and then I want acceptance, pure and simple. If anyone wants to disrespect me (which doesn't happen much these days) they can piss off. I am prepared to deal with a certain amount of ignorance and to give information. Basta.

I have said all this before, one way or another. But now, with my new decision to take an extended “gap” period, (where I’ll be working but not “going out to” work) I know I’ll meet a number of responses that have, perhaps, less to do with my situation than with the stressful lives that so many people choose, or are obliged to lead. When I told my sister last year that I wouldn’t be working for a while, there was a silence and then she said, “I have to work.” A divorced friend of mine, run off her feet with work, children and health problems must see this life of mine as an oasis. I don’t get into arguments about it, I can imagine how it feels and have, in my way, been there too in the early days of my illness when there was little money and if I had been on my own instead of living with a supportive partner, my children may well have had to be taken into care. There were hard times, and I never had a penny of incapacity benefit as I wasn’t working at the time the illness struck. Things are easier now. I liked going out to do the work I did, but it took all my strength and what happens in the future is open. So, for now, I am having another gap year and taking the road of “never apologise, never explain” – the contradictions notwithstanding.

Notes from the Coalface

I’m not complaining, but it’s tough at the old coalface – the novel-writing one, I mean. I am writing, but not yet the kind of writing that feels like yesss, and we have lift-off kind of writing. What I am waiting for is the sense that I have hit a seam, because when that happens one is given wings for a space. Then the thing is to keep going. I made the fatal mistake once of taking a break when I was 30,000 words or more into the work – and this was one where I could see the whole picture, story and characters were alive in me, all I had to do was put pen to paper (which I always did first, typing it up later). Trouble was I took a break, a long one because of the M.E. and so many other things then needing my attention, and the characters began to lose heart and finally they cleared off altogether. I had the memory of them but they weren’t there any more. I could have resurrected the project but it would have been something completely different. After that it was short stories and poems – ok, you can sometimes complete them (first draft) in one sitting, but you need to re-boot each time. At least that’s how it can feel with M.E. energy. I like the feeling you get, with a longer work, of coming back to a place that already exists and comes to meet you.

Anyway, down among the bloggers, I can feel it’s in the air: Ms Pants has completed a significant draft of the novel she has been working on for some time, the novel-racing Mr. Moon has recently become re-inspired, Jane Holland has emerged from an Arvon course and seems ready to go and we have recently had some excellent advice from intrepid thongster and coalface veteran, Chip Dale. And NMJ, who has actually done the deed, is to have her novel published some time (spring?) next year.

If only one were still smoking Camel Lights! But one is a-chewing on Wrigley’s Extra sugar-free peppermint gum and trying not to think of Beryl Bainbridge saying how she can’t write without smoking. And one is taking the prescription drugs, when necessary, for muscle pains.

At the moment, I have very few hours in the day that are properly available for real work. PWME will just know what I mean and others will just have to take my word for it. Incarnating into the day takes time unless I grab some morning hours and do absolutely nothing else (practically not always possible) afternoons are out of the question till I have got my wings back. Or hit a seam. Sorry about the confusion of images. Goodness, is that the time?

And thank you, Anna Mr, for giving me the Booker Prize Creative Blogger Award.

Auspicious Signs

On the weekend I spent a day with a friend who came up from London on the best of all possible days, the weather being warm and blue and gold with just the right amount of breeze. We sat outside on the terrace of a country hotel that used to be a convent, looking at the monkey puzzle tree and close-cut grass that sloped down to the lake with ornamental fountains, drinking white wine spritzers with cassis, eating Caesar salads with fresh prawns. There was a wedding party and we watched the guests gather on the lawn and considered the strange Queen Mother-style clothes that women wear for such occasions. There was one, though - a striking and very large dark-haired woman who wore a white trouser suit that made no apology for her size and clothed her beautifully. An added adornment was the shine of kindness on her face and in the way she accompanied a much older woman as she walked away from the party and back into the hotel. Watching her it felt, somehow, auspicious. But then, you know me.

My friend and I both used to live in Hackney, round the corner from each other, we belonged to the same women’s writing group. Our children played together and we saw each other most days. Being with a good friend means one can breathe more easily, properly inhabit one’s body and skin. She poured coffee straight from the packet into the cafetiere. We liked coffee and books and writing. The first time she heard me read my stuff she said I was possessed and I felt newly and exuberantly gifted. She too could write up a storm. I had M.E. then but I could still find pockets of strength with which to override it. It cost me, but really there was no choice, I had found the thing I wanted to do and I sat at the kitchen table in the late hours, in the early hours, and I did it. We published stories and then I moved here to the edge, we both did all kinds of other things, my illness became more entrenched, but whenever we met we talked about writing; about everything else too, but it always flows back, as a river goes to the sea, to the writing, the process, the notebooks, the others, the words, the writing.

After the Caesar salads, strong Americanos and an absence of cigarettes (we have both given up again), I spilled my misgivings about the formal, paid work I was about to undertake, how the small strength I had would be taken by it. Her judgement was swift and uncompromising. Don’t do it, she said. Life is too short and we are women of a certain age and must grasp it, life, the nettle or the thing that won’t be pushed aside, the writing. Sometimes it takes someone else to say the obvious and the road ahead suddenly rises to meet you.

The novel-racing, competition-hosting, good Mr. Moon has given me an Inspirational Blogger Award. So cloth-headed do I feel that I can’t for the moment figure out how to upload the nice badge thing so it appears where I want it to. But I’ll see to this and everything else because just now – what with the woman in white, the perfect advice of a friend, good words from a blog-pal and a very attractive black and gold award – everything looks very, very auspicious. Of course, there is always the possibility that I am losing my marbles. At present, however, I remain,
yours truly,
Reading the Signs.

any bird in flight

I was briefly reminded of William Morris’s News From Nowhere the other day in a conversation with someone about what life would be like if we didn’t have money or “work” as we know it. In Morris’s socialist utopia there is no such thing as private property and no division between art, life and work. I did read the book a long time ago and can’t remember who did things like empty the bins and such but presumably such a world would be greener than Green and committed to state of the art composting. Everything works on the assumption that our basic impulse is towards good will, and that this will establish itself given the right conditions. Anyway, the character in the story woke up and found Utopia had all been a dream.

I suppose we try to create, or hope for, a kind of utopia in our relationships and it’s either neurosis or unquenchable optimism that keeps us hoping for the best of all possible worlds. Occasionally one sees it: the fully-functional family, group of friends or work colleagues where people like and help each other and let each other be; we may even know a few individuals who are simply inclined to look and hope for the best in people. But just lately (and I don’t think this is down to having re-given up cigarettes) I feel as though I’ve been bumping up against an awful lot of dysfunctionality: nothing that comes too close to me personally, but I find myself steering a conscious path in order to avoid it.

I like to think that my own (nuclear bit of) famly are pretty functional, fingers crossed that my kids will look back and feel the same, though one can never make too many assumptions about this. In the wider extended family I have experienced both extremes and various bits in the middle. Nothing too unusual there, perhaps, but the dysfunctionality is something I still have to take into account, find the balance between leaving myself too open, without adequate defences, and being too defended, closed to possible change. On the whole, I think I have erred on the side of the former and I am, as I will never tire of saying, a very late developer.

But these days, like I said, I am steering a path, giving a wide berth to anyone on the “life is shit therefore you are bad” trip, which is a journey an awful lot of folks seem to be on. No wonder so many people seem to be locking themselves away with their computer screens for company – I’m not talking about artisticos like us, friends. Natch. But really, life is short and getting shorter each day. It used to be hip to say that one didn’t choose one’s mates because they were good. From where I stand (or sit), though, kindness and sanity rule ok. And here’s a poem I like, by Brendan Kennelly.

The Good

The good are vulnerable
As any bird in flight,
They do not think of safety,
Are blind to possible extinction
And when most vulnerable
Are most themselves.
The good are real as the sun,
Are best perceived through clouds
Of casual corruption
That cannot kill the luminous sufficiency
That shines on city, sea, and wilderness,
Fastidiously revealing
One man to another,
Who yet will not accept
Responsibilities of light.
The good incline to praise,
To have the knack of seeing that
The best is not destroyed
Although forever threatened.
The good go naked in all weathers,
And by their nakedness rebuke
The small protective sanities
That hide men from themselves.
The good are difficult to see
Though open, rare, destructible;
Always, they retain a kind of youth,
The vulnerable grace
Of any bird in flight,
Content to be itself,
Accomplished master and potential victim,
Accepting what the earth and sky intends.
I think that I know one or two
Among my friends.

"Like a breath I knew would come"

It just happens like this sometimes. You wake up to a day like any other, go out for a walk like any other, and the day, for some reason or none at all, comes right up close to meet you; unveils itself, reveals itself in grass, sky and woodsmoke. One butterfly. At such times you understand how Rilke could come to an utterance such as

"Earth, is it not just this that you want: to arise
invisibly in us? Is not your dream
to be one day invisible? Earth! invisible!
What is your urgent command, if not transformation?
Earth, you darling, I will! Oh, believe me, you need
no more of your spring-times to win me over: a single one,
ah, one, is already more than my blood can endure.
Beyond all names I am yours, and have been for ages.
You were always right, and your holiest inspiration
is Death, that friendly Death.
Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future
are growing less.... Supernumerous existence
wells up in my heart."

Sorry folks, but I'm even going to put up a youtube thing. I know, I know. But this is how it feels. I can't be rock and roll ALL the time.

Round the Block

I meet up with a couple of people once a week, if we can manage it, in order to write together. We have done this for years. Sometimes what it written in the sessions becomes poem or story, other times it stays just as it is and serves no particular purpose. We like to do it and it is a convivial form of writing practice.

Today I brought along my Writer’s Block which is actually a block of ideas, images, words, all designed to “jump-start your imagination.” But sometimes the very notion of all the possibilities scares me. They are doors I don’t feel able to walk through. Then at other times I can open any thought, any image at random and go into it. Whatever “it” is welcomes me with open arms, but it can feel strange leaving at the end of the allotted time, as though walking out of a relationship just begun, ended before it has been given the chance to flourish. When I think of the many writing sessions I have undertaken, on my own or with others, my sense is that I was bridegroom and the words and images were brides who all said yes and opened to me, and I left them all stranded and perplexed. They waited for a while and then shrivelled away, disappointed. I could have gone back to any one of them and made something but they all wanted, expected so much of me and I couldn’t settle for anything smaller than they were, nor could I give the commitment wanted of me. Perhaps this is how it is to be a philanderer.

I wonder if it’s reproach I feel (mine or theirs?) as I open the door and catch sight of their faces; is it that I know how much is involved in the engagement and that I haven’t a hope of fulfilling my obligations or that I can’t spare the emotional and physical energy for even a brief affair? It is the hope they place in me that scares me, the fact that they have not stopped wanting.

786 Ideas to Jump-Start Your Imagination, says the block. The image of a car, yes? This is what came suddenly to mind this morning; a car that can’t get started on its own because the battery is flat, so you attach the leads to a vehicle whose engine is up and running. You jump start, the engine revs and you go for a bit, sometimes slowly, sometimes roaring along the motorway, doing the ton. Then you stop, turn back, go home, always before you reach your destination. You had set out for Cornwall, Ireland, France, Africa even, why not? But you don’t get to any of these places, you turn around and go home.

Then I opened the block at an image of a mangled and broken-to-pieces car. There were men in protective jackets and helmets gathered around, attending to it or attending, perhaps, to the people inside it. Synchronicity. And that’s another thing: so many of the journeys seem to want to begin with a trip down Misery Lane or Disaster Highway. On the other page there is simply “9.11”. I have never, will never want to use such an event to jump-start. Not that I have anything against it on principle, but I have nothing meaningful to say about it. Well maybe I have got something against it on principle. Why should I use this kind of disaster as a vehicle for one of my abortive journeys?

So I turned the page: “Write about the worst lie someone told you.” I could have made that one up, I suppose, but if these jump-starts are any good they usually draw from the source of lived experience – a slide into the ditch of Misery Hollows. I am not in the vein.

Flicking to the next thing brought something a shade lighter: “Write about the worst driving you’ve ever done.” No great incidents there, nothing that involved anyone getting hurt, nothing more than an unsightly dent in the side of my car, and not even another driver involved. Actually, no story. But yes, of course story (I know, I know) – context! Can I be arsed, though? I was driving the car in the grounds of Sussex University where I’d been at the bookshop looking for a couple of creative writing books because (being a teacher of such) I wanted to keep my finger on the pulse. Irony? And I simply edged the side of the car along a place where I was not aware of an obstruction. No, really.

One last flick of the block: “Invent a character who sees a phone number on a restroom wall.” What is a rest room? A euphemism, like all these words. Anyway, the next bit: “Describe what happens when he or she dials it.” This is quite good because in this day and age once could do that while still sitting and finishing one’s business, because of mobile phones – though the image they helpfully provide shows a set of push-button numbers, the kind you would once have found in telephone booths, the sort with letters grouped in threes underneath each number.

And why would this character, he or she, dial a random number in this way? Pluck something out of the air and see where it leads? For the same reason, perhaps dear reader, as I open the Block looking for the jump-start. Because there are times when one has to go somewhere – anywhere, begin a conversation, take a risk. There may be danger. There may be the fulfilment of a dream. There may be nothing. I thank you.