Sunday 29 May 2011

six years

We drove for an hour and a half to get there, taking red country roads rarely travelled because I no longer trusted my knowledge of the country; I’ve been away for six years. I said that you don’t get red roads anymore but how would I know. The weather was changeable and by the time we came off the motorway fairly sunny, though windy. I felt safer driving his car off the motorway and decided this was due to the six years not having changed me. I told him about when I went up to move Mary-anne’s things a week past when the wind was so strong that the car chased the shadows of clouds which made moving panels on the road surface. The same thing happened to us moments later, first on the hills, then on the road and we marvelled. We played the game we play with a joint playlist, counting the score of how many of each persons songs had been played. We always forget to keep count and then work it out thinking backwards in the trip. 6-6. We arrived after an hour and a half tight from the journey and ready. I had made a lot out of it, I thought this would solve problems, I thought it would heal us. I took Kendal mint cake. The yellow sign declared gardens closed due to high winds. I can’t describe the feeling but I suppose it is somewhat akin to being petulant and let down and disappointed and it manifests itself in your stomach. We would take a walk down a nearby road instead. Private road. Two slaps too many. I am overdramatic, I love to decide to give up. It wasn’t that the gardens were closed or that the road was private, it was that I couldn’t deal with the stress and the trauma of the night before and this was to be the thing that saved me from it all, the thing to make him himself again. People think that I am strong but it scares me so much that I don’t have the strength to look after anyone but myself. I told him the night before, I wish it was just me, because when you have anyone else in your life that you care about you just have to worry so often. You and the cats and the fish. It’s okay with the pets, if the cats aren’t well you take them to the vet and you know one day they will die and it will be awful and it will hurt but you will be there for them and there is only so much you can do and it’ll be done, but with you… The truth is I have no idea how to help another person. He said we shouldn’t let it be a wasted trip, we should have fun. We headed to Peebles. I was resentful because now I was the one needing help, and it should have been me helping him. The roads were familiar and it still felt okay driving his car. Yet I felt this drag the further away we got from Glasgow, the west, from home. We got to Peebles and I drove towards the high street and I went for the car park but missed the junction and I couldn’t tell him because I hadn’t spoken for so long that it felt like my voice wasn’t even there anymore. I drove up another street remembering the driving test and stopped to parallel park because I wanted not to be driving anymore. I messed up the first attempt and lost my temper internally. I can’t park your car and I pushed it in first and took it back around. As we waited at the junction that was never clear I just stared up the road. As we drove back around the high street he said you’re not having any fun are you? but it didn’t sound accusing. I shook my head and drove to the roundabout. I needed to stop driving so I took it left across the bridge and saw a big car park and I whirled it in and stopped and just sat. He tried to convince me it wasn’t a wasted journey but I was too stubborn to even reply. I didn’t want to speak; I knew my voice would break me up. He asked if I wanted to eat and I said I wasn’t hungry but he could eat. He said we should go for a walk and get out of the car and I got out. We walked along the river and I stared at the water and the blown bits of tree. I couldn’t help feeling so desperate. It felt as though the day, that bleakness and simultaneous roughness in the weather, was made for us then. The wind gusted so hard and I imagined it blowing me into the water and wanted it to. I asked myself would I be thinking this way if I had fallen in the river, would I still be thinking these thoughts. He remarked on a large branch that had been stripped from a tree by the wind and I barely responded. If there were tears it didn’t matter because it was the atmosphere. We rounded the path and I slowed knowing the alternate direction took us directly back to the car. He turned to me and looked and I just slid to his chest and we stood together and I knew that all the upset and the pain would be gone soon, as though we had reached the summit finally. We walked back to the car and it rained. He put up his hood but I let it rain on my head and my hair get wet. When we drove home I had a fever of my own creation and we blew cool air to my forehead. We were going to make marshmallows, was I still okay for doing that? He remembered and I told him it didn’t matter it was only an idea but this time he really did want to. We compliment each other by taking turns at being hopeless. The motorway was backing up at Parkhead and we drove home through Dennistoun and the red sandstone blocks of tenements made me feel safe. Six years is a long time and old problems still remain. The problems of four years ago made me wish for where I used to be so deeply that it made me ache and this city seemed too hostile. Now it is the motorway lanes and the streetlights that soothe me and I don’t know if I should ever go back. Things will be okay as they always are and I don’t think you should read too much into this. Such is the way of the mind that it races with awfulness while it can hold onto it, but just as quickly ease and comfort return and you look back on your actions in such states regretfully. I told him I will be strong for him and I will be; it’s only fair and I vowed it, I would be ashamed of myself for less.

Saturday 21 May 2011

old people

i love old people. read it back now. that is the kind of statement that only comes from someone when they have been at least 12 hours out of the company of old people. it's not the old people's fault really, it's a lack of coordination in pace of living. i spent yesterday at seamill hydro hotel in ayrshire. we used to go there each year in october - and subsequently around easter - with the family en masse. and for my family, en masse at its fullest only ever amounted to ten people, and mostly just eight. as my grandad likes to remind me every time we go, they've been attending holidays there since my mum was [hand at knee] high.
this time we only went for one night and i didn't even stay over. one of my aunts and i took my grandparents over in two cars. driving alone because of my cold and a disinclination to put any eighty-one year old person in a sealed capsule with a sicky i considered living in each of the towns we passed through on the way. considered myself and stuart and children there. we drove through places with big sandstone houses with green trimmed hedges, white stones on drives and bay windows. beautiful views of lush meadows and small woods, trees of all variants and a multitude of greens made it seem untouched; it's funny how the sun can do that. and then i would drive for a further thirty seconds to find the obligatory area of scottish social housing, lumped onto the edge of a parish town like a reattached and infected limb. places where the grass is never cut and everything gone to seed; pieces of wood and children's obligatory plastic playthings scattered in the road. i'm all for inclusion but it seems that such efforts at assimilation between both ends of the scale have failed, all they succeeded in doing was placing a pocket of depravity right where it would feel the most disparity.
upon arrival at seamill everyone was desperate to get to their rooms despite it being hours before check in. there was no reason for it yet. grandad was standing upright at the counter disputing the name under which it would be booked with fran. i talked to my gran but she was too preoccupied with five things at once despite capacity for only one at a time. we had lunch in the pladda bar which i still lovingly change to bladder as a gesture to old times with my brother. it's funny with the old, the cauliflower cheese sauce was too runny and spoons required but once received it was delicious. what one would have ordered year after year became forgotten and the lack of alternatives a shock. look grandad, roast beef sandwiches, remember? there's no coronation chicken. oh dear, why not? where's the coronation chicken? they slip from misplaced nostalgia to being put out by lack of understanding so quickly. as is common place for this family food for thought is the theme of the day. how is your cauliflower cheese? what did you order again? how much meat is in those sandwiches? oh your chips look nice! did you have enough? do you want some of mine? helen would you like a chip? no thanks. helen, how about some of my cucumber? i'm ok, i have cucumber with my meal actually. helen, please have some of mine, just try it, take it. i'll take it all then okay (good humoured). confused looks arise. i eat my sandwiches and drink my tea. there was barely enough room on the table.
marjorie and jeer discuss the runniness of the cauliflower cheese again. it's nice isn't it? i'm glad i got the spoon. yes, it is nice, mmm. oh jean, you have some on your shirt. oh do i? yes, it's probably because it's runny, it runs under the spoon. yes, yes. i just wanted to tell you so you could get it out quickly. okay, thank you marjorie. my diary only cost one pound (grandad). yes, well thats all i tend to pay for diaries too (marjorie). fran looks at me with her tense smile and stricken eyes which makes her look simultaneously ecstatic and manic. i smile back. more tea please.
old people are trying. it is hard to slow your brain down enough to not get frustrated. you need to expect everything to be hard to understand and everything you say to be either misheard or mistaken. i always find myself thinking when i sit alone how i love my family, my elder family, and how i think of myself as patient and willing to listen and help and do what they want. they've made it that far, they deserve to do what they want. the only problem is that what they want they can't quite tell and most things you try seem to fail. such thoughts of how brilliant a grandchild you will be when you see them vapourise as soon as you get there as what you expect to go down a treat will always flop and the smallest little thing you didn't think mattered is the most perfect and wonderful delight of the day.
we walked on the beach and i held my gran's arm so she wouldn't fall; she's been known to fall. i realised that i wished someone else was holding her up because my hope and constant advocation that she is better than we think and coddled and underestimated didn't seen so accurate as she neglected to watch where she stood. she stumbled over rocks and walked on sinking sand and only commented on it a long time after we got there. what surprised me was how easy it was to hold her up. we walked for about 500m in total and how tiring that was made me vow to myself to walk every day when i am old. people will always say things like 'best intentions' in tone that conveys mixture of disbelief and a lack of conviction. i will follow through though. i know i will.
i drove home after dinner and thought of them all as the sun set, heading straight to bed with tea. i thought of tomorrow and the next day and the rest of the year. i had talked with fran about having children in the pool earlier and how stuart and i were going a year married already. we worked out that my mum's golden wedding anniversary would coincide with our 20th wedding anniversary, only a month out. we could have a joint party. i remarked that my mum, and fran, would be about 70. we were shocked, a little silent. as i drove home i felt so young by comparison. the idea that they were going to bed each night in a mindset of being at the end of life, that thinking forward was pointless, scared me. the whir of the loose bearing in the car as i coasted downhill was so prounounced as my head was silent, filled only with that dread. i considered then that being my age and imagining old age were meant be clash. i wonder how long it will be before the idea of death does not scare me? people often say that they are not scared of dying, that it is natural and a progression. for me it is naked fear because this is it. for me, this is everything and regardless of your view of what comes after (which i will tell you for me is probably nothing) once you've gone there's no return. the idea that you are barred from doing anything ever again is one of the most scary things i can think about. it's selfish and it's not emotional but to avoid dying it is the ultimate point of living. because that is the end, and that is all there is.

Monday 2 May 2011

envy

I never know what to put as the title for each thing I type. The box should be under this one, because thoughts just seem to be dammed up, only ready to flow after I can make a hole and have it burst.

I'm looking at a rainbow light streaking across our television. It is violet, blue, green and yellow. If you move your head left or right the colours continue and repeat. It is endless, until your eye and your television are in line with each other and you can't be sure what you are seeing at all anymore.

There are bluebells in a vase on my windowsill. I picked them on May Day at Glasgow Necropolis with Stuart. It felt like how a May Day should be, like in a book. I'm always wanting to be so romantic and at one with the world, but my world keeps inhibiting such actions and the realism of others threatens to bring me back down to earth forever. The bluebells looked so beautiful. A carpet of them, but not all blue. Some deep blue, some pale violet and lavender, some altogether white. In Rebecca Maxim says he believes bluebells shouldn't be picked as they look worse in a vase. I thought this as I stooped down to pick them, feet crackling on the emaciated, crumpled leaves of last autumn, but I picked them all the same. I wanted them near to me, so I could safely rest my head in the clouds once more. They still smell beautiful, but they are slightly listless and lank. I couldn't make an arrangement out of them, they wouldn't allow. They hang horizontally.

People make me world weary. Sometimes I think people only exist to make other people feel worse about their lives. Sometimes people want to pick you apart just because they can, and sometimes they do it because they are jealous. A lot of people have been saying to me things such as 'how do you manage to be such a domestic godess?' or 'did you make that?' or 'where do you get the time to do all this stuff' and I reply in turn. Oh it's nothing, not important, I'm a student I have too much free time. I smile bashfully. You would think to be pleased by people's approval and admiration but it's really not that. It's jealousy. And it's scorn, feelings of anger and resentment generated by thier own awareness of their failings. They use the people in the world they contact as a yard stick to meausure their own sucess or lack thereof. I skimmed an article in a magazine about women brushing off compliments because they don't want other women to be jealous or feel bad compared to their own accomplishments. The article argued it to be a method of sparing people's feelings. I argue it to be lies brought on by the effect other people's complexes have on the person who is doing well. Because these little comments and enqiries on how you could be so talented or how long it takes you to do something aren't simply verbal mentions or interested questions, they are challenges. 'did you make that' is 'I couldn't make that, so how come you can'; 'where do you get the time to do all this stuff' is 'I am too lazy to make time to do this stuff so I don't think it's fair that you do make the time'; their questions are ways of shaming ability and success and creation. I'm fed up of feeling as though I should hide my accomplishments. And actually, I put a lot of effort into doing the things I do because I believe laziness to be an ugly quality in a person and I demand more of myself. People talk about living life while you still can, yet my version of this somehow seems to fail. It's ok to live your life by undertaking back packing tours of unappealling Eastern European countries and to go skydiving for charity but to live your life by being quietly successful, aiming to be good at the little things before the big? That can't be stomached.

Jealousy is an ugly quality and people try to hide it. They manage it from most because nobody looks deeper than the facade. People are too confused and their intelligences repressed too far to consider the awful realities of social interaction. I get hurt by social situations far easier than others not because I am soft or tender to such but because I am able read the subtle inaccuracies and flickering changes of characters others don't bother to. So when you next see me and you put on your impressed and unbelieving exterior to something I have spent a lot of time doing, don't think that I can't see the envy and the mild hatred bubbling underneath. Your sense of failure is your own and you can't hide it half as well as you think.