Sunday, November 20, 2011

Love in the time of caldera

I dreamt about you last night, you rare person with the power to hurt me. It was not a nice dream, I fear, and I apologise for dreaming you into someone who uses my love to cause me pain. Me with my head held high, yes, in the dream too, but you told me to look up, too, so you could see inside me through my eyes. What you saw made you smile. You have such a lovely smile, but in my dream (I apologise!) it was no such thing.

My life written in the lines on my face, I am not doing terribly for my age, I guess, if I behaved more like a graceful sort it could maybe even be said I was doing alright, but the two poles insist I have to, from time to time and for a time, walk the clown, nice-legs-shame-about-the-face. It is good for me to make myself thus ridiculous. Don't ask why. Try guessing. Extrapolate.

I think of some people, and the altruist I wish to be is clearly eroded. I compare them so unfavourably to myself my pettiness is all too evident. What suffering? Please. At twenty-eight, I was a mother of two, desperate to keep alive in a violently unhappy relationship. The old flame I used to support my way out of it caused me more pain of a sort I will not discuss; but I bump into him from time to time and see I haven't, at the end of the day, fared badly. He was hit by a train, he tells me, surprising he is alive, apparently many things inside his chest ruined beyond repair, including his vocal chords. He was a singer; he can still speak. I don't know the details of his substance use nor wish to. Likewise with his accident. His anything. May he go his own way in our jointly-human pursuit of happiness, may our paths not cross to remind me how much I have needed support - any support. Long ago.

Theatre, from time to time, filling the emptiness nothing else can reach, the emptiness I can almost forget and cover over during the spaces between theatre. Did I ever write about that thing I read many years ago, about how the vulvas of old women can apparently grow shut - heal over, as it were? A startling, terrifying read, I remember feeling at the time.

I don't write a great deal these days.

2 comments:

Reading the Signs said...

Well you should then, shouldn't you? Write, I mean. Because what comes is good stuff, and don't argue with me about this because if there is one thing I can pronounce on it is the writing stuff.

And what is going on here please? First of all, you have been posting again without my knowledge. Ok, admittedly this is down to my not having the googlereader alert thing any more, but I feel that a telegram should have been sent by special delivery to notify me anyway.

I did not know about the vulvas. Oh lord and lawks - the WVLs have said cleme, and it just feels - apposite.

Anna MR said...

I had to look up "apposite". It feels like an honest thing to admit to such thing, I don't know why, although maybe the blushing induced by your praise has something to do with it (thank you, incidentally); like having been praised, I should confess to my vocabulary having gaping holes, so as not to appear better than I am.

Oh who knows. Why does one sometimes have the writing thing within one, and then at others, not? Tell me that, mine sage-like Schwes, and make haste. Also tell me why and how it can be that I used to fabulate words and stories like nobody's business when young, and really worked hard to have this capacity outrooted from me? Although I don't know whether I realised that that was what I was doing.

And, whilst you're at it, could you explain the frigging meaning behind it all, and please don't say "42", okay? It reminds me of, I don't know, the college-boy humour that someone I used to know [Biblical sense, yes - in the days of yore, even that happened, once or twice] used to be so fond of, and which used to annoy me even then, although then, I used to hide my annoyance from myself beneath a blanket of adoration of my own (mental) manufacturing.

It feels safe to say I'm in the weirdest frigging mood at the moment of speaking with you, oh Signs of the Western Lands. It may show. You will be happy to know that it is snowing outside the Igloo - which has nothing whatsoever to do with the weirdity of mine moode. I have something fairly sizable to achieve within the next, let's see, 44 hours or so. That does have something whatsoever to do with the weirdity. I would like to be warmly wrapped up in a snowball, though, I think. Not instead of the achieve-thing, mind; I'd rather all achieving were behind me for a wee while and I could just curl up and be.

So you know - here you have it, my dear, some self-exposure and more writing, just as you suggested. How comes you haven't seen these previous posts though I don't know, as I thought you'd been here in this house of future and past, to say things, whilst they've been up.

Maybe they (my posts) switch themselves on and off, from time to time? Weirder things happen in the world, that we both do know.

I should go and play in the snow with Ms D, and then for an extended stretch of hard work. Feel like going to bed, mind.

I was made really, really happy - heppy, even - by your numerous comments, by the way. Thank you, you are a star.

x