'life events'

How long should condolence cards be left displayed for? On the 6^th of January the pavements are littered with Christmas trees. So for Christmas, ten days is considered to be a suitable recovery period. Obviously, a death is (usually) more traumatic than the festive season. Although in my AS level Psychology course I distinctly remember both being termed ‘life events’, a clinical and bloodless term for heartache, catastrophe and acute stress. A life event such as Christmas was given a score of 12, whilst ‘death of relative’ was given 63. Moving house was surprisingly high, I seem to remember, about 40. Anyway, the point was that if you have more than 150 points in a given year, you are more likely to suffer a breakdown, or depression, or similar. I was enthralled by this way of quantifying the ghastliness of one’s life. (By the way, ‘Change in Church Activities’ was given 19)

I’m well aware that the opening question is about as stupid (and bloodless sounding) as trying to assign a score to the ‘event’ that is ‘death of relative’, but I’m still intrigued. I noticed a few days ago that my mother had quietly removed the twenty odd cards we had displayed on the shelves in the living room. I noticed their disappearance immediately, because I would look at them every morning, arranging them in my head from the most vile (three pink butterflies, and a purple bow) to my favourite (a Rossetti detail of hands entwined), with special note made of the comedy ones (anything using a euphemism for ‘death’, anything religious, anything so eye-bleedingly hideous as to make one glad that the dead in question is indeed dead, so as not to be subject to this horror). But anyway, now they’ve gone.

When I would see the discarded Christmas trees in the gutter on my way to school – or this year, for the first time, on my way to work – it was always a grim reminder that the holiday, with all its manufactured nauseating cheer, was firmly over. It was the beginning of January, fucking freezing, whipped by wind, grey and flat skies, work to do, the Christmas tree star packed away in the attic, and that is that.

And so the cards have been packed away, I’m never going to ask her where, I don’t look at them anymore over breakfast, and that is not that.

(On a brighter note, I am well within healthy levels of ‘life events’ so far this year. Recent calculation show that I’ve got at least another 40 points before I hit 150, where the depression and breakdown kicks in… Although a Change in Personal Habits (20) combined with Outstanding Personal Achievement (28) could quickly change all that. I’ll work hard at keeping them both at bay.)

And the days are not full enough

And the nights are not full enough

And life slips by like a field mouse

Not shaking the grass

Age gaps

No one has ever stared more
tenderly or more fixedly after you…
I kiss you—–across hundreds of
separating years.

Marina Tsvetaeva

I have absolutely nothing (good) to say about today.

Should be nice, but isn't

I got two things in particular by email today which I very much enjoyed. Three sentences from one of my best friends living in Paris, and a photo from a friend who works on the floor above me, a world away in the art department - I see him less than my Parisian friend.

My parents are here this weekend which is the usual 'could-be-nice-but-isnt' nightmare (...) Right, i have been summoned by my aunty to go to her house, which is a real pain beacuse i have to go on the RER train which smells of wee. oh well.

first to the obituaries, second to the stock market

Here you are

It's such a relief to see the woman you love walk out of the door some nights
for it's ten o'clock and you need your eight hours of sleep
and one glass of wine has been more than enough
and, as for lust - well you can live without it most days
and you are glad, too, that the Ukrainian masseuse you see every Wednesday
is not in love with you, and has no plans to be, for it is the pain
in your back you need relief from most, not that ambiguous itch,
and the wild successes of your peers no longer bother you
nor do your unresolved religious cravings or the general injustice
of the world, no, there is very little, in fact, that bothers you these days
when you turn first to the obituaries, second to the stock market,
then, after a long pause, to the book review, you are becoming
a good citizen, you do your morning exercises, count
your accumulated small blessings, thank the Lord
that there's a trolley just outside your door your girlfriend
can take back home to her own bed and here you are
it is morning you are alone every little heartbeat
is yours to cherish the future is on fire with nothing
but its own kindling and whatever is burning in its flames
it isn't you and now you will take a shower and this is it.

Michael Blumenthal

Tied to a swivel chair

A quick email I got at work from my aforementioned friend who can't bear Milan. I don't know why, but I kept on re-reading it all day long.

Thalia do I get a reply today? I need some stimulation. It's sunny and I feel dreamy and hopeless again. The weather is so...destabilising. Obliterating, almost. Talk about unbearble lightness. You look through glass and feel like your soul could just seep out of you. And then the unbearability, which, in this case, is your body being tied to a swivel chair.

As if by Centrifugal Force

Was enjoyably wasting time earlier with my brothers, re-enacting bits of Withnail & Ir. We're a bit obsessed with that film. And of course it is a hysterical comedy, but I love/hate the ending so much - when two out-of-work actors living in squalor suddenly become just one out-of-work actor living in squalor.

I first read this when I was 15, and the passage got under my skin then, as it does now:

You see, it was no longer just me. Harvard was full of nut cases, and we'd all managed to find each other, as if by centrifugal force. People at school were sufficiently eccentric to offer a new playground for my neuroses, to create novel opportunities for acting out. But in the end, after the curtain dropped over these little dramas, they all seemed able to go back to their rooms and back to their lives, they all seemed to know that it was just a game. Only I seemed to be left behind, wanting more, wanting my money back, wanting some satisfaction, wanting to feel something. I was the only person going to a prostitute in seach of true love. But somehow, no matter how often I was disappointed, I was always game for the next round, like a drug addict hoping that a new fix will give him a rush as good as the first one.

Prozac Nation

And so Withnail is left reciting Hamlet to himself in the park. In the unpublished novel's ending - on which the screenplay is based - Withnail says goodbye to 'I', goes home, drinks, and shoots himself. This ending was ditched as it was thought to be 'too dark'.

"I have of late -- but wherefore I know not -- lost all my mirth, forgon eall custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilential congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neither."

A Mood Apart

Just back from a brief holiday. Hard to pin things down and capture them in words, and hard to find the motivation to do so this time.

Robert Frost seems appropriate here -

Once down on my knees to growing plants
I prodded the earth with a lazy tool
In time with a medley of sotto chants:
But becoming aware of some boys from school
Who had stopped outside the fence to spy,
I stopped my song and almost heart.
For any eye is an evil eye
That looks in on to a mood apart.

Also, I have lost my copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and I have a BURNING desire to re-read the introduction right now. It's odd, a friend was recently saying how he finds that opening chapter horrific, too painful/true to read. I'm slightly obsessed with it. It's the part where he talks about why lightness is unbearable. Not being grounded, not having anchors of responsibility mooring you. It's nearly three, I can't sleep, and I really need to read it again right now. Damn.