Day 647: Aglow

I’m lucky. I have friends who talk to me about things like how to pray and don’t expect me to know what I’m talking about, or to have any particular religion in mind. I have friends from aeons back who get in touch as if we’d met for coffee yesterday. I have friends who meditate and dance and twat about as a matter of course. Some friends have all that rolled into one and some specialise. I love you all for your particular flavours. 

Aglow like this, only without the fake teeth

I’m blessed with enough work to keep my odd indecision and directionlessness of now supported while I find my way. 

First time in the pond for a few days. It was almost aggressive in its embrace and yet so deeply calming. I saw the eye-fire in one woman who'd just got out when I was just leaving to get in. When I got back, she was the first to witness mine. There's a poetry in that, and a recognition. 

Once, I went to a workshop that was brilliant and exciting and left me all aglow. My friend (and at the time, direct report at work) found the change so noticeable that she greeted me with the question 'Have you just had sex?'... 

And it's a bit like that, that swim. It's a bit like losing my virginity every morning, purely energetically. When you lose your virginity, something changes in you for ever. You can't get it back. Swimming in the cold does that for me, but daily. It takes something from me and gives me something back that's other, and that makes me shine. Who wouldn't be grateful for that?

Day 646: Monsters and Open Strings

The Ministry of Stories

I enjoyed that rich-voiced cello today. It sang the best it could, on the end of my arms and hands. It did its thing. I've just been to a cello concert at the Royal Academy of Music (for which I'm grateful too). Now THERE's a way to play. It was really quite something. Maybe I'll never sit up on that stage and take the room by storm, but I'll play something in a way that makes me smile. I already did that today, with all its failings. I'm already trying to listen to every warm, fat, full note and let my body notice what it did, what I was thinking, feeling, where my focus was to make that sound. 

makes these

I saw two types up on that stage - those who process music with their mouths and those who don't. In the nuance, some with mouths and some with faces too; some with just the face, but not the mouth. Some (most) with bodies, though one or two cellists seemed implacable. I like the chewers best. One held the low notes like a ping-pong ball or plum, or a whole Kinder egg. The soloist - the main woman - used every bit of herself to sense it and to play. She was fascinating. At times, I worried for her, but her expressions were a joy to be in front of (and we were at the very front, right in the middle). 

I am lucky to be the receiver of clear information, and still the ditherer with it. It's my sticky prerogative, and at some point the crows will caw again and the game will be up. I'm almost there. I think becoming the giver of it might help with that. Mirror, mirror, mirror, if nothing else, you're consistent.

Thanks, Grundel. You know why. Thanks for my lost phone found and for a sweet American Monster lady. 

Day 645: Full Previous Woman

I unsubscribed from the mailing list of a dating website (which I swear, I SWEAR I've already unsubscribed from many times, but I feel that way about many of the hundreds of marketing emails I get - shit, didn't I already tell them to leave me alone?).

Full Previous Woman?

The message on the page delighted me: Full Previous Woman List. That makes me a previous woman. Does that mean previous as in 'that's a bit previous', like what you'd say if a date grabbed your tit before he shook your hand or kissed you on the cheek? Or previous like 'been there, done that'. 

The irony is, I never actually used it. There was a thing they were doing that sounded like fun so I signed up. Hundreds of jolly, joshy emails later, I found I absolutely couldn't be arsed to even read the subject line. I do hate to be 'animated' by marketing people. And all the events looked like massive, trendy piss-ups, which is so far from my cup of meat, I hardly knew what to do with myself.

But Full Previous Woman? In a way, I kind of like it. My fantasy FPW me is buxomer and more brash. She takes what she wants on that front, whether the quailing, quaking man wants it or not. If he doesn't want it, he'd better pluck some up and say so. 

Day 644: Grace and Tea and Crows

The man's face pleased me. He had smiling eyes. He was evidently 'mad', by common standards. On another plane. He had a pair of bluish glass crystals in his hands. He held them up to anyone who'd look (so that means me - everyone else was resolutely looking down, away, off into the distance - anywhere but him). He held one up to his finger like a ring. He did that a few times. The other, he held up to his cheek, and to the light, so it might be caught and lit. He smiled again. I felt love for him and at the same time a quiet hope that he wouldn't attach himself to me or settle in. 

He tried hard to get the attention of the girl on the table next to me in Costa (he was drinking takeout coffee from another place). He knocked on his table, then he knocked again. Her head got lower. He gazed at her and across at the older lady one across. No response. He got out another stone and rapped it on the table, stood up, looked again. Nothing. And then he came to me.

His name was Adrian. He stood a little bit too close. He smiled with is gappy, rotted teeth. He asked my name. Then 'Have you got a number?'. I said no, and then said yes, but not to give. Why not? Because I don't want to. He smiled again and seemed satisfied. He went and sat. Not long after he stood back up, approached and fumbled with his cock (through his trousers, blessedly - I thought he was going to go for a full flash). He was still smiling, though, and still kind of gentle in his energy. I smiled too, a 'oh, not that' kind of smile. He got it, stopped and off he went. Good luck, Adrian. Surprisingly, you kind of made my day.

The counter crew are beautiful today. A man (or boy), probably in his twenties. A little bit beardy, and a little bit brainy-looking. Sweet. On satellite delay. Every question and response was met with a moment's reflection, a disappearing of him. Maybe language. His English was good, and it was evident that he wasn't totally at ease with it. His name was Sara, according to his badge. Is. That in itself was sweet. The girl too - black-haired, with black-lined eyes, tall, soft, elegant and stunning. Friendly in the extreme; enquiring, listening, engaging. I didn't see her name. If I was a boy, or properly that way out, I'd be well smitten. Such attention and such grace in the transaction of a simple cup of tea. 

I stood beneath a shouting crow today. Proper loud, it was. I fancied that it had a message for me. If it did, what would it be? Get on with it! (with what?). You're fine! Get help! I don't know its message, but it felt like words for me. I'll listen harder next time. I'll listen harder now. 

Joanna Brown on Facebook. A photo a day.
What a perfect shot!

The air is full of sunlight and the grass is warm on top and cold below. The water ripples with light as the ice gives in to the morning's light and heat. It bit, on the shoulders today, and on the arms. It left a round patch of red hanging at my throat like a ruby, and yellow in my palms. It left me with that glow, the light in the eyes, the ruddy happiness of the pond. I brought it back to the changing rooms, and then the lady after me did too. It's like something off of Doctor Who. We go through a magic waterfall and come out with a special glow. We recognise each other in the street from it. We share a knowing that only the initiated feel, a physical bliss in every cell that lingers in the body and the mind. 

Thank you, water. Thank you, crow. Thanks, Adrian and Sara and that girl (the Sophie Ellis Bextor meets Billie Piper in black). Thanks, Wednesday.

Day 643: Extra Arm

This is by Marc Johns

That balance... motivation, drive, freedom, and bald-faced laziness. I'm looking for balance, within myself, outside myself and somewhere in between. I'm looking for direction in all those places too. I feel like I could do anything, and while I dither and decide, the world gets bigger around me and I stay small. 

I am blessed with wonderful people in my life who seem to accept me whether or not I 'achieve', whether or not I shine. And what I notice consistently: they seem to see me in a lighter light than I do. They see the sparkles and the successes when I seem to strive to miss them. 

I realise how lucky I am to be in the situation I am in, and what a luxury it is. I can survive easily. I have huge amounts of choice about what I do. I can come and go in the whole world, mostly as I please. Perhaps I'm having a moment of lacking purpose. Not perhaps. I am. And in this state of dissatisfaction, I am still grateful, and vividly aware of what a privileged position I stand in. 

Day 642: Lovely Strangers, Lovely Art

What a simple bit of loveliness. Today, bouncing over a particularly knobbly sleeping policeman, my pannier leapt off and threw itself into the road. All that was in it was my bike lock (not the expensive cello bow in my yoga mat bag - I had considered putting it in the pannier for ease). 

by Katharina Abildgaard,
who is brilliant

Immediately, a taxi bipped and flashed to let me know, a van flashed and stopped, blocking the traffic, so I could pick it up safely and a runner whipped into the road, picked it up and handed it to me. Thank you, lovely strangers, for your simple, speedy and massively appreciated kindness. 

I joined Stoke Newington Library, where DVDs are free and the ceilings are a long way up. It's entirely impractical for where I live, but fuck it... it's a pleasing place. There's nothing wrong with a long cycle ride in the 'wrong' direction, either.

Thank you, Greg Vukasovic, for being a truly good egg, and an open, helpful man. Thank you, cold, harsh water and warm women. Thank you, new friend Grace, for being so very funny and full of vibrant energy. Thank you, Rob Grundel, for the shortest meeting ever. Thanks, Stoke Newington, for being... as you are. 

I am inspired by a call I had this morning - full of wow and eeeep! Thanks, long-chatting cafe man, who told me the history of his broadband situation in this new cafe he's taken over. Thanks, cold, for keeping me sharp. Thanks, everything, for kind of keeping me on my toes.

Day 642: Little Dingy Bells; Love

I do like my friends, and God, I have some good ones. I missed the pleasure of seeing, touching, hugging beautiful Laura Furones this week. She was in London when I wasn't, then texted me when I was, but was on a long call, so her brief sojourn here went unruffled by me. And then yesterday, out of the blue, she called. Sweetly, openly, full of laughing and honesty, mobile to mobile, country to country, generous with her words and with her soul (as well as with her phone bill). I love that woman, I do. She's mint and she inspires me. 

We noticed that there were some people you just know that you want to be part of your life as long as you're both alive. When there's sexual attraction involved, sometimes that gets complicated (if you're me), especially if you carry the unnecessary burden of imagining that those chosen people are most likely to say 'eeeooouuwww' (or however you spell that). And yet it's just that simple. Am I glad this person exists in the world? Yes. Am I glad they exist in my world? Absolutely. Do I want them to be there for the rest of mine? Fuck, yeah! And if the person you're dating, going out with, living with, married to doesn't fit that bill, then... then there's more out there for you, if you're brave enough. 

We're not as random as we think. This is what we decided. There is a school of thought (which in part, I subscribe to) that our deepest relationships are based on serendipity and situation; that the people we meet, we meet because we happened to be in one place, not another. Of course that's true. Of course, if we hadn't met them, we wouldn't know them, and if we didn't manage to be in the same place (whether in real life or online), then we wouldn't have the choice to make (or the information to notice) about wanting them in our lives for good. And yes, yes, yes, things change, life changes, we're wrong sometimes, or our hurt makes us think we don't want them, but in truth, that's not the whole picture. How many people do you meet in your life? I don't know about you, but I meet many, many, many. And there are some that I've shared months and intimate times with, and yet they're no longer in my life. And others who tell me in the first seconds of our meeting that we will most definitely get on. Sarah Lonton. Took about three seconds, and I knew. 

Sometimes, it's contextual. Do a long acting course, and there will be a crop of fabulous people that you want to keep. It's about vulnerability. In an acting course (a good one), or doing a play, you show bits of yourself you wouldn't otherwise. Anything where you expose yourself properly, like a scallop, all unprotected... when you see that part of people, and they get to see you that way, you have a different quality of information to help you know. And then there are your Sarah Lontons and your Jessica Loudons and your Lilley Harveys, when you just know pretty much instantly. I don't believe Sarah had said much more than 'hello' when that knowing came. 

So all of you, and perhaps you don't know who you are (and if you don't, it's my job to tell you), thank you for being the shoes I want to walk in, the landscapes I want to marvel at, the dances I want to move through, the breaths I want to breathe. Thank you for being the people you are, just your way, and for showing me yourselves so clearly that the myself of me recognises you and shouts YES from the rooftops, wiggles and revels like a puppy does, wags with its whole back end in glee at the very you of you. 

And god, this comes: I've spent so very much of my life, consciously or unconsciously, adapting who I am to please people... and thinking this, I know that this just serves to mist the mirror. How can you see yourself reflected in me if my me has been folded down at the corners to better fit the thing I think you want? How can your soul know it's safe to come out if I'm telling you it's not safe for mine? If ever there was a motivation to live purely as myself, it's that. Because in doing so, I take my thumb off the bike bell and the people who love my sound find their ears tingling. They run towards me like children chase an ice cream van, and I find my sound multiplying in them too. We find each other more easily.  

Thanks, universe, for knowing so well how to do this. Thanks, courage, for reminding me that it's worth it. 

Check out this article, which looks at the very same from a different perspective. It's lovely, and it made me cry. 

Thank you, as always, for the water and the women and the beauty and the cold. Thank you for the crows - the heath is full of them today. Thank you for connections with beloved ones in other countries. I love you and I'm bleeding from the eyes with the sheer force of my thanks.

Day 641: Sugar

It's just not good for you, sugar

I am tired but happy. I enjoyed my day very much and am particularly grateful for how much I got to laugh. I'm really tired now, and a bit grumpy as well as happy (I ate a lot of sugar today, and it just doesn't help) but that doesn't mean anything except what happened. 

Thank you, man who has met famous people by working at the Nottingham Arena. Kylie Minogue is his favourite. Apparently, she is small enough to put in your pocket. Tom Jones is lovely too, he says (no indication of size). Cliff Richard is up his own arse. Nothing entirely unexpected, then. 

Got seriously dog-licked. It was sweet, if a tiny bit slimy and a tiny bit dog-breathy. Again, no surprises. He's not like other dogs. It's partly the smallness and the extra-bulgy eyes. 

Thanks for the fat, yellow beauty of the moon. It's lingering on looking full. It's not, but it's still very round and very lovely. 

Day 640: Head

Not that extreme

Lovely swim, lovely women, lovely pink and blue and yellow flesh. Lovely heart beating. Lovely skin prickling. Lovely fingers and toes smarting, lovely warm shower water and lovely lady-laughing.

I've had quite an extreme haircut. I thought I was going Downton Abbey, but it's turned out a bit more prisoner of war camp. I'll get used to it. It's only hair (or absent hair) and in theory, it's a good shape for me. I'm just getting used to seeing bits of my neck I haven't seen in a while, and feeling cold air where hair used to be there. It could, as everybody knows, be much worse.

No toothpaste

Today, checking into my hotel, I asked for toothpaste, because 'there's nothing worse', I said, 'than not being able to brush your teeth.' Really? Nothing worse? I won't go into anything really nasty, but even on a very minimal scale, there are much worse things. Getting mugged is worse. Dropping my phone down the toilet is more expensive, definitely. Cat gets run over: worse. 

Tooooothpaaaaste!

Murder's definitely worse, obviously, but even getting locked out. That's a right pisser. There are locks to change, if you do it comprehensively enough, and possible waiting in the cold, or having windows replaced. I'd rather be without toothpaste than get run over. I can ask someone for a squeeze of toothpaste, or go to Sainsbury's for Sensodyne, or the health food shop for cleany balm woven from frog hair and PH neutral intentions. The lady said she'd bring me some, anyway. She hasn't, unless it's lurking outside my door, but I feel pretty good about the whole thing at the moment. 

A nice meeting with power Julia this morning, and a lovely lunch with Nick, followed by a promise of ping pong.

And I've spent the evening with lovely people. Most of them, I've met once or never. Nevertheless, we laughed. It's part of doing this kind of work, the good people. People who talk excitedly about the experiences they've had doing this work. People who are at ease with other people. I've enjoyed it so far. It's too late to enjoy it any more. To bed. 

Serendipitous image search candy

Day 639: Avocado-Pregnant

If there were the slightest chance I might be pregnant, I would think I was. There is none. Today, I spent many minutes, almost to the point of hours, thinking about avocados. I squeezed a few, wondering if my one at home could be ripe yet. Once home I ate it, slice by slice, removing it gently from its stone in circles. Like a 1960s mobile or a Habitat lampshade, thin green rounds. Yes, it was bland. Yes, it was creamy. No, nothing else would do. This might sound like nothing to avocado fans, but my world is rocked.

When I was 15, 16, and with my first boyfriend (he was in the sixth form! I thought I'd made it!), a friend of his was off at medical school. He was a talker and a charmer and he liked to weave a tale. The tale he told that's stayed with me so long was this: upon the occasion of his first cadaver dissection, he was nervous. He prepared himself, leant close and let the scalpel slide into the corpse's cold torso. As he did, a globule of cold fat from around the hip flipped up and landed in his mouth, or on his lip. It made it in, whatever. A dead body's fat cells, in his mouth. It's unfeasible at best. Even at the time, I felt it hadn't happened, but I was compelled and morbidly fascinated. And until now, every time I've eaten avocado, the memory of that cold, lardy, unwelcome human fat deposit slipping on my lips and tainting me has returned.

And now I'm caning avocado slices like pringles, or slipping them in salads. Half an avocado a day, on average. Not excessive in itself, but very strange. The sensation is the same - the slightly clammy cold of them, the lack of distinctness in the flavour, the gentle mush of flesh. 

Two things of particular note today, both previously tipped: the cello and the pond. Not in that order. The pond - I "didn't have time" again today, having got out of my warmest of beds a little later than I planned. There was no not doing it today, though. It had snowed. I'm not sure if I've been in snow before. Maybe I have. It never gets tired, though. The water was at its first official zero of the year. There are rumours of the thermometer being off - it's been stuck at 3.5 for weeks, despite tangible temperature changes on the skin.The skin can lie, though, and the air temperature plays havoc with perception, as do wind and rain and biorhythms (if such things still exist). 

I was busy feeling cold, noticing the pricking at my limbs and the cold grip around my throat, feeling the holding of the water, yearning towards the ice, when I looked up and saw snow sitting along branches, making beauty. That's a better thing to notice, as far as experience goes. A coating on the life ring. 

There was a cormorant with a speckledy white head, crooning and necking up, awkwardly beautiful and totally compelling to watch. He was standing on a life ring and plopping in from time to time. They can be sleek, those birds, but this one wasn't. Like a puppy growing into its feet, or a teenage boy with his first gelled hair. I loved him instantly.

My cello lesson made me joyful. There was ease in it. Ease in the shoulders. Fascination in the hands. And the beautiful caress of the notes when richly played. I was a tiny bit late, having run (awkwardly, with a cello on my back) up behind two departing buses on the way there, so I got to hear him play. I always loved that with my other teacher too. They play so beautifully, these cello men. They have such body passion in it. 


Thanks, Goddess Sturrock, for being very good at what you do. Thanks, Greg, for making me soup in time for when I got home, so I could spoon some in my face before my call. Thanks for a little bit of work I wasn't expecting. Thanks for lovely Ruths.

Day 638: Family

Thank you, sweet Pauline. More than sweet. Rich, flamboyant, funny, loving Pauline, who came to the pond dressed as a fairy on Christmas day and has raised a thousand pounds or more for charity by doing what we all love to do, and stepping into the cold water day by day. We swam together this morning, then hung out. She is another inspiring pond lady with a big life full of love and I adored hearing her stories. She's also an incredible communicator and determined like a tree root. I have a beautiful photo, but I can't seem to find a way to get it off my phone. 

The Saturday family pull-out has always been my very favourite part of The Guardian. I'm drawn to it like a voyeur or a fantasist, a filial peeping Tom. I want to hear about love that's tinged with ties and resentments, or families who love, respect and cherish each other, and always have. I like to read of secret letters from long dead fathers or of the diverse paintings on cave walls that are our histories, our families and our constructed truths. I love to hear of children loved, lost, gained; of tragedies and happy endings; of the tiniest tinges of family life. Perhaps I glamorise it because it's not my world. 

Perhaps I'm missing something, in the bigger sense of things, because it is my world. I have a family too - not one I've given birth to/with, granted, but the one I chose in coming here - and that, itself, with all its oddnesses and intricacies, with all its withheld heartness and its cross-related stories (never a perfect fit, always a little blurred in its overlaying) is good enough.  Nobody's article can cover the wholeness of a family's existence. Nobody's family is perfect, nor is their history. Even families who find no-one ever quite lives up to what they got from mother, father, sister have moments of bickerly spatting (don't they?) and times when irritation sits like sand in love's eye. It scratches, but doesn't blind. Maybe that's enough. Maybe it starts not with my ancestors or with other people's families, but with my own, the bits that work and the bits that don't (bits being moments, exchanges, whole people).

Avocado iced lollies:
A Step Too Fucking Far
or...

So thank you, Harriet. This section has always been my favourite, and recently, having said this to my friend (your husband) John-Paul, I discovered that it is you who are responsible. Keep it coming, please. I have never once failed to feel the warmth of it, or to enjoy its complexity. Families can be complex, love is simple. Remembering that's like walking after letting down a piggy-back rider - there's a lightness that could never have been felt without the pig. And remembering that the rider, however likely to climb up again unnoticed, can be set down with any chosen breath (or two). In love. 

The avocado I bought three days ago, part of a pair, is not ripe. I feel a deep compulsion to go and buy another - how could I have a salad without a helping of creamy, slimy avocado, cut with onions to mix in crispness and sharpness of flavour to offset the blanket of bland that avocado brings. What the fuck is happening to me? It's clear that I don't yet love them, exactly, but I feel the pull like an addiction, almost. 

I remember the first time I ached for marmite. It's location-based, that memory. I was at Brighton's Seven Dials, at the top of Montpelier. On my way to see J, who lived at the cute square that's now a hairdresser's. I was terrified. I thought I surely must be pregnant. Why would I wake and suddenly crave a substance I'd detested for so long? Just short of B12, perhaps, or harbouring a secret candida creature that was calling to be fed. The taste has stuck. nearly twenty years later (Lordy!), I still adore crisp white toast with butter and a little too much marmite. Avocados, you and me, we're joined now, like twins.