the density of angels

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In May I had almost no work at all, which scared me because May is usually a pretty busy month. Freelance means you set aside some money when you get some money and you enjoy some time when you have some time and you try to hustle reasonably in busy times and you also try not to panic unnecessarily in slow times so even though I experienced some concern in May I mostly enjoyed the fine weather and the free time and waited it out. Summer's always slow; things predictably picked up a bit in September, but I still hadn't come close to making up for May.

AND THEN: November and December were absolutely crazy. Every academic in Brno wanted to publish something, the air was thick with the smell of grant money to be spent before the end of the year. January promises more of the same, and I finally took time out to look at finances and raise my prices, which I haven't done in ages. I know this is a very interesting story that I am telling you. Stay with me; it gets a little better.

I am thinking about this, about feast and famine, about the flow of things, and about boundaries. What happens with my work is in many ways the same as what happens in my life and I have to remember to keep my eyes and hands and heart open and take it all in and let it all pass. Just like the absence of work in May, there are times in my life when I am scared, when I feel lonely and like what I have is not enough, that I need more hobbies and more interests and more life in my life, but if I can remember to look at what I actually have and assess whether changes need to be made, most of the time the only change needed is the passage of time, into another month and then things are different. And there are times with work and with life when I feel almost overwhelmed, like a hamster running on a wheel, but then I have to remember that I can stop that wheel whenever I want, and that in fact I do kind of love it, running like that, too much to do, 20 pages a day every day, weekends too, and no time to sit around dithering about angels dancing on the heads of pins or practicing ukulele or exercising or anything other than work and basic social maintenance. Not forever, but for a month or two (or three, if I must) it's okay.

And raising my prices, it's so scary in a way because: what if I lose clients? But asking isn't hard, and in this case it's just a yes or a no. And if the answer is no and I don't especially like the client, then it doesn't matter. And if the answer is yes, then I can start enjoying months like May with even greater pleasure. Similarly with life I am asking a lot of my friends right now, for their patience and kindness during this period of self-absorption and overwork, and I'm blessed to have friends who do understand that there will be a sunny day somewhere in the future; a beer garden and the pure pleasure of laughing the sun down, maybe even waiting for the fireflies, because we will have earned that. And the yoga and the ukulele can wait, too.

pruritus

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It is there whether you think about it or not, this impulse that is below thought, or maybe beyond, or over, or in any case not fixed with your consciousness into a place where you can overcome it; it is simply there. Brought to you by a pet, maybe, or something you ate, a walk in the woods, a picnic; probably there was sunshine but not necessarily, and now you have it. 

The way it affects you is impossible to ignore, it is stronger than desire, it is more than almost anything, and even when you manage to put your thoughts to something functional like work or reading, your hands wander back again and again to it; it is more than pain and you realize this when the red ribbon of blood unravels under your hands and you still can't think about anything but this.

Cover it if you can, smother it with magic potions, creams; wrap your hands in bandages; recite the songs of childhood forwards and backwards, spells and incantations, still it rises, insists, whines, cries. It will not be denied. It murmurs in your ear at night, wakes you with hot whispers, your physical response to it is stronger than your thoughts are quick, and your mind is mercury but this is faster, more, demanding.

How do you deal with it? The persistence of memory, the persistence of thought, the realization that it doesn't matter how it started or when it ends but all that matters is now, right now, how you will deal with it. Try for one minute giving it your focused and complete attention. The whole of you absorbed in this, the whole of you absorbing it. Realize you will never satisfy this. Finally now, you can accept it, even take pleasure it in, see it as a mark of where you've been; it's not release but it's better than it was. For now.

too few to mention

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It is my great regret that I never read to you like I promised I would, because if I had read to you, you would have loved me. I regret that I did not paint what you wanted, because if I had painted it, you would have loved me. I'm sorry that we never went to the sea together, because if we had, if you'd seen me in that element of salt instead of soaked in my tears, you would have loved me. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I have to remember that we never said the words, because I feel like we did but we didn't, and maybe if we had, you would have loved me. Maybe it's simple: If I had told you I loved you, you would have loved me. Or biological: if I had been a man, you would have loved me. Maybe I should have tried harder, been prettier, stronger, sweeter, less myself and more what you wanted, maybe if I'd spoken less or more, maybe if I hadn't written that one letter, or maybe if I had written that one note, slipped it under your door at night with a yellow rose and a seashell, maybe if I hadn't left to give you time to think, or maybe if I had left so you could have followed me. Maybe if I'd trusted you. Maybe if I hadn't. I played it every way and the results were the same, but maybe if I'd played it the other way you would have loved me. 

This is backwards. If you had loved me, I would have read to you. Our paintings would dance on the wall behind us. The sea would have been one more place where we loved each other. Words are only worth what they mean, spoken or otherwise, and I am no man. I am who I am and anything else would have been a lie, and I wouldn't have wanted you if you loved a liar, even if I had desperately wanted to believe it was true. I regret nothing. You could never have loved me. 

everything was beautiful at the ballet

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I went to the ballet last night. One of my dearest friends here had been gone for a month, and I wanted to celebrate his return, and another of my dearest friends has put up with a disproportionate amount of my chaos lately, and I wanted to celebrate her sweetness, and also I will not miss an excuse for what looks like a good ballet, which it did. So we went.

The first piece was Serenade, by George Balanchine. Bunch of pretty girls fluttering their arms about, with some guys trying to look like the goblin king in the pants department wandering around. One can like it, but it was: meh. I hate to say that. I mean, here I'm looking at a stage full of athletes and all I can think is: let's do math with Balanchine, because it really looked like illustrations of math problems or something. Not word problems, either. So mostly I sat there thinking about WHY I didn't like it, which is not really the feeling you want in the theater.

The second piece was Sofa, by Olivier Wevers, and that was totally different. There was a purple velvet sofa, and everybody danced on and under and around it, and it was awesome. It made me think of high school and how I couldn't have boys in my room but we could be in the living room, and how the sofa was like a way station to where we wanted to go, and the center of slumber parties, and where we watched TV, and it is still all those things, the sofa is so central, and these dancers were fighting and kicking and kissing and teasing all on a sofa, just like us, except of course way more elegantly and their feet probably hurt a lot more. And in this I felt fully engaged and delighted.

The third piece was Lunar Sea, by Moses Pendleton, danced by MOMIX, a sort of black light madness and chaos. Like the first one, it didn't have a story, but it was so busy and stimulating visually that it didn't need one. And so we watched people split open, creatures with four legs dancing across the stage, absolutely a hundred things to look at. 

We ran across the street in the rain, ducked into a clean well-lighted place for tapas and wine, and talked and talked, the beauty of this, three generations of ballet in one evening, and how the first one made sense because we could see now how that non-narrative mathematical beauty made the other two possible, and how the third one called back to it, and how amazing it is to be able to see this when it is presented like that. It was delightful. I was delighted.

I Wonder by Derek Tasker

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I wonder what would happen if
I treated everyone like I was in love
with them, whether I like them or not
and whether they respond or not and no matter
what they say or do to me and even if I see
things in them which are ugly twisted petty
cruel vain deceitful indifferent, just accept
all that and turn my attention to some small
weak tender hidden part and keep my eyes on
that until it shines like a beam of light
like a bonfire I can warm my hands by and trust
it to burn away all the waste which is not
never was my business to meddle with.

the remains of the day

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When I was thirteen or fourteen, I went into a hormonal rage and pulled all the shelves in my room down. In about two minutes everything was chaos on the floor — books, toys, knickknacks, everything. And I stood there, sort of shocked, and then I started picking it up. Some things were broken, but I swept them up and kept going. I don't remember how long it took, but I remember how the violence and the drama did not make me feel better in any way, but the slow methodical work did. And the sky opened up and a beam of light on my forehead and the voice of clarity and reason, so rarely heard by the pubescent: now you know how to calm yourself. 

And now I am thirty years older, and I have been cleaning my home and other people's houses for most of that time. It's a thing I can do, dishes and dusting and floors, and it's usually soothing. Plus when you clean other people's houses they pay you, either in money or free accommodations and food, a range of delicious treats in exchange for you doing what you'd do at home anyway, haha. And I did always clean at home, too, for the meditation of it, and the feeling of calm from everything being where it belongs. Except I lived for a long time with people who did not care if it was clean, and you're allowed to not care, I'm sure it makes life much easier, but it makes cleaning up after you kind of a pain. Also my knees started to go weird, locking up, which didn't make kneeling and scrubbing any fun.

So five years ago I got a housekeeper, a teenage girl who came once a week and dusted and mopped and scrubbed. And she did not do the work as well as I did, because for one thing you cannot get a floor clean with a mop, you get a floor clean on your hands and knees, ffs, Yes I know. But she did it every week and she did it without complaining, which in some ways reminded me of my teenage self, and she was pleasant and she didn't want to be my friend, she just came and did it and got paid and left. Then she went to college, which was the worst. 

I have some ideas in here about hiring people to do menial labor, and about privilege etc., which I think I dodged by hiring a teenager, but it was on my mind.

For two years I tried to find another housekeeper, and it was just ridiculous. One who told me the house was a mess (uhm, nope) and so it would be hard to clean; one who talked and talked and talked at me so I couldn't work while she was here, which I thought: shouldn't we… both be working?; one who smelled like cat piss and mold. I did not find another teenager and I did not enjoy the dialogues in my head. So finally Squire and I have been doing the weekly cleaning together, I do the standing parts and he does the kneeling parts, it's not FUN but it helps to feel like I'm not alone and I don't feel weird about it and we get it done and whatever, it's a couple hours. But the cat hair, my god. There is one cat, and she sheds a kitten per room per week.

So we bought a floorbot. My sister's is named Benson so I named this one Stevens because he is also a butler (I was thinking of Miss Kenton, which is more correct, taskwise, but I just couldn't see Emma Thompson in his shiny black morning coat). He is tiny, he cleans one room and then runs out of energy and has to be recharged, so I have to pace him. It is a funny new addition. It is interesting to have watched so many programs about robots in the last year and then find myself behaving exactly as those silly humans, assigning emotions and personality to an object. I mean this is a cheap version, I don't think it even has a memory, which as Deckard will tell you is what separates the roombas from the replicants. But anyway: Stevens. New member of the household.

Well you said you wanted something a little less… sad. And I'm trying, I am. Though the fact that I named my floorbot after the butler who could talk about anything except his feelings instead of, say, Wadsworth, is not lost on me.  

In the Pitt-Rivers Museum

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Curiosity and wonder, they call it, and put it behind glass and we press our faces against it and hold our breath so as not to cloud the view. Trophies of war, declares one sign, and behind it dangles chunks of the real live hair of people who are no longer really alive. The head of your enemy, with the part that thought it could hurt you carefully removed, just the face now, the dead eyes even deader, filled with sand and looking more like fuzzy dice than anything that could do you harm, which is the point I guess. Body art is a whole floor, and there are objects from rituals once sacred in one place, now trendy in another. Still rituals, though. These cabinets are better curated than a B-lister's Facebook page, they look like chaos but each item has a tiny label in penmanship that makes my fingers cramp in sympathy and longing. Here are shoes worn by a woman who was so rich they had to hobble her to keep her from walking, the wretched smell meaning that all the perfumes of China will not sweeten this little foot. 

 
This room is for crusty old men smelling of wet tweed and pipe tobacco, and for Mrs. Frankweiler, and for me. For people who do not think in the rigid lines of time and space as well as we would like to imagine, but instead group things together in a logic that defies; a pile of thoughts, confirmation bias, and objects used for the same purpose across generations, continents. Here is a cabinet filled with things for Woodcarving, and we suspect that maybe some of them might be sex toys, though later on we find out that's in another museum. Adze is a beautiful word. Here is a world with problems, the cases say, here is rain and hunger, the need for food and shelter, and here is how it has been solved, and solved, and solved, with wood and mud and traps for feathers and meat and bone; here is what we do with what we need, here is what we do with what is leftover. There's a labret made of a soda can. Here is boredom, they say, and breathe across your mind until it fogs, and then they wipe the mist away with a piece of leather soaked in salt and vinegar, and there are so many beautiful ways to solve that.
 
You gaze into Permanent Arts, the eyes of a woman with a stack of neck rings and wonder if she feels exploited or pretty, her eyes defiant or beckoning, and beside it a corset and an x-ray of the woman who wore it, her deformed skeleton. Or in this cabinet, pig bristles and woven straw, a mixture of things to cause malevolent events, earth from the grave of a man killed by a tiger, bad beasts do not harm me, I'm quoting here. Charms, says the cabinet, and I'm charmed, magicked, transfixed. 

 

http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/

And Now it’s October by Barbara Crooker

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the golden hour of the clock of the year. Everything that can run
to fruit has already done so: round apples, oval plums, bottom-heavy
pears, black walnuts and hickory nuts annealed in their shells,
the woodchuck with his overcoat of fat. Flowers that were once bright
as a box of crayons are now seed heads and thistle down. All the feathery
grasses shine in the slanted light. It's time to bring in the lawn chairs
and wind chimes, time to draw the drapes against the wind, time to hunker
down. Summer's fruits are preserved in syrup, but nothing can stopper time.
No way to seal it in wax or amber; it slides though our hands like a rope
of silk. At night, the moon's restless searchlight sweeps across the sky.

tatters

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What I wanted to write about was the feeling of being ripped up, that pieces are being torn off me, that sometimes I believe I can actually feel my soul being just a little shredded. I tried to write that and it came out as some kind of poem, the kind that my friend once said "Oh, so this is what fire is for, to toss this into." Not so good. So now I'm just trying to write AROUND the idea for a bit, and what I wanted to get to from there was the thought that if all these pieces are being ripped off of me, maybe I can make something of it, some kind of papier mache creation, if the words of me are ripped off and then dipped in liquid and then reformed, wouldn't the new me be marvelous, the way I planned it, some kind of collage beauty that only showed the parts I wanted to show, something lovely. But right now it feels mostly like the tearing part, the rip of paper, the destruction, and I feel like the pieces are just blown into the wind before they can be reassembled into anything of meaning. 

 
So that's happening, the ripping.
 
Despite that I'm mostly happy, I'm working a lot and that always makes me feel useful. I play the ukulele almost every day and I have not improved even a tiny bit. I'm going to London and Oxford for a few days to visit friends, yay. I'm starting to hunker down into winter, piling my books and blankets around me and making sure there's lots of good television lined up.  Sometimes I wish you were here and we could just talk and laugh and be ourselves; sometimes I don't think about you at all.