The female that fashion forgot.
When did I become not stylish?
When did I become all jeans and shirts and flat sensible shoes, and not strappy dresses and dangerously high heels and the perfect handbag? When did it become all about whether or not it would fit and not about whether it was just the most perfect ensemble, whether I made a statement that was totally unique, in a fashion voice that was all my own. When did I start to care what people thought, or whether they did at all? When did I decide I had to hid myself beneath volumes of fabric because perhaps it wasn’t perfect, and all I required was comfort? When did I lose my sense of fashion fun?
When did I lose the sense that I too deserved to enjoy style?
I don’t even have children to blame for this…
Perhaps
…this shouldn’t be as hard as I make it.
Write it down. Regardless the expectation. Take the pressure off yourself. So what if it isn’t poignant, so what if it doesn’t make sense. If there is a need to share, then write it down. Even if there isn’t a need, only a desire to say something, a desire to break the silence, then write it down. Even if it isn’t well written, witty or pithy, still, write it down. Even if it isn’t worth remembering…
Write about the high pitched squealing that keeps you up at all hours in the morning in the dinky, dreary, expensive flat in Nottingham, where the bed squeaks with the slightest hint of movement, so violently it squeaks that you have resorted to sleeping on the floor, for a price greater than that of your own, much larger, home. Write about performing in empty theatres, to those that number few, whose appreciation is great. Write about the pains of choosing a sofa, about letting your rear end do the talking, about lounging around in showrooms to the great entertainment of the masses, about letting him lie on your lap to see if the sofa was comfort worthy.
Write about Radio 4 versus Black Eyed Peas, about blockbusters versus classic movies. Write about what to do with the cat when his visiting means being away for days on end. Write about the great changes in life, and space when one becomes one plus one and one has to decide how to share wardrobe space, and the mental calculations involved in deciding where his stuff will go.
Write about the loss of icons and whether that loss only just happened, or if, with that loss, the icon was regained.
Perhaps, I should write about those things. Or I could just go make myself another coffee.
In Brum…
It’s an interesting place, Birmingham. It’s shiny and new and old and decrepit, it’s enterprise and tall buildings, and waste and boarded up windows. Its people are friendly but not always fair, kind and terrifying, soft and tough. The audiences have been amazing.
I’m singing and dancing again, making happy work and helping people forget their sorrows by shedding tears at ours. I love my work, but my work has not been loving me of late. The chances seem to be drying up and now I am reduced to offering my skill to the smallest and most silent of roles. I came close to the question of quitting in Brum. I have not yet answered that question.
I started asking myself the inevitable. ‘What could I do, if I didn’t do this?’ I am met with a grey mist in my mind, an impenetrable fog of fear and indecision. I cannot imagine not baring my soul for all and sundry. I cannot imagine not creating joy and laughter and happiness where there might be none. I cannot imagine not using my imagination to free the imagination of others, not letting my creation run riot in front of an audience of many, who pay me to play the clown, the fool, the player.
But I wonder if this world is done with me. I wonder if I have had my time, if I have already made my last hurrah, if my glory days are past and now I am a clawing has-been at 35, still searching after my big break. Maybe I am one of those sad people who cannot see that which is staring them right in the face. Perhaps…
I must go pound a treadmill towards clarity. If I reach it, I shall tell you.
Don’t ask me…
…if I’m alright getting the heavy bookcases that you’ve just delivered up the stairs if you’re not planning to help me anyway!
The love/hate relationship of a girl who lives alone with delivery guys continues…
So I leave you with this
No great man ever complains of want of opportunities.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Now, where’s my tool belt?
Where have you been?
I do apologise, dear reader, for leaving you for quite some time.
I’ve been lost, wrapped in the arms of the new boy, he of the North, he at the end of long train journeys, he who cannot help but take all of my attention.
I have been experiencing life, rather than standing out the outskirts of it and observing. I have not been watching too closely, the excitement is far too much for me, the fear far too palpable. It may disappear at any moment, so I am being present, lest I miss any precious moment, that I could not regain, should it become too late. I have been being giddy, dear friends. I didn’t know I could do giddy. Giddy, for the most part, irritates me. Yet, that is what I have been doing. Being giddy. Irritating myself. Finding my irritated self quite amusing. Laughing at myself. And being giddy again. Quite tiring, really. And so I’ve been too tired to write.
Or perhaps too lazy. Or perhaps too giddy.
I’ve been tweeting and audiobooing and making new friends in cyberspace. New friends who know how to be interesting and entertaining and educational and sharing in 140 characters. Friends that have succinct wit and education down pat. Friends that know how to get to the point, who say a million things with limited space. They are creating my new philosophy. I am learning intently. And having tremendous fun.
So until I come from beneath my giddiness, from behind my Balvenie haze, from beyond reason, I leave you with another copy and paste link http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp (until I figure out what’s up with the link button in WordPress…there must be a notice somewhere, but I’ve been too busy to notice…) One of my Tweeps passed this on to me. Have fun and let me know your type.
I’m ENFP – The Champion.
I leave judgement to the brave…
King’s X – the commandments of train travel
The sign says ‘Information’, the sign does not say ‘Come and yell at me because you couldn’t be bothered to get up early enough to get to the station in time to catch your train and it bothers you that you’ve paid £146 for a ticket that you now can’t use because of all the restrictions imposed by a carrier that we are not responsible for and no, I don’t have the number for them here, why don’t you look at your ticket or booking reference page, after you’ve stopped yelling at me, of course’.
No matter how much coffee you have at home, you will still buy a coffee at the station, because…well…just because.
The train platform will be put up 5 minutes before departure time. Everybody’s carriages will be six minutes away. There will always be mild cattle-like panic. The carriages are not a suitable thoroughfare for many people with large cases.
If you book your ticket in advance, chances are, no matter how empty the carriage is, you will be booked into some awkward seat right by the toilet and overcrammed baggage storage area.
There will be no trolley service when your carriage is a million miles away from the catering car. There will be a trolley service when you’ve been organised and gotten all your provisions before you boarded.
Someone will always be drinking cans of lager at 10 in the morning. That person will always be sitting opposite you. That person will want to engage you in talks about football. That person will ignore the fact that you are staring intently into your computer screen.
No matter how many books you have packed for your travel, you will buy a magazine in WHSmiths.
Small children always get underfoot. Small children always get underfoot of people who don’t like small children. Small children smell fear and loathing, like dogs. Parents of small children generally don’t give a shit what their demon seed are up to, and see these moments when the little bastards are bothering other childless people as a moment’s peace for themselves.
Children like to scream for no reason. It is acceptable for children to scream for no reason. It is not acceptable for adults to scream for no reason.
No, I do not want to read your copy of the Sun. Yes I know there are tits on Page 3. No, I still don’t want to read your copy of the Sun.
Headphones are inadequate protection from an invasion of personal space and quiet time.
The speed of time is directly proportional to the availability of on board broadband.
You will almost always have to go searching for your ticket when the ticket inspectors come along, no matter how carefully you stashed them for exactly this moment. You never pay attention to where you put your ticket at the time of stashing. Hence the mad rifling through everything while the lovely, patient man stands there…
Profuse apologising and nervous giggling never makes it any better.
Your tickets are always the first place you looked when you started searching. You will spend a few minutes after the episode wondering how you didn’t see them the first time around.
There is a strange ‘table space politics’ that happens on trains. Try to play fair. Try not to mind if somebody’s jacket sleeve is creeping over your keyboard.
That attractive guy will only ever notice you when he’s getting off the train at a stop before yours. He will smile and say hello with palpable disappointment that his moment has passed. You will look away uninterested, but seriously chuffed that you still have pulling power.
The journey will always be just a bit too long until you’re in the pair of arms that you wish to be in. You will find ways of amusing yourself until then.
The Philosophy of Idleness (a stream of consciousness on the arrival of the ‘other’)
Oh, how much time and space does an ‘other’ take up, in one’s life and mind.
I’ve taken a moment to crawl back inside my head, a place in which I have gambolled and frolicked for so long, a place where I have put the onslaught of thought and expectation and opinion to each and every high stepping test I could find. I went back there, to the dancehall of my mind and decided to hit the floor with this latest preoccupation. I held it close, I let the thought envelop me and I began the dance.
The song that plays is one that is familiar, though I do not know it completely. I recognise it, I have heard something like it before, but I do not know this song. I have heard those words before… someone adores me, loves me even, but not from this voice, not from those lips. My heart skips, with excitement mistaken for fear, fear mistaken for excitement. I sing along. But there is a part of me that doesn’t know these words, and may not want to sing these lyrics. I sing them, because that is the song that is being played. I sing them because I am caught up in the beat, the rhythm, the gentle rocking of this beautiful song. I sing them because I am not sure what it would sound like if I did. I sing them because I am not sure I want to find out what it would be like if I didn’t. I hear the words, on my voice, and I am frightened. I am not sure I want to feel this way…
I’ve spent so much time alone. I’ve gotten used to it. I know my space, my time, my actions and reactions. I know what I will do, when I will do it and I change my mind more often than not. I try to outwit myself in terms of expectations and sometimes fool myself all too well. But I am used to myself. I am used to my aloneness. It is what I know, what I have come to expect. It is the ‘way it is’, the way it has come to be. I am accustomed to this jive. I stand in a corner on the dancefloor of the everyday and swing my hips, raise my hands in the air and enjoy the solo. I venture to the middle, beneath the lights of everyone else’s presumptions and predictions and spin and gyrate, jump and bump and grind to the tune of my own song. I would love myself enough for everyone else and my dance would show it.
Now, someone else wants to love me, and I am not sure I know how to let that happen.
He turned up, unexpectedly, with his unexpected face in an unexpected way. He made a giant effort to find me, an effort of miles and hours and mystery. He blindsided me, appeared from nowhere, or at least from where I wasn’t looking. He was nothing I was looking for and everything I was looking for. He was charm and little grace, gentleness and awkwardness, sturdiness and instability, all rolled into one wonderful package of beautiful eyes and inimitable wit. He makes me laugh uncontrollably, the kind of laugh that one hopes to hide if one hopes to impress the other, the kind of laugh reserved for girlfriends and best friends. He makes me feel safe and uncertain. He is fun and infuriating and friendlier than I. I described him once like water, containable but unable to be held too tightly, there is a better description perhaps, but my brain short fuses with the thought of him. He is indescribable. What he has brought to me is indefinable. What my heart is trying to say is incommunicable. I cannot correctly illustrate the fear, I also cannot convey the joy. I do not know what frightens me, only that there are several things I don’t want to lose, which each entail losing the other. It all makes little sense. But it preoccupies me.
I’ve been following myself now for this past month or so, trying to catch up with where he takes me. I have almost lost control, not for being swept away, but because reason for this is elusive. I cannot help but follow blindly where he leads, he hypnotizes my heart.
I shall have to think on him further.
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