one hand clapping

There are some times when everything goes so horribly wrong that you can’t even cry because you’re too stressed to. BT - as I had rather foreseen, given their unspeakable inefficiency and disregard for customer service - stood me up today after I’d taken a day off work to stay home and wait for their engineer to finally set my phone line up. This is after I’d very patiently waited around for two whole weeks since moving to London. Without any foreseeable date when my phone line can finally be set up, I remain stranded indefinitely sans internet at home. Without a phone line to call BT on, I have to ring them on my mobile, and rage silently as I wait on the end of their inevitably, impossibly long hold queue.

The York city council is after my landlady to pay council tax for last year, from which I should be exempt on account of my being a student, except they claim I have to fork out for the period of time when I straddled undergrad and postgrad and was very, very briefly not techically a student. She’s naturally panicking about receiving letters threatening court action, and it falls on me to deal with it. Except that the council refuse to speak to me any further, for confidentiality purposes, as the account is in my landlady’s name! And I can’t talk to my uni welfare adviser over the phone because they don’t dispense advice that way. So I have to email her and await a reply. Did I mention my lack of internet or phone line at home? Or that the sum in question is somewhere in the region of £300, which is by no means an expense I can easily afford?

I’ve been yelling on the phone a lot this afternoon, for various reasons, and none of the above are anywhere nearer to being properly sorted out. On top of that I’ve cut two days of work so far, within a week of starting, because I had to wait at home for boxes to arrive on Friday and today I blew it all waiting for BT. I know I have perfectly good reasons for skipping out on work but I don’t like doing it; I feel lazy, I feel ashamed. I haven’t spoken to my family in eons, I haven’t spoken to so, so many people. Most of the time I feel fine. When I don’t, though, I really, really don’t.

I know this will all pass and I won’t even remember this turmoil, many months later. For now, though, this is one of those times, and I’m gritting my teeth as best as I can through the profound frustration and disconnectedness. Days like this when I can’t cry no matter how much it’s welling up inside me, I want to go out, buy a massively expensive tub of Haagen Dazs, and eat it all - but it’s been raining and hailing all day and the weather is at odds with my ice cream therapy. So it has to be hot chocolate, and I guess I should be grateful after all that I still have hot chocolate in my cupboard to turn to in a pinch. Some things, unlike others, don’t fail you.

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out of the shire

the reactions of others (notable exception pepper), when i tell them i am in fact incredibly nervous about moving to london, are so unequivocally “why???” that i really start to wonder if the problem is with me. it is an exciting city, it is vibrant, the job is interesting - i have everything to gain and nothing to lose, it seems; and yet i am nervous as hell, and when i say this i am almost without exception greeted with blank incomprehension bordering on disbelief.

i don’t want to be whiny and all “nobody understands meeeeee” because that’s ridiculous and childish and i know it. but is it really honestly so strange to be this nervous about something, even if it’s a path i chose and forged out for myself? of course i wouldn’t be nervous, were i moving back to singapore to take a comfortable paid job there, but this is a whole different ballpark and yes i am terrified. i can’t explain it, i know i’ve nothing to fear, and yet - i fear.

i can feel myself all on edge and irritable and frustrated, mostly with myself for being like that; i am so, so tense right now i could snap. and it is probably all my fault - as everyone keeps telling me, i’m just overthinking it all and it will be fine once i get there. but for now, for now, on this last night in york, let me be afraid without feeling bad for it.

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please stay for a while

Hey where did we go,
Days when the rains came
Down in the hollow,
Playin’ a new game,
Laughing and a running hey, hey
Skipping and a jumping
In the misty morning fog with
Our hearts a thumpin’ and you
My brown eyed girl,
You my brown eyed girl.

Whatever happened
To Tuesday and so slow
Going down the old mine
With a transistor radio
Standing in the sunlight laughing,
Hiding behind a rainbow’s wall,
Slipping and sliding
All along the water fall, with you
My brown eyed girl,
You my brown eyed girl.

Do you remember when we used to sing,
Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da

So hard to find my way,
Now that I’m all on my own.
I saw you just the other day,
My how you have grown,
Cast my memory back there, Lord
Sometime I’m overcome thinking ’bout
Making love in the green grass
Behind the stadium with you
My brown eyed girl
You my brown eyed girl

- Van Morrison, “Brown-Eyed Girl”

I had a whole long draft typed up, about everything I am feeling this last weekend before leaving York, with all my stuff in boxes and bags once again, but somehow it never reached a stage where I felt it could be published. All the words just seemed so useless; no matter how much I wrote and rewrote whole sentences, paragraphs, I simply couldn’t - still can’t - really, really put across how I feel. So much has happened so quickly over the past two weeks.

And then “Brown-Eyed Girl” came on the radio and I thought, this is it. This is how I feel.

Do you remember when we used to sing
Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da.

Do you remember? I hope I never forget.

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the bad beginning

…it would be so easy for me to lose heart and throw in the towel now. but i can’t, i can’t, i can’t, not now, not when i’m already halfway down the road, there’s no turning back - i have to keep on it, i have to keep going on. on with my rapidly draining bank account, on with my grasping straws of hope, on with my flimsy backup plans and cluelessness.

is it really so bad, not knowing what’s going to happen to you? part of me is scared out of my wits, and part of me is - well - excited. it’s the first time in my entire life i’m not following a plan that’s been set out for me. it’s the first time i’m choosing the hard, hard path. so i can’t tell you for certain where i’m going to be in a month’s, a fortnight’s time, so i haven’t anything concrete beyond getting through the next 24 hours… and is it really so bad?

i don’t know what to think. i’m just really small, right now, and the world seems very big.

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i said, babe, you’re not lost

Now and then a particular song among my thousands really jumps out and speaks to me, and today it is this deceptively simple one, which I never realised was so beautiful until I heard Michael Buble sing it with the lights dimmed, video off, and eyes closed in Manchester last year.

*

Maybe I didn’t treat you
Quite as good as I should have
Maybe I didn’t love you
Quite as often as I could have
Little things I should have said and done
I just never took the time

You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind

Tell me, tell me that your sweet love hasn’t died
Give me, give me one more chance
To keep you satisfied, satisfied

Maybe I didn’t hold you
All those lonely, lonely times
And I guess I never told you
I’m so happy that you’re mine
If I make you feel second best
Girl, I’m sorry I was blind

You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind

Tell me, tell me that your sweet love hasn’t died
Give me, give me one more chance
To keep you satisfied, satisfied

Little things I should have said and done
I just never took the time
You were always on my mind
You are always on my mind
You are always on my mind

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back where it’s cold

…or not, really. It isn’t that cold here in Sydney - an average of 12 to 14°C during the daytime, dipping down to maybe 9°C or so during the night; significantly colder than currently-summery York but nowhere near the frigid depths of northern English winters, and nothing I can’t take (wait a couple of weeks and I’ll be complaining about not being able to type my dissertation because my fingers are freezing off).

The last couple of weeks in York were whirlwind - drinks, pub quizzing and suffering random harrassment from a creepy American chap with Mander; Red Chilli with Susanna, where we had to order fish to share because she doesn’t take any other meat and I discovered for the first time that York sometimes does have very decent fish indeed; Eleena’s visit and the first proper cooked breakfast I’ve had in York all year, with scrambled eggs, baked potato and bacon; a frenzy of Railway Children activity at the Theatre Royal which involved the filing of a million press clippings and reviews and 1.5 hours of standing at the National Railway Museum giving out flyers; yummy Garden of India takeout and plenty of random chitchat with Kevin and Rokey, thinking this might be the last time for a long time that I see either of them boys; lots and lots and lots of packing and moving, and of course the dissertation final draft (here a misleading term which actually means only about half the thing has been written, and mostly crappily).

All of that, plus passing through Singapore and meeting up with my lovely, lovely friends there, and finally touching down here after two solid days of travelling has stirred up in me that old feeling of being pulled in a million different directions, that question of… how do I balance all this? How do I portion out my time and myself for all these different places and people when I love them all, when I don’t want to leave any of them, when I just wish foolishly that I could pack everything and everyone with me in a bottomless suitcase, have it all in one place? Just when I thought I had it sorted, I find again that I haven’t a clue, I don’t have any answers. I know something’s got to

Now that I’m finally here with my family after nearly 10 months of being away, all I really want to do is catch a breather, sleep in for a week and recover properly from jetlag… but I know I’ve not done anything for a week, dissertation-wise, and if I want to knock out another 10,000 words before September 22nd I have to hustle soon.

breathe, just breathe, I keep telling myself.

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welcome to your life

…ever had one of those days where there are so, so many things on your mind, so many things spinning round your head, so many things you know you’ve got to do, but the paralysis from knowing there’s that much to tackle just freezes you and you end up spending all your time randomly gaming and watching telly and uselessly surfing the net instead?

Yeah. It’s been one of those days.

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hide and seek

“Sometimes,” he sighed, “I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see.”

It occurs to me, chillingly, that the older I grow the better I get at goodbyes - not because of any laudatory emotional control I’ve developed, or because I’ve learned that precious skill of letting go gracefully - but because a part of me just doesn’t get as attached anymore. Whether it’s a self-defence mechanism against a long string of farewells or the inevitable conclusion to an over-nostalgic youth, I don’t know. Everyone has graduated, everyone is leaving, tomorrow there’ll be an empty house, and where I would have been a nervous ball of tears a few years ago I find myself now fluctuating wildly between a silent, throbbing sorrow and a firm faith that this isn’t goodbye, just a hiatus till the next time we meet again. It’s really the latter that’s anchoring me right now, but I don’t think I’d have been able to find that anchor back when I first came here.

Daddy told me a few years back that I ought to be happier about moving out and moving on, throwing away the old, leaving the past behind, because it meant that we were on the cusp of a shiny new future. I hope, perhaps unreasonably, that I’ve managed to learn that lesson; but I know somehow inside that this new alacrity with goodbyes isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I almost wish I was a nervous ball of tears, because my emotions felt so much more real then. I wonder where this clinical, rational thinking came from, I wonder if it’s a cold, icy self-preservation to keep the ball-of-tears version of me from wasting away after the millionth farewell, I wonder if I haven’t lost something in gaining the new calm.

It’s strange, isn’t it? I spend almost three years trying to get over goodbyes, to get used to the idea that everything comes to an end, and the day I find I’ve finally done so, I want nothing more than to undo it all and just cry like a child again.

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bang bang

“for it might end, you know,” said Alice to herself, “in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?” And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle looks like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing.

…it’s been a draining, exhausting few days. everything seemed to converge at once, everything, spinning spinning horribly and coming to land on one fatally explosive spot; it’s been mad dashes everywhere, geographically, emotionally, mentally. i feel like i’m in one of those movies where i see the storm coming from a mile away but i’m rooted to the spot and the film is in slow motion - the camera rotates 360 degrees, it keeps coming coming closer, ominously, and still i stand transfixed, my expression unchanging, because i am utterly powerless to do anything about it, and when time goes back to normal the storm will hit me hard and fast. and then everything will blow up.

it isn’t over yet: i’ve two and a half more days before clearing the next big hurdle in dissertating, and a meagre 1/10th through what i’m supposed to hand in. even the weather hasn’t been friendly, shuffling with frustrating rapidity between gorgeously sunny and frigidly cold and wet.

yesterday’s london interview was an unexpected bright spot, but i can’t just stop now, i can’t sit back and rest content - there’s still so much more i can do, so much more i can at least try to do - how can i leave all the other doors closed just because one has opened for me? what if behind the next one is something even better - and i never know, because i’ve been lying back on some flimsy plastic laurels -

at times i’ve felt, as alice did, that i might shrink till i go out poof just like a candle-flame. but there must be a way out of this trough, there must be; there always is.

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winds

It’s been an oddly melancholy week, and I can’t put my finger on why. Have I - horrors - prematurely reached the plodding, weary phase of my dissertation, having spent the past few days mired in an excellently written but extremely long biography? (Next up, >1200 pages’ worth of letters… joy.) Is it the end-of-term syndrome, where everyone around is either done, very near done, or leaving for good already, and the thought of home and family just beckons so enticingly? Is it the ridiculously indecisive weather, which has been seesawing back and forth between lovely and abysmal with almost daily regularity? Is it my continued deficit of money and employment, and a frightening dearth of further prospects to apply to?

Actually, I suspect it isn’t really any of the above. I’m probably just trying to find excuses to justify the vague, moody miasma that’s been hanging round me lately… and more likely than not, it’s just one of those inexplicably emo things that will go away on its own with time.

The RJ lit trip made a stop at York last Wednesday, and I was very happily assigned to the campus tour group which had Mr Purvis in it And it dawned on me, really dawned on me, how much I have changed since I was the shy silent girl in the back of TS2. I found myself strangely able to have a real conversation with him where in the past I would have been too terrified to do anything other than nod and smile; we had a very thought-provoking chat about literature and life after university as we walked round the campus, and it might just be the very first time I’ve really understood the human side of this teacher who was such a prominent figure in my JC days. He told me about how he was glad I’d kept the faith with English, and that he really regrets not doing a Masters after getting his first degree - and how, now, thinking about it, he’s afraid he’s not good enough for an MA and that his BA was really a fluke.

Hearing that, just that one line, from someone who was almost singlehandedly responsible for igniting my obsession with lit and pushing me towards the path I’ve taken… it was heartbreaking. I felt there were so many things I wanted to say to him: I wanted to tell him he was good enough, that it wasn’t just luck, that he’s been inspirational not just to me but to a lot of other students, and how could someone like that be a fluke of the system?

But I couldn’t find the words. I struggled with what sounded, to my ears, like hollow reassurances; I don’t even remember what I said in the end. We moved on to talk about how beautiful the campus is in spring, my mind trailed off and I started wondering if I should tell them that the lake is really toxic, actually, and I forgot all about it for the moment.

Thinking back, I wish I could have said everything I was feeling. I wish I could have poured it out, I wish I could have found a way to show it. But there will never be a way, when words just aren’t enough, and it will always be one of those increasingly frequent instances where the empty signifiers of everyday language are just sorely, sorely inadequate to the occasion.

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