if there is one thing my trip home and the past two days have taught me, it is that at the end of the day, the people matter most of all. i could have the best job in the world anywhere (and i do really love my job) and it wouldn’t keep me there if i didn’t have my family or my best friends around too. and what a family, what a group of friends i have. i couldn’t ask for more.

and if there is a second thing i have learned, it is that there is no such thing as the perfect place to be. here, i miss so many things about singapore and sydney, there, i miss things about england. wherever i go, i think, there will always be something or other i miss; fuzzy said to me after tea at coffee club that this feeling of passing through places and always being in transit was probably always going to be a permanent one, and i can’t help but think she was right. ironic, isn’t it, for someone who has been doing nothing but trying to find home for the past four years. maybe the answer i’ve finally found is that there is no home. there are only feelings, feelings of being home, feelings of belonging somewhere, and the people and things and memories that trigger them.

and there is no combination of words i could say

there are so many things i want to express, for which words will never be enough. reading terry pratchett’s nation in tasmania, and then watching it last night at the national theatre, brought that home to me all over again. i feared i would cry at the last scene, instead there were helpless, silent tears in my throat and a choked up dryness in my eyes. how do you put a name to this? how do you say hello, and goodbye, and hope to see you again soon, and i love you, in your own way – without using these words that so many people have used before you, to mean things that they feel, not that you feel? there is only so much i can pour into my christmas cards, into my smiles and gestures, and i don’t know if it is good enough.

I know I ask perfection of a quite imperfect world
And fool enough to think that’s what I’ll find

i had some very pensive and slightly blue musings here, involving the painful aptness of the carpenters on this cold, quiet, rainy friday night, but then i decided that no one is served by my melancholy, least of all myself.

deep breaths, deep breaths, if i concentrate on the hereandnow split nanomilliseconds of each moment and just, for that short period of time, be happy, it will all add up, and it will all fall into place.

the days are so short, now. i miss the spring, i miss the summer even more, and most of all i wonder where 2009 went.

This evening, it occurred to me how absurdly overdeveloped this sense of guilt and wrongdoing has become when I found myself, stirring soup in the pot, dwelling on guilt and feeling all kinds of guilty for feeling guilty. And then feeling guilty for feeling guilty for feeling – well, you get the idea. Like one of those mirror images which never ends.

I know, I know. I’m working on it, I promise. Please don’t laugh at me. I’ll get it under control… someday. Really. You have your irrationalities too, don’t you?

In other news, we had unexpectedly good weather throughout almost all of the August bank holiday weekend, and a whole array of good food (chorizo burgers at Borough market’s Brindisa, Monmouth Coffee, GBK, lassi, cake, duck rice at Goldmine!) plus NHM plus butterflies plus South Bank sunshine plus good company made it a lovely one. And that’s it, for summer – but what a memorable sendoff.

(but my heart’s not in it)

absofrigginlutely exhausted. what a week. full of thoughts. full of conflicting emotions. bouncing from almost sinfully sugary highs to fist-clenching, gut-twisting lows, feeling like the tension knots in my back will never leave, feeling full and empty alternately (like the proverbial glass of water), soaking up the last of the summer sunshine, thinking how much i’d miss this as i walked down the south bank, futilely clinging on to the moment, loving it, hating that it had to end.

i can’t even think straight enough to string a post together coherently, i am so tired, and i feel so drained, and i feel like there is nothing of myself left over for me. i haven’t felt like this since jc. and it’s scary. i know i’ll be ok. i just really – need to let this tension go. thank goodness, thank goodness, that i will be seeing wanyun in a week’s time, and finally touch base again with an old familiar world where i know the people love me no matter how long i’ve been away and how long it’s been since we’ve spoken. i’m trying my best, here. but it’s hard.

Questions/things I am thoroughly sick and tired of hearing from other people:

1. “Have you thought of moving back home?”
2. “Why don’t you go home?”
3. “So what do you do in your spare time?”
4. “What does ‘looking for a job’ involve?” (GO AWAY!)
5. “Have you tried the National Theatre?” (Yeah, because you can just waltz right up to the National for a job, they hand them out like candy…)
6. “Have you tried [insert other famous theatre]?” (ARGH!)
7. “How about looking out of London?” (yes I’m sure a town with one theatre, as is the case with much of England, will have better job prospects than London)
8. “What do you actually do at work?”
9. “It’s not work if it’s only an internship.” (GO AWAY! part II)
10. “How are you surviving on an intern’s pay?” (uncomfortable scenario part I, where I explain I’m not actually even paid)
11. “How are you surviving if you’re not paid?” (uncomfortable scenario part II, where I explain I’m a shameless, selfish financial liability)
12. “Why don’t you just get a temp job or something and waitress/be a receptionist/work at Starbucks?” (have you even TRIED getting a random temp job in the current market when you have zero customer service background and all your work experience, while significant to your chosen field, is irrelevant to others?)
13. “Have you tried looking for something other than in the arts?” (If I wanted a job I don’t actually have an interest in, I could’ve gone home to be a teacher.)
14. “It’s so much easier getting a job in Singapore.” (you think I don’t know that?!)

In conclusion: if you secretly think I’m a good-for-nothing layabout who’s being exploited as free labour within an inch of her useless, penniless, mooching life, please sod off, I have got no more patience for the likes of you, and right now I feel like I could bite.

there was a big ranty post here, in which i railed against numerous frustrating things and feelings that had cropped up recently, but i often forget that i am very blessed in many ways and it won’t do to continually dwell on sawdust while ignoring the plank in my eye. so all i will say is, i am still way too sensitive, and have a long way to go, and even with all the facility with words in the world i remain incapable of understanding the words of other people. especially when they are unaccompanied by body language. :/