the scent of water

18. A Quick Hello

It's time for me to go to bed with a book and a cup of tea but I wanted to write you a quick letter - somehow the last couple of days just ran away from me and I didn't even stop by to say boo.  I've been really nervous about the upcoming interview, and spending as many hours convincing myself to run away from doing it as I have convincing myself to go through with it.  I'll do it - it can't kill me right? - but I don't think I'll take the job, even if I'm successful.  I just can't bring myself to work full-time.  Not yet.  I can't decide if this is selfish or sensible.  It probably doesn't matter.

We enjoyed some spring sunshine today, for the second weekend in many months.  Warren and the girls even had a picnic outside on the deck.  They're tight, those three.

17. It's times like this when the social phobia thing isn't very useful.

I applied for a job over a week ago.  What for, I don't know.  Promptly forgot about it because I didn't think my CV would get me into anything but the rubbish bin in the corner.  And now I have an interview.  Lord. 

I've been spending the whole evening coming up with increasingly elaborate reasons I should call the whole thing off, chief amoung them I'm a blathering idiot and it's a lot easier to be one in the comfort of your own home.  Well, it is.

Got some writing done though. Almost an entire page!  Just 349 to go!!!

(Is there such a thing as a sarcasm emoticon?)

16. I don't use my salt and pepper shakers, they just decorate my window.

I've fallen in love with this book, The Roma Journeys, (you can see a selection of photos from it here - click on the country names to the right) and through it was lead to another, Strangely Familiar. I haven't met either of them in the flesh yet, but I know we are destined to belong together. Some affairs are like that.

In an alternate universe I might have spent my life wandering around the world, camera in hand, hanging out on the fringes of humanity.  There are a lot of alternate universes I would like to inhabit.

I can't get my pantry sorted out.  It's full of stuff, useless obtuse stuff, and never quite capable of turning out a full meal without at least one trip to the supermarket.  Or two.  Bread for lunches?   No.  But there are a ton of organic dried calendula leaves.  I spent my day eating fruit loaf and jelly, with McDonalds for dinner.  No, I don't feel well.

In an alternate universe, organic dried calendula leaves would be a staple diet.

15. She has a face for radio.

You will be glad I don't have the webcam on.  Sitting here in my pj's, eczematic scalp flakes snowing freely on my shoulders, desk, keyboard; unplucked eyebrows; unwashed face: it's enough to induce nightmares in the staunchist of souls.

You could look a little over to your right though.  Isn't the magnolia going to be beautiful?  All winter she was a skeletal ghost of a tree, wrinkled, covered in lichen, dead. It's true, yes, that she's very old, but my god.  There must be a thousand buds, two thousand, all poised to burst into burgundy and cream tinted glory.

I'm distracting myself from writing.  500 words on a week day morning is the modest budget I have set for my procrastinating self, but today it has to be 750, because I did none yesterday, and so far this morning I have got as far as 75, which is pretty much a lie because all I've really done is re-arrange 75 words I wrote last week. Good words though.  Brilliant.  Yeah.

The other way I distract myself is by an urgent need to eat something really sweet and creamy.  Having made my way through the rest of last night's flummery, and last week's ice-cream, and something like 4 cups of tea, I've run out of options.  I would go for the magnolia buds outside, but that would mean actually moving out of doors.  Good idea though.  Brilliant.  Yeah.

If I ever make it to the end of this book, I'm going to be either clinically insane or morbidly obese, and probably both. 

14. I finished after midnight and backdated the time.

I have 17 minutes to type this letter before it is tomorrow.  What shall I do in that time?  Apparently write and re-write the next sentence five times over, looking for a vaguely interesting piece of information to tell you.  And then do it again to the next sentence...

There's 11 minutes now.

I wonder what you did today?  Was it as routine as my day, filled with shopping and folding and cooking and all that fun stuff?  Oh, though I did have lunch with my niece and helped her plan the first year of her degree, which was definitely as useful as peeling the spuds and a heap more fun.

5 minutes and counting.

Make that 2.   I'm going to have to jump straight to the good stuff:

Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

~ Arundhati Roy

 

 'Night then.

13. Grey clouds in the valley.

I have been watching too much late night television and so my dreams are shaped by the echo of death, of armageddon in Halloween dress.  Somehow, in this subconscious shadowland, I become both cause and effect of all wrong things.

Nathan had a magician's wand once.  It was plastic, and it was black with a white tip, and it came in a box that said "Magician's Wand."  He was surprised the first time he used it and didn't work, upset the second time, and despondent by the third. He had come so close to omnipotence, only to be beaten by the natural laws of the known universe. It took a lot of getting over, if he is over it yet.

I do this too, invest magic into things that never had magic in them.  Like my actions, and my thoughts, even, yes, my dreams.  I listened to myself talk with my sister yesterday at lunch: If I had said this, I might have saved that; because I did this, the other thing happened.  As if I could have known.  As if I was a rain god.

12. I haven't got much further than the title.

Thank you for your kind thoughts for Iona.  She had to have a baby tooth pulled, which was no fun for anyone, but all's well that ends well. 

I've been reading the journal John Steinbeck kept as he wrote Grapes of Wrath.  The most interesting thing to me was how often he doubted he could write at all, and whether this particular book was any good, even though by that stage he had written and had published a few novels, including Of Mice and Men, which had brought him no small amount of money, fame and critical praise.  Through all that doubt he still wrote methodically a couple of thousand words every weekday for months on end until it was finished.  There's something in that.

I haven't told you I've started writing a book yet, have I?  I always told Warren I would when he got me a laptop (I thought I was pretty safe in thinking this wouldn't happen for many years, if at all) and this last birthday he called my bluff and bought me one.  So now,  no excuses.  No real story either, but that's a minor point...

What's something you were always going to do, and when are you going to start?

11. Iona has tooth ache and I'm running way behind.

So many of the stories about my day could be summed up with "life got in the way". It's my own fault, I much prefer to ignore pesky details like a daughter who keeps complaining of a sore tooth (it might go away) and a messy pile of unwashed dishes (it might go away) or unfolded washing (etc.) until finally it gets to Friday afternoon and I have nothing ready for dinner, a household in messy turmoil, a very agitated 8 year old, and every single one of them needing to be seen to immediately.  Friday afternoon's not the best time to make an emergency dental appointment, if you were curious.

10. Time out.

 According to Warren, I have a temperature, which is rather a relief as I can now give in to the temptation I have had all day to curl up on the couch and sleep. I wanted to say thank you so much for your responses to my letters so far, I really appreciate it.

If you click on my house (I'm writing to you from that room with the light on), it'll take you to a poem.  Technology is so great. 

9. The globs are melted cream because I don't do homogenised.

I'm tired and I need a bath and a sleep, or possibly even a sleep in the bath.  I feel like I've walked into some sort of parallel universe of exceptionally cool stuff lately, which is wonderful if somewhat bewildering, and my brain's too full to make sense of most of it just yet.

Have you ever heard of Hildegard of Bingen?  Medieval nun lady, who, according to the always reliable wikipedia was a German abbess, artist, author, counselor, linguist, naturalist, scientist, philosopher, physician, herbalist, poet, visionary, and composer (yeah, those ages were dark alright). I'm assuming she slept and took baths too. Being the closeted little WASP that I am, I have been ignorant of her existence until this afternoon when I visited the library and grabbed a CD off the shelf for no other reason than because I loved its title ("Canticles of Ecstasy" - how brilliant is that?).  The sleeve said these canticles (I also had to look up what a canticle was) were written in the 12th century by Hildegard, and revived beautifully in this version by Sequentia. 

I'm having to control myself from using a ridiculous amount of adjectives to describe the music, so I'll restrict myself to suggesting that if God has a really big cosmic stereo (MP3 player?  Could there be such a thing as a divine Ipod?  The DIpod?), these canticles are almost certainly on His playlist.  Which I suppose is kind of the point.