My love is a question. It seeks answers of understanding, tolerance, interest, amiability... and initiative, bounded by consideration and careful wisdom.
My love is a question and the answers are multiform. They come in words and music, in images and touch... in action, or inaction.
My heart exalts when it is answered artfully. Some eyes reflect comprehension of the depth and tone and timidity of the question I'm asking. Some eyes, some hands, some lips... in some moments... answer me firmly, and my world is, for a moment, resolved.
Some times, eyes are averted, hands fidget, lips purse and strain, and the answer is feeble or flinches away. It is a symptom that love has become sick.
Some times it falls to me to cut through ambiguity and excuses, to stand broad and stolid and confront plaintive cries of "I don't know!" by answering the question for myself, and answering it, "No."
My heart staggers when I stand grim in the bloodiness of a question silenced; when I have at last taken some answer as final, and resolved to ask no more.
Showing posts with label Romance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Romance. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 25, 2020
Friday, December 13, 2019
Grim November
It has been some time, and so I will explain.
Things began to be sour, I think, in August. Habits which were endurable in the short term so long as they were being worked on and would improve over time seemed to worsen, signs of improving grew sparse or there seemed to be subconscious resentment at the pressure.
Too much responsibility was placed on me.
There was cause, of course; there were extenuating circumstances. My Stars left their job, trusting to another to support us, and then he lost his job too. And there was much discouragement and despondency. None of us were in fit shape to carry the limp weight of the others while we were robbed of strength. And so I did my best at times, but neither was I - and I lashed out and growled and broke down often under the strain, so little rewarded, so little relieved.
I believe I am still blamed for my failure to hold up the heads of my companions during that time, as well as my own, but I plead that it was not within my power, and ought not have been expected of me. I had not enough participation. I had not enough support. I had not enough compensation to see me through it, not enough nor gentle enough reminders; reminders which are invitations, rather than chastisements.
Of course, it is an advanced difficulty to succeed, with me, to my standard, in giving invitation and not chastisement.
But this is how it went on. I carried far too much, seeking not to let others down, but I must in the end. My patience, my spirit, was overloaded for quite some time, and my vulnerabilities pricked when I was gathering enough air and lift to begin to get somewhere, such that that liveliness would easily and swiftly drain away, and I would lie again lifeless in a wasteland of bitterness.
I do not say that I held no responsibility nor blame for these cycles - O, I was part of them. My failure to speak my boundaries while I could still do so without cursing made things worse. I was at times negligent. I was at times evasive.
And so it went, and until I had a room of privacy to myself for a while (the gift of interim hosts in the city of Kitchener, and O my great gratitude to them for the privilege), for six months I had no place I could retreat to which was mine to be alone in, mine to rest in, and not need to share it, neither night nor day. Looking back it shocks me that I lived so long in these conditions, and I did not seem to realize that that was a problem.
Of course, I was caught up in wanting to be there, be present for Stars if they needed physical assistance to get up, and perhaps then, I ignored my own need for privacy, for a crook I could lay in on my own and be undisturbed. There are reasons for this, of course, reasons. But O it was surely a part of my growing twisted and impatient and bitter.
And so it went until a particularly bright-careless and manipulative episode, of some of my love's worst habits. And then I told them I would not marry them. Not now, not like this. And so I would need to return North and leave the country, for I had no other legal basis to stay. And it was sad and sour but felt necessary.
We moved several times, because as everything descended into a slough of despond, we would not organize cohesively enough to close a rental agreement and did not have a place to go by the ending of the old lease. And so there was a hotel one night, and an Airbnb for a half-week, and then another Airbnb for the rest of the month, with our things in a storage locker a long drive outside town, near to where we had hoped to rent a place, but it was a scam. A scam we would ordinarily have spotted, but we were desperate for a place by that time, of course.
Much of our things have been left behind. My friends I leave with less, materially, than they had before, and some bitter memories of my impatience and desperation and the guilt of having drawn it. But still though, my friends I leave in a pleasant place, a roomy apartment somewhat bare but well outfitted with such things as the kitchen that came with it. I leave them in a place with an extendable lease and the flexibility to adjust time there, so that they may be sure of their next leap's landing before arranging to leave. I leave them nearer to some people who have been friends of ours, that we wished to be close to... And still do now, but less so. Less, for there has been loss and grief and disappointment.
I leave my friends and I hope very dearly that I leave them better for having spent time with me rather than worse, for all that they have less materially now and our lessons from each other have been grim. November was a very slow, very sad and waiting and grieving month for me this year.
I hope to pick up my project again. I have not done so quite yet. I have a bit more of ensuring my next living-space to do first. I was in no condition then, really no condition for it.
And that is how it went.
Things began to be sour, I think, in August. Habits which were endurable in the short term so long as they were being worked on and would improve over time seemed to worsen, signs of improving grew sparse or there seemed to be subconscious resentment at the pressure.
Too much responsibility was placed on me.
There was cause, of course; there were extenuating circumstances. My Stars left their job, trusting to another to support us, and then he lost his job too. And there was much discouragement and despondency. None of us were in fit shape to carry the limp weight of the others while we were robbed of strength. And so I did my best at times, but neither was I - and I lashed out and growled and broke down often under the strain, so little rewarded, so little relieved.
I believe I am still blamed for my failure to hold up the heads of my companions during that time, as well as my own, but I plead that it was not within my power, and ought not have been expected of me. I had not enough participation. I had not enough support. I had not enough compensation to see me through it, not enough nor gentle enough reminders; reminders which are invitations, rather than chastisements.
Of course, it is an advanced difficulty to succeed, with me, to my standard, in giving invitation and not chastisement.
But this is how it went on. I carried far too much, seeking not to let others down, but I must in the end. My patience, my spirit, was overloaded for quite some time, and my vulnerabilities pricked when I was gathering enough air and lift to begin to get somewhere, such that that liveliness would easily and swiftly drain away, and I would lie again lifeless in a wasteland of bitterness.
I do not say that I held no responsibility nor blame for these cycles - O, I was part of them. My failure to speak my boundaries while I could still do so without cursing made things worse. I was at times negligent. I was at times evasive.
And so it went, and until I had a room of privacy to myself for a while (the gift of interim hosts in the city of Kitchener, and O my great gratitude to them for the privilege), for six months I had no place I could retreat to which was mine to be alone in, mine to rest in, and not need to share it, neither night nor day. Looking back it shocks me that I lived so long in these conditions, and I did not seem to realize that that was a problem.
Of course, I was caught up in wanting to be there, be present for Stars if they needed physical assistance to get up, and perhaps then, I ignored my own need for privacy, for a crook I could lay in on my own and be undisturbed. There are reasons for this, of course, reasons. But O it was surely a part of my growing twisted and impatient and bitter.
And so it went until a particularly bright-careless and manipulative episode, of some of my love's worst habits. And then I told them I would not marry them. Not now, not like this. And so I would need to return North and leave the country, for I had no other legal basis to stay. And it was sad and sour but felt necessary.
We moved several times, because as everything descended into a slough of despond, we would not organize cohesively enough to close a rental agreement and did not have a place to go by the ending of the old lease. And so there was a hotel one night, and an Airbnb for a half-week, and then another Airbnb for the rest of the month, with our things in a storage locker a long drive outside town, near to where we had hoped to rent a place, but it was a scam. A scam we would ordinarily have spotted, but we were desperate for a place by that time, of course.
Much of our things have been left behind. My friends I leave with less, materially, than they had before, and some bitter memories of my impatience and desperation and the guilt of having drawn it. But still though, my friends I leave in a pleasant place, a roomy apartment somewhat bare but well outfitted with such things as the kitchen that came with it. I leave them in a place with an extendable lease and the flexibility to adjust time there, so that they may be sure of their next leap's landing before arranging to leave. I leave them nearer to some people who have been friends of ours, that we wished to be close to... And still do now, but less so. Less, for there has been loss and grief and disappointment.
I leave my friends and I hope very dearly that I leave them better for having spent time with me rather than worse, for all that they have less materially now and our lessons from each other have been grim. November was a very slow, very sad and waiting and grieving month for me this year.
I hope to pick up my project again. I have not done so quite yet. I have a bit more of ensuring my next living-space to do first. I was in no condition then, really no condition for it.
And that is how it went.
Saturday, August 3, 2019
I Like Being This Person.
Wait. I just said I like being this person. What happened?And then, everybody laughed. My lovers and I had been talking about norms, policy-building between us. How to stay in touch across time zones - fewer hours than across the ocean now. Planning to reserve one convenient hour to connect to one of our busiest people.
We were talking about leadership. In our group of five, three are far more followers than leaders by preference. Maybe, maybe that's more two, and the third is on the fence. Two of us are more leaders than followers - and I'm one. I'm the louder one, the one who draws attention to it more often, who usually asks what telecommunications program we're using to voice chat, and suggests something to watch or to play, takes responsibility for remembering things we agreed we have to talk about.
But we have another leader, who usually stays quiet, who spends more time watching and less time saying what he sees. He gives careful prods but not ostentatiously. It's not his way. And he and I, it seems we work together well. Me the circus ringleader, he around the shadows at the edge of the ring of light. I asked again that he remember to remind me, if my shouting becomes too self-serving - I don't want my trained assertiveness only to serve my own preferences. And I'll try to give him time, and bite down on my jealousy when it has a problem with sharing the spotlight.
I asked him to tell me out loud that it was alright that I was louder, was showier, was the ringleader kind of leader that I am. Whether we really do work well together with this being a prominent part of the nature of our double act.
Good. Because, I like being this person. And I wouldn't want to have to go without it.Wait... What happened?
And then, everybody laughed.
You're healing, he said.
Okay, crying. Crying again.
I'm on my second day of being back on my thyroid medication. There was a gap there for a bit, while we got more. But I'm just over the extra hormonal stress and mess of my period, and although I expected things to be harder while I was off my medicine for a week or so, and then back on again... All I've really had to cope with so far that's seemed worse than usual has been some waves of tiredness in the middle of the day. And I eat, and drink, and get excited with my loves and I listen to upbeat music, and they pass. And honestly, I have been getting short and broken sleep a lot of the recent nights too.
I've been here a month and a half, in the house of someone who wasn't surprised to see me, who wasn't pined after secretly for months on months - we've discussed my coming to see them for a long time, and they've said yes, that they would welcome me with open arms, and they have.
Our apartment is our apartment, they tell me. Ours including you (meaning me). Our food and drink is your food and drink too. You don't have to keep asking me whether you can have it.
Our apartment, then. It's a pretty place. Well maintained, simple and somewhat small but high quality and close to their work. I keep it tidier than they ever did - I asked first. We've discussed the matter many times, and I've gotten consent over and over again to go ahead and turn their lives upside down.
We watch heartful TV together. They've been showing me This Is Us. I've been showing them Steven Universe. They're started to show me My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and I've had a bit of fun riffing on it and analyzing it.
With some prompting from me, they started to shift their focus away from the idea of signing up for a code college which would require them to be at a physical classroom for months and pay up thousands of dollars later down the line presuming they can find better work after the schooling. They're taking on some courses on Udemy instead for now - there was always some fear that they wouldn't be able to stick to it, but I'm here to help now. To ask what they're learning, and remind them to study regularly... but not too hard. ♡
We're doing it together. I'm picking up a Udemy course too, and suddenly I have a six month plan, to end in a working store website and all the experience it took to build it. This morning, a Saturday morning, we each spent a few hours on our different projects, in the same living room, taking time from time to time to hug and kiss or give back massages.
I send them to work with packed lunches. We can save money that way, and still eat deliciously. They don't mind - they like the food I give them. I keep our apartment clean, and cook, and when they can't walk on their own, I'm there to help carry them.
And I'm working through this course, and from time to time I just spend my day watching YouTube videos, but it's okay. Because it's not all the time. In my spare time, I get to reach out to people all along the edges of my online social network. I got to spend a half hour not long ago telling someone struggling with grief that they were not as alone as they felt.
And I still fret, sometimes. Of course I do. I worry that work that isn't done in a hired position isn't real somehow, isn't worth as much... but I know that isn't true, it's just... just one of the things that gets passed along through the deepest social memes and habits. And I don't have to know that all by myself anymore. My lovers will tell it to me over again as many times as I need to hear it.
I've been starting to look through listings for a house for us to move into once the lease here ends.
My Stars want me to stay here with them.
Everything is different now.
And I'm starting to think... Maybe I really don't ever have to go back.
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
The Rainbow
It's been a while since I've come back to write here, but maybe it hasn't been as long as it feels like. For a while I was thinking from time to time I should come back just to mention that the heartbreak is fading and although the challenge of trying to get by here on the budget I have available for it is a big one, I think I'm getting more of a handle on it.
A couple of weeks ago, I think on the day I last wrote, now that I think of it, I applied to Rev after looking through some articles on more unconventional ways to make money, as opposed to a regular hired job. Rev is a captioning and transcription service and work space; they hire freelancers who can use the online tools they provide to claim jobs as they come available and type captions to videos and audio from clients. I went through some testing and was approved to join.
It's been exciting to have something I could do with my hours from home to make money on my own terms, and although I'm not currently earning at a rate which is going to solve all my financial problems, it's work that I like and I think I can get better at it over time.
Yesterday just for example I wrote captions for a weird music video, and started work on an hour-long documentary I'll need to finish today. I get exposed to a lot of different media I probably would never have watched on my own, and the variety makes this job interesting. I'm glad to have something that takes advantage of my precision with words and good typing speed, although in this case, it's precision in listening to hear exactly what words someone else used, not choosing them myself.
As often happens, I've found solace in love from those around me by deepening my relationships into romance. There's a degree to which I feel uncomfortable about that, since it's happened so many times before it feels like I'm turning predictable or something, becoming a cliche. It's frustrating that that meta-awareness messes with my appreciation of the moment, because the thing itself is beautiful anyway.
So once again I've had a wonderful time talking endlessly to one of my friends and finding that there is potential for us to be closer, and it was all appropriately delicious. I've drawn a few pictures, hit by inspiration from the new relationship energy and finding with pleasure that the skill I've accumulated over the years makes it much easier for me to depict what I want to reasonably well, and I've been producing work I can be proud of in just a couple of hours.
The thought to see if I can try to market that as well does come to mind, alongside the long-standing intent to try to set up an online shop for my macrame bracelets. The way things are going so far, it'd make me an all-around crafter-freelancer, and you know what? That could be pretty cool.
Sunday night this week I pulled an all-nighter hanging out online with this relationship that's changing colours in my life, and so yesterday I had trouble staying awake in my classes. I gave up and went home to sleep after the first two. I slept again last night, although not ideally long, and walked to school today listening to a variety of renditions of "The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond". There was one instrumental version in particular that I reflected would sound just about perfect if I could have added the sound of rain into it, for an atmospheric connection to the sky and fields as they are, I suppose.
Well here's where it gets a bit strange, because not five minutes later it started raining. I'd finished the song by then, but the timing was remarkable anyway. I had been admiring the many colours of silver in the clouds, as there often are in Ireland, and it's not as though it seemed unlikely for it to rain, but just that it happened right then, as opposed to fifteen minutes earlier, struck me as somewhat uncanny.
But what was moreso was when I looked up and almost jumped to see the change in the sky; where there hadn't been not five minutes before when I took a photo of the lovely silvers in the clouds over the green field I was passing, there was a rainbow, full across the sky and not the slight half-bow I'd sometimes seen in rain in Canada.
Over the next little while, the rainbow got brighter and brighter by the moment, not only a full arc across the sky now, but apparent right to the ground on both sides, even casting its colours in front of the distant hills on the horizon. It looked as though you could have guessed to within a dozen meters or so where exactly it seemed to touch down on one side. Looking on with awe, some of the old legends of searches for leprechauns' gold made a lot more sense all of a sudden.
For a period of not more than ten minutes or so, the rainbow brightened and brightened, clearer and more vibrant than I had ever seen a rainbow in my life, with a second, dimmer arc beginning to show outside the main on the sides, and then began to dim and fade away. I caught a few photos of the rainbow before it was gone, and the sky returned to gray as the rain continued lightly for a while longer and I went on my way toward the college. The whole of its appearance may have been contained in a quarter of an hour.
I thought back to King of Dragon Pass where the appearance of a rainbow was considered to be among the best of omens, and to other similar things, and felt rather a lot as though the sky had smiled at me, 'like forgiveness' in a way, I remember thinking. There's a certain cheshire-cat-ness to it now, looking back, that leaves me feeling curious and portentous. Perhaps it smiles on the progress of my new relationship, or to reassure me that my efforts are good enough, for now; or that I may be soon rewarded for not giving up on my time here. Who knows, but there is that in me that wonders, even while its being silly and seeming misguided is also felt in my thoughts.
So there, anyway, is the rainbow which greeted me this morning, and the trend of my activities these past few weeks. Health and fortune to the ones I love and to all those who love me, if I may spread it out to them, for their fortune is also mine after all.
And good day.
A couple of weeks ago, I think on the day I last wrote, now that I think of it, I applied to Rev after looking through some articles on more unconventional ways to make money, as opposed to a regular hired job. Rev is a captioning and transcription service and work space; they hire freelancers who can use the online tools they provide to claim jobs as they come available and type captions to videos and audio from clients. I went through some testing and was approved to join.
It's been exciting to have something I could do with my hours from home to make money on my own terms, and although I'm not currently earning at a rate which is going to solve all my financial problems, it's work that I like and I think I can get better at it over time.
Yesterday just for example I wrote captions for a weird music video, and started work on an hour-long documentary I'll need to finish today. I get exposed to a lot of different media I probably would never have watched on my own, and the variety makes this job interesting. I'm glad to have something that takes advantage of my precision with words and good typing speed, although in this case, it's precision in listening to hear exactly what words someone else used, not choosing them myself.
As often happens, I've found solace in love from those around me by deepening my relationships into romance. There's a degree to which I feel uncomfortable about that, since it's happened so many times before it feels like I'm turning predictable or something, becoming a cliche. It's frustrating that that meta-awareness messes with my appreciation of the moment, because the thing itself is beautiful anyway.
So once again I've had a wonderful time talking endlessly to one of my friends and finding that there is potential for us to be closer, and it was all appropriately delicious. I've drawn a few pictures, hit by inspiration from the new relationship energy and finding with pleasure that the skill I've accumulated over the years makes it much easier for me to depict what I want to reasonably well, and I've been producing work I can be proud of in just a couple of hours.
The thought to see if I can try to market that as well does come to mind, alongside the long-standing intent to try to set up an online shop for my macrame bracelets. The way things are going so far, it'd make me an all-around crafter-freelancer, and you know what? That could be pretty cool.
Sunday night this week I pulled an all-nighter hanging out online with this relationship that's changing colours in my life, and so yesterday I had trouble staying awake in my classes. I gave up and went home to sleep after the first two. I slept again last night, although not ideally long, and walked to school today listening to a variety of renditions of "The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond". There was one instrumental version in particular that I reflected would sound just about perfect if I could have added the sound of rain into it, for an atmospheric connection to the sky and fields as they are, I suppose.
Well here's where it gets a bit strange, because not five minutes later it started raining. I'd finished the song by then, but the timing was remarkable anyway. I had been admiring the many colours of silver in the clouds, as there often are in Ireland, and it's not as though it seemed unlikely for it to rain, but just that it happened right then, as opposed to fifteen minutes earlier, struck me as somewhat uncanny.
But what was moreso was when I looked up and almost jumped to see the change in the sky; where there hadn't been not five minutes before when I took a photo of the lovely silvers in the clouds over the green field I was passing, there was a rainbow, full across the sky and not the slight half-bow I'd sometimes seen in rain in Canada.
Over the next little while, the rainbow got brighter and brighter by the moment, not only a full arc across the sky now, but apparent right to the ground on both sides, even casting its colours in front of the distant hills on the horizon. It looked as though you could have guessed to within a dozen meters or so where exactly it seemed to touch down on one side. Looking on with awe, some of the old legends of searches for leprechauns' gold made a lot more sense all of a sudden.
For a period of not more than ten minutes or so, the rainbow brightened and brightened, clearer and more vibrant than I had ever seen a rainbow in my life, with a second, dimmer arc beginning to show outside the main on the sides, and then began to dim and fade away. I caught a few photos of the rainbow before it was gone, and the sky returned to gray as the rain continued lightly for a while longer and I went on my way toward the college. The whole of its appearance may have been contained in a quarter of an hour.
I thought back to King of Dragon Pass where the appearance of a rainbow was considered to be among the best of omens, and to other similar things, and felt rather a lot as though the sky had smiled at me, 'like forgiveness' in a way, I remember thinking. There's a certain cheshire-cat-ness to it now, looking back, that leaves me feeling curious and portentous. Perhaps it smiles on the progress of my new relationship, or to reassure me that my efforts are good enough, for now; or that I may be soon rewarded for not giving up on my time here. Who knows, but there is that in me that wonders, even while its being silly and seeming misguided is also felt in my thoughts.
So there, anyway, is the rainbow which greeted me this morning, and the trend of my activities these past few weeks. Health and fortune to the ones I love and to all those who love me, if I may spread it out to them, for their fortune is also mine after all.
And good day.
Monday, September 3, 2018
The Broken Throne
So. It's been a week and two weekends. I have felt I've been doing surprisingly well. I have reflected on the happiness of working toward a goal that I have enjoyed over the past year. I have cried, have sought comfort in the words and company of my friends back in America and found it. I have felt confused, and hopeful, and empty.
I have searched for work, intermittantly, between sessions of passivity and fatigue bordering on depression, but not quite depression. I have despite this managed to submit resumes or reply to job ads to the tune of twenty in the two weeks I have been here.
I wrote a song. I got into a conversation on FetLife and was disappointed and alienated by an uncanny scriptedness of the advances of another human being, even though his script was polite.
I came into the campus this morning to job search, but wrote "love thyself" on my checklist, consciously, intentionally, a note of gentleness and will toward peace and joy.
(Context: There was a time, during a panic attack that I documented here, that I wrote "LOVE THYSELF" on my checklist as I was leaving class, like a compulsion, in jagged and accusing words, and visualised myself in a round room, curled up in a fetal position, with those words wrought across the rounded wall. It was one of the most direct and straightforward messages I have ever gotten from myself through my visualisations and compulsions.)
I came into campus this morning to job search, and listened to favourite OCremixes on the way, enjoying a variety of the songs that impressed me enough while I was combing through the vast collection that I wanted to keep them and hear them again. A few that I may want to remove, being not as impressed with them now, or feeling I had only liked them in comparison to other songs I liked less. Still at home, I felt a little downcast at the memory of Turks in Pursuit. A fine track, but one that Eoin had pointed out to me, based on an original track he liked, back when I showed him my habit of Audiosurfing these remixes. Now I sit down to a desk in the campus library, access the wifi, and another remix is next to come to my ear. It is one that's always struck me hard and driven me to thoughtfulness, and worse, it also speaks of Eoin. He knew the original duet, and we had planned, once, to sing it together. A 'Kid-pella, a touching a cappella rendition of Setting Sail, Coming Home from Bastion.
I imagine the million things I want to say to him. To say I wanted to believe better of him than to think that his having said I would always be special to him last year, having said he liked me, and thought he would like to stay in touch a week ago, was empty words to placate. I still want to. I feel angry, although my wisdom counsels patience. I feel angry that I have heard nothing from him, after promising I would let him come to speak to me if he wished to.
I wonder, in my reeling thoughts, when I think of this, whether that was a mistake. Whether I might be able to claim him as friend quite readily if I'd been willing to lead the overture, but that he will be too intimidated to start a conversation with me, will not know what to say, and so will say nothing, until it eventually feels like it has been too long, and it would be too late now, and so will continue to say nothing. Should I rescind my promise? But that would be weakness. Desperate weakness, and would make me a clinging thorn if the truth is he would rather not speak with me.
I wonder if I should wish there was enough submissiveness or enough apathy in my nature to live on without much thought to it, and let him speak to me in his own time, whenever it strikes him to do so, even if it never does. I cannot wish for apathy, though.
The challenge of staying in touch with my loves across the ocean is upon me. It is quite natural for me to stay up late, but it makes it difficult to get any sleep. I am woken most mornings as my roommates rise, a neighborhood dog barks, a child with some developmental disability hoots a now-familiar loud cry. Perhaps I will be able to sleep in the evening, wake for company, and sleep again through the morning until it is time to wake. Perhaps, but then when will I work? There is so much to answer. It is difficult. But the voice of my dear Iris is comforting, in that blind, desperate way that something can be comforting even though it does not necessarily make any of the things that are wrong better. I remember that I wanted to talk with my friends about my future. I want their advice to help me figure out what to make of it. I realised through this experience that I build myself more to be what I think the people I love want me to be than I may have been willing to admit before.
I smashed the throne I built for Eoin, but the pieces, heavy as marble, still weigh in the center of me. I have not cleared them away, and it is hard enough even to resist the temptation to rebuild it. The throne room is a sad place now, deserted and despairing after the hope that had lived there. "My heart is wrapped in cold sorrow", I remember thinking to myself, as I marched home that Saturday afternoon, after that Friday evening, and my train back to Carlow.
I have searched for work, intermittantly, between sessions of passivity and fatigue bordering on depression, but not quite depression. I have despite this managed to submit resumes or reply to job ads to the tune of twenty in the two weeks I have been here.
I wrote a song. I got into a conversation on FetLife and was disappointed and alienated by an uncanny scriptedness of the advances of another human being, even though his script was polite.
I came into the campus this morning to job search, but wrote "love thyself" on my checklist, consciously, intentionally, a note of gentleness and will toward peace and joy.
(Context: There was a time, during a panic attack that I documented here, that I wrote "LOVE THYSELF" on my checklist as I was leaving class, like a compulsion, in jagged and accusing words, and visualised myself in a round room, curled up in a fetal position, with those words wrought across the rounded wall. It was one of the most direct and straightforward messages I have ever gotten from myself through my visualisations and compulsions.)
I came into campus this morning to job search, and listened to favourite OCremixes on the way, enjoying a variety of the songs that impressed me enough while I was combing through the vast collection that I wanted to keep them and hear them again. A few that I may want to remove, being not as impressed with them now, or feeling I had only liked them in comparison to other songs I liked less. Still at home, I felt a little downcast at the memory of Turks in Pursuit. A fine track, but one that Eoin had pointed out to me, based on an original track he liked, back when I showed him my habit of Audiosurfing these remixes. Now I sit down to a desk in the campus library, access the wifi, and another remix is next to come to my ear. It is one that's always struck me hard and driven me to thoughtfulness, and worse, it also speaks of Eoin. He knew the original duet, and we had planned, once, to sing it together. A 'Kid-pella, a touching a cappella rendition of Setting Sail, Coming Home from Bastion.
I take your hand; now, you'll never be lonely...Tears come. I had hoped to be professional today. And I still hope I will be. But if I need to cry, it's well that I do it, and the sooner I can get over it.
I imagine the million things I want to say to him. To say I wanted to believe better of him than to think that his having said I would always be special to him last year, having said he liked me, and thought he would like to stay in touch a week ago, was empty words to placate. I still want to. I feel angry, although my wisdom counsels patience. I feel angry that I have heard nothing from him, after promising I would let him come to speak to me if he wished to.
I wonder, in my reeling thoughts, when I think of this, whether that was a mistake. Whether I might be able to claim him as friend quite readily if I'd been willing to lead the overture, but that he will be too intimidated to start a conversation with me, will not know what to say, and so will say nothing, until it eventually feels like it has been too long, and it would be too late now, and so will continue to say nothing. Should I rescind my promise? But that would be weakness. Desperate weakness, and would make me a clinging thorn if the truth is he would rather not speak with me.
I wonder if I should wish there was enough submissiveness or enough apathy in my nature to live on without much thought to it, and let him speak to me in his own time, whenever it strikes him to do so, even if it never does. I cannot wish for apathy, though.
The challenge of staying in touch with my loves across the ocean is upon me. It is quite natural for me to stay up late, but it makes it difficult to get any sleep. I am woken most mornings as my roommates rise, a neighborhood dog barks, a child with some developmental disability hoots a now-familiar loud cry. Perhaps I will be able to sleep in the evening, wake for company, and sleep again through the morning until it is time to wake. Perhaps, but then when will I work? There is so much to answer. It is difficult. But the voice of my dear Iris is comforting, in that blind, desperate way that something can be comforting even though it does not necessarily make any of the things that are wrong better. I remember that I wanted to talk with my friends about my future. I want their advice to help me figure out what to make of it. I realised through this experience that I build myself more to be what I think the people I love want me to be than I may have been willing to admit before.
I smashed the throne I built for Eoin, but the pieces, heavy as marble, still weigh in the center of me. I have not cleared them away, and it is hard enough even to resist the temptation to rebuild it. The throne room is a sad place now, deserted and despairing after the hope that had lived there. "My heart is wrapped in cold sorrow", I remember thinking to myself, as I marched home that Saturday afternoon, after that Friday evening, and my train back to Carlow.
Monday, August 27, 2018
Dear Memory: A Love Story (The End)
There was a time that we were lovers,
through March, April and May.
I went home in the summer,
though I wished he had asked me to stay.
The ocean was very wide,
and it got in our way.
So I came back from the other side,
to see how much had changed...
The time we met;
The time he loved me;
Today.
He always was a gentle man.
He is a gentle man still.
He met me at the train station,
like he'd said that he will.
We had a long, awkward conversation,
head to head, eye to eye.
I had lost his heart some time ago.
I may never know why.
The time we met;
The time he loved me;
Goodbye.
Does he regret
the time he loved me
today- I promised I'll be okay,
so I'll be okay.
Though I loved him- Maybe I'll hear from him,
and I can be his friend,
who loved him.
The End.
through March, April and May.
I went home in the summer,
though I wished he had asked me to stay.
The ocean was very wide,
and it got in our way.
So I came back from the other side,
to see how much had changed...
The time we met;
The time he loved me;
Today.
He always was a gentle man.
He is a gentle man still.
He met me at the train station,
like he'd said that he will.
We had a long, awkward conversation,
head to head, eye to eye.
I had lost his heart some time ago.
I may never know why.
The time we met;
The time he loved me;
Goodbye.
Does he regret
the time he loved me
today- I promised I'll be okay,
so I'll be okay.
Though I loved him- Maybe I'll hear from him,
and I can be his friend,
who loved him.
The End.
Tuesday, August 7, 2018
Dear Memory: Volume 2
Good evening.
You have been often on my thoughts. Only natural, I suppose. I do not know, quite, when I am to meet you. You have already been told, given that it was not practical to have our first meeting immediately as I was in the country, that I will wait until my arrival to arrange it. You judged it reasonable.
As the day draws near, the need to have a place to stay becomes more urgent. That, though, pales in comparison. I have spent the last week or so kind of out of sorts, feeling antisocial, bored, tired. It may have been partly the after-effects of a minor cold, or possibly of failing to notice a missed day of my medicine. It has not prevented me from getting anything done, however. I finished the essential part of sewing up my backpack. It is, although not as thoroughly secured and finished as I want it to be, ready to be used. I redoubled my efforts contacting landlords who might rent to me, and have several conversations going with regard of potential places. Two of my friends agreed to come and move furniture for me, to set up a yard sale. Another from out of town asked to meet with me briefly before I go, and I agreed.
I am on my last week of work. My direct supervisor has praised me over several times, for being a good and energetic worker. Proactive, reliable. Last week, I found and returned a ring that had been lost on one of the shuttlebuses when we were cleaning them, and I was given a card and little reward for it.
For the past couple of weeks, I have occasionally stayed behind after my shift to play piano, for there are instruments at various places throughout the building, and some of real old wooden make, with the soulful sound of an organic, resonant thing responding to my touch. It has been a long time since I had convenient access to such an opportunity to practice my playing. I am rusty. However, with a half an hour here and there, I have been able to reclaim a great deal of my elegance, if not my memory of specific songs. Several people have complimented my playing.
All this is procrastination. It is... details. I came to write here today because I thought... maybe... it would help my temper at work, and allow me to sleep a bit better at night, if... If I...
If I admit here, openly in writing, that I am afraid you will reject me.
There. It is said.
Although I have no particular reason to expect you to, and although I have coached myself on every fancy that I must accept whatever answer you give, I am nevertheless afraid. Although I have prepared to move on confidently, with the condolences and support of several dear friends, and the necessity of looking after myself by earning my keep in the more expensive environment to which I go... Perhaps I will sleep more soundly if I have confessed here that for all my preparation, I do care. I do have hopes, and they stand at risk of being disappointed. I do wish... and with a power that makes all this that I have done, to arrange for myself to come back across the ocean to see you again seem perfectly in line, not excessive. I want to share fondness with you again. I want to be permitted to love you again.
The time I spent in Ireland makes a grand story. If it is, as I have at least once named it, like a story that makes all that came before only a prequel, then the time since October has been another very worthy story in the series, and frankly one much better documented within its own time. But I could not have written everything I have felt, all the times I have thought of you. They have been too numerous. I could not have written all the different things I have felt, or believed myself to feel. There have been long weeks of distraction that I did not write at all. There have been weeks I myself have forgotten.
This second volume, second story within the series that follows the arc of you and your impact on my life, present or not, must be drawing to a close. Its content has been doubt, and the coping with doubt, and learning how to respect doubt and carry it healthily and act confidently despite it. Doubt must soon come to an end, and I have been feeling the tension building gradually around me, the thrill of coming closer and closer to the climax of the story, the resolution of the doubt, the answer to the mystery. How it plays out, I do not yet know, but I know that I am nearing the final pages, and feel that however it is this story ends, however the doubt ends... My memory will be watching, and the memory of it must surely be keenly felt and remembered as the next story, whatever its shape may be after this, begins.
The tension is killing me, and my heart is cheering for a happy ending as the days lurch and drag. Two and a half weeks. Two weeks. A week and a day now, and I find that I am imagining talking to you at all sorts of idle moments. The tension is killing me, but so sweetly poignantly that I could have no objection.
You have been often on my thoughts. Only natural, I suppose. I do not know, quite, when I am to meet you. You have already been told, given that it was not practical to have our first meeting immediately as I was in the country, that I will wait until my arrival to arrange it. You judged it reasonable.
As the day draws near, the need to have a place to stay becomes more urgent. That, though, pales in comparison. I have spent the last week or so kind of out of sorts, feeling antisocial, bored, tired. It may have been partly the after-effects of a minor cold, or possibly of failing to notice a missed day of my medicine. It has not prevented me from getting anything done, however. I finished the essential part of sewing up my backpack. It is, although not as thoroughly secured and finished as I want it to be, ready to be used. I redoubled my efforts contacting landlords who might rent to me, and have several conversations going with regard of potential places. Two of my friends agreed to come and move furniture for me, to set up a yard sale. Another from out of town asked to meet with me briefly before I go, and I agreed.
I am on my last week of work. My direct supervisor has praised me over several times, for being a good and energetic worker. Proactive, reliable. Last week, I found and returned a ring that had been lost on one of the shuttlebuses when we were cleaning them, and I was given a card and little reward for it.
For the past couple of weeks, I have occasionally stayed behind after my shift to play piano, for there are instruments at various places throughout the building, and some of real old wooden make, with the soulful sound of an organic, resonant thing responding to my touch. It has been a long time since I had convenient access to such an opportunity to practice my playing. I am rusty. However, with a half an hour here and there, I have been able to reclaim a great deal of my elegance, if not my memory of specific songs. Several people have complimented my playing.
All this is procrastination. It is... details. I came to write here today because I thought... maybe... it would help my temper at work, and allow me to sleep a bit better at night, if... If I...
If I admit here, openly in writing, that I am afraid you will reject me.
There. It is said.
Although I have no particular reason to expect you to, and although I have coached myself on every fancy that I must accept whatever answer you give, I am nevertheless afraid. Although I have prepared to move on confidently, with the condolences and support of several dear friends, and the necessity of looking after myself by earning my keep in the more expensive environment to which I go... Perhaps I will sleep more soundly if I have confessed here that for all my preparation, I do care. I do have hopes, and they stand at risk of being disappointed. I do wish... and with a power that makes all this that I have done, to arrange for myself to come back across the ocean to see you again seem perfectly in line, not excessive. I want to share fondness with you again. I want to be permitted to love you again.
The time I spent in Ireland makes a grand story. If it is, as I have at least once named it, like a story that makes all that came before only a prequel, then the time since October has been another very worthy story in the series, and frankly one much better documented within its own time. But I could not have written everything I have felt, all the times I have thought of you. They have been too numerous. I could not have written all the different things I have felt, or believed myself to feel. There have been long weeks of distraction that I did not write at all. There have been weeks I myself have forgotten.
This second volume, second story within the series that follows the arc of you and your impact on my life, present or not, must be drawing to a close. Its content has been doubt, and the coping with doubt, and learning how to respect doubt and carry it healthily and act confidently despite it. Doubt must soon come to an end, and I have been feeling the tension building gradually around me, the thrill of coming closer and closer to the climax of the story, the resolution of the doubt, the answer to the mystery. How it plays out, I do not yet know, but I know that I am nearing the final pages, and feel that however it is this story ends, however the doubt ends... My memory will be watching, and the memory of it must surely be keenly felt and remembered as the next story, whatever its shape may be after this, begins.
The tension is killing me, and my heart is cheering for a happy ending as the days lurch and drag. Two and a half weeks. Two weeks. A week and a day now, and I find that I am imagining talking to you at all sorts of idle moments. The tension is killing me, but so sweetly poignantly that I could have no objection.
Friday, July 27, 2018
Dear Memory: Nondispassionate
Yes, that is a deliberate double negative.
After having written four days ago in a state of surprised and surprising calm, and reflected on my own detachment from the emotional side of my return, I find that strange dispassion... it has not... gone away, exactly. I don't believe that anything I said then has become untrue. I still await the future with great curiosity, without certainty, without demand... and I think, ready to face a disappointing answer if that is what awaits me.
However, perhaps in response to having thought about it more seriously for the first time in quite some time, I notice a more emotional side of my experience. Perhaps it is rising up in response, or perhaps I am just noticing it in response, in all of the little ways that the things I said do not show the whole picture. The details of my life that those words do not adequately describe. Perhaps a combination of both, and I think this is more likely. I always seem to think of an exception to an assertion just as or after I make it.
Like rules in Magic: the Gathering always interacting with one another, and allowing for so many variations and conditions that almost any absolute statement you make will have exceptions. Like, "You won't have more than one sorcery on the stack at once." I have to admit, dear memory, I have enjoyed your Topdeck Tutors podcasts and videos a great deal. I listened to them many times, much like rewatching CarlSagan42's videos over and over again, which you also introduced me to. I like your taste, dear memory. The things you do and recommend have often been interesting, hopeful, clever and funny. Much like you...
I told the story of my relationship with you to one of my co-workers today. She has been working with us only two weeks, rather than the five that I have shared with the other summer students who joined at the same time as me. She is more than ten years younger than me, and working together with a co-worker more than ten years younger than myself feels very strange indeed. It gives me a sense of being older and more experienced in my surround that is very distinct and I am not sure how to react to it. I feel I should be a voice of wisdom and experience to some degree, but am also concerned against being a pretentious adult as I know I used to see adults who would try to talk to me: who thought they knew better, and needn't listen to me. I never want to be like that. I think I am managing not to be, so far.
I told her about meeting you at tabletop society, inviting someone else at the table to walk, but having you answer that call instead, and noticing you in a way I had not noticed before. The March-a-thon, and the long walks you markedly failed ever to make an excuse not to show up for. The discomfort on your face when I mentioned a lover from home. The request to kiss you. A relationship beautiful and intense and supportive, but always bound by time to end with the school year. My own desperate reluctance to leave you behind. A promise perhaps unfairly extracted. Intentions forged from fear of letting go. Inability to keep up a relationship worth having between the pain of distance and the dissynchronicity of time zones. A coming apart, first resisted, and then formally agreed. An attempt to move on. A song, a breaking point, a realization, and a decision, to come back. Plans, applications, formalities; step by slow, beaurocratic step. Success. Acceptance. Further plans. A plane ticket. And an email, requesting your consent to meet me. And a message, charmingly misspelled, 'of coarse'.
I was crying a little by the end of that story. I am crying a little recounting it here. The feelings... they are still there. Of course they are. How couldn't they be? And yet, none of the words I said four days ago, I think, are false. I do not think I am obsessed anymore. I do think I am ready to take whatever comes. It remains true, so far as I can tell beyond a veil of perspective behind which I cannot be objective, that the travel and the adventure may have been welcome even if I did not have this exceptionally romantic excuse to undertake it. That I expect the adventure to be welcome even if the answer I find is not what I hoped it might be.
Beside that strange dispassion is a shining storm of quiet passion, controlled... in some way respectful... perhaps even polite. But passionate nonetheless, moved into a whirl that twists the air into eddies and currents, that pulls me, although perhaps not inexorably. That moves me, because I consent to be moved by it. It would be a great struggle not to move to this current in some way or another, but I can direct it, I think. I can channel and turn its flow. I still am convinced this is not really a contradiction. Like so many other things, my dear memory, in this ball of seeming contradictons, as you called me long ago. I don't think I ever claimed, or ever expected, that I would not feel. I don't think I ever said, even to myself, that I would not cry, or hurt. Only that it would be worth it. It was, and is, my choice. The story worth telling, both the bitter and the sweet of it.
After having written four days ago in a state of surprised and surprising calm, and reflected on my own detachment from the emotional side of my return, I find that strange dispassion... it has not... gone away, exactly. I don't believe that anything I said then has become untrue. I still await the future with great curiosity, without certainty, without demand... and I think, ready to face a disappointing answer if that is what awaits me.
However, perhaps in response to having thought about it more seriously for the first time in quite some time, I notice a more emotional side of my experience. Perhaps it is rising up in response, or perhaps I am just noticing it in response, in all of the little ways that the things I said do not show the whole picture. The details of my life that those words do not adequately describe. Perhaps a combination of both, and I think this is more likely. I always seem to think of an exception to an assertion just as or after I make it.
Like rules in Magic: the Gathering always interacting with one another, and allowing for so many variations and conditions that almost any absolute statement you make will have exceptions. Like, "You won't have more than one sorcery on the stack at once." I have to admit, dear memory, I have enjoyed your Topdeck Tutors podcasts and videos a great deal. I listened to them many times, much like rewatching CarlSagan42's videos over and over again, which you also introduced me to. I like your taste, dear memory. The things you do and recommend have often been interesting, hopeful, clever and funny. Much like you...
I told the story of my relationship with you to one of my co-workers today. She has been working with us only two weeks, rather than the five that I have shared with the other summer students who joined at the same time as me. She is more than ten years younger than me, and working together with a co-worker more than ten years younger than myself feels very strange indeed. It gives me a sense of being older and more experienced in my surround that is very distinct and I am not sure how to react to it. I feel I should be a voice of wisdom and experience to some degree, but am also concerned against being a pretentious adult as I know I used to see adults who would try to talk to me: who thought they knew better, and needn't listen to me. I never want to be like that. I think I am managing not to be, so far.
I told her about meeting you at tabletop society, inviting someone else at the table to walk, but having you answer that call instead, and noticing you in a way I had not noticed before. The March-a-thon, and the long walks you markedly failed ever to make an excuse not to show up for. The discomfort on your face when I mentioned a lover from home. The request to kiss you. A relationship beautiful and intense and supportive, but always bound by time to end with the school year. My own desperate reluctance to leave you behind. A promise perhaps unfairly extracted. Intentions forged from fear of letting go. Inability to keep up a relationship worth having between the pain of distance and the dissynchronicity of time zones. A coming apart, first resisted, and then formally agreed. An attempt to move on. A song, a breaking point, a realization, and a decision, to come back. Plans, applications, formalities; step by slow, beaurocratic step. Success. Acceptance. Further plans. A plane ticket. And an email, requesting your consent to meet me. And a message, charmingly misspelled, 'of coarse'.
I was crying a little by the end of that story. I am crying a little recounting it here. The feelings... they are still there. Of course they are. How couldn't they be? And yet, none of the words I said four days ago, I think, are false. I do not think I am obsessed anymore. I do think I am ready to take whatever comes. It remains true, so far as I can tell beyond a veil of perspective behind which I cannot be objective, that the travel and the adventure may have been welcome even if I did not have this exceptionally romantic excuse to undertake it. That I expect the adventure to be welcome even if the answer I find is not what I hoped it might be.
Beside that strange dispassion is a shining storm of quiet passion, controlled... in some way respectful... perhaps even polite. But passionate nonetheless, moved into a whirl that twists the air into eddies and currents, that pulls me, although perhaps not inexorably. That moves me, because I consent to be moved by it. It would be a great struggle not to move to this current in some way or another, but I can direct it, I think. I can channel and turn its flow. I still am convinced this is not really a contradiction. Like so many other things, my dear memory, in this ball of seeming contradictons, as you called me long ago. I don't think I ever claimed, or ever expected, that I would not feel. I don't think I ever said, even to myself, that I would not cry, or hurt. Only that it would be worth it. It was, and is, my choice. The story worth telling, both the bitter and the sweet of it.
Monday, July 23, 2018
Dear Memory: As Seasons Change and The Time Draws Near
My upcoming trip back to Ireland becomes more real week by week. It is less than a month away now, and begins to solidify, develop the practical gentle urgency of something I need to prepare for. I went out today, and bought a luggage to fit close to the maximum dimensions for an allowed carry-on luggage as permitted for my flight. The one I found at Talize that I decided to buy was missing a handle, but seems roomy and adaptible. Part of its length is collapsible with an extension zipper. It also has little wheels on the bottom, and I know well the value of being able to pull, not carry, wherever the ground permits. I have begun to sew on a new handle, made of a synthetic strap that I have among my collection of various potentially useful objects and materials.
It has been a while since I've done any sewing, although I had a stint of it a while back, before I got this summer job, and I look forward to finishing my backpack as well, before I finally go.
The job... The first genuine interview I got this summer led to a hire. I must have been doing something right, and that brings a little soft smile to my face, although I know it also took me some effort and stress before I got to that interview. I have been working in maintenance at the Boys & Girls Club of London, and my direct supervisor is often impressed with the thoroughness and care of the work I and my co-workers who are also summer student hires do. Even, sometimes, with the speed, although this is far less one of my strengths. I have had sore muscles and joints in at least one place almost constantly since I started - it is physical work, which I have not been used to in recent years; and involves a lot of crouching and bending, which is hard on my feet, and thighs, and knees. However, the staff there are friendly and diverse, encouraging and gentle. They remind me insistently to take breaks and I think they want to make sure I take care of myself, which it is hard to remember to do when I am focused on proving my worth - at work, I always am.
For the first week of July, distant memory, I went into the United States to visit with another friend from the internet, who has seemed to be quite smitten with me for some time, and has been a great source of comfort and companionship. It was a very pleasant week of luxury and relaxation. I was treated to a hotel and swimming and I suspect I would have been bought restaurant food every day I was there had I not pretty much insisted on showing my cooking chops - so one night, I made us sandwiches and then my host bought us a hotplate so that I could cook a jambalaya (a boxed meal that caught his eye when we were shopping) and a soup and a good meal of pasta.
My dear host also offered me the opportunity to take a new laptop with me when I left, which caught me thoroughly off-guard. He had bought it just to have for our time together, he explained to me, and would have returned it otherwise. Although it baffles my awkwardness about money and worthiness, and jarred against my pride clamorously, I accepted; my budget for the coming year is likely to be stretched as it is, and my old laptop is in awful shape, just kind of waiting for one last problem to make it actually unusable. It already has no useable battery (and cannot run at all without being constantly plugged in) and often stalls and threatens to crash when dealing with anything complicated.
My trip in July was romantic, and my relationship with the one who invited me there as well. It continues to be a strong and fond connection. I wish for you to understand that although it took me some time to be ready to open my heart again after losing you last summer, and losing you much more thoroughly in October... I have been able to. I want you to understand that this is not an indication that I do not care about you or am no longer fond of you. It is, however, part of the plan. I needed to let you go, in order to come back to you freely, and with the strength of independence. Forging new romantic connections again, once I was able, has been part of that, a small and vital part of letting you go. But they do not displace my promises, or my hopes. There is a throne somewhere in my heart, now perhaps a little dusty, for I have left it mostly alone for some time... that sits reserved for you, should you want it. I have set up my other relationships to be secondary, to give primacy to the potential of you. If the primacy of you does not come about, I will adjust. If you make clear that you do not want the throne, I will adjust. Offer that place to someone else, or destroy it and build something else.
I think of you only occasionally now, and I think of you as a feature of the future more than a feature of the past. I do not have much to think about you that I have not already covered, and I think I have settled into a reasonable comfort in waiting. I went very thoroughly over all this, emotionally and practically, earlier. I chose my strategy, now it only remains to carry it through, and this I can do quite simply.
It occured to me while I was taking a shower at some point, perhaps a week ago, perhaps two... that there had been a time that a former state of Serp was thoroughly obsessed with you, and that state of Serp had had little else in its focus than you, and what might be the best way to have the best chance to know you again, and to have all the good of your company. That Serp decided that in order to have the best chance, it must cease to be the obsessed Serp that it was, but make a plan to pursue you gently and without being obsessed, so that the future, non-obsessed Serp would not simply ignore you or fail to make any effort. And so my past self plotted, and felt, and dreamed, and wrote you letters here, burning out its passion and resigning itself to pass away, giving way gradually and by its own will to a different Serp with a very different state of mind.
It feels like a different person wrote those letters, a little. This Serp, this present I... I do not think it is obsessed. I do not think I am obsessed, but regard this whole adventure as just the way that things are going to go. In respect for my past self, and in accord with the arrangements and work already put into the plan, in acquiring an acceptance from another Irish school, a deposit from my father, committing to my landlord to leave. I do not feel all that romantic about it day by day, but from time to time I do think about the future and wonder what will happen, when I will actually meet you. What look will be on your face? What will you see when you look at me? Will you notice some differences right away? Will I seem calmer? Stronger? Thinner? Happier? The subtle changes that take place over months are rarely well observed by one who lives through them. They are rarely drastic enough to notice, and even when they are, the new way of things quickly becomes merely normal again. But perhaps you, old memory, will notice.
And so that I do not leave it out, because it is still part of the reason, I do come to Ireland in order to find out. In order to see you, and speak to you, and in order to answer the question of whether we can and will love one another again. Perhaps I will feel a wash of emotion as soon as I see you again, eye to eye in real time and real space. Perhaps I will remember my obsession and be again entangled. I think, however, that I will be able to resist becoming obsessed for a time, by being careful, so as to not overwhelm you or make myself a nuisance by being too attached if it is not reciprocated, or if it is not desired of me. It is not, now, a demand... as my past self insisted it should not be, and I think I am ready to fulfil that. It is not a need for you. It is an open question, one in which I remain interested and curious, and very much inclined to pursue. Will we love one another again? Shall I be your companion for some substantial amount of time? Will your life and my life fit together? Can we make them complimentary in a way that makes each of us stronger? Will you want to?
I remind myself, in a reflex, to imagine that the answer could be no. And I smile a little to myself, because I think I genuinely have managed to prepare to accept that gracefully, by reminding myself every time. It would be alright. It would be satisfactory. The question would still have been answered. Don't get me wrong, I expect it may be at least a little disappointing... But my cunning past self knew just what it wanted its strategy to be, and set it in motion and then lay down and passed peacefully into the past so that I could emerge as I am, as planned, and I have to say I am somewhat impressed with myself. I didn't realize I could do that.
I think I'm ready. I am prepared for long travel, and to face uncertainty with confidence and with ingredients gathered around me from which to forge all manner of alternate plans. I am ready to meet you and be rekindled as a lover, or embraced as a friend. An... old friend... I remember the words, and my mind is transported back to a grassy field, a gentle rise, a tense and tearful conversation. My eyes leak in sympathy with the past and I feel curious, and wistful, and I continue to think about the future, but note that there is still this possibility of being reminded vividly of the past, like a movie playing over again, known fondly and memorized.
I have begun to sell some of my things. Took a bunch of photos and made a bunch of listings the other day. It has demanded more organization from me, and I have done it. It is useful on its own anyway.
I knew it'd been some time since I wrote here. There are a good many things I struggle to make time for, in those moments when I have power and confidence enough to choose to do something, and then go ahead and do it. Rather than going through my life desperately from reassurance to reassurance like it sometimes feels like.
I have three weeks left at my summer job, and then another handful of days left to myself, and then a long, long travel back to the country where I met you, old memory. Since you will not be able to meet me the day I land, there is not really any need to plan the meeting in advance. I will take up the offer given me by my college and be transported to Carlow to begin to settle there, and then I will probably feel I have the right to speak to you more freely, for I will be there, and available at the expenditure of a few hours in transit. I breathe. I sigh. Until then, then, old memory. Heh. The reunion comes.
It has been a while since I've done any sewing, although I had a stint of it a while back, before I got this summer job, and I look forward to finishing my backpack as well, before I finally go.
The job... The first genuine interview I got this summer led to a hire. I must have been doing something right, and that brings a little soft smile to my face, although I know it also took me some effort and stress before I got to that interview. I have been working in maintenance at the Boys & Girls Club of London, and my direct supervisor is often impressed with the thoroughness and care of the work I and my co-workers who are also summer student hires do. Even, sometimes, with the speed, although this is far less one of my strengths. I have had sore muscles and joints in at least one place almost constantly since I started - it is physical work, which I have not been used to in recent years; and involves a lot of crouching and bending, which is hard on my feet, and thighs, and knees. However, the staff there are friendly and diverse, encouraging and gentle. They remind me insistently to take breaks and I think they want to make sure I take care of myself, which it is hard to remember to do when I am focused on proving my worth - at work, I always am.
For the first week of July, distant memory, I went into the United States to visit with another friend from the internet, who has seemed to be quite smitten with me for some time, and has been a great source of comfort and companionship. It was a very pleasant week of luxury and relaxation. I was treated to a hotel and swimming and I suspect I would have been bought restaurant food every day I was there had I not pretty much insisted on showing my cooking chops - so one night, I made us sandwiches and then my host bought us a hotplate so that I could cook a jambalaya (a boxed meal that caught his eye when we were shopping) and a soup and a good meal of pasta.
My dear host also offered me the opportunity to take a new laptop with me when I left, which caught me thoroughly off-guard. He had bought it just to have for our time together, he explained to me, and would have returned it otherwise. Although it baffles my awkwardness about money and worthiness, and jarred against my pride clamorously, I accepted; my budget for the coming year is likely to be stretched as it is, and my old laptop is in awful shape, just kind of waiting for one last problem to make it actually unusable. It already has no useable battery (and cannot run at all without being constantly plugged in) and often stalls and threatens to crash when dealing with anything complicated.
My trip in July was romantic, and my relationship with the one who invited me there as well. It continues to be a strong and fond connection. I wish for you to understand that although it took me some time to be ready to open my heart again after losing you last summer, and losing you much more thoroughly in October... I have been able to. I want you to understand that this is not an indication that I do not care about you or am no longer fond of you. It is, however, part of the plan. I needed to let you go, in order to come back to you freely, and with the strength of independence. Forging new romantic connections again, once I was able, has been part of that, a small and vital part of letting you go. But they do not displace my promises, or my hopes. There is a throne somewhere in my heart, now perhaps a little dusty, for I have left it mostly alone for some time... that sits reserved for you, should you want it. I have set up my other relationships to be secondary, to give primacy to the potential of you. If the primacy of you does not come about, I will adjust. If you make clear that you do not want the throne, I will adjust. Offer that place to someone else, or destroy it and build something else.
I think of you only occasionally now, and I think of you as a feature of the future more than a feature of the past. I do not have much to think about you that I have not already covered, and I think I have settled into a reasonable comfort in waiting. I went very thoroughly over all this, emotionally and practically, earlier. I chose my strategy, now it only remains to carry it through, and this I can do quite simply.
It occured to me while I was taking a shower at some point, perhaps a week ago, perhaps two... that there had been a time that a former state of Serp was thoroughly obsessed with you, and that state of Serp had had little else in its focus than you, and what might be the best way to have the best chance to know you again, and to have all the good of your company. That Serp decided that in order to have the best chance, it must cease to be the obsessed Serp that it was, but make a plan to pursue you gently and without being obsessed, so that the future, non-obsessed Serp would not simply ignore you or fail to make any effort. And so my past self plotted, and felt, and dreamed, and wrote you letters here, burning out its passion and resigning itself to pass away, giving way gradually and by its own will to a different Serp with a very different state of mind.
It feels like a different person wrote those letters, a little. This Serp, this present I... I do not think it is obsessed. I do not think I am obsessed, but regard this whole adventure as just the way that things are going to go. In respect for my past self, and in accord with the arrangements and work already put into the plan, in acquiring an acceptance from another Irish school, a deposit from my father, committing to my landlord to leave. I do not feel all that romantic about it day by day, but from time to time I do think about the future and wonder what will happen, when I will actually meet you. What look will be on your face? What will you see when you look at me? Will you notice some differences right away? Will I seem calmer? Stronger? Thinner? Happier? The subtle changes that take place over months are rarely well observed by one who lives through them. They are rarely drastic enough to notice, and even when they are, the new way of things quickly becomes merely normal again. But perhaps you, old memory, will notice.
And so that I do not leave it out, because it is still part of the reason, I do come to Ireland in order to find out. In order to see you, and speak to you, and in order to answer the question of whether we can and will love one another again. Perhaps I will feel a wash of emotion as soon as I see you again, eye to eye in real time and real space. Perhaps I will remember my obsession and be again entangled. I think, however, that I will be able to resist becoming obsessed for a time, by being careful, so as to not overwhelm you or make myself a nuisance by being too attached if it is not reciprocated, or if it is not desired of me. It is not, now, a demand... as my past self insisted it should not be, and I think I am ready to fulfil that. It is not a need for you. It is an open question, one in which I remain interested and curious, and very much inclined to pursue. Will we love one another again? Shall I be your companion for some substantial amount of time? Will your life and my life fit together? Can we make them complimentary in a way that makes each of us stronger? Will you want to?
I remind myself, in a reflex, to imagine that the answer could be no. And I smile a little to myself, because I think I genuinely have managed to prepare to accept that gracefully, by reminding myself every time. It would be alright. It would be satisfactory. The question would still have been answered. Don't get me wrong, I expect it may be at least a little disappointing... But my cunning past self knew just what it wanted its strategy to be, and set it in motion and then lay down and passed peacefully into the past so that I could emerge as I am, as planned, and I have to say I am somewhat impressed with myself. I didn't realize I could do that.
I think I'm ready. I am prepared for long travel, and to face uncertainty with confidence and with ingredients gathered around me from which to forge all manner of alternate plans. I am ready to meet you and be rekindled as a lover, or embraced as a friend. An... old friend... I remember the words, and my mind is transported back to a grassy field, a gentle rise, a tense and tearful conversation. My eyes leak in sympathy with the past and I feel curious, and wistful, and I continue to think about the future, but note that there is still this possibility of being reminded vividly of the past, like a movie playing over again, known fondly and memorized.
I have begun to sell some of my things. Took a bunch of photos and made a bunch of listings the other day. It has demanded more organization from me, and I have done it. It is useful on its own anyway.
I knew it'd been some time since I wrote here. There are a good many things I struggle to make time for, in those moments when I have power and confidence enough to choose to do something, and then go ahead and do it. Rather than going through my life desperately from reassurance to reassurance like it sometimes feels like.
I have three weeks left at my summer job, and then another handful of days left to myself, and then a long, long travel back to the country where I met you, old memory. Since you will not be able to meet me the day I land, there is not really any need to plan the meeting in advance. I will take up the offer given me by my college and be transported to Carlow to begin to settle there, and then I will probably feel I have the right to speak to you more freely, for I will be there, and available at the expenditure of a few hours in transit. I breathe. I sigh. Until then, then, old memory. Heh. The reunion comes.
Saturday, June 9, 2018
Out of the Fire and into the Pan
It has been a stressful month or so for me, increasingly so over financial debts and concerns that I may not be able to arrange things adequately even to get myself to Ireland, much less beyond... I was very reluctant to return to Ontario Works, but this week I did so, and spoke very humbly to the staff member there who was quick to listen and encourage me, and trusted me when I said I was job searching already and had applied to ten or a dozen summertime positions, which I had.
I've made up a chart on Google Sheets of when I applied to what and how long I spent doing it, and roughly what sort of positions they were, and I've given to my friends and to my employment counsellor at Goodwill Career Center a link to see it as I add to it. I was feeling so glum and reluctant one evening that I turned to examining the feeling and what exactly it was about. I decided a large part of it was probably the silence. I've never been able to happily endure silence as a response when I put myself out into the world, whether it's a joke or a request or, as now, a job application. It feels like casual rejection, which feels hideous. Although I know that keeping at my job hunting a little at a time, stable-like, is how best to make sure I can find something, it's awfully discouraging to me not seeing any mark of progress, because I've not got interviews or hire offers yet.
So I thought about that, and I decided to ask my friends to help me by setting up like video game achievements for me, so that to help me keep going with gradual consistency, I could measure progress by milestones like grindy achievements; applications X days in a row like studying on Khan Academy, or apply to five receptionist jobs, or to ten labour jobs, or thirty jobs in total, whatever it'd be. Then I'd have marks of progress to look forward to, and to look back on, that didn't depend on any feedback I'm unlikely to get from the jobs themselves.
So that seems alright, and I do think it's helping me stay happy, which ultimately makes everything better. One of my friends agreed in right away and will share with me a song from his music library or a sketch he's drawn that I didn't see before for each two online applications I submit, or each one place I submit in person, up to two rewards every day. And yesterday, I went through and did five applications online to mostly labour oriented positions, so I could focus on how to present as a good labourer rather than trying to organize a bunch of different fronts at one time. I like that strategy, I think it suits me well.
There's also mother. I don't remember whether I wrote it here, but I got back in contact with my mother, and that's been stressful. I think she's trying, though. I told her once a little while ago that she had been behaving unappropriately and to stop sending me any more messages until I could figure out what to say back to her, and then she sent me a message to say she would (because no-one ever apparently thinks that saying yes counts as saying anything), but since then has stayed quiet, and I've got a long email sitting in drafts that I haven't gotten back around to yet to trim down and decide whether to make it milder, but I've been focusing on trying to keep my morale high enough to job search. I might say more about my mother here later, or maybe I won't.
I've come 'round to sleeping days again, which is all a great frustration, but I can still do my job searching at least, in the evenings when I'm awake. Normally I'd try to push my sleeping forward and forward through the days some more until it was back around to nights again, only I talk to Iris in the evenings. He's been very sweet and loving to me, and it makes me feel happy to have that place and time when I'm welcomed for a while. I've got him playing through Doki Doki Literature Club, which I played my virgin run of a while ago. I thought we might be done with his own virgin (or I suppose you could say blind) run through it by now, but he goes through the game so slowly, reading the dialogue and discussing the poetry and thinking hard over every choice and talking to me about it.
We spent some amusing and interesting hours together finding a bunch of secrets in the game, much earlier than I would have expected and which I hadn't even known were there, so I was able to participate in unraveling them from ignorance and with sincere exploration myself, which was great fun. I won't say any more about that here, because between them being secrets and the type of game DDLC is, if any readers have not played it, I would want to encourage them to do so and experience it all themselves. Iris and I have recorded our playing the game and I might put it on YouTube at some point if ever I find a comfortable way to edit videos again, so it's not like our experiences will be lost if I don't write them here.
Last time we played, Iris had a substantial conversation with Yuri for the first time in the game, having mostly spent his time talking to Sayori so far. It was very fun for me to hear him read it, partly because it went like conversations he's actually had with me even more than I expected. I see a lot of myself in Yuri, a lot of my own strengths and weaknesses and fears, depicted very well in some places, and that gives me reason to love the game if I didn't already have an inclination to. I spoke to Iris about it and he can see what I mean by that, although he finds much more kinship in Sayori himself, which doesn't surprise me... Such a simple sweetheart, taking unabashed delight in the simple solaces of the world like restful sleep and tasty food. And what's better, he doesn't mind if I make a little fun of him for it. It seems I get along very well with fellows like that, who can remind me by example to enjoy the simple things, and aren't too proud to let me laugh at them.
I say simple, but it doesn't mean stupid. Iris and Fish and Coda too can understand the complexity and darkness in my perspectives well enough to empathise beautifully and sincerely; I know it's not any lack of understanding or capacity that leads them to deal with life on such simple terms, but their own preference, and oftentimes conscious decision about who they want to be. I can thoroughly respect that. I can enjoy walking a time with Iris's sunny attitude, knowing that he is sincerely willing to take his turn walking with me through nightmares... so spending time lighthearted doesn't mean denying the dark is there, in the way that it has often felt to me as though it does in broader society. It's not whitewashing. It's not stupid politics. It doesn't make me pick sides between two ends of a waveform as though they were contradictory to one another for the contrast. I love that.
Anyway, I started out this writing meaning to say that my benefit return from filing my taxes has come in, and now so has Ontario Works support for this month, since I hadn't paid my rent yet, not having the money, and I asked humbly if they could help me with that and was told they could and would. So I've paid my rent, and I also paid off most of the debt on my credit card that's been building up from groceries and stuff... And my plane ticket... and there's such a weight off my shoulders now about that. But I still need to work at finding work for those weeks of summer I have left if I can, because I can use all the money I can save up to get myself started strong in Ireland.
I've made up a chart on Google Sheets of when I applied to what and how long I spent doing it, and roughly what sort of positions they were, and I've given to my friends and to my employment counsellor at Goodwill Career Center a link to see it as I add to it. I was feeling so glum and reluctant one evening that I turned to examining the feeling and what exactly it was about. I decided a large part of it was probably the silence. I've never been able to happily endure silence as a response when I put myself out into the world, whether it's a joke or a request or, as now, a job application. It feels like casual rejection, which feels hideous. Although I know that keeping at my job hunting a little at a time, stable-like, is how best to make sure I can find something, it's awfully discouraging to me not seeing any mark of progress, because I've not got interviews or hire offers yet.
So I thought about that, and I decided to ask my friends to help me by setting up like video game achievements for me, so that to help me keep going with gradual consistency, I could measure progress by milestones like grindy achievements; applications X days in a row like studying on Khan Academy, or apply to five receptionist jobs, or to ten labour jobs, or thirty jobs in total, whatever it'd be. Then I'd have marks of progress to look forward to, and to look back on, that didn't depend on any feedback I'm unlikely to get from the jobs themselves.
So that seems alright, and I do think it's helping me stay happy, which ultimately makes everything better. One of my friends agreed in right away and will share with me a song from his music library or a sketch he's drawn that I didn't see before for each two online applications I submit, or each one place I submit in person, up to two rewards every day. And yesterday, I went through and did five applications online to mostly labour oriented positions, so I could focus on how to present as a good labourer rather than trying to organize a bunch of different fronts at one time. I like that strategy, I think it suits me well.
There's also mother. I don't remember whether I wrote it here, but I got back in contact with my mother, and that's been stressful. I think she's trying, though. I told her once a little while ago that she had been behaving unappropriately and to stop sending me any more messages until I could figure out what to say back to her, and then she sent me a message to say she would (because no-one ever apparently thinks that saying yes counts as saying anything), but since then has stayed quiet, and I've got a long email sitting in drafts that I haven't gotten back around to yet to trim down and decide whether to make it milder, but I've been focusing on trying to keep my morale high enough to job search. I might say more about my mother here later, or maybe I won't.
I've come 'round to sleeping days again, which is all a great frustration, but I can still do my job searching at least, in the evenings when I'm awake. Normally I'd try to push my sleeping forward and forward through the days some more until it was back around to nights again, only I talk to Iris in the evenings. He's been very sweet and loving to me, and it makes me feel happy to have that place and time when I'm welcomed for a while. I've got him playing through Doki Doki Literature Club, which I played my virgin run of a while ago. I thought we might be done with his own virgin (or I suppose you could say blind) run through it by now, but he goes through the game so slowly, reading the dialogue and discussing the poetry and thinking hard over every choice and talking to me about it.
We spent some amusing and interesting hours together finding a bunch of secrets in the game, much earlier than I would have expected and which I hadn't even known were there, so I was able to participate in unraveling them from ignorance and with sincere exploration myself, which was great fun. I won't say any more about that here, because between them being secrets and the type of game DDLC is, if any readers have not played it, I would want to encourage them to do so and experience it all themselves. Iris and I have recorded our playing the game and I might put it on YouTube at some point if ever I find a comfortable way to edit videos again, so it's not like our experiences will be lost if I don't write them here.
Last time we played, Iris had a substantial conversation with Yuri for the first time in the game, having mostly spent his time talking to Sayori so far. It was very fun for me to hear him read it, partly because it went like conversations he's actually had with me even more than I expected. I see a lot of myself in Yuri, a lot of my own strengths and weaknesses and fears, depicted very well in some places, and that gives me reason to love the game if I didn't already have an inclination to. I spoke to Iris about it and he can see what I mean by that, although he finds much more kinship in Sayori himself, which doesn't surprise me... Such a simple sweetheart, taking unabashed delight in the simple solaces of the world like restful sleep and tasty food. And what's better, he doesn't mind if I make a little fun of him for it. It seems I get along very well with fellows like that, who can remind me by example to enjoy the simple things, and aren't too proud to let me laugh at them.
I say simple, but it doesn't mean stupid. Iris and Fish and Coda too can understand the complexity and darkness in my perspectives well enough to empathise beautifully and sincerely; I know it's not any lack of understanding or capacity that leads them to deal with life on such simple terms, but their own preference, and oftentimes conscious decision about who they want to be. I can thoroughly respect that. I can enjoy walking a time with Iris's sunny attitude, knowing that he is sincerely willing to take his turn walking with me through nightmares... so spending time lighthearted doesn't mean denying the dark is there, in the way that it has often felt to me as though it does in broader society. It's not whitewashing. It's not stupid politics. It doesn't make me pick sides between two ends of a waveform as though they were contradictory to one another for the contrast. I love that.
Anyway, I started out this writing meaning to say that my benefit return from filing my taxes has come in, and now so has Ontario Works support for this month, since I hadn't paid my rent yet, not having the money, and I asked humbly if they could help me with that and was told they could and would. So I've paid my rent, and I also paid off most of the debt on my credit card that's been building up from groceries and stuff... And my plane ticket... and there's such a weight off my shoulders now about that. But I still need to work at finding work for those weeks of summer I have left if I can, because I can use all the money I can save up to get myself started strong in Ireland.
Thursday, May 10, 2018
Dear Memory: Overlap
It's been a while since I wrote here... A lot has happened.
I mean, a LOT has happened now that I look back on it. Three short weeks later, and so much has happened after these long, stretching months of seemingly so little... I have finished my diploma. I was a bit worried about Tax, so I studied it purposefully and did well enough on the exam for a solid pass, although still not a great grade overall. I have moved out of the house with the loud and inconsiderate roommates I didn't feel I could talk to. Moved right next door, to another room managed by the same landlord, with different roommates. These ones don't bother me much. The walls are thicker and the room is further away from main flows of traffic. I've been sleeping full nights again, at long last. I even have access to quite a large downstairs den which I can reshape to my heart's contentment. I cleaned off and rearranged the furniture, populated some neglected shelves and a mantlepiece with books, knicknacks and an assortment of tasty snacks. I actually set up my round table, which has had no space to be useful in for over a year and was just in the way at my last house. It is so pretty now, a comfortable and happy place into which to invite my few local friends. Including a special new addition...
My asexual girlfriend finally moved to London! I had been forgetting this was even a thing, but a few days before I moved (which was a few days before the end of the month) she was landed and local. The night before the move, unable to sleep and stressed, I called her up to go walk the London night streets together and we hugged and kissed and chatted about all sorts of wonderful things. I've been showing her the markets on the weekends. It gives me an excellent excuse to go out to them myself, and there's a great budget stall at Gibraltar that sells non-perishable foodstuffs that are past their expiry date. I've found some pretty great things there (like sunflower seed butter and some delicious little cookies) and also some not great things there (like protein bars and Welch's fruit snacks which become very tough as they go stale), but the prices are certainly right for experimentation.
I got another three offers from Irish colleges, and am currently trying to decide between Sligo IT, Carlow IT and IT Tralee. I also got mail from Waterford, but to be honest their letter wasn't even a conditional letter of offer like the other three were and I was very unimpressed, so I'm not seriously considering it. I'm currently leaning towards Carlow because it's the closest by transit to Athlone.
I booked my plane ticket. Five hundred dollars or so, including baggage allowance. I'm bringing a real suitcase this time, bringing more with me; since I'm leaving nothing behind to wait for me.
And I broke the silence. I wrote you an email on the first of May. Brief and simple and somewhat formal, but contact has been made. I got a response the very next day, which was even shorter and simpler, but although little is said and although you did not take me up on the offer to talk more by starting a further conversation, there is enough confirmation there to make my heart sing. Misspelled and humble is a simple message that validates all the work I have done to get back across the sea. "Of coarse I'll meet with you".
Now my next big task is to choose between these three colleges and get access to enough money to pay my confirming deposit before May 30th. I'll probably need a student line of credit. And for that, I'll need a co-signer. Probably my father, if he'll agree to do it. Otherwise, I might reach out to Iris. Or Ashlynn. Or maybe even Brian, possibly. I'm willing to have some really awkward conversations about finances in order to make this happen. I will find a way.
As I was heading out to the bank today to discuss this, I paused and wanted to hear a specific Ani DiFranco song. This happens often enough, but this time... I didn't have the version I wanted to hear. I have the song, somewhere in my discograpy, but... it was too loose and whispery. I remembered a different rhythm. The search for the correct earworm involved a flustered overturning of YouTube to no avail and my purchasing a single track for 99c of the other non-live recording that was made of it... only to be sent the wrong song. They sent me "Shameless" instead, so I called the support line to have them fix it and ask questions about the song I was looking for.
It's been sorted. I have it now. The lighter and jazzier, more rhythm-tight 2007 recording, from the album 'Canon', of Ani DiFranco's song "Overlap":
I have started taking firm steps in the process of job searching. There are postings on a student website. There are agencies in town that might be able to find me a temp position; maybe even one related to my accounting studies. I had an intake interview with one of the recruiters at one of those agencies on Tuesday (two days ago).
But I think I may be pushing myself a bit too hard. I came home feeling somewhat dizzied today, my mind full of blades and violence. I've had a particular propensity within the last week and a half or so to imagine stabbing myself through the left eye with my biggest, sharpest, favourite kitchen knife. It has been making me very twitchy, and I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. It may be... I hope... just down to a high intensity of stress, which is natural as the school term is ending and one is looking for a summer job. And preparing to go back to school. And adapting to changes in romantic relationships. And a move into a new house. And finances... So all told, I mean, I don't think I have a reason to be all that worried, but it's still a particularly unpleasant symptom of stress and I hope it goes away soon.
I hope I will hear from my dad. I hope he will be willing to co-sign a line of credit for me. I hope I can find a summer job that pays enough that I can do some saving for Ireland. I hope so many things, really... And I look forward to seeing you, sometime in my first few days of being back on the isle. I want to get to know you again, Fish. I hope you want that too. I really do.
I mean, a LOT has happened now that I look back on it. Three short weeks later, and so much has happened after these long, stretching months of seemingly so little... I have finished my diploma. I was a bit worried about Tax, so I studied it purposefully and did well enough on the exam for a solid pass, although still not a great grade overall. I have moved out of the house with the loud and inconsiderate roommates I didn't feel I could talk to. Moved right next door, to another room managed by the same landlord, with different roommates. These ones don't bother me much. The walls are thicker and the room is further away from main flows of traffic. I've been sleeping full nights again, at long last. I even have access to quite a large downstairs den which I can reshape to my heart's contentment. I cleaned off and rearranged the furniture, populated some neglected shelves and a mantlepiece with books, knicknacks and an assortment of tasty snacks. I actually set up my round table, which has had no space to be useful in for over a year and was just in the way at my last house. It is so pretty now, a comfortable and happy place into which to invite my few local friends. Including a special new addition...
My asexual girlfriend finally moved to London! I had been forgetting this was even a thing, but a few days before I moved (which was a few days before the end of the month) she was landed and local. The night before the move, unable to sleep and stressed, I called her up to go walk the London night streets together and we hugged and kissed and chatted about all sorts of wonderful things. I've been showing her the markets on the weekends. It gives me an excellent excuse to go out to them myself, and there's a great budget stall at Gibraltar that sells non-perishable foodstuffs that are past their expiry date. I've found some pretty great things there (like sunflower seed butter and some delicious little cookies) and also some not great things there (like protein bars and Welch's fruit snacks which become very tough as they go stale), but the prices are certainly right for experimentation.
I got another three offers from Irish colleges, and am currently trying to decide between Sligo IT, Carlow IT and IT Tralee. I also got mail from Waterford, but to be honest their letter wasn't even a conditional letter of offer like the other three were and I was very unimpressed, so I'm not seriously considering it. I'm currently leaning towards Carlow because it's the closest by transit to Athlone.
I booked my plane ticket. Five hundred dollars or so, including baggage allowance. I'm bringing a real suitcase this time, bringing more with me; since I'm leaving nothing behind to wait for me.
And I broke the silence. I wrote you an email on the first of May. Brief and simple and somewhat formal, but contact has been made. I got a response the very next day, which was even shorter and simpler, but although little is said and although you did not take me up on the offer to talk more by starting a further conversation, there is enough confirmation there to make my heart sing. Misspelled and humble is a simple message that validates all the work I have done to get back across the sea. "Of coarse I'll meet with you".
Now my next big task is to choose between these three colleges and get access to enough money to pay my confirming deposit before May 30th. I'll probably need a student line of credit. And for that, I'll need a co-signer. Probably my father, if he'll agree to do it. Otherwise, I might reach out to Iris. Or Ashlynn. Or maybe even Brian, possibly. I'm willing to have some really awkward conversations about finances in order to make this happen. I will find a way.
As I was heading out to the bank today to discuss this, I paused and wanted to hear a specific Ani DiFranco song. This happens often enough, but this time... I didn't have the version I wanted to hear. I have the song, somewhere in my discograpy, but... it was too loose and whispery. I remembered a different rhythm. The search for the correct earworm involved a flustered overturning of YouTube to no avail and my purchasing a single track for 99c of the other non-live recording that was made of it... only to be sent the wrong song. They sent me "Shameless" instead, so I called the support line to have them fix it and ask questions about the song I was looking for.
It's been sorted. I have it now. The lighter and jazzier, more rhythm-tight 2007 recording, from the album 'Canon', of Ani DiFranco's song "Overlap":
...I know there is strength in the differences between usI love this song. This version of this song. It prompted me to draw an analogy between communication and light that I built up so thoroughly I drew a colourful diagram of it years ago. And thinking those lyrics brings tears of intensity to my eyes. I feel this so much. I feel this about you. Not just you... So many of my friends. But also about you.
and I know there is comfort, where we overlap;
Come here; stand in front of the light.
Stand still, so I can see your silhouette.
I hope... that you have got all night,
because I am not done looking at you yet.
I have started taking firm steps in the process of job searching. There are postings on a student website. There are agencies in town that might be able to find me a temp position; maybe even one related to my accounting studies. I had an intake interview with one of the recruiters at one of those agencies on Tuesday (two days ago).
But I think I may be pushing myself a bit too hard. I came home feeling somewhat dizzied today, my mind full of blades and violence. I've had a particular propensity within the last week and a half or so to imagine stabbing myself through the left eye with my biggest, sharpest, favourite kitchen knife. It has been making me very twitchy, and I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. It may be... I hope... just down to a high intensity of stress, which is natural as the school term is ending and one is looking for a summer job. And preparing to go back to school. And adapting to changes in romantic relationships. And a move into a new house. And finances... So all told, I mean, I don't think I have a reason to be all that worried, but it's still a particularly unpleasant symptom of stress and I hope it goes away soon.
I hope I will hear from my dad. I hope he will be willing to co-sign a line of credit for me. I hope I can find a summer job that pays enough that I can do some saving for Ireland. I hope so many things, really... And I look forward to seeing you, sometime in my first few days of being back on the isle. I want to get to know you again, Fish. I hope you want that too. I really do.
Thursday, April 19, 2018
Dear Memory: The Games You Play
Hi, Eoin.
I feel very close to you today, dear memory. I have been listening to your voice. It has been... over five months, I think... since the last time I listened to your voice, and that sound, so familiar, carries an amazing weight of nostalgia now.
I know you must be doing okay, for now, because you're part of a podcast now. Maybe later, I will come back and add a hyperlink to it into this post, but not yet. Not today. I'm a little afraid that you'd see the back-link somehow, and find me here, watching you, and that that would make you uncomfortable. So as much as I would love for you, for this person you are now, your voice still familiar, your jokes told with the same friendly sass... but not to me... As much as I might love to see you turn and see me watching you, I do not rustle the branches. I stay quiet and hidden and permit you not to be any more likely to notice me than you already are, for I've posted links to my blog sometimes on Facebook and I think once, the preview line visible from there held your name.
It's so good to hear you laughing again. And Gearoid and Troy, too. I miss hanging out at your house, listening to you banter with them like this, at home and happy and comfortable. I miss listening to you talk about the games you love, and shows you love, and things you do. I hope I will one day be welcome again to stand awkwardly at hand, listening. Trying sometimes to find something to contribute by saying. Even feeling self-consciously out of place there, but still allowed to be there, listening, enjoying the stories... and talking to you about them afterwards.
Maybe someday I will play games with you again. I hope so. You're so fun-loving. It's... relaxing just being around that, sometimes. It... was, I mean.
While looking through Steam today after nabbing a game which was released for free as an anniversary promotion, I stumbled across something I had remembered only dimly for some time. The Beginner's Guide... And I remember, like vision, like the physical world coming back as a dream fades. I remember sitting and laying on your bed and exploring it, rapt with attention. I remember the prison cell which ostensibly would originally have trapped the player for hours. I remember the trick-door which kept coming back or something, although I'm not sure I remember the trick to it. I remember three figures with blank faces, asking questions about how I got there, and how to move forward. I remember a huge room full of bubbles with comments in them. I remember a combination lock without any clues to the combination. I remember a man standing at a podium. I remember a red curtain around a stage, and a gun which shattered the scenery into blank whiteness... I remember a house full of little things to fix. Little chores to keep up, maintenance to be done. I remember liking that part. It seemed... peaceful.
I remember sitting with you and speaking aloud back at the narrator about the point I thought he'd missed. I remember... rising above the maze. Do you know, Fish...? I still keep that screenshot among my wallpapers. And whenever I see it, I think of you.
I listened to your podcast while I took a long walk today, and bought some ramen. Many times, I laughed at your jokes. Not just yours, Eoin, I mean Troy's and Gearoid's too. I'm glad you're okay. I'm glad you're talking about things that you love. I'm glad that I can listen to your voice without getting in your way. If you keep doing this, then there may be a way that I can have your good humour and your cheeky cleverness in my life even if you don't want to talk again when I land.
When I land. Dear memory... I haven't written this here yet. But last week, I got my first offer of placement back from an Irish college. Dear memory, the only condition set out in that offer is that I successfully finish my diploma and hand in my transcript by May 30th. Dear memory, I don't even have to get good marks in my classes, I only have to pass them. Dear memory...
I am coming.
I hope I will get more than one offer. I hope I will have a reason to contact you and ask which one I ought to choose, a lapse in the silence that's existed between us for more than five months. But even if this is the only choice I am given... I am coming. It's gone from "hope" and "maybe" and "trying" to something more solid.
The day after I received the email, I woke up in my bed, and squirmed gradually to consciousness, and my first conscious thought was to repeat, in my mind, I could buy my plane ticket today. I'm going to Ireland. Where to head after I land may not be set in stone, but I have my confirmation now. There is at least one answer available to that question. I'm going to Ireland. Coming to Ireland. I'm coming back, and I'm coming for you. It sings in my heart so intensely it turns almost to a shriek when I think about it. Like a perfect tone, sweet and high and pure and so loud it could shatter glass.
There is still much to be done first, but the greatest hurdle, the most doubtful issue has been cleared. The rest is details. Details which will fill my days, my nights, my schedule, until mid-August.
And this is why I felt it was now an acceptable time to look through your Facebook page again, and see a couple sorta recent pictures. And I found your new podcast there, and I've been listening to it. It's close enough now, somehow. It doesn't feel distant and stalkery the same way it did once before, because I expect I may have cause to actually be in touch within just another two weeks.
It all comes down to this... and now I hear you laughing and joking with your friends, just like you used to. And something in me that had worried that you might be somehow a very changed person now, someone less likely to like me... something of that fear melts away. You will very likely have changed somehow... but you laugh the same. In your most recent pictures on Facebook, your smile is as I knew it before I left. That's Eoin alright. And that's something right about the world. Something happy. Right now, it must be night time in Ireland, though it's yet early evening here. Goodnight, Eoin. May you rest healthfully and wake happy. I love you.
I feel very close to you today, dear memory. I have been listening to your voice. It has been... over five months, I think... since the last time I listened to your voice, and that sound, so familiar, carries an amazing weight of nostalgia now.
I know you must be doing okay, for now, because you're part of a podcast now. Maybe later, I will come back and add a hyperlink to it into this post, but not yet. Not today. I'm a little afraid that you'd see the back-link somehow, and find me here, watching you, and that that would make you uncomfortable. So as much as I would love for you, for this person you are now, your voice still familiar, your jokes told with the same friendly sass... but not to me... As much as I might love to see you turn and see me watching you, I do not rustle the branches. I stay quiet and hidden and permit you not to be any more likely to notice me than you already are, for I've posted links to my blog sometimes on Facebook and I think once, the preview line visible from there held your name.
It's so good to hear you laughing again. And Gearoid and Troy, too. I miss hanging out at your house, listening to you banter with them like this, at home and happy and comfortable. I miss listening to you talk about the games you love, and shows you love, and things you do. I hope I will one day be welcome again to stand awkwardly at hand, listening. Trying sometimes to find something to contribute by saying. Even feeling self-consciously out of place there, but still allowed to be there, listening, enjoying the stories... and talking to you about them afterwards.
Maybe someday I will play games with you again. I hope so. You're so fun-loving. It's... relaxing just being around that, sometimes. It... was, I mean.
While looking through Steam today after nabbing a game which was released for free as an anniversary promotion, I stumbled across something I had remembered only dimly for some time. The Beginner's Guide... And I remember, like vision, like the physical world coming back as a dream fades. I remember sitting and laying on your bed and exploring it, rapt with attention. I remember the prison cell which ostensibly would originally have trapped the player for hours. I remember the trick-door which kept coming back or something, although I'm not sure I remember the trick to it. I remember three figures with blank faces, asking questions about how I got there, and how to move forward. I remember a huge room full of bubbles with comments in them. I remember a combination lock without any clues to the combination. I remember a man standing at a podium. I remember a red curtain around a stage, and a gun which shattered the scenery into blank whiteness... I remember a house full of little things to fix. Little chores to keep up, maintenance to be done. I remember liking that part. It seemed... peaceful.
I remember sitting with you and speaking aloud back at the narrator about the point I thought he'd missed. I remember... rising above the maze. Do you know, Fish...? I still keep that screenshot among my wallpapers. And whenever I see it, I think of you.
I listened to your podcast while I took a long walk today, and bought some ramen. Many times, I laughed at your jokes. Not just yours, Eoin, I mean Troy's and Gearoid's too. I'm glad you're okay. I'm glad you're talking about things that you love. I'm glad that I can listen to your voice without getting in your way. If you keep doing this, then there may be a way that I can have your good humour and your cheeky cleverness in my life even if you don't want to talk again when I land.
When I land. Dear memory... I haven't written this here yet. But last week, I got my first offer of placement back from an Irish college. Dear memory, the only condition set out in that offer is that I successfully finish my diploma and hand in my transcript by May 30th. Dear memory, I don't even have to get good marks in my classes, I only have to pass them. Dear memory...
I am coming.
I hope I will get more than one offer. I hope I will have a reason to contact you and ask which one I ought to choose, a lapse in the silence that's existed between us for more than five months. But even if this is the only choice I am given... I am coming. It's gone from "hope" and "maybe" and "trying" to something more solid.
The day after I received the email, I woke up in my bed, and squirmed gradually to consciousness, and my first conscious thought was to repeat, in my mind, I could buy my plane ticket today. I'm going to Ireland. Where to head after I land may not be set in stone, but I have my confirmation now. There is at least one answer available to that question. I'm going to Ireland. Coming to Ireland. I'm coming back, and I'm coming for you. It sings in my heart so intensely it turns almost to a shriek when I think about it. Like a perfect tone, sweet and high and pure and so loud it could shatter glass.
There is still much to be done first, but the greatest hurdle, the most doubtful issue has been cleared. The rest is details. Details which will fill my days, my nights, my schedule, until mid-August.
And this is why I felt it was now an acceptable time to look through your Facebook page again, and see a couple sorta recent pictures. And I found your new podcast there, and I've been listening to it. It's close enough now, somehow. It doesn't feel distant and stalkery the same way it did once before, because I expect I may have cause to actually be in touch within just another two weeks.
It all comes down to this... and now I hear you laughing and joking with your friends, just like you used to. And something in me that had worried that you might be somehow a very changed person now, someone less likely to like me... something of that fear melts away. You will very likely have changed somehow... but you laugh the same. In your most recent pictures on Facebook, your smile is as I knew it before I left. That's Eoin alright. And that's something right about the world. Something happy. Right now, it must be night time in Ireland, though it's yet early evening here. Goodnight, Eoin. May you rest healthfully and wake happy. I love you.
Monday, February 26, 2018
Dear Memory: A Hole in My Foot
Dear memory... Over the past week I have been largely idle, as I mentioned before.
On that Monday, I came into school and was unnerved and confused that the front doors were locked on a Monday morning. I had not remembered the short Family Day holiday; Monday and Tuesday classes were cancelled. The gym was not open either, and I would be unable to work out for my third time that week. I returned home, and slept long and through the day, and at some point, I scratched and pulled at some rough edges of the thick soles of my right foot, and restless, I pulled skin away that tore bloody at the end, and wound up with a patch that was thin and bare and painful to walk on.
I have not been to the gym for the past week, while I was being idle, and part of the reason is that I have been waiting for my foot to heal, and for the slight stiffness in my calf to recover after walking with a limp which puts more stress on different places. It seems to me as though my restless picking may have corresponded to a subconscious need for rest, and winds up working out quite nicely, although the fact that the way it works out involves temporarily hobbling myself is not ideal.
On Friday and Saturday, I turned my sights to work again, as the finished version of an important assignment in my Finance course was coming due. I worked for three and a half hours solid on Saturday morning before 6 AM in that special zen state I get into when I am under pressure to finish a document, in which the hours seem not to matter, as the document forms. Large pieces of writing produced, and then whittled and perfected and formatted step by step; like a drawing, increasing by stages, but not in a particular order. Just switching to adding or refining in some other place where additions or refinement can be made, and then coming back and adding to or refining the part I had just left behind to do so.
It is strange and beautiful and trance-like, and I think I always worry, as a deadline draws near, that I might not manage to fall into that alien and productive state of mind again, it is so different. But then I do. One of my team mates started out working on the wrong part, one that had already been done, and adjustments needed to be made at the last minute. I volunteered to take on part of his work and adapt the project to include the extra work he had done even though it had not been necessary, and it all worked out. I believe so, anyway. Our grades aren't in yet.
I have to say, I have been delighted with my team for this assignment. I think it's fair to say I have done the lion's share of the work on the project, but if so, I have determined lynxes pulling beside me. They show solidarity, they rowl in support and pride when we make a leap forward, and we make that leap together. My teammates have had my back and contributed resources I did not have by conferring with their friends in other sections to figure out segments of the assignment that I did not know how to proceed on. Their written segments showed effort and contained genuinely useful material, despite a few inaccuracies and some poor English. I don't blame them. For two of my groupmates, it is not their first language, and in any case some peoples' skills are not oriented towards writing well.
Mine are, and I spent some of those hazy, focused hours of vaguely happy-ish just-do-it-ive-ness stroking my chin and carefully rephrasing, reducing redundant statements, correcting spelling mistakes and structuring the flow of sentence to sentence.
I also made the report pretty, putting the original phrasing of each assigned question in italics at the beginning of the section that addressed it. It had a pretty header with all of our last names in it and collapsible headings, and I uploaded my current state of progress for my teammates to look at several times. They expressed appreciation for how pretty and comprehensible I had made it.
After the three and a half hours of solid work on the assignment report, I continued on to finish two quizzes for other subjects before sleeping, because they were there to be done and at the time, I didn't mind the expenditure of time in the way I normally do. I scored 100% marks on both, despite being so tired that words occasionally swam before my eyes. I think the difficulty and doubt made me focus and double-check myself more, and the fatigue to the point of feeling uncommon silence and stillness within my mind helped prevent restless distraction or overthinking.
I went back to my games on Sunday, but felt less engaged with them. I think I have had the rest I needed. But, even if this level of strange, zen productiveness were entirely sustainable, I don't think I have a task before me that demands it. Until the next time to crunch on school affairs, I mean.
My foot has healed to a point that the pain is minor and of a different kind. Only the slight pain of touch on scab. It barely hurts to walk. I think I will go to the gym again today.
I listen to another episode of Welcome to Night Vale while walking through the halls, feeling friendly and zazen. The weather comes on, and the gentle, romantic sound of strumming guitar greets my ear, and I experience a strong mental vision of myself laying in a field of swaying yellow grass, half feeling as though you were with me, and half wishing that you were. My heart yearns gently like the satisfying ache of a well-exercised muscle. I pause, and look out of a window, and gently touch the glass as I continue towards my Intermediate Accounting class after the weather is over. I want to go for a long, long walk to nowhere in particular, to be walking. The temptation is extremely appealing. I decide that to do so would neglect my duties at this time, and I continue on to class.
The class is review. I do not focus on it. I sit and write this blog, and listen to the gentle, comfortably familiar sound of my professor going through example problems in the background. I occasionally look up and acknowledge the subject matter. I occasionally hear the input of one of my classmates, and once or twice there is a little chuckle of laughter across the class. I am not focused on the lesson, but I am happy and feel a gentle, abstracted affection for my classmates and my professor and the community that we are together, in the context in which we operate together. Various things seem vaguely and peacefully right about the world around me. This may be partly attributable to my having consumed a Monster energy drink this morning. Those things don't just make me alert; even when I remain sleepy and tired, they tend to make me bizarrely happy.
And I continue to miss you. This, too, seems vaguely and peacefully right. I miss you, Eoin. I love you. Cecil's deep, pleasant voice during part of this episode of Welcome to Night Vale had said... You are never the same twice. You are different at every moment. Continue to do what is important to the you that you are now, until you are not that person anymore. I smiled. I appreciated that part. I feel it is very much what I am doing, and a vital part of the perspective that has been what I am doing since the original light of determined decision in November. This is what is important to me now, and it is true to myself to act upon it. What happens later will wait for later. My priorities will someday be different. I doubt I will regret this, though. How could I regret taking calm, gradual strides toward being as I wish to be? Being where I wish to be. Being with someone I wish to see again.
On that Monday, I came into school and was unnerved and confused that the front doors were locked on a Monday morning. I had not remembered the short Family Day holiday; Monday and Tuesday classes were cancelled. The gym was not open either, and I would be unable to work out for my third time that week. I returned home, and slept long and through the day, and at some point, I scratched and pulled at some rough edges of the thick soles of my right foot, and restless, I pulled skin away that tore bloody at the end, and wound up with a patch that was thin and bare and painful to walk on.
I have not been to the gym for the past week, while I was being idle, and part of the reason is that I have been waiting for my foot to heal, and for the slight stiffness in my calf to recover after walking with a limp which puts more stress on different places. It seems to me as though my restless picking may have corresponded to a subconscious need for rest, and winds up working out quite nicely, although the fact that the way it works out involves temporarily hobbling myself is not ideal.
On Friday and Saturday, I turned my sights to work again, as the finished version of an important assignment in my Finance course was coming due. I worked for three and a half hours solid on Saturday morning before 6 AM in that special zen state I get into when I am under pressure to finish a document, in which the hours seem not to matter, as the document forms. Large pieces of writing produced, and then whittled and perfected and formatted step by step; like a drawing, increasing by stages, but not in a particular order. Just switching to adding or refining in some other place where additions or refinement can be made, and then coming back and adding to or refining the part I had just left behind to do so.
It is strange and beautiful and trance-like, and I think I always worry, as a deadline draws near, that I might not manage to fall into that alien and productive state of mind again, it is so different. But then I do. One of my team mates started out working on the wrong part, one that had already been done, and adjustments needed to be made at the last minute. I volunteered to take on part of his work and adapt the project to include the extra work he had done even though it had not been necessary, and it all worked out. I believe so, anyway. Our grades aren't in yet.
I have to say, I have been delighted with my team for this assignment. I think it's fair to say I have done the lion's share of the work on the project, but if so, I have determined lynxes pulling beside me. They show solidarity, they rowl in support and pride when we make a leap forward, and we make that leap together. My teammates have had my back and contributed resources I did not have by conferring with their friends in other sections to figure out segments of the assignment that I did not know how to proceed on. Their written segments showed effort and contained genuinely useful material, despite a few inaccuracies and some poor English. I don't blame them. For two of my groupmates, it is not their first language, and in any case some peoples' skills are not oriented towards writing well.
Mine are, and I spent some of those hazy, focused hours of vaguely happy-ish just-do-it-ive-ness stroking my chin and carefully rephrasing, reducing redundant statements, correcting spelling mistakes and structuring the flow of sentence to sentence.
I also made the report pretty, putting the original phrasing of each assigned question in italics at the beginning of the section that addressed it. It had a pretty header with all of our last names in it and collapsible headings, and I uploaded my current state of progress for my teammates to look at several times. They expressed appreciation for how pretty and comprehensible I had made it.
After the three and a half hours of solid work on the assignment report, I continued on to finish two quizzes for other subjects before sleeping, because they were there to be done and at the time, I didn't mind the expenditure of time in the way I normally do. I scored 100% marks on both, despite being so tired that words occasionally swam before my eyes. I think the difficulty and doubt made me focus and double-check myself more, and the fatigue to the point of feeling uncommon silence and stillness within my mind helped prevent restless distraction or overthinking.
I went back to my games on Sunday, but felt less engaged with them. I think I have had the rest I needed. But, even if this level of strange, zen productiveness were entirely sustainable, I don't think I have a task before me that demands it. Until the next time to crunch on school affairs, I mean.
My foot has healed to a point that the pain is minor and of a different kind. Only the slight pain of touch on scab. It barely hurts to walk. I think I will go to the gym again today.
I listen to another episode of Welcome to Night Vale while walking through the halls, feeling friendly and zazen. The weather comes on, and the gentle, romantic sound of strumming guitar greets my ear, and I experience a strong mental vision of myself laying in a field of swaying yellow grass, half feeling as though you were with me, and half wishing that you were. My heart yearns gently like the satisfying ache of a well-exercised muscle. I pause, and look out of a window, and gently touch the glass as I continue towards my Intermediate Accounting class after the weather is over. I want to go for a long, long walk to nowhere in particular, to be walking. The temptation is extremely appealing. I decide that to do so would neglect my duties at this time, and I continue on to class.
The class is review. I do not focus on it. I sit and write this blog, and listen to the gentle, comfortably familiar sound of my professor going through example problems in the background. I occasionally look up and acknowledge the subject matter. I occasionally hear the input of one of my classmates, and once or twice there is a little chuckle of laughter across the class. I am not focused on the lesson, but I am happy and feel a gentle, abstracted affection for my classmates and my professor and the community that we are together, in the context in which we operate together. Various things seem vaguely and peacefully right about the world around me. This may be partly attributable to my having consumed a Monster energy drink this morning. Those things don't just make me alert; even when I remain sleepy and tired, they tend to make me bizarrely happy.
And I continue to miss you. This, too, seems vaguely and peacefully right. I miss you, Eoin. I love you. Cecil's deep, pleasant voice during part of this episode of Welcome to Night Vale had said... You are never the same twice. You are different at every moment. Continue to do what is important to the you that you are now, until you are not that person anymore. I smiled. I appreciated that part. I feel it is very much what I am doing, and a vital part of the perspective that has been what I am doing since the original light of determined decision in November. This is what is important to me now, and it is true to myself to act upon it. What happens later will wait for later. My priorities will someday be different. I doubt I will regret this, though. How could I regret taking calm, gradual strides toward being as I wish to be? Being where I wish to be. Being with someone I wish to see again.
Monday, February 19, 2018
Dear Memory: Tempted Closer
My plan to beast through my Cost Accounting quizzes has been met by an unexpected obstacle. When I logged onto the publisher website to study again, I discovered it. Access to quizzes five through ten had been taken down unexpectedly, while apparently the course administrator adjusted which questions from the question bank would be on them.
I had not been confident I would do well charging ahead anyway, and it was taking a lot out of me to try. After all the recent stress I had been under, I was not altogether unhappy to surrender to this sudden enforced change of plans. Instead of working on Cost Accounting quizzes, I worked with my team on the finance project in a more relaxed state, knowing I could give as much time to it as the task might take, and enjoyed laughing with them while working.
Again I feel the strange sense of suddenly being surrounded by more reasonable people. In this case, people I can work with, who are willing to work with me. Even though I do wind up doing a lot of the primary processing, having company who are making useful comments makes a great difference. We sent one of our number home, because he was too sleep-deprived to be of much use and had only insisted on dragging his body to our meeting out of a sense of duty. He blessed us quietly for being so understanding when we insisted he should go sleep instead.
I have also spent long hours and majorities of days playing The Sims 3, and have been quite surprised that I continue to find it so engrossing despite bugs that make it through ErrorTrap, a mod which fixes most known glitches. I am not sure I'm done on my stint of it. But, yesterday (I suppose; I am writing at 1:30 or so in the morning after waking up feeling restless and alert after only a couple of hours of sleep) I took time out to do productive things; a bit of shopping, put away the laundry I'd done the day before, and pushed myself back to the gym.
I re-listened to Irish podcasts about the federal budget, and found myself thinking so much of you that I stopped focusing on them entirely, so I switched to listening to The Seldom Seen Kid again instead. My heart whirled and I felt and fantasized many different things, and snarled a little to myself while I thought no-one close enough to notice at the almost painful intensity of my want for you, and of how it might feel, when I see you again, to fear that that meeting may be the only one I ever get, if I present myself poorly...
As I thought might be the case, I performed better at the gym for taking a bit of a longer break, particularly on the strength elements. I upped my weights on several exercises and powered through them happily enough after willingly jogging (or something) my cardio for 20 minutes with more resistance than before. For the first time yet, every exercise I did, I did for three sets (I started with two sets each, and have started going on to three when I felt able on some particular one). By the end, my shoulders and arms felt gently stiff with muscle soreness.
I also listened to Savant while working out, and I thought of you, and showing off my strength to you. Also to Coda; I remember with a little crafty smile that he has a particular attraction to strongly-built women, and I feel it would be fun to meet him again with some confidence I may look sexier to him.
...The question of how to manage polyamory is one of those that I imagine could be a bit of a problem for us, dear Eoin. I put it off while I was there last time; the temporary nature of our relationship then offered its own answer. I was unlikely to find someone else during that time to get romantic with anyway, and was too much enthralled in infatuation and new relationship energy with you to have wanted any such distraction, so beyond my offering not to see anyone else for that period, and the mention of it as something that would need to be talked over if we were ever to want to have a longer term relationship, it was not really discussed.
It is kind of nice to feel so dizzied by thoughts of you again, although it seems to contradict my theory that the time of it were over. Perhaps my quest in Cost Accounting and the various stresses of becoming acclimatized to a new term had suppressed the phenomenon? Perhaps blogging stirs it up more than I generally acknowledge, and having spoken of other things without getting to you led the way for my mental habits?
Perhaps that thought of six months made it seem so much closer, so much more real, that I began to feel about it again. I almost wonder if I should after all break the silence far ahead of schedule to tell you, so that you can help me plan. So that you can weigh in on the question of whether I should come to Athlone IT again, or rather go to one of the other colleges. I don't know.
Changing such an integral part of the plan is unsavory to me, and the thought of breaking my silence to you when I had promised it far more so. Although... Whether I were to talk to you a couple of weeks before I expect to be there, or a few months... Perhaps the heart of it would be much the same..? Perhaps the factor that makes a difference is whether it is already set up that I will come back to Ireland? In that case... I should not, at any rate, until I have bought my plane ticket, I think. But that may be much sooner than anticipated, if I decide to make it my constraint.
I had not been confident I would do well charging ahead anyway, and it was taking a lot out of me to try. After all the recent stress I had been under, I was not altogether unhappy to surrender to this sudden enforced change of plans. Instead of working on Cost Accounting quizzes, I worked with my team on the finance project in a more relaxed state, knowing I could give as much time to it as the task might take, and enjoyed laughing with them while working.
Again I feel the strange sense of suddenly being surrounded by more reasonable people. In this case, people I can work with, who are willing to work with me. Even though I do wind up doing a lot of the primary processing, having company who are making useful comments makes a great difference. We sent one of our number home, because he was too sleep-deprived to be of much use and had only insisted on dragging his body to our meeting out of a sense of duty. He blessed us quietly for being so understanding when we insisted he should go sleep instead.
I have also spent long hours and majorities of days playing The Sims 3, and have been quite surprised that I continue to find it so engrossing despite bugs that make it through ErrorTrap, a mod which fixes most known glitches. I am not sure I'm done on my stint of it. But, yesterday (I suppose; I am writing at 1:30 or so in the morning after waking up feeling restless and alert after only a couple of hours of sleep) I took time out to do productive things; a bit of shopping, put away the laundry I'd done the day before, and pushed myself back to the gym.
I re-listened to Irish podcasts about the federal budget, and found myself thinking so much of you that I stopped focusing on them entirely, so I switched to listening to The Seldom Seen Kid again instead. My heart whirled and I felt and fantasized many different things, and snarled a little to myself while I thought no-one close enough to notice at the almost painful intensity of my want for you, and of how it might feel, when I see you again, to fear that that meeting may be the only one I ever get, if I present myself poorly...
As I thought might be the case, I performed better at the gym for taking a bit of a longer break, particularly on the strength elements. I upped my weights on several exercises and powered through them happily enough after willingly jogging (or something) my cardio for 20 minutes with more resistance than before. For the first time yet, every exercise I did, I did for three sets (I started with two sets each, and have started going on to three when I felt able on some particular one). By the end, my shoulders and arms felt gently stiff with muscle soreness.
I also listened to Savant while working out, and I thought of you, and showing off my strength to you. Also to Coda; I remember with a little crafty smile that he has a particular attraction to strongly-built women, and I feel it would be fun to meet him again with some confidence I may look sexier to him.
...The question of how to manage polyamory is one of those that I imagine could be a bit of a problem for us, dear Eoin. I put it off while I was there last time; the temporary nature of our relationship then offered its own answer. I was unlikely to find someone else during that time to get romantic with anyway, and was too much enthralled in infatuation and new relationship energy with you to have wanted any such distraction, so beyond my offering not to see anyone else for that period, and the mention of it as something that would need to be talked over if we were ever to want to have a longer term relationship, it was not really discussed.
It is kind of nice to feel so dizzied by thoughts of you again, although it seems to contradict my theory that the time of it were over. Perhaps my quest in Cost Accounting and the various stresses of becoming acclimatized to a new term had suppressed the phenomenon? Perhaps blogging stirs it up more than I generally acknowledge, and having spoken of other things without getting to you led the way for my mental habits?
Perhaps that thought of six months made it seem so much closer, so much more real, that I began to feel about it again. I almost wonder if I should after all break the silence far ahead of schedule to tell you, so that you can help me plan. So that you can weigh in on the question of whether I should come to Athlone IT again, or rather go to one of the other colleges. I don't know.
Changing such an integral part of the plan is unsavory to me, and the thought of breaking my silence to you when I had promised it far more so. Although... Whether I were to talk to you a couple of weeks before I expect to be there, or a few months... Perhaps the heart of it would be much the same..? Perhaps the factor that makes a difference is whether it is already set up that I will come back to Ireland? In that case... I should not, at any rate, until I have bought my plane ticket, I think. But that may be much sooner than anticipated, if I decide to make it my constraint.
Thursday, February 15, 2018
Dear Memory: Difficult Day in Stride
(after Unsupportive and Dance-X, same day)
I have had a lot to tell today. Yet there is more. It seemed sensible to divide it into these pieces. This piece is for you, Eoin. I feel as though you may have been on my mind a little more this past little while that the previous similarly sized while.
I'm glad to have been going steadily through school, trying to balance homework and classes and fitness and the process of trying to bring myself back to Ireland. I keep thinking back to something my friend Ampersand said, the last time I had him visit me. I was talking about my plans, and something about how I intended to arrange things so that they would work out well for me even if it turns out that you don't want me back. He said, that seems pretty unlikely.
It stuck in my mind. I think he may have been the only person who ventured to assess the chance. It was certainly something I appreciated hearing, and I wonder what this judgement is based on.
I can't say. But although the intensity and inability to control my tendency to think of you has faded over time, I certainly do think of you from time to time, and smile, usually. I want to see you again. I look forward to seeing you again. While I was getting out of the shower today, I thought to myself... Well, it's half-way through February now. March, April, May, June, July, August... September.
It could be as little as six months. It could be as little as six months that I actually see you again.
It's sensible to leave early. One of the college reps suggested I give myself a couple of weeks before school starts in order to have time to find a part-time job. So really, arriving half-way through August is entirely plausible, and if you are amenable to it at that time... it really could be as little as six months. Something about that just strikes as though it's unreal and also more real, both at the same time.
I recently took photos of some of my books, to add to my list of things to try to sell on Kijiji. I delete and replace the sale listings once a week. They get pushed down the list very fast, but there's only so much time I have to spare for it just now. Perhaps after my trial period quiz challenge. I think casually about what things are important enough or difficult enough to replace that I will want to bring them with me. My knife set, probably. My few issues of Transmetropolitan, likely. My cool old-fashioned pepper grinder, maybe. That would be it for kitchen things, though. The rest, better to find new ones as I settle wherever I wind up settling.
It's... exciting. And despite the difficulty today, and the uncomfortable coughing and watery feeling in my stomach and tightness in my calves after Dance-X, I note that I have stuck to my initiative of working out three times a week for three weeks and still counting. This is the most consistent with exercising I've ever been for an extended period. I feel my abdomen and my shoulders with curious, interested fingertips from time to time. I feel as though it's making a difference... and hoping that you will see that difference when you see me again may be almost all the motivation I need to keep it up...
I wonder at my determination, and the way my confidence has held strong. There must, I suppose, be something special about the way I love you, that it makes me stronger like this.
I need to eat, and I need to work on quizzes. But Eoin... I love you. And I am coming. Six months from now... I hope you're ready.
I have had a lot to tell today. Yet there is more. It seemed sensible to divide it into these pieces. This piece is for you, Eoin. I feel as though you may have been on my mind a little more this past little while that the previous similarly sized while.
I'm glad to have been going steadily through school, trying to balance homework and classes and fitness and the process of trying to bring myself back to Ireland. I keep thinking back to something my friend Ampersand said, the last time I had him visit me. I was talking about my plans, and something about how I intended to arrange things so that they would work out well for me even if it turns out that you don't want me back. He said, that seems pretty unlikely.
It stuck in my mind. I think he may have been the only person who ventured to assess the chance. It was certainly something I appreciated hearing, and I wonder what this judgement is based on.
I can't say. But although the intensity and inability to control my tendency to think of you has faded over time, I certainly do think of you from time to time, and smile, usually. I want to see you again. I look forward to seeing you again. While I was getting out of the shower today, I thought to myself... Well, it's half-way through February now. March, April, May, June, July, August... September.
It could be as little as six months. It could be as little as six months that I actually see you again.
It's sensible to leave early. One of the college reps suggested I give myself a couple of weeks before school starts in order to have time to find a part-time job. So really, arriving half-way through August is entirely plausible, and if you are amenable to it at that time... it really could be as little as six months. Something about that just strikes as though it's unreal and also more real, both at the same time.
I recently took photos of some of my books, to add to my list of things to try to sell on Kijiji. I delete and replace the sale listings once a week. They get pushed down the list very fast, but there's only so much time I have to spare for it just now. Perhaps after my trial period quiz challenge. I think casually about what things are important enough or difficult enough to replace that I will want to bring them with me. My knife set, probably. My few issues of Transmetropolitan, likely. My cool old-fashioned pepper grinder, maybe. That would be it for kitchen things, though. The rest, better to find new ones as I settle wherever I wind up settling.
It's... exciting. And despite the difficulty today, and the uncomfortable coughing and watery feeling in my stomach and tightness in my calves after Dance-X, I note that I have stuck to my initiative of working out three times a week for three weeks and still counting. This is the most consistent with exercising I've ever been for an extended period. I feel my abdomen and my shoulders with curious, interested fingertips from time to time. I feel as though it's making a difference... and hoping that you will see that difference when you see me again may be almost all the motivation I need to keep it up...
I wonder at my determination, and the way my confidence has held strong. There must, I suppose, be something special about the way I love you, that it makes me stronger like this.
I need to eat, and I need to work on quizzes. But Eoin... I love you. And I am coming. Six months from now... I hope you're ready.
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
Dear Memory: Still Working On It
Dear Eoin...
I have been writing less often, and directing my thoughts here toward you less often when I do. I think the period of intense heartbreak and missing you since the last time I heard your voice in October is pretty much done.
However, my peace lies twined with my plans. I have unpacked the things I call my "shrine", symbols and trinkets that I like to keep together and revere as little treasures. The red bull, the antique horn, a musical jewelry box which holds some stones and jewelry... And my skull candle, my oath candle. I have contemplated it with happiness. A few years ago, I burned this candle hollow, so that a pillar's worth of wax ran out and left its eye sockets and nose hollow, just as a skull is meant to be, and stared intently at it for hours as it burned, making a promise to myself, in a desperate and unhappy circumstance, that if I continued to be unhappy where I was, I would move. Put another way, that same promise could be phrased, "follow your dreams".
It gives me peace and happiness to look on it, because I know I have not forgotten the promise. I keep my oath to myself. For my joy, and my health, if I find I am not content with where I am, I will change it.
I think the wax shell is probably too delicate in its hollowness to bring across the sea. I am thinking that before I go, I will seek an opportunity to burn the rest of it in a fire, and re-confirm with the destruction of my oath candle the same promise that made it what it is.
I am still planning to come to you, although you come into my thoughts less often. The intent to go back to Ireland is always close at hand there. I am committed to it so thoroughly that the idea no longer seems at all unusual to me. The processes are perhaps a bit daunting, and of course it will cost me more than studying in Canada, but there is much at Fanshawe to help prepare me. I will probably need to work part-time while studying. It's something I have made a point of avoiding in my studies in Canada, but when it comes to bringing myself to Ireland... If this must be a part of my plan, for it to work out financially, it will be, and that is that.
I was so excited to meet the representatives of Limerick, Sligo, Carlow and Tralee. One of them was named Eoin, too. I must have suppressed a sad smile when I recognised the name and was able to pronounce it at a glance. There is a little workshop next week as well about procedures related to studying at a foreign college.
This morning, I came in to the school library and sat down to read and study my Cost Accounting material. I put on music from TouHou and wrote down many phrases and sentences from the material in my schoolwork related cardcast decks. It was a bit of a distraction, and no doubt slowed my reading. However, the music was so appropriate for background music while focusing that as I was packing up to get some breakfast, it was with some odd surprise that I realized turning off my laptop would require me to stop listening to it (since that is what I had playing the music). It was as though the TouHou tracks had been accepted as just what life sounded like on some level.
From that early morning on to late evening, I have been busily tending to one thing and then another... I was exhausted and barely taking anything in by the time my last class ended (it is the latest in the day of any of my classes). However, there were some fun highlights. The professor makes Google Documents and shares an editing link with the students; we pour in, over a dozen of us, and start building something there. Seeing it come together in several pieces at once like that, some formatting, some writing... It reminds me a bit of ants, in a good way.
If you were to wonder of me, I wish I could tell you that I still love you, and with this strength of mine, I will come to find you. I will be healthy and hearty as I can be.
You never read the Discworld books, I think, but... There's one character in them, a Mr. Carrot who has been in various books corporal, sergeant and eventually I think captain in the nightwatch. He is an immigrant, a human (by blood) who had been raised by dwarves, and his defining characteristic is that he believes so strongly in the good nature of people that they can't bring themselves to disappoint him and act more nobly and honestly than they do around anyone else.
At one point, he and a bunch of the other watchmen are aboard a ship in a storm at sea, chasing after someone who has kidnapped Angua, the woman he loves, also a member of the watch. The others had expected that he would be sick and restless worrying about her, but in the hours before they expected to land, Carrot was soundly sleeping with such determination that even the fierce tossing of the storm could not wake him. Since, as he had said, if he arrived in an exhausted state he'd be useless to actually help the woman he loved.
I feel kind of like that about you. Not that you are in need of rescue of course. Just... I want to be stronger for you and not weaker. I want to be better for every influence you have on me and not worse. You deserve that.
I have been writing less often, and directing my thoughts here toward you less often when I do. I think the period of intense heartbreak and missing you since the last time I heard your voice in October is pretty much done.
However, my peace lies twined with my plans. I have unpacked the things I call my "shrine", symbols and trinkets that I like to keep together and revere as little treasures. The red bull, the antique horn, a musical jewelry box which holds some stones and jewelry... And my skull candle, my oath candle. I have contemplated it with happiness. A few years ago, I burned this candle hollow, so that a pillar's worth of wax ran out and left its eye sockets and nose hollow, just as a skull is meant to be, and stared intently at it for hours as it burned, making a promise to myself, in a desperate and unhappy circumstance, that if I continued to be unhappy where I was, I would move. Put another way, that same promise could be phrased, "follow your dreams".
It gives me peace and happiness to look on it, because I know I have not forgotten the promise. I keep my oath to myself. For my joy, and my health, if I find I am not content with where I am, I will change it.
I think the wax shell is probably too delicate in its hollowness to bring across the sea. I am thinking that before I go, I will seek an opportunity to burn the rest of it in a fire, and re-confirm with the destruction of my oath candle the same promise that made it what it is.
I am still planning to come to you, although you come into my thoughts less often. The intent to go back to Ireland is always close at hand there. I am committed to it so thoroughly that the idea no longer seems at all unusual to me. The processes are perhaps a bit daunting, and of course it will cost me more than studying in Canada, but there is much at Fanshawe to help prepare me. I will probably need to work part-time while studying. It's something I have made a point of avoiding in my studies in Canada, but when it comes to bringing myself to Ireland... If this must be a part of my plan, for it to work out financially, it will be, and that is that.
I was so excited to meet the representatives of Limerick, Sligo, Carlow and Tralee. One of them was named Eoin, too. I must have suppressed a sad smile when I recognised the name and was able to pronounce it at a glance. There is a little workshop next week as well about procedures related to studying at a foreign college.
This morning, I came in to the school library and sat down to read and study my Cost Accounting material. I put on music from TouHou and wrote down many phrases and sentences from the material in my schoolwork related cardcast decks. It was a bit of a distraction, and no doubt slowed my reading. However, the music was so appropriate for background music while focusing that as I was packing up to get some breakfast, it was with some odd surprise that I realized turning off my laptop would require me to stop listening to it (since that is what I had playing the music). It was as though the TouHou tracks had been accepted as just what life sounded like on some level.
From that early morning on to late evening, I have been busily tending to one thing and then another... I was exhausted and barely taking anything in by the time my last class ended (it is the latest in the day of any of my classes). However, there were some fun highlights. The professor makes Google Documents and shares an editing link with the students; we pour in, over a dozen of us, and start building something there. Seeing it come together in several pieces at once like that, some formatting, some writing... It reminds me a bit of ants, in a good way.
If you were to wonder of me, I wish I could tell you that I still love you, and with this strength of mine, I will come to find you. I will be healthy and hearty as I can be.
You never read the Discworld books, I think, but... There's one character in them, a Mr. Carrot who has been in various books corporal, sergeant and eventually I think captain in the nightwatch. He is an immigrant, a human (by blood) who had been raised by dwarves, and his defining characteristic is that he believes so strongly in the good nature of people that they can't bring themselves to disappoint him and act more nobly and honestly than they do around anyone else.
At one point, he and a bunch of the other watchmen are aboard a ship in a storm at sea, chasing after someone who has kidnapped Angua, the woman he loves, also a member of the watch. The others had expected that he would be sick and restless worrying about her, but in the hours before they expected to land, Carrot was soundly sleeping with such determination that even the fierce tossing of the storm could not wake him. Since, as he had said, if he arrived in an exhausted state he'd be useless to actually help the woman he loved.
I feel kind of like that about you. Not that you are in need of rescue of course. Just... I want to be stronger for you and not weaker. I want to be better for every influence you have on me and not worse. You deserve that.
Saturday, January 13, 2018
Dear Memory: Trying to Slow Down
I wrote myself a checklist for today which consisted of very little big or taxing, and included leisure as an entry. It has been exams, and I have been dizzy with love and busy with study and unable to get much sleep, as I stay up late and my roommates always wake me with their conversations in the morning.
So I have had a quiet day deliberately for once. I set away my laundry, I enjoyed my tea, I ate leftovers and a shawarma on my way back home from a walk. The snow glitters like tiny flashing stars everywhere. Across the ground and in the air, the world around me shining with pinpoint mirrors, facets on a tiny flake of ice. Craft glitter could never match this, for all that it might be designed as though to try.
I Googled up some podcasts to do with finance and bookkeeping and Irish experience or systems in particular, and listened to one first episode of a couple on my walk. In one of them, the voice of the speaker sounded so similar to my dear friend Coda that I giggled to myself about it. In the other, the accents brought me nodding recognition and a reminder of the lecturer who taught my marketing class in Athlone.
The man at the pizza shop (who made me a shawarma) was good-natured and complimentary, happily chatting to me about all the diverse ingredients that make up the flavour, and shared the basic ingredients in the garlic sauce when I confessed I didn't know how to make it.
Half way along the long stretch of Oxford St. which is bordered in great sports fields and open to the wind, I paused and stared in some wonder at the sky. Lights... Lights on the distant side of the field stretched straight up in gorgeous vertical beams, visible high into the sky, diffuse with gentle auras. Some lights more reddish, others more bluish, and a couple thicker and brighter and yellow. I suppose, the light must have reflected off the sparse falling snow, to show those magnificent beams like pillars or signal lights up into the sky. It was worth stopping to stare at for a while, and I could not help but wish I had you with me to see it and awe at it alongside.
My phone had died of podcast. Its battery is rubbish these days and I hadn't fully charged it before leaving anyway. Otherwise, I would have taken a picture. As it is, I describe it here and encourage anyone who might read this and who lives in a place where it snows to look for the beautiful sight on a night when it is only just snowing in tiny flakes, so you can see into the distance.
I certainly must have overexposed myself to those Elbow songs in the past couple of days. Now I can hardly get them to stop interrupting my thoughts, and I am a little irritated of the feeling, even though they are good songs.
I am trying, for the moment, to calm myself down and return some focus on the present and near future, as much as it is habitual and forever tempting to continue daydreaming of meeting you again. I do not want to overdo it and lose sight of the broader existence and variety, and the options in my life. I hope to continue to find ways to enjoy my time here in more than just waiting for it to be over. I see myself in a broad variety of lights, as a student, a traveler, a romantic, a strong creature going on adventures, a restless youth barely able to pull myself together for an hour or two to study and touch ground between flights of fancy and self-indulgence.
Yesterday I went over to the college for a while just to get out of the house, and wandered into the library. There I found on a rack of books to be returned to the shelves a volume called Celtic Mythology, and I picked it up and sat down and read a while, a description of what disperate and scattered records shed any light at all on the religions and folklore of old Irish and broader Gaul or Gael culture. Records in Greece, observations written by their foes, suggestions in the content and the labels of some various works of art; statues, a cauldron somewhere... I read a brief English summary of the stages in the Book of Invasions.
Although I felt restless and tired and was frequently tempted to return home, my mind was also hungry for this context of some of the scant few things I heard others say while I was visiting, and one bit in particular, a mention of one surviving boat of a migration, which carried fifty women and three men, prompted me to blink to myself in some astonishment. I had heard that story before. Only briefly mentioned in this book, but I had heard a much elaborated version in a book I had read while still living at my mother's house what must have been over ten years ago.
It put me in a keen interest to someday take some time to visit other sites around Ireland, any place which still has symbols or record of these old stories, or special relevance in them, and see what it might inspire me to wonder. I thought, perhaps I could become a scholar of these great old stories someday, perhaps write conjectures on them... That, though, is another big and bold idea. It must be enough for now to be fascinated and pleasantly distracted by them, and keep going about my business of learning business, putting forth however much effort performing well at that must demand of me.
And it must be enough, for now, to bring my writing to a close and wish you and myself a good and restful night.
So I have had a quiet day deliberately for once. I set away my laundry, I enjoyed my tea, I ate leftovers and a shawarma on my way back home from a walk. The snow glitters like tiny flashing stars everywhere. Across the ground and in the air, the world around me shining with pinpoint mirrors, facets on a tiny flake of ice. Craft glitter could never match this, for all that it might be designed as though to try.
I Googled up some podcasts to do with finance and bookkeeping and Irish experience or systems in particular, and listened to one first episode of a couple on my walk. In one of them, the voice of the speaker sounded so similar to my dear friend Coda that I giggled to myself about it. In the other, the accents brought me nodding recognition and a reminder of the lecturer who taught my marketing class in Athlone.
The man at the pizza shop (who made me a shawarma) was good-natured and complimentary, happily chatting to me about all the diverse ingredients that make up the flavour, and shared the basic ingredients in the garlic sauce when I confessed I didn't know how to make it.
Half way along the long stretch of Oxford St. which is bordered in great sports fields and open to the wind, I paused and stared in some wonder at the sky. Lights... Lights on the distant side of the field stretched straight up in gorgeous vertical beams, visible high into the sky, diffuse with gentle auras. Some lights more reddish, others more bluish, and a couple thicker and brighter and yellow. I suppose, the light must have reflected off the sparse falling snow, to show those magnificent beams like pillars or signal lights up into the sky. It was worth stopping to stare at for a while, and I could not help but wish I had you with me to see it and awe at it alongside.
My phone had died of podcast. Its battery is rubbish these days and I hadn't fully charged it before leaving anyway. Otherwise, I would have taken a picture. As it is, I describe it here and encourage anyone who might read this and who lives in a place where it snows to look for the beautiful sight on a night when it is only just snowing in tiny flakes, so you can see into the distance.
I certainly must have overexposed myself to those Elbow songs in the past couple of days. Now I can hardly get them to stop interrupting my thoughts, and I am a little irritated of the feeling, even though they are good songs.
I am trying, for the moment, to calm myself down and return some focus on the present and near future, as much as it is habitual and forever tempting to continue daydreaming of meeting you again. I do not want to overdo it and lose sight of the broader existence and variety, and the options in my life. I hope to continue to find ways to enjoy my time here in more than just waiting for it to be over. I see myself in a broad variety of lights, as a student, a traveler, a romantic, a strong creature going on adventures, a restless youth barely able to pull myself together for an hour or two to study and touch ground between flights of fancy and self-indulgence.
Yesterday I went over to the college for a while just to get out of the house, and wandered into the library. There I found on a rack of books to be returned to the shelves a volume called Celtic Mythology, and I picked it up and sat down and read a while, a description of what disperate and scattered records shed any light at all on the religions and folklore of old Irish and broader Gaul or Gael culture. Records in Greece, observations written by their foes, suggestions in the content and the labels of some various works of art; statues, a cauldron somewhere... I read a brief English summary of the stages in the Book of Invasions.
Although I felt restless and tired and was frequently tempted to return home, my mind was also hungry for this context of some of the scant few things I heard others say while I was visiting, and one bit in particular, a mention of one surviving boat of a migration, which carried fifty women and three men, prompted me to blink to myself in some astonishment. I had heard that story before. Only briefly mentioned in this book, but I had heard a much elaborated version in a book I had read while still living at my mother's house what must have been over ten years ago.
It put me in a keen interest to someday take some time to visit other sites around Ireland, any place which still has symbols or record of these old stories, or special relevance in them, and see what it might inspire me to wonder. I thought, perhaps I could become a scholar of these great old stories someday, perhaps write conjectures on them... That, though, is another big and bold idea. It must be enough for now to be fascinated and pleasantly distracted by them, and keep going about my business of learning business, putting forth however much effort performing well at that must demand of me.
And it must be enough, for now, to bring my writing to a close and wish you and myself a good and restful night.
Thursday, January 11, 2018
Dear Memory: Five Years Ago, Three Thousand Miles Away...
It is the day of back-to-back exams from 3 to 7. I slept in to be well-rested, had a shower and a filling but not over-filling breakfast. And I remembered, as I was turning to head out; early, so I could spend a little time studying... I had wanted to listen to something new. I had been thinking I wanted to listen to that weird song you showed me, "An Audience With the Pope". See what else was on that album that I hadn't explored, because the names hadn't caught my attention as much. Your taste in music has rarely failed to interest me.
You might already see where this is going.
So I found the album, and put it on my mp3 player, and listened to the first track while I was crossing the road. Heh, I thought to myself. Well, it's refreshing. I haven't worn out my ears on it yet, and yes I think I might vaguely remember this... Not exactly the thing to want if my purpose had been not to think of you romantically, but then I already knew that.
But there is something I had forgotten about that album, if I ever knew it, that you surely know very well. The next track came on. And I was a bit stunned. The first song I ever heard you sing... Which, at first... I caught the mention of a cigarette and raised my brow at it as I gathered myself up and left your house, the very first time I visited it. In retrospect, with all I know now of that day, and having listened through the fullness of the song again... Well, I guess it may have been well on your mind from the disappointment when you thought I was informing you that I was unavailable.
And so I march on, and appreciate the meaning. It's not the crude encouragement I thought. It makes... sense now. Obsession, memories... They're addictive and habitual.
And then... There is something I had forgotten about that album, if I ever knew it, that you surely know very well. The next track came on. And I was a bit stunned. The song that you had sung to me, along that farm road. I knew there had been one, thoroughly a love song, that I couldn't quite remember. It expressed finding something that had been missing for a long time, but... I couldn't remember how. The melody, everything, was lost to me. I only remembered that you had sung it to me, and I had asked you whether you really felt that way, about me. And you had said yes.
I think I had almost started to convince myself that it had only been Skyscrapers, and I had mis-remembered. But Skyscrapers doesn't say that.
And here it is, to my ear. The same band, the same album, the very next song. A parade of little memories. I am struck with profound appreciation and a sort of reverence. And I'm nine months later, and... Huh. Well, would you look at that.
You might already see where this is going.
So I found the album, and put it on my mp3 player, and listened to the first track while I was crossing the road. Heh, I thought to myself. Well, it's refreshing. I haven't worn out my ears on it yet, and yes I think I might vaguely remember this... Not exactly the thing to want if my purpose had been not to think of you romantically, but then I already knew that.
But there is something I had forgotten about that album, if I ever knew it, that you surely know very well. The next track came on. And I was a bit stunned. The first song I ever heard you sing... Which, at first... I caught the mention of a cigarette and raised my brow at it as I gathered myself up and left your house, the very first time I visited it. In retrospect, with all I know now of that day, and having listened through the fullness of the song again... Well, I guess it may have been well on your mind from the disappointment when you thought I was informing you that I was unavailable.
And so I march on, and appreciate the meaning. It's not the crude encouragement I thought. It makes... sense now. Obsession, memories... They're addictive and habitual.
And then... There is something I had forgotten about that album, if I ever knew it, that you surely know very well. The next track came on. And I was a bit stunned. The song that you had sung to me, along that farm road. I knew there had been one, thoroughly a love song, that I couldn't quite remember. It expressed finding something that had been missing for a long time, but... I couldn't remember how. The melody, everything, was lost to me. I only remembered that you had sung it to me, and I had asked you whether you really felt that way, about me. And you had said yes.
I think I had almost started to convince myself that it had only been Skyscrapers, and I had mis-remembered. But Skyscrapers doesn't say that.
And here it is, to my ear. The same band, the same album, the very next song. A parade of little memories. I am struck with profound appreciation and a sort of reverence. And I'm nine months later, and... Huh. Well, would you look at that.
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