I hear it's October..

As quiet and perpetually slow as things were 3 weeks ago, things are now bustling along with the velocity of three jobs. I am thankful for the sense of purpose that fills my shoes, for the boredom of menial tasks and the beginning of my teaching career.


I have little to say that I have not said before, and yet only a passing glance over my tea cup reveals the changes underway. At this time of year, Nasturtiums are running amok in gardens fat with flowers. Soon the summer burn will turn their tender broad leaves to cinders but right now the essence of spring is contained in the tiniest of flowers that sprout everywhere they aren’t meant to. There lies the truth always, in the smallest of things, in children’s sticky hands and the fleetingly small touches that make up a love. I’m waiting for my poppies to flower and the mint to grow into its container. While I wait, I hope tentatively that my strawberries will turn sparkling red. The four European seasons, I have come to realise, are ill-fitted to this climate, like a baggy t-shirt disguising the subtle figure, but nonetheless we note their passing. Just as we note the gradually gathering of dust on bookshelves that we have not often visited.

The busier you are the more you realise – you can live a lifetime in one moment. A moment of elation sat atop a mountain, casting my eye over a foreign city of delight, sticks in my memory. A breath of air as I roll along the river, homeward bound on a heavenly afternoon. An instant spent day dreaming about where my shoes will journey next in this world. The jingle of keys as love walks in the door smiling.

Sponge

My mind, my inner voice, is like a sponge. It begins to talk, you see, exactly how whatever it has been absorbing talks. For instance, if I’ve been reading Jane Austen my mind ponders breakfast like so “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a piece of toast in possession of peanut butter, must be in want of some jam.” I start declaring how ardently I admire this or that for it is exceedingly handsome, and no it shall not do, for work is simply tiresome and should rather be left for the maid to do. In this frame of mind, I make simply unbearable company. Usually I waffle and write in long, linking sentences. Just recently I read ‘The curious incidence of a dog in the night time’ in which the narrator and protagonist is autistic and writes in short definite sentences, I began to speak and write like that too. “I am nervous. This is a bad idea.” If I read in German I start asking for Wasser when I want water, say Danke Schoen and exclaim Echt? and otherwise process my thoughts in stunted German.


This absorption technique gets awkward when I get an Irish or Scottish customer and they say “How much is dat?” and I say “Dats 24 dollars.”

Oops.

On the itinerary for today

The Library is a splendid destination for those of plentiful time and negligible money. It’s an excuse to leave the house and seek out the society of books, in a very public display of intention and affection, which will not cost you the solar system and it’s many moons.

Twas in the library late yesterday as I browsed the shelves for a read not entirely Literary, in that virtually unreadable Virginia Woolfe-Kafka-Joyce sense, but one that’s blurb didn’t begin “Mary Little thought she knew what love and life was about until she met Ryan, her husbands estranged brother....” Oh! The Espionage! I sought something funny, but not pitifully lame, something to delight in that would not suck the will to live from my wavering eyes... In short – I went in search of a good book.

It was in this quest that I noticed that some books on the alphabetised shelves were ‘Fiction’ or ‘Romance’ while others were ‘Literary Fiction’. This term I had heard before, but I got to wondering, what on earth does it mean anyway? Are those books better, or just more nose-to-sky intellectual? For it seems we attach that term to the hefty, critically-acclaimed, multi-award winning books that make the majority of us go....

What?!

They are the kind of books that you might conceivably purchase to line a shelf in your house labelled “Oh yes, I’ve read that.” They are the name-droppers, the no-idea-what-it-was-about-but-ha!-I-read-it type of books.

A confession: I own many of these. I have read most of these. I usually don’t understand why they have been adored for generations.

Why do I read them? Because they are the books that are referenced by books that wish to be cool by association. They form the extensive body of those books referred to in sentences such as “This book is reminiscent of Henry David Thoreau’s timeless essay Walden...” I read them to broaden my mind. Usually, I get a headache. Literary fiction is all about the imagery, the intense layers of meaning, the unforgettable characters and usually, the fact that we have NO IDEA what the author was smoking at the time but, hey, it must have been good.

In the end the book I picked was labelled Literary Fiction. But what I’ve discovered is a gem of a book, a book that makes you go “Aww” and giggle, get teary and wonder how to go on when it’s over. And then, next time I need to sound like a wanker, “Oh, have you read this..?”

On Adulthood and other Disasters

I am so damn sick of being an adult. Here are 4 examples why I currently find being an adult a very unsatisfactory situation.


Example 1:

Bills, bills, bills. You pay one and another jumps up and hits you on the back of the head. How friggin injust.

Example 2:

Interviews. In fact the whole damn employment process. Construct a CV from the bits and pieces of your life. Deploy a winning argument to prove you have skills, disguise it in an attention grabbing but not overly self-absorbed cover letter.

Wait.

Receive a call. Go to an interview, dressed like someone with “Please hire me” tattooed across their forehead, nervous as hell you must then expound upon the aforementioned skills.

This is no time to change the subject.

‘Great, I’ll call you back tomorrow,’ says the Prospective Employer. Invariably, they don’t. Did they just forget? Were they never going to? How long do I wait before I fire bomb them?

Example 3:

Washing, sweeping, doing dishes, cleaning up after pets... you no longer have anyone to defer these jobs to. If you chuck a tantrum and absolutley REFUSE to do them, nobody will care. You'll just be the smelly person no one wants to visit.

Example 4:

In fact, when the going gets tough, you have no one to defer your life to at all. You’re in charge buddy, step up and make decisions.

You may be aware that I am a lady of many hats. Indeed of late, I have tried buckets of different hats on, just to see what it might be like. I have become fed quite fed up with the uni students hat, and have decided to cast it to the wayside for a time. Since then I have dabbled with the idea of a gardeners sun hat, but found it didn’t fit quite right. In sheer panic I reached out for any menial, wage-paying hat that would rescue me from destitution but to no avail; it was not the right hat for me.


Finally, this week, I have found my new hat. In the space of a week I have gone from a bundle of couch-bound tears to someone with a goal and a purpose; a busy-bee engaged in the business of becoming an English Teacher.

Here’s to unlocking the secrets of the English language and to finally having a hat that fits.

50c gem

In the early hours of a vaguely wintery Sunday morning whilst trawling the treasures of our local swap meet, I saw in the corner of my eye a book that called out to me. It sat atop a box of waterlogged, wearied and well-read looking books with the most wonderful cover I have ever seen. i.e. A sketch of a tree. Inside I soon discovered the pages spoke a language I knew not, were brown and felt like they had been left adrift at sea for decades. I had to have it, this 50 cent gem. At home I discovered tucked away within the dying damp-scented pages of this barely held together book, what looks to be a ration card of sorts, written out to the name of Kristine Jacobson. What is interesting is that it’s in English, for the month of May who-knows when. The book itself, Straumeni by Edvarts Virza, which google informs me is in Latvian, has another ladies name written in barely-legible cursive on the inside cover. Somewhere on the net I found an essay of sorts written about the text which says the book tells the story of an “Old Farm in Zemgale through the Changing Seasons". The author says Everything takes place as though seen by the eyes of the reader, who, like a traveller, is led through fields and over meandering streams in and around the Straumeni homestead and is invited to rest under the shade of the huge, leafy old trees and listen to the story of the old homestead, of the land and the country, and of the passing of generations now gone.

And, since I didn’t ask the two girls where they came upon the boxes of Latvian books, I’m left to wonder about the book and its reader. What did they see and where did they go before they washed up in fragments at my local swap meet?

Quote found here http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/litol-9-X.html

Welcome to the worlds stupidest argument, please, take a seat.


The culprit - a sock.

Well perhaps that is a little unfair on sock as it was the victim, after all, of an unprovoked attack by a certain canine. Which canine exactly is the crux of the matter. Or perhaps, stupidity is the real crux of the matter. After all, neither the canine nor the sock started the argument. In fact, it may have been a passing remark, a jest about the sock that set the wheels in motion or it was the fact that Protagonist A cannot bear the thought of hearing another opinion in Her house. Her house, you understand. Really, the nerve. But I’m getting ahead of myself here, lets recap.

The plot - Protagonist A’s conjecture is that Dog 1, belonging to Protagonist B is to blame for the destruction of one Sock, value $30 (why, I might ask, spend that much on socks?) Meanwhile, Protagonist B is of the opinion, based on actually being present, that it was Dog 1, owned by Protagonist A, that tore the garment to shreds. Much yelling ensues.

So! Where does the real blame lie? Who was the real destroyer of the Sock and how, it must be asked, does Sock feel about this dismal turn of events? Yes I am sure you are all dying to know. But let us pause a minute while the household erupts in a mudslinging fest and the non-combatants slip silently away – is this not the stupidest argument you ever did witness?

Certainly there are underlying issues, tensions, scandals and grievous wrongs just simmering between these four walls but who’d of thought, a mere sock? The proverbial fucking butterfly that sends the whole god-damned bus tumbling off the cliff side. All I could think as an innocent bystander in someone else’s moment of sheer stupidity was, my my, this is awkward, how to overcome the temptation to point out to all concerned that this argument was a new low for humankind? But that’s a bit like Switzerland waltzing up to Germany and England circa 1914 and going “Oi, you’re both numbskulls.” You know what Switzerland would have got? Socked. (Ha.Ha.)

People, it occurred to me as the bomb shells fell all around us, are remarkably circular in their arguing. Always certain that the other person just hasn’t quite understood and if they just say it again, a little louder, with a little more venom, they shall be prevailed upon to realise that they are incorrect.
Pity that this logic never has seemed to work.

Pity perhaps, that the Sock had not just got stuck in the washing machine or picked that day to up and disappear as all Socks must eventually do. Ah, the twists and turns of fate.