FEB.3rd 2008
and I’VE SEEN CAMELIA BUSHES IN BLOOM and hillsides covered in snowdrops!
Predictably this blog has suffered the slowing inertia that comes of cooling off… it is one of the universal laws: Big bang, the explosion of the creative muse, and life itself begins with a spark, with heat, and as life unfurls eventually the heat dissipates… we stumble through obstacles, ditches and doldrums trying to maintain velocity. Some manage to feed the furnace and keep up a consistently good pace for the long haul, others stumble in and out of the race… but eventually it all tapers off. Slackens. And stops -unless violently, unnaturally truncated. I tend to by cyclical in my efforts… Sisyphus had it easy –he only has one rock to push up hill. I always feel like I’ve got a half dozen on the go, and when I ignore one I have to go running back down hill after it -in a comical fashion…
'WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?' –someone is bound to be thinking by this point.
Well, I’m using obfuscating metaphors and references to Greek myths as a crutch to limp along a pathetic dog’s breakfast of excuses for not updating my blog since Dec. 18th 2007 -when today is Sunday February the 3rd, 2008.
Enough with the excuses! No one wants to hear them, no matter how clever or abstruse they are.
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COUNT DOWN
I would say there are 207 days until I return home, but I believe I may be home a little earlier than that. Possibly the beginning or middle of August. Partially because my dissertation topic may use Ione Betty McIntyre’s art work as the focusing lens to look upon my subject matter (an idea that is recent, or else perhaps I would not have travelled to Wales to decide to study a local artist’s work from back home…. Or perhaps it could not have occurred in any other fashion, as there is nothing like travelling to another country to give one perspective on what one has left in their wake.)
If I arrive home at the start of August that means that I have approximately 179 more days in Wales. The sands of time are running through the hour shaped glass just as the money is pouring out of my bank account… I am satisfied I will be tired, but happy when I come to the end of both. I’m not yet certain what my next chapter will be, and am reticent about trying to prematurely pre-write it.
I am as settled as I am going to be here. It is a strange thing to be in a place for a year. It is cloaked in a variable sense of impermanence. Constantly conscious of the finitude I find myself refraining, or resisting from nesting or putting down roots. Of choosing some discomfort over the future discomfort of having to dispose of/leave things behind. It is not a way to live for long. But it is a terrific way to live for a time! Ah –the adventure! Then I can return home to mundanity and the comfort of the illusion that when one buys something it owns you just as much as you own .
I have given in to buying a peace lily that sits upon my wardrobe, happily blooming. Mostly I enjoy the flowers, but sometimes I look at it with guilt and think –it won’t be long before I leave it behind. As I will leave behind a great many things. I have plans to put together a care package at the school for the next international student to come in, so they will have a start-up kit of art supplies etc. to get them going. The plants and other things I will either find good homes for, or install on the windowsills in the art school with the other plants. Anything else can be taken to the art school and tagged with ‘Free’ and will most certainly be raven-ized. Art students are nothing if not scavengers!
I should know! Just look at the accumulation around me –from beach stones to a new suite of paintings (it was a bit of a shock to me to discover that my Portfolio Review Power point Presentation contains 55 images –all new paintings- and that it does not include every painting, or any of the drawings I have done –and only a few of the embroidery pieces, or any of the 60 or so poems, or half dozen or so short stories, or the –very rough- sad scrawling attempt of mine to begin to map out a graphic novel.)
For better or worse I am prolific! (I say with a measure of chagrin) For what am I going to do with this abundance of creativity? I’ll be lucky if anything sells in this somewhat depressed economy where the finance minister openly uses the words ‘recession’ and ‘economic depression’ which leads to very cheery thoughts when repeated hourly on the BBC radio.
You know what they say about repetition. And people who create art with the expectation that it will sell. I paint to please myself these days.
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BACK TO THE BEAN
I’m extremely perky at the moment. I’ve just had my first cappuccino of 2008 at Little Italy –the only restaurant of any note in Aberystwyth. (they hand make every dish and then send it down a little food elevator from the top floor to the floors below).
FIRST COFFEE????? Well, I went full-bore for the New Years Resolutions –with the caveat that they would –for the most part –be just for January. (I was trying to keep it manageable while at the same time do some sort of penance to balance of the completely un-regretted and much appreciated excesses of Christmas –more about those later)
My New Year's Resolutions were (for the long grey month of January) were: to stop buying milk and to consume as little as possible when not at home, to stop eating all land animals –except for a few free range local eggs- and to limit or eat no sea creatures and then to see how I felt at the end of the month. I also decided to give up caffeine for January.
I also resolved to get back to palates/exercise classes and dance classes as soon as they resumed after the holidays. (The holiday season lasts much longer here than I am used to.)
Well, January has come, been and gone and I am happy to report I stuck to all my resolutions and not only lost my Christmas indulgence weight gain, but have lost an unexpected inch (unexpected inch? –just pretend my peculiar phrasings are poetical and roll with it) –I lost an inch from my waist –which I know from social conditioning must mean I have become prettier. Skinny= pretty in this culture, right? But too skinny= scary. I recall talking to one of my fitness teachers once, she was somewhat shocked to discover that I like my curves and though I desire to be strong and healthy I have no desire to lose my distinctly female hips and thighs. She actually stopped and stared at me as though I had uttered some sort of blasphemy. She shook her head at me, stating that she loved her ‘hardbody.’ I could appreciate her pride in her hard-earned looks… and envy her for her well-defined triceps, but… there’s got to be variation in the world. Someone has to hold up the tradition of beauty that was big back in the 1600’s.
Now: the dilemma –do I return to meat eating –my previous ‘social carnivore’ status, or do I draw some sort of line in the sand (a vegetable purity demarcation). There’s such a problem with pedestals, plinths, declarations of absolutes. I generally try to avoid such things. I guess I’m not ready to call myself a vegetarian again. If I see a rack of ribs that ‘has my name on it’ I don’t want to deal with the guilt of ‘falling from vegetarian grace’ again just because my inner cave-man sometimes comes alive –and demands BBQ sauce, bones and gnawing.
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THINGS THAT ARE DIFFERENT FROM BACK HOME and RANDOM NOTES
-not once have I worried that a tree would fall on me -or my home
-no power outages (just lots and lots and lots of internet interruptions)
-buying beets that are already cooked and packaged in a macabre fashion in vacuum packs (they don’t sell raw beet root –as it is called here- as far as I can tell.) It looks like a set of four hearts in a bag
-rugby is a very big thing (though a little confusing to me –I do like it when there’s the circle of men lifting a man up in the centre –how did they come up with that?) and rugby players must be awesomely tough –the game looks rougher than American football –but without the padding!
-large men sing loudly in pubs during sports games
-the words are hard to make out, but you can hear them a block or two away!
-going to a pub to watch TV –especially sports- is a v. big thing
-if you ask for sour cream you may get a bowl of salad cream
-sour cream is properly called soured milk (yum)
-a cel phone is a mobile etc. etc.
-the way I say castle is endlessly amusing to Brits. As is my pronunciation of the letter h
-people who like to go for walks are Ramblers
-I haven’t had to chop any firewood, shovel snow, carry water, gotten stuck anywhere due to weather, etc.
I haven’t been bitten by a single mosquito, spider, etc. (no complaints there!)
-haven’t been sick enough to miss out on anything (only a couple of mild head colds since I was here –knock on wood!
-you have to chase after teachers if you want attention otherwise they leave you alone to get on with your own thing
-education is a much more organic, laid back structureless structure here
-there are fewer hoops to jump through
-as a post-grad I can go to just about any lectures I want (again -no complaints here!)
-one can purchase canned BEANZ and BALLS
-my Chinese flatmate received a care package box of pig’s feet and chicken parts preserved in vacuum packed msg flavoured goodness
-what do I miss most from back home food-wise? Sockeye salmon (cooked on a BBQ) and SUSHI sushi sushi sushi sushi…. And the Shao Lin Noodle house
-they are only just considering giving UK police the right to take alcohol away from minors who are drinking in public!!
-UK police do NOT carry guns
-precooked hotdogs are available in cans, jars or vacuum-packed
-fruit and vegetables are best plastic-wrapped onto Styrofoam trays
-people really do eat beans on toast –and the beans are sweetened with sugar
-almost everything has sugar or worse –artificial sugar- added to it (which means a great deal of label reading even on foods that I would normally think were safe)
-bags that have ‘I am not a plastic bag’ on them are very popular
-I have a notebook that has ‘I used to be a plastic bag’ on it
-The next level of Ugg boots have just come into fashion –in plaid, floral prints, stars, etc.
-‘Oi! You’re really getting on my tits!’ Is a maternal expression used loudly in grocery stores to calm eight year old kids as is ‘shut it, or you’ll get a smacker!’
-Hot pants are back in style –even in January
-If you’re a female and you don’t wear heels and don’t have a man with you when you go out to dance at a night club with friends then you’re called a lezza and drunken girls in 3”stilt-high heels wearing 5” skirts and metallic sparkly tops want to pose with you and have their photos taken. ‘She’s Amish’ –‘-no a lezza’ ‘definitely a lezza’ ‘maybe an Amish lezza?’ giggles (I know I wasn’t supposed to hear this part of their conversation, but they were very drunk)
-A closing-out sale allowed me to buy dance shoes for £10 instead of £110 –and the business really was going out of business instead of just setting up for the next sale.
-Aberystwyth Christmas trees (if not artificial) have probably been dragged down to the beach or thrown into the sea from the seawall -which seems to be the tradition around here. It’s February but the now needle-less Christmas trees keep returning to shore like large pinecones, or some sort of Xmas-skeletons
-20 people showed up at Welsh dance last week!–almost half of them there because I can’t keep my mouth shut… It was fantastic having four full sets for some of the dances! …and then, a little late, 4 more people (I had never seen before) came in. They were Goths in velvet trench coats, black lace, leather and chains. Pretty, pale-faced, Welsh Goths with soft hands. There’s nothing like Welsh folk-dancing with a 6’4” Goth wearing chain-ladened black bell bottoms and 3” high stomper boots with steel toes –giving him a total height of 6’7”! It was like dancing with an armoured flagpole who wasn’t certain of his right and left. During the polka I feared for my poor wee feet!
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THE TREE’S LONG GONE
-THIS IS XMAS TAKEN OUT FROM UNDER THE HEAT-LAMPS AND RE-WARMED
I’m now going to plagiarize myself as I’ve written about my Christmas adventures in various epistles, and I don’t think that I could do the memories any more justice by rehashing them.
My apologies to anyone who is offended by the re-use of my words - instead of reworking them to serve them up fresh. I find it easier to write letters – the impulse to write while ‘speaking’ with a specific person in mind is more compelling than the idea of blog writing, where I know I will be more careful as I’m less certain of who will read it. So, perhaps dragging stuff out of letters will keep the blog a bit fresher… Perhaps.
Dec. 30th 2008
So… I'm back at Aberystwyth in my own wee room after an adventure… I spent almost a week in the Wilmslow area –specifically the even smaller townsite of Styal (they never actually built the town) but eventually the Manchester airport sprang up beside it and ate a good chunk of the farmland.
After sleeping on a fold out cot wedged between a filing cabinet and a computer desk in the Woodley house computer room for 5 nights my student residence single bed and ability to swing a small cat seems like luxury!!!
I’m also glad to hear the sea again, and to see it foaming about in a Winter stormy froth, flinging stones up onto the promenade and drenching me in a moment of witnessed public hilarity this morning when I put my foot up on the metal railing to tie up my shoe in a not-as-sheltered-as-I-thought spot!
Xmash dinner.....
I stayed at my Aunt and Uncle’s home which is directly adjacent to the Manchester Airport. An empty plane body sits just over their back fence –occasionally they airport staff light the segment of the plane on fire and do emergency training and drills. They had one on the 23rd. It was very festive!
My 12 year old nephew, Mattie (occasionally called Rattie) is batty about plane spotting. The only time I could get him off the couch to do anything that wasn’t plugged in or Wii related (there’s nothing like a young man obsessed with his wii to add a few smirks to the face. It was my wii this, and my wii that.) I got him to go for 2 walks… he wanted, of course, to go to the airport fence to watch the planes, which is a fun thing to do if the person you’re with is psyched up and full of plane stats. Amusingly Mattie wore one only sock all Christmas and played with his new remote control cop-chase cars, and his remote control mini helicopter (which landed in the goldfish bowl eventually).
Between Nana –age 96, and Gertrude and Teddy Edwards -85, and 84, Great Uncle Jim at 85, my various aunts and uncles (in their 50s), aside from Matt I was feeling quite youthful and in awe at having a traditional Xmas dinner with over 7 centuries worth of wisdom and experience around one table. It really made me think about what a life is for, and what sort of person/situation I would hope for in my later decades.
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When in doubt… eat.
Christmas at Woodley house was memorable; it was a treat to be invited to share in the traditions and life of another family. To see the 50 year old plastic ornaments on the tree, learn how to make trifle…. I did wonder aloud where the eggnog was at one point, and got a blank look.
No loss, there were puddings, brandy sauces, gravies, mince pies, chocolates, Christmas Cake, a million types of vegetables, with new wonderful condiments to try in a mix and match flavour fest.
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FAVOURITE MOMENTS
- seeing the full moon rising between the forked, truncated limbs of an old dead tree in the middle of a pasture. It looked like a 20 foot high wooden tuning fork with the moon nestled in it like a pebble.
-Old oaks frame the sky in leafless black linear patterns, that when seen in isolation against the grey cloudy sky remind me of patterns seen in biology books –the molecular branchings of vision and, somehow, if only I could get the mathematical formula sorted out, I could somehow unlock a key to how things grow, and why we are separate and yet connected, and what rate growth is possible in the trees occurs somehow on a more universal level. The microcosm reflecting the macrocosm etc. etc.
- making a homely wreath for the Woodley house front door using blooming pussy willows and other twigs I pulled out of a pruning pile from beside the old Mill. Who would think of Pussy willows blooming just after the Solstice? Some daffodil bulbs are already pushing up from the ground, perhaps they are confused. I keep waiting for winter to arrive in the UK. I’ve seen frost a few times…. yet everyone keeps complaining about the cold they are and how miserable the weather is! I feel like a Polly-anna as, form my point of view it’s all been GREAT. The weather changes rapidly and dramatically and I’m never bored.
Back in Aberystwyth –which is a bit like a holiday greeting ghost town -I wandered through castle ruins yesterday, soaked from the wave that caught me on my left side, but grinning like a happy fool –for one is either a happy fool in adverse weather conditions, or miserable. I tend to grin, because I know that getting bashed about in the rain and wind a bit only makes the cup of hot chocolate taste even better. Or in my case today I’m trying a new grain drink –no preservatives or caffeine –made from barley, chicory and rye. It’s most excellent and may become my new virtuous vice now that I’m charting a path back towards healthy New Year’s resolutions.
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EPILOGUE: FULL CIRCLE
I’d say I would resolve to update my blog more frequently, but it’s gone on to Welsh-time now!
Until next time, stay warm and hwyl!
Hax
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