Sun comes up in familiar fashion,
World awakens as it always does,
Light laves leaves and then
reflects from windows that are curtained still.
Birds sing strong in silent air,
As people slumber through the ringing refrain,
“warmth is here” cry a thousand throats
their feathers glinting in a fresh new day.
This world is fine to the jaded eye,
No despoiler to marr the mood,
Solitude comforts lonely thoughts and
offers calm to a spinning mind.
I’ve been re-reading the Corfu trilogy recently and the wonderfully warm and witty works of Gerald Durrell have rekindled a strong desire to go and explore over there. I had wanted to visit Greece a couple of years back with herself but as ever the plans fell by the wayside as we followed our separate paths.
Having done some research in the last few days then it is looking eminently possible to do a solo trip later in the year, fly in, collect a hire bike and then stay on a camp site on the North East coast for a week. Certainly cheaper than a hotel/apartment, just need to find out about weather patterns. It’d certainly be an adventure, although to be perfectly truthful I’d still by far prefer to ride down cross country and get the ferry across, spend the time on my own bike rather than pay for a hire machine. See how much flights actually sit at I suppose, it may even be cheaper to do it that way given that I’d be carrying camping gear so could overnight on the way there/back.
It’s not an Oriental odyssey but that could be a massively fun way to spend a week or two.
Birdsong sounds fitfully in otherwise still air, avian voices gaining in volume as the sky outside brightens behind the blinds. The lumpen shapes of other houses squatting against the grey sky with single digits probing the air above the roofline – looking like cigarettes puffing smoke as central heating boilers fires up and the flues begin to belch water vapour.
Another night lost, both literally and figuratively. How is it possible to feel both so full and simultaneously so empty?
It’s tempting to do as I have so often and babble incomprehensibly, dear blog. To vent angst and emotional turmoil in equal measure, try to tame a tumultuous mind with the cathartic release of words that in person I never seem to be able to form let alone utter.
Not today.
Today is the culmination of a long weekend spent in solitude besides a brief meeting on Saturday. One of technical achievement and social failure, schooling hardware with scripts and making it roll over at my command whilst I ignore the outside world. A welcome respite, but tomorrow is another day.
Still. Regardless of anything else, I’ve learned stuff.
A long time a go a close friend said something that amused me greatly, a play on words concerning my name. After a somewhat exuberant evening involving a disagreement with number of patrons in a fairly seedy pub he quoted a piece by Kipling that went so – “In his life the wolf shall only lose one fight, and that shall be the fight in which he dies”. He raised a fair point as regardless of joking around I’m not good with losing when the fight is important, once seriously engaged then that’s it – I’m playing to win. Look at the way I’ve turned my mobility around in the last three years, after years of bloody mindedness and trial and error I found a means of working with the problem and improving the situation, it has been improving steadily since. To the point where I’m now generally able to move naturally and actually exercise properly, I can even spar at something approaching a decent level.
This brings me onto the losing. Last night I finally realised at the most visceral level that I have indeed lost a fight, a battle that was being waged on my own as the other side of the war didn’t want to be involved – she’d long ago made her peace and moved onto different fields, leaving me in a fog and stabbing at shadows alone. It’s a new feeling this “defeat” and something important is changing, as yet I’m not sure precisely what it is.
Sound of the rain beating a crystal rhythm against the window offsets the counterpoint, the syncopation of water whipped hard by wind onto the roof above me. No other noise beyond this, just an all encompassing wetness beyond the walls of the room, an oasis in negative.
I lay here listening while enfolded in duvet, sprawled alone in an oversized bed and groping for a way to shut down a remorselessly whirring brain. Failing.
Gief sleep.
I got to thinking about lines today. How they are used to delineate things, to regulate our boundaries and give shape to the amorphous mass that is a life. Currently there are aspects of life I would like to draw a line under, to end and allow me to move onto the next sum. There are other aspects of life that have a line drawn above them, places I will not go to – actions or even words that are so repugnant that I will not allow them. There’s another line, “I”. It also made me think about holding the line, something I’ve been bad at doing from an early age and show no signs of improving with. My instinct is to attack, to advance in the face of an opponent and forget defence beyond a cursory nod to the idea, probably the very reason that the three of us used to work so very well together but in all probability a major contributor to the stasis of recent years as there has been no enemy to fight beyond myself.
Having written this down I’ve just realised a major flaw in my mathematical metaphor. While it would be all well and good to draw a line under that sum you invariably have to carry the “1″, and like “I” that’s a line that won’t break.
Listening to the wind gust outside, empty air swirling through leaves as it rushes past and grabs the branches in playful exuberance. Shadows dance on the curtain where light speckles the white cotton, fast moving and elegant but utterly random while the street light by the bus stop stands stolid and imperturbable against the erratic blowing, casting a monochromatic kaleidoscope on the window in front of me through the veil of sycamores. I like these gleefully flitting shades, the fractured shapes are company on an otherwise empty night.
It’s always exciting when the head and the heart are in firm opposition on a matter. Then, I was happy to lay with her head on my chest, her arm carelessly draped across me at first and then drawn back to cushion her chin. Both of us quiet as our breathing deepened, just relaxing.
Now, I’m discontented. Annoyed at myself and the certainty that it’s not a position we’ll ever be in on her instigation, that while we’re close enough to be comfortable like that I’m just not someone it would occur to her to be that close to without express invitation. She simply doesn’t want it in the same way.
Therein lies the dichotomy, the heart isn’t concerned with practicality or the fact she’s not interested – it simply wants her. The head however is fighting a valiant rearguard, a vain attempt to convince the heart it is in fact mistaken.
Meh. Love sucks.