Filed under: Uncategorized
UPDATE FROM REAL LIFE (Yahoo! news): This is my nightmare! This is it! In real life! Today! Thank god down under and not here! (Sorry down there mates!)
An island, a toe path, a canal, an ocean, a pier
An island, a tow path, a canal, an ocean, a pier
That is my mantra as I lie in bed. I do not want to forget last night’s dream about the island, which jogs the memory of another and another and another dream. Dreams with water.
An island, a tow path, a canal, an ocean, a pier
I type the mantra, hints to remember the dreams when they will have been fading.
And a digression: toe path? or tow path? It’s a path for toes, but I intuit from some recess of my brain that it is the path next to the canal where boats are towed. I do not think to investigate further. The dreams are demanding my attention.
Do not forget. An island, a tow path, a canal, an ocean, a pier
An island. My dream from last night. Water figures prominently. The water dreams flood my memory. I do not remember if these dreams are last night’s dreams, or if they are recently dreamt but no so recently as last night. I think they have spanned, let’s say, the last week.
The island. A tropical island with white sand and clear blue water. I find a dog; a white English Sheep type of dog with matted fur on its belly. This dog is for rescuing. I will rescue it. I run across a white South African family caravanning and picnicking on the beach; I tell them about the dog and they promise to take it in because they have children and want a dog. So I go to find the dog, and when I do, I look across the beach at the water surrounding the island and at the mainland and I wonder how am I going to get to the mainland with the dog. I think about how I would love to go swimming; the water looks inviting, but its dusk; it will be dark soon, and I have an irrational fear of swimming in the dark. I am certain I will be eaten by sharks if I swim in the dark. This fear of mine is real and known to my waking brain, not just dream-conjured.
The tow path.
Again, the aside. About the spelling of tow, toe path.
I am riding my bicycle along a tow path. To my left, there is a small, inland canal for small craft (to tow those craft?). It is green country, obviously England. There has been rain because I ride my push bike through some puddles. I reach a point where I can go no farther. Do I turn back? There are two cyclists behind me; my companions. I do not see their faces. They are waiting for me to decide what we do.
A canal.
A proper Venetian style canal. Wide and deep and leading out, if not to an ocean, at least to a sea. I am guiding, not a boat, but a raft. My pole is a proper gondola style pole. My raft is a proper Huck Finn type of craft. It is a perfect square raft; the water is calm, but there is significant canal traffic. I have to watch out for eddies and tides and currents and boats, and whichwaystoturn when I get to a junction in the canal maze.
I do find my way to open water. Like a salmon. I think that in the dream. That I have accomplished a salmon’s ½ life.
An ocean (or in retrospect a sea? Because this dream might be the continuation of the one above)
I am on an ocean liner. A Titanticesque vehicle with fancy people and glasses of champagne. My outfit is not appropriate. I’m wandering the wooden deck. I don’t know that I’m looking for a change of clothes (something smarter!) but that is what I’m doing. I picture something red, but before I find it, the ship lurches, sways, and turns on its side. It is sinking. Suddenly it is no longer an ocean liner, but just a rather large and swank yacht, the kind of thing you’d find moored up in Monaco or Cannes or St. Tropez. It is still in trouble, still on its side, and its deckhands (who are Hollywood style deckhands, big muscling things with well combed hair and deep voices and perfectly fitted trousers with belts. They are bellowing seafaring crisis orders with confident airs of authority, but the ship is still going down).
I am on an edge of the yacht. I’m going in the water. There is no question about it. I am in the water. I am afraid of sharks. But I have found a pole that has been plunged down some depths. It is like a massive telephone pole, and the tippy top is right here where I can stand, balanced safe from the sharks.
The Pier.
A dock stretching out over water. It could be a lake, but it’s a Sea. The pier is old. Planks are missing. The sky is gray, the ocean too. Choppy waves lap against the wooden beams that hold up the pier. One section of the pier is impassable. I will have to jump across to a little sub section of dock … this is like no dock or pier in the awake world. It is a stupid and ugly design that just happens to be practical and will save my skin in the present circumstances. At the sub section of dock to which I have jumped, a vessel – a massive Zodiac large enough to fit 30 or so people – zips around to pick me up.
The Mista is somewhere in the background in all of these dreams. Crossing the water with me, behind me, always out of site but there.
What’s all this about? The recent rain?
I received a response from the Haloscan people.
I had emailed them to report the fact that the ‘edit’ function under “comment management” wasn’t working.
Their concise reply informed me that the ‘edit comment’ functionality is no longer available.
What, did they run out? How am I supposed to correct my commentators’ spelling mistakes? How am I supposed to put words in their mouths? How can you take this control away from me?
They promise enhanced functionality.
When?
I am astonished by the pulling of the carpet from beneath my virtual feet.
You can’t just take functionality away!
But I suppose they can. Especially when you’re not a paying customer.
I consider leaving Haloscan. I consider upgrading to a paid account for the privilege of exporting all my comments from Haloscan. Then ditching the bastards. It would be a drastic move, and I wonder if I would not be playing into their hands. Maybe this removal of the “edit comment” functionality is a ploy to get a massive infusion of cash.
“If all the non-paying Haloscan customers upgraded their accounts and became paying customers, how much dough would the Haloscan people be rolling in?” I wonder.
I wonder if I’m not a bit paranoid.
I wonder how I could consider the Blogspot (Google!) people more trustworthy than the Haloscan people. The Haloscan people, afterall, have ‘halo’ in their name. The Blogspot people have spot (yuck) or Blog (hmmm). There is also that whole association with Goo and gle.
Filed under: Uncategorized
I’m hit with a realisation: reading impacts me.
Not just the greater, general concept of reading, which I quite enjoy; but rather the very specific act of reading, and, more specifically, the what I’m reading, has a material impact on me. The ‘material impact’ that is the subject of my epiphany is temporal …
Why not temporary?
and
Can a material impact be material if it’s temporal/temporary? Doesn’t seem very material after all.
What I’m reading influences my immediate state of mind. When I’ve finished with a book, my anima flutters about with a lingering theme or themes for some time – how long depends on the book and my particular susceptibility. Eventually the potency of the completed book wanes; maybe leaving a residue; maybe not.
This staggering revelation dawned on me over a period of months. It started with Doris Lessing. She had me thinking, thinking, thinking. My brain wouldn’t stop. It wasn’t just the thinking though; it had me feeling differently and walking differently and looking at the people on the tube differently. It put Anna Wolf into me, which I didn’t entirely like, but didn’t entirely mind either. I liked the experience, even if I didn’t always like her.
Before this thought dawned on me, I don’t think I would have said that I was impervious to the force of the words on paper that I generally absorb in the morning on the bus or in the evening under ground on the Underground. No, if you had asked me, I wouldn’t have said I was impervious. I would have scratched my head. I wouldn’t have known. It wouldn’t have been as obvious to me as it is now. After Doris and Anna, it was something else (less influential – obviously – as I don’t remember it now). More recently it’s been non-fiction – 2 pieces in a row – which again has me looking at people differently, has me looking at myself differently, has me thinking about my facial muscles and about what I reveal without saying a word, has me putting on a mock smile as I walk home from the tube in a bad mood, just to test out the theory that the act counters the mood. The jury’s still out on that one.
On a different note, I’m a mess.
What had been allergies is now a cold. Someone brought it over from America. I know who.
One minute I was fine (thanks to a Piritin knock-off). The next: my throat constricted, making it clear that it would ache with each swallow. My nose is running, not from pollen; but from something more insidious. I’m on the sofa because I’m trying to be considerate of the Mista’s nocturnal repose. It’d be nice if the dog came to keep me company, but she’s sleeping too.
God damn it.
And, has anyone else had problems with Haloscan? My ability to edit specific comments (how I normally respond) seems to have been disabled.
Dover Street is one of those streets perpendicular to Picadilly, parallel to Old Bond, that cuts through Mayfair and ends up at the Ritz.
On Dover Street there is a club with Polynesian flair. They serve communal drinks in ‘treasure chests’– questionable concoctions rumoured to contain rum and/or champagne and/or tequila with colouring and fruit garnishings.
Can I get something else? Would it be rude?
I don’t enthusiastically embrace the concept of communal drinks. Not since the Scorpion Bowl at the Chinese restaurant behind the student union in Cambridge* where we would go as underagers because we knew the Chinese wouldn’t card.
A server walked by. I asked for a beer. No double-take. No questioning look. Some of the others in the party had their own drinks — not just a straws plunged into a Disneyesque chest filled with hard core something or other. I wasn’t the only selfish drinker.
Waiters walked through the party offering hors d’oeuvres. I declined the first tray. Then the second. I was chatting with the hostess.
I suppose I have to eat something. She’ll think I’m poo pooing the poopoo platter.
As I should have. On the third pass, I picked up a sample — chicken on a stick. I do not enthusiastically embrace overcooked and cold finger food. I ate nothing else for the rest of the night.
After three beers, I found myself taking dips into the treasure chests. At first I tried to keep track of my straw. By the end of the evening everyone’s straws were everyone else’s straws too.
Disgusting.
Everyone else consisted of work colleagues. This was not a formal work do, but it was a gathering of most of the company. Someone’s birthday. Compatible colleagues.
But share straws with these people?
I danced until three in the morning.
Early 80′s Madonna and Outkast and Gloria Gaynor.
One of the work colleagues, a gentle giant with a shaved head – a deceptive look: a menacing face covering the demeanour of a lamb, received a bottle to the face because a member of the public – a short aggressive guy – didn’t like the look of our gentle giant. A strong face, little damage. The short aggressive guy was ejected from the match. We danced on.
The taxi driver tried to engage me in conversation as he drove through Chelsea. I couldn’t hear properly, my ear drums still humdrumming from music on the dance floor. I was afraid I couldn’t talk properly; I worried about slurring. I thought about that black cab driver who plied his lone female customers with drug-laced champagne and then had his way with them. My guy wasn’t that guy, but he talked to much.
Butters greeted me enthusiastically. I embraced her enthusiastically. The Mista didn’t even toss in the bed.
*Massachusetts
I had always thought “drawn and quartered” applied to that particular punishment (torture)whereby a person’s limbs are tied to 4 equally strong beasts that are then encouraged to gallop in opposing directions. A variation on this torture, I thought, included using some sort of machine to substitute for the horses, bulls, mules or asses that are used in the more organic version.
A quick consultation with the Internet, and I’ve learned that I don’t know nearly as much about techniques of torture as I thought I had.
I learned I was wrong about drawing and quartering … and I learned that usually drawing and quartering follows a bit of hanging. Interesting. And it doesn’t involve horses or machines at all. It just means chopping the person up, presumably in quarters.
So, drawing and quartering isn’t the term I wanted then.
I was looking for the word or phrase that describes the process of causing pain or death by pulling a person in opposite directions. So, again, I consulted the Internet. I searched for ‘torture using horses’. The results were disturbing. All I wanted was a vocabulary word to describe something very specific — something I associate with wild west westerns with bad cowboys and good cowboys and good hard working Christian folk tilling the land despite the woes instilled upon them by the bad cowboys.
I got more than I bargained for. Some horrible Japanese torture specifically designed for women using what they call a wooden horse. I cannot leave a link. If you want more detail, I’m confident in your Internet searching abilities.
I never did find the term I was looking for, but I did find a reference to it under a torture using the Wheel … and then I remembered the Rack.
The Rack!
The rack involved stretching and pain and dislocation of limbs! Similar to what I was looking for.
I am a person who feels like I am on a rack. Or being pulled by wild horses in different directions.
The Mista is playing ProEvolution on our PS3. I look at him, blissfully playing away. Not a care in the world.
Whereas I have the Internet to read. All of it. And I want to lie on the floor and play with Butters. And I want to write … to take the time to let words come. And I’ve got the orchids to water. And so many ands.
This is what the rack was like. Only maybe not so painful?
I’d been struggling with a decision, and thought I’d reached a decision.
No.
My company has initiated a bicycle-buying-eco-friendly scheme through which I can become the proud owner of a brand new shiny pair of wheels — provided I make my mind up by the twelfth of July. For a short walk across the street from my office and into a cycle shop and a small reduction in my salary each month (an amount more or less, equivalent to one week’s worth of coffee), I could be whizzing around town. It all adds up to a great deal. My colleagues are raving about it. So, what are my reservations? Why did I tell the Mista this morning that I’d made up my mind, that I’d like a bike, but I don’t want a bike?
1. A week’s worth of coffee isn’t something to be undervalued.
2. I once had a bicycle in London; I didn’t ride it much (maybe six times in three years); I gave it to a friend; It was stolen.
3. As a child, I was hit by a car three times (on three different occasions by three different people; I feel it important to clarify I wasn’t purposely targeted.)
4. Finally, and most paramount, space. We just don’t have it. The Mista’s bicycle already litters our hallway, or our patio, or our reception, or our spare room/office depending on the day, the weather, and the Mista’s compunction for ‘putting it away’. I don’t want to have to pull it through our hallway and into the patio each night. Equally, I’m certain my enthusiasm for riding to work will wane when I’m faced with the early morning prospect of hauling the damn thing out of the garden and into the reception, down the hall (God damn it! A smudge on the wall!) to the front door.
So it was decided. No bike for me.
The Mista came home from work this evening with news: his bicycle was stolen from the bicycle rack at the tube station! Now my most paramount of reasons for NOT taking my company up on their bicycle scheme has flown the coop. Now we have the space! Hurray.
Of course, I have to ask myself, how long will I have this shiny brand new bike?
It’s the first June since we moved to London that the Mista hasn’t imitated the Brits at Wimbledon. With the retirement of England’s perennial favourite tennis son, the Mista assumed that the chant had come to an end, “‘Com on, Tim! ‘Com on son!”
Centre Court teaches me that the chant hasn’t gone away. It’s just evolved.
“Com’ on, Ana. Com on!”
“Com’ on Andy! Com on!”
Tim Henman’s retirement hasn’t spelt the end for the myth of the hometown hero. Others have stepped into his shoes and ignited the imagination of the supporters in their union jack shirts. Most notably British hopes are pinned upon the young Andrew Murray.
Not as highly recognised as her male counterpart, Anne Keothavong, also gets the hoots and hollers.
The chant doesn’t sound very tennis-like; it doesn’t sound like it’s aimed at someone all in white; rather, it’s resonates with working class tones; it sounds as if good ol’ Andy or sweet little Ana need encouragement to climb out of a quarry or reach for a rope to be pulled out of a mine.
“Com’ on Andy! Com’ on son!”
“Com’ on Ana! Com’ on!”
Anne gave it a good go against Venus, but didn’t have the stamina to sustain her challenge. Andy gave the Brits what they wanted.
“Awright, son!”
Coming back from procuring a round of Pimms, my hands full and hoping the wind doesn’t whip around the wrong way and catch my skirt resulting in overly public viewing of my butt, I have a celebrity sighting! Not any old celebrity sighting but a double sighting. The inspiration for the chant himself, Mr. Tim Henman decked out in his commentating uniform, walks by me, surrounded by tough looking folk – his protection, no more than 3 feet away from me, my Pimms, and my perilously risque skirt. I’m busy making myself chuckle with the sound of my Mista shouting out, “Com’ on Tim” when I suddenly notice right behind Tim, now right next to me is Roger Federer. Oh boy!
Filed under: butters, cultural conundrums, going out, London places, present, work
I spent last night printing consecutive frames from Google Maps UK and worrying about what I’m going to wear to Wimbledon. Google Maps UK is my aid in getting me from place to place, and this morning I had to get from One Place to Another to Another. I’ve been to Another on a number of occasions, but infrequently by car, and never managing the vehicle myself. Today, it happens that I am behind the wheel because Butters needs an operation, and to get her to and from the Veterinarian’s office, I need wheels – private wheels because Butters is liable to pee or puke or worse. After dropping Butters for her appointment, I had work-related appointments of my own. The print-out slices of my journey lay on the passenger seat; I had superfluously marked my way with a red pen over Google’s blue path. The superfluous act with my red pen was intended not so much for reference but rather an attempt to etch the journey into my mind’s eye so that I wouldn’t find myself freaking out on the M3.
Have I missed my junction?
Last night, after printing and tracing and trying to etch into my brain this morning’s journey , I turned to my wardrobe, vastly expanded thanks to my visit to the USofA and the convenient exchange rate. Later this week I will be going to a corporate event where the agenda includes strawberries and cream and tennis whites and champagne or Pimms or both. A wise guy at work had me thinking I needed to wear a hat; thus the undue concern with my wardrobe. This morning I had a ‘doh’ moment followed by a confirmation email that cleared it all up.
Watch Wimbledon much on TV? Have you noticed the dress code?
Smart casual.
I love that designation.
No hat required.
Phew.
PS- If you are concerned, Butters is recuperating with a morphine doused patch and a little doggie cast.
We are on the open road between the two places I have spent my holiday. It’s just about high noon and we’re entering the little town in Huerfano (Orphan) County, which marks the half way point. I generally stop here – at the Load ‘n Jug – to fill up on gas, Coca-Cola and Sweet Tarts. It’s been a wile since I’ve done this trip with my mother. She’s been doing it more and more frequently since I moved to The Smoke. She suggests a bite to eat, and I immediately think of the Loaf ‘n Jug. She tells me she knows a place for a proper bite. I am impressed by my mother’s sense of adventure; I would never have ventured beyond the Loaf n’ Jug in this small town. I am, I recognise, a city-slicker at heart.
The place my mother knows is an unlikely-for-people-like-us place to stop. It’s called Georges. It’s a roadside diner, family restaurant, burger joint from some other era. The patrons are simple folk with cow shit on their boots and big bellies hanging over the top of their dungerees. The waitresses hand us a menu before we even sit down. They take our order before we get a table. They buzz around offering refills of ice tea and serving extra ice.
How does my mom know about this place?
It will be the last meal I have ‘out’ before going home.
Going home. It’s time. I miss Butters. I miss Petunis. I miss the Mista who left me here an extra week.
Have I done all the things I wanted to do? Have I bought all the things I wanted to buy?
Yes and almost — there is always more to buy with a 2 to 1 exchange rate. 3 week vacations are good. I’m ready for the Smoke, but will I be ready for work?
