Pages

Tuesday 24 January 2012

We interrupt this scheduled broadcast

Grounded, is what I am. Shackled, hobbled, paused, clamped. I have been hijacked by my own body; my will power, my freedom of movement have been subdued by a stronger force.
Something is growing inside me, an alien thing, the unwelcome expansion of a small organ. My body will kill me if this is allowed to continue.
I must go to the hospital, be cut open, have things removed. Then see the nature of the beast within.

I have the attention span of a bee.
I ache.
My brain cannot read text without stopping mid-stream. I cannot read, I cannot write. I can merely exist, see people and receive love and care. The only thing I have to give is my need. My awareness has shrunk to the size of my stomach.

But I will note this in the timeline of my life. Here it is; my hiatus. And hopefully, in a few months, I will continue, not unchanged, but as planned.

Monday 16 January 2012

Work

Work I have done for other people for money, taking the name of employment

I have cleaned, wiped and hoovered hotels rooms as a chambermaid.
I walked a dog.
I delivered newspapers.
I have picked strawberries.
I have worked on the checkout of a supermarket.
I have worked as a barmaid in 5 different pubs - a wine bar, a quiet country pub, a big town chain pub, a strangely decorated pub full of chain smokers and artists, a local town bar.
I spent one day on the front counter in a burger van.
I photocopied pensions as a temporary admin assistant.
I worked as an admin assistant for an examination board, first data entry and later examinations administration.
I worked in ASDA as admin staff.
I took money and filed videos in a video shop.
I helped gypsies and travellers to read and write, which actually meant helping them practice for the computerised part of the driving test.
I taught English to Spanish businessmen.
I chopped ingredients and washed up in a sandwich shop.
I worked as night staff in a homeless hostel.
I have stayed still, naked, for hours at a time as a life model.
I have sold pizzas at festivals.
I acted as a personal secretary/general dogsbody for one rich lady near London.
I cleaned an art exhibit.
I planted and prepared fruit, veg and flowers in a nursery.


Work I have done for other people for free, taking the name of voluntary work

I sorted and sold clothes in a charity shop.
I was a care and classroom assistant in a school for severely disabled children.
I helped at a summer playscheme for disadvantaged children.
I was a staff member at a homeless hostel.
I helped in the classroom of a EFL college.
I went door to door, collecting money for LEPRA.
I worked on a small plot of land, making cider.
I lived in a farm community, gardening and feeding animals.
I ran an albergue for pilgrims on the Camino to Santiago.
I helped in English lessons in a Bulgarian school.
I decorated tents to make them appropriately mind bending for festival goers.
I was crew for a festival bar/cafe/stage/cinema.

Work I have been made to do by the government of my country, taking the name of punishment

I painted the window frames of a junior school.
I cleared the gutters and undergrowth around a scout hut.
I carried buckets of gravel up a hill.
I laid a path in a graveyard.


Work I have done for myself, taking the name of self employment

I have sold vehicles.
I have taken a stall at festivals and sold vintage clothing, jewellery and my own hand made and hand knitted clothing.
I have sold clothes and craft supplies on Ebay.
I have sold illegal substances.
I have made small things from leather and sold them at festivals.
I have sold cider at festivals.
I served soup and cake to pilgrims in return for donations.


Work I have done for myself, taking the name of hobbies.

I have made pictures.
I have made graffiti.
I have organised art exhibitions.
I have taken photographs.

Wednesday 4 January 2012

How now

I went to watch the sunset; tramping the short hundred metres out from my house to the edge of the village where I could see the horizon. It was far away over ploughed fields, the earth turned from a grey soil, pallid and sundried to a gooey, melting brown. Earth from the deep underneath.

But two things happened and I didn't see the sunset. It's a shame I didn't as the sun was glowing a strong friendly orange, outlining the line of clouds above it in brilliant gold. The clouds were grey and smeared across the horizon but the undersides glowed a surprising pink, as if unable to contain their merry nature.

The first thing that happened was that, as I crouched at the base of the first tree lining the straight rocky road, I saw a walnut and realised I'd chosen a walnut tree to watch the sunset by. So I started to scuff around in the leaves, head down, looking and not looking. It is often the subconscious that will see patterns in the landscape, the telltale circular shape among the curled leaves. I lost my phone the other day; I looked on my bedside table....lamp, book, mug, no phone. It was only after a few hours that I realised I had only looked around the book and not at it. Or on it. There was the phone.

The second thing that happened, back in the landscape, was that I found a cow skull, upside down, full set of teeth, remnants of membrane stretched across the cheekbones and leaves rustled in the nasal cavity. Itchy. There was still a topknot of white brown hair clinging to the bare bone and two fine horns, black tipped, protruded from the nest.

I looked at the skull and the skull looked at the grass, my presence did not amount to much I suppose, a mere whisper in time, a flicker on the wind, stirring leaves for a second and then, gone.

I scuffed some more, making a slow circle around the base of the tree and thought about how unmagical the skull is to me. No shock of a new sight, no amazement at the majesty of nature, still struck wonderment at the purity of the process of decay. The great crawling nature, condensed into an off white cowskull lying beneath a walnut tree in a windblown, bare landscape.

Somehow this magic has become mundane for me. I just shrugged, in a way. "Oh look, a piece of dead cow" and I wondered if I could rip the horns off and use them for something interesting. There was a hoof lying in the road the other day, an abandoned dog toy. Have I gained something with this nonchalance or lost it?

When I looked up to the sky again, the sun had gone and dusky blue light was settling, darkening down upon the land. I trudged back again to the house, pockets full, and stopped to return an axe to my next door neighbour. I offered her some walnuts and she said "Wait, wait", leaving me leaning against the doorjamb, watched by a nervous dog on a short brown chain. A hen fluttered down from the top of the door and I could see a row of turkeys nestled, companionable. She returned and dolloped a beach ball bag of walnuts into my arms. "But I wanted to give you something!" I protested, useless, unintelligible and we both giggled as I pressed my walnuts on her, my paltry pickings. Yesterday she gave me a single hen egg.