Dear Adam,

Thank you for your nice letter of January 12th.

It’s true, when I sent you a postcard mentioning a medical problem, I was definitely skirting around the issue. A pretty vague way of putting it. So here it is.

I have a large ovarian cyst, it’s swollen up out of nowhere to occupy the entire right side of my abdomen. I’ve gone from a flat stomach to a bloomingly pregnant 4 month bump in just 8 weeks. Cysts in themselves are not a great problem, apart from getting in the way when you’re trying to bend. I’ll have an operation next week to remove right ovary, cyst, appendix and omentum. The scary part is that a blood test shows a high level of something (ATP maybe?) that indicates it might be a rare form of cancer. Might be.

The cyst can’t be diagnosed until it’s removed so I’ll find out a week after the operation whether or not I had cancer. Which feels pretty neat and tidy.

What’s happening right now has been a whirl of blood test and scans, following the cancer alarm being raised. There was fluid in my lungs which appeared and disappeared just as they were preparing to draw it off. It’s been dramatic and worrying at times, especially finding a place to stay during the treatment. I’m very independent (as you might have guessed) and the thought of entering the post op period of great vulnerability in a place where I didn’t feel comfortable or welcome was a horrible prospect. But that has been resolved and I can now prepare for the operation in peace.

Another relief is that the CT scan showed no lumps anywhere else which means that I probably don’t need chemotherapy post-op. If this cyst does turn out to be a germ cell tumour then it will be out already and in the hospital incinerator and no other lumps means I just go into follow up treatment, regular scans .
So really it’s exactly as you’d hoped – serious enough to be impressive but not properly serious. I just need to recover after the operation, which is basically a caesarian cut. So a week in hospital and 8 weeks of no heavy lifting. I don’t know how mothers manage this with a brand new baby in tow.


I have half of another letter to you which I started in December, before events overtook me (as they have done quite often this year). I’m very aware that my correspondence has slipped, but the longer I leave it, the greater the backlog of events I have to relate and so it becomes more difficult.

Here, then, is June – December 2011
In Brief.

I went to Germany, bought a kayak, hitchhiked with it for 600km to Ingolstadt where I joined a group of people and together we set off to kayak down the Danube. I made friends, I annoyed people, I drank a lot, I found a boyfriend, I met hundreds of people of varying nationalities, I had amazing and crazy and intense and incredible and beautiful experiences every single day for 3 months, I was thrown out of the organised tour for breaking too many rules (and endangering my life) but I continued to the Black Sea anyway. When the tour finished I bought another kayak for the boyfriend...who I didn’t like very much by this point....and we kayaked alone through the Black Sea, down past Romania and towards the port of Varna, Bulgaria. We hitched a lift with a yacht outside the port of Mangalia, last town in Romania and had a mad 30 hours rounding the point towards the harbour, towing our kayaks behind the yacht and struggling for hours when they became waterlogged by the choppy sea. When I arrived in Varna I dumped the guy, sold the kayaks and lived on the yacht for a month while I searched for a place to live. Eventually I found a small, barely livable house in a small village in the NE of Bulgaria – free in exchange for basic decorating and gardening. I spent very little time there...3 days, then a visit to Serbia, 10 days, then a month housesitting elsewhere. But finally, for the month of December, I was there, preparing to settle for the winter, learning Bulgarian, meeting my neighbours and curious villagers, making tentative friendships, going to help in English lessons in the big school in the nearby town.
Trying, even, dare it be said, to approach the blank page and write something.

I wasn’t planning to come back to the UK but when it came to about the 20th of December, I got an urge. So I closed up the house and set off. 6 days hitching, a detour to Sarajevo and two lorry loads of Turkish tomatoes later, I arrived in London. A few visits to friends, a mention of the strange feeling I had in my stomach, a visit to the doctor and now here I am....nothing to be done but try and keep up with myself.

So there you are; it's been a while since we exchanged letters but now you've got a better picture of what I'm doing, lumps, bumps, travels and all. What's happening with you?

Lots of love

haveyouseenthisgirl

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.

Notes From A Dogwalk XIII

Dog rolls in rasping fallen leaves. A stick clatters to the ground nearby and we all pause, startled. We wait together for the intruder to Show Himself. Then, as if on cue, we relax together, returning to writhing, stick chewing, musing on life. The colours have gone now, no ecstatic fireworks, the final shouts of summer have died away to sleeping brown and dignified twigs.

A small stone rolls past me and on down the steep hillside. I will shortly resume my clamber to a new view, the brown one rests his head on my shoulder, waiting.

Notes From A Dogwalk XII

Scratch fingers deep into folds of skin, rough affection; tough love for dogfriends. No herds today, just a faraway horse and cart, heading to the woods for fuel collecting. This land is picked clean by foragers; no stray branches or quiet trunks, all is empty, swept. Maybe that's why I can't feel life in the woods, no rotting detritus, thick layers of squirming mulch, rich in damp wriggling rot. The blood of the earth is missing, where is the regeneration, the bacteria blessing, churning death back to life.
There's life but in a different way; heat and cooking for the village gypsy families, survival in a cold winter. To keep themselves alive they take richness from the earth, leaving stony ground and scrabbling trees.

Notes From A Dogwalk XI

The sun gleams on the yellow grass here at the top of the hill. The haze in the air is thicker today and it veils the land in a white blur, throwing into sharp relief the bunch of dry, petrified flowerheads, clinging to the stony ground near my outflung foot. One of the dogs is shedding hair and I can pull clumps of him out of his body and throw it to the ground. He doesn't seem to mind, standing idly, ears cocked to the shouts of the shepherd on the neighbouring slope. The hair lies like fluffs of scattered feather; more usually a sign of a frenzied attack. Here lies the shameful record of a bird murder. This dog is more commonly the perpetrator than the recepient of such an act. Let his fur lie here as a record of that day.

Notes From A Dogwalk X

Today, as I come to the edge of the ploughed field, I can see two jeeps moving slowly up the far hillside; I see that they both have men standing in the back of them and then I see that the shepherd moving across the flat field at the hill base has his sheep collected together, a small, tightly bunched clump of brown, moving carefully across the wide green. I see all this and I think Hunters.

Today I go West instead of North, through the scrubby trees at the side of the dirt track. I'll walk until the start of the apple plantation. And so I find myself in thorn trees and sharp bushes, all sprouting into multiple prickled twigs, like cancer. The bushes spring from the ground, curling, licking fire at me and the trees hang branches down towards me like groping fingers.

So I walk through fingers and flame towards the apple plantation. There are gunshots in the background and I think about fighting and war. About how all humans could be fighters; every single one of us has that in us, the only difference is that some would be better than others. I think about how lucky I am to have grown up in a country where fighting over my land, in my towns, with murder moving from house to house, is a memory more distant than horses and carts.

The dogs are nervous, they stand attentive, sniffing and listening. Strange howls come from over the hillside; they almost sound like a dog.

Notes From A Dogwalk IX

The leaves have blown away from the base of the walnut tree and I can sit on the thick gnarled rootlump and place my feet, boot heavy, on the bare brown ground. The air is thinly blue and the light hits a white haze on the hills in the distance. I have eaten too many sugary things and feel sticky and sick.

There are no leaves left on the walnut tree now, not one. The twigs spring out like feelers, branches, breathing alveoli and I imagine spongy redness enclosing them like an animal lung.

Notes From A Dogwalk VIII

And of all the things I'm thinking, I can only write about my body odour; how the dog wants to push his nose into every crevice and I don't care enough to actually wash.

These hills are a maze of trees and valleys, I can take a new route every day, find new views of the same village. Sit on a carpet of twisted leaves, rest back aginst another grey rock and watch the dogs watching things.

Sounds float up over the plain; a car revving a loud exhaust, chainsaw buzzing, dogs barking and I am reminded of waking up one morning on a Danube beach in Romania and hearing a village wake up nearby. Just a low, sandy island, thick trees lining the banks, no sign of humans, no cars, no horns, no music, no sirens. Just cocks crowing and dogs barking; a gentle animal cacophony.

Notes From A Dogwalk VII

Hot day, dreams of boats and Danube waters. The dogs stand poised in the sun, heat bounces off sleek coats. I'm lazy today, a morning of deep thoughts in the big town. Thoughts that slide away like melting butter, slipping from reach, back to the dreamworld. What Bulgaria is. What is Bulgaria?
A noisy market of homegrown veg. Gypsies slipping through the crowd. Faces worn, faces weathered. A thousand cabbages. Vans filled to bursting with huge cabbages. A hardy crop, no mango glamour, aubergine celebrity. Just cabbages, mild and reliable. Thousands of pale green footballs.
I hear bells, and goats start to drift over the faraway hillside. A man calls after them, unintelligible.

Notes From A Dogwalk VI

Today I wanted to write about scraps of plastic blowing ragged in the cold wind, scattered fragments of weathered litter; the consensual tipping ground, just out of sight of this village.

I wanted to write about the lacy drumroll of a flock of startled birds, wheeling away from the juicy brambles and up to safety.

But I lost my pen, it fell out of my pocket and so I had to settle for sitting in the silent trees, among the thick leaf carpet and settled branches, watching the dog rip apart a rotted tree trunk. Her nose wrinkled up in a savage growl as she worried away at the powdering chunks and I remembered the time I walked up a hill in Spain, taking a shortcut through the back of a village and how I found a captured wild boar, held prisoner in boards and wire and thick grey mud.

How this boar was round and brown and blind in one ugly scabbed eye; but most of all I remember how its nose was long and flexible, almost like the start of a trunk. It would explore you; gentle, enquiring, grasping, rubbery.

I never saw a wild pig before, only heard them at night when I slept outside; my fear gradually rising as I heard their terrible chomping and snorting, smelt their thick musky scent. It stayed on my bedroll for weeks; dogs would growl at it, hackles rising.

Notes From A Dogwalk V

Last search for rosehips, pushing winding fingers through prickles and thorns; catching my worn jacket, almost in holes, close to unsightliness.

Take these scarlet buds; chop and soak and boil and strain until you have a syrup. My cold weather orange; a guard against illness.

There is a carpet of flickered leaves, fallen in a slow shedding. My dog disappears into the undergrowth, returning with a fresh piece of spine to chew. The eternal fascination of new smells.

Notes From A Dogwalk IV

Today I have made it to the top of the smallest of the three hills that encircle my forest meandering. Now I can see.

I can see the dotted sheep on the hillside opposite; the start of the rising waves of hills to the Northwest that lead into the Balkan Mountains. I can see a flat chequered plain to the East; scattered blocks of vines, neatly aligned, curving round the feet of these gentle rises of earth. I can hear a train and I know that in the next valley runs the main line across the centre of the country; from Sofia to Varna, Serbia to the Black Sea.

The sunshine comes slowly towards me; trailing tips over each ripple of land and fuzz of treetops. One dog has a tree to chew on; the other is happy to push his nose into the wind and simply breathe.

Notes From A Dogwalk III

Sweet dreaming on a hillside, chewing sticks, rolling on grit and scrubby grass. Dogs bark in the distance and my village is laid out in front of me. No apparent road here; just a rise to hills and the village squatting inbetween. Small red roofs nestling in an expanse of trees.

In Spain I felt the essence, the richness of life, alive and present in the landscape. Bulgaria is dour in comparison, struggling. I have seen no vitality here. The land is not brimming, exuberant with energy.

The first rain comes, misty, drifting against my face. Tiny drops that don't know they're there.

Notes From A Dogwalk II

The orange shines from the leaves today as afternoon sun illuminates the treetops. The stalky stems and sticks of these undergrown trees stretch from sight in all directions. They are tight together, intermingling, grasping branches at malicious eye height. Bundles of frantic twigs emerge from the ground; the next generation biting at my ankles.

My stomach hurts; frozen cramp across the surface, muscles in tension, pulsing and contracting in shifting combinations. Underused muscles shriek in complaint and my body rolls in response to the dog lead pulling me, jerking.

Notes From A Dogwalk I

Tinkling goatbells warn of dog danger in the distance. I must veer left, avoid the encounter. Excitable dogs start fights. The carpet of yellow, orange, brown leaves. Shocking green seedlings poke through it; thousands of new lives shortly to fall by the wayside. The struggle for supremacy starts with just two rounded leaf dots. The trees are gnarly and twisted; nibbled by goats, they shoot prickles of new growth from their unduly shortened limbs. There is peace here but only in emptiness. I know it's Autumn, the time of decay, but I don't feel life in this forest. The sky is grey today and maybe I am too. Dogs interrupt. Streaks of running animals in the distance send mine pounding down the hillside to intercept. No fights but I must move on. Bells sound from two directions; one goats, one sheep. I must move on.

The earth will kill you if you try to kill it. Your body heals you if you discipline it.

Space, space, time and a place. My self expression is rusty; my method full of holes.

How do you catch a thought cloud?

My profound views on the workings of the universe gather in wisps; shaped by events and my mental landscape, rising slopes of sunny days and dark valleys of snide remarks. A perfect view floats above me; my thoughts, coalesced, condensed; then it sails away, serene, uncaught.

So, if you're ever in Bulgaria

and you get an urge for a tattoo....here's where you should go.

Go to Varna and find Shorty's Tattoo Studio.

It's a name on a buzzer down a leafy side street. Then a walk up a grimy staircase, I wasn't sure what I'd find at the top. But I found Plamen; he's friendly, really easy to talk to and, most importantly, he took time with me to sit for an hour and make a design together. He's so nice I even bought him coffee and banitsa the second time I went (but then he wasn't in so I drank it while I was waiting). Anyway.



My best tattoo experience so far.

http://shortystattoosvarna.blogspot.com/

Kitten fur and hope

Back lying, bored, basically. Not sure what to do., it’s just so comfortable here. Easy to dream the day away.. Cats tucked under chin, pushing my lips into soft sweet smelling fur. I am their mum, their caregiver, they lick my face and come to me for comfort. Five feeds a day, sleeping in my bed. Running around, frantic when I walk into the caravan. Come back here little one, calm down, I’m here again and I won’t go away for a while. Come and sleep little one, smell my breath and vibrate with purring. It’s addictive. The caravan is warm and soft, everything padded, cosy, cocooning. My wool lined retreat. Dogs howl in the distance.

And I’m sad somehow. And maybe it’s because I’m spending too much time looking at shit websites (www.lamebook.com?)...the scum that rises to the top of the internet. Distilled essence of the worst of lazy Western humanity.

Or maybe it’s that I’ve lost my traveling mojo. I’m not in cities any more, the heady whirl of life. I’m in the country now. Flat, brown fields. Corn chopped for winter feed. Trudge down one straight yellow road to a copse of struggling trees. Go back home to neighbours I can’t speak to and solitude.

I had the chance to live in a city; small, cheap, cold apartment but in the centre of a nice Bulgarian city. Sitting in cafes, drinking cheap coffee, watching the worn people and the stray dogs. Upstairs from a tattoo parlour. But it cost money you see and I don’t have enough to pay rent. So I came here for free; a cracked and empty tiny house in a cracked and empty village. The shop doesn’t sell vegetables; everyone grows their own. There’s a mosque here and no church. Goats are driven, turkeys forage and tractors rumble past my window. I arrived too late, there’s no garden so I’ve only been able to make rosehip syrup and quince jelly. My bourgeois winter provisions. My house is empty, I sleep on the floor. I made lampshades from twigs and tissue paper to cover the screeching bare lightbulbs. There are holes in the windows and cracks in the walls.

Or maybe it’s the come down from summer. I kayaked almost 3000 kilometres in 7 countries. I fell in love and out again. I was homeless on a boat. I did very stupid things and paid appropriate prices; exile and infamy. How strange that this is who I am; I never thought I would do those things. Great stories for future tall tales but at the time it was shit.

Maybe I can’t find the start. The tail of the knotted ball of story. So I ignore it and look at ecowhore or clickclackgorilla. The glowing lights of other peoples lives further push mine into memory’s darkness.

It’s a fitful storm lamp, my story, red chipped paint and delicate yellow glass. A curled wire lever raises the shade to light it and it throws a small comforting glow just a short little distance. The problem is, it runs on lamp oil you see; and that’s difficult to find in rural Bulgaria.