Birmingham

Ani and I wanted another drink, a little after closing time.  We got in a taxi and asked the driver to take us to the Casino.  He asked which one and we sort of shrugged, not knowing Birmingham at all.  He went past one Casino and we thought, OK maybe he's trying to up his fare/ take us somewhere better/ more popular.  When he stopped, we seemed to be in front of a hotel.  A posh casino, maybe?  so we went in, ushered in by fairly friendly bouncers, towards a small desk.  £10 entrance fee.  Well this was unusual but, unsuspecting, we paid it and went in.

Ani said she realised immediately.  I didn't.  I had one glance at a shiny large "table" and wondered what kind of game it was, until I saw the pole extending straight up its middle.  Yes.  It was a strip club.  I realised why the discreet logo, Spearmint Rhino, had rung bells.  We had paid, so we stayed.  The decision seemed fairly simple.  We started in on Corona (A) and vodka (me).  I had a quick, polite vomit in the loos, then returned to my beverage.  As you do.  We watched the dancers: Fit, attractive, lithe bodies.  Mainly small boobs, though some were surprisingly upright.  We went to sit by the bar.  Better view and better access to drink.

I can say the following:

I have never before, and will probably never again, be offered a student discount on a lapdance.
I have never before, and certainly never will again, been in a position whereby a ludicrously rich man pays a stripper £180 to have myself and a friend in a booth, sharing a lapdance.
I doubt that I will ever have a lapdance again.

After the dance, and a pleasant chat with several strippers and a barmaid (all students), it was time to go.  The moneyed male offered to buy us champagne for the opportunity to "explore our bodies" with him at his home.  Of course, we declined.

The taxi driver who took us home was in stitches when we explained the bizarre situation.

I don't blame him.  I'm still smiling now.

3)

I feel fat.  I try not to go there again.  Constant punishment without crime.  Except that the unwarranted punishment is itself a crime.  The cycle just repeats itself.  So I try not to go there again.

I have done some stupid things, for want of a better way to express myself.  My body isn't really mine when I express them.  I am not really vulnerable when I use it the way I do, with the people I do them with.  Because I'm not really there.

I wonder if I seem as far away as I feel.  But how could anybody want what isn't really there?  A hologram-me, a ghost of me... a vampire?  How can anybody want someone who shrinks back the second the lights come up again?

I don't feel guilty because I'm not quite myself.  I only give, so I am never giving away, never giving of myself.  Nothing personal.

It's not awkward.  In the morning it's only me again.  The me who is easy at laughing and smiling.  I leave not-me behind and I forget.

So it's okay, except when it isn't.

2)

 All my words come out bold, underlined, italicised.  Not quite the urgency of capitals, which I have never much liked.  Just a bit too sharp, a bit too harsh.  I feel that I'm being unkind.  So I flatten.

On a page, my words now would have deflates Os and As.  The tall letters shortened, the Is undotted.  All the spikes rubbed clean then grubby by repeated attempts to erase.

You know you can use white bread as a rubber, if you squash it up?

I dunno why I write like this lately.  Metaphor.  Cliche.  Simile.  Like a GCSE student prepped to impress the examiner with her range of techniques.  There, a simile again.  It annoys me.  Like the alternatively spiky and deflated words I speak, it messes up my meanings.  It hides my real thoughts behind forced, pretentious literariness.

Because I don't see another way to get them out.

Except...

1)

I watch a snail edge onto a cigarette end in the garden.

I think: this cannot be great for the fag end, or the snail, or the garden/

Alanis Morrissette in Birmingham

From the back of the stalls, one unbelievably loud voice cries "I love you Alanis!"  Off the bat, Alanis shouts back "I love you toooo!" to laughter and applause. 

It's easy to see why.  She takes up all the stage, spreads her presence, knows how to mix classics with new work, sings with surprises.

Her voice is powerful.

Her words are powerful.

Me & K are a bit short to see her properly but even through the shoulders and heads of others (a huge demographic of fans!), she is pretty amazing.

Wuthering Heights: Andrea Arnold

There was a lot of wuthering in this adaptation.  Really.  Of course, it was necessary to set the scene.  In the book, the atmosphere is heavily dependent upon weather and scenery.  So true, some wuthering and a sense of height was due but... that many shots of moors and skies and birds made me wonder if I'd sat on the remote and changed the channel to Springwatch.  And, unpopular as this view might be/ uncultured as I may seem... I would have preferred more dialogue.

Still- it was compelling.  Quite beautiful.  and convincingly acted.  It was both original, and true to the novel.  That can be difficult to achieve.  Some disturbing, uncomfortable scenes showed what the novel evokes.  I didn't like them; they were hard to watch, hard to stomach.  But they took the unsettling underside of the story and brought it to the fore. So, the sparse dialogue left this: the bones of the original story fleshed out with its own dark essence.  Despite my own preference, maybe more dialogue would have spoiled that.  There was something quite pure about this adaptation.




Oh, and Heathcliff is black.  Haven't read a review yet where someone hasn't mmmm, ahhhhd or wowed about that.  Boooo-ring.

free-writing

odd lives.  our silent suicides & skin etched hearts: readable secrets engraved, uneraseable.  sleeved sketches of stories we tell to defy- to explain- sleeved sketches of pain. 
odd lives the intentional blind describe as outside- beyond- between the cracks in reason.  slips into the stream.  as we struggle to find- our own ways to balance our minds,
in the unsteady times.


***


A thing happened once.

I was very hungover.  Not sick and not headachey.  Just... afraid.  I got into the shower and felt (not saw) that the shower head had become a snake, or something similar.  I sat down, trying to breathe.  I knew that it would twist down towards me and harm me.  Later, at work, I knew everyone could hear my thoughts.

midsummer

- Because I have just learned how to "schedule" posts!!-

When the music has been going on long enough that it is only background, we stop moving.  We sit around the fire.  As the sky gets lighter and less predictable, we talk about rain.  We argue about what rain smells like, if not nothing.  We categorise different types of rain-smell, the rainsmellers attempting conversion of the skeptics.  The first train will be coming soon.  Some of us feel a second wind and start to sail back into the ebb and flow of the music.  Others, watching, find themselves even more tired.  Dancing looks effortless but for the heavy-limbed and light-headed, it is finally getting too cold.

Dear TLE,

I am writing to express dissatisfaction at the Employability course at the Walthamstow TLE Centre (Selborne Road).  My complaint is not about the course itself- in general, I found ******* and **** to be kind, helpful tutors.  Some of their advice regarding interview techniques was interesting.  Rather, I am seriously unimpressed with the updated CV I received at the end of the course.  To illustrate my reasons for this, I have highlighted the CV itself, enclosed.  I have highlighted in orange grammatical errors (which never look good when applying for writing-based jobs/ a degree in English Literature!) In blue, I have highlighted Key Skills that I don’t actually possess, which have been added to my CV for no clear reason.  In the case of being brought to interview, this could prove very embarrassing.  Obviously, I have been able to update my CV myself since the time of the course (Feb- March 2012.)  However, I am sure that you can understand my confusion at the conclusion of this course which is supposedly meant to help people gain “employability skills.”  I can only hope that others check their Cvs  before using them.  Please take these comments into account, as it seems obvious to me that a CV should at least be written in a clear, correct and at the very least, truthful fashion.

Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

Sh!

Friday night, the second poetry/ fiction night of my week.  After some faffing with the wrong bus-stop, I navigated myself onto Hoxton Square and along to Sh!, a "Women's Erotic Emporium in Hoxton Square."  I paid my £3 to get in, collected my first glass of free bubbly and shifted, late, into the seat behind my friends.  I was midway through one of KD Grace's readings, about a woman's threesome with two blokes.  So very not my thing, but to be honest, I didn't expect a lot of women's erotica to be very much my thing.  KD had a lovely way of reading it and I reckon if I had even half an inclination to think about "members" or bumholes, it would have been great.


Events like this are naturally going to be awkward at first.  There was a fair amount of giggling.  Some was conspirational, as with Meg Philip's readings ("ladies, you do know that feeling").  Some was outright hilarious- Meg again, reading out a passage on "persistent tongue-fucking of the ear."  Some was awkward (at least... I am guessing that I am not the only person who felt less than  fully comfortable at hearing the word "anal hooks" for the first time.)  But it was very fun and, of course, free bubbly does nothing if not ease nerves and awkwardness. 


I think everyone who read was pretty brilliant.  Mel Jones' poems had me giggling right through and their outright naughtiness made it hard to feel awkward at all.  I really enjoyed the way they flowed and the general aura of sexycalm she exuded.  She read them naturally, naughtily, no-nonsense-illy.  Fun.  Meg Philips' work had a great, easy conversational tone and, considering that it was "straight," was actually pretty hot.  And well, she's just so cute!   KD's writing was hard not to be impressed by, it was pretty adventurous.  Again, despite being not my "thing" there were some hot moments.  Who'da thunk it?

My favourite story, by Nonika, was about kissing- "just" kissing- in a rave.  The kind of intense moment with a perfect stranger that makes the only option turning, and running away. It was a really beautiful story, with funny moments and pretty moments and honest moments. Actually, it was one long honest moment.  I liked it a lot.

It takes something like serious bravery even to acknowledge thinking some of that stuff, let alone to write and then read it.  I don't think I would do it (besides anything else, there is a huge wide range of phrases and words I just do not like.)  So I was  impressed at the way the writers had thought, acted, researched, written and then read.  And at the way the writers and the staff helped us as an audience to navigate the inevitable blushes and shuffles and get involved.  There was a sexy-text competition, and Nonika's phone buzzed with sexiness the whole way through the night.  The resulting messages ranged from humour and gentleness to actual pure filth.  It says something for the way they handled the night, that people were able to come up with some of that madness (and yes, some of that madness was mine!)


GATE! was not.


Afterwards we drank a little more bubbly and browsed the shop.  Sex toys have never really held that much interest for me, except to say "what the hell would you need that for?" and flinch in vague imagination of pain.  But the atmosphere in Sh! on Friday and, I am assured, in general, was very un-horrific.  I would definitely reccommend going to the next reading.  For the fun, the cupcakes, the bubbly, the experience, the dare-i-say education?




http://kdgrace.co.uk/blog/poetry-smut-and-humour-interview-with-mel-jones/

Rationalisation

This isn't the worst state I've ever woken up in.

It isn't as bad as the time I...
or the time they had to...
or the time she said...

It isn't that bad.  Not really.

run-in with the avant garde

It was appalling.  Five women, dressed in black and reciting.  I could have finished that sentence with the word poetry but, try as I might, I don't think I can associate their recitation with that word.  I'm pretty non-traditional in my views on poetry.  But one view I hold pretty firmly, is that poetry should be accessible.  You shouldn't need a dictionary, an encyclopedia, and a knowledge of every book ever written to understand a poem.  You shouldn't need footnotes.

So this... dramatic recitation was just about the opposite of that.  Five women, dressed in black and reciting.  Turning over a deck of cards, to determine what to read.  Occasionally one picked up a piece of A4 and read something- read anything, it appeared!  "Economic.  Crises," for example, while somebody else walked back and forth saying "She bleeds.  Red." in a sinister voice and someone else sat on the floor, writing "Once there was a beautiful princess," (arguably the best written thing in the whole performance!)  Back and forwards, the blonde Scottish woman with the hefty cleavage announced "She bleeds.  Red!"  while the slim girl with the paling scars said "The economy is failing...."  and, walking in a circle around them, a dark-haired rose-lipped woman said things like "DNA, the key, the key to our identity".   Voices doomfilled with that irritating rising inflection preferred even by amazing performance poets. In the background, the sound of a man sweeping the floor highlighted the importance of meaningless work (a man performing earlier swept the floor, then tipped the dust back out from the pan.)

Meaningless work.  Says it all, really.

rubbish writer and mixed metaphor

I thumb my weaknesses like fontenelle, test their softness and then shy away from it.  I have always been less gentle with my own tender spots.  So their outlines repel me.  They remind me of the impulse to cruelty throbbing at my fingertips.

Lately I have spread myself too thin- Austerity Butter.  I split and split, between places and people, trying to be helpful and cheerful and kind.  When the constant motion stills, thoughts open beneath me like a trapdoor.  I keep a foot either side.  The paper dolls of split-me join hands again in the morning, tug the door closed, regroup, resplit and go out smiling.

I need a new blog, one with a theme.  Wiped slate and a story to tell (not mine.)  Something funny, collected, solid.  Something to concentrate on, while I pull the focus from my thumbs and the soft spots beneath them.  Something with a point.

A collection of stories (not mine.)

Jubilee

1) Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey never sing together. They must either a) hate each other or b) secretly be the same person.

2) Elton John has the same haircut as Anne Robinson

3) Prince Charles has got *old*! 

4) I also dreamed that old Liz was responsible for the stabbing on Leyton High road- is that treason?
5) Madness are going to take over Buckingham Palace- did you *hear* them calling it "Our House"?

***

Things here have been so, so busy- busy enough that I don't feel guilty for sleeping 22 hours in the last two days.  To be explained soon.  Maybe.

realisation

I am more OK now than I have been since I turned 13.