27

There are two times of the year that I tend to get very thoughtful, and rather depressed; the Christmas/New Year week, and around my birthday. Time seems to be passing faster, these days, than it did ten years ago, and every time my birthday rolls around I’m surprised.

I don’t know what being 27 is supposed to feel like, but I’m pretty sure that it’s not supposed to feel like 17, but with more responsibilities and less free time. I remember being 15, and thinking that I couldn’t imagine being 30, that it was just so old I couldn’t even conceive of what being 30 would be like. Now that I’m looking it in the face, albeit at a slight distance still, it’s an entirely different matter. Instead of not being able to conceive what it will be like to be 30, I’m having difficulty wrapping my head around the fact that I’ll actually be 30 in a few years. How did this happen? And not only that, but what the hell am I supposed to act like?

So far this year, I’ve gone to see more live music than I ever have in my life. Regardless of the past 9 years of drinking, I’ve still managed, on one or two occasions, to wake up the next morning, attempt the recall the night before, and winced. I recently bought a skirt that I’m fairly certain my mother wouldn’t approve of, and wore it out of the house. The only differences I can really see in myself from ten years ago, at 17, are that I’m less trusting, more cynical, don’t get a summer vacation, wear more make-up and high heels, have less money and less time, and have lived in a different country for the majority of the last ten years. Yes, there are differences – but certainly not enough that I feel like I should be 27.

So. Getting older. I vote ‘no’. The song below is from one of my current favourite bands, out of Australia, Powderfinger. I’ve been listening to it quite a bit lately.

These Days

It's coming round again
The slowly creeping hand
Of time and its command
Soon enough it comes
and settles in its place
Its shadow in my face
Puts pressure in my day

This life well it's slipping right through my hands
These days turned out nothing like I had planned

It's coming round again
The slowly creeping hand
Of time and its demands
It settles in its place
Its shadow in my face
Undignified and lame

This life well it's slipping right through my hands
These days turned out nothing like I had planned
Control well it's slipping right through my hands
These days turned out nothing like I had planned

Soon enough it comes
Soon enough it comes
To tie us down

Hmm.

Dear Victoria Line,

What the fuck was up with you last night? Seriously, we’re going to have to begin re-evaluating our relationship if this is the way you continue to behave.

I’ve been understanding since February, when we started seeing each other on a regular basis. I’ve understood your need for upgrades, and have backed off and found other lines to take on those weekends that you just needed time for yourself. I’ve wrapped my head around your early nights from Monday to Thursday, because you’ve been feeling a little bit off lately. I even know that you’ve been seeing other people on those nights and weekends that we’re not together, and I’m not upset. I know that you just need something that I can’t give you.

But yesterday, not only was there a signal failure in the morning but then, then you had a broken rail during the evening rush hour. A signalling failure is no ones fault, it happens to all the other lines too, but a broken rail? What have you been doing all this time, with your evenings and weekends? I thought we agreed to this break so that you could sort out your problems, and come back to me more put together and dependable? I ended up on that tourist-loving Piccadilly Line, man-whore that it is, smashed into the armpit of someone that desperately needed a bath and trying not to gag. Is that really how you want to end things between us?

I’m sorry to say this to you, but if this behaviour continues… I don’t know what I’m going to do. Please, for the sake of both of us, get your act together.

More than a bit tired of it,
me

Obsession

Recently, I joined a gym (it’s going well. I haven’t yet had an episode where I do the cross-trainer for 15 minutes and then have to go sit on the bathroom floor for half a hour trying not to be ill into the toilet. [This is what usually happens after I start doing exercise again after a long time]). I’m aiming to go a minimum of three days a week, and a maximum of five, although I’ve decided that if I want to do yoga on the weekend that doesn’t count towards my gym visits.

So recently, on days when I don’t have anything else planned, I’ve been heading down to the gym straight after work. I’m now getting ‘home’ (as I have to go home to change into my workout clothes – the gym is less than five minutes walk from my flat) between 7:30 and 8 at night. This isn’t really a problem – I have time to shower, throw something together to eat, although my meals are becoming much less inspired, and then sit and knit for an hour or so while watching TV or a dvd.

The key activity that’s been mentioned in that above paragraph is the knitting.

I’m going to a 60s fancy dress party (costume party, for those across the pond) on Friday and need something vaguely hippy-themed to wear. I found out about the party on Sunday, but didn’t have time to go and look for a costume as I had other plans. I dragged myself out on my lunch on Monday (I usually knit on my lunch break) to look in charity shops for something I could turn into a hippy outfit, and found a shirt – in size 8. It was perfect, but clearly some modifications would need to be made as it’s unlikely – barring some sort of body swap – that I’ll ever be a size 8 again.

I didn’t have any time Monday night to start making modifications to this top, so finally got a chance to sit down last night to begin work on it. I’d gone out yet again on my lunch (no knitting) to hunt for white thread, and so had all the things I needed to be able to change this top. Some snipping, some sewing, some trying on and two hours later I have an almost-completed top that I should look vaguely hippy-ish in, especially combined with the lovely necklaces I found at the same shop.

I noticed last night that I was feeling a bit resentful about the top. It was going to look pretty good (and hopefully fairly sexy when finished, as this party is taking place at a bar), but I was a bit angry with it. I couldn’t figure out why I was walking around for the past few days feeling slightly antsy and on edge, like I didn’t have enough time to do the things that I wanted to do and I was having a hard time figuring out why I was feeling this way.

Then, today, I read the Yarn Harlot’s post from yesterday and it hit me – I’ve barely gotten to knit in the last three days. Sunday, I was busy all day. Monday, I didn’t get my usual hour in at lunch, and then was busy all evening. Yesterday I again devoted my lunch hour to the hippy-top and spent my evening free time working on it. No. Knitting.

This was a bit of a surprise to me. I know the knitting has become a big part of my life since April last year when I picked up my sticks and strings and really started making things, properly (as opposed to the year at uni when I made scarves for Christmas, and then walked away). It just didn’t occur to me that it had become so…necessary. It’s how I relax, now. I don’t need to think, much, when I’m doing it. It’s active meditation, a time when I can just look at my hands and be no where else but where I am in that moment. After all, it’s hard to think about work, or money, or stress when you’re being amazed at how the blue is changing into the yellow is merging with the purple to make that really lovely colour as the yarn flows through your fingers.

Clearly, it’s moved into my life in ways I wasn’t expecting. And you know what? I’m pretty okay with that.

Ways to tell it’s June in London

1. The weather wildly fluctuates between around 26’ (I think that’s around 78F) and 10’ (maybe around 50?).

2. It’s inadvisable to leave your house without all of the following:
- Jumper/light coat
- Umbrella
- Water bottle in case tube is warm
- Sunscreen
Should you leave any of these at home, the weather will change depending on which you forgot. No umbrella? It’ll pour down rain. No jumper or coat? The wind will blow as though a hurricane is about to hit.

3. Blindingly white legs at every turn.

4. The second the sun emerges, the parks will instantly be filled by overweight, middle-aged men without shirts and women who have bodies you want to kill them for wearing bikinis.

5. Sunglasses. Regardless of actual sun. It’s summer, and therefore sunglasses must be worn.

6. People beginning to express a confused desire to drink Pimm’s and lemonade.

7. The profound fight my body has with pollen, wherein my body always loses. I think it gives up to easily. We’re not currently talking.

----------------------------------

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

- ee cummings

These days

Today is not my best day ever. I’ve had a rather emotionally fraught year thus far, and this week several things have sort of broadsided me. This morning, I was surprised by something that completely threw me. It wasn’t at all expected, either the surprise or my reaction to it, and I now feel like I’m on the edge of something that is going to make me either hide in my flat for weeks or do something spontaneous and idiotic – like randomly deciding that the place I most need to be in the entire world is Vietnam.

I don’t know how to handle this. And I don’t know how to talk about it here.

This is an aspect of blogging that I find difficult to balance – talking about what’s happening, happened, or my version of events, what I’m feeling and thinking, and at the same time not saying something that will hurt anyone (whether I mean it to or not), not really talk about matters that someone might not consider fit for public consumption. I like blogging, it’s like a diary that I don’t have to actually write in (because almost everyone can type faster than they write). It’s also a diary that anyone can read, including the people that are involved in my life. And as they’re involved in my life, it’s likely that they’ll make their way on to the blog at some point.

So I’m working on it. I’m trying not to name names that aren’t already in the blog-verse, I’m trying not to be too emotional out loud here in this space. I’m trying to hold my shit together, and not have it rain all over things, because sometimes talking about it doesn’t help it just makes things worse. It’s just getting harder to do.