Fingers crossed

Forgive the overt superficiality (did I just invent that word, or does it exist?) of this post.
But after ages of not blogging, I am now overly fond of the sound of my own typing (this would be better utilised as an excuse to type up some PhD, but no matter...)

I bought these the day before yesterday.

Technically, reading glasses should fill me with utter dread.
Somehow, these do not.

I saw these and instantly imagined:
Short black nails + scarlet lips + messy hair + dark skinny jeans + boyfriend sweater (blacker than the blackest night) + lashings of pearls.

I might be mistaken utterly, and when they arrive, I might regret not having chosen the staider frames on offer.
But in the event that they do not disappoint, I am looking forward to some seriously Parisian street chic.

Please to wish one luck!

Banal, but so real in the moment

So M. and I had another old-couple quarrel this morning. We go through patches (well, they last for months at a time, so I should call them phases, shouldn't I?) where we don't disagree on a single thing. And then for weeks and weeks and weeks, it seems that we rub each other up the wrong way. Focus only on each other's cracks. Stamp over each other. Misunderstand. Snap. Scream. Walk away in the middle of the street with a sharp BYE!!
Today, I turned into Accessorise and he continued down the pavement. I switched my phone onto Silent, fuming all the while that he wouldn't call. But just to be perverse, hah! the phone's on silent so I wouldn't be able to pick it up anyway! I made mental lists of all the shops I could go to, to kill time and make him wonder where I was (knowing full well that he wouldn't wonder, he'd just assume I was still out shopping. Which thought made me fume even more, but no matter...)
And as I was walking to River Island, the winter sun bouncing off the golden trees in the churchyard and people swarming around me with their lovers, friends, babies, families, shopping, laughing, smiling, holding hands, I suddenly thought: Well this is nice. What if one day after I do that sharp-as-glass BYE, my words suddenly turn into my reality and bye actually turns into GOODBYE?
And you know how, when you're a kid, and you think about losing your parents for the first time, and are surprised by how quickly that brings tears to your eyes? I thought about my bye turning into a goodbye and suddenly felt tears pricking the back of my eyes, all on their own, instantly.
And all the rubbish about my tone versus your tone, our juvenile differences of opinion on God, the nature of the universe, the nature of people, the role of dancing in a happy existence, the right way to walk down the street, the right way to be a boyfriend or girlfriend just... disappeared. And all I wanted to do was run to Sainsburys and hug him and say sorry.
So I did. And the next time we part ways sharply in the street because one of us has an attitude or a tone, I hope I remember what I felt this morning and back down, say sorry and just hold his hand and shut up.

A thought, which perhaps you should put off thinking about if you've been feeling low, because thinking about it when stressed is likely to just be the last straw.
I'm keeping track of the run up to the next big climate summit in copenhagen, esp. the noises coming out of the US, India, China and Brazil. Then planning to write something about it. And part of that is watching lots of speeches. And today, again, I realised the difference between intellectually knowing something is wrong, and being horrified in your gut.
I've been thinking about climate change now for 4 years, ever since I first began studying it.
And there have been moments when I've been absolutely sickened by it. But today I thought this thought:
You realise how BIG the world actually is, how deeply ancient, how vast? And how much life it contains and nurtures and the scale of the processes that it takes to keep a global, interconnected life support system going? My god. And you realise how much time it's taken to evolve to this stage? 4 point something billion years, and every passing second brings up that number. And in the space of a few human generations between the start of the industrial revolution to now, we're fundamentally changing that entire system. Dismantling it systematically.
Don't get me wrong. The system is so perfectly self-correcting, after a tipping point, have no doubt that it will heal itself and get rid of the offending organism, or reduce it's numbers to keep its further actions absolutely under control.
But in the meanwhile, we're taking the ground out from under our own feet, and causing whole nations of creatures to simply tip into nothing. Not a single centimetre of the earth's surface is unaffected, now, by us, because the very air has changed.
I invite you, an individual, human, being, to feel, in your gut the horror of being, in this case, on the wrong side.
The powerful, all-changing, supreme, side. We know what happens to those in all our fairytales, in all our history.
Don't get me wrong. The wrong side is also a product of nature, and so it also has the capacity to correct itself, and it's taking baby steps, perhaps too late, to at least look at what's it's doing.
But feel it - actually imagine it - unless you're a member of an indigenous island tribe or a herder in sub-saharan africa, you, me, us, all, everyone you know and love, is on the side that is whipping the oceans up into storms, sweeping deserts further across the globe and buying, flying and discarding our own way into misery. Imagine it, sincerely image it. If everyone did that, and then knew what to change, perhaps we could hope that it won't go so badly for us in the end.

Can't explain, but this is the lesson I hope to learn today.

Note to self:
It is absolutely astounding, and completely disgraceful, Miss T., how you readily believe the worst things about yourself without question, without critique, and try to disclaim all the best things away as accident or fluke or a stroke of luck.

What a waste of the 4-point-something billion years of creation that were needed to make you, of the love your parents poured into you hoping something good would come of it, and all the time you spend away from the two people who love you most in world so that you can make something brilliant out of yourself.

And at the end of 27 years of all that, how is it possible that you still think that people are automatically correct when they think the worst about you, and deluded if they think the best?

Stupid kink in Miss T., head that makes her think like that: Correct Thyself! At once and forever!

Darling.

When we're at the bar, and the sun is setting outside and lighting up the wooden panels on the walls in soft amber.
And your shirt is picking up the lights in your eyes and you're flashing them all over the place.
And your lips are slightly parted and there's a golden flame of sunlight licking your cheekbones.
And you're fingering the back of my neck lightly, lightly, the way you do.
And that red wine is blooming slowly all the way from my lips to my heart, lighting up deep deep rose gardens.
And your gaze falls onto my collarbones and you say, "I can see your heartbeat". And of course, it beats even faster.
And then, outside, while the last of the fuschia dusk is finally crashing down around us and a light warm drizzle begins to fall. And I look up and can't stand it anymore and kiss you.
And you say you're in a hurry because the footie's gonna start. Or you can't because I'm smokey.
I feel like a giant garbage truck has run me over very sloooowly and tipped itself all over my insides.
And I love you, of course.
But God I hate you when you do that.

Thoughts in the morning on a day that feels like Something.

I am 27 years old.
I live in a white house with a blue-eyed boy and a chocolate-brown cat.
I research in environmental studies and today is the first day I will be talking seriously about what I want to do for the rest of my life.

I have two and a half hours and counting until it's time to pack up my things and sit on the bus and meet the man who might offer me job, or some ideas, or suggest I take some more time to think about things (more thinking. Please, no) or... nothing, really.
I might come away soaring or empty or utterly confused (again, please, no.)

It's a warm, summer day outside.
I will be wearing my new pink ballet shoes and trying to hide the spot I have on my left cheek.
Underneath the shoes, a tiny white sticker reads: 'These shoes are original ballet construction and will not stand hard outdoor wear.'
Suits me. I'm all about the inside today anyway.
And if there is a perfect pair of shoes to mark a new, uncertain and long inner path, it isn't clunky boots made for walking.
It's pink shoes made for dancing.

Until then, though, I will be reading through the notes I made last night and staring out of the window at the icy blue house across the street, framed by a limpid blue sky, and drinking my morning coffee and trying to just be present and calm.

I have thought long and hard about what I will say to him and I've run through the list of reasons why I would like to work with him until I'm blue in the face.
I have thought about what I could usefully contribute to the world if I work with him. What I can usefully contribute to the world if he shows no interest in working with me. What I can usefully contribute to the world if I write my thesis and go home and just start anywhere - even with just one child sitting across the street from my house, doing anything - even just teaching it to put off a light switch.
On and on and on. I've thought and thought and thought.

But this morning, this is what I feel:

I am grateful I still want to contribute something useful. It's been a long time since I've wanted to do that, and I'm afraid I haven't done as much as I could have. I am grateful that at least the feeling of wanting has stayed fresh and ever-present, always waiting to be used.

If nothing comes out of any of this. If my PhD has just all been a waste. If I am no good to anything anywhere. I will go home and eat lunch with my parents and hold my mother's hand as she watches the Bold and the Beautiful, and stroke Pasha to sleep every night and love M. every minute of every day and spend the rest of my fathers' life making up for the time I have been away and learning from him every minute of every day. I will love them as much as I can love anyone and show it as much as I can show anyone, every. single. day.
And that will possibly be the best and most good thing I will ever do anywhere in the world anyway.
So I will do that.
And it will be much, much more than enough, if that is the only good thing I ever do in the world.

I've listed out paper ideas and what my research interests are. But I wish I could simply say: I have learnt a lot from you, Supervisor-Sir. I am full of what you taught me. I can only promise that I: Always want to keep learning. Always want to help the Earth somehow. Always will feel heartbroken at the words Climate Change. Always will want to do something to help heal it. Never stop feeling like I CAN do something.
Use me.

Time to go get dressed.
Today feels like something.
It'll also be the day I find out if nothing can come from something. That's another post on quantum physics that I don't have the time for :)

Wish me luck.

Fuschia Rain

A note to the future:
I want to do insanely sexy things with your blue eyes. Tossed onto foreign shores by a fuchsia rainstorm and dripping flowers I want to hold your ribs above mine and crash into those shores, high tide.

Where shall we run away to? Where is the sky blue enough, where is it littered with stars, god an errant cleaner who forgot to sweep the floor. Trapped in fluoresence and words about faraway worlds, the girl hears the runaway sounds of: seashore, breathing, wooden beams creaking, high tide, low tide, crabsong, flute dances and the vibrations of rain-soaked fuchsia flowers humming their brilliance into an acid blue sky. Leaching delicious desire out of your finger tips. Against the hardness of cushioned computer chairs, she feels: The edges of wet leaves, dark green as forest hearts. The silkiness of warm saltwater in rock pools. Sand. The edges and crenulations of the landscapes that hide underneath your skin.

How do I stop planning holidays with you when all your colours are runaway gypsy songs?
The lover in me wants to roam the world.

Some day, far away, if I am ever left behind, I will dance across the silkiness of a map - a map of countries, or of sky - and pretend that it is your body that I traverse.