Here's a thought that makes me smile:
My fingertips touch hundreds, maybe thousands of different things every day and I am probably unconscious of most of their sensations. But when they brush against the Man's fingertips, even just in passing, my whole body notices, and my mind  stops. Every time, any time.

I like to think that if there are auras and personal energy fields, you'd be able to see something happening around my fingertips when I touch him. I like to think that on some level, there's an actual sound, like a crackle of electricity, that we make when we touch.

And I think: I've held... how many hands so far, with other men I've loved and been with? Dozens? Hundreds? And it was nice, of course. But it didn't spark my body and stall my mind. And that tells me something.   

The night the clock went back

I turned around in bed last night to see the Man curled up beside me, in a deep sleep.  A wedge of streetlight came in through the window and splashed across the foot of our bed, and  the chestnut tree rustled in the wind. Two leaves gone, four, golden summer dropping away one leaf at a time. The clocks went back silently, but I think I woke up at the moment that they did, and saw the timeless things around which the world turns. Golden leaves falling in the wind, streetlight, the fan of a lovers eyelashes.
I took it in, in the half-dark: Time passing, time stopping, time moving backwards. And us standing together within it.

It's what's inside

Lets: curl up together like two cats (me grey, you brown and white. Both purring) on the windowsill of whatever ruin we are inhabiting. In the bar of sunshine, fanned by the breeze. Why don't we: Discover the corners where the nightwind does not reach, where the broken wooden floor creaks, where it doesn't. We'd learn how to use the stairs without breaking them, how to lap water from any pool in the garden after the rain. Let's just Be here, together. Let's prowl under the thornbushes and watch the sunset, let the flashing street flash by. Let's sit silently side by side and just watch. Let's listen to the creaking house and let it creak. Let the wind play with the curtain or take the chimney down. We have what we need: a bed, a sill, each other's shoulders and chests and paws. Let's wake in the middle of the night to the sound of the rain, and in the morning to the sound of the setting stars. I want all this with you, as the flashing street clatters by. Let it go on, on and on, as we sit in here. Let them think it's a ruined house, abandoned and empty. We know its every creak. We love its every corner. I love every moment in it. Our palace. 

Dark have been my dreams of late

I've been dreaming again. There are times in my life when I simply crash into oblivious sleep, and others when I spend night after night after night wandering my emotional landscape. Sometimes the landscape is magical. Sometimes terrifying. I wake tired, sore even, and recognize that while I never left my bed, I have actually been on an inner journey.  

I've been dreaming of water. Flooded rivers and deep forest pools into which mysterious magi dive from great heights, from diving platforms high up in the trees. Dark forests on the edge of deep blue oceans, the colour of no ocean I recognise. I dream, for the first time in my life, of being pregnant. In these dreams I am wandering wild landscapes with burning sunset skies and I am anxious about whether I really am pregnant, or whether I am dreaming the whole thing. 

I wake frightened, with my palm pressed against my tummy. I remain unsettled through the day, half because of the landscape I have been in, and half because I want to return there as soon as possible. 

Who is to say which is more real. The forests of my dreams with their fire and water and freedom and panic, or the world in which I type these words. 

Lawrence

"I stand for the touch of bodily awareness between human beings," he said to himself, "and the touch of tenderness. And she is my mate. And it is a battle against the money, and the machine, and the insentient ideal monkeyishness of the world. And she will stand behind me there. Thank God I've got a woman! Thank God I've got a woman who is with me, and tender and aware of me."  

A quote that made me smile, inwardly and outwardly. 

Some quotes I come across are a challenge and a question mark and an exclamation point.  They raise the internal eyebrow, they make me look twice and wonder.  Others are a homecoming and a flush of recognition and an affirmation. 

I've just finished Lady Chatterley's Lover for the first time.  I fully intend to read it again and then perhaps I might don a more critical stance - though that seems to be totally against the spirit of the book actually.  To me anyway, at this time.   Because so much of it was a flush of recognition and a warm homecoming.  

Words are so important. Perhaps it's feeble-minded of me to only fully come to appreciate the reality of something once it's been put into words.  To say YES! to it once someone as talented as Lawrence has been able to articulate it for me.  But so what.  Bette to come to a YES! than to never come to it at all.   

I felt the YES! from cover to cover. 

I thought about the Man and how I feel when we are together.  I speak only for  myself in this, as who knows what is going on behind those eyes of his.  But for me, this is what we 'stand for'.  A world apart from the 'insentient ideal monkeyishness'.  A different wonderland, just as valid.  There are many things far from ideal about 'us'.  I'm not going to list them, for it doesn't matter.  But there is nothing monkeyishness.  Nothing farcical, nothing made of superficial appearance, I think is what Lawrence means.  Nothing of the mechanical, the socially ordained, the socially constrained.  Of course, it creeps in. But I think we're trying to live and build a way around it, imperfect as it might be, transient as it might be (though I hope it isn't!) It's worth a try, and we're trying. Without struggle.  

We assert and re-assert, without ever having explicitly agreeing to do so, the intimate, the soft, the warm, the unspoken, the tender, the kind.  He is bringing me towards that part of myself, in a deeper way than I could have alone. In a more adventurous way, in a more lived way.  I must have wanted that, and I didn't know I did. I fought against that need, for a long time. But he stands for the touch of tenderness.  And does not fight it. And holding my hand, he is walking me towards it, quietly, without even knowing it. 

Postcrossing: Lviv, Ukraine

So a few days ago I received another Postcrossing postcard, this time from a girl in Lviv, Ukraine. (Pronounced, roughly, as lev-iu on the Wikipedia site and as Le-viv by the BBC). If you're into football, you'll know the city as the host of the Euro 2012. 

I'm not into football, and again, I hadn't heard of it. So I googled.   

I won't try to summarize this incredibly detailed Wikipedia article - it describes what seems to be a really vibrant city! Lonely Planet calls it "mysterious, edgy and architecturally lovely", and says that its citizens boast that it is Ukraine's "least Soviet city" (I'm guessing that's meant to endear it to us) :) 

My postcrossing friend recommends it for coffee.  And since I'm totally addicted to caffeine, this got my attention! She says her city is famous for the best coffee in the world. 

And her city's tourist office appears to agree with her (as does the Ukrainian tourist board). Apparently this is a city where there is nothing more offensive than instant coffee. I HEAR THAT! 

And they host a coffee festival every year! 

Here's a BBC video on coffee, chocolate and beer in the city (though as one commentator pointed out in the comment threads here: I wondered why she is saying thank you in Russian?) 

I keep thinking and thinking and thinking (and feeling and feeling and feeling) about my Father and Mother. About the fact of my Father's illness and my Mother's sadness and struggle to care for him while maintaining some kind of independent life. About what I should really be doing, about what I really want to be doing. What is my role and how do I really decide out of love rather than fear and guilt.

There's no way to explain to someone who hasn't been in my shoes how much of a journey I've taken to be even be able to type that last sentence and really think I know what I'm saying.
It's been a long journey since March.
That (I think?) is when my Father fell sick and was hospitalised again.  We've been through this before, I thought. We'll go through it again. Here we go. I was so practiced. My Mother phoned. I heard that beeping on the other end, before I heard her voice or just as I heard her voice. Her call had awoken me out of an uneasy sleep. And I knew before she said anything. I jumped out of bed, I pulled on my jeans.  She said hello? I felt nothing, I thought nothing. I just knew, in the cold, emotionless, sharp way of knowing that comes over me when I hear that beep - Papa is sick. Papa is in hospital. I need to go there. I will need to have a meeting with my boss today, urgently. I will need to ask for leave. We have a conference in 4 weeks. I'll need to pack the papers on my office desk. I should get to the office.

Beside me, the Man was still in a warm, soft sleep, his eyelashes perfectly still against his cheeks. My Mother  was talking, telling me what happened. Heard it all before, I thought, heard it exactly this way - concentrate on what you need to do.
She said I wish I could be there with you to help you too.
I snapped, ice-like: I don't need you to do that. I'm fine. Just tell me what I need to do.

And there we have it. The last time I said I don't need you, I'm fine.
I felt horrifying in every sense of the word.

I went to work and planned and planned. Clip clop, clip clop. Papers filed, meetings shuffled, everything cut and paste into place.
I walked into my boss's office with a list of items to sort through before I could leave. 3 A4 pages long.
Before I told him anything was the matter, we exchanged the usual pleasantries: How are you, nice weather we've been having.
He said: I have some good news for you - We've decided to make you full-time as soon as possible.
I've been waiting for this for years.
I won the funding that will make it possible. I work full-time hours regardless of what's on my contract. I wanted this.

I felt nothing, I thought nothing. I just knew, in the same cold, emotionless, sharp way of knowing that was still over me: It's happened. What a day for it to happen. Should I turn it down? Should I tell him now that I have to go, urgently and I don't know when I'll be back?

I felt like ice. Cold as ice, hard as ice, broken as shattered ice. Go, stay. Too much going on here, too much going on there. A sharp drop into the abyss (or it would have felt like one, if I hadn't turned to ice) in the morning, a huge flight into the open sky in the afternoon (or it would have felt like one, if I hadn't turned into ice). The beep beep beep on the phone, the words full time in the office.

He smiled and asked: Aren't you happy (or something like that)
I thought: I wish I was deaf. I wish I was blind. I wish I could go back to bed. I wish I could cry.
I smiled back and said yes, of course, I'm thrilled.

I've been walking around feeling snapped in two since. I think back to that meeting, and I feel it as clear as crystal. I'm surprised there wasn't a large cracking sound, like a twig breaking.
I didn't tell anyone that I'd just been made my dream offer for my dream job. I didn't tell anyone who didn't need to know that I would be away because my Dad was ill.
Maybe I should have done. I should have connected the two parts of my life. Maybe I would have done if I hadn't turned to ice. But I did, and I snapped, as ice will snap.

I'm only starting, slowly, to thaw now. Taking a deep internal breath, and realising: the Universe is not toying with me, and I did not actually break in two, no matter how it felt.