Moving Inside

Moving inside

The tear was there before I started, before I said a word,

Such feelings mixed of guilt of rage which pushed up hard inside.

A twist of nerves so physical, the thought becomes so felt.

And no logic nor calm reasoning can trim them down to size.

The remedy to thoughts so grave, to shatterings of hope,

Lies merely in a human touch, a word, a subtle brush.

My friend was there with such a word, well-mulled, prepared with love,

The only wish he had – I saw – was to wash my worries clean.

He uttered this considered cure, confined it to my ears,

But this alone does not suffice to stem the flow of tears.

His arms don’t reach to wipe my cheek, or calm the pulsing flow,

Of panicked blood which rushes through to redden both my cheeks.

Once all is said my ears are dumb, my skin now yearns for help,

A contact friendly, physical, and human, all in one,

To fill the gap of family and lovers still to find.

No arm strikes out, no head just tilts, no offering to grasp,

I see another wet globe form, my troubles aren’t my own.

The Unknown

It's what we fear more than anything but it's also what we cling to for comfort and promise.
It's how some of us reason religion.
Sometimes we get a sexual tingle from thinking there's a stranger lurking in the dark.
And we always, always, think we can control it.
Sometimes maybe it's better to just trust and try and appease it by making sure the known is as tip-top as possible.

That's how I'm going to live from this second on. As far as I know, it's a good idea.

PS. In writing this I've realised it's impossible for me to try and write the word in the title without omitting the first 'n'. Clearly, spelling of phenomenon which inspire is also something unkown to me.
Try it for yourself.

Labels

The menu to the right hand-side of my computer screen includes, in first place, 'labels'. It makes me think a lot, looking at this word. It makes me think about how much we strive to do this for everything, from insects, to relationships, to foodstuffs and to types of bogeys. And it also makes me think about the impossibility since a young age for me to label anything to do with myself.

Even the unpredictable 'I'm always like this, that's just how spontaneous I am', or 'I've always been a bit shy'. I can't work up the objectiveness to do it. I'm incapable of being consistent, aknowledging it, and projecting it. So I bounce off the people around me, I act how I want to act in that instance, and my presence and conversation is shaped almost entirely by the context of that given moment. I'm extremely good and moulding myself to the label-givers around me, but don't carry my own one for all to see and recognise. Is that a bad thing? Maybe I need to pencil some labels in temporarily to try and decide which fits me best. Or maybe I'll just be label-less, like an anonymous piece of second-hand clothing or a contraband bottle of wine.

There's a line, and I've crossed it - even though I was meant to be below it.

Today i started the Live Below the Line challenge. It's not going so well. It started with the best of intentions. I had some squidgyfied (meaning slightly past its best) spinach, some value rice, and a few bunches of herbs to get me through the first day, with some chewy sweets thrown into my work backpack for good measure in case I got a sugar low and couldn't concentrate on my world-saving work.

But then Jeannette brought chocolate in. And Damien had lots of leftover roast meat that was going to go to waste...so instead of sticking to the challenge which I'd harked on about for weeks, I went for utilitariansim. Is me proving to myself and my peers that I can scrimp and suffer and save and starve for five days really worth letting purchased and processed food go to waste? Is that really what awareness-raising is about ? Or is it more sensitive and sensible to use up all the shockingly shoddy foods we produce and sell for extortiante profits on this side of the economic divide in order to prevent additional wastage ? And also to prevent me from spending what little money I earn on even more nutrition-free crap.

There's a further argument (oh yes, this can get worse) : I have good friends. I know decent people. I frequent sociable people. Thereby, food and sociability go hand in sticky hand. To top off the plying of cooked and packaged goods thrown at me during the deskjob, upon returning home to my gourmet flatshare, I was flipped at by some fresh pancakes, which were justified solely by the explanation 'yes but you didn't buy them, I'm giving them to you' (also accompanied by some faux-champagen which Lucinda had left for us after a flying visit to Paris). It's a fair excuse and one which, frankly, if I were to turn my nose up at, would make me think I had even less heart than those people who forget that there are starving suffering (for real) people on the other side of the world/channel/road.

Hello old friend.

Writers are known to take brief breaks, in order to delve back into the world of the living, and neglect for a small moment the world that spills out of the tip of one's fingers; though no less real, this world is not as tangible or as ultimately satisfying, in my sensation-driven existence. 

However, the break I have taken from writing for purely egotistical purposes such as this one is neither brief nor explainable. So I shan't try and justify it, and I certainly shan't try and shorten the past, as both of these ambitions seem as dead-end to me as my desire to learn to play a new musical instrument (perhaps I'll come back to this soon). 

What I can explain, right here, right now, is the purpose of this blog. Because the truth is that this blog is not meant to be read. On the contrary, if you read it, you'd be doing it a mis-service. It is to be written. Which writer, however hopeless, however obnoxious or tireless, writes in order to be read? If they do, they should be shot ink at from the top of their pen. For writing is a purely egotistical experience. I realised this a short while ago, whilst I was doing some freelance journalism for an increasingly popular online travel journal. The purpose of the writing wasn't for people to really glean useful tidbits to aid them on their journeys of discovery. It was to prove to myself that I could write for money, and research thoroughly enough for an article to be respectably objective and coherent. Of course, the fact that what I had written from my Parisian living room could perhaps be of use to an American tourist travelling through South America gave me infinite joy, but that wasn't what got me behind my computer every evening after a day at the office. 

And so there is no non-egotistical reason for me to write this. I'm just going to do it. Because although I'm still Claire and I still make half-baked observations, I've seen and lived and felt a fair few things since I left Mexico and wrote my last blog article almost three years ago. But I haven't quite moved far enough in my life, for my liking. So by writing this I'm going to try and get moving even more. By 'moving' I mean learning from the things I live. Because there's no point in doing things if they don't make you do better things afterwards. 

Where am I?

I have now been back in England for a week and a half. I have thus been gone from Mexico, the country in which I have stayed for the longest uninterrupted period of my life, for 10 days. And this means that I am, to put it bluntly, a bit screwed up. If I stop to think about it, try and put my finger on where I am emotionally, culturally, what I’m currently doing with my life, I get dizzy from a trilingual barrage of worries, hopes and dreams, and reasonings. Because of this confusion I have mostly chosen to spend this week relishing in the simple and pleasing task of clearing out cupboards. A simple idea. And yet in digging elbow-deep through drawers, under beds and into my childhood memories, the realisation of how much has changed in my life means that I wasn’t just clearing out a cupboard; I was clearing out dusty physical memorabilia of a happy childhood and adolescence. I rediscovered poems I wrote as an eleven-year old rosy-cheeked beanpole; moth-eaten stuffed toys which I’d cradled in my chubby arms as a clueless toddler, and so many maps, tickets, receipts and pointless hoarded ‘souvenirs’ that I realised my bedroom was even more cluttered than my brain. I’m still only halfway through the clearout, and still have a lot of incarnations of Claire to rediscover.

Between wallowing in self-analysis, I have also been doing what I haven’t been able to do for over a year. Gossiping, giggling and gorging myself with my English friends and family. Any plans I have expressed to live away from London are a contradiction of the value I attach to the friends I have here. I feel a bit like a spoilt rich girl who appears to collect things and never use them, leave them at the back of the cupboard, or neglect them and turn my attentions to new, (say, Mexican) models. Appearances can be deceiving though. A facebook message here and there, a visit twice a year, a birthday wish, is nowhere near enough to show how much I hold on to them for dear life. Along with my family, my pocketful of school friends, ex-colleagues and randomly acquired friends mean more to me than even the longest, fanciest of words can describe.

And tomorrow I throw myself back into Paris. A decent way to book-end the Year Abroad.

I don’t yet feel ready to write about how I feel about having left Mexico. I hope I can be forgiven for this. And also for having already spent a chunk of my student loan on a return flight to Mexico for New Years. This is not an ending. It’s a cliff-hanger, even for me.

Havana really good time

I finally did it. After weeks of planning, years of dreaming, and 14 hours of travelling, I made it to Cuba. I always attempt not to imagine what a place will be like before going there, as you’re only running the risk of drawing comparisons between your imaginary creation and the physical reality. So I was neither shocked, disappointed nor proven right. Instead I got to grips with the dismal reality for the majority of Cubans; just by walking the streets and seeing the tiny little rooms which a whole family share, and from which they run the family business (half of these being souvenir shops), and watch the world go by, waiting for Socialism to really deliver Jose Martí’s dream of Cuban independence.

The uniqueness of Cuba lies in the cultural mix: the cohabitation of dark dark-skinned and light light features, drawing respectively from its slave origins and the more recent arrival of immigrants from Spain and Europe. I didn’t quite get the chance to get to grips with the differentiation in treatment of these differing populations, but I saw some evidence of racial prejudice and an American photographer I made acquaintances with made comments to suggest that it ran deeper than could be gleaned from a superficial observation (or Half-Baked observation, you might say). The fact that I was in Varadero for the first three days, where you don’t get to see any of the real Cuba from within the confines of your all-inclusive, minimum four-star hotel, means that my learning on the situation in Cuba was slightly stunted. The political situation in Cuba obviously shapes the nation more than mojitos and cigars, and there is evidence everywhere, from murals, to the currency (the national money is used only by residents, tourists use the convertible peso, and can be many more ‘luxury’ products than the locals...luxury products like powdered milk and nice underwear). When we asked someone where the ‘comandante jefe’ (Castro) lives, we were treated to a decent amount of speculation- that he has 27 houses, including one in the richest neighbourhood of the city. But no one actually knows where the bearded Commy lives. I would imagine that he has more than a 1-bedroom pied-a-terre.

One important thing which I wish I’d known before going was just how much money you feel obliged to give out as tips. From the guy who serves you your coffee in the morning, to the chambermaid, to the kindly stranger who gives you directions. There is very little crime in Cuba, as we were constantly reminded and then told how dangerous it was in Mexico (yeah, thanks, we live there), but tips are daylight robbery. No, but seriously, they wouldn’t ask if they didn’t truly madly need it. The advantage of the system is that everyone has a salary (thus you may find a tiny state-run shop with 6 employees, and two doormen on one door) and a decent education (for example the best doctor’s education in the world), but once you spread all the resources over a population of several million, the pesos don’t weigh so much in each individual pocket.

I was there for 8 days, with Mabel (from the family, sister-like figure, you know her) and Cata, a 50-something friend of the family who at first sight appears an affectionate pensioner with a late-blooming taste for travelling, but she’s as open-minded as the youngsters of today and as filthy as a dishcloth. So I had no complaints about the company. Nor, funnily enough, about the fact that our flight was delayed almost a whole day. That could have something to do with the fact that the airline put us up in a 5 star hotel whilst we waited, and gave us three delicious buffet meals.

I’m still trying to get to grips with what sort of effect Cuba had on me, and I think this suggests I need another trip. Almost definitely so, as the cigars I bought won’t last longer than a couple of months.