Monday 27 December 2010

Feels Like Home

For Christmas, my mum and I went to my sister's house; the most homely place I know - full of children's joy, games, blankets, hugs and family photos.

For days before, my eyelids hung heavy and my head felt like it had been stuffed with cotton wool. We worked hard all week, mum and I; 'Team Sanassee' lining the pockets of fat cats just in time for the holidays. When I had a moment to think or even breathe, I thought about how I had to pull myself out of this - the dark circles under my eyes become more sinister by the day, the fuzziness gets thicker. But how amazing to throw your bags down by the door of your biggest comfort and get hugs and kisses from the ones who look at you with unconditional love when you've been recoiling from yourself in the mirror.

It was good to spend time with my niece and nephews; it was so good to get some sleep! My mum, sister and I sat in the kitchen for many conversations and cups of tea. My sister's cat, Bambi fell in love with my baggy wooly cardigan and made me her bed, her purring soothing my restlessness. We talked about me travelling, we talked about the things I now need in my life. Mulled wine turned tiredness into softness and I sunk into the couch and breathed the deepest I had in months.

The kids' excited whispers was the nicest alarm to wake up to on Christmas morning and when I came down the stairs, everyone was swaying to Dean Martin and preparing coffee. With an abundance of new Wii games, my sister and I worked off our Christmas dinner by playing Just Dance 2 for about two hours, it reminded me just how much I love to dance, just how good it makes me feel.

We all settled down in the afternoon to watch Karate Kid; Jayden Smith reminds me a lot of one of my nephews, Kyi-Tien. He's my godson, my little star; the one that has the dream of being in the Winter Olympics and cheers me up by giving me cheesy winks and thumbs up, the 6 year old joker.

I baked my sister's boyfriend some chocolate and hazelnut cookies on Boxing Day (pictured below) because he's the kind to appreciate love that comes out of the oven. And after I had stuffed my face the entire weekend, I worked out a detox programme in my head. I'll begin this in the new year because the cheesecake that my best friend baked for me when I got home is flirting with me from the fridge and I can't possibly hurt its feelings.



The dark cirles are a little lighter, my head is a little less stuffed but new year decision making approaches. With a dose of home now in my heart, I should be able to set myself free.

Friday 17 December 2010

All sorts and Astronauts

My nana used to say: "If you laugh too much on a Friday, you'll be crying on Sunday," a bit dismal I know, but I wondered if there was some truth to that this weekend. I've never laughed so hard on a Friday in all my life; Sunday took on a bizarre and somewhat sombre mood.

I was up on some kind of galactic high (or maybe I was just up on too many everffecent energy tablets). I got a burst of enthusiasm I haven't felt in such a long time; silliness loosened me up, widened my eyes and had me spinning. I tried to identify the stars on Google Sky Map that seemed to shine more brilliantly where I was.

There were also random one-liners about astronauts and electrons, a jaunt to Starchild (a shop name that apparantly needed to be sung theatrically) and altitude sickness from a monster set of steps - 118 of them, was it?

Natural highs...they're the best.

When you're up there you hope that you don't get called back down. Sunday forced me back down; there were tears aboard that ship; I landed with a thud. Nana would have wiggled her finger at me: "you laughed too hard on Friday."

I wanted to stay up there where my feet don't touch the ground and the joy is infinite.

Positive; "statically charged like two electrons" as someone once put it.

Wednesday 1 December 2010

Pictures of Matchstick Men

With decent settings and effects on my new phone's adequate camera, I have still failed to achieve my goal of taking more pictures. I do this all the time, I make declarations about making memories, catching opportune photo moments and yet, I still have nothing worth showing you. Please tell me that I won't be forever riding on the asthetics of others to pretty up my blog! The thing is, to take pictures, and I mean really take pictures, I need to be able to capture the new in new places and the old in new perspectives but I just don't see it in the room that I've been sitting in for days. To a photographer, every moment is a photo moment. I must be more vigilant!

Pictures are great and all that but it's music that gets me every time; a moment for every song and a song for every moment. My awareness remains in my moods, my emotions and the little hairs on the back of my neck that stand up when the right song is played in synchronicity with feeling.

I had a major ipod sort-out and deleted songs I noticed I skip through these days and replaced them with old ones I've rekindled affection for...perhaps it's my constant 'I'm back here again' feeling that has me revisiting frozen moments that can be thawed out time and time again. Old pictures however, are still too difficult to look at right now...they give me a different kind of feeling, similar to the one that has you questioning your reality like in that split second when you put your feet back on the ground after a rollercoaster ride or something. But I love to feel the giddiness I get from music, I kind of like the nostalgia; an appreciation of a time for what it was without the desire to ever change it if I could have.

So, no new memories as of yet, but here's a few tunes I've thawed out from those frozen moments:


MusicPlaylist
Music Playlist at MixPod.com

Promises Promises by The Cooper Temple Clause
Hook and Line by The Kills
Underdog by Kasabian
No No No by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Pure Morning by Placebo
Childproof by Queen Adreena

Communication Breakdown

It really is a time of uncertainty at the moment; the weather has thrown daily routine into standby plans and tube strikes have added an extra bit of drama to an already disruptive couple of weeks.

I have kept my end of every bargain and have managed to follow through with plans that don't just depend on myself like work trips and doctor appointments. Last week I went to Sheffield for work and tried to shut my ears off to comments such as "you know I hear snow is coming, you might get stuck here,". Now, I don't like to hear the sentence: 'you might get stuck here' in ANY circumstance, but the fact that it was said to me in Sheffield had me seeing horror-film clips flash across my inner screen. And you know the expression 'it's nothing to write home about?', well Sheffield is nothing to blog about so let's just thank it for The Arctic Monkeys and move on.

Since being back, there have been misconstrued text messages, missed phonecalls, damaged sim cards, hang-ups and all sorts of communication pandemonium...has this 'crazy' time of snow and christmas adverts (that are aired far too early), causing everybody to misunderstand simple unwritten laws that we've always rolled with? I'm having a deja-vous while everyone is experiencing confusion: people forgetting their own names and what year we're in and even who I am and how they know me. Or is it me?! Perhaps I'm living in a different time frame and all my friends are cloned in the realm in which I thought was reality... maybe an answer to the meltdown of something we've been using for years, the telephone...my line must be connecting to a different plane.

And amongst all these interpersonal errors, I went along to my clinic and waited for my doctor who was driving through ice and craziness to perform my surgery. One thing that I was hell-bent on having done. Three years I have been sent back and forth for this, three years of discomfort and dissolved self-esteem to remove the stone in my shoe, or my foot rather; a neurovascular something or other that wasn't any prettier than it sounds. But my physical hinderances have been lasered out. I wonder if it can be done with the emotional ones too...

But at the end of all this, I'm not sitting here with bandages around my feet feeling bitter and sorry for myself because I have to commando-crawl to the kitchen if I want painkillers...oh no no no. Well yes I guess I am a little bit...but I believe it's because I'm alone and bored and have even reduced myself to the thought of what everyone is getting on with at work. Scary. You know what would break up the boredom for me a bit? Some communication, some correspondence, some kind of two-way interaction...oh wait I just remembered, it's snowing outside, christmas is nearly here and no one knows how to use a phone properly anymore.