Category: Cafe sitting

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Thresholds

After I’d finished writing yesterday, I looked up the dictionary definition of ‘liminal’ and found that it refers not just to borders, but specifically to thresholds, which pleases me, because of the ambiguity between the two – what I described yesterday as the ‘hazy, scary…’ nature of boundaries, their combination of both limiting aspects but also potential for discovery, change and new experiences.

It also made me think of a picture by William Blake, the frontispiece for his epic poem ‘Jerusalem’, which shows Los (his name for the embodiment of the poetic imagination) about to step through an archway, carrying a lantern into darkness.

About six this morning, as I was lying in bed and thinking, the word ‘edgy’ popped into my head, and I started to think about its implications – that combination of nervousness and excitement. When applied to people, it can imply a kind of fearfulness, a risk of tipping over into a chaotic and destructive state – most likely self-destructive, but not necessarily just that (does self-destruction ever not have repercussions for others beside the self?) But when ‘edgy’ is applied to actions, ideas, art, it implies courage, and is more likely to be complimentary, or at least ambivalent.

This whole idea of edges, boundaries, borders, liminality, the relationships between risk, fear, courage, change, uncertainty, danger, transformation , creativity, loss, immobility (in no particular order) has been haunting me recently as I try to deal with my ‘stuckness’ and lack of motivation and inspiration, not to mention my fear of not being able to find ways of dealing with the obstacles I keep coming up against.

Speaking of which, I think (only think) I may have got round the large ones with the website project, and that it shouldn’t (‘shouldn’t’) require too much more work. Having said that, I went out yesterday morning to walk on the beach and have breakfast out (instead of putting in the work) and realised how much that improved my mood. And then when I got home my broadband was down, so I abandoned websiting and spent the afternoon trying to sort out the design for the jumper, filling in the design on squared paper and then realising it would be far too big, so having to produce a smaller pattern which I think is going to work, but anyway it will all require a lot of time and effort (knitting doesn’t count as ‘work’) to put into practice.

Tai chi this morning, and I’ve just had a phone call from the GP’s surgery offering me a flu jab appointment at 2:15. I had to cancel the last one because I had a cold, so don’t want to miss it. And afterwards I might go and do some café-sitting and reading, or walking if the weather stays nice (which it looks as though it might).  Those things are important and I need to do more of them. But I’ll have a couple of hours between tai chi and lunch to do some website work.

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Plus Ҫa Change

New day, new week. Almost a new month. Sunny but chilly.

Found out over the weekend that my local swimming pool won’t be reopening. When I moved to Southsea it was on my doorstep, and I started going in the mornings, then having a bacon butty and pot of tea afterwards at the local seafront café. When I first moved from the flat into this house, I stopped because it seemed too far to walk and I didn’t want to drive there. Then in spring 2018, after I’d finished my cancer treatment, I started going again, walking (it was only 20minutes away) first thing in the morning, only once or twice a week. The café had changed hands, but everything else stayed the same, and I would come out of the pool and stop for a few moments on the prom watching the sea and filling myself with love for this place. Then my writers’ group started meeting at the library on Monday mornings, so I would walk from the seafront into the town centre, and in the process found another café for breakfast. During that time, first John Lewis and then Debenham’s closed down, and our Sunday meetings moved from Debenham’s café to the library as well as the Monday ones.

I’ve lived in Southsea for well over five years now – in this house for four years next month. To me, it doesn’t feel very long, but in that time, so many of the things that I felt made the place special have gone or changed – of course, this year has accelerated that, but many went before that – in fact, of the things listed in the previous paragraph that have now changed or gone, only the pool and the second breakfast café (the one in the town centre) have closed as a direct result of the lockdown – and both were already in financial difficulty – this has just been the final blow.

Places change – that’s how it is. The sea is still there, and the park, I can walk there whenever I wish. Most of the people I’ve met over five years are probably still here, even if I’ve lost touch with them.

I came here intending to start a new life, and I’ve done that in many ways, and I guess I can do it again, even if so many things and places I treasured/took for granted have now slipped into memory (like riding my bike over the Common in that first summer and having coffee overlooking the harbour, watching the Isle of Wight ferries and other boats coming in and out – and when the weather got colder I started going swimming instead). I’d come out of a period when there was very little stability in my life, and the future had always seemed fluid and unknowable. Well, I guess that’s always true, but the human heart likes to kid itself that it isn’t.

I didn’t know when I sat down that this is what I would write today.

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Morning Walk

I went looking for the sunrise today, but I missed it by ten minutes – only I didn’t realise it at first because it was so cloudy.

I got to the beach at 5:50 and sat on the bench outside the Beach Café, staring at the thin strip above the sea and below the clouds at the horizon, expecting the sun to appear at any moment, till I checked the app on my phone and discovered it was due at 5:39, at which time I was walking towards the sea through the streets, where it’s almost impossible to see the sunrise because of all the houses in the way. I had noticed the clouds, but had told myself that clouds often make for interesting colours, and there probably was a brief flash of brilliance when the sun came up above the sea before it disappeared again behind the clouds, but I wasn’t there to see it.

So I sat and drank coffee from my thermos and watched the hi-vis litter pickers and the odd wild swimmer or dog walker or jogger, and tried to find something – anything – worth photographing. Even the waves were pretty subdued, and the gulls didn’t show up against the clouds.

I finished my coffee and put the flask back in my bag. The first café to open would be the Coffee Cup, fifteen minutes’ walk away down the beach. I could go there and get another coffee and a sausage roll, or maple and pecan plait, or toasted tea cake.

In retrospect (because I didn’t think of this at the time), I could have gone the other way, to the Co-op, which probably also opens at 7, and maybe I could have got a sandwich and even a coffee there and eaten it on the beach – except that I’d forgotten to take a mask or scarf.

I started walking along the beach, but then when I got near to the steps up to the prom, opposite the Rose Garden, I thought I’d go up and just walk home from there. I couldn’t cut through because the gates were still locked, so I turned left and walked past the model village and what I think of as the Mondrian beach huts (flat roofed and square and painted in bright colours, not pastels like the conventional pointy-roofed ones opposite the Coffee Cup). I sat on the wall and checked on my phone for the opening times of the nearest cafes. As I thought, the Coffee Cup would be open at 7, but the Beach Café, Tenth Hole and Tea and Thistle (which only reopened on Tuesday) wouldn’t be until 9. By this time it was 6.45, and a ten minute walk, so I wandered back to the beach and carried on.

I ordered coffee and a toasted teacake and sat outside. I felt some spots of water as I was finishing, so I didn’t hang about. Looking out of my window now, I can see it’s properly raining.

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No End

Two compliments about my writing yesterday – one from an old friend on Facebook, one (actually, several) from a new one over socially-distanced coffee on the beach. As usual, I was overwhelmingly stressed and apprehensive about meeting the second, but found myself pouring out my life story and then apologising – even when I waved my arms around and knocked over my coffee, she cleaned it up before I could even think what to do next, and offered to buy me another one (I refused, naturally – it was my fault that it happened.)

I sometimes wonder why people are ever this nice to me. They learn, of course, when they get to know me better.

We first met on a writing course immediately prior to lockdown – I might have mentioned that before? I’ve got a feeling I have. I’d said something about my thirty-year-work-in-progress fantasy novel, and she said: ‘I’ll look it if you like, bring it next week and I’ll let you have feedback the week after’. I felt really embarrassed, but I printed out the beginning, past the ‘inciting incident’ (hero’s journey creative writing course BS jargon) and handed it to her at the next session. I’m not really sure why I, but I suppose I just thought: ‘oh screw it’.

At the next session – which was the last of the course – she was very complimentary and full of questions. All I could say was – well, I haven’t done anything on it for fifteen years because I don’t know how to end it, or even to get closer to the end. We all went to lunch together as a group, and I’d taken my books with me to show the tutor (it was a general invitation to anyone who’d got a book to show). She picked up ‘S2S’, started looking at it, then said: ‘Can I borrow this?’ so of course I said yes. We exchanged emails and made a semi-arrangement to meet up for coffee in a couple of weeks, but of course that didn’t happen. Since then we have exchanged irregular emails and last week finally fixed up this meeting.

I was relieved to find out that she hasn’t been doing any writing either, apart from a journal. We grinned wryly at one another about good intentions and motivation.

She writes short stories –and has sent one in to a competition since we last met. I said that I don’t do short stories because I can’t think of endings. I guess I’m basically a poet, since that’s all the muses – or the Universe, or whatever’s responsible for this stuff – ever seems to send me. And I realised – though I might have had this thought before and forgotten it – that the advantage of poems is that they don’t really need tied up endings or conclusions – they are just there, and open to whatever. Well, the ones I write are.

But the weird thing is that I’ve completed stories in the past. I guess it’s all about luck.

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Aspiration and Achievement

Woke up with odd fragments from a dream in my head this morning. I was standing on steps leading up, and there was water below me. The woman in front pointed out I was still holding my phone so I tried to throw it back to the ground, but it fell in the water. I asked her (it might have been my daughter) if she could dive, and she dived straight into the pool and got it for me. Now, those steps must have been to a diving board or a water slide, so why was I on them when I’m terrified of both those things? Then later I was on similar steps going up a hillside but they ran out and I had to go the rest of the way just on the hill itself.

Returning to my therapy session, the therapist asked what she called ‘the death question’ – if you knew you were facing death what would your reaction be? I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant but I had an answer – two, in fact. When I had cancer in 2017 I decided that the best thing to do was focus on doing the little things that made me happy each day – like: listening to the radio, knitting and crochet, reading etc – more or less the same things I’ve been doing for the last three months.

Then I remembered the feelings I had at the end of 2011, when everything significant in my life seemed to have fallen apart or be falling apart. There was a lot of nonsense around about the Mayan prophecies and the end of the world, and though I didn’t take it seriously, I thought: what would I do if I knew the world was going to end next year? And that gave me the impetus to go travelling.

These two things might seem quite different: focussing on the everyday versus making a huge leap into the unknown – but in the details they were very similar. The happiest memories I have of my travels are of those little everyday moments: sitting in cafes; looking through train windows; finding my way around unfamiliar places; walking through parks; reading my Kindle or writing on my laptop; su doku. Doing and going where I wanted, not having to deal with other people or think about their needs or what I ‘should’ be doing; being free; being myself.

Why does my mind keep being drawn back to those big gaps in my life: career, relationship, financial self-sufficiency, writing? I can’t rectify the first three now, it’s too late, I have tried to accept them and be glad that I can cope so well without them. The last one is the one that still nags at me.

There are two ways of dealing with that gap between aspiration and achievement: lower expectations and/or take steps to get closer to the goal. I am a past master of lowering expectations, but not so good at finding ways of making progress.

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The Hermit (Part 2)

Weekly therapy session on Skype yesterday. The evening before, I was feeling quite down, but by the time lunchtime rolled around I was wondering what we were going to talk about.

She remarked that for the second week running I seemed to be quite happy and content with life. This week I did my shopping in Sainsbury’s, and used the self checkout, so I didn’t even have to interact with the checkout person, as I did last week in the Co-op. Not having to be with people suits me. I think about good friends I’ve known, how much I’ve enjoyed spending time with them, some who’ve helped, bullied or cajoled me onto new paths through my life, and the joy of my children and grandchildren, I’m aware of all those things, but still I think: enough, now it’s enough just to be on my own, doing what I want, when I want, how I want. ‘Snow can hurt your eyes, but only people make you cry.’ I’m even managing to be kinder to myself, less judgemental over the chaos, quietening the critical voices. I think about the times when I was travelling, how I revelled in just being, in anonymity and invisibility, looking out of the window of a train, or sipping coffee on a café terrace, just to be somewhere without feeling I needed to justify myself to anyone. That’s how it is now: sitting in my garden in the sunshine, or in my bay window listening to the radio and crocheting, or at my PC in the mornings pouring out my words from the wellspring of my soul. This is who I am.

I talked to her about my thoughts on the stages of grief, somewhat apprehensive that I’d taken it the wrong way, or that she’d say it was outdated or I was oversimplifying (a little knowledge is a dangerous thing). But she was genuinely interested in what I was saying, she explained some of the background, where the original ideas had come from and, yes, it has been distorted and misused but it still has application, and no, it’s not just ‘pop psych’. She said I’d latched on to the crucial point that it can be hard to distinguish between ‘denial’ and ‘acceptance’, that it can be cyclical and it’s not always a straight progression to a nirvana of acceptance.

I think perhaps this time of being home alone, of not pushing myself out into the world to interact with others, has been exactly what I need. So much of my emotional life has been taken up with that sense of incompleteness and failure as a person, the hopeless quest for a soulmate to fill the void in myself. Enough.

But the time will come when I’ll have to go out there again, and I will have to be with people, and things will happen that will bring me down. I don’t know how to prepare for that. But at least now I recognise the danger.

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Day 18 – Istanbul

I saw a photograph today,
of a sandstone palace,
frosted with blue and white tiles.
And I thought of Istanbul,
though I knew it couldn’t be.

‘Germany’ I guessed,
‘another of Mad King Ludwig’s confections’
(I’ve been caught out like that before).
But no, it was Seville, and I thought
‘Aha, Moorish influences!’
and ‘I must go there one day,
to southern Spain.’

But oh, Istanbul,
beautiful, dirty, noisy city of my dreams.
Byzantium, city of Constantine,
with your minarets and domes, gardens and palaces,
cats, magpies and wonderful cafes,
sunshine and storms and clinging fogs,
and best of all, your waterways,
ships and ferries and fishermen on Galata Bridge.

The taste of that fresh fish sandwich,
bought from the boat, where I watched them fry it
over a brazier by the water’s edge.
Or the tea I poured from a double pot,
the russet colour, clear as the glass I sipped it from
as fragrant as the roses in Gülhane Park
a sensual delight, sweet as the pastries
in Hafiz Mustafa’s.

Perhaps one day I’ll find
my way back to you,
(though somehow I know I won’t)
but you’ll always be there
in my heart.

Linda Rushby 18 April 2020
Gulhane Park, Istanbul May 2012

http://damson-tree.co.uk/travel/?cat=39

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Any Other Day

Trying to write a poem – the first line came up as: ‘Any other day…’ but nothing after that.

Maybe writing a poem about trying to write a poem? That sounds about as mad as the idea I had of trying to write a novel about trying to write a novel… another non-starter.

Any other day… and it wouldn’t matter so much. Why not? Come on, it’s just a day – a Tuesday, in fact – tai chi day, in normal times. Except it wouldn’t have been ‘normal times’ anyway, because I wouldn’t have been here, but on a narrow boat called ‘Teasel’, pootling about the inland waterways around the Hampshire/Surrey border with my son, his wife and their dogs.

I keep telling everyone -especially myself – that I’m fine with this lockdown thingy. Missing a holiday and spending a birthday alone are nothing in the grand scheme of things, nothing compared with what others have to deal with.

So here I am, putting all that to one side and getting on with it. Trying to write a poem – or failing that, just 500 words of any old nonsense, nothing too whiney, nothing too self-pitying. Do some gardening – I’ve been putting that off, till I realised that weeding could be quite appealing, it’s destructive after all. But I might miss the postman, there might be a delivery, so I can’t go in the garden until after then.

Waiting. Waiting for an indeterminate period, for an indeterminate outcome. Waiting for Godot. Beckett on failure: ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better’. Story of my life.

Late this morning – in fact, it’s just turning into afternoon as I type. Awake half the night, early enough to fall asleep again and sleep in till 8.30, then do my morning stuff and it gets later and later, and my sister rang to say happy birthday, and I tried to call my brother (his birthday too) but couldn’t get through.

So, having made my mind up to do some weeding, I thought about the possible delivery and decided to wait in the front room, and in the mean time to do the writing that I didn’t do before breakfast. Waiting.

It’s not so much the activities that I do to break up my weeks that I miss so much as the café-sitting. It’s a habit I picked up in my flat-dwelling years – in Bedford, Ramsey, Prague and here in Southsea – and the months when I was travelling, when I would inhabit the public spaces – cafes, parks, seafronts and riversides – rather than sitting in hotel rooms. Now I have a garden, and the weather (at the moment) is good enough to be out there. But hunkering down in your own space – however appealing – can become a trap.

Just been interrupted by a phone call from my brother. It was nice to hear his voice, but has broken my chain of thought. We don’t always get on very well, but good to know he’s there.

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All for what?

Lambeth Bridge from Millbank, London

I didn’t go to the beach to photograph the sunrise, though I was awake in time to get there.

Instead I lay in bed, as I do, thinking.

And then it was seven o’clock, and then it was eight o’clock, and I was still lying there. And I thought how pointless everything is, and wouldn’t it be better to just let go, let everything go and stop trying to find reasons to stay alive?

All these stupid tasks I’ve been setting myself, like doing yoga and tai chi and meditation in my spare room, and writing 500 words. All for what? To make me think I’m doing something worthwhile with my days? All that self-bullying that I usually put into getting myself to leave the house I’m now focussing on creating a ‘structure’ for my life (though not on housework, no, never on that). And I resent it just as much, and find reasons for telling myself how pointless it all is, nobody’s making me do it but myself, so why shouldn’t I just lie in bed all day hating myself and feeling miserable, because that feels like the easiest and most natural thing in the world. After all, it’s what I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember, why change the habits of a lifetime? And now there’s no one to judge me for it but myself (and anyone who happens to read this, of course).

Someone said in a private message last week that I ‘torture’ myself. Well, why not? Maybe I deserve it. Maybe it’s all I know how to do.

While I was sitting on my cushion I thought about being on Millbank, upriver from Tate Britain, leaning on the wall and looking at the river and the new spring shoots on the plane trees, unfurling between the bobbles of last year’s seeds. I feel as though I have been there many times on lovely spring days taking photographs in the sunshine, and later crossing Vauxhall Bridge and going to the café which I can never remember the name of, but it’s also an antique showroom, and sitting outside drinking coffee surrounded by quirky statuary and old garden equipment, hiding from the noise and stink of buses. I’ve been going there for years, but I know it was still there last summer (maybe not the next time I go though, if there is a next time).

Hiding and running away are two sides of the same coin – yes, yes, I know, I know, I repeat myself, keep churning out the same old nonsense time after time. So why can’t I repeat the ‘good’ stuff? How the f*ck do I know? I don’t have control over what pops into my head. It’s all just bollox anyway, whatever I say.

I was planning to venture out again when I run out of milk – which will probably be today, or maybe I can stretch it out till tomorrow. Fact is, I don’t really want to any more.

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Any Normal Monday

I didn’t see the sun rise from the beach this morning – too late, I didn’t wake up till 7. Maybe another day.

I did do my half hour of combined yoga, tai chi and meditation before breakfast. It worked well. The mornings are filling up.

On any normal Monday, I would aim to leave home by 8 and walk to the leisure centre on the seafront. The pool closes at 9 for the parent and toddlers session, so I try to get there before about 8.30 or it’s not worth it. I could drive, but I’d have to faff around getting parking places at the pool, in the town centre, and back at home, and, honestly, I’d rather walk.

Which reminds me, my steps per day must have gone down massively.

I swim for about 20 minutes, then sit in the steam room for about another ten. Then shower, wash hair, dress, dry hair, go out and lean on the sea wall for a while. Some weeks over the winter, it’s been the only time I’ve been near the sea, these Monday mornings. Then I walk to the town centre, to a particular café where I have a bacon sandwich on granary bread, with brown sauce, and a pot of tea for one. I do killer su doku while I wait for my sandwich, drink tea and watch the world go by through the window. Then to the library for 11, where I buy a coffee and meet up with my writing buddies. Sometimes I even write, or more recently, edit (not my work though, a book I’ve been working on for a client – the one that I’m currently designing the cover for). Before Christmas (in the ‘black Friday’ sale, though I hate to admit it) I bought myself a notebook computer, so that (in theory) I can be more productive during these sessions.

About 1 o’clock, we start to disperse (the last two weeks I went I was the only one who turned up anyway), and I either walk home, or catch the bus. The bus also takes me back past the seafront, though only a small part of the way. I might pop into the co-op or the health food shop on my way home from the bus stop, if I need anything. At home I potter around till 3, when it’s time for the daily drama on Radio 4 extra, and crochet – usually yesterday’s square for my weather blanket. At 4 I’ll get an early dinner, veggie or at most pescatarian, because I have yoga in the evening. At 6 it’s 4 Extra again, and I get ready for yoga so I can listen to A Good Read at 6.30 so that I’m (in theory) ready to leave at 7, though always lose something, – cushions, water bottle, keys, money, coat – it starts officially at 7.15, but when I’ve got everything together it takes me two minutes to walk round the corner.

That is, any normal Monday.