Category: madwoman in the attic

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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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Liminal thinking

I was thinking about freedom this morning, in that sleeping/waking borderland – which just made me want to use the word ‘liminal’, one that I’ve learned (or relearned, because I think I might have come across it when I was studying sociology, forty years ago), that lovely, slightly hazy, slightly scary word and concept that speaks of borders between places, between states (in both senses of the word) between meanings, perhaps. Or maybe I’m just talking pretentious boll*x again.

I’m reading a book which has been sitting on my Kindle for two and a half years (I checked, because it was originally recommended by my therapist, and I mentioned it in our session on Thursday, and couldn’t remember how long it was since she’d suggested I read it, and I said ‘a couple of years’, which surprised her, so I checked, and I bought it in April 2018, which makes my guess an underestimate, and puts in perspective how long it’s been sitting there unread, and also how long I’ve been seeing her).

When I bought it I read the opening and decided it wasn’t for me (these days I usually download the free sample before deciding to buy, unless it’s a sure-fire author I’ve read before and know I will enjoy). As I told my therapist, I didn’t exactly fling the Kindle across the room, though I might have done if it was a paperback. But this time I’m finding it more interesting, so I’m persisting. It’s a semi-mystical, Jungian exploration of women’s lives and psychology related to mythologies, but I won’t say the title until I feel I’ve got something I want to share from it.

Anyway, when I was in my ‘liminal’ state this morning, I remembered recently talking about freedom and constraints and how constraints are liberating, which seemed to me (this morning) rather Orwellian, so I needed to sort out what context I’d been speaking about. Then I remembered that it was the way in which having a routine frees your mind from having to make decisions in the moment. Constraints, or ‘boundaries’ (which brings me back to liminal states again), relates in my mind to dyspraxia, because it seems to me that a lot of the impact of dyspraxia is around difficulties with knowing where you are in relation to boundaries, in time and space and maybe other things – social acceptability, perhaps, or expectations – and how to manage those relationships. Okay, so that does sound like pretentious boll*x, but when I think that way I feel a buzz that I’m getting close to something interesting and exciting.

Maybe my life is permanently liminal because I am always negotiating my way between this and that, never quite knowing where the boundaries are until I’ve crossed one, which can be catastrophic, or thrilling, or both, or just trivial.

Where does this get me with thinking about freedom, or boundaries, or creativity, or how I find a better way of living with myself? Let me think some more…

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Do It Again

I move something off the desk, balance it on top of another box of stuff, there’s a crash and the whole lot scatters on the floor. I moan, don’t I? I go on about how hopeless I am, but I never bloody do anything about it. Mea maxima culpa. What else can I say?

I’ve now made a start on both the projects I was talking about the other day: the website and the jumper. I had to give up the idea of using WordPress for the website because the client doesn’t like the free domain (appended with a nine digit number), but equally doesn’t want to have to pay for hosting for just a couple of pages. The websites I used to manage I hung off my own hosting, but I don’t want to commit to doing that long term, and anyway, it’s so long ago that I’m not sure how I did it, and it has undoubtedly all changed since then, and I don’t want to have to go there. But I bought the domain name she wanted for five years in advance, and then discovered that I still couldn’t attach it to a free WordPress site. So now I’m trying to do what she wants using Blogger, which I haven’t used for over ten years, and never liked very much, and I’m still not sure I’ll be able to use this domain I’ve paid for.

And this was all supposed to be something very quick and simple, just a couple of pages and a contact form, that I could knock up quickly for her on the cheap, a Blue Peter website made with cornflake packets and loo roll middles and stuck together with sticky-backed plastic, I can do it for you, no probs, couple of hundred quid. Should have told her to do it on Facebook.

So I’m learning how to use Blogger on the hoof (or ‘winging’ it, depending on which anatomical metaphor seems more appropriate, horse or bird related). Which reminds me why I started using WordPress in the first place.

But I have to have something to do – otherwise, I could be walking on the beach, or crocheting and listening to the radio, or untangling yarn, or weeding the garden, or mopping the kitchen floor, or tidying the study. ( Or even writing a book? Get real!)

On the dyspraxia forum, people talk about ‘super powers’ (I think that must be a life-coaching thing), and one that often comes up is persistence, sticking at things, not giving up – apparently that’s something dyspraxics are good at, like original thinking, creativity and sense of humour. But I’m always giving up, like Mark Twain giving up smoking – it’s easy, I’ve done it thousands of times. Everything is a disaster, I give up in despair, get up the next morning and try again, with a kind of brute doggedness, again and again and again. ‘Try again, fail again, fail better’ (Samuel Beckett). Beat yourself up about it, and do it again.

‘Do It Again’, Steely Dan

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Wherever That River Goes…

No post yesterday, because I got up and took a flask of coffee to the beach, arriving a few minutes  late for sunrise (but there was low cloud over the sea anyway) and writing in a notebook, which I might or might not copy onto here, but today I’ve got other stuff in my head so will go ahead with that.

One of the songs from my youth that listening to Amazon music has reintroduced me to is ‘The Ballad of Easy Rider’ by the Byrds, and now it’s stuck in my head. It starts like this:

‘The river flows, it flows to the sea,
wherever that river goes,
that’s where I want to be.
Flow, river flow,
let your waters wash down,
take me from this road
to some other town.

All (s)he wanted was to be free
and that’s the way it turned out to be…’

‘The Ballad of Easy Rider,’ Roger McGuinn & Bob Dylan

Notice how I subtly changed the gender in that second verse? It’s true, all I wanted was to be free, and that is ‘the way it turned out to be’, though not quite the way I might have expected (or even hoped for.) But I’m still very grateful for the way it is – despite the warning from another song of the same era:

‘Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose,
nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’, but it’s free…’

‘Me and Bobby McGee’, Kriss Krisstofferson

…a warning that kept me stuck in a sad but ‘safe’ situation for many years, which has brought another song to mind…

‘How often does it happen that we live our lives in chains
and never even know we have the key?’

‘Already Gone’, The Eagles

But that’s enough soft West coast country-rock from the late 1960s and early 70s for today.

Going to the sea yesterday morning did its magic of lifting my mood. I sat on my usual bench behind the beach café, writing in my notebook, and two people passing by said: ‘you’ve got a good spot there!’, and later on my way home I sat in the Rose Garden and read for a while, and another stranger said the same thing. But when I got home and started trying to tackle a project I’ve started, I had a massive setback which threw me into despair about how useless I am and what a charlatan because people have expectations of me and really I don’t have a clue what I’m doing and am scrabbling all the time to keep going, and everything is ten times harder for me and takes ten times longer than any normal competent person but nobody sees it and I hate myself and I hate being me.

I talked to my therapist in the afternoon about it, this massive fear I have of cocking everything up. She talked about adjusting to not being ‘needed’ any more, but I don’t want to be needed, I don’t want anyone to depend on me, I can’t stand the stress. I want to be free of all that. I want to run away again.

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Detritus

I think: if I start writing, maybe the ideas will come? And in a way they do, but they’re not necessarily ideas I want to write. I think: if I do twenty minutes of movement, light candles and incense, sit quietly, maybe the thoughts will go away? And sometimes they do, but mostly they don’t. I lie in bed and do backwards-counting exercises to try and stem the flow so I can get back to sleep, and sometimes it works, but mostly it doesn’t.

Why am I constantly engaged in battles inside my head? Is this just normal, does everybody have this never-ending struggle to manage their thoughts? I used to think that, and that it was just me doing such a lousy job of it. Now I’m not so sure. Now I think: maybe it’s my curse, maybe it’s just another part of my chaotic weirdness. Maybe it’s the cause of everything.

This morning, in bed and after, I was thinking about fear. What am I so afraid of? Failure and rejection, that’s what I thought. I deal with rejection by avoiding contact with other people, pre-emptive rejection. Failure is trickier (not that avoiding human contact is always easy). The best ways of avoiding failure are never to try to do anything and to give up – I am an expert on both of those.

But what did I say a couple of weeks ago? ‘The greatest pleasure in life comes from doing something you don’t want to do and then knowing that you’ve done it’? True enough. Life is a bugger sometimes.

I remember getting into a conversation on Facebook a while ago about the ‘detritus’ that accumulates in your mind, that you have to wade your way through. I feel like I said something quite clever, but now I can’t remember what it was. There is certainly a lot of detritus in my mind.

I’ve just remembered a conversation with a counsellor over twenty years ago – I know it was in autumn 1999, because I saw that particular counsellor then after my parents had died in late winter and we’d moved house over the summer and I was getting about three hours sleep a night and was referred by my GP for six sessions of counselling, but she was offering bereavement counselling, and as I told her, after six months since their deaths I didn’t feel I’d even started to mourn them. But what I remember telling her was about this big well of shit in my head, which I can never empty and which keeps getting refilled all the time. I think the idea came from the title of ‘The Well of Loneliness’. But what was in my well? Loneliness, certainly, but not just that: shame and guilt and fear, and of course , failure and rejection.  

Within ten years I’d left my husband, in the hope that that would bring me new opportunities – which it has, it has, but why has so much stayed the same?

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Gloomy Monday

I am here again – today, anyway, though it remains to be seen whether I will post this or just rant to myself. I went to stay at my daughter’s for the early part of last week, after my infusion at the hospital – quite a last minute decision, to do with me going to see their new house before she goes back to work full time, and not knowing when we might be able to meet again. I came back on Wednesday and came down with a cold Wednesday evening, which I’m now over except for an embarrassing cough, a nasal whine and a cloud of gloom that I’m struggling to get out from under.

Aha, autumn, increasing darkness, getting colder, and nothing to look forward to in the next six months but more of the same. Yes to all of that, but also commitments; an Xmas jumper promised to one person and a website to another, both of them started over the weekend, neither of them particularly well.  

One of the joys of combined singledom and retirement is not having regular commitments to do things for other people. Although it has been said to me that the best way to make yourself happy is to make other people happy, for me it just creates so much stress and worry beforehand, and the outcome is so uncertain – what if they don’t like what I’ve done when I’ve done it? What if it all turns out to be crap? For example, if I’m crocheting something for myself and I hate it when it’s finished, I can either unravel it or shove it into the back of the wardrobe and never have to look at it again (which is what mostly happens with the things I make). But if I’m doing something for someone else, I have a certain responsibility, and they have certain expectations which I have to meet. And what would happen if I fail to meet those expectations? Another failure to throw on the ever-growing pile, but with the added sense of shame and guilt of knowing that my failure is not just a private one but visible to others.  And even if they say they like it, how can I ever know that they’re being honest and not just trying to spare my feelings?

A crowd of starlings just flew past my window and over the roof – or the roof of the next house down the terrace perhaps. There’s a word for it – isn’t it ‘murmuration’? Or is that when they all get together and make a noise?

Yesterday was sunny but chilly. I stayed indoors, though I know there’s lots that needs doing in the garden to stop it descending further into an ugly green mess. Will the weeds die back in the winter? There’s no guarantee of that. Today it’s grey and gloomy, which is a good enough excuse to stay in. Already been to Sainsbury’s, and committed to going to yoga this evening. That’ll be enough.

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Leaf Upon the Water

Poem today. Not sure why. Sometimes it happens like that. Feels like this is the first one in a while

The photo was taken in the water lily house at Kew Gardens in 2015. The flowers and small leaves in front are lotuses, the large leaves behind are from giant water lilies. I was tempted to use a photo of a water lily from my old garden pond, but thought some smart Alec might point out that it wasn’t actually a lotus (that’s the sort of thing I’d do, anyway).

Also ‘The lotus flower grows from shit’ is only one of many interpretations of the mantra ‘Om mane padme hum‘ but it was the one explained to me by my first meditation teacher, and it makes for a great metaphor.

Leaf Upon the Water

The lotus flower grows from shit,
the silt of a thousand fishes, living
and dead, their shimmering scales,
dulled and darkened,
sinking through the cloudy waters
to the home of the scuttling things,
sliding into and becoming
the black, unspeakable ooze
that clings and clods
and welcomes into its bitter embrace
the scattered seed
that cracks and bleeds
in its agony of birth,
sending its silvery roots into the darkness
to trap the rotting death-food and to grow
new life that rises,
green and fecund
to break the surface,
unfurl its leaves
and open its lovely face towards the sun.

I am the leaf upon the water,
held in the magic of the meniscus,
I will not struggle
I will trust the power of the water,
I will lie back and let it hold me
until my season is done.

Om mane padme hum.
The lotus flower grows from shit.

Linda Rushby 30 September 2020

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Another Monday

Yesterday I had a horrible day. I spent most of it crocheting, but for once it didn’t make me feel happy, just guilty because I knew I was just doing it to fill the time and avoid all the more important things I probably should be doing to sort out the house. Also I had some phone calls to make, which I always dread (I did one, to the vet, but not another, to cancel something which is costing me money and I need to stop it). And I was expecting a ‘phone consultation’ with the breast cancer nurse, about my next 6 monthly infusion at the hospital. The one in April was cancelled, and if that had gone ahead this should be the last one, but I asked her and apparently it’s based on number (six times), not time (three years), so I’ll have to have another one next spring as well. Anyway, this one is on Saturday, and I knew about it because I’ve had the appointment letter since April.

I always have to get blood tests beforehand, and usually there’s a walk-in service at the hospital. But what I hadn’t realised until I spoke to the nurse is that now I have to make an appointment. Also she asked if I’d arranged a covid test, but I knew nothing about it being required. She said it should have been mentioned in the letter, and I wondered if it had been, because I hadn’t reread it, but when I said the letter came in April she said ‘well it wouldn’t have been then’ in that sort of fussy way that some people have that makes everything sound as though it’s your fault and you should have known. She’s not the same nurse I met when I was having the original treatment in 2017, and I didn’t recognise her name, but I know the drill now, or thought I did, till this year. She gave me a number to call to book a test at the hospital for Wednesday, and also suggested I call the blood-test centre and get the appointment there close to the same time, so I wouldn’t have to make two trips to the hospital. So I made those two phone calls and got both tests sorted for tomorrow.

If you’re thinking either: ‘That doesn’t sound too bad’ or ‘Poor you, that sounds horrible’, I should say that my bad mood was not related to having to make these extra appointments (though they didn’t help), but I’d been feeling it all morning as well. So much so that I was trying to find excuses to get out of going to yoga in the evening, but I made myself do it, and felt much better for doing so, which I knew I would, but still… It did help, and now I’ve made a commitment with the teacher that I will definitely go next week and she has put me on the list, so I can’t back out.

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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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Log Cabin

Very late this morning – although I’ve been awake for two and a half hours already. I decided to start doing my half hour yoga etc in the mornings again, and had a shower and washed my hair, and just generally time passed as it so often does.

Routines, as I’m sure I’ve said before, are both constraining and liberating. I half thought last week that I wouldn’t restart these two morning routines – exercise and blogging – but that’s because I was in a pretty shitty mood after returning from Cyprus. It’s so easy to slip down into chaos – especially for someone like me. Spontaneity can be exhilarating, but it can also be terrifying. Sometimes the chaos reaches a point where the only way I can deal with it is by ignoring it, and so it grows exponentially until it reaches a crisis and I fall apart emotionally. I was getting close to that point last week. But yesterday I wrote my blog; tidied the kitchen; loaded, ran and emptied the dishwasher; hoovered the stairs and landing – never really know what brings me back from the brink. I might say: ‘a decent night’s sleep’ but that wasn’t the case. Taking the van out on Friday? Doing that one, big(ish) stressful thing and then putting it to one side? Putting everything else into perspective? Maybe.

When I was learning to drive, the instructor told me that the greatest pleasure in life comes from doing something you really don’t want to do, and then afterwards, knowing that you’ve done it. Over forty years later, I think that’s still one of the wisest pieces of advice I’ve ever heard.

I’ve started a new crochet project – while still finishing off the previous one (both cardigans). I started following a pattern for what’s called a ‘log cabin’ design, starting with a small square, then every few rows rotating the work and picking up stitches along the edge of the existing work so that you have a rectangle that keeps growing – like a spiral growing out from the centre, but with straight edges. I’m using a ‘cake’ type yarn with large blocks of colour, and it looks pretty good. But I don’t like the shape of the pattern in the book – which makes a sleeveless waistcoat, which I’m not that keen on. So I’m trying to think of a way of adapting it to make a cardi with sleeves. This is the sort of thing I like to do – trying out something new and seeing how it works out.

Every so often I think I’ll give up on crochet, because it’s too repetitive and I feel like I’ve exhausted the possibilities. Then I get an idea like this and get interested again. Admittedly, I have cupboards full of projects that I’ve never finished, and garments that I’ve never worn. But I keep going back to it. And today I’m looking forward to sitting in the sunshine and trying again.

Maybe there’s a metaphor for life in there somewhere.