The other day my heart ceased up but my brain was alive.
I was sick of being told how to breathe mid-sentence. So when we had a five minute discussion on whether menu should be followed by a comma or a semi colon because no pause just wasn’t working, I said a quiet fuck you under my breath and later that night bundled up my dying imagination and made away on an escaping thought while my heart lay deathly still and cold from missing a familiar thrum.
I always become Jewish when I’m on the run.
Like Anne Frank.
And so, heavy with a deep sense of loss from leaving behind a dysfunctional heart and a significant chunk of Europe in the 30ies among other things, my bundle and I fled past people and places, skirting at the edges of memories like thieves, to arrive at a familiar scene.
My aunt’s old house in a hostile neighbourhood where people hung their children’s bums off balcony walls and flung turds into enemy houses over messy water wars.
There I arrived at the door of a friend’s studio-plus-house dressed in a white blouse and green sari. I’d never wear white with that green. Never. So I already knew something was wrong.
As soon as the door opened, there he was. Duck. Sitting squat in a shocking shirt of clumsy pink flowers with deep brown shadows, while some people I didn’t like sat around and made small talk with him. He didn’t even look up to acknowledge me. Just sniggered with everyone as I passed them by to go to the balcony, because I had business there.
Turns out, after a long journey I wanted to take a dump and the best place for a pot, as we all know, is an open air balcony because then you can pretend to your house guests that you’re just going out for a smoke and no one will ever suspect that you need to lose a load, except of course vicious neighbours.
There I was, dodging intrusive neighbourly stares by artfully draping my sari around the pot so that it looked like I was squatting for pleasure and no other reason, when I noticed Shane Warne and a few of his buddies draw up in a car to move into the house next door.
A pressing sense of unease not entirely unconnected to my exposed bum wormed its way into my belly as I watched this scene unfold. Shane Warne and his band of boys were loud and unruly, their energy infecting the air so rapidly that soon the whole neighbourhood looked like it was going to explode into world war three in which atomised faecal matter vaporised us off the earth – ashes to ashes, shit to shit. Meanwhile the house guests were deciding on an orgy of some sort. But Duck, ever hesitant Duck. I could sense he wanted to say something on the lines of an apology as I struggled to clean my bottom discreetly, when someone gave me farkin’ CPR.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Custard
Last night Robert Downey Jr. fell in love with me, and he pranced about my head causing me excruciating bouts of heartache, because he’s such an imp.
And K, who’s married to F, a philandering Dutchman said that I should be patient, because he does love me, doesn’t he?
I s’pose so.
So I hung on every word and every glimmer in his sparkling eyes, while he hopped in and out with dizzying frequency in leotards and a billowing white shirt stuffed into a tiny waistcoat, claiming with each fleeting flit around my brain that he truly madly did care for nothing else but my ROI-ignorant head.
That’s how much I adore Robert Downey Jr.
Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking. About things. Variously. And how introspection is a deeply committed job that requires nothing short of 24 hours each day for any sort of breakthrough. Time that I can ill-afford because, hello, there are meals to be worried about and then eaten and then worried about again – because if your digestion’s screwy then introspection is a far thought residing in near about the 10th foot [or if U’s to be believed then the 25th kilometre] of your large intestines. But my digestion’s okay.
It’s just that I do have a job right now, and however little time I try to devote to it, there is the inevitable sitting-it-out at my desk, slamming drawers officiously, sharing MY VIEWS across the desk with A who ignores me as much as she can and tapping at my keyboard that I’m contractually bound to do.
So, much as we’d like to believe that I spend hours pondering the depth of my navel, as S, recently America-returned, says – not of me yet, though – I’ve a lot else to worry about. Like the singular strand of grey that I found lurking in my eyebrow.
That’s serious. When did the post-40s tip toe around my eyebrows?
But this isn’t what’s been occupying my thoughts lately either.
Meandering. That’s what’s been bothering me. And the inability to focus long enough to construct a legitimate sentence because bastards are just so much easier to produce.
Okay so this came out wrong. No really. Don’t judge me.
It’s just that I like the word bastard.
Pay heed now class, there’s nothing such as a ‘bastard’. It’s a state of mind. And the muck’s in your head if your state of mind insists it’s a bad thing.
Now repeat after me.
Bastard rhymes with custard
It’s gay and tart like mustard
It’ll never leave me flustered
‘Cause I love a jolly bastard.
And K, who’s married to F, a philandering Dutchman said that I should be patient, because he does love me, doesn’t he?
I s’pose so.
So I hung on every word and every glimmer in his sparkling eyes, while he hopped in and out with dizzying frequency in leotards and a billowing white shirt stuffed into a tiny waistcoat, claiming with each fleeting flit around my brain that he truly madly did care for nothing else but my ROI-ignorant head.
That’s how much I adore Robert Downey Jr.
Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking. About things. Variously. And how introspection is a deeply committed job that requires nothing short of 24 hours each day for any sort of breakthrough. Time that I can ill-afford because, hello, there are meals to be worried about and then eaten and then worried about again – because if your digestion’s screwy then introspection is a far thought residing in near about the 10th foot [or if U’s to be believed then the 25th kilometre] of your large intestines. But my digestion’s okay.
It’s just that I do have a job right now, and however little time I try to devote to it, there is the inevitable sitting-it-out at my desk, slamming drawers officiously, sharing MY VIEWS across the desk with A who ignores me as much as she can and tapping at my keyboard that I’m contractually bound to do.
So, much as we’d like to believe that I spend hours pondering the depth of my navel, as S, recently America-returned, says – not of me yet, though – I’ve a lot else to worry about. Like the singular strand of grey that I found lurking in my eyebrow.
That’s serious. When did the post-40s tip toe around my eyebrows?
But this isn’t what’s been occupying my thoughts lately either.
Meandering. That’s what’s been bothering me. And the inability to focus long enough to construct a legitimate sentence because bastards are just so much easier to produce.
Okay so this came out wrong. No really. Don’t judge me.
It’s just that I like the word bastard.
Pay heed now class, there’s nothing such as a ‘bastard’. It’s a state of mind. And the muck’s in your head if your state of mind insists it’s a bad thing.
Now repeat after me.
Bastard rhymes with custard
It’s gay and tart like mustard
It’ll never leave me flustered
‘Cause I love a jolly bastard.
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