Lump

Buy me. I’ll change your life; say the faux-cynical billboards from Selfridges. It’s the sale, I am fairly solvent and susceptible to advertising, so after mass yesterday I tried to be part of the hordes and go shopping. Two budget-saving conclusions:
1. I don’t need anything.
2. I don’t want to buy anything anyway.
What I need is to go away, but I don’t know away from what, besides the obvious constituted by my four walls, the green kitchen, the blue bathroom, the view over the neighbour’s yard, Sid the vicious cat, the plants I haven’t managed to kill off despite years of care. Maybe I need the kind of break where you don’t bother to lock the door on the way out and throw away the key into the trash. I don’t know. I’m envying my mother; as soon as she has completed her painting of camels’ heads on the bathroom wall, she’s off to some Ashram in India for an indefinite period of time. I lead a more structured life, and the thought of letting that structure take over again tomorrow at the ass-crack of dawn is enough for me to want to pull out my nose hair and scream. I hope the pile of detective novels I have bought will carry me through January. January is by far the least fizzy, the lumpiest month in the year, right after February. February is beyond lumpy, it’s nothing but a humongous block of bleakness. Maybe I should run away to India too.
For now, I’m off to pull out my nose hair. And scream.