Ne faites pas du dimanche un jour comme les autres *

And now for a completely hippie moment
On the bus again- I put the customary paperback back into my pocket, and allow myself to feel what is there. Feel the present, look at fellow passengers, flex my bum muscles on the used grey seat; for once I won’t retreat into fiction, or into another deeper inner layer of
regrets
what ifs
memories
but breathe in and feel the anticipation of today fill me up and warm me. It’s good.

---

And now for a completely lesbiatric moment
There is something quite spiritual about dolphins, she says, as we flutter about in the sexshop; I’m admittedly there to pick up a present for an unsuspecting friend; as we play with what is on offer, I do wish they would leave the animals out of it. We leave with their last two Fun Factory dolphins, conspicuously packaged into bright pink wrappers that we can later happily display to fellow tube passengers.

---

And now for a completely cynical moment
I wish they would stop it with the let’s write to the undecided Ohio voters campaign bollocks. Can’t they tell that it’s incredibly arrogant and will backfire? That’s all I had to add.

---

And now for a completely grumpy cunt moment
It’s Halloween, people. Annoying children trick-or-bloody-treating, possibly. Time to put the lights out and lay low, after greasing the doorbell button thing with melted lard; since I’ve run out of anthrax.

* don’t make Sunday into a day just like every other day.

Skincare : no more broken eggcups
I just read this in some magazine :

Surveys and panels
Dermexpert, a leading skin-care company, is looking for women 20-35, any skin type, affected by facial acne Must have 5 to 6 white/red spots. Compensation: 160 euros.

A ha! a guinea pig job where people will pop your pimples for you. How lovely.
What I like about this is that you need to have a certain number of zits.
What happens if you only have 4? Or more than 6?
Also, do they have to be white and red, or just one or the other? Are white ones preferable to red ones?
I guess even if you end up completely disfigured, you come back home with the moral satisfaction of having helped modern science.

---

Internet, people, friends: I’m pleased to report that the upbeat mood is sticking around. No more tears, no more broken 50p eggcups.
Not that I had eggcups left.

I like compote, or Porque lo valgo
I don’t know what it is, besides the obvious explanation of non-simultaneous chocolate cake and fruitful masturbation, but I’m all upbeat today. As if I were high on something. Life. The realisation that I like myself, and that I'm worth more than the bad taste left behind from a unrealistic relationship.
Maybe it’s the Glorious End of The Infinite Sadness.
Yay!

---

This morning’s pre-breakfast reflecting went as such:
a. Why, in moments of anger, am I capable of picking something up and throw it at the wall, but always pick up the fifty pence eggcup from New Cross cheap-ass market? Why always something cheap that doesn’t matter? Isn’t anger meant to overlook thrift and carefulness?
b. Should I, like my lovely and very controlled, ass-kicking martial artist friend S, pick up Kendo? From his description, I understand it goes like this:
1.Put on Dark Vader mask and padding.
2.Pick up big stick.
3.Step forward.
4.Hit opponent on any of the following body parts: head, wrists, chest, and throat.
5.When beating opponent to a pulp, shout out the name of said body parts. Head! (whack) Face! (whack)! Just to make sure opponent knows exactly which bit it is that’s hurting like a bastard.
6.Now, your turn to get whacked into Dark Vader compote.
7.And relax.
Pricier than eggcups, but oh so much more cathartic.

---

*cough*
And finally, a big thank you to the lovely people who have put up with me for the past two months and reminding me that I'm worth it. I had forgotten - temporarily.

Snippets
It’s only after we left the house to trot towards the Saatchi Gallery that J leaned over and said : you have hair sticking out of your nose. Do you have any scissors on you? Since I did not, I carefully tucked it back in with my little finger.

---

Late last night, a quick succession of events culminated in me acting as referee in an arm-wrestling contest between complete strangers in a dodgy, grimy, sticky Soho dive. Time well spent.

---

Sometimes, when the hangovers let me, I read The Guardian, and I laugh, and spill tea over my 300 thread count sheets.(I don't spill as much as when I read The Times, naturally.)
Extracts:
Last week [The Guardian] launched Operation Clark County to help readers have a say in the American election by writing to undecided voters in the crucial state of Ohio. In the first three days, more than 11,000 people requested addresses. Here is some of the reaction to the project that we received from the US:

Have you not noticed that Americans don't give two shits what Europeans think of us? Each email someone gets from some arrogant Brit telling us why to NOT vote for George Bush is going to backfire, you stupid, yellow-toothed pansies ... I don't give a rat's ass if our election is going to have an effect on your worthless little life. I really don't. If you want to have a meaningful election in your crappy little island full of shitty food and yellow teeth, then maybe you should try not to sell your sovereignty out to Brussels and Berlin, dipshit. Oh, yeah - and brush your goddamned teeth, you filthy animals.
Wading River, NY

Real Americans aren't interested in your pansy-ass, tea-sipping opinions. If you want to save the world, begin with your own worthless corner of it.
Texas, USA

My dear, beloved Brits,
I understand the Guardian is sponsoring a service where British citizens write to Americans to advise them on how to vote. Thank heavens! I was adrift in a sea of confusion and you are my beacon of hope!
Feel free to respond to this email with your advice. Please keep in mind that I am something of an anglophile, so this is not confrontational. Please remember, too, that I am merely an American. That means I am not very bright. It means I have no culture or sense of history. It also means that I am barely literate, so please don't use big, fancy words.
Set me straight, folks!
Dayton, Ohio

MAY YOU HAVE TO HAVE A TOOTH CAPPED. I UNDERSTAND IT TAKES AT LEAST 18 MONTHS FOR YOUR GREAT MEDICAL SERVICES TO GET AROUND TO YOU. HAVE A GREAT DAY.
Harlan, Kentucky

More here. Enjoy. I know I did.

I love England, really I do.
Places I would like to visit:
Poppleton, just for the name.
and Farleigh Wallop, wherever that may be.
And Effingham, of course. Wait, I’ve been there already.

Surgery, celibacy, and the infinitely personal nature of experience
Metaphor Of The day, or Picture this:
secondary school, break time, the girls’ toilet is a hive of chatting adolescents applying lipstick. Marie-Laure is examining her complexion in the mirror – huge, white head spot alert! She starts squeezing mindlessly – SPLATTER! Conversations come to an immediate halt. Hey, isn’t that what cubicles are (also) for? Hasty wiping of the mirror, exit in shame.

This is a bit like squeezing a bit fat purulent spot. First it hurts much worse than it looks, for such a middle-of-the-range-looking spot. You just can’t leave it alone, and then you squeeze, and pus keeps coming out, a little blood too perhaps. And you keep going back for one little more squeeze, because it just has to come out, even if the mirror gets splattered in the process.
Then, maybe, when the crap’s out, then you heal.

---

I bought a bumper pack of AA batteries yesterday. I’m all set for a long spell of celibacy.
cel·i·ba·cy ( P ) Pronunciation Key (sl-b-s)
n.
1.Abstinence from sexual intercourse, especially by reason of religious vows.
2.The condition of being unmarried. [syn: chastity, sexual abstention]Wait, isn’t celibacy self-imposed? Or perhaps it’s a nice word to use when deep down I’m bitter that I’m not getting any?

---

I watched an Alexandr Rogozhkin film last night called The cuckoo. Wartime Lapland, three characters with no common language are thrown together by circumstances.

- [in Finnish] What’s your name, Russian; Ivan? All Russians are called Ivan.
- [ in Russian] Get lost, fascist!
- [in Finnish] Pleased to meet you, Gerlost, I’m Vekio. I’m not a fascist, I’m a Finn. I’m just wearing this uniform, I’m not fighing, the war is over for me.
- [in Lap language] Vekio, Gerlost, I’m Anny. I haven’t seen a man in four years, and now two come at once! so don’t get too close to me, or I get wet and I want to scream.

It’s a tale of prejudice and loneliness and longing and the failure to communicate, exacerbated by the language gap. At the end, all parties walk away with an altogether different version of what happened – as if they didn’t live the same events at all.
When a relationship falls through, how can both parties to walk away with the same version of events? Different memories, different emphasis. Better not compare them too much.

This is not a love song
These are the things that I miss.
I miss her voice; fired up, opinionated, passionate in every way, sometimes unfair and unforgiving, quick to dismiss and scorn, judge and trample. Such a relief from my wanting-to-be-careful considerations, such freedom. In secret, I called her my little bull; I never told her that. Perhaps I thought she’d be offended.
I miss her perspective, her sense of what is funny, absurd, shocking; I was so proud to be the one to see beyond the funny girl, beyond the entertainer. I thought: no one will love you like I do. (In every story, isn’t there a character deluding herself with that belief?)
I miss her brown body, so unlike mine, yet so familiar; and I miss her appetite, for food, for movement, for life, for sex, for me. It matched and legitimised mine; it opened up floodgates in me, new possibilities, new hungers, new, shared, power.
I miss her crazy hair (she always wanted to shave it off), her soft skin, and I miss her belly.
I miss telling her off for pulling out her toenails, for always threatening to get a bald head; I miss trying to convince her that I liked her belly.
I miss pretending to tell her what to do; I miss pretending that she deserved a slap.
I miss her unrealistic expectations, which pricked the mediocre in me.
I miss her dreams of domesticity, which lured the loner in me.

These are some of the things that I miss; and if that makes me inconsistent, I don’t even care.
(On the other hand, I really don’t miss her attraction for yappy lapsang souchong dogs.)

The pillow perspective
It’s a beautiful autumn day.
I found a probably imprudent, tiny insect in my mug of cold tea; I want to believe it was suicidal. I can be so romantic that way.
I have many encounters planned for this week.
It's 4.50 pm and I'm still in bed; it's called brooding.

---

A picture emerges:
· She fantasised about me beating people up for her. She fantasised about me going to Law school, become a powerful lawyer and fix injustices . She would have liked me to move over the Atlantic in one short sweeping motion and find my feet and be autonomous and strong. She would have liked me to initiate phone sex and to top her in bed. She commented on how hot other women were. She would have liked me to drive her places, to woo her, to be able of more, to know more. She would have liked me to pretend to boss her around, tell her what to do. She would have liked to look up to her partner.
· How I always felt that I was letting her down! And vowed to myself to try harder!
· It is hard always feeling on trial; it is harrowing always trying to impress, always trying to match someone else’s hopes.
· She liked that I was different, looked different, talked differently, perhaps even thought differently; but then it began to show that my way of being different didn’t fit into what she wanted for herself.
· Why is so difficult to accept the notion that I was loved for who I am not? And why did it take me so long to figure it out?
· It’s not like I don’t know what it is to invest a lover with my own expectations. Projection, anyone?
· Goddamnit, I still can’t shake the belief that it could have worked out. What do I need to quit?
"When someone sees you as you really are and wants to be with you, that's powerful."

Deep sea diving makes me feel claustrophobic
How much truth is there to the cliché that you really have to touch the bottom before coming up again? And how far down is the bottom anyway?

Six Feet Under?·
·The hedonist in me has shut up. One day, perhaps, I slowed down, and finally figured out that our/my only worthwhile pursuit is really intimacy; that on that quest we get sidetracked and lost and confused and lured and deceived, and all we get is sex, and sex and its corollary ego rub seem to fill the void for some time. And now, that has become a given, and I just can’t nod to hot fuck dates. I’m only/obviously flattered. But I’ll stay away, and not unleash the flirting beast inside. Keep the rampant shagster locked up.
· Relationships can be a great distraction. The general sense of rot that I am feeling is, I realise, deeper than the pain of the break up. When did it start? Was it covered up by the elation/hope/torment of this relationship? Where would I be had the relationship not happened?
· There is undoubtedly digging to be done; and I know I have to do it alone. Isn’t a break up, as horribly gut-wrenching as it is, the best time to start digging?
· Yours truly will be single and sleeping alone for a very long time.
· Yours truly will still be missing her for a very long time, and lapsing in my resolution of not daydreaming about her.