Love, love is a verb, love is a doing word

Matthew Eastmond's wonderful 'Commuter Ignores Lovable Bear', which is too perfect for words for today's post. I would love to think that we are all sometimes that lovable bear. You must - and this is not a request - take time immediately (even if the dinner will burn) to look at Matthew Eastmond's website, and at his online art exhibitions. Even better, buy something from him at once.

On the train home from London. No one speaks to anyone. People are even fearful of making eye contact. I challenge this by exuberantly greeting those on the morning or evening train who choose to take the seat next to me. Generally, they look afraid, then pointedly retreat behind books, Blackberries (I don't even know what a Blackberry is, but the chicks dig it...), Metro's or mobile phones. The exception to this rule - which I have noted consistently over the past two weeks I've been travelling to and from London - is Anthony, my seat companion yesterday from Waterloo all the way to Portsmouth and Southsea. It is ironic that on the one journey where tiredness had discouraged me from venturing beyond my usual smiling 'Is this seat taken?', it is Anthony who strikes up conversation with me.

"You read very quickly," he comments after half an hour in which I have been immersed in Rabih Alameddine's book, Koolaids - which I heartily recommend, and which has a great opening paragraph:

Death comes in many shapes and sizes, but it always comes. No one escapes the little tag on the big toe.

"You have nearly finished that book in half an hour!" he continues.

I beam at him, nearly sliding from my seat in surprise, and delighted that someone else has broken my observation of non-communicative travel. For the rest of the journey, Anthony and I chat about the benefits and disadvantages of speed-reading (he reads slowly and retains the details of every book he has ever read; I read very fast and cannot remember many details within the same week, though I can always tell you if I have enjoyed a book or not and rarely forget one entirely), and our respective jobs (he is an internal auditor in Gosport and very interested that I make my living writing).

It is a pleasure to listen to him talk; he has the delicious accent of Africa I have not heard since my days with the African Women's Choir (anyone who mentions my appearance on the Big Screen of the Guildhall Square will be struck off my Christmas card list for now and all time).

As the train pulls into Portsmouth and Southsea station, we exchange warm goodbyes. I wonder why these encounters are the exception rather than the rule?

Over the last few weeks, I have made a determined effort to speak to my fellow travellers during my train journeys, with varying results. Some people welcome contact with such warmth it borders on gratitude, as if they had been longing for someone to speak, whilst others respond with a hostility that may denote a fear of my self-evident insanity at speaking to them at all.

I don't mind too much how people react; the exercise is as much for my benefit as theirs. On Radio 4's Thought for the Day yesterday morning (Radio 4 is one of my closest and best informed friends) Giles Fraser said:

The more you give away, the more you have; the more your focus in life is outside of yourself, the more you will flourish.

In a world where our similarities by far outweigh our differences (should you doubt this, try comparing humans with frogs for a contrast), and in which many of us increasingly feel isolated and alone (Ah, how I miss you Kate!!!), the temptation to 'protect' ourselves by turning our focus ever inward (or, as the great philosophers John, Paul, George and Ringo once said - it's a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder), I'm all for bridging the gaps between each other, even at the risk of being considered crazy (what's new, I hear you cry, gentle reader).

I've been running around always looking down

I'm taking a leaf out of The Youngest Indie's blog (see what I did there?) for a while and using song lyrics as my blog titles. If you have time, check out The Youngest Indie, one of my favourite blogs in the 'osphere, and featuring some mighty fine images, as always.

I'm delighted to find in my image search for today's post, a comic strip called 'Angry Sarah' that captures it all perfectly, by the outrageously talented Luke Pickett - clearly a genius. Turns out Angry Sarah is a recurring character of his, and I love the by-line 'An Angry Sarah Adventure' which just about sums up my life to date.

I spent yesterday in London, up at 6am and back at 9pm. My days in London are weird. The city used to terrify me but I must confess it grows on me more and more. The things I hate about it are also the things I love: the cool anonymity, no one having any interest in you or yours and the way that I never, ever really know what's going to be around the next corner. I'm also becoming increasingly accustomed to sleeping on the train. Snoring amongst strangers should be an exercise for self-confidence.

I had a great opportunity to practice patience on the way back when sharing a carriage with a group of middle class teenagers. Say what you like about young people (no, really, do - I'm no longer in that category and genuinely don't care) but the irritating type are the middle class ones, for me. All sound and banality, signifying nothing, today's uniformed emos will be the 2.4 suburbanites of tomorrow.

There were several moments when I wanted them dead, several where I just wanted them maimed and several where I just wanted to grab and shake each one of them in turn whilst screaming:

"I don't care how posh and fucking privileged you are, or how fucking hilarious your repetitious ego wank fest seems to you right now - I need you to SHUT THE FUCK UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP!"

Although it took a lot of work, I decided against this in the end: partly because it's against my personal code of ethics and I know that such moments really are an opportunity to practice patience, and partly because after my last commuter trip, the judge said that another offence would result in a prison sentence (I know, call that justice? It was a public service and I only did what the other commuters did not have the nerve to do)....

So, yes, I've got a few issues right now. Missing Kit Kat is making me short tempered and intolerant. Yes, even more so than usual. Someone 'accidently' called me a narcissist earlier today and I actually found myself considering throwing him through the window of his shop. Seriously.

I think I should have some kind of public health warning - Danger, this girl has recently lost her best friend to Antipodean Travel. Do not approach her. Do not upset her. And for the love of God, don't provoke her temper.

In other news, The Magic Pixie and I were recently discussing the need for us to have t-shirts reading 'What would Kate do?' to get us through the next 12 months. Turns out, someone got there ahead of us. Truly, Kate is a human miracle.......As the Pixie says, Everyone should have one.

Until next time.......Stay patient.

It's been a long, long time but I want you to know

Farewell for a year to the Kit Kat!

Well. It has been a while, hasn't it? It seems longer than just February since I wrote, but perhaps that's because so much has happened since.

My best friend Kit Kat has just left our fair climes to travel for a year. We set up a blog for her before she left so that she could keep in touch with everyone. You can find it here:

Home Thoughts from A Broad

Seeing Kate's blog made me think that I miss my own a little. This year has seen a huge amount of change for me - just when I was thinking that nothing could beat the wild changes of last year. But last year's winds of change were gentler, born of sunshine and novelty. This year's changes seem slower, cooler, like the onset of winter in all its inevitable, indifferent beauty.

So here I am, back in the land of the blogger once more.

It split my heart a little to see a couple of posts back in February that mentioned James and I moving in together. Alas, as life would have it, this was not a state that lasted long. We have since both moved on to pastures new: he that way, and I this. As the lady Alanis once said, 'Life has a funny way.'

Indeed it does. Bloody hilarious.

I've got that sinking Sunday feeling: cleaning the flat, catching up on work-related reading, typing invoices and listening to the Kings of Leon's new album (you can always rely on the Followills to keep you holding on).

I'm needing the sound of Use Somebody each day since I bought it. I've no doubt this will change as I have a tendency to fall in love with each one of their album tracks in turn, until I'm wearing the whole album under my skin like a singing insulation against the cold. Check out our boys on C4:

Portsmouth

He says a sky of blue and a landscape of green
balances the human mind.

But back in the real world of desks and offices,
computer screens and colleagues,
the lack of balance makes the world spin
at an angle that feels somewhat less than jaunty.

Back amongst the jokes and jaunts
and jollity of weddings to come,
the overheard conversations,
the petty frustrations,
the bureaucratic defenses,
the world is closing, folding in and over.

Behind my desk, I am subsumed
beneath a sea of paper, a tide of tasks,
the endless duty England has come
to expect of every man, woman and child.

This city, these walls; the space, the place
in which my shape took form.

I am tied to your horizon with a concrete heart.

'Only in silent shadows and dreams...'

Thank God for the St Bernard, I may never have made it otherwise.

While I've been recovering and waiting for the frostbite to heal, I've been hanging out on Encarta. I love it. It's a highly convenient way to deposit useless facts into my memory banks and waste even more time in procrastination than an average session on Facebook.

Tonight I only went on it to look up Wallace Stevens. I've been reading a poem of his called Sunday Morning. It reminds me of feminism in a strange way, the female voice. Read it and you might see what I mean. Here's a bit of it.

Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measure destined for her soul.

Does that remind you of Virginia Woolf or Sylvia Plath, even a little? More in meaning than in style. Then again, it could just be me.

I'm wildly hormonal today, it makes me jump erratically from subject to subject. Though I'm sure no one's noticed.

I've moved in with my partner.

This is exciting, dangerous stuff, like bungee jumping without the rope and only an outrageous amount of faith to bounce you back. Living with James makes me notice the nuances of my own insanity. I'm fascinated with the world as James sees it, yet sometimes catching a glimpse of how I appear through his eyes (as I see him seeing me, if you follow my skewed vision) is terrifying. It makes me want to shepherd him to safety and the arms of someone more normal. Well partly. I know such women exist, I just don't want to give him over to any of them. Is that wildly selfish?

But back to Encarta.

Did you know that the term Big Bang was originally coined by Fred Hoyle, who used it as a term of derision for a theory that wasn't even his and that he didn't actually even believe in himself? He actually had a rival theory of his own. But the name he gave to his rival's idea became the name that actually stuck. That must have been annoying.

Moreover, did you know that 'hind' is actually another name for a female deer? Admittedly, it probably wouldn't have been as catchy in the Sound of Music, and wouldn't have worked as a musical mnemonic, but it might have been more interesting.

I got all of this from looking up Wallace Stevens. Well, technically from the journey the poem Sunday Morning took me on (I told you that you should read it).

And did you know that Jove, as in 'By Jove!' was another name for the god Jupiter?

See. A little poetry is good for your general knowledge.

Sarah's feeling for snow

There's a snow storm in Toronto.

Life in Canadia is exciting this way.

Everything is covered in snow, as you might expect, but I have never seen snow like this in my life. The snow rises and rises, making deceptive surfaces that wait for people to fall into them, mistaking air and water for something more solid. I trace the strata as it climbs, watch the wind lift the whiteness, and deposit it in deep drifts against windows, against doors.

The snow falls in circles, sweeping arcs of pure, white silence, drifting to the ground and making the world a cleaner, brighter, muted place. It sweeps from the rooftops in tiny grains, like sand, like dust.

I've had dreams like this.

Just staring at the snow from the safety of the house - no one dares venture beyond the front door for long, we can't tell where the stairs to the street are anymore and if you guess wrong and fall into a drift, you won't be found for days - leaves me dazed, dreaming and disoriented.

A small amount of people are still driving, but very, very slowly. From the balcony of Howard's room, I just saw a landrover towing three sleds covered in children slowly along the backstreets, the children screaming with joy. I wanted to be among them and maybe twenty years younger than I am.

Eskimo impersonators, wrapped in clothes so thick they waddle, not walk, take manual snow ploughs to their drives in a futile fight against the drifts.

The snow separates me from home, from the familiar. It reels my mind into a more intuitive frame, a different way of seeing, where my interior senses become more important than my physical senses - sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing. Instead I feel more. Thoughts - usually built of words - become emotions that swirl, like the clouds of snow beyond the window, around my heart.

Snow comes in such silence, strips the modern world of its supremacy over us; the snow takes me further away. Nothing about this landscape is familiar.


Snow, by Louis MacNeice

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink rose against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes --
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands--
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Cold in Canadia

Picture above is courtesy of Brian Swetek over at Time to Talk.org. You'll have to Google it because I'm on a Mac and nothing is the same anymore.

So, I've arrived in Mississauga, popular suburb of Canadia and official home of the strip mall. My friend Simon, who is also here calls them strip malls. I'm not even sure what a strip mall is, but I like the sound of it.

I am travelling with my friend Kate, who stepped in to accompany me at the last minute due to my incredible fear of flying. It wasn't too bad on the first flight. I clutched my little Buddha in my hand and thought of hugs and kisses. I tell myself in these moments that everyone gets as nervous at flying as I do, but I know this isn't actually true. You can tell by the look on people's faces. Some people are just chilling out, reading, doing sudoku - I'm quietly confident that these people are not fixing their gaze and silently screaming, 'We're going too fast, we're going too fast, nothing on earth should be going this fast, my ears are exploding, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!" Or maybe they're just convering it well.

Kate said that I seem to deal with the fear pretty well, and this was probably the calmest I've ever been on a flight, but even so, my most comfort comes from just acclimatizing myself to the fact that I'm about to fall out of the sky/crash into another plane/pass out during a spin-dizzy descent following a bird hitting the pilot's windscreen, which doesn't seem to me the most positive way of dealing with fear. Stil, as Miss Sally says, you gotta make it work for you.

It is damn cold in Canadia. Minus 20. There's snow and everything. On the night we flew in, Howard, Simon, Kate and I end up in a restaurant, Moxie's, drinking pinot griogio and laughing a lot before heading back to the house in Mississauga, where we had a snowball at about one in the morning. We're already friends with the neighbours, as you can imagine.

My friend Glenn tried to convince on the night before we left that temperatures this low would freeze our eyeballs. I laughed this one clean off the football pitch of ideas.

"Do you not think we would hear a bit more about that if it were true, Glenn?" I ask, "Do you not think they'd put something in the tourist guides - 'Please bring goggles on your trip if you are travelling to Toronto in winter, as your eyeballs may freeze in their sockets, causing you considerable pain, certain inconvenience and permanent blindness.'"

"It's true," he insists, displaying that incredible Capricorn trait of ignoring you and contradicting you all at the same time.

"Google it," I command. I no longer believe anything that google can't generate at least fifty thousand hits for.

He draws a blank and is kind enough to mumble something about it being a mistake. Glenn is rarely wrong and I know this hurts him. As one of his closest friends, that's all I need and I kindly let it go.

It is bloody cold here though, and I had forgotten that Canadia, like the USA has not learnt yet to put a door on cubicles in public toilets that actually fills the gap made for it. I wrote about this on the Stateside blog last year, but had forgotten. Why leave an inch wide gap around the toilet door? No one outside wants to see me urinating (I'm assuming, and fervently hoping) and I don't want to watch people queuing while I urinate. It's too unEnglish for words. Except these ones, obviously.

My friend Rodders just chastised me on facebook for leaving without saying goodbye, and I need to apologise to more than just her for this, I have abandoned almost everyone without a goodbye as it was all so last minute. I'm only here for a week, so fear ye not, England. We fly back on Thursday night and arrive on Friday, so I will return in time for a cool Yule.

I know it's sappish, but I don't care. I miss you all, of course I do, but I miss James a lot. I've told him this already via email, but I can't tell him too many times or he'll I think I'm overly emotional crazy (I'm certain he hasn't really noticed this aspect fo my personality yet, so don't mention it if you see him, pretend like I'm secure and well-adjusted and for God's sake don't mention the therapy years). He's travelled loads and for long periods of time and he says he never misses anyone. So if you see him, make out like I'm totally stiff-upper lipping it. He doesn't read the blog, so it can just be our little secret......