I felt curiously elated today and I find it hard to know why. The weekend began quite badly on Friday evening when for the first time ever (I think) I shrieked at Mark, stormed out of the house at supper time and drove off like a bat out of hell... I didn't go very far - Dumpton Gap where, at low tide, there was a nice long beach and some chalk platform to contemplate, some gulls, oyster catchers and sunlit clouds and a number of dog walkers. I sat there for about an hour to let M stew a bit (and so that he could have supper with Sira and get that over)... I thought all the negative things one thinks, and couldn't see how I was going to achieve my ends. Then I went home, ate supper and forgot about it all. What had made me SO angry was the fact that he had said "you are starving yourself because of this bloody diet" and I thought he's spent the last 20 years encouraging me to lose weight... how very dare he! For the record I am not starving myself, but I was very hungry and tired...and my feet hurt and he wasn't helping me when I needed it.
Last week, the tinkling sound you would have heard in my vicinity was the scales falling from my eyes as I realised something about someone else that changed my world view... today, by coincidence further evidence to reinforce my new world order as I learned that things I had intuited for the last couple of years were entirely true. I think the weird elation I feel is that sense of vindication. Always trust your intuition I was told years ago - by the famous Indian astrologer I visited in Delhi - on the whole I do, but am painfully aware that sometimes the narrative urge grabs an intuition and inflates it into a story. I also realise that intuitions are only about now - not about the future (usually: occasionally they can point to it). I am beginning to understand that I do have a bit of a rescuer complex... it isn't a la limerence that I seek gratitude - more that I can't bear to see people trapped and struggling whether in a situation or with their own personality, I get the urge to offer them a hand out of the bog, I only wanted to help... might be put on my gravestone. Except that I have now turned into a selfish, single-minded bitch.... so - where are we?
Then the most appalling thing happened today - my friend Paul who went into hospital with acute leukaemia last week, told me that he had about a week to live. He's going to a hospice and expects to be dead by Sunday. I've had some difficult telephone conversations in the past - but this was a horror. Because you feel your feelings, but it's not about you - it's about him - and what do you say? I guess let them talk - be there to hear them out. It is just so unspeakably unfair that a man of 55 should be slain like this - but it's not the first and won't be the last. First there was Sue at 42 - but she was an anomaly really until first Strat had has incurable diagnosis - that was the worst thing, but still the two deaths last year Mike M and Roger were apallingly sad - since they were people I hoped to see again somehow and hang out with in the dim and distant future. And with Mike's death and the ensuing conversations I discovered that a couple of others had died, not quite so close, but other friends of my 20s. So, nothing new.
However, Paul's mortality did that trick of making me feel very alive and lucky and blessed and happy... it was rather terrible. The other news has liberated me from something I really disliked - and Paul's imminent death has somehow propelled me towards a greater appreciation of what I have. As a result M and I have had some really good, intense conversations about things today. And whatever I may have said about M in the past, he still has the capacity to surprise and interest and engage me with new things.... even if does tend to repeat himself.
Better than all this - or rather - part of all this - I have had a great idea for a comedy film script - I don't know if it will work... but it could...it has been an extraordinary day, and I feel it may not be over yet.
Last week, the tinkling sound you would have heard in my vicinity was the scales falling from my eyes as I realised something about someone else that changed my world view... today, by coincidence further evidence to reinforce my new world order as I learned that things I had intuited for the last couple of years were entirely true. I think the weird elation I feel is that sense of vindication. Always trust your intuition I was told years ago - by the famous Indian astrologer I visited in Delhi - on the whole I do, but am painfully aware that sometimes the narrative urge grabs an intuition and inflates it into a story. I also realise that intuitions are only about now - not about the future (usually: occasionally they can point to it). I am beginning to understand that I do have a bit of a rescuer complex... it isn't a la limerence that I seek gratitude - more that I can't bear to see people trapped and struggling whether in a situation or with their own personality, I get the urge to offer them a hand out of the bog, I only wanted to help... might be put on my gravestone. Except that I have now turned into a selfish, single-minded bitch.... so - where are we?
Then the most appalling thing happened today - my friend Paul who went into hospital with acute leukaemia last week, told me that he had about a week to live. He's going to a hospice and expects to be dead by Sunday. I've had some difficult telephone conversations in the past - but this was a horror. Because you feel your feelings, but it's not about you - it's about him - and what do you say? I guess let them talk - be there to hear them out. It is just so unspeakably unfair that a man of 55 should be slain like this - but it's not the first and won't be the last. First there was Sue at 42 - but she was an anomaly really until first Strat had has incurable diagnosis - that was the worst thing, but still the two deaths last year Mike M and Roger were apallingly sad - since they were people I hoped to see again somehow and hang out with in the dim and distant future. And with Mike's death and the ensuing conversations I discovered that a couple of others had died, not quite so close, but other friends of my 20s. So, nothing new.
However, Paul's mortality did that trick of making me feel very alive and lucky and blessed and happy... it was rather terrible. The other news has liberated me from something I really disliked - and Paul's imminent death has somehow propelled me towards a greater appreciation of what I have. As a result M and I have had some really good, intense conversations about things today. And whatever I may have said about M in the past, he still has the capacity to surprise and interest and engage me with new things.... even if does tend to repeat himself.
Better than all this - or rather - part of all this - I have had a great idea for a comedy film script - I don't know if it will work... but it could...it has been an extraordinary day, and I feel it may not be over yet.
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