Monday, April 24, 2017

the roughest winter yet

Things I never thought I would do, that I did during the past winter:

fall in love with a stranger
cut down on coffee and wine and not even miss it much
take anti-depressants
go to bed at 7 pm
see a therapist
ask to join a women's church group
stand in a breadline (for the company, not the food)
love my gym
have panic attacks
lose weight (alas, only temporarily)

receive excerpts from a psychiatric textbook by text message
take up knitting

Sunday, April 23, 2017

if you're gonna jump, then jump far

We are losing our volleyball game, even though our team is playing really well.
We seem to be losing more often than ever, even as I feel my own strength growing and my skills improving. My hatred of losing stays the same.

Our team today is a motley collection of women that I play with every week and women I see twice a year (at these volleyball tournaments). There is a thin teenager who will probably be playing at national level in a few years and middle-aged amateurs like myself. This is what I like about volleyball: there are women who seem to be approaching sixty, and women who are short and fat, and they are still very good at this game that seems to favour the tall and powerful. Better than me. Maybe I can still play when I'm old and fat.

Our team picks up the serve - one of the weaker players fumbles with the ball but somebody else helps and the teenager hammers it over the net.

Some parts of my body are starting to fail. My hitting arm protests with pain and my knees hurt after half a lifetime of jumping. I need to stop playing volleyball and do something about this before my legs refuse to carry me anymore. As I focus on today's game, I know it is my last for a while. I won't really miss these tournaments - I always seem to leave them in a huff after yet another defeat.

The team sets up a beautiful opportunity for a spike. I forget my knees and my shoulder and jump like a cat. My spike is, for once, perfect. Hard enough to crush bones. It bounces off a defender's arms and comes back to me in an ideal arc. I jump again, halfway to heaven, and immediately make the kill. It is lovely. I feel stronger and better than ever.

We are losing the game and I'm sure I will walk away in a huff, on wobbly knees. But at the moment I and my team-mates are having too much fun to care.

Saturday, April 22, 2017

from the Penny Diaries

Random facts from my formative years:

* Fastest timed clocked for going around the block on a kicksled: 4 minutes 55 seconds
* First line in first play (cast as Mary in the nativity play), said in a dreamy voice: "It's the angels, Joseph."
* First entry in first diary ever, age eleven: "Today I got to skip first period in school. School started at eight and I stressed so much that I started to feel sick. Later heard the others had had their weight and height measurements taken. (With Elise N., who is the strictest teacher in school.)"
* Favourite TV show: Brødrene Dal (especially when the intrepid Norwegian brothers went looking for the mysterious Professor Drøvel)
* Founding member of: The Secret Spy Club, Spying Club Adventure, Detective Club Adventure (anyone see a pattern here?)
* Genre of poetry I wrote: naïve romanticism
* What I sang for my first (and only) real solo, age six: "Adventstid kom till mitt ensamma hus" (Advent time, come to my lonely house)
* Musical instrument I took lessons in: the piano (for seven horrid years)
* Musical instrument I almost performed with in public once: the glockenspiel (but I was late for school so someone else did)
* Dream job: zoo keeper, cook
* Hobbies I took up: volleyball, writing, church
* What I loved: animals, advent calendars, coloured pens and scented erasers, drawing maps and walking fake dogs, hanging out with my big sister (especially when she took me to look at horses)
* Teacher's assessment after I wrote an essay on arms dealers who became victims of burglary, age twelve: "Your writing is grammatically correct and the subject matter is not the usual - you have your own view of problems."
* How I earned my first own money: babysitting a future pole-vaulting star

Friday, April 21, 2017

having cookies with Wolverine

I had another one of those evenings with Wolverine - I call him that because he is a loner, a bit haunted but powerful and caring.

He came to me on a cold April evening when he needed a break from reality. He brought chocolate cookies. I watched TV and knitted an ugly scarf while he sat  next to me, drinking cider. We talked about sick poodles and flatmates with OCD.

Then he went home.

Thursday, April 20, 2017

wild city

I'm awakened in the morning by the screeches of seagulls and oystercatchers, and the first eyes I meet as I go out the door are those of a bold hare. Sometimes it's hard to believe that I live in a city.

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

where the heat burns your blue sandals off your feet

She wore a white labcoat and a hijab, a black scarf on her hair. Because her face was exposed, he averted his gaze, blushing as he did so. Uncertain where to rest his eyes, he let them fall on the plastic ID tag that hung around her neck; Katya Hijazi, Laboratory Technician. He was surprised to see her first name on the tag - it should have been as private as her hair or the shape of her body - and it made her seem defiant.
  Worried that the older man might think he was staring at her breasts, Nayir dropped his gaze to the floor, catching sight of two shapely feet ensconced in bright blue sandals. He blushed again  and turned away from her, trying not to turn completely but just enough to indicate that he wouldn't look at her.
  The woman's shoulders drooped slightly, which seemed to indicate that she'd noticed Nayir's discomfort and was disappointed by it. Reaching into her pocket, she took out a burqa, draped it over her face, and fastened the Velcro at the back of her head.

I don't like to read books set in a culture I know nothing about. Maybe I don't want to be disturbed in my lazy ignorance. Fortunately, I happened to pick up The Night of the Mi'raj by Zoë Ferraris and was too intrigued to put it down again.

I have seldom read a murder mystery so well written. I was thrown right into daily life in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with its unforgiving heat, ordinary people with ordinary lives and strangely paranoid attitudes towards women. It made me feel almost at home, at the same time as I felt the terrible claustrophobia of being a woman there. Delicately written.

Sunday, April 16, 2017

faith, hope and love

Easter Sunday has dawned and God has rescued me.

The war has been won. I am loved. One day I will meet the God who loves me.

Friday, April 14, 2017

good friday on the beach

As we stroll along the seafront, among the pine trees, birds are singing wildly.

I don't know if I can trust this calm inside me but there is no need to know the future. The sun is blinding. It looks like spring but an icy northerly wind is blowing. On the sandy beach we sit down on a fleece while a few stray snowflakes make their way down from heaven. The melting ice makes a whispering sound.

Two friends, a toddler playing in the sand, and me. We talk about depression and sick children ... oh, yes, and giant wasps. And we pray, right there on the deserted beach.

Thursday, April 13, 2017

as the church goes dark

I go to the big church on Maundy Thursday and sit in the back, fidgeting like a teenager.

The liturgy and the voices of old ladies singing hymns seem like history, like years and generations stretching back to ancient times. I think of my forefathers, farmers who left their work to dress up and go to church when bells started tolling. I miss them, the grandmothers I knew and the great-grandmothers I've only heard stories of and whose blankets I wrap around me on cold winter nights. I think of the vast cathedrals I saw on my wanderings further south in Europe, the votive candles and the air thick with prayers that have been said there for centuries. I think of God, who came down to earth to rescue us two thousand years ago and who is still holding the invitation open for a little while longer.

I hold on to all of this on a Maundy Thursday when myself and the world around me are shaking and sick. I fidget like a teenager in the pew and watch with amazement as the candles are extinguished and the church organ goes quiet. In a darkened church, we sing the last hymn a cappella. A crown of thorns is placed on an almost empty altar. Christ is gone to Calvary to take our punishment.

We sit in the dark and wait for our redemption to dawn.

Monday, April 10, 2017

vast and fathomless heart


"There will come a time when you want to cut off all your hair. Do it. Realise that the thing you want rid of doesn’t lie in the long curls that frame your face so perfectly. Live with short hair for a while. It’ll grow.

You won’t always want to talk to people. That’s okay. When it’s late and you hear your friends talking in the next room, you don’t have to join them. You’re allowed your solitude. It makes company sweeter and it teaches you how to survive alone. You will need that skill.

In the winter, you’ll believe that nothing will ever grow again. You’re wrong. Every year, London looks like it’s on its last legs, wheezing through those last cold days in March. Every year, spring comes like an explosion and the city shakes off its sleep.

Mundane problems will get the better of you sometimes. Don’t worry. Try as you might, life cannot be an endless, beautiful, intense moment. Find comfort in money worries and late trains; they’re a welcome rest in between heartbreaks and breakdowns.

People will call you a cynic, a wry smile on their faces. Pay them no mind. You alone know that you are capable of a love greater than anything they can comprehend. You alone know that you are not willing to sell your identity and respect to the first smirking halfwit to pass by. It is not cynicism. It is reverence for your own vast and fathomless heart, and it makes sense only to love someone who understands that and is awed by it.

You will not always get what you want when you want it. Accept it. Your goals are not set in stone and you are not on a fixed trajectory. Sometimes, life will take its time and you will have to play the long, interminable game. Play it well and with as much grace as you can muster. Live at your own pace.

At night, you will occasionally wake up afraid, wanting to die. Don’t give in. Night plays its tricks, but you are not so easily fooled. Your mind will play its tricks, too. It will make you believe that you’re not who you are, but you must not give in. You take a breath and you tell yourself that you are here. That you always were."

(blood-and-magic, Tumblr: "Practical Advice for Difficult Women")

Sunday, April 09, 2017

songbirds and the rest

Life is not always easy, but there are always songbirds, volleyball with friends, raspberry water, hand-knitted scarves, new ideas, coffee and the feeling of a long Easter weekend approaching.

Tuesday, April 04, 2017

sober me up

I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.

(F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Monday, April 03, 2017

beauty unfamiliar and perilous

Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.

(Thomas Mann)

Sunday, April 02, 2017

the little yellow book

The written chronicles of my life start with a small, yellow notebook.

It has a picture of a budgie on the cover. It is yellow because that was my favourite colour when I was six years, eleven months and fifteen days old - and still is, in some ways. My sister, then a teenager, bought it and wrote little diary entries in it for my benefit. The first one begins: "Today you went ice-skating with Fritz."
I was apparantly a six-year-old who ate sweets only on Saturdays, loved my trainers because they looked almost the same as my sister's and was too shy to hand over the fare to the bus driver when we went to town. I wanted to sit by the window in the bus. I always sit by the window everywhere.

When I was sick, I got to lie in my parents' bed all day and draw pictures. Summer days were spent playing on the beach with my poodle, on winter evenings I redecorated the dollhouse my grandfather had made. I sang in a children's choir, took piano lessons and attended Sunday school. Sometimes my sister took me pony riding, the most exciting thing I knew.

When I was nine, I found my first BFF and spent most of my free time walking dogs - real and imaginary. I had entire worlds of imaginary adventures, fuelled by explorations of the neighbourhood and all the books I borrowed at the library.

I was shy and sometimes lonely, prayed to God and soared in my endless imagination all the way to distant galaxies. I think I was happy.