twangypearl the elastic girl

Season's greetings

I offer you this cartoon of mine in a spirit of bonhomie and festive cheer, and I wish you all tremendously good times, my friends, for the season and 2012.
xx

T

PS. Oooh! Star-spotting: Colm Me@ney was in the local pub last night, all apparently nice and dead normal. Irish people like to be all cool with stars in their midst. It's funny: No big deal, man! Hollywood, pfft. I choose not to be a celebrity, myself.

Seen anyone, recently? I know London and NYC are positively littered with stars. You're falling over them, aren't you?

eergh

I have been finding myself very silly.

The first occasion of embarrassment happened like this: I applied for a show, sort of a voluntary community-ish affair, that has as its theme mental well-being and is to run in a few weeks. Time passed, the show approached, and no response was received from the curator.

Grr, I said, earlier this week, bloody curators! They don't even let you know that you haven't been selected! And it's for mental health! The irony of making people depressed by denying their application to a mental health awareness event! THE IRONY.

 All fired up and dangerously intoxicated by my own pique, feeling I was striking a blow for all artists everywhere and anyone in the world who hasn't Been Got Back To In Timely Fashion, I flamed off an email to the curator:

Dear whosit,

I didn't get an email saying my work wasn't chosen for Your Festival - I wonder did it go missing or something, as I am sure you wanted to acknowledge all entries, and the work that went into them?

Blah blah, good luck with the show anyway, etc.

And she replied immediately: The reason you have not yet received an email is because your work has been shortlisted. As an artist I completely understand the time and consideration each proposal takes...

Oh! CRINGE. And:

Our festival is run by six volunteers, we organise all events in our spare time, we appreciate your patience.

I DIED on the spot, even as I was leaping to the ground off my high horse and apologising profusely for the jumping of the gun. And then, when I met her, (of course) she turned out to be a) terribly nice and b) friends with loads of my art world friends.
I RE-DIE.

The second thing: something seemed different about the front of the house on Monday morning. Like something.. lacking.
I told the JB: My bike! It's just like.. gone. It's not there, I tell you! Someone must have taken it!

Two or three days flew by. Then Sister 1 texted me: Your bike is outside the wine shop. Which made me so happy! And yet, annoyed! Because what kind of hooligan does that? A drunk one? But no, (you'll be amazed to hear) the penny didn't drop. I texted Sister 1 back: The cheeky beggers! Is the lock broken? and she: No, it's securely locked, by you? And I, (finally twigging it): OH. Oh! O-oh.

I do remember leaving it outside the shop, though, it must be said that I also remember leaving it outside the house. But what with the physical evidence to the contrary, I have to accept the reality of the situation. Which is that I am a twit.

Your ridiculous,
T

ps. Have a good weekend.

adhoc

Love my magnets! LOVE. HFF sent me these, you know.

Well, my darlings! I'm in that awkward state of mind for which there should be a long composite German word - I have left it so long, that I don't know where to start, and the longer I leave it, the more I feel I have omitted Vital Stuff, and go into a further state of avoidance. And yet, I sincerely love my long-cherished blog-comrades and miss the interaction I find through this blog. I feel like the lovely Belgian Waffle, whose first paragraph here says it so much better than I could. That happens to me a lot. People expressing my thoughts better than I can. Thank Gawd for 'em.

Let's barge ahead, here. Nothing else for it:

• I've been singing, in the choir. Every night this goes on, for the season, including one bizzarro combo performance with Another Choir, composed of undergraduates, this time. On one occasion, I was late. I disapprove greatly of myself for this, not least because I had missed by minutes the meeting at the gate, where we were to be ushered to the appropriate room in the college to rehearse, and had a frantic Indiana Jones-like run-and-search down long lino-ed corridors, under arches, through courtyards, trying doors and stopping to listen intently for choir sounds. I needn't have worried, when I finally burst in to the room, there was a kindly Robert Hardy-look-a-like banging away at the piano, and the room was filled with The Young People all whispering, giggling, and singing, just a little. Robert Hardy looked at me over his glasses and said "Welcome" and the whole thing was like a three way cross between a seminary musical, a boarding school and a Harry Potter book, all set in the 1960's.


• I've teaching unemployed people with the State Training Body. This happens, weirdly, in a hotel in a peripheral suburb of west Dublin. It's all very Sign of the Times. I sit for an hour on a tram to be launched into this alternative reality, where you must travel on lifts and know codes and finally be delivered into an abandoned office building, where we occupy the one heated room on the fifth floor, to light a fire under the unemployed people, or at least offer them some hope, or so I hope. They are, so far, a dream to teach, getting on with their work, and only stopping to ask me intelligent questions.


• Also, steady money! Hurray.


• Which reminds me, I made a wonderful discovery out there yesterday. Near the hotel, there is a large 1990's style shopping centre, through which one can take a shortcut on the way back to the tram. There was a line of unlikely looking wooden huts in a line at the back of the centre, full of Christmas gift "ideas", personalised mouse pads and slippers, each presided over by a frozen but hopeful retail hutter, the type you feel sorry for. But then! A hut of The Most Beautiful Etchings, like a gleaming jewel amongst the dross. Like this! My eyes nearly fell out of my head:
  
  
  
  As thus it was that the problem of five Christmas gifts was solved on the spot. Well, I thought to myself, Suchandsuch should like this, and frankly, if he/she doesn't, I have no truck with him/her!
  (This is the artist/hut retailer: Jan Goede.)


• Ermmmm.
  
  
• Oh. Yes. Many applications for Art Stuff have been made, including a frightening one, which (life being like that) I might get. The application process is itself an art, I am realising. If I get that one, it'll be shown for an entire month in a public place on a huge wall. No pressure then. Gulp.
  
  
• I have been making art with a group of Other Young People, this time ones affected to varying degrees by cerebral palsy. They are great fun. I have discovered exactly how bad I am (appallingly) at boccia with them, and made some stop-motion animation with them as actors. It's cool.


• Kittaloo, who has been living here for what seems like a century, continues to hold us in her thrall, stroll inconveniently on my keyboard and hog the nearest source of heat. She is exactly as clever as she needs to be, the little maggot. When she feels slightly peckish/bored/cold, her latest thing is to sit beside me and put her heavy paw coercively on my arm, as if to whisper, threateningly: I will not allow you to forget me. Feline mafia tactics! Chilling.
  
  
• The spa was salutary, mostly because of the redemptive presence of my dear friend R, with whom I had a long debriefing session on the subject of the JB. She recommended counselling, and is going to get me the name of Someone. At least I can go, and the JB may feel encouraged to go at a later stage if I break the ice, so to speak.
  Other than that, the spa was as if conceived by the people who made those Philadelphia ads set in Heaven, all muted colours and nice candles - deliberately unstimulating and cocoon-like. Which was lovely for a day. After that, it started to feel a tiny bit like a psychiatric hospital, what with everyone being reduced to a white uniform and floating about. Just a bit edgeless and suffocating. However, no doubt this is me, and my Methodist background, again, making me uncomfortable with .. er.. comfort.
  
  

I've gone on, haven't I? Better stop now, before you lose the will to live entirely.

I have missed this.

Back soon.

xx
T

big picture

Dear all,

Oh my. Busy again, I was.

Thank you for your comments on my last post. You need never worry about giving me what they call "assvice". You are too kind and experienced to be judgemental or miss the point. If any advice did not seem relevant, I would just put it aside for another situation which it might fit. So that is all good. 

While it is true that I suffer at times from what my lovely American flatmate used to call Big Picture Disease (taking the long view to the point where it becomes hard to have an appropriate response in the moment), a marriage is a long, awful, beautiful stream of experience, where you run into all kinds of unexpected limitations - many of which you have to recognise as your own. You know how it is. So, as you can imagine, the JB and I have had every kind of conversation about our future, from the tearful to the comic. Our style is fairly frank when we argue, but that is only a tiny percent of the time. The rest is really good and the last week or two have been in that mode. We're fine, at least for the moment.

ANYWAY. This was just to let you know I am aok, and not living in a damp bedsit in Mountjoy Sq with an angry cat pissing on my single bed. In fact, I am off to a spa tonight, no less. Oh yes, it's a high-octane, devil-may-care life I lead, you know!

Talk soon.
xx
T

let it unfold

Thank you very much for the ear sympathy. Fascinating/disgusting report: it's quite a bit better, has deflated to a more normal dimension and I can almost hear through a minor static interference. An improvement. I am sporting an impressive Augmentin pallor, however, the kind you otherwise get from being a consumptive, or doing a long stretch inside.

Some of you have kindly enquired as to the progress of our declaration, and so, let us indeed marvel at the smoky and clogged engine that is the relevant Authority, the cogs of which do turn extraordinarily slowly.  Our paperwork is all complete, and now lacks only a stamp of approval from the Authority before we are cleared for take-off and it will all be sent on to India. Mysteriously, however, the Authority cannot seem to stamp the documents in good time, and oh dear! They are so backed-up! And lifting the stamp is so tiring! You'd be wrecked doing it!

Uffa, as Italians have it. UFFA.

As it happens, India itself is closed to new applications until January, while it reconfigures its own system. So if one wanted to be one of those perky, positive people, one could say that at least the two delays are coinciding. But, I don't know, maybe in my youth I read too many moralistic children's stories, wherein the poor blighters wore saggy, wool swimming trunks and were always getting their comeuppance but all this is taking on the aspect of a very heavy-handed karmic lesson. Festina fecking lente, etc. Embrace the crap life you are living. Live in the fecking moment. Seize the saucepan and brain your spouse the day. GOT THE MESSAGE, Universe.

Let it unfold.

That's the hardest, isn't it. The JB and I had a most weird conversation the other night. I know this is going to sound rather bleak, but let's not panic here, it's really okay. It's not as dire as all that. In fact, it's almost as if talking about these things make them more manageable. In a way.

Imagine the following being all conducted in the most lack-lustre tones, like we are discussing our rubbish collection, and whether the green bin alternates with the black every two weeks, or not:

JB, comes in after work, flops on sofa: Sorry about this morning. (He stamped off earlier in the day, in a snit over my response to the delays as above.) I just feel like throwing in the towel, sometimes. It feels to me like our wheels are spinning.

T: What do you mean, throwing in the towel?

JB: You know, giving up, leaving.

T, still with zero inflection: Ah. Breaking up?

JB: Yes.

T: Oh. Well, if that's what you want to do.

I simply had no response anymore, felt calm, in a "Ah well, 'tis the tapestry of life." way, and just lolled there like a badly stuffed doll. I can't continue to keep the show on the road. He is simply going to have to decide for himself. Every suggestion I make - counselling, research, bereavement groups, reading the helpful, straightforward The Portable Therapist - he won't do any of it. He doesn't recognise that the feelings aren't the problem, it's the defeatist behaviour that is. Of course I know that he doesn't mean what he says, he's not going to leave, he loves me, and blah, blah, blah, but those words still undermine my faith in us. My brain starts whirring. The genie is out of the bottle, and I am thinking with half my brain, the part May beautifully describes as sitting there eating popcorn through it all: Blimey. What would that be like? Where would I live? Huh.

The human brain, if mine is anything to go by, anyway, abhors a vacuum. It - I - want to know where my next meal is coming from, at the most basic level. I find it so hard to keep the vision of the alternative lives beside each other in my head, and not preempt whatever will be, and not throw myself on my sword.

Of course there was much apologising and forgiving later. But what has been said cannot be unsaid.



She makes herself comfortable.

thank you

Thank you so much for your kind commments on the situation with the JB. They were all enlightening to me, all a comfort. You are the most intelligent, empathetic people. You are right there with me, even when the subject is so close to the bone, and you might feel personally implicated. I really do blog to know I am not alone.

 

I didn't mean to leave that post there so long, like a harbinger of doom. Blimey, what has it been - a century - since my last confession?

My ear is broken again, dear friends, reducing me to a four walls sort of existence. Ah. The human body. I never know whether to be more fascinated or disgusted by it. I have a stinky ear infection complete with whooshy, sea pounding on the shore sound effects, like when you hold a shell up to your ear, and I feel all sealed into my nutty little head and physically enfeebled. YUCK. Poor kids who suffer from this kind of thing all the time. Me, I am almost never sick. Can't complain.
(Ed note: And yet you do.)

A weekend of being trapped under P-kit, (she re-earned the P since an unprovoked stratching incident involving the JB. It was nice niceniiiiice being stroked by him, and then SUDDENLY IT WAS UTTERLY INTOLERABLE. HOW COULD HE? SWIPEHISS!), thinking we should really paint the ceiling, actually, no, what we need to do, is dust it, has not filled me with blog-worthy material.

The JB is so good when I am sick. It's all endless cups of tea and soup, wrinkled brow and concern. I am on this rather unsatisfactory liquid diet (not the brow, mind you. Never touch the stuff.) because the Ear of Stink has aggravated the TMJ which my friend Sister 1 (she's a physical therapist) diagnosed recently. Apparently you are not actually supposed to be able to unhinge your jaw as if you were a boa constrictor eating an entire rat! WHO KNEW. This all means that I can only open my gnashers two centimetres. It's like having my jaws wired together.

This is what they call TMI, isn't it?
Sorry, folks.

Terribly boring being sick. I AM TERRIBLY BORED NOW. And,  urg, I have so much to be doing. How are you? Tell your Aunty Twangy.

T
ps. Has anyone experience selling stuff on etsy? I wondered if I should go that way, last night at 4am. Seems harmless? Large audience, no need to see anyone in person and make embarrassing sales pitches or (Heaven forfend) show portfolio?

on being loved

[Apologies in advance for the gloom-laden, whiny quality of the below.]

P-kit has almost earned the right to drop the Psycho from her name, I do believe. I know cats are reputed to have little in the way of an emotional life, but I would swear she loves me with all her little feline heart. She follows me around, like a dog, purring extravagantly. She lies on my chest and pats my face with her carefully sheathed paw. And since yesterday I drank the water that she had ever so delicately lapped earlier, and wasn't even much bothered, I think it's official. I am, in fact, a cat lady.

How did that happen?

Ah. What it is to be loved. I suspect I'll always be at sea with this thing you humans call love. I never know what it is that is required of me. Am I responsible for the other's happiness? How is that? And how responsible is he?

For the JB continues to trudge through the mire. It's not altogether easy being beside him through it, either. He is so focussed on being a parent, at times I am at risk of feeling like a conduit to his target/like a failure, depending on the mood. It takes some effort to keep it straight in my head: he is choosing to be with me, and I must not second-guess him, or throw myself on my sword. (We are far into the adoption process, after all! He just needs to have a bit of patience. Gah.) All potentially terribly regrettable options. Last night there came about an unhappy confluence of tiredness, sickness (My ear. It feels broken. Uff. Why is my body so weird?) sadness and sensory overload that ended with my telling him he knew where the door was, if he wanted to go. Oh, sigh. It's never a good idea to act rashly on your hurt feelings like that, is it? He did apologise, but he is miserable, and that makes him dramatic and catastrophic. And I was too tired to talk him round.

Maybe I am mistaken, but I believe his starting point is wrong. I feel that you have to start with you two, that that is a great piece of good fortune, to build on, if you are lucky. If it is children you really want from the relationship, you need to be clear. (The JB discovered his desire to be a parent after we were married, a thing that has caused us no end of angst. I had all sorts of issues about it, physical and emotional.) Where does that leave us? We are all out of step with each other. It's not good.

Points of view most welcome. Also kicks in arse, advice, or whatever is required here. You'll know.

xx
T

Drawing from hotel room recently, in [London]Derry. Vurry naice ut twas, toy.

you will comfort me

Back again, my friends. Life has been full on. It used to be that feast and famine was the rule, but now, I am always dementedly busy, and yet persist in not being any more solvent. What is this strange new world? I don't know if I like it.

I joined a choir, did I say? It's been absorbing to be a part of something bigger than me, something I know so little about. Humbling. I keep having these light bulb moments: OH! That's a chord! That's a quaver! Seriously, I am that - what would it be? Immusicate?

We performed, in a kind of flash-mob way, in a busy lunch venue earlier in the week, wearing, per instructions, "black trousers and a top in a solid colour". I didn't think I possessed any black trousers, (an extraordinary factoid, I know) but lo! A pair dated circa 2000 skulked in the back of the wardrobe, made of a millenial fabric that seems to be .. vinyl?

Vinyl, I swear. Maybe it's recycled records. If only I still had a turntable, I could listen to them. I wonder what they'd sound like. Pants? (Groan. Stopping now.)

It was satisfying to hear all our voices turn into one. I could see the familiar figure of the JB, my only only, on the other side of the atrium, and my very stalwarty friend, Sister2. (Stalwarty doesn't sound as flattering as I intend it to be. I am going to trust you know what I mean.)

You are with me, [we sang], you will comfort me.

I think the JB is going through some stuff. He's sleeping much more than usual, and though he has not abandoned his papers, (that would surely be a sign of impending death) he is not his usual ebullient self. He's one of those people that is always on, you know? Even if you wake him up in the middle of the night, he's like a good photograph of himself. Not so now.

Really, I do think All This has been harder for him than for me. Not that it's a quantifiable thing, or a race to be the most hurt, indeed, but he's such a hard worker, he's used to barriers giving way under the weight of his effort, and he is baffled and deeply offended that those rules don't apply here. Of course, it's true that he is also grieving for his father, but somehow the frustration he feels about our efforts to have/be a family has become the focus of that pain too. It comes and goes, of course. Any progress - any tick on our adoption list - rallies the spirits. Any delay or problem brings on the feelings of disappointment and aggrievement.

Lest anyone think the IF shitstorm spares the partners.

So that is where I am. Wearing recycled LPs, and being very busy having no money coming in.
How about you? What's in the back of your wardrobe?

T

Actual news I can actually report

I am half-daunted, half-thrilled. (Is there a single word for that? There should be.) On Tuesday I received a phone call from the by now much-beloved Detective, our social worker, to tell us that we have passed the board, and are deemed suitable to be adoptive parents.

(!!!)

It is big and somewhat odd to be declared (apparently) sane by your government. Something to celebrate! I feel all government-sanctioned! All I need is an APPROVED stamp on my forehead to complete the look.

Then on Wednesday, more life-changing events: we took the train to another town for a meeting in The Hotel of the Swirly Carpet. It was extraordinarily informative, dispelling many myths, and covering all sorts of important stuff on Bulgaria and India, as sending countries. India probably has over 10 million children without families. OVER TEN MILLION. There are any amount of impromptu and unlicensed orphanages that spring up to care for them, but many of the children inevitably do not even have that much luck. It is utterly heart-breaking and overwhelming, isn't it? Words fail. We fail. All those children, all their needs, all their talents, in need of so much nurturing, of so many hours of hugs and stories, so much encouragement, so many peeled potatoes, and slices of toast, so many pairs of pyjamas, so much effort, patience, understanding and love.

So walking back to the train station, the next morning, the JB and I, down the steep steps, with the fog lifting, we made up our minds that India is it.

It seems this is how you make decisions that change your life, while you hurry to catch a train. You've arrived at a fork in the road, and you've run out of time, standing still is not possible, you just have to move one way or the other. So you just take your life in your hands, and go, and try not to be haunted by the ghost of other path, the way unchosen.

So we sent an email to the detective to ask her to change our country to India. The USA was our previous choice, but it seems that there is an uncompatibility between the Irish interpretation of Hague and the American one, which means that private adoption is looking rather uncertain for the time being. We could adopt out of the state system, however. Frustratingly, the JB does continue to waver on this. Yesterday he sent me the link to an (of course) utterly adorable one-year-old on a state website. Now, I do understand that as a purely pragmatic tool, these sites do work in placing children, but it makes me oh-so-uncomfortable to look at the children's profiles. I mean, apart from the awful, awful heart-rending God-is-that-my-kid? That-could-be-my-kid! confusion, it just feels wrong to me. I do believe that it is getting the cart before the horse. There is a reason for the agency being the one that matches parents with children, and doing the referral. They know things.
(What do you think? Maybe it is simply that we are not ready for that yet.)

So.

That was the news from Dublin.

[Insert single word that conveys both the excitement and fear of this moment.]

Yaaaay! Eeek!
T

in which I continue to be a crap blogger

I have so much piling up in my small, overheated, '94 Nissan Micra brain - so many things to drone on about. But tomorrow I must go away to a thing I can't exactly be clear about, and can't begin to commence to arrange all these stories into a even vaguely coherent linear narrative-like thing. Beginning, middle and end. But where to begin?  Where to end? Aristotle never mentioned that! (Or maybe he did. I wouldn't know, to be quite frank. Original texts! So awfully hard. Whimper! Classics people: feel free to roll your eyes now.) I can't keep up and I need to keep up -  I need to process The On-going Succession of Events That We Like to Call Life. It keeps me sane. Ish.

So! Another tree, until I arrange my unruly thoughts into a crocodile line? How about that?

Your over-wrought,
T

ps. P-kit is doing what she can to hinder. She has perfected the I Just Have To Be In The Middle of Whatever It Is You Are Trying To Do Stance that all cats adhere to, by zoning in on my right hand, and lying heavily on it. So devilishly clever! Cat people, please explain. Why is it I feel strangely flattered by being thus inconvenienced? 'Tis verily a mystery.