it is in my heart…

That solemnly handing you a paper boat would make everything alright.
It is in my mind
I am alone and sometimes lonely, but very wary of new people and very nervous about more people.
It is in my brain
Books were the things that kept me enthralled, awake for whole nights. Books and I, we’ve betrayed each other now. I can’t make sense of words for too long and they exact gentle vengeance by sending me sleep and sadness.
It is in my eyes
My eyesight is deteriorating, there are times when I see things that are not real and sometimes when I am sad and my eyes untrustworthy, they feel hooded and old and tired as a vulture’s.
It is in my bones
If marrow can ache, mine does.
It is in my nature
To laugh at my own pretentiousness. It’s a saving sort of a grace.

The other day was a happy one though and here is why.. Elephant, black rhino, lion, buffalo, eland, kudu, red hartebeest, ostrich, burchell’s zebra. Totally worth the 3hr drive there and the same back, and a day’s driving in between.

it is in my mind…

When I was a lass lad kid, I read as much as possible about ancient and Romano-Britain. In many of the stories, ancient Britons of various tribes would preface thoughtful words with, “it is in my mind…” and you could feel the weight of it. I loved those stories, still do actually. I use those words mentally sometimes, because it’d sound very pretentious aloud and some of the things I use it for stay there, in my mind. Sometimes I think, “it is in my heart…”, which sounds even worse aloud – unless you’re in Braveheart or Highlander or something.

I love this quote, I love Camus.

The solidarity of bodies, unity at the center of the mortal and suffering flesh. This is what we are and nothing else. We are this plus human genius in all its forms, from the child to Einstein.

No, … it is not humiliating to be unhappy. Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life. … What you must do now is nothing more than live like everybody else. You deserve, by what you are, a happiness, a fullness that few people know. Yet today this fullness is not dead, it is a part of life and, to its credit, it reigns over you whether you want it to or not. But in the coming days you must live alone, with this hole, this painful memory. This lifelessness that we all carry inside of us — by us, I mean to say those who are not taken to the height of happiness, and who painfully remember another kind of happiness that goes beyond the memory.

Albert Camus

*chirpy voice and laser pointer* And in my mind today, scattered thundershowers are moving towards this *point* low and… eh, idk. I’m tired and probably over stimulated by good people and their voices.

Thank you for your beautiful words in response to the post about my mother’s birthday, I was and am too tearful to reply. I’ll visit your blogs when I get time and space. I miss you. I miss me too, I wonder where I am.

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It’s my mother’s birthday and I started to feel miserable and fragmented and jagged yesterday. I’m having some solitude, which is possible because I have two guests till Tuesday. I’d be lousy company anyway and there’s every chance I’d feel agitated and trapped and turn into a (more) grouchy asshole. It feels as though every molecule is vibrating. There are tears queueing up to punch their way out, but I’d rather that happened later if I can stave it off. Hollow gut, faint feeling of RLS, nausea – I feel so lost. Every time I get teased (and it’s truly kindly meant) I have to walk away with a fake smile so that I don’t snap or howl.

Douchebag neighbour is away (hallefreakinglujah) and her daughter and family are house sitting, which is lovely. I get on really well with her and I escaped there for coffee earlier today. I’ll probably talk to nextofkin later if we’re able to speak. I get very silent when I’m feeling very fucked. Don’t know whether I’ve already told you, but ol’ douchebag popped in one day; she said that her homophobe had sent his regards and that she had said well why not do it yourself? I said, with a saccharine smile, “I haven’t invited him here and he isn’t welcome.” She did what she does, which is to look like a rabbit in headlights and scuttle off like a gecko. (I can’t begin to tell you how fond I am of mixed metaphors.)

I had blood drawn yesterday for white blood cell levels and something else I can’t remember. Then I’ll be on clozapine and apparently off chlorpromazine. Tomorrow I’ll take my two guests to an arty and old village. Tonight I’ll read blogs until I pass out.

Tell me how you are?

another pair of wings for my coatstand

He had a sticker on his bakkie, “drugs are for people who can’t handle reality,” because he couldn’t.

The phone rang and a voice I wasn’t sure of, said a name I use for someone else. I was shocked at the news, whoever owned it, and when it became clear, the shock was harder, sharper. My soul went back, two decades almost exactly. I lived in a room with little in it, he sang when he walked up the stairs towards it. My friend, my heart’s friend, the angel with broken wings. We walked hand in hand and gave plants new names and we shared the moon. On a whim, we would go from the town to the city, to a walled place with guns waiting. The journey was so much slower on the way back, and so much faster too. We were blood brothers, we were safe.

It rained all night last night, all day today and it’ll rain all night tonight. Tears first, fast, then the dull daze of shock returning. My broken man with the name of an angel, Yagharek’s wingless, scarred spine. The man with secrets and sorrows, the man who died alone. I’ll grieve him hard as mountains, desolate. Two decades claw at my neck, hunting the jugular, tearing holes in the sky. They think his heart killed him, but it assassinated him long ago.

Darling, darling broken angel, dead before he died. I won’t forget your smile, or your hand in mine.

He died in his fucking bakkie.

a-z challenge: r

{TW: graphic info about Rothko’s suicide.}

This one is a no brainer. R is for Rothko and the reason for that, is a gentle and logical progression from seeing my very first one (Light Red Over Black) at the Tate, and then Georgia O’Keeffe’s comment about his work being like a weaving, in a film at the Hayward.

“Abstract art never interested me; I always painted realistically. My present paintings are realistic.” |Mark Rothko – The Seagram Murals|

*makes like Sophia in the Golden Girls* Picture this, Sicily London, 1993. A young woman scurries from gallery to gallery, looking in vain for her soul, her fortune, or a girlfriend. Her trusty copy of Time Out, newsprint classifieds bleeding into the rain, would get her one of those things in time, but for now, it got her to the Tate Modern. By then she had a homing device tuned to it and a thorough knowledge of which rooms to bypass and which postcards to buy.