You have the right to remain silent...

You have the right to remain silent.  Ah, but we don’t, do we?  We are compelled to talk, to relate, to narrate, to dictate, to gossip, to speculate, to whisper and shout and share.  Even those of us who say we don’t, do.  How can we not?  Even if we don’t talk out loud, the words come out in other ways – we write, we ‘chat’, we tweet, we sing, we chunter, we rant and rage or whine and whimper.  We talk to ourselves. We talk in our sleep. 

And last night I read this passage (from Your Face Tomorrow by Javier Marias) and it made me smile.

‘If you stop each night to think about what has been told or recounted to you during the day by the many or few people with whom you have spoken…you will see how rare it is ever to hear anything of real value or interest or discernment… Almost everything that everyone says and communicates is humbug or padding superfluous, commonplace, dull, interchangeable and trite, however much we feel it to be ‘ours’ and however much people ‘feel the need to express themselves’…  Talking is probably the biggest waste of time amongst the population as a whole, regardless of age, sex, class, wealth or knowledge, it is a wastage par excellence. ‘  [Itals my own.]

Yet still it seems we need to talk.  And mainly we need to talk about ourselves.  Rare are the listeners; even rarer are the askers of questions.   I remember once, years back, talking to this guy, a friend’s boyfriend.  Or rather he talked, and talked and talked and talked.  And it became a game.  How long could we go on with him not asking me one single question.  Answer?  Four hours.  Yup, I gave him the occasional prompt and off he went.   I should have charged him – shrink's rates.  J

Is listening a skill?  It certainly helped me become a relatively successful journalist.  Some might say it makes me a good friend.  The key is really to listen – not just to pretend while waiting impatiently to add your own anecdote or feeling.  Most people play verbal ping pong.  But then again, listening can be a defence mechanism – being a good listener is a great way to avoid talking.  And I feel uncomfortable talking about myself.  Because, really, what is there to say?   Who cares about my opinions?  I don't even care about my opinions that  much.   What business is it of mine what other people do, say; how they behave?  If my words can help or soothe in any way, then they’re worth it.  But they’re just words.  What use are they, really?  If, instead of offering words, I could wipe away pain and sickness; if I could take away sadness and indifference; if I could write large cheques and bestow largesse, then that might be worthwhile, huh?  But I’m helpless – so I offer words.

Anyhow.  See…even I (who love silence) am not immune.  I spew out words on this blog.  It’s one way of talking without being interrupted (*smile*).  Of course you don’t have to listen; nobody does.  That is the really good thing about this kind of verbiage – it’s easily switched off.   J 

Why do we talk?  Obviously it is useful – on a practical and evolutionary level.  But why do we feel the need to express ourselves?  Why do we need to be heard, to be understood?  Is it ego?  Is it all just ego?  I did a cursory search online to find out ‘why people talk’ but drew a blank – or rather I drew an awful lot of people…talking and not listening.  J

What do I think?  What do I know?   Don’t you love the ambiguity of that phrase?  Let me italicise the I to add some emphasis, to make the nuance clear. What do I know?  I guess sometimes we talk purely for comfort – against the cold, against the sheer nothingless, against oblivion.  Chitchat, the murmuring of words, shared laughter, the everyday, the inanity even, soothes like a warm bath, like the burn of brandy down the throat.  We know that ultimately we’re all alone but talking, with the right people, those who we feel *get* us, dispels the cold - just for a little while.  It’s like an inferior form of holding. 

And not everything is dross or commonplace or trite.  Sometimes someone says something that stops you in your tracks.  That makes you go ‘Oh’ and then sometimes ‘yes’.  And not just because you have the urge to go ‘Oh yes, me too,’ and then launch into your own anecdote or diatribe, but because it makes you want to go away and ponder quietly.  And I guess that’s why I don’t vanish into silence entirely.  And I guess that’s why I continue chuntering into the void because, every so often, someone says something in response to my inanity that …chimes. 

Anyhow. How about you?  Talker? Listener?  Any idea why we, as a species, have the talk urge?  

My life mapped in scars...

Scars interest me. Fate’s branding of the body.  Skin torn open, the wound exposing the flesh beneath; then closed but a fissure still remaining where the defences were breached.  A line.  Sometimes criss-crossed with stitches; sometimes knot.  Yes, scars interest me. They change a body forever; they mark it; shift it; alter it.  Tattoos?  Studs and bolts? Implants? Nah. Not so much. Because those alterations are man-made, voluntary, decided, chosen.  A tattoo says ‘This is me!’ but a scar says ‘This is what happened to me’. Scars are the mythic debris of archetypal wounds, rites of passage, life drawing on your skin. The gods scribbling. Yes, your choice maybe - but at a far deeper, unconscious level.  

When I was young I craved a ‘proper’ scar – one that zig-zagged down my face. Why? No idea. I thought it was romantic.  I had a strange idea of romance. *smile*  And there are scars and scars, of course, and some  make us shy away, as if we know the person who received them has been in a perilous place, one we fear we might visit by association. Foolish us...

My scars, however, are not seen by the world.  They are private wounds. Sometimes I look over my body and I examine them – to see if any have faded away, have integrated, been taken back inside.  And, for those that haven’t, I ride the memory-horse back to when they happened.  Can you map your life by scars?  Funny little snapshots of those moments when Fate (often combined with stupidity, has to be said) poked you in the…wherever…

Here are mine…

1.      It’s barely there now, the burn on my hand, my adult hand; that happened to my two-year old hand, pulling down a hot pan. Remembering my mother telling me of how guilty she had felt that she’d let it happen. A tiny link to her vast love, still here now she is gone.

2.      A small scar on the underside of my heel.  Dancing wildly in our front room, aged seven.  Treading on a needle which snapped off inside my heel. ‘It’ll work its way out,’ said the doctor. It didn’t. Instead it buried itself deep and had to be dug out. My Achilles’ heel. 

3.      The rose scars on my inner thighs.  Only the faintest traces of one or two remain, slim silver scythes.  Seventeen and vaulting over the rose bushes at school when a rogue bramble caught me and I fell into the thorny heart of the rose.  Taken to the school nurse with blood pouring down my thighs to have 33 thorns plucked out of my flesh – the virgin deflowered. J 

4.      The deep puncture wound on my finger joint where a dog bit me during a school holiday stint as a kennel maid.  Artemis bitten by her hound (in the shape of a miniature poodle).  I nearly lost the joint… Lesson: never trust a small dog.

5.      The deep ‘tick’ on my left forearm.  Drunk (again) as a student in Manchester, having an argument with my friend Mike. I swung a punch: he swung the door. The one with the glass panel.  Lesson: don’t punch when drunk.  *puzzled* why did I punch with my left hand when I’m right-handed?

6.      The scars of conflict that pucker my belly.  Thin skin stretched beyond its endurance by the growing life within. No matter how taut my muscles, no matter how much I work out and stretch and tone, my stomach will always remain a battleground. I struggled with the idea of motherhood, shrank from pregnancy (my tarot card was always the High Priestess, never The Empress) and my body reflected my fear and reticence.  It’s the part of me I love the least; that still makes me wince to look at, to touch.  But it is what it is…the outward sign of an old battle, of my mind at war with my body.

7.      The long slash across my pubic bone.  Not a C…a line, an El. Where once again, I shied away from motherhood, couldn’t embrace the birthing. Fourteen hours of labour and we got into dangerous waters, my boy and I.  We were nearly lost, nearly ran away together back to the void.  So they cut me open and realised, too late, that ours had been the impossible battle.  A 12.8lb baby was never going to fit through that narrow bony gate. 

Sooo….can you map your life through scars? Or are there other ways?  Inner scars, you say?  Ah, those are something entirely different…

Lulu gets medieval on my art

So, I was chatting on Twitter with Milla and Lulu and we were doing the usual ‘we must meet up’ thing (which we do periodically) and then Lulu got medieval with me and threw down the challenge.
‘Your place. This weekend. Right?’

Aaaghh. Errrr.....
I’m such a hermit nowadays. I make vague plans and then never follow through with them. I just don’t think I’m very good company right now. I’m trying to rewrite Samael but it’s sheer torture. Words have turned mean and are bullying me; they really are. They’ve got me pinned in the boys’ loos and are shoving daddylonglegs down my jumper. They’re throwing my books in the nettle patch and laughing.

‘You’re not doing anything, are you?’
Um, no.
‘Great. I’ll be with you at 9pm and we’ll grab supper at the pub.’
Um, okay.

Of course, 9pm was nearer 11pm by which time it was too late to eat but not too late to talk. And we talked, and talked, and talked. I swear, I spoke more in 24 hours with Lulu than I have in the entire last six months (since I last saw her, come to think of it). See, Lulu is one of the VERY few people in this world to whom I can say Absolutely Anything However Mad and she will just shrug and go, ‘Yeah. Of course, sweetie.’

So we talked by the fire and we talked up the stairs (where she identified the tricksy thing that always tries to trip me up) and we talked in the bathroom and we talked in the bedroom. Eventually we got to bed and the next day we talked as we walked the dogs (by the river, in the big open fields) and we talked so much we didn’t even realise we’d lost the SP until someone returned him, looking a bit flustered (the SP, not the woman). And we talked about infinity and beyond infinity, and death and oblivion and whether the universe is Good or Bad or Both, and about love and fear and madness.

And she said she’d never had her tarot done. So I pulled out one of my packs and she dealt and I told. And we laughed our heads off as the exact same phrases we’d used earlier in the day came up again and again. And then I showed her the report I’d had on Samael, the one that said I had to pick it to pieces in order to make it saleable. And she went, yes, and yes, and no, and yes and no, no, yes, yes. And then she put me straight, she really did. And for the first time in months, I felt like maybe I could do this. Maybe I really can. Only now I’m scared. I have the images in my head, so clear, so strong. But will those damn words play nice? Will they fall into line, however straggly a raggle-taggle line? Or will they just lie in wait, on the stairs, and trip me up yet again?


PS - you have to be a really sad film buff to get the (atrocious) pun in the title.  Anyone?

Er, Disney....

Last week Blackden, next week Walt Disney World. The contrast couldn’t be greater really. I’ve been invited (along with a band of other bloggers) as a member of Think Parents Network. I always do a double-take on being described as a parent as it’s not a label I think of applying to myself (likewise ‘mother’). I’ve never been archetypal parent material and never really ever imagined I’d become a mother. My mind and body went into severe shock when I was pregnant and neither has ever really recovered. I have blundered through parenthood by applying my standard response to any new challenge – a crash course of reading the textbooks then bluff like fury. It’s always worked in journalism. I don’t think I’m a bad parent (I don’t write books shaming my son – at least, not yet) but I hardly think I’m representative.
Also, and here’s the irony – I don’t really like theme parks. Part of being an odd parent is that we have never really done the parks – have never made the pilgrimage to Paris, have never faced up to Alton Towers. My odd excursions (to Legoland and Chessington) have been to accompany friends and their children. I get vertigo and motion sickness and have a very low fear threshold. Consequently I screamed all the way round the baby roller coaster at Legoland and got off (shaking) to a barrage of abuse from parents who had been patiently queuing for an hour only to find that now their children were all sobbing and refusing to do the ride. ‘That mummy was scared – me not doing it’ was the bottom line. Wise me.
I succeeded in getting round Chessington without setting foot on a single ride.

Given this antipathy, I’ve been reluctant to tell people about my forthcoming trip. But the response has been extraordinary. Seems the most unlikely people go gooey-eyed over Disney.
‘Oh, it’s fabulous, absolutely fabulous. You’ll love it!’ gushed one of the mothers from school, who I’d always had down as the ‘trekking across Patagonia by llama type’.
‘Don’t be such a snob,’ said a friend at the pub, rolling her eyes. ‘Suspend your critical faculties and you’ll have a ball. Ah, you’re soooo lucky.’ She went dreamy-eyed and floated off into fond memories of Mickey and the Magic Kingdom.

Even my mother-in-law went into full-on gush mode. Turns out she’s been to Disneyland, Disneyworld, Florida, Paris and Outer Mongolia with her friends (not a child in sight) and LOVED it every time. Now there’s the weird thing. Like MIL and crew, we bloggers (mothers all) are going without a child between us which, to my mind, rather defeats the object. But no. It seems that people (lots of people, adult people) go to the ‘worlds’ sans children. Strange but true.
‘We went without children,’ said another friend on the phone last night.
‘We did?’
‘Yup. Don’t you remember? We were in Florida and felt we ought to have a look. It was full of children screaming, ‘I wanna burger, I wanna nicecream, I wanna ka-ka.’
Silence. Did we really? Ah yes, it’s coming slowly back. I was twenty-something and lean as a reed, wearing cut-offs, a t-shirt and a baseball cap over cropped peroxide blonde hair. We walked down the beach and I noticed that three months of working out had paid off – my leg muscles were actually rippling. Full-on panic mode set in. Can I lose three stone in a week? Florida = sun + coast = swimming = costume = ritual humiliation. Having spent last week writing about the latest Hollywood beauty trends I am suddenly painfully conscious of my:
a) rippling flab
b) eerie gleaming white skin, pockmarked with cellulite
c) two inch grey roots
d) sprouting hair (sorry Milla)
e) grubby finger and toenails.

‘Oh, don’t be so ridiculous,’ said my pal at the pub. ‘This is Florida, not LA. You’ll be the skinniest there by a mile.’ Flicking through my photo album, refreshing my memory, I take comfort in the pics I took of the largest bodies in the world, standing like megaliths, fat-swathed ankle-deep in water, gazing out to sea. Let’s just pray that Florida hasn’t gone on a health kick in the last thirty years.


PS – have to say, full brownie points to Disney for taking along a self-confessed sceptic. ‘Can I write what I like?’ I asked. ‘Yes, providing it’s not libellous,’ came the reply. So that’s OK then. Of course, when someone is paying for everything it takes a hard nut to be totally and utterly rude but I will try my hardest to be honest and objective. Yup, even if hanging upside down vomiting. Whether that would be on Thunder Mountain or at the sight of a giant Mickey Mouse cosying up to small truculent children is yet to be decided.

PPS - image shows me and my fellow bloggers - see, I'm getting into the mood already....(he he)