Procrastination is something that shouldn’t be put off until tomorrow.

I was supposed to start NaNoWriMo on November 1st, but I was too er… busy.  But I have written like a guilty writing machine type person ever since, not even remotely influenced by the fact that Bohemiénne has the number of words she has written slapping me in the face every time she surfaces.  So now I’m only two days behind – OK, three, counting today – and not at all smug that I have so far out-written her.   Hah!  Eat my dust, bitch!  (Oops, sorry.  I mean: Well done, Boh.  I’m sure you’re doing your best, honey, but we can’t all compete at the same level, can we?)

Anyway.  I’ve written loads of words.  I have a lowering feeling that what I wrote yesterday may be the sum total of my imaginary words (obviously it’ll be a while before I run out of the non-imaginary ones – my incredibly sedentary and uneventful life still holds endless fascination for me).  I’m also slightly surprised at what lurked in my imagination, and rather dread to think what will emerge next.

Actually, to tell you the truth, I more dread that nothing will emerge, and I have emptied out my imagination.  Or even that I haven’t, as there are stirrings in it, but they don’t seem to want to be written down.

OK, the truth is I’m procrastinating.  I think that I’m achieving something filling up some space with this rubbish, and am trying to pretend that it will count when it doesn’t (“You so did NOT write more than me!  I posted on two blogs, I’m definitely out ahead!”), and that if I just sit looking casually the other way, inspiration will grab hold of form and I’ll get something down in writing.

Shit.  It’s just not working, is it?  My last ditch attempt will be reverse psychology.

I will not write anything for NaNoWriMo today.

There.  That’s shown me.

Cut & Paste

The insides of my mind are covered in wallpaper paste, with bits of torn up Deep Thoughts half glue-submerged and half blowing in the draught. I find a bit that says:

“you are totally exposed, open, pliant… the natural instinct is to protect you, cover you, shelter you”

which logically must go with:

“Yes … I remember trying to get a reaction out of you. You were very disciplined, and I felt like seeing where that might break down.”

but apparently doesn’t, because it can be summed up with:

“I think he gets protective of me because he thinks my vulnerability shouldn’t be exposed. I think other people want to try to expose it”.

which rather kills the discussion dead. Trawling through reasons why some people would want to break me down and others want to preserve my strength doesn’t really yield up anything particularly edifying about anyone much, so I end up abandoning that train of thought.

Then stuck to the glue I find a whole lot of prickly bits about fathers, the lack of, and Alpha Males, and things my daughter has to say about the kind of man she’s looking for (how come it took her 20 years less than it took me?). I could write a whole plethora of posts, I think happily, but they elude me.

I’m sucked into a black hole of advice-giving, which leads me to wonder why it is that every single man I’m involved with appears to have some inability to resist dingbats. Or is it me? No, apparently not: I’m the dingbat antidote, I’m told. But maybe this is because as an ex-dingbat I have the inside scoop on them, I’m subsequently told by someone else.

This morning a colleague asks me to be the union representative: I’m diplomatic, I don’t kiss ass, I’m not self-serving, I can say my piece, I don’t take sides, I can negotiate. Huh. So it’s only lovers who want to cut me off at the knees. Or alternatively, all the people I normally infuriate with my impartiality suddenly see how this can be turned to their advantage.

Underneath it all runs a little thread of worry and dread and anger, and that’s the mouldy paste my thoughts are sticking to – the things I don’t want to write, that pervade everything I do write.

Easy

I’ve always had it easy, you know.  Everybody knows it, surely you should too.  It’s my special talent: I roll in the shit, and come up smelling of roses (it comes in a spray, you should try it): I fuck up my life and I get what I want (I box myself into a corner, and then I cry for help.  It usually works, you should try it).

Oh, I should wail, I should tear my hair out by the roots.  I should get out of bed and kick myself every morning.  I should be ever so humble, and I should repent.  I should smile with gratefulness, and not with pleasure.  I should repeat my litany of thankfulness, I should be so grateful for everything I have (but I am, that’s why I smile.  Why are you too stupid to see this?)

If I don’t cry out in pain, then I must not feel.  If I don’t confess, then I must not know the sins I have committed.  If I forgive myself first, then there must be something I don’t tell.

I keep it to myself.  I don’t tell anyone (but I do.  Just not you).

It’s not reaction you want, it’s the reaction you want that you want.  I think you’d back me up against every limit I have just to push me into something raw and real.  And yet I throw emotion at you, and you discard it: it’s not what I give you want, it’s what you want to take. (And then again, I know that’s unjust.  I know you’d give me good things if I asked for them.  But I won’t, and it infuriates you).

You can get here from there

I have no idea what direction I’m coming from at the moment.  I’m OK at work – there I’m walking straight at you and I’ll be right up in your face if you don’t move.  Here and now… no idea.  No clue what’s going on in my head, although there seems to be some surface activity, doing the chitchat thing.  But really I keep wanting to say:  “What do you think I’m on?  Where do you think this stuff is coming from?  When do you think it’ll stop?”  And more than that: “Do you think it’ll do any good?  Is this all I’ve got, or is it just a symptom (this mental discharge)?”

I suppose I’ll know in a week or so, or I’ll just get used to it.  I suppose whatever direction I’m going in I’ll just keep going in.  I think I’m headed somewhere familiar, but I still wish I knew how I got here, or what way I’m facing.

Talk to me

I’m gazing into the foam on top of my cappuccino when a voice makes me jump. I look sideways, and there are a pair of adolescents engaged in their awkward mating dance. They shift from foot to foot, look thoughtfully at their coke cans, lean faux-casually against the nearest available surface (sometimes a passing adult), and I drag out my coffee just so I can listen to him.

It’s not quite the timbre, but it’s all about the accent. I know exactly where he’s from, and exactly who he reminds me of.

She’s the daughter of a friend of mine, so I keep smiling at her encouragingly to make her nervous, so that she will blurt something out, and he must respond. I work out that if I stare at him intently every so often he will jump a little, and engage her more in conversation to deflect attention from the mad woman at the counter. I alternate, working out how long it will take each of them to wind down, and then stabbing them with a look to release another little rush of words.

His accent gives me the long, hot, wet, shivers. I consider turning round and telling them both that I’m not really there to freak them out, but that I’d really appreciate it if he wouldn’t mind just talking for a bit. Perhaps he could read out the price list, or the opening times, or something at random from the notice board or the local free paper. Recite the alphabet, even.

How many of you are there? I want to ask him. Are there many more of them that talk like you? Line them up for me and make them speak. I’d just stand here with my eyes closed and listen, no trouble to anyone.

I decide against saying anything. They would just think I was nuts.

I’m too sexy for my meta

Listen, Boh.  This blocked thing.  Have you tried senna pods?

Oh, Mel, sweetie. You can be so literal sometimes.

I know.  Everyone tells me I’m ever so literary.  A regular bluestocking, that’s me.

Um. Yes. That’s right. Anyhow… the point is that, sometimes there are just too many other things going on, and I can’t get the words to flow. What should I do?

I have no freakin’ idea.  I can’t write anything either.

You? Ms. Purple Stockings, or whatever that was? I thought you were bursting at your wordy seams!

So did I.  But apparently not.  I think it may be because in actual fact all my stockings are black.  Maybe I need to do a dedicated lingerie shop.

Or perhaps being outrageously sexy isn’t good for the writing process. On the other hand, all of my stockings are in disarray, with holes, and runs, and hanging from chandeliers and such.

Yes!  That’s it!  Perhaps I’ll start wearing tights and granny knickers instead.  Oh well, if it comes to that, all mine have teeth marks and mysterious stains.

Teeth marks and mysterious stains!!! Well, I would think those are the ones that I’ve borrowed. I can’t think how else that would have happened.

You’re having another go at that irony thing again, aren’t you?  Give up – you’ll never get the hang of it.

Oh, stop using all your smarty-pants (granny-pants?) literal terms. Irony-schmirony. You’re just jealous because you’re always the smart one, and I’m always the sexy one.

Look, stop worrying about it.  You’ll be smart and sexy too, one of these days.  You’re just a late bloomer, that’s all

Do you ever talk of anything but bloomers? Really, it’s no wonder I’m too distracted to write.

…  Like one of those sad chrysanthemums.

Oh. Now there’s a thought. I could write about how I’m like a beautiful flower. The most intense fragrance and glorious bloom produced by the flower of late summer. I can just imagine it now. My fans will swoon.

Yes.  Or a hardy perennial.  I wonder what kind of flower I am?  Maybe I could speculate about it for a few posts, whilst cunningly revealing my true nature.

Hardly hardy. Delicate and glorious to behold. The temptation to … pluck me is almost all-consuming. But I must be left to be enjoyed by all… then wither on the stem. I am a tragedy, and yet a thing of beauty, the height of my being captured forever in one beautiful early autumn moment. What? Did you say something about you? Shhhhh. I’m sure I have an analogy about how I’m surrounded by weeds, yet reach to the warmth of the gradually more distant sun. Oh, perhaps you could be a weed.

You’re so funny! … Oh, don’t look at me like that!  I thought you were being witty.  Sorry, I didn’t mean to spray you with crumbs. I’m laughing AT you, not with you.  Oops, that didn’t come out right… Fine.  I shall be one of those creepers that strangles the beautiful flower, one of these days.

Whatever. I’m off. Must write. My blockage has passed.

Yes.  I thought there was a bit of a funny smell.  That senna pod tea always does the trick.

Antidote to Blocked

Bohémienne is blocked and distracted, but I’m bursting at the seams with wordy-goodness. My every thought needs to be committed to sentences and sent out into the ether. I need to write, to communicate, to tell, to get it all out and get it all down. Thoughts prance through my head in beautifully coiffed phrases, and if I don’t get them down, they’ll be lost forever, and all I’ll be left with just the annoyingly clunky and awkward ones that always get picked last because they can’t run fast enough.

The dust bunnies are gathering, ready for their coup. They don’t hide in corners any more: I see them brazenly prance across the middle of the floor, confident in their massed millions. They plan to combine forces with the dust, piled perilously close to every edge, just waiting to drift down and cover everything in an epidermal nicotined fog. The pots in the kitchen are almost ready to cook themselves, the beds have given up their welcoming freshness, the floors wait patiently for coffee drips to merge with tea drips.

More coffee, more cigarettes, all those words and the pounding lure of a hot scented bath with the promise of a (another) nap to follow: all these drown out the plaintive cries of the ironing board and the vacuum cleaner. And in the bathroom, the laundry basket silently girds its thongs and pillowcases, and prepares for ambush and invasion.

I’ll do it later. I need to write this down first.

Alphabetics

My bookshelves are a mess. Underneath everything else going on through my brain, it is this thought that keeps rising to the surface. So, buy more, I tell myself: they are only IKEA ones, they didn’t cost that much. Move the dining table forward, and put some on the wall behind it. But that will crowd the room, I tell myself sternly. All my pretensions towards minimalism (cunningly hidden under layers of boho-chic (well, that’s what we call it)) will be offended, and I won’t want to sit in the living room. But I don’t sit in the living room, because the bookshelves are a mess. Tidy. Up. The. Sodding. Bookshelves. I tell myself, through gritted teeth. There is a slight pause while my brow furrows and I wonder if I don’t have people to do these menial tasks for me. It unfurrows when I remember that no, I don’t, and this is no doubt why my home is so full of menial tasks undone.

Let me back up. I am a Librarian’s Daughter. OK, strictly speaking, I’m not, but the point is that during my formative years, my father was a librarian, and I spent many a formative year sitting on the floor behind the stacks reading Jane Austen and Anais Nin (and a few others). I never got to grips with the dewey decimal system, I have no compulsion to stamp my books or do exciting things with ISBN codes, but they MUST be in alphabetical order. And they must all be visible, and not in double rows, or piled on top of each other. And poetry and fiction and plays and non-fiction must not mingle. Apart from that, I’m not rigid about it at all.

I’ve tried to break free from the tyranny of alphabeticism. I’ve tried to group them under similar genres. I’ve attempted to insouciantly lob them on a shelf irrespective of any criteria at all. Ten minutes later, in both cases, I was sobbing wildly and snatching books from the shelves. I have over the years, managed to gradually wean myself into a state of faux-casualness regarding the alphabetics of book-filing. I can now manage to cope with a shelf full of Bs, without needing the Bs themselves to be in alphabetical order. I know – I’m just one of those free-and-easy, don’t-give-a-shit, take-life-as-it-comes compulsive alphabeticisers.

There is no room in my bookshelves to have everything in proper alphabetical order (oh yes, I forgot to mention, there has to be a logical visual sequence, too. It’s no good having A- L over here, and M– Z over there. That just makes my head hurt). I’m caught between a rock and a hard place right now. More bookcases means overcrowded furniture, which makes me hyperventilate. Less bookshelves means messy books, which makes me want to cry. It’s a dilemma which can probably only be overcome with a severe overhaul of my pet neuroses. In the meantime, I shall avoid the living room, and just lie on my bed and read.

Parenthesis

A girl insinuates her way between us while our saucers wait on the counter side by side. She doesn’t look, doesn’t acknowledge, in any way that she has isolated him in a corner with her forward facing clear-cut profile which will become sharper as she ages. He has to reach across her for the sugar, I have to pass him the spoon in front of her. She doesn’t notice, apparently that she has forced herself across his line of vision, so that he must notice her. She probably doesn’t see the look he gives me above her head. I had forgotten how women look at pretty young men, even when their faces are stunned with lack of sleep and anxiety.

(“Did you walk with him?” “What do you mean? We went out for coffee.” “Yes, but did you manage to WALK WITH him? He’s so SLOW!”) My legs ache from holding back my stride, and I can see he is trying to hurry up his lazy uncoordinated athlete’s wander, but we somehow manage to keep pace. (“She made me walk,” he told her. “We parked the car miles away, and she made me walk all over town. And she kept announcing where we were going. It was like being with you. But even faster”). Back at the hospital he collapses on a chair while I hurry in to see her wheeled past (so much my daughter – her face tense, not wanting to be touched), and take up my vigil on a cold hard chair.

This is the hospital where she was born. I had the room three doors down on the left, the one the doctors use now, the only one now with a private bathroom. There were so many babies born that week that they had to give that room to me and the girl who had the baby who looked like a pig (she wouldn’t speak to me after they brought her back, because they kept telling her to stop screaming and be more like me – too bloody stoical and Scottish to bellow for God and my mother). it was a mixed blessing, that room. I could have done with other people to dilute the number of country aunts in print dresses and sensible handbags who stood around her bed shouting over each other.

The doctor passing by (“This is your mother? I thought she was your sister!” – the sort of remark that just makes you want to slap someone: I’ve been doing this for 20 years, give me my due, you fucker) (and anyway, it’s not as though I haven’t seen my face in the mirror today, looking as though the director had been standing behind the scenes: “Everybody ready? OK, give us your Anxious Mommy face. That’s it: lots of stress with a bit of reassurance pasted on top. Perfect – work those facial lines, honey!”) – before he passes by he pats my cheek and says it’s over. When they bring her back in I sit beside her and stroke her hair (just sometimes, I am so her mother), and she moans and shifts irritably every time I stop, until she falls into a proper sleep.

Going down the back stairs, I pass three nurses smoking outside the open window. I need to go down to the bottom, where I can pace and smoke, but I can hear their voices. The voice of a booming throaty man well past middle-age belongs to a tall blonde, looking somewhat battered by life, but probably only in her early thirties. Back upstairs again, a doctor is talking to a new father with the high light voice and intonation of a woman. Maybe it’s just me, today.

I leave the ward to look for him, and he’s outside, looking up at the window with his Anxious Boyfriend face, reminding me to change my expression to something that won’t make him hurry towards me so nearly-fast. I send him home with the house keys and tell him to sleep: he can’t see her yet. He could if he was a new father, but only mothers get in out of hours for women’s troubles.

When you live in a small town for all this time, everyone’s familiar. The man in the suit getting into the lift, didn’t I used to get the train with him? But I’ve seen him here before: either he works here or he must have a lot of sick relatives. The young guy polishing the floors, where do I know him from? He’s serious and absorbed in his task, but I know his face smiling (he’s a waiter at the weekends, I remember later). The woman leaning against the door, did our children go to school together? And the people that I know I know: the emergency room nurse, the woman from the fruit shop.

I’m tired. This hospital chair is hard and uncomfortable, and my book is full of two many words in too many sentences, crammed into a relentless onslaught of chapters. There are still empty pages in my notebook, but my pen has run out of ink. When she wakes up I go home with instructions to deliver, but when I get there he’s on the phone to her, mainly saying yes. “She’s bossing me around”, I say. “Me too”, he says, and gives me a smile of blinding happiness, “she’s back to normal now, isn’t she?”

Stick this up your meta

Oi! Boh! Stop contemplating your navel for a minute and come and talk to me about mine (it’s not as deep, but it’s not as linty, either).

Hold on, Mel. Be right there. Have you put the kettle on? You know I only discuss your deplorable lack of lint over tea.

Of course I have. Now listen, did you get my list of topics for discussion today? I wanted to start with Writing, the Meaning Of, as related to me, and possibly you if I allow you to get a word in edgeways, and follow up with People’s Perceptions Of Us (with particular relevance to me), and then perhaps we could go on to Complete Inanities That Are Amusing To Only Us That We Feel Compelled To Share, and then touch on kinky sex, if neither of us feels a pressing need to commit our thoughts to blog before that.

Fine, but have you ever noticed, Mel, that you always get to choose the topics? Once, just for once, I’d like to talk about the phenomenon of cute kittens with misspelled captions on the Internet. But no, we’ll talk about Audience and Perception in Transient Forms of Contemporary Writing, again. Pour me a cuppa.

Well, actually, Boh, what I notice is that it’s always me who has to put the kettle on, and it’s always me who is left to wash the cups up, and vacuum up the crumbs that escaped falling into your navel. So the least you could do is let me compile the discussion list. Bitch.

Hmmm. You may have a point. God knows I don’t want kettle responsibilities. Can we at least get to the kinky sex, or at least discussing it, a little more quickly this time?

You know I don’t really like doing that. I have to work up to it gradually so I don’t get all insecure about you being kinkier than me. And while we’re on insecurities, can we discuss Drodbar’s Perceptions Of Us?

Ah yes, I wanted to talk about that, actually, Mel. I was so shocked when he picked up on the fact that we’re next-door neighbours! How did he know? I wonder if he has guessed….. the rest.

Well, I’m a little upset by him thinking I’m interesting and have insecurities, whereas you are great, and he thinks about you all the time… Oh, Boh! The rest… surely not…

I thought we had done such a good job of covering it up. Perhaps he doesn’t know. And darling, listen, let’s not harp on this whole “Everyone likes Boh better” theme yet again. It’s nothing that I do. It’s just how I am. Irresistible. I thought you were okay with being…. ‘interesting’.

No, OK. I know they all like me better in secret. Would you like a piece of ginger cake? Or a cucumber sandwich? No, I’m not sulking. And I didn’t mean to slop your tea down your front. Which I can’t help noticing is bigger than my front. You don’t ever think that the “Everyone likes Boh a tiny bit better than Mel” thing could be a little… shallow?

Shallow? Not possible. I’m counting calories, but thanks. And you know I don’t like ginger. Do you have anything with chocolate? No? Okay, back to Perceptions of Intriguing Commenters.

Well, the way I see it, Boh, is that we are just so complex, multi-faceted and well-rounded, that people can’t really grasp the Wholeness Of Us (I told you we should cut back on the chocolate).

I agree. Now, we just need a way to express that with as many obscure references and analogies as possible. It doesn’t much matter what, really, since our very Depth and Complexity can never fully be understood by Them (I know… I think my arse is beginning to get too big for this kitchen chair).

I think you’re right. Are our Superiority Levels filled right up to the top again? No little insecurities leaking out the bottom? (No, I’m not talking about your bottom).

I don’t know. I think we’ve been awfully candid and unassuming lately. It is probably time for an extreme dose of Pretension and general High-Falutin’ Wordiness.

Oh, God, yes! Actually I was just thinking that I’ve kind of done the Writing about Writing thing to death a bit, lately. I think I’m going to post on Writing about Writing about Writing.

Or…. and it’s just a thought…. or, we could just post this conversation, and then get back to speculating about whether Drodbar and the others think that we’re the Ultimate Sex Goddesses…

Did we want to be Sex Goddesses again this week? Didn’t we want to be Literary Geniuses for a while? Introspective Queens of the Universe with added sex-appeal?

… … … Er. We can’t be both? I can be both, Mel.

You always have to win, don’t you, Boh?

Yes, darling. May I have another cucumber sandwich?

Of course, sweetie. Where exactly would you like me to put it?