Worried

I feel terribly ropey, and it is worrying me slightly.

When I got up this morning I ached all over. It was completely out of the blue - I felt fine yesterday, I was fine all weekend, even with getting both sunburnt and soaked to the skin, and sleeping in a field for three nights.

I've now reached lunchtime and I have to face the fact that there's something wrong with me. I have the energy levels of a ninety-year-old. All my joints hurt and my head is throbbing as if I have a fine old hangover (I haven't). I just want to lie down and be left alone. But Roxana is off on annual leave for the rest of the week, and now I am thinking I may be off too and that will mean no-one on the Visitor Info line for two days. Not good. Damn it; but this is another of the things that happens when two people try to do three people's workload.

I'm eating as I write - a toasted bagel with a bit of Wensleydale cheese. It tastes like dusty all-bran with sour milk. Yuk. I have some Morrocan mint tea but that doesn't taste quite right either. If I have this blinking swine 'flu I will be really cross; but I have to admit that that is what this feels most like - the beginnings of 'flu. Blast and b*gger it...

I will not get in a panic; I am a healthy adult with a normally-good immune system. I came through one of the famous "terrible 'flus" of the last forty years - that dreadful Christmas in Tankerton when we were all ill, and none of the presents were opened until the 28th. I will not run down the hallway wailing that I've got Mexican Swine 'flu and I'm going to die, woe's me, woe's me... Doubt very much if I could muster the energy to, anyway.

I will soldier on to the end of the day if I can, and then see how I feel tomorrow. But if I vanish from here for a while, that's why. I am not usually a hypochondriac, or a malingerer, I'm glad to say. I don't want to be off work this week; it will really screw things up for everyone else in the department. But I do feel increasingly dire as the day progresses.

My pitch for GY, online...

Please have a look at this website if you have a minute
http://pitchparlour.blogspot.com/
as my draft "pitch letter", a synopsis (minus the very end as I have what I think of in my vanity as plot twists to keep schtum about), and the opening pages of "Gabriel Yeats" are there. Feel free to comment; I want feedback or I wouldn't have done this. I'm really pleased to start with that the site moderator thought it good enough to post at all.

Back in London now after a wonderful break at WOMAD at Charlton Park. For the last few days I have been in another place altogether, a strange alternative world in which I live in the magical realm of Albion, not the UK, and all the world is bound together not by capitalism, tv and twitter but by ties of friendship and the joy of sharing our wonderful variety of cultures... I have been hearing fantastic music, getting rained on, dancing my feet off, eating good and immensely varied food, and sleeping like a log in my little old Eurohike 225 (which oddly seemed to stand up to bad weather a lot better than the larger swankier tents pitched all around it).

There's another shorter WOMAD at the Tower of London in September; already trying to work out if I can make it to that as well.

Off to dance in a field!

I'm off to WOMAD, via my brother Stephen's place in Bath, and will be dancing in a field all weekend (possibly in rubber boots - I'm taking a pair just in case, but I hope they won't be needed). Back at a computer on Tuesday 28th. Have a wonderful weekend, all!

A bad dream can mess up your day...

I had a very odd dream last night, one that has left me vaguely shaken-up and ill-at-ease all day. I dreamed I had to go to a meeting with all of the team from the first floor office I work in, plus one other person who works at Kew, with whom I used to share a flat and who was at the time a very good friend - up until about two years ago when we had a huge bust-up, as a result of which he has cut me dead ever since. In the dream, I was dreading having to spend a couple of hours in his company but was trusting that we’d be civil to one another and hoping we’d be able to sit far enough apart not to have a problem. Incidentally, if we were to have to go to a meeting together, this is exactly how I would feel.

However, when I arrived at the meeting room it was to find everyone else had turned up early, including my former flat-mate, and I was the last to get there. I tried to slip in quietly but he crept round behind me and suddenly grabbed me from the back, catching me round the waist with his left hand and very firmly by the elbow with his right, and to my disbelief having thus trapped me he then leaned over my shoulder from behind and kissed me on the cheek as one might a good friend. He said – to me, but loudly enough that everyone else would hear too – “It’s okay, I’ve explained to them about everything.” I thought, what the heck has he been saying? One of my closest colleagues then said to me cheerfully “So, Imogen, are you going to apologise?” - and I woke up shaking with shock and anger.

Dreams are the brain trying to sort things out, shake them up and look at them from a different angle, right? They don’t mean directly what they show, right? I certainly hope not, in this particular case. I made very full amends, nearly two years ago, for the relatively minor fault that ended this friendship. The idea that I could be considered still to owe anyone an apology for anything about this made me so angry that I woke up outright. But in that case, always assuming I am not merely being horrendously self-deluding about the whole topic (which is always possible), what the heck was this dream telling me?

Imagine that someone you once loved and trusted appears to have told a group of people you work closely with and see every day a version of past events that makes you out to be a Bad Guy. You have always seen yourself as essentially more sinned-against than sinner with regard to this particular issue, and you believe you did everything you could to make amends. You have always felt your conscience was clear. Being confronted by a group of familiar people all convinced of the opposite is both painful and angering, and leaves you feeling helpless and manipulated.

If someone told me this dream as one they had had, and filled me in on the background, I’d suggest they tried to move laterally from the central image. I think I need to remember that – the central image is, to coin a phrase, doing my head in. Perhaps something has left me feeling vulnerable, feeling that I am about to be wrong-footed, and, too, feeling guilty when I know I’ve done nothing to merit it. I know what it’s like to feel guilty when I have merited it (= ghastly), so I know the difference. And the fact I was grabbed from behind could be significant. It’s hard to think of a more unpleasant way for someone to catch hold of you. The unanticipated kiss was upsetting, too; a friendly buss on the cheek, something one would normally welcome, something I once would have been happy to receive from this person, transformed into something that made me feel bad about myself and completely unsure of what was going on.

Yes, yes, this blogger-therapy thing is working! Of course, the dream is so obvious once I think about it; it’s all about vulnerability and feeling vulnerable. The only problem is, why?

Bizarre things, brains. Can’t live with them, can’t live without.

On which idiotic platitudinous note I’ll go home and pack for WOMAD.

Going like a bush fire...

Last night I got home and sat straight down to writing again. Typed all evening. Ate hastily reheated remains of previous night's supper. Typed on until I was pie-eyed again. It was wonderful. It was going like a blaze. How am I going to cope without my laptop for four days this weekend? I shall have to take a notebook (paper kind, of course!) to WOMAD so that I can carry on regardless. Nothing I know, nothing at all, is like the buzz of working when the work is flowing. I am never more in the moment than then, because it is simply the best place in my life to be.

Listened to music while I worked; two albums of Bulgarian choral music and then a brilliant recording by Cathal Hayden, of Irish traditional fiddle and banjo music. He plays a slow air called "A Stór mo Chroi" which is hauntingly beautiful and has been on my brain ever since. I don't know any Erse speakers, so don't know what that means, but it is a melody to gaze out at the sea to and dream of dark eyes looking into your own... I did have an Irish woman next to me briefly on my way into work this morning, stuck at traffic lights while idiot drivers went through the red light in front of us. She was muttering under her breath "Straight through the red light! Straight through the red light! Jesus God!" in a lovely Ulster accent as we watched and waited. Not enough time to ask if she spoke Irish Gaelic, though, before finally the idiots let those who actually had the right of way have the use of the road, and she sailed off on her bike and went the opposite way to me.

Thought for the day...

A little nugget of wisdom, from a slightly unexpected source:

"...no amount of success or exposure, or opportunity is going to really matter or be ultimately fulfilling unless you can be totally present in what you're doing right now."

- Zachary Quinto (The hot hot hot new Mr Spock).

I've just found he has a website. He seems like a good bloke, as well as being hot hot hot.

Thought for the day (no. 2), occurring to me on considering Zachary Quinto (Hmm -"For I shall consider my cat Zachary Quinto/ For he is the servant of the living god, duly and daily serving him/ For he is hot hot hot..." - apologies to Christopher Smart and anyone else concerned or offended by that but I couldn't resist it. Note to self; actually, "Zachary Quinto" would be a great name for a cat...).

Sorry, I'll begin again. Thought for the day (no. 2): Whatever can it be like, to be so attractive that it is the first, and sometimes even the only, thing people notice about you? I am not sure I could stand it (so it's a good thing I don't need to try). But however does Mr Quinto manage to go down to the corner shop (or U.S. equivalent) to buy a loaf or a pint of milk without getting hassled every step of the way? Imagine having to wear dark glasses and walk with a stoop whenever you went out. One would need to be a capable actor to carry it off. (Fortunately for Mr Quinto, he is).

Anyway, it amused me to see someone out of the blue saying just exactly that; be in the moment, not pinning all your thoughts on what might be, or on what may have been, or what is no more, or maybe never was. Be present in what you're doing right now. He even has the guts to lay it right on the line, and say "Nothing else is going to matter if you don't do this", which a lot of pink, fluffy, lovey types who preach "be present in the moment" don't have the nerve to do. But it's true; live only in your head, not in the world, and ultimately you aren't really alive. Be embodied, be alive here and now, and deeply committed and involved and related-to what you are doing; because this life is all we have, and whatever follows after, we will not have this life again. (Apologies to Rose McCauley as well, since I've just realised I'm quoting "The Towers of Trebizond" there).

I've begun re-reading "She who changes" by Carol Christ, a marvellous book about feminism and process philosophy, so I'm feeling deep. And I had a good afternoon yesterday, moving a writing project on a good bit. I was typing and typing all afternoon until I was so tired I typed the immortal phrase "I am not string enough to do this" and knew I had to go and get some tea and chill out for a bit. It is so easy to get so intensely into what you are doing right now, if it is flowing and going well; but not being string enough is a less-than-desirable state of affairs for one's protagonist to find herself in, and sometimes you have to stop and let the flesh rest even if the spirit is willing to go on till silly-o'clock...

Your comedy note for today

Three gift ticket sales, in rapid succession, in the names of Snook, Dreck and Sanders. They sound like a firm of dodgy lawyers in Dickens...