December miscellany

[raven]

Life. It continues. Itemised:

1. Last night, after five, I was tidying my desk and flipping through Farmers' Weekly (really, by god), and the Caped Crusader rushed by, came to a sudden stop, rushed back and said, "Iona, can you witness a stat dec?"

"Yes," I said, a little doubtfully, read the document, watched him read the document, watched him sign the document, and then wrote my name, address, occupation, and signed to say that the above-named individual had signed in my presence in accordance with the 1835 Act, etc., and then thought to ask, "Why are you making a statutory declaration to say you read over someone's will?"

"Blind testatrix," he said. The funny thing is, I thought later, that the testatrix in question is a young woman. If she lives her allotted span, that document will be pulled from its envelope along with the will a half-century from now. If it becomes part of the root of title for something, well, I have a will in my files that was signed in the presence of witnesses in this year of our Lord seventeen hundred and forty-seven. That scrap of paper with my writing on it will outlive me by centuries.

2. Still quite depressed. Ahaha, I say "quite". Went to see new GP yesterday, which I hadn't done since arriving in Cambridge. He turned out to be very kind and very nice, and alarmed me somewhat by turning to his computer screen and saying, "Right. I think I should sign you off work for a week and put you on something."

I persuaded him not to do this - it's ten days till Christmas - but he told me to come back in January and rethink. (Actually, he was really nice; he said I had a sensible approach to things.) And I think he was right about January being different - I always find January and February harder than December. Usually I look forward to my birthday, but for some reason I don't want to be twenty-five. I feel like twenty-five ought to be, to have done, to have become something... and me, I read Farmers' Weekly. You get it.

3. Speaking of Christmas. This year as most years, I am out of the country. (Once, on Christmas Eve, I spent eight hours on a departure gate floor, listening to "I'll Be Home For Christmas" on repeat over tinny airport speakers. It was hell.) Today at work, I went to see one of the partners to get something signed, and not only is she a lovely person, she has an endearing relationship with the two departmental trainees (me and the Caped Crusader): she's new, and she doesn't want to annoy her secretaries or make her colleagues think she's dim, so when she wants to know how the photocopier works and where the spare envelopes are and what idiotic thing her computer has done now, she asks us and thus feels she owes us a favour.

So she signed my letters, and asked, "Are you going home for Christmas? Where's home for you?"

And, and, I have this issue with home and going home and homelands. Y'all know. Since coming back from the States it's only got worse. Every day I track people and plans and landscapes - I call Land Registry, I register interests, I use documents and time to map people onto the water, rocks and earth they call their land - and I get more worried, theoretically speaking, about what any of it even means and if it means anything. Me, I own no land. (To get technical about it, I do hold an interest in land, but whatever.) But I sometimes worry I own no land metaphorically: that I grew up in one place and spent all my adult life in another, that I've lived in three countries and left bits of myself in all of them, that I never sit still, that I never go home.

All very melodramatic and banal, as per; I guess I have a homeland in my body, all five feet and seventy-percent water of it, and the spaces I pass through.

All of which is a ridiculous prelude to the answer to the question, which is: India. I am going to India on the evening of December 23rd, for the first time in two years, and the real first: Shim is coming with me. I think it will be strange, but good.

4. Possibly related to 2, writing is not going so well. yuletide, it is a hollow laughter. I have written, oh, 300 words, and I have a perfectly serviceable plot which for some reason I do not write down, why, self, why. The novel is going a bit better, but I'm stuck in chapter nine. I don't know why. Nothing very exciting happens in chapter nine. Some people talk to other people. (Actually, that describes my entire novel. Absolutely nothing happens, and then characters talk to each other about it. It reads rather a lot like the sophomore effort of a woman who has spent the last decade writing fanfic. (Be glad you weren't around for the freshman effort.)

And so on, and so on. Still flying, still breathing.

Comments

[falena]

The way you write always moves me profoundly and makes me fall in love with you a bit (hopefully this is not as creepy as it sounds in my head, but I don't know how to express it). This entry, though, it touched me especially, possibly because I know what it feels like to battle with depression...Anyway, what I want to say is - I think you're a truly gifted individual and I wish you all the best. Thanks for sharing these little bits of your life with me, with us. I hope you'll have a wonderful time in India and that you'll feel better, eventually.

[raven]

Thank you very much. I'm really glad that you enjoy reading: it might sound a little trite, but I really, really am. And I've been meaning to tell you - I finally went back and read that lovely post you made about your visit to Liverpool, and I just loved seeing it through your eyes. So familiar and extraordinary, all at once.

[falena]

Oh, I'm glad you liked the post. :)

[livrelibre]

This comment cannot contain the many hugs I have for you. Keep on steppin' honey and and safe travels.

[raven]

Oh, thank you! Miss you <3

[surexit]

The idea of carrying your homeland in your body is incredibly powerful. I hope India is wonderful.

[raven]

Thank you very much. :)

[blueteak]

I also really like the idea of a homeland being in the body, being contained within you. There are pieces of me, past selves, scattered around the world too. Sometimes it's almost hard to believe and it feels like those times must have happened to someone else, but there's still contact every now and then, still photographs and memories. It's nice to think of it being more contained.

Wishing you happy travels and good times ahead.

[raven]

Thank you, that's kind. :)

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

*hugs* I love you. I'm sorry you're not feeling well right now.

(I am now two chapters behind on your novel, but it's finally my weekend and I'm looking forward to getting caught up again.)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thanks, honey. <3 I hope you like it. :)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

pee ess I saw a book at Heffers today called "100 Facts About Sharks" in which all the facts were unashamedly and delightfully made up. ("The only country in Europe in which Jaws was not released was Greece. Consequently, they do not have connotations of terror there and maintain as tourist attractions shark surfing and shark taxis.") I thought of you. :)

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I, too, was going through Farmers' Weekly at work the other week, but then I was working for a library, and the issues concerned were between twenty-eight and thirty-two years old. (At one point, without any editorial explanation, the masthead adds the subtitle 'Incorporating Big Farm Weekly', and there's another merger, even more low-key, later on and only noted on the contents page, with [I think] Power Farmer. These phantom publications added a layer of mystery.)

Shim in India - this is good news. I hope you both have a great time.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

POWER FARMER. OMG. Please excuse me while I sprain something.

(Seriously, the tractor ads are the best part. I read them for about an hour yesterday, and now I am greatly edified.)

[greek-jester.livejournal.com]

I'm a little confused. You've lived in 3 countries. Count 'em. Three. All on different continents. You are living with someone who sounds like an excellent boyfriend, & you have a job that has the potential to turn into a fantastic career. You're writing a flipping novel, for crying out loud, & you are not yet 25!

I, however, lived within 3 miles of the house my mum conceived me in until I was 32, & all 3 houses in that time period were owned by my mother. The next house was also owned by my mother (albeit in a different county), & I didn't move out into my own house (shared with my younger sister) until I was 32. I am only now in the last year of my AAT training, which was originally started in 1996.

Are you really sure you've not achieved anything yet?

On the other hand, having recently battled with depression (circumstantial, not chronic) myself & am still taking the pills for it, I do understand that sometimes your brain chemistry just goes splat & you could be moping around if you'd just been told you'd won £10,000,000 & that no-one you care about will ever get sick again.

Get through Xmas if that's what you need, then go back to the doctor, sit down & discuss your options. If you're really worried about going on tablets, ask about counselling options - sometimes a willing ear who won't be emotionally wounded by anything you say can make all the difference. If you do decide to take pills, consider taking a few days off while you adjust to them. I spent the first few days alternately feeling a bit sick & falling asleep in odd places while my brain chemistry started stabilising.

PM me if you want to ask any questions.

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

I feel like twenty-five ought to be, to have done, to have become something... and me, I read Farmers' Weekly. You get it.

Oh, sweetie - you have done things! You have got multiple degrees from excellent universities, lived in multiple countries, made loads of friends, written lovely things which people have read and enjoyed, forged a successful and happy romantic relationship, got a good job (um, I know it makes you unhappy - not good in that sense, obviously, but one which takes intelligence and skill to get offered and to do. Even if you quit tomorrow, though, your total of achievements would still be great) and much more. I know how easy it is to dismiss all of this (I frequently wail about how I Failed Utterly at university and am incredibly stupid, even though I know that objectively that's probably not completely true; it feels like it is), but your achievements are still noteworthy and to be proud of.

I hope going to India with Shim goes well, and that the two of you have a lovely time together.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you, sweetie - this is kind, and it's sensible, and I am sort of intellectually aware that there is more to my life on this earth than a desperate winter and a great deal of farmers. Thank you for the reminder. :)

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

I know knowing something intellectually and actually feeling it are two completely different things (human brains are not great sometimes, really), but I hope even just knowing this intellectually helps a bit. x

[speak-me-fair.livejournal.com]

If it consoles you at all, some of us have ONLY the plot outline, totalling less than 150 word, ready for yuletide.

It is indeed a most hollow laugh.

(also, the robin continues to be unco-operative with regard to being stuck on a card)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

MY LAUGHTER, IT CONTINUES HOLLOW. What is today's date I don't even want to know.

[speak-me-fair.livejournal.com]

I HAVE TURNED MINE OFF ON THE COMP.

So I cannot tell you even if I felt like being that mean.

*beats head on keyboard*

Words. I used to have them.

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

I have twenty words. I have the entire story, but I don't seem interested in writing it down. And I'm not stressed about it. WHAT THE FUCK BRAIN.

*HUGS* I hope your new doctor and you can work something out. I hope your time in India is blessed.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

SAME HERE. WHY.

(thank you, my dear.)

[icepixie]

Actually, that describes my entire novel. Absolutely nothing happens, and then characters talk to each other about it. It reads rather a lot like the sophomore effort of a woman who has spent the last decade writing fanfic.

Hahahaha, I am right there with you. Which is why, for my latest foray into non-fanfic prose writing, I just said fuck it and started writing it in script form.

...Of course, now the idea wants to be a movie musical. *facepalm*

I hope your trip goes well!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

A movie musical! I think this would be awesome. I totally do. :)

[icepixie]

:D

I'm growing slowly more attached to the idea myself. There's a few spots where the meaning would probably be imparted so much better through dance than through dialogue. Plus one day I could get a group of people together and make a really fantastic home movie?

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Drive-by huggishness sneaked in on the translucent ribbon of bandwidth I've snagged before a branch tips off some snow across the lake and my internet disappears.

What I was gonna say about all kinds of different things in this post just sort of boils down to: "I think you're beautiful, by the way." So, that.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Oh, and you know, re: novels about people talking to each other and not much else: I had a salutary experience a month or so ago reading a book that seemed to be a sort of mathematically improbable precipitation of characters (a waiter, we're told, walked out after serving a main character and was never seen again, although we are invited to look after him while the main story meanders on in the background) and I found this so comforting, because the book was very good and the plot sort of emerged like one of those 3D images you have to stare at with just the right lack of focus, and in the end, it seemed that the proliferation of characters and the threads that tangled them up with so many others "off-screen" was actually the point, story-wise and life-wise, because, ultimately, it was all about how none of us is alone and no story has a through-line without a snarl of connection in it. So, although I have been out of the loop and have not been able to follow you so far (but I see I can as you've posted some), I have faith. I even might go so far as to share some of that with my own despairing writerly self. Wot?! What an uncharacteristic act of generosity! Well, everyone's got to take a break from self-flagellation sometime, or she'll get a repetitive stress injury.

(oh, the book was Between the Bridge and the River, by the way)

Okay, really going now (I appear to be drunk with the powah of stable internet access!). As you were.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

That sounds just lovely, and I shall try to read it. I think you should be kind to yourself, my dear: I miss you over there in no-internet-land, my life is lacking without you in it.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

That sounds just lovely, and I shall try to read it.

It's lovely in a very... unlovely way. I mean, it's gritty, and it's hard to love the people until you kind of realize that that's kind of the point, and then you kind of do. It's a bit like Hard Core Logo that way. A blurb on the back of the book calls it "profane on its surface, ethical at its core..." which is accurate.

And I miss you guys, too, although being out of the internet loop has done a lot for my off-line workaday productivity. All work and no play....

Better go before a leaf moves somewhere and I lose my connection. Tenuous, thy name is internet.

[fyrdrakken]

Congrats on getting to visit India again and taking Shim with you this time. You'll enjoy it more if you aren't separated from him, and hopefully it'll be fun seeing his reactions to the places and people, and your family's reactions to meeting him.

I can't help but find myself in agreement with your decision to postpone something health-related until after Xmas -- I just broke a chunk off a tooth and then lost the big filling in said tooth two days ago, and since it doesn't hurt I'm going to postpone having it dealt with until January. (Though I think I should at least make the appointment now, so as to prevent myself from postponing and postponing. I've made two good-faith efforts to call for an appointment but the first time the office had quit answering the phone for the day and the second I discovered they're only open a half-day on Fridays.)

Ah, writing. I've never been a Yuletide participant since my Decembers are invariably eaten up by trying to finish up my gift-knitting in time -- though the great advantage of knitting is that once you've got the pattern and the yarn, it's just a matter of making one stitch after another. No hours staring at a screen trying to drag out the words that just. won't. come. (Though sometimes there's a problem that requires a lot of calculating and reworking and possibly undoing large portions of work that's been done, sometimes even starting over again from scratch because it just didn't work. Still. There's something to be said for a method of creative endeavor where the results are usually directly proportional to the time invested working on it, as opposed to the uncontrollable lightning flashes of inspiration vs. slow plodding struggles.)