monstrous

I have finished my monster (the felt one). I have not finished packing up my stuff. These two facts may be related. There will be explanations.

I'm freeeeeeeeeeeee...

The doctor says I can go to Chicago. I'm feeling a lot better (and I took pills and potions beforehand and tried very hard not to cough while I was in there). Hurray!

On the other hand, after I wrote yesterday's entry, I experienced an irresistible urge to put some CDs in a box, did so, mentally slapped myself round the head, did a bit of work, read some things on the internet, had a lie down, and accidentally fell asleep. This morning I designed a felt monster. My work is, shall we say, not going too well.

Update: I am in my office. I have seen and spoken to other human beings. Everything is very lovely indeed. Furthermore, my boss has decided that we will be publishing the second of the two pieces I have been trying to get written next month, and he likes what I've written on the first. I want to play with it a bit more, and I need to go through photos for the piece, and my expenses, at some point over the weekend, but basically the weight of work has suddenly and delightfully been lifted from my shoulders.

And, I am well enough to go to tonight's party for a while.

I am feeling really rather lucky. I cannot stop smiling. Hurray indeed.

Update

Just to be clear, I don't think I ACTUALLY have bird flu. The chances are tiny.

It just sucks being (a) sick, (b) stuck at home on my own, and (c) potentially unable to go to Chicago.

I am actually feeling a lot better in myself, but I am stuck in a race to shake off the cough before, well, tomorrow, when I have to make a decision about the ticket.

This getting better lark is not helped by my complete failure to make myself work today, having put in a good solid 10 hours' pointless procrastination instead, which means I won't be able to get all the sleep I need tonight. I am, as ever, an idiot.

I would rather be:
1) making things out of felt. I have come over all crafty and want to be doing something with my hands.
2) reading The Railway Children. This morning I was filled with an overwhelming desire, nay need, to do this and nothing else. No idea why. Except it would be immensely comforting.
3) packing up my apartment. Hum, should probably explain this one....
4) blogging. Possibly about (3)
5) almost anything else, up to and including home trepanning.

But, I need to be working. Now. Here goes...

Heaven

I like to keep my promises. I'm terribly bad at it, but I do like to. So, here is heaven:

It is a bookshop called El Péndulo in Mexico City. I suppose a trendy sort of bookshop, with a cafe and restaurant, concerts and open poetry nights, CDs and DVDs with an emphasis on world cinema and unusual choices, and lots of big glossy books of photography and art. And best of all there is a whole stand of books in English, with a fantastic, intelligent, interesting selection of the kind you only ever get in independent bookshops and the best I've seen in Mexico by miles: Charles Bukowski, Neil Gaiman, Noam Chomsky, Jane Austen, Susan Sontag...

I knew I loved the place when almost the first thing I saw was a shaft of sunlight hitting the bright pink cover of this fabulous edition of HG Wells, illustrated by Edward Gorey:

Closely followed by Harry Potter in Welsh, of which I simply cannot imagine the future buyer:


But possibly my favourite discovery was this one - so, so beautifully obscure and intellectually geeky:

I haven't felt that bookshop feeling in a while - tingly excitement at all the lovely books, combined with a profound anxiety at how little time there is to read them - but I did with a vengeance. I picked out an English translation of The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz (having previously, rather to optimistically, bought it in Spanish), a history of Mexico (better late than never to do something about my blinding ignorance), and a book of amazing photographs of ordinary Mexicans from the infamous Tepito neighbourhood of the City, which I realised I'd seen the exhibition of with the lovely Josie last year. I've had a bit of a thing about books of photos recently, and now have a lovely shiny pile of them. Predictably, I have looked at all the pictures and not read any of the serious non-fiction books that make up the adjacent pile.

But the bookshop was lovely. I looked at all the books, and then I went upstairs and got a cold chocolate and listened to the mellow music playing. And I thought about all the chores and useful things I could be doing in the city, and decided not to bother with any of them that day. And the next day I did almost nothing at all, just went with a few friends to a nearby town, the kind of place where Sunday afternoons are slow, and children sit on curbsides, and lovers hold hands, and families eat together with greasy fingers. We wandered about quiet streets, and looked at a little chapel full of jewel-coloured candles, and shared some food. Heaven.


On the theme of books, I bought myself a couple in Los Angeles airport on the way home - a tremendous and guilty pleasure since I am trying to restrict myself to serious non-fiction, which unfortunately tends to have the effect of stopping me reading anything much, and therefore making me miserable - and I recommend to you A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore. It is one of my favourite kinds of fiction, involving fantastical events happening in the ordinary world, gods and monsters and abstractions personified, crazy story logic, brilliant plotting and wordplay and jokes, and a general sense of the world being a mad and marvellous place, but with characters that you can care about and believe in, and an internal consistency and flow within the story - as practised I think by writers like Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams and Tom Robbins. A Dirty Job is about a guy who one day discovers he is Death, and it is really very good. There is the odd irritation and hole in the plot, but it made me happy when I was feeling like shit, it made me laugh, and I didn't stop reading til it was finished. Yum.

This, from page 71, is one of my favourite lines and made me snort in a busy departure lounge:

...staring at him accusingly, like she'd caught him feeding Froot Loops to her bête noire...

I will definitely be seeking out more Moore.

I also completely loved the cover art of the American edition, the strong colours and boldness of it, and that it just made me laugh.


Good cover art is important I think - I looked at the UK one on Amazon and it is similar in concept but in execution it is truly horrible. And the cover is a pleasing mix of glossy and matt (I am a little bit weird about the lovely smooth feeling of matt covers) and the paper it is made from is nicely soft and bendy and it simply made me very happy just holding it and ruffling though the pages. Just like we eat food partly with our eyes, I think we eat books partly with our hands. Or possibly I've just been a bit book deprived recently.

Also on planes I saw a couple of excellent films, Lars and the Real Girl, and Juno. Possibly everyone in the civilised world has seen both of these already, but if you haven't you should. I'm not sure you are supposed to suspend your disbelief in Juno, but I liked it a lot anyway. Juno reminded me a lot of Enid in Ghost World, being impossibly cool and quirky and full of brilliant wisecracks even at the most difficult times. I realised that when I watched Ghost World I couldn't help wishing I could be like Enid, and when I watched Juno I couldn't help wishing I could have been like Juno, which is a rather depressing reminder of all the time that is gone and will not come again.

Lars and the Real Girl is just a beautiful, oddball story beautifully and simply told: Lars falls in love with a doll he buys on the internet and treats her like she is a real person, forcing his family and community to do so too. I loved the various strong, smart female characters, I loved the concept of a person who isn't a person at the centre of the film, I found myself loving the outfits (it's set in far northern North America, so lots of woolly jumpers and tights and mittens) and really I just loved the whole thing.

Who wants to hide under the covers with me and read books and watch films til it all goes away?

In solitary

FUCK.

So I have just got back from Thailand and China. There is much blog juice in this, mostly involving me going ooooh, it's all different.

While I was there I developed a filthy flu-type cough-thing, which:
- made the free day I had in China, and the day in Bangkok on the way back, quite shit.
- made me no fun at all to sit next to on any of the flights I caught, though I was taking magic pharmacist-advised strepsils to lessen the coughing fits.
- has been painful and miserable and generally rubbish and was probably going to be quite boring when I got around to complaining about it here.

So far, so dull. Crap, but dull.

Then just now I went to see the campus doctor, just to see if he recommended anything to help me sit out the cough.

So the thing is, I might have bird flu.

This is rather rattling and a bit scary, but not really terrifying. I haven't died yet, so I doubt I'm going to do so anytime soon, even if I do have it, which is pretty unlikely. However, it has the following ramifications:
- I would be the first person to bring bird flu to Mexico. Not really the kind of fame I was looking for. Funny, to my black sense of humour, but not funny if it actually happens.
- I'm not exactly in quarantine, but I probably shouldn't be socialising either. Which means not going to the office, working at home, and generally keeping myself to myself. Which means not catching up with the friends I've missed, not being in the office with the lovely Allison, not having lunch in the canteen, not hanging out in the evenings, probably not going to a big goodbye party on Friday... and generally being sad and lonely.
- However, I still have a shitload of work to do this week, and this doesn't excuse me from it. And there were lots of other chores and fun things I was going to do, but can't.
- Worst of all, I am under observation by the doctor. Under WHO rules, anyone who comes back from South East Asia with a filthy dirty cough like this has to be kept under observation, and if I get worse the authorities have to be notified. Which I'm sure isn't a trip to the circus at the best of times, but I am planning to go to Chicago to visit good friends in exactly a week's time. I really, really want to go, nevermind what will happen to the ticket. And there's no guarantees I'll be better by then even if it's just a regular ol' non-avian-type virus - I had a cough earlier in the year that lasted at least 3 weeks - and I'm sure he'll stop me going if I'm not.

So everything's probably going to be fine, but right now everything sucks in an absurdly melodramatic and shit way.

I had a massive weeping stress fit at Allison (by phone of course), and then phoned my boss and managed not to break down completely (again), but was still a madwoman. I really need to stop being mad and/or crying when I'm speaking to my boss. Then I resisted phoning any friends or parents and crying at them, mostly because it was afternoon in the UK and working hours, but also in the case of my parents because I didn't quite get round to mentioning I was going to China and it might all be a bit much to take in. Then I sat down to write this and am feeling slightly more calm. Slightly. On the other hand, it's well known for driving people mad, this solitary confinement lark. I must be sure to keep myself busy with plenty of activities. These shall include coughing, staring at a blank screen trying to work, complaining, coughing, weeping, staring wistfully out of the window, coughing, thinking bitterly about the things I could be doing, and coughing. Hooray.

China

I am in China! China is right there, just outside my window, being China.

I am also in the fanciest hotel I have ever been in (though, admittedly, this is not saying much).

I am also absolutely exhausted.

Zzzz....

When I die...

I think I would like to become ink.

Listening to a sad song tonight and it can't make me sad

This is not a whinging post, I promise. The following two paragraphs is strictly for informational purposes and background and dramatic contrast.

So I have had an almost-entirely shit couple of weeks. Last week (the week before last? The one before the week that has just past but we are still in the weekend of...) I worked every night until between 3 and 5 am, and got up every morning trying to hold my edges together. This was sort of my fault for somehow underestimating the magnitude of the job that nearly killed me the same time last year, but that was not a comforting thought. Then this week we have been hosting our two-yearly intra-organisational conference, which has meant me spending most of my days in meetings starting at 8am, and running to try and squeeze important other stuff I was still supposed to be doing into breaks and evenings. I spent Monday and Tuesday evenings in the office until midnight, and by Wednesday I was ragged to the brink of tears.

I will admit that Wednesday and Thursday evenings were both quite lovely, involving actually being sociable, with other people and everything. Both evenings were entirely delightful, and I am not at all sorry I wasn't doing the sensible thing and sleeping. Last weekend also brought some points of light - specifically the arrival of a new computer in exchange for my old one and an obscene amount of money (things like cameras and computers seem to be madly expensive in Mexico). It is a bit shit, but it is marvellously, delightfully functional and I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to welcome the internet, music, and all kinds of computery goodness back into my life. On the other hand, it did mean that I spent Saturday installing software and phoning my Dad for advice and transferring data til I was screeny-eyed (still not finished) and not going to bed to get the sleep I really, really needed. On Sunday I spent the day in Mexico City hanging out with and catching up with a friend and ex-colleague on a flying visit, and buying myself small and lovely things and loving being in the (my) city and being ridiculously tired. And then on Monday my new bank card finally arrived (sent by my parents via fedex at horrifying expense, they being about the only people who will carry the blasted things). This is an immense relief; not having a bank card is a horribly naked and insecure feeling, knowing you wouldn't be able to get hold of money in an emergency. I kissed it. (Tongue in cheek. Mostly. Figuratively. Don't be disgusting.)

So there were some social loveliness and some awesome practical things making my life better, but I spent the vast majority of the last couple of weeks working and being exhausted and miserable and arrived at Friday hating everything and swearing even more than normal. Friday evening was an end-of-conference dinner (in a marquee) at which everyone got cold and hungry during the speeches and I got angry with my friends for spilling wine and giggling while everyone else was listening attentively. After the end of the speeches and fetching a shawl and getting the rest of the dinner I started defrosting (literally and figuratively) and we were among the last ones still there, chatting and drinking. I started feeling quite fond of my fellow beings.

At which point my officemate, Amazing Allison, dragged me off to her apartment for moral support while peeing, because she was afraid she had a bladder infection. And then on the way back she insisted on going over to the women's group house because there was pasta there and she was still hungry. And so I steeled myself for remonstrating with a drunk person, which I'm not very good at because I get bogged down in sober logic.

[More background may be required. I leave for China next Wednesday, and I won't be here for my birthday or Easter beach-trips. I am trying to be positive about this. I couldn't have a big party on Friday because of the dinner, and I'd been thinking about Saturday except that I wouldn't have been able to get everyone to come in the way that you can after work, and so I'd settled on a party when I get back.]

And so we went inside, and it was dark, and suddenly it wasn't and it was full of people shouting "Surprise!" and singing Happy Birthday and I was in the middle of it all, spinning round and smiling and feeling embarassed and smiling and smiling and smiling. And then I was hugging and kissing every single person there. And then I was running away to fetch my camera and put on my favourite top and drag a brush through my hair and have a little cry, because it was overwhelming to be made to feel so loved. Especially because a lot of the time I don't.

My friends had decorated with balloons and streamers. They had bought snacks and drinks, and even things for making piña coladas, knowing they are one of the few (ridiculously sweet, girly) things I drink. They had sent emails inviting people, and rounded up other people at the dinner, and lied and kept it secret. And they had all showed up, for me. I am very glad I have a friend who will pretend to have a bladder infection for me. I am very glad I did not get more pissy with the gigglers, and listened to my good side and unasked brought clean clothes for the one who spilt wine on herself even though I was cross with her. I am very glad I am absurdly obtuse and did not pick up on all the clues, which in retrospect were many. Because no-one has ever thrown me a surprise party before, and it made me happy fit to burst, and it was amazing.

It wasn't the same as the party I would've organised. Not everyone was there, like they would've been at a normal after-work Friday party. We didn't go out dancing afterwards. But, there will be more of those things to come. Almost all the important people were there, and it was happy and noisy and full of dancing and jokes and laughing and love... and I was surprised and delighted, instead of exhausted and stressed-out from organising, which made it pretty much perfect.

It was funny in some ways. I hardly remember talking to people, I was too busy bouncing around and grinning and hugging people and dancing and flitting about. I remember smiles and hugs and dancing, and not many words! There was a huge, beautiful piñata (apparently they had to bring it home held out of the taxi window). There was a delicious, absurdly creamy birthday cake, and I made my wish and blew out all the candles so hard I got candle wax on Amazing Allison's arm, and I rose to the jokingly-made challenge of making my self-imposed thank you speech in Spanish. There were balloon animals, made by my bar-tending, DJ-ing, ex-clown Favourite Peruvian, and a balloon penis. There was salsa and merengue and pop and reggae and a moshing accident that I'm fairly sure involved my head being sat on; fast dancing and drunken dancing and funny dancing and tender dancing.

I, um, may have kissed a boy. In the carpark, in the cold, under the stars. It wasn't entirely unprecedented nor entirely unexpected nor necessarily a good idea, but much better than just saying goodbye and goodnight (and also better than persuading him to stay) and it made me mostly-happy and I'm glad the evening almost-ended that way - especially with half my friends going home in couples!

[An aside on kisses: in Mexico everyone kisses hello and goodbye (once, to the left), and for thank you and congratulations. This has made me a much more kissy person, and I like this very much. I was thinking this when I was giving my friends thank-you-and-I-love-you kisses while we were tidying up. (I did an especially good job of tidying up the cake.) I would never have given spontaneous or comfortable friend-kisses before, but now I am a giver of kisses. I like kisses. Hurray!]

This morning I forced myself into the land of the living and onto a bus and found myself still breaking out into smiles in spite of feeling a bit like I'd been run over by a steamroller and went to the launch of amazing photographer Graciela Iturbide's new book. She has just won the 2008 Hassleblad Prize and I am rather pleased that I fell in love with her work before I knew she was at all important. The press scrum was rather disconcerting, but it was interesting and I listened and contemplated and dreamed in and out of the Spanish and had thoughts and ideas. And then I found Heaven... but I am too tired and this entry is too long...

Coming soon: the pearly gates, and where to find them. If you happen to be in Mexico City.