One of the things about having an appallingly bad memory is that you are constantly ambushed by your past selves.
Sometimes it takes you by surprise, as they jump out at you from behind some innocuous-looking object. Sometimes you know you’ve brought it upon yourself by wandering down memory alley after dark.
What with one thing and another – joining facebook, trying to introduce some order to my memento-stuffed bedroom at home, looking through old photos – this has been happening rather a lot.
My child selves mostly induce in me a tender pity; they do not feel quite like myselves. But, I salt away the odd things I treasured then.
My adolescent selves make me wince. I am mostly quite glad to forget.
With my most recent selves, well, the relationship is more complex. I feel regret that I did not spend my student days better, that I wasn’t happier and bolder and more alive and less afraid, that I didn’t do more things. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that I hold that regret for each day I’ve ever passed.
So these selves make me sad. But there is happiness too, and fondness. There is a smile on my lips as I remember the day when we did that. And a longing for those days that will never come again (and oh they never do).
And oh I wish I didn’t forget so easily.
It is a very peculiar thing to look at old photos. To do so is to remember that I am not simply the sum of my most recent experience, of the last couple of years or so. That I run much deeper than that, that there is more to me. It is to discover a vast, forgotten hinterland.
It is to open a forgotten door in your house somewhere (and don’t we all have one of those, that hovers on the elusive edge of unsettling dreams?) and to find a whole room that has somehow dropped out of your consciousness, though now you find it you know you’ve always known it was there. The furniture, the pictures, the way the mirrors reflect the lampshades, the view from the window – they are all perfectly familiar. And yet they are another country.
More than that it is to open a door – and now you see it you know it’s always been there – and to find a whole house on the other side, and to realise that you’ve been living in one room all along. And to know that next time you wake you’ll have forgotten again.
Oddly enough, it is the photographs I took of my room in college that first affect me most. I look at my posters and pictures and plants and books in that year’s particular arrangement and remember the person who lived in that habitat. I firmly believe that we live in our surroundings, not just in the obvious way, but that we bleed into the shape of our forks and the colour of our favourite throw and the way the light slants across the wall.
And so I look at the photographs and I remember the things I did and the things I knew and the things I thought about, and how I felt about things, and what I hoped and dreamed and wanted. I remember that I was quite different, perhaps better.
And then I look at the photographs of my friends, and I remember forgotten punting trips, parties, days out… balls even. Some of them are still close friends, some I know are slipping away, some are no more than a name I used to know. I remember camaraderie, silliness, brilliant conversation, shared emotions, shared time. And I miss them.
And although it’s a destructive emotion that I try not to have, I regret what is lost. And I wonder who I am, and who I want to be.
What filthy, monstrous, perverted faith can drive a human being to drive a three-inch nail into a little girl's head? To set their own child on fire? Bury them alive, chain them up, starve them, beat them until their bones break?
I just watched the Channel 4 Dispatches programme Saving Africa's Witch Children, and it has to be one of the most distressing things I've ever watched. In short, certain extreme pentecostal churches in Nigeria have people convinced that millions of their own children are possessed by Satan and responsible for any misfortunes that befall, and as a result these "witches" and "wizards" are ostracised, tortured, and killed.
It is disturbing how a powerful blend of traditional beliefs and Christianity has people completely convinced - such that it's an embedded, unquestioned certainty - that the bad things that happen to you are never just down to chance. Deaths, illness, crop failures, accidents, miscarriages and all such stones upon life's road must have a cause, which is where the witch children come in.
What their parents and other adults do to them is horrifying, but based on a sincere belief that is able to flourish in an environment of ignorance, fear, and profound poverty. The people in this film who I truly wish could burn in the hell that they believe in and I do not are the pastors. With a few easy words they condemn children by the dozen, perhaps to physical torture and death, or the lucky ones who they "cure" to the lifelong mental torture of being feared and stigmatised. The children who are cared for in the shelter featured in the programme, having been abandoned or rescued, seem like the lucky ones, but they have to be helped through beleiving that they are witches and knowing they have been rejected by their families and communities.
Meanwhile, these pastors grow obscenely rich on the profits of torturing children to extract confessions and "exorcising" them - which a family will have to sell all it has to afford. So even if a child is successfully exorcised, it will be living in a family that has been pushed even more deeply into grinding, deadly poverty - something the programme didn't really explore so much, but every bit as pernicious as the other effects of these pastors' actions, I think. Oh yes, and at the top of the heap these operations are hardly unsophisticated - including making blockbuster gorefest films depicting exactly how possessed children eat human flesh and so on. Perhaps these pastors too are acting out of sincerely-held beliefs, but seeing them on the screen wealthy, complacent, and wilfully, happily ignorant or unmindful of the suffering of the children... At the very best they're guilty of failing to scrutinise their beliefs and the consequences of their actions, at the worst, well, there are no words strong enough.
It's distressing to see the terrible scars left on these children, worse to see their absolute, abject sadness. I swear it would melt a heart of stone to see Mary, five years old, cowering inside herself as an angry crowd beat on the metal walls of the shack she was sitting in with her eventual rescuers. They asked her name and what had happened, and then they asked if she thought she was a witch, and all she could bring herself to do was nod, once, slowly. They told her they didn't think she was a witch but a fine, beautiful girl, and they asked her what she wanted them to do to help her. It was a long time before she could find any words, and then she said she wanted to go to school.
There are many brave and good Nigerians trying to change the situation and care for these poor damaged children. There is a rescue centre and school, CRARN, where the children seem happy and full of life, able to smile again. There is also an English bloke called Gary, who went to Nigeria to do research on something else entirely and ended up founding a UK charity, Stepping Stones Nigeria, to support the centre. I have the sense of an ordinary person struggling with the chaos and horror of it all, maybe not getting everything right, but with immense courage and selflessness actually using his life to do something extraordinary.
At the end of the programme he took all 150 or so of the rescue children to the local state capital to protest directly to the governor that the state had not put the national children's rights act into law. At first it seemed like it was going to be a fiasco, but eventually he came out and the children sang to him and he spoke to them and seemed genuinely surprised that none of them lived with their families and had all been abandoned (and they are the tip of the iceburg), and he promised to enact the law, and visit them and see how he could help them. And so he did (at least on the legal side, they didn't say about the second). It's only a small step against the enormous problem of changing attitudes and culture, but it does at least mean that there is a valid legal means to prosecute abusers, and I don't think I've ever seen a more moving or a more effective example of the power of face-to-face protest.
I don't watch a lot of TV - I think this is the first time I've done more that flick through the channels since I got back from Mexico (yep, I do go for some upbeat viewing...). I was a bit startled by all the adverts that came up during the breaks for Chrismas foods and gifts and other crappy cut-price luxuries. The Stepping Stones website was down last time I tried, which I hope is because they're being overwhelmed by a deluge of donations. There are a thousand equally worthy causes, there always are, but as soon as it's up and running again I'll be donating the price of a few special seasonal gifts from WHSmith. If you happen to be wondering what to do with a few quid (and I'm sure you are, what with the economy being so outrageously healthy n'all), I think these people will make it go a long way. The Dispatches website has more information and more links, and you can watch some clips from the programme.
If you need cheering up after all that, I also caught some of BBC2's Oceans programme about the sea of Cortez. I found the programme itself incredibly smug and irritating and lacking in actual content (for the love of all that is holy, since when do wildlife programme's have a "cast"? Of people I mean, not animals), but the footage of a group of sperm whales socialising, taking time just to make physical contact, (an erect penis is involved, admittedly but only later when a male comes along to court them), is breathtakingly beautiful. You apparently have 42 days to watch it here (and if you're as easily annoyed as me you might want to skip to somewhere near the end).
So here I am and here are some words. I have more to say about various things, but I need to begin somewhere. And I also have stupid youtube videos to post so I can close the tabs before my poor creaky computer explodes.
So where to begin...?
I've been back in the UK for, I think, almost four weeks, although I can't quite believe that. Leaving Mexico was, as I knew it would be, one of the hardest things I have ever done. Perhaps other things have hurt more, and there could and will be worse things I know, but it was breathtakingly, enormously painful. In the days before I left, the tears and sense of grief overwhelmed me often and without warning. Sometimes, watching a street go past a car window, or something equally ordinary, I would find myself suddenly unable to breathe with something like panic, knowing that soon I wouldn't be seeing this or or being here at all any more. Ridiculous, perhaps, in this house of horrors of a world, but there it is.
At the end of July I came back to the UK on a last-minute and entirely crazy trip - I was on UK soil for less than a week - for an interview for a dream job (which I didn't get, of course) - they insisted on a face-to-face interview and I hoped the gamble might be worth it. The whole thing was exhausting and emotional. I couldn't countenance losing those few days from my time in Mexico, so I ended up pushing back my flight by more than two weeks.
But, in the end, all my time slipped through my fingers like sand anyway. My work went on and on and on, particularly one hellish project that made my life a misery for a long time and that I tried very, very hard to finish and still had to hand over incomplete - after I ended up, by then desperate to quit work and do other things, trying not to sob while I blurted out to my boss that I felt trapped, like I would never escape. But there were still lots of things to finish off, of course, and I also massively underestimated quite how long it would take to pack up my apartment (and sort it all out, and throw stuff away, and recycle stuff, and ship stuff, and give stuff away, and sell stuff, and send my borrowed furniture back whence it came, and so on). Because it really does take a bloody long time. Add to that a little bit of sickness, innumerable errands, some misjudged social commitments, and some good times seeing friends, and sprinklings of tiredness and sadness and godawful weather, and my hoped-for four weeks exploring my beloved Mexico and researching for my book dwindled to three, then two, then one, and finally nothing. A stolen hour or so taking pictures of my town in between chores.
The whole thing was a terribly depressing process, constantly and unremittingly having to give things up. Realising one by one each thing I wouldn't be able to do or finish, each person I wouldn't have time to see again, each anticipated attraction I wouldn't get chance to see, each familiar place I wouldn't be able to go back to, each beloved possession I realised I'd have to leave behind, each fun thing I wouldn't do again. A process of letting go by force as each thing was tugged from my grip.
What a terrible feeling it is to know that time is running out, that there isn't enough time, that there is no more time left. The uneasiness that is the knowledge of our own mortality, magnified.
As the day, the hour of my flight approached I felt like I was being ripped from my life, torn away from my fabric of people and things and places and activities, from so many things undone and plans unfulfilled. And I felt it bitterly - weepingly, shudderingly, chokingly. And intensely physically painfully. I wasn't ready to go, not one bit.
I thought I might just fall apart altogether on the plane, but I didn't. The practicalities of travel required attention. I sat at the departure gate listening to two or three songs over and over with a strange calm. I slept on one plane. I fretted through US immigration and nearly missed another plane. I sat next to the sort of person who makes me turn my emotions inside to keep them safe coming anywhere near them. I struggled home from the airport on a journey of absurd hellishness. And by the time I got there I don't think I felt anything at all. I was perfectly frozen.
In retrospect, of course, I was protecting myself. For a week or two I barely thought about Mexico at all, except for the odd, quick, wincing moment. I didn't do much at all except sleep.
It is, predictably, not terribly good for me to be back in my family home. It is a step backward, away from adulthood and independence and being myself and being alive. A sort of hopelessness and lassitude steals over me. I'm a lot worse even than usual at getting things done. I have been spending a lot of time trying to sort out a lifetime's worth of crap - at the moment my room is so full, and so chaotic - that I don't even have space to unpack. This isn't good either, as I am constantly taken back to being 15 or being 20, and trying to make impossible decisions about where to put things when there's nowhere to put anything, and trying not to be driven to despair by years of unsorted photos and papers. This is not entirely a hopeless task - I am finally learning to get rid of stuff and to let things go, not before time - but it often feels like one.
Not thinking about Mexico scared me. I was afraid that I might just let it pass painlessly and quietly out of my memory. So I began to let myself think about it a little bit, even though it hurts. I listen to songs in Spanish although they rub raw nerves. I glance quickly at photos. I think about places I knew. I miss Mexico. I am afraid that what I really want is to be there, to live there for good - a big, frightening thing to have to consider.
I have been in a bubble. A bubble of not feeling and not engaging. A bubble of not blogging, and not phoning or emailing or seeing anyone. A bubble of sleeping at the wrong times, stuck on Mexico time and tired from trying to fix it. A bubble of not really being. But bubbles, of course, can't last. I have been looking for jobs and I hope that once I find one I can start another proper real life of seeing people and doing things. In the meantime, it's time to get off my arse and stop wasting my precious time, to take back control of my life. To hoist the sails and take the wheel. To embrace where I've been and work out where next.
So, fingers crossed, I skipped a night's sleep and now I'm more or less back on track. I'm thinking about how to develop my professional skills. I'm trying to be effective sorting and organising my stuff, and not overwhelmed. I'm slowly getting back in touch, shamefacedly tackling all those unanswered emails, writing these words. Sorry I've been gone, but I'm back.
Have you ever heard the song "Short Dick Man" by 20 fingers, featuring Gillette?
Well I hadn't, until it came on on my way home on a crowded bus.
The lyrics go like this:
Don't want no short dick man (x4) What in the world is that fucking thing? Do you need some fucking tweezers to put that little thing away? That has got to be the smallest dick I have ever seen in my whole life Get the fuck outta here Eeny weeny teeny weeny shrivelled little short dick man (x2) Don’t want no short dick man (x8) Eeny weeny teeny weeny shrivelled little short dick man (x4) Isnt that cute, an extra belly button You need to put you pants back on honey Don’t want no short dick man Eeny weeny teeny weeny shrivelled little short dick man Do you need some fucking tweezers to put that little thing away? That has got to be the smallest dick I have ever seen in my whole life Get the fuck outta here Don't want no short dick man (x4) plus mocking laughter throughout
This is a cruel song. It doesn't necessarily bother me that it's vulgar and crude, but it does bother me that it is cruel.
But, there is also something of the hilarious about it. Especially at maximum volume, when you are on a bus crammed to overflowing with Mexicans, half of whom are teenaged schoolchildren and none of whom probably have any idea of what the words mean, including the slightly creepy driver who is singing along enthusiastically without really making any of the words.
I kept being overwhelmed by giggles and then trying to control myself, partly because I didn't want to be the mad laughing foreigner, and partly just in case anyone DID know what was so funny.
Isn't it odd, given the relative amounts of current and historical disapproval of the two acts, that bugger is considered so much less offensive a swear word than fuck?
I just realised that I don't think I have any health insurance right now, since my contract has technically finished. Which, you know, is probably fine. I'll just have to try very hard not to get airlifted from anywhere.
"I don't know who I'm going to play ping pong with when you go"
said my friend sadly yesterday lunchtime, while we were playing. It was a melancholy moment, but I was glad too to know in this oblique way that I will be missed. I'll miss it too. I've played with him for a few minutes, not every lunchtime, but most lunchtimes, for perhaps a year and a half, perhaps longer.
It's been rather pleasing to see myself getting better, making fast shots and difficult shots, making him work harder to beat me. It's been a pleasure, a few moments of pure enjoyment stolen from the day. And it's been one of those little rituals of shared time that cements a relationship, ensuring that we are friends rather than people who share the odd casual chat.
When you think about it, a daily game or two really is a luxury -I can't imagine ever being able to afford a house big enough for a table tennis table. In the public sphere, I associate table tennis with drafty youth clubs and the back of the school hall and the college basement, but I suppose one can play it in sports centers. Once a week maybe, if I'm lucky enough to find someone to play with. Sigh.
Yesterday we also played volleyball for the first time in months. At first, when it didn't look like anyone was going to show up, I was angrily disappointed and embarrassed by my overenthusiasm, conscious of all the people there watching the semi-final of the football tournament and in my absurd imagination thinking me ridiculous. But then we had three or four, enough to begin warming up, and before long we had trickled up to two full teams of six.
I really, really love volleyball. I'll get frustrated sometimes when people get overcompetitive and start stealing my balls, but mostly I love it. I'm not all that good but I've got better, and every time I make a decent shot I'm pleased with myself. I love the grace of it sometimes, and the energy, and the precision. I love being outside. I love playing as part of a team. I love playing with my colleagues and people I'm fond of. I love the friendliness of it, the way we yell at people passing by to come and join in. I love the supportiveness of it, the gracious Mexicans who've watched me grow and will say well done even if I stuff it up, or congratulate me if I make a point even if I'm on the opposite team. I love that the taunts are always good-natured and the way we all laugh when someone makes a terrible shot or makes themselves look daft - with them, not at them - and how we don't bother to count points except perhaps to bring the session to a close.
Volleyball makes me happy and I really want to play in the future. The thing is, that's not how volleyball works in the real world, outside of a campus like this. It's not the sort of sport people play casually after work, not in the UK anyway. You have to join a club, play on a team. Like I said, I'm not all that good and I'm far from athletic, but I suppose I could join at the beginner level.
The thing is, even then your supposed to aspire to 'proper' volleyball. Offensive and defensive play. Sets and spikes. Rules and points. Not being pleased when you just get it over the net and not cracking up when you do something stupid and not making faces at your friends on the other side of the net. It doesn't sound like very much fun at all. Perhaps it's stupid, but I hate all the tactical stuff. I suppose it's worth it to be able to play, if only I can not be too terrified to do such a thing as join a club, but my heart will be here, on uneven grass with the chalk lines washed away and a broken net.
I love the feeling of winning a game, but I don't really get the kind of excessive competitiveness that drives the fun out of things. So many people get bizarre competitive attitudes on them about all kinds of things - sports obviously, but also things like dancing, or gardening. Pchah. When I think about it I actually find the Olympics pretty distressing (and not just because of how much they cost). So much effort, so much hope, and for so many it's all just broken dreams. Still, I read an interview with British gymnast Beth Tweddle where she said that the uneven bars felt like flying. Maybe that makes it worth it?
It is called where in the name of sweet baby Moses on stilts did I put my external hard drive when I went away, and why isn't it in any of the hiding places it ought to be in? Sometimes I wish I could get things done at times that were not 3am, or that I didn't have to get up in the mornings. Or that I didn't need 8 hours sleep. Whatever.
My neighbour's son has a new(ish) schnauzer puppy. Both son and pup are visiting at the moment, hence I met it today for the first time, and oh my gosh it is one of the cutest things I have ever seen. Friendly, full of beans, soft-coated and eminently pettable. Once again, my wish to have a dog is awakened.
See, I'm beginning to suspect that this hoary old divide between cat people and dog people is really just a load of cobblers. I like cats - we had a cat when I was a child - and I've always thought of myself as a cat person: fiercely independent - the cat who walks by herself - choosy with my affections, never fawning, a creature of integrity. But the thing is one's own personal characteristics aren't necessarily what one would want in a pet. I, for example, would make a terrible pet. And it is also true that as I get older I increasingly value "dog" characteristics, and, I think, grow into those aspects of myself - loyalty, warmth, demonstrativeness, friendliness, generosity of spirit.
In short, I got it into my head a few weeks ago that I want a long-haired chihuahua. Everyone thinks chihuahuas are silly, but they have a long history stretching back many centuries to prehispanic Mexico, which is pretty cool. And I like small dogs. They are cute, pick-up-and-cuddleable. They are practical - I like the idea of being able to take my pet with me places, and unless you have a lot of space or a lot of time to dedicate to long walks I think it's pretty unkind to keep a big dog. And almost most of all, small dogs don't know they are small: they are fearless and bold, little warriors with hearts just as big as any. I like that.
I dismissed the idea pretty quickly. I do not have the kind of lifestyle that would be fair on a dog. In the immediate future I envisage the kind of employment where I have to be out at work all day. Furthermore, I am a person of irregular, some might say chaotic, habits and irregular hours. I like being able to stay out all evening and not get back until late. When I am settled in the UK again, I hope I'll be going to lots of classes and things, or at least some, which will mean being busy and time not spent at home.
Something that worries me more is that perhaps I am not the sort of person who should have a pet at all. I like the idea of pets - companionship, affection, general adorableness - but the reality is I don't really want to put any effort into them. I resent the responsibility of them. I resent their dumbness - their comfort is hollow. Whatever people say, pets don't really understand you, don't really love you.
Worse, I worry that I might feel that way about people: maybe I like the idea of human companionship in theory but actually I'm too selfish, too turned in upon myself to actually care about or for other people in a real way. Certainly I am afraid that I will have children because it seems like a good idea - I like and one day want children, I feel like I would love them - but actually in reality resent and hate being so tied down, and all the endless effort you have to put into them, which they can never - and nor should they have to - repay. After a few minutes with a pre-speech child, amusing them with the same game over and over again - lifting them up in the air, pretending you can't see them, making silly noises - my smile is fixed, my cooing doesn't falter, but I feel like I'm losing my mind and I just want to get rid of said child. The thought of doing it day in, day out makes me feel ill. And playing is supposed to be the fun part...
Awesome, I am a sociopath! Maybe I worry too much, but they seem like doubts too big to dismiss and blithely take on either a puppy or a child anyway.
Back to cats and dogs... obviously gender stereotypes are not cool however you slice 'em, but why is it that men are seen as doglike/dogs are seen as masculine, and women are seen as catlike/cats are seen as feminine? I mean I get it (dogs = big and dumb and noble, cats = pretty and capricious) but actually most of the most self-contained, self-controlled, emotionally unavailable (i.e. arguably catlike) people I have known have been men, whereas if dogs are needy, emotionally transparent, demonstrative and helplessly hungry for affection, well, that sounds more like a female stereotype than a male one.
I feel like a mixture of both (of course, for who amongst us in his own mind is reducible?) but perhaps more of the latter and less of the former than I think. The boy is most definitely a cat - for though he is generous, a good friend, fun to be with, he is also self-contained, undemonstrative, inscrutible, neither needing nor wishing to be needed. In fact, henceforth I think I shall refer to him as el gato (the cat) - it's silly to call him a boy anyway, since he is several years older than me, wreathed about with the mystery of adulthood. He is not my boy, or even the boy - there are lots of boys in this world after all - but he is my friend. My cat friend. And it sort of sounds like a cool gangster name, no?, so I don't suppose he'd mind.
My baby sister got her A-level results today: straight As. I am so proud of her.
She always thinks she's the less-smart one, and that my parents aren't proud of her. She is less intellectually aggressive than my brother and I, and more of a balanced person, so it might seem this way. But not only is my sister lovely, brave, kind-hearted, caring, funny and beautiful (she thinks I have rosy spectacles, but I don't - she's not perfect, she's just pretty damn awesome), she is also proper intelligent and today I hope she's proved that to herself beyond doubt. And she works damn hard: she has a reading problem that's only been identified in the last year or so, so it takes her longer to do the same work. And she's done all this whilst actually having friends and a social life. In short, ROCK ON LITTLE SISTER!
Because it's basically all about me, I have been thinking about youthful brilliance, specifically mine. I wouldn't go through it all again, not for worlds - the intense stress of endless exams upon which your future hangs - but I do miss being sure of my own exceptionalness. I wish I knew what best to do to make use of my mind - it's a pretty good one, or it used to be - to use it well, and to be happy.
My sister's going to university to study psychology. I'm sort of jealous - it's something I half wish I'd done - and all of that glorious, privileged, terrible, shining time ahead of her to explore who she is and learn abstruse things and make friends to last her through the darkest days of her life and be ridiculous in her youthful excesses and be unreserved and be wonderful, before she has to start worrying about jobs and what the hell she's doing with her life and - God preserve us! - the fact that she hasn't got a pension. I'll be cheering her on, all the way.
I've had a hell of a couple of weeks. I do plan to write it all down, if only as a kind of exorcism, but for now some thoughts about today, which has been a rum old mix...
Lunch was farewell pizza from my English students. I took on the class - mostly middle-aged female secretaries whose names I still haven't quite got straightened out, because I was too shy to ask - because there was no-one else to do it, and it's taken much, much more time and effort than its two lunchtime hours a week. They gave me a card and a gift and I felt like even more of a fraud than usual, partly because I haven't really left work yet but largely because I never had any idea what I was doing.
I've never really managed proper teacherly assertiveness and today I was reluctant even to ask them to speak in English. If I'm honest I secretly like to have the chance to show that I can speak Spanish too. It's interesting though that the ones who I think of as quiet and timid and less able than the rest aren't necessarily the same at all in their own language.
After that it was an over-expensive taxi to one of the universities on the other side of town where my one non-work friend is a student. He had asked me to come and speak to his English class; apparently they always want guest native speakers. I didn't really want to - the idea of being up in front of 30 or so people gave me the horrors - but I couldn't say no. He'd stressed that I had to be on time, and all the way there I was balancing the passing minutes against the passing landmarks. In the end it would have been fine, only the campus is huge and I went the wrong way.
A fraught phone call - although my almost-inaudible speaker makes most calls pretty fraught - and we establish that I am lost. Out of a chained-up gate in a chainlink fence. In through a high-tech turnstile that seems in a weird no-man's land, but hurrah the building I'm looking for is in sight. My friend isn't. Another phone call and he arrives out of breath - he's been looking for me by the main entrance. I'm red-faced and flustered - maybe only 10 or 15 minutes late, but hardly the best beginning. The classroom door eases open upon a terrifying circle of attentive students. The teacher commands my attention: we're introduced in low voices, and she explains that, since I said I would be late (I didn't exactly, but still) there's been a slight change of plan - they're having some kind of information session now but it will be done soon.
It takes a little while for me to calm down and process my surroundings. A boy student is wearing a kind of folding sandwich-board display, mostly of condoms, in shiny packets in a multitude of colours and designs. A girl student is gesticulating with a realistically-moulded pink plastic dildo, which I extrapolate that she has just been putting a condom on; now she's demonstrating a female condom.
"How do you say that in English?" whispers my friend. I am nonplussed, wondering which of many thats he might be referring to.
A poster is pinned to the whiteboard, with a slogan along the lines of "don't be a dick, use a condom" - more literally, and more amusingly "don't be a penis".
I listen to them explaining the different methods of birth control, matter-of-factly but with humour and I have nothing but admiration for them. What they are doing is incredibly valuable and important, and I think it takes guts and strength of character. But, I am struggling not to giggle. Not so much at the subject matter but at the bizarreness of it all. Sometimes my life seems possessed of perfect comedy, and now is one of those times.
They round up by giving out condoms and talking about them again; I am distracted by the teacher murmering in my ear. When I look back they are pulling a condom off the dildo in a kind of tug-of-war: it is s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g. I am not sure if this is a deliberate humourous demonstration of how not to do it, or an accidental one.
I talk about myself ad lib for a couple of minutes but can't think what to say and sound like an idiot. Then they get to ask me questions - and the teacher's marking them all for "participation". They're things like what I do in my spare time, what I think about Mexico, the differences between Mexico and the UK and so on. I wonder if this has any educational benefit. I'm hardly at my most eloquent, fumbling for answers, and my audience seems a bit glazed-over - I'm not sure if they're not really following or just find the whole exercise terribly dull, though they're sweet enough. Two questions have me blushing and not knowing what to say: what do I think about my friend, and do I have a boyfriend. I'm sure this gives the wrong impression.
In my office, preparing to take some shots, I read a bit online about how to take good portraits. I realise how I could have been taking some much better pictures and the irritation with myself sticks in me almost like anxiety, although I know I should simply learn it and get better.
At the end of the afternoon I brave a group of visiting American students in order to snare two or three to interview. In the bearpit of announcements made over the gathering of papers someone mentions that they want a volleyball, and I offer mine. We'll meet by the net. When the interviews are done I skip out of the office with joyful heart, even though I ought to stay and do more work. By a miracle, it isn't raining this afternoon, the sky is blue, the sun is shining and I am going to play volleyball for the first time in ages.
No-one is there. It transpires that the boys have gone to play basketball, and the girls have gone to Zumba in the gym. I really need to learn that other people are not like me, and do not see saying they'll do something as a binding promise. I know that I set myself up for disappointment.
But I hate these fucking students. And their cheerful vapid confidence. And their stupid accents.
I take a picture of long-dead wings on the path, looking as if their body has just gone somehow:
On the plus side, no volleyball did mean that I had time to go and get my hair cut. Suddenly it had turned itself into hateful rats tails and I couldn't stand it any more. I sat and waited and read about Mexican politics and economics in the 70s and 80s. I tried to make cause and effect add up in my head, but I wonder how much logic there is to history, and what are the real causes of how things turn out and what is just happenstance. It's frustrating not to be able to pin it down.
My hairdresser was Julieta, but I felt like it ought to be Violeta because she had purple bits in her hair (and blonde bits too). Unlike the previous one I had she didn't feel slightly creepy and inappropriate, like she was chatting me up, and neither did she blowdry my hair to make me look like a refugee from the 90s in the mould of early Scully, which was good. On the other hand she used a squirty bottle rather than washing it, so I was ashamed whenever she touched my unwashed locks, i.e. all the time. She did decide to give me my first and quite possibly last ever zigzag parting and put wax in it, which is the last thing it needs, but she got the length right, which is the important thing. I was thinking how flattering the lighting was, and how canny it is of salons to have such lighting, but then I realised I looked nice because I didn't have my glasses on and was thus a smooth blur.
When I stepped outside it was the kind of sunset to blast away discontent. A sky like this and I can't help but be lifted.
When I get home I go straight up to the roof and the sky is watercolour blue over the rooftops and the lights on the distant hills are like stars. I don't think I've mentioned the roof but it is like a secret because no-one else seems to go up there, and it is wonderful.
As I'm turning to go, I notice that one of the volcanoes, my familiar faraway volcanoes - Popo or Izta, Popo I think - is standing out deep blue and snowcapped and perfectly clear.
In the evening I get distracted from what I told myself I'd do by youtube videos from the US TV program "So You Think You Can Dance". I am cross with myself, but it does make me think about how much I really love good dance. There are lots of things that I could never really list as my interests, even though I enjoy them - films for example, or theatre. But in the future I want to make efforts to go and see dance.
I am also pleased that I seem to be able to discriminate, and when the dancing's not so hot I don't enjoy it as much, even though I can appreciate bits of great choreography.
The clip that got me hooked was this, Mark and Chelsie's hip hop routine:
It's here with better sound quality, though with the intro clip and judging bits from the TV show. I also really like their contemporary routine. I love Mark's outlandish clownishness - like an intelligent, French, mime-artist sort of clown but with huge physical energy, and strangely reminiscent of my friend Nathan's crazy dancefloor antics - and Chelsie is tremendously lovable and they both seem to embody a character when they dance.
My other favourite couple is Katee and Joshua, also both very likable, especially their hip hop and samba routines. And this from Jamie and Rayven is hugely endearing, her chutzpah and the way she couldn't suppress her big ballerina smile.
Of course I'd kill to have a quarter of any of their dancing abilities (or gorgeousness), but all the same I am inspired to dance around my house like a daft thing.
I got an email today, having given up hope, saying they would like to interview me for my dream job.
Also, could I call back as soon as possible.
So I called, and got an answerphone, it being after working hours in the UK. And so I left a message, in which I fell over my words because I was so nervous, forgot what I was going to say, and generally made a complete tit of myself.
wOOt.
Afterwards the trembling, then the tears. The first time I saw this job I couldn't sleep for thinking about it. Every time I read the advert again it set my mind racing. I sweated blood into the application. It is a complete one-off and it would be completely perfect for me. In short, I have never been so excited about a job opportunity. When I thought I hadn't been shortlisted I was pretty sad about it, but now that I know have a chance I am utterly terrified.
I never know what my answer would be to the question what's your biggest fear? but i think I've just realised: fucking up.
I shall now be spending the next few days telling myself how completely awesome I am. This does not come naturally.
I discovered the band Stars yesterday and yet some of their songs already feel like a part of me, like I've known them a long time. I shan't try to say technical things, just that their sound is gorgeous.
Emotions too close to the surface when music playing in the street transports me for a moment onto the film set of my own life, just walking along but this moment is part of the story, and the song is my soundtrack unrolling how I feel. (Thank You by Dido. Laugh if you will.)
Emotions far, far too close to the surface when I pass an open church and for a moment the idea is in my mind that I might slip inside and there find solace.
(I am and always wish to be an unshakable atheist. I like exploring churches, for their peace and beauty and interest. But to hear a little cry for solace is slightly terrifying.)
Nosey colleague: So, do you have a boyfriend in Mexico? Me: Um, no. NC: You don't like Mexican men? Me: No I do like Mexicans! They just don't like me... NC: (Thoughtfully) If I worked in the United Kingdom, I would like to have a girlfriend from there. Me: Well, I guess it just depends what happens...
This conversation for the win! Except not. Wound, meet salt.
Luckily, as I waited interminably for the cashier to be free, along came another colleague, originally from Zimbabwe. We are on friendly terms but I wish I had got to know him more, as he is about one of the loveliest people to talk to I have ever met. We chatted easily and pleasantly about things - my plans, how much he liked living in Colombia, buying a guitar for his small son who desperately wants to learn. His enthusiasm for whatever he's talking about is infectious - he is clearly a man glad to be alive - but he's interested in you too. You walk away in a good mood and with a smile on your face, thinking what a wonderful chat you've had. I wish I was more like that - it's both inspiring and chastening.
Also luckily, I retain the ability to laugh out loud at dictionary entries: Christhood n. the condition of being a Christ Obviously, it's not actually that funny, but it was. I don't suppose it's a condition many of us have to worry about.
My favourite new word of the day, however, is: bug-juicen. Slang 1. an alcoholic beverage, esp. of an inferior quality. 2. an unusual or concocted drink. This word is perfect for me, since alcohol-wise the only things I like are sweet and fruity (some might say sickly) cocktails. From now I shall only ever be drinking bug-juice. Go on, ask me what I'd like to drink...
I need to be told in words. I can’t believe in a friendship, a love, an affection unless I hear it. Unless I can ask and be told yes. It’s not necessarily better or worse than being any other way, but it means that if I care about someone but they can’t or won’t reciprocate in words I am eaten away by doubt and misery.
So why, given this, do I tend to place great chunks of my battered heart in the hands of men who just do not communicate this way? Who don’t believe in trying to verbalise elusive emotions, or are afraid of direct questions, or don’t like talking about how they feel, or don’t know how, or believe in expressing it in actions, or whatever?
a) You are subconsciously attracted to that which will destroy you. Moth, meet flame. b) You are subconsciously afraid of being happy, or don’t think you deserve it or something. c) You’ve been unlucky. Your sample size is small. d) Your expectations are too high. You are a bottomless pit for affection and will never be satisfied. e) They are all like that. Give up now. f) I do not care. Stop whinging. g) All of the above.
The Boy is my best friend in Mexico. He is my confidante, the one I really trust. We talk, we laugh, we enjoy each other’s company. What I want – what I should want – is friendship, a real friendship that will last after I leave here. He is supremely undemonstrative and private, and I am trying very hard to deal with my doubts and demons and believe in our friendship. I am crossing my fingers and hoping that we’re more than just friends of circumstance, that I matter enough for something to survive the ravages of time and distance.
That’s what I want. But finding out he has a girlfriend hurts like a knife through the heart.
I happened to be having a bit of a read of a fairly recent New Scientist the other day. For those who are not aficionados, it has a section on the back page called The Last Word, where people send in questions about the whys and hows of everyday puzzles. This particular edition had a picture of a strange pattern that someone had found on their windowsill.
The patterns have been produced by snails grazing on algae. The snail scrapes off the algae with its radula - a sort of tongue with teeth. Hence the Cornish proverb Tavas medall ew howlsethas an bullhorn, which in English becomes "A smooth tongue is a snail's undoing". - David Ridge
Possibly my favourite proverb EVER. Perfectly bizarre, but not at all nonsensical. Nicely lyrical, but biologically accurate.
I thought it was too good to be true and this bloke might be taking the piss and seeing if he could invent a proverb and pass it off as real. Howlsethas? Bullhorn? But I did some googling for Cornish dictionaries online and it turns out that "tavas" IS actually cornish for tongue (I couldn't find any of the other words). Hurray - I'd like it anyway, but being real makes it even more awesome!
Now all I have to do is figure out how to use it in casual conversation... I would quite like to use it to enigmatically put down some silver-tongued charmer - refusing to explain, of course. But actually I think maybe it means that sometimes what seems to be a negative trait is actually a good thing. Any ideas?
