Dear July, one // a knack for getting found.

Dear July,

Yesterday began with losing my favourite necklace and ended with me walking home in the pouring rain, in the dark, without an umbrella*. I crawled into bed, after blow-drying my hair, feeling shivery and quite worn out. Uncertainty. So much to do. Doubt, doubt, doubt in my ability to do any of it. And – that necklace. It was the smallest of things: a silver elephant pendant on a thin silver chain. But I liked it, and was sad to lose it.

What had happened was this:

Getting ready that morning had been a bit of a hurried affair. Due to staying up too late the night before, I'd kept snoozing my alarm which meant I only left myself twelve minutes to get ready before my bus. So I spent those twelve minutes knocking into things in my tiny room while my heart raced: smearing make-up into my face, rummaging under the bed for my shoes, dragging the straighteners through my tangled hair a few times, stuffing my laptop bag with books and papers and lunch, pulling my coat on and then: go! Out the door and up the street.

What I remember doing was putting the necklace into my coat pocket before I left with the plan of fastening it when I got on the bus.

But then I got on the bus, and it had disappeared. I spent about ten minutes of the journey taking everything out of my pockets – crumpled napkins, my house keys, kirby grips which kept scattering to the floor, odd bits of brown string, euros and nickels and dimes and pennies – and laying each item out on my lap, hoping the necklace would be among them. It wasn’t. I kept repeating the process. Taking everything out, laying it out on my lap, scanning over each object: the necklace was not there. It must have fallen out during the mad dash to the bus stop. My heart sank. I should have been more careful with it.

//

This isn’t the first time I’ve lost that necklace. In fact, it seems to have a particular knack for getting lost. It'll fall to the floor, or under my bed, or hide under books, and – because it’s so slight – it often won’t reappear for months. The last time I lost it was actually just a few weeks ago, when my brother and I were visiting our friends in Atlanta, Georgia. 

‘I know it’s in this room, somewhere,’ I said to Evan about two days into the holiday. I ran my hand over every surface in the room, but couldn’t see it. (It was so warm over there at the time that we were both wearing shorts and no-cardigans. The ceiling fan above us whooshed). ‘Seriously, it must be in this room somewhere. I was just wearing it yesterday.’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ Then said, ‘It’s strange, isn’t it? Knowing there actually is an elephant in the room...’

Almost two weeks passed – driving through the mountains, eating mustard on sandwiches, chatting till late at night, getting a little sunburnt on our shoulders, seeing a bear – till I found it again. It was the last day of our trip and I was stripping the bed. There it was, hiding under the sheets, the silver chain glinting in the light.

//

When I woke up this morning, the weariness hadn’t shifted. Rain was still hissing outside my bedroom window. I turned over to look at the clock then lay in the dull light for a while, breathing, trying to quiet the minor note of anxiety that has been creeping in, trying to shake myself awake: Time to get up. There is much to do. You can do it. Time to get on.

I went through to the kitchen to get some breakfast: clicking the kettle on, reaching up to the cupboard for Earl Grey teabags, moving around in bare feet. I was scooping half a mug of granola into my bowl when I stopped what I was doing and gasped*. 

There it was. A glint of silver. The elephant necklace was lying in a curl on the table by my bowl. I stood with my mouth open, not quite believing it. 

Just the smallest of things. And I don’t really know what happened – maybe I didn’t put it in my pocket yesterday morning like I’d thought. Maybe I’d left it there on the table while I was getting lunch out the fridge. But finding it there this morning felt like a small miracle. Like a cup of golden honey to my heart. Like a gift: everything that had seemed impossible just a few moments ago suddenly felt less so. Change is possible, writing is possible, feeling light and heat again is possible. I can do it. Time to get on.

//

Notes.)

*Some nicer things did happen in the middle of these unfortunate bookends. Like dinner with some of my closest friends, and talking on the phone to my parents, and writing some decent paragraphs...

*True story: I actually gasped. 

Dear December, nine to eighteen: if life hadn't got in the way.

Dear December,

Hello! I'm still here. Though I'm going to sleep very soon because it's quite late. I will get back to writing more regularly. Promise. In the meantime though, here are three things I might have written about if things hadn't been so busy the past week and a bit: 

[one.]

I might have written about the afternoon I tried on jeans in GAP. My current pair have scuffed knees. After trying a few pairs on (none of them fit), the weight of the week made the idea of heading back out into the rain and starting to think about dinner too heavy. So I just hung out for an extra ten minutes, sitting on the changing room floor, curtains pulled shut to my right, legs stretched out in front of me (the soles of my socks touching the soles of the socks in the mirror), head resting back against the wall: listening to other customers moving about and feeling vaguely disenchanted with the music in the store (‘All I want for Christmas is you...’ ‘It’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together...' ‘It’ll be lonely this Christmas...’). I'm not a Scrooge, but Christmas music can have this way of making you feel very small if it catches you at a funny moment, don't you think? 

[two.]

Or I might have written a longer post about looking through old photographs in my Grandpa’s house last Wednesday (sitting with my duffle coat on the whole time because the heating had been switched off all day). Feeling very weird being in his living room without him there with us, sitting on the end of the sofa bemoaning something or other and cracking puns (‘Are you all right?’ ‘Just down the one side. Heh heh.’)

There are boxes by his window. The pictures have been taken down off his wall. There are gold hooks sticking out of the wallpaper. His shoes - thick, black, comfort-fit - are still sitting by the sofa. (I couldn’t stop looking at his shoes. Glancing away and then glancing back. The laces were splayed out across the wooden floor. I couldn’t stop looking at them, the thought occurring: did he not have his shoes with him? Did he leave the house in his slippers?) 

It's been a month now. We were there so my Dad could sort through papers, so I could pick out something from his cabinet to keep: a little crystal swan maybe, or a bowling club pin. By accident we came across the handful of old polaroid-type pictures of my dad and uncle when they were little. If that’s to be my last time in his house – sorting through those photographs, laughing at the 70's hairstyles – I guess it was quite a nice evening to end on. (The time before that, rain was bouncing off the roof and we were all dressed in black, huddled in the hallway, waiting for the cars come and take us to the church. The gaping front-door let cold air wrap round our ankles.) 

[three.]

I could maybe have written about standing in my sister’s kitchen on Tuesday there, trying to artistically smear lemon icing onto the gingerbread cookies she’d made while I was sleeping, and thinking that this – the fact that here I was: standing in my pyjamas in her kitchen, being watched by the 217 cats she and her fiancé own*, the sound of her and our (tall) little brother playing Guitar Hero in the next room – 'this' is one of the things I’m most grateful for this year. This. Us. If I’m uncertain of who or what I am in other areas of my life, I’m so glad I get to be ‘sister’ to those two. 

(Note: *slight exaggeration. There are only three cats.) 

A song a day:

I won't link ten songs, because this post is already quite long. But here are three: I came across 'Shut Eye' by Stealing Sheep yesterday and quite liked it; I actually quite like this cover of 'Lonely This Christmas' by K.T. Tunstall, even if it is a bit of a downer; and I've found the words of 'Pieces' by Amanda Cook quite powerful the past few months... if I could live like I believed them, I think things would be rather different.) 

Pictures by: Julie Morstad

I lost two cities, lovely ones

In July I read a poem every day. I picked most of them at random: either choosing a title I liked from one of the poetry books around the house, or asking friends for a suggestion. Once or twice I just stumbled upon a poem online (like Anya Silver’s 'Doing Laundry in Budapest' which then led to an afternoon reminiscing about a childhood summer in Hungary).

Although, as I say, I found most of the poems that month by accident, it was interesting (and also a little unsettling at the time) how so many of the poems seemed to speak to the theme of loss. Poems about the meaning of it, the inevitability of it. Loss of certainty, loss of love, loss of objects and people and a clear sense of self. I wasn’t sure if that meant anything. Maybe I was just hyper-sensitive to that theme – being worried in July about losing, about being lost – or if it was just a strange coincidence. Maybe it’s just the case that all writing grows out of a sense of loss; whether it mentions the word or not, the shadow of it lingers somewhere nearby.

Anyway – I write all that as a lead in to say that I’m going to try and go back to reading a poem every morning. The one that I read today was ‘One Art’ by Elizabeth Bishop, a poem that starts with the line: ‘The art of losing isn’t hard to master...’ I've read it before, and I like the rhythm of it. It also reminds me a little of something I wrote back in April actually, about losing buttons. I thought I’d share it with you (read it twice. Read it aloud): 

♥

One Art

by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

♥

(Pictures are by illustrator Alice Ferrow.)

Dear July, seventeen to twenty: Budapest heat.

Dear July,

Today, a rather dark rainy heat-up-some-chicken-soup-to-make-yourself-feel-better kind of Monday, I’ve been thinking about Hungary.

The year I turned twelve, my family spent the summer in Budapest. My Dad was working over there for a few months, so we went to be with him. It was hot. The hottest it had been in years, apparently. We watched a lot of BBC World in our little apartment (the only TV channel in English and we grew thirsty for words we recognised) and there were continual cries of ‘Heat wave! Heat wave!’ on the news. On the days we went into the city – our feet clapping in flip flops, collecting dust from the streets – we’d practically sprint from one café to the next, buying bottles of cold water or Lipton’s lemon iced tea to gulp down. We spent all of our days in shorts or swimming costumes, jumping and splashing into the blue pool outside, diving for coins with goggles sucked onto to our faces. We had to sleep with the fan on full and windows cracked open – the sound of crickets and dogs barking and the opera singer next door practicing scales echoing long into the night.

We wiped watermelon juice from our chins, and licked peach juice off our wrists. We ate lemon sorbet ice-cream every other day. We put ketchup on pizza like the locals. We ate the best thing I've ever eaten - a big deep-fried fritter-type thing topped with sour cream and grated cheese called 'Lángos' - and have never found again since. Almost every time we went out for dinner, we’d order 'cucumber salad' as a side: cucumbers soaked in a vinaigrette dressing. One time we ordered ‘Grandma’s special cucumber salad’ because the name made us laugh, but when it arrived, it was just a plate of fat dill pickles (which forevermore made us suspicious of food described as ‘special’). They had bizarre translations for things on the menus. ‘Diced curd with graves’ was one option on the desert menu (literally no idea). ‘Chicken throat shaped pasta’ was another.

We went to the circus while we were there – silver clad trapeze artists, cats jumping from great heights onto red cushions. We visited a park full of old communist statues. We went to Lake Balaton and felt the mud squelching between our toes. We went into supermarkets so big the staff had to roller-skate from one end to the next. We bought vegetables that came straight from the fields, meaning they hadn’t been prettified, meaning the closer you got to the produce stalls, the stronger the smell got, meaning sometimes you’d pick up a nectarine and it would look deliciously juicy face up, but when you turned it over the reverse side would be crawling with flies. 

♥

Living in a country where we were constantly faced with things we didn’t know – food, words, buildings, customs – could have been a small disaster. The three of us – my brother, my sister, me – were still quite young so were prone to whining, as children sometimes are (‘Whatsthat?’ ‘Idontlikeit.’ ‘Idontwantit’ ‘Whatsthat?’). But that summer knocked it out of us, I think. We had so much fun, and my Mum taught us to think of everything as "an experience".

‘We might not like it,’ she said. ‘But it’s all an experience, so we’ll just give it a go.’

‘It’s an experience,’ has now became short-hand for: ‘That was weird, but strangely wonderful’. By the end of the summer, we’d all grown a few inches; our hair had turned a few shades lighter, our skin had turned a few shades darker, and we’d stopped complaining as much. We spent the last few weeks laughing our heads off at things that no one seemed to find as funny as us when we got back home – ‘Well, you just had to be there, I guess.’ – but that was okay. We didn’t mind (#heatstroke).

♥

I came across Anya Silver’s poem 'Doing Laundry in Budapest' today, which set me off on this path of reminiscing. (Forgive me. I hope this post isn't too long or self-indulgently nostalgic to read.) We have no photographs of it – they all got lost – but it’s a summer I remember in warm bursts of colour. Orange and browns and reds.

Silver (the poet I was reading today) writes about pickles, and covering her shoulders to get into churches, and the begging ladies on the street who sold half-dead flowers to passers-by and I recognised the images in her words: I’ve been there, I thought. I’ve seen those things. I’ve eaten those pickles. I bought those flowers. 

♥

(Pictures - letters of the Hungarian alphabet - by: Anna Kövecses. 

Also: this song by reminds me so much of being there - it was 2003, after all. My sister and I listened to Delta Goodrem's album on repeat the first night we were there. We'd somehow managed to convince ourselves that there were terrorists running about outside our hotel so were trying to distract ourselves. Like I said, we were pretty young and had poor geographical knowledge so we had no idea where in the world Hungary actually was. Ha.)

where the buttons go.

Buttons are always falling off of me. I’m always losing them. They are always losing me. Sometimes they dangle for weeks – hanging off my coat like a wobbling tooth until I tug. Snap. And all that’s left is the thread. Sometimes they disappear without saying goodbye. Ping. Pop. Rattle. Bounce. Rolling down pavements, down the gutter. Down and down. Never to be seen again.

There’s a place underground where the buttons go. Buttons and socks and kirbies and rings and keys and shoes and tights and teeth. And that red Polly Pocket I lost when I was five. And the words I forgot in the middle of talking. All the things that I’ve lost. Marbles and dice. And watches and pens and letters and names and needles and doodles and Monopoly houses. And all of those photographs that were wiped from the computer. Quite without warning. Just one day: deleted. The three of us shivering in the pool in the summer. Emilie hopping in the garden, bare feet. That one of me, twelve, in Budapest heat, so small, smiling under the willow tree’s sway. Gone. Gone. Not a pixel left over.

All the things that I’ve lost. All my vests. Those addresses. The person I was until something else happened. The person I thought I was likely to be. All my chewing-gum packets, and hair bands, and scotch tape. The minutes I’ve spent on trains that aren’t moving. The minutes I’ve spent squeezing spots by the sink. All the minutes I’ve spent on the bus, in a queue, on my phone, by the mirror. Or just waiting for someone. All that waiting. And waiting. All the thoughts in my head that I didn’t write down.

That’s where the buttons go. Or so I imagine. They're all there, underground, where the lost things live.

♥

This is a piece that came out of a free-writing exercise I gave my students on the last day of class. I like buttons, so I thought, 'Hey, why not? I'll do it too'. The writing prompt (in case you'd like to do also) is pretty much: 'pick a button, look at it, turn it over, think about what it reminds you of, who it might've belonged to, set a timer for 15 minutes, don't plan, just start writing, and writing, and writing until the time runs out. Just see what happens.' Some people wrote stories. Some wrote descriptions. This is (a slightly edited version of) what I came up with. 

My Gran kindly donated the buttons we used in class. We spent the Friday evening before, sifting through her button box, looking for the ones with the most 'story potential'. (Thank you, Grannie-Anne.)

ode to a hat.

It’s been a difficult couple of days culminating in the loss of my very most favourite hat*. When I say ‘favourite hat’ – it’s really the only hat I’ve ever enjoyed to wear. I’m not even sure how I lost it. 

I had it on yesterday morning when the rain was driving down so hard that, by the time I bustled inside, my coat was heavily, spongily wet. I had the hat when I was in the car, tucked inside one of the cup holders behind the handbrake. I picked it up – I’m sure I picked it up – when I was getting out the car, waving goodbye to my mum before stepping in a puddle en route to the the train station.

But after that: no idea. 

It was a nice little hat – thick knit wool in a colour that was somewhere between green, turquoise and teal. The expression ‘it fit like a glove’ would describe it perfectly if it hadn’t, in fact, been a hat. And what I mean by that was it kept my ears cozy without being too tight around my head (unlike the new hat I was forced – by the gnawing wind – to buy this morning. I can still feel it pressed against my forehead even though it’s been sitting beside me on the desk for the past seven or eight minutes). I could wear my hat and not end up with funny hair. It didn’t have any pompoms or ruffles or racoon faces with ears or sequins. It was just a simple hat, and when I wore it with my red coat I felt kind of like a strawberry.

Goodbye hat.
I'm sorry for not taking better care of you.
I will miss you.

♥

(Picture: the last photograph of me and the hat, taken on Sunday, on the Glasgow subway, as my brother and I hurtled towards the West End and our first Christmas turkey of the month

*Note: the hat-loss isn't the most difficult thing, so I suppose 'culminating' is the wrong word. But I'm still pretty sad about it...)

forbidden music.

It’s late when I leave the library tonight. By the time I finish writing and gather my notebooks together – stuffing them inside my backpack – the moon is out, the streetlamps are on, the campus is quiet. Pulling my scarf close to my skin, I hurry along the street, towards the coffee-shop where I’m meeting a few classmates to discuss a literary journal we're putting together.

               

It is freezing. A woman waiting at the bus stop in front of me tries to light a cigarette. She shields the flickering flame with her cupped hand until - a flash, a flash – it’s lit. The smell of smoke winds towards me as I turn the corner, heading down the hill towards George Street. Red and white lights from cars speed past. Their reflections bounce onto, and then slide off, the black walls of the building on my right.

 

Men's voices, a little way behind, on the other side of the street, start shouting – swearing at each other. Instinctively, my fingers fasten around the phone in my pocket. I start to walk faster, trying heat up. But this air is icy. From the train into Glasgow this morning, I noticed snow on the mountains, and now my knuckles are stinging. My nose is stinging. My neck.

It’s because of this – the cold, the creepiness, the dark etc – that, when I see the lights are still on in the building beside me, I move towards the door and – pushing it open, my wrists clicking a little with the weight – slip inside. Warm air on my cheek. Dim yellow light. The door swings shut behind me, muffling the sounds of the street.

This building – I start walking again, slower now, not feeling such a need to rush – joins into one of the oldest buildings in the university. I walk past the front desk – it’s empty – down a small flight of stairs, through a set of double doors, and I’m here: the Royal College. 

Stone staircases, marble tiles, stained glass windows, peeling wallpaper – this building has always been my favourite in the university, because of the stories it seems to whisper at. If I go down enough levels, if I take the right turnings along its labyrinthine hallways, I know I can leave the building on the ground floor. That’ll take me out to George Street, and keep me out the cold for a while. Brilliant.

I start heading down a long corridor lined with dark blue lockers. My shoes squeak as I walk. The lights seem duller than usual. I glance behind me, biting my lip. Usually there’s the sound of footsteps in this building, the conversation of cleaners, the odd “mad-scientist”-looking lecturer darting about in a white lab coat. But – I check the time on my phone – the place is deserted. I’m starting to wonder whether I’m even supposed to be in here this late when, all of a sudden, I hear something. I stop walking. I listen, frozen to the spot.

Music.

There is music coming from a room close by. I hold my breath, trying to catch the sound. Piano music. It keeps stopping and starting. Someone seems to be practicing. All thoughts of ‘am I allowed to be in here?’ vanish as curiosity takes over. Where is it coming from? I start walking again – my heart beating a little faster – moving in the direction of the song, following its sound. It leads me along a narrow corridor and up to an enormous wooden door.

I tiptoe closer, vaguely aware that if someone were to catch me, to open the door suddenly and - blinking, furrowing their brow - find me, lingering here, I would be stuck for words. I wouldn't know what to say, how to explain myself... 

I put my ear close to the wood. It’s definitely coming from inside this room. The door is ajar, and I peek through the crack, trying to see inside. I can’t see much: a high ceiling, a balcony, wooden floors, long rows of desks laid out. It looks like it’s set up for an exam. In fact - a memory triggered - I think I had a Victorian Literature exam in this room a few winters ago. But I can’t remember there being a piano in the room. I still can’t see it. The musician remains hidden.

I stay here, in this dark hallway, for quite a while. A line of yellow light slipping out from the doorway, landing on my shoe. A warm glow growing inside my chest. I stand here, just listening. Just being.

When I head back out into the night, I can’t seem to stop smiling. The cold doesn’t seem so biting. The dark a little less ominous. I can’t put my finger on what it is about this small discovery that has made me so happy. But that’s how I feel. Happy. Quite inexplicably happy.

It feels as though I’ve stumbled across something important. Something beautiful. Something secret.

(*p.s. A tiny clip of the music is meant to appear above these words. If you're reading this on mobile, find it by clicking: here. 

Pictures by Yelena Bryksenkova. The dreaminess in her pictures kind of links in with the words...)

♥

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the things we carry.

All of that stuff down there was rumbling inside my handbag until about 3pm this afternoon. I had to tidy it out. It was becoming a bit of an ordeal trying to find my car keys in there after work. 

Among other things, I found: 

...at least two hundred and seven pens ~ two small forests worth of Random Bits of Paper ~ about six used-up order pads for work ~ various drafts of short stories I’ve been working on ~ two tickets for a recent heavy metal gig I went to (quite an experience...) ~ two tea bags ~ £6.86 in spare change ~ a name-tag from my brief stint as a poetry conference steward ~ my work tie ~ and two pretty good books (‘Consider the Lobster’ – a collection of essays by David Foster Wallace – and Carol Shields’ short stories. Having only two books is unusual for me, actually. I normally carry about a mini-library). 

No wonder my shoulder’s been kind of sore recently. I should do a clean out more often.

♥

(p.s. in case you're wondering... those pandas are my socks. Cute, eh?)

I get words all day through...

Most days when I’m at work, I have some song or other playing on a loop in the back of my head. Maybe it’s the last song I heard on the radio before I left the car, or maybe it’s a lyric triggered by some phrase I’ve heard during the day. (Example: me asking a customer ‘How would you like your eggs?’ will invariably lead to the song ‘How do ya like your eggs in the morning?’ wedging itself into my brain for the next eight hours or so.)

I’m guessing this is fairly typical of most people, right? This is a ‘thing’. It’s not too uncommon.

Well, recently when I’ve been in work (and I’ve been in work a lot recently) I’ve noticed that, as well as having songs stuck in my head, I’ve also started getting words stuck in there too.

‘Scrupulous. Exodus. Arabesque.’ (For example).

These words, unbidden, will just randomly appear – ‘hello!’ – in the middle of my wiping tables, or serving customers, and I’ll find myself turning them over, almost unconsciously, as I go about the motions of laying cutlery and scraping plates.

‘Vehement, vehemently, vehemence.’ ‘Scrupulous. Dwindle. Umpire.’

It’s like they’ve escaped from the dictionary – like penguins from a zoo – and have waddled into my head just, y’know, for something to do. I quite enjoy to find them – these stray words, with their crispy, satisfying little syllables, milling about in the back of my head. But it’s also quite strange. Because more often than not they’re pretty obscure. And words I wasn’t even aware I knew. Like: ‘incursion, machinations, and rambunctious.’ Odd.

I get the feeling this is slightly less common than the song thing, right? Probably the tired mind of a writerly English graduate trying to amuse itself during very long, very repetitive days of cafe work... I think I probably need a holiday quite soon.

♥

Pictures by: Daniela Strijleva

Title of this post taken from 'Show Me' from My Fair Lady (... which is, of course, now stuck in my head.)