Sun Shines (Again?)

I'm about to say nothing original. Not only not original, but possibly something I have already said here, in this space, at another time. This makes me wonder if I've been blogging too long ...

... if I don't properly remember what I've said before …

Maybe it’s got nothing to do with my blogging tenure and has much more to do with a poor memory.

This is all by-the-by. What is important (enough, even, to risk repeating myself, if this is a repeat from some other sunny time) is that London has recently been blessed with days of extraordinary sunshine and balmy temperatures.

On one of these days, I am on the bus heading toward Fulham; we are mid way across Putney Bridge, and I look out across the Thames. It is a wide river with a personality that changes with the tides. Right now it is full and lapping up at the edges of the surrounding banks. The reflection of the previously mentioned extraordinary sunshine glitters on the river's surface. A string of boats are moored off centre closer to the south bank than the north. This makes me think of the part on my head which doesn't like to settle in the middle, but rather falls just to one side ... if I had to give it a direction, I'd say my part falls to the east. The view on this day is a picture perfect impressionist painting.

The toy boats in the Luxembourg Gardens. Renoir. Cheap and chirpy. Light and airy.

I look over to the northern bank where the sun dapples the trees of Bishop's Park, a strip of urban green, also known as the spot where the priest warned Gregory Peck of the nefarious origin of his son in The Omen . Occasionally I run under the boughs of those over-the-Thames-towering trees where I know the pavement is warped from the growing roots below.

Like miniature tectonic plates.

I think about my runs. How sometimes they are hard and suck.

Usually.

How other times I think if I were Lara Croft - or a monkey - I could swing from bough to bough the length of the park.

The bus moves on and I lose my view.

No Bombing Today

I am sitting on the bus; I have one of those single seats that looks neither forward nor backward but to the side and out the windows of the centre double-door exit. The view's not generally good from here: a view of the pavement and the detritus that accumulates around bus stops. I would normally go upstairs, but I'm not going very far, just a few short stops. Two stops before my intended stop, 2 young men board the bus. They look like they could be brothers. Or a gay couple. Similar physiques: thin, undernourished vessels used for partying. They have similar half-grown beards and could swap attire and no one would notice, probably not even them. They have impish smiles. At the foot of the steps leading to the top deck, one of them hands something to the other one.

Was it a knapsack?

The one with the whatever it was goes upstairs; the other snuggles into the corner seat on the ground level.

Strange. Why aren’t they sitting together?

I panic. I selfishly look to see where we are.

How many stops to go? Will I be off before they cause whatever trouble they’re planning? Oh, God. Don’t be ridiculous.

They might be scruffy, but they don’t look like bombers; the one in the back is chuckling whilst he reads something on his phone.

No bomber would target this part of town anyway ...

Still I’m nervous, and am relieved to get off the bus.

I’m not a nervous person, and I don’t often think back to the London bombings. In the months that followed 7/7, the sound of any emergency vehicle siren kept the recent trauma alive and vivid. With the passage of time, even that reminder has ceased to be a reminder. Now the wailing of a European accented siren is just another distraction that pulls The Dog toward it when we’re out on walks.

I’m surprised at myself for the dormant paranoia.

I don't recall if my mom and I discussed it again that year.

I thought that by vocalising it I had put it to rest.

Since I had said it - "I was sexually abused," - I'd be fine. Any manifestations of damage would go away since I had remembered and spoken up. In the vernacular of pop psychology I had conquered my demons. There was no reason for me to talk about it. I'd be fine.

Besides, I was in a village in South Africa where I could only receive calls, and only when the inbound call coincided with favourable conditions, namely the good mood of the operator a few villages over and an active telephone cable, both unlikely conditions because the operator was an irascible drunk and telephone cable was prone to theft.

I was also too busy living a current adventure to bother myself with the past.

"That's all behind me." I maybe would have said if I had given it any thought.

Neither do I recall if my mother made any hint of it in the innumerable letters she sent me that year. My mother is an exceptional mother and an instinctively keen custodian of the psyche. I know now that when I told her what I told her and added that I didn't want to discuss it in detail, she had burning questions, but she identified a process unfolding, and she respected the natural course that the process would take. She knew it would take time.

I, on the other hand, was a fool. I had duped myself into thinking demons were easily exorcised. I ignored the signs of residual damage or I attributed them elsewhere.

Walk Repeated

I was going to say, "When my alarm went off this morning, I reached over to get my phone to check my email."

I was going to continue by talking about reading a comment from Franklin in my mail, on my phone.
.
As soon as I started down this vein, however, my starting thought was interrupted by an interrupting thought.

Ha! You have a fancy phone now too!

Not so long ago, I didn't have the means to check my email on my phone. I scoffed at The Man who is generally as disinterested in gadgets as a man can be, but who has come to be the teensiest bit annoying with his affection for his phone. He constantly polishes its sleek face. He checks his emails; he reads the news; he even has some means to make the fancy phone sound like a lightsaber. On a couple of occasions I have woken to the sound of a lightsaber chopping off my head*.

So, this morning I checked my email on my company-provided, new, almost-fancy phone and saw Franklin's comment to the post immediately preceding this one. She remained with me during my morning and was a source of inspiration to repeat my walk.

Hats off to you Franklin; there is a thrill about living here, if you remember to feel it. I'm reminding myself of this more and more.

Enjoy it now! You might not be here forever.

* The Man would not be pleased with this expose.

Commuter Walks

There is something I don't like about the Oyster card: when you top up online you have to choose a station where you will "collect" your top up. I suppose for most people the choice of their top-up-collection tube station poses minimal consternation; for me, the decision is always a pain in the ass.

Where will I be tomorrow?

Where I will be when I desperately need more juice on my Oyster is variable and can change with a simple beep-beeping of an incoming text message.

"Meeting brought forward. Let's meet at GPS*."

God damn it!

I suppose I could forget about topping up online and opt for topping up directly at a station. This, however, doesn't feel as efficient as an online transaction. It's sooo bricks and mortar, and I'm a cutting edge kind of girl; which is why I found myself walking from Marble Arch to Oxford Circus this morning.

I had a top up to collect. I don't think I've ever collected a top up at Oxford Circus, and I wouldn't have today if it hadn't been for a meeting I was supposed to have nearby that was subsequently cancelled. When I start my walk at Marble Arch I am slightly annoyed.

God Damn it. If I could take the tube from here it would be so much easier.

I resign myself to enjoy the stroll down Oxford Street.

Quite your complaining. It's early. Not overpopulated with pedestrians. You've got plenty of time. Enjoy it.

I look over at Selfridge's window display. They usually have something good going on. I'll always remember their display when I first moved to London, September 2001: giant posters of cats in seductive swimwear and humanesque poses. It was so odd and so alluring; I took a ton of pictures. That was before I had a digital camera. I wonder if I were to look now if I could find the prints. The window displays today don't seem to be anything worth crossing the street for; at the main Oxford Street entrance, there is a giant marquee with flashing yellow bulbs - like Broadway or the Moulin Rouge or the circus coming to town - that spell out the show: "open since 1909".

Is that year right? God, you've got a shit memory; it was only this morning for Christ's sake.

I stop in my tracks at the sight of a pair of shoes - or actually 4 - in the window of Russell and Bromley. 4 colours of exactly the same model: black, brown, dark green, and gray. I want a pair. I want three pairs. I don't know if I could decide which colour to get. I move on, but my mind lingers over the shoes. I think I haven't been shopping in some time, and I recently got a bonus. Maybe it's time for a little spree. I need trousers.

Would that style shoe go with trousers?

When I get to Oxford Circus, I cannot stomach the idea of descending into the artificial heat of the underground passages. I enter as far as the ticket booth where I touch my Oyster to a reader; it is topped up. A perfunctory stop in the station. I walk up the steps to the other side - the east side - of Oxford Street. I have enjoyed the first half of the walk so thoroughly, I have decided to extend it.

From Oxford Circus to Tottenham Court Road, I notice a building with an Art Deco facade. It is a fantastic glass window construct. I have never noticed it before. It always blended into the chintz, crowds and crap of Oxford Street. A bit further along, there on the front of another building, which also isn't the ugly post-War modern cement box that I usually associate with Oxford Street, is a golden statue of a elegant girl / young lady / muse. She reminds me of Degas' ballerinas.

Sometime after Tottenham Court road, whilst waiting at a crosswalk, I gaze upon a walking stick, whip, umbrella shop. It's historic. I've noticed it before, and as always it reels me in with its quintessential Englishness. I think about buying an umbrella. It would be cool to have one from this very English shop. I chuckle at the thought of a whip. For the first time I notice that the shop announces that it can emboss its products with the government hall mark. That makes me think of Hallmark; I think about their greeting cards and wonder about the origin of its name.

I realise too late that the light has changed. I miss my turn to cross. I have to wait another iteration.

I've gotten into the swing of a leisurely stroll.

Cool Lapses, Felix Acts

My Man tells me I'm an uncanny mix of my mom and my dad.

Isn't everyone?

My initial thought is tempered by further reflection. I remember I was adopted* , a fact that might make this manifestation of the perfect blend of my parents in me unlikely.

A magnificent example of the nurture half of the argument.

What's more neither of my two brothers - not even the one who is a "real" son to my parents - demonstrate as balanced a mix of maternal and paternal influence as I do.

Ha! I rock!

If you consider my parents' personalities you might jump to the conclusion that I am schizophrenic. My dad is the intense, dictatorial former marine; my mother, the uber-nurturing ("You are the perfect you!") airy-fairy artist.

When I was a kid I wanted to grow up to be all groovy and mellow. Mellow seemed so much cooler than wound-up-edness. I didn't realise at the time, but I was choosing my mother's personality over my father's.

All of this is a prelude to something that happened ... something I did ... that contradicts my sense of easy-breezy self.

I rearranged the dumbbells at the gym in ascending order of weight.

*I was only two weeks old when my parents became my parents.

Outburst Embarrasses

It probably coincided with one of my jogs when I saw the old Japanese couple.

I’d seen them on a handful of occasions during the late spring. I wondered if they were tourists or transplanted residents. They were obviously husband and wife, an old married couple. They were, to my mind, Japanese. I suppose they could have been some other Far Eastern nationality, but I don’t think so. There was something about them that spoke Japanese to me. I’m not sure what. He wore a shirt that was probably an old golfing shirt, orange with thin horizontal blue stripes and a white collar. She wore a white, cotton visor. They held hands as they made their early morning walking loops around Green Park.

On the first crossing of our paths, he and I made eye contact; maybe we shared a tentative hint of a good-morning smile. On the 2nd loop around, it was an unmistakable smile. On the 3rd loop around, he gently nudged his wife, they both waved, and I waved back. That’s how it was each morning I saw them.

Jogging, however, isn’t all good. The sense of morning civility I try to foster in myself is sometimes overshadowed by a sense of righteousness and perceived right-of-way. The repetitive pounding of foot to pavement, the sustained reverberations up through the knees, the sense of exhaustion toward the end of a long run instils me with the belief that pedestrians will yield. They will – or ought to – see my pain, admire my hard work, and move to make my journey just a little bit easier.

Of course, this is rubbish. I know it, and knowing it, I fight the base, delusional sense of entitlement that jogging fosters.

On that particular day in late spring, my higher senses had been eroded. I imagine I greeted the Japanese couple. The world was right. The sun was shining. Daffodils popped up willy nilly throughout the park. I plodded on through my last Green Park loop and crossed in front of Buckingham Palace over to the south side of St. James Park where I turned left. In the distance Big Ben flitted in and out behind the trees. Down and around and up to Pall Mall where I turned right to make my way along the final stretch, which would lead me up to The Strand.

My feet pounded. My heart pounded. I had to work to control my breath. I saw a petite blond walking in my direction in the same groove where I had found my rhythm. As we approached I sensed – as I suspect she did of me – she didn’t want to move out of her groove. Her intransigence – imagined or not – made me dig in my heals.

A quiet, little voice inside whispered to me, “Give way.”

I prepared to partially heed this advice.

If I give a step, she should give a step too.

Childish.

Her face looked set. She wasn’t going to yield. I imagined a collision or a real life manifestation of the North-going Zax and the South-going Zax in the Prairie of Prax.

I’m not the bullheaded.

At the final moment, I skirted to the left, but not without audibly articulating my thoughts.

“What a bitch.”

She heard. She turned and stared. Two constructive workers heard, and turned to stare.

I carried on. I felt no better for my outburst.

In fact, I felt ashamed. I still do.

Asked Questions, Not Always Answered

When ABF* came to visit she asked a lot of questions.

Like:

How old is that church?
Is that building still used as a boys' school?
What's flytipping?
What are bubbles & squeak?
Will Prince Charles ever become King?
Do you ever get sick of your little refrigerator?
How do you find the healthcare system?

Eight years of visits from friends and family from overseas have accustomed me to the inevitable onslaught of unanswerable questions. No matter how much I prepare, many questions still stump me.

On this particular visit, rather than getting annoyed at ABF’s questioning or the subsequent disclosure of my ignorance, I resigned myself to internal bemusement.

Does she really think I would know if that building** is used as a boy’s school?!

I smiled and answered, “I have no idea.”

“I have no idea” became a kind of mantra.

“What …?”

“I have no idea.”

“When ….?”

“I have no idea.”

“Why …?”

“I have no idea.”

The visitors who travel the least seem to have the most unrealistic-to-be-answered questions than the more frequent travellers. I don’t know if this is a true observation or not, but my friend who travels the world never asks inane questions; as if he knows what local knowledge is reasonable to expect from a host, and what questions are just plain silly.

Now to be fair to ABF, many of her questions were reasonable – even some of those to which I did not know the answer. Some of my discomfort was deserved.

“No Flytipping”

How could I not notice that sign?! I walk by it with The Dog every day!

I have since investigated ‘flytipping’ and have learned it means ‘dumping’. I’ve also conducted a little poll amongst my work colleagues. ‘Flytipping’ does not appear to belong to popular lexicon. Nor was it on The Test. Nor this one.

You’re forgiven.

I decide I should not punish myself for a seeming lack of proactive scrutiny of my environs. I’m certain I’ve noticed lots of little details and picked up scads of local trivia; the right questions, however, have failed to have been asked.

On a different note, ABF's visit was my excuse to go again to the Tate Modern. The sun shone that day. In the main hall I could not help to think how fabulous a place for my orchids. A big airy sunny venue. Then I got dizzy and imagine I was in a fish tank.

What if this hall were filled with water? I would have to swim up and up and up and up.

I know: odd.

* American Best Friend
** Somewhere just to the north of the Millenium bridge and south of St. Pauls.

Helter Skelter Permitted

I'm thinking about the order of things.

Not all things.

Not really even thing-things. Ephemeral things -- my thoughts and the order (disorder) with which they materialise here -- are the things I'm thinking about.

I have a backlog of semi-thoughts and partial stories awaiting crystallisation, awaiting for their moment on the humble plinth, which is my blog.

I wonder about the mini-series I have started and not yet completed, the loose ends still frayed: how the plant care saga has panned out, the conclusions of my health tests, proof of my bitchiness, observations made and questions posed by visitors who have long since come and gone -- observations made and questions posed that at that time seemed blog-worthy, but with the passage of time, am I losing my interest in those observations made and questions posed?

Invariably, when I sit down with the purpose to pick up a loose trail and progress it - to impose a bit of order to my ephemeral things - I wander down some other path, somewhere unexpected. I like these meanderings, but they don't represent progress, and I wonder if that bothers anyone. I think it should / would bother me in real life, but since I'm the boss of the ephemeral things, the midwife charged with birthing (or aborting) the words, I won't let it get to me.

I allow myself a bit of disorder.

Pedestrians Smile

As I walk out my front gate, I’m glad I've remembered my sunglasses (I was kicking myself for not bringing them yesterday) and my light sweater.

Autumn is definitely in the air.

As I close the front gate behind me - something the neighbour in the upstairs flat never does, a bit of communal untidyness that drives My Man crazy - a middle-aged woman passes by, catches my eye, and smiles. It's a kind of Hi-Enjoy the day-We'd probably enjoy a cup of tea together even though we don't know each other-smile. I'm struck by the fact that I got the exact same smile at the exact same place yesterday morning from a stylish young mother pushing her kid along in its stroller.

I think about the origin of these genuine expressions of decent humanity.

Is it the weather?

It's true that today has started off with promise.

But yesterday morning was overcast and muggy.

Is it something about this spot on the sidewalk? Do passers-by feel obligated to smile when crossing me upon the footstep of my home? A kind of instinctive communication that they are no threat? No need to bark.

Maybe it's pity. The laurel looks really crap.

Don't be stupid.

Maybe it's me, or rather, my face. I remember one of the "popular" girls at university who studied in Italy with me during my third year. She told me I have a kind face. She said that's why so many Italian women spoke to me. Most people on our program thought Italian women were aloof.

Young. Stupid.

Now, I like my face. I wouldn't have admitted that a few years ago. On the cusp of middle age, I'm brave enough to say it: it's a nice face. And probably kind too. Nothing gorgeous. Gorgeous is generally intimidating. I think about the girl I saw coming out of the coffee shop on Monday afternoon. She was stop in your tracks gorgeous. You wouldn't smile at her. You'd be too intimidated. At the time I thought about how annoying it must be to have everyone stare at you. I didn't think about how it wouldn't be so bad if the stare-ers who had stopped in their tracks smiled, even just a little bit.

I resolve to smile at the stopping you dead in your tracks people.

Well maybe not the men; they've probably got big enough egos anyway without getting unsolicited smiles from sun-shiny girls like me.

I think about how my kind face obscures moments of bitchiness. Like now how I'm wishing ‘my’ coffee shop were closer to ‘my’ bus stop so I could get a coffee and better guarantee getting a seat, since ‘my’ bus stop is ‘upstream’.

Screw those people at the downstream bus stop.

I think about the words coffee, shop, bus, and stop, and get annoyed that I can’t remember if they are 2 words or 4.. When they are conjoined I think they should be conjoined: coffeeshop, busstop. I think about being sun-shiny. I think about how I don’t write the post the shows I can be a real fucking bitch.

I am ashamed.

Daughter Tells Mom

Do you see what I did there?

Whilst writing about something physically repellent, yet ultimately innocuous (public nose-picking), I dropped a little bomb.

... maybe because I was sexually abused as a child ...

Then I went away for a while, leaving you on your own to assimilate this new tidbit of personal information.

18 years ago, I did the same thing to my mom. She and I were in her car. It was a fancy Mercedes that I never drove despite her frequent encouragement to do so.

"Take my car. Here are the keys."

I was too afraid. I didn't want to accept the responsibility for a potential ding, or worse, a pile-up on the motorway. If I needed a car, I borrowed my father's mid-life crisis. I remember when my mom got that fancy car, I made all sorts of righteous protestations along the vein of "how do you justify spending the equivalent of a couple of years at a top university on a car?" My guilt trips fell on deaf ears. Ultimately, the fancy car turned out to be a bit of lemon. Every year, Mom would have to take it in for minor, yet costly repairs (air conditioning, windshield wipers, headlights). It was comfortable though. It felt solid, and safe.

I was home for a visit. I had finished university a few months previously, and in a few days I was due to be going to a village in southern Africa where I would teach for a year. I don't remember exactly where my mom and I were going; I was probably just keeping her company while she ran some errands, but I do remember exactly where we were when I told her. We were turning right onto 6th Ave from Vine Street. She was looking left at the one-way traffic coming down 6th, when I told her, "I have something to tell you, and I don't want you to freak out because I am just fine, but I want you to know because you know everything about me, and I just remembered this when I was talking with [insert ex-boyfriend's name here], and so I thought you should know ...."

Traffic whizzed by down 6th Avenue. My mother listened patiently while she looked at me then back at the traffic.

"Brother 2 sexually abused me when I was growing up."

The coast had cleared; she pulled out onto 6th.

I don't remember talking much more about it. I don't remember if she asked questions or if she was just silent. I suppose she needed time to absorb the news. I suppose I had made it clear that I didn't really want to talk about it ad naseum. I suppose deep down I thought maybe she knew all along.

How could she not?

I don't remember why I chose to tell her while she was driving. I suppose I wanted to make sure we were alone, and being in the fancy car was the safest place we could be. In retrospect, I probably could have planned it a little better -- for her sake. I could have chosen a time when she wasn't occupied with something else. I could have planned it better so that I didn't just drop a bomb then fuck off to southern Africa, leaving her with so many unanswered questions.