This Week

I've had the most ridiculously emotional week, feeling up, down, down down, up, down, up, down, down for no discernible reason. I realise that these things happen to the best of us but I also think that sometimes I would prefer physical ailments to emotional ones. After all, when you've got the flu you just sleep and wait for it to pass. When you feel emotional, you're lucky if you can sleep.

However, I finished the week on a high note, a culinary one, see below.



Still, the recipe I would like to give you, and maybe I will do so tomorrow, is one for a most delicious green beany curry, something that I've tweaked and cooked twice this week and that I thought was very delicious on both occasions.

Other than this, work on my pro website is going really well and I am so excited I cannot even get to sleep at night. My feelings of uneasiness this week have prevented me from writing on here and even in my red journal. It is still so beautiful and smells so good that I really did not want to mar it with what will become sour memories, years down the line. I hope things will feel better from tomorrow and there will be more reasons to keep track of all of the great things I am doing in the face of a certain degree of adversity.

More White Stuff

I kept myself to myself last week, not simply because I needed some writing re-grouping, so to speak, but also because I rather love to make plans (no matter how far-fetched) and lists (no matter how pointless). Writing is an isolating job for sure, but I must confess that I would find it harder to deal with people on a daily basis than I do to deal with my own personal demons, annoying and boring as they are even to myself.

Early on Sunday morning it snowed and so I woke up to another white garden.



Sadly, it isn't as cold as it was at the beginning of January and today, although a little of the white stuff has survived, there's hardly anything left anywhere, as the sun is shining brightly and as we are on the cusp of winter-heading-to-spring. Birds are chirping and although there is no sign of vegetative life, at least not on the trees in my immediate proximity, there is in the house, where the bulbs I planted last week have already shot up and bent over themselves. I may need to rescue them later.

We are almost a week into Lent already and I've yet to make my mind up as to what to do on the way to bettering myself. I tentatively tried the 'stop swearing' thing, and quickly realised it was an unachievable task. I suppose that something even harder would be 'stop beating yourself up'. I am currently running the Unravelling exercise over at our private boards on Flickr and I made it an assignment on self-love. And, guess what, almost nobody is doing it. Interesting to see how we are all masters of flagellation instead.

On related reflections I should add that the whole poetry thing was really hard. There was much I wanted to keep track of during Valentine's week and I forgot it all on the basis of sharing poems instead. I'm gonna have to make sure I don't do that again for sure...!

Post-Valentine Hang-Over

I always, always, always get it; this big emotional slump, this dip within my thoughts always hit me after the Valentine/anniversary thing is over. I had a fantastic three days, even though I didn't do anything incredibly out of the ordinary, and today I woke up cranky and annoyed and I am not even sure why. It's not like we can stop time after all. I knew that the Valentine Three Dayer, as I call it, would be just that, three days, but getting out on the other side is a depressing affair all the same.



I guess there are mixed feelings in it for a multitude of reasons, chief amongst them the constant dichotomy of being alone and feeling lonely. They are not one and the same and I think I am not saying anything new there. Then of course there is all of this detestable crap relating to household management which at the moment means sorting out my cracked drive. Earlier today I was writing in my diary (the paper one) that I want everything to end. No more annoyances, anguish, pain, stress, feelings of inadequacy or loneliness. When last week I heard that Alexander McQueen had killed himself I burst into tears as if I had known him personally. People just do not realise how bad life is until one goes out with a hell of a bang and then they look at each other and wonder what they could have done to help. For a start, offer to help, I'd say, and then we'll see.

Yesterday I went to York, which I had only visited in passing many years ago when I stayed at the uni with the fencing team. Well, it is one heck of a charming place and it is true that its cathedral is one of the most beautiful ones. It was sunny but extremely nippy; for a few hours there was just me and beauty itself.

Valentine

By Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.

Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

Upon the Death of Sir Albert Morton's Wife

By Sir Henry Wotton

He first deceased: She for a little tried
To live without Him: liked it not, and died.

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art

By John Keats

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art –
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors –
No – yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever – or else swoon to death.

From The Vicar of Wakefield

By Oliver Goldsmith

When lovely woman stoops to folly,
And finds too late that men betray,
What charm can sooth her melancholy,
What art can wash her guilt away?

The only art her guilt to cover,
To hide her shame from every eye,
To give repentance to her lover,
And wring his bosom, is – to die.

Recension Day

By Duncan Forbes

Unburn the boat, rebuild the bridge,
Reconsecrate the sacrilege,
Unspill the milk, decry the tears,
Turn back the clock, relive the years,
Replace the smoke inside the fire,
Unite fulfilment with desire,
Undo the done, gainsay the said,
Revitalise the buried dead,
Revoke the penalty and clause,
Reconstitute unwritten laws,
Repair the heart, untie the tongue,
Change faithless old to hopeful young,
Inure the body to disease
And help me to forget you please.

My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close

It's Valentine's week and after that it will be my wedding anniversary which happens to fall on Shrove Tuesday this time, a great opportunity to stuff my face twice over. I decided to put my self aside this week in favour of sharing love poems, which is all I've been reading as of late (well, almost, together with Doctor Zhivago which, really, may not be a poem but it surely is about love).

Today, it's Emily Dickinson.

My life closed twice before its close –
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

Massacre In A Bedroom

Serves me right. Last night I thought that William and Victoria would have also enjoyed a bit of the Massacre and so gave them a minute spoon of it. I don’t know whether it was the pomegranate or the cream or the combo that didn’t agree with William but whatever it was, the poor darling spent a few hours looking extremely miserable until he spat out water until 2 am.

This morning, the first two hours of the day were spent in a bed-stripping-floor-washing exercise which eventually saw the little guy reclaiming his spot at midday. He is in very good spirits if only a little long-faced by the lack of sleep and I must confess that I, too, could do with a nap. See why I always say that those who want kids should always, always, always try out pets first?