H.R. I
H.R. II
“a small insight into the inside of my mind”Anxiety is controlling me.
Anxiety is ruining me.
Anxiety is bleeding me dry.
Anxiety would, if I let it, but I won’t. Oh, but a positive attitude can only do so much.Oh, but a positive attitude can do so much!
My darling friend Kathryn; somewhere on the East coast…..
I found out yesterday. I’m going to Spain. I’m going to live in an apartment in Madrid, with new-found friends. I will find a favourite cafe, a local market and learn to use the underground. I’ll write wonky poetry in limited Spanish and drink sangria and vino tinto. I’ll visit London, Berlin, Paris on my weekends. I’ll listen to Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan, put flowers round my room and work my best to not be homesick. I’ll learn Flamenco, and tell the spaniards why I don’t eat beef. I’ll find Spanish punks just like that King Blues song. I’m going to draw every day, and write a blog in Spanish. I’m going to have a fucking adventure.
I leave in September.
I can’t stop smiling (and I don’t want to).
1968
This photograph I took before I left that floral house
Musings on being a muse.
I was a muse and I was so afraid. Watching a beautiful girl, my beautiful best friend, lay across a lounge in the sun, long, delicate sunbronzed legs, or sitting curled on the roof, reading and smiling, the boy, my beautiful boy, crouching, finding the right angle, click.
Gazing with wonder. Wishing he’d brought more film.
I was nauseous and trembling with envy, every time.
One day I told her how scared I was. I told her what I thought I saw. I told her I trembled with fear of him falling in love with her. I told her I feared it was already happening before my eyes.
My beautiful friend sat in her hot car with me and told me what it means to be a muse. It means to inspire, to encourage, to creatively support. It means not just being the sole object of art but to encourage the creativity no matter where it came from. She told me to be envious is to stint the creativity- that a true muse would not hinder the artist in any way. She told me he loved me and not her.
He doesn’t photograph me because I am beautiful, she said. He photographs me because he is a photographer.
I believed her because I wanted whar she said to be true, and she promised me with all her heart that she would never, could never do anything that would hurt me. She offered to tell him she didn’t want him to photograph her anymore. I told her not to. I told her I could be strong, I don’t need that, I want to be the muse that encourages his art and creativity. What a fool I was!
I don’t ever want to be a muse to anyone, for anything, ever again. It’s a bizarre and scary relationship; too much hinges on the art. And seeing someone else begin to take the place of muse, watching your artist begin to love her, delight at her presence, even before they’ve kissed or touched or held eachother….it hurts so deeply that I know now it’s never worth the initial joy of being the object of desire, the catalyst for creativity.
We spent two nights together,
and all the space inbetween.
In one checkered house,
with wiry fences and floral carpets,
we hid ourselves.
In the bedrooms we hid under sheets;
in the showers we hid under water.
You kissed my hands and face and bum and toes.
I hit you, but only lightly.
You took my hand and held my fingers,
ran them over the cracks in your cheekbone.
I felt the tiny fractures and they made me cry.
We slept and awoke so much,
but always together.
In the short sleeps I had,
my mind was soaked with nightmares,
flashes of anxiety and unease.
I woke in a panic with a fast head.
I woke with knotted guts.
We spent two nights together
and all the space inbetween.
26.1.12
We sat in our garden today, with a bedsheet stretched over the clothesline as a makeshift shadecloth. We sat on our towels surrounded by foot-tall grass and I was drawing while Fiona read. Then she put her book down on her lap and asked me if she could read me a story; she said I would like it. So I said yes, and she read me a story about a woman who falls in love with a man who is in love with the moon, and I drew a deer-like creature, something with long curly antlers, something I saw in a magazine. I thought about perfecting it for you, going over each line in a black ink pen, shading the fur and curly antlers and giving it to you in an old bronzed frame I’ve got under my bed. I don’t know if you’d like it though, and I can’t do that. I’m not someone who should be drawing delicate pictures for you, no. I could give you something sensible, useful, emotionless. Nothing sentimental, I suppose. I need to learn to be your friend and that’s where I’m getting confused. That’s why I can’t be near you, or look at your face, hands, grin, because I don’t know how to be your friend.
Fiona finished her story as I finished my drawing, almost exactly the same time, which I liked. Days like this are so sweet, and I suppose I’m doing pretty well, but I can’t help but notice how
sore I am with missing you.
‘last night’
Last night I saw you for the first time this year. It was weird and fun and sad. We went straight to your house, straight to your bedroom; we were so hungry for each other.
You told me you love me when I was on your lap and it scared me and I hated it. It wasn’t what I wanted you to say.
‘No. Shut up. Talk to me about nothing deeper than how it feels to touch my skin, to touch my hair, to hold my waist.’
That was what I wanted to say; skin deep was as much as I could take. But I said nothing.
I don’t even think at the beginning I wanted you to kiss me but I let you. Your lips were familiar but foreign and they felt right and wrong on mine.
You kissed my face, and then you kissed my body, just like I wanted you to so badly. We were so close I felt your heart beating like it was in my own chest. I thought about us being together. You wore the same aftershave as the day we met, and I fantasised about the first time you fucked me, and we lost ourselves.
After, when when we were lying naked, side by side, sweating, spent, I thought about how your lips had felt foreign, and I asked you, ‘did you kiss someone?’
I regretted the words as soon as I’d spoken them. I wanted to catch them in the air before they reached your ears, to suck them back in, to swallow them.
You said it didn’t matter, you said we shouldn’t talk about that, then you asked me three times if I kissed someone and three times I said, ‘no’. I looked at you waiting and you told me you had, and I was winded. It didn’t surprise me, really, but I loathed that you had, and I loathed that you asked me three times, like you didn’t believe me, and I loathed myself for asking at all.
I wouldn’t let you touch me for a long time after that, but I never raised my voice. I did say something stupid and childish, like that I was going to go out and fuck someone, which obviously I wasn’t. I called you a fuckwit. Cheap shots.
We fucked again later, and I cried after I came. You held me and you tried and finally won at making me laugh. You hugged me so tightly and closely; you were smiling like a happy child. Just being with me made you happy, you said so. ‘I’ve missed you so much,’ that’s what you said. I asked you again how you felt and you still said you just feel happy and nothing else.
(I don’t get that. You make me happy, but I also feel an endless mess of guilt, disgust, grief.)
I didn’t stay over because your bed doesn’t feel like somewhere I belong anymore. Even laying under your covers made me feel like an imposter but I did it. I could have stayed on top of them but I crawled under, because your sheets were new, and I guess I wanted the next girl who lays in them to feel my presence. How fucking crazy is that? What’s even crazier is that I was late for work today, not because I spent twenty minutes at a chemist in line for an emergency contraceptive, but because I got stuck at the Thomas Dux in the biscuit aisle, crying silently to Lost in the Supermarket.
I don’t think we should fuck anymore.
What happens if you make a mistake?
What happens if you did the right thing for the wrong reason (or the wrong thing for the right one)?
Maybe it follows you and beats you til your eyes are aching with the impending bruises and your mouth seeps with the taste, that familiar taste (that suckable organic taste you get when you’ve drunkenly bitten your lip and all you think is ‘that’s familiar’ and suck the bleeding right out of your lip)…
Or maybe once it’s gone and it’s over and everyone’s forgotten, maybe the only person who’ll follow it right into your future is you, remind you on each bad luck day that you gave in, you let the temptation control you and you did what you shouldn’t have done.
And which is worse?
(And does it even matter? You’re probably going to do it either way, because you’re human and you can’t resist.)
my friends from England
winter (II)
winter
