Saturday 1 December 2018

plenty happened

I'm sleepy as anything. At least the air is warmer now and I can sit up crosslegged in bed and type; in winter I had to organise this complicated arrangement where the bedclothes were tucked shroudlike around my body but my arms waved free - and Oh Boy how they waved! I have promised myself I will write daily until the inner resistance to writing is ground away. It takes the form of Oh I don't think this will really be of much interest to anyone, That's too complicated, Well I don't know where to start. The cat is on the end of the bed, where he should not be, snoring.

Plenty happened in the month of not writing and much of it should have been written about. I will write about some of it, perhaps.

We have just had a very frustrating and depressing state election.

Some really choice men have taken it upon themselves to shout at me in the street, as usual.

I went to see a beautiful show about 1970s fashion staged by the National Trust at Rippon Lea, and loved it so much that I decided to invest some serious time and attention in exploring the clothes of 1970s, which for me means making some, and I have done some of this already and it's been remarkably fascinating, if not entirely practical from a keeping it real in the wardrobe department point of view.

My hairdresser cut my hair too short.

I became moderately obsessed with a podcast called Deep State Radio. For a couple of weeks I listened to nothing but back episodes of this show, which consists of US foreign policy people pointing out all the ways Donald Trump is appalling. There are many back episodes and I listened to them much of the day and into the night.

The assistant curator went to another job. Now there's only the head curator left. One of the nine or so planned work Christmas parties is at his house and I am fully expecting it to be a very special experience. I have an essay club meeting in my diary for that date too; it's only eight days away and no essays have been nominated much less read so I guess the meeting is not going to happen. I am missing my friends.

I watched three episodes of a TV show about Waco.

There was a violent crime committed in Bourke St in the city one afternoon when I happened to be nearby and while I didn't see the actual crime, I was drawn into the immediate aftermath and I am still feeling the impact of this, although obviously many people suffered most terribly because of it and my disturbance is comparatively a very minor thing indeed.

I went to hear some music played and got half my attention drawn away from the music, which was quiet, beautiful and weird, by the only too familiar psychodynamics of pathological anxiety emanating from the main performer and circulating through the performance, infecting the audience, and triggering in me the irritating little inner voice droning away back there isn't this interesting? what's happening here is very interesting.

I have driven places in the car and came away from these interludes wanting to hurt somebody because the traffic was so excruciatingly hideous, is it always like that?

I went to a church fete and won a gift voucher to a frumpy middle-aged lady clothes shop, and I thought I might as well redeem it and thus I found myself staring at my reflection in a changing room mirror, hemmed in on all sides by drapey asymmetrical baglike garments and wondering, is this my life now? How can I get back to where I was before?

My colleagues organised a birthday tea for me, with a cake, but I could not be present at it, because I had to take Lenny to his music lesson, and there is actually a lump in my throat right now as I think about this.

I had a week where I could barely control my desire for food and I ate hundreds of cheese and jam sandwiches. I am still trying to shift the last traces of this bout.

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