Friday 31 January 2014

Seeing Greatness

Of all the people I want to be, the one I aspire most to be is me.

I went to a very odd thing last night, in my capacity as a plus one to my house mate.  It was a musical tribute to Michael Jackson and it was quite strange.  A mix of singers doing cover version along with youff doing youff dancing, somewhat out of time with each other if the truth be told, and a bit of a band in the background.  The band were oddly geeky whenever the bass and lead guitarist got to come out for a short skiff.  Skiff isn't a musical term, is it? Oh well.  The funny thing is that the format of the event had someone taking on a voiceover role in the style of a documentary.  I can get why at such an event they'd be all about the fandom and wasn't Michael an amazing showman.  What I find a little too feelgood is the way they tried to paint a picture of him as someone who tried to make a change for the better in the world.  I really didn't get that.  In my head is a picture of an unhappy man who despite his sometimes thoughtful lyrics on the subject of colour, didn't entirely accept his own birthright and tried to do for colour what androgeny does for gender.  I also have that sceptic's suspicion about his activities behind closed doors and his association with some of the young people in his life.  It's not all glory and glowing.  There's nothing of that man that I aspire to be.

What I want to be is simple.  It's me.  I want to be able to think of myself as a rather wonderful creation of things I chose to become.  I want to live up to the good qualities my friends believe I have and to remember what those are while at the same time, accepting my own limitations and embracing those individualities.  Above all, I want to remember from time to time who that person is.  I want it to be enough that I think I'm someone to be proud of.  But then, I'm starting with the man in the mirror ...


Monday 27 January 2014

Bluebirds fly

If tomorrow, as seems increasingly likely given the state of the bicycle I was contemplating riding to work, I slide across the road and under a bus, my life might be over.

The thing to focus on, though, is that my life is not over, not now it isn't.  My life wasn't over when my husband died, and it hasn't been over with any injury, illness, set back or mishap.  Nothing within human experience seems to be unendurable.

Do we ever really long for an even, steady state existence?  Do we ever wish that changes would stop taking place?  From the outside, sometimes I think I have friends and relations who somehow do live the steady state life, work where the tasks and people are the same, the same home and home life.  Do they get bored, do you suppose?

If things do get steady state, I suspect I sub consciously scupper things to create variation, find faults where there are none, find reasons to make things different.  Now I have a job, you know, one of those things where you get up, put on the regulation clothing, step out the door at the regulation time, arrive in time for the regulation coffee and go home at the regulation time.  Repeat ad infinitum.  So, now change is confined to my leisure time.  What I do after work, what I do at weekends, but there's limited room for manoeuvre.

Open University crowds out a couple of evenings a week, sometimes more as assignments loom, bike riding takes up the weekends, as of course it should, and joyfully until Easter, I have a Tuesday night local council run bike maintenance course to attend.

But I crave change, and something has to relinquish itself to my storm.  I think it's going to be the house this time, the house, my house, our house, my home.  It's lovely but it's in the wrong place.  And as changes go, it would be a positive one.  Endurable indeed.

But sometimes folk don't return from the mountain.

Monday 6 January 2014

New Dawn

It's not a New Dawn.  That's not how it works.  New Year doesn't bring a new start, a wiping clean of the slate, or even particularly refreshed hope. 

It brings something though.  A clean slate of months lies ahead, blank pages in the diary.  Too many blank pages.  Not enough excitement, anticipation or hope.  I'm on hold now as much as I was on hold in November / December, waiting for an illness I cannot control to ebb away.  I've done as much as I can, and like a cold which lasts a week if  you treat it, seven days if you don't, I've neither been able to make things better or worse for myself.  Recovery is simply taking as long as it takes.  But that doesn't mean I have to like it.

I'd like my hope back now please.