Silly Little Girl

A week or so ago, someone I care about called me 'a doll.' It was a compliment of my figure and fashion. A phrase said in a loving tone. It ruffled all my bad feathers.

A few days ago, multiple people in one evening called me 'beautiful,' specifically or a variation of it. I brushed it off on good looks, decided it was the shallowness of people that drove them to such pithy comments. This was despite being told that it was not just my looks to which they were referring.

A few hours ago, I called myself 'a silly little girl.' How awful is that to say of my gorgeous, strong, intelligent 24 & 11 month year old self.

I've made these connections, drawn the line between believing in myself as more than a pretty face, a shallow object, and I want to cross to the other side.

For Friday - Trends

After a while, you start to notice trends about yourself, or other people start to point them out to you and make the connections. Or, rather, after a while, I've started to notice trends in my thinking and suddenly, as they're forming, other people are starting to point them out to me and make connections.

My reaction to other people feels a dichotomy of either/or: either it is an epiphany moment where "ah" I am making sense to myself again (through someone else's notice) or I reject their connections made as below me. Kind of a crappy either/or system.

What trends I have noticed, and others have pointed out to me, is that I am intensely interested in love. I am interested in love and I am interested in love relations to sexuality--and, as a subset, desire for as a result of that human sexuality. I am increasingly and intensely interested in love and sexuality. And it's seeping in, popping up, infiltrating all facets of my daily interactions.

It's fascinating. I love it. (See, it comes in everywhere.) Love, as a describable and indescribable being/feeling/thing, is something I wholeheartedly believe in, rally for, and consider and re-consider over and over. It is powerful and I don't ever want to stop thinking about it, feeling it, ruminating on it. Why would I?

At the Restaurant

"I love older lesbians...they give me hope."

Today & Yesterday

• I found a purple flower earring on the street I think would make a good pendant.
• I remembered someone wrote about me (positively) in an online review of the restaurant I work in, and that rocked.
• I slept when I needed to.
• I made a breakfast burrito for the second day in a row, this time not only with cheese but with potatoes, red onion and garlic as well.
• My neck hurts when I look down at my laptop or read too much; and I think I want to get a massage on Friday.
• I think I deserve a massage.
• Yesterday, I checked everything off my to-do list.
• I can't seem to help telling people that I'm getting hitched next year, or that my lover is going to be a Physician's Assistant.
• I'm proud of my lover.
• I found a motorcycle shop near my house yesterday on a walk, but I haven't told my dad about it yet.
  
• I found pick ribbon in my drawer today and I really like the color of.
• I keep wanting to spell 'color' as 'colour.'
• I figured out that if I pronounce words like 'address,' 'literature,' and 'weekend' differently, people who live in this country understand me more easily.
• When my father in law lived in America, he found this out too, and triumphed the day the waitresses understood when he said 'water.'
• Posy is my favorite sister in Ballet Shoes and Titty is my favorite in Swallows & Amazons.
  
• It's time for bed.
  

Because I've Been Writing All Day

"Try...peeling some basics carrots and slice each in half lengthways. Place in a large baking tray with whole basics garlic blubs, and mix in the zest and juice of a basics orange, placing the squeezed orange halves in the tray. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Bake in a preheated oven at 200C, fan 180C, gas 6 for 45 minutes, turning the carrots halfway through. Serve immediately for a warming side dish with an autumnal twist."

- "Basics Garlicky Carrots," Sainsbury's

Clotheslines in Autumn

It is late autumn in London and storms have been blowing over the British Isles for days now. Weather being weather in ways I have never seen before. Today and yesterday came with a few sprinkles, but mostly sunshine and wind--and it is the wind that fascinates me. There is so much energy in the wind; potential, hope.

When the sun shone with the wind this morning one of my first thoughts was the ability to efficiently dry cleaning washed sheets on the line; sheets of cotton soft flannel, a delicate brocade pattern of white on ivory. Sheets for loved and visitors to snuggle into, wrap up in. I could dry the sheets in the house, on a stand or the radiator, but the smell is different, the texture of the fabric, the softness.

The image that never fails me is the clothesline of a house on the Irish bus I passed each day to university. Freshly cleaned family washes strung out for any kind of weather, relying on the wind. The property around the house went on for as far as I could see, a stone wall at the front separating the land from the road. My garden would have fit in their driveway by comparison, but I got a sense of the openness--the potential--as I struggled to pin the sheets to the line today, the wind dancing around me.

I Don't Know What to Write

I am sitting at my computer and I don't know what I to write. As I type I recognize that I'm hunched over enough to be stuck in a bell tower and pull myself up straight--imagine a string going from the bottom your spine through the top of your head--and watch my shadow rise on the wall. In my next incarnation of an office, I will have a desk lamp that doesn't blind me (so I can turn it on), the ceiling light will be bright and my desk will face a window so that most of all I can utilize natural light. That is, when the sun up. Although I wouldn't say that it necessarily bothers me that the sun starts to set around 4 PM when you live on any island just before Europe meets the Atlantic. Rather, it's just nice to have natural light for writing--the kind that lights with a gentle touch.

I guess what I want to write about is that in my lifetime, I have experimented with kissing first, and waiting to be kissed. (Reader: I don't know who you are anymore so please forgive any over-share you weren't expecting.) I'd say more times than not, I went for it. I dove in cause there were the signs: I was hot, they were hot, and there was probably dancing. And dancing just becomes more fun when you make-out on the dance floor. (Catholic grandmothers are all too good at predicting this; even when you're dancing the least sexily you've ever danced for your cousin's wedding.) I liked the cheeky nature of it all, the wanting.

Having written that, I don't know how true any of that is, having kissed first many a time. (Except that last part, that last part is definitely true. The cheekiness, the wanting.) I also don't know if it is true whether or not I've actually ever waited to be kissed. In truth, I'm not very good at waiting, for kisses or for anything. Which is maybe why it's more true to say that I have (and continue to) experiment with wanting kisses. (There's that want, again.) A game of patience, but not of waiting. Perception and a bit of sass are key; make 'em laugh, watch them walk away.

It sounds like I'm dispensing game advice, but you should never trust a narrator you're not sure of, maybe they should discuss more of kisses in Literature class than of narrators. But what I can tell you is that you should never trust the narrators you're not sure of, especially when they can't tell you what they want to write--or don't know what it is they want to tell you.

So I Won't Forget

• "I came to the conference for your workshop. There are not many people doing this research."
• "You had nothing to worry about!"
• "You are a novice compared to them, technically, but you did better than half the key note speakers."
• "I just wanted to give you a hug. Don't be nervous."
• "It was funny after my coming out looking back at all the books I read as I child and thinking 'Oh, that makes sense!'"
• "I heard it went brilliantly!"
• "Judy and I did some PR work for you."
• "I'd like to talk to you about your paper, and your poetry."

Yes's. BIG yes's.