Well another weekend of hecticity (this is part of my attempt to rival the bard with new word creation, only prob is that without his literary credentials it can seem like a total disregard for grammar so apologies to any literacy teachers out there) has come and gone. In it's path I'm left panting and experiencing full on previously unfelt emotional elation/trauma (it shifts across the polarity from moment to moment).
Friday was a day of healing, calmness and self assuredness. It was a beautiful day. I think it began with a pirate DVD, yoga and crying. Post late breakfast it began to bloom. I headed to the library, now this may not be the beginnings of many people's beauty but for some flumuxsome reason tis that way for me. I think the exprerience is heightened by being close to what you know, never has finding The Times been such a comfort. I created a potential day's worth of fun with, lets find what books the sensors have burnt - I got as far as American Psyco and then got stuck. I couldn't find a huge amount of Nietzsche which ain't usually a problem, had I not been experiencing Nietzsche cravings it would have continued to be. Brain was somewhat concerned that I was having a one of my, now not so frequent, attacks of concern about my intellectual capabilities. I chose not to continue that debate and carried on meandering, fingering spines and glowing.
I reckon communal silence might be the one of the most powerful actions humans can take. It's an incredible feeling of calm, potential unleashed but also community - we connect to each other as well all do something at the same time that we so often do alone. It's a great sound too.
Anyway, read a sociology paper on manners in Singapore plus some Othello. Then went off to explore the gallery I'd vaguely planned to 'do' - now great news struck me, it was on the 11th floor. Less then a year ago I wouldn't go in a lift, airplane, the tube - I would plan escapes from crowded rooms, feel panicky in a traffic jam. No high buildings for me. So this is all new to me. I am so thankful, proud and occasionally elated everything I'm connected and remember what I'm doing that a wave of it covers me and closes my eyes - I smile with myself and have joy. So here's me, in a glass lift going up 10 floors and here's me in a closed lift (these buggers are more difficult) coming down 10 floors. I remember the day If rist began moving towards here, I went to a mall and I stood watching a glass elevator open, fill up, shut go up one floor, open, shut, come down. I watched and agitated, and walked in, walked out again. Watched. I got in it and the doors closed and guess what I wasn't lying on the floor howling, ripping my hair out, thumping the floor, kicking my legs, biting the other passenger's ankles and pissing my pants.
The think about fear is that it's a fucker. Cause it makes your brain tell you that really bad horrible muck is gonna happen if you do something. But you get to a point, I remember this one too, where the pain of not doing the thing you fear is too much - you know you'll walk away destoyed cause your faith was lacking and feeling faithless is sapping. The pain is too big and it out psyches the fear. So you get on the tube at Victoria station.
Now since then I've sat on a plane for fourteen hours but what's truly incredible is the propensity of this stuff to lurk and reestablish itself in those old well worn neural paths. So you feel a bit down on yourself, whatever, and wo ho the bugger is back. And this time you know full well the only way is through it - grrr.
The weekend progressed and dealt me a chance to re-live my childhood, Saturday was Wild and Wet day - note the 'childhood' this is not any sort of adult ents establishment. Without much real passion for it we dragged ourselves out, on what turned out to be the most wet and windy day on this Island for a many a year.
The water park was pretty scrutty, but it did have what looked like a physically impossible ride in it. Basically a half pipe type arrangement but about three stories high, you're sat face to face in a kinda of goggles shaped inflatable dingy and launched by two friendly assistants. I say launched but really you're pushed off what is an essentially vertical drop, after a few endless seconds you re-engage with the surface and hurtle towards the earth then back up towards the sky. I screamed and close dmy esyes, Ross was not enamored about going on the damn thing so as a concession I agreed to go in the seat that was backwards. It was just like being back on those theme park rides which punctuated my early childhood before about the age of 11 I developed a sensititivty to the sensation created and opted to hold the coats. So having felt an urgent shock of adrenalin and been blanched by terror, we exited dragging our trust stead and I cried "again, again". Now why the hell do we like experiencing that sort of emotional hit? I made him go on it again, did the pitch black slide (another thing defiantly on the "I don't fancy that" list) and then we went home.
Lifts went on to feature very prominently throughout the weekend, Saturday night was a Chinese new year family party on floor number 16. Sunday was dinner with friends at their new apartment on floor number 15, Sunday evening after swim, hotdogs int he hot tub and beer I was coaxed up to floor number 30 to see the view and gawp at the as yet unoccupied penthouse's through their incomplete spy holes. I'm still working up to floor 70 and the New Asia Bar on top of the Swissotel. The lift's fine but stand like I'm sat on an elephant convinced everything is moving rather oddly.
This is quite different from the deadlock I go into about half way up the climbing wall, I'm gonna need some new words. Bugger, you see I generally try not to label what I feel - just classify it as being comfortable or uncomfortable. But when you come to write it you need wordsd and there aint enough of them - the clautraphobia, the water slide, the climbing, the heights where all so different and all bearable ultimately, not exaclty comfortable. But having said that when you sit and feel something horrific, that really makes you want to shed your body and hide, and when you know you can't hide and that there's no point calling anyone or turning to some form of relief, then you know that dfeeling is in you and you can't escape from it. The only option is to turn to it and accept it, and then it becomes a pleasure to feel it - to know you can feel anythign and you'll be in tact, you'll be living and free.
Today I saw a father Christmas model dressed up in Chinese pyjamas with a little cap and everything - I laughed.
