Everything below the waist

When the F-word and I started the fundraising venture that is our life in Belgium, he warned me that there were big parts of me - the fun, creative parts - that were going to have to go on ice for awhile. To make the money I make, to work the hours I work, to concentrate on capitalist minutae, was going to of a necessity mean that I had very little energy left, not to mention time, to do the creative things that people like us go a little nuts without doing. He felt prepared to offer that warning because he went through his super-hard-work-nest-feathering period a few years ago, and is now sitting on a big pile of money, working part-time and painting like a lucky, lucky motherfucker.

That's well and good, and information I tried to take on board through a few deeply depressing and exhausting initial months, when I felt as though I was throttling myself with a money noose. And I have taken it on board. 1.7 or something years into my job, I feel like I've got to a point where I can see what I'm doing, and why I'm doing it, and why the present is helpful to the future beyond the ever-growing stack of money hidden in the basement, which is always strictly abstract: though I have a euro figure in mind, as the philosophers say money-making is an activity without a goal, without a natural and satisfactory stop-point, and part of the frustration of those early months was that money seemed like such an unsatisfactory thing to be working for.

So. Now I've resigned to keeping that part of myself on ice. But. The consequence of that is sometimes the glacier splits and vomits up a few literary or creative boulders. Yesterday, while sitting at the millionth fucking conference this year about how industrial actors can convince consumer audience they give a fuck about the environment, what got thrown up was a bunch of stuff about France.

Now every young lady should benefit, as I benefited, from a hedonistic and anonymous block of time in their early lives; in my case that was Italy. It's only recently that I'm accepting the fact a block of time like I had in France is probably necessary on some sort of character-building level too. I've said it was before, but without really meaning it. And I'm not going to pretend the years I spent in Paris were all dogshit and drizzle. I had a lot of fun, some really great sex, and met people who I hope to be friends with all my life. But there was a degree of adversity and misery in some events there - and I'm not just talking Bluebird, who I appreciate more and more was sometimes a victim of me and my circumstances, as well as the vice-versa being the case - that changed everything.

And this is becoming fodder, not for anything biographic, or even journalistic, but for the strangest sort of epic that ever crossed my mind, with a microscopically specific component on one side, and something big, sweeping, and ridiculously macroscopic on the other. It's been on my mind for two or three years now in one form or another, and all I can do is take notes; note down some of this extreme chatter in my brain on something so bizarre, and try to get myself together in terms of the mechanics of drawing a realistic picture of France - while I'm benefiting from living right next to it without living in it. I can't schedule time for that sort of note-taking, so sometimes it spills over, and that's what I spent the white-noise part of yesterday's conference doing. Spilling over into notes. And it makes me feel much better to know that the chatter is there and that I can note it down to work with later

But fucked if I don't feel like Lilly Von Schtupp afterwards. I guess if it's not one fun, creative part of you on ice it's another. At least it's only one a time. Once more for posterity:

Are you going to the Scarborough job fair

Off to the maison communale again this morning to get the provisional license. We'll see if anybody bothered showing up today. Sigh. Fucking failed state! Otherwise in a good mood - sort of. A therebutforthegraceofGodgoI sort of mood, actually. Yesterday, a couple hours before deadline, I got breaking news of 500 people getting sacked via two different companies. One of the sites was in Scarborough, my earthly paradise when I was a child. It made me sad. Besides tourist trade I'd figured there was already nothing to do for work there and now there's 100 or so fewer things to do. And all of the other editors present also got word of mass layoffs, all that afternoon.

Balance I suppose - so many people were off for four days for the Armistice celebrations and then it's still more than a month before Christmas, so nobody can accuse the companies of ruining anybody's holidays . . . except, of course, a lot of these layoffs will roll out just before or just after the holidays. I shouldn't think about it so much. But I do. No doubt for selfish reasons - doing it to remind myself my own current prosperity may be ephemeral and I mustn't do things like buy a kayak until I'm a little more confident I won't be getting sacked.

Could be worse. Wrapping up Runciman's First Crusade. I could have been anybody in that, particularly one of the poor people or the women, and that would have sucked. You know I've actually met people who've defended the crusades as more than desperate land grabs by aristocratic younger sons? No doubt thousands of the people who went were seeking something holy, but I see no way they'd have gone to war without fierce goading by their ruling classes. Which brings me to my favorite Goering quote, given when the lousy asshole was awaiting suicide at Nuremberg, trotted out here because I've got to run to the maison communale now and it's as good a way to wrap up as any:

"Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship . . . voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Sometimes it's good to have an pseudonymous blog

My reaction was complex. But the dominant thought in my brain, which was being too complex to actually be hurt or whatever you might expect in the circumstances - though what would one expect in the circumstances? - perhaps like it felt the first time, incredulity at the poorness of his decisions, that had led the poor man to the point in his life where, despite our fluid-based association having ended years ago when I'd left town forever, he had failed to realize in the meantime that his balls and all their contents belonged to me in perpetuity in testament to the awesomeness that was his Manhood having been in my Womanhood in a mutually satisfactory sort of way.

Anyways, the dominant thought in my brain, instead, was "aw, why can't I fuck up the rhythm method?", which is a very silly dominant thought to have, as I would never use the rhythm method - "oh, I've got a great idea, I'll contraconceive by refusing to let my man plunge deep and climax in my pulsating Womanhood at exactly the time of the month when every fibre of my physical and emotional being most wants my man to plunge deep and climax in my pulsating Womanhood." Yeah. Fucking genius. That's why no-one ever says 'as smart as a childless Catholic'.

Two conclusions:

1. I'm glad he told me now, when I can channel any possible resulting funk (from complexity, and from the sudden inevitability of acknowledging that the fucking banging in my cranium may not be incipient psychosis but is in fact the 'ticking' of my biological clock) into my rambles through the woodland of my homeland and into the hectic preparations for Magnum's wedding next Saturday, instead of subjecting the F-word to it, who knows as well as I do the logistical problem with replicating our awesome DNA nine months from now.

2. I'm glad you're here, dear readers, to read about things without thinking too hard about who's who and whether it's who you think it is, since so many of you don't know who anybody is anytime I use a pronoun in Costume Jewelry, and the rest of you are almost definitely barking up the wrong tree at any given moment, and certainly right now. I can't tell you how soothing that is, because it's lovely to write the things it's not a good idea to say out loud. But today I think I've already written enough. Some things get to fester, or mature, or distill, or ferment, or something. It builds character. But thank you. Thank you.

5 am and ready for lunch

Jet lag. Home again after a year and a half and no one else is awake. It just struck me that the birthday party I fell asleep three hours before last night is probably still happening somewhere but I don't feel equipped to do anything about that.

Yesterday drove through my old neighborhood, the darling Cabbagetown, to take care of some business with Luke Duke. Past my old apartment. I love Cabbagetown. That was such a great place to live and I was very happy there. Yes, visible signs of drug abuse all over the place; yes, lots of people wandering around who should have been institutionalized one way or the other. But when you live in a market economy, the only cool-ish smack downtown neighborhood a kid like I was can afford a one-bedroom in will be one crack addicts, halfway housers, and the victims of Ontario's criminal budget cuts re. low security psychiatric hospitals can also afford. And when you're as cheap as I am, that's not likely to change with age. Why pay a premium to live in a boring, isolated neighborhood? But perhaps my tune will change when I have children.

Anyways, going back there reminded me how Cabbagetown was just so great. So many restaurants and shops that I loved in one tiny area, that great park, Jet Fuel, everybody who's head's together being pretty friendly, especially by Toronto standards, and a lot of the crackheads being quite decent too. Part of the reason I want to move back to an Anglo country is that I want to live in a neighborhood like Cabbagetown again, and I've never found one in a European city. Saint Gilles has a lot to recommend it - I love living there in a different way - but some Anglo neighborhoods like Cabbagetown still promise big things for people with a good idea, without needing to be historical or hipster-ish or exclusive or expensive or uncomfortable.

Ah, maybe I'm just happy to be at the place that's closer to being home than any other place, unless you can count my man as my place which you can't, because he's a person.

Lying there with all the light in your hair

Artificial drama makes me impatient, but I try to keep that impatience tamped down because I'm often a little drama factory myself. At least, I am in my head - I try to not let it slip out my teeth or typing fingers. Also, I understand it's people's way to deal - in the same way that they'd rather look like a bastard than a patsy, even when the risk of being a patsy is small, they'll prefer to see themselves as some sort of wronged romantic heroine when the truth is that there was a big emotion that had nowhere to go.



Another thing that makes me impatient is a lack of imagination, and yet I have no imagination when it comes to other people's emotional existence. It can take me years to arrive at some sort of useful juncture when I'm trying to understand the people I love, or who I loved, and sometimes my subconscious needs to help, like it did last night in a 'Bluebeard' dream.

I was in the courtyard of La Pedrera, which had been moved to Paris, and he was there as well, bright-blue-eyed, happy, and rather scrawny as he had been when we first met, before I’d cooked and biked the heroin-chic modeling years out of him. He was acting in his sweet way, with the sweetness that made me want to stay with him long after it was evident I had to go.

‘It’s damp here,’ he observed.

‘Yes,’ I said, pointing to a half-basement apartment behind us. ‘We used to live there and I don’t think it was good for our lungs.’

And then his new girl was there. She looked slightly like me, but much better – that sort of stupendous, mid-size dark blonde you get in a stretch here from Denmark down to northern Italy, through Holland, Alsace, Luxembourg. I liked her instantly, and their rapport was adorable. They started frolicking around the courtyard, and as he scooped up a handful of rainwater to splash her she grabbed my arms and hid behind me. ‘Don’t let him get me!’ she cried, and they both fell about laughing.

Wondering if I’d be pressed into a ménage à trois I’d have to politely refuse, I consented to go to their apartment to pick up some stuff I’d left there. As soon as we entered they both went down for a nap. I gathered up some of the more important and portable things and made to leave.

On my way out, he woke and rolled over to face me, naked as a jaybird. ‘Don’t be a stranger,’ he said, and I told him I’d arrange to come back and pick up the other things later. I kissed him on the forehead and tucked him in next to her, where he fell back asleep almost immediately, a happy little smile on his face.

When I woke up I knew that boy can’t be my bogeyman anymore. I remember too much that I shouldn't forget. His sweetness was just as much a part of him as the batshit craziness. And although that brand of batshit craziness is unacceptable to me, I've been coming to realize for years it’s not really deviant in Central Europe, where their genocides are in living memory and those damnable Italian fuckwits are gearing up for another with their gypsy-hating and sheer fucking pig ignorance. All that fury, all that anger, those words and that way of acting - no wonder it confused him so much when I was revolted by it. It's normal here.

And after having gone through what he went through with me - being rejected because I couldn't accept that fury - how could I expect anything except that he'd get more conscious of it, and go into his next relationship with a greater desire to show more of his sweetness and less of his batshit craziness? Why would I choose to believe he could be some sort of lurking monster when - with his wealth, extreme good looks, generally sweet character and a level of fucking insanity which is merely typical by continental standards - some perfectly reasonable European woman would snap him up and perfectly reasonably love the shit out of him, and that woman - and the man himself - would probably benefit from what he learned through our relationship?

In short, how could I focus so hard on the 2% chance he's the revenge-obsessed monster he acted like when he realized I wasn't just play-acting breaking up with him, and the 98% chance he's happy with someone much better suited to him now? Sure, the 2% chance exists. But the other 98% chance is much, much bigger and rather more pleasant to dwell on . . . so much so, and so obviously, that I wonder if - no, I know I've been choosing to believe that getting over Mistress La Spliffe is impossible. Throwing a mean-spirited sop to my ego whilst throwing prime rib to my pride, my paranoid fear. Harming my mental health, my pleasant memories of the good times we'd shared, and some of the lessons I should've learnt through our relationship.

Because, of course, as my analyst was always at such pains to point out: everybody in the dream is you. As was that girl, his new girl, who was as pretty and happy as I felt myself to be when we first got together all those years ago; a girl who didn't utterly fuck things up, but who did what she felt was right at the time, and who had some joy with that man that made some unpleasantness worth it for a long time. And in the dream, he was me too; the 'big bogeyman' part of me, who is almost statistically certain to have hurt Mistress La Spliffe more than the man himself ever even wanted too. Happy now, playful, reasonable, and put to bed.