It's an 'end of the rainbow' sort of deal

Yesterday I went on a road trip with three women I met via Meetup stuff (so lesbians, and vaguely connected to the group I mentioned previously without being in the centre of it). We went to Charleston which is in...Sussex. Not just in Sussex, but all of 20 mins drive from Brighton. It took us just under 2 hours to get there. So well done me on living right near it all these years and only going to visit once I moved all this distance away from it.

Wikipedia makes obscure reference to an "unconventional family" living in the house which fucks me off for a number of reasons. Firstly, the stupidity of calling anything other than a traditionally nuclear heterosexual family "unconventional" when almost no families during the entirety of human history have fitted that shape. Secondly, because the tour you go on at Charleston, and all the literature on the history of the place on offer, could not be less coy about the arrangement of the relationships between adults in that household.

Vanessa Bell (Virginia Woolf's sister) moved into the house with her lover/boyfriend/beau Duncan Grant. She was married, but amicably seperated from her husband (Clive Bell) and brought her two children with her. Duncan Grant brought his lover/boyfriend David Garnett. The three adults, plus two children, all lived happily there during WWI when Grant and Garnet were conscientious objectors and worked as farm labourers. Whilst there, Vanessa Bell gave birth to a daughter (Angelica) by Grant (but she was raised believing Clive Bell was her father). After a few years back in London, Grant and Vanessa Bell moved back to the farmhouse and this time Clive Bell came to live with them as well. Ultimately, Angelica ended up marrying Garnett, and then found out he'd been her biological father's lover, which she felt as happy about as you'd imagine

There is, therefore, a very queer connection at Charleston and I was really pleased that all the adults were introduced to us, with photos, at the start of the tour and there was absolutely no value judgements on the relationships between them as more or less valid or significant. This was a welcome way of telling history and the women I went with all felt similarly.

After this, and as Storm Dennis started making itself known, we piled back into the car and headed into Brighton. Evidently this was a pre-agreed part of the plan but it hadn't been communicated with me so I suffered a gut kick/wave of homesickness as we drove in. Was difficult not to call any one of a number of people to ask if I could come crash at theirs that night/abandon my road trip people and catch a train back to Southampton on Sunday instead. I ended up playing tour guide because large groups of people/lack of leadership on where to go/my deep familiarity with the city versus their passing or out of date knowledge/a low level anxiety which had nothing to do with any of this meant I just needed to sort everything out.

I thought I was doing ok for not being too bossy - and maybe I was - but when we got back to Southampton and they dropped me off they thanked me for being "leader" which made me squirm. Later that night one of them contacted me to say a few things including; "you must be everyone's number one travelling companion - you notice everything!"

In principle this is a lovely compliment and I thanked her for it. But it contrasted with how I had felt all day - that I was completely exhausted, overwhelmed with the number of things I felt I needed to keep managing (time keeping, social interactions with people I hardly know, directions for driver in and around Brighton, suggestions and directions for where we could all walk whilst on foot in Brighton), and I was really 'switched on' sensory wise and unable to stop noticing everything. It's like an assault.

By the time we got back into the car to drive back to Southampton it was mercifully getting dark and I could sit silently and rest a bit. Except they noticed I wasn't joining in with the conversation and ask if I'm asleep and blah. 

Everyone is really nice, and then I have just nothing left. And even things which are compliments end up being about things I've noticed about myself to but am not finding enjoyable/pleasurable/don't want to continue.

All of this was especially interesting - odd? - because of Charleston. That farmhouse, stuffed with books and paintings and a beautiful garden, tucked away from the pace of life all around it, with this wonderful set of romantic and platonic relationships at the heart of it represents just the most perfect way of life I can imagine. It was pure sanctuary. The best future I can imagine for myself does include a lot less noise and movement, and a lot more connection to creativity and nature, and space and time to do that. Not individually isolated, but not needing to be in the midst of this kind of pace of social interaction which demands (or perhaps prompts) so much energy from me.

Richard James Edwards, 44 today.

I half love imagining he's gone the James Dean Bradfield-ageing route* and become decidedly rotund but there's every chance he, like Sean Moore, is blessed with Peter Pan genes and looks as though he hasn't aged a day.

Without Richey, the Manics would not be in the world right now.  His furious energy and attacks upon the media propelled them into the public eye and then he, and Nicky, captivated the country and indeed the world with their beauty and words, whilst James and Sean made sure we listened. 

His unflinching, uncompromising intellect created a brand that young, beautiful sluts flocked to.  He wrote a lyric about group sex in the Kremlin. He scared the bejesus out of SteveLSteve with the now infamous 4REAL moment. He made bad, contradictory, stupid decisions. And he made beauty, in many, many ways; he understood the power of an image, and he understood the weight words can carry.

Would the O2 gig I attended on Saturday have happened if he were around for his 44th birthday? Maybe, maybe not.  But would I have got wasted on vodka beforehand were it not for Richey?! Would I have chuckled as I heard 16,000 people chant/sing "we are the useless sluts that they mould" had Richey (and indeed Nicky) not simultaneously brought such humour and gravitas to those lines? Would I read Camus and Nietzsche were it not for Richey? Would I always feel safe to wear short sleeves in the company of Manics fans were it not for Richey's articulate honesty on the subject of self harm and depression - would I have the words I do to describe and process those times in my life? It's a simple 'nope' in answer to all of those.

We 'young' fans feel the loss of Richey through Nicky, James and Sean.  We feel it in the absence of the dense lyrics that were his trademark. We feel it in the lightness and intensity of every moment of Manics fandom.  

And it is with that sense of melancholy I hope and wish with all my heart that wherever he is today, he is enjoying his birthday, with humour and happiness and intelligence.




* For reference, see impossibly beautiful young James and impossibly middle-aged current James.

I keep going over this extract in my mind. I think because it hits on something very key in how I think and how I look at the world.

As with a lot of characterisation in Pratchett, Mister Nutt's preoccupation with gaining worth is initially approached with humour and gradually becomes key to the understanding we have of him as a character and, as in this case, leaves you with a shadow of that character in your mind that cannot be shaken off. I think it is also important to note that Mister Nutt is an orc - a violent murderous uncivilised beast with claws and the ability to bend the rules of the world around him - except through concerted effort and a deep seated desire to accumulate worth he suppresses these 'innate' instincts; he tries, in short, to be better than is expected of him and to be the best he can be, however hard that might be to achieve. Dealt with by anyone but Pratchett in any context than the discworld such a characterisation and motivation would be sickeningly saccharine, but I think it manages to be much more astute than that.

But this wasn't meant to be a book review.

I am still jolly unhappy (I enjoy the English language which made that construction possible). And I am still taking things to heart that other people might say I shouldn't - but I am and I feel justified in beating myself up over them. With this in mind, it strikes me that in order to succeed in this rejuvenation of the self and my life I must focus, like Mister Nutt, on the most effective way to accumulate worth.

I have been discussing with a colleague the possibility of us going travelling somewhere exciting this year - at the moment we're looking at a trip through Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia - Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro.  There are lots of buts - right now I don't have a valid passport and the trip is costly.  We also don't know if we'd get along after 2 weeks travelling and not enough sleep.  But the prospect of travelling does throw up some questions, whilst I feel fulfilled after a trip, it is largely because I feel I have participated in the world and made strides toward educating myself in the diversity and variation of life on earth and met people - mostly other travellers - far outside the normal run of things.  But travel is categorically not about me making the world a better place or accumulating worth.

What to do then? I know I don't have it in me to make the big gestures, do the great deeds, save the world.  As an example, my friend who got kidnapped last year spent, after his release and subsequent repatriation, all his waking hours getting a new passport so he could fly straight back out to rejoin the convoy.  I could not do that - and that's ok, if we could all do that the world would be a very different place and the blockade of Gaza would have crumbled under sheer weight of numbers some time ago.  But how does one make a notable, measurable difference in the world when you can't make noticeable, measurable gestures?

I try always to treat everyone I come into contact with with respect and kindness, but I'm also a person and in a bad mood sometimes and paranoid sometimes and worn down by some people not subscribing to that philosophy, so that's never going to be a perfect score.  I try to be mindful of my actions and my choices in the world, to ensure the employment I undertake is not morally reprehensible by association or otherwise.  I eat ethically - choosing local produce whenever I can and abiding by a strict vegetarian diet.  These are all things people list and take comfort in - I've heard them do it - but in my attempt to overhaul my life and myself I keep coming back to the notion of worth and the sense of my own failure in that respect as the core of the thing I want to change.

I think there is something to be said for being in love and being romantically loved that allays ones fears of worthlessness; an absolute certainty that for one person at least your existence is of worth and value.  Which, I suppose, brings me neatly back round to my last post and the words of Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo, namely, that we cannot act without a sense of our own value and we cannot achieve a sense of our own value without acting.

 In 26 days I will be 26. Struggling to have any positive feelings about this.

Today I visited the job centre to transfer my claim from the Brighton office. As with the previous visit the advisor was rude and...stupid.  He mocked my signature for looking silly (I know, wut?) and kept laughing at the course title of my Masters (Sexual Dissidence in Literature and Culture) before needing convincing that yes, that is what it says on my degree.  He snorted once more and said "I won't write that on your file" and simply typed 'M.A.'

I spent the afternoon with my brothers, which was lovely.  Although we all had a bit of a weird psychic moment where brother 2 and I left his flat to surprise brother 1 with a visit - 1 didn't know I was even going to be in town today - we arrived to 1's flat but he wasn't in.  So we nipped into the nearby Asda and received a call from 2's partner who was still at their flat.  1 had just arrived.  This means that we both left our respective departure points at the same time, having not planned to meet or visit and all three of us deciding on the spur of the moment to visit at that exact time.  Weirdness.

I got home to my parent's house and my Mum tells me that the school at which she works, the same place I had an interview the other week, want me to work there in some sort of admin role.  Apparently it pays better than the one I interviewed for and I won't have to interview again.  So obviously I'll take it if they offer it to me - don't look a gift horse and all that.  

I was planning on going to the cinema with brother 2 tomorrow for Orange Wednesday to see Salt.  We were going to go to a matinee because it's cheaper and he needs to get home at a reasonable hour to go to bed as his schizophrenia medication makes him sleep for at least 12 hours and he's at work at 7am the following morning.  ANYWAY, I'd be leaving at 1:15pm for the cinema, not unreasonable that I won't be constantly in the house between 8:30am and 4pm, surely? My parents believe I'm being reckless with a solid job offer and I should arrange to stay in ALL DAY.  This is particularly stupid given my Mum could just say to the recruiting woman tomorrow morning "oh, she's only in until 1pm as she has to go to the job centre" or just "go out".  Not unreasonable, right?  Parents continued repeating same thing.

Eventually I packed up my stuff and went upstairs to my room, once again - I've spent a significant portion (if not all) of 5 of the 6 evenings I have been living here for, in my room (and the sixth night was spent at a friends house).  I may as well have got a bedsit and stayed in Brighton.

I am, despite my above refutation, thinking about looking a gift horse in the mouth.  I have spent the last 3 years trapped in a job I hate in a city I love.  I say trapped because of the working pattern of 1 day on, 1 day off, 4 days on, 1 day off, repeat didn't allow me time or energy to look for new jobs with necessary zeal.  Financially, of course, I was also trapped, unable to afford luxuries or save any money, but earning just enough to pay rent and bills; making myself unemployed in Brighton would have been suicide/was unthinkable.  But the gleaming, shining, bouncing, glowing star of optimism that convinced me to move back up North was the idea I would have space and time to find a job I might enjoy, as well as live in a place that would allow me to save for the now mythologised PhD.

In short, whilst the prospect of a job falling into my lap seems a delight, I can't help but sigh a sad sigh and prepare myself to be reinserted into just the working environment I so gleefully fled in Brighton.  I feel trapped all over again and I haven't even had the job offer.

I was meant to be having some sort of careers guidance meeting with an advisor a week on Friday.  I was feeling really positive about that.  And I was planning on going to Nottingham on Thursday to register with some agencies in the hope of striking out into publishing/editing industry - copy writing? Yes please.  But agencies and waiting for the career you've picked to turn up requires having an empty calendar - you have to be able to answer the phone call that says "we have a 3 month contract for a copy writer in x, can you start on Monday?" with "yes" not, "no, I have to give my one months notice first".

I keep getting trapped in this stupid fucking economy with my fucking useless (although, apparently amusing) degree and attempts to break out of it last LESS THAN A MONTH.  I just want a good job.  A graduate job - £20,000 p/a is not an unrealistic salary expectation.  What was the point in going to University, getting myself a £15,000 student debt, when I could have got a job at a local paper or something and worked my way up.  I could have done a degree at 50 if it was still something I felt I needed to do.  Instead I'm completely fucking stuck.

I'm single. And I'm 26(ish) and I'm living with my parents again - the latter being my choice in principle, by only because I thought it was a radical move that'd give me the opportunity to break out of the have no money-get paid-pay rent-have no money cycle of finances I simply couldn't break free of in Brighton.  And here I am, feeling more hopelessly stuck than I have done since I made the decision to move if I didn't find a new job in Brighton back in May.


ETA: Oh, and the rats aren't settling in nearly as well as I hoped they would and the only time they come to me is when they are cowering in fear and want to hide from everything/nothing in my arms/under my legs, rather than for kisses and tickles and hugs like they used to.  I feel fantastically guilty for upsetting them so much

 My ambitions in my life have always been basically the same; partner, cats, dog, house, car, garden, lazy Sundays, books, stability,

It seems that I can never hold on to more than one of these things at once.  Which is...disappointing to say the very least.

Over the years one thing seems more urgent than another and I find myself longing for its realisation.  Every fibre of my being desires it and every moment of my spare time is spent in my imagination.  So vivid are these fancies that I can almost feel the chill in the air as I sit down in the undecorated, sparsely furnished living room of the house I own for the first time.  I can hear the dog sneeze with excitement in the kitchen as I put my shoes on in the hallway to take him for a walk.  I can feel the weight of the paint cans as I heave them out of the boot of my car one sunny Saturday afternoon, met at the door by the cat who rubs round my ankles and I clutch the paint cans tighter for fear of dropping them on the cat.  Tripping over the books stacked against every wall before I've had chance to put the bookcases up.

And then a customer shouts at me, and I go and serve them, and grimace through their rudeness, or politeness, as it goes.  And I am brought back to reality with an uncomfortable bump.

Right now I'm trying to work out the shortest route to buying a house and having that.  I think shared equity would be the only way I'd be able to afford a deposit.  And I know for a fact I wouldn't be able to afford even the smallest possible deposit on a place in Brighton.  So I need to move back to the East Midlands.  Most often my little fantasy pastes in a house on the housing association estate they built in my village about 14 years ago.  Is that realistic? Is that what I want?

These fantasies, desires, hopes....dreams, whatever you want to call them are the reason I hoard books.  I just book a new bookcase, because even though I might only be in Brighton for another 4 months, it's always something that will take me just a hair's breadth closer to the dream.

In these uncertain times, I really don't even know what is realistic to hope for any more.  I have friends who never left the East Mids who have jobs and own their own houses, they got in before the recession, and they have been in full time work for the last 7 years.

Don't get me wrong, I don't regret leaving, I definitely don't.  I don't regret my degree, or my Masters.  I don't regret living in Brighton when money has been so tight.  I just wish these things didn't come at the expense of stability.  I wish my Masters hadn't coincided so completely with the beginning of the recession where all graduate training schemes were more or less withdrawn the day I graduated.  I wish I hadn't made myself apparently unemployable by pursuing the further study of a niche subject purely because it interested me - but I don't wish I hadn't done it.

I know I could compare myself to a hundred and one of my peers and see they are all in the same situation - I know they are, I recognise it as a stark fact.  But 'being like every one else' is not the motivation, so such comparisons aren't useful, they alter nothing.  I want these things because I want them.

I do, however, recognise, that all of these dreams are attached to one very clear payoff in my mind; they will make me happy.

Happy.

It's an empty word, it can never be all of the things it claims to signify.  You can't have all the things happy means at once.  And you sure as hell don't get happy from moving somewhere in order to get one box ticked off whilst simultaneously unticking a load of other boxes.  

And me? I don't get happy from any of the brilliant get-happy-quick schemes I come up with.  I don't get happy by fleeing one place to the next.  I don't get happy from another new bookcase.  I won't get happy when I get the house, the flat, the girl, the dog, the cat, the book, the garden, the Sunday.  I won't.  'Happiness', illusive as it is, can be achieved by degrees and in the small moments, but for me? It's not gonna come just yet.  Because the days where I get home and just cry keep happening.  The days where I stand in front of the mirror to brush my hair and it takes me 5 minutes to actually lift my arm, keep happening.

But because the road to a place where I don't feel like that is so long, because the journey is unmapped and unclear; because on the days where I cry the hurdles to overcome seem so absolute, so huge; because all of these things I keep on looking for the quick fix.  And the quick fix is imagining how utterly my life would be transformed the day I signed the mortgage on my house, or rolled over on a Sunday morning to see the face of the woman I love for the hundredth time, knowing I'd see her again every day for the rest of our lives.  


These are my most favourite daydreams.

A very dear friend just blogged about his response to heteronormativity and the heteronormative male ideal. It was a jolly good post, which you should read. Being just that kind of person I took one comment and blew it out of proportion, because it interested me. Instead of hijacking his blog, I decided to post it here. Apologies if this is a little jumbled, I wrote it in a remarkably short space of time and only had the ideas I express as my fingers were hitting keys, I intend to revisit some of what I've said at a later date.


To say one wishes to avoid a certain, stereotypical way of being implies that there is a clear and well defined 'other'. And if that is lacking, there is at least a clear way of knowing what it is one is distancing oneself from. Whilst heteronormative gender performance and relationship forms are common, and in being common feel easy to deconstruct, there are nuances which can be erased by the broad stroke of a queer agenda.

Common is often synonymous with unthinking. Understandably so when you look at the most vocal proponents of the status quo; the [hated] Daily Mail and it's readers is an example which rushed to the forefront of my mind. One also cannot neglect to mention the culture of the 'lad' and the associated press of lads' mags, the page three girl and football related sponsorship and advertising. In short, we glance at a culture which evolves without moving forward and grows via the insidious ooze of repetition and we feel we know it, absolutely. The moment we see the dragon for what it is, we believe we have seen the route to slaying it; produce a counter-culture founded on the same principles of social interaction and familial structures but subvert each of these on the individual and group level. In short, we try to queer it.

The logic behind this seems sound at first glance: why are heteronormative relationships and gender roles so common? Because the model of heteronormative relationships and gender are baked right into our culture and society, they are numerous, they are supported by every fibre of society. One of the most common, if not the most common narratives in our culture is boy meets girl. Boy meets girl. Not boy meets boy, not girl meets girl, not boy meets girl and they then meet another girl. Not any other permutation.

The effect of this narrative on the individual level is shocking when you pause and look at your own life. At the moments of uncertainty, the moments when you feel like a social retard and cling onto whatever model of social interaction you can find, you will most likely find that model is a heteronormative one. Years and years of repetition mean that heteronormativity is not just common, it just *is*. We do it because....because we do it. Heteronormativity is self legitimating; if we follow those rules things will work out. Recently, when I found myself single and entering intimate relationships with men for the first time in 6 years I reverted to what I knew; there exists, in my head and I'm sure yours, a complex list of dos and donts for interactions with the opposite sex. We may reject them, we may belittle and ridicule them, but we can all identify and perhaps describe some cardinal rules for romantic interaction. They are there, baked right in.

So, the little voice of dissent suggests, reject them! Turn them on their head. Ignore that prudish voice which tells you girls should be girly, shouldn't be assertive, shouldn't....do. But where does that leave us? Rejecting heteronormativity surely only achieves one thing: we aren't being heteronormative. But the relationship to heteronormative remains a dichotomous one: we either do, or we don't. Furthermore, by prescribing that gender roles should be delineated, as the front line of queering culture often does, we run into language which starts boxing people up again - yes there are now more than two boxes, but are the boxes still there? It's hard to fight against a system unless you propose an alternative, it's easy to get people on side when you show them an alternative which is clearly expressed; "don't expect everyone to fit into a girl/boy binary! Let people choose their own gender identity, like bigender, or intersex, or trans, or cis, or fluid!" People can understand that, we're presenting our argument in an contained and quantifiable manner. It seems to be a step in the right direction to say "don't say two genders, say many! And here are some examples" but are we in fact aiming for the middle ground before we've tried to achieve the ideal?

To me, the place we should be going, the place where heteronormativity does not exert influence is comparable to anarchy. To present queer family models as an antidote to heteronormative family models is still to present a model. Whilst making our campaign intelligible to those we are attempting to liberate is important, we need a clearer sense of purpose. Why aim to remove heteronormative models of being only to replace them with more delineated, but still fairly concrete ones?

We need to view heteronormativity as continuous with non-heteronormative behaviours and identities. The binary of queer/heteosexual was established by a heteronormative society, why are we still playing on their terms? Let me elucidate my point of view with an example: my brother is in a heteronormative relationship, but his performance of gender is sometimes very queer. Is he playing at being non-heteronormative or is he non-heteronormative? This seems like a logical question, and one which encourages us to question what it means to be a heteronormative male. But what I propose is we don't question whether someone's behaviour is inherently heteronormative or queer, rather we ask 'why ask?' Am I a heteronormative woman? In some respects; yes, in others; no. A better question is "am I compelled to act in a certain way depending on my surroundings?" And the answer to that is 'sometimes'. In this way we can identify the places where a prescriptive, restrictive force suppresses a natural expression - and there we can target society.

In short, what if we were to fight it, not flying the opposing standards of 'heteronormative' and 'queer' but by proposing absolute freedom of expression and creating narratives about the instinctive and impulsive expression of ways of relating to each other. With a broad stroke we sweep away the dichotomy and create through imaginative desire the new system in which there is only a spectrum. Instead of the deification of the twin pillars of 'heteronormative' and 'queer' we level the ground. We don't distance ourselves from heteronormative as though it were an infectious, terminal condition but we embrace it and engage with it, forcing it to look in the mirror and see that whilst we can choose to live that way, we can choose to live slightly differently to it, or dramatically differently to it. As long as heteronormative ways of being do not continue to hold unchallenged power then there is surely no harm in associating with it, we can resist it's normalising force without needing to demolish every single brick of its edifice.

I am so afraid of missing things. I live in terror of not having the time or capability to do all the things I want to.

I want to go to Cuba, before the Castro's die and communism collapses. I want to go to New York and see the Empire State Building. I want to drive across America. I want to go on an Arctic cruise. I want to learn to snowboard. I want to go back to New Zealand. I want to go back to Brazil and go to the Amazon. I want to go interrailing through the bits of Western Europe I haven't been to and go on to Eastern Europe. I want to go to Russia - St. Petersburg in particular. I want to see the Northern Lights.

PhD. Publish a paper. Read a lot more books. Have a library. Own a house. Tend my very own garden outside said house. Get a cat. And maybe a dog.

( This gets a little repetative )

I need to have some certainties, I need for at least one of the things in that list at the beginning of the entry to be in hand, to be guaranteed. I need to be able to sit down at night and say "yes, there's a lot of things wrong, there are a lot things up in the air, but this? See this, right here, this is sorted. Everything else can go to hell because I've got this one thing, and it's sure, it's sorted, it's permanent."

I'm impatient.