Thanks For The Cheer

This Blog arrives courtesy of: My mother, for reminding me that it exists, and Philip Hansel, for bolstering my ego and persuading me that it might be a good idea to update once in a while.

So: Cambridge says "Hello," as do I.

The wind keeps blowing from across the Atlantic, the sky keeps trying to put on a good display when the sun hits the horizon around 3:45pm, the rest of the time it rains, and the chickens instinctively cruise the yard in separate factions, black and white, and I write more letters than I know what to do with, sometimes I eat crumpets for breakfast, most days it's tea and nothing more, I think about sailing, I jump on the trampoline and get very wet, I get sick, and then get better, I play Scrabble with my Godfather, I remember that somewhere in the world it's still sunny, I think of how quickly the last few years have flown by, I knit, I knit some more, I open the drapes, I close the drapes, I take the bus and read coffeetable tomes on tall ships and oceanic navigation, I dream about trying to moor longboats around luxury yachts with prehistoric alligators who are supposedly no longer hungry for the taste of sailors as my Captain spontaneously combusts for no apparent reason and doesn't seem too concerned.

See, it wasn't too wierd until that last one. I swaer it seemed perfectly logical while I was asleep. My dreams have been vivid and hectic these last few weeks, leaving me strangely satisfied when I wake up, knowing that I've seen my shipmates and my friends and the children I learned my ABC's with in some capacity at least. It staves off the feeling of being cut off. Some days are fabulous because I hear from someone on break in Ojai, someone traveling to the mountains in Australia, someone weathering the winter in France, dealing with potential in-laws in Washington, navigating the 5 down to Los Angeles, waiting for the weather to clear, studying for finals, taking a photo a day, heading off on a New Year retreat...Anything beyond the fire in the grate and the the rain relentlessly flowing down the gutters outside. Anything that reminds me of the family I've built up over the years. They're an amazing crowd of beautiful, lively, intelligent, silly people and I love them all dearly, perhaps I don't tell them enough. Driving me to write and tell them now from 8,000 miles away.

Alysia wins first prize for writing back to me on this leg of the journey. Her postcard and letter arrived today, carefully forwarded from home, full of sunny Australian news, making me dream of Sespe backpacking and Mount Brewer in the snow. But now is the time for some practicality. I begin work on Tuesday at Borders bookstore, earning minimum wage here, which sneakily translates to $10 an hour at home. Thank you, failing economy. With the money I earn I'll be able to finish my trip with cash to spare for a ticket North when the time comes to rejoin my precious sailorly contingent and live it up away from the hard for a change. I get to wear a shiny red Borders shirt and spend eight hours a day in the company of books. Lots of books. I should mention that the particular Borders I am employed at is the largest in Europe. Oh yes. Lots of books for me.

This is probably all the sensical writing I can manage for today. Slacking off on journaling for the sake of letter-writing leads to a surplus of nostalgic rambling, which unfortunately must be emptied before I reach critical mass and go super nova.

Other things, like holly and the distinctive smell of tinsel and London and trains and dresses and just remembering to breathe every day. Taking anew the farmhouse I remember from age 6, sitting in a vortex of bubble bath and giggling, hot water bottles, a little more tar off the Turk's Head each day, playing with calligraphic pens, helping to decorate the village hall in tatty cellophane, stringing ornaments 25 feet up a ladder, flashbacks to countless light hangs in countless spaces, Shakespearean Festival nights and where are they now? All of those power tools, interns, flats, crusted rollers, wads of gaff tape, baseball caps, memorized lines, bad Italian accents, tambourines, innocent crushes. Standing still as the world flows on around me. It gives one a strange sort of perspective.

Haircut here, frostbite there, new top, old pants, replacing shoelaces, knitting handwarmers, new handwriting, same news, remembering to wash my hands, forgetting what sort of cake I had for my eighth birthday, listening to the same music, superimposing different connotations, running home in the five pm darkness, could be any time of night for all anyone can tell, understanding the meaning of perpetual summer, resisting the temptation to run home and jump on the Lady and sail away, to book the next flight to South Africa and regain feeling in my fingers again, knowing I should head to the kitchen and defrost, but deciding just a few more words, just a little more thought, saying goodbye and hello to all these different parts of myself.

This is what the world is all about: Hello and goodbye. Goodbye and hello.

Just keep breathing.

Deep In The Night

It's been a wierd day. I spent a lot of it reading Yes Man in Waterstone's, looking up periodically to see how the clientele of the cafe had been replaced with newer folk. The pleasant weather left with the Fringe and now all is grey and rainy. The streets are comparatively deserted. I came out of Waterstone's and walked the short distance down Princes Street to Henderson's for a late lunch. I'd brought the Free Hugs sign. I cracked it open.

And then something strange happened.

People avoided my gaze. They walked around me. Nobody smiled. They stode past staring at the pavement. The only people who opened their arms or acknowledged my existence at all were a couple of clipboard-holding volunteers from CARE who were out trying to recruit people for their organization. I guess they know what it's like, being ignored by pedestrians all day because you're carrying a dangerous-looking piece of office equipment.

Could the difference really be that great between Old and New Town? It appeared to be so. This couldn't just be put down to the end of the Festival. The occasional person who accidentally caught my eye invariably got a big smile from me and, in same cases, I could see them wanting to smile back, mouth twisted in a small, stifled expression of amusement or approval or longing, but none of them seemed able to open up. I was a stranger. I was dangerous. "Those hugs could be an excuse to take my wallet," they think, "Or squirt acid in my face or cover me in anthrax or turn me into a newt!"

And so where I'd been welcomed with open arms on the High Street, I was shut out and ignored on the other side of the Mound -- not half a mile away. Walking down Queen Street I got a few honks and some waves from people in cars, perhaps emboldened by their metal encasings, but that was it. I ended up catching a bus home around 6 and sitting morosely on the sofa writing letters. That cheered me up a bit, but the whole day had a really surreal tone to it.

Now I've been plopped down in a cosy armchair scanning the internet for remnants of my life in Ojai. Everyone I know has scattered themselves on the four winds to college. Everyone has left. Myself included -- but I wrote no farewell messages, had no goodbye parties, exchanged no class schedules. I left for different countries, not different educational systems. By the time I pack my room away for that journey all my friends and classmates will be world-weary Sophomores. My Freshman compatriots will be a full year younger than I, and considering how much diffilculty I already have enjoying the company of the majority of my contemporaries, this doesn't bode well.

Will I survive the return to academia? Especially in a world as intense as Reed's? Freedom has engulfed me here. I am educating myself in life, in survival and adventure, not Classics and essay-writing. Even after I'm home I'll be back on tall ships for the summer, and that only means more love of freedom and life on the open sea to miss when I return to the reality of the hard with a distinct thud.

Kicking my head back against the sagging couch cushions, ear bus replaying songs from my early days. Songs I last heard out of scratchy record players and on cassette tapes. While watching a kid who had taught himself to swordfight with a broom write poetry. While eating pomegranites and slices of cold watermelon with gusto on the stairs. While watching my backyard burn. Faces of friends from the first grade run past my mind's eye. Sun-drenched sailing ship playgrounds. Leprechauns. Teachers. The swoop of my first costume on the hot blacktop. Waterfights during summer school. Dead pets. People I passed in the street today. Stewards at aquariums. Fish at aquariums. Sailors. Walking at midnight across the Saddle in barefeet. Sunsets. The view from Arthur's Seat. The smell of waking up in the Sierras on a morning full of snow. Mud baths in the Ojai summer. Old pajamas. Silk pillowcases. Christmas in my living room. Being proposed to on the edge of an icy mountain lake. Playing soccer with an orange in the rain on a street now devoid of the people I knew living on it. Best friends turned into strangers on foreign continents. My first show in the Zalk Theater. Immediate soul to soul connections struggling across the misunderstanding of great distance.

Where does all this go? I feel like I have this terrible responsibility to remember everything sometimes. I'll sit for an hour just thinking about all my memories. And even as I grasp the ones I've got, new ones swim up. Completely forgotten things. Memories that used to be standards. Favorites. Which I have forgotten for what? A week? A month? A year? And I'm only 18. Jesus.

Tomorrow I've got a quest, a purpose. Things will be better with a night's sleep. And, truth be told, I enjoy the time to think. Even if it's during late-night internet binges induced by too much tea before bed. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, really.

At least I'm not a moon tickler.

And for the explanation behind that enigmatic last remark I suggest you all go out and a) Hug a stranger, then b) Read Yes Man. Because it's bloody good.