This is exactly how I feel right now.  I don’t mean right now in this moment; I mean right now in general.  I mean this sums up the sense that I have constantly.  I’m both scuppered and free.  At any instant I may hit a brick wall or discover opportunity.  In a way this is how things always are.  Impossible, amazing.  How do you reconcile the fact that you always want what you don’t have with the fact that you have something special?  You don’t, because this is how we have always been, this is how we always will be.  You just sit there and thing, everything is impossible, anything is possible. You think that until you don’t know what anything means anymore.

Then, I suppose, you go from there, wherever there is.  Is that right?  I don't know.

What I do know is this: a few weeks ago, the Man showed me this article about luck.  I don't often react well to things that he shows me.  Perhaps I'd like to think that I don't need guidance; that I could do better; that he's not-so-subtly trying to tell me something.  In any case I want to see flaws in the articles he shows me, and I saw a thousand flaws in this one.  I saw this one as a personal attack.  If you're naturally negative or naturally anxious (and who can deny that I am both?), I pretended the article was saying, you're fucked.  He tried to tell me that wasn't it at all, but I was in a foul mood, and I'd convinced myself, and that was that.  (That's always that).

But then last night he said to me, you're more positive lately than you have been.  You're happier.  It's nice.

Yes, it is nice, and yes, I am, and no, I don't know what it's related to, exactly, but I do know that on the "everything is impossible/anything is possible" scale, I'm leaning towards the anything is possible side.  What this means, specifically, is vague, and hardly matters.  What it means generally is what he said.  More positive.  Happier.  Nice.  Everything is so bloody hard.  And at every moment there's the possibility of something.  I can just about deal with that.  I can just about feel the tremble of possibility.  Who can say what luck's got to do with it?

 

 

*Thanks to a good friend for helping me work this one out tonight...

❧

I’m a fan of the to-do list.  A big fan.  Partly I like making lists because they give me something to do during the day that is about work but not actually work, if you see what I mean.  I can just about get away with making endless lists of shit-to-get-done in the office because, in theory, once I’ve made my lists, I’ll start actually doing the shit.  (In. Theory.)

But also I like the poetry of a to-do list.  Funny titles, clever bullet points, drawings, plans, a record of a day (a week, a month).  The simple (buy new toothbrush) to the huge (finish manuscript).  I don’t make distinctions between the importance of different tasks; I might well buy a new toothbrush this evening, but equally I might well decide that my teeth can stay covered in plaque for the sake of writing another chapter.

My lists are not organized; no, this would be missing the point.  The point of a good to-do list is not really to create order.  The point of a good to-do list is to give thoughts some space.  A good to-do list is like the Pensieve in Harry Potter (yes, really)–it’s like pulling thoughts out of your head, putting them somewhere safe, where they won’t bother you and you won’t bother them, and then being able to revisit them whenever you want.

A good to-do list cannot be made to look neat or tidy.  At any moment you might need to add to it or subtract from it.  You might need to write, “make new to-do list” on it because it’s so crowded; but you won’t make that new to-do list, not immediately.  You’ll know when it’s time, when your priorities have shifted, when the clutter outweighs the usefulness of the list.  Then you’ll start again.

❧

Not often, but sometimes, it occurs to me that I am very, incredibly, out of touch with the rest of the world.  It has always been thus, but living in Oxford makes it easy to forget that once I was a geeky Converse-clad girl with a bad hairdo. (I am now a geeky Converse-clad girl with a better hairdo. And sometimes I wear boots.)  My life has become something completely ridiculous, in a rather wonderful way.  Take this, for instance: one of the highlights of my existence is the rush I get when I swipe my card at the Bodleian and open my bag so that they can check to make sure that I’m not trying to smuggle a bottle of water in and walk up the stairs and smell the books.  And there are all these other people there! Doing the same thing! Loving the books! And outside (this is the best bit) there are a bunch of tourists who can’t come inside.  It’s a perverse (and very British) revenge of the nerds; and I’M PART OF THE CLUB!  I actually have a special walking to-and-from the library swagger.  Just so that everyone will know that I belong. (Sometimes, but not often, I even manage to swagger without tripping over my own feet.)

❧

And then there was the time we hid under my parent’s bed so that she wouldn’t have to go home.  I don’t know why I remember this now, particularly.  There are children playing hide-and-seek in the house (not our children, not our house).  I guess somehow that makes me think of this one afternoon, a long time ago.  A friend of mine had been over for the day, and now her mother was coming to pick her up and we did not want this to happen.  Somehow every time a friend was picked up by a parent, it seemed like it would be the last time we would ever have such a chance to play and be carefree.  I remember tears and tantrums; perhaps it was a manifestation of only-child loneliness, perhaps simply a particular quirk of character, a shimmer of the anxiety and self-doubt that was to come.

But this friend (another only child) seemed to understand; and then her mother arrived, and it all seemed too awful.  I can’t remember who suggested it first but suddenly we were under the bed in my parent’s room.  I don’t know where our mothers were; perhaps they were in the living room, having a coffee and a chat, oblivious to our plan, thinking we were playing quietly in my room until the very last moment when we would have to be parted.  But I know that after a time they called for us, and we didn’t come, and that was okay; most of the time, children don’t come the first time you call.  But then they called again.  And then, eventually, they scoured the house for us, and then in panic they ran out into the street and began to ask the neighbours, have you seen our daughters?

And the more we could hear their panic the more frightened we became of revealing ourselves.  We wanted to crawl out from under the bed, but we couldn’t.  We couldn’t face the shame.  We would be in so much trouble.  We had done something so very wrong, and out of such an innocent motivation.  We scarcely knew how it could all have become so complicated so quickly.

We were in trouble, of course.  We suffered both the wrath and the relief of our parents.  Then, after awhile, we weren’t in trouble any more.  After awhile we were older and after awhile longer we were living in different cities and hardly even knew each other any more.  But still, we’d done something very foolish together once.

And now here I am in a thatched English cottage, thinking of that day.  Things are funny.

❧