Dear Reader(s)

I know this blog has been depressing lately.  I’m not exactly sorry for it, because, you know, things have been totally out of my control lately.

That said, I still hope you have a very wonderful Christmas and a tremendous New Year.

And to you, 2010, please don’t let the door hit you where the good lord split you.

On your way crappiest year ever, and please tell 2011 that we all expect better.

Oh yes,

I forgot to tell you, the Godspeed show last Monday was stupendous.  Seriously, seriously amazing.  Really.

I bought a t-shirt.  It’s green with a gold design.  I like it a bunch.

The weekend involved Christmas antics.  A Christmas curry in East Dulwich with friends and then a Christmas open house in Peckham with other friends and attendance at the Christmas party and live broadcast of Voice of Americans in Nunhead on Resonance FM.  This was held at The Old Nun’s Head, in Nunhead.  I was there in official capacity as I was drafted into holding a lyric sheet for our friend Edori of Edori Fertig and the Sunny Side Up Band.  I still drank a fair bit of wine though.

But, unsurprisingly, even though all these things are fun and I am happy to have been present and accounted for because I enjoyed myself.  I mean it, I did enjoy myself.  I’m still sad.  Like I said, unsurprising.  It’s a very melancholy holiday season this year, and since I’m often melancholy on my best days, that’s saying quite a lot.

I miss everything about my dad right now, even the things I hated.  Even though I’m not as overwhelmingly sad as I was just 5 short weeks ago, it’s still a constant  undercurrent.  It’s supposed to be, this is grief, and grief is horrible. 

I’m getting through.  I find myself become even more attached to the small trinkets I have that belonged to his mother.  I’ve been wearing one of her brooches nearly every day.  I’ll be making cookies from one of her old recipes this week.  And I’ll almost certainly be looking at lots of old pictures and having a cry or 20.  It’s okay (not really) I’m getting through (really) and it’ll still be a good holiday season.  Cocktailmas / Christmakah lives on, it’ll just be a bit less boisterous this year.

Poetry corner

I first read this poem in 1996 when I was 18.  It’s been one of my favourites, if not my very favourite, ever since.  I’ve been thinking of it more and more lately.

 

Separation

by W. S. Merwin

Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color.

Things to look forward to

1. I am going to see Godspeed You Black Emperor tonight.  I don’t care that I am still feeling a bit oogy and tired from the flu that someone whose name starts with J and rhymes with Airamy gave me last week, I am going and it is going to be good.
2. There is a box full of goodness making its way to London from Michigan for me.  It has dried chillies and some of my dad’s old t-shirts and an old brooch of my grandmother’s and I want it to get here now, but am also enjoying (somewhat anxiously) anticipating its arrival.
3. Chrismakah / Cocktailmas is nearly here.  We’ll be celebrating in the traditional way.  This includes drinking cocktails, watching movies, doing jigsaw puzzles, and making lots of delicious food.  It will be nice.  Very, very nice.
4. This is a retroactive thing, a surprise good thing that happened on Saturday night when I had the insomnia (a bad thing).  So I couldn’t sleep and was feeling grumpy and angry so I went downstairs to play stupid Facebook games and watch the television, fully expecting to find only crap available for my viewing pleasure as is often the case late at night on a Saturday.  And all was dire until I got to channel 28, E4, and found the SHOWGIRLS was on!  Showgirls!!  Clearly, I had insomnia for a reason, and that reason was to watch Jessie Spano snort coke out of her fingernail and dance topless while trying to fend off the lascivious advances of Gina Gershon.  Thank you E4.

Dear Sir, I hate you

So today after walking nearly two miles in the snow and cold in order to get a bus to work (because London goes haywire when there is non-rain based weather) I finally got to a stop that was apparently safe enough for my normal bus to start from.  I got on said bus and collapsed into my seat, but still made sure there was plenty of room for another passenger to sit next to me.  Because I am polite.

First I sat next to one spread legged man who is apparently so well endowed that he must take up a seat and a half.  His legs will not be contained by the suggested seat size, he might crush his manhood and become a woman, the horrors.  He got off the bus on Old Kent Road, hooray.  But was quickly replaced by another, similarly afflicted gentleman.  The men of London, you see, are not abl to put their knees together whilst riding the bus.  It would certainly emasculate them to the point of no return.

Whatever.  I’m used to this.  It happens nearly every weekday. 

But then, THEN, the bus approached my stop so I stood and said to Big Strong Man #2, “Excuse me, please,” very politely.  He looked at me and groaned like a 12-year-old and just turned to the side.  Turned to the side.  Did not stand up like a grown ass person to let me by, but turned his relatively large form to the side, leaving me about 6 inches to squeeze by.  And they say chivalry is dead!

I wanted to hit him.  I think I might be in the anger stage of grief right now (at the very least, I’m in the anger stage of commuting) it would not have been surprising if I had hit him.  But I did not, gentle reader (s), no I very icily said, “Would you please stand up?”  He may have rolled his petulant eyes at me but he did stand up and I am certain that he will cry himself to sleep out of shame for at least the next week.  Maybe 2 weeks even. 

I may or may not have said, “Thanks a lot, jerk,” with the word jerk under my breath, as I walked away.  I had trouble sleeping last night so I’m having trouble remembering anything past my imperious “Would you please stand up?” but I am sure he felt the full force of my scorn regardless.  And now his rudeness has been posted onto the internets for posterity.  He shall never live this down (at least not in my imagination).