YAY/Departure/It’s Still Alive

First of all, there are no capitals big enough for that ‘yay’, let me tell you. This week I managed, against all odds, to finish my manuscript. Can’t you just feel the relief radiating from your screen? Boy, it took forever. So far the feedback has been good. And publication date’s sometime next summer, it seems. I’ll be tidying up little bits and pieces from now on, but nothing major. ¡Basta Ya!

Other than that, my departure date’s been fixed. I’m out of here on the 22nd of December. The original plan was to go home for the holidays, then come back to pack. But I’ve done away with the second half of that plan –after all, what’s the point of spending money on a plane ticket just to come and shove things into cardboard boxes? And anyway, there isn’t even a whole lot of that to be done since, as you may remember, I never really unpacked in the first place. It’s basically clothes, a few books, and tiny things accumulated over the past year. Two days tops, in other words. I’m not worried.

So that leaves me two more months over here. Not much to be said, since at the moment I have zero social life. It’s pretty much me, my books, my laptop, the swimming pool and the waves. I do have someone I’m seeing once a week, which is helping me not to go insane. Not a therapist as such, but I do think it’s been helpful. At least I’m a bit better than, say, a month ago. It’s been rough. It still is, really, but at least right now I feel as if my head’s above water. I don’t plan to do much with the rest of my time here. I don’t think there is not much to be done, apart from hanging in there and trying to get a little better every day.

You may have noticed I haven’t been around much. I haven’t been commenting much on your blogs, and I’ve been finding it hard to blog myself. Somehow my thoughts just don’t translate into sentences. This is me giving it a go anyway, just to let you know I’m still floating around in cyberspace…

I Love This Poem

…and was reminded of it today, somehow. Apologies if you’ve read it a thousand times already. Then again, so have I.

I gather up
each sound
you left behind
and stretch them
on our bed
each nite
I breathe you
and become high.

Sonia Sanchez, Poem no 3

A Brainwave On Compassion

At around nine o’clock every morning, one of my neighbours walks her two little kids (one and three, I’d say) to school. They stop briefly on the pavement right across the building to wave hello to the old lady on the second floor –the one who calls me a cow, incidentally, though in the nicest possible way. I’m usually having tea on my balcony by then, and can’t help but notice the cute little neighbourly scene. The older one always used to have something to say to the lady, while the baby was busy waving in every possible direction. The old lady shouting in her shaky, happy voice and the mum translating the children’s babbling for her. It was one of those moments that filled me with a general sort of optimism for the day.

Recently, though, the older one seems to be going through a phase. She refuses to acknowledge the old lady and would do anything to avoid having to wave to her. What’s more, she tries her hardest to prevent the little one from waving too, covering her eyes or crowding into the stroller to block her view. Kids are kids, of course, and entitled to their stages of development. But the situation got me wondering…

Could she be behaving that way because she’s picking up on the old lady’s weakness? After all, kids seem to have an infallible knack for this. And, developing the theory a little further, does this mean that the intuitive reaction to weakness is –if not necessarily exploitation– rejection? It reminded me of this past June, when my parents got a new kitten. Feeling utterly lost and vulnerable, he walked up to the older cat, hoping for some love and care. Instead he got a wallop in the face –the older one’s unpremeditated, hundred percent intuitive reaction.

Could compassion be a completely fabricated sentiment, institutionalised and taught, but not at all intuitive? If my neighbour would explain to her daughter that the old lady’s kind of lonely, and that her morning wave may be something she looks forward to, would it make her more inclined to wave, or less?

‘Nuff Said

“I’ll tell you the truth,” I heard an older man across the aisle say to his wife (I was picking out a teapot, they were in the tablecloth section). “I don’t like either of them.” I couldn’t help a snigger, which set off sniggers from two other women in my aisle. We’ve all been there…what can you say?

Surfers, Goths and Beachcombers

Basically, today was filled with just those. The annual horror film festival is on over here, attracting a slew of, shall we say, interesting characters. Everywhere you look, bloodied fake extremities are encountered. I’ve had to stifle a scream more than once (they look really real!). To escape the madness I took a walk on the beach and spotted the surfers, loads of them, looking like a colony of penguins floating on the frothy bottle green waves. I ambled past them and was suddenly surrounded by a mob of beachcombers brandishing metal detectors and trying to get to the booty first. The goths, I guessed, must be known for their carelessness with precious metals…A surreal day, all in all.