My Forks

Exactly how come my dad isn’t deaf yet, I’ll never understand. He’s downstairs as I’m typing this, listening to opera on his headphones. It’s Rigoletto today, and I know this because I can clearly hear ‘La Donna e Mobile’ floating up to where I am –in my bed on the second floor. Can you imagine what it’s like when he switches the sound to the speakers..?

Yesterday my mum and I tackled her cupboard. We spent four hours sorting through her clothes (fashion is a major hobby) and deciding what to keep and what to give away. Clothes hold memories, I thought. A top she bought when I was six, the cardigan she threw on when the hospital called to say her dad was dying and she should hurry, a blouse I remember from a picture and how young she looked in it…

I’ve been gradually realising they are aging. Both in their own way, both with their specific idiosyncrasies that may or may not spiral out of control if they have the good fortune of getting much older still. We joke about them sometimes, my mum’s forgetfulness, my dad’s rigid planning and routine. But from time to time I find a scary edge to it all. I wonder why. It’s all life, isn’t it?

Some days ago I was speaking English to a Japanese friend –you know how it is sometimes, languages get all tangled– and mentioned my folks.
‘My folks are about to come home so I should get started on lunch’, something like that.
Short silence and then: Are they bringing them?
‘Who?’
‘What?’
Hah, I love the whole R and L issue. Folks and forks…I’d never thought about that!

It’s Still Alive

I see a handful of lost souls are still making their way to my site every day. How sweet, really. I’m reminded of my great-grandmother who lived all by herself until well into her nineties. Twice a day a neighbour would go round the back and pop her head over the wall. My great-grandmother smiled and waved while explaining to us, oh she’s just checking to see if I’m still alive…

So this is me smiling and waving.

I’ve been shuttling myself back and forth between France and Belgium these past few weeks, so as to minimise my time alone. The train ride is six hours, which is not too bad but does seem to last longer each time I take it, especially in the summer heat. If I book early enough I’m lucky to get a first class ticket for less than the price of a second class one (a glitch in the system?), and oh how quickly one becomes accustomed to the finer things in life. Notably a lack of screaming kids, unwashed dogs and teenage boys who have yet to discover the joys of wearing deodorant. Well…

I’m now in Brussels, sitting between two sleeping cats, writing this. The days pretty much just pass, and I try not to feel too overwhelmed, though I often do. I’m planning to go to Japan next month to spend the autumn there. Not with people, but close enough, in Kyoto. There are some ideas as to how to make the most of my time there but, since I don’t know if I’ll be up to any of it, it’s really all just theory. I guess it’s one of those back-against-the-wall decisions: if you can’t stay where you are but don’t know what you want, it’s better to do nothing. And Kyoto, in a way, is nothing. It’s just away, hopefully to get a little stronger. We’ll see…

For now I’m seeing the last of summer, intense in France and schizophrenic in Belgium. I’ve realised I’ve been spending the past year all wrong: hot summer in Spain, cooold winter in Belgium, rainy spring in France followed by yet another too hot summer. I’ll be leaving just when the nice weather begins. On the other hand, Kouyou will be great as well…

Hell’s Kitchen

The heat, people. The heat! The downside of living in the South really is the summer. I get this mental picture of an African waiting for the bus in the middle of the desert: just sit down, shut down, don’t move a muscle and wait till it arrives. That would be me right now…

I’ve been back for a little over a week. Had a quiet birthday with Mr. Rose, who took some time off to spend with me. I really appreciated the effort, under the present circumstances. I did want to do something a little more hip this year but, realistically speaking, it wasn’t possible. So we had some lunch on a terrace somewhere, did a little shopping, escaped to the airconditioned heaven of the local cinema for a few hours (‘Okuribito’ really was a beautiful movie, Tatsuya. Thanks for recommending it!), and at night went to the beach for a long walk, feet in the water…

I can’t say exactly what it is about this heat that’s so particular. I’ve been in hotter places, more humid places too. So it really shouldn’t be this bad. My theory is that, in Europe, they don’t really have the right infrastructure to deal with heat. Not a lot of A/C, a lack of blinds in strategic places, no cross ventilation…last year in Spain, what saved me was the fact I was on a hill and ten minutes away from the sea. Right now I may be a ten minute drive away, but that doesn’t help much in terms of sea breeze…

Anyway, I manage. I spend the day at home with the blinds down as low as they’ll go, work a little, read a bit, watch some movies, sleep. When the temperature drops I try to get the house work done, do the shopping, and join the land of the living for a while. In about eight weeks’ time it’ll be spring, I read on an Aussie friend’s blog today. Which means that in about eight weeks’ time, it’ll be autumn here. That’s not such a bad prospect…

Off

I realised today I haven’t travelled at all since moving into this flat –early April, was it? In fact, I haven’t travelled since arriving here early March…no wonder I have itchy feet. I’ve just booked some tickets, I’m off to Brussels on Wednesday.

I did intend to fly off a whole lot further, but it seems I’ll have to wait a while longer still. So I’m flying from Nimes, a town about 30 minutes away from here, which means I get to see some of the neighbouring wildlife in passing. I’ll be in Brussels for two weeks (at least, that’s the plan. Unless I get waylaid…one can only hope^-). And I’m coming back by train, a six hour ride.

I’ve done this once before and I do like long distance train rides. It takes about the same time as a plane if you calculate waiting at the airport and checking in and all of that. But the main decisive factor is that the only airline flying out of here to Brussels is this low cost one (I’m not naming any names, but if you’re familiar with European low costs, I bet you can guess) which is a complete and utter rip-off and always finds one way or another to add to your total cost. On my way over here I nearly smacked the woman behind the counter –I know it’s not her fault, but she had that attitude going that showed she knew exactly what was happening– because she charged me 4 times the price of my ticket to pay for supposed excess luggage. The small print, you see. B*!?*&ds…Anyway.

It’ll be good to get away…

Yes!

I’m not at all a competitive person. Don’t know, the gene was left out somehow when I was produced, which suits me fine really. Still, I feel today was a triple victory for me. Against who or what, I’m not too clear. But I went swimming today for the first time in about six months.

First of all, I showed up. Which is no small thing, considering my illness. It’s why I haven’t swam in this long, not because I didn’t feel like it. I dropped by the pool countless times, often already in my swim gear. But I had to bail out every time. What was different today: a mix of factors, but who cares? I went, and I actually hit the water.

Secondly, I swam a kilometre, which I didn’t think I’d be able to. I’d expected to cramp up with too many nerves and lactic acid to swim much more than five laps, which would have been ok. But I could keep going, despite the fact that we were about seven in one lane, all swimming at different speeds. There was no system of different lanes for different speeds, which meant either swimming behind a granny doing a leisurely back stroke and happily kicking water into my face, or trying to bypass her without impinging on the space of the swimmer heading towards me. I tried first one and then the other, miscalculating the speed of the second swimmer and nearly giving myself an asthma attack –and I don’t even have asthma. But I repeat, I hadn’t swam in six months.

And finally, I swam the 1km in a decent time (for me, that is. I’m not an Olympic medalist or anything). Now there was a surprise. I wasn’t even going to time myself, but there happened to be a clock staring me in the face. And something comes over me at a point like that: I’m going to do it even if it kills me. And it’s not competitiveness at all, just will power. I forget I have an iron will sometimes, though the people around me consider this to be an obvious fact (my mum has countless stubborn baby/kid anecdotes to prove it too. Hah!). It’s just that when you’re ill, you can’t get well on will power alone. And when you can’t do things, you simply can’t do them, no matter how hard you try to push yourself. It’s hard not to end up feeling like a sad excuse for a human being this way, actually. So once in a while, it’s really good to have a day like this…

Even if I spent the rest of it at home with a throbbing headache. Hey, at least it didn’t actually kill me^^. And I can quietly sit on my terrace, typing this, watching the Chinese neighbour playing with his dog. A small white thing, not a poodle but weirdly with a poodle hair cut (what were they thinking?). And not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer either: the man pretends to throw something –I checked, there’s really nothing in his hand– and the dog runs like mad for a while and then comes running back with his tongue dangling from the side of his mouth like, isn’t this FUN?! Whatever works for you, buddy…and I bet he’d think the same if he’d seen me swim.