October 9, 2012
On my way from Phoenix to La. Today is the day I’m traveling away from the US of A. Zeb is in good hands, though they are not my hands, they are hands that love him. Am I excited? I would say I’m looking forward to going to Scotland, but I’m not exactly excited. Excited was going to see JB, when I traveled east to him, I was always acutely aware of my excited state. I was well attuned to the chemical surges and electrical impulses that would cause my heart to race, my body to fidget, and my mind to spin. This isn’t like that. I don’t feel nervy or anticipatory, I feel calm and grateful. I’ll bet Scotland will be cold and I’ll bet Scotland will be interesting, and I’ll bet there will be lots to write about. Earlier today I felt like writing. I even had my notebook out, opened to a blank page, I was ready to take on the task of moving my pen across the emptiness, but it is now— not then that it happens. Now as we are about to take off, I’m moving the pen across the paper. I stop to study the woman in the window seat rest her eyes. She is dressed in brown leather open-toed wedges, she is french manicured from top to bottom. Her clunky gold accessories were selected to go with her beige just above the knee belted sleeveless dress. She’s got the requisite thousand dollar purse, and an iPhone in her manicured hand. Here we go…
LAX to Heathrow. I do good thinking while in the air. My mind becomes soft and receptive and my heart is more audible. Contemplating my calling. This contemplation has been incited by Stephen Cope’s latest book, The Great Work of Your Life. What is it? What is my calling? To write? It seems so, but how do I know? How do I step into it, if that’s even it? The depression and meaninglessness that haunt me seem directly connected to this loss of purpose. How do I know? Is it enough evidence that others tell me so? Do I feel it in the deepest places? Yes. When I’m connected to these places, yes. YES. Sometimes I know for sure. Sometimes I know nothing at all.
October 10, 2012
Heathrow
Color me moody. Blabbering children, tall men in trench coats, skinny women dressed in the latest what’s hot. Loafers and accents and scarfs and pounds and a supermodel in first class with a little baby-boy sized ass. Never would a smile cross her face. Vacant, angry, hungry. A woman’s clothes hanger. Why do we admire this? So empty and hungry, a praying mantis. I wonder what it is like to live in that fleshless flesh, what’s it like to be so tall and fat-free? Her face is a sculpture chiseled by god. Some of us are like this, all of our parts obvious and small and long and flat and angular and desired and despised . I watched Fight Club on the flight here. I drank complimentary French Merlot and ate microwaved curry chicken while being blown away by the brilliance of the writing. How is it that I’d never seen it before???
“As calm as a Hindu cow.” “Be alive! Feel your life! Get scared!” So many good lines I meant to write down, but I didn’t cause I was IN IT.
3 hour layover til we go to Glasgow.
Do your duty or DIE!!!!
Push hard. This is what it means to be wanted. To be good enough. Tall enough. Thin enough. Blonde enough. All of you enough.
October 10, 2012
Glasgow
Finally here at The Premiere Inn. It reminds me of The Hampton Inn, the place I stayed in Denver. Thousands of tiny rooms, it’s the Denny’s of hotels. Efficiencies made for function. The view out my window is a parking lot on top of a building. The sky is full of soggy gray clouds. I’m beyond exhausted. We are right next door to The King’s Theatre where “I Dreamed a Dream” is playing. J has tickets to all 4 nights, and a couple of matinee’s too, I think. I’m happy J is happy. Tonite when we got here, we walked around, and I saw a poster for Steve P—–! He’s playing right across the street Friday night at The Griffin. I’m going to go, it’s so strange…I wonder if he’ll remember me. How long ago was it that I saw him play with B—- H—–? Seven years I think. I was just back from Seattle, in the best shape of my life and I still thought I was fat. Foolish girl. S dropped B off at the AM/PM where I then retrieved him. I took B back to the hotel where S was staying in the morning, because school took priority over sexy- sensitive- singer-songwriter types. I feel blah. I’m not excited to be here. Tired and gassy. I think altitude makes you gassy. Painfully so.
October 11th, 2012
Queen Street Station
This morning the sky was dark and hard to read, so I pressed zero on the plastic white phone next to my bed to inquire about the time. My watch, the digital sport model I brought, is a complex puzzle of beeps and buttons that I have no intention of resetting. A feat way beyond my current capabilities. My phone doesn’t work here. The ten dollar jobbie I traded my iPhone in for hasn’t the capacity for such complexity, and my computer will not obey my requests to go online. Oh goody…another opportunity to surrender! My thoughts are occurring in Scottish English. My o’s are being heard like oohs, I’m so seggaistible. We are traveling to Linlithgow this morning to meet J’s friend who has promised to take us on a Susan Boyle tour! So far Glasgow reminds me of San Francisco without the freak factor, but I’m too brain dead to say why. Something about the cloudiness and the greeyness, buildings are old and intricate. Mostly white folks, unlike SF. No soy milk for my coffee this am. I paid eight pounds for my breakfast this morning, that’s almost sixteen bones. I had poached eeegs, hash browns, sauteeeed mushrums, greeeled tomatoes, and what I think was a crumpet. I passed on the brown beans. Because I have been totally liberated from my connection to the world via technology, liberated from that distraction, I am free to screeble down me thoughts. I’ve gone off on too meeny subjects, ‘aven’t I? There goes my Scottish accent ageen!
On Scotrail
Relying on strangers to guide you correctly…also like San Francisco. Awake and then asleep. The countryside is timid. Green yes, but not breathtaking. I wonder if it’s that I’ve not much breath to take. So tired. Yellow trees. Soggy. Dark skies. Rolling hills. Mind flat and running on vapors. I’d rather be sleeping. Sleep sounds divine. I love being distracted by a telephone or a computer. All of this awareness is stuck to the countryside rushing by and the chattering of voices. Foreign languages. Fog hiding sheep-like creatures and brown cows and black cows and black horses too. All of them —almost— but not quite— hidden by fog.
Seen on the wall at the Falkirk High stop:
“Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil.” Isaiah 5.20
Dark tunnels and a baby whines and then she screams and and then she shrieks. And her mummy who is sitting next to us just looks at her. J and I exchange glances that yell, “why in the hell doesn’t she pick her up!?”
0943, next stop Linlithgow
Head Full Of Glitter 