In Person
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
I've been spa-ing.....me and my partner went to a luxury serenity qi enhancing ,pampering experience. It was a bit like being in hospital without being ill, and the food was alot nicer. We wandered about in white dressing gowns, and lay on heated couches having oils and creams rubbed in. I am always afraid that I will have head lice or some other embarrassing condition in such moments. Anyway, we ended up completely floaty and vague....I couldn't remember who I was. I particularly loved lying in the outside jacussi with Autumn leaves falling from the trees.
We have also been to London....we saw the huge yellow sun in the Tate Modern...it's a bit like being at the end of an epic film...all smoggy and Londonish..everyone in raincoats lying on the floor looking longingly at the golden globe...some of them rather elderly to be lying on concrete, I thought. Very beautiful, though.
We went to see an exhibition about living and dying at the British Museum. Our Brazilian friend Marcia pointed out that though the exhibition discussed many cultures, and how they dealt with illness and death, it didn't even mention BRAZIL, which is the queen country for rituals, healers, spells and magic. How strange. I didn't find out much from the exhibition. It seemed to be rather general, with big museum writing aimed at school children, but it made me think about my funeral again. I can never decide what I want for my funeral...the songs change daily....I wanted everyone to dance to GLORIA by Patti Smith last time I thought about it. I imagine a kind of party death, roomfuls of friends drinking champagne, but of course that's unlikely when one feels poorly. I would just like an unpredictable death...but not one of those falsely positive ones. Singing would be good, as long as it wasn't too churchy or girly. I suppose in the end death chooses, not us.
I love what Spike Milligan wanted (but didn't get) on his gravestone...I told you I was feeling ill.....Actually, after the spa experience I feel very well, if a little sleepy. It's been over two years since my last encounter with illness and I am beginning to forget about it again. I am certainly spending alot more time with my body than I used to....we know each other quite well now. I am always having it pampered and attended to. I still think acupuncture is the best treatment for just about everything.I am trying to finish a story for the Big Issue...I wanted to write something jolly, but it's turned out rather sad. Then I will go back to the Brazilian novel. Oh, and I am going to Brighton on Dec 7th to run a workshop about poetry and recovery, so if you live around Brighton and would like to come, just drop me a line.
Marcia's husband Mustaver reads this weblog...HALLO! I never think that anyone reads it. Love JPosted by julia @ 12:25 PM GMT
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
You can see I have no idea of the date. No idea of anything really! Since I last wrote this log (that word is very Startrek) I have been to Warwick and Hull. Both were very enjoyable, although it took my friend and I several hours to find Warwick University. The campus hides between Coventry and Warwick in a tricky web of ring roads and lanes called things like Gibbet Hill. By the time we got there I was nearly speechless with fear of lateness, a quality that has always been with me, even when I was a teenager. It must be another category...early or late people, yet I have never seen the question in a quiz. My best category is radiators or drains...although both sorts of people can have drainish or radiator qualities. I avoid drains on the whole, and it's a very helpful way to live. Then there is always the fear that I may be a drain.
Anyway, once we got to Warwick Arts Centre, it was really nice. I had a lovely group of people in my workshop which was all about apples. This is partly because I love the vocabulary of apples, the smell, and the look of them. But although the workshop used apples, it was really about narratives within other narratives, and trying to think in circles, not lines.
Another thing about Warwick was that we hated the hotel. This is for various very easy reasons...
1. They gave directions to the hotel from the South only.
2. The room was too hot and you couldn't open the window.
3. My Caesar salad was just lettuce and tinned anchovies.
4. the chambermaids woke us up at 8.00 am on saturday morning.
I am becoming an expert on things I don't like in hotels. there is a smell I haven't given a name to yet, of some kind of cleaning fluid, and something else that is awful....but what is it? Infidelity? Loneliness?
So we went on to Hull, which is always a place I have liked. The Humbermouth Literary Festival was a very well organised affair, and we didn't have to stay in a hotel as we stayed with my friend's family (watched Pop Idol...I was glad about Andy). I was reading with Patrick Gale and Jake Arnott, and James Nash...all very interesting writers. We discussed reading habits...Patrick said if you get bored , just read dead people as they are cheap and always good...Jake said his father read obsessively throughout his childhood....I admitted that I can't stand italics. The audience was small, but they were ALIVE...you felt their characters filling the room. Perhaps it was because they were all avid readers.
I left feeling quite rejuvenated. Now I am back in my cave room, with the new sofa and my novel, a short story to finish for the Big Issue, and a pile of reading about the Red Spot babies. And I have just bought a furry jacket from TKMAX which is just the image I am after this Winter...a cowgirl gone to the dogs.....
If anyone reading this lives in Brighton, do come to a workshop I am running on 7th Dec...details on this website somewhere!Posted by julia @ 02:39 PM GMT
Monday, November 10, 2003
Spent last week in what must be the ugliest castle in Scotland. it was pebble-dashed, stained green, with small windows. Like a large, castle-shaped counci house. Inside it was suprisingly warm, but rather like being in an Addams Family film set, with clanking doors, rattling windows, and towers and turrets. I was there with the lovely poet Linda France...we would have been just as happy in a little cottage with flouncy curtains, but the castle had been booked from a long time ago, and there were meant to be four of us there, but various things had got in the way. Strange though. Did plenty of work, and had lots of deep hot baths.
I had the dog, Heidi, with me as Newcastle is like a war zone with firework parties. I'm sick of it. What's it all about? People trying to own the sky?
While I was away I missed a programme ojn the tv called Does Healing Work.....did anyone out there tape it? I really want to find a copy. The new novel explores this territory.
No more news. It's hard to adapt to life after the castle. I keep walking into walls.Posted by julia @ 01:55 PM GMT
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