a million weird anniversaries..

...that was sally's excellent summary of the daily problem that i am encountering, on repeat, day after day...

every day is another anniversary - today its three weeks since i was back in gloucester after the trip to the hospital in essex, took up sitting in my garden drinking wine, which is what i have been doing more or less ever since...

it is four weeks since i called him and said 'you know when i saw you two weeks ago, and your hair was all long and scary and you were starting to look like some kind of wildman/yeti character?' he said 'yes', i said 'i'm coming to visit in two days, please tell me you will have had a hair cut by then' and he said 'but you told me i should grow it!' and i said 'yes, two months ago, i did not mean indefinitely!!'

at least...

..i know that he did not stop loving me.

he didn't have an affair, or walk out on me, or stop picking up the phone to me, or fall out of love with me.

this much i know.

ours is not..

to reason why...

on the day that it happened, i remembered certain things very clearly that helped me both immediately and on the following days, to make a very clear decision.

i remembered how i felt in the months after my uncle died suddenly of no found illness, aged 53.

i remembered how i felt seeing ben and louie searching around for answers, even small clues...

and so i made the decision then and there, that i was not going to ask god why this happened.

i gave up my right to ask the question.

i honestly think that grief is compounded, approximately a million-fold, by the fruitless repetition of this question to god.

don't get me wrong, i'm not for a second saying that people shouldn't ask.

but i was and still am quite resolute in my conviction that for me to ask would not come to any good.

no-one has ever received a satisfactory answer to that particular question. faith can be lost over it. sleep, sanity and love can be lost over it, and i for one am ripe to lose all four in one swift move, if i do not check myself in time now. by that i mean that i am not going to ask. i am going to trust that only god knows, that only god can know, because my mind is far too small to take it in.

i truly think that he should be allowed to know some things that we don't know.

i'm letting him win on this one

however, in return, i had hoped to be able to sleep....not tonight, mes amis....

at least..

he did not die because someone driving a car knocked him down

he did not have cancer for one, five, ten years

he was not in pain for more than about five minutes

he did not die from a heroin overdose

he did not take some coke that had been cut with some unknown devilish ingredient

he did not do something feckless like jumping out of a plane or bungy jumping

he was not shot on the streets of south london along with a couple of dozen other young men this year

he did not go to fight someone else's war and lose his life there

he was not in a plane crash, or a ferry disaster, or a collapsed mine-shaft or a treacherous arctic expedition

he was not fool enough to climb everest, go into space or try to take on the outback

its not his fault. and its not anyone else's fault.

there is no-one to blame

shit happens

undo...

if you have never listened to the song -undo- by bjork, here's why you should...
(itunes, people, itunes...)


"Undo"

It's not meant to be a strife
It's not meant to be a struggle uphill

It's not meant to be a strife
It's not meant to be a struggle uphill

You're trying too hard
Surrender
Give yourself in
You're trying too hard
You're trying too hard

It's not meant to be a strife
It's not meant to be a struggle uphill
Sweetly
It's not meant to be as dry
To enjoy
It's not meant to be a stuggle uphill

It's warmer now
Lean into it
Unfold
Unfold in a generous way
Surrender

It's not meant to be as dry (surrender)
It's not meant (undo) to be a struggle uphill (undo)
It's not meant to be as dry
It's not meant to be a struggle uphill

I'm praying
To be
In a generous mode
The kindness kind
The kindness kind
To share
Me
To share me

It's not meant to be as dry
It's not meant to be a struggle uphill

It's not meant to be as dry
It's not meant to be a struggle uphill

Undo
Undo
If you're bleeding
Undo
And if you're sweating
Undo
If you're crying, darling
Undo

Undo
Unravel

unprecedented

the quietness in my head is unprecedented.

i have no thoughts.

i cannot fix on any one train of thought.

i cannot settle on one perspective or one even vague notion about what the hell is going on.

i think maybe if i start writing down what i'm actually feeling, it might become more real.

how bloody terrifying is that, though?

this is the worst bit now, the flowers and cards will stop coming, i will be expected back at work some day, and i will have to become me again.

but i cannot yet figure out how to even start reverting to being me again without him. not because there was the slightest amount of control or overshadowing or hyper-dependence but because, well, i had after many months of running from it, finally decided that he was worth being first in my life.

four weeks ago we had a small falling-out, and later when he'd left bristol and gone back home, he told me on the phone that at that moment he believed i was breaking up with him. i laughed and asked 'wtf?! how can you have thought that?!' and so we talked and talked, and it finished with me assuring him that nothing he could do could make me think that this isn't worth it.

and now that has to encompass even this.

it was so worth it.

it was worth even feeling this shit.

sitting on the floor..

...in my hotel room

i am trying on my dress for The Thing on monday, for about the twentieth time...

its 2.48 in the morning and i would like to simply record this...

i miss walking into a room with him.

i know its the feeling that phil probably still has when he walks into a room full of people, but he walks in with laura. or like fran has when she walks into a room, with matt...

i have never been so proud and glad to walk into a room with anyone as i was every time i walked into a room with him.

its the canniest feeling that is very hard to describe, but you know it when you've had it.

i am listening to the fray, and it soothes me somehow.

i just liked the look of him. he wasn't real good at taking compliments, and the embarrassing but unwavering truth is that he was and is the most handsome man i have ever laid eyes on. he wouldn't hear that from me, so in the end i just boiled it down to 'well, i like the look of you', and he'd take that.

but walking into a room with him, it was lovely, and also comical. someone would only have to look at him before he took it as a cue to introduce me as his girlfriend, never missing a beat, either to ward off potential rivals, or to boost his own ego. i never cared, it was an absolute pleasure every time.

you will recall a post on these pages, from about two-and-a-bit years ago, on being loved....in which i confessed to you, dear reader, that i have never known a time in my life when i did not know i was loved. but you will understand me when i say that this was different. this was walking into a room,full of people who would within seconds know that i was loved, because he could not wait to tell them so.

the fray really are good.

lady in waiting

how ignorant and heartless my previous posts now appear, in the light of this week....its a horrible feeling knowing how wrong you were.....

no-one can think thoughts about death and the afterlife and sickness without needing god as much as you need air....least of all me.........its just so baffling....

it makes you want to not love so you don't feel the pain of knowing that people you do love will die 

it makes you not want to get old, realising the many and varied ways in which age can wreck you.

it makes you want to spare others who have chosen the folly of loving you, the horror of having to watch you go.

it makes you want to ask god about a million questions.

it also makes you realise once more that he's the only one who has a right to know the answers...

it is the most universal and yet the most personal thing. like god. 

so i'm going to ireland tomorrow as it seems my grandmother does not have long left til she will go on ahead, as they say...

my grandmother's name is eithne o'brien. she is 91. 

she gave birth to six children, saw five of them into adulthood. saw one of them go before her five years ago. 

she was married to george o'brien for oh i don't know! yonks! about 55 years i imagine...

she campaigned for the rights of local traveller people. she called them itinerants.

she campaigned for people to be able to own their council houses

she got a computer when she was about 75 and went to computer class

she wrote a poem about wheelie bins when the 'corporation' introduced them in Clonmel. it was published in the newspaper.

she researched both sides of her family tree, her mother's side now goes back to the year 637. she worked on this history for years and years. she used to take trips on to dublin on the train to go to the library...

she was quietly formidable, and quietly caring. 

had she been born in a different time she would have done a job like i'm doing now, i think. or maybe been the prime minister. 

and now she's waiting her turn. i hope to be there before she sets off. x

hand on heart

i think my post last week was a bit odd

i've made the decision to leave it there, but i think it was a bit odd...

i did not mean to imply that i no longer need god.....that's just crazy talk.....

but i think that what i meant, refers to the dynamics of that need, the impulses and responses that heighten and isolate that need.......these have changed.....i do not right now feel as i felt before, and the ongoing flaw in my theology, is that it hinges in this bizarre and incalculable notion of feeling....

a wise man said to me last summer, that he believed that my (then) sadness and fear were being compounded by the problem of my having experienced a very 'personal' salvation', as aforementioned, however many years previously...

by this (and he may be reading, so he can correct me if i'm wrong...!) he meant that my version of jesus is based on who is is to me, not on who he is just because...who he is as the firstborn in all the world, the one who chooses to let us keep on living on our spinning axis everyday, the one who fails to falter...who cannot change.....that one.....

he eludes me...

if i'm crying, weak, lost, hurting, fearful, confused, aimless, feckless, loveless....he is there, as vivid and as real to me as i could possibly ask of him.......

yet it seems i cannot let him just be...

which is rude, really, because he lets me be!!

anyway. seriousness over, back to silliness in the episodes to come...!

many loves....x

theological conundrum...

so, i've never been too hot on theological matters...

i pretty much figure - love the lord, be nice to people, explore your surroundings, use your talents, give what you have, and love bravely....

what more is there, really...?!

thing is, if theology is one's view of god, or the unmovables about god, or the cumulative ideas of 2008(?!) years of deciphering the word, or all of the above, then at the end of it all its still just about your relationship with god, right...?

so, my theology - my relationship with god....

thing is, that for me has foundations that were built on total despair being met with huge expectation and shocking hope......i had an actual conversion, one pin-point moment, where i chose to live......and then the hard work started.........and that hard work was god's work, convincing me, one relentless fear after another that only he could cross them off, rub them out.....replacing abject fear with unbelievable truth....i cried every day for about the first year, fretted everyday for about the following four years.....and since then, have moved from mildly unsettled, back to hideously fearful, and then to, well, then i moved into falling in love....

and now i find myself, quite literally, happier than i have ever been.....and well, my condundrum is this:

how does one, at the ripe old age of 27, begin to imagine a god who wants to be involved in the flirting and the planning and the missing and the misunderstandings and the giddy grinning of a fledgling romance....?

the answer, i know, is that he instigated such love, he instigated this love, and that all love comes from and is sustained and enhanced by him....

this much i believe......but in practise it is proving rather difficult...not because the man in question is not a friend of the lord, but because of my second question....

where, in a relationship with jesus that is built out of a desperate, overwhelming need in me, for him, do i find a dynamic that moves me to need and rely on him, when i do not feel that same sense of lack? of course i do lack: i lack love and kindness and patience and all the other things that we all lack, but, i don't know......i have not wept for my want of god in quite some time, and truth be told, that's how i know him.....its why i know him.....its how we relate.....or was....and now? 

now, i wake up happy...i sleep better than a baby.....i do not grimace when i look at my own body....i have tiny seed-like hopes for a life in the future....i grin alot...!! there is a man who makes me laugh everyday, loves me selflessly everyday.....

once more pals, answers on a postcard....

good evening pals....

and hello from the sunny west country!

so, my new town is as fun and funner than i hoped it would be......there is a cider bar on a boat, a lovely cathedral with a seat in it dedicated to my great-grandparents, a very cute old-town section of the city centre which i had never seen before i arrived, and a general feeling of a city full of all-age working-holidaymakers! i'm not sure if its the amount of water in the city or just the slightly higher average temperature than life in the north, but it really does feel like living in a holiday town......on my first weekend here i went roaming round town on the saturday, and got pleasantly lost.....weirdly feeling very at home and not at all daunted.....and i have continued to feel that way.......the early evening i a particularly nice time to be out on the little high street that is the centre of my neighbourhood....its like a whalley-range, hulme kind of high street with one of everything and lots of people out and about, alot of whom are from alot of different countries and seem to add their own ingredients to the general feel of ease and slow-walking.....no-one seems to be in a hurry here.......haven't found my coffee place yet, but that's ok, these things sometimes take time.....the cider boat is enough to be going on with for now! i love it.....and me and roz went out for tea one night and wound up in a place that looked, felt and tasted like it should have been on the sea-front in barcelona, which cannily enough is where we were the last time we had dinner together!

as for the job, well......can you imagine a happier anna than one who gets to study maps of iraq, learn about the kurdish people, study unhcr statistics and send letters to the home office and various embassies all in one morning's work?! i imagine not......last week i was mainly learning about what happens to people who find themselves in the Uk as victims of human trafficking, and what if anything can be done to assist them once they escape their captors...turns out that by law we can't do all that much, which makes me hopping mad to say the least...victims of trafficking do not automatically qualify for refugee status or other forms of national protection, since they still have to prove a well-founded fear of persecution on their return home, to gain such a status......i would say that having been sold by your own family would be grounds for a pretty huge amount of fear, but actually its fear of having nothing to go back to, much more often than it is fear of persecution...........anyway i have a job now which allows me to help see the system circumvented, one case at a time, seeing the rules navigated round and the rule makers confounded by how flimsy their own rationales are shown in public to be......i love it.......and they all drink real coffee....i have never seen such a frequently-used cafetiere...this makes me happy....

as for the man, well, i can honestly say that i am embarrassingly in love...lately its all got much, much worse, as i think we are both starting to allow ourselves to dream a future together into being and its pretty darn fun i can tell you.....

....my new housemates are still getting to know each-other, one only having been born of the other two weeks ago....they are doing well, especially when one isn't howling and the other has got some sleep.....

come visit me....! as my friend joe said to me when we met for a pint or two last week, 'it's a hip-happy-town, you're gonna love it!'

how did it take me so long

to realise that what a i need is a jolly good blog session...

this evening shall be dedicated to just that...

no joke - again

today, at work...i read a referral form which said

Country of Origin:- Dominican Republic of Congo

honestly!!
people need to stay in school, this is disgraceful!!

no joke...

today at work, someone honestly, literally wrote on a referral form

Country of Origin: Stockport

the uncertain triumph of a talented young baker...

"i freakin rocked that cake...well i think...."

- cate thornton, on her lime and coconut cake of yesterday...

see...?

see what percentage of women hate ironing, but do it anyway?

all for the love...

me, i love ironing!!

 

j'adore the ons...

testing, testing...

would you pass?

i failed, dismally...

 

some nights..

...only 'you split the earth' by delirious will do for my ears
it truly is one of the most beautiful songs i have ever heard

seriously

this is a genuine conversation i just had with someone at my work...


me: bbrrr its cold!

other person (OP): i'm going to get us all some get chips at lunch-time, that'll warm us all up

me: oh, no chips for me thanks, i'm having soup

OP: oh, i thought you liked chips, i've seen you eating chips!

me: yes, but I'm putting a stop to chip-eating

OP: why, are you going on a diet?

me: not exactly, just trying to make better lunch-time choices!

OP: well, i tell you what, i wish i was as big as you, wouldn't be so cold then would i..?

me: no, i suppose not


seriously....

anna's top fifty smiling songs...

a while ago a friend asked for a list of happy songs, that she could download...i just found it! for your itunes treat-yourself perusal... artist	song
morcheeba	rome wasn't built in a day
nitin sahwney	promise
bjork	more to life than this
guillemots	made up lovesong
the killers	mr brightside
get cape, wear cape, fly	call me ishmael
the hippos	wasting my life
feist	mushaboom
kathryn williams	no-one takes you home
elbow	station approach
the kooks	matchbox
john mayer	clarity
jason mraz	no stopping us (live, from the tonight, not again album)
blur	there's no other way
the feeling	fill my little world
frou frou	its good to be in love
india arie	wonderful
julia harris	ha ha
busted	britney
simon and garfunkel	keep the customer satisfied
t-rex	ride a white swan
ben harper	oppression
counting crows	hanging around
otis redding	try a little tenderness
james	laid
new radicals	you get what you give
jamiroquai	return of the space cowboy
sheryl crowe	love is a good thing
feist	secret heart
five iron frenzy	dandelions
g love and special sauce	baby's got sauce
feeder	buck rogers
john mayer	83 (live from the any given thursday album)
lamb	angelica
stoney	hands hold the stars
lemon jelly	spacewalk
magic numbers	forever lost
neil mcsweeney	long way round
nina simone	I got life
the police	so lonely
counting crows	murder of one (live acoustic)
simon and garfunkel	baby driver
stevie wonder	as
ryan adams	New york
van morrisson	bright side of the road
cornershop	brimful of asha
john mayer	sucker
elvis presley	suspicious minds
blur	tracey jacks
simon and garfunkel	feelin groovy

brisk

i had a bit of rage earlier
i had to do some pretty fierce negotiating with some people at work, i also got cross about something that made me cross, and i was also feeling harrangued. and frustrated. and a bit caged. and, well, you know....its february....
so as lunch time drew near i knew that i needed the air of outside rather than the air of inside.

and so i went for a small walk and admired once more my favourite building in manchester.....
isn't she a beauty?

i was calmed, and aired and breezed and therefore simply alright again.

ps: journal update: maybe i just need a nice new pen.......

manchester evening views

i took this photo shortly before the aformentioned idiocy occurred this evening....
as i left work for the walk to town, this was what greeted me...

ps: journal update: not sure what's going on, but.....well, maybe in my head, i went too far....maybe the bok is just too nice to write in....?!

all out of character

so today i walked into a door
i am the woman who walked into doors.

seriously, i was about to go into pop cafe, which i actually don't like all that much because i think its up its bum, but i wanted a nice new/old purse, so i thought i'd chance it.
bad idea. literally there was not a sticker, not a sign, not a smear on the full-glass door.......and so how was i to know that before me was a fairly impenetrable object. particularly impenetrable to an unsuspecting, un-shielded, -unprepared forehead.
.....swearing ensued, and severe, pain-diminishing shame took me to a whole new place of embarrassment...

and then i thought - well, that was out of character!
and then i thought - what a stupid thing to think!
but its actually true..i generally don't drop things or fall down or trip over. i rely on our sal for that sort of entertainment....
anyway it felt weird to do something that i don't normally do
but then, who does normally walk into doors?

ps: journal update: NOPE! nothing! zip! zilch! nada!

am now purely six word thinker

so this morning on the -today- programme they featured a book/a thought/a movement concerning -six word memoirs-

it began with hemingway....if you don't know the tale, it is thus:
our pal ernesto once made a bet, probably with some other literary, bar-propping-up type, that he could write a story in just six words.
-surely not?!- i hear you cry -it can't be done!-
well, it was done, and his story was this:
For Sale: Baby shoes - Never worn

he won the bet
it also nearly reduced me to tears!

the idea has translated into a book, via a us magazine invitiation extended to the public to write one's life-story in just six words. or a six word representation of you and your full story. and basically, throughout the course of the day, my mind has to one extent or another (depending on what else i am supposed to be doing at the time!) been somewhat consumed with the notion.

all i have come up with so far are the following, neither of which fully satisfies me but which i will own to you just now for the sake of learning to air one's ideas when not yet perfected!!

raised catholic - found the escape hatch!
and
the art of pottering: pleasurable utility

i challenge you, my friends, to look upon this and feed your six-word imagination!

ps: journal update: all out of literary juices today (six words, see...?!)

literary incentives..

so i bought a new journal today

i spent £15.99 on it

i can't possibly justify this amount of money, except to say this: i need the motivation. i bought a paperblanks one, because they are the best (none of this moleskin molery!!) and within the paperblanks range, i bought the most beautiful one available. why? because i need the motivation...am not sure at what point i began to need motivation to write....it worries me slightly....

anyway, i am going to endeavour to journal, and for £15.99, it had better be good!

(aside: oh crikey i'd better not spell things wrong! you can't scribble things out in a £15.99 journal, can you? are there rules? yiesh.....where's that tippex...?!)