The Plug

The night of my birthday, exhausted but happy, I really wanted a bath. A deep relaxing soak with lots and lots of bubbles. I had been a little disappointed on the first night in our apartment when I couldn't find the plug to the bath - a problem not common in France where the type of plugs that are usually used are not actually removable, but powered by a special knob or handle on the bath itself. But while searching the apartment for something else, I found, in the back cupboard, the plug.

Now one would assume, that being as someone had actually gone to some effort to put the plug in a "safe place" that I would have thought more deeply about it other than the general glee that I was going to get my bath. But no, as I popped it in and ran the extra deep bath, all I could think about was soaking away my troubles. And as we ate chocolate mousse from the jar (bought on the way home from our favourite little greengrocer) soaking until fingertips pruned and skin was waterlogged I gave very little thought to the bath plug.

It was not until later, wrapped in a huge white towel and brushing my teeth that I went to empty the bath and realised something important. Plugs in Australia have a little handle, so that you can reach in to the tepid and soapy water and fish it out. Occasionally this will be slippery and aggravating, and invariably my sleeve gets soaked, but in the scheme of things, I don't think much about plugs.

Except, as I went to reach my hand into the cold water, I remembered something pertinent - there was no little handle. There was also no little lip. The way my French plug had fitted, was like a cork, deeply into the drain with a smooth, shiny top. A smooth shiny top now covered in about 100kg of water. I finished brushing my teeth and stared at the bath. I tried to turn the knob that usually releases the plug, hoping that miraculously that the reason why the plug had been hidden in the first place was not because of a malfunctioning plug knob thing. But of course, this was ridiculous.

So I did the only sensible thing that one can do in the circumstances, and went to bed, hoping that somehow overnight the plug would have magically removed itself, perhaps sitting on the bench courtesy of the French Plumbing Fairy that takes pity on stupid tourists on their birthday.

Sunday morning, I woke up late and headed to the bathroom, averting my eyes from the bath. Finally peeking to realise that no, the bitch French Plumbing Fairy had not come, and the bath was as full as ever. Except the water was now freezing cold. I fiddled some more, I opened the secret door under the bath to the plumbing, and cocked my head in a knowledgeable way coming up with the pertinent finding that we were fucked. Because I'm sure that finding a plumber on a Sunday morning in Paris would be an easy and inexpensive task.

I got back into bed, curled up into Bingley, and decided to go back to sleep, because surely it would be better when I woke up. Dreaming of MacGuyver like ingenious methods to remove the plug including superglue or a plunger.

Bingley however, appraised of the plug situation, and being an Engineer, whose sole purpose in life is to "fix things" got out of bed. I could hear him circling the bathtub much as I had done, gaining the general understanding of the lay of the land, and of the way that things which are supposed to work that were not working. And I wondered when he too would come round to my superglue method. I heard occasional swishing noises, then splashing noises, and then, gratifyingly, the sound of the plug being ceremoniously removed.

And when I went into the bathroom a little later to brush my teeth it was sitting there, on the bench, just as I'd hoped, with a mysteriously mangled coke bottle and a slightly smug expression on Bingley's face, at the conquered plug which had not foiled him! The knight who had bested the plug and saved the damsel in distress, while I hid it back in it's corner cupboard and didn't have another bath while we were in France...

Schrodinger's Kitty

Are all beautiful things painful? The emotion that runs so deep has the power to soothe as well as slice, and I wonder how much chance there is in that... if it's God playing with his yahtzee dice, while we rattle around in the cup.

I cannot escape rainbows lately, they follow me around like some sort of technicolor omen, and it makes me laugh and wince in equal measure. They both mock and encourage me. My life some sort of weird farcical dichotomy of being. There was one over me as I drove home in hail today, some ridiculous metaphor of being. While others race for shelter I am out being battered, chasing rainbows.

This time last year I lived like I was on a tightrope, where the net shimmered beautifully below while I balanced serenely dressed in spangles. I have never felt so emotional in my life as I did a year ago, so reckless and wild, a raging storm of it. I have grown enormously in the last year - I have never been so beautiful as I am now. And all the lines and the new angles at my jaw contribute. Age is shaping me, moulding me against my will. I still don't remember how to breathe.

Sometimes in hiding from the emotion I have closed myself from looking for beautiful things, of seeing the beauty in everything, in pursuing the Gleam. But in honour of nothing, but being tired and anxious, and wanting to focus on something else, here are a few random things from my blog inspiration folder. I'm sure you all have one, and here's a glimpse of mine...

I have to know - did you dream this of me?

 Of wanting to lie with them, touch them, wake with them

My mirror friend

The hardest part? …there’s a fear that doubt will creep in, you will awaken one day and think “what the hell was I thinking?

I know it’ll get better. I wonder if it’ll ever be as good.

Reminded today of what I'm counting from

my mind is where the ghosted afterthoughts of you linger

you are still the brightest light to have shone in my sky

It's the shortest day of the year today. 
 
From tomorrow, every day will have more sunshine in it than the day before

As with other times before, Time had dissolved

I just closed my eyes for a second and disappared from reality. It was tough coming back

You're unlike anyone I've ever met, yet I feel like I've known you my entire life & beyond.

DFA

i will be frank, because i feel the need: i will take you in whatever form you are happy to share yourself with me, but i will always have, at the back of my heart, a little bit of wistfulness for more

the next day I didn't care & just held your hand for a moment

I was breathing so slowly & deeply that I may have appeared to be not breathing at all

i want words. 
 
and a tree

There was something about the beauty of the location, the company and the surrealism of having not slept and having no idea which day it was or which time. Some sort of suspended bubble that eeked itself out on the space time continuum. A beautiful lucid dream. I remember feeling my palms after all the digging in the sand, and how exfoliated and excoriated they were and the soft pain of that making me double take and realise that *this* was actually reality

Nope, in the end I cbf arguing so just went and did them.
 
QED
 
Then walked into a wall

well if one is going to be antisocial and self destructive one may as well do it antiseptically

now, when I sharpen a pencil, I enjoy the sharpness for a few seconds before deliberately softening the top so that it slides more easily on the paper

I'm perpetually glad that you appreciate the things that mean so much to me

When you're watching someone's face and they've yet to see you. The second that their eyes come into focus on your face and the connection is established: ephemeral; visceral; tangible. The way that you don't actually need to acknowledge it because it is so palpable that you can't help but know that the other knows it too

I understand gravity. Understand how it is that something so invisible can be felt so acutely. The pull towards. I never think about the fact that as I walk my feet touch the ground. It doesn't require concentration, it doesn't really require thinking. By virtue of the attraction of both bodies, the pull and force brings them together. Unintentionally. Inexplicably.

GTFOOMH

it must be strange shooting up your own vein. i look at my veins and think how easy they'd be to stick a needle in, but the idea gives me a shudder straight up the spine

i see it as a tangible edge, wispy and black but interestingly i see it against light