learning relation, again, at 32

-----Original Message-----
From: ajk
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2004 10:08 AM
To: jjl
Subject: RE: all of this

i remember those leg pains. lying in bed, ache in the shins, smoothing the sole of my foot up and down on my sheets trying to stretch it out. but how to stretch out a pain in the bone? the usual remedies don't apply.

so yes, growing pains. this learning anew, reforming, reshaping. becoming. hard - despite the wonder of it - to shed old habits, old patterns. constant vigilance the price for the privilege of standing this one foot to the left, of seeing new perspective.

i'm believing in the work, though, and in the benefit of it all, the move towards wholeness. we can do this.

-----Original Message-----
From: jjl
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2004 9:53 AM
To: ajk
Subject: all of this

when i was a kid they called it growing pains. unexplicable leg aches or other mysterious forms of suffering. which i felt. and may be feeling now. growing pains. the ache of change. how the snake feels shedding its skin. how a newborn mammal gets squeezed so hard in the muscular grip and hard bone passage of its mother's body. Condensing oneself down into a tight shape, being pushed along by larger forces. a body has to take a lot of pressure to come into the world. so here's to that pressure. here's to coming into the world. we can do this

bloor street, lunchtime

girl, 15 or 16, crossing at a diagonal at bathurst and bloor. beeline through traffic, not looking for cars, for bikes. i stop short, tire at her heel. she doesn't notice, her gaze focused three feet away - a moving target. "Heffer!" she's yelling. horning, honking. "Heffer!" almost baritone. loud.

on the sidewalk, another girl turns. braids pulled tight back on her head, headphone cords dangling. immediately, she flinches. immediately, she's sorry. slow eye close. brow furrow. her spine straightens, she blinks quickly, armouring herself against the building onslaught.

"good you know your own name." beeline is on braid's shoulder now, at her ear. "fucking cow." she steams past. smug. braid walks on, adjusts her earphones. i can't tell, as her back moves away from me, if she looks bigger or smaller. she does, i think, look stiller. poised.

been down so long

needing a venting. sun is out this morning, hazy, despite the undercurrent of autumn chill. one of the last gasps of summer, i suppose, before cool begins in earnest. woke up this morning crotchety. called j., heard the shortness in my own voice and had no way of curbing it, no access to the root of it. "is it PMS?" she asks me. calm. cool. reassuring. i am not reassured. i am scared. tired of this dragging down, tired of the sinking in my abdomen, the weight of mood. when, how, does this go away? how to buck up, pick up, shape up?

and now, here i am, ass in seat at work. am feeling my head sliding closer and closer to the keyboard, my fingers slow. heavy-lidded. now there's a nice picture. you understand, of course, that i'm talking in symbols. i hope.

publish or perish

i'm at work. i should say i'm not working. clearly. but i'm here, body in chair, and that seems to count for something.

i work in publishing. an offshoot of the publishing world, really. periphery. what we call *scholarly* publishing. none of the glitz and glam of the trade world - the randomly housed, vintage-clad, penguin-suited trust-funded martini-swilling world that helen fielding pens. here it's all skimping and scrounging. mounting press releases that nobody reads. i sometimes comfort myself that i get paid better than some of my compatriots in that swisher world, but the sheer blandness of my job can get me down.

am contemplating a career change. or a shift. but what the hell to do? i'm a compulsive non-finisher of degrees, having only managed the BA, and that only because i didn't know yet that i didn't *have* to finish it. started a PhD, backed down, got lost, thot maybe it was on account of i leapfrogged over the MA that i bailed on the big DR, so went back to do that. guess what? 'taint done that either. i used to pin it on being part of the cohort cursed by being born in the early 70s, the aimless child of the not-quite-boomer generation. now i'm not too sure. i'm beginning to think that i'm just really freaking lazy. lately the thot of doing *this* - this WORK thing - for another 33 years sees me sliding into a trough of despair.