closing

So another year comes to a close, and I am astonished at the difference in how I felt this time last year, and how I feel now.
I'm gearing up for what will be my biggest year so far in my career, of that I'm certain.
THEN, I worked at a place I loathed, my heart was in pieces, I missed Atlanta and my friends, I didn't exercise, ate okay, but not great and I was so so lonely and empty.
NOW! My goodness....I LOVE my career, my heart has never been more whole, I have new friends, but have stayed in contact with the people who I love, I can't imagine my life without Yoga, I have begun to practice more meditation and I am healthier than I have ever been. Yesterday I made myself a banana, apple, kiwi, blackberry, pear and mango smoothie. I know it may sound like just fruit to y'all, but every time I peel that fruit and juice it, each time I finish a Yoga class, every time I make it to therapy, I KNOW that I'm honoring myself. Its like the shampoo commercial-because I'm worth it!
I feel more like myself than I have ever felt before. And I celebrate that. I celebrate it.

Late night phonecalls rarely bring good news.
My mother just came downstairs at almost midnight, sat on the adjacent sofa and told me that her older sister had died of a massive heart attack. Hands in her lap, she looked about 10 years old but with grey hair.
There's nothing like death to put things into perspective, to make you appreciate life.

colder than a witches tit

Some days I feel like the invisible girl. After the mildest winter since the 1700s, the weather has finally broken, bringing a biting chill to the air, freezing fog and my gloves out of the closet. Today I visited the London College of Fashion's reference library. I had been waiting for my visitors appointment for over a month and it didn't disappoint. For anyone creative, its heaven, with shelf after shelf on anything that might ever inspire you visually. They have every back issue of British Vogue for the past 40 odd years, all the issues of Pop since it began in 2001, vintage books on fashion and makeup.....it was dreamy. I'm going back.
Last night i finished The History of Love, the last pages turned rapidly, the words lessening as it drew to a close, and then the final paragraphs bringing me to tears. Heartbreaking.

Listening to
I don't trust myself by my one true love, John Mayer

latest images

Yesterday afternoon, I went to the movies by myself. Chose to see Stranger than Fiction, sat where I thought I wanted to sit, then sat somewhere else. I SO enjoyed myself, the film was just perfect to me. Spoke to me about how loneliness can change in just a moment, about how taking a few scary steps forward towards someone else will find you being met halfway. How life explodes into glorious technicolor when love arrives. How this false sense of immortality that most of us have, causes us to waste so much time, and that life can be over, just like that, like the flick of a switch. It was...beautiful.

Today I feel like my smallest niece felt yesterday. Except I don't get the luxury of sitting on grandmas lap all morning getting cuddles. Slept erratically, and scheduled a too early appt this morning way the other side of London. Y'all know how I am
when I haven't slept well.
Sooner rather than later I have to acknowledge its Christmas and do some shopping. I just don't believe in this holiday, it seems pointless.

The headlines on the newspapers I refuse to read are unavoidable. Someone is killing women in Ipswich, 5 in a matter of weeks. The tabloids exploit these horrors to shift papers. I hope they catch him soon.

And yet.

Contents of my bag

some used false eyelashes
a John Varvatos cologne sample
unopened contact lenses
a New York subway map
a well thumbed London A-Z
2 different handcreams
3 anti nausea pills
a penguin chocolate bar wrapper
my Sony cybershot
loads of bits of paper

Getting out of my car to what has become my regular friday afternoon activity of collecting the children from school, I can smell swimming pool. Chlorine and feet and wet hair and disinfectant.

My therapist has a candle burning, I can smell the lavender from down the stairs. It strikes me that I should give her a candle to say thankyou, in my final session, which is just weeks away.I feel bad that I know nothing about her life, only her first name, yet exonerated in perhaps not being allowed to know.

On arriving back in Oxford last night, after the first things first action of juice making-apple and pear and carrot-i rifle thru my bags for the book I am reading. Having left it in London, I take another from the pile that awaits me, and begin.
A while later, sleep pulls me away from what I see now is one of those literary jewels that you come across, maybe once every year or so, that you can't stop reading, but never want to end.
THIS is the kind of book, I would like to write.

I am reading a book about love. I have avoided love for the past 16 months, this self-censorship dictating the films I would watch, or rather would not, the books I would not read. I have opted out for so long now. But I feel like this book chose me. Reading it, I remember love. I recall its all encompassing need, its importance, its urgency. I remember its beginnings. And like buds coming up through a previously frozen ground, I wonder, if my winter is finally over.

Listening with euphoria to For the Time Being by Phonique feat. Erlend Oye

Sketching...my nephews face

Reading.....
THE HISTORY OF LOVE by Nicole Krauss