Reply Paid

Idril, I am guilty of such neglect. I have been working hard at it, but the awful way things tend to work means that I usually have one or two blogs written and recorded, three or four written but not recorded and two or three half written. And as it stands at this moment I have NINE blogs on the go, and I’m trying to create witty labels as I go as well as all the way back into late July.
Bear with me, and know through all of this that I have noticed each and every comment, and I am trying just as hard to get a reply out to you.

So on to the dissection.

I agree that a fixed background for the blog is the way to go, thank you for that suggestion; I have already half designed it, although making it work for different screen resolutions is a bit of a problem.
What I am trying to achieve image wise with the nose ring, um… I think I want to look more bohemian. I want to be characterful.
I did get an invisible tracker from StatCounter. It’s awesome. It’s already doing its fascinating and complex job. I’d wanted one of these a while back, when I saw a picture of yours on your blog, and I left a message asking where you got it. I’m glad I found out, I’m a bit vain about my blog and the statistics will give me hours of fun! Thank you. Also, on a less light-hearted note, StatCounter has allowed me to see how much you visit my blog, and it has reinforced both how lucky I am to have you, and my guilt for not working at this harder.
What was that at the beginning of the podcast for Retrograde? Me being stupid and trying to amuse myself with a line from ‘Pirates Of The Caribbean: At Worlds End’. For those of you playing at home, it was the delirious mumbling of Jack Sparrow after disembarking from the Black Pearl in Davy Jones’ Locker, the line, as I understand it was: “But why would he do that? Cos he’s a lummox isn’t he? Well we shall have a magnificent garden party and you’re not invited.” I was just fooling around as the recording started and I decided to leave it in. Partly just because I like the word ‘lummox’.
On hoping that I find the inspiration to do something and be productive again: Do something? There is nothing to do. Just wait wait wait, and then there will be so many things to do at once I will wish I was never born. Why can’t it all be nicely paced out? That’s all I ever wanted. School was good for that; just sit there from the hours of nine to three and absorb, maybe do a bit of writing or talking. Suited me fine. That’s the life I want. Long but cruisey. I don’t want to work my arse off for 3 hours so I can have 3 hours off; I’d much rather work at a relaxed pace for 6. I find myself thinking thoughts at work that would make most people sick. ‘I could stay here until we closed, I wouldn’t care, as long I had something to do the whole time; and I’d get paid and I could go home and have dinner and go to bed pleasantly tired.’ Give me a few lazy afternoons, save me a day to sleep and a day to shop and my life is made I swear.
On the difference between what Amanda truly means and what her readers think she means and the fact she may genuinely love them: I will confess to being a little bitter about this. Criticising her selfishness only reflects my own selfish desires. I really try, and at times it’s fortunate and amiable; but there is a lingering resentment that somehow still stands because of all it could have been between me and her; and never will be. And it tugs at the soul to know a beautiful friendship like that must suffer such a useless and impossible existence.
The sudden return of your long rambling comments has been a joy. Don’t worry if you ramble too much at all; I love to be immersed in it and hear every tangent, even if I fail to note it. I am touched to know that you are touched, and I feel I cannot say it enough how much I value this exchange. Thank you for saying that it’s not an insupportable one sided relationship here. It means a lot to me to hear that. You do need to blog; I try to make sense of your one in French, but it is an incomplete attempt that at best manages to absorb the pictures, a few words and maybe the general feeling. I would read your blog, should it get going. But I must warn you that I’m terrible, awful; Musings got her blog going a while back and it shames me how I have only managed a few cursory blog comments and maybe one or two on the main page. As I have said before I am a hypocrite when it comes to reading and replying to blogs. Too absorbed in my own world. I need a holiday. I need to finish these nine blogs and be done with it for a while. Give you all some time to catch up and myself some time to switch off and absorb…
Do I have my results yet? Do I ever. It goes without saying. There’s a full recount of the events; I just hadn’t got around to posting it in time…
On the links between TV fantasies and real life boys: more on this later love, there is so much that has gone unsaid.
Would I laugh if you told me you’re most afraid of the day when you’ll take your lip ring out and know it’s forever? Not at all. I completely understand. God do I ever understand, and thank you so fucking much for getting me to talk about this. Beyond my dreams and whether I am going to succeed in them, is this same indescribable thought about who I am now and how the me of the future will reflect upon it. I too am afraid of what it means about what I am now. Will I dislike myself? Will I discredit myself? What a futile and useless existence I must lead if this is true. I look back on my past I regret most of it, in light of what I have learnt now. I remember primary school and being so different and outspoken that I scared all the other children away and never had any real friends; I remember pink and purple, white shoes and green eye-shadow and other similarly bad fashion choices (which is quite a feat seeing as I haven’t lived more than two decades). I remember money, and all the stupid, plastic, broken things down the bottom of my cupboard I bought with it. I gaze at the ceiling for hours imagining time machines and fantasies in which I travel to my childhood and appear before that 7 year old who gazed at the year sixes and wondered with a transcendental longing what she would look like and be like when she was that old… and I would sit her down and tell her who I was and where I had come from and why I was here. And I’d tell her to be normal, and average, and friendly; and that when she grows up she’ll be most happy if she just accepts that she is a writer. I’d give her a few winning lottery combinations and Melbourne Cup winners, tell her to get her mother to invest in a company called Google. And above all, if I had anything to teach her it was that she shouldn’t say too much, ‘Don’t think too much, and for God sakes don’t tell everyone about it, they’re not ready; it is your talent and your curse. Take it up later in life, but for now it will save you a lot of heartbreak if you leave it be.’ I’d tell her that she could tell her mother about me, but nobody else; and I know she’d want proof and to remember this, so I’d take two Polaroids of both of us together and give one to her. I’d tell her that I loved her so, so much, and to keep safe, remember her first kiss and not hang upside down off the metal fence between the asphalt and the deciduous trees.
I hear from my mother that this is a natural but immature thing to think, and that in time I will learn to accept myself and memories for what they were. It’s a noble thought, but nobody ever does. Everyone wishes, for at least one moment in their life that they could know what they know now, that they could know what the consequences would be. I think this is what we humans desire most of all – the ability to know the future, and make an informed and perfect choice, always. It’s a hopeless and impossible thought rife with regret and agony– but who can resist it?
But I know what that innocent little seven year old would say, after I finally gave her an opportunity to talk and took my first breath after blathering on… she’d say, but you’re so cool. You’re so beautiful and articulate and awesome. I want to be like you. Do I have to change anything to be like you? And I’d hang my head, and in the most happy, defeated voice I would say: No, no you don’t.
And that is where the thought behind the subtitle for this whole blog comes from. “I want to be what I was when I wanted to be the person I am now.”


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