Thoughts on a fickle pickle (apparently) and a few on (guess what?) (my) human nature!

And if you understand or agree with that, then you know more than I do! So let me try, all be it stupidly, to explain. Because as Coco Chanel once said, “The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud”.

I was talking to a friend, a male friend, not that it should make any difference, but in this case it does slightly (though not I should add because of some stupid nod to feminism, though my first automatic reaction without thinking it through, was to defend the female sex. As it turned out reflectively, wrongly!), and he told me he thinks that all females are fickle.

Fickle? I do not think so I said. I do not think so at all. I have never been so. I could never be so. I am loyal. I am loving. I am considerate, compassionate….. I am crazy, I am an idiot, I can become paranoid, and I can become nervous. I can lose myself (as you all know by now) through worry of never being good enough.

In short, in a relationship, I can be fickle. Not fickle with my feelings, but fickle with myself.

Nevertheless, it can get worse as I also believe that friends should not be fickle with friends. Friends should care about how their actions may affect their friends feelings. (No matter how you may or may not feel on this subject) (And unfortunately given that at the moment I just want to live and enjoy my life, really live, an impulse taking over more and more). Friends should not be fickle with their feelings (or friends).However it would seem to me at least, females are fickle when led (for want of a better word) by (some) men.

God, can I write that? I don’t even know, I guess I just did. You see recently I have needed to escape me. Not that there is anything wrong with me, rather that I just wanted to capture a little bit more of me. With uncharacteristic urges, wants, things I want to say, things I thought I might have to do, things I would have loved doing (again and again), things I want to do…. Oh things I want to do.

Moreover, it would help. I would and could say I recognised myself in them. I saw a bit of me. A bit of me I always knew was there. A bit of me I have longed (fantasized) to find. A bit I want to grab with both hands, now I’ve started to see her, a bit I want to grab by the ass.

Because she would be “kick-ass”, she would not accept less than a muse that must, what’s more she will enjoy looking, and she will enjoy being.

But here’s the sting in the tail, or the kick in the teeth if you will…. It leaves me as a female lured as easy as a piece of prey, and quite more or less in a bit of a fickle pickle! So I guess, which is amazing as you would say, means you were right all along, and yes, I mean you! Another argument I will not win!

With a note at the end to say…. No, no to no matter how much I may or may not be in a fickle pickle…. I am going to live my life. For myself. To the full. And there is one thing I will never ever be fickle with anymore (though I am not stupid, and know I will have down moments I will have to pull myself through, moments where I will need my friends to pick me up, but hey that’s why I have pencils and paper). I will never ever be fickle to myself and my character, my feelings or eccentricities again. Which should mean in the future, to whoever that muse may be, an unconditional (uncompromised) me!

You see really, to summarise, a plot that came later, a thought that should have come sooner…. I am a good person, I am not a fickle woman, I just happen to fall for (in love with) men whom I spend longer than a train journey with. Someone will always be prettier than me. Someone will always be smarter than me. Someone will always be younger than me. But they will never be me.

(And is it wrong that me is chuckling. Just wondering that’s all! That and what happens when you fall for fun? Or become addicted to the fun? (I should point out I’m not talking things, as ever I am talking people, hadn’t you figured that out by now, people (men) are a drug of choice, and highly addictive at that, even if you’re just sitting still watching!).

I keep on adding endings, as I think, as I go along, as I sketch my page to go along with this post, so please do excuse the ramblings at the end…. But I was wondering if I am self-destructing…. am I too old for a naive teenage like rebellion (seem I don’t think I really ever had time to have one back then) or too young for a mid-life crisis? Or is it just me and who I am. Is it just my human nature? Or more worryingly, and perhaps most tellingly, is it simply my ability to combine self-obsession with a complete absence of self-knowledge? Now that does make me laugh.

To be honest that’s where you have to find your strength from. Not from self-destructing. Not finding that thing that takes you out of yourself for the half hour, five minutes, or three and a half hours that means you can escape yourself. You have to find that inner strength, that being that is you, who you can be 100%, 24/7. That you who will not get upset when things don’t go your way. That you who won’t upset people because they won’t believe you, or that nothing’s happened. That you that they will love, and grow to trust. The person you are, the person you can be wherever you are, whoever you are with, where there is never a whenever, because you are always them.  I can try to put it in another way, simply, it’s that if you are a person who would worry for me and the part of me that would grab that piece of ass….well you don’t need to. Because yes, I will grab it, but at the same time I want it in tandem with coming home to someone who will massage my shoulders at the end of the day, kiss my neck with his arm around my middle just before I go to sleep, and then wake me up in the middle of the night with a smile on his face because he’s has a thought that’s gone through his head and he needs to act on it there and then. I guess what I’m trying to say (as liberated as I might like to be) I don’t want (or feel comfortable) with one without the other. And I want to be the person I am, without trying to be something I know I am not, and without trying to impress people who I don’t need to impress. Does that make sense? I think it should, because I’ve kind of being welcoming her back recently. Which means, if your surname is Davies too…. No, I didn’t.

(Pencils and paper, and all things lovely, with a page from my new sort-of sketch book, which I want to fill with loveliness, life, and it’s facets, and narcissistically the world according to me.)

The best parts of me….(or where I am now).

The best parts of me are irrational; the best parts of me are a little bit crazy. The best parts of me are sensitive enough to realise when something is turning into a memory right in front of my eyes before it is even over. The best parts of me are comfortable enough around you to be as naked, or as kinky as I like.

So to truly understand where I want to be, where I want the best parts and the rest of me to be….then you need to understand where I have been, where I am now, and how I intend to get there.

The first part is the simplest, and that is the last part. I am going to get to where I want to be by not giving up. By being stubborn, and matter-of-factly, in three little words, by being me (and staying me). Then the second and little bit harder part, where I am now. In a word, confused.

I was in love. I was in love with an impossibility, someone who you all now know lots about. Then I cried over a suitcase, and spent a year being a mess. When even my Mum despaired, and got a little bit fed up of me.

Then I came back here. I found happiness, it was what I wanted, and a chance to build something for myself, towards an ourselves. You see for once I did not want to over-analyse, or even attempt to rationalise. All I wanted was to be happy, so that was the thing I did and I tried my best.

It worked, it did. Then out of the blue, it didn’t. And I went into the normal. I blamed myself, I had stopped being myself, I wasn’t confident in myself because I was scared. Scared yet again that I wasn’t good enough. That I couldn’t help, and didn’t know how these things should work.

I asked, and I asked time and time again, for reason, an explanation. I wanted to understand. I got asked what was there to understand? A reason, a love, another year of my life.

So then, I wrote my last post. He read it, the first he ever had. I upset him, and I didn’t mean to. I should never have blamed him. Never have said he made me give up my art. Because he didn’t, I did that all by myself. And I am sorry, sorry to him, sorry to you, sorry to myself.

But now….but now I understand, at least a little bit more than I did before. I got an explanation, one I could never ever have wanted. One I could never understand. Am I meant to understand?

I don’t know. I don’t know if I can. Because I want to, I do. Because unlike you, I do, me in my inexperience and naivety do understand love according to Saint Augustine. Love will never be what it is at the beginning a year, six months, seventy years later. However, if it is love, truly love, then it will still be there.

And so, that is what I offer, albeit a little bit broken for now. That is what I give. Myself in the form that is me and my unconditional love.

So there you go, where I am, where I have been, where I want to be. It may take time; it will take strength and courage. However, this time (at least until the next) I am not accepting anything less.

Nothing but mad, all-consuming, fiery passion. A love that means without me……..well a love that means without me you are without you.

(With an aside of the fact that when I sketched this small little, full of faults drawing today, it made me smile, it made me want to sing, (oh la la la la la ooooooooohhhhhhhhhh wee la la la la la la!), because it felt like before. It was a release, an escape. It tapped into my feelings. It was me. It was where I want to be, and it is who I am. It is me!).

A love that means without me, you are without you.

Waiting for that indescribable moment, an untypical Tuesday afternoon, when you’re listening to music, and all you can ask yourself is when is it now….

So I was sitting, thinking as you do, wanting something wonderful to come into my head to go with this painting I’ve just done (as a variation of all I want for Christmas, something to make it unforgettable, that and it has a wonderful bum, which I have to say is a good thing). Something to accurately express how I am feeling. Something to blow away the cobwebs, something to make me pick up my pencil with that state of urgency, which in me at least characterises my artistic urges. Then of course, something that would make me write about what I have been saying I will for a while.

Namely the difference between the erotic and the pornographic, whether that can even be understood, or that maybe it is just some kind of misconception that I am believing, and perpetuating. (I don’t think so). Maybe it’s me that just wants to clear up the difference. Me who can smile at Woody Allen, when he says, “Man consists of two parts, his mind and his body, only the body has more fun”.

Me, who (yes, Mr Misfit) is a hopeless romantic waiting to think of something I would like to draw from my own one (time only, never to be repeated) line of (terrible rhyming) poetry (which you will well understand), “I can’t wait to see that look in your eyes, the one that says I want to be between your thighs!”

Because as every apple of a boyfriend knows “a woman is a beast. She is as lovely as she is as lovely as she is repulsive. She is one part demon and one part goddess….one part slave and one part muse….one part child and one part mother….these contradictions are what make a woman so intoxicating….”

So there you go, with strength, courage and conviction with a smile on my face I shall go to my blank pieces of paper now. For the reason that after all, at the very least, it will stop me writing!

The Art in the Attraction of Enthusiasm (or why enthusiasm is the most attractive thing you can posses, at least to me)….

Have you ever stopped, I mean really stopped and tried to think through, or at least wonder why, what makes you attracted to the people that you are attracted to? Now, I’ll be the first to admit I usually find something attractive in most men (which sounds strange, but I don’t honestly mean it like that, just that I will look for the good and the interesting, what makes that man, and his character tick, because that’s what’s most interesting to observe!). But the ones that I really fall for, the ones that hit me square in the chest, the ones that become part of me, my life, the ones that give me that overwhelming scary moment because you suddenly realise how much you do care, and yes sometimes (too much) of an obsession in my heart; and thus appear in some form or other in my art as an apple of a boyfriend along the way…. They are the enthusiastic ones, the ones with a passion in life, something that moves them. Something they would talk about for hours and hours day after day. Something that is as much their thing as art is mine.

It’s the reason why when I go to a concert I can fall for an instant in love with the bass player. Or that actor on the stage, that’s part of that company of “players”. Because they’re part of something, passionate about it, and if they’re generous enough, and enthusiastic enough, they’ll share it with you.

It’s the reason I’m cultivating an interest in motorcycle hill climbing. In fact motorbike racing in general. It’s the reason I was surprised to receive a painting for valentine’s day! And the reason I was surprised and touched to have a stack of CD’s lent to me, because he knew I’d not brought any music over with me. You see, an apple of a boyfriend?! Maybe yet!

Whoever they are, whoever I am now, I am only going to be that once. If I wanted to live a life without enthusiasm, well then I’d be but a shadow of myself. And of course, could only give but that shadow of myself to anyone else, and if he is enthusiastic, well then he’s worth much more than that shadow.

If you are going to be in my future, do not read this…. Because it was a year ago today.

It is exactly a year today, exactly a year since we were us. Not a year since I saw you. Not a year since we spoke. A year since we were us. I knew it was today, if you will believe me, I knew it was today before I even woke up this morning. I guess I’ve been consciously and sometimes unconsciously counting down to today, for oh 365 days. Because it is after all the last time we were us. So I knew it would be hard. What I did not know is that I’d be this angry.

It was a Sunday; a week after you’d picked me up. When you’d asked me your typical greeting of ‘ç a va?’, and I’d answered mine, ‘ç a va main tenant’. Simple enough, but you knew I meant I was alright now that you were there. Then you kissed me, with far more intention that you should have with my Mum at the door. We drove the two hours with your hand on my knee, that look in your eye. You carried my suitcase into the lift, only putting it down to quickly crush me against one of the walls for the three floors we went up. We got out, go in, you go out. I unpack, I tidy up, and open the shutters (you lived in a gorgeous apartment next to the jardin de plantes, why did you never open the shutters?). You work, or do something you imagined equally important at the office (that annoyed me, did you ever know?).

Anyway, like I said, I’d been there a week. You were at the office, I cannot reason why, I only know I put up with it. You were late and I was bored, so I decided to get dressed up (no, not in that way this time, just a way that wasn’t pyjamas or joggers). So on went my new thing that would hold up the stockings, some fancy knickers, and a new pink and black dress I knew you would love. I’d got it at Christmas that year, I knew you’d like it, it was similar to one you once said I looked nice in, then let your actions prove your words. (Did you know that in three years you gave me four compliments? Did you know, my excuse for you was at least I knew you meant them?). I did my hair, I did my make-up, and put on perfume (which is why I need to change it, because I am fed-up of feeling melancholy every time I wear it). But then you were late, and an otherwise rational woman started to get irrational. It is part of the infliction of being an artist, an over-active imagination that’s constantly turning.

So you get later, and then you get back. I didn’t shout (I never did, did I? Would you even believe I could?). But you could tell. It’s all too easy to tell how I’m feeling. I cannot help it, and I don’t think I could change it. But for this time you could still control it, you still had an invested interest in changing it, you still wanted us. So you pushed up my chin, stared into my eyes and said, without a trace of a smile, “Don’t forget God’s gift to Adam was a woman, so revel in your femininity.” Coming from you, you who would constantly assure me you had no fear of death, why would you? You, who I could argue about evolution with eight times a day!

Well it sort of worked, it made me smile, and I could see it working behind your eyes, wondering what your grateful little gift would give you that evening. So before you had time to say anything else I spouted out, as quickly as I could, without thinking “oh yes, rejoice in the fact that I can be difficult to please, because when I am pleased what I give back is definitely something worth having, being part of, and being grateful for. Trust me, it is obviously worth the effort of getting it right! That and always, always wear matching underwear because I can, and when I dance move my indecent suggestive hips!”

You just laughed and slapped my hips (popping one suspender), you raised your eyebrows, and I knew you could see a winning edge. So you followed with “yes, because there’s no shame in wanting to be feminine, and not liking Germaine Greer doesn’t mean every man you meet is going to step on you!”

Then of course, you won, when you followed up by shouting “and about nakedness, well, enjoy your body, feel good about it, and enjoy being in it. Because why not?” Then more quietly, “if you can give me a good reason, I will try not to!” So you see, coming from a man who generally slept in a jogging suit, you pretty much floored me. So what could I do but concede defeat, and submit to your rationality.

So why did you have to leave me, when the world is already much too full of the broken hearted? Why did you have to leave me without even giving me the comfort of offering you comfort? Why did you have to leave me broken (for a while) (and at the mercy of my irrationality)?  “No matter how tightly my soul is pinned to my body”, for a while there it left me unthinking and unfeeling. But most of all, why when it’s now 365 days later, why did you have to leave me afraid of falling in love? Moreover, afraid of never being good enough?

And of course, yes, this post is about you, the ex-blue shirted boyfriend. To you there is a question, and a statement. First, if I was sent to tempt you, well how do you think you did? I think you know how I’d answer for you, and the angry me would probably laugh, even though I probably shouldn’t. Then the statement, do you know what? You are not in the art, not even for a second; and that is a bigger part of me than even myself. So how’s that for defiant for you? (Though it is only fair to say a pathetically tearful defiance).

And if there’s one more thing I could just add, its here’s to not counting the next 365 days! Here’s to finding the strength (I have never had before) to be a woman in my own right. You see, yes, I am sure of my femininity and the power that awards me; but (and you notice the irony, and double standard here), but I am not sure of it on its own. I do not need a man to make me a woman, but I would quite like one to make me feel like a woman. With a promise to myself, that will undoubtedly please my little sister, I need to make my blog future proof. By which I mean one that anybody could read, if they were just knowing me, if they wanted to know me now, and after.

Of course it’s all thanks to WordPress, or as it’s properly titled “A Drive-by Crush”….

Since I started this blog on WordPress, I sporadically like to look through the latest topic tags on the WordPress dashboard and a couple of weeks ago I read this story on a blog about a couple on a train journey. The story appealed to me for several different reasons, firstly because I too am a ‘people-watcher’. I like to look at people and wonder how they know each other, how they met, what their relationship is, how long they have known each other…. All those sorts of terrible things, which can make you feel lonely when you’re single and looking at a couple. Then next, because once you have read the story you become involved with the characters (something I usually find, even as an avid-reader, quite hard to do with a short story). You care about them, and you start to make a back-story for them. Of course, because I liked it that much, I “liked” the post.

Therefore, I was genuinely very pleased when the author of the story, and blog, got in touch with me via e-mail, asking if I would like to draw a picture for one of his stories for him. That is what I’ve been doing this last week. I can’t tell you, or explain even, how much I enjoyed it. I am so used to thinking about (and going on about) how much I want to be an illustrator, that I’ve never even stopped to think about if I could actually do it or not! I mean I’m used to illustrating my life, my feelings, my experiences. But that’s just second nature, because they wouldn’t be my life, and I wouldn’t cope with my feelings if I couldn’t deal with them somehow (if it isn’t obvious my now, my dealing with them is me drawing).

I’m taking the fact that I really did enjoy it so much, the fact that it was nice to be taken away from myself for a little while, that it was nice to illustrate someone’s thoughts and ideas (though of course this could just be because of the quality of the story), and that he does like my drawing as a sign of success. So I guess that’s another small step towards my dream. As for the most important bit….

Here is the illustration, and you can read the story on Den’s blog, A Flash of Inspiration, and while you’re there you should also read Strangers on a Train (and all the others), which after all started this collaboration. Which I now hope will go the other way, as he kindly says he will write a story from a drawing I send him.

How I came to learn how to knit (Or a thought on French kissing married men that flirt)….

My Mum taught me how to knit once, I do not think I’m any good, but I can knit, pearl, do a cable stitch, and make a bobble. This is not deep, or meaningful, nor is it particularly thoughtful. It is just a light (-ish) story from my past that I thought might make you smile (being slightly tongue-in-cheek), and in truth I just wanted to have an excuse to sketch some balls of wool (no, I have no idea why either!). First, let me explain two things.

I have always had a bit of a thing for older men, I’m not sure why this is or where it came from (having said that ex-blue shirted boyfriend was a year and a half younger than me, and I was not the mature one in our relationship, no seriously). Now what I have never understood, because I do like flirting as much as the next person (it’s fun, cheeky, teasing, and can be a good boost to your ego), what I don’t understand is why do some attached men still think it is ok to take things beyond the boundaries of propriety? Now I do realise there is such a thing as un-harmful flirting, but this is a story about the unintentionally harmful kind, at least on my part.

Secondly, in France (as you will probably know), kissing is the normal form of greeting for people that you know. Where I live, it is three, it’s nothing new, but it is incredibly important to them. Because if you didn’t do it you would unintentionally offend the person you were saying hello to.

So now we go back to a time when I had just moved to France, and my little sister and I used to go to a nightclub near us called Le Pyramide (think going back in time to the 80’s, with neon paintings of music stars on the walls). It was in the middle of nowhere, you had to (obviously) drive to get there, the drinks were a bit disgusting (and the ice was definitely dodgy), and the music iffy at the best of times. Nevertheless, we liked it (and as it happens it is where I met ex-blue shirted boyfriend, but that is a different story), and we eventually got to know the owner who let us in for free, the doorman was cute, and the barman…. Well he is the reason I took up knitting.

I’d sit there and talk to him across the bar, and totally take advantage of the free dodgy (non-alcoholic, I was driving) drinks. (I do not mean to sound so stereotypically female, but you have to remember that people were interested in us; we were English, young, and liked clothes and high shoes. Which were back then rarities in that particular part of rural France).

I was young(er) and cheeky, and he was cheeky back. Because he had a wonderful imagination that could make me blush, one that significantly increased my French vocabulary (of which fesser was one word), he talked about his pet snakes (of which he honestly had several), and stuff I will leave to your imagination (I do not want to make my little sister cringe when she reads this). All of which, I guess (I know), I encouraged him in.

So, then one day I went to the supermarket with my Mum. Thankfully, this supermarket had shops along its front. Because walking along, I looked up and there he was, my barman. Except he had his wife in one hand, and their two children on the other hand and a hip.

I panicked; I didn’t know what to do. I mean would he kiss me hello? Introduce me? How? As the young woman who he made lewd suggestions to most Saturday nights, most of which she lapped up? I looked to my left, “oooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhh, look at all those lovely coloured balls of Phildar wool for 99 cents!”

(I should also add it was probably a good thing, he was far too normal (for want of a better word) for me, and not at all geeky. I should also like to say; I felt much easier when no one was following my blog, and I felt less scared about the reaction to what I write and me. Stupid right, I know. Still, at least, I hope this is ok.)