Monthly Archives: February 2013

Things I am average at no. 290: Providing

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My housemate and I purchased steak the other day. I’ve been feeling a little under-meated of late and the sheer size of the mammoth porterhouses selected had me significantly giddy. I chose a day when I knew several people might be home so that we could all enjoy the meat planks and the marvellous assortment of freshly sauteed and gorgeously presented seasonal vegetables that I would have lovingly prepared.

This is what happened after work today.

Got steaks out of freezer, placed on bench. Left the room.

Came back ten minutes later, looked at steaks, contemplated pizza.

Looked more at steaks, still irritatingly frozen and completely uncooked

Sat on bed, whinged aloud about steaks.

Finally opened pack, put steaks on plate and put in microwave. I am Martha.. someone.

Despondently sipped a cider by the sink wishing a housemate would come home and tell me how best to construct a meal/construct a meal for me

Success! Josh home and roped into cooking steaks on BBQ! Things looking up.

Huge steaks still defrosting

Josh is cleaning the BBQ and I am now sitting on the floor of kitchen imagining a teeny race of people who might worship at the foot of our White Pages stack

This is why I shouldn’t have children.

 

Note: while writing, Josh made the salad and politely didn’t tell me to get off the floor.

Sadness can eat my ass

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Being sad is just a huge load of shit, yeah? Man.

Who, I ask you, needs a deep and heavy pit in their stomach or a frequent and burning ache in their chest that has nothing to do with a night of much scotch? Nobody, that’s who.

It is amazing to me, post-sadness, to recall a day pre-sadness when I looked at the bits and pieces of my life and thought ‘wicked. Solid. Good job, life’. I effing hate it that something can waltz solidly in and shoulder out the magic that made my life really cool and leave it looking sort of greyish, wan and sickly. I liked it cool.

Worse still is the knowledge in my viscera that the magic hasn’t actually been shouldered out it’s just been hidden behind a haze of hurt and memory and my life is STILL REALLY COOL, particularly as I am well fed, employed, able bodied, have access to my iTunes library and remain wholly unpersecuted. How dare I sigh so much? Why is it OK for me to wake up in the night crying? Sadness can eat my ass.

Time wasting jerk.

 

 

the girl who lost her face

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She had a lovely face. She would wear it all over town, and most who saw it were moved to smile or at least to look away disinterestedly. She wore it well, her face. It’s curves and smiles, it’s eyes and forehead were all in their appropriate places- she wore it well.

She had a particular look she was trying out. It was a faraway, pleased but mysterious look. It carried a sense of whimsy around the mouth and that of a thinly veiled secret hovering just above her brow.

She was getting better at it. She did it more and more. She would look at herself and think “that is it. That is my face. I can see it now”. She made the faraway pleased but mysterious look all the time.

Then one ordinary day, she woke up and something was different.

Her face was gone.

She moved around her house like one dead. She could not eat, she could not see; she had no face.

In the street people didn’t look at her at all. They didn’t understand what she had lost. She took to sitting by her window, and to feeling the soft breeze on her shoulders. She would have cried, but she didn’t know how.

She moved towards mirrors and would run her fingers juddering down the glass, trying to remember what her face would do: the way her lips would pull to one side, or a slight crease in her brow.

“Damn” she thought as she strained to recall the face she had loved,

“I thought that was the one.”