A Mixed Bag

Originally posted July 19th 2023

This isn’t a cohesive substack, more a collection of bits from this week. But hopefully will make for a decent read.

Gone are the days of the casual call. Now a phone call must be scheduled through text or email. I can’t just call for a 5 minute chat to see how someone is.

Or maybe I’m just telling myself that. Maybe people do just call. I think I’m projecting again and if I turn myself into someone who just calls I can prove myself wrong. But I worry it’d be like a can of worms.

If I started calling my friends I’d call them all the time. I’d want to hear about the dullness of their day. How their morning coffee didn’t taste quite right, there was a weird smell on the bus, the job hunt is the same as always. I want to hear the same thing over and over and love every second of it because it’s better to be bored with a friend than alone. You start asking questions you wouldn’t normally ask to break up the monotony. I’d ask what colour is the sky there. Are the trees still or moving? Do you see the shallow glow of summer too?

I want to be wrapping my fingers around a spiral phone cord, saying nothing. I don’t want every conversation to be a life catch up. I don’t want things to always have to be abundantly meaningful. I’m tired of text messages. I want to hear the cadence, the harsh or forgotten consonants. I don’t want to guess your tone.

I worry about being annoying a lot. It’s why I don’t message people as much as I should (and calling is an even bigger commitment). Being a bother is the last thing I want to be.

I used to ignore my best friends calls a lot. I would watch my phone ring and a while later say I was busy. I was never “in the mood”. I did this when family, particularly my sister, called too. Pretend I didn’t see it then go on with my day. I made people schedule calls, because I had time to “mentally prepare” (call it what it is: procrastination). And I operate on the assumption that’s what everyone does. It wasn’t until I began just picking up the phone that the anxiety about it began to fade. Because not every phone call has to be a 3 hour saga. You can just say hello, how are you, good, love you, goodbye.

Can I be the one who incidentally always called on a Tuesday morning? Can I be a part of your routine?

I was clearing out my Google Docs, because they’re implementing AI and I’m not on that train. I found a lot of old bits, ideas that never went anywhere. Observations of long work days. My internal monologue running amuck. It wasn’t the sad pieces that stuck out to me. Or at least, not my regular moping. It was the recollections of intimate moments that struck me, things I had completely forgotten about (things I will not be sharing because a line must be drawn). I often recalled dreams in theses notes, one in particular stuck out to me. I remember it well enough and also how sad I was because of this dream. It is strange how much our fantasies can affect us, perhaps that is why so many cultures believe our dreams are a reality as real as our waking lives. The date on the document is 10/01/21:

I had a dream in which my daughter, in a blue knitted jumper and moss green trousers complains that the button above the zip has fallen off and that she will need a new pair. Her hair is dark brown like mine but rests easy and flows past her shoulders like my sisters. I tell her why replace when we can repair and take out a tin that used to have cookies in it but now homes sewing bits and bobs. I tell her to pick a button, not too big or small and see if it slips through whatever the bit that button goes through is called. She picks a turtle shell one, it is a little too big but she says that makes it more secure. She says if I could use red thread instead of black, as if to show off the repair than be caught hiding it. Once I thread the needle she asks if she can do it and I hand it to her. She sews while the trousers are still on her. Her voice is a strange mix of mine and her father’s. Sometimes she says “y’all” like an American or swears like an Irish one. Her friends point this out. In her are strange pieces of my history. And I try to only give her the good bits.

In the morning I awake and I no longer have her. I don’t think I shall ever meet her. And I am terribly sad because she is kind and calm and I would like to see her grow up. In the brief dream I saw the home we shared and it felt warm. I wish I could meet her but our future is unknowable and my generation is replacing children with dogs or plants or something that will not have to suffer the rising tides and summers melting postboxes. I will restitch the fallen button with red thread and think of the girl I will never meet.

I put together some stretcher bars over the weekend. It’d been a long time since I stretched canvas myself. Trusting my memory to do the task right, knowing when to take out staples and get the fabric just a little bit tighter. Along the way I somehow cut the wrong amount of canvas despite laying the stretcher over it. I made do. Tried making a piece reminiscent of my older work. Today I became frustrated and brushed all of it together into a big muddy mess. We’ll start again tomorrow.

I keep trying to recapture older work. I’m trying to remember what it was like back then, when I was inspired and excited. I feel as though my ideas have outran my skill, that I’m a bad artist. I look at what others are doing and wonder how the hell they manage. Been watching youtube tutorials on colour theory, going through books on how to draw, yet at the same time not taking in any of the information. There is so much room for improvement it’s as if I don’t want to do it. It’s overwhelming, it’s impossible, blah blah blah. I scroll through instagram seeing all these people who, rather than be inspired by, I am envious of. Why are all my paintings so muddy? How are theirs so clean?

I am not a painter I am a sham. I’m a hobbyist. I’m a tourist!

I often wonder if I am saying too much. In these essays, specifically. I wonder if some things should be kept to myself, that I shouldn’t share every bit of writing, every thought that pops up. I mainly draw the line when the work involves other people, that’s when it becomes private. When it’s my own thoughts and moments, I’m not too fussed. I never want to be a “woe is me” type of person (but I kinda am, regardless), but I find sharing the darker thoughts outloud (or on paper) helps me understand them. And maybe through sharing them with others they become less frightening. Because, in a way, they become quite silly don’t they? This is to preface this next bit of writing, something I wrote when trying to go to sleep the other night. I was laying in my bed listening to music, this week I’ve been enjoying Miya Folicks Roach and Youth Lagoon’s Heaven is a Junkyard, and I just began sobbing my eyes out. The day had been unremarkable. Nothing had pushed me into this moment. But sometimes hopelessness just takes over. Then you read it over the next day and wonder if it was ever that serious.

10pm, 16/07/23

If I’m being 100% honest, and I know I go on about riding the wave and “positive thinking”, but I am really tired. I’m really tired of doing this. Everything is a struggle, getting out of bed, eating, going outside, taking a shower, the shit that’s supposed to be simple. I don’t know what to do with all this exhaustion. I am in a city with no friends and I am so incredibly lonely. I sit around in my apartment all day, bored and with nothing but my thoughts. I think I must deserve this somehow. I think of all the terrible things I’ve done and this must be my punishment. I don’t know if it’s worse if I don’t deserve it. At least if I deserve it, there’s something to it. Redemption or justice or karma. This isn’t a life, it’s just waiting. When I think of the future I don’t picture anything any more. I can’t just laugh it off. I’m probably never gonna get married or have kids. Never going to have a home of my own. If this is the rest of my life I don’t want it.

I have no wise words. Not right now. No great platitudes about life and meaning and whatever. I’m not okay. That’s it.

There is a shot in the film Worst Person in the World that I think of often. It’s nothing really to do with the story. The main character, Julie, is leaving a party for her boyfriend, and walks down a winding street, eventually overlooking the city. I remember seeing that shot and thinking “Damn, I really want to go outside again.” Whenever I start to feel lost or panicked about my future, I think about that scene. How much I want to walk on my own during dusk and maybe look over a city not too far away. Maybe it doesn’t need to be a city, maybe it could be a large ever expanding valley. Maybe a village. Maybe the ocean. To look over something and feel the warm air before the night chill. I want to give myself that freedom, to feel safe within myself because no one else can. I don’t think that’s possible. I want to be laughing at a party, I want to be enjoying dinner at a restaurant, I want to be wine drunk in a friend’s kitchen. I want to have a healthy dose of indulgence. I will always mourn the life I thought I should lead, I will always be sad about one thing or another, but I’m getting older and wiser and dumber and weirder and lovelier. I think about that shot of Julie looking over Oslo and think what I want is openness.

Thank you for reading,

-Enya xx