Journey to Nothing

[LastThursday]

The last week I thought I would bring myself back down to earth. The blasted cold I had helped ground me in my body and in reality - thanks cold. I always pride myself on my ability to not get ill. Once a year? I'll take that! I do so hate being ill with a passion.

And so it is. Not working and having large tracts of "me" time continually pulls me into my a set point. I read a lot, watch stuff on YouTube, watch occasional series on streaming, go for walks, play my keyboard, meet friends for lunch, constantly learn new stuff etc. etc. And I'm prone to fantasising plenty. Ultimately though, I just want a calm peace whilst the swell around me churns away.

I know the precious peace is not going to last. Life ebbs and flows and catches you up in its shenanigans. For example my landlady is selling my flat, so I have to find a new one really. I can't afford to indefinitely not work, so I have to find a job really. My dad has been moved to a hospice and his cancer continues unabated, so I have to say my goodbyes really. I have nearly finished my app I'm coding, so I have to get it published really. 

All the time people around churn away and ask me all those questions: how's your dad, how's your job hunting, hows your flat moving, have you found a girlfriend yet, have you XYZ? I know that really they're just saying: Guillermo we love you and want the best for you. But can' they see I'm a nearly 54 year old man who knows their own mind, has always done things in their own way and time, and that the worst possible way of interacting with me is to keep reminding me of things I should be doing? Don't these people know me at all!? Even my sister who knows my core being better than anyone needles me. Why! Arghhh. And even my own dying father doesn't get that I just want him to say "Son, how are you? I'm just calling to say hi." instead of "Son why aren't you doing what I want you to do?". Of all the people he knows me the least.

I take a breath and try and carry on with things stoically, but reality keeps knocking on my door. But the worst person for it, and really the one who knows me most intimately is: myself. He's a right pain the ass with his idealistic notions of this and that and the way things should be, the fantasies he wishes were true, but whose reality probability either won't ever happen or if they did wouldn't really be what he wanted. Can I really make a life sitting by the beach sipping coffee and beer all day? No. Will that great romance really last for ever in a state of perpetual bliss? No. Is the perfect person for me full of beauty and intelligence and life really out there? No. Is the idea of working for myself on some grand project going to give me momentum and zest for life? No.

Instead, I'm just a big bag full of cats constantly fighting each other.  I progress in fits and starts with long periods of stasis and inaction. And even writing this is a vain attempt at trying to understand that bag of cats, and it's a miracle anything happens at all. That smart alec me tries to be constantly high-falutin and insightful and solution oriented. The pragmatic wistful me says fuck off I like my peace and quiet, I've had enough of that obligation crap for one lifetime thank you. 

So what to do? Nothing. Carry on as you were. Guillermo you're your own worst enemy.

I'll restart my magical workings, engage with it fully, see what happens.

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 08:28 AM by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

Yesterday on my walk around town and as I was on the leg back home, I could see walking towards me a woman in her thirties. She was staring wistfully into the shops that lined the street with a half smile on her lips. I was wondering what was on her mind when I suddenly realised what it was. She had been staring at the wedding dress in a small boutique shop I've passed a million times. 

It's not often you get an insight into what strangers are thinking. I wondered if the woman had been married before or even if she was about to. I did half think that I should ask her the question as I passed her: "Hey do you want to get married?" and see what her response was. 

I had also stared into the shop wistfully at times. It catches my eye every time without fail. I don't know if it's the prominent white classic wedding dress that's always fronted and proudly displayed in the window, surrounded my her entourage of lesser wedding dresses. Or is is the dinky size of the shop, like a little mysterious shop of curiosity; one in which if you ever entered you might be enchanted and never leave. Or is it just the name of the shop which my super-logical mind gets its knickers in a twist about every time: Isabella Grace. Is that two first names? Two last names? The founder's name? Or just a perfect name for someone about to get married? When they get married will they become a more ordinary Bella Jones?

The shop brings out the schoolkid in me. I had always expected that I would get married, most probably in my twenties. And if you can believe it I always wanted a lavish affair with lots of guests and all that traditional Western wedding stuff; most of all I wanted a bride in a beautiful dress. It would be a symbol that I'd arrived as a man and everyone could see it and acknowledge it and congratulate me - us. Marriage was the done thing, and the thing to do, a symbolic rite of passage, things that grown ups do.

All my friends managed it and I was invited to every one of their weddings. Hindu weddings. Muslim/Chinese hybrid weddings. Weddings in country houses. A wedding in a farm house. I had fun at those events and I always wished my friends good luck and was happy for them. But each was a reminder that it might be me one day, but not today. I was even booked to attend two weddings on the same day once. That's not untypical of my luck. I chose by precedence, but secretly I'd wished I'd gone to the other one. My ex got married in Vegas: I was not invited. This is despite us supposedly having been on "friendly terms" and having known each other for twenty years or so at that point. She was never one for awkwardness however, it's sort of fair enough, kind of. The irony being that she'd also been at nearly all those other weddings with me.

The other thing that always occurs to me is: I want to be the one in the wedding dress. Could I just walk into that shop and ask to try it on, just the once? To be honest I'm not sure what has happened to me in the last five years or so. Whatever feminine part of my make up that was submerged for fifty years or so has bobbed up to the surface and it won't go away. I do a lot of work on myself perhaps. This journal is really about shadow work dressed up as observation and I've done a lot throwing light on that shadow. I've never strongly vibed with being a man for various known and unknown reasons, which leaves the question: what do I vibe with? It has certainly been hugely easier to present and behave like a man but it's somewhat of an awkward or lacklustre mask at times. I just don't care about huntin' shootin' and fishin' if you get my drift.

I seem to vibe with feminity a great deal. I both enjoy the appearance of women - like most hetero men do - but I also like the company of women. At school I was always more comfortable talking to and being around girls, when I could manage it - boys were coarse and unpleasant. This changed as an adult and I became equally comfortable with both. I got shoehorned into maleness and adapted, and mostly became amnesic about my feminity or more precisely my lack of strong embodied masculinity. I kind of learned to be male.

What may have happened in the last few years is that I've dug around into my shadow, stopped being amnesic, and allowed myself latitude to experiment with what does vibe with me. More than anything I seem to yearn to embody that feminity to really understand it in all its glory, rather than being a passive observer of it. I want to somehow and temporarily switch off that maleness in me and let her take over me. To put on her clothes and mannerisms and to be her for while and to let her sink into my bones. 

What does all this mean? I haven't the faintest clue. I don't know where it's all headed and I also don't seem to care much particularly. All I know is if I could shape-shift for a while and be a woman, then I would. I don't want to kill the man I am, but I do want to let the woman I am have breath.