Transformation

I'm thinking about transformations. Something I'm fascinated with; the human capacity to transform. The drunks who get sober, the large who shrink themselves, the slobs who get fit, the dowdy who scrub up into swans, the houses groaning with junk which, decluttered, become places of solace.

It is that last one that I'm preoccupied with at present. My home, while not groaning with junk, is grumbling a bit at the quantity of books I have encouraged it to swallow over the six years I've been here. I just keep buying book shelves at garage sales to accommodate the screeds of words that it is my compulsion to consume.

The problem is that there has never been a plan as to the placing of these shelves, or the ordering of the books. I now have shelves everywhere and anywhere they'll fit, filled with books in the order they were bought, or read. A few months ago I bought a very large, and much needed old wooden shelf at a garage sale, which had been converted from a cupboard, and as I stood gazing in satisfaction at it, smug with the knowledge that the latest piles would now have a home, the owner said, 'and I'll throw in the books too, if you like.' How could I resist? There was Le Petit Prince, various guide books to Paris, and novels by Dickens, Miller and of course E.

So, you see. I have a problem. And this is only part of it.

I am in the midst of transformation of a kind. The spaces of my house are being rearranged according to the type of things we (my daughter and I) are working on at present. She is doing a lot of dance practice, and so therefore needs uncluttered space in which to do this, while I am spending a lot of time at the computer and (quelle surprise!) reading.

I am shrinking down the art area, which consists of a long table atop which are gathered an easel, tubes of paint and a variety of paintbrushes, a stack of w/colour paper at the ready and our art diaries (mine and hers). Next to it against the wall are frames, sketches and works in progress. This all takes up a considerable amount of space and neither of us has spent much time there in the last 6 months so, it goes. To make way for her dancing, and perhaps another book shelf. It won't disappear altogether, and will be accessible but it will be put away to make way for the new, the people we have become.

As for the many musical instruments that we have hanging around: the piano, 2 guitars, a violin, a djembe drum, a ukelele, various percussion and an antique piano accordian, these will be worked around. You never know when the urge may take you.

So, for the next few months, the Christmas season, in fact, I will be preoccupied with cataloguing, with space, with the question of who I am now as opposed to who I was last year. All in preparation for New Year's when I shall begin the wishing. Dreaming of the who I'd like to be this year.

You know me, I like a good wish. It's the way all tranformation begins.

What I missed Vince for.

Have just been out of town, accompanying my daughter to a Ballroom dance competition. She (only 8) had a great time and took out a few trophies too, slick little hip swinging chacha sweetheart that she is, but, as for me, her highly strung, bookish, grave-wandering maman, I fear I haven't the heart, or indeed the claws, for the competiton that plays out around the edges of the floor.

Oh, E. I'd rather run with the bulls in Pamplona.

Summer

It's starting to heat up. Summer is bearing down and I, as ever, am not really prepared. Not ready for the clouds of mosquitoes and the profusion in the garden which will grow wild through the wet if I let it. Not ready for the humidity and the endless hours of light, or for the approaching hysteria that is the commercial side of Christmas.

I do look forward to the sunsets, though, the intensity of the colours at this time of year. I wish for some good storms too. We'll put up our feet on the patio and watch the lightening claw across the sky, shout over the rain that 'IT'S REALLY CLOSE!' as the thunder claps overhead.

I look forward to putting the cotton net up over my bed, and crawling into my own little world at night, just like I did as a child. Then, the summers brought fireflies too. Lying in bed after lights out I would gaze enraptured at these magical little creatures as sleep drooped my eyelids and the fans whirred.
Everything was a possibility.

The heat just seems hotter now than it did then. There's not as much magic hanging in the air.

Que sera, it's not all gloom.
There is champagne, after all.

A Reminiscence.

Watching the SBS classic albums doco on The Doors tonight put me in mind of the autumn I was in Paris. It was the nineties, I was very young and, mais oui, I was indeed in love. The day we, mon cher and I, strolled arm in arm around Pere L'Achaise cemetary was windswept and suitably spooky. Cold too, after a summer in the south of Spain. I wore red gloves. My hair was rich with Moroccan henna. I had eaten brioche and bananas for breakfast. Dead leaves fell all around. He took my photo as I stood breathless at the grave of Oscar Wilde, where someone had laid a single red rose.

We followed the trail of graffiti to Jim Morrison's grave, heard him before we saw it. A group of people were gathered around, the Doors were playing on an old tapedeck and the grave was a mound of flowers. Candles and incense burned, joints were passed around. Someone stood and read some of Morrison's poetry, quiet and reverential at the head of the grave while we lay about and got high, and the leaves scudded and the clouds rolled by and the crows cawed in reverence to the Lizard King.

I wandered off then, and found Piaf. No hoopla there. Standing before her headstone, I thought about regret. Young and in love, I found I had none. Now, years later, I wonder at the girl I was.

My friend, J, she of the Hemingway story, has also visited Jim. J likes to write her poetry on toilet doors. On the door of the toilet at Pere L'Achaise, J wrote (one poet to another):

'Poor old Jim, you're better off dead

You've got a bunch of hippies sitting on your head.'

She has a certain turn of phrase, oui?

To Paris.