Slipping Sliding Droopy Drawers

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Slipping Sliding Droopy Drawers

I have a headache and my tummy is tired.  I have lots to think about and no solutions.  I have had a wonderful time recently and now I am having an angst ridden time trying to work out why I am not having such a wonderful time any more.  If only, my anxious brain says to me, loveliness just comes, through the ether, with no input from me, to me, and gives me a jolly nice lift.  If only, it continues, you didn't have to work so darn hard to make anything happen.  Poor you, my brain adds sympathetically, you really do have to keep on top of things, don't you?

I spent today in bed watching Disney films with my lovely daughter, the Trainee Nurse and Renaissance Woman.  She loved it, I sought oblivion.  We lay in my big bed in pyjamas and had eggy toast and tea, and watched Muppet Treasure Island followed by the Lion King.  In each plot, I looked for clues as to how to live well and find a way out of this feeling of - well, nothingness.  Disney and Muppets are good for droopiness of the brain, they have happy endings and the characters don't feel pain for long.  Existential pain, that is.  They don't feel the Meaningless of Life for very long.  Someone always says something profound at the end  like, "Remember who you are" and "I know who my real friends are" and "if you can't beat them, join them", and suddenly the sun comes out, everyone has a Eureka Moment and en masse, the whole lot of them have fantastic lives again.  

It is not that bad here.  Bognor is joyfully lapping up the sun despite the wind.  So far, the shops are doing enough trade, the trains are running on time, and people are paddling with determination in the choppy sea at the top of my road.  My garden is lovely, and the Cosmic Gardner did come and clean my windows inside and out.  I can see out of my windows in a way that I did not think possible.  And, I guess, I could see in too if I was outside.  14 Year Old Son, he who is 6'3" and a tangle of arms and legs, well meaning bear hugs and playful karate chops, put up all my mugs on special hooks he fixed himself on the new shelf in the kitchen, and made the kitchen look even more homely.  Lovely.  Furiously Independent Son spent a whole week here eating resting and not doing night clubs nor dreadful things, before going back up to London the day before yesterday to take his A Levels.  That was nice.  

I have bought a new hoover, I have thought about painting my house green.  I have dreamed of having wooden floors everywhere, and I have done job bags for my new commissions.  I even did a commission.  I hauled myself about the house this week as if I was recovering from a long, debilitating operation, sighing and stopping for breath at short intervals.  My mind, the same mind that I wrote about a few blogs ago as a deep lake catching the spindly long legged thoughts etc etc, has passed from being the deep waters and so on,  skipped the bog stage and become a dried up canyon, deep, empty and scorched into nothingness by the blazing heat of the sun.  Or that is how it feels. 

I have had no good news all this week.  No bad news either.  I have heard nothing about all the feelers, proposals and ideas I put out into the world outside Bognor.  No emails, no phone calls, no texts and no letters.  I am in an Artistic Drought as a result. There are things I could do, there are always things I could do, but I don't want to.  As I said at the start of this blog, my head aches and my tummy is tired.  And my mind is a Grand Canyon of Whatever.

So what to do.  Well, funnily enough, the best thing to do is Nothing.  That is what I am aching to do, so that is what I will do.  After a spot of Nothing, I will be ready to to take stock, and do Something.  On Muppet Treasure Island, the delicious Tim Rice as Long John Silver gets his comeuppance.  But that is despite being let go by the Jim Hawkins character.  "Well done," says Kermit the Frog as Captain Smollet, "your father would be proud of you."  And then we get a small clip of Tim Rice being bored to death on the Treasure Island by a Mountain with a Face telling one dreadful joke after another and I thought - there is justice.  I am the Jim Hawkins character and I will do nothing but let the baddie go.  The baddie, Tim Rice, is my Lack of Energy.  Well, my lack of energy baddie will be punished by having itself bored to death by bad jokes.  Serve it right.  And Kermit the Captain Smollet character, well - he is my Higher Self and therefore the winner.  Oh I knew Disney would sort me out.

And yes yes yes to the kind comment below, it is Tim Curry not Tim Rice that is in Muppet Treasure Island.  Thank you and please come and live with me.  You have a deep meaningful lake for a mind, not a scorched Grand Canyon and I may need the input.  Thank you.