Resistance, rewards and leg-warmers

"Is it enough to live in hope that one day we'll be free? Without this fear...I'm going out and carrying on as normal..."  'Discoteca' (Pet Shop Boys)

I used to listen to this quite a bit in the days that followed the shock of finding out about ex-partner's new love.  Actually, I can barely remember the point at which it stopped being that horrific shock, the kind that stops you from eating, and became a more established sense of horror and loss.  I remember I got to a point where I could eat, I could 'carry on as normal' but nothing looked the same.  And even more so, as a musician, no song ever sounded the same.  There was a new sting to anything that was about break-ups or trauma of some kind.  I suddenly understood what it was like to have a three minute song sum up my empty little life.

I appreciated the 'run away' kinds of songs all the more, those that inspired me to start again.  But it took a long time for me to be able to feel anything but trapped inside a bubble of ridicule and abandonment.  So I listened to things on headphones as I travelled about in London and reinforced my little cocoon.  Sometimes I catch myself doing the same thing even now, but I'm mostly trying to establish a territory of resistance, a place of defiance, lest this unrewarding, life-stealing work I do swallow me up entirely.

I have snatched a few moments for fun and frolics, but not enough to have my sense of strength in my own, creative work re-established.  My things are still scattered about and my thoughts are intermittently focussed on escape fantasies and determined task-avoidance, but with a sense of entrapment about the week ahead.  I'm getting more and more infuriated at being asked to do more for no extra reward (I bet I'm not alone in this...) but I have to find a way to zone out from that resentment, because I can feel it eating away at me.

I want to at least be able to take an afternoon off to go for a coffee and sit and read newspapers and write something.  But there is no suitable 'afternoon-off' awaiting me.  Not for the foreseeable future.

So, in the meantime, I spent a day with the architect, which resulted in acquiring a new pair of jeans, since my old ones disintegrated just as I was leaving London.  And now, not only can I wear the jeans, but also a top I've been wanting to wear for ages, which just doesn't go with anything else!  Hurrah to good fortune and a most helpful shop assistant, willing to suggest countless possibilities until, having tried on at least 12 different pairs, I honed in on the best fitting pair I could find.  

With a little inspiration from a stupid action film [starring Nicholas Cage doing an uncanny impression of my dear friend, Mr. Byron II]  and a flourish of my own with some leg-warmers bought in New York (which coincidentally help cover up the fact that the leg is too long and needed serious folding to not drag on the floor) I have cheered myself up thus:

If fashion is frivolity and an indication of my deteriorating mind, then sobeit.  Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.