last ditch attempt.

sitting on the floor of an empty apartment. i realise now its been 9 months that i ve lived here, like an ectopic pregnancy, implanted into the wrong place, growing out of control.

i have to pick up my 5 bags and go – 2 of which are way too heavy – but its rush hour and the last thing i want is to be standing on a train, with my cheap chinese plastic bags, in the middle of all those suits wrinkling their noses at me. i dont want to go.

i m exhausted. so tired i m having headrushes.

i m not sure i really want to move in with G, he s kind to offer to share his room with me, but i cant foresee it as being a happy time. i dont want to move in with P. I dont want to share his bed. I dont want to go back to the hostels. I can be everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

i had my final exams today – its all been a blur though, really, i cant really remember much of the last month – but, amazingly, despite it all, the exams went well. thank fuck, because i know i have to change the ways things are, and this might be my ticket out.

i did my 36 case studies. the people were diverse in age and occupation – tattooist, ice-cream maker, carpenter, actor, musician, mother – ages 23 to 70. i did my business plan (two words that have never gone together in the messy history of my life) and outlined my plans to set up a green and organic pedal-powered enterprise. i m happy with that. its who I am, after all.

last night we drank laurent perrier champagne for our last night together in the flat. we talked about dreams – in the literal sense, because thats the way things are around here. Things are? Things were. I need to get used to the past tense.

I m not sure about going back to squatting. The last squat I was in burned down and 2 people and a dog died, did i tell you that? I wasnt there, but its a painful thought, regardless. Gs place is actually really nice and the people are really positive but I feel inadequate and useless already and all I ve moved in is my guitar and saxophone. I dont have keys. I cant come and go as I please.

Is this the last hurdle? Does it ever end? Or is this my last ditch attempt?

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On Sundays the world revolves to the hum of sewing machines. I am a child at play amongst these diligent matriarchs. Even the baby photo I have in front of me for discussion is not my own child. It never will be. But that’s ok, I ve been fine with that for years, and the tears that threaten my eyes later are not about that but rather the sense of uselessness and futility I now foster that threatens me again.

The teacher admires the spirals on my trousers and as I show her the fabric, I notice the dirt. There was a dirty sock in my pocket the other day, there are dirty socks everywhere, the washing machine beside the outhouse is overworked, I would have to get up halfway through the night to fill it, we cleared an abandoned part of the building the other day, the piles of trash, rubble and humous were up to the ruined ceiling, 8 squatters in facemasks and a roll of strong plastic bags, sifting through the detritus of time, archaelogists paring away at the filth that has been built around our business on this planet, days later I still have dreams where I see the needles.

Passive aggression. Passive love. The past tense. Grammatical errors like continuity discussions that I forget to pay attention to. Has beens.

But I m greasy now too, I remember full well the sticky, grimey days of working on the road and the black that built up in the hollows of my ear, its like I ve never been clean since, and the dirt was just lying in wait for a possible resurgence, well I ve opened the floodgates now, even between my thighs is sticky, like the end of a cycle, saddleprints high up on the adductors –

Or maybe I m just being melodramatic. I don’t really know anymore.

On Sundays my favourite tool is the stitch-pick as I undo the work I ve done wrong, keeping the thread taut  –