Letter about validation:

Norbert,

I told someone that I had never been in love. A passing comment, thought nothing of it, because it was fact and couldn’t be changed. But it comes to mind now, writing in response to your letter because of how I’ve passed the whole of my life without the one thing I’ve longed for, a love between two. I am confident about not having been so because I feel growth and strength. It is the beginning of something that has the possibility of being. A calmness (his words) that I have never felt before (mine, secretly).

Surprisingly, so much of our (his and my) time is about learning, is that what love is? How to be good, respectful and caring of someone. Things that have never come easy, but easily with this one.

Learning someone through conversation, their life, their history, sewing together patches to work out their path. We talk about everything. On friday nights, date night, after I have danced. More often then not in his kitchen. I sit in my usual seat, with my now usual mug. Asking each other questions, not so formal. And I’m learning to see myself through his eyes. I see him making his own quilt with my stories. I find myself trying desperately proving that all the difficulties I have faced, like any girl, have not defined me; it is not my making. That i haven't been victimized or suffer from jealously cruelly. That i am strong and free and healthy. Characteristics that i truly want to be. That I truly want him to see. Wanting to bring the best out of us.

Learning someone’s body, remembering points, contours, scares that make it impossible not to react to. How to move with his, dancing at angles and speeds. Understanding his breathing and fragility. I watch and feel him learning mine too. Eyes open, mouths open, wanting, feeding. Satisfying urges and appetites. Nourishing secret beasts.

And the last part, the newest part, the part that proves he’s not just any boy and he’s not just any fuck. The part that's not so secret, but never asking, the part of us that wants true validation. For me this is the moment of departure. A free fall, a sign of love. We are asking for acknowledgment, respect, to be seen, to be heard from the other. Regardless of imperfections, unconditionally. We are asking, pleading not to be dismissed. Please don’t let me go.

Monday: A love letter from a converting cynic.

There’s a secret forming. Not quite a secret, a stirring, something floating to the surface. But I don’t dare think it. My temperament is too difficult to second guess. I keep on thinking back to the park. When I bit your shoulder, gnawing at you from behind as we both knew what each other was thinking but didn’t dare say. Wanting you possibly more than ever. Shit, i’m more than scared. Do you realise what is happening to me. For the first time a long time my organ is opening, it’s blazing. I’ve been reading about broken hearts and how these sad people hurled them. I’m not seeming to care about all that now, me a million miles away... Will it be a different story, when you stand in front of me after this long scorching summer. Are you waiting for my confession? You are strong in your silence? I’m confused about how you feel and worry I’ve got you wrong. Then again I remember the unexpected night, after that long day working in England countryside. I came to see you and fell asleep on your bed and in the middle of the night you turned over and placed your hand over my side onto the space next to me sleeping body, happily you woke me. I keep on thinking about you when this Van Morrison songs comes on, Sweet thing. Fear, such a small word for such a fierce act, how it over comes your sense of adventure. I might as well be shit scared of feeling something important about you while being with you than being terrified and alone. Is there some sense there, No?

Sunday: This is the last time

I feel a tightness in my shoulders
worry is creeping up again
I feel short and sharp
and we all hate each other
spiteful words said in jest
feelings are rising up a lump in your throat
Fuck it hurts
I tell myself this is the last time
This is the last time
This is the last time
and that’s all I want to say to him.

Saturday: Steel birds cross the sky to other lands

Again waiting for a steel bird and its flight I continue to read a book that makes me want to cry. Cry for myself and the peoples lives that are ruined by loss. Ochsner writes about hearts ‘The saddest cases were the too-full hearts, the overworked ones still carrying good intentions and bad and all the fallout from a lifetime of lousy choices they’d promised themselves they’d forget but couldn’t because they were too busy twelve-stepping their way through therapy ... cracked and spilt at the chamber seams these hearts still managed to continue beating... ‘The Hurler.’

Friday: And from absolutely nowhere.

Before anyone had stirred from thier perfectly white honeymoon beds. A Hungerian with the dark dragon on his right calf drove us off the lovers bridge away from the fickle tourists in their manufactured (and yes perfect) paradise. He speeds us into the dense jungle that seemed to continue way off beyond the horizon. A strange sense of home swelled in my organs. The lanky 15 year old boy talked to his elephant. His words were strong, stern and kind. He told him to help and obligingly the elephant held out his trunk, the boy stepped on and was raised to sit on his head. Then moving the shy boy in his perfectly ironed true blue shirt and swimming trunks rubbed his foot on the bottom of the animals ear. There was something kind of like love and affection there. He was 32 and looked at me as if i were an angel, a celestial being he had never seen before. Almost with no words exchanged we waded through the river looking for snakes of tropical colours. I could feel that he was different from the other men I had seen of late. There was something in his eyes; (it’s always the eyes, they’re made of glass, are often see through and break easily) and there were lines in his face of something found that I haven’t yet, yet! His face wonderfully brown with deep set brown eyes, so hard and dark, one of a kind, never seen before. He sang to the snakes to wake and come out of the trees that fell over the river. While I took digitals on his camera he passed to me on stepping on his boat. We stood close while we waited for our lift and I checked my shots and came across him with wife and child. I became jealous. More often then not I long for days of married life; with dogs and babies and lemon dresses. For those seconds I was in love with a simple life I will never have nor understand.

Thursday: True colours.

I always underestimate the feeling of sadness. When I thought about home. Memories of this past year came. The red concertina red hat (that I saw at a market in Yu Gardens and thought of him), my sixty-nine percent. I am still so bitter and still hurting. Still. Hurting about things that could and shouldn’t matter. I’ve never been one with a happy disposition. I realised that when I was 16 at my college library listening to Lowgold with that wonderfully calm grey sky about to break snow. They never believe me though, I have one of those smiles. Not as fake as a Colgate smile but... she has a problem with her smile. How often am I going to fall for Prince Charming and be broken by Dorian Grey. Today is a day of failures. My cure failed me. He came back, briefly but it came from my heart- my disappointment

Wednesday: Unnervingly True.

All that is really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times with joy - Oscar Wilde

Tuesday: The nonsense we think.

She has those blue green eyes of a child born near the sea. Her nose red from the sun, her freckles glowing. She is lovely and sweet and you want to kiss her salty lips. Walking bare foot on the uncut grass where the chickens graze aimlessly while the dogs lie like lords and bark at scooters. Really this is all there is, and not much else. Everything else is just spaces between. They say the monsoon came yesterday while she watched moonlight mile. The way the ‘almost not’ widow touched the girl in the post room, the longing and aching for that extra forty percent. Outside the storm raged and still the boys played volley ball. An older woman talks about the flowers with their Latin names and I promise myself there will be a time when I know them too and have worn hands like hers from turning the soil.

Monday 14th August

We spend the day snorkeling with a young family with two boys. They remind me of my childhood and my younger sister and I. The oldest a little too naughty and lost; while the youngest talks in poetry and has a knowing looking of understanding and a previous life. We swim with tropical fish that are curious at us as we are to them… I drift off

Sunday 13th August

There’s not even ‘anything’ in my head. I have some sort of tropical disease. Not even the shit that I make up. I feel positively empty and with that brings a certain sadness.

Saturday 12th August

My attention span is disappearing…I hold no thoughts for more than seconds. I think not of art or home or beauty. I purely observe my strange surroundings, but nothing seems to stick. I can’t even muster wonderful lines of the scenery around without turning into a cliché…

Friday 11th August

Paradise. This word since my forever was a fantasy or a delusional state of mind. I’ve travelled almost all over the world and I’ve visited God’s window and know that this is no beauty in humanity but only what’s been made my mother nature. Never an all over paradise. I’ve never felt so relaxed and unworried about anything. I’m even finding it hard to write. I always felt that what made a artist good is life. More specifically a life not so easy, maybe that’s apart of our wiring. Here, life is not just easy. You lose yourself. I am officially lost. Eventually a car and a plane with take me back to the concrete castles high above, but for now, and the next few days I want to remain blissful and brown and so far away from what will all come rushing back with a whirlwind.

Wednesday 9th August

A lime green cherry in the morning with my orange juice, I wait for a plane to Thailand. This is the break I’ve been waiting for; desperately needing, secretly holding onto to cure...We queue for checking in, a typical French boy with shy forget-me-not eyes stands not far behind. To fancy someone, is too much ‘lovely’ to ever stop doing. I feel pretty today, the first time in a long time…The last time I saw M.O.M. I was crouching down in calf length tight jean skirt putting paper in his printer. He gave off this smile that came out like a bit of a laugh. I know why he made that noise. I looked like a little girl squatting at the end of a garden trying to find fairies. I like sitting in his office with him. I don’t think I can be his companion ‘we were never friends’ next year. I’ve been making a lot of decisions and deciding against ‘just seeing what is happening’ because I don’t think I have control over my life. There is no point on pondering over this point any longer. I’m starting to believe everything will become apparent in what I’m supposed to do. If I’m to do anything at all.

Tuesday 8th August

It’s my hosts birthday, she’s turned twenty-three. A twilight age, someone said. That suits her, she hopes for a twilight year. I woke late and opened presents in my pajama’s, my sister wrote a beautiful card. Only received one Happy Birthday from a friend, which has left me a little sad. But I saw something I haven’t seen in a while and it was a lovely present. Walking along Naungpu Road, a spotted a beauty. A tall blonde boy with perfect dress sense. Our eyes caught for a moment, and there was no look in his eyes that suggested anything other than a coincidence. But for anyone who knows me and knows what I like, it was a lovely small gift. I don’t want to write much, due to the fact that today belonged to the other. But my sister played three songs for me this morning, the words to one...

She can kill with a smile She can wound with her eyes She can ruin your faith with her casual lies And she only reveals what she wants you to see She hides like a child But she's always a woman to me She can lead you to live She can take you or leave you She can ask for the truth But she'll never believe you And she'll take what you give her as long as it's free She steals like a thief But she's always a woman to me Oh, she takes care of herself She can wait if she wants She's ahead of her time Oh, and she never gives out And she never gives in She just changes her mind She will promise you more Than the Garden of Eden Then she'll carelessly cut you And laugh while you're bleedin' But she'll bring out the best And the worst you can be Blame it all on yourself Cause she's always a woman to me She is frequently kind And she's suddenly cruel She can do as she pleases She's nobody's fool But she can't be convicted She's earned her degree And the most she will do Is throw shadows at you But she's always a woman to me

This is the kind for women that I wanted to be, I think and need to believe I am.

I actually dislike birthdays, there’s something empty about it, your wishes, it’s promises, they never quiet meet.

Sunday 6th August

In a foreign country we watch illegal DVDs towering above a city I can’t speak to. My language is so far removed from theirs even childlike sign language wont help us. We are slowly learning, but only at the dinner table with ‘ping-gwo-ju’ (spelt as said) apple juice. They squeeze it fresh, after a while the juice and pulp separates, as if they they can’t stand being with each other anymore. I think I am a romantic like my host for I dream of idealism and perfect kisses. The heroin of my film laughs at her misfortune and I wonder how tragedy strikes, and why on whose certain beings. Who will endlessly feel the coldness and unforgiving world laughing hard. You start to have inclinations, or a small voice in your head that says, nothing will come easy... And like the people of this country you start to fight for everything even when there is no war.

Friday 4th August

It is on the fourth day as Norbert that I realise not that I think as an artist, but am one. We travel in blacked out windows on a hurried motorway where the cars don’t simply move but dance from lane to lane between car past car at dangerous speeds. I listen to some music and my brain fires ideas too fast for my hand and pen. Not concrete or good, but letters to words, shapes and lines. Similar to my surroundings, the pylons, factories, pipes and rows and rows of same square houses with sky blue roofs. Scribble, scribble, words are no justification for anything I hope for, but these exercises will help. All, everything will help. Hoping

Thursday 3rd August

I wake with the stench of raw fish skin and vomit in my dry mouth. It takes a while before I realise that it’s just my imagination (running away with me) and I’ve woken abruptly from a dream I was quite interest in finishing. The speed of the air conditioner makes my curtains move magically as if they are alive and breathing. Standing to attention, tall waiting to be parted and reveal my life size window with the cold it’s marble window lip that I’ve started to stand on with my hot wet feet after a shower. Looking out to see nothing of nature and only of human accomplishment. A single post-it note sticks to my window, from before I arrived. Liking it there, I wont ever remove it. Even though I’ve cleaned my teeth until my gums bleed a little I can’t ease the dream. With a young man I know, but don’t remember we watch the fat grey fish slither through the murky smudgy brown water, the same water that flows in the river below our apartment. Somehow we know the fish are sick, and dying. I pick one out of the water, it lies limp in my arms almost a meter long and wider than my wrist to my elbow. I lift it effortlessly above my head and relax as it slips down my throat. I feel its slippery gills travel down hitting my stomach and I hold my hand over my mouth to stop the sick but I cough and it spits out uncontrollably. Things are only as important as we want to make them, no.

Monday 7th August

Now wait a minute. I’m all over it. I step out of the hideous gold elevator to see an ordinary looking man only coming home at 7:30pm with a simple black brief case and six red apples in a plastic bag, I don’t know why I specifically noticed the apples, attention to detail, a female characteristic. It was in the beginning, of a story, that the apple was their down fall. What are my vices, as Norbert. Is it that we grow from learning, or learn from our growth? I hear wishing in my ear above the classic music that makes me believe that this is something important, that something important is flowing or following from the music into my head onto my finger tips, that are trying to move swiftly around the key pad. The river outside my temporary home moves only for the huge barges that bring the coal to the land, the water is brown by day, but the lights of the near by tower block have turned the water red when the sky is black. This country is red, red behind expressionless faces with beautiful jet back hair. I already know I’m not that clever, but it’s better to know, then be in the dark, and know ‘that look’ on others faces. I think of our first Birthday, in a happily darkened room. A large round cake enters, as if hovering. It’ll have thick white icing and Smarties with a single candle representing all that we’ve accomplished in our first year... so much to look forward too.

Manifesto