Pablo, etc.
Hi again, phantom reader!
I have to say, I feel so much better after writing some of my feelings down in last week’s blog. For all my awareness of the freedom that comes from owning and exposing one’s darkest feelings, I am somehow still shocked at how much lighter I feel. I did something I never do, such a passionate advocate of therapy am I, which was to keep my feelings in for a change, let them percolate and darken and then become obscured and layered with a shame of them being there at all, so that when I finally came to try and understand what was going on with me, I was met with what I can only describe as a sort of calcified, congealed, rigid blockage. A mess. Anyway, I have a lot to work through still, not here, not now, but I can confirm that writing things down just for the hell of it somehow helps.
It’s been a good week. I managed to do a lot of writing. I have a small team of builders working on the outside of my house, repairing the chipped brickwork and cracked paint, and it makes me feel so guilty to see them out in the cold every morning at 8.30 scaling the side of the house and sanding actual concrete with their hands, that it has motivated me to be more disciplined about my novel. I just can’t in good conscience sit on my arse inside this cosy house and browse etsy or curl my hair while there are three grown men using their whole bodily power to tidy up the outside of my house, so I’ve actually made a lot of progress on my main characters, albeit still entirely sat on my arse.
It’s very up and down, this fiction writing process. I try to set myself parameters whilst remembering it’s fine, and sometimes right, to change them. Everything and anything can be changed. I am the absolute creator and god of this world. So, sometimes I wander too far off track while meandering somewhere my imagination is intrigued by, only to find that track has wound off into an entirely different story. Yesterday was a very frustrating day in this respect. I developed a character in such detail - the placement of her freckles, the pattern on her dress, her most secret ambition, quotes, anecdotes, all of that - only to realise that her presence very much interfered with a crucial loneliness that is an essential quality of the protagonist’s story. So, that character was abruptly cut, the practical aspects of her role in the story foisted onto a much more peripheral character. It felt like such a wasted day of writing, which is a hard thing to justify, you know? If I was a builder sanding done the outside of the house, I wouldn’t have such liberty to fuck up. So I stopped writing for the afternoon, went for a walk, bought fancy biscuits for the builders, made them cups of tea and then got back to my notebook. One thing I try to do when I write each day is never to leave my desk on what feels like an unsolvable problem. It would be too easy to procrastinate the next day, so I at least have to brainstorm and jot down some solutions so the task the next morning doesn’t feel so insurmountable. Much like going to the gym, I think it’s important to work hard to make the conditions surrounding writing very comely, so that getting your butt on that chair is not the greatest obstacle you’ll face all day.
Hmm, what else? My sweet little kitten Pablo went for the snip, and I’m relieved to say he hardly noticed. He is 6 months old now and the most healthy, strong, sturdy little cat I’ve ever known! He just attacks the day. He seems so happy to be alive everyday! I can’t say the same for the other inhabitants of the house; all of the rest of us have our moments. My beautiful Pufflet (my pal of 10 years now) is blind and deaf now and grumbles from deep within her belly as she trundles from the living room to the kitchen, trying to ward off Pablo’s advances. Malo, my boyfriend’s dog, lives to explore the outdoor world, but when she’s indoors and and has given up trying to intuit from my every twitch what time our walk will be today, she sinks into a depression. And even Den my boyfriend sometimes comes home in a foul mood swearing about the tube, how he doesn’t like most people and how it’s best to expect every stranger you meet on the tube is ‘an absolute C**T!’, and I know it’s best to leave him alone on those evenings and go read a book. But not Pablo! Pablo wakes up with ecstatic purrs rumbling through his little body! He wants to eat! He wants to rub his moist pink nose on your face! He wants to pounce on Malo’s tail and then go tearing out the catflap into the brisk November air! I was so braced for his surgery, knowing that just being fasted overnight in preparation would be the most trauma he’d ever endured, but he endured it all with purrs. I don’t know what’s happened in veterinary science but they’ve clearly come on leaps and bounds since I was a kid when I watched many young wild cats suffer the indignity and disorientation of a neck cone. As the vet explained to us, Pablo’s incision was the size of a small paper cut, didn’t need stitches and would heal fully within a couple days. And no cone! He was flying about that evening, ravenous with hunger and apparently none of his lust for life was contained within his testicles because he appears completely unchanged. What puzzles me - though not enough to research it, I am squeamish - is that he even actually looks like he still has his ball sack, they are just ever so slightly less, hmm, ripe-looking. They are raisins, rather than grapes, but still quite prominent.
I would like to explore further my mixed feelings on humans’ autonomy to sterilise animals and call it humane and responsible, because I do have such complicated feelings on that subject (long story short, I think it is probably the most ethical choice when you adopt a cat though it never feels right), but I have to cut this blog short as I promised my boyfriend I would watch a documentary with him this evening, and I promised myself I would keep up the consistency of a weekly blog so I need to hit post! So for now, enjoy a photo of Pablo, sweet, keen, fearless Pablo sleeping peacefully on the sofa!
Have nice weekends! Evy xox
