muscle memory

This is always a sore time of year for me. Once, longer ago than I really like to consider, I played shinty for the University of St Andrews.

Shinty, for those who don't know (probably most people), is a sport played mostly in the Highlands and on the Islands of Scotland. It's a stick and ball game, frequently described as field hockey without rules. It does have rules, but not very many. If you get hurt, and lots of people do, it's generally considered to be your own fault. The pitches are huge. Camans (shinty sticks) are made of wood and are wedge shaped at the business end. Shinty balls make a pleasing whistling noise when you hit them hard. It's thought to be a progenitor of both golf and ice hockey.  

I didn't play very well, but I made up for it by drinking hectolitres of beer on their behalf. That's one of the joys of sport in higher education - lack of athletic ability is easily forgiven for drinking prowess.

I'm fitter than I was then. I drink less and smoke zero. Depending on how happy my legs and joints are, I run 28-35 miles a week. And so, the first weekend of May, I look forward to playing in the annual old boys match and sixes tournament in St Andrews. Sixes shinty is much like rugby 7s for five-a-side football, except for that it's 6 players on each team.

It serves as a reunion, a general booze up, and an opportunity to play a huge amount of fun, dangerous, sport. There's also a large number of middle aged men doing a lot of 'back in my day' grumbling, which is always good for a laugh, if you're into that sort of thing. Most folks aren't. 

What it also serves as, is a reminder of just how much the years and the mileage take their toll. By the end of the two days, my joints, bones and muscles shrieked in symphonic discord. Any part of my body left untouched by the sport was amply shattered by the colossal hangover. This year was tamer than some. There were no fights and nobody set their rental car on fire. But it left its mark nonetheless.

And so, battered by attempts to recapture the remains of my youth, this week has been spent in pursuit of my future. Job-hunting and book-writing have already polished away most of the memories of pain, discomfort and aches. I know I had them, but I don't really feel them anymore. Writing about them now seems dishonest; memories that actually linger to touch are those of fondness for old friends, the unmatchable deliciousness of the first pint after a day's sport and the hope that it's not a whole year before we all meet up again.

If it is a year, though, no doubt I'll dive right in with both the shinty and the beer, the joy of reunion blocking out entirely the memories of aches and realisation of age. My muscle memory is short, and quite selective. It's quite happy to forget the pain.

music in a library

A few weeks ago I met with an old friend. She's a musician, and a bloody good one. She's also successful, which means her time is somewhat scarce and catch-ups are usually a juggling act of multi-tasking, rather than a relaxed pint or cuppa. On this occasion I sat in on an interview and an acoustic session for a podcast. The session took place in an ancient library; the sort with high ceilings and a balcony. On the windowsills sat busts of great thinkers. Islands of wooden bookshelves created a grid of words. I found a seat at a desk placed near a section of ancient Hebrew texts. I switched my phone off and sat as comfortably as possible, willing my entire being to be quiet. It's so much easier when surrounded by books. The instinct to soften all noise in their presence is one of humanity's more civilising traits. A warm silence results, even in a cold old library. 

Two cameramen and a sound engineer spoke softly, readying everything. The countdown switched from vocals to hand gestures and my friend plucked and strummed and sang. The sound was soft and warm, even when the songs were sad. The music bounced off the books and this temple of words and silence changed and filled with harmonies. The quiet retreated for each song and filled the room between them.

I sat in awed silence, moved by the music in the library. 

When it was over, she packed her guitar with little noise and greeted the next band with a hushed smile. The silence took the room again. The music was only borrowing it.

maintenance and giant magnets

Today I posted my watch to the manufacturer for a service. It's a nice watch, a present from my folks for my 30th birthday, and it bothers me when it's not working. I like the weight of it on my wrist, but not enough to wear it when it can't tell me the time. And so I dispatched it in the hopes it will be back soon, good as new.

Soon my camera will need the same. The pre-sets have gone funny and as such I can only shoot in manual mode. I should have sent it off ages ago, but I hate not having it around, especially if I'm going somewhere. It's like leaving the house without a pen or a notebook. Should something happen, I would only have my memory to record it.

As I type this on my iPad, my laptop scans a hard drive for erased and damaged photos, about 500 gigs worth. It's a slow process, the scan, that leads to another slow process, the recovery. Once they're both complete comes the re-organising, which is also slow but more rewarding than the first two as it's something I actually do myself. I don't send anything away and I need not cross my fingers and hope that the software doesn't crash 48 hours and halfway through the scan (which has happened three times now). That level of control and self-determination is somewhat comforting.

Tomorrow I drive up north to a small hospital for an MRI. Just before New Years, I sensed a small itch on my back, just below my right shoulder. As of now, about 40-50% of the right side of my body is either numb or has that odd tingly-ness that comes just before pins and needles. The progression has been slow and consistent whilst my dry neurologist's theories have ranged from benign to rather scary. My blood tests came back negative for viruses and vitamin deficiencies, so I'm hoping the MRI reveals something, just not something rather scary.

I'm also hoping there are no shards of ferrous metal embedded in my body that I am unaware of, nor that I have a hitherto unrealised problem with claustrophobia; lying in a giant magnet for an hour can aggravate both those things.

And so, like my tools and toys, I need some manner of maintenance. I just wish that going in for a service was as easy for me as it is for them.

april showers

Last night was the Red Sox's first night game. I swore I would only watch the first inning and by the fifth, I finally called it quits. It was two am, so it could have been worse. We were trailing 2-0 to the Blue Jays. I knocked on my wooden headboard as I rolled over to get some sleep, wishing them luck for a comeback with my last conscious thoughts.

Baseball is not the only indicator of Spring in my life. It's mild outside with persistent rain. There's more white in the fridge than red in the rack. The light wakes me just past seven, and the cat makes sure I stay that way. I see flowers, as much as guys do.

Job-hunting and book-writing continue apace, but I find it hard not to look out the window for that little bit longer, to watch as the world wakes up and enjoys the new season.

strange swans

A strange swan showed up in the harbour uninvited this morning. I assume he was male. Immediately he started antagonising our resident swan couple, first chasing away the female and then charging after the male. He never flew. He just squatted his neck, tucking his beak into its tight curve, and motored after the resident male. Never have I seen such a wake follow a swan, and I've seen a fair few swans in my time. The newcomer pursued relentlessly, caught up, and outside the mouth of the harbour, between the pier and the beach, they fought. At that distance, I had a hard time telling who was who, but in the end one pulled away, shaken, and it seemed to be the resident. The victorious male then turned his attention to the female, lingering in by the smaller pier, and to my surprise, he chased her away too.

I don't know much about swans, other than that they are as aggressive as they are beautiful. I've lived near many in my life, and have always appreciated their presence and aesthetics. I find their proximity bizarrely comforting and admire their familial loyalty. But my admiration is mostly aesthetic. I am fond of art, but I'm not an expert by any stretch. So it goes with swans. I like them because they're pretty to look at and it is richer to have them around than to not have them around.

And so this morning's fight saddened me. Our current couple has been here for a couple of years, and to see them chased off by what I assume was a rogue male, well, that's unsettling. I couldn't be an ornithologist. Standing on the balcony in the sunny but cold spring morning, my sense of loss far outweighed my fascination at the display, and I doubt the newcomer will endear himself to me with time.

Speaking of newcomers, sat on my desk is the growing, scribbled outline of the new book. It turns out, to my surprise, that not all blank pages are created equal, and that getting lost in writing new fiction is very different from writing new non-fiction. And so yesterday, with high hopes and genuine enthusiasm, I set to it and within two or three paragraphs came to a screeching halt. With the novel that was no problem - I could just be creative; ideas could, would, and did come.

I'm not writing a novel at the moment.

And so I pushed back the laptop and pulled out the notebook and a pen, and started the clarifying task of building a scaffolding, a structure from which this new project can grow. It turns out that writing into the void is not always possible, or even preferable, and while the pages may be blank, the mind can't be.

As the newcomer swam triumphantly back toward the inner harbour, I looked towards the bank on which the old couple nested. Floating next to it was a female swan. The female swan. I turned back towards the male and realised what I should have guessed from the beginning: the newcomer was no newcomer at all, but the resident, defending his nesting area from another couple. Triumphant, he returned to his mate while in the distance the vanquished invaders sought safer harbour. My heart lifted at the return of the familiar and I shook my head at my mistake.

I guess I really don't know enough about swans.

 

 

wiffle ball and the point of contact

We played wiffle ball over on West Hill Place, just off of Charles Street, by the T-station. Drivers would use it as a shortcut to get to Storrow Drive, even though they weren't supposed to. It interrupted the game. We'd have to move the traffic cones or undo the chain to let them through. There'd be dirty looks shot and much huffing and puffing, but the drivers didn't care. We were just kids playing wiffle ball. West Hill Place was essentially a circle. Car bumpers played the role of bases and a convenient manhole served as the pitcher's mound. You got a homer if you hit it fair over a second floor window. We weren't exactly power hitters - we had more luck scoring runs by grounding the ball under parked cars. On the rare days there were no cars, there weren't a lot of runs scored.

There were usually only three or four of us playing and so we had to adapt the rules a tad. You could throw the runner out by hitting him with the ball. It was a dangerous strategy as a miss would almost always result in a run scoring. We also always underestimated just how much that little white plastic ball stung when it slapped against the flesh. Shrieks of pain resulted in derision, so you had to grimace, bear it, and take your place out in the 'field', fiercely rubbing the point of impact and wincing.

Contact was sublime. It always is, whether it's a proper ball against a wooden bat or plastic on plastic, there are few better feelings than the shudder of a bat when it hits the ball, that split second of unity and ultimate harmony that comes when the ball's trajectory reverses and it becomes part of the bat's motion, exploding forward with a crack that staggers the forearms. The hitter becomes a motor; an engine generating propulsion. The balls sails and as it does an incredible sense of forward motion flows through you. There's no time to appreciate it; you have to run and maybe, if you reach base safely, you smile and clap your hands together hoping to feel again the moment of contact.

I'm writing a new book. I can't really say much about it yet, but it's not fiction. It's not about baseball or wiffle ball either. But it's new. Instead of sifting through countless pages in the big purple binder, buried in words I've already written, I've got blank sheets staring back at me, waiting to be filled. Some writers fear blank pages, but not me. For me it's a thousand points of contact, hit after hit, as each page fills so goes the forward motion and as I type I feel the shudder in my forearms and so it flows.

Hopefully.

 

 

the toy grabber

The words filled my heart with a mix of despair and dread. I'd look through my toys, through Star Wars figures and Legos, squirt guns and Matchbox cars to no avail. Defeated, I went to my mom.

'Mom, I can't find my Boba Fett.'

'Where did you leave it?'

'I dunno - the floor somewhere? I can't find it anywhere!'

'The floor? Oh dear, I guess the Toy Grabber got it.'

The Toy Grabber. My nemesis. A mythical beast that, in my mind, looked like a cross between a large rat and a Jawa. Its mission was singular. Any toy not put away properly became its property. It struck swiftly and with little warning; toys left in communal areas of our apartment, especially the floor of the hall, disappeared the fastest. I never saw it. My room tended to be sanctuary, though sometimes, if it got really messy, The Toy Grabber broke the truce and something special would disappear. Something like a Millenium Falcon. Anguish and resentment followed; dejected, I would tidy what toys that remained and sulk. Or I would throw a belligerent-brat of a tantrum. Often it was a mixture of the two.

I begged, pleaded, bargained and bellowed for the swift return of my toys to little avail. The Toy Grabber didn't work that way. It heard no pleas and felt no compassion. I imagined it stood atop a mountain of neglected toys, not just mine but all of the neglected toys in the world, ignoring the chorus of calls for their return.

Weeks, sometimes months would pass until prodigal toys reappeared. By then I had forgotten they were missing, perhaps that I ever owned them at all. It was almost like getting new toys.

It was only after about a year that I realised that my mom was The Toy Grabber. It made little difference. Its stoicism remained. Only now I knew that there was no mythical mountain of missing toys; now I knew that the missing toys were hidden somewhere. And so my pleading became merely a token gesture, and my efforts shifted to discovering my mother's hiding place. I searched everywhere: closets, cupboards, under beds, behind couches, high and low. I remember one large, silver plastic bag - I think it was from a shoe shop - that I became convinced was The Toy Grabber stash. It lay at the bottom of my parents' closet. It had those hard plastic handles that could be snapped shut. It was always snapped shut.

I never mustered the guts to open it. Eventually, I learned to pick my toys up after myself and The Toy Grabber faded with the rest of my childhood.

There's a small wooden cigar box that sits on the floor to the right of my bed. It's a Cohiba box. It used to hold Siglo I's. Now it holds countless bits and pieces: green stems from Poppy Appeal poppies, hair ties, short pieces of plastic tubing, zip ties, wine foil, paperclips, fake mice and many more. They're the cat's toys. If he plays with them on my bed while I'm trying to sleep, they get confiscated. They get put in the cigar box.

They get put in The Toy Grabber.

shire horses

The field on the left used to hold horses. Driving by on my way to Naughton, I slowed and glanced and smiled when I saw them. Sometimes, on the way back (when the field was on the right), I'd pull over and stand by the fence and they would wander over, hoping I had a snack for them. Their breath heavy, they'd mumble and mutter their horsey chat and nuzzle and batter my shoulders, hoping I would draw from my pocket a sugar cube, a polo mint, or a carrot. I never remembered to bring a snack, and as I got back into my car they no doubt wondered why I bothered to visit at all. I thought they were Clydesdales; they were certainly some manner of shire horse. Long manes hid their eyes and shaggy hair adorned their dinner platter-sized feet.

A few years ago I drove by and the shire horses were gone. As time passed the field on the left filled with trailers and now there is a small hamlet of shoeboxes on breeze blocks. It's a stark contrast to the surrounding countryside, especially when compared to the previous residents. This development lacks a deft touch. The land still looks like a building site and seems a tumour amongst the surrounding scenery.

Passing last month I noticed the next plot colonised as well. More trailers, more breeze blocks, more mud and more detritus strewn across raw earth instead of grass. Walls and an entrance gate far more grand than what they guard had been erected.

I could turn this into a metaphor about the passage of time; a resentful missive on how progress is a mixed blessing. I could draw contrasts of my own hopes and dreams and the stark realities they bump up against. How life is so rarely what we imagine it should be, and regardless of what's in our heart, the world moves on whether we like it or not. Those things are all true. The connections are all there in my head. But in the midst of all that is sadness. My heart sinks a bit when I drive by the field on the left now. Shoeboxes stood on breeze blocks are a poor replacement for horses stood on shaggy feet.

10 years and a few days ago

I quit smoking. I didn't tell anyone about it at first. Quitting was a frequent thing for me, and I figured people were bored by my attempts. Cravings came strongest when drink was involved, and readers of this blog and folks who know me can correctly ascertain that drink was frequently involved. Days would end with me thinking 'I didn't smoke today'. Those days then stretched into weeks until it wasn't that big a deal to me anymore. I was proud of myself, don't get me wrong, but I never puffed my chest out. Not that I remember, anyway. Some folks I know may disagree.

I picked up some odd habits to help me cope. Hanging out outside with assembled smokers always appealed to me and I kept doing it, in spite of never sparking up myself. If friends are smoking, I still like to join them outside while they light up. Sometimes, usually in the pub, I would ask if I could borrow a cigarette and play with it, unlit. I would even mime smoking it for a second. That usually satisfied any hitherto dormant cravings. The lender - always a friend - would  shake their head at the weirdness of it all.

Some quitters find the smell still torments them. I never did. I didn't really like the smell when I smoked, and so it grew more abhorrent to me once I quit. I missed the finger movements though, and to this day I still clumsily flip pens around my digits.

I have hazy memories of some friends, quite early in my cigarette abstinence, making hashish infused-yoghurt for my benefit. It tasted wretched and got me high as a kite. I never tried it again. After a couple of years, I indulged in the odd cigar, though the hangovers of Cubans mixed with booze led to far more regret than pleasure. The odd joint passed my way and I would partake, though as I get older all it seems to do is make me tired.

Perhaps the strangest thing I've done since quitting is also the rarest: to treat a cigarette like a cigar, puffing on it but refusing to inhale. I've never done this sober and memories of the act are always blurry. I don't know why drinking brings on the urge to once again burn a trail down my lungs, but it does.

From time to time, I imagine starting again. It never lasts for more than a moment or two and it's never with any real urgency or need, but the thought crosses my mind nonetheless. When I dismiss it, it's not with revulsion but with a reassurance that I am not a smoker anymore. The various hangovers of the habit suffice and dwindle in frequency with every passing year, though I will probably always flick pens clumsily around my fingers.

lost and found

The sun's setting just after four at the moment. It pops its head up just before eight in the morning. At the moment. The former will get earlier and the latter later before the solstice and the days once again stretch themselves out of the dark ages. After eighteen winters in Scotland (give or take one or two) you would think the pervasive dark would have no impact, or at least less impact. But no. By two-thirty I know the darkness is drawing in and I flail to finish something, anything, before it falls entirely, and feel when it does that no matter what, I could have or should have done more before the pale light departed. And so the Scottish winter feels like time unfulfilled and unfinished.

It's ridiculous, I know. The marvel of electricity allows bountiful productivity long after the sun sets. And I do work in the dark, often longer than I should. But it feels different. It's got an academic feel to it. Like doing homework or pulling that all-nighter on the essay that you need to get in by nine the next morning. Whether that's because the time of year isn't just winter but also the peak of a school year is the kind of chicken/egg pondering that I don't give a shit about. Though I'm certain that the academic feel makes it far easier to make excuses, to push it aside and crack open a bottle of something.

I can't remember which particular Scottish winter it was, but two or three of them ago I pushed my book aside. Oh, I fiddled with submission chapters, snippets. I got angst-ridden about cover letters for agents and would every couple of months or so work myself into a state about getting it sorted and would do the bare minimum before the sun set and I pushed it all aside again and distracted myself with something else, some other idea still embryonic in my head. People asked about it and I shrugged about it being kind of finished and not really feeling it at the moment and all the other reasons a school kid would put off their homework until the last possible second.

It's a strange thing to do with a book you've written. It sat in a large purple binder - sometimes next to my desk, sometimes next to my bed, untouched but to move it from one place to another. It lost meaning for me. Just a binder and not the words inside.

Last week a friend took me to see Midnight in Paris. Woody Allen's latest is charming, whimsical and, while not landmark cinema, deals with a time close to my heart. Regardless of the premise or even the movie itself, it reminded me of the writing I loved. Books of grand stories and the human condition, writers shaping words to capture a world growing bigger and just beginning to chronicle those changes. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner and Chandler and Penn Warren and Ellison and the others who embraced prose without forgetting poetry and raised the novel to high art. People who made words dance in their simplest (Hemingway) and most complex (Faulkner) arrangements. Passages that leave you breathless with their poise and perfection, winded by the words on the page. Stories so heart-rending you can't bear to turn the page and prose so compelling that you can't bear to not turn it. Books that you hold in your hands for long minutes after they're finished, heart beating strong. They've left you full and empty all at once.

Those are the fucking books they wrote.

Those are the books worth writing.

And so I sit in the dark, surrounded by drafts and rewrites and notebooks and outlines and I have found my book again and am wrestling with the words inside. The days are short but then so are most things. I cannot write the books they wrote, I can only write mine.

But I can make mine worth writing.