And finally…(well for tonight at any rate) October 28, 2009

I’d forgotten that so much of the glory of blogging lay not only in the writing of my own drivel but reading the wisdom of others (and adding too much drivel in response…)

I’d forgotten that blogging was such a time-consuming hobby ( I came home from rehearsal at ten and have only managed to write blogs/ read blogs/ flood my kitchen floor with my washing machine and hoping against hope that dropping my iPod again on the tile floor will prompt it to work again)…

I feel like deleting  both blogs I posted tonight: I fear that each of them exude a melancholy I don’t actually feel. Today wasn’t just about washing machines and iPods breaking, and rain and three self-indulgent hours spent in front of a computer. It was about chosing a bridesmaid dress (both a pleasure and a pain: pleasurable because it was retail therapy of the highest order and such a privilege to be ‘on’ my sister’s wedding, and painful because the measuring tape don’t lie), and spending time with T and my fellow bridesmaids hopefully absorbing the life wisdom these great women exude.

It was about ‘bumping into’ my very talented cousin as I dashed through the rain to rehearsal and his delight at my feeble screaming when we saw a frog (that is how wet it is!) in a puddle in the car park. It was about finally getting hold of an entire Guys n Dolls script; reading it in its entirety and finally understanding what makes it such a good performance choice.

It was about realising that only I can make my apartment/ job/ relationships/ finances/ body image: in short my life work for me… A rather important realisation in the midst of a half term week.

The City Chick wannabe October 28, 2009

I am a girl both blessed and cursed with a vivid imagination. I can hear the strains of Schubert’s Ave Maria and despite my well-established and long lamented single status: have in my mind’s eye a vision of myself in white, making my happy and blessed way along the aisle of some religious establishment. I can look at my rather shabby and untidy apartment and imagine a home of stately splendor; a Nigella like me and the smell of mulled-wine and cinnamon  welcoming guests at Christmas through a be-wreathed front door. I can catch a TV image of one of the world’s major cities and imagine the Carrie Bradshaw/ Sex and the City lifestyle that awaits me there.

I love London. I love New York. I love Paris. I even have a rather special place in my heart for Dublin. Once upon a student years I Northern Ireland’s own metropolis of Belfast was ‘home’(admittedly only five out of every seven days and probably only eight out of every twelve months of the three years I studied there). And yet when I got a job and bought my first home (as an independent 21st century woman); the key components of ‘making your way in this world’ I ended up in pretty but rather rural North Down. The seaside town of Donaghadee has much, well the Lighthouse, Pier 36 and Grace Neills to reccomend it but city life it ain’t…

I found myself on a very short solo trip to London for a ‘course’ recently: as close as this lowly Drama (/English) teacher will ever get to a ‘business trip’. As my much braver sister had lived in London for five years and I was a frequent and delighted visitor; as a veteran of perhaps ten visits to the city I was determined to be ‘girl about town’. I wasn’t. I wasn’t even close.

I managed to navigate Heathrow and the tube but when I climbed out of the underground at Charing Cross: faced with real life pulsating London I panicked. Lost my bearings completely and began an unecessary trek around a frightening and on at that time on a Sunday night rather foreboding Trafalgar Square rather than simply walking down the Strand to the pre-booked hotel. I was suddenly fearful, lonely and horribly rural.

Once ensconced quite safely (with the door double locked) in my room I perused the room service menu; tempted to turn on ‘Good Will Hunting’ order a sandwich and put the kettle on. Where was the brave, stylish, designer shoe wearing pavement pounding woman of my imaginings? She would have fixed her face, and walked to a stylish restaurant ordered a cocktail and whatever she fancied on the menu while chatting up the gorgeous waiter…

The real me: fixed my face and headed down to the hotel restaurant (I feel you should applaud my courage: this is a step ahead of the room service sandwich). I asked if they were still open and the admittedly gorgeous waiter grabbed a menu and said ‘Only for you.’ as he led me to a table. I ordered champagne and two courses: I sat and read the ‘Style’ section of the The Sunday Times and I was secretly rather pleased that I wasn’t in the room drinking tea and chatting to my Mummy on the phone.

I have aspirations beyond my capabilities. When I couldn’t sleep (as London was clearly still wide-awake beyond my street facing window) I started to analyse the differences between the life the imagined I would live at 30 and the one I am actually experiencing. Whatever happened to the idea of the American teaching exchange: the year I would by some miracle of chance find myself doing a much better job in a progressive NYC high school than I ever did in Bangor (meeting of course a Samantha Jones smorgasbord of delightful male dinner dates along the way)? Where were the ‘that was the summer I inter-railed around Europe’ souvenir photographs? Where was the momento from the school I loved but left to pursue academic glory in a city of choice?

My sister moved to London and had a blast for five years, came home met her dream guy and we are planning her wedding.

My little brother having moved from Dublin to Melbourne via a ‘travel the world’ ticket is now deciding what the next part of his adventure may be.

What the hell happened me?In a hotel bedroom, a city I loved I worried that I had fallen into a professional and personal rut. But the reality is that I have a mortgage and too many financial obligations, a job I love and have further obligations too, a family and friend network so buoyant in their support that I know, KNOW that without it I crumble. In my more lucid, less deprived moment I realise that these are huge things to walk away from just to ‘feel like I can make it alone in the big city’.

I have given up on the idea of the husband and babies: they may still come a calling and I will of course fall at their feet and worship at the altar of motherhood but in their absence I need to ‘do something more’ with my life: I have to offer some sort of compensation for not fitting into the cookie-cutter eventualities I thought (and hoped) my life would follow.

…and yet I somehow feel I still have to somehow compensate for the fact that I life has dealt me a less than typical hand; but the problem is I don’t really know where to begin.

Yet again, I am a 21st century woman and to that end I am going to start small (a big dream needs a big wallet and that I do not have) faced with a month of the summer to fill (post my sister’s wedding in July) I am going to take a week: I am going to go to London all my own some, drink champagne in a new restaurant each night, go to West End shows, enjoy museums and art galleries, take that city on.

If I hate it (and I do fear that I subscribe to ‘I’m nobody till somebody loves me’/ ‘What use is the world if you’ve no-one to share it with?’ school of thought) then I will strike city living of my ‘Things to do with your life’ possibility and reach for the next idea. If I love it then….who wants to move to London with me??

 

 

Why do only the good die young? October 28, 2009

The untimely death of Stephen Gately prompted me to start writing a blog again…I was shocked and saddened by the news when I got an early morning text from a friend’s husband. I cursed the seedy suggestions and homophobia created in the media void that followed (and was grateful yet again that I don’t ever even glance at the scandal soaked propaganda that is the Daily Mail) but I was truly overwhelmed with grief when I stumbled across the footage of Stephen’s funeral on Sky News.

The sheer force of the emotion shocked me. I had had a similar experience when I suffered through George Best’s funeral; as Northern Ireland mourned a much-loved though admittedly flawed favourite son. I had never met George Best, never even been in the same room as the man; am a generation too young to have experienced ‘El Beatle’ first hand: and yet I watched the footage of his funeral and felt my heart break.

I sat in my late father’s chair in my pyjamas wailing in grief. Daddy had been a huge Georgie fan and somehow, knowing how devastated he would have been at Best’s death made the loss of this one time amazing footballer somehow all too personal.

Stephen Gately I ‘knew’ better: or rather his fame had been part of my boy-band  past. Boyzone too, climbed aboard the Take That train of ‘lets get the band back together success’. I dragged a long-suffering friend to Dublin for the weekend, who in turn bribed her sister to keep me company when I went to hear the ‘Boyz’ at the RDS at the beginning of last summer. It was a fun concert; I spent much of it in absolute fits of laughter: their music (the biggest selling band of the 90s) evoking a trip down an exploit filled memory lane.

As I sat once again in my pyjamas; hearing Stephen’s funeral ‘alongside’ the people he had grown up with in Sheriff Street, Dublin I was devastated once more. I listened as each of the band members spoke so eloquently and simply of the ’brother’ they had lost. When Ronan Keating sang ‘In This Life’ I had to try hard to remember how to breathe. I was reminded that behind this trail blazing, closet shattering, very sweet, beautifully talented pop star was a son, a brother, a best friend and a husband.

When I met my Mum the next day for lunch she asked in that quietly all- knowing way of her’s why my eyes were so puffy; why I was so subdued. When I answered her she asked why I had tortured myself? Why not get up of the sofa and out of the pjs and find something to do with my Saturday? I struggled to give her a coherent answer…

I worry that I glory in my melancholy. That I allow every grief-stricken occurence in life to act as a self-indulgent gateway to the personal grief I do a reasonable job of keeping under control in better circumstances…

But a quieter part of my psychosis suggests that maybe the crying for a pop star who I had felt some sort of connection with (no matter how distant),  or even the tears at good movies, great novels act as some kind of release valve. Their catharsis a means of preserving a sanity more delicate than anyone wants to admit….

Why do only the good die young? Is a question without an acceptable answer and I will leave my pondering on the nature of human suffering for a different time and blog space…however there are moments in life that give us perspective. Kick us on the metaphorical ass and whisper with some urgency in the ear we hear best with that,’This is it. This is your chance. This is life. Go…Do!’

I’m not sure that spending time writing about life is truly embracing the spirit of carpe diem (or making the most of the time afforded to me that wasn’t afforded to Stephen Gately) but maybe, just maybe, I am more likely to see the opportunities life presents me with if I can find the discipline to write about their merits…or maybe I will be less likely to have regrets if I am faced with their stark reality in the words that flow from my own fingertips.

 

 

(More re-branding) Seizing the day…. October 17, 2009

I had hoped that that the ‘manic moments of Carrie O’Hara’ would kick start my writing again…but all was too quiet in  blog land. I had forgotten that what had made Carrie’s original blog and her 365 work were the readers. It was a dialogue. I had allowed myself to be influenced by an emailing friend who refused to read my blog as he felt, ‘All blogs are self-indulgent bullshit. What makes the intimate details of anyone’s life fodder for the wider audience?’. As is often the case with this particular guy I found myself at a loss for words…

But I continue to miss the opportunity to articulate my view of the world. Why can’t the blog be a 21st century version of the diary?  The self-indulgence of writing about my daily life can perhaps help me understand its blessings and confusions. It is the gregarious nature of human kind that leads us to art and music and literature: why can’t a blog be part of that dialogue?

So here goes again…

I have been struck, much more than I ever could have predicted by the death of  Boyzone’sStephen Gately. Yet again I search for a God who allows such unfathomable events to take place…this is a topic I will hopefully return to.

 When I first heard the horrible news and more acutely during the Sky News coverage of Stephen’s funeral today I was (to continue the self indulgent theme I suppose) struck again by fears of my own mortality; and reminded of the soul breaking grief I felt at the loss of my father.

I feel the need to take a hold of life; to reassess and reach for my goals. To take both the time to ‘smell the roses’ and yet not stand still for so long that I miss life’s opportunities as they fly past.

So it is back to the blog once more: to attempt I hope to capture life’s moments in Words, and to prompt the procrastinating me to take her chances no matter what.