success

Today I managed to: belly dance, swim in the sea AND socialise. However did I manage to do all this in a single day you ask? I have a rule. I sometimes break it but I try not to. I know I’m not a gregarious person but I do come across as extroverted and sociable even though I’m not extroverted. After much work and training I’ve become open to people and I do genuinely enjoy others’ company even though I need to spend time alone. But when they ask me out I say yes. That’s the rule: When directly invited to socialise, socialise.
And in this way, I’ve been meeting new people. Slowly but surely. They like me and I like them so I’m extending my social circle even though I hardly ever take the first step. It’s a pattern to be fair. I’m bad at pursuing relationships (platonic or not) but I’ve learned to work within the constraints of my personality and character and push my boundaries as appropriate. So I was invited out and I went and I spent enough time to bond and extend relationships but also to go home and get my eight hours to do my students justice tomorrow. Success.

flirt

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Great novelists start with banal premises such as: he touched her shoulder and she smiled, a little bit too quickly, and thought that maybe he was interested in her afterall. Then, they do interesting things with banality and I’m always amazed. People like Kingsley Amis and Charles Bukowski, to name two, who can take you through thought processes honestly and bluntly and there’s the rub, poetically. For me, thoughts fly by and I catch them sometimes and scrutinise them and I’ve been horny lately in a strange way and this has produced interesting thoughts. Not so much interested in sex, but rather in performing post-mortem examinations on attractions. I’ve always been good at telling who’s attracted to me though far from omniscient. I get confused when the attraction is reciprocal because I start doubting myself. At some point, I realise and then I examine. I realised maybe more than a year later that my friend __ was attracted to me. It hadn’t occurred to me. Probably because at the time I was depressed and beginning a dysfunctional relationship with someone else. And now, I find myself kind of attracted to some people and for the strangest reasons. I had a sex dream about one and it was quite nice and he was drunkenly talking to me last Sunday and I felt I called him to me because I did and I did give him my number when he asked for it but I thought: he has the guts to ask and this should be rewarded. Behind that thought was someone else that I should have the guts to approach but I’m cowardly about these things. When I don’t care too much I’m upfront and charming in my honesty. And thinking I must leave past commitments behind because I need to emotionally follow through with the current state of the universe, I’ve started attracting males again as single females tend to do eventually. So this ramble really is meant for me to tell myself to simply have the guts to flirt.

in bed, alone, with book

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I woke up today and decided I wasn’t going to see anyone. I wasn’t going to go belly dancing. I wasn’t going to go swimming in the sea. I was going to be alone. I did this because I need days alone and they’re hard to come by lately. I stayed in bed and read my book for a couple of hours. Kingsley Amis’ “Lucky Jim”, because I need a break from SF and also because it’s an actual book and not a digital copy and much as I love and appreciate my Sony Reader and its great readable screen I’ve missed the experience of reading from a physical book. It smells like a second-hand book should and it has a history. Some student was studying this for English Literature A-level or something and it’s underlined, predictably. It took me back to school when I was underlining books looking for themes to delineate some line of argument the teacher already decided we should make. Or themes. Evidence. Characters. I turn to page 41 to find: “fair hair, straight and cut short, with brown eyes and no lipstick” moving on to: “The sight of her seemed an irresistable attack on his own habits, standards, and ambitions. Something designed to put him in his place for good.” And so on and so forth.
I decided to make my own mark on the book even though I’ve borrowed it and I didn’t ask for permission. I thought, and I think rightly I thought this, that the book’s owner would appreciate the thought. The book has a story so I wrote that the book found its way to Dalian, China adding the date. Horrible handwriting, predictably.

cooking is not a show

For tonight’s extracurricular adult class we were meant to do a “Ready, Steady, Cook” thingie. I explained the rules: must cook whatever we’re given and each cook has one assistant (etc.). But everyone ignores this and people get up and start cooking together. In China, cooking and eating are social and shared events and I realise now the lack of foresight us foreigners displayed at thinking this could have been a structured thing where people sat and watched others prepare and cook food. And it’s way more fun the Chinese way.

dog, boy, smile

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I met a girl last week when I was covering a class for a colleague. On our way out we chatted and she told me, “you like a quiet life, don’t you?” and I said “yes” and I think it’s true. What makes my life exciting to me is not loud and so sometimes I find it hard to put in language (make noise). Sometimes I am ovewhelmed and I tell people about this amazing spider web I saw. And sometimes I wish I’d find the medium to express to others the joy of everyday events such as walking down the street, stopping to pet a dog and meeting the dog’s owner, a three year old boy who instantly smiled (pure) and started babbling on in Chinese. This incident filled me with joy and such things in my life always do and I don’t often need to tell but this time I did — I wanted to tell someone about this boy and his dog and the boy’s smile and his genuine and pure interaction so I’m telling you.

love, of course

41

I would think it strange to have a baby and then give it to my parents to raise because I wasn’t an experienced parent. But there you have it, this is what happens in China and I still find it strange even though I don’t find many things strange. I wasn’t surprised at the pain I could feel coming from her person. She sounded like she was trying to convince herself that having a three year old son she hardly knew was a good thing. She said, “I don’t have experience. Maybe one day when I have enough experience I will try again.”
It was difficult for her to say her son wasn’t very affectionate towards her. But she told me that when she asks him “do you love me?” he says “yes, I do”. I told her, “of course he loves you” and she seemed unsure as to whether to believe me. I was thinking of my own mother and how I hated her for years until I realised that I hated her because I loved her and she wasn’t there for me, physically or emotionally. Of course I loved her.

winter swimming

I love being in the water. Love it. In the summer. It’s hard to get me out. But I’ve learnt the hard way today that as a winter swimmer you can’t stay in the water too long. I stayed in longer than anyone else today. I got in the zone. The water was clear and I got used to the tingling sensation all over my body and the North Siberian wind was blowing and it was more pleasant in the water than out of it. And so I lost sensation in my body and I couldn’t put on my bra, I could hardly zip up my boots and I’m still trembling one hour later. The cabbie must have been really freaked out from me. I was like a skeleton from a kid’s cartoon, my teeth were clattering and I could hardly speak. But swimming in the sea is a great joy and I’ll keep it up. With measure next time.