Grilled Basa & Clusters O' Stars

I feel like I have been putting this entry off for a long time. October ended abruptly, mentally revising psychology notes at the back of an unfamiliar vehicle, feeling cat scratches chewing into the flesh of my arm, stripes painted precisely in the pocket of a wall, stubble coarse across my tired face. The minute I did end up walking into university for one of my finals, there was a gross film of sweat glimmering from my face, my dad's hoodie was a cough of blue around the rest of my black graphic tee and sweatpants body - I finished the exam early, by virtue of getting so riled up I had no idea of the pace at which I completed the questions. My back seized and ached for days, I had focused every ounce of energy into turning it into tablet stone while writing essay responses.

I spent the middle of the month climbing up hills, stumbling down unfamiliar roads, listening to new music. Venturing towards the "Noble Hill", filled with hungry flies, granola bars and thorny weeds clinging to my ankles and the mesh of my shoes. Watching windmills, baking basa and salmon in the oven, stargazing, dreaming. I didn't have a car, but I did have my brothers, and my dad, and a need to understand silence when it did strike.

The silence in my bedroom at home (where I currently am situated) is very different to the silence in the countryside. Silence in the country comes in the form of moonlight, the whisper of grass, the gentle hums of the dishwasher, the vague cries of birds and other animals. I sat in a field finishing "Norwegian Wood" and listening to jazz, I spent a lot of hours in the day getting into a man's mind and brewing myself in there for as long as I could. Now in my bedroom at home, there is a sort of damp feeling. Every "James" that has existed sits in this room with me - Japanese coffee incense next to Wedgwood ashtrays, prestigious psychology journals I somehow stay subscribed to, Tiffany lamps, stamps, a pair of glasses, birthday cards from ages away. I learned early on that it was easier to confront my impatience and dissatisfaction using material goods, I then learned later, after re-heating frozen salmon on the stove, that such a thing didn't matter. That I just needed to be with myself, outside of the yelling and scolding, for as long as I could muster.

I was in the countryside for around a month, and I will be in this room for around 2 weeks, and then I have a new apartment to move into. I'm weird about new places, but I know this new area well, and there is a great canopy of trees nearby, and a pond where swans and cygnets rest and paddle, and a good variety of supermarkets along a large street. Said supermarkets have a good selection of sushi. And then once I am settled in there I'll look for a roommate, and I'll set up everything for my final year of undergraduate studies, and then I will probably sit and read and watch TV for a little while. And try and perfect pasta. Because he likes a good penne alla vodka, and I have never made such a thing in my life. Do you think he'd settle for salmon?

This person in question, do you want me to describe him? He is like a misty beach at dusk, the feeling of cold air and the spray of saltwater, he feels like a clash of cashmere and coarse wool, bruised knees and calves, the pages of books. For lack of a better word, he is ferocious. Not in the way a lion might be, or a teething kitten, but in the way that the moon teases the sky at 4pm in the afternoon and gazes upon the world before its evening debut. Gentle, sweet, stalkerish but attentive. I am not sure I could have verbalised any of this before I wrote him a letter, something about that action unlocked something gentle in me, knowing he can hold a card of mine in his hand and that there is something beyond a screen between the two of us.

We watched a few movies together recently (the power of streaming) and he has really been there for me in all of my moments of momentary (and ongoing) crisis. I have a strange and twisted relationship with a lot of my family, by virtue of just being a particular kind of person who is adamant on making particular kinds of decisions. I run in circles of people who stick to me like thorns in Velcro and then detach themselves from the root. I don't have an easy time with either of these things. Coupled with the nature of my body, and the future of it, it hasn't been simple. Everything has been so complicated. A good kind of complicated, the kind that tells me that my 20 is different from someone else's 20, it is a scary one but a needed one.

A lot of this random hiking, and dishwashing, and yearning, and cutting my hair with kitchen scissors, has told me a great deal about what I want out of my life. Do you think it would be possible for me to make a change in the world without vibrating the whole ground beneath me? Do you think I could have something sweet - a ring on my finger, a collection of palm cards nestled on a lectern, an interview, a paper published every so often - without it all being so noisy? Does the world love me enough to make it possible?

I had never really understood love until now, in all its diversity. I think we all want to have a proper "first love", to get real acquainted with the romantic stuff, to acknowledge we have family and they can be kinda good, to wear a nice outfit and think "nice, self love". Love is different to all of that. There's a great deep pit eating at your solar plexus that is full of it, and it feels like saline and firecrackers. It is everything and nothing like you expect it to be. It is so quiet. The love you think you have that is loud and ambitious and feels like fire in your nostrils is still love, but the quiet kind can only be found in the galaxy. In star clusters. I think I have gotten there.