I, Priestess (9)

I, PRIESTESS (9)

The trip to the tip left me sick with unease, so I shot a few pigeons and cut down their trees.

I couldn't dismiss, though, the sight of that trash piled up in those crates; it gave me a rash. (I've applied steroid paste to calm my hives down but consumption ain't cured by prescribed cortisone.)

A culture of waste, that's what we've become (a secular place built on late-capitalism). A terrible place with no space for free-thinking (therein lie the pleasures of drugs and hard-drinking).

I wish I believed in some god or some system, where numbers made sense or bad luck had a reason. A meaning to life, a blue-print or template; I'd pray for forgiveness and accept my own fate.

But, when I trod - by mistake - on a snail on the lawn the random nature of life left me feeling forlorn.

I, Priestess (8)

I, PRIESTESS (8)

Now.

My utopia was generally going quite well: exciting, exhilarating.

Life-affirmingly swell.

So.

I took the carpet and underlay (which we'd removed very happily in less than a day) to the tip.

Should've paid for a skip. (Why, on earth, do we acquire so much idiot shit, when we only throw it away?)

The trip to the tip sort of ruined my day.

I downed a gin and hit the hay.

I, Priestess (7)

I, PRIESTESS (7)

With utopia, comes the promise of ascension.

Today we created my stairway to heaven. We pulled up the carpet and underlay. Wrenched out all the staples, prised tack-strips away from the plywood beneath that requires little sanding. (I'm thinking of varnishing or, maybe, just painting.)

Masks still on our faces, we hoovered and swept. Scraped off the detritus (dust stuck to the paint). We lever-ed out cable-tacks left from BT.

I have to admit that it makes me quite happy to bring down a house to its former essentials. (With nothing but brute force and old-fashioned hand-tools.)

Perhaps I've succumbed to the DIY bug. More like, I'm addicted to being a thug 'cos I loved - with full force - this act of disassembling.

But, already, I'm lacking the desire for re-decorating.

I, Priestess (6)

I, PRIESTESS (6)

I wanted to create a utopia. Envisaged a number of grandiose structures.

But, it's structures and things that obscure clear thinking. The material world leaves one drowning.

I'm sinking.

I'm done with re-decorating, renovating, building: with off-the-peg fixtures and ornamentation.

Fed by consumption: banal acquisition.

I'm now in the business of property-deconstruction.

I, Priestess (5)

I, PRIESTESS (5)

This is how our local waste-disposal operates.

Every other Friday the council collects domestic rubbish and garden trash. The weeks in between are for paper cans cardboard plastics glass.

Those every-other Fridays are our days of shame. (When nobody's looking we pop our bottles in next-door neighbours' bins - in the hope of avoiding humiliation and self-blame.)

I wish we could do the same with our pasts. (Just how long does atonement have to last?)

I wish we could recycle our guilt and regrets; re-think them and make them useful. Bin our miserable failures and transform them into something worthwhile and functional.

I envisage a trash-can crowned with flowers.

Imagine this.

Well-disposed and lightly-perfumed; a world that never goes rotten and never sours.

I, Priestess (4)

I, PRIESTESS (4)

So, I've made a decision to take control: lean and fit and healthy and well.

You'll find me each morning with chalk on my fingers, hanging from a Beastmaker while the sliced bread singes.

So what if the smoke-alarm's ringing?

I can't be found quitting this crimping or clinging to those (beautifully-carved) wooden jugs. You see, I'm practising learning how to handle pull-ups.

Even if the house is razed to the ground, in the process.

You'll find me each lunch-time eating soup from fresh vegetables. Forcing it down despite each bowl tasting quite terrible. (The midday bevy has been replaced already with carrot juice or a mixed-berry smoothie.)

Then.

You'll find me out front, pumping the tyres on my bicycle. (I have to admit, it leaves me quite miserable. Too many sad memories of good times in the nineties.)

You'll find me in the afternoon, hula-hooping in the back-garden. (Got it off amazon.com. It tones one's lower abdomen.)

And, in the evening.

You'll find me behind the sports centre, slack-lining. (The butt-bounce was tricky; it proved quite demanding, but I managed it in the end.)

And, later.

You'll find me at night, curled up in bed, trying to focus on a some contemporary women's fiction. But, it has to be said, those late night-caps seriously fuck your concentration.

I, Priestess (3)

I, PRIESTESS (3)

My step-mother was a lazy cow. 

I'll tell you a tale from a far-away land; as much as I'm able. (Perhaps I still misunderstand.) 

As I remember:

A boy and a girl who'd yet to do harm; they were pretty and charming cack-handed disarming. Serious curious quite bright and still humorous; they met every day with a light-hearted optimism. (A characteristic that is life-affirming).

They loved each other, and their mother and father. The boy was my brother. The sister was me. If petitioned in the years prior to 1973 we'd have said we were happy as happy as can be.

So, here's to stupidy ignorance naïveté. (Will you wait while I crack open a good Pouilly-Fumé?)

My father and mother didn't much like each other. They quickly divorced on the grounds of infidelity. The result: bad-feeling, court orders and alimony. 

My father married again. 

I remember, clearly (every other Saturday), my father watching Grandstand: Benson and Hedges and a glass of whisky balanced precariously on the arm of his green-upholstered chair.

(We never ate properly while we were there.)

And, our step-mother was nowhere to be found. Each alternate weekend she faked 'flu and went to ground.

My brother and I spent our formative years playing poker for Tic-Tacs and cans of stolen beer.

He was cleverer than me, and his game was strategic. More often than not I was miserably defeated.

Hungry as hell, that's how I learned to be - in future years - such a gracious loser. After all, tell me.

How on earth do you fight back when you love the person who's beating you?