Sunday Bookmarks #3
The clocks went forward so here I am starting to write at 5 am, listening to cars and birds sing, and hoping for a pain-free day. (the irony that I fell asleep twice today and I sending this more than 12 hours later, is not lost on me)
READING //
Multiple books, 2 audio, 2 e-books, 2 physical and a half-hearted attempt at a graphic novel. Something isn’t sitting right with me this week, I can’t quite place what it is, aside from the usual pain and distrust that is par for the course when you own a body like mine. I haven’t settled into one book, darting between many to see what will suit. I feel as though I am waiting for something, something to change? or go wrong? unsettled is the word that suits my week best, I have retreated into books as always for relief, and have been satiated even if only for a while.
In the latter half of this week, I found joy in diving into a big book, Scabby Queen by Kirstin Innes. I have spent most of the last year shying away from longer reads, something about short attention spans, heavy spines, or the general air of impatience I seem to carry when it comes to reading. Scabby Queen really sucked me in, I forgot what joy it can be to follow characters as they come of age, move out into the world, and as they inevitably decline on the other side. Big books give authors space to explore multiple identities of each character, we are shown synchronicities and similar, many forks in the narrow roads of life these people tread. I am often one to consider, what if? What if I travelled perpetually for the rest of my life? What if I never trained to be a teacher? What if I lost that person I love? Scabby Queen showed me many near misses, many attempts of a life one woman could have led, and in the end, I was satisfied, for her and for me, there is little point contemplating the what ifs and just in cases, so I am on a mission to stop looking back on everything I do and attempt to consider what could have been, what will be, will be, it seems.
Last night, I began My Broken Language by Quiara Alegria Hudes (published 10th June), a memoir of a Daughter of a Puerto Rican mother and a Jewish father, growing up in 1980’s Philadelphia. As most of my favourite bilingual, multifaceted writers do (see: America is not the heart, Memorial, Sigh, Gone), Hudes specks her passages with Spanish, her mother tongue, she decorates pages lightly with them, no need for explanation.
‘‘ ‘I’m half English, half Spanish,’ I ventured, as if made not of flesh and blood but language. And it felt okay. The kids seem satisfied by my declaration ”
It is up to us as readers, members of so-called global society, to piece together, if we are not as sharp as she, and so many others, our single English tongue, has nothing compared to so many, maybe not schooled in Latin or French, but many more grow up translating for parents, switching language between the school room and the block, something I am always in awe of, alone in my own classroom. Tonally it is already gives me a sense of Machado’s Dream House, although in form not as artful , at least each chapter leaves something to consider, a phrase I must write down, a rabbit hole I must research.
I am not one to wish time forward, but I was elated to see an announcement of Sarah Moss’s next novel, coming in November. Written during lockdown, and centring an isolation period, it is certainly pandemic related. Although last week I told you that, for the most part, I will avoid the round of viral virus writing we are due, I will certainly be making an exception for Moss, she can write tension and slow building atmosphere with decidedly British tones, like no other, so I trust her take on the year 2020.
THINKING ABOUT //
Home. Home in its geographical form, a physical place we return to, where we consider our roots to be grounded. I haven't quite settled my thoughts on such a question, but it was sparked when my partner watched lectures from his contemporaries this week, about their home, the links they had to the place they were raised and how that has influenced their journeys as academics. He turned to me and said, maybe I am just not sentimental, but I just don’t think much about the place or house I grew up in, it just was. I was left contemplating my own roots, whether I am attached to physical places, or just the memories they hold. I grew up in 7 houses and 5 schools, all an hour or so apart, so nothing ground-breaking, no long migrations places, in fact my family roots only stretch to the East coast of Ireland, where my estranged father was raised. But that is also besides point considering my only tie to Irishness is my fiery hair and lapsed Catholic upbringing. I am attached to memory of the places I was raised; I can easily close my ears and envision the terrace house we lived in between age 6-9, the blue Laura Ashely scalloped patterned sofa we pushed to the side of our living room to dance with my mother at 8 o clock sharp, my ears still ring to the theme tune to Saturday night fever. The hole in the fence in that same house, where I made a first friend without adult intervention, a woman I still see on the train to get into London. Fast forward a few more years, to the big white house behind the trees, the one that we ran to, the one we got stuck in. Next was the upside-down house, the one with the kitchen in the middle, the one I started teenagerhood in, the one where I cried a lot. A few less memorable in between, more like stopovers when I was spending weekends at friends, hiding hangovers with ‘sore stomachs’, or in far flung countries, where temporary homes consisted of bunks and dorm rooms, beaches and boys’ beds. Now my mother lives in another house, her house, a house I have never ‘lived in’, I have come to visit, stayed plenty of times, and she expresses upset when I call it her house, no she says, it is our house. I cannot oblige, my house is somewhere else now, the home I’ve made alone, or sometimes with my partner. My roots will always be where my mother is, but my home seems to be where I am right now.
Further reading; Home Coming: Sheppey Island and the Great British Caravan Park,
& an academic root , Bhabha’s body of work, but in particular, the early essays on Location of Culture.
LIVING WITH //
I want to get vaccinated. I don’t want to go for a pint. I don't want to dance in a sweaty club. I don't want to sing my heart out at a gig. Actually, I take that back, I would love to do all of those things, all the things my 20 something counterparts are waiting for, but I stopped doing those things long before covid, I had to stop doing them, my body wouldn’t let me. At 21, I took a flight, I contracted EBV, the common virus known as Glandular fever, I left it untreated for two weeks, and I never got better, in fact, in the last 4 years, my health has slowly declined, to the point at which I am at now, having my partner care for me full time, an inability to work and getting through the final year of university on pure adrenaline and determination.
M.E is a condition affecting mostly women but also some young men, it's lifelong, it's incurable, but it almost won’t kill you, (alone at least). M.E affects every part of your body, it is classified as a neurological condition, but I feel it everywhere, every single day. My legs throb as I move from my bed to my sofa, my eyes twitch as a migraine develops, my abdomen aches with another impending infection, my knees swell as my joints become unhappy from the lack of movement, a single cold will leave me broken for weeks, the flu? I’m out for a month, my heart palpitates, my ears ring and every time I register my pain on the 111 online services, it tells me to call 999.
why won’t you vaccinate me?
M.E is poorly understood, more research worldwide is spent on male hair loss than us. In the last 4 weeks, it has been highlighted on occasion for its similarities to Long Covid. The fatigue, the exhaustion, the ache and the pain. The government are funding multi-million-pound ‘long covid centres’ to address the needs of a population who will suffer from post-viral fatigue after this pandemic. It wants to create one-stop solutions, to get previously healthy people back on their feet, (and back to their jobs). I wish those people well, I would not want another to live with this half-life, I hope these centres care for people but, I can admit, I am angry.
why won’t you vaccinate me?
The M.E association, the UK charity that advocates for support and action for people who suffer from M.E, have stated that COVID has left almost all M.E sufferers who contract it, in a state of relapse, to give those unsick people context, you catch and get over the flu in 3 days? It will take me at least 3 weeks. I cannot let my mind comprehend what COVID would do to me. My body is broken, it is not able to cope. It is under attack from all sides.
So why won’t you vaccinate me?
One last thing, for all it is worth, I am sending solidarity to all in Bristol, I lack anything new or nuanced to add to the ongoing conversation around #killthebill and the right to protest, only that I believe in ACAB, always. Read an on the ground report, by a local and respectfully run journalist community, dead set on truth telling.
Catch you all on another part of the internet,
Hannah