Catpaws Cafe

Random musings from my virtual fountain pen

Archive for the month “February, 2016”

(I hate) Being sensitive

IS peace and quiet in your own home a privilege reserved only for the moneyed?
Why? Does not people from all walks of life have the right to a have that choice also?
Do you really think HSP (high sensitivity) is something that only happens when affluent? It’s no blessing, it’s a curse, unless you can afford a secluded cabin when the world around you gets too much.
With a baby howling out back in the neighbours courtyard (and has done for over an hour now), three soundsystems pounding out techno, rap-reggeton and something else I have no name for, the feeling of panic in my body is steadily rising and the impossible need to get away is threatening to suffocate me from within.

Last night I was so sure I could write that last missing chapter in the morning, but waking up to this? How am I supposed to even stay sane with this? How am I supposed to work in this constant bombardment? I’m not a successful author so there’s no money for an office, let alone a soundproof one. I work at the kitchen table. I like working from home because I like the love of our cats around and the comic relief they provide. When I get stuck I can wash up or do the laundry.

Now every nerve feels frayed, my heart is pounding a tattoo in a RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!! and I can’t stop it. I can’t think.  I seriously can’t think.
All my ideas have fled and are out of reach, every last one scrubbed away by the auditory torture and I don’t even know what I was going to do. My hands are shaking and the rest of my body trembling. All I want to do is lock myself in the bathroom and cry. Cover my ears with pillows and and blankets, and rock back and forth in catatonia. So that’s what I’m going to do.
loud people
I’ve come to hate Cancun. I hate how no one gives a shit about being considerate. I hate being sensitive, it’s a fucking curse and I’d happily swap it for being more hardy and be able to live and be more at ease in this loud world that to me feels more like assault every day.
Who the hell wants to be sensitive and feel deeply?
I can’t get away from it because there’s nowhere to go. Everywhere is full of people, and where there’s people there’s always someone who thinks it’s their duty to make as much noise and pump out muzak as loud as the speakers will go. Unless you have a car and can drive and park up in the jungle somewhere.

Now it’s finally stopped – after 3 hours+ for this time. Every muscle in my body is still tense, tighter than a piano string. Every idea I had is gone, Every single idea, every nuance I had to guide the word magic to weave together a story is gone without even leaving as much as a trace. The word notes on the paper from last night means nothing any more. And that makes me cry even more. Now all I feel is empty and crushingly depressed.  12742607_1028001063927972_7883913622580101030_n

Re-writing my life?

ann patchett
With the leg still in the cast this is more true than ever I suppose. Writing has become my life – because it’s one of the few things left in it, even with the challenge it is to find a position to write in. It’s a trade off – less pain, muddled head. Clear head: spine, head and neck hurts.

I very much look forward to getting a splint in a couple of weeks, and with that hopefully some more mobility. I know the cast was to immobilize me and that it has done well, but I still have stuff I need to do. I want my mobility back, and a life.  And I look forward to be able to feel the cats tails under my feet again so I don’t tread on them quite as often…IMG_20160203_093625

To catch you up, I was in a traffic accident 3 months ago. I have no insurance and is now faced with perhaps choosing how much mobility I will have for the rest of my life. Wasn’t planning any marathons, but I’d like to be able to walk easy etc. Do I have surgery and work to pay that cost back til I die and have no money to do the things I want to do, or do I live with a splint and hope for the best? And be grateful to still be here? Focus on what I can do instead of what I can’t? I should add I love long walks, rambling and hiking. And I don’t want to have to write that last bit in past tense.

It’s not as if there really is a choice, no bank will lend an unemployed unknown author that kind of money anyway, so the question is mostly hypothetical.

Strange as it may sound at 47 I finally had a body I was happy with. For a brief year I could look myself in the mirror and like what I saw. Now that’s gone by the wayside, at least for now.  To say that I’m not bothered and not grieving would be lying.

To get back to the topic of writing, like one of my inspirations – Daphne DuMaurier – I write from a longing to be someone other than myself and a need to explore other possibilities, the ones not available to me in this life thus far.
Terry Pratchett said he didn’t want to get a life because he already felt as if he was trying to lead three already. I on the other hand feel more like Katharine Johnson, (a close friend of Nikola Tesla) in that it feels like I’m still looking for my life, and that so far I’ve mostly lived someone else’s.

My books are set in locations I have dreamt of visiting or would like to re-visit. Places that intrigue and inspire my imagiNation. They are also a case of the story choosing the writer, a phenomenon I hear more and more author’s talk about. Right now I couldn’t even get around an airport without a wheel-chair.
I write to live. I can’t imagine not writing. If I was stranded on a desert island with no hope of ever publishing I’d still write.  It’s part and parcel of who I am.

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That said, I hope there will be readers who will love my books as much as I loved writing them. And that my writing will bring me a new life, new friends, travel and the purpose I have always craved.

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