Perception and person; musings on costumes and indiscreet questions

Today I annoyed the English teacher who is on maternity leave with her beautiful baby girl Amelia to go for a walk with me (Amelia bedelia came too of course). They’re so perfect but at the same time so unusual. The English teacher is blonde and jogs or swims or cycles the entire time, complains that she is too large now despite the fact that she is skinnier than I have ever been even though it hasn’t been a year since she gave birth.

Anyway, we were discussing The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James. An amazing book with two of my favourite children characters in adult literature. I’m half way through watching the BBC’s production of it which was shown this Christmas, and I recorded it then but am only just finding the time to watch it (as I approach what ought to be the busiest time of the year).



So far, I adore the children actors, but more especially the costumes. The governess (the stunning Michelle Dockery) and the little girl (Eva Sayer) have so far exhibited a stunning dress sense, especially the girl’s head adornments.

I was sitting on my bed (which has a cover at the moment which is covered in pictures of pieces of candy. It’s like falling asleep on a sea of sugar. Rather jolly) with a friend called Matty today, him lounging with a book by J M C Le Clezio, me sitting at his feet. The book is called Terra Amata, a stunning piece of writing which completely blows me away whenever I venture into its strange realities. There’s a chapter called ‘And asking indiscreet questions’ (the chapter before is called ‘saying incomprehensible words’). There’s a couple of these kind of strange chapters which I think are following the development of the main (and in some ways only real) character. Anyway, Matty doesn’t tend to go for the kind of linguistic musings I adore, but he did deign to kind of skip through the questions asking me some of them, the ones which fit with the more normal kind of questions you ask when you’re bored, the kind of ‘if you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be’ kind of ones, except better, of course, because the writer is a genius.

Anyway, one of them is now stuck in my mind. I can’t be bothered to go upstairs and find the exact wording, so, in essence, he says: ‘if you weren’t you, who would you be?’

Well firstly, is that something I could choose? I mean, if I wasn’t me, I’d probably be no one, but then, at the same time, I guess I could be anyone. The question looks at a distinction which I find hard to make, between the self and everything else. Don’t ask me about perception.

I think if I could be anyone in the world, live any life, I’d be thrilled if I could try out as Joni Mitchell. I mean, I adore her music, her life sounds fun, and she met all the greats. Furthermore, she didn’t get screwed over by Bob Dylan like Joan Baez (who also has the let down of emotions which I don’t quite understand obviously but which seem to be unable to really form a truly loving relationship with anyone. Although, on that note, who can?). I mean, I don’t know that much about her, but she sounds awesome.

Other people I’d like to be... I can’t think of any great writers who are women who had amazingly great lives. I mean, there’s plenty of people who I’d chose to be for what they did, but then you look at some aspect of their personal life and it’s like, look what they sacrificed! Is it worth losing what one can accomplish as an individual without the backing of fame in order to make an impact on the world, to do something which everyone can remember you for?

My mom, I think, could have done anything involving intelligence with her life. She was asked to work for the USA’s spy network people (like in James Bond, yes I am utterly unknowledgeable and vague about that). I think she could have been president. But no. She decided to have all us lot instead. And my dad, he used to be a diplomat, but he pulled out and became a teacher, I guess because he wanted to be around his family more.

So there seems to be a history of giving up the public for the personal in my family. I guess my issue with doing famous things is that I strongly dislike the idea of being remembered. It makes me want to curl up inside. But then, it wouldn’t be me who was being remembered if I lived someone else’s life. But then it would be, because I’d be them.

I think I’m too tired to think this out properly.