You know what I think, the singer says
to me,
I think he’s a cunt.
That may be.
But I have to admit I love him still.
He has to admit, well, I only know your
side of the story.
This is the back story.
I loved with a love that was meant to
endure,
Because anything less would have been an
insult.
I gave that love to you, because you
seemed to want it.
You appreciated, enjoyed, created,
enlivened it.
You devoured it, grew tired of it, cast
it aside.
Then I wept like you’d never seen.
Without you there to witness it, I
finally crumpled
My face wet with tears
My body convulsed with anger
With fear, sadness and humiliation.
Then I did what you said I would.
I turned you into literary inspiration.
Its April, 2012, I’m in London. Its four months since the relationship
I had hoped would last for a lifetime ended. The sky is grey and its pouring
with rain.
Its two weeks since the rain set in. And
for two weeks I’ve been feeling a lack of motivation and a suffocating sadness which
settled upon me making me want to hide beneath my blanket. But I had work to
do. For the last fortnight I’ve been sitting in my room making wigs and
watching the rain. Whenever I looked up from my wigs, and let my gaze stretch
further than the square inch of hair and lace in front of me, my view was of
the damp grey urban landscape, of rain pelting down on the Westway, fat drops
of water clinging to the trees, the window pane, the apartment block across the
street and the umbrellas of passersby. If this was a movie or a novel, and not
my life, it would be a trite and stereotypical use of objective correlative,
because its also two weeks since I truly woke up to the fact that my best
friend, my lover – though I would never have called him that – was no longer mine, and that I had no reason
to hope he ever would be again, no matter how much I longed for him. The truth
sunk in. The sky went grey. I gave way to unhappiness. The clouds broke. And as
the rain dashed across my window, I cried.
There is a lot of talk in London about rain at the
moment. For the minute we seem to have forgotten the approaching summer, with
the promise of extra bank holidays, The Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics, because
the inclement weather is making it feel like winter again, and if this rain
keeps up, maybe it will never actually be summer. Too much rain and yet not
enough rain. And just to make sure we know there isn’t enough rain, there on
the tube, next to the advertisement advising you to take different routes to
work when the network is flooded with tourists going to the games is one by
Thames Water telling us that after the driest two years since records began, we’re
in Drought.
Coming from Sydney, Australia, I can’t help but feel a
sense of déjà vu. While living in an Olympic city for the second time is a
curious experience, inducing both a desire to escape life, but also a reluctant
excitement, it’s the concept of drought – drought in famously drizzly overcast London – and the interplay
of rain, or the lack of it, and our emotions that interests me. Why is it we
mope and complain when it rains, even those of us who aren’t poets or
filmmakers seeking a metaphor and who don’t suffer from Seasonal Affective
Disorder, or even winter blues, when rain is a necessary, even vital, part of
our continued existence. We think of sunny
days and clear blue skies as the ideal, but if rain was forever absent from our
lives, we’d actually have to accept it was cause for unhappiness.
Drought in Australia is serious business. In
2005 my friends and I drove six hours north west
of Sydney to a
small country town, Tambar Springs, which lies roughly between Coonabarabran
and Gunnedah. Driving up the mountains,
through fairly familiar places – Leura, Katoomba – the surrounding bushland was
that beautiful deep blue and olive green. Once on the other side and heading
north towards Mudgee, the green fades away. The metaphorical line in the ground
between the haves and the have nots, was made literal, the colour of the earth
reminding east coast city kids like myself, that west of the Great Dividing
Range there was something wrong with the weather. East of the mountains things
were still vaguely green, west of the mountains, red, orange and brown took
over. Drought was bigger than the grief felt by middle class suburbia who
couldn’t believe the government could dictate what days they could water their
pot plants and non native flower bushes, to car owners faced with the ignominy
of wiping down their cars with a bucket and sponge, to the generations of
children who would not experience the joy of a summer spent in the garden
running through the sprinkler. In rural New
South Wales drought swooped down upon kilometre after
kilometre of farmland, and squeezed the life out of it. On either side of the
highway we were confronted by dry grass, shrivelled wheat and pathetically thin
livestock. Field upon field of heartbreak.
In my
comfortable city life, where food came from magical places like Woolworths and
Coles, now from Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, I’ve never really had to consider the
personal pain of drought. Ok, I get twitchy when the sink is filled to capacity
in order to wash a couple of bread plates, and now that I live in a flat and
don’t have a garden, I feel a bit guilty every morning when I tip my coffee
dregs into the bin rather than feeding it to plants, but my income isn’t
affected, my lifestyle is not seriously challenged, my identity hasn’t been
torn to pieces. Across Australia
rural families whose lives were dependant on agriculture had year after year of
stress, grief and financial hardship, essentially because it didn’t rain. Or occasionally because it did, but too much
too soon, with the year’s rain falling in a week, turning the dry cracked earth
into a murky soup of flood water. For me, drought is a minor inconvenience; a
slightly higher groceries bill, a reluctance to indulge in the luxury that is a
deeply filled bathtub. For those working in farming and agricultural
industries, drought “can contribute to severe mental agony due to
financial hardship from increased debt” additionally, “Stress, worry and the
rate of suicide increase”.
Perhaps even more scarily, “
empirical
evidence in NSW has linked drought with suicide rates demonstrating every
decrease of 300mm in precipitation is linked with an 8% increase in long term
mean suicide rates.”
That’s serious emotional interference all because of the absence of
rain.
Considering the huge environmental and
financial affect of drought in Australia,
the way it ripped through the land, and changed much of how we think and live,
its hard to apply the same word to the current weather conditions in the United Kingdom,
and not feel just a bit sceptical, even cynical. Come on guys, the grass is green,
the sheep are fat, bananas are still around 70p/kg, and most of all there is
water falling from the sky. When I applied for driver’s license in the early
noughties, I stretched the truth in my log book stating I’d had experience
driving in wet weather. What wet weather? I think I drove through a light
sprinkle of afternoon rain once or twice. Considering the huge emotional and
psychological effect of prolonged drought in Australia
its hard to accept we’re experiencing drought conditions in the UK, but then,
if we are, its equally difficult to justify having a whinge about two weeks of
rain.
But whinge we do. Even though common
sense tell me rain is a good thing, even though I’m intellectually and
environmentally aware enough to know its necessary, useful and important that
there be rain, that given the real grief and stress drought causes farmers and
the like its selfish and immature of me to complain about a drizzly London day,
I still prefer nice sunny days. The emotional low that seems to accompany wet
weather seems to make me forget how dependent we are on water, makes my
problems, however small seem big. Sunshine make me happy, and the rain makes me
want to mope. Additionally, at the moment anyway, I quite like being able to blame my
unhappiness on a light dose of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Despite knowing
that rain is good, that drought is a serious problem, I still believe the
equation that less rain plus increased sunshine equals increased happiness and
that therefore my emotional well being and general life contentment is
dependent on the weather.
The link between rainy weather and
discontent was backed up by the Facebook status updates of my friends who From
December 2011 to March 2012, complained about the weather. In London, though we were initially amazed at
how mild and dry the winter was, once the snow finally fell in February, our
joy at its prettiness was unsurprisingly short lived and by the next day we were
complaining that the streets were covered in freezing grey slush which made
life generally difficult and unpleasant. On the other side of the world Sydney was experiencing a
wet and comparatively cold summer, and people were whinging. My Facebook news
feed was covered with complaints about rain, having to wear coats and gumboots,
not having enough opportunities to wear summer dresses, this sort of thing. The
increased presence of rain in Sydney
brought an increase in complaints on my newsfeed, which for the most part,
smacked of an environmental short term memory crisis. Never mind the fact that in February 2011 we
complained bitterly when for a week the temperature hovered around 40 and
didn’t even drop over night, and our bodies ached and we couldn’t sleep it was
so hot, or more importantly that for close to a decade we’d been living with
that drought, remember the one that brought those hideous water restrictions which
infringed upon our middleclass right to a convenient lifestyle. So how dare the
rain now come and prevent the wearing of a frilly frock and strappy shoes.
Our memories play tricks on us, that is
for sure. As I sit here, questioning the legitimacy of laying the blame for my
unhappiness on rainy (delayed) winter blues rather than on loosing my
bestfriend/lover/boyfriend/person I wanted to marry and hang out with for the
rest of forever, its easy to let the cloud of sadness descend and have no
memory of ever feeling otherwise. However, I have photos to prove that in
March, spring came early, and I revelled in 18 degree days, that frankly, were
glorious. The sun was out, it was warm and pleasant and I left my coat at home.
I was happy and life was good. But now its April. The sky is grey and pouring
with rain. I actually find it a struggle to recall those few weeks of spring
induced happiness. Are our memories really this short? When my then boyfriend
spoke to me through the darkness and said he thought we should break up, I momentarily
lost my ability to analyse my life and my happiness objectively. Even though I
knew I was perfectly capable of living without him, and I knew my happiness and
chances of feeling content with life were entirely independent of whether I was
with him, I couldn’t imagine how that could be. Four months later, I’m churning over the same
thoughts, but I find that its the
absence of sunshine which is taking away my ability to consider life
objectively and remember happiness.
Knowing that we need water, doesn’t make
an oppressive grey sky all that uplifting, except for those who are keenly
environmentally aware. For the rest of us I guess our memories and our emotions
trample upon our intelligence and perhaps even our morality. This must be why
you can live through a drought and save water and recycle and not eat meat for
the sake of the environment, yet resent a summer that doesn’t suit your desire
for picnics, barbeques and open toed shoes. Its probably also why we sometimes
find ourselves lying in the arms of someone we desire but don’t love, or love someone
even though they no longer, or perhaps never did, love you. And why when you
do, why you look at them delicately, saying, do you remember? Do you remember
that afternoon last August…
It is our emotions and memories that
force us to replay specific events, that reinforce a chosen narrative. It never
rained when I was in my early twenties, there was a drought, we syphoned the
bathwater onto the back yard. Yet in 2002, aged twenty I helped pull down a
Marquee in the middle of the night as it had been swamped with rain, and
watched as the campsite I was meant to live on for the next ten days was
promptly flooded. My memory tells me that my boyfriend loved me. It tells me of
the night he woke me at three in the morning to ask for reassurance that I
would look after him, it tells me how when I turned twenty-nine he said he
intended to be around for at least the next twenty-nine years. My emotions tell
me that surely he must still love me, even though my intelligence mocks me for
harbouring such naïve hopes.
In March when the sun was shining,
unseasonably early, I dreamt of him.
I dreamt of you last night
I didn’t mean to.
I dreamt your mouth
Of your tongue
Tickling me.
And as you smelt me
You luxuriated in the memories
Of sunshine, casserole, apple cider
And earthy sweat.
So yes, yes I do remember, that afternoon last
august to which he referred the last time he visited me. And I knew beforehand
that it would be the memory that he would recall. But because my intelligence
and my memory are at war with each other, I chose to answer bluntly, of course
I remember, rather than to indulge the spirit of reminiscence. Besides, I’d
already done that when I wrote the above lines, a few weeks earlier. I also
remember the picture of happiness that I never told him, a picture bathed in
sunlight, a memory of an event that never was and now never will be. How before
I moved to London, when I sat in Sydney and longed for his
presence I dreamt him then as well. I dreamt of once again lying beside him,
Of never having to leave.
Of long summer afternoons
That stretched on and on
In endless light.
Miles away, months away
Years away.
And he would place his hands on my
stomach
And smile with delight,
For a child that would be ours,
I loved him deeply. That was my failing.
I went and took all the things I had wanted, all the things I hoped for and
placed them on him. For nearly a decade, I’d been bitter about the life I had,
and wished I’d had a different one, one where I got to be wife and mother, and I blamed my discontent on
the absence of these things, I got angry at God about it, which was foolish. It
was foolish to expect a real person to be a person I had invented in my mind,
in my longing and in their absence. The women I work with all complain about
their partners. He doesn’t move the furniture when he cleans, he just don’t
understand that I don’t eat meat. I feel a sadness when they do this because I
feel certain that if I could be back in the relationship I had, I wouldn’t complain.
I’d be happy. The winter following the hideously hot February, a friend of mine
posted on facebook ‘come back summer, all is forgiven’. In the absence of what
we all hated about summer, she can forgive the heatwave and crave the return of
warmer weather. But if that 40degree week had come back, would all really have
been forgiven? Maybe she’s not as fickle
as the rest. I don’t know yet, because the next summer she got was the wet one
just gone, so no chance to complain about heatwaves.
Contentment, I know, is not just about
the absence of the things I dislike in life, and drought isn’t just the absence
of rain. Drought is about not enough rain to match human demand. So even though
its raining in London
at the moment, there is a real risk of there not being enough water to match
human consumption. That is what makes it a drought. That’s something worth
worrying about, and if there was no
water in the taps or if the wheat, rice and potatoes don’t grow that’d be
something to complain about. So given we all need water, surely we in London should be rejoicing that we live in a generally wet
and drizzly city, and more people in Sydney
should have been glad of the respite afforded to them by a wet summer. However,
it seems that our complaints about
the weather are much more about the personal, than the global, and that, in
turn, makes me a bit sad. But soon the
sun will be back, and then I’m sure I’ll feel fine.
The first time I drove in real rain, for the record, was
about a week after I got my full license, and I was driving a friend’s car to
South West Rocks. Not only was it the first time I drove in proper wet weather,
we were on the freeway, I was driving at 90km/hr (the fastest I’d driven at
that point in time), the car had dodgy windscreen wipers that refused to obey
me when I switched them on and it was one of those impressive north coast
summer storms. So in a matter of seconds, I was no longer driving at 90 the sky
dark and ominous, but at about 40, with sheets of rain upon us and with next to
no visibility. Happy Days.
