well, quite a week. i was electrocuted, i woke up in a wood pile, lost and found, + it was my birthday.
i’d like to apologize for the poor material last week, the entry was as damaged and poor as i was drunk and damaged. i fell right on my back that night like a slapstick actor, the world turned black and white for a moment and there were title cards and bruises and scratches on both sides. i ate a big fish, too. but it didn’t satisfy my hunger for a big fish. big fish shaped big hole in my big belly remains.
Monday was a day of rest. i spent all of it sleeping in various top living room spots. On my back on the floor with my legs up on the couch was the most rewarding by rest. Tuesday we got ingredients and cooked a nice meal. Then we hit the Witch’s Ball, a bar that’s been open since the 1400s and serves the same regulars. We had jägereggers. It’s like a jägerbomb but the red bull’s subbed out for a pickled egg. pickled jaegg. awful. drank 2 of them. zaina ate a dog biscuit and locked me out of the house. i got lost trying to find the back door and climbed up something tall and thought “if i slip from here i might well die” but i don’t remember anything about it. i don’t remember getting home but eventually i did, i understand i’d been unkind in my wet and frozen drunkenness and haven’t drank since except the next day.
Wednesday good enough, uncertain, peaceful, good yes good. We get a big fish at the Coast. It was lovely, Hake. Prepared very well, but i still have a hankering. I drink two beers there and then we stop by the Top House Inn and Ethan informs me i’d been discovered out the back in a woodpile. I don’t finish the drink there, we go home and we watch television until it’s bed time.
Thursday I watch American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders and I make a kind of chili kind of thing with rice and then we go on a walk to Kynance Cove which is truly beautiful. And muddy. Truly muddy. A man with a dog says “right on” and we stomp through mud and pony shit. I’m wearing slip-ons. I have waterproof boots back in the apartment. Why I didn’t wear those?
So we go down by the water where it’s incredibly beautiful and we go for a walk in the hills up wooden stairs and stairs of stone and climb over little fences and follow yellow arrows with little acorns on them as best we can. but sometimes the arrows are pointing at each other or contradicting one another. Pointing at the sky or sea. We come to a clearing with no exit, mud and hard bush and nettles in every direction. My feet are caked, so are Zaina’s socks and sneakers. We turn back, it’s somehow muddier now.
There’s so much mud in the middle of it. I get up on the other side of the cleft and with meticulous precision i place heel after toe, heel after toe until i’m far enough along to rest my hand on the hard bush with its thorns (now dead and rendered harmless). Lending it my weight, I pivot with perfect grace bringing my foot across the muddy split to rest on the base of the other side. Then I slip and fall and land with both feet in the mud, stumble and grab hold tight of a young living bush and get cut and bleed and Zaina laughs so hard she pees a bit. A few minutes after this I'm electrocuted by a fence “meant for keeping out cows” which she enjoys not just in the moment but for every moment thereafter, spontaneously bursting into laughter about it at any given hour of the day or night. Nothing has ever brought her the kind of sustained joy and happiness of having watched me be electrocuted in a field at the very edge of england.
That night I book a train away from Lizard, out of Cornwall. We spend a lovely day on Friday travelling and laughing and eating McDonalds and getting lost. Eventually through to Redruth, on the bus/rail replacement service. We get to Plymouth. The Duke of Cornwall Hotel. A lovely evening of merriment and joy.
On my birthday we walked all over the Hoe area. Beautiful, got splashed by the sea. Ate well. I finally ate the fish that filled my fish hole at Rockfish. We had what felt like several wonderful days yesterday. There was cheese and a bubble bath.
Sunday we travelled back to London. It’s been lovely. At home now tidying up and sleeping.
