the personal hurricanes of kirsty mitchell.

London is showing me it’s funny side at the moment. from the bus driver who used the intercom to talk to everybody all the way through Bloomsbury, to the guy messing around with a really fast remote control car in Camden high street last night, there seems to be something weird and humourous to everything and it’s making life feel a bit lighter.

i’m not sure where last week went. I was left in charge a lot more, and it seems to make the time pass faster than normal. I have been very disciplined with my routine, eating right, sleeping right, and living, for once, in a clean and tidy room. it’s helped me a lot.

and life, lately, has been full of changes of scenery: I’ve been to places I don’t normally go, met new people, and tried new things. yesterday morning was waking up not alone, drinking coffee and chatting in bed, and traipsing through Alexandra park in the sunshine, down to crouch end in search of breakfast. the walk felt good, the sun felt good, having the views and the trees and the beautiful streets on my doorstep felt good. north London is beautiful. sitting in a café playing the smiths, luxuriating in the small things, eggs benedict and a cappuccino and the benefits of being able to sleep with someone and not have to deal with some massive agenda of theirs. I always wonder what people think about how excessively polite I am to the waitstaff. it must seem odd to the uninitiated.

and then the afternoon, my plans to lie in bed watching French films and eat chocolate ruined by my little brother calling me up for beer and football (his shout, or so he said). making my way into central in the sunshine; wandering through covent garden thinking ‘tourists will stop and look at anything, jesus’, and finally finding the pub he was in, only to realize I had been completely set up, and my dad, who I haven’t seen or spoken to in a year was there. at which I promptly burst into tears, which ended about as abruptly as they started.

it probably was too public a situation to address the issues and say why I was so angry, so I didn’t. I just let him buy me beer and half filled him in on my life. the quality of pub we sat in improved when I started recommending places (it’s my business to know these things), and we went for Mexican food. he didn’t have his glasses, so I read through the menu for him briefly, and basically ordered for him; and we talked about how i’d done a trial shift in the restaurant, about how I was happier where I am now. it’s funny when people visit me and my brother at the same time, because basically the things we do together and the places we go afford no real glimpse into how I live my life in the city. our tastes are so different that we meet on neutral ground.

nonetheless the ice is broken now. and I wandered out of my little brothers house at the end of the night to find a bus home, still not wearing my coat, because I was warm, and realized how tired I actually was. my life these days seems to involve a lot more climbing into bed before midnight being too exhausted to straighten things out before my head hits the pillow. and that’s fine, if the side effect is that I have more time in the morning to sit and drink coffee, read short stories, draw the covers tighter around myself and focus on feeding my mind. the routine at the moment is slow, comfortable, and thoughtful. i’m not as afraid of or upset by things as I have been. I get tired at the right times.

last night was interesting. i’m not really sure what it was, but we kissed, and he said it was nice to kiss somebody, and I said it was nice to just kiss somebody. same problem, different angle. never sure how much of a lifespan these things have; we’re both restless with an eye on the horizon, he barely drinks, I make a living out of it, but it’s a fun notion to entertain for a while. and walking through the city letting it get dark and seeing the lights come out, talking and just taking it all in, it was a good, uncharacteristically sedate way to spend an evening.

hearing about other women he’s seen lately, because men always seem to want to talk about those things. not offering up stories myself, because the only men that even make good stories are men who have actually managed to get close to my emotions, and therefore deserve the respect of not being anecdotal. the rest is just a shopping list, not entertaining at all.

it’s fun when life is as simple as how cute you can be drinking a gin and tonic, listening intently. i’m reading Americana by don delillo at the moment, and also privately obsessing over film stills. so this kind of double play of how things look, real or like a tableaux, is forefront in my brain at the moment.  

coming home without reapplying my long-gone lipstick, I climbed into bed with a shivery-cold glass of pinot grigio (I am trying to invoke the sungods, okay), and watched a Belgian film that desperately wanted to be a Hitchcock, lost myself in overly made up, high camp female fear for a bit, dreamed of having sixties eyelashes, and idly thought about the weekend.

I am enjoying the way I look at the moment. my days are taken up with elaborate beauty rituals, putting myself together for work, sorting though all the powders, paints, and potions I have. I feel playful. and given the strain of the last few months, I make no apologies for not being serious if I don’t hav to be.