"time flies but you keep cutting its wings"

To be honest it's been a really long time since i've signed in to my blog so even i surprised myself by finally deciding to write something here. I've actually composed lots of drafts over the past few months but somehow in the midst of writing my thoughts always trail off and obviously i never had enough conviction to return and finish them up. 😂

So...what's it gonna be? A very cliched (excuse my absence of macrons) new year's / general reflection??? 😹

I don't really have any specific focal points for this so i'll just weave my way through wherever my train of thought takes me.

It's been quite a long and arduous year for me. A good half of 2017 revolved largely around academics for me. Y3S1 was truly one of the darkest, most exhausting periods of my life and I was just really sad the whole time. It was my first time overloading modules so i'd had a total of 7 modules to juggle...and it probably doesn't come off as much of a big feat to some people LOL idk maybe the scholars or whatever but my plate was really full and i was just inundated with so much work every day! My daily schedules were perpetually filled and i'm not exaggerating when I tell people i just don't have time because I literally did not even have enough for myself!

Even on days where I had only 1 lesson (each lesson lasts 3 hours) in the day it'd still feel like the entire day was gone because first there's the 3 hour travel to and fro and then by the time i got home i was dead beat and through all that exhaustion i still had to sit down and get work done. My god, i really hated it!!!!!!! It was quite stupid of me to overload last semester because I was quite grossly misinformed about my balance AUs LOL. Basically I had no idea I needed to set aside a certain amount of AUs for my FYP so I was under the impression that I still had a lot of modules to clear LMAO so I was damn scared and just wanted to quickly clear most of them to graduate on time LOL!!!! But as it turns out...after taking all the modules i did, i had to go back to my admin girl and ask her to reclassify some of them for me because i ended up with insufficient AUs for my FYP LMAOOOOO fk me la so ya la the main gist is I unnecessarily bit off way more than I could chew.

Unnecessary overloading aside, I was also very unhappy with a few of my modules because they were mostly very technical and needless to say i had ZERO passion for them and I was basically just floating through every lecture (for those i'd even show ed up for) because wtf is going on man...??? Argh i just really hated everything so much!!!!!!!! So that was a major contributing factor to my severe unhappiness for the entire semester...

So as my days got busier, I eventually started to neglect even myself. Like, I didn't even feel alive. Every day i was simply going through the motion mindlessly and i just wasn't happy with my situation at all. I was too tired to even get in touch with myself and i started to lose sight of a lot of things. I gradually stopped talking to my friends on telegram and i basically shut myself off from the world...I stopped going on my social media platforms, stopped having fun, stopped doing lots of hobbies and i stopped being a great bulk of myself. I even experienced a bit of a personality lapse where i lost my mojo, sense of humor and general excitement for life. I was even quite worried i'd been a bit depressed and that actually really scared me...but the day's activities passed faster than i could attempt to snap out of things and pull myself together. I felt really wretched every day and i absolutely hated this personal downward spiral. I'm just glad somehow i managed to pull myself back out of that black hole and i'm slowly regaining every bit of the my self again! To everyone: the spirit, self and soul are so important and precious; take good care of yourself and don't lose them like i did.

The thing about school is i generally don't talk about it because not only do i not see the need to talk about things, i also do not really have anyone i can talk to about it. I'm sure this applies to everyone else as well, it's weird to just bring to the dinner table stuff you learn about at school like "oh today I managed to artificially synthesize a fricative consonant but i had trouble fiddling with the nasal component" like ???? it's just not something appropriate i like to talk about. I mean it really varies across the different majors i guess like for example when my nursing friend tells me about school it's really easy to listen and carry a conversation because we get to listen to attachment stories and talk about biological/medicinal stuff and it's all very real and human(e), you know what i mean? To be very honest i've not actually spoken to my family members about school at all, save for the few times my dad actually asks about my course and future plans LOL. Speaking of this!!!! I don't know if i'm just really bad at explaining but i usually find myself unable to explicitly explain what exactly do i learn in my course because there are just so many things! I try to water it down to the textbook definition of linguistics i.e. the science of language but most times that just doesn't cut it LOL. As for future plans, even i am quite lost myself because i honestly don't see myself doing a lot of things and i don't really know what the future has in store for me so que sera sera i guess!

I generally worry about a lot of things on a daily basis. Nowadays as i start to grow older, i find myself increasingly emotional every time i think of my parents. I try my best to drop them messages and talk to them every day (they're both not around) and just be there. It makes me really sad every day whenever i think of them growing old. Some days i'd just look at pictures of their younger selves and feel really sad when i see how much they've visibly aged. My mom's hairline is slowly receding and my dad's eye bags are getting a lot more sunken. I wish every day they wouldn't grow any older. It makes me really sad and scared. Every day i worry one day my dad will go and he'd be in a different continent and i'd never get to be by his side. Many nights these primordial fears haunt me and I still cry myself to sleep thinking about the both of them. At this point in my life i'm past wishing for circumstances to be different...but more than anything i always wonder. I always wonder if things would have been better for all of us if it hadn't been this way. Maybe if things were normal it'd slow down our ageing and i'd have the chance to be by both your sides and i wouldn't have had to lose your best years the way i did without a say.

I think i did myself a great favor in finding time off to think and talk about things like that because i don't think i've allowed myself such catharsis in a long time coming. Sometimes I believe i wouldn't think it too big a deal if i decide to just go. Things feel very ephemeral to me these days and i'd probably be okay losing my footing or just completely uprooting myself. I don't think there remains much i've yet to have, know or feel. Most of life has already come and gone hasn't it? Recently a particular conversation keeps looping in my head. On this particular day i'd met someone for the first time and we were talking about inspirations. I was young and rather impressionable so I was more than impressed by his lofty "Mother Teresa" reply. Then for the next few months (actually years) I felt extremely embarrassed and lousy at my answer when I told him "life". But increasingly as the years went by I kept thinking of my answer and the more I thought about it the harder it became for me to put myself down because that was exactly the truth, an affirmation in itself. Everything I do, i think, i write, i speak are inspired by everything that has transpired in this life. Everything I am is inspired by life, my life.

I am my life.

Life as I have it!

So it's been quite a while since I last updated this space with anything regarding my personal life...but recently i've been extremely busy and exhausted from school and as i'm taking a break right now from all my projects and assignments, i thought when else would be a better time for me to reflect and pen my thoughts about school?

For quite some time now i've received quite a number of questions from lots of people about my course: what i do, what i learn, etc. If you're not a friend or don't already know, i'm currently pursuing a degree in Linguistics & Multilingual Studies in NTU and i'm currently in Y2S1 (which is ending in about 2 weeks' time!!!!!!!!!)! As you can see from my multiple exclamation marks i am BEYOND THRILLED at the thought of this semester coming to a close...because trust me when i say this semester has seen me work harder than ever before!!! Like ok maybe i've ever worked a lot harder back in JC but for the first time in a long time i'm actually really feeling the grind!!!! I'm currently juggling several assignments and projects and basically every day i'm just inundated by an endless heap of work and information...cognitive overload is an understatement right now tbh!!! But i guess this workload is pretty normal for year 2s and i'm just lucky (or am i? 🤔) i don't have any final exams so i guess that makes up for the heavier workload this semester...!!! Then again sometimes i'd really very much prefer exams to projects because it's just a one-time thing to get over with unlike projects which usually last through a few weeks!!!! It can be so draining, truly!!! But in the midst of all this hustle i've also been really lucky to have found a great group of friends which were a total blessing in disguise!!!!!!!!! Basically last semester my other friends and i were all allocated different tutorial groups (cause of stupid Star Wars which fucks everyone up tbh HAHAHAHA anyway our system is called STARS so Star Wars is basically us fighting for our time tables cause it works on a fastest-fingers-first basis so you can JUST IMAGINE the pressure like im not even kidding...my adrenaline always pumps so heart and my palms get really sweaty and i even need to turn on the World Clock app just to beat my competitors by the miliseconds the fuck??) and I was the only one who managed to get T1 for everything SO basically i was alone and i can't deny i was really bummed and lonely the first few weeks cause i had no friends!!!!! But thankfully...things eventually worked out and I made myself a few new incredible friends with whom i've hung out ever since and i'm super grateful because they're a bunch of incredibly intelligent and funny women and super empowering so we spend a lot of time working on our projects and assignments together and things really fell into a great place for me!!! Yay!!! So yes!!!! I guess that's one of my biggest plus points for this semester :-)!

Ok so!! One of the most common questions for me is: "What's Linguistics about?" If you've asked me this before you'd probably recall my hem and haw......because it's just so difficult to answer! I honestly think about my answer all the time LOL and very broadly speaking Linguistics is really the science of Language. Basically we examine the different facets of language like how language works, languages of the world, functions and usage of language, language acquisition, language features, semantics phonology grammar syntax ETC.!!!! That's why it's so difficult for me to answer because it's everything to do with language tbh!!!!! And Linguistics itself is such an open-ended field like probably in your very first lecture they'll tell you about how they have different beliefs and camps of Linguists and when you go deeper into your content you'll realize how there are so many things which still remain indefinite today! So it's really not an easy field because...there's kinda like so many different ways to look at all these different things.

But it is also this same open-endedness that has really taught me so much in the process! You'd probably expect a Language expert to become more critical and intolerant of so many things but it is just the opposite for me!!! If anything (and ironically) i've become a lot less critical and a lot more accepting of a lot of things around me like for example last time I used to be a total grammar nazi because correcting people seemed only the right thing to do, right? But ever since i've been introduced to the concepts of Descriptivism (which to me is an essential and imperative quality of all good linguists!!!!!) i realized how immature and narrow-minded i used to be...let me put it this way ok, in the words of one of my favorite profs and i quote: "as a descriptivist, you don't tell the planets how to work, you describe how they work." I've really lived by this ever since and i want to leave this to you to unravel so i won't explain it. You'll figure it out :-)!!

Oh wait, i just remembered i was still on the topic of take-aways LOL so yes!!!! It's definitely changed me as a person through perspectives and i've also been exposed to so many different lamguages in the world it's insane! Learning about all these languagespreviously unknown (to me) and unheard of is really mind/eye-opening! It always makes me think about all the different places and cultures and peoples of the world and it really helps preserve and fuel the flames of my passion for Language!!! As tough as the learning process goes, it somehow has this self-motivating factor in itself which only makes you want to find out more, you know? Like hey i've already read this much of this topic, how can i rob myself of learning even more? The content depth always seems so unending so every time you are step foot into a new module...the learning never ever ends......Oh and speaking of learning, i've yet to mention how my course has really stellar tutors and professors who are so talented and kind and helpful!!! They're just REALLY GOOD at what they do and even though i fall asleep sometimes i really appreciate their expertise!!!

So really this entire entry has been for my benefit as i really enjoyed sitting down penning (or typing) my thoughts and reflection on my linguistic journey thus far but if you have been reading i hope you enjoyed it too!! If you ever wish to find out more about Linguistics you can always google NTU LINGUISTICS and look through our course content to get a better idea of what we really do/learn!!

Elastic heart

No longer recognize the concept of Sufficiency - when is Enough really Enough anymore?
Sufficient conditions are not necessary conditions.
So when do I know to walk away, and how?

"I love you but i don't like being with you."

Did the math. Been through these mental arithmetic so many times, repressing truth values, bending my truth conditions and came up with a table tailored to my fit: false false false false false false false.

Fight fight fight fight flight fight fight fight

Always was flight from me to you: that was my biggest gift; the brightest part of this maybe scrunched up, twisted plot peppered with ferocity but surely: undying love.

I never know to walk away because Exits don't exist in this architecture. I never know Enough because i elasticize: push pull push pull push push push pull - snap.
Snapping? Now i know why it hurts, how it hurts; i just don't know who hurt(s).

stop snapping at me!
snap out of it!

Snap out of it
Snap out of it
Snap out of it
Snap out of it
Snap out of it

take this sinking boat and point it home

In 1930, Burmese former monk Saya San championed a rebellion and revolution. Historians labeled his movement a form of 'millennialism', characterized by a yearning for a sort of 'golden past'. I guess that makes perfect sense, how someone'd pursue and even fight for the past. It's golden. Like minerals and ores, people and realities both tend to dull over time. The present then becomes a form of disillusionment. Hindsight always has its way of painting bright, beautiful shades over the past. Time is merely the medium through which people disappoint. Time will tell, indeed, in the literal and expressionistic sense. Perhaps this is why some people choose to live in and hold on so tightly to the past. It's...empowering, consoling and even...clarifying, unfortunately. We all know how clarification can either make or break. Even more unfortunately, sometimes it's inevitably procedural - it breaks before it makes. Now blink that teardrop away and unveil your vision.

Perhaps this is why anger is deemed one of the most powerful human emotions because of its ability to incite one to do and say things which, and can, translate to violent clarification for the other person. It shatters this great glass ball of ideals, and these smithereens of disillusionment bleed you blue. This is the birthing process of reality - this painful son of a gun; a mephisto manifesto. And you wonder why it actually bloody hurts. In that scathing moment of brutal revelation, blinds are drawn. Well, the love that you were once blinded by now probably strikes you unfamiliar and strange, complete contrary to what you have been led to believe this whole time. Who are you? What are you...saying? Don't blink, because in that one-third of a second, they're going to break so much at once; you're going to break (so much at once). Contradictions...clarifications.

(It's funny how most binaries exist to prove the existence of another.)

Now blink that teardrop away and unveil your vision.

the problem

The problem with this world is there is almost no definitive right or wrong and everything is basically subjective.

this is what it's like

It's very difficult being very needy, very clingy, very overly-dependent on someone. It's even more difficult to understand why would someone be this way. Sometimes I try to mentally break it down to myself to understand why but it feels like it is just so, in the way that i am. It becomes really damaging and terrifying because people start to lose themselves in a relationship. If I'm to describe what it feels like to be clingy, i'd say it's a lot like being a cling wrap. You'll start wrapping yourself so tightly over that person, layer over layer. But you'll poke two holes for him to breathe, just enough for him to stay alive just so you can suffocate him further. And this is where it gets hard, because while you're being clingy and needy, you're also conscious at the same time. You know you're smothering someone but you just can't seem to do anything about it. You become quite torn, between what's wrong and right. And somehow when you're wrapped so tightly around someone you can't quite tell what's wrong or right anymore, either. And because you can't tell, it just becomes so that being needy becomes the only thing to do. It's not even an in-between anymore. It gets harder when you can literally see the person eroding slowly, disintegrating. They start becoming someone else and it's all because of you. Basically they lose their selves but it doesn't help you find yours either. You only start to lose more of yourself too as you become even more immersed in needing them. I guess they begin to crack and these crevices only grow wider, but it only grows wider for you to fill even more of yourself in. And that's how people start to feel that their significant other is becoming a part of them, or even them, and all of this is at the expense of the other losing him or herself. Maybe it's not always a good thing to feel like someone's your other half, because that's exactly what they become: your other half. Then comes the question: do their selves even exist anymore? If they only grow to become more and more of you, and less and less of them, who exactly are you loving? 

Needing someone also becomes a kind of double addiction. You don't only get addicted to someone, you also grow addicted to needing them. It's very crazy. It involves a lot of physicality and proximity and you basically want them around your entire life, the entire time. It's even extremely self-absorbed and selfish, it's honestly terrifying while highly destructive for both parties. You keep wanting more and you keep taking more and it's very exhausting and daunting. You start to feel really guilty as well yet you can't stop doing it. You can't simply stop. It's emotional, it's personal, it's spiritual, it's psychological, it's...so many things. And as much as you'll grow to hate it, it just is so, anyway. It's honestly pathological and unhealthy, but I couldn't imagine myself healthy either. I don't even know what's healthy anymore, anyway. I don't even know if i want to be healthy again. Self-help is the worst kind of help. Sometimes it even becomes a form of reinforcement in itself.

I only wish I could stop.

Comfort came against my will

negotiation
compromise
accomodation

I need you so much closer

Mourning.
Grieving.

There is a...void/vacancy/vacuum inside of me.
I am hollowed out.
Vacuous.
There is an emotional chasm where my heart used to rest.
Abysmal.

But I am my own undoing.
I am (un)deserving.

I miss the comfort of this house

How do we learn to live without people
How do we learn to live with people
How do we learn to live
How do we live

Lump Sum

Feeling a little strained, a little defeated.
Overwhelming, asphyxiating.
Abysmal, dismal.

I just want to slip away, dissipate.

If You Forget Me

A lot of times it's hard to achieve maximum transparency in loving a person.
How do we tell if we know someone enough?
As disparate as ideals and realities are, they still are very much indistinguishable at a certain point in time.
Be careful not to fall in love with an idea.
Take them as they are, but know also just what you're taking in.

taken away to the dark side

It's not impossible to un-need/un-want someone, especially when you've been living just fine even before they came into your life a few months back. Sure they've opened up your eyes your mind your heart and soul and shown you a few new things, but that still should not change anything about how you were doing just as well even without these things. Take a step back, and you'll realize you never really needed that step forward, anyway.

And sometimes that step forward could well be but a step back. It's all a matter of perspectives and positioning. 

...And so the living are comforted.

Marion Coutts: 'There is going to be a destruction… the obliteration of a person'

In 2008 art critic Tom Lubbock was diagnosed with a brain tumour that was attacking the language centre of his brain. In this moving extract from her new memoir, his widow, the artist Marion Coutts, recounts the ordeal of his last monthsm

• Marion Coutts
• The Observer, Sunday 15 June 2014
• Jump to comments (50)

Marion Coutts at home in London: 'The project is not to go down.' Photograph: Gary Calton for the Observer

Something has happened. A piece of news. We have had a diagnosis that has the status of an event. The news makes a rupture with what went before: clean, complete and total. We learn something. We are mortal. You might say you know this but you don't. The news falls neatly between one moment and another. You would not think there was a gap for such a thing. You would not think there was room.

The childminder lives around the corner. She is much younger than me and canny. She has heard all this before. She knows to be patient and let me play myself out. When I am done, she will take the child.It is our child Ev's first day at the childminder's. I arrive at nine, anxious and grave. This is our first official separation. I am a zealot, an airship on its maiden voyage packed with mother adrenaline. I have rolls of data to proclaim about his protocols: his beaker, when he likes to nap, his poo, the snacks that are allowed and the snacks that are forbidden. I am not going to let anything stop me.

In mid-song I am interrupted. Tom arrives. I am surprised to see him and pleased. Lately we have been seriously upended. A week ago, while we were staying at the house of friends, he had a fit. We don't know why. He'd never had one before and the shock took us straight into hospital in the night. Soon we expect some test results from the hospital. I imagine a letter about high blood pressure or diet, some readily managed condition, normal, nothing beyond us.

Tom greets me directly and takes my sleeve, pulling Ev and me out of the yard away from the toys and into the street. The three of us cluster a couple of doors down alongside a low wall. Ev wriggles in my arms and I am still talking. Tom stops me. He says he has had a phone call. He has a brain tumour. It is very likely malignant.

Did I understand it before I heard it or did he finish the sentence before I understood?

Conflagration: my ship is exploded. A fireball.

We are novices. We have very little information and so repeat what we have. One phrase goes back and forth between us. The tumour is in the area of speech and language. I do not consider the idea that the tumour might one day take the mind. That thought comes later.

To make sense of what is happening, we need to say it aloud. Only then will we hear the news mouthed back by others and reshaped into words – ohs and ahs, expletives, and long out-breaths. Maybe, coming back to us in this way it will sound different; better, worse, I don't know. Maybe more comprehensible.

Marion Coutts at home with Tom Lubbock and their son, Eugene, the day before Lubbock's first operation, 2008. Photograph: © Marion Coutts

So this is what we do. We make an email list of our friends. Concentrating is hard and even remembering who these people are is an effort. We go back to the things we know, the building blocks of our past. Our wedding was nine years ago and at the heart of the list are the wedding guests. We liked these people then and mainly we like them still. Slotted on are new friends met since. We do not edit but add. It is construction work and we are going for solidity: mass, weight and number. Family is here too. Now is their hour. We don't want to overburden them or frighten them off. This is our disaster. They are just being called upon to witness. So together we write them a message in the form of an email.

14 September 2008

We have some troubling news that you should know. A small tumour has been detected in Tom's brain. It's not known yet whether it is malignant but that is possible. It needs taking out and he'll be operated on in about a week.

We don't know yet what any of this means, in terms of further problems or none, or possible side effects from the operation. It's a very uncertain time for us.

After the first shock, we are strong as we can be. This is largely because Tom is at the moment very well, looks well, is lucid, thoughtful, writing, working, preparing. Ev is fabulous as usual.

We will let you know when we have a date for Tom going into hospital.

In the study we bend over the computer, tight under the lamp. Tom presses send. It is serious, this action. By agreeing to its terms and conditions we elect to turn everything pertaining to us a different shade. Once the news has gone out we cannot disavow it or pretend it is not happening.

Messages come back immediately. What were they doing, these people? All hunched over screens so late at night, at home, at work, as if primed and ready to consider Tom's brain? News, News, News, News: the word scrolls down in bold text, multiplying in the subject box like a black manifesto printing over and over.

There are no rehearsals for these responses. Some remit their love directly. Some are blessedly, seriously practical. Some are brilliant: full of anecdote and funny. Most are short and this is cleverest. We get poems and photos, links to sites, mad advice, offers of dinner, invites, suggestions, jokes, clichés and generosities. Courage in all its forms, liquid and solid, is pressed upon us. But over and above the offers of help and love, precious though they are, is the fact that we are public knowledge. Our signal has been heard. By each response a friend is activated.

A new future has been handed to us. Now that it is here, it is impossible to recall what we were expecting before. Ev was born 18 months ago, so it would have been a lot. But the exact texture of past desires cannot be recalled. It is gone.

25 September 2008

Some further news about Tom. He's due to go into hospital on 29 September to have the tumour in his brain removed. He will be in the National Neurological hospital at Queen Square. The operation will be on the Tuesday. All going well, he should be home by the end of the week.

At the moment nothing can be predicted in terms of recuperation and further treatment. But it's important to us at this time that our friends stay in contact, so please do phone, text, email, visit, and so on, in the coming weeks. If we don't always get back to you at once, don't worry. We hope to see you soon.

Twenty-two thick staples of metal run from below the jawline up into the shaved area behind the ear on the left side. From the front you notice nothing, but from the side a blooded silverine line fringed with scabs marks out a wound measuring 12cm. One week after the operation it has healed well, with no trouble. We have been called back to the hospital to take the metal out and to hear the result of the biopsy.

After the removal of the staples and a further half-hour waiting, this is where Tom and I; Mr K, the surgeon; and Charlie, the charge nurse meet so that Mr K can give us the biopsy results. There is no preamble. The biopsy results are as bad as they can be. Grade 4 – glioblastoma multiforme. This is the new name we are given. I hear a short suite of words – aggressive – early – small – encapsulated. Even in the delivery of wholly violent news I notice Mr K's voice is emollient and slightly hesitant as if to soften the blow, making me think the news might actually be worse in reality even than this.

This should not be Mr K's job. All praise to the surgeon. He is the one with the good hand and as the bad messenger he is not in his element. His manner and words are functional and in no way sweet as the high art of his knife. We who are good at words would be better than him at this but in this foursome we are suddenly wrong-footed. Something new and strange has happened. We are the victims. I don't know yet what this means but the ground we stand on has gone.

Tom and Eugene on Hampstead Heath, December 2008. Photograph: Marion Coutts

9 October 2008

The struggle continues. The biopsy showed that Tom's tumour was malignant. The surgery went very well but he will need a course of radiotherapy, beginning quite soon, and going on for six weeks (that is, going into St Thomas's each day, for a short blast, for five days each week). Tom is otherwise making a good recovery from the operation. He looks and feels well.

The next couple of months of treatment are going to be pretty difficult. So we say again, it's important to us at this time that our friends stay in touch.

So what did you do when death came to your house? We continued in the same way as before. What is that, a failure of the imagination? Are you in denial? This is not wholly true; we continue in the same way as before but in parenthesis. My thinking has switched its grammar. The present continuous is its single operational tense. Uncertainty is our present and our future.

Once the nature of the threat is known the defences are brought out at high speed and within multiples of days they are fully rolled out. As well as the surgeon, Mr K, we are assigned an oncologist, Dr B. We are booked to see the neurologist, Dr H. We meet the chemo nurses and Tom is fitted for a radiotherapy mask. We wait for the regime to begin.

23 December 2008

Happy Christmas to you. Tom's first round of treatment finished a week ago, and we have a respite until mid-January. So far he's doing well. Ill effects are few and not too terrible.

Thank you for your thoughts, messages, support and company. We look forward to seeing you in the new year.

6 June 2009

It's been a while since we sent one of these out. The months seem to have passed quickly. Tom is about to have his last week of chemo. After that, there will be a scan. After that, we're not sure.

So far he continues to feel very well. He is doing his work as normal.

17 July 2009 
Tom had a scan last week. Yesterday we were given the results. They were described as "very good news". Since the last scan in January the affected area of his brain has shrunk, and there are currently no signs of bad activity there.

This is obviously encouraging but the situation is ongoing and there will be another scan in three months' time.

There are these simple words that are starting to cause him trouble: small, single, only, speak, one, tiny, tall, short, sign, slow, same, few, lips, stop, sole, lone. Tracking elusive words was always Tom's pleasure but now it has added urgency. His recovery is becoming less secure. Out of the blue, pronunciation needs attention. Meaning swoops and flits about and can land on the wrong thing. In a miracle of Tube extension, Kennington Tube becomes Dulwich Tube. Driving through Hackney, a police stakeout becomes police steakhouse. Hand replaces head.

Fast forward to February. The future has arrived early. Tom has a severe fit in the small hours of the morning. He had gone away by himself to get some writing done in a house by the sea and was due home today. It is evening, he is back with us, lying down quietly upstairs. He can talk after a fashion, read a little but he can't write. He is estranged from himself.

Spring. There is going to be destruction: the obliteration of a person, his intellect, his experience and his agency. I am to watch it. This is my part. It is now March. In one week, Tom will have another scan. This is the one to fear. There have not been so many fits, but outside them complexity is multiplying and thousands of lesser confusions also occur. Words slip out, switches are stumbled over and substitutions made.

The scan results are as expected. After nine months of post-chemo stasis it is springtime. The tumour is growing again.

10 April 2010 
Since our last news at the end of March, things have moved very quickly. The surgeon has now looked at the scans, and recommends another operation. It is lucky that the tumour is growing back in the same place, on the edge of the brain. Tom will be going into Queen Square hospital on Monday, and the operation will be on Tuesday 13 April. It is all extremely short notice. Tom will be out of action now for an uncertain period.

This is a time of great stress for us. Offers of help, practical, emotional, culinary, comradely, or otherwise enlivening – all will be gratefully received. We should say how much your support and contact so far has meant to us three. Thank you.

13 April 2010 
The operation went well. Tom is sitting up, talking, eating, reading. He looks extremely good. All praise to the surgeon.

Tom is home within 10 days but straight away there are fresh difficulties. He has trouble saying the name of the hospital or the name of the friend who came yesterday. He calls me to the study where he is looking up something in the thesaurus. The word is disaster. "They can't have got rid of it!" he says. "Maddening!" As he has spelled it distaster, he cannot find it. Physically there is a lot of strain. Weakness and muscle failure is starting to sting him and creep again around the joints, fingers and calves and in parts of his arms. This is steroids at their warring work.

Tom is speaking to me less. The way his intellect is made manifest through language is being destroyed. Great chunks of speech are collapsing. Holes are appearing. Avenues crumble and sudden roadblocks halt the journey from one part of consciousness to the other. He strings words together like ropes across voids. He never panics. What would it be like if he did?

9 July 2010 
It's been three months since Tom's operation. After the latest scan, it appears that the subsequent chemo treatment is not working. Another form of chemo is now being tried out, as of this Monday. We don't know how he will react to this. We are anxious.

Tom continues to work well but more slowly. Though still physically fit, everything becomes much more difficult. We are very tired, except Ev.

Thanks as ever for your support.

My job is threefold.

1. Not to let Tom be destroyed before his death but to help him live it fully in his own way with all his power. 2. Not to let Ev be destroyed by Tom's death but to help him live it fully in his own way with all his power. 3. Not to let myself be destroyed. See 1 and 2. That's it. The project is not to go down.

Tom introduces his son to Yayoi Kusama at Victoria Miro, 2007. Photograph: Marion Coutts

The three-month span is up again and it is time for the oncologist. We go in the mood of holding steady, hoping nothing, fearing nothing. The outcome is bad. (Did I know this in advance? Again that weird trick: knowledge falls on to ground that seems ready prepared though you never remember doing it.) The scan is hard to decipher in a way that doesn't look good. Not long afterwards we find a lump. A small hill is rising on the side of his head at the site of the scar. I touch it with my finger. A thing. I had noticed it first a few days previous hidden under his hair but definitely it seems bigger. It is growing. We are puzzled. We think of the skull like a motorbike helmet that can shatter but not expand. We mark it down to tell Dr B at the next clinic. What is this? Her fingers go to it quickly, gently parting the hair. Her eyes narrow.

1 November 2010 
There are two pieces of news. The first is that Tom is in Guy's hospital as of this weekend. His mobility on the right side deteriorated sharply last week and it is no longer wise for him to be at home.

He is in very good spirits and we hope to keep them that way. Visits are a pleasure for him. He is in the same ward as before. Cards, pictures, notes are very welcome. Phone calls can sometimes work too.

The second news is that funding for him to receive the chemo drug Avastin has been approved.

This is scheduled to start on Wednesday.

It's a very extreme time, deeply precarious, but also amazing. Tom has been doing a great deal of talking and writing lately with the help of friends.

The tumour's physical presence has grown. The little lump was only the start. This is unusual. Most people are dead before the thing shows itself. Disease has taken the weakest route via the scar to exit the head and is now flourishing outside the skull. This growth may be good. Better to be under our eyes where it can be dressed and assessed than couching inside, impacting on the skull, blotting out the brain. So, on the left side of his head above the ear is now something the size of a tennis ball. Or is it an orange? A potato? A chunk of Play-Doh?

The tumour is advancing. Avastin is not working. I am in a car going around London with my friend Vivien to look at nursing homes so that Tom can be discharged to a place where he may die.

On the drive I saw a street sign, so small I hadn't noticed it before. Hospice: pointing left. Without thinking I signalled left. Friends had told me about this place. Let's take a look. I slid the car round and into a waiting bay. There was a gravel path and a door open to a reception area in a blue-grey colour with tall windows behind backing on to a lawn. We did not go further than the reception. No one stopped us but we halted and stood there for a bit, looking about. I noticed my breathing: acclimatising, checking in.

The receptionist was on the telephone. On the desk was a spray of sharp Christmas grasses edged with white. She finished her call. Can I help you?

How can we come here? I asked her. I am looking for somewhere where my husband can die.

7 December 2010

Tom moved today from Guy's, where he has been for five weeks, into Trinity Hospice on Clapham Common. We are delighted and relieved. It's an incredible environment to be in, to spend time in. We can be at home.

You are all welcome. There are no restrictions at all on visiting. Nearest Tube, Clapham Common, is five minutes' walk. We hope to see many of you on Thursday at Tom's exhibition at Victoria Miro.

One. One. One one. The first day of 2011.

A new year has begun. Perhaps the one cruelty of this story is that after this, when I look on to the garden, it will look the same. There will be no outward sign. At death the world does not alter: no shift of earth or change of colour, no noise, no shimmer of light, no falling or collapsing of physical objects. The tree standing there will still stand. Stay, stay awhile longer.

On Tuesday, Tom goes to sleep. His breathing is natural and ordered. His face relaxed. When watched closely like this, watched out as if your own life depended on it, death is normal. It is a series of stages more or less known. Here is a person asleep who will not wake. His breathing is not unstable. One. Two. One. Two. I pat the belly curve and trace the angle of its rising that I know so well. I love being in position here. It is perfectly correct. This is where I should be. But I want him to stay with me. Stay, just stay awhile longer.

When we are alone, my voice sounds hollow as I talk to him while he sleeps. I cannot make my sentences work. They tail off. This is a dry run. A premonition of what it will sound like when my main hearer is gone. I have lost the second consciousness that powers mine. Lost my sounding board, my echo, my check, my stop and finisher. I am down to one.

Tom is already elsewhere, gone on his own sometime in the last days. He glided so delicately out, his absence so continuous with his presence, with us and without us, that I didn't catch the moment and immediately it happened it had already gone and was behind me. So. Just me.

Stay, stay awhile, I whisper to the bed. I want this death to happen because it is the end and I will finally rest. I don't want it to happen because it is the beginning and I will finally understand. We are together on the bed. It is familiar. Like how we were.

How precious, I tell him, we are here and I am seeing you off. I am sending you. My hand is in his hand. Go. I hum something, not anything. Go. I speak words, not anything. Go. I am not anything. Go. I am.

10 January 2011

Tom is dead.

He died yesterday, January 9th 2011, at 2.15 at Trinity Hospice.

Two days after your death, in a dream you text me many times. I read the first of them.

ME!

And so are the living comforted.

It was snowing on the day we buried you: small flakes, wide-spaced, tugged hard by the wind. Unplanned, we formed a circle around your grave and stood as the words went up. Your child and his friends were everywhere present in our procession, threading lightly through the lines of mourners. I scatter earth over you and so does he. You have moved through us and now you are gone, leaving us standing. And so are the living comforted.

love of mine, someday you will die / i will follow you into the dark

dwam

dwɑːm/

noun

SCOTTISH

noun: dwam; plural noun: dwams

1. a state of semi-consciousness or reverie.

   "lying in bed, in the dwam before sleep"

"...an attack upon the intimate self and dignity of the individual human being"

Mass Rape in Bosnia -
Breaking the Wall of Silence

an interview with Seada Vranic

Instead of a blindfold, the Serb soldiers bound Enisa's eyes with their socks. The stench made her throw up, so they hit her until she learned that 'Serb socks don't smell'. Seven 'heroes of the nation' raped her and beat her for days. At first she resisted, so they brought her to her senses by knocking her teeth out with a rifle-butt and breaking her jaw. When she lost consciousness they would 'give her a bath', i.e. douse her in cold water. Terrified that she would be driven mad, she suddenly liked the idea and saw madness as a way out. She began singing Serb songs louder and louder, then dancing with the chetnik who had presumably butchered her husband. The soldiers were dumbfounded. They threatened her, held a knife to her throat, but she only sang louder. Believing she had gone off her head entirely, the soldiers paid less attention to her and she managed to escape, by hiding in a potato sack. When the journalist Seada Vranic spoke with Enisa a few months later, in July 1992, she saw before her a hunched, grey-haired old woman with a contorted face. That was just one month before Enisa's twenty-eighth birthday.

to crawl beneath my veins

im cold and i am shamed, lying naked on the floor
illusion never changed into something real
im wide awake and i can see the perfect sky is torn
you're a little late
im already torn

sometimes it feels as if i've never healed at all

i guess some damages run deep and permanently so

let me count the bruises

and now you'll always get the best of me

coursing

Love: a manifestation of parasitism

see i'm not too strong

A pretty mountain like you ought only to be admired from afar

Couldn't find my way around you, couldn't build a tunnel through you

You were the kind of picturesque I could only afford through the pages of Nat Geo

Where touch and sight cannot coexist, where the former never was

The kind of expedition people saved a lifetime worth of dreams for

but could never fulfill.

something of my own creation

need someone to constantly throw me off


idoneous


you're more than i can believe would ever come my way



these quicksand emotions, slowly but surely im sinking, i know






i just refuse to keep you out of sight, out of mind






(im) sickening