A Calm So Deep

I've had such a fun month. I'm truly loving everything life is throwing at me these days, which is mostly friendship, love, food, and fun. I also have a job! It's a paid internship at a marketing/PR company in Great Portland Street, that i'm ecstatic about starting on monday. These leisurely meandering days will soon be a thing of the past, and I can't wait to hurl myself into normality.

Health wise, i've put on quite a bit of weight - I was this weight a couple of months ago before I had that stream of colds and coughs around christmas, yet then everything was utterly different. Before, when at 50kg, I felt (and was) absolutely (relatively!) huge around my tummy and my face, everywhere else still scarily skeletal. Now however, my face and my tummy look the trimmest they've been in a good long while, but my arms, legs, bum and hips have filled out! I'm so over the moon - I feel womanly... and sexy and.... normal! I've been taking peppermint capsules and charcoal capsules (charcoal in the middle of the day to stop them absorbing the other meds), and they seem to have made a huge and noticeable difference to the bloating. My chest has also been the clearest it's been since my transplant over a year ago - why I even had clear lung gunk the other day! I'm not waking up fighting for breath, nor reaching for the inhalers before I can even think about doing anything with my day. I can't fully express what an incredible feeling it is; it's just so liberating. I'm managing to keep up if not thrive on this fun and hectic lifestyle I have at the moment, filled with gigs and pubs and outings. I may start some cipro next monday, just to buffer myself for the onslaught a working life may have on my body.

Almost everyday I go for a ramble across Wormwood Scrubs to keep these puffers stretching - a huge bit of parkland just round the corner from where I live. It hosts fantastic views of London - every landmark you can think of I can see from this windy spot. Anyone that knows me (or reads this blog!) knows i'm a sucker for a view, and I could easily spend hours up there, whiling way an evening watching the beast that is London, now suddenly draped in serenity and stillness. Wordsworth writes of my city: 


Earth hath not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! The very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

(Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, 1802)

Everytime i'm up there I think of that mighty heart lying still - such power and such majesty, yet seemingly so calm, so tranquil. "Never saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!". Again Shelley pops to mind - the "unremitting interchange" between your surroundings and your own mind, "which passively now renders and receives fast influencings" - his deep calm heightens my deep calm, as it's true - never have I felt a calm so deep in such a long time. This view, this space, this endless horizon perpetuates my happiness and i'm left overwhelmed by just how awesome life finally fucking is. Of course the splendour falls short of what somewhere beautifully high up like Primrose Hill has to offer (you know i've actually never been, whats that about!), but it still more than adequately satisfies my Romantic tendencies, and my love of all things beautiful, all things sublime.** My housemates and I would cartwheel and do 'yoga' on there all the time, but now they've sadly left me i'd feel like a bit off a loony toon doing abysmal flips by myself. Instead I arm myself with headphones, tea in a water bottle and a kitkat in the pocket, and fill my lungs with the crisp air right down to the forgotten sleepy tips.

I'm definitely going to work hard so this fantastic spell doesn't catapult downhill as soon as I start working - I honestly haven't felt so good or so content in such a long time, and I hope this simultaneous deep calm and energy lasts for as long as is humanly possible. 


*PS I don't have osteoporosis anymore!!! I fucking love you Liv II !!

**Interestingly, normally the sublime is associated with terror, but I seem to go with Shelley's interpretation (and radical departure from the normal interpretation) that the sublime can lead to a greater understanding of nature and 'truth' (yourself? Everything?). I remember he wrote somewhere that for a "cultivated mind" the sublime has this alternative meaning, and I guess he means those not influenced by the supernatural, or those that believe in religious ideologies ("large codes of fraud and woe"). I've never found the Sublime terrifying, it only heightens my love of everything beautiful, and seems to cement me within this mysterious and bonkers world. 

Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood
By all, but which the wise, and great, and good
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.

Out, damned spot!

It starts with a slight tickle in my throat. Then I sense an icy sharpness somewhere a little further down. Then I spontaneously cough. But it's not a normal cough. Instead of either a little bit of satisfying gunk popping up, or a reassuringly dry echo, it's thin. And liquid. And if my chest had eyes, i'd see it was red.

It's this succession of events that fills me with dread. Not in a Keatsian "this is my death warrant" kind of dread, more a "oh for fucks sake, not in public" kind of dread. Because when I start coughing blood, it doesn't stop for what feels like a lifetime. I can't do a big cough or a huff until whatever is there shifts, I have to wait for whatever torn blood vessel deep down in the fragile tips of my lungs clots. And the thing is my blood doesn't like to clot. Thanks liver.

So for the next 5 or so minutes I keep coughing, every few seconds. Bubble, cough, swallow, pause. Bubble, cough, swallow, pause. My inner vampire i'm sure relishes at this stream of molten rubies, but not even a disillusioned schizophrenic wannabe vampire can cast aside the disgusting clammy metallic taste and slimy consistency that i'm forced to swallow. Sometimes, if it's been going on for longer than I care to imagine, I grab a glass and start to watch the disturbing contents of my lungs fill it up. When this first started to happen a few years ago, I used to be in tears, thinking this was the beginning of the end. Blood being ejected from any part of the body is horrifying, it seems to trigger within people an extreme reaction of abject terror. Not surprising given it's our core, our unrelenting fuel.

It now doesn't scare me, knowing it's not too too serious, and probably (and like so many gory body things) because i've become so immune to anything remotely disturbing. It's not that it just doesn't scare me, when I see blood, it almost fascinates me. It's the oddest texture when it clots, like fast-setting Vampire jelly. And the colour is insane - the deepest red, so rich and regal. I suggested painting our bathroom that colour. Mum firmly said no. Pity, because it complimented the tiles just perfectly.

CF desensitises you greatly to things that might turn the stomachs of the general population with endless exposure of blood, phlegm, organs, bodily functions, and now transplants. You grow up talking about organs in terms of how they're functioning, what they're up to, why they're not working, how you can improve them. Bodies and all that goes on inside them become stuff of everyday banal conversation. Gushing blood, funny x-rays, CT scans of lumpy livers or increasingly scarred lungs become problems that need to be solved, shapes and shadows and highlights on a screen, rather than an invisible amalgamation of your 'essence of being' or some bollocks like that. Bodies are like machines, parts making up a whole. Bits and bobs, nuts and bolts. You see your body like a machine, you don't get scared when it starts to dribble oil. If something stops working, you try and replace it. I suppose it's a sort of uncanny detachment, a severing of the mind from the body.

This living hand, now warm and capable

Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

And in the icy silence of the tomb,

So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights

That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood

So in my veins red life might stream again,

And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—

I hold it towards you.

                                                  John Keats

(See how odd that poem is? That's what i'm on about! An uncanny detachment from your body.)

Unsettlingly unfazed, alarmingly desensitized. I think this is why you'll find most CFers have a grotesquely dark sense of humour. I sure do, but i'm not sure whether the uninitiated public are ready for it. Should hear the 'jokes' thrown about in the safe confines of this house! I hate to say i've caused a few pale faces with my flippant remarks of very un-flippant things... Oops. I think it's the unknown that unsettles the most. Whoever said 'ignorance is bliss' was seriously mistaken. 'Knowledge is power' reigns in my kingdom. Knowledge calms, knowledge soothes, knowledge hands you the tools to understand what is going on in our intricate and amazing bodies. If you know, then it certainly won't be the fear that consumes you.