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professor h. higgins - tpw[l] - 11

Writer's picture: matilde tomatmatilde tomat
Sep 4, 20196 min read

The Perfect Wor[l]d - 11

I have written a lot yesterday, and today I changed my writing area: no more at Costa but sitting at a dinner table in the Blackburn University canteen. A place where there is nobody. Silent but for the humming of the fridges and vending machines. Maybe this is what it must have sounded to Stephen King when he started writing on a desk balanced on his thighs in the laundry room.


Today I feel deflated and emotionally tired. And while walking along the canal to come here I had a sort of revelation I was postponing. There is a place in my mind I didn’t want to do, even if my heart was saying otherwise. I just vented out some words to myself I need to corroborate and expand; so, I checked again the implications re. this decision of mine. All very complicated. Do I feel a writer even during these emotional upheavals?


I am also waiting for a reply to an OpenCall I have applied to and I know they are going to reply to all applicants between today and tomorrow, but I haven’t received anything yet and this makes me wonder… no! makes me believe I didn’t get it. Which would be the 4th OpenCall since May, in 3 months. Is my art that bad? Are my creations something I shouldn’t be making anymore since it seems that no one accepts them in their open spaces? Am I different, so different? Is my difference a bad difference or a good difference? Gosh, we could speculate for hours. Instead, I am still here, writing. Never in my life I have felt so determined and so focused. I am sitting at this table, at 4.30 pm on Tuesday after having spent a good three hours this morning journalling and analysing my own previous weeks to see what I have been complaining about or what ideas I did have. I have to say that my moaning and complaining revolves about one thing, mainly. Instead, the list re. ideas, and actions and positives is filled with notes, thoughts on communications, communicating, expressing, symbols, change. And I can see the evolving of my journalling towards this blog, how its creation is organic and sustained by all previous actions.


How every choice I made and decision, and analysis, brought me finally here. At this desk, writing anything while drinking something the colour of swimming pool water with added chlorine. I can see how there is a wounded part of me which still craves attention and feels it doesn’t get any, or enough; and how my soul is connected with freedom and the sea.

And how much I need my own space.

To me, it works like this: I need my own space and silence in order to create. I got to a point in life in which I almost demand silence and understanding. And I am not interested if this is the supposedly right way to live or not: it is my way. And it is what I want. And what I need. I enjoy communicating with other like-minded and understanding people but not being in each other’s pocket. I like reading and exploring and moving, and I don’t mind doing that alone. I like being among people, but not being ‘with’ them. On the train I like to sit alone. I like my boundaries well defined, held, and respected and at any given time anyone knows my own level of availability.


But I can only live like this if I want to be a good therapist and a creative being. I could not sit here and write these words if I didn’t understand the kind of life I want to live and that I am aiming for. For some people, living like this might feel lonely. And boring. I am not lonely. And I don’t find it boring. The repetitiveness of sitting down every day and writing 4 pages, regularly, after having done my journal, my chores, and had my lunch, is what gives me pleasure. In this moment I am living in my own world: a tight closed bubble, protective and safe. In a sort of dream, I do not want to wake up from. The idea that I might have to engage in other people’s affairs and conversations later on fills me with dread. While walking home I can still re-evaluate what I wrote and the main concepts. When at home, I can decide to have dinner or to watch a movie or to just sit in silence and enjoy the end of a creative day. Then, I go to sleep. Most of the time with a book or an audiobook. All these characters do not disappoint me. I find them where I left them. They don’t complain to me, they have nothing to remonstrate about how I conduct my own life. They don’t demand anything. And I can choose, as a perfect puppeteer, if I want them to enlighten me, amuse me, make me cry, teach me something I don’t know.

For some people this might sound like a sad, sad life. But I am happy. And, don’t get me wrong, I am jovial, serene, well-mannered, and educated with it comes to engage with other people. It’s just that I prefer not to. Especially with children, when they are loud and crass and not well-behaved. I detest people shouting and when they open their mouth to say nothing intelligent and wise. I don’t like people who don’t read or do not engage in any intellectual activity. My idea of best neighbour would be Professor Henry Higgins : I'm an ordinary man / Who desires nothing more than an ordinary chance / to live exactly as he likes, and do precisely what he wants / An average man am I, of no eccentric whim / Who likes to live his life, free of strife / doing whatever he thinks is best, for him / Well, just an ordinary man. / A pensive man am I, of philosophical joys / who likes to meditate, contemplate / free from humanity's mad inhuman noise / A Quiet living man. [1] And maybe as Shaw himself, I am a polemicist.



Wonderful Rob Brezsny this week suggests for me, a Libra, to not apologise for my dreams, desires, quest, and ambitions. Never apologise for who we are, never justify, never explain.

I just want to sit here and write. That’s all. Nothing more.

I had a conversation, just the other afternoon, with a dear dear friend who understands me perfectly. K. also said: do not apologise for who you are. There is no need to explain or justify. We are who we are.

I find mesmerising how much I am wired (and trained, I could also add) to accept, unconditionally, anyone who sits in front of me as a client in a therapeutic relationship. I am empathic, fascinated, captivated, accepting, tolerant and a well-balanced mixture between not bothered and not interested nor faced by their stories and desires and plans and expectations. I am excited by their dreams, raptured by their courage, in awe of their experiments in life. Never envious, always very proud.

But, when it comes to me, I find excuses, and I feel the need to justify, study, prepare, explain. I need to be 100% sure that no one, ever, is going to complain, or tell me that I was / am wrong, that I should go back to simply be the woman who has a lot of dreams but should simply work in an office, behind a desk, at a till. Don’t dream too much, don’t expect anything, bend down, and keep on going. Be happy, but never too much.

The moment we stop in our track to explain and justify our choices, we give away so much energy… we lose focus, determination, we give ammunitions away. We stop prioritising. What we are looking for is (again!) external validation.

Now, let me tell you: I am not interested if anyone likes what I do, anymore. I am not concerned if people like my style of writing, my topics, the way I have chosen to live my life. I find this process of Learning and Allowing to be Me extremely freeing and intensely empowering.

My only hope is that anyone, one day, reading this, could find that little extra courage to go out and do whatever they want.


This world needs happy people!






© mtomat 2019 - written on 09.07.19 - no reproduction without permission.


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