The life of the Anchoress thrills me, I have always loved tight spaces.
In third year I take a course in Australian Gothic lit and film, in a dinky wooden lecture theatre in the physics building. The afternoons are warm and sappy, light dripping in from the windows above. A little shadow curls into the fold of a window ledge and wooden beam, and over the term its corporeality grows to trust my gaze, all warm musky fur and darting little eyes.
If I trap myself, it is a gift; bed-frame hickeys and carpet kisses. I shove my form like a sleeping bag into its case, small and complete. If I can’t sleep (after I have taken my bath, drunk my warm milk and honey, said my prayer hands clasped insect muttering) I curl up inside my wardrobe. A snotty nautilus between shoe boxes and shelves. I drift in the dust motes between sleep and wakefulness, my hitching breath soaking the carpet. The trick of my game is that once I am sufficiently stiff and the ephemeral pool in my ear is just sticky salt, I creep back under the covers - bliss. The hardwood in my bedroom in Newtown isn’t quite so conducive; no nostalgia in a cold smooth cheek.
I am upset in Summer Hill at 7pm on a Tuesday night. It has been suggested I take a walk, come out from under the bed, wash my face, move my legs. I sulk down the steps, the rabbits hidden away in their hatch. I can’t peer into their boba eyes and confirm myself not a wraith. Mark a wobbly chalk-line of nail dust and fingerprint along wooden fences, stones visages, fretwork, and ivy. Tear leaves, let them fall, forced intermission between sky and ground. Sit on the pavement in the bend where Stanmore spits onto Parramatta Road - no death wish, no wish at all, but to feel something pressing in.
The stone off the slope of my last relationship; that fight at the house my parents rent out each year for the sea lice lagoon and late night tv. All rattan and shells hot glued onto styrofoam balls. We talk jaggedly upstairs. She’s cross-legged, back to the couch. I, the kernel between molars, hug my knees to my chest as my lungs expand only to fill the box between drawers and wall. I am in pain, therefore I exist. Shoulder blade curled around a pole on an accordion bus, screeching cat clawing quietly round corners.
I choose an anchoritic life. They chant the prayers and seal up the stone door. My era of contemplation begins now.
I have made my anchorhold quite cosy. Covered the stone with feather duvet and cushions, blu-tacked a poster of Kate Bush by the altar. That’s the problem with owning a house, there is simply so much space to fill with things! Parishioners and fashionistas come to the window and request my hallowed advice. In return I ask only for offerings of smutty books and tins of Ortiz anchovies. My 13th Century Guide for Girls, the Ancrene Wisse, warns that
Admiring their own white hands is bad for many anchoresses who keep them too beautiful, such as those who have too little to do; they should scrape up the earth every day from the grave in which they will rot.
The old me would peel my cuticles up to my eyeballs to feel that grave, but I feel that I would do well to keep up the clean girl look, even if I am “utterly dead to the world”.
Through my Squint I spy the religious scratch their ankles, take the eucharist (quite good with anchovies) on my knees. I offer relationship consultations and have been contacted for a partnership with Hinge via a paper scrap in my sup (How to navigate dating a girl who has walled herself up?).
A little cat comes to confess most evenings, spinning out tales of greed and woe. Velvety, butter-hued masochist, she licks her chops but never partakes in a meal of fish and cracker, just stares at me with bunny eyes, soft and slow.
All in all I’m doing great, although I wish the walls would close in just a little more, that someone would kiss my fingertips through the grate, soft and slow.
No playlist this week…listen to your own heartbeat instead.
Until next time,
Niamh