Two Guests

Friday morning began with a massive clean up after the dinner party. I washed all my dishes by hand and then I had a meeting with the Arts Council. When I got home, I 

It’s not like my life has been normal at all. I shouldn’t be freaked out by anything any more, but yesterday in the meeting with the Arts Council something unusual to me happened. I arrived mute so I was using my Dingo voice, but when we got past the small talk and into discussion of the issues that brought us together my voice came snapping back.

Then, the moment I noticed I was speaking well—BAM: I was instantly mute again.

I’ve stopped wondering about “why” my brain and speech do the things they do. There are no answers in the end, just: “That’s mental illness for you.” Every time I sense a pattern, it falls apart. All there is to do is to “keep calm and carry on.”

Yesterday I used YouTube yesterday as an auditory sampler. I searched through videos in which people were doing a lot of talking—such as people doing film reviews—and I tried to find people that had an accent that was “different” enough for me to emulate but closer to my natural speech than Dingo.

I played each one I selected several times and then tried to emulate what I’d heard. But within one or two sentences my Dingo voice would start creeping in and then take over. I tried so, so hard to find a more comfortable accent but everything turns into Dingo. 

I had several moments of deep self-pity. It’s frustrating, mystifying, sad and it makes me angry that I can’t talk. I keep thinking: If I just try harder. But it doesn’t work.

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It’s bittersweet rising early during this oasis of dry heat. It’s dark now when I get up, as it is in winter, so every day begins with an awareness that we are on a downward slope toward winter. Sigh. Still, it’s just the end of July. There are two more months of summer—the final two of my first year of residency here.

Kelly’s visiting today. She’s Jay’s brother who was here Thursday night for dinner. We’re having lunch together and then I have to race to Silva Bay to pick up Jacques who’s here for two days from Montreal. I expect a rather unique experience with Jacques because I barely know him. He was a friend and admired my birth mother, Françoise.