Heather Cox's Blog
May 20, 2020
An Update For All My Beautiful Bastards
Loyal readers, subscribers and victims of errant Google searches: I have been remiss in not updating earlier but I would like very much to invite you to join me at my new website heathercoxbackwards.com We have a lot of fun over there. There are big bright photos and Insta links and errything. I look forward to seeing you! xx
September 18, 2018
Honey Is A Verb
Back in LA. Bet you didn't even know I'd gone.
One week later, and London is still strewn across my bookcase; a handbag umbrella, a Tesco's bag, a half-eaten box of Jaffa Cakes, a few pounds in change. There were twenty-nine new books, now twenty have been put away.
London was hard.
Big line-in-the-sand business decisions. Frustration, speculation; too many crossroads to consider with jet lag. The Divine light I was counting on to point the way still hasn't appeared. Uncomfortable dinners with old loves. Seated in stiff chairs, separate and independent, friends without benefits. Stuffy Hampstead is more than a handful of pubs and Flask Walk, but the atmosphere is restrictive, and the only thing that made it feel like home was T. I am looking forward to next year, back to Primrose Hill, and to never having to go any farther than the Chalk Farm station on the Northern Line.
Milky tired, early nights, chest cold. Medicine light bones, eyelids melting closed, dizzy, dizzy, spinning into sleep. and then dreams: Yeah, but I got sick, said the little mouse to the elephant. Yes but I was sick, said the late little spoon that came back from Catalonia with an epic death and slept all weekend.
London was soft.
Like when I was clad in his navy sweater, seated at the breakfast table watching as he made coffee. I rest my chin on one drawn knee, neckline falling over my shoulder. The soundless motion of pushing the chair away from the table. The length of his legs walking around the herringbone floor in cuffed jeans and socks. The length of his legs wrapped around my own, as he watches me come, sweat in his hair, sweat in his narrowed eyes, mouth wet and gasping, knuckles, toes. Resting my chin against his freckled shoulder, facing the window, where coral braids of delicate honeysuckle flow gently between the sunlit slats of the blinds. Long rounds of evening Botticelli. T. and B. finishing the crossword at The Wells, as the evening chills. Legs stretched from Borough Market to The Globe to Soho, for the best burger in town. When he cleans his glasses on his shirttail. Waking up with my love warm and asleep next to me. This is not where I expected to be and I am grateful for it.
So this is the way Autumn is opening today:
The pockets of my cotton dress are overflowing with wildflowers. I have work tomorrow. There is coffee with steamed milk and cinnamon. No sugar. I've gone full keto, even swearing off sweets and my beloved Sauvignon Blanc. Rereading Anna Karenina.
Rereading the last four years of blog posts. I write about love and lovers. Impermanent lovers, demanding lovers, struggling lovers. Lovers that made me sag under their weight. Growing pain lovers, run before you walk lovers. All of these titles have at one point belonged to T. I write about him specifically, and there will always be more about him I want to write. I write him into every universe that I create, and in each one he is filled with some kind of light. Love with him has become what it was always meant to be: quiet. It is an inseparable belonging without doubt. It is a peace. It is without conflict which doesn't make good stories. I don’t even want my heart back. He can sink it to the bottom of the ocean so he’ll always know where it is.
He will read this. He will know that every direction I move is toward the precarious cliff of his collarbone. He will remember my teeth, my gentle deep bite like through the wax of honeycomb. Honey will always taste sweet, but the best way to eat it is from his fingers, laughing.
One week later, and London is still strewn across my bookcase; a handbag umbrella, a Tesco's bag, a half-eaten box of Jaffa Cakes, a few pounds in change. There were twenty-nine new books, now twenty have been put away.
London was hard.
Big line-in-the-sand business decisions. Frustration, speculation; too many crossroads to consider with jet lag. The Divine light I was counting on to point the way still hasn't appeared. Uncomfortable dinners with old loves. Seated in stiff chairs, separate and independent, friends without benefits. Stuffy Hampstead is more than a handful of pubs and Flask Walk, but the atmosphere is restrictive, and the only thing that made it feel like home was T. I am looking forward to next year, back to Primrose Hill, and to never having to go any farther than the Chalk Farm station on the Northern Line.
Milky tired, early nights, chest cold. Medicine light bones, eyelids melting closed, dizzy, dizzy, spinning into sleep. and then dreams: Yeah, but I got sick, said the little mouse to the elephant. Yes but I was sick, said the late little spoon that came back from Catalonia with an epic death and slept all weekend.
London was soft.
Like when I was clad in his navy sweater, seated at the breakfast table watching as he made coffee. I rest my chin on one drawn knee, neckline falling over my shoulder. The soundless motion of pushing the chair away from the table. The length of his legs walking around the herringbone floor in cuffed jeans and socks. The length of his legs wrapped around my own, as he watches me come, sweat in his hair, sweat in his narrowed eyes, mouth wet and gasping, knuckles, toes. Resting my chin against his freckled shoulder, facing the window, where coral braids of delicate honeysuckle flow gently between the sunlit slats of the blinds. Long rounds of evening Botticelli. T. and B. finishing the crossword at The Wells, as the evening chills. Legs stretched from Borough Market to The Globe to Soho, for the best burger in town. When he cleans his glasses on his shirttail. Waking up with my love warm and asleep next to me. This is not where I expected to be and I am grateful for it.
So this is the way Autumn is opening today:
The pockets of my cotton dress are overflowing with wildflowers. I have work tomorrow. There is coffee with steamed milk and cinnamon. No sugar. I've gone full keto, even swearing off sweets and my beloved Sauvignon Blanc. Rereading Anna Karenina.
Rereading the last four years of blog posts. I write about love and lovers. Impermanent lovers, demanding lovers, struggling lovers. Lovers that made me sag under their weight. Growing pain lovers, run before you walk lovers. All of these titles have at one point belonged to T. I write about him specifically, and there will always be more about him I want to write. I write him into every universe that I create, and in each one he is filled with some kind of light. Love with him has become what it was always meant to be: quiet. It is an inseparable belonging without doubt. It is a peace. It is without conflict which doesn't make good stories. I don’t even want my heart back. He can sink it to the bottom of the ocean so he’ll always know where it is.
He will read this. He will know that every direction I move is toward the precarious cliff of his collarbone. He will remember my teeth, my gentle deep bite like through the wax of honeycomb. Honey will always taste sweet, but the best way to eat it is from his fingers, laughing.
August 20, 2018
August 17, 2018
Complaining, Again, about Screenwriting
Hmm. Replacing an historical meteorological pioneer with a woman when, in actual fact, it was a man is fine if this is billed as fiction, but it is not: it is being billed as biopic, which of course, has nothing to do with the poor writer. As the Royal Society have correctly pointed out, this project has nothing to do with real biographies of Coxwell/Glaisher, and it is so pointless when “There were so many deserving female scientists of that period who haven’t had films made about them," why they don't choose one of them instead?
Ballooning hero 'airbrushed' from history to make way for female character in Eddie Redmayne film
Ballooning hero 'airbrushed' from history to make way for female character in Eddie Redmayne film
The Telegraph Being as Silly as The Guardian
Yes, and I gave up waiting for this craziness to stop. And by the way, what about Jean Marais who was openly gay and a boyfriend of Jean Cocteau, but had always played straight characters? It seems we should throw his legacy away for the sake of the new correctness.
In older times an actor was praised for their range, now they must match their character to the letter
In older times an actor was praised for their range, now they must match their character to the letter
August 6, 2018
Honey, I'm Home
I wash my face and lean, dripping, over the basin. Jacaranda hand cream and a souvenir of fragmented street tile next to my sink. The room is cool, white, and clean.
I'm back from Lisbon, where the sun gives peace and light, and life pivots, instead of being fated. The geography of the city is twirls of crooked stairs and fragrances instead of lines on a map, making every movement a dizzying ascension, every destination a temple. Streets filled with the incense of grilling sardines and octopus, of hash burning, sweet and earthy. Sour garbage and and heady magnolias perfumed our walks around the Alfama. Every few metres a table filled with crisp light beer in glasses, cigarette smokers, and tiny pots of marjoram honouring St. Anthony would fill the air with life, savoured and celebrated.
Every night I fell asleep wrapped in his arms, every night I drowned a little deeper. Life was free and friendly. Mornings with T., loading clothes on the drying rack and drinking coffee before the World Cup.
Climbing the castle: the entire family makes it up the stairs but I can go no closer than three feet toward the outer wall before walking back down again, laughing, apologising for my fear of heights, but proud nonetheless to have gone as far as I did. B. bounds around the parapets with the boys in tow. I sit on a massive wobbly stone. A mother sits nearby, playing with her laughing baby. Peacocks screech from somewhere on the grounds, but otherwise the space is quiet until, in the silence, audible only to the finely-tuned ears of the woman searching for it, was the sound of T.'s voice, lighter than the wind. The message is a magic I've always believed in, but have unlearnt. Satisfaction. Happiness. Love. Contentment. All too small to describe my giddy belly so infatuated it forgets to sigh.
His arms around me and his whiskers against my cheek, standing in the centre of the Rua São Cristóvão. The baby claps to the Fado, while a crazy Frenchman dances in the street, eating a chocolate mousse from a crystal dish. One cigarette scrounged that I didn't want to smoke, but my haunted lungs demanded.
Reluctantly pushing ourselves home, to bed, to our flight home in ten hours. Our friends from the bar will still be sleeping while we are climbing into the airport-bound taxi, and that is a soft thought to carry to sleep. I choose not to listen to the sorrowful whispering through the olive trees, ghosts that plead for us to stay. We already know we will return. I fell asleep against him, knowing that some of the best days of my life were yet to come.
I'm back from Lisbon, where the sun gives peace and light, and life pivots, instead of being fated. The geography of the city is twirls of crooked stairs and fragrances instead of lines on a map, making every movement a dizzying ascension, every destination a temple. Streets filled with the incense of grilling sardines and octopus, of hash burning, sweet and earthy. Sour garbage and and heady magnolias perfumed our walks around the Alfama. Every few metres a table filled with crisp light beer in glasses, cigarette smokers, and tiny pots of marjoram honouring St. Anthony would fill the air with life, savoured and celebrated.
Every night I fell asleep wrapped in his arms, every night I drowned a little deeper. Life was free and friendly. Mornings with T., loading clothes on the drying rack and drinking coffee before the World Cup.
Climbing the castle: the entire family makes it up the stairs but I can go no closer than three feet toward the outer wall before walking back down again, laughing, apologising for my fear of heights, but proud nonetheless to have gone as far as I did. B. bounds around the parapets with the boys in tow. I sit on a massive wobbly stone. A mother sits nearby, playing with her laughing baby. Peacocks screech from somewhere on the grounds, but otherwise the space is quiet until, in the silence, audible only to the finely-tuned ears of the woman searching for it, was the sound of T.'s voice, lighter than the wind. The message is a magic I've always believed in, but have unlearnt. Satisfaction. Happiness. Love. Contentment. All too small to describe my giddy belly so infatuated it forgets to sigh.
His arms around me and his whiskers against my cheek, standing in the centre of the Rua São Cristóvão. The baby claps to the Fado, while a crazy Frenchman dances in the street, eating a chocolate mousse from a crystal dish. One cigarette scrounged that I didn't want to smoke, but my haunted lungs demanded.
Reluctantly pushing ourselves home, to bed, to our flight home in ten hours. Our friends from the bar will still be sleeping while we are climbing into the airport-bound taxi, and that is a soft thought to carry to sleep. I choose not to listen to the sorrowful whispering through the olive trees, ghosts that plead for us to stay. We already know we will return. I fell asleep against him, knowing that some of the best days of my life were yet to come.
May 3, 2018
April 25, 2018
Goodness
Last night, at dinner, leaning across the table toward each other. Laughing, speaking loudly over the chaos of the crowd. The restaurant is dimly lit, Italian, hidden, secret. Everything I love. Both of us had to use readers and our phone torches just to read the menu. The server comes by to pour our wine, smiling. We talk, finishing each other sentences, speaking in our own lexicon. He moves from sitting across from me to beside me, and we hold hands. When the server returns to pour more wine, she says, "You guys are so cute the way you finish each other sentences. You must have been together for a long time."
T. and I look at each other before he replied, "A long time." He took my hand between both of his. "A long time that feels very brief."
T. and I look at each other before he replied, "A long time." He took my hand between both of his. "A long time that feels very brief."
At Last
Hello, muted light, and orange Blogger logos. Hello, various pictures of me staring back at me. It's been a minute.
I hope you can forgive me — the seven people on Earth that still stop by this blog from time to time. I've been working on a series for months, with one foot on either side of the Atlantic. It's a merciless schedule, with as much research and reading required as writing, which has left time for little else. But I do have until Friday to complete what I need for work, and I have until June until I'm back in London, so we can talk. So where to begin...
L. had her baby and I didn't. A beautiful little girl that looks perfectly like the two of them. I feel her in my bones; there is so much joy. I still have baby fever, I don't know if it will ever completely go away. I will definitely be one of those little old ladies that stops children with harried mothers in the shops to have long drawn out conversations and to touch their little fingers. But we shall see.
I work out all the time now. I no longer jog.
Every man I've ever loved in the past ten years is still in my life; inconveniently, fantastically, gratefully present and always available, always frustrating. I would very much like to add that my lovers have been, they are, the most beautiful humans, and I am a very lucky woman to have been naked with you people.
After a two year hiatus of pivoting around one-another, I am so happy to be standing beside T. again, held firmly against him, his fingers entwined in mine.
Like all romantics, we were so wrapped up in the long term, that we got tripped up by the short term; by the here and now. And right here, right now, things are soft, and pure. We have loved each other before as wolves, and as shadows, and now we are trying to love each other as humanly as we know how. Intense, wonderful, flawed love. I admire the ways in which he's expanded, healed, rediscovered himself. He doesn't attempt to craft himself, he just moves from day to day so simply, and also so happily. He reminds me to savour everything. And he heals me.
There's so much more to write, but I'll stop for now. Prosaic little reports of the tangles of time. Today is back to work, Stan Getz, texts, and tulips. Earl Grey URRYWHERE. Let's move.
I hope you can forgive me — the seven people on Earth that still stop by this blog from time to time. I've been working on a series for months, with one foot on either side of the Atlantic. It's a merciless schedule, with as much research and reading required as writing, which has left time for little else. But I do have until Friday to complete what I need for work, and I have until June until I'm back in London, so we can talk. So where to begin...
L. had her baby and I didn't. A beautiful little girl that looks perfectly like the two of them. I feel her in my bones; there is so much joy. I still have baby fever, I don't know if it will ever completely go away. I will definitely be one of those little old ladies that stops children with harried mothers in the shops to have long drawn out conversations and to touch their little fingers. But we shall see.
I work out all the time now. I no longer jog.
Every man I've ever loved in the past ten years is still in my life; inconveniently, fantastically, gratefully present and always available, always frustrating. I would very much like to add that my lovers have been, they are, the most beautiful humans, and I am a very lucky woman to have been naked with you people.
After a two year hiatus of pivoting around one-another, I am so happy to be standing beside T. again, held firmly against him, his fingers entwined in mine.
Like all romantics, we were so wrapped up in the long term, that we got tripped up by the short term; by the here and now. And right here, right now, things are soft, and pure. We have loved each other before as wolves, and as shadows, and now we are trying to love each other as humanly as we know how. Intense, wonderful, flawed love. I admire the ways in which he's expanded, healed, rediscovered himself. He doesn't attempt to craft himself, he just moves from day to day so simply, and also so happily. He reminds me to savour everything. And he heals me.
There's so much more to write, but I'll stop for now. Prosaic little reports of the tangles of time. Today is back to work, Stan Getz, texts, and tulips. Earl Grey URRYWHERE. Let's move.
