Bella’s blog

I can talk with great eloquence, if little comprehension, on a lot of subjects, sex life of the firefly, sub Sahara economies, humanity and her delights or sores. And if I have no idea of what I am talking about, I’ll give it a guess or maybe pretend I know what I’m talking about, (which will in effect convince that person, as well as myself, that I do know what I’m talking about.) Truth never raring her lovely troublesome head.

The only thing, with absolute consistency that I haven’t been able to, are not able to, and will not be able to talk about with fluidly is ‘the talk’ itself. I’m marginally sane with the break up talk, as I rehearse the hell out of it before hand, (and often consume large amounts of alcohol) but still I end up blaming the weather in Istanbul on my decision which I think will somehow make it easier on them (NB: it doesn’t.) The real problem lies in the ”yes, I like you”, or more horrific still “yes, I love you” talk, I become a jibbering, jabbering, stuttering, blushing, twitching fool. I become like Wily Coyote who has just been blasted with 100 volts of electricity, my hair flies out at right angles, limbs shoot out, my tongue lolls and my voice alternates between that of a lobotomy patients and a mosquito cracked up on pseudoephedrine.

Typical conversation as follows

Man: So what would you like in the future?

Bella: My future? Or another person? (boooya!) Um. So. Like that chick on the Bold and The Beautiful. She had such a funny hair do…you know with all that hairspray…hairspray. Yeah. So anyway she was talking about the future. And.You know what. Guess what! She was supposed to be telepathic… Yeah. (pause of pneumonic plague proportions) So. Right. Have you ever had telepathic thoughts then?’

Not even a smooth change of subject, a hurtling out of control brakeless lorry with a drunk driver kind of subject change. And it gets worse.

I blush like an alien mothership’s backside as it pulses with crude energy. Then I stutter. And blurt. Like beer pipes with too much gas. Intermissions of hot air then gushes of inappropriate slush. Then the piece de resistance: I dribble.

Man: ‘No, I mean our future, together.’

Um. (clear throat, straighten wrist watch, cock neck, widen eyes briefly and clear throat again) I think that, you know, in the end, you know, like I think it’s all good to think things, you know, but like, who knows what to think right. But anyway, I think we should just, yeah, you know. It’s all-. What we gotta do, you know, is, but look, it’s okay to not talk about it, I completely understand. Would you like a cookie?

What I need is for the man to treat my like I’m five.

‘You-likkie-likkie-me?’

‘y(stutter) e (blush) s (shake). Yes’ or n (burning hot) o (stutter) No’

‘Do-you-want-to-be-with-me?’

‘y(stutter) e (blush) s (shake) Yes.’ Or ‘n (burning hot) o (stutter) No’

Why isn’t life that simple? And I don’t even know why I become so idiotic. Usually I’m a pretty self aware person. I know why I over consume chocolate or embarrass people when I dance. But I don’t for the life of me know why I become like this. There is a part of me that can be rational:

‘Yes, I love you and I think that you are the love of my life and I’d like to have beautiful kids with you in a year, but on the condition that you don’t wear your socks to bed.’ Or something equally as concise. But no luck. I can’t even blink correctly during ‘the talk’ I brush away their concerns that I am having some sort of seizure, go into the bathroom and come out with a new subject change that I think nobody can see through ‘So do you like ovaries. I do. I think they’re neat, how are your ovaries. Oh. Right. You don’t have any. That’s okay. I don’t mind. That. Perfect really. Considering you are a man. So um another cookie?’

I’ve just been nominated for the Cosmopolitan Fun and Fearless Woman of The Year Award – I’m next to some fab women so feel very chuffed, even better that an award like this exists for women. To celebrate being fun and to celebrate being fearless – what a wonderful thing. It’s celebrating what it is to be a woman. In all her beauty, contradictions and strength. Even a couple of decades ago it would be awarded to women that could fold laundry well or make the best G&T, now it’s for being fun and fearless, our role as women has come a long way and I think that it shows that we are very much on the right track. What could be more fun?

I’m booked to leave New York at the end of the month for Europe. Rome for 10 days where I can write then over to Nice – Cote D’azure for 7 days. We’ll nip across to the Cairns Film Festival too which will be brilliant as it is my virginal foray into the glitz and glam of films – french style. While in Rome it would be awesome to visit Palermo but will see if I can, apparently it takes 12 hours by boat.

I’ve stopped partying for the past five days to give my body a rest – and I have entered the twilight zone – I’ve gotten a flu and am so bored I’m actually cleaning - 

Just done a spring clean of the house… I only wish I could do that with my lungs and liver

My flatmate has left for vacation in Turkey and I’m left at home with The Beast. The Beast aka Oscar is a 6 month old Boxer with scitzoid tendencies. He is handsome, beautifully proportioned with a compacted snout and large expressive eyes – but he is a beast. You leave the apartment for ten minutes and you come back to find hell on earth. He chews everything he can reach. Shoes, make up, clothes, bills, computers. He was once able to start the computer and get Itunes to play a Bob Marley song. Kind of brilliant if you think about it. Yesterday I came home to find my new red Italian shoes turned into oatmeal. He also bites. And he jumps up and tried to have sex with my leg. The house a shambles, my leg being systematically raped, saliva and hair an inch thick on my clothes and I have bite marks that make me look like I’m into hard core sex games. I’m getting kind of desperate. Today I tried swinging his toy duck back and forth across his vision and repeated in a monotone ‘you will be a good boy, you will be a good boy.’ Oscar is turning me into a crazy person. Soon I’ll be hearing him talk back to me. But then in a blink of an eye, he’ll softly patter over to me while I’m working on the computer, and gently nestle into my lap, splaying his heavy paws around my neck as he trustingly rests his head on my shoulder. He does the whole Shrek Puss ‘n’ Boots thing and your heart melts and you feel guilty for calling him the hound of the Baskervilles and other unprintable things. Ah, the love of a naughty mutt, nothing beats it. Kind of.

Spring is breaking through the concrete sidewalks of New York –  Blossoms are coming out and people are out on the streets stepping from sun puddle to sun puddle as they make the most of the bright new rays coming down.

I’m house hunting and weve been plodding through apartments and negotiating balconies and bathrooms and brokers. Greenwich Village seems like the best balance, right near the park, filled with cafes and bars and graceful tree lined streets.

I have to leave the USA soon to lodge my artist’s visa application which is a darned good excuse to visit Europe again. Perhaps back to Berlin, perhaps Rome to visit friends, a maiden voyage to the South of France perhaps? Ah necessity is the mother of all excuses. 

I remember as a child Europe seemed so exotic. So far away. A land with strange and exciting vistas and smells and tastes and people. It didn’t seem feasible for me to see it ever in my lifetime, a dreamland far away from the realities of our kitchen table. I still have those feelings for Europe. But she is more solid in my thoughts now, with her history, her sculpture lined boulevards, fresh summer gardens, wooden cafes – and of course her cute French boys, and Italian ones, and German ones. Ah, traveling is the mother of all excuses.

I’m smack bang in the middle of the process to apply for my O-1 Visa for America. I need to prove that I am an ‘alien of extraordinary ability’ – apparently being able to juggle or consume a Whopper burger in under 10 seconds won’t cut the mustard, so I have my work cut out for me.

I’ve decided to get an apartment in downtown Manhattan, I can commute to Los Angeles for work, but it means that I can always have my dose of stale hot dogs, attempted muggings and deranged cab drivers Manhattan style. Life is good.

I’m up in the country with a friend to write a play we are going to perform as a two hander in NY. It’s about women, the light and the dark side of us crazy creatures, it’s about the duality of human nature and the limits that are imposed on it by others as well as ourselves. Athough chocolate and wine seem to have taken a front seat to the actual writing but gradual headway is being made in between sampling.