one day at a time

From my notebook, earlier this month -

“I put on sun block today because I decided to actually sit in the sun rather than just flirt with it.

Yesterday felt like a good day. Good to be within that particular Tuesday. A good day to pass through. Do I pass through a day or does a day pass through me? is a human life a digestive system for time?

On a daily basis we bite off chunks and nibbles. We chew. We flavour them with different names - work, rest and play. We spice them up or soothe them through our tubes. And slowly but surely with peristaltic grace they travel through our winding passageways. We suck what we need from them. We drain the life from each scrap and then discard the waste. The husks we have no use for - the leftover seconds, minutes or hours that offered no nutriment.”

And since then I’ve tried to pay closer attention to the particular flavour of each day, noting something special I tasted along the way.

- She said she was woken by the seagulls.

- In my hand, reflected birds pass through the lens of my sunglasses. Moments before they would have flown across my eyes. And I wouldn’t have noticed.

- The man I admired holds a large fish he has caught. Note the past tense.

- Every chimney seems to be sprouting gull chicks.

- The cheapest flowers are also the ones I would choose.

- So many bees. I can still hear the buzzing when none are near.

gone but not forgotten

A few last words on behalf of the tulips -

*  I thought something had died when I looked out of the window this morning.  Pieces of red strewn this way and that.  Bold stains on shy concrete.  Red enough to make the bricks blush.  Thankfully the victim was only the tulips - given up the ghost for another year, petals thrown to the wind.

*  An evening wind teases fallen tulip petals.  Spins them in ever decreasing circles - their red deepens as the light retreats. 

*  They looked like they should taste of burnt cherry.  They look like they should feel pain.  Unashamed to fall apart so publicly.  I wish we could live like tulips.  Not for long, but vividly, bravely.  I wish I could burn myself into memory and leave bloody fingerprints on your page.

Out with the old, in with the new.  Some plastic wrapped blooms that sit pretty in a vase on a windowsill.  And they too draw me in.  Into their light filled rooms, their hearts bursting with sunshine and serenity.  Delightful, but nothing like their wilder cousins.

the ghost with the most

Did I abandon my blog? or did it abandon me?  did anyone come in to cut the grass? did it feel lonely?  I didn’t mean to be gone so long.  I followed an interesting looking sentence and it took me further than I expected. 

I’ve been thinking about writing far more than I’ve actually been writing.  Perhaps this is one of the side-effects of The Artists Way which I’ve been working through for the past six weeks. 

It’s like I’m going wild with a cloth, erasing everything previously written on my blackboard.  The air is clouded with chalk dust.  At times I’m choking and I look like a ghost.  But I think it’s making way for a cleaner board, ready to drag that screaming chalk down it again and to see what I’ve got to say for myself.

There are a few things that are taking shape in my notebooks and may appear here soon - a ramble about bravery, and some small stories about strange girls, one who talks to raindrops, one with a red suitcase and a rather odd hairdresser.  

brighter whites

It looks like a small leaf is trapped in the door of the washing machine.  It’s trying to get out, not in.  I can tell by the way it’s pointing, at me, asking to be rescued. 

It’s clear this time she tried to wash a tree.  A little one admittedly, but I’m sure she had use her foot to persuade it in.  She didn’t like the shade of it’s leaves.  It didn’t fit in with the others in her garden.  It wore a demanding shade of green and she doesn’t like to share attention.  She put it on a hot wash with a red sock, hoping to induce autumn.  It didn’t work.  The leaves stayed green until the spin cycle when they promptly dropped off.  She pegged it out to dry while all the other trees giggled behind their leaves at the little winter tree shivering and bare and upended.

Next time she plans to wash a rain cloud.  She swears that with a little effort she’ll get those grey stains out.

confessions #8 & #9

an accident waiting to happen

with photographic thanks to dandelion

the ongoing observations of a tulip watcher -

*  while the crocus work their magic the tulips stay silent.  waiting.  bitter green knots of anticipation.  while the crocus are white and bride-like and virginal, the tulips want it known that they will be red.  they are planning dark deeds, riots and damage and bloodshed in the flowerbeds

*  these tight lipped tulips begin to bleed a little

*  love is discovering I’ve planted her favourite flower, without knowing her favourite flower

*  one day one lazy tulip collapsed over the side of the pot, by the next it found it’s feet again

*  in the bright spring sun the blooms open too far, they embarrass with their similarity to wounds, gaping and raw with a yellow infected centre.  they only show decency when the sun goes in and they draw themselves primly closed

two's company

Two daffodils in a vase.  One slightly shorter than the other.  Each a little past their best.  Two that have broken away from the crowd - preferring the company of each other and no other.  Two that have sunk their toes into cool water held in good quality glass.  Two friends who grew the same way, inching a little higher every day, facing the sun, never turning away.  Now back to back, silent, speechless.  Not even waltzing in a gentle breeze.  Unable to look each other in the eye - when they used to kiss.  They used to sing.

the skin of my teeth

When I first started writing I used to struggle with sensory detail.  I used to worry that I was somehow rather numb to the world around me.  I was especially un-tactile - forcing myself to stroke brick walls just to get to know them better.  Now I realise that I’m just a rather strange creature who feels more with my lips and tongue and teeth than with my fingers and toes.  As a number of my posts have shown, I’m firmly stuck in the oral phase and proud to be there.

***

From between my teeth a pip appears.  From a kiwi fruit I ate a little earlier.  I crunch it and it tastes of nothing.  But sounds like the beginning of the end of the world.

***

She says the browned edges of the Jerusalem artichoke taste like bonfires.  I hadn’t noticed until then, but they do.  And suddenly I’m eating the beginning of November.  I’m devouring piles of censored books.  I’m sucking on cannibal roasted bones, and kissing boys who have spent their evening torching car seats in derelict playgrounds.

haiga #14

more than words

Annie at Ink Haven recently tagged me.  I don’t usually get involved with these things, but this one seems quite useful.  It asks me to list five things I do to support and spread the love of the written word.  And I do love it.  But sometimes it’s good to examine and reaffirm that love.  And whilst I’m not sure how I exactly support and spread that love, I do butter a slice of what I like and offer others the occasional bite.

Ten years into regular writing and I find I’m still thrilled, excited and indulged daily by the simple pleasure of it.  Choosing words, discarding some, making sentences for sentences sake.  Imagining a path and following it.  Painting word pictures and sending them on postcards to myself.  It costs next to nothing and can fill an entire day, or the time it takes the kettle to boil.

I like to give my words a comfortable home.  I indulge them by buying beautiful notebooks for them to rest in.  This is the delicious tactile side of writing.  Turning smooth and heavy pages, words sliding quietly along feint lines or making their own way across a blank page.  I’m always on the look-out for the next perfect receptacle.  At the moment they are settling into a black Rhodia Webnotebook.  I write with a cheap ballpoint pen that looks like a wasp!  I once wrote a piece for a writing class about a paper addict which was very loosely based on me!

I’m bricking myself in with books.  They fill every available shelf and teeter in piles where piles shouldn’t be.  I read them too.  And I try not to feel guilty about my infidelity to music - which was my first love and used to assume it would be my last.  But those spinning discs of silver no longer lay sole claim to my heart.  Now they have to share me with my paper-spined friends.  I read every day and feel almost seasick if I can’t, and I give gifts of books to my friends whether they want them or have time to read them or not!

I try to appreciate and reciprocate the network of support and encouragement that blogging offers to writers.  Sometimes all this time with pen and paper and the echo of your own words can feel a little isolated.  I’m unlikely to invite a friend around only to say ‘listen to what I’ve written today, what do you think?’.  Bloggers build bridges between desert islands.  I try to post fairly regularly with things that I like and I think my readers might too.  I like to read good blogs and take time to comment thoughtfully (most of the time) on their content and execution.

I’m recently learning to challenge myself - edge closer and at times even dangle over that precipice I’ve stayed back from.  I’ve always been guarded around real-life writing, stammering over the word ‘autobiographical’ - but I’m starting to work on something that seems to feature me.  Or at least me as a bit-part, a walk-on extra.  It’s a little bit scary, but fun too.  I feel like young cress, spindly and pale and flopping about.  I need to toughen up and grow true and head for the light.

rubbing the lamp

It’s feels like I’m taking dictation from life at the moment - a lot of everything and nothing filling my notebook.  A few scraps in the meantime…

 

She sleeps in a knot.  Come morning she will untangle and stretch and enter another day that will confuse and tie her.  She’s a ribbon, a string, a fraying bootlace.  She sleeps like a boiled sweet - wrapped in a folded sheet, twisted at each end.

 ***

Wednesday market stall - mesmerised for a moment by a tumble of colour contained by glass.  Like something from a fairy tale - dreams of genies and potions.  Actually just a heap of cheap nail polish.

 ***

She’s like a cat in that new cardigan.  She’s moulting.  Leaving a hairy path behind her.  We know where she’s been and we follow.  The beads clatter around her thin wrists and we think it’s the sound of her bones.

his black heart

The stick man announced his arrival with a tumble of pencils.  In sentences of varying lengths he spat out broken bits of lead and brushed the shavings from his hair.  He danced a merry doodle and hummed the tune of ‘Is There Anybody There?’.

an anti-valentine

A little something to counter-balance all that love flooding the highstreet today.

This is how my heart was broken

It wasn’t so much stamped on as left underneath a cushion on a battered sofa until someone’s aunt sat down with a loud rude sound.

It wasn’t so much burned as found in the ash-tray the morning after - wearing a coat of grey dust and smelling of spilled beer.

It wasn’t so much smashed as left with a crazed glaze like old china, or a starburst like a bullet through a cartoon window.

It wasn’t so much chewed up and spat out as held beneath the tongue till body warmed and malleable then taken out and stuck beneath the desk for someone to find clinging to their trousers on another day.

It wasn’t so much broken as neglected, abandoned, defaced, deflated, lost.

hate crimes

Her hair offends me the most.  To wear it so black and still appear cheerful.  Almost a bowl-cut but a bowl-cut from the trendiest bowl.  And those glasses that frame her eyes like they are a priceless pair hanging in the Tate Modern.  Framed so I’ll notice them, or they’ll notice me. 

 

I know these evil wishes can sprout legs and hurry back to bite me - but for now I’ll bless them and send them on their way, with an address, a map and a deadline.

 

I hope she spends her days dry and childless.  I hope she is widowed young - the wrong side of forty five.  I hope one leg develops a drag that sends her round in circles.  I hope her hair curls.

out for the count

It’s hard to get going on some of these cold mornings.  A few warm-up exercises are called for.  And recently I’ve been having fun with the photo prompts provided by Sarah Salway. 

 

She has unusual tastes, not ones catered for on match.com.  How can she explain the boy of her dreams would have legs like chimneys, hair the colour of roof tiles, could only sleep at forty five degrees, and would talk exclusively in smoke signals.  Falling should always feeling like falling.

 * * * 

As each home failed them they moved on, to somewhere smaller and apparently safer.  And each time they took a souvenir.  The door hinges that survived the fire.  The name plaque from their daughters bedroom door, found buried in the flood mud.  The last supporting beam the woodworm chewed through.    

 * * * 

He fell in love with her eyes.  Both of them.  The greenest green of jealousy.  Voodoo.  Leaves.  He dreamed bad dreams whenever she stayed.  And this morning he woke, her gone, no note.  Just a pair of contact lenses on the pillow.  Which he ate, just to recapture her taste.

a midnight snack

Late one night when no-one was looking I swallowed a hyphen.  The one from the middle of your silly surname.  I felt it scrape the walls of my throat on the way down.  I felt it sink into my stomach, weighing that sack lower in my body.  It was not easy or quick to digest.  I recalled my mother’s warnings about going to bed too soon after certain foods - all talk of things ‘laying on your chest’.  I dreamed of cream and chocolate sauces smearing the bed sheets.

When I woke I’d forgotten my sudden snack.  But in the morning mirror I noticed a dashed black line running down the length of my body, all the way from head to tail.  And when you got up you were no-one I recognised.  Just a someone broken in two.

fletcher's monkey

I have sticky attention.  It’s like double-sided tape.  I choose something to attach it to but the other side stays peeled and primed and ready to grab any bits of fluff and litter that pass my way.

I enjoyed the novel I just read, but a fleeting detail has stuck to my tape and now I can’t shake it.  A little red monkey drawn onto a lightbulb in a boarding school.  Everywhere I go that monkey is in my mind.  He has nothing to say for himself but still he lingers.

I wonder what keeps him here.  Is it his colour? or the unlikely place he hides? is it that he remained nameless? or that when we meet him he is the only friend of the girl far from home?  or perhaps it’s because he wears a fez?

Either way we are stuck together until my glue dries and he drops off.  And he’s got me wondering what other strangely attired beasts burn on bulbs that hide beneath demure shades.  What other primates flash sixty watt smiles.  He’s got me wanting to slip into other homes and draw snakes and tigers and jellyfish onto the light fixtures of strangers.  I want to know that someone somewhere is turning on a secret hummingbird at sundown.  

post christmas post

This is the scenery of inbetween days. The no-man’s landscape that stretches between Christmas and New Year.

New books form skyscrapers on coffee tables - little towers of fact and fiction. Cards that came late drape the curtain pole, white leaves with best wishes for veins. And the last arrival, hastily employed as a makeshift bookmark.

The table confetti from Christmas day has fallen to the floor. With every step she takes silver stars are carried to other rooms. To other carpets where new constellations form, forever drifting through acrylic skies.

the day of rest

On a Sunday they discuss soft herbs and nurture a mint plant as if it was their first grandchild.  They watch five sparrows circle a leaf stuck upright in a concrete crack and wonder who will be the first to pluck it out.  They take a little dose of Jeff Buckley and cheese on toast, and stand barefoot in hair clippings pulling pouting teenboy faces.  They score bonus points for awkward questions and enjoy the silence of a phone that doesn’t ring.  They catch each other’s tears and it doesn’t mean a thing.  They tell the mist not to mind if the rain is late, while laying biscuits side by side on a plate.  

through the square window

I’ve changed my mind about Christmas many times.  I loved it as a child, but we fell out sometime in my late teens, although the trust is slowly re-growing in recent years.  Now I enter into the festive spirit with the best of them, but like any good pantomime its always necessary to have a few boo’s and hisses among the laughter and the cheers.

So these days I find myself opening an alternative advent calendar, and finding things like this inside - 

behind the 5th

the work’s Christmas party - fours hours spent fighting off his brandy breath / her glittery dress

behind the 7th

the battles with Sellotape - the finger nail cruising for the end of the tape - the tacky curses at the last to use it - the polish fingerprint lifted from the edge of the dining table and transferred to the parcel - and the hair, always the hair, caught beneath, coming your way, from here to there

behind the 10th

the mother talks of frozen meats - of creatures carefully sliced and interleaved with paper this time last year - the pink, the white and the darkened brown - intended sandwiches and Sunday suppers rediscovered twelve months on and given a bin burial just in time for the next ones to come along

bargain hunting

This is yesterday and my squeaky steps carry me along polished wooden pathways that lead me through an old fashioned department store.

I linger near the lift watching an old woman try on a new coat.  Her husband and an eager assistant stand by, ready to offer advice and casual compliments.  They seem oblivious to the fact that the coat is far larger than the woman.  

That her knees sag under its weight and as the fabric skims the floor her feet are lost.  The fur collar has devoured her head and husband is still not alarmed.  She is utterly eaten by whatever fake fur beast this coat used to be.  

But still she basks under their gaze and the heat of these lights - all aglow from the giant red tag reading ‘£100 off marked price’.

two become one

Most of my daydreams contain a grain of truth, nestled alongside a seed of doubt.

Sunday morning, a call from the middle of the Adriatic.  My parents, a struggle to interpret at the best of times, now victims of telephonic time slip.  Our words bouncing there and back via Norway.  The last scrap of sense surrendered - they answer my questions before I’ve asked them.

And later, from the foot of the mighty mountains he calls, seducing me with details of snow irrigation and new world wines of cash machines and high altitude climbs.  And when we say goodbye I ask him to give my regards to the condors.

long distance daydream

My worry takes the form of a daydream.  I see him weaving through a virtual city, rumpled print-outs creased in his hand.  Sweat making maps on his back, as the capital struggles to welcome him.  His bag dragging lower with every corner turned - the rattle of the travelling pharmacy packed within.  Something for pain, for digestion, for sleep or it’s lack, something for blisters.  But nothing for getting lost.  

And all the while the shadow of the angel moves with him.  She’s lost her way too.  Cast herself further south than she ever intended.  Blown down on a fair wind, with the litter gathered in doorways.  Waving good-morning in coffee bars and goodnight in strip clubs.  The vowels still muddle in my mouth and I wake wondering how many South American countries I can name with one breath.

the sound and the fury

They begin an hour after darkness descends.  Only sounds to start with.  Most seem to come from behind me, but some feel deep, too deep, like they are exploding beneath my feet.  Each sounds subtly different. Some remind me of my father breaking thick cardboard boxes apart across his raised knee.  Some sound like my hard drive searching for a file, or a driver missing a gear.  

fireworks whistle

and whine - last week’s ghosts

still lost and roaming

I don’t jump until the first flash.  Twenty to six and vivid pink thrown against my eyes.  Another reflects in the gloss painted parts of this room - as the door, the frame and the skirting boards white wink at me.  I feel like the world has turned upside down and someone is hurling light beakers onto the black floor.  Clocks of mercury shatter seconds before I hear the crash.

through fireworks

a shout - urgent,

excited or angry

And for an hour or two these annual effects punctuate my reading - dropping exclamation marks into an otherwise calm paragraph.  I am centrally heated but surrounded by war cries and danger and the smell of regret.

re-inventing the smile

He tells me the story of the family photo.  All the tricks of the trade that bring four generations together in one ten by eight inch space.  United forever in two dimensions.  Some focused, some less so.  Some smile in today’s technicolor, while others grin through a 1970’s sheen.  The living and the dead and those still hanging somewhere in between.  Ghosts with shared chromosomes.  A new hierarchy - centre stage claimed by those who have spread the gene pool farthest and widest.  And the three extra pounds to grease the palm of the virtual wizard who can remove the scar from her face.  The fun we had with those face paints, pulled from a cracker - all gathered together some thirty Christmases ago.

three's a crowd

[it seems I missed the third anniversary of this blog - sometimes its hard to believe that I’m still finding things to say that people actually want to read - I’ve got a few bits ready to go that are just lacking a picture, but in the meantime three observations from recent days]

Royal Road, relatively innocent at any other time, suddenly shifts pitch to a threatening tone.  A man runs round the corner, thin arms gangly triangles at his sides.  Fumbles mobile to his ear, doesn’t speak, only breathes.  He looks at us.  We look at him.  Try to communicate that we have seen him but would be willing to forget him too if he prefers.  A hasty diagonal takes him across the road where he joins a gender vague friend on a corner wall.  Without greeting or goodbye the friend stands and walks away.  And a few yards further along three men get into a topless car the colour of long stewed tea.  All events apparently unrelated but feeling somehow significant, somehow weighty with the flavour of danger.

- - - - - 

Our old knives have marks bitten deep into their plastic handles, paler blue breaking through.  Like they’ve been fighting in the dark, chewing at each other with serrated silver teeth.  Their knife nature unstoppable even when the kitchen drawer is closed.

- - - - - 

A crow chases a bread crust down a roof.  It bounces tile to tile and he follows.  Black after white across the red.  Like a strangely slanted game of chess.

where theres a will

Cocooned in faded brown sleeves.  She looks down at her arms, spindled and bent and moving very little, and wonders if she could pass for a tree.  If she stood still in the park would people overlook her.  Would the little white dog cock its leg in her direction.  Would that girl with the faraway smile come and sit beneath her as she ties and unties knots in that piece of blue string she always carries.  She looks at that string like most girls look at a best friend - only more unique, more treasured.  Not like something she’ll have lost and forgotten by the time she’s wearing faded brown sleeves.

the calm before the storm

Two collared doves rest.  One on the arm, one on the back of the flaking bench.  Like two balls of pale clay they seem to melt a little in the late afternoon sun.  They retract their legs and lower slowly - wrapping wood in soft balled feather.  Their white rimmed eyes blink slower blinks, their beaks mutter soundlessly.  The privilege of watching animals sleep.

A small cyclone of black fur panic.  A cat trapped in our conservatory.  It throws itself to the four corners trying to find escape.  Windows appear the correct shape but don’t work the same in this house.  They are closed.  A double glazed cage surrounds cat and drives it crazy.  Clinging with front paws and climbing claws cat abandons floor and heads higher.  Shimmies sideways along the top of the door - a four legged spider.  Black face gets lightly draped in cobwebs.  Foolish home-owner has now noticed cat and is beckoning and rubbing empty fingers together and repeating clickety sounds of ‘kittykittykitty’.  Foolish person disappears and reappears outside looking in at cat.  Person is where cat wants to be.  Cat investigates, tentatively exits conservatory, through kitchen, through hall where daylight smell gets stronger, into lounge where fool is pointing at open doorway.  Cat pauses then exits as if rebounding on invisible elastic.  A shriek of teeth and feet across the lawn, flying over the low wall without the slightest jump, up the tree, barely shifting the leaves.  And gone.

[It felt improper to photograph the doves as they slept, but I took the above with their permission, moments after they awoke.  The cat declined the offer to pose for me.]

our favourite stranger, revisited

Brimful of love with endless time on his hands he ponders mornings and tilts his head to better view an afternoon. He makes friends with all the little things most of us overlook.  Greets fruit and vegetables like he’s known them all his life and is relieved to see holes in their travelling bags and boxes through which to enjoy the view.  And he mourns every empty shell he finds - already missing the departed resident he never got to meet.

the fall

She brings home a handful of windfalls. Smaller than shop bought apples but far more sincere. Their skins a darker green - almost mossy, almost velvet. If apples were thunderclouds they would be this green. If apples were the eyes of a girl who never forgives ...

She slices them into uneven fans and scatters them on a square white dish. They are a funny colour and I eye her offering with a little suspicion. They look more like pieces of potato. But they taste like the summer that never arrived. Like listening to stories while sat on heaps of your mother’s skirt under the tree we never grew.

I bite into their uneven landings - the flavour of a tumble that follows a long cling. I taste their bruises and learn that sometimes bruises taste good.

the urban jungle

In the news this week - a lion on the loose in Belfast, in a park, near the zoo - where all lions counted and accounted for - all cages closed and locked - yet enough sightings for police to advise to approach with caution.

The thought lion. The one that got away. The one on the tip of your tongue. The eternal complaint, the silent roar the caged ones never make. The dream lion they send out to roam on their behalf. Conjured from sand and dropped lolly sticks. Brought to life by midnight incantations breathed through soft whiskered lips under Irish skies where anything is possible. A new king of Ireland with a leafy crown - sent to battle for sun and savannah and meals to eat on the go. Treading grass carpets under blue sky roofs - the lion that comes and goes while your eyes are closed. Golden shadows, wild wishes, sun ghosts. A myth to keep you on your toes.

Postscript - another false alarm - the big cat turned out to be a big dog, sandy coloured but otherwise harmless.

Cu & Ocimum basilicum

Two observations, from either end of an otherwise unremarkable day -

I am washing up. My fingers absorb the heat until they translate the feeling to one of coldness. I’ll never understand the mystery of nerves. I hear the rain growing more committed against the plastic roof. And then another sound, a different tinkle, more metallic, more tuneful. In another room she is counting coppers to give to the birds.

I hear her chopping basil and trying not to cry. There will be tears lying in wait behind her eyes. Her throat will catch, words are hooked there. Any that escape will waver a little in the air as if released from underwater. And from now when I smell basil, metallic and fresh, I will remember these words, both the said and the unsaid.

feng shui for the paranoid

a single unmade bed. in the corner of a room. always a corner. important to limit the ways they can come at you. a couple of inches out from the wall. you never know what could be crawling there. sheets only in white or mixed-wash grey. nothing too bold to stimulate vivid dreams. only checks or stripes on blankets or duvets. never spots or swirls. nothing to remind you of her.