a longing for the impossible

the spare room

2011-09-29T12:18:00.004Z

[inspired by the title of a novel by Helen Garner]

If we had a spare room we’d make good use of it. We’d throw it open and welcome allsorts tocome and stay - objects rather than people.

A drawer full of post-it-notes and not just the yellowones. Another bulging with inner tubesin various sizes, to guard against all manner of deflation. And one for that novel by Emma Donoghue thatwe have two copies of as where else better? Nestled next to the little rice cooking ball that looks like a robotplanet, that so appealed in the catalogue, shiny with potential just as anyrobot planet would be, but which we’ve never used.

A small shelf of books - the handful we have truly loved andcan’t bear to part with. Another withframed photos of those people we’ve parted with and can’t bear to love. A row of jars containing nothing but air,sealed inside on memorable days. Abundle of envelopes that once held letters in various forms, the typed and thehandwritten, the cryptic, coded and downright blunt. The letters themselves have gone but the envelopesbear witness to our first encounters with bad news in its many guises.

Coppers in a pot just in case we ever find something worthbuying for just one or two pence. A dishfull of seeds collected from things grown in our garden – things we didn’t plant,but which grew from previous seeds deposited by passing creatures. And a pill box brimful of apostrophes - theshould have used, overused and those kept handy just in case.

gold mining

2011-09-04T18:13:00.002Z

In January and July this year I paddled in the River of Stones and panned for my own nuggets of daily truth.

I think it's high time I re-polished my nuggets and dangled them here to delight those who prefer truth when it sparkles and burns and buys it's way into all the most (un)desirable places.

Inevitably drawn to pale foods he was the sort of man to heap his plate with potatoes and spend the meal searching for his meat. To drink two pints of milk straight from a summer doorstep and smile away the morning as they curdled gently within. To think of his mother whenever he caught himself looking at a woman's breasts - remembering her force feeding him rice pudding, and withholding blancmange when he'd been bad.

I predict a riot

2011-08-12T12:03:00.005Z

‘… violence is embedded in public spaces whether visible or not, because public spaces are responsive to violence even before the violence has occurred, through the physical design.’

Jen Berean & Pat Foster (PoCA magazine)

The child barely manages to post the empty crisp packet into the bin before his mother drags him onwards. He looks back hoping to catch a glimpse as it starts to crackle and smoke. He scrapes his shoe along the edge of the kerbstone, throwing out an anchor to slow their progress, but all he leaves is a slight red scuff that melts and slowly dribbles toward the gutter. A police car passes and he pictures it upside down, end over end, any way but this – much more fun than flipping triangles in maths class. His mother says he has an overactive imagination although she struggles to keep the syllables in their rightful place.

The mother drags him onwards, just another bag of shopping she can barely afford only without the handles. He bulges, he sags, he makes her arm ache, he threatens to spill his contents across the pavement at any moment. They stop by a shop, the mother staring at the screen of her mobile phone, decoding abbreviated declarations of love from the latest in a long line of abbreviated lovers. The child exhales. His breath a hazy cloud on the shop window. In this he draws – not letters or hearts or faces – but jagged lines that divide and collide to form little pieces of steamed glass. A map of how this window might come apart.

where the wild things are

2010-05-28T11:52:00.000Z

spotted last sunday. baby birds times two. the collared dove not yet smooth, and darker than it will become. like brewed tea taken less milky. the sparrow still fluffed with down the colour of ash. a little phoenix. both hopeless against the wind, content to go wherever it takes them.

*****

at the corner point of the roof next door is a strip of metal that forms a curl. a roofer’s flourish it looks like it should support a hanging basket although that would float far to high for belief, watering or enjoyment. this afternoon, one foot on the tile, another on the curl, stands a crow. looking to each cardinal direction in turn. sparkling in the sun. if black can be said to sparkle.

*****

this morning. a small green beetle-bug comes through the door. perhaps wind blown, perhaps self propelled. it lands on my hand. I try to shake it off, I am reading. it weaves between my fingers, round the back and in between. it has a long body, not a round one. I flick it off and it skids across my page. I grab it and feel it rattling slightly in my fist. like a word you can’t quite remember. I cast it out the door, badly. it sails towards the little bleached fir that we plan to plant round the front to replace the one that we uprooted at the end of last year. the one that had grown too big for us and for itself. but beetle-bug falls short, and lands in a web. I hope it gets free. I am reading but I would rather it was still stuck to me than to that web.

101 ways to write about rain

2010-03-25T12:54:00.000Z

Sometimes it seems like there’s a lot of it about. So, in the spirit of ‘if you can’t beat them join them’ I aim to get to know each and every drop.

the rain started like a rumour. a whisper at the back of the classroom. a secret passed on under the breath. a hastily scribbled note on folded scrap paper. she knew what was happening behind her back. she knew it was coming for her. yet again she’d be caught in a cloudburst.

*****

your eyes are like rainclouds. filling. filling the sky. no wind. no movement. some light. not much. blankety and grey. comforting in their familiarity but largely unwelcome on a summer day. all day they linger. they stay. but drop not a drop. they glower but never shower. you threaten to rain. but don’t.

*****

false alarm rain. a few spots that linger in the air but don’t drop. that hang there to create the impression of rain. like a raindrop mobile above a baby that never breathes. enough to get you up off the sofa, out of your book. to bring you to the window. out the back door to bring in the washing. while the drops hang still.

what a difference a day makes

2010-03-18T13:40:00.001Z

today is all I have to do. brown blankets to the power of two. strawberry tea brewed strong with one heaped sweet. listen to short CDs, boys with guitars and easy accents. finger nails tap in time on the rim of this mug. net curtains parted slightly, hooked by a thread on a thorn on a pot plant. the street outside, a dagger shape slicing into view. a scrappy bookmark of the place I left off, that I’m meant to pick up again. but not today.

* * * * *

the garden grew indistinct. she thought she was falling asleep with her eyes open. but it was just a sea mist creeping through. not rolling in the way they usually do, steering round corners and piping between trees. this one seemed to form in the air itself. in every place between here and the distance the air grew thicker and the view thinner. as if something was turning down the volume on this tuesday afternoon.

patchwork prose

2010-03-01T10:45:00.003Z

I’ve always been drawn to mosaics, jigsaws and patchwork. Anything that aims to make a whole out of small somethings. I also regularly need to revisit the question of why I write. It feels reckless to do it without understanding my motivation. I’m not the type of person who would climb a mountain simply because it’s there. And the answer I’ve often come to is that I write to keep record. Noting the daily in an effort to distinguish the uniqueness of each. I think that’s a major reason why haiku suits me. Each is a little patch, and seen together they suggest some kind of record of experience. A patchwork of my days. Of course I like my flights of fancy too, my wild imaginings. Perhaps these are my play, where I fling the patched cape around my shoulders and pretend to be a kaleidoscopic witch for the day.

I’ve dabbled with reading diaries before, but never fully embraced them. Plath’s big green volume has been bowing my bookshelf for years. But recently I’ve dipped my toe into May Sarton’s coastal account shared in The House by the Sea. And I’m astounded at how much I’m finding there, how much relevance to my todays considering Sarton’s todays were almost forty years ago. I admire a diary keeper - their bravery as they allow me to hear their confession. The way they aren’t ashamed to be so indulgent as to write about themselves day after day. Perhaps we all hope to create something that will outlive and outlast us. Some people bear children to meet this need, while some of us prefer to make something we can burn if we change our minds.

Today I shall start to read the first entry in the fictional diary of Ruth which runs through Thaw, the third novel from Fiona Robyn. I’m interested to see how Ruth uses her diary, and if you are too you can read along for the next three months at Thaw.

unrecognisable truths

2010-02-19T12:05:00.001Z

I always enjoy spending time browsing through the posts at One Million Footnotes, not least because the most interesting text recognition scrambles appear when I comment there. And perhaps influenced by the mood of the place, sometimes I can’t help but make up sentences to nest these unexpected words.

A recent dubious flock hatched the following -

He said he admired my fulogo and I admitted I had waited years for it to bloom that profusely.

As they lifted the deadverd stones from their mahogany chest and laid them into a perfect circle they knew that tonight was the night it would happen.

How ever much her grandmother combed or wetted them with spittle, she could never calm those unruly efrai that danced around her ears.

The seeds of the pandea were bitter between his teeth. But they made his dreams taste sweet.

The odabil was lost overboard, just as they rounded the lighthouse. It sunk slowly to the seabed and sometime later was appropriated by a shy hermit crab.

It wasn’t the first case of outterea they had recorded, but it was the worst. It didn’t quite kill the villagers, but they were left distinctly altered, unaware that they’d made it into the record books.

a 3-ply valentine

2010-02-14T11:23:00.003Z

This is the tissue that carried two drops of oil of eucalyptus. That lay folded beneath your pillow. That let you sleep and dream away the fever. That helped you be a hummingbird.

This is the tissue that you fashioned into a soft envelope. To treasure the eyelash. That you found between the pages of a second hand paperback. The day you fell in love with a stranger.

This is the tissue you clutched. That midnight we shared secrets. The ones you’d stood on for years. The ones that started to eat you from the feet up.

This is the tissue that caught your hayfever tears. Walking through the fields. Swigging cherry wine from the bottle. Looking down at the village we’d outgrown.

This is the tissue that blew overboard. Out on deck. Cross Channel ferry. Smiling and watching the others look seasick.

This is the tissue you found stuffed down the back of the sofa. As you sat with your coffee cooling. On the first Valentine’s day without a card.

suburban myths

2010-02-10T15:22:00.001Z

I don’t believe in these snowflakes. The sky is laughing and running with scissors. It’s breaking the rules and snipping the corners off clouds, and dropping the litter in my garden. The trees and the shrubs are dancing with agitation. The wind is getting on their nerves as they try to make plans for spring.

shower the people with love

2010-02-04T15:33:00.002Z

If I had the time I’d tell you a story about the girl who could speak to the rain.

I’d tell you how she would sit in a quiet room and let it patter at her window. Few people know that raindrops speak a language distantly related to Morse code. She would listen to their hopes, their everyday worries and their weekend heartaches. She was usually content to listen, a well mannered eavesdropper, and they didn’t seem to mind. But occasionally she’d reply, tapping on the glass with her fingernails. And then the raindrops would gather on the other side, in eager clumps and clusters. She’d share little matters of little interest – what she’d had for lunch or a snippet from a magazine. And they’d be thrilled. Few people care enough to learn fluent raindrop. Sometimes she’d wish a raindrop ‘Happy Birthday’ and tonnes of others would arrive in a flurry to cheer and toss the birthday drop around. Passersby would frown and pull their collar tighter to their neck. Sometimes she’d go to other houses and overhear other people’s raindrops. They were never as friendly as hers. To long ignored they’d hurl themselves cursing against the window pane – threatening to break in and drown the householders. Other houses had sad raindrops sliding slowly towards the sill, crying and muttering how no-one loved them.

I’d like to learn to speak raindrop. If I could I think we might forge a better relationship. We could learn not to mess with each others plans.

hate crimes (part 2)

2010-01-27T11:08:00.000Z

Once upon a time I built her a house of cards. To keep her happy, to lock her away.

For her second coming I’m constructing a life-size cinema made from spent matchsticks. I’m laying an orange carpet, and tearing out the flame retardant seats. I’m painting the walls the colour of London street corners, edged with waiting for taxis at 2 a.m. The air-conditioning silently circulates the smell of the bottom of a strangers shoe, of spat out chewing gum that tastes of your kiss.

And she’ll get a front row seat. To watch the show. To see how quickly we all fall down. One huff, two puffs, three’s company and four’s a cloud.

snow diary

2010-01-19T13:06:00.005Z

day one

The white one has come. It used to be a rare bird, but here it is, in our garden, the second visit in a month. We must adjust to the blank landscapes that fill every window frame. And the silence. The snow is all we talk about, comparing flake size and coverage. It’s all I write about - all day until my paragraphs shrink to bullet points and your bootprints fill with fresh fall.

I know a warm hearted man who believes that snowflakes are made of spite, with a little water and sky thrown into the mix, just to help them to fly.

day two

So much for central heating. She brings a fallen icicle indoors. She places it in a glass and takes photos. Sometime later I look and it’s only millimetres shorter than it was before.

day three

The man with the white car hasn’t left his house in days. Today he emerges, and chips away at the ice and snow with a scraper and a brush. He wears a brown cardigan and works till his hands look undercooked. He runs his engine till the snow on the bonnet has thawed. He clears the headlights, then goes back indoors.

day four

The white tide is lapping at our door. No longer the slim beach of bare concrete. Today, the frozen waves are cresting the double-glazing.

Sparrows kick up small flurries with their feet. Woodpigeons no longer leave neat impression of their footsteps. Instead they are sunk to their feathered undersides and drag themselves along with their grey mood in tow.

day five

I wake and check Tommy’s roof. Eyeing tiles as if they were distant hills. Today they are red. All morning a steady dripping. The new snow melts first, uncovering old footprints. It doesn’t melt so much as fade. Concrete burning its way back through.

She walks the garden path with a jug. Filled with water for the birds. And on her return, with sprigs of rosemary for our dinner.

day six

The neighbour’s over-hang drips steadily. The postman delivers five days of mail with a guilty look. And the redwings come no closer than the far tree.

day seven

She wears different boots today. The marks they leave are proper footprint shapes – the kind you draw or doodle in the margin and can only watch as they snake their way across your blank page.

People have claimed the road as their own. An old man pulling a trolleybag and a young woman pushing a buggy. Walking in the tracks of the cars that went before. Trudging the black lines carved through old snow to tarmac below.

day eight

He said they’d gone, that the worst was over. The fieldfares back to the fields and the redwings on the wing. I dreamed busy dreams. I slept with my left foot sticking out the right side of the duvet. I woke to more snow.

these things fall silently

tears and snowflakes
beautiful and bearable

only in ones and twos

[with thanks to dandelion for the above image]

surprised, lime

2010-01-06T13:12:00.001Z

haiga #15

2009-12-19T11:49:00.003Z

[with thanks to dandelion and her camera]

either / or

2009-11-24T15:09:00.005Z

some fictions about a factual day

some facts about a fictional day

[click to view detail]

seasidescapes

2009-08-15T11:40:00.002Z

Coaches spill dusty daytrippers onto an overcast promenade where they trundle back and forth for a few hours, before climbing aboard again - a strange anoraked tide that only rises in the summer months.

Children run, armed with open arms, towards shingle-speckled young gulls, who lift and rise and scatter from the pebbles, only to settle again, a little further down the beach.

For a few weeks blue and sand is not enough, this simple view obscured by whirling waltzers. The fun fair is back in town. High tide drowned by the sound of Phil Collins.

I text to tell you the whereabouts of me and my sandwich. A yapping gull hovers level with me and my breadcrusts. Do you want that on brown or white bread? she said - considering the depth of speckles on the young gulls, hatched this year or last.

Triangles of varied sizes slide westwards like folded paper yachts pulled by the string of the horizon. And a huge yellow buoy bobs like a drowning sun.

turning over an old leaf

2009-07-16T09:52:00.000Z

When I was very young I had a picture book. I can’t remember what it was. Perhaps Beatrix Potter. Something clearly rural. On one page there were some leaves, and on one leaf there was a squiggle of white. And it always bothered me.

I didn’t think it could be a mistake. Surely the people who drew the pictures for the picture books didn’t make mistakes. I believed all adults had learned to draw properly, to stay within the lines.

By then I had learned to draw leaves myself. Although I probably made them all the same shape. Coloured them all the same green, unless the felt-tip ran dry, in which case the tree would seem spoiled.

I probably thought leaves were limited to trees, or either side of the stem of a flower, as if for balance. I didn’t realise that all sorts of growing things choose to wear leaves. Hedges and weeds and even the things we eat.

Probably come autumn the teacher piled the tables with pens of red and yellow and orange and suddenly I didn’t spare a thought for the humble green. But I knew that pale wiggle was peculiar, as I’d never been taught to add that to my drawings.

And then today I look out of my back door and see a leaf, in fact two or more. Right there, hiding under the bush where the sparrows form a disorderly queue for the bird-table. And there is that squiggle, just as I remember it from that forgotten story.

And while I might not have learned to draw better leaves, and might still throw a tantrum if my pen runs dry, I have learned to grow my own leaves, and I recognise the work of a leaf miner when I see it.

one day at a time

2009-06-09T14:59:00.002Z

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

2009-05-23T11:04:00.006Z

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

2009-05-13T10:38:00.001Z

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

2009-04-24T10:00:00.000Z

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

2009-04-14T09:52:00.002Z

an accident waiting to happen

2009-04-01T14:38:00.004Z

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

2009-03-22T15:31:00.002Z

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

2009-03-09T11:29:00.001Z

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

2009-03-09T11:18:00.001Z

more than words

2009-03-01T12:05:00.004Z

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

2009-02-20T10:37:00.001Z

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

2009-02-20T10:30:00.001Z

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

2009-02-14T17:10:00.006Z

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

2009-02-06T12:34:00.002Z

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

2009-01-27T10:53:00.002Z

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

2009-01-15T12:49:00.003Z

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

2009-01-10T11:54:00.001Z

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

2008-12-31T11:50:00.001Z

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

2008-12-21T15:19:00.002Z

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

2008-12-10T15:19:00.001Z

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

2008-12-03T12:14:00.001Z

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

2008-11-22T11:32:00.001Z

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

2008-11-15T12:29:00.000Z

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

2008-11-06T11:25:00.005Z

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

2008-10-26T12:38:00.001Z

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

2008-10-16T10:26:00.001Z

[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

2008-10-06T10:45:00.003Z

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

2008-09-28T11:53:00.003Z

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

2008-09-20T11:18:00.002Z

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

2008-09-11T11:56:00.001Z

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

2008-09-03T15:48:00.001Z

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

2008-08-24T11:38:00.004Z

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

2008-08-14T11:12:00.005Z

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.

a broken rainbow

2008-08-04T11:40:00.003Z

[click to view detail]

it's the end of the world...

2008-07-24T14:47:00.002Z

…as I know it. It’s three minutes of footsteps laid on wood. It’s metal suspended and sending me out over the sand, over the water, away from the land.

A place where old women slump, deckchairs moulding their spines into perfect curves. Heads eaten by floppy cloth sunhats. Arms at rest on polyester laps. Each a mess of veins, a blue knotted net thrown over their bones to stop them from blowing away.

A place where men line the pier sides. Arms crossed on the top bar of the railings. Never content to sit, they always pace or stand or lean. Silent and staring down to the water below. So blue today. Parallel bars of colour that deepen as they leave the sand behind.

And down below gulls dot the border water. Walking in and out of the fluffy ripples. Pecking and poking. And almost looking like they might grab the edge with their beaks and with a little teamwork fight the tide and drag the blue back up the beach.

all in all

2008-07-12T11:49:00.001Z

(further impressions of my Friday night friend)

She loved men as if they were walls. Dressed in shades of height and presence, when they dreamed they dreamed of solidity and dimension. They promised welcome containment - offered boundaries to stop her drifting apart and away. She’d tried ones made of glass in the past but they always broke too soon. The best ones cast shade and gave her something to lean against. Always welcome to someone so prone to sunburn. Their mood could turn unstable with little warning but their conversation was something to graze her knuckles or her forehead against if the mood took her. The ones she fell for were usually well built and fairly logical - made up of little repetitive parts that she could count and measure, take apart and put back together at her leisure. Which was something, and better than nothing.

gathering dust

2008-07-08T11:08:00.001Z

Just for one day I scare the skeletons away and reclaim the cupboards from no-mans-land. I sort through accumulated books and letters and cards. I dust off forgotten histories and polish flat packed promises.

I find his picture folded into a secret six - still tacky at the corners from where it used to cling to my wall. And I’ll never not be surprised at how quickly newspaper grows yellow and brittle with so little age. And on a paperback of the best known road trip I find a tea ring. The caffeine fingerprint of someone happy to deface. And then that battered Salinger - the one she left behind amid the heap of less obvious mess. Lost in her secretary chic and Friday night tangles, I wonder if she ever missed it?

I find French greetings and New York incoming flight numbers. Heavy goodbyes and fading Valentines. I read indistinct sentiment laid in bold black ink in a handwriting that used to be more familiar than my own. I discover teenage poems written ten years too late on airmail paper as if the words themselves carried too little weight. And a long gone song riddled with spelling mistakes and that is the least of its crimes.

just jack

2008-06-29T10:42:00.000Z

Jack came out of the box. He cursed in fluent Russian and bit me on the nose. He said he is claustrophobic, asthmatic and scared of the dark. All of which I should have known. He said he’ll never forgive me. Swore he’d never let me go. Threatened to tie me up with second-hand parcel string. Stick on an obsolete stamp. And post me to a country that no longer exits.

when

2008-06-22T09:51:00.001Z

When we’re aged angels. With these words written in the creases of our well-read faces. When our hair has fallen through too many shades of autumn and lies heaped beneath us, a knotted nest for our belated bones. When our gaze has cracked like china teacup sheen and all we see is sepia dreams. Of crosswords and washing machines. Then and only then.

baggage control

2008-06-14T15:07:00.004Z

A Case of Mistaken Identity

I look in the mirror and don’t like what I see. My eyes chipped, a handful of overplayed marbles. My lips ragged from caging criticism. My brows tangled, a magic forest keeping the princess in her tower. My upwardly mobile nose, ever sniffing for the next suspicion. I look in the mirror and I don’t like what I see. I don’t know you, do you know me?

A Case of Lost Property

I forgot to pick up my smile. I’d taken it off when I sat down to rest. I had a lot on my mind, if not on my face. It was starting to rain. I’d lost my shopping list, or it had lost me. Someone found the smile under the bench. A dog walking an old man. He handed it in to the police station. They noted it looked well used and a little worn. I never claimed it.

my favourite things

2008-06-09T11:19:00.003Z

Repetition comforts me. It always has. As a child I would gain hours of pleasure sorting beads or Lego bricks into piles according to colour and type. Then mixing them up and starting again. Far more fun than anything I might actually make from them. I’m the same now I’m nearly grown up. I think about some things over and over again. There are certain memory lanes that I never tire of visiting. And there are certain themes that reappear regularly in my writing. Because each time, I think I’ve spotted a new angle, a slant to the light that will throw sharper shadows and show me something I missed before.

After the rain I was pleased to see that our garden had made the most of the downpour. Each leaf had sorted the raindrops in its own unique way. Each greened backdrop displayed a different raindrop style. The ravenous arum encouraging every drop to slide toward its centre taking our gaze with it. The vibrant little fir who set up ladders for playful raindrops to tumble down. The nurturing sedum, cupping her hands to gather remote drops into pure glass chunks. And not forgetting the dark velvet garrya letting the shyest raindrops sit quiet in the shade.

- NOTICE -

2008-05-23T10:27:00.002Z

in parenthesis

2008-05-14T11:15:00.004Z

When I’m writing I put brackets around words I might omit. Those that might later disappear, or fall from the page. Those that add little to meaning, but take up precious ink in the process. Sometimes they prove themselves worthy and get to stay but mostly they fall by the wayside onto unfertile verges. I think it’s true that less is more.

And these days I wonder if I should bracket my spoken word too? Perhaps I should take a vow of silence. Perhaps I’d make more sense if I communicate in broken sign language and obscure charades. Perhaps people would listen more carefully, or take me more seriously.

artificial thistles

2008-05-04T11:01:00.001Z

Some days she feels she’s filled with thistles. A prickly mouthful of mispronounced words. Meaning comes last, sensation first.

Some days he’s looks like broken glass and smells like barbed wire. A bloody perimeter, and no-one gets in.

Some days she’s packed full of autumns. Boots tramping brittle leaves. Bonfires flicker and snap and crack.

Some days he’s a walking spelling mistake. Well intended but poorly translated.

Some days I taste like pins but sing a song of threadless needles.

the final countdown

2008-04-29T10:49:00.000Z

Time flies. Day follows day. Each the same shape. Each the same taste. My days are numbered. So are yours. But I won’t bow down to calendar convention. I choose to rename and reclaim my days. (I’m humming ‘My Way’). I recreate days of meaning and mayhem. Each stand a little taller this way.

one is company

2008-04-18T11:38:00.002Z

Recent sunshine has lured me to the seafront. Surrounded by my pens and papers I am content to while away a quiet afternoon. Others would not have it so. On my next seaside afternoon I intend to erect the following sign beside me…

outward bound

2008-04-12T10:54:00.003Z

Books. I don’t just read them, I think about them too. I fantasise and criticise and fall a little in or out of love each time. I wonder what it means that the bedroom is where the bookshelves live whereas the study is wall to wall music. One wakes me up and while the other keeps me warm at night. Sleeping soundly beneath a blanket of words and waking to a concentration of sound.

I think about the books I part with, sent on their way, to travel to another pair of waiting hands, who welcome them, and give them a roof over their papery heads. I wonder what they leave behind once they’re gone. Not so many new words these days, not so many new ideas. But perhaps a few new questions and a clearer idea about the kind of book I don’t want to write.

And with them they take my fingerprints and my dust. Perhaps a hair caught between their pages, a scent of certain soap or sunlight from time spent on table or lawn. Maybe the footprints of a money spider that passed by. Or the aftertaste of a dream from where the book lay by the bed on a darker than average night. A nail mark on a page where I gripped too tight or a tiny tear on one turned too fast. Or a heavy breath sunk into a sentence that I had to stop and read again. And again.

If books could speak, the stories they would tell.

losing faith

2008-04-07T10:50:00.001Z

She’s stopped praying. Stopped holding her hands together and closing her eyes. Stopped bruising her knees for you. She's loathed to waste precious breath on anything other than blue balloons. For every wasted wish she ties another knot in her hair. She saves graces in the cutlery drawer. She’s making a stainless steel nest, so she’ll never have to fly again. She’s polishing tomorrow and trying to keep out of the rain.

confessions #6 & #7

2008-03-30T11:50:00.004Z

a post easter post

2008-03-30T11:35:00.002Z

I eat bitter diamonds laced with lime and shot through with vodka too. They look like they have been stolen from the back of a clever snake. They look like the eyes of evil queens. They taste like they should be toxic. They taste like they should cast a spell. Those who know me know I like it this way.

crawling out from under the weather

2008-03-26T12:20:00.001Z

Lines scribbled on the twentieth of two days later -

It’s only when things go wrong that you notice your body. The rest of the time you are unconscious of your component parts and how they work.

But now my ribcage feels like a cage. A rusty one. With bars that brown and flake and threaten to crack. That bend and bow and moan as I lean against them trying to escape my monster cellmate.

And my lungs feel like dry bellows. Riddled with holes and drying glue and useless. A collapsed accordion in the hands of a tone deaf musician. I whistle the introduction and he wheezes his way through a lament to lost days.

haiga #13

2008-03-17T12:02:00.004Z

punch drunk promises

2008-03-14T12:38:00.004Z

I don't often speak to prompts but sometimes they speak to me. Letting them roost in the margin helps - I'm a firm believer in peripheral vision. And so Monday shakes hands with Thursday to give you...

[click to view detail]

wake to watch and blink away

2008-03-08T13:22:00.009Z

Without a sound. That was how it happened. How it arrived. Like pieces of clouds fallen down. Like crowds of snowflakes clinging together for warmth.

quiet morning -
blood-speck confetti
in the flowerbeds

Fur that looked like feathers or feathers that looked like fur. White among the green. Macabre blooms on a thursday. White among the grey. A bad start to the day. Remains of skin and absence of life. All shape and sense stripped clean away.

fox kill
white fur scattered
in the sun

Blinding white collected and consigned to black plastic burial. Bloodless. Nameless. Movement reduced to prey.

give me your blue rain

2008-03-03T10:56:00.004Z

I got two new notebooks for Christmas. I decided to try something different - to let the notebook dictate the nature of the writing within. One of the books is the beautiful Colors Journal. The matt black covers bind a wild and wonderful paper rainbow - with each day offering a word ripe for prompting. I dip into this pot as and when, and these are a few of the recent results.

[click to view detail]

sweet dreams

2008-02-23T12:38:00.001Z

She used to make me sleep with teeth under my pillow. And not just my own. Not just the milk ones that fell out of their own accord. She would find them, collect them, borrow them or buy them. Dog teeth, sheep teeth - bartered from the butcher. The teeth of other children that she saw fall during rough games at the playground. Fairy teeth that she plucked while they lay sleeping soundly in the sun-drowned flower beds.

A sprinkle of enamel every night. Sometimes a double dose beneath two pillows - plumped and stuffed full of feathers I laid down. But I still felt them nibbling and nipping. Sometimes I would wake with ragged earlobes and a bloody nose. Sometimes there were holes in my dreams big enough to poke your head through.

On my birthday one year she gave me a tooth of her own. She snapped it off with her sharpened tongue and spat it right into my palm. She told me to suck it. Ordered me to enjoy. I told her it tasted like violets, but her eyes looked like thunderclouds.

the history of love

2008-02-13T17:01:00.007Z

[a list inspired by the title of a novel by Nicole Krauss]

is rotting in an unmarked grave

is chequered never polka dots

is a pillaged shipwreck

is second-hand

is a riddle on the tongue of the dumb

is growing paler by the day

is 17 syllables scribbled onto a folded playing card

is largely written in invisible ink

is a rhymers paradise

is a hurricane in a feather factory

is cause to carry an umbrella

is a unnamed god in an unlabelled bottle

is a secret splinter

is a ruptured aorta

is unpunctuated

is borrowed from a travelling library

is littered with broken lightbulbs

is stuck together with fairy glue

collected cobwebs

2008-02-13T16:48:00.005Z

[a few dusty relics that need to be aired]

If I lived in an abandoned lighthouse I’d use it as a personal sundial. I’d watch the giant finger of shade swing through three hundred and sixty degrees. Catching all the little creatures in their sunny stride. Throwing autumn back to the trees. Spotting the difference between those who told the truth and those who lied.

- - - - -

There were veins in the flowers they gave her - red running lightly through yellow. There were veins running through the people she loved too - knotted and bottled and sometimes blue. There were dark threads between her days - tying morning to evening, night to day. She knew if she lost her pocket scissors she lost her way.

- - - - -

It wasn’t the book that smelled musty like the face of the woman on the cover. It was memory, waiting in the afternoon air for someone to catch it. The smell of seventeen and those paper cups with the orange powder within. The vending machine drinks he claimed he was addicted to. The way they stacked together, each fitted into the next like a paper spinal column. Infinity came easily those days. Bitter and sweet at the same time.

- - - - -

He uses a trolley on wheels. Tilts it back to move them about. Fridges and freezers and washing machines. All sealed within plastic sheeting with polystyrene corners. He shifts them about to a pattern only he knows. White blocks of differing dimensions. Perhaps he wants to build an igloo - one that will only grow cold when he plugs it in.

haiga #11 & #12

2008-02-07T13:17:00.002Z

digitally enhanced

2008-01-31T14:54:00.001Z

[random thoughts about fingers and toes]

Everybody’s talking about sock puppets. But they unnerve me. Such knitted snakery and lack of limbs. Buttoned eyes that never blink. They make you think you are the one in control, the one working them - but they have already devoured half your arm. And now they are quietly conspiring with your lower limbs. Dropping stitches like secret hints. They plan to have your feet for tea.

- - - - -

Crossing my fingers doesn’t amount to much. But it’s better than nothing. Better than closing my eyes. Better than a sentence that starts with a full stop. Better than a year of absent thinking and a French introduction. A tidy riddle and a dirty exclamation.

- - - - -

They count to ten. Over and over. Everyday. Just to say they are doing something. Making progress on fingers and toes. Forty between them, but they never get beyond ten. Always holding hands. Always walking backwards.

sitting pretty

2008-01-22T10:49:00.001Z

(not exactly a short story but a short something)

(inspired by a post on Sarah’s Writing Journal)

It’s hard to find the perfect bench. One that fits, that suits mood and persuasion. One that encourages the right words onto your page.

Some benches are always in the sun and some prefer the shade. Words written here may bristle with goose-bumps, or burn with rage. There are benches that face the sea, that make you sway and spin stories about drowned gods and fish that dream they can fly. Some face the swings and the slide, and make for playful verses filled with colour and rhythm and rhyme. Some benches have names, dedications to the deceased. Beware of these loud benches, over-owned and all too keen to whisper ghost secrets into your ear.

Sometimes it’s safer to sit alongside, X-legged and lower down. Cross cut by striped shadows of arm and back. A friend of a bench.

It’s always raining these days, and I can’t remember the last time I visited my benches. I need to do a tour, to check they are all still there. Weathering this winter. Peeling and patient.

one by one

2008-01-17T13:25:00.000Z

There is something I can’t resist about those cut and paste death threats and murder confessions. Words in different fonts and colours stuck in lines onto a blank page and all the rage in cheap thrillers and the 1970’s. So much more artful than just trying to disguise your handwriting.

I always wanted to have cause to create one - and I know a friend who indulges from time to time. It’s something we could all benefit from - carrying a small satchel stuffed full of words clipped and culled along the way. Ripe to be sprinkled, literate confetti on a windy day. We should all carry little silver scissors - ready to snip at each others conversations and tear holes in our confessions - stealing the parts we like and rearranging them our own way.

But there’s more to it than that. It’s something about spelling out anything that carefully - as if the process forces a stronger focus on each individual word or letter, making you think more about what you are saying, making you more connected to the essential way that language is built within the human mind.

And I just got myself a post Christmas treat - a letter printing set, a grown up version of one I had as a kid. I remember the little rubber letters, lining them up in the holder. And I’m still thrilled at picking the letters out one by one, slowly watching my words form, and remembering to write everything backwards. Perhaps that is the ultimate key - that anything you say is stronger if it makes sense both ways round.

over the hills

2008-01-10T15:24:00.000Z

two moons, one me

2008-01-08T12:22:00.000Z

[inspired by the latest prompt at one deep breath]

A slightly different take on the theme this week as I have chosen to focus my attention on moons captured by pen and paper.

Two haiku - the first inspired by a piece of art that has hung in my bedroom for many years, the second by a friend who has hung around for nearly as long.

The Weary Moon by Edward Robert Hughes

at the foot
of my bed - a moon
that never fades

she sent a postcard
of the moon - promising
to visit soon

a new complaint

2008-01-03T12:14:00.000Z

Plus one on the calendar and its out with the old, in with the new. A Christmas treasure given to me by you. A dragon scale, a petal from a petrified flower. A mantra repeated hour after hour.

A lack of space - something has to go. A heart shaped box - kept beside my bed, for thirteen years or thereabouts, since the days when those three words still meant something. And hidden within - a lighter, free with tokens on cigarette packets, from when I had nothing better to do than smoke. Two herbal throat sweets and one white pill. Three buttons - two black, one white (ownership unknown). One tarnished silver earring (ownership known). A little white crystal, quite possibly of magic origin. And a perfume sample that she says smells like rosemary while I disagree.

And something secret - something treasured that now needs to be set free, thrown away or returned to the sea.

so far so good

2007-12-31T11:36:00.000Z

7 days under my ever-changing sky

today the sky is usual blue, from left to right but cut in two by a plane line. straight down the middle, north to south, then slowly dissipating, growing woozy as it slips westwards

today the sky is contradictory - it has fallen out with itself. shattered lines drag on from others, some dark, some bright, some fluffy with delight, some blooming with desire to ruin your day

today the sky is flat and lower than it should be - I have to stoop as it swoops down and knocks the top off my head - I should have stayed in bed

today the sky is hazy, not as hot as yesterday but reconciled to its rightful place. no clouds, no breaks in the colour, no pace, no space - in short a lot like me

today my eyes watch the sky - two rings of a colour no-one can quite describe - mostly blue but now and then a curl of white wing slides into view - silent and true

today the sky is a grey betrayal - a let down after a long held promise of something better - an echo of all we leave behind and a warning of what waits behind the door at the end of the hall

today the sky is a pedestal we try to climb, safe holding onto the lifeline of her hair. the sky is a secret only making sense within the half-light of my dreams, an eternity that welcomes screams

forty winks

2007-12-22T17:56:00.000Z

For the boy who collects shadows. Who traps them in a net he weaved from seaweed he caught himself. Who hangs them out to dry on a washing line on a day where the sun won’t shine. Who presses them flat beneath a pile of books filled with heavy words. Who seals them in blue glass jars and shakes them daily to see if they still hum. Who folds them into little balls and hides them beneath his tongue, and never speaks with a mouth full. Who sews them into the soles of his socks and tries to squash them when he runs.

raindrops on roses

2007-12-16T15:11:00.002Z

I’ve been reading Three Beautiful Things for a while now and I’m regularly surprised at how much beauty Clare finds in her everyday life. I think my eyes were calibrated differently, set to a lower frequency, tending to the grey.

I encounter things I find striking, bizarre, shocking, bemusing and sometimes even mildly pleasing - but rarely beautiful. Nevertheless, I pick up these pieces and make them into something new. As my old friend Elliot would say - ‘these fragments I have shored against my ruins’.

Last week I offered up a blast from the past, this week a few fragments from the last week -

Many people say that putting up their Christmas tree is an annual occasion for frowns, frayed nerves, bitten lips and crossed words. But not here, not today. And I wonder why? are we so different? so much fitter happier more productive? or perhaps we just have greater perspective, about ourselves and our tree. Its a little pyramid of lights in the corner of one room. That’s all. Its not a test of perfection, of evenly spaced reflections. Not an indicator of how well our Christmas will go or how much we care about it or each other. Its just a few extra glimmers in another night together.

...

As she opens the door to leave a ghost of the cold morning enters to take her place.

...

Twinkles reflect in the windows, multiplying all by themselves until tree-light stars form new constellations.

...

As he tells me how he took a few days away, changed his number, changed his locks - I think how much harder it is to change your mind, admit you’re wrong and leave the past behind.

...

A knock on wood, a bump in the night - tart ripeness flung from green - a yellow present on the window sill - the ongoing revelations of my lemon tree.

dusted thoughts

2007-12-09T12:42:00.001Z

I’ve kept a notebook for at least ten years. Most days I lower something onto its pages - but I rarely look back through them. Today I thought I would. I pulled one at random from the shelf. A blue bound 2003. It seemed that on that 9^th December I didn’t have much of interest to share - just something about wanting to ‘wear my wooden wings’ and mountains and rivers and French kissing.

But 9 days later I tried to write a poets review of the year. These are the edited highlights -

January - round the bend, take me with you, call me when you get there and tomorrow we’ll cut your hair. February - and we can’t be truly human till we wake with water lilies on a breakfast tray. March - finds thoughts of love and death and god and the sea and sky and familiarity. April - leaves miracles and tricks of the mind, stick a pin through anything you find. May - we’re out-running clouds but the pictures on my wall never move for me. June - you drove us to the town of Do Something, but there was no-one home. July - you live on tip-toes, you changed all the light bulbs and barely had to stretch. August - let’s leave the bored games at home this time. September - honesty is the hardest stone to carry hidden in your palm. October - then comes the sorry, I’m shit, the is it too late? do you hate me? bit. November - we stayed up till 4am and you wore you hair down for the first time this year. December - a pale imitation of a worthwhile week, excuses run through the grass, wet and sleek.

That doesn’t make much sense to me now, I wonder if it did then? Perhaps this confusion is why its important to live in the present tense. Time to come back to the future. Home to now.

the spice of life

2007-12-02T13:10:00.001Z

I am ginger. A kiss to keep you warm, or a promise to settle your stomach on a long bus journey. Just like a lie I can burn if you hold me under your tongue for too long. I’m content to be right but happy to be wrong.

I can dress in a spicy suit or recline in sweet robed luxury. You can boil me hard as candy or drown me in dark chocolate pools of wisdom. I can be ground to powder brown, or sucked straight from the stem, splinters and all. I will take your message but won’t return your call.

I am ginger. Or so she said yesterday, but perhaps today she would disagree. Perhaps today I am Darjeeling eyes lost in the land of black pepper trees.

the heart of glass

2007-11-25T11:54:00.000Z

A few years ago I claimed that 'reflection is overrated'. In part I take that back.

Lately I’ve been drawn in by the union of images that take place within sheets of glass. Mirrors are monogamous, they hold only one thing in mind at any time and think most highly of themselves. Whereas windows are gluey - constantly craving to stick things together in shiny collages.

Sadly I don’t have the photographic ability or equipment to properly capture these moments - and I don’t have much skill with a sharpened pencil either - so I'll have to make do with a few words - scattered and rearranged on the page and hoping to convey these momentary conjunctions.

what was lost

2007-11-18T12:48:00.002Z

[a list inspired by the title of a novel by Catherine O’Flynn]

a silver ring set with a red stone - a blue military style jacket - a bucket full of memory - the first Feeder album - unbroken skin - the girl in the paddling pool - the smile in the plastic racing car - three months in the summer of 1993 - 8 years give or take - the taste of Malibu - your middle name - unquestioned trust - the desire for great heights - self censorship - the one who walks in the snow - a real wood floor - the lost boys - a duck and a bear - milk teeth - the desire to dye my hair - a pen that wrote with pale grey ink - your untorn first letter to me - our dogwood - a blonde hair halo - belief in the mythology of Father Christmas / Jesus Christ / The Queen (delete as desired) - a handful of Friday nights and Saturday mornings - the boy with the whitest smile - the cover of my first copy of ‘Dracula’ - our get out clauses - those amber incense cones - the child with the faraway eyes - the flexibility of youth - the need to write neatly - living anywhere above the ground floor - the chance to start again

haiga #10

2007-11-15T16:22:00.001Z

haiga #9

2007-11-12T19:08:00.001Z

[inspired by the latest prompt at one deep breath]

confessions #4 and #5

2007-11-10T12:30:00.001Z

penny for your thoughts

2007-11-05T17:15:00.000Z

some girls

2007-10-30T12:36:00.000Z

Sometimes surrounded by girls wearing curls. Knowing they made it that way with all their twisting twisted twister thoughts. Darkness spinning within. All distant relatives of the Medusa - snakes on high ground, twirling and crowned. Reptile frowned.

And some I like and some I don’t. The girls I like have warm snakes dancing around their faces, snakes that smile from laying in the sun. Snakes who want to chat, and sing and drink gin. And the bad girls? well, their snakes are pencil thin, with teeth of rusty nails. They snip and tear and whisper secret poisoned berries with bitter pips within.

mixed metaphors

2007-10-25T14:43:00.000Z

I salute the goddesses of good luck when I find the postcard - the picture that started the misunderstanding that gave him the nickname we now know him by - I didn’t know I’d missed it, but I know I miss you

I used to list words - no meaning needed - just for their sound or the patterns they made on the page - like a child builds a tower of blocks only to knock it down and start again

its not that I’m ungrateful or unable to appreciate beauty - but its true that the carnations fascinate me as much, if not more, now they are dead - crisp rustles as I touch and the smell of deep dark dank forgotten bottoms of lost ponds - faded relics of who they once were with weird white worms emerging from one - almost as if it was trying to eat itself, one last brittle supper

hands wrinkled by water - as if my fingertips are trying to fold in on themselves and disappear - as if they want to resign their uniqueness and keep me hidden

woodpigeons walk lines back and forth across our overgrown lawn - like little forensic men - careful footsteps - heads up, heads down - searching for evidence - tasty treats hidden between stemmed green

haiga #8

2007-10-16T11:34:00.002Z

haiga #7

2007-10-16T11:25:00.002Z

better best forgotten

2007-10-12T15:02:00.000Z

Wednesday. The first face of the morning is the face of the missing. Not my missing but yours. We all have one, tucked away somewhere - at the back of a cupboard, bottom of a pocket, boot of a car. A certain someone - gone but not forgotten.

And those clever people who live inside the computer have used their digital imagination to spin a spell of zeros and ones. To show us how someone might now look - if we turned a corner and found them back from the dead, standing, smiling in a patch of sunlight, dug up from the bottom of the lost property box.

It’s a game we can all play with our missing. It’s make believe and re-draw the picture how it might have been. It’s fold the corners and crumple the edges, fade the colours and bruise belief. It’s smudge the smile and place coffee cup rings around the eyes.

And however well you play, it all turns out the same - a thumbnail image of someone you never knew - who day by day grows to look a lot like you.

the one that got away

2007-10-07T14:01:00.000Z

[an anniversary message from me and my blog]

Last Friday, walking home from the supermarket, down the ramp into the subway under the big road. An onion overtook us. We stopped for a moment, slightly stunned. And then gave chase. It was our onion you see, fallen through a hole in our carrier bag. We only caught up with it at the bottom of the ramp, once it had stopped its escape attempt. These days even the vegetables outrun us.

Two years on and I’m still writing here, still chasing the impossible - and you are still reading and sometimes chasing with me. For that I thank you.