pieces of eight

Thanks to dandelion for inviting me to share 8 largely unimportant facts about myself. As is the nature of the impossible, the rules got washed away, so my round of the game both begins and ends here.

- the first three posters I remember having on my bedroom wall were of Shakin’ Stevens, the Pink Panther smoking a cigarette and a butterfly identification wall chart. I still retain at least a passing interest in all three subjects.

- I most resemble my mother in looks but my father in thoughts. (Those who know me may disagree). I’m happy with it this way, but it would be fun to swap for one day.

- my first adult attempt at creative writing started when I was in hospital in 1995 and I wrote a poem about the floor. It wasn’t very good, trying too hard to be Jim Morrison, but everyones got to start somewhere.

- I adore tessellation. I can stare for ages at a wall, awed at the way the bricks fit together. Hence the haiku that features in the very first post on this blog and the background imagery.

- I wrote my degree dissertation on images of childhood in advertising. I don’t care much for children, and haven’t really thought about them since.

- I once said I would marry anyone who liked parma violet sweets. I have since changed my mind. Both about the sweets and about marrying.

- I like snakes but I’m terrified of watersnakes. And inanimate objects portrayed in animated ways make me very nervous (I think this began with watching Disneys ‘The Sorcerors Apprentice’)

- my blogger avatar is a photo I took of a hook high up on the east side of our house. Its there, for no reason, nothing hangs on it, its just there.

thinking aloud #1

those creatures

[limited observation of girls both known and unknown]

She still slides an extra syllable into your name. A rising inflection that brings you into question and out of focus. You should be short and sharp - a knock on wood, a nail banged firm to hang my hope on.

----

There she is with her eyes drawn on. Doodled and downcast. Coloured in and crossed out. Practice makes perfect makes sense. Looking from the past to the present. Tense. As if she expects me to join in, join the dots - to play a round of have and have nots.

----

She whispers. Its not about the words but the breaths between. Held too long or exhaled too late. The fish wont always take the bait. Its not about the things you said, but about the lies you ate.

----

I gave her back the smile. I have no need for it anymore, and its started to annoy me. Velcro greeting and tacky goodbyes. Always gathering dust and sticking to the sole of my shoe. I need a mouth that plays by the rules - that talks when its open and not when its locked.

writing wrongs

I hoard post-it notes, reminders of things to do, things to avoid. They patchwork the bony walls of my mind. A small clutch of these refer to the act of writing in itself. I recently read a passionate blogpost on the nature of comment and criticism. In the subsequent comment discussion I made the throwaway suggestion that perhaps bloggers should display a button or banner to indicate the type of comment they welcome. This discussion set some of those post-it notes aflapping, and demanding fuller attention. So now, as I share a few of my thoughts about writing, please accept this as my banner.

(DISCLAIMER - as is apparent, these thoughts come in no particular order, they do not attempt to form a cohesive manifesto regarding blog based writing. They should be read only with reference to blogs that present creative writing, not journal diary based blogs etc.)

I believe that all writing is many things. It means something to itself. It means something to its author. It means something different to each and every reader and may change drastically through time and distance. Some of the relationships between author and piece will be favourable and friendly, some not. The same goes for the meeting between reader and piece.

I write because there are words dancing within me, and I might act a little peculiarly if I don’t let them out. They dance merrily in my notebooks, but tend to spill onto the floor. If I post them here, it gives them a moment of limelight and equally allows me to choreograph them a little. I write everyday. I would write if there was a powercut. If the World Wide Web got swept away by a giant broom in the World Wide Springclean I would still write. I sometimes write for prompt based sites as an exercise for that day. However I fear that there are people who believe they are writers merely because they bounce their way from prompt to prompt through the days of the week. That’s not the life for me my friend. But I wobble on an over-oiled seesaw on this one. Part of me encourages anything that encourages people to write. But part of me despairs at wading through so much chaff to stumble upon the occasional wordy wheat. But I am happy to feast on those that I have found.

Anything I post on my blogs is considered a work in progress, because I believe nothing is ever truly finished, finalised, perfect. No-one, however esteemed, educated, famous or infamous can grant a gold seal to my writing. They can just offer comment or criticism based on their own experience, skill and interest. All comment and criticism is valued - even if it is harsh - as long as it is made thoughtfully and eloquently and with valid reference to the piece. Nothing I post on my blogs is too precious or close to my heart to stand up to criticism. If it is then I shouldn’t have posted it here. I should have left it safely sleeping in the shoebox I keep hidden under my heart.

Much of the content of my writing is inspired by my everyday life. Much of it isn’t. Hopefully I have blurred the line sufficiently that you can tell which is which. I like to light fuses to thoughts liable to offend many. But when I post I try to blanket them in folds that soften the blow. I don’t want to start wars. I don’t want to lose more friends than I already have.

A final thought on COMMENT MODERATION. When I read those words I sometimes shiver. They tend to try to anagram themselves into CENSORSHIP ENABLED. I remind myself of the necessity to curb idle advertisers and net nutters but I cant help worry that some people may use them as a filter to allow through only comments that bless and never those that bruise.

Thank you for tolerating this extended ramble, normal service will resume shortly.

never more than seven

We are paper people, made from mashed up trees. Once we reached for the sky, but now we lie side by side and flattened. We carry truths that could make the world turn in reverse. We mention that you need to buy some milk. We fold to keep our secrets within. Or live bold lives with letters scarred across our skins, bearing messages of love or hate or everything in between. We fold into flightless cranes or lotus flowers that never see the sun. We are kept close at hand. To refer, remember, remind. Rewind. We are crumpled and flung, torn and burned. We are left in the rain, to grow thin and indistinct - edging close to pulpy surrender.

a long way down

She had always wanted to join them, high in the sky hopes and all. She said she dreamed the same dreams, schemed the same schemes. And at first all seemed well. She talked the talk, she squawked the squawk - and they even forgave her when she didn’t know the truth about bluebirds. But while ignorance is bliss, bad birds must be punished.

And yesterday the eagles passed judgement. They took her up to the top of the tallest tree to remind her of the rules of the game. They said you mustn’t use your feathers as weapons. They should lift you high, and let you see the world laid out below, all gameboard smiles. They said feathers are light, but sharp too. They should be used to draw comparisons, and sometimes even conclusions, but never to draw blood.

Yesterday the eagles passed judgement. They plucked 180 feathers from her wings and sent her down to live out life on the ground.

piece signs

I’m prone to ramble in those little comments boxes. This will not come as news to those people I visit regularly. But this is the first time a comment has grown into a post of its own. When I saw this recent image in the box of delights that is grey dandelion feather, my mind went into flood alert.

I'm not religious, but certain scraps of christianity come together when I see this. The shroud of turin, stained with the blood of the crucifixion. Warnings about original sin, and the spilled juice of the first forbidden fruits.

I see innocence. But innocence lost, or innocence stolen never to be returned to its rightful owner. Kissed laid gently on skin that never sees the light of day. A well intentioned touch that burns and leaves a scar.

I picture a beautiful woman walking through the sun, fan in hand, caught in a downpour - washed suddenly from youth to old age.

I’ve said too much, I haven’t said enough. But I’ll stop, and leave some breath left in the room for you to make of this picture whatever you will.

for the restless

The following letter was found under a dented pillow in an empty bed. Folded and refolded and faint with age. Over the years the ink has seeped through the pillowcase, infusing each and every feather, eventually passing through to mark the skin of the sleeper. Should you encounter this person, who you will surely recognise, please tell them they have lost their letter.

negligence #1

I hear a chainsaw slicing through the breeze. Sharp against the edges of the morning. A sound disembodied from its owner. By a wall, taller than me, or a me smaller than the wall. They’re cutting down the ghosts in the graveyard, my dear.

The ghost of trees grown too big for their roots. Or their boots. Their footsteps set to disturb the ancient sleepers, grown mossy from too much dreaming. Chiselled names faded, memories ivy-strung and jaded. They’re cutting down the ghosts in the graveyard, my dear. And you don’t care.

hand in glove

The other week I had a thought about a childs glove dropped in the snow. Colour sudden amid absence of colour. A knitted hand unravelled from its owner. I wondered if the child lost the glove or if the glove lost the child. I cant recall where this thought came from - like the glove I am well worn and am often losing my threads.

Then yesterday I saw a cigar dropped in the street, still in its plastic wrapper. And I wondered again. About the cigar, and the smoker. I wondered if it was meant as a celebratory cigar, to mark the birth of a baby. A baby never born, hence the drop. The child never grown up to wear the glove found in last weeks thought snow.

Unanswerable questions. Time now to drop this train of thought and let it lie buried as more snow falls, unlikely but not impossible in June. Maybe I will rediscover it come thaw. Maybe it will have grown into a glove tree, blooming with new girls to wear new gloves. Maybe they can tell me where the thought came from, and more importantly why it came to me.

reading the tea leaves

Once upon a time I used to care about numbers. It mattered how many times the bell above the door rang to say that a customer had come into my shop of second-hand thoughts and lovingly refurbished ideas. But that doesn’t matter much any more. Now I smile when familiar faces place their footprints on the welcome mat, when they buy an antique smile or a battered hat.

But I’m still fascinated by the signposts that strangers follow to get here. Because as we know this little shop isn’t clear on the maps, and permanent ink never does what it claims to. So people gaze deep into their teacups and see the fortunes the leaves spell out to them - sometimes the message is clear, and those people end up here.

Recently someone called in the hope of finding ‘how do you loop jelly bracelets on your wrist’ - sadly I have no idea, although I’m sure it’s a useful skill to know. Another came looking for ‘Tales from the Rainbowed Seas’ - but I was all out of stories that day and even my poems were coming through in black and white. Lots of people seem interested in the path ‘through boredom into fascination’ - and so am I, but I’m still perfecting my route. And someone unnerved me a little by looking for something that says ‘Horror is important. It reminds you that you can bleed. It scares the life out of you just to show you how safe y…’ which is strangely familiar, in fact I’m sure its something I said once before. But it seems like some nasty creature, hungry for overblown words, ate that traveller before they arrived, so we’d best keep our voices down.

Once upon a time my signpost was newly painted and the destinations clear. But the weather came and flaked the paint and made some of the letters disappear. For the record, I gave up travelling when I learned to walk - I gave up praying when I learned to talk. But if I can make a pilgrimage then my holyland is beckoning - and its a place of shadows and spotlights with shabby gods dressed in unlikely suits. And for nothing more than the hymns we sing its worth abandoning without and stepping within.

broken windows

[click to view]

with wings on our feet

I have the smallest feet of anyone I know. I have feet like a birds. Feet like a babies. I have feet like creatures with too many feet to count - where each does a tiny percentage of the work of an average foot. Feet like a water strider, designed to do a jesus dance on the surface of a still pond.

I barely make a sound when I walk, even with my big black boots on. I don’t disturb the dust as I spin in your corners. And you’d hardly know I was passing through, apart from the stop-start buzzing of my thoughts.

When I walk in the rain the drops don’t try to move out of the way like they do for you. Even if I throw myself against them with all force they wont mind, they wont be bruised.

I can climb leaves as if they were ladders, even when they are brittle with autumn surrender. I can tightrope my way across the ceiling using a spiders web, and never look down. I can stand upon your head and you would just think thoughts a little darker from the shadow I cast.

colour is its own reward

Some of the things we were taught at school that seem quite incredible now. Like the lessons about what to do in case of a nuclear attack. How to store tinned foods and make shelters using doors and mattresses. All the symptoms of radiation sickness we were introduced too. I feel out of time - as if I grew up in war time, or in some far flung future. Or maybe it was just the curriculum in my village!

But I remember it cropping up in film and television too. Small talk about powerful men with their fingers hovering over the big red button. I always worried that they might slip or sneeze or have a bad day and launch missiles without really meaning too.

I thought I didn’t have to worry as much these days. Till I realise that now we all have a button. And its probably right beside you now, to your right or possibly your left. It still only needs the press of one finger or possibly a thumb. Its missiles are more varied but no less dangerous. Gambling, buying, selling, investing, chatting, dating, emailing. You name it, you can launch it. All those ‘are you sure’, ‘click to confirm’, ‘proceed’ boxes blinking and begging for detonation. So next time you prepare to click, take a second to think what reaction you are setting in motion before you press that button.

tread softly

I recently watched a programme called The Human Footprint. It offered visual reconstructions of my wildest dreams and my worst nightmares. It also clarified one big reason why I regularly feel at odds with my world.

Apparently in the UK 3% of the population cannot read at all. But more worrying is that 40% can but choose not to read. And worst of all, more households own 2 cars than 2 novels.

Based on these statistics they calculated that the average citizen would use the equivalent of 24 trees to manufacture their lifetime reading needs.

On average I digest about 50 books a year - so I guess I will destroy way more trees than most people. This is not good - I love reading, but I love trees too. But I guess I can take solace in the fact that I am a great recycler of books.

Books are beautiful when they are new, crisp clean tight white pages held firm in unbroken covers. But somehow they are even better when they come with a history. With other readers thumbprints laid gently on the edges of the pages, other peoples exclamations and sighs tickling the margins. Their bindings a little looser from the distances they have travelled. Their corners a little bent from the spaces they have jammed into. (and what goes for books also goes for people - I prefer recycled friends)

And then I realise its not just books I love to recycle. Its their components too. Playing anagram games with letters - the taste of tongue twisters. Stirring words to make new sentences from old recipes. Mix and match questions and answers - a game of snap played by the wrong rules, where you cant cheat but you always win.

back to neverneverland

Maybe the lack of April showers is letting our minds grow dusty - but there seems to be a lot of people suffering from the Tinkerbell Effect at the moment. Don’t laugh, its real, it must be because it even has a Wikipedia entry. Albeit a slender one - defining it as ‘those things that exist only because people believe in them’.

And its all around me. Its there when she says she wont throw it away, because it once meant so much - a souvenir from another day. Even though he said it tarnished long ago - and anyway, he always preferred the pea-green boat to the runcible spoon. A fairy tale postcard brought home from a pick and mix honeymoon.

Its there when he says he has seen the future. An amateur fortune teller with a mirrorball. And so she walks in the direction of his pointed finger - out onto the water - despite the holes in her feet where the rusty nails went in. And she still believes the only way is up when there is so far to fall, because there’s no choice when the autumn leaves don’t return your call.

adrift in a world of my own

I always wear the wrong costume. When I am meant to be playing the part of the philosopher - having pulled that dusty cloak from the fancy dress box - I get weighed down by my concrete boots. And when I am quill in hand pretending to be the poet, I am adorned in an array of abstract feathers.

So earlier this week, I sat down to write about bridges. Wanting to wield words to build solid sentences. To show others the bridges I have seen and the streams I have crossed. But as ever I drifted away on an abstract tide - always headed for the sea.

I thought about the postcard I had as a child - an elongated image of the Golden Gate Bridge. Looking like the land at the end of the rainbow, before I realised that the only place a rainbow leads is round the bend. I thought about bridges built of hopes and fears - wasted wishes scribbled onto faded playing cards. I thought of you stood high and mighty, casting off your shadow to walk lighter into another future, further into an unwritten past. I thought about fish tanks and river banks and Winnie-the-Pooh. I thought about two of her and two of him and only ever one of me.

mixing memory and desire

Last week she gave me flowers. She knows the power of the petal to brush away the clouds that can gather in a week where everyday is everyday.

Amid the crush of carnations and chrysanthemums stood three gerbera. Proud to be lifted straight from a childs painting of the perfect flower. Burning bright with innate vividity (if its not a word then it should be).

But within two days two had drooped. Bowed down and stooped under their own weight. But not a weight of grammes or eighths of ounces - a weight of colour. Over saturated by the depth of their own orange nature.

And once again I learn a lesson from the quietest voices. That some people live gerbera lives. Doomed to demand attention, to strike the eye or the mind. To bloom bright but to fade fast. To fall to the floor too soon, too soon - before you even left the room.

confessions #1, #2 and #3

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message in a bottle

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to have and to hold

Sometimes I know what I want to say - I have my target clearly in sight, I take aim and fire my words home. But sometimes I like to roam - around the houses and through endless dictionaries. To let whatever comes come.

I like to keep up with the tales of the albatross girl. I see a little of me in her, a little of her in me. Me back when I still had a flicker of faith in something more than this, more than me. A time before my heart turned to gilded jade.

And she prompts me to return to questions long overgrown with the dust of incomprehension. And so I ponder what is truly worth its weight in gilded jade? Only something that you can carry in your hand. That you can find in a smoke filled room with your eyes closed. Or swim across a channel with it tight beneath your tongue. Only if its still there on a rainy morning after an endless night. Something no-one can steal, break or turn to dust. A thing that can carry on after you have turned the page, turned off the lights and gone home. If not all this and more then what?

midnight rambler

[with photographic thanks to dandelion]

No need to mourn. No need to shed idle tears. She is not gone. She is just forgotten. By others and lately by herself. Even time has moved on without her.

by her bed
the glass of water
gathers dust

No longer keen to rise from the nest she builds each night. Within this haven she can roam where she likes.

sheets become sea -
pillows billow
as sky

And with dreams like these who would ask her to wake?

tidal persuasion

Sometimes its like I have so many thoughts - one at least for every stone on this, my favourite, beach. Each unique and coloured to suit and begging to be picked up and cherished, taken home and kept on the mantelpiece for a week or two. But they never stay still, they rattle and sway. The waves sweep in and reorganise, deliver a few new, wash one or two away.

And as I gaze at these words that seem to make their own way across my page, out of the corner of my eye the waves come and go. And I start to feel a little dizzy. As if I am the one swaying - ebbing and flowing, coming and going.

And from up here - standing firm on concrete and painted iron, jutting out over water and stone. From up here the gulls rise from beneath me - leaping from shredded surf to intermittent blue. Sea to sky in one breath. And it feels like I am conducting them - directing a never-ending symphony of feather and beaded eye. Until a wing winks across the sun to remind me. Who am I to pretend to command something so supremely free?

filed notes #3

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cloud on my tongue

I dont know about you and your virtual arrangements. But I have a friendly frog who watches over this white-walled room that I built for myself. Call him the doorman, call him the guard. He sits and notes who comes in, who goes out and how long they linger for. He plays with numbers and leaves the words to me. He counts on his fingers and sometimes his toes.

He also observes which sign posts the people followed to find their way here. Sometimes our visitors come via wayward and winding routes. Some quite directly, like bullets from a friendly gun.

This week the frog and I shared a smile to see that one caller had come because they had dared to type a forbidden question into the ever inquisitive box. They had asked - 'why impossible to hold breath forever?’. A valid question and one we all ponder sometimes.

And the frog and I smile, and know that it is highly unlikely that they found their answer among these rooms. Instead they probably found themselves choking on our clouded questions. But just in case they call again, I’ll say that it isn’t impossible to hold your breath forever. You just have to believe.

the closest to heaven

I wake to a garden left two shades darker. Damp from a night-time visitor.

puddles
lay scattered -
I never see them arrive

Paper-made irises melt beneath the weight of water. Clumped and crushed they abandon faith in so-called spring. But their leaves never lose sight of their target. Throwing green lifelines straight up and out.

living lightning rods
channel raindrops
from sky to soil

Beckoning the clouds to come closer. Conducting the water that falls from on high. Directing each bead from tip to root. Feeding the need of their dry lipped greed. Sending hope to the hopeless.

[with photographic
thanks to dandelion]

to hope to be made happy

I am suspicious of love on the best of days, but sometimes its thrown about like so much confetti. White paper promises clouding the breeze, impairing the clarity of the view, and ultimately destined to clog the drains.

On days like these, days like today, the word is repeated so often it loses all meaning. It is reduced to a series of letters, or even less - to a series of shapes that barely recall what they used to represent.

The L becomes a corner, one fourth of nothing. A bookend without any books to prop. A right angle, but what about the wrong angles?

The O becomes a frame around a picture torn from view. A black hole. A mirror to show you whatever you want to see.

The V becomes the tooth of the vampire waiting to bite. The tip of the sword perpetually suspended above your head.

And the E the empty fork once the food loses its appeal. The spiky trident of our over-heated friend downstairs.

dreamtime #1

[click to view]

98 reasons for being

[a list inspired by the title of a book by Clare Dudman]

1. snowflakes 2. the ESCAPE key 3. pencil sharpeners 4. prehensile thumbs 5. feathers 6. the smell of new books 7. sneezing 8. unlikely cloud formations 9. blue glass 10. sunset skies 11. music for all seasons 12. sending postcards for no reason 13. saturday morning radio 14. long dessert spoons 15. chocolate turtles 16. perfect circles 17. colours bleached by streetlight 18. wicker baskets 19. black leather 20. the shape you leave on the pillow 21. cotton buds 22. over the counter drugs 23. the teabag 24. lucid dreaming 25. worry beads 26. the patience of mosaic 27. the odd one out 28. tambourines 29. butterfly museums 30. time spent alone with candlelight 31. origami 32. unexpected shadows 33. stem ginger 34. california dreaming 35. the murmur of beachstones 36. ceiling fans 37. medieval methods 38. the seven deadly sins 39. the theory of evolution 40. grass 41. symmetry 42. beanbag animals 43. glow in the dark 44. soapstone 45. cut and paste 46. celluloid god worship 47. the encore 48. window panes 49. smoke through a spotlight 50. remote control 51. unforgiving glances 52. certainty 53. purple ink 54. chain link fences 55. cinnamon 56. hole punch confetti 57. shaded eyes 58. thin curtains and heavy blankets 59. rust 60. the world within my walkman 61. bookmarks 62. moonlight shadows 63. fingerprints 64. post it notes 65. uncontrolled laughter at inappropriate times 66. the shape of your lips 67. bed bugs 68. faked polaroids 69. counting eyelashes 70. watching animals sleep 71. chewing tinfoil 72. cigarettes sleeping snug in their packet 73. the inside of your wrist 74. bootlaces 75. notes in the margin 76. the honest solitude of open water 77. very cherry jelly belly beans 78. anticipation 79. the greenwich meridian 80. earthworms 81. acoustic confession 82. cassilero del diablo 83. nothing more than this 84. a voice that can make you bleed 85. footsteps receeding 86. paper bags 87. virtual shopping carts 88. a strangers smile 89. planes that scar the sky 90. morning tears 91. absolute silence 92. sunday sun 93. freeze frame 94. reflection 95. alphabetical order 96. sycamore seeds 97. lemon tree leaves 98. a stuffed kingfisher

clean cut, unbecoming

ave maria

Thoughts arrive like butterflies. They land and linger on my leaves, begging me to write a net of words to capture their beauty. But I am over mesmerised and they escape every time.

One such butterfly of thought concerns the seas of the moon. Every few months they get a mention in something I read and I remember how much I want to write about them. But I can never begin. Something about their beauty combined with baroness, their uninhabited extreme, always leaves me speechless.

The dark patches that we can see on the moon are known as lunar maria (mare in the singular). They are dry plains created by volcanic eruption, reflecting less light, hence their dark appearance. They were named maria (from the Latin) by early astronomers, who mistook them for seas. The moon is also home to lakes, marshes, bays and an ocean.

But its their names more than their notion that draw me in. Particularly alluring to me is the Sea of Clouds set to turn the world upside down, and the Sea of the Edge, harking back to the days when the world was flat. I long to linger beside the Lake of Dreams and drown slowly in the Lake of Time. I could drag myself reluctantly from the Marsh of Sleep if only to behold the Bay of Rainbows.

And so I’ll settle to offer you a few scraps about them. And the thought that with names like those its no wonder I feel I am living in the wrong place.

redefinition #1

Gods bother me but angels appeal. All that illumination with added wings. They come in all shapes and sizes. Named or shamed they rise or fall. But what the books of the believers never tell you is how angels are made…


If you can name it you can break it. Mirrors, glass, bones, hearts and minds. Things you lose and things I find. You can collect up the pieces and try to glue them back together with patience or idle promises. You can wrap them in newspaper and lay them to rest in the bin. But there will always be a few fragments that get away. That lay embedded in the carpet, biding their time, only to float skywards one day.

And there they reconvene, brushing together their jagged edges and sharp corners. Meeting and greeting and reuniting in celebration of the shattered. Until all those forgotten have found a new place to be, to breathe and believe they can fly again.


So now you know. Now you see what was staring you in the face all along - a one letter shift between two words. And now, when something breaks, remember there is an angel in the making, so bless rather than curse the thing you’re breaking.

pieces of art

I’ve talked a bit about my quote taking habits before.

But there’s more to it - it goes beyond a handful of words lifted from one book to another. Most of the people I know are collectors and clippers - I see their lives peppered with special crumbs picked up on their travels. They spend their days gathering pieces of their passions. Cutting and pasting them into real or virtual albums. Hence my need for a whole blog just to store such finds. We people gather quotes, a few bars of a cherished song, a corner cut from a coloured canvas. Moments taken out of time.

And I wonder why… is it that these chosen bits are better than the whole? or perhaps because we simply cant carry a gallery or symphony in our pocket, head or heart. Maybe its like those people who carry tiny photos of their child or lover or pet in their wallet. We need a little something that is always by our side, a scrap of magic amid monotony.

[illustrations clipped from a few of the things that illuminate my days]

sensory overload

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something in the air

Sometimes smell becomes my primary sense. When the animal in me still twitches its nose to show that domesticity hasnt completely tamed me.

A few days into the year and new lotions and potions are cracked open and applied to dry winter skin. And suddenly I no longer smell like me. I smell of a new me. A me who has wandered through exotic spaces and forbidden gardens, collecting spices on the soles of my feet and rare seeds in my hair.

And as my imagination races to the places my new skin might take me, memory drifts to the scent of moments left behind.

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