I am much like this wall. I have a tendency to gather scraps around my feet. Lately I find myself knee-deep in half finished pieces - words without pictures, pictures without words. Its time to have a spring clean, six months too late. Its time to round up these unruly thoughts and call them to order. Its time to pin them down and hang them on these walls.
But now I’ve finally got myself a decent camera, and I’m slowly teaching my eyes to focus properly, to catch my own pretty pictures. And so I thought I would repay a debt and share some of my photos with the site. They have quite strict criteria and only accept photos with decent lighting, framing etc. They also reject photos if the subject matter is not required.
Now… browsing back through my scraps and bundles I have borrowed a crazy array of images from them… so I am surprised to hear that anything is deemed unnecessary. But that’s exactly what they said of these two images that I offered up -
Obviously no-one but me will search out snapshots of a cardboard landscape - a papery city to wander through, where perhaps we might find ourselves a corrugated park, where we can stoop and pick some cardboard flowers.
Some days turn upside down. A click of a button and the colours are inversed. Silky things tear at your skin, while you sink into concrete with a welcome sigh. The tame bear teeth and claws you never noticed before. While the wild draw close to your lighted window - dressed in tophat and tails and ready to read a bedtime story. Clouds slide behind the sun and shadows arrive at sunset. Words write themselves into knotty ropes while conversations are exhaled to form a stagnant layer that hangs just below the ceiling. Hands where you used to have feet - you kick me when you wave goodbye.
They say you should write about what you know. I don’t know much, hence recent posts on blue glass, paper people and lost gloves. But this week inspiration took a turn for the worse and left me struggling under the weight of a common cold. I’m under a spell cast by a cartoon wizard - my bones have turned to rubber. I wobble and bounce from moment to moment - none having much impact on me and vice versa.
It’s wrong to have a cold in the summer. The clue is in the name. I need to feel the risk of freezing. I need to laid my burning forehead against frosty surfaces. I need to feel as if I have been cryogenically suspended for a few days, and that when I thaw it might be spring.
Familiar foods have changed and grown corners. Even the roundest mouthful has edges and sharps that I never saw before, all eager to tear my throat on the way down.
My eyes water when there’s nothing to be sad about while my nose is filled with pepper tipped pins. And so I sneeze. And sneeze. And each time I do, I swear I lose precious thoughts. Words and phrases lost forever to high powered exhalation.
Boiling water. Your surprise. The way the glass shattered. The way it muttered out a couple of cracked cries before it gave up two blue tears. Sharp edged apologies that it couldn’t hold itself together for us any longer.
You know I have a thing about blue glass. Or I should amend that to had a thing about blue glass. I think my passion is fading. Individual pieces have broken and fallen by the way and those that remain on the mantel-piece are gathering more than their share of dust.
I’ve never liked rose-tinted glass, never needed that optimistic sheen spread across my world. But a world viewed through blue is a world that makes a little more sense. Every place a step closer to water, to where we came from.
But I realise that you cant just live a life of curious curves and keep me on a high shelf for special occasions. And the things you hold most tightly to are always the last, but most likely, to break.
- 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
- 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.
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.
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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.
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.
Thank you for tolerating this extended ramble, normal service will resume shortly.
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.
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. 
I'm not religious, but certain scraps of christianity come together when I see this. The shroud of 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.
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.
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.
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.
