memento mori

As the final hours of the year slip through my fingers my thoughts turn to the way we mark our days.

I recall that I first started keeping a diary around easter 1993. At that time I would catalogue all my highs and lows, dips and disappointments in a series of A6 notebooks. I used a rainbow of whatever pens came to reach and my handwriting was as erratic as my mood. I wrote every day without fail. I never had nothing to say.

Sometime since I graduated to A5 notebooks, my handwriting has stabilised and I only write in black ball point. Currently my days are trapped between the pages of a book with cold corrugated metal covers. But with every progressive year I write less and less often. In 2003 I made 23 entries. In 2004 only four. In 2005 I wrote on 3 days. And in this past year I have not visited that paper palace even once.

Which leads me to wonder…

Where do they go when a poet loses her words? Where does it end up when a philosopher loses his train of thought? Are my diaries getting larger even as I have less to say? and where will this ultimately lead? Will I spend 2007 spray painting a slogan on a brick wall? and the year after scrawling silence across the sky?

breadcrumbs in a line

out-takes on a seasonal theme

-- the postman approaches, cloudy and vague through my condensation
-- browsing virtual shops, done up in the glory of festive fonts
-- whittling down the Christmas card list
-- eating ice-cream at bedtime - sweet to smooth away a bitter day
-- as winter grips my lemons surrender and fall from their tree
-- mail order frenzy, day by day, more of our Christmas arrives
-- wrapping with ease - grateful for small square gifts
-- once a year sentiments, scrawled and sent to distant friends
-- seven days between now and then - eight letters between you and me
-- I trap the hours in the holes formed by letters - each loop just large enough to hold a drop of blood
-- wood grain always lays in one direction - knowing itself and where its heading - I look at the spiralled confusion of my thumb print
-- the hazy sense of sleep approaches, anytime, anywhere unannounced - middle of the day, middle of the room
-- an excuse to try to smile and to eat iced gingerbread reindeer
-- frozen morning and you hold up a perfect replica of the inside of the bird bath bowl
-- we smile despite our false best wishes
-- baubles on the tree and cocktail cherries at the ready
-- wondering what you will wear on Christmas day, wherever you are
-- a years worth of news - good and bad - squeezed beneath the printed greetings

I know the mortar in the wall breaks

Back to the walls (of October 2005). I was wrong. I can see that now. I focused on the holes at the expense of the bricks.

Its not that we need more bricks. We are inundated with them. They fall from the sky. A never-ending tetris monsoon. Chucked down by the gaming gods. We can dodge them all we like, but the pieces will just pile up at our feet, and trip us with their technicoloured edges.

We need to stand still and take the time to slot them into place. But we must break the rules of the game. We must leave gaps. Gaps to breathe, gaps to look out and see our fellow builders coping with their own walls. And if we spy anyone too good at the game - blocked in solid behind their wall - we must fling a brick in their direction, hoping to break a window in their rainbowed frame. As within those walls there is only darkness and suffocation.

I remind myself, we must not fix our holes. We must not plug our gaps. We must play but we must play badly.

beginning of a great adventure

I prefer anticipation to instant gratification. I like to catch the scent of my dinner cooking for a while before I eat it. I like to get lost in lengthy introductions to favourite songs. I like to see daylight calling through my curtains before I open them.

I like to be teased. To have the moment of pleasure suspended rather than immediately granted. The real treat is in those extra few moments that allow the mind the chance to prepare itself for delight.

And so advent is always welcome. Its one of the few things we choose to hold onto from all the childhood pastimes that we willingly discard as our years advance. We give it our own trademark - less commercial, less tacky. We share pictures and sentiments and little gifts each day. Twenty four packages of homemade love.

And its not so much about a countdown to Christmas. Its not about opening a numbered window to a glittery picture each day. Its more about remaining aware of the inevitable passage of time. One day at a time for one month of the year. About finding ways to make each day a little more individual and unique.

divine retribution

For the record this is the sum total of my amber collection. Two bracelets restrung from beads that originally hung as one necklace - I prefer to shackle my wrists with colour these days. One silver set ring smuggled home from when I sailed to Copenhagen. I had another amber ring, given by a friend, but I seem to have lost it - the friend or the ring, I’m not sure which.

And a fake plastic impostor. As if it wasn’t obvious from its pale comparison to its surroundings - you only have to put it between your teeth and touch it with the tip of your tongue to know. It lacks the bittersweet treat of genuine amber. The flavour of its heritage.

Because we all know how amber is formed - the slow solidifying of sunflower honey, with a little of the garden always left behind. And we know that the pieces we receive are nothing more than the boiled sweets spat out by the gods. Ejected from their mighty mouths once they have sucked away all the pleasure. Discarded just before they reach the insects or seeds trapped within. Just like you or I might refrain a second before we reach the worm lurking beneath the tequila.

fade to grey

Almost as an undertone she drops them into conversation. But when we are done, when all is said and done and long forgotten, they linger and beg me to speak for them.

The second generation shadows. The ones that have broken free from their owners. Sometimes through struggle. Or when someone outgrew their shape and wanted to assume a new dimension that they couldn’t stretch to. Sometimes through neglect that left them hanging at home on a hook on the back of a bedroom door.

And then the ones cast aside by those rare individuals too slippery to hold a shadow close for long. People who move too fast, burn too bright, sitting thinking through the night. People with no need for a grey definition tagging behind them as they walk. So their shadows seek out other dark outcasts where they gather together and reminisce their long lost owners.

And its not just people - its plants and building and birds and chairs. So next time you see a shadow - take a moment to notice what its doing - to make sure its still tied to a form of roughly the same shape and size. Or if its one of those indistinct orphans, who may be eager to become your friend.

filed notes #2

[click to view detail]

In part in honour of the enigmatic gasometers.

filed notes #1

[click to view detail]

This encounter was illuminated by a recent teawiththebirds post.

chain reaction

Its only when I stand you side by side, under certain light, that it shows. You are the ghosts of one another. Shadows cut out and folded over. If one is the paper torn from the whole and the other is the hole, then which are you?

I remember those paper doll chains we made when we were small. Outlines of boys and girls holding hands. I never tore in the right places. With anticipation, I always went to unfold and they fell apart and tumbled to the floor. Forever separated from one another. A cut that could never be corrected.



I remember the ghosts of the second sentence. Urging me to tell you the truth two days too late for halloween. That ghosts are not somethings to avoid and fear. They are only cold because we run from them. The breeze we feel is the draught from our hurried escape. Step within and they are warm and welcoming, like tea or coffee steam but faintly herbal.

So don’t forget them. They wait patiently for you. Carpets of ghosts cover this land. Although we only see them when we wear a hole through the floor boards or the pavements that we have overlaid.

Ghosts walk forever hand in hand - unlike us and our broken paper dolls. Hand in hand through walls and floors, they can stand in adjacent rooms but still be connected. Disconnected in space and time, reality and fiction, here and hereafter, but still strung smokily together.

do it yourself

beyond reasonable doubt
(or how to make sense from confusion)

First, take the last book left on the lowest shelf. Tear out a blank page from the beginning or more likely the end. Find a pen - one of the ones hidden in the place you would least expect to find a pen.

Write down the riddles that fiddle their insidious tunes at the back of your mind. Write them in code. Write them back to front and upside down and inside out - any way so that no-one but you can know them.

Write them boldly in black ink that always smells faintly like the stains left behind by spilled white wine. Then fold the page in half and half and half again - then go one fold beyond what the paper is willing to allow you.

Tear out lots of little pieces - if desired using your fingers and teeth. Let the newborn confetti gather around your bare feet. Unfold the page, now grown a hundred fold by the elasticity of your words. Wrap the paper lace around you, thin against your naked skin, and see only little pieces of you showing through in erratic patterns.

Walk outside and stand still. Wait for the weather to notice you - don’t worry, it might take a while but it always will. When it comes, don’t forget to greet the rain by name. Then stand and be bathed in her gentle blame.

As the paper dissolves, the riddles resolve and the words and the thoughts wash free from your skin. They pool at your feet which slowly sink into the welcoming ground. Until all you are is a ripple on the surface of an uneven puddle on a cloudless day.

easy way out

[All week I have been trying to write a piece about something that struck me as vitally important last Sunday morning. About a someone who had been overlooked. And only now I realise I am writing a story. Dreaming a fiction of your reality. And that is as bad as forgetting you altogether. I realise this is a familiar pattern I fall into. Filling the holes of unknown with imaginary detail. This is wrong. I have no right to claim any story but my own. So no cohesive piece today. Just the random threads pulled apart from my attempt to weave a blanket to keep you warm.]


I see you. Sitting. Legs folded. Thin carpet beneath you. Light enters the room, and falls as empty angles across furniture. You don’t notice the light. Similarly it ignores you, but does not choose to leave. It lingers. Like time. Like breath held too long. A thought grown too strong. The thought that your feet could be anyones but your hands are all mine. And they fiddle with each other. Ever restless. Ever impatient.

They called you the one with the quiet voice. They say you lived on the periphery, whispering thin secrets that we could only catch by the edges. They say you lived a quiet death. A silent puncture, and a gentle deflation. They say you died in a place named after echoes. They say that’s all we hear - the cyclical repetitions of the things you shared with us.

I never sent a postcard. From nowhere. For no reason. I never answered the phone, before you’d even dialled. I never held my breath to hear you speak. I never kept your letters between the pages of my books. I never made you sigh. I never saw the way your hair fell in the morning. I never reached for your hand in the middle of the night. I never laid flowers on your grave. I never knew you enough to forget you.

unlikely treasures

Sick of complaining that I have words to spare with nothing to pin them to, I remind myself to look everywhere for inspiration, leaving no nook or cranny unexplored. And so I lead you to an overlooked. A place seldom glanced. Just spun a few revolutions each day on the quest for a clean sheet.

And I find a butterfly inside our toilet roll tube. Or at least the shadow of a butterfly. A black stamped symbol with four fold wings. There is a number printed next to it. Inky digits laid there for a reason.



Things like this preoccupy me and make me wonder what it means. Perhaps that toilet paper is made from butterflies. Or that butterflies are made from toilet paper. And that exactly one thousand one hundred and seventy six go into the making of each.

Bear this in mind the next time you sit in contemplation in your bathroom or your garden. Take care that your toilet rolls don’t take to the sky, or that your butterflies don’t dissolve in the rain.

a gift from the earth

Like the jeweller loves his precious stones. The thrill of a treasure found hidden within compressed centuries. Chipped it out from its surroundings and dragged to the surface. Measured. Cut. Polished. Held up to the light - all perfect angles and magic surface. All colour and light contained within - secrets of the underworld.

I’m dazzled by words. I prise them out from their paper chains. Barricades of ruled lines. I let them dance on the tip of my tongue and wonder at the partners they choose. I spin them through my fingers - a literate card trick.

Today the sparkle comes from the partnership between -

One letter to divide and differentiate. One letter to mark between the sharp novelty of a pulled cracker - and the breathy warning of the snake in the grass.

under a full moon

[an anniversary message from me and my blog]

Its a year to the day since I sank to this unclaimed stretch of the abyssal plain. Since I planted my flag and claimed this barren patch as my own. When I accepted my mission I suspected I was the only one foolish enough to plunge to such depths. But now I grow accustomed to my home alone on the sea bed.

There is no sound under my ocean. And only limited colours. But unlimited wonder if you are willing to hold your breath and squint. If I am willing to learn to listen to the sound of my own voice. My. Own. Voice.

Since landing I have let 71 bubbles float to the surface. Some large, some small. Some brittle, some bold. Some have never made it - forever adrift on erratic currents. But I am sure I have heard one or two burst as they break for freedom.

Schools of precious creatures pass this way - growing a little more numerous and bolder by the day. Among them the strangest fish. Species I am taking my time to identify. Labelling each - predator or prey.

I’ve weathered underwater storms and the changing temperatures of the deep. I’ve sent cables of communication to other oceanic explorers. I hear their steady bleeps and see their occasional flashes of light. And I know they see mine.

Tonight the moon is full, but its light is unlikely to reach me here. Where I sit still dreaming the infinite dream of impossibility.

the ghost in you

white cat
squeezes through black railings
quiet as a ghost

A welcome return to blanket road. Where this time the shouting has stopped. All is calm, all is still. Nothing speaks, nothing breathes - but something moves. A whiteness - that eases its way between parallel lines of isolation.

A cat departs the cemetery. It rolls in the road. It licks itself. It seems to like itself. Content within its skin. Happy with its cat-self. It licks the tarmac. Comparing extremes on the tip of its tongue. Hard and soft take turns in the taste game.

It glances up the road. Chances a few more minutes in the middle. It seems more reckless than most. As if it has gathered extra lives from its padding across the gravestones. From where it loitered among resting spaces, savouring the scent of forgotten names and remembered weeds. Collecting horizontal and vertical thoughts into its furred bag. Nine multiplied by nine always leaves some spare.

brittle thinking

Some might say television is the opiate of the masses. I believe that used selectively and critically it can be educational, valid, and inspiring.

On Monday I watched people frozen to save their lives. Particularly striking was the woman trapped under ice - feet up through a hole, held tight as her last link to the surface world. Head half submerged in freezing water. Slowly slowing down. Thoughts, blood, heartbeats. Losing heat, losing life. Till nothing - silence, stillness, stasis. Hours while she is dug out, held, handled, carried and flown to the most northerly hospital in the world. Then peered at, poked and monitored. Slowly warmed - welcomed back into softness and movement. Breath revisits - movement remembered - life returned.


I watch and then I turn from the screen and I think.

Only the cold saved her. We mammals need warmth to survive, but she needed cold. A step outside of the rules of nature. An inversion of how things should be. I think of the relationship between heat and cold. How one can feel like the other. How ice can burn. They are opposites. Like life to death. In one always the other.

I think of all those mottos - what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, kill or be killed, no pain no gain. I think about what is being killed. Kill the senses, kill the desires, kill the instinct to cling to the thinning thread.

And then I think about myself, and how sometimes I know how she feels. I call them my everyday winters. I have to invert myself to a reversed 45 degrees. I have to freeze out consciousness, freeze myself in. Hibernation of the mind. I have to hold my breath and close my eyes. I have to play dead. You might not notice - the signs are subtle but there. A crispness to my tone and occasional visible breath. Suspended - just till the tides of time carry me beyond today. To a place more welcoming, a place with smoother edges. A place where I begin to thaw.

writing to reach you

This is the plant that stands to my left. My witness when I come here to write. She always cries exactly one day after I water her. And I always wonder why.

Perhaps she cries in gratitude - that I have now remembered her, when for weeks I have passed by without a glance in her direction. Perhaps she cries for being nameless - all because I carelessly lost her label soon after we met. Her closest neighbour is a lemon tree - so perhaps she cries tears of inferiority because she lacks a vivid scent.

Maybe she cries because she is looking in when she should be looking out. Longing to break the glass that keeps the sky at bay. Maybe she misses for the smell of the damp soil in the evening or the midnight whispers of a passing snail.

I think she cries at the memory of the sounds of standing in the rain, the sensation of the sky as it falls and collects on her leaves.

memories form a disorderly queue

You’ve left the towels on the line again. One grey one. One blue one. Two hand towels. You’ve only got two hand towels. You’ve only got two hands. Our line - a green metal contraption strung with yellow plastic string. Also sporting a plastic peg basket full of plastic pegs.

I remember when we had wooden ones that darkened when wet. That squeaked when I snapped them open and closed. Making crocodile smiles. Despite warnings I couldn’t resist clipping them to my lips or the tip of my tongue. Speechless. The surprise greeting of pain. Always sharper and more lingering than you think.

I remember fetes with stalls where people broke those wooden pegs apart and reassembled them into new things. I had a rocking chair made of pegs - a miniature one, of course. Something used to sit in it. A doll, or more likely a bear, or more likely a duck. I forget the inhabitant but I remember the chair. So often the way.

You’ve left the towels on the line again. Drenched each night by summer storms, they begin each day a little heavier than the last. Don’t we all. Through the day they doze a dream of evaporation, casting off a haze of concern. Their only lingering worry - that they may be left there till winter to freeze stiff and snap. Don’t we all. Eventually.

reflect what you are

Last Monday I found a place that never took the time to find me. I saw seas of green and leaves that choose to linger. And I saw these shining fragments of infinity, raised a quarter way to the sky.


Ever intrigued, I pulled on my disguise to mingle with the locals as they perched on their branches and their backs of benches. And they explained this monument - this tribute to their abandonment of vanity.

For birds have no need for reflection - enough that they appear in each others eyes. They have no desire to admire their images. Why would you if you could fly?

soft