broken windows

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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

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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.