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 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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
[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
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.
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
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.
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.
[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.
When we look to the south we face the sea. We cant quite see it, but we know it’s there - always ready and waiting for us. Sometimes snoring, sometimes sighing, sometimes sad. But just there, behind the line of houses, behind the line of trees.
But today there’s a wrenching and a ripping in the air, and you’re not here to hold my hand as they tear apart our view. As the nameless men uproot the little trees, like milk teeth with no-one to put them under a pillow, no-one to pay 50p. I see multiple green tops and tips sliding past at unlikely angles. I see bits of old fence flying through the air and soil hefted higher than it wants to go. I see a mean little digger tear apart the decaying shed.
And despite this sudden and most welcome burst of October sun (surely a sign from the sky that you’re on the way home), despite the new window they are determined to cut between here and there - I can sense the sea pulling further back. A yard or two more distant from me, from you.
