Month: June 2022

disturbance

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And then, not quite the moment I’d mentioned the word ‘rhythm’ but not long after, the pattern has been disturbed. I forgot to bring my journal home from the studio, disrupting my normal writing time first thing in the morning. Then I realised that my carefully-herded into a less obstructive timeslot client meeting now required a fully powered laptop, but that that the ageing battery was at 73% and could not be relied on to last. Rushing over to the studio where the charger had been left meant that there was no time to play the piano before I left home.

And so on and so on..

In the wider scheme of things these minor turbulences are, of course, negligible. But I cannot live my creative nature patrolled by the legitimacy police. My creative work is to try to shimmy myself into the tiny cracks of the most vulnerable, neglected places of (my) being. That process is easily disrupted and I cannot help but be protective of it. A luxury, one might remark, and yes, in the context of what is going on around us that luxury is stark. But in the context of my own story it’s not quite so indulgent as that term implies, and perhaps if our world spent a little bit more time and care on its vulnerable places we might sleep easier.

So then, disturbance (category: small, agreed). As the etmology unveils, it is disorder, grief, agitation, turmoil, bewilderment, muddying, stagnation.

In the lightness of this season though, the disturbance, while apparent, is less of a suffering. In one of my favourite television programmes, the idea of ‘stirring up the waters’ is seen as having value, of offering a way out of weary patterns.

Has my rhythm already become a confinement?

Unknown.

I traversed all the minor disturbances, and now I am back in a more or less calm serenity. Or do I delude myself? I am awaiting a message and that message may have power to truly disrupt me, so then, yes, perhaps I am serene, but I am also aware of something stirring the nature of this calm existence, something beyond my reach and beyond my control.

And I wonder what it has to offer?

sea singing

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sea singing
carries from the depth
express in
jubilation
joyous in the day, the night

sea singing
shadows shift before me
open up in wonder, your heart,
your soul

rent the sky with longing
joy tears
a rift in pains
hope, hope anew

light, a faint initiation
rites a hymn of potency
a song a song a song

weave a thread of laughter
shadows mourn no more
luminous becoming
fulfil fulfil

sea singing
oh to catch this in a shell, to listen
evermore evermore

Note: this is the third poem (/song) in a series written to Divenire by Einaudi played by the poetess after a long absence. Title of an abstract watercolour in the same colours as before.

light

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There is something so light in this week in the studio. Perhaps it’s because of that, that it is only a week, even though I long for something more permanent.

I am accustomed to large-scale, intense, no-end-in-sight-for-months-or-years projects. I have deeply integrated the virtue of difficulty, its capacity to draw out a wildness, a unique depth of self that is rare and to be treasured in our how-long-can-I-distract-your-attention-from-anything-important world.

And then here I am, tumbling into this week, breathless and weary from my other work (in business, since you ask) and I find myself in something so sweet and beautiful and light. I somehow feel no pressure. I have elegantly disembarked from my responsibilities. I had no time to weight the week with intentions. I am existing, pure and free.

It’s such a pleasure and so unusual as a grown woman to encounter such an interlude. And it has, I must admit, taken some diligence and hope to protect it.

But I wander about, peaceful, playing, and I can feel a luminous uncanny that I have not sensed for a long time, magnifying within me.

wild the sea; the spray, gold

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storm, the wildness is coming
restless, I scent the rain
distant, but nearing
me, adrift, chop

currents crush me to
each other, press into my
skin, insistent
you are mine, Mine
I don’t belong to myself

forces pull on limbs
a vast rose crimson,
pulsing in the drench

clatter, rain advancing from
another shore, nearer still,
nearer, sound the drums of
torrents, clash against clash
whip, foam, soak, slap,
gasp, yet not a drowning
yet

monstrous pitterpat
hail, rain!
splatter
tumult a poor shelter,
lift me up, hide me
may I nestle in your ferocity

dip into the pinkish hue
silence a moment
down
returning,

surface
all is rose dawn
wild sea; rain-spray, gold

Note: a second poem in a series painted to Einaudi’s Divenire, played by myself after a long absence. This life size abstract water colour is painted in Rose Madder and Permanent Rose (Windsor and Newton Professional watercolour) splattered with Rembrandt Light Gold (Series III watercolour)

the year of the poem, a pondering

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The looping that I have noticed is in particular taking me back to the year two thousand and sixteen, ‘the year of poem‘ (strangely I did not feel like writing digits, I am aware it looks a little odd). With some fanfare I christened this year with a title of such vast aplomb it appears that I sank under the weight of it.

The ‘year of the poem’ plummeted from its giddying heights to a swift confrontation with reality, as I quickly realised. The ‘poetry diary‘ stayed buried in a box, poems remained unwritten, even the ‘editing poetry course‘ became an ordinary memory with startling rapidity.

No more ‘year of the poem’ musings were mused.

But now looking back, the year of the poem was speedily despatched, not because the poem element was too small, but because it was too big.

Somehow, a pre-existing poetic dimension took hold of my whole entire life.

And, of course, being frail, not really realising, consumed by other things, practicalities, transitions, this elemental condition was not fully grasped.

Dizzying though it may sound, preposterous though it feels to write, what happened to me in the year two thousand and sixteen is that my weary, care-worn ways of being were shed, like an age of reason skin, and I leaned into trust, to relinquishing control and holding on to faith as a human experiment. And slowly but surely, the very substance of my being mutated into wonder.

What does it mean?

I’m still not entirely sure.