courage

toujours suspendu en l’air

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I’m still here, in mid-air, which is uncannily like a depth, it turns out. In the wrestling match between maintaining a normal pace and slowing down, slowing down has won. And yet now I’m here, I feel strangely at home. I don’t feel the fret of missing out, I’m no longer disappointed, I’m kind of content, and curious, because at other points in my life when I have found myself in this imposed suspension, often something very deep has been at work, beyond my thoughts, words, understanding or control.

So it’s a little bit like I’ve set up tent here, in mid-air, and now find myself delighted. It’s so peculiar; how can I resist it so much and then turn out to be glad? Sometimes I feel like I don’t know myself at all; I can sometimes so little predict my true feelings about things that are in prospect.

I am still playing the piano (although today I didn’t because the neighbour was using the apartment) and writing, but I have seemingly slipped into a complete harmony with quietness and ordinary chores. Small unexciting things are getting done and I’m not feeling lonesome or deprived.

And the deeper stillness means that I’m more aware of the rumblings of movements in unknown places, and this awareness increases my patience because instead of fearing nothing, I can feel something. And what is a creative process for if not to prepare a space to welcome and embrace that?

loop

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Something is looping it seems to me. Here I am, after all, in this blog again, suddenly drawn to it, unexpectedly. What is there for me in my earlier self, I wonder. What is there for me in this representation of a me that you, by being there, sometimes liking, create? It’s mysterious.

I have a week in a space that completely transformed my life, over five months in the summer of 2020. Yes, that summer. Perhaps I will write more about it another time but I knew then and knew even more later, that a fundamental shift had taken place in my perception. Perception of the world, perception of self. I had joked that 2020 would be the year of seeing clearly. The joke had me.

So then here too is a loop.

And I find myself rereading the stories of my childhood.

I’m so much older that when I began this blog. I feel it. I can feel the resonances of greater substance, ontological weight, density, weariness, power. I have ‘made my bones’ but they are heavier to carry around, whereas surely there should be a more expansive freedom?

The true lightness of freedom, the true depth of well-formed substance. Another mystery.

So then there is this younger self. I recognise her and I feel triumphant. The self she was wondering was there is me. Her innocence touches me and I wonder if I can rediscover that. Surely that is a treasure? It is not-knowing and it is, I realise as I write this sentence, fear. I am at risk of an idealisation. It was terrible to be that vulnerable, continually not knowing if there was something there, risking everything with the possibility of nothing.

Something was there.

Perhaps though this is the rediscovery and the loop. That vulnerability recurs. The sight of an old tree in spring always touches me. All those frail sensitive quivering leaves on those full grown sturdy branches. It strikes me how rare it is to see those qualities in a person. Fragility is for the young, it seems, the full grown branches necessitate a kind of firmly-enforced self-protection.

I’m getting nearer some kind of reconnection and when I do I will know what it is. It will be a freedom and a lightness. It will be a reunion and an intensification, an expansion of substance.

And in the meantime, I will write this all to you, who carry the me I might become.

retreat: over half way

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So, extraplorers…

A short(ish) post I am supposed to be:

  1. Working on poems to read tonight
  2. Writing up three poems to put in the class anthology tomorrow morning at 9:30am
  3. Working on poems to be read out at our ‘reading’ tomorrow night
  4. Getting more questions ready for tomorrow’s ‘drop in’ tutorials.

Somehow despite my poem enthusiasm I seem to have spent free time in very rascally ways like walking into the local village for a cream tea, going for a run in which I got lost and having my portrait taking.

I.e. not writing (but perhaps this is the most writerly thing I have done all week?)

Anyway, to summarise my actual writing progress so far:

  1. My poem about my granny (‘someone I don’t know well‘) turned out very nicely and was received with enthusiasm from the group and positive feedback from the real poets.  I still have some feedback to consider about this such as decide whether the order of stanzas could be better.
  2. I met one of my goals by writing and reading an intensely personal poem this morning.  I have wanted to be braver about this and I had several affirming comments both on bravery and quality.
  3. I had a quietly incredible tutorial this afternoon where some of my lurking questions (‘is this too self-absorbed?’, ‘does this even work as a poem?’) were met with wonderful responses about the quality, potential and validity of my writing.  I don’t think I have yet recognised the full weight of this.

Right!  Back to work.

 

 

And if I loved forty

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And if I loved forty,
it would be for the sweet joy
of confidence in a room.

And if I loved forty,
it would be that I
knew my place
– inside out.

And if I loved forty,
it would find me able
to sit awhile with someone sad
and mourn.

And if I loved forty,
it would be to see dear friends children
grow old enough to make me
a cup of tea.

And if I loved forty,
I would embrace quiet,
evenings by myself
a blessing of solitude.

And if I loved forty,
it would be for long views still
of growing, and of grandeur.

And if I loved forty,
it would be for patience,
and for knowing
that all things are made new.

And if I loved forty,
my friends too would be
grown and worn into
comfortable grooves of
loving kindness.

And if I loved forty,
I would be wise.

in the wordsmith’s workshop

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Following a magical visit to the goldsmith’s workshop, now it is the wordsmith’s turn.

The wordsmith had visited the goldsmith’s workshop to help her with some writing because she does not find it easy to tell her story.

The wordsmith took the tools of her own trade with her to see the goldsmith – just a little silver laptop computer and a warm heart.  As the goldsmith talked, the wordsmith captured certain phrases, facts and stories.  Using questions wrought from the wisdom of experience, the wordsmith tugged at tales and pulled at pauses, and waited patiently in silence, knowing that in time precious nuggets would emerge.

Which they did, sometimes one or two, sometime more, with their own timing and rhythm as the goldsmith remembered, lit up, hesitated and shared.

At last the wordsmith shut her laptop, said goodbye and left the goldsmith’s workshop, ready for her own process of mulling, refining, and seeing what remained.

The wordsmith allowed the goldsmith’s stories to swirl around her imagination, and at last, sat down again with the goldsmith’s words, ready to start work.

As she pondered, she let the most important themes come to the surface.  Then she worked with them, adding little facts here and there from her notes; unwinding and bending phrases to become small facets of love and delight.  She brought the goldsmith’s passions and heart for people into a setting where they could be more easily spotted.  She highlighted the goldsmith’s bravery and pioneering spirit.

At last the wordsmith was finished.  She did a last check over her work, and then ‘ping’ sent it to the goldsmith’s team.

And then today, she visited them.

The goldsmith had loved the finished work.  It had helped her to recognise her own self, remember her great joy in her own work, its value and many riches.  It had helped her to see past the struggles and weariness, to regain her vision and strength.

The praise from the goldsmith’s team delighted the wordsmith.  She too suddenly realised the treasure of her work, its power to make things beautiful and full of wonder.  She felt encouraged in the middle of a day of challenges, and renewed for her own adventures into the unknown.

And now the goldsmith and the wordsmith are hard at work, in their workshops and at their desks, making…