depth

Sing

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You, faintly beating heart,
wounds louder than
your loves, your hopes
yet beating still, yes,
although your sounds are drowned in
work and fret

I hear your fleeting glimpse
I hear your leaping hope
I hear the strain of aching long ignored
I hear containment creak its last captivities

You, voice
in secret humming hopefulness, yet frail,
weak from your hiding places
convenience, old stories, loss,
the places you elude
a confrontation

You, whose voice, whose heart
I know has power,
I call you, whole,
to open up the gates of hell
unlock the brokenhearted
retrieve the lost and lonely

Sing with me, you of heart, of voice, sing!
Sing heart! announce the dawn!
Sing voice! stir the fires of hope!

Sing future into our beings, our fears, sing wonder!

Sing, sing, you, lover of humanity
lead us in your tender songs
Let our cries heal hearts,
our whispers mourn
our laughter triumph

We cannot live our sorrows alone
sing what you were made for
sing what you are made of

Note: this is a poem in progress. Sometimes when I am writing it is like the poem itself is struggling to be born through the still-existing layers of patriarchal culture, and postmodern ideology; the heart of the poem is there, doing its best to be born full and whole, but in fact by the time the heart makes it into the voice, it is bedraggled and bleeding, showing signs of struggle. So this is best seen then as a draft or pr/echo, and perhaps something more resonant and whole will come soon.

door way

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a door
you, who have come here
moved in, unlocking things
before I noticed,
What are you doing here?
Where did you find those keys?
and who told you where to find
those
locked up places?

Who are you to me?
Will you just unlock and leave?
leave all these rooms open?
for someone else to explore?
Are you a door yourself?
a key?
or a wide expanse of being, to discover?
a togetherness?

a depth?
a sea?


la vie suspendue – time

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In la vie suspendue, time is running through me, or to be more precise times. I can feel them, some of them streaming through with no thought of clinging on, some ferociously disputing ownership, claiming my desires, my thoughts, my imaginations, my frailties.

Perhaps it takes this enforced slowness to truly notice the other forms of speed swirling. I am poised in some kind of eternal time, and despite the continuous risks I feel of slipping off its axis, this eternal time, now that I have returned to it, is steady, more steady than I realise, and I don’t seem to slip off as much as I fear.

And so then the other times are making themselves felt, the slow slipping time of summer tempo days punctuated occasionally by the panic of the end time, when I will have to return to the demands of work. So then business time and the seasons of my clients – holidaying for July or holidaying for August or holidaying for a two week scrap of childcare before swapping with the other partner to return to work, according to culture.

His time, how long will it take him, what is he thinking, does he have a time with me in it, should I reach out time, no probably not, patience, time.

Biological time, googling statistics, pondering depleting likelihoods.

Ageing, in a way the same, but felt differently, eyes, hair, skin just a little bit different from last year’s summer photos.

Divenire time, Andante, one dotted crochet = 60 beats per minute.

Ontological time, such a very very long time it takes to manoeuvre the human psyche into new orders to wholeness, always a shock.

Capitalist time, now, immediately, preferably yesterday although then you didn’t actually knew the offer existed, or the deadline.

Poor pitiful modern time, no depth, no heart, no soul, no allowance for grieving, passion, healing, compassion, renewing, also known as ‘according to my personal convenience time’, and ‘validate me! validate me! Entertain me! Feed me! before I pre-emptively reject you’ time.

Nature time, everything in its season, can’t be cheated, nature of reality time.

Sometimes when my younger friends are fretting about how Long everything is taking, I remind them; remember, you were raised in a culture of timescales for the insubstantial. It is a hard lesson, and I have to learn it again.

The eternal time is helping soothe the pains of this emancipation.

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.