everyday

constellation

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While I have been fretting about the presence or absence of the innocent and ancient self, other things have been going on, which I somehow did not connect.

It’s been a time of furious difficulty. And in this difficulty I’ve been unusually lost.

I have chosen a life of particular exposure to the wilds of existence, and yet normally I know where I am. I have an inner stability borne of experience and love.

The last months have been like a battering. Certainly not comparable to other terrible events elsewhere, but for a self that wants to make creative work, crushing.

After every wham of difficulty I have tried to regroup, only to (sometimes) glimpse a moment of arrival before, wham, some other violence to my body, self, relationships, possessions, work…

After months of bravery, suddenly it was too much. I was distressed, tearful, lost. Plus the endless noise disturbance of the sound injury fills every moment of potential rest.

No wonder the delicate self was not keen on showing up.

Today I reflected on various ‘solutions’ that had been proffered in the last week: Get new friends, take a flight, look online, try America.

All of them, I could feel, were like trying to tack a threadbare patch over a crater and hope for the best.

A deeper part of me thanked the offerers and explained, yes, this seems like a sensible option, but it is not enough. I cannot thrash around trying to fix things.

This morning I realised what was really going on. I was being intimidated out of staying in position, by who knows what force, but the one we often concede to.

The recognition summoned a deeper ally: No.

No I will not back down.

No I will not make compromises.

No I will not fritter away truth.

No I will not choose my path based on fear, mockery and pressure.

Nothing much has changed in the circumstances.

But in the inner situation, the clarity is like a protecting force.

Maybe she will come out now that she knows she will not be betrayed.

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?

creaking

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Am I trying to 
inhabit a life
that no longer fits

Why do I creak?
Why do I fail to find the once familiar groove,
the seam in which all things
cohere?

I am displaced,
scattered and my senses
fail me.

Where am I trying to come home to?

I creak and hear my own 
groans escaping.
wild sounds that alarm
my younger self.

Am I becoming that?
Am I she who will
fail to meet imagination
with dignity?

I creak and now it is
a home-coming of sorts,

To my bones,
To parts of me long abandoned.

Have mercy.

last pelargonium

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It was really quite white
when I found it,
the last pelargonium,
but I was on a budget
and it was reduced
so I bought it
although really I wanted a pink one.

It’s a ‘mårbacke’, said the florist.
It’s a traditional kind.
But it was white
so I doubted.
Do you know the place?
I didn’t.
It is the home of a famous writer,
Selma Lagerlöf.
A current barely stirred.

And anyway,
I was on a budget
so I bought it
although it wasn’t pink,
but white.

I stood my white pelargonium
in a mixing bowl.
I didn’t own a plant pot
and was on a budget.
A mixing bowl was all I had.

It stood, a little self-conscious
on my step.  Two flowers giving me
joy, but white, and no others
arrived to join them.

I looked up Lagerlöf:
A woman writer
native to this land,
winning prizes,
when women didn’t.

I wished my plant was pink.

I went away for work,
asked an almost-neighbour
to water my pelargonium.
She took it in its mixing bowl,
didn’t comment.

A while later I returned,
settled in and eventually went
to retrieve the last pelargonium.
It has probably died, I told myself
to preempt disappointment.
The neighbour may not have been there
all the time.  It’s been hot.

I wandered up the path,
curved around the corner.
I spied the last pelargonium
covered in flowers.

They were pink.

a very golden sunlight

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a very golden sunlight
shafts suddenly across leaves
yellowed with glowing
oldness.
Illuminates memory,
gilding years of
subtle pain,
revealing glories
yet unknown,
to come, yes, to come,

the cold grass is dappled
for a moment,
warm here and there.

the red squirrel pauses
with its golden acorn,
tentative, suddenly
awareness rich,
hesitant to scurry
to store its treasure
for another day.

gone grey a moment,
mundanity takes
back its familiar
places, but not forever;
a golden knowing lingers.