drawn on a sheet of A2 paper,
in fine black ink,
and coloured in with caran d’ache,
labeled with more care than usual,
a window on an inner world:
‘enigma code-breaker’
‘French resistance worker’
‘Businesswoman-globetrotter’
‘Rebel with a cause (there’s no rebellion more radical than goodness)’
‘orphanage worker – or orphan’
‘good little girl’
‘Poet queen’
‘secret lover’
‘storyteller-pied piper’
‘speck’
‘dancer-choreographer’
‘Mountain climber’
an inventory of subpersonalities.
Dressing
Out of the bath, it’s time to get dressed. I bet you love dressing up. Whether you are a child or an adult, dressing is a great activity. Let me tell you some more about dressing.
Well first, let’s be clear that there is a continuum of dressing fun (a continuum is a wide range on an imaginary line). On one end, there’s clothes just for being covered and keeping warm. We are lucky that we have enough clothes to always wear a top and bottoms and shoes, and to keep warm. Then along the continuum we have all sorts of extra things that we can do with clothes. We can have clothes for different activities, for gardening, swimming, gymnastics, dancing, climbing mountains, even going to the moon. Then as we go further along the continuum right towards the other end we have clothes that say something. What can clothes say? I hear you ask. Well, this is something very interesting. Imagine you had two outfits, one was a plain top and jeans, and one was a top with a sunshine on and jeans. The outfit you might pick on a particular day might depend on a few things. Let’s have a think about what these clothes might say.
So, why might you pick sunshine top? Well, you might be feeling particularly happy, and want to celebrate it by wearing a sunshine. Or you might be feeling a bit sad, but then think that wearing a sunshine all day would help you to feel happier. Or you might be about to see a friend that day who’s nickname is ‘sunshine’, in which case wearing your top might be like a joke or a wink. Or you might be about to see some friends who need perking up, in which case a sunshine top might do the trick. Can you see that in each case your top is trying say something? ‘I am happy’, ‘I am hopeful of being happy’, ‘ha! I was thinking of you when I got dressed’, or ‘there is something to be happy about’.
Now this is only a very simple example. In fact there are infinite things that clothes can say (infinite means more than can ever be counted). For example, say you wanted to wear your Batman outfit. Perhaps this can say ‘I want to be like Batman, to be brave and rescue people who are in danger.’ Or you might want to wear a vet outfit. Perhaps this can say “I love animals and like practising for being a grown-up’.
One particular outfit that you will have to wear one day is what is called a school uniform. When people go to school, they often have to wear special clothes so that they look the same as each other. Now that we’ve thought of some of the things clothes can say, it might be a bit funny to think of everyone wearing the same. But there are some very clever reasons for a school uniform. The first one is to build what is called ‘esprit de corps’. This is a French phrase which means literally ‘the spirit of the body’, but sometimes it is called ‘team spirit.’ What this means is that instead of everyone all being their own individual selves, doing and wearing whatever they like, they choose to act together (like a body!). This means that they will be kind to each other, and to work towards goals that they share. You can see that in a school, this could be useful. Everyone has a common goal (learning) and wearing the uniform helps everyone to recognise that. In a way a school uniform is saying its own thing, ‘we are here to learn’. There are some other useful reasons for a school uniform. It makes it simple to get ready for school because you don’t spend time wondering what to wear. It also means that when some people have more money and some people have less money, their clothes won’t be able to say this, and so people won’t treat each other differently. You might not have thought about this, but imagine you know two friends and one has a large bag of sweets and one has a small bag of sweets. I’m guessing that you might be tempted to be nicer to the large-bag-of-sweets friend. Over time, we try to train ourselves to be kind to everyone whatever they might be able to offer us, but this takes practice.
When I think about getting dressed I like to choose something that fits how I feel, what I want to say, and what I need to do that day. I take into account whether I will be doing all the same thing, or lots of different things. If lots of different things, then I will need to choose an outfit that is more versatile.
One of my favourite things, which I am sure you will love too, is getting really dressed up for a party, in beautiful clothes. When people all decide to get dressed up in their special clothes, it is as if some magic has come along. All the girls and ladies look more beautiful, and all the boys and men look more handsome. When everyone dresses like this, it is like everyone is saying ‘the world is a beautiful place. Even if sometimes sad things happen, there is still beauty enough to cover over the sad things and help us be hopeful. Each of us has a special part to play in making the world full of joy and delight.’
So what are you going to wear today? I want to wear my new blue velvet coat, so we better plan a trip somewhere!
OK, so I know seventeen days isn’t a conventional review period, but I am brimming with reviewing thoughts about writing my extraplorer blog, and having missed the more traditional one week and fortnight review moments, I can’t wait any longer.
Here are my top ten:
1. Somewhere to share my writing ~ I have been writing a journal since I was sixteen, poems since I was six, and all sorts of other bits of writing, but I have not really had a space to share it. I have read one or two things to close friends, but then some of my attempts to share things have met with a wall of silence, and this has made it feel hard to believe that what I am writing is ‘real writing’. By setting up this blog as a series of fragments, I have been able to hop over the hurdle of ‘real writing’ and just write, which I love.
2. Writing ~ I can never understand authors and writers who say that they hate actual writing (or even sometimes that ‘everyone hates the writing part’). I absolutely love it. For me it is like falling in love, and hearing beautiful music, and watching children play and the dawn when the snow has just fallen. I love love love it.
3. Readers ~ Of course this is ridiculous, but somehow when I decided to start the blog, I had forgotten that people might actually interact with it. I had readers in my mind’s eye, but I had forgotten that readers would jump out of there and turn out to be real. It is quite amazing that people are reading what I write (see point 1 above). Thank you so much!
4. extraplorer ~ I also love the name extraplorer, and now I have had the idea for a secret blogging identity, I have had some follow ideas like making little cards with ‘extraplorer’ on them to help people who would like to read something like this to find it.
5. ‘Penscratcher theme’ ~ What a great word! The minute I saw ‘penscratcher’, I knew it was the one for me. I love the word and I love the layout. I love customising. It’s so fun being able to say ‘yes’ to this and ‘no’ to that (and much much easier than designing a website which I’ve had to do for work and was laborious and very time-consuming).
6. Paying attention to things ~ This is one of my favourite things about writing – it helps to encourage you to pay deeper attention to things, and it also helps you to be brave. There is a reason that a pen also connects with a sword and with a scalpel and with a torch. It makes it possible to go deeper into things, to venture into dark places and take a look around, to understand more and even to do battle for things that are important (like beauty, and hope).
7. Learning about blogging ~ Now that extraplorer exists, I would like more people to be able to see it (again, if they would like to). It’s fun to check our tips and work out what I might be able to do (and also helpful to be clear about what is not possible, given my other commitments).
8. Becoming more creative ~ Having a space to write is making me stretch out creatively. As I wrote before, creating found poems has been immensely joyful. I’ve loved starting to think thoughts in writing and then follow the thought to the conclusion. I love having a thought pop into my mind ‘passion opens doors’ and to have a place to explore it.
9. Secret identity ~ I feel a bit funny that I have not told all my own actual (lovely, fun, kind) friends about my blog, but the chance to try something in a totally fresh place is very invigorating. For a while I worried about it in case I was not being brave enough, but no, I think sometimes a new land is an important place for growth and transformation. It is a liminal space.
10. Being connected to a new world ~ I’ve been a bit reticent about social media use because I feel sad when it’s used badly, and I feel protective about myself. I use it for my work, but we could say I am a mixed-speed adopter. Writing extraplorer has made me comfortable with taking time to find my place, my path and my pace, and taking the time to find out how to be wholehearted means I am really loving it.
So hooray for blogging, hip hip hooray! And thank you WordPress for making something wonderful and fun. And thank you people who are curious about extraplorer…
You know when a baby is holding on to a table for that moment before she lets go and takes a tiny step all by herself. That’s me. I’ve tried bits of writing all over the place but I needed a little quiet space where I can explore what (else) I want to write and try out my own voice with different thoughts and forms. I want to try essays and poems and snippets from embryonic books and epigrams and pronouncements and see what happens…
extraplorer 