heart

return to the studio

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I have spent the summer tending ‘the studio inside’ after my one week residency in June. The communal garden has been a studio. And my neighbours’ apartment with their piano. But the days are getting colder and soon the neighbours will return to inhabit their city home full time.

I returned from holiday and two absences stared me sternly in the face. Indisputable and unmoveable. One was the absence of a studio.

I am a very joyful person and quite good at smoothing over bumps and being grateful where gratitude can reside, but somehow the absence of a studio is very stern, and immune to substitutions or platitudinous comfort. There is a joy in a studio which literally nothing can replace. This is a mystery to me. I’m somewhat reluctant to concede this ground.

But maybe starkly facing our absences has an importance? So I pondered to myself.

Into this absence I said a fierce prayer. If your commitment to existence is not to control your longings nor to detach from them, both of which constitute a harsh diminishment of human being, and if you refuse to despair, a fierce prayer is mostly what is left. I leave the deeper questions for another time, but in this case I was astonished to find, shortly thereafter, I was sitting in a studio again. A temporary arrangement, but astonishing nonetheless.

I reviewed the writing I did here at the start of the summer. I pondered the renovation of ‘the studio insight’ and now reflecting, this is indeed what has happened. Through piano, plants, play, seaside, parties, festivals and dancing, many of the old broken places have been substantially mended.

The day I heard I would have a studio, a project took shape in my being. Since that day, a series of disruptions have overwhelmed my daily life. This is a recognisable and now almost encouraging pattern showing that I am on to something.

This does mean however that some of the renovating got trashed so now I am attending to that.

But there is a deep thrill in the heart of the project, and its existence cannot be prevented.

I cannot face the hopeful girl

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I cannot face the hopeful girl,
not tonight.
I’m OK sitting
in the firelight
that burns.

She knocks,
hopefully, and with some
restraint
on a door wedged in now
by damp, and rain.

I could get up
and welcome her
but I sit still longer,
safe with my
weary despair
well worn as
old slippers.

I can hear the rain
beating down
on her, feel her
presence flattened
for protection
against the wall,
or window, even
(the blinds are down)

Dare she knock again?
I wonder, not knowing
what I wish for,
on red-alert,
but poised to
dive for cover.

Inertia reigns.
What if she tries
another door,
gains welcome there,
instead? An
inner shriek
runs through me
at the thought
but still I sit.

‘Get up!’ rings
all around me,
a ghost chorus,
infiltrates the wild wind,
real, but powerless
to move my arms
and legs.

‘Wait!’ I call out,
barely,
and hope she will.

found poem – a stroll in Brussels, autumn 2015

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To our heroes.

The unicorn doesn’t take the bus.
It flies from star to star.
Do the same.
Love life.  And smile.

On May 14th 2009, a young sequoia
from the family garden
dead from an unknown disease
is cut down.

May it please the One who Is to
open the human heart to the
full measure of all life.

A thunderous landing
manifests its weight for a final time
as it falls
prostrate.

To enter into the unknown
involves a willingness
to fully experience and study things we don’t understand
and to embrace that lack of understanding.

I have a dream.
Restoration of networks
of energy and public illumination.

Do you?

Sources:  War memorial near Les Etangs d’Ixelles; sign on lamp-post near Ixelles; description, Royal Museum of Fine Arts; engraving, Marguerite Yourcenar Park; book in museum gift shop; advertisement; street sign; advertisement.

All translations mine.

missed you

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Dear extraplorer,

I’m home. You may not realised it but I have been away a long time.  I have to tell you that everything I have been doing while I have been away has been very important. I have been working all over the world, helping people to grow. I have been writing at home for weeks, finishing off a book I hope will make a difference to the world, and bring more courage and joy and delight (but will anyone ever read it, I’m not sure). And I’ve been keeping hope alive wondering what someone else is doing in a far away place. I have been cooking and eating and seeing friends and doing pilates and running and sleeping. Sometimes I have crept in here to see you and I have wished that I had something to write here. But all my thoughts have been in my book and all my energy has been on planes and trains and in classrooms, and I have wandered around in my heart but not been ready to share what is in there, not yet.

extraplorer, I miss you, but I am here now, and I will be back. Be patient.

x

red helium heart balloon – a poem for a cousin’s birthday

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I was thinking of your birthday;
‘A helium balloon!’  I cried to myself
(internally as there was no one
around to hear me).

I waited til the day before
to buy it as I did not want
even a sniff of helium to escape
or bring it too soon
down to earth.

That day, I forgot where
the helium balloon shop was
had to double back on myself.

I walked in triumphant
‘A birthday balloon’, I asked the
shop assistant.  The store was
filled with valentines

that crowded out the ‘normal range’.
I didn’t think you would like
a balloon loudly proclaiming ’40!!!!!’
or Olaf or the one from Planes.

A momentary qualm assailed me;
was my helium balloon plan to be
thwarted by the patron saint of love?

On the contrary!  The saint of love
smiled down fondly; a red heart
helium balloon perfectly fit the brief.

a heart for love,
a heart for hopes and dreams,
a heart for passions and adventures,
a heart for you.

‘Oh, that one please, on the
longest red string!’  The jaunty
foil heart balloon reached boldly to the sky.

I could not bear to
imprison it in a plastic carrier.
It is not what helium balloons
were made for.

I basked in the smiles of passers-by
as I wended my way home
thinking of your birthday.

‘She will be so pleased!’  I said
to myself.  ‘No one else will have
thought of such a thing.’

The happy balloon, full of love
and excitement, bobbed up and down,
couldn’t wait to meet you.

It was a windy day; perhaps I should have been wiser.
In a moment, the companion attached to my wrist
was gone.

Oh!  I looked up: A red heart took flight
into the street, up, up,
above the silver birch tree lines.

Up, up, UP, riding thermals beyond
the multi-storey car park.
Up consorting with the seagulls.

I saw it last as it bobbed behind
the church spire; a heart and a cross.
To infinity and beyond.

I wanted to give a heart
for your birthday – for love, for hopes,
for passion, for you.

But the heart wanted to give you a poem,
Show you that your hopes and dreams soared to
dance with the angels,
to mingle with the stars.

Show you that the heart is free;
and alive and full of grace
and beauty.

That nothing can hold it back.