meaning

on leaving some things unsaid

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I was going to carry on with part three (photo) and part four (name) of my one month review, and something has made me hesitate.  Is this too much reviewing?  I ask myself.  I feel a bit ‘I’ve started so I’ve finished’, but I don’t want to pay so much attention to something that I wear it out, like washing.

So in fact I will leave it there for reviewing for now.

Leaving some things unsaid is perhaps surprisingly like the dynamic of deciding when to jump off a wave you’re surfing.   Once you’re up, it’s so tempting to ride that wave all the way to the very end, to get the last centimetre of wave out of the experience.  But sometimes that leaves you on a scrappy bit of wave with no energy left in it, plus you’ve gone so far the paddle back can be really long.  Sometimes it’s better just to hop off earlier, leaving some energy and excitement ready for the next one.

In the writing I’ve been doing so far, knowing when to hop off what I’m writing has proven surprisingly challenging.  One of the most common final things before I post a post is to delete the last line.  (I’ll be heading over to ‘found poem, London, autumn 2014’ soon to get rid of ‘Go to it’, I can feel it’s too heavy-handed).  I have an aversion to overemphasising a point and making it annoying.  The other day I realised I wanted to coin a new word, something like obviaphobia, to label the fear I have of saying something that is too obvious, or that has been said too many times already, or getting wedged in an cliché.

(Leaving things unsaid is a habit I try to cultivate in friendships and work.  My sense of justice and precision is such that I often feel compelled to aim for accuracy in accounts of events, feelings, responsibility.  But this kind of precision can be too much to bear.  Discretion is an unsung hero of human relations.)

In music, I have been learning about ‘interrupted cadences’.  A cadence is two chords in a row.  The ones I have been learning about are at the end of a phrase of music.  A perfect cadence sounds like an ending.  And imperfect cadence sounds like you’ve just taken a breath but are about to end.  And then the interrupted cadence is my favourite.  It’s like leading someone up to the end of a path, and stopping just as the path turns a corner, and you can’t see what’s next.

The what’s next? is the unsaid bit, and I like the bit fact that leaving a bit unsaid leaves a space for the reader.

things I want to tell my children but might forget – dressing

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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!

in the goldsmith’s workshop

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Last weekend, tucked away in a corner of my city, surrounded by beautiful handmade jewellery, a goldsmith friend and I worked together to create something in writing about her work.

A goldsmith’s workshop is a metaphorical and literal treasure-house.  Scattered all over the place were tools, little bags of silver wire, strange little ladles and dishes.  As we talked, she showed me gem stones from distant mines and pearls from seas in far flung places. As our conversation explored the events and moments in life which are marked by things made in precious materials, the goldsmith told me a story, one of the many secrets of the workshop…

The goldsmith had a customer who had recently become divorced.  Still distraught, she brought her rings to the goldsmith; could they be remade, she wondered?  Hidden in the liminal space of the goldsmith’s workshop, the customer and the goldsmith worked together to melt down the engagement ring and the wedding ring that had symbolised love, and commitment and hope and friendship.  As the metals turned liquid, so tears flowed down the face of the customer.  Something was dying; pain, disappointment and loss seeped out of the cracks of the broken heart.  In the crucible of the molten gold, impurities from the former life of the rings burnt away.

And then the process of re-creation started.  Moment by moment, the customer and the goldsmith designed something beautiful from the raw materials of the old.  What had been was no more; what was left was a becoming.  Slowly the customer watched the goldsmith work with her designs and her hopes to create something new.  Wonder took the place of tears, and then joy and hope and delight.  The new ring slipped onto her finger and with it new meaning, shaped from the wisdom of experience, for a new life.

The fire crackled, the conversation went on…