an unusually warm day.
time has slowed
though many are back to work.
sound of bees humming,
though they aren’t
not near me.
this morning I saw the murk of grey clouds harden into a covering that lifted right off
all at once
off the dawn sky
off the sunrise blossoming into day
off my heart
drifting away, I didn’t even pay attention because the dawn caught my breath
breathing sighs
among the warm breezes, among the back to work hum
an unusually warm day
It continues. The discernment of wild forces was strengthening in itself. So too was the realisation that staying in position was the place of hope.
So I stayed while everyone left.
Stayed still. Not rushing hither and thither. Stayed in the small circumference of the garden, the seaside, the station and the park. Dwelling myself into home, to wholeness, to hope and to trust.
I did ordinary things. Tending the flowers, the laundry, the thoughts and the imagination.
It seemed like nothing. But the seeming was not true.
The staying still revealed the rush of everything; long days at work, long calls listening to friends, trains, planes, fretful self-displacements searching for places to hide, be found, regroup, distract.
The more the rush appeared, the more the stillness showed its value.
I’m still not there yet, not there, a somewhere that some part of me knows I am going towards but cannot speed up, or even really know where it is, just that it is. There is a somewhere and part of me knows how to get there.
The rest of me must follow, blind.
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.
Yes, I went a little bit silent. Despite the sweet encouragements of the wordpress world (‘you’re on a [insert number here] day streak!’ I got absorbed into another direction.
I have been making a rhythm path into my creativity, but also, I notice now, my living.
As my creative practice is continually also an investigation into the nature of existence, the living and the art are closely intertwined. Deep shifts have been going on in my own deep life, old stories have been moving to take up new positions, new stories may or may not be being born, but they will only be able to be born if space is made for them.
Such a work is one of great tenderness and almost perpetual bewilderment, perseverance yes, and perhaps this is why this has been such a focus.
But now the shift has completed, or is completing, and then a new space is opening up. As usual the space comes with a sense of dizzying exposure alongside the delight. What will fill this space, what discoveries will get made, who will arrive to commune with it, how to protect it? It is a space for tiny flutterings and glimmerings yet as with all tender spaces most likely the giants of the land will be waiting to sneak in forbiddingly.
So I go gently and write and try to inhabit peace and trust. And to soak up and reveal in the creativity of a moment of blossoming freedom that comes rarely in life and is a gift of great power and beauty.
Today there was a certain new joy in persevering with the rhythm that will sustain the studio inside.
Alongside other chores, yesterday I had two calls with old friends, and although in a way both of them were need and I was helping (listening, which I am not always good at), the quality of the (re)connection – (‘re’, because we have been so little in contact in the ferocious wildness of the last two years) was very deep. They’ve both known me a long time, and although there is a certain element of them knowing a me that I no longer am, there is also a knowing of a me that I deeply am and will always carry with me, that newer friends will never truly know.
Then I cycled to the seaside on my bike, taking with the picnic food that my mother always makes for my family’s seaside trips, simplicity itself yet with the soul of a thousand small memories.
It is not totally the case that I have cleverly made a joy happen; it’s partly the sheer fact that after persevering with so many chores and so much work, some of them are now done. There is a loosening into the necessary tasks of the day. I am at liberty to untangle thing more, to create more freedom. I note to myself the importance of not accidentally accumulating more.
Nonetheless, I am aware of a kind of deeper nourishment. My soul is resting. My perseverance can come from a deeper place, from the deep heart rather than from a certain kind of drier (yet for a time necessary) intention.
In the middle of my life I found myself in a beautiful garden. I’ve longed for one, and although I expected it to be in a more conventional house and of a more private nature, the one I have tumbled into is a continuing wonder; a collective small garden converted from a tiny park, in the middle of the city, with small allotment boxes with the growings of strangers who are becoming known, and a communal, collectively tended vegetable garden from which I can at will pick spinach, herbs, beans, potatoes.
I feed my perseverance by putting myself in the path of beauty and trying not to neglect the wondrousness of existence, by a collaboration.
extraplorer 