A small stone is a polished moment of paying proper attention.

Starting in January
a daily challenge, to
pay attention
to the world
observe it and
polish it.

anticipation

my toes are cold, the frigid air

steals in from the opened door.

the bells from the monastery

chime above the town,

notes snowflaking through the brittle air.

Last morning

When I wake up I am pinned down, my head is anchored to the pillow.  Resistance at my scalp as the skin pulls as I try to move, twist my neck.  Panic clutches me, like that waking dream where my body is frozen but I am alert, I can hear the footsteps coming towards me, coming closer, I know I am paralysed and cannot escape and still they come.  Breathe, gulp air, how effortful it is to do this now when aware that the allotted amount is almost up; how have I breathed unnoticed all this time?  Thoughts whirl and skirl, patterns in the air, a flock of seagulls, wishing I had a picture of you, I've been looking so long at these pictures of you...
The low rumbling I hear must have been going on for several seconds now and with this the terror recedes; it resolves itself into a purr as once again my cat has come into the room in the night and now squats heavily on my hair.

This weekend

Once again real life intrudes...  This long weekend I thought I would get around to lots of writing, and maybe even some playing around with pictures on photoshop which I find sometimes helps kickstart some writing (Streams & A journey, for example)

But the weekend hasn't really panned out like that so far; for good reasons, like actually getting involved in life for a change.  Spending time with friends, spending time sorting things like christmas shopping out.  Wandering through the town in search of ingredients for tea so that I didn't have to get into the car and go to an out of town supermarket, where I would end up sitting in a queue of traffic of people trying to get into the town to go to the mediaeval christmas market, fuming, knowing I would have to do it all again in reverse when I wanted to drive back into town to get back to my flat.  Luckily after visiting the Metzgerei, the Asian shop and Kaisers in town I had all I needed (Lammgoulash, ginger, yoghurt) to make Mughlai Lamb.

Yesterday I did write my second chapter in the Storymash thread that I am working on together with a friend; he'd completed his second thread within minutes (poetic license - I guess it was a few hours really) of me posting my first; and was feeling slightly guilty at not being able to match his pace.  However, since one of the reasons I am making more of an effort to write at this time is to stave off lethargy and depression, this sense of pressure or urgency is quite a good thing.

And today, meeting a friend for a late breakfast and catching up on the gossip, the sky is bright with white and grey clouds, the wind is strong and bitter, the cold finally fits the christmas markets and I almost feel like drinking Glühwein, but it is too early in the day.  Wandering through the market, trying to imagine what it would have been like in the middle ages, much harder to do by daylight.  It is easier to believe in the dark, and tomorrow I will go there again hopefully with my imagination fully functioning.  Today I came back after visiting only one stall, the baker with stonebaked cumin bread.  Clutching it to my chest, it is warm through the paper bag, but surely paper would have been too precious in former times to make into bags?

Some of the sense of wonder at the market coming to town must have come from having a small town attitude; global travellers are jaded, not really entering into the spirit I suppose, or maybe that's just me.  It is of course on one level quite a spectacle, but as it is only "for show" I find myself wondering what all the players, the jesters, the stall holders do for the other eleven months of the year when the sun shines late into the evening.  I guess I'm not very good at suspending disbelief...

My first attempt at collaborative fiction - "Rediscovery" (see My Links)

It was like waking up after you'd been ill for a long time, she thought. She didn't really have a clear sense of where she was, she vaguely remembered being... well being somewhere else in a house, a familiar place, her house? She thought that must be right but it felt like trying to remember through thick curtains. Trying to think but she just got a blurred shape, and the feeling that she did recognise the memory.


And now, where was she? Sitting in the passenger seat of a car, parked by the roadside. It was quiet, and dark outside, and as she looked to check on her surroundings her vision wobbled, slid. Shaking her head she blinked quickly, but the view stayed indistinct, and as her eyes refocused she realised it was rain sliding down the windshield. But something was strange... when she tried to recall it she couldn't pin the thought down... It was something she'd noticed before she realised about the raindrops oilily running down the glass... something... but the thought was gone again.

"So, I'm in a car," she reasoned, talking out loud to be reassured that she coud reason and function. "I guess I didn't drive here or I wouldn't be belted into this seat?" She felt oddly divided, like her attention was not where she was now, but being pulled elsewhere, a kind of searching, seeking for something. Something not entirely pleasant, but a yearning, a hunger. Focus, girl, focus, she thought. She was wearing a coat, it was long and buttoned up most of the way, wrapping over her knees and parting as it dropped down to her feet. It was surprisingly soft to touch, and almost, almost, she felt it did belong to her; she felt like she remembered it; but when she tried to trace that thought, hook it on a line and follow it to find out more about herself, it somehow squirmed out of reach and eluded her.


"So I'm in a car," she tried again. "I'm alone, but maybe there is someone who drove me here? But where is 'here'?" It was almost impossible to see outside of the car, for the rain blurred the outside world. But there were no lights that she could see, looking directly ahead there was only the glimmer of the hood, the car she was in must be white and reflecting what slivers of light the sky still held. The darkness was not frightening though, or threatening, she realised, and again had the feeling that this was new, that this wasn't quite how she normally felt about being somewhere dark and wet and alone. She wasn't scared. Was that a good thing?


"What can I remember? There must be something that will remind me where I am and why," she thought. Under her rib cage she felt something contract, or clench. And again the feeling that she was focussed somewhere else, somewhere outside her body. She let her mind drift off to follow that sensation. There was something at the edge of her perception, but she wasn't sure what. It was intense, a concentration of something, a burning core and she wanted to reach out to it, wanted to reach out and pull it towards herself. Wanted, yearned, and as she wanted inside her something stirred, something pale and torpid uncoiled within her.


She shivered. It really did feel like there was something out there. She could even concentrate on it and pinpoint it. It was not that close to her, it felt like it was some distance away, she thought. She felt as if she could zoom in on it, a hot roiling melting something, a churn of hot and cold feelings. Feelings? How could she sense a bundle of feelings miles away?


"Oh for f*cks sake," she chided herself. "Can I not just keep my mind on my problem? I don't know where I am or what I'm doing here? I can't remember how I got here. I can't remember who drove me here and..." She didn't want to finish the thought. She didn't want to acknowledge the slowly dawning truth. She gazed at the rain on the windscreen again, sharp splashes pulsing against the glass. The distinct drops burst and spattered and disappeared into the watery film covering the windshield, fading into the foreground.


"I can't remember how I got here, and I can't remember my name!" Panic rose, she twisted in the seat, struggling to get out, feeling held down, constrained. Oh, God, I can't get out, I can't move, I can't, I can't, I can't... and then nothing.


This time when she came to herself, she remembered the convalescent feeling she'd woken up with last time, it felt so familiar. She also remembered trying to get out, to escape. She must have been so alarmed, so afraid that she'd blanked out. Looking down, the seatbelt was still tight around her, pressing her down into the seat. Her mouth twisted as she tried a wry smile. How stupid to have panicked over being belted in! She reached down and pressed the seatbelt release, catching her long fingernails as she did so. The belt snickered back across her body as she thought... "Long fingernails? I bite my fingernails, don't I?" But when she brought her hand up to her face the nails were perfect and long, and even painted. She wasn't sure what colour they were as it was even darker than before, but they were much darker than her skin, which did seem pale in this light. Disquiet rushed through her, but how absurd to look at yourself and think "These aren't my hands."

That feeling again, burning, empty hunger...


"I have to get out of the car!" she thought. And no sooner had she completed the thought than the door was open and she was standing outside of the car, twirling back to it to shut the door. Twirling, she saw movement, she saw a blur of motion reflected in the glass of the window. A fleering white oval.
Pause. Stop to think. Stop to process the visual information and assimilate it, place it into context. "My face!" she realised. "That was my face reflected in the window," and she drew closer to the car door to see herelf more clearly. As she bent down to the window a curtain of white blonde hair fell across the pale reflection and made her draw back in shock. "I am not blonde!" but even as she thought it she was looking at the image in the window and losing the indistinct memories of herself as a different person, feeling them dropping away from her.


She gazed at the window, she couldn't say for how long, transfixed at the face that was hers but somehow new to her too.

She gazed, and barely noticed anything else. It wasn't until a she heard a faint rushing sound that she glanced at the surroundings. She was in a wood, maybe even a forest, the trees were tall and seemed pretty close together and the only break in them was the road she was parked on. Now she did feel apprehensive...


Sound intensified, a rushing, growling. Before she knew it she was sitting back in the car and cowering into the seat. The feeling of longing and burning was very near and verystrong now, she found it difficult to concentrate on anything else. It was so near! Somehow, while she'd been watching the reflected face that wasn't hers, the longing yearning thing had come closer, so close. Sound filled her world, and a blinding flash, after the initial shock she placed it as belonging to a car driving past her.


And the strong feeling of yearning passed by. The relief! The...

But her memory left her again for a moment, and then when she came to again; the sickbed feeling not so strong this time, there was a person stood in front of her. She'd pulled her coat around her, it's hood over her head. The person in front of her said something but she was too distracted by the sense that all the burning intensity she'd felt and dreaded was inside him.


"You been stuck out here long?" the person said. What should she do? What should she say? What, what was this person in front of her? Somehow she knew what he wanted her to say.

"Not too long. My name is Steph."

Meeting up

Craning her neck over her shoulder she flipped the indicator switch and pulled left onto the autobahn. Although she never felt completely at ease doing it on the wrong side of the road, it seemed easier in the dark than in daylight to judge the speed of the other cars, and the lorries. Two cars moved across to the middle lane and swished by, the roads were wet with spray although it didn't seem like it was actually raining at the moment. Foot down on the accelerator, listening to the automatic gearbox change up as she increased the pace to match the traffic.
The radio was tuned to an English station, the music was not to her taste, dance music, but she had forgotten to put the CD case in the car. In any case, her mind was definately not on the music but on the meeting to come. She picked up the phone from the passenger seat and typed a message, "Just leaving airport be bout 50mins will call when leave m'way". Turned the radio down low so that she would hear the sound of an incoming message and dropped the phone back onto the passenger seat.
Focus on the road ahead, the carriageway fully lit, no need for full beam here at night. A gentle sine wave of streetlamps as the road dips and then picks up again to crest the hill. Nothing behind her at the moment, coming up fast behind a lorry and moving over, the tyre noise changing momentarily as the car crossed the white lines marking the lanes. She listens for the same as she pulls back in, but missed it, or the tyres missed the lines.
It would probably be about 50mins before they met, although she thought the drive might be a bit quicker. On getting dressed this morning she'd planned not to change her clothes, but she knew that the bed was unmade, the last thing she'd done before leaving for the weekend away was strip the sheets off. Would it be tempting fate too much to make the bed before going to meet him? He might decide, on actually seeing her face to face again that they would not get together after all, despite all the flirty chat messages, and the dozens of texts over the weekend, anticipating the night to come. He'd admitted to being a bit nervous too, under the excitement, which she'd found endearing.
The spray has turned to drizzle, she turns the intermittent wipers on. At least when she gets back she hasn't got too far to go to meet him, the bar is a minute from her flat, no risk of getting soaked unless the heavens open. Past the first set of services, she knows she has enough petrol to get back without stopping. The fluorescent lighting disappears behind her, nearly half way now.
The 130kmh signs disappeared, although she was already going the usual 15 kmh faster than she should have been. She pushes the accelerator down some more, how fast did she dare go? How quickly could she get back? She felt the movement rub against the blister on her heel from her new boots as she did so.
She knew she wasn't concentrating fully on the drive, glancing down to see whether a new text had arrived, head full of the texts exchanged over the last few days. Oh for fucks sake, she'd bought condoms for the first time in years, if that wasn't tempting fate nothing was, making the bed was just something that needed doing anyway. Even if she did sleep alone. Of course she was nervous and a bit unsure too, they'd known each other as acquaintances for years, and only over the last few months had started getting to know each other better, the conversation initially joky and often crude, but then falling into flirtation. And over the weekend! Even the fact of the texts themselves, he was thinking about her almost all the time to be sending 50 or 60 texts a day. As for the content... she's wondering what it would be like to kiss him. What if he feels differently when he sees her?
A single ring from the phone and the screen lights up in the dark. "Just gettin 2 tram station :) xxx". It is really going to happen, he wouldn't text that if he was going to back out now. Too late for her to back out now too though. The news headlines came on the radio, 9pm already. She imagines the autobahn is a river, she's flowing along with the current, moving to the left or the right to avoid other fish, but flowing, being pushed along towards the destination, towards the rest of the evening. It is smooth, effortless, she feels in her element.
Nearly at her turnoff, tucking back in the inside lane as soon as she sees the sign for the exit. Much earlier than she normally would, crawling up behind the dirty white back of a Polish lorry, swinging right with relief when the junction appears and the lorry goes straight on. Ok, Ok, now she has to make the promised call. As soon as she joins the next road, after the loop that connects them, car and body angling to the right as she drives around it. He's just got to the station near the pub, he's early too. His voice a surprise after all the texts and IM chat, she realises how little she's actually spoken to him.
Seconds later she can hardly remember what was said, just that he is there. A voice inside her, listing the things to be done in the few minutes she's back at the flat, an insistent metronome. And a blur, getting to the flat, hardly remembering the garage and hauling the weekend's bags out of the car. Making the bed in a rush, no need for hospital corners, just throwing the duvet and pillows into the covers, a brief plumping. Takes the condoms from the bag. Puts them on the bookshelf in the bedroom. Keys, money, put them in the coat pockets and she's back out of the house walking to the pub. Not thinking. She walks into the pub, scanning the room for him. Will he look different because they plan to be more than friends?
She sees him at a table, and is surprised to see him wearing yellow. He has a bottle of white wine and two glasses in front of him. She feels a smile breaking across her face, and a tension she wasn't fully aware of dissolving. Relief, she didn't realise she was worried that she might have felt differently when she saw him. She corrects herself, it's more that she had been anticipating not wanting to "go through with it" because as he notices her and smiles back she does feel differently.

Getting started...

Randomly browsing on Facebook last night, I was struck by the blog "one hundred words, once a day" (http://www.100words365.blogspot.com/) I like the idea of having the discipline to sit down and write some few words for public consumption each day - I probably like it all the more because I am not sure if I actually do have the discipline to do it. I'm in the frame of mind where I feel I need to do something to climb out of the pit, although as I can blog from the comfort / space of my home I'm not sure how much this will really answer that need. I did go out & get a couple of Christmas presents this morning, and braved the shopping purgatory that is IKEA too, which beats last weekends activity levels already - & I still have the delights of going to Kaufland to come! Hotdogs at IKEA now come with the dried onion bits you put in salads... not a patch on proper fried onions though. I would like to get started on some fiction writing, not just blog as an alternative to diary writing. I used to write "stories" mostly in my teens, although the last time I tried was probably late 20's. I think I am better at descriptions, rather than characterisation or plot building, but it will be interesting to see if with regular practice something actually develops. So, thanks to Jo Parker for providing the inspiration, and lets see where this thing goes...