#awakeaugust 02

Eating soft crumbs, toffeed sultanas and gooey cherries; a fruit cake baked yesterday.
It brings back the yellow polypropylene smell of the plastic cake tubs from home, smaller fingers straining to lift the corner to see how many buns were left.

Quietude

A small small English town, barely even a village, peaceful in the early morning sunshine. I got off the ferry and drove here, in the opposite direction to all the lorries bursting to offload their produce from the continent. I notice how I think of it as Mainland now, more central to the world than the country I grew up in. Ich bin auf der Insel. Friends excuse me, when I do something 'odd', like not wearing a jacket first thing in the fresh morning when I know I will be inside all day, watching the sunshine warm up the tarmac and concrete around the office, they say, 'Oh she is from the Island,' as if my peripheral position is in itself enough to explain strangeness.

The small English town has a long shingle and sand beach, spiked with dark wooden groynes to prevent the coast from taking a Sunday stroll down to the next village, and from there, maybe even across the Channel to the old enemy, France. This morning though, there are very few people around, it is early, for England, around 7am. I would already have been in the office back home, but here, a couple of joggers, and a couple of sprightly pensioners out for a morning walk are the only people I see. The road along the beach is also mostly undisturbed by cars.

I would not have driven here, even for the beauty of the beach, if I had not been here before as a destination, and if I had not had 10 hours before my next 'appointment'. The beach huts are a couple of miles up the promenade from the faded hotel and guest houses. A couple of miles away from where my great-aunt had lived, and the house where my mother was born. There is a photograph of me here in the swimming pool car park at the age of sixteen, all bleached curls, towering over my brother who at fourteen had yet to put on his growth spurt to reach his six-foot-plus adult height. The huts back on to the swimming pool.

Even so, the town is not really familiar to me, in those days it was a good six hours drive from the parental home, longer if we had the caravan on the back, and after sixteen I begged to be left at home, for what teenage girl wants to spend time cooped up in a caravan with parents and brothers? I remembered that as a young child, we had come here and I had slept in my great-aunts house. I remembered the garden, and the path that led behind a tiny sports club, with corrugated tin fences. It took less than three minutes to get to the beach from her house. She left it though, towards the end of her life, moved to sheltered accommodation around the corner together with her husband, they were in a familiar place even if the rooms were not.

She had cool paper tissue skin, and a particular scent or perfume, I don't know which one it was, perhaps the smell of her face powder, but together it gave her a subtle beauty, a distinctiveness that seemed all her. Quiet and almost elegant, not breathtaking but peaceful, something calming. Whether it was her age or just her I don't really know. The small town has the same qualities, neat but not ostentatious, pretty but not eye-catching. Seeing it in repose, quietude.



For Muriel
more pictures here (scroll down)

Quotations...

She knew she was able to fly
Because when she came down
She had dust on her hands from the sky
She said I touched a cloud

Ride: Polar Bear

Scars

eyes flashing in the mirror, overhead halogen.
scars, skin not shining but reflective.
as scars should be.

temperature

OK the Poland plans have had to be shelved due to a temperature plus cough & cold.  So I'm trying to make myself sweat by drinking (more) hot tea, hot raspberry cordial and cooking a hot chilli.  And I thought I'd have a nice warm toned New Orleans step to, think myself into sweating despite the duvet of snow outside...

one day i will be able to say no (and mean it)

this clean period
recovering you addict,
through soggy summer.

underneath...

there is nothing left
I visited our home land,
you would not see me

The green bike

Photographs of that summer showed her skinny and brown skinned with white-blonde lanky hair, her brother chubbier and darker; her on the swing and him on his green Chopper, a boys bike that she wasn't allowed.
The paddling pool, an ever present temptation that summer where the pavements scorched bare feet and the cheap plastic seats of their bicycles were too hot to touch, too hot for the pair of them to go riding and the breeze of their movement to cool them down.
Mum encouraging her outside, "You shouldn't be inside reading on a day like this!"
They did a jigsaw together, lying on the back lawn on their stomachs, a sheet of hardboard for the table, but the jigsaw was wrong for the weather; an ancient world map, the sun blindingly reflected off the silver edge pieces.
There were comparatively few photos in her mothers album, images were scarcer then, more expensive and more treasured than in this digital age. She was never so close to her brother as that summer, and the album was one of three from their shared childhood that her mother had bequeathed her, she picked up the phone to call him and call him closer.


Published (on real paper and everything!) in 6S The Green Bike anthology here

House of Escher

The wait was finally over. The shift was finally over. Another gruelling 8hrs , if not quite at the coalface then pretty fucking close. Back breaking work. Moving the products from A to B, from B to C, C to D, well, you get the picture. And yes you felt like you were moving in circles, but why the hell did it always seem to be uphill too? The sweat seeps down as you move and toil, like a nappy rash in an adult, how pleasant. Stubbed fingers, scraped knuckles. But now the wait was over, the reward in sight...



and if you're interested in the work/reward payoff, here's a link to the advert that came into my mind when I read the opening sentence!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb7y2VKfgHY

Posted at ThinkingTen in response to Take it Away challenge http://thinkingten.ning.com/profiles/blogs/house-of-escher

Tracks

The scene, tranquil on the face of it was subtly horrible. The tracks leading off into the forest, the trees louring over, darker as they drew my eye onward, until at last I was gazing into a black hole.
Stuff of childhood nightmares, I was never able before to bring the fear over into waking life. There was a picture of a woodland scene at Granny & Grandad's bungalow, above the fireplace. The colours were wrong too, oil paints in daubs of too bright yellows, olive splotches and the hint, but only that, of the darkness at the end of the track.
One day though, I opened a book, a classic, and read for a while until I got to a scene where four hobbits cower at the side of the track on the edge of the wood while unknown dark beings seek and sniff for them.
The memories then came flooding back, a nightmare where the monster lurks, I try crouching down in the wood, a tangle of roots I hope will hide me and prevent the monster spotting me. And the book has me hooked, there is nothing more evil than the nine black riders who search for you. Primal fear of being discovered. Being looked at. Freud would no doubt have a field day, as long as it is not walking tracks in the forest I don't give a damn.


Published at ThinkingTen in response to On Location Monday challenge
http://thinkingten.ning.com/profiles/blogs/tracks-1

Where to though?

Time was running out. It was now 12 days since I had last mailed him; 8 days since he mailed me back. But the time was for sure ticking by. Perhaps I could look at it the other way round; time is running in... or up? It is getting richer and fuller and there are more things to do with time now that I am not waiting stupidly for him to contact me. That's the theory anyway. So why did I spend another 20 minutes today when I should have been working looking with aching eyes at the last mails? On my own in a quiet office, the sun on the windows soporific and sluggish like my thoughts. The sun runs through it's rutted arcs in the sky according to the seasons and perhaps so do I. Now is the season for looking around and realising time is running out. I wonder where to? Do I want to go there?


Posted at ThinkingTen in response to the Take it away Tuesday prompt:  Time was running out
http://thinkingten.ning.com/profiles/blogs/where-to-though

haiku n° 6 (revised)

Your words trickle in
Why did I let you? Cut not
clutch at memories...

haiku n° 5

Your seed trickles out
a wet patch; summer is due,
sunshine flew away.

haiku n° 4

You pull out of me,
drive from the hotel; litter swirls
windblown vortices.

haiku n° 3

Ripe for seeding, sun
falls on open eyes, legs, heart;
you push into me.

haiku n° 1

Still I wish for you;
The sap rising in the trees
I will not blossom.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing...

I don't know her name.
Filtered through him I have random snippets of information about her, I know she has three kidneys and is several years younger than I am, I know where her parents live, that her sister has twins that went to the psychologist almost before they went to school.
I know that it is one year since she had to have her wisdom teeth out in hospital, because it shattered our plans to meet, paint the town red and fall into bed; this year, this weekend he goes to the hotel with her instead.
I know she is six foot tall, a better match for him there than I am, although it was someone else that told me this, explaining the day after the birth why their newborn girl was such a "long" baby.
He told me that she never gives him blow-jobs, after her first attempt at it many years ago went wrong; now a wicked joke between us that you could be a spit, swallow or snort type of girl. 
He told me so, but of all the things he told me I wonder if this last is true?

The right curtain

At first I hear a noise, quiet and slow, an echoing boom.  It's the fall of giant footsteps, not too close to me now.  But as soon as I recognise them I know it is time to run.  From wherever I am, I must get home.  From a view point just above my head, I see myself scrambling into a run.  I am not very fast, but as I go round corners and duck out of the way of the other people all leaving the streets I am pleased that I don't fall.  I keep my balance, and I feel confident that I will be able to get home in enough time.

But the booming noise gets louder, the dinosaur is getting nearer.  I can't see it yet, but I have run as far as the street my house is in.  Not far now!

Boom boom; boom boom; boom boom.  The footsteps are louder and getting quicker.  I should not look round.  I can picture in my head how the dinosaur will look.  I don't need to see it.  I should not look round.

Now I know somehow that it is just me out there, I don't have to save anyone else this time. I just have to get into the house and close all the doors and windows so that it can't get in. So that it can't get me.

I look behind me to see how close the race will be this time. I know I should not look round but every time I do, and every time I lose my margin of safety.  It is a tyrannosaurus, tall and rusty.  Its head is above the rooves of the houses.  Its tail is lashing along the hedge on the bank across the road.  It sees me then too.  Its eye is a pukey yellow green, weird like a goats.

I can taste something in my mouth, it is a funny taste you get when you have been running hard.  I am breathless.  I am 5 houses away from home, then I am past Mrs Rivers house and at Mrs Taylors house.  They are both teachers at the big school but I am too worried about getting home to be scared of them now.

The tyrannosaurus is very near; I can feel the thump and the vibration as he walks behind me.  I can see in my mind the large yellow-white curved toenails ready to rip me up.  Oh please oh please let me make it home!   Boom boom.

I can see the garage door swinging down in front of me, to keep everyone in the house safe.  I have to make it up the drive and under the gap before it closes.  I run so fast, and I can feel the sting at my knees as I squeeze and roll underneath it, just in time as the tyrannosaurus swipes an arm at me.  The nasty nails clack on the outside of the garage door.  It is bolted shut from the inside and the dinosaur cannot get in that way.

But it is still not over as I have to run through the house to check that every door is closed, every window is closed, and every pair of curtains is drawn across the window.  The tyrannosaurus has stopped outside the house and is searching for a way to get in.  I run up the stairs, and jerk the curtains in my brothers bedroom closed.  I saw it moving outside the window, and I run into my bedroom. 

Time goes slower, I take hold of the left curtain and pull it across.  I pull it at the bottom and it takes a while for the top to catch up so there is a diagonal edge.  The monster could see through the gap.  I pull until the top of the curtain reaches the stop in the middle of the window then run for the right curtain on the other side of the gap. 

I have pulled it halfway closed when the monster catches up with me.  Through the gap in the curtains the final horror is going to happen after all.  The tyrannosaurus bends its head to the window, and I cannot escape.  The booming noise is still there but faint, reminding me of my run here, blood pounding in my ears.  It bends its head to the window, turns it parallel to me.  The line of its teeth skim by, and now I can see its horrible eye. 

IT IS LOOKING AT ME!

A recurring childhood nightmare; always the chase, the panic, will I make it back home safe? Always I did and when I had to look after other, we all made it inside to safety. Sometimes I even woke up before the tyrannosaurus could peer through the windows; sometimes all the curtains were closed and I could sense it prowling outside, looking for another way in. I felt the creeping horror when I realised there was an unbolted window and at the same time so did the monster, but always the worst thing that happened was that I was looked at. I realise this part does not sound very scary in retrospect but at the time this was terrifying.

A weak writing week

I haven't written much for a while; I've been following people at 6S and reading these & various other blogs avidly, commenting occasionally. I had a 5 day week at work (I know, it's amazing how fast I forgot this was normal) and work also extruded itself into the weekend.  I did manage to write a piece on what love means to me for submission & hopefully later publication/approval, but it's felt odd not to have published anything for a week to the blog or other website...
Minor turbulence this week when I found an ages old flame via facebook, I proposed friendship and he accepted.  I am not particularly surprised to see that he seems to be pursuing a life of status symbols; maybe the exotic young new wife is one of those or maybe there is genuine feeling there.  Now my surface is smoothing out again & the ripples in my composure quickly fade, it is a pleasant surprise to realise I don't much care.
But.. the lastest flame I had is still smouldering on after the event; he knows it and as long as I am not depressed about it he seems to be content that I still dance around that candle.  Sooner or later I will have to snuff it, but still it brings light and a tiny heat into my life.

Remote

Sometimes I wonder who I am chatting to really when I message or e-mail him, physically all I can see are the words we send to each other as we have the electronic conversation; it's attenuated nature is not immediately obvious as my mind fills in the gaps of a missing voice and tone, face and body, shared and separated histories.
The words jump from the screen direct to the brain, and I interpret the simple facts of the communication with him, decorating them with the smiles and laughter, touches and tears that we used to share; although sometimes the words carry out a bypass operation and head direct to my stomach.
I type at my keyboard picturing him at his, concentrating on what I have said, and choosing the words to send back to me; I tease my words into a shape I know will tease him, but not too much, the situation demands that I hold something of myself back until he changes his mind and comes to be with me again.
I use the words to bring, bit by bit, the desired result closer, subtle reminders of what he is missing, some not so subtle remarks as to what I miss, I am playful as I build up an edifice of memory and longing and closeness; looking to evoke a yearning nostalgia that can be uncorked to fizz and be joyful again.
He writes "Talking to you makes me have thoughts, but whereas before I would let those thoughts lead me they don’t now!" and my gut curdles as I digest the realisation that thinking about me has lost the power to move him the way it used to.
And with that I realise, the words I see from him are filled with a backwash of emotions that I provided for myself; he sees just my words.