#awakeaugust 16

satiated but guilty
the stretched ache of my stomach around
chicken saag and mushroom pullao


Awake August facebook page here

cushions

They get up and leave, muttering about what they will do next as they circle, swirl. The cushion on the sofa, sitting, part of the furniture. You would not say anything to the cushion, not explain yourself, not invite the cushion to join in.

You can have a one to one relationship with a cushion, it is always going to be there for you, you can put it down & leave it and most times, unless someone else moved it, the cushion will be there for you when you get back. But why would you? Sure, it is comforting, it is nice to snuggle into, warm and enfolding. It won't complain if you are not there for a while, it won't seem any different to you if you haven't been there. Maybe a little colder to start with, like when you turn a pillow over, a refreshing coolness that disappears with your body warmth.

Group dynamics are interesting things. I sit as passive as a cushion, waiting. People display around me. I think about need. On one hand, I hate the cushion role, but then I also always hated the need to be of importance, of consequence, the ache to be noticed and appreciated. My whole persona comes from this need, sarcastic party girl with a (fading) work ethic. And it is not the right persona for me at the moment. It is the one people like, people relate to, if only they don't have to be reminded of the need beneath. Hell, I don't like to be reminded of it, so I am sure that no-one else does either.

You, you upset me when you suggest I should be looking out for someone else. You asked me if anyone took my fancy, on this weekend of like-soul finding. I was taken aback, I said it wasn't that sort of a weekend. And then I watched the others, who did find other souls. Maybe they had more soul to offer, to share, to attract. Mine, too closely associated with need, mine is too small to stand observation, too small to share. I need it, I want to have something left inside in case you would look my way again.

I make the breakfast, bake biscuits in the oven and my new role must be that of an enabler; a mother hen with no chicks of my own. I don't want chicks, I don't know whether people notice this or not. I am called an angel of mercy for doing the practical nurturing things and no-one sees that I need nurture too.

You tell me that you had a wonderful time last night, somewhere else in the world, far from me. We talk but it does not bring us closer today. The need is too close to the surface for me to cope with this. I think about how I could cut this off, but I know I won't; I need the emotional swings to make me feel alive, to at least let me know that I am not a cushion.

the edge

Being at the beach should be one of the simple pleasures in life. The best sort of beach has shelving sand dropping steeply into the sea, the waves rush up and tug at your ankles as you try to walk along. Standing still in the swirl of the sand and water results in your feet being buried up to your ankles, deeper each time the surf surges in. The icing on the cake is the rocky outcrops that make the perfect beach, so that the waves crash and send pearled and diamonded droplets into the sky. Spume. And over and over the waves come, in a rhythmn that never gets boring.

The joy of being on the edge, between the elements of earth and water, land and sea is what makes it more complex. I am most at home in the limbo between them, on the beach when the waves crash. Some people are happy at the centre of things, I am an edge person, happier looking in and observing.

The land is a mass where humans live, millions and millions of them, whom I will never know. The humans I meet, talk to, write to, watch on the telly or in films, they belong to this mass. I do not know them, in a Venn diagram of all that we have in common, the two circles barely kiss. I do not feel encompassed by them, I feel a thing apart, I prefer to watch them and carefully pick my interactions.

I feel drawn to the water and its vastness and energy and seeming emptiness (ignoring the scientist part of me that knows the biomass of the oceans is greater than that of the land). I feel drawn to it, I would like to wade into it's depths and swim out away from the shore, I would like to be that bold and adventurous, but I am not. If I stay here long enough, thinking, watching, reflecting, perhaps I will get the strength?

The beach is where land and sea come to interact, where sociability flirts with the empty wet horizon. An edge person needs the land, the mass, as well as the waters that move to their own tides. And so I come to the beach, not such a simple pleasure.



originally inspired by a T10 prompt 3rd June 2010, revised for >language>place blog carnival edition #6 on 21st May 2011 after the world did not end again.

whisper words of wisdom, let it be

The day of the wedding the chestnut blossoms were teased loose by the gusty breeze, like paper leaves they covered the ground and drifted, or got caught in grass, branches. Natures confetti. Pretty, even I thought so, spattered across the patio. Something about their insubstantiality. I recalled that someone had once told me that chestnuts were a very primitive tree, and the fallen blossom was simple, an oval ivory-pink leaf with  a central vein. It is falling still, a bumper year, sweeping it up today seems like a waste of time as there will only be more tomorrow.

There is a long running dispute between an anonymous neighbour in my block and myself. Every now and then, at Haus meetings (to which, as only a tenant, I am not invited; my landlady goes instead) I will be complained about, or rather, the dreadful state of my patio will be complained about. 

I freely admit that I am not the most houseproud of people, but I sometimes do try to make an effort. Every year I get around to emptying the pots of plants that have eventually died off. Admittedly, most of them do die in the heat of August, when I have to go away there is no-one who waters them. I water them intermittently when I get back, hoping they will pull through somehow. And thinking Darwinianly, well if they don't pull through, they weren't fit to survive. But the anonymous neighbour objects to more than this, horror of horrors, sometimes there is grass or dandelions growing in the cracks between my paving slabs, and almost always there is moss. Another very primitive life form if I remember anything about botany. I think that moss is part of a symbiotic relationship with something else (algae?) and goes on to form lichen; about which I was told, very definitely, not to pick it off stone walls because it had been there a damn sight longer than I had been alive.

Moss, trees dropping blossom, autumn leaves and cat hairs swirling in the breeze and scuttling into the corners of the patio and house; to me they are signs of changing seasons, natural, something to be observed not obliterated. I spent some time this morning (between sneezing at the millimetres thick pollen that also coated everything) potting and re-potting plants, and wondering why some people seem so resistant to just letting things be? Blossom and leaves fall, waves wash debris onto the beach, people leave footprints along it. At one five-star hotel/spa I stayed at on the beach in Ko Samui, people were employed to rake the beach to make it smooth again for the tourists. Whisper words of wisdom, let it be. It's why I get so annoyed when I see council employees out with leaf-blowers, expending energy to move leaves into neat piles, energy and noise and seemingly oblivious that the next breeze will undo all their 'work' and they will have to repeat it all again tomorrow.

The neighbour at the flat at right angles to mine came out while I was 'gardening', we exchanged greetings but no more. He began his daily clean up of their patio. I swept some of the blossom and earth into piles, and then into a blue IKEA bag to take downstairs to the Biomull bin. I do suspect that he might be the anonymous neighbour, there is him and his wife, but there is also another fussy seeming older man in the block that I have categorised as a busybody. He told me not to park on the street, even though I was unloading a bookcase or some such thing at the time. He would rather I parked in the garage and hauled the furniture across the whole garage and up two flights of stairs than park for 3 minutes outside the flat in nobody's way.

After a couple of minutes, a whirring noise started up, my neighbour was hoovering his patio. I will never hoover a patio. It is not really an outside room, it is the garden, it gets rained upon and the wind pushes and tangles things in the corners. I don't care that things are not neat, I like to see things grow and decay - the shapes of flowers twist and show new things as they die off. I dislike the bareness of my flat when I have tidied up, it happens more often now that I have a cleaner, but this is another task that is still ahead of me today, as due to travelling (mine) and holidays (hers) the flat has not actually been cleaned for 5 weeks.

I wonder why the bareness pricks at me so much? Perhaps I suspect that that is what really reflects my soul, I am difficult to get close to, to know well because inside there is nothing. I surround myself with clutter as a sign that I have lived, look, there is the evidence! Empty wine bottles, books piled on the sofa, the table, laid onto the bookshelves rather than stood on end and put away. Bags dropped onto the chairs, the worktops; shopping bags mostly emptied. I have been out there and interacted with the world, here is the proof. And I wonder if this is qualitatively different to the compulsive neatness, the daily conquering of elements carried out by my neighbour (and many many others, I'm not singling him out except as an example of a type).

The difference to me lies in the displaying element. Perhaps it is as simple as extroversion versus introversion. The extrovert nature wants people to see what he does, wants the things he does to be seen, to be commented upon. The extrovert needs 'society' to approve of him, does not chafe under the rules of a society but enthusiastically adopts them, wants to encourage others to do the same, wants to pull people to join in and do more things that society smiles upon, make more norms to follow and encourage others to follow. At least, that is how it seems to an ingrained introvert... I don't want to impose on the world, I am quite happy sitting and watching what it offers (at least in the way of nature). I dislike arbitrary rules.

Let it be, let me be. I am not a failure only because I don't do the same things that you do, or live to the same standards that you have. Let it be, like I let you be, like I let the world be. Keeping myself to myself is not my judgement on you, but on myself.

you would know him if you saw him

He has been with me for years, this tall man, not a gentleman. His skin is fair, I do like a man who can blush, or be flushed with exertion; thinking of his face unmasked in passion. A large man, well, large bloke. Blokes are down to earth, normal, have blokey mates and do blokey things and he anchors me to the world from which I might otherwise drift. He is big, and strong, he makes me feel physically right, not fragile (I am never that) but in proportion to him and to the world.

He makes me feel like I have a place here, I am not 100% sure what that place is, but it is here because of him. He has the key to opportunities, the one that unlocks my spontaneity. I would think, Hey, lets go to the cliffs today and lie on the grass while the seagulls whirl overhead, or We could go to the station and get on the first westbound train, or The pub is open, lets go. And we would do it, I would not make excuses to myself and end up doing nothing but thinking about new things, I would, we would experience them. That was all that mattered, doing things together.

The details of how he translates to this world, my ideal man, are a little sketchy. There is no recipe, like he must call me xx times a day, or we must be married (to each other!) The last man in this world made me feel all of those things. I felt more interesting, more lovable when he was with me. But the real world came calling and just like that he was gone, and Mr Ideal is taking an extended holiday right now.

note to self...

drowned forest

These trees have spent a long time in the water, I know how that feels, but the sun presses on them. Do they dream of budding once more? Reaching down to their murky toes for a spark of life, trying to draw it up inside them, though the capillaries are long since hardened? Oh, hope is not such a straight path.

updates... roundups... letdowns...

I am just about keeping my head above water with write1sub1 - see the stats below ;)
In the last couple of weeks, although I have been writing less, I have had a couple of pieces accepted for later publication - look out for 'Foot and Mouth' in MuDJoB mid/late March, and 'liminal' in the May edition of negative suck.  Also, my poem 'the river tonight' was chosen as an editors pick at thepoetrycircle ;)

I am annoyed with myself that I could not get my head in the right place to meet a couple of deadlines - notably the >language>place carnival edition #4 to be hosted by Jean Morris at tasting rhubarb.  Also, I wanted to do something collaborative for Dorothee Lang's synergetic transformations at BluePrint Review, I just never got to the right mindstate.

oh well, onwards and upwards...

housework

I hate it,
I hate being told what
I should do
to fit in as a good
little housewife,
but I know
what's good enough
for me isn't
good enough for other people.
Hoovering up spiders.
The dust bunnies
under my bed are
pre-mammalian,
a grey and fibrous
slime mould rearing its
head and looking
for more salubrious surroundings.
They reach their fingers
into my nose
and creep, creep,
so as not to waken
the sneeze reflex, creep
down my airways as
if seeking their
primordial swamp.
They should have hung
a left, and headed
for my brain.
Who would want to
tackle such a creature?

mourning...

She was the sort of girl who showed up to a wedding in a sports car and a figure skimming black dress, and she stalked in on impossible high heels, barely managing to avoid teetering.  Her green eyes glinted under chunky layers of blonde fringe and above the foamy head of another pint of local bitter.  She laughed raucously at dirty jokes, and sprinkled innuendo around like the trampled confetti.  The wife of the man who was buying the girl drinks watched warily, wearily, without seeming to watch - years of practice at that.  She trusted that her husband would know when to withdraw, to pull away when the flirting changed from exploratory to expectant, after all, he'd had years of practice too.
No-one wondered why the girl was wearing black.

When was that?

I lost that girl somewhere.  She was careless and carefree and reckless and, no, wait, reckfree is not a word; but if it was, she would have been all of that too.  In retrospect yes of course I admired her, loved her even, if only she'd known that.  The turn of her neck, whisking her hair past me, across her eyes, so that I saw her face only in flickers as she smiled, on her way through to somewhere else.  Fleeting, fun and gone.
Stolid and set now, I have taken Scarlett O'Hara's "I'll think about it tomorrow" and hardened into a life of procrastination.

I live here

Come in. Please.
Yeah, it is a bit messy.
I did think about you coming here
and wondered whether I should
tidy up or something,
but I thought that would
tempt fate or something.
I didn't want to put on a show
and make you think I was
someone different.
Does it upset you that I didn't?
That I didn't make an effort,
didn't dress this place up for you?
I thought that you would like it,
to see me, warts and all
not hiding things, dirty things
and black holes
down the back of the sofa.
Oh.
It makes you uncomfortable to
see that this room of my mind
is a mess, doesn't it?
Don't worry, it's been like this
for a while, it wasn't anything you did.
I kind of like it unkempt, at least,
I know where my wild things are.

Weak as I am...

I am sprawling in the dingy light, behind the bars that contain me, keeping me penned into the corner of the room.  I am not really there as a possession, treasured or otherwise, I am not really something he would display to other people.  But, in the recesses of his mind I am on display, I am defined by the sex we have had, and by the ideal of a mute naked slave, existing only to perform for him.  A casual pet.
I see the bars that keep me in, but I don't want to acknowledge that they were always weak, and now that he has broken a hole through them, I still stay in my corner cage.

Back again...

Oh dear, another week away from the creative impulse...
Well not strictly true, the impulse was there on fleeting occasions, and I have written several ideas & phrases in my notebook, but nothing was flowing as far as bringing the written word to the page.
Coming home on a couple of flights today, I was trying to watch people as a prelude to doing some character studies; I feel I need to practice creating some believable people who are not just an extension of myself; people who would behave differently to how I naturally would when put into a particular situation.  But I watched myself from outside instead.  To paraphrase Jane Gaskell, "incidentally, surely that's allowed as I'm the only interesting person around".  A blonde shaggy cropped head, dark rimmed "clever" glasses, with a pint of cider in one hand and a book introducing quantum theory in the other...  I spent some time wondering if people would notice and wonder if I was posing or genuine; but I suppose as usual people don't notice much outside their own heads & concerns.
Other than that, I have been in the accepting and comfortable world of being at home with my family; recharging my batteries, watching some good & bad rugby, and avoiding thinking about valentines day. 
Of course, the nunber of mafia/farmville/petville/fishville/facebook etc valentines I received mean that this year has been officially my most popular ever!  Back in school when boys were another species I could only dream of receiving multiple valentines, let alone into triple figures, but how mercenary they all are this year, given to receive further presents/points etc.  I'm not sure if this was any different way back when, even then they seemed to be merely a way of scoring popularity.  I'm not sure if I am a hopeless cynic or a hopeless romantic.  I guess I'd like to believe in a lasting love; but not the Hallmark hearts & flowers version.  Or kidneys...

Snapshots

Lisa went to the hairdresser this morning, although she was bright and early for her 8am appointment, the morning was reluctant to leave the dark behind and clasped shreds of mist to itself.  The spire of the abbey was nearly visible, the pale yellow of its walls almost the same whited out colour as the clotted fog behind it.  The market was coming to life, the fruit and veg stalls already set up, stall holders making routine conversations with regulars; the rumbling sound of it entered her consciousness, but the words did not.  The cheese stall already had a queue, although only four people long; waiting for service here was a social event in itself.

When she sat down and saw her mutable reflection in front of her, she wondered at how different she had looked at home, when smoothing down her hair with a wet brush in the bathroom mirror.  She'd decided it made no sense to have a shower that morning, as she would anyway have her hair washed for her.  The rough attempt to tidy it up, smooth it down wasn't in evidence by the time she sat in the chair with the cape around her, back-to-front so her arms lay trapped under it in her lap.  Today, she asked for "the same again", to have the roots redone, and the length trimmed.  It was unusual for her, normally she changed something; lighter or darker, thicker or finer streaks, and every now and then a complete switch of colour.  She wondered if she was afraid of being stuck with a style, of having a recognisable snapshot, so handy in case of police investigations or headline writers, never changing from that picture again.

Parallel mirrors around the salon allowed for discreet people watching.  The woman directly behind her was fully groomed, subtle but noticeable make up, carefully styled hair.  She hadn't been given her cape yet, she wore an ivory coloured blouse with a string of pearls at her throat.  There was an animated conversation about the womans desired new style, it involved two hairdressers and the large sample book, fake strands of hair held up to the womans scalp, much nodding.  
Lisa wondered how early the woman had got up to be so arranged, and why?  How much did her appearance matter to her that she thought it was necessary to have on her public face, even while the artifice of her hair was being renewed.  She would still have to go to the basins to have her hair washed, to have her head pulled back, exposing the old skin of her neck to the world.
"But perhaps it's me that's wrong," Lisa thought.  When her hair was done, it flicked outward pleasingly, giving her a faintly kittenish, tousled look.  It framed her face and the melding shades of colour in her fringe drew attention to her eyes.  She thought she looked a bit more like herself, but still the reflection wasn't really her. 

It was still misty outside as she walked back through the market square, the queue at the cheese stall had grown to its usual proportions, with people meeting and greeting each other, catching up on the gossip of the previous week.  Lisa turned her head as she walked, and suddenly there, a blur refected in the shop window,for a second was the person she was.  Only a glimpse, but the fleeting movement was her, the static images seen so far this morning like a parade of postcards, could only be an approximation.