the last burnt sienna crayon

And I have known them all already, known them all. . .
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all _
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawlling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

You see, what Heather commented on that poem, although I know it was a bit tongue in cheek, is precisely what I’m talking about. A poem is, I feel, as much about the reader as it is about the writer, because all readings and meanings can be valid. I read it one way, she read it and, because she’s a different person with different things in her own head, she imediately thought of something different. (whether tongue in cheek or not, the image occured to her.)

I’ve been in so many discussions where people try to say “this is what this means” or “this is what the writer wanted you to think”, and I suppose just as all readers are different, all writers are different and I suppose some writers do want to “force your hand” and make you think and feel a specific thing by what they write. I suppose, if I’m honest, of course there’s a bit of that in what I write too. But the older I get, the more I try not to do that, and the more I try to just ‘let it be’ without forcing anyone to ‘get it’.

Because isn’t that what is ideal to be like with other people? Just ‘letting them be’ who they are, with all of their myriad meanings and interpretations, rather than forcing them to be and do and communicate just what we want from them?

Yes, it’s time to hibernate. Hibernate, eat, hide and drink mulled red wine. And besides, mulled wine doesn’t count towards your weekly allowed alcohol units. . . does it?

The fact that I have written so little as of late (both on and offline) is evidence to this fact (the hibernation, not the alcohol units). Long nights, evening skies at noon, cold rain and wet, rotting leaves. I find December difficult and Thanksgiving to Christmas a bit teary. And I guess also this year getting flu (probably Swine flu) which turned into chest infection (bronchitis/pneumonia – was actually a bit frightening at times. One gets attached to the act of breathing.), and not getting treated quickly enough hasn’t helped my usual “happy go lucky” general life attitude. (HEY! No heckling in the back there!)

I came down with it was the day after my vaccinations, so therefore I only assumed it was a side effect of the jabs and didn’t get checked until I really was in a bit of bother, which delayed my treatment for the infection.

I love antibiotics. No really, I do. I’ve been on them almost 10 times this year, and I always just feel safer once they’re in my system. I guess having a damaged immune system can be a bit scary at times, especially when you just can’t seem to fight something off. So an “immune system in a pill” is a great idea, I think (even taking into consideration my usual reaction against all things tablet shaped!).

My cat is ill, my mom is too far away, my husband is travelling, and my friends must all want to be hibernating as well.

I’m in a bit of a resentful, self pitying, “i love you, go away” slump just right now and I am sorry. I’m sorry both to you, Reader, and to those who must encounter me in the everyday, that I am a bit of a “little black rain cloud” at the moment. I am trying, I promise. I’ve just got my head down and mostly trying to direct as much of my tunnel vision and non existent energy as I can at the Flower Child, who has been such a star while mummy has been ill.

(aside: toddler tip for ill mums: create a small gentle set of “duvet games” with your little one. Hide and Seek works well. They will love hearing “where’s Flower gone?!” until you flip back the duvet and exclaim “There she is!”, and it allows you to be vaguely horizontal for as many minutes as you can squeeze out of it. Hide and seek with toy animals works well too. Also the game “the one who moves first looses” is a good one. Anyway, it worked for us.)

I can’t see how to shift this fatigue or cough or lassitude or blue mood for the foreseeable future, and Christmas has always been a tough time for me anyway (at least since coming here from there).

So please show some forbearance with me, and I’ll try to at least act vaguely positive. Maybe by next week, at least.

Oo. And I mustn’t forget to get some ice cream.

The fact that I have remained so quiet recently is more evidence to the fact that there is too much to say, rather than too little. Don’t be fooled into thinking there’s nothing going on in this mental filing cabinet of mine. I am just trying to find the appropriate ways of saying them rather than to just say anything for the sake of it.

Also, so many blog entries are written mentally in my head at 3 in the morning while lying awake in bed and then refined at the keyboard later, after waking up. And as I have been too ill lately to allow any 3 am wakings (is that a good thing or a bad thing?), I have “pre-composed” less than usual.

I took a lot of photographs when I was back there. Snaps, mainly. And most of them from a moving car or plane window. But none of them were of places that really meant something to me. Except for a few snaps of the house I grew up in and called my home for 20 years, speeding past from a car window so as not to stand on dodgy ground longer than needed. And that is so different now anyway, as if it had been built again. All the trees are gone, the two towering blue spruce where the blue jay made it’s nest each year, my mother’s flower beds and the peonies– all gone. Even the windows and siding are different colors. . . that house wasn’t mine. It was a facinating specimen to photograph, but it wasn’t saving a memory. That house was never my home. Those snaps were of nothing sacred.

The sacred places would have made better proper photographs. But were perhaps too risky to attempt. I dared not.

My camera has lain dormant for several months now, so recently I have bartered in the old style currency of words. I wonder why. Even the simple swan photo I posted the other day was from my archives. In part I know why, and am confident of my photos returning someday soon, but right now, even though words are a somewhat riskier endeavour, in a way, they fill a space that the images left, and at least prevent a complete block.

And besides, there’s really nothing at stake anymore anyway.

Today I discovered words again. Last night I wrote them, today I listened to them. I now have a working and useful screen text reader installed on my computer and it is like a whole new world has been opened up to me! Yet now that I am able to once again read the words of others, I don’t, just right now, seem to be able to write them myself. Last night I wrote that poem a friend had assigned me awhile ago. After not being able to even approach writing poetry for so many years, perhaps I used up all of my words in doing so.

Instead, today, all I can do is offer an image. Images are the same thing as words anyway, they just sound different.

haven’t been able to write much today. lots to say, three entries begun, just can’t seem to complete them right now.

I run to where you will not be
Amongst the shelves of poetry
The dusty worn out libraries
That live inside my mind

I’m here but hope you will not see
I hide from you and look for me
Where silence and the voice agree
For once I understand

Have been scouring my old writing books, notepads and journals, and the journey has been facinating. Perhaps I’ll find a starting point? Perhaps I kept them to begin with because I used to think that there was something there worth not throwing out. I’ve thrown so much out.

I don’t mind looking back. Sometimes I find it more hopeful than looking forward.

It was seven years ago, that in
Looking for that lighthouse near the cafe called The Rock,
In Devon or Cornwall (I always forget
Which it was) I slipped into a silence.
It didn’t just happen, but slowly rose
To my side and took my hand.

Stunned, I didn’t hear when asked to hand
The waitress the leftover cup which, like me, now had nothing in.
And clumsy, not thinking, knocked over the vase of roses,
Felt my heart sink like a rock,
Or like the sound of angry cursing in a room of proper silence.
Those feelings one tries to forget.

And I did forget,
Seven years ago, looking away from the task at hand
I once more took my old friend, Silence,
With me to the water’s edge, hoping that the tide was in,
And at the shore picked up a small rock
To skip across the first wave that rose.

It was then that a new (or was it old?) feeling arose,
Though no sooner than felt I began to forget,
And the earth began to rock,
To crumble like dried petals in the giant’s hand
Bringing forgotten ways of life rushing back to settle in,
Along with memories of the desire for a voice not silenced.

I hadn’t remembered a time before the silence.
The memory went the minute that I rose
To my feet to see the old friend who’d come in.
It had been years since we last spoke and I’ll never forget
How cold it was once again there standing hand in hand,
By the bay at low tide our bare feet on sharp rocks.

But now alone. Alone, and not alone, I ask the sea a question for each rock.
Will I spend my life here, wrapped in this web spun of silence?
Could I still hold my voice with these cold callused hands?
Could silence pierce me like thorns on a rose?
But the sea interrupts, and it begs me “forget,”
Undecided, distracted, I return and walk in.

It was seven years ago, in rock cold silence,
That I rose from my ashes and threw up my hands.
In Devon or Cornwall. . . I always forget.

last week a poet friend sent me an assignment. i mean an actual writing assignment, like the kind you’d be set at school. It wasn’t just to me thankfully, and he was very relaxed about whether or not anyone took up the challenge, so by now he probably assumes that i’m not going to.

thing is i keep thinking about it and mentally composing snippits, but of course when i am not in convenient proximity to pen and paer or laptop.

that never used to be the case, i was never far from a pen or a notebook. i used to write my mind much more than i do now.

Some (most) old journals are self indulgent nonsense and sickly nostalgia and most of them should be burnt. but there are others that retain some worth, others that can remind us of someone who we used to be. . . especially when that was a person who, in many ways, we like better than the reflection we confront in the mirror everyday.

you may have noticed… i haven’t blogged much over the last few years. or at least, i’ve blogged in a different way. and whereas i feel i’ve always managed to blog in a fairly wise way, i used to wear my “blog on my sleeve” a bit more, so to speak. i used to be a little bit more “raw and honest” perhaps. nothing i ever said could really have got me in trouble, unless maybe personally. and not much even then. maybe it was life or circumstances or maybe it was just getting older wiser that made me pull in the reins on my keyboard.

probably more accurately it was just becoming more british. it won’t be all too many years before i pass the 2 decade mark in this most reserved of reserved counties. well, when in rome. . .

but i’ve been reading more blogs again lately and i’m impressed with what i’ve read. a lot of people out there write an awful lot of good stuff. and i find that the styles i appreciate most are the “raw and honest” ones. and to be fair, i don’t see that it matters whether the author is just joe smith writing about his relationship problems in nowhere town, anywhere, u.s.a. or if it’s petit anglaise in paris, france with her international readership and successful published book and facebook fan group, it’s writers who are willing to take the risk of honesty, who put a bit of effort in to dig deep, who write what is worth reading.

and of course that isn’t just true of blogs. it’s true of any writing. it just seems like when it happens on a blog people start asking questions. i have a good friend who comes to visit us in the uk every summer. we tease him for his persistant questioning and particularly when he starts to sound a bit like a toddler in any conversation as he asks “why?” “why?” “whhhyy?” (i really couldn’t get the correct vocal intonation in that, you’ll just have to make it up yourself.) one year we introduced him to the concept of blogs.

he simply could not see the point.

and i simply could not see not seeing the point.

after all he’s an avid reader. gobbles books. and as another “avid-as-time,-dyslexia-and-eyesight-problems-allow-me-to-be” reader i’ve read a lot written by people both off the internet and on. so whereas for him, once something is posted on the internet for no particular reason other than to write it and put it there and have others read it, it lacks legitimacy. although i just find that strange considering that he would probably find someone’s personal writings stashed in a box and stored under the bed to be more legitimate possibly?

anyway, i digress. i was talking about my blog and got sidetracked. so considering recent events in my personal life, that although i won’t/can’t blog about, i feel allow me to be a bit more honest with my readers about who i am and what i think. and maybe even hopefully get some better quality writing in there occasionally.

it just takes having the guts to post. but then i suppose that nothing good comes without a few guts.

and that’s not saying that i won’t allow myself the odd “what i had for breakfast blog” post. this is a community site after all. and i do eat breakfast. (metaphorically of course.) i guess my approach to photography has been to take a lot of photos, try hard each time, and that should increase my chances of getting something half decent. writing works the same way, doesn’t it. if you don’t just write, it’s never going to get good. and as i’ve said before, any creative process involves an element of risk.