Be your brother’s keeper

Kind, honest and charmingly nuanced English – a lovely blog to lift your spirits today!

Bridgid's World

Have you ever stayed in the house until you thought you were growing roots under your feet? Maybe, maybe not but for me, the first week was a bit difficult. There was a lot of confusion in my mind. I always have something to do in my house but I cannot explain how much I have missed the children/students. I miss their questions, their warm smiles, their curiosity and naughtiness too. I really miss my colleagues and the laughter that rang throughout the whole school. I know the whole world has been adversely affected. I did get into a place that I feared what was happening but I can now say I am taking a day at a time.

What has rushed into my mind is being there for others. I have not been checking on all my friends often but I always try my best to find out how…

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Quicksilver

Image credit: with thanks to Fred Shively

QUICKSILVER

Late December evening, mild as May,
my dog and I take our familiar path
to the new villas at the edge of town,
glimmering with lights to welcome Christmas in.

On the vacant plot next to the last white house,
a horse is tethered near a half-built wall.
Shadow shifts on shadow and reveals two more,
all three grazing on the weed-frilled ground.

Suddenly a child runs out – from a house? I couldn’t see.
Elfin, blonde curls, maybe eight years old,
she’s wearing red pyjamas and no shoes.
Lit up with intention she flashes past me
across the rock-crumbed field, and 
straight to where the horses stand.
Clambering on to the unmade wall, 
she sits where she can reach
to pat the biggest horse. Who whinnies

once and then goes on to graze.

It made me smile, she was so blithe and sure
to reach and hold her object of desire.
And wishing she might always make so bold,
I turn and walk the dog the long way home.


December 2019

 

I was reading Robert Frost’s famous poem in blank verse, ‘Mending Wall’ (1914). I really like the natural way it reads and sounds, like someone thinking out loud. The poem seemed to fall into this rhythm by itself.

You can see more of Fred’s evocative photography and photo art at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/fredshively/

 

Passerby

Every day he goes out for a walk,
nods and smiles at everyone he knows
and every day he walks home, still alone

Always the same streets and café stops.
Always a chance: today he might connect.
Every day he goes out for a walk

looking for a passing word, a chat.
Coffee or a drink? Too much to hope,
and every day he walks home still alone

trailing his loneliness like a cloak,
certain that today he’ll make a friend,
every day he goes out for a walk

greeting mere acquaintance heartily,
exchanging banter and banalities,
every day he goes out for a walk and
every day he still walks home alone.

Purposeful and pointless, full of hope,
his longing ill-concealed beneath his smile
he takes his loneliness out for a walk
and knows that he will always walk alone.

31.05.19

A villanelle about T., who we see everywhere in town, waiting for nobody to have coffee with.

Poem: Silver

Image by Jonny Lindner from Pixabay

Happy #WorldPoetryDay everyone!

I’m really enjoying my online course with the London School of Poetry: “The God In the Forest – Nature Mysticism.” Here’s a poem inspired by our last assignment, with many thanks to our tutor, Seán Hewitt, for an inspiring course:

SILVER

The night we took our bowls of chocolat
and sat on deckchairs in the soft damp grass,
the murmur of the radio from the house
merging with the purling sounds of spring,
when from the dark a movement drew our eyes.
She swept across the orchard flying low
a barn owl’s eerie, oiled and silent flight,
silver in the full moon’s silver light
from cottage roof to barn roof in one swoop
from rush of air she stilled to standing stone,
regarding us as we sat dazzle-eyed,
worshipping in broken whispers. I
never saw you look like that before
or since that night, you were a boy again
holding your breath in case you broke the spell.
The minute an eternity until
unfurling her imperial cloak she swept
from sight, impassive, other, fading into night.

 

Daybook: 12 March 2019

I have been struggling with the writing thing for weeks now. How can I be a writer (for a living) and want to write (for love) – and yet resist writing? It’s like pulling teeth to engage with the poem or short story that is on my worktable at any time.

I feel as though I am doing my degree homework, with no-one to give me a mark, or responding to a client brief I won’t get paid for. So inevitably, I now approach every ‘writing hour’ with this toxic backstory, with fear and loathing. Having dragged myself to the desk, whipped myself into some kind of enthusiasm, got a glass of wine and some nibbles lined up – I start surfing the internet.

God. I bet Hemingway didn’t have to go through this pain barrier every damn time he sat down (no, stood up) to write. Maybe my props are wrong. Maybe I need a bottle of hard liquor and an ashtray full of stubs. Oh and one of those muscular metal typewriters where I can smash away at the keys in a creative frenzy…

Poem: Bardez

The ‘fruits’ of my first assignment in the Poetry School London course: ‘The God in the Forest’ – Nature Mysticism. I revised twice – once with tips from the poem’s readers, and once again using a checklist in a textbook. The ending survived both times.

BARDEZ (“Garden, park” Armenian)

Garden with the rosebush in the middle of the lawn, its hybrid roses fresh and pink as love.
Garden where you and grandmother coaxed mint and vine leaves under the London sun, where you dried mint on old tea towels.
Garden where you hooked spiced beef on the washing line for bastourma, darkly spiced with memories of home.
Garden where we launched soggy fireworks fizzing each November Fifth, and swished sizzling sparklers in the steely frost-smelling air. Where
Over the bamboo-weave fence, our neighbours handed fiery samosas for us to try, and we replied, with lamb koftas as tender as our good intentions.

And where much later, I helped you plant unsteady steps along the path to smell the jasmine after rain,
in the garden where you sat last summer, soaking up the sun you couldn’t see,
already on your way, the path cracked and mildewed, grass growing anyhow,
paradise lost.

Daybook: 19 January 2019

It was the first week of September 1976, I had just started in the Sixth Form at my London comprehensive. I still remember my keen anticipation as I walked down Wembley High Road to  equip myself for this new adventure. The chunky mug i bought in Bargain Basement,  a light pearly brown, softly metallic, with – I think – a sketch of Abraham Lincoln on one side, and some of his most quotable quotes on the other. Then to Marks &  Spencer for a packet of Dark Chocolate Ginger Biscuits, to add to my writerly survival kit.

I could see myself already inhabiting the Sixth Form ‘cafe’, half-curled in an armchair there, drainpipe jeans and a loose shirt, deeply absorbed in my work, sipping occasionally from my mug, nibbling a ginger biscuit without looking up.

I was 16 going on 17 and I wanted, everything. I took the stairs at Alperton Tube station three at a time, released from a dark and fearful family life, galloping into my bright future.  Me the Writer, the Poet, the Actress, the PR Person. My ignorance and arrogance were not even measured against anything, I lived in my own world and every door was open to me.

Many years later, I glimpse this avid girl as I sit in a sunny corner of my living room far in time and space from England, laptop balanced on my knees, poetry coursework and books strewn on the little table in front of me. I am fighting a strong sense of futility, a sneering voice that says you again, poetry this time? Too little, too late. Pointless and purposeless. Down the years there have been many handsome mugs, fresh notebooks, new pens and cunning bags to put them in – yet I did not break through, I did not create a growing sense of my voice,  a body of work, win any awards, make any waves.

Yes, I have written for money, for business, since 1993. I studied for my degree and got first class honours in Literature and creative writing. But except for short periods, I never really got the discipline of keeping a notebook, of shaping and sharing my thoughts. Now I come to writing half-ashamed, self-conscious and full of derision at trying again, unsure why I am doing this poetry course. Perhaps to prove once for all that talent is not enough, even discipline is not enough – you have to feel compelled to write every day, even if no-one will see it.  And I don’t feel that.

Just that I believe there is treasure there if I can find it. Reading, writing and thinking about poetry – enough lifetime left to love it if I can break through and let it speak to me, speak for me.

 

 

Free gifts

I’m getting a start on one of my NYRs on NYE. Yes, WRITING. It’s 23:27 and outside the fireworks are just getting going. (We always joke that it’s the town’s education budget going up in smoke). Indoors, it’s just me, F. and E., quietly watching TV – the way I like New Year to be these days.

Just watched the end of Season 2 of ‘This Is Us’. The one where _______ ________s. (Spoiler avert). And it happens in such an ordinary domestic way, making it more shocking. And before it happens, everyone is taking their home and family for granted, the kids all want to be somewhere else, they are bored and restless and want to go out. Not knowing that this was the last day of the rest of their lives.

I was telling a girlfriend today that at fifty-something I am all passion spent, that it’s too late and I never really ‘made it’ as a writer and why bother now. So every time I sit down to write, huge resistance sits facing me with a sneer. It is hard to avoid her eye and push through. I get bored putting down what I already know inside out, and I don’t want anyone I know to see what I am writing. Age has made me more private or more paranoid.How will I share what I feel and know, and who with?

But in the past few weeks, four friends and one angel have told me, out of the blue, that they think I have a special gift for writing. That I should continue, write poetry, fiction, memoir. Of course stupid me then thinks I hear ‘the call’ again, and puts me here at 23:40 on 31st December 2018 to get a head start on my ‘write every day’ item.

It has been a good, social, connected Christmas . Reading my 2018 diary, the recurring sadness was of isolation, alienation and the lack of community (which I created as much as anyone else) in our previous location. When we came back to this small village, we just wanted to downsize. We didn’t know that so many gifts of friendship, so many opportunities for engagement and re-engagement would be under the tree.

You can’t go out to buy apples next door without bumping into someone you know. My progress along our home street is like ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, kissing the plumber’s dad, hugging the greengrocer, waving at a writer’s group buddy, murmuring greetings to dogs. Which is great on the days I can face myself and the world. The other days, I put on dark glasses and hat, wear black and do my best to avoid eye contact. But I still love being in the web of connection.

OK, I think I earned my last chocolate before Easter Sunday. Wishing whoever is out there whatever you want to happen for you in 2019. Thanks for reading.

 

 

I

 

 

Into the Blue

Wes Somerville’s sculpture: “Ancient or future memory of a place I’d like to spend time in’

Community writer and ANA member Jayne Skellett invited writers and artists to two dynamic writing workshops last month. Our playground: the newly-opened ‘Invierno Ardiente’ (Hot Winter) 2018 exhibition in our home town.

I wasn’t sure I should attend this workshop. After all my clients don’t pay me for playful language and I get put on the professional naughty step if my copy veers to purple. Which, unchecked, it does.

But once there, Jayne’s enthusiasm warmed the chilly November evening. “Are you a rock crumbler? Do you see straight circles, can you feel the gentleness of spikes?” she asked us, and went on to show us how we could.

Jayne asked us to pick an artwork that attracted us, and to describe our chosen piece, with synonyms, antonyms, contrasts, oxymorons and antitheses! The diverse and vibrant artworks on show offered exciting possibilities, objects on which to focus and language we could frolic with.

The show’s opening the previous week had been crowded, loud and bright. I’d walked around dazzled by the lights, by faces and voices both familiar and new, by everything that vied for attention with what was on the walls and on the stands.

Now I had the time, space and a mission to pay attention. And so I was drawn to Wes Somerville’s sculpture: “Ancient or future memory of a place I’d like to spend time in.” (Plaster, Perspex, LEDs; 60 x 40 x 23 cm).

On a plain black stand, its luminosity invites. Pure white curves soothe the eye and the sapphire glow through the arched entrance draws you irresistibly inside. I stood there for ages, just bathing my eyes in its tranquillity and simplicity, its gentle light. Like a visit to the hammam, “Ancient or future…” soothes and calms the troubled eye and brain, laying to rest all clamorous impressions and bathing the viewer in a liquid silence.

This is the beginning of a poem I scribbled after the workshop:

INTO THE BLUE
I swoosh into your
cooling smoothness,
blueminous pool

and lose myself

Slip into your freeze-flame lake
Like diving through a jewel…

Thanks Wes, for giving my senses a mini-break, and to Jayne Skellett, for creating this delightful workshop.

 

Daybook: 24 November 2018

24 November 2018
When Fred mentioned an acquaintance’s latest blog, it stung me. And her blog is very good, with observation and great photos and a touch of humour and irony. Damn the woman! Bless the woman! Got me writing again.

After a week of sunless days, this morning the skies are blue and the genial sun sets off a million carats in hedgerows and orange groves and everywhere there is green. Everything rinsed and quenched in a week of steady healing rain. Not the usual big storm with rushing streams of rain damaging trees and tracks.

I try to channel the joy I feel from Eddie, snorfling along in damp leaves and worse, the sun on his white back, enjoying this very moment. Find the joy in this life right now, not in some other where or when that is always just behind or before.

In the high street, a coachload of Cordoban elders have just disembarked. They stand outside waiting for their friends, faces turned to the sun, drying out damp bones, simply drinking in the light and warmth. Others linger over café con leche and their morning tostada, yet others stop and chat to friends in the street. It’s like a theatre stage where the lights have come back on. And even I, always a fugitive from the summer sun, even I walk on the bright side this morning.

30 November 2018 – MADRID
I’m at Starbucks Café, Principe Pío rail station (think Liverpool Street as a London equivalent). Munching a modest turkey sandwich and crisps, sun shifting in the skylight above. A notebook, three 0.7 tip blue pens and a renewed faith in the joy of purpose.

Divine intervention? Reading Anne Morrow’s diaries and letters (her beautiful mind and great heart on every page). Carlos surely channelling an angel to give me new energy as we talked. He is pursuing his dream of professional football coaching – at 57 years old; while doing right by his 90 year old Mum and even by the sad old dog he is caring for.

People pass my table in a constant stream. Many are dressed in drab navy, grey and black on this cold Madrid morning. Some are elderly and infirm. Younger people hurry past, still living in the world of hustle and have-to – what keeps them from despair?

Maybe now, with different eyes, I can see better. Maybe each of these commuters has a dream. An elderly woman next to me in the newsagent was looking for a particular type of goody-bag, one with the right cards her granddaughter needs for her collection. She found the right one, and smiled at me. Purpose doesn’t have to be heroic! She was anticipating her granddaughter’s joy at getting the cards. Suddenly the busy mall seems not tense, but jolly.

As the world’s troubles darken and deepen, I have been seeing through dark glasses too, all doom, all downhill. But just for today, I will allow myself to believe again, in friendship, joy, fun – and the pursuit of dreams.