Girl At The Well – Poem.
I like to write; in that freeform manner where poems might be songs or just lilting prose. Sometimes I start and don’t finish for months, like this little piece about seasons, resources and trust. (more…)
A Secret Love Of Paper.
I wrote a poem once that included a line about love letters written on paper somehow being more convincing than their digital counterparts. At the time I was writing emails to a friend far away and every time I hit send, I felt like there was just a little something missing.
For a girl who always wanted to be a writer, it’s no surprise I spend a lot of my time playing with words. But they’re always words on a screen. So rarely do I get to see and experience those words in print. I used to wonder with amazement how writers could spend hours with their handwritten manuscripts – concurrently admiring and despising the words crossed out and rearranged in blue, black, red ink. Red ink looks so angry on the page, but it’s so compelling.
Dissecting the anatomy of every sentence – why change that word? Why choose another? What made that word better, stronger, softer?
Now in my work, I thrash out words, flinging them into the digital world as if I have an endless supply. It’s so hard to choose your words so selectively – there is no margin to the paper, no running off the end of the page or abruptly changing the size of my scrawl to eek out another syllable or two onto the page.
I don’t want to make digital things always. I want to smell paper and ink, newsprint and binding glue. I want to write the kinds of phrases that people are compelled to write out onto Post-It notes, stuck to monitors. *A permanent indelible mark.
The kind of work you can write as an inscription on the inside cover of a book or one day worthy of printing inside hardbound covers. To write the kind of work you give to someone you love like you are exchanging a great secret, entrusting some great treasure into the hands of another.
And therefore, just like that – I am a writer after all. Tucked inside a leather journal, fit to bust – all the good words, I’ve been saving them up to pass on as delicious mysteries, as if to say ‘Here it is, my whole heart and every crevice of imagination tucked into a binding I’ve made just for you.’
Fierce.
We forget that the seasons of life do not move as quickly as the seasons of spring, winter and fall. For some of us, we have never been known in summer; in full bloom. Some of us are re-emerging, seen for the first time.
I wrote this poem when as I was stepping back into myself after some time away. I realised that while the reflection of myself I saw in the eyes of others was familiar to me; they were seeing me for the first time.
Oh, the possibility that we could see ourselves new again, recognising our strength, our beauty, our wonder as if for the first time and without fear.
Fierce.
This woman is like an army in front of me
Like a great tiger out of hibernation
Everything about her uniform is strong,
she is oiled like snakeskin
I forget, you have forgotten her – before the Hiberation,
that great dark winter when she watched
hovering from the north west east south borders of you
And you, hidden in the corner, did not know me
before the winter; cracking brittle icicle heart.
That underneath, she is entirely fierce
You over there could not know, you there, have pushed it from your mind –
That I am always summer.
Always, like an unshakeable,
immovable living oak tree, a cedar, fragrant – I am drenched
in some internal sunshine, I am always summer merely beneath snow
My blazing flesh becoming sacred, holiness of ash and ice
I have a secret, layers of secrets over hidden things and the most
furthest hidden thing in my heart, beating like a drum…
I do not need to feel happy to be happy
Happiness is in me like spring, summer and snow
now that I have remembered
How to roar from within to always be warm,
the dancing hunt of the tiger, the flight of the dove –
do not forget me again (I will not forget myself)
I do not need to be happy as some people need happiness
or melancholy as fuel, not to be happy or sad
the deepest melancholy is joy to me in summer, spring or snow
I fear nothing, I am not burdened by desire – I am freer
than one who tries to satisfy the burn
the burn instead delights me
i do not need to feel happy to be happy
I am fierce, like summer.
Fearless like this army within me.
What The Hell Just Happened…
We were just kids walking to school, skipping classes, drinking too much Coke in the weekends and talking about small things as if the world depended on them. We believed the world would depend on us. We were well-intentioned, no matter how we played on the edges of darkness and clung to one another in the chaos of adolescence. We held on to one another with a fervour. Somewhere within we knew that innocence was rushing from us like the tide escaping the shoreline. We longed for our freedom but had no idea what ‘real-life’ would bring.
We were unprepared – no fault of our parents, our school system, our religious institutions or lack of. It wasn’t television, the dawning of the internet age or the influence of sex, drugs’n’rock’n’roll. We were unprepared because that’s how you must be, to enter the fray of life. Stepping up onto the diving board, if you knew what was ahead you would never do it. So we closed our eyes and jumped, hoping everyone was just as scared as we were and trying not to show it.
But that was only yesterday, and what the hell just happened?
We gave birth to babies, kept some and gave some away; lost husbands, boyfriends, broke a limb, broke a back.
Suffered cancer, fought cancer and won, fought cancer and lost.
Stayed in one place for 2 years not leaving the house, didn’t stay anywhere more than 2 weeks, didn’t call anywhere home.
Tried to have babies and lost them, tried to have babies and couldn’t make them, tried to have babies then hated them, tried to have babies but couldn’t find a lover.
Found love in the arms of men, of a woman, of a few men and women.
Called ourselves feminist, traditionalist, reformist, non-conformist, modern, post-modern, wouldn’t be called anything or put in a box.
We tried over and over to find hope, until it was hopeless and then we succumbed to depression, succumbed to life and to death.
We died in our waking and living the same old thing, day in and day out wishing we were dead and some of us just died. Drove a car into a cliff face, never woke up. Drank too much vodka and drove, never woke up. Drank just enough wine to wash down the pills, never woke up. Tried to slice ourselves open but that never took, while some of us starved and others threw up. Some of us heartbroken and fear never recovering, others so strong now we hate ourselves and everyone. Some of us just lived but never woke up.
Some of us divorced, divorcing or cheating in public, in private – all of us still lonely somehow, even as we find ourselves in the places we never expected to be. Good or bad, who knows, who cares – we’re still fifteen and holding on to ourselves. Trying to let go and leap, trying to hold on to someone else just enough to let them be loved and be loved ourselves but not enough to kill it, the love in our hearts, the love in our life.
And we have become well-practiced at living, even when it doesn’t feel real but there is so much that feels so good, that we live like the breath is being stolen from us. Live, live, live screams our blood.
Some of us burying children, marriages, husbands, parents. Some of us nursing each other. Some of us dreaming still, looking forward to next beginnings, some of us waiting for the first beginnings and what the hell just happened? Live, live live screams our blood.
It was yesterday and we were jumping with our eyes closed into Life, that we had been hurtled towards by Time and everyone, hurtled ourselves into it and now we are dying. Some of us have died.
So all the time, we are hurtling towards death and it flies at us in the minutes and hours. Our lovers, our children, our parents, our siblings. By car, by disease, by water, by choice and I do not know if we are ever at peace.
The Art Of Moving Furniture.
Whenever I begin to feel cluttered in my head, I can see the telltale signs in my environment. It starts in my car – a piece of paper left in one place for too long. A plastic water bottle that never gets put in the recycling bin. Then it travels to my office, where a pile of things I need to deal with accumulates in the corner, on the desk, on quickly jotted Post-Its stuck to the iMac and files on my desktop unsorted. Sometimes figuring out the rabbit warren and getting back to calm is like unraveling a piece of thread.. long, laborious and seemingly unending.. until you undo the one little knot that was holding you up and away you fly.
But when I find myself stuck on a knot that I just can’t figure out.. I have one solution, with three simple steps that always helps me to ‘unstick‘ it. (more…)
Words
– the intro to a message on the importance of words and our role as storytellers, regardless of which words we choose.