by tashmcgill | Dec 29, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Monologue
I was standing at the kitchen bench, knife in hand and a slab of ham in front of me.
‘This is what you do,’ I thought to myself. Maybe it was the coffee, maybe it was the Mimosa. It seemed like a thought that came from nowhere, yet was profound in the moment it appeared to me.
It was a thought as visual as it was constructed of nouns and verbs.
‘You slice away at the meat of life until you hit the bone.’
Sometimes holding a pen, metaphorical or otherwise) feels like holding a knife at the throat of someone you love.
Perhaps that’s why writers drink: we need the courage that comes with loosening the inhibitions, the fear, the risk.
The virtues of public and private decency compete like never before in this digital age. When anyone can publish, there is no subtle observational art in how writers write. We can publish at a moment’s notice and therefore it is as easy to assume that all observations are those of our closest acquaintance. And often it is.
There’s the truth of it – sometimes I do not write about you, but sometimes I do. Sometimes I cut away at the flesh of our very real, everyday lives until I hit the bone. Then, even then, sometimes I am tempted not to stop but to continue carving until I hit the marrow.
Then , once I have hit the bone and passed through to the marrow – I hope that I have struck the core of it.
I want my words to cut to the core of who we are, to the very deepest and sacred parts of us. I want us to be challenged. I am challenged when I think it and even more so to write these thoughts in ways sharp enough to penetrate but thoughtful enough that my good intentions are clear.
Sometimes when I feel my words are like the knife at your throat, I think about stopping, holding back. But these words ring in my ear ..
“The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.” – Anaïs Nin
I do not write to hurt you, rather to peel you back. To give you permission to live more exposed, more real, more true. To accept you as you are and as I am, all flaws exposed and not hidden. I write to carve you out, to tease you out until you have no choice but to show yourself unbound to the world.
Whatever those ideas of identity, belief, value, truth, sex, sensuality, spirituality and ambition are – I hope to use my words to bring them to life in you, willing you to come into the light. I want to know you. I want to experience you in the same fullness I offer myself to you.
As much as I am trying to carve you out, to really see you – I am exposing my own marrow and hoping you see me.
by tashmcgill | Dec 17, 2014 | Love & Marriage, Relationships
I remember the instance so clearly; I think about it every time I take that same escalator. The escalator is at the airport, so I take it a lot. An acquaintance of mine (who I thought was quite mad at the time) was talking about a mutual male friend, only a couple of years married. She said, “Oh yeah, he’s great. Don’t worry I’m just waiting for the second time around. No point trying to catch a new one, just wait til they are done with the practice round.’
She was talking about what great relationship potential he was and joking about whether or not his relatively recent marriage would last. It was a serious viewpoint on her dating prospects.
Ten years on, I can’t help but wonder if she wasn’t quite as mad as we thought as I’ve watched relationship after relationship fall over, with women ready and waiting in the wings to snap up bachelors ‘recently returned’ to the market.
(Really, I mean any partnership between men and women, or same-sex relationships. However, I think there is a stronger mythology being spread around the difference between men and women.)
Don’t get me wrong, I have little respect for people who insert themselves into the midst of committed relationships and I find society’s tolerance for it to be distasteful. I’m not suggesting that I agree with her. In fact, this is the opposite of that. I’m hoping that women feeling fragmented, dissatisfied or even a little bored, might have a change of heart.
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by tashmcgill | Dec 15, 2014 | Friendship, Health, Love & Marriage, Relationships
I wish I could say that I wisely hold back in loving the people around me. But it’s not true – I’ve never once been a ‘hold back on love’ kind of girl. Which means I’ve loved deeply and truly a bunch of times, but I can honestly say I’ve never been in love, not really.
And now it might be too late, because I’m falling out of love with the idea of falling in love. At least, in the way we think about it. The way the movies tell it, or at least, the way most movies tell it.
Was there ever a more unlikely couple than Steve Carell and Keira Knightley, confessing their love to one another as the world ended in the film ‘Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World’? But by the time the story reached an inevitable conclusion, it was obvious that neither character could have found a partner better matched. It was not a long list of shared interests and mutual sexual attraction that made their love story so compelling or so real – and it was, despite contrived circumstances, honest and truthful about what love can be.
Instead, they found in one another an honest, endearing, truthful and compassionate friendship. Both characters were able to be themselves and grew to a more honest and engaged individual when supported and encouraged by the other. They gently inspired one another to a better self.
But I believe that this what we should all be looking for, a friend for the end of the world who loves us as ourselves, rather than an idea of us. The friend who brings us home to ourselves with humility and the one who helps us feel capable of climbing mountains. It’s idealistic but that’s kind of beautiful – for a girl as smart as I am to recognize the naïve innocence of that desire and desire it anyway.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to pretend that chemistry and attraction aren’t a really big deal in successful relationships. But I also know from experience that the deepest attraction grows from the heart and mind. From the soul, I guess you could say.
True passion requires a lot of fuel, on an ongoing basis. I’ve watched love fade from the eyes of people who once couldn’t keep their hands off each other. If the sparks are your only fuel, you might fast run out of matches. True love takes a long time to grow. We confuse the possibility of love for Love itself and where we ought to nurture true and deep companionship, we burn out in a flash of heat and sparks.
And here’s the truth hidden in the detail of a movie of a story we should pay more attention to: sometimes the best friend we’ve been looking for our whole life is just within reach, within eye contact or a phone call. We just don’t recognize it when we’re busy looking for something that feels like love (sparks) but isn’t friendship.
The older I get, the less I’m looking for lusty sparks, I’m looking for a different kind of chemistry. One that is no less exciting, but a little more substantial. Is there a chance we can share a common outlook? Is there a chance I could care about you more than myself? It is probably a terrible sign for my love life, but the truth is I’m no longer looking for a fairy-tale kind of love story. I’m seeking a friend for the end of the world and that makes dating even more of a challenge. The more experience you have of what true Love looks like, the more you are able to recognize what is good and what is not worth holding on to.
In the same way you might study Van Gogh originals to best recognize a forgery, once you’ve recognized the kind of life-changing love that can be experienced in the embrace of a true deep friend, everything else feels like a cheap knock-off. I have too much good love in my life already, so it feels intimidating and impossible to start from scratch.
I’m looking for someone who can follow the sub-text of a conversation, who shares the meta-narrative, the one I laugh with like no one else and who embraces my sentimental, romantic nature. While I don’t believe that any one love can meet all our needs, I’m looking for my best friend and the one who knows I’m theirs.
Here’s why: if anybody is going to stand a chance in making love work for longer than the sparks do, it will be those who are friends and continue to nurture that friendship and relationship above all things. That’s what I’ve learned watching my parents, my friends and dozens of disasters.
I’m talking about the kind of friendship where trials and triumph matter as much to you as to your friend and layers of sub-text and meta-narrative accompany every experience. Where trivial moments of laughter, bad humour and everyday experiences meld effortlessly into what matters and what does not. Sometimes the deepest friendships appear shallow because the foundation is so deep. A deep foundation that anchors people to a common outlook is the richest and best kind of love, no matter who it is shared between.
While I would gladly embrace the heat and spark of new love, I can’t wait for old love. I’d give anything to fall in love with someone who already knows my best stories, my deepest hopes and maddest dreams. I’d love to fall in love with a friend and skip ahead to holding hands.
by tashmcgill | Dec 5, 2014 | Friendship, Relationships
To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage. –Lao Tzu
It takes a lot of courage to love someone well. It involves giving so much of yourself to another, and holding enough of yourself back to let them be truly themselves. It’s such an act of practical grace and wisdom.
It’s a wonder that we ever succeed at loving one another. We take hold of hands and lift one another up the craggy face of courage to the brave lands of loving gently and ferociously. We leap over chasms of honesty, truth and silence. Love, really good, true and honest love is made up of lots of forgivenesses, big and small. It is that forgiving that makes us so brave and scared all at once. Love is all paradox, hope and hopelessness.
There is nothing independent about forgiving another. It indebts you to another because where you forgive, you give away Love-That-Heals by choice, you pour love into the cracks of another jar from your own vessel. You leave something of yourself behind, making yourself vunerable by giving something away. Forgiveness frees you and ties you together at the same time. Forgiving is such a brave thing to do.
I said to a friend ‘I have learnt to love well’. What I ought to have said is that I am trying to be as brave as I can, for love needs to be spoken aloud. Love lends its strength only when given actively and purposely into the life of another. So perhaps I do not love well, so much as I am foolishly brave at times.
Still I am caught by my own insecurities and I do not speak the deepest things, or the strongest longings. I still find my sleep hiding in the safety of darkness rather than leaping into the daylight of loving so openly.
So dear friends, for you – I will choose to love you bravely and speak love aloud so you might be strong and courageous in the face of your challenges…I will place one hand into your hand and one hand at the small of your back and we will climb, taking as many as we can with us.
when the light rises it takes me
cast out adrift into the rush
the daylight crushes against me
steals my breath, takes hold of me
here on the cusp of bravery
put my hand in yours
put your hand in the small of my back
love is nothing if not known
in the smallness of your touch
love is everything brave about me
though I am a coward
holding your hand
i want to climb
by tashmcgill | Nov 20, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Health, Mind, Relationships
I’m sitting in a kitchen in Tennessee, looking out the window. I have arrived too late to see the turning of the leaves but as the cold November wind blows through the trees in the yard, I see them fall, fluttering yellow gold and bronze.
I’m reminded of a song, an old jazz standard, ‘Autumn Leaves’. It was a favourite of mine for a long time. I hum it now gently to myself and remember listening to Nat King Cole with a glass of red wine in front of the fireplace. I’m smiling now, into my coffee cup. It’s a romantic kind of feeling, being in a place you love with people you love and who love on you. I’m already anticipating the coming knock at the door. A treasured one is travelling from Atlanta to get here and my pulse races knowing the next few days will be full of love and laughter. We’ll be good to each other, these loved ones and I.
I am romancing myself. Lingering, filling up my senses with moments that are good for my soul. Romance is good for us, it gives you stories worth telling. This is really the heart of my annual Thanksgiving sabbatical, a chance to immerse myself in the feeling of being alive.
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