Is it spring or is it summer, the guitar sound or the beat of that drummer

It is pouring rain out today, absolutely pouring it down and my favourite two seagulls, affectionately named Bernadette and Harold, are over on the neighbour's roof as usual having a total bask in the shower.  First they hopped around and drank from puddles, then then groomed and plucked at their feathers and now, as you can see here, they have settled down.  Shame you can't see the heavy rain in the photo cause it makes it all so much more surreal.  Drove home this morning through torrential rain too but with lots of good tunes playing loud in the car.

Remarkable Things

1). No matter how hard I try I just can't seem to impersonate a seagull cry.  Too tricky.
2). My cats watching Harold and Bern out the window like hawks.
3). Just finished work early today and now have time to write.
4). Tons of tiny green baubles on the bush, soon they will be purple black currants, ready to eat.
5). Collecting wild flowers from a lawn before mowing.  I've always loved doing this.

Cause something comes over me when the beat goes

After an evening meeting in London and a slow train ride home through the sunset I got back and felt a bit as if I wanted to 'do' something, but I wasn't sure what...and then I remembered...I've been meaning to get back to my blog.  Viola, so.

This evening I've been thinking about mix tapes.  All the cassette tapes I've made friends and family and lovers over the years.  The whole lovely process of the thing, from choosing the right songs, which of course you have to be in the right mood to do, to then selecting the length of tape required (60 min, 90 min, or the biggie: 120 min) and then getting the order of the songs just right.  At least a few of you will know what I mean by this process.  It is a creative endeavour not to be taken lightly.  A type of energy and focus much like writing a poem. 

So I was thinking about the last time I made a mix tape, back when my tape deck actually still worked and I was taping songs from cds onto tape because I didn't have a way to make a mix cd.  Yes, back in the dinosaur age.  And then I thought about mix cds and I realised that I have recently made one for my mother from lots of songs on my laptop.  And then I thought about all the emails I've sent to friends with links to songs and then of course this blog, which for me is a lot like making a mix with a collage of song and word and image.  This blog almost always begins with a song lyric in my head, then the rest follows.

All those mix tapes somewhere out there with good intent from me to the recipient, most of them probably in the bin or fallen by the wayside without a cassette player to hear them on or worn out from repeat playing.  I'm getting ready to make a new mix, errrr, tape? No!  A mix digital compilation.  It doesn't quite have the zing to it that phrase.  In the same way it is somehow cool for shops to sell iPod holders that look like 'old skool' tape players.  Well listen up, y'all, I still have my neon yellow and blue sports cassette walkman.  Boo-yah.  So I can officially ride the train listening to real tapes and not just digital mixes with great quality looking like I've got a real deck. Ha.  Hmm.  So I'm already trying to work out when this week I'll have the time for making the mix tape I want to collate.  I've already done step 1: make a list of the potential songs on a scrap of paper in my handbag and I'm working on step 2: find an evening with nothing happening to immerse myself in the experience of mix tape making. 

My final verdict:  It can never have the same zing to it if the process is called making a digital compilation so I'm gonna go ahead and still call it: making a mix tape.  And I'm sure the sound quality will be better and it will be more shuffle-able (thus ignoring the perfect sequencing that took me days to get right) but it can be transferred from me to the next lucky owner of a Zee mix tape in a nano second.  At least that beats the smudged ink-on-tape-insert effect that usually sealed the deal.

And this can be compilation 1 of many.  No time limit on the reel or cd.  Maybe I'll come up with a new structuring principle to give shape to this emerging new form.  We'll see.

like a slow fire burn

Been flying below the radar lately, not wanting to write much until lately. The sense of stillness and quiet I am finding in my life is helping me to look at what I need with boundaries, with breath and wide open spaces.

How nice it is just to be in that stillness sometimes and rest there. Not think too much, just feel things.

The Remarkable this week

A long long lie in this morning, hours to be with my warm thoughts.

Sitting on a cold station platform at night watching the announcement board lights flicker across my new friend's face.

Cat cuddles from both of them at once.

Giant salad for lunch with beetroot and cheese (yum)!

Hours of film watching on a rainy Saturday, a reclining chair that's just the right fit.

Within the sound of silence

I've decided to try out something new today: being absolutely silent for 24 hours. For the past three weeks I've struggled with losing my voice. The two new classes I'm teaching this term have meant 6-8 extra hours of communication each week. Alongside of this there have been friends here to stay and chat with, many skype conversations with family about important events, debriefing on creative events, a new class for my PhD... and all of this leaves me with a very sore throat and very little voice. It needs some healing, some silence, some no-talk time.

And this has got me thinking about how I communicate with people, how I prefer to communicate versus how I do. For a long long time now I've been in the closet about my dislike of phones. Yes they are useful and sometimes the intimacy of talking with someone whose voice is in your ear even though you can't seem them, can be just the thing at the end of the day, but overall, I don't like talking on the phone! Maybe I over dosed on phone time as a teen. But rarely does a day go by now when I am not on the phone for at least an hour: as usual the landline rings, the mobile rings, skype boo-boo-dee-boos at me if I'm logged in and it all has begun to feel like I just spent my day reaching out of myself to communicate with others. Well...

With my intent on a silent 24 hours I mean to only communicate what I need to. Written communication, my sustenance in life, I will keep an eye on. I was once on a silent retreat where the people attending were wildly gesturing around and mumbling sounds to indicate their thoughts. The woman leading the group reminded us that silence is also stillness and that taking a vow not to talk for however long does not mean we then use every other communication tool necessary to get our message across. And here I am blogging about not talking! This is what has got me thinking, about the over-stretch of communication in my life. I need to find a balance for it, I need to let my vocal cords heal, I need to give my head some silent space too. So I'll see how it goes...

Remarkable Things Today

1. The unmelted snow in my garden
2. My new mint plant on the kitchen windowsill and how delicate its leaves are, how they all reach for sunlight.
3. Lemon and honey, warm and soothing
4. Cats stir-crazy in the house

Moods that take me and erase me...

I just finished watching an Irish film called 'Once' and it really moved me with its music and the relationship between the main characters... something subtle and so human in how we connect. Love that doesn't fit into any category really, just love. Beautiful music. (Hello Breeda, thought of you when I watched the film). Have the words of the main song in my mind now and thinking about my day.

Two of my close friends have provided me with amazing information about their lives today: One friend is in labour and is giving birth to her daughter right about now, the other has just had a job offer that will change the shape of the next few years of her life (at least). I feel so moved by the journey I am on and the journey of my friends. There are moments in my life where I just feel amazed and awestruck by the really human things: the joy I feel for both friends and how I know their lives will be different from now on. The compassion I feel for my own journey right now, even and especially when things are tough. There is so much more to learn and experience here. My eyes are continually opened more and more to the real pleasure in life, in knowing others, in getting to know myself.

And today I accomplished all of my goals: got all the work I needed to done, went for a walk (as per new year's resolution 1) and meditated (resolution 2). Now I just need to sleep well and with cat snuggles.

A bit better today, thanks x

And out of all these things I've done

Kidney Vetch: anthyllis vulneraria. This one found when I was in the Hebrides in August. Just thinking about wild flowers again and how much I miss seeing them in winter. Woke up this morning feeling utterly exhausted and the first thing I thought of was my time in the Hebrides. It was so unbelievably tiring to get up there, a 24 hour journey each way by land (and sea) and yet being there was one of the most rejuvenating things I've ever done for myself. So I decided to drag myself out for a walk or really just a wander around the local wild area. As I walked I realised that there were very few green things let alone things with bright colours. Green things: nettles, grass, more nettles... So I looked at trees instead of the usual looking at flowers. Close examination of bark and twigs. Then I wandered home again.

I had such an exhausting day yesterday I feel like something huge came along and knocked me right off track and today I'm still trying to recover from that. One thing I'm learning...though very slowly...is how much energy it takes for me to do any kind of deep emotional work. I think the underlayer of energy that I usually have to keep me going when I'm tired is just eroded lately. Even though xmas contained some very lovely sleep. So trying to nurture myself and find out what that even really means. Today it has meant a tough choice, a saying no to something I really wanted to do this evening, an event with friends and poets. But I just don't have the energy in me to get out of bed or walk to the station. All I want to do is wrap up warm and fall asleep. Maybe dream of wild flowers or islands rising from the sea like a mirage.

With tuppence for paper and strings, you can have your own set of wings

Taking a few days out in a New Year visit to a dear friend and I'm catching up with myself and chilling out properly. Not only am I getting work done for my PhD, I'm also watching some telly (Mary Poppins) and continuing to eat luscious food. And I am keeping up with my two resolutions: meditation every day and a good walk.

Today I finished reading Alice Oswald's stunning collection, Dart. Years ago I heard her read from it and over these years I've dipped in many times but I'd never read it through until this week, start to finish. I feel enthralled with the idea of writing part of my PhD thesis on such amazing poetry. There are pretty much no words to describe how sorrowful, how celebratory, how moving and wild the voices of the river are, but here is a very brief quote from my favourite bit...

o I wish I was slammicking home
in wet clothes, shrammed with cold and bivvering but

this is my voice
under the spickety leaves,
under the knee-nappered trees
rustling in its cubby-holes

and rolling me round, like a container
upturned and sounded through


Today's Remarkable Things

1). Watching the rain pool and eddy in squared shapes on the neighbour's patio

2). How late I can sleep in the morning, left to my own devices

3). reading about a drowned canoeist in 'Dart' and then an hour later seeing a headline on the news about a drowned canoeist

4). Toast with honey and goat cheese

Yummy day

And things we're all too young to know...

New Year, new start, new approach. New Year 2012 began with a change of plans. Instead of the party I had intended to go to last night, myself and a friend headed into the city for a meditation evening. Though I hadn't yet thought about the best way to ring in the new year, as soon as this idea came up I knew it was where I needed to be.

The candle-lit, warm room held our thoughts, our chants, our letting go of the past year. Someone read a quote by Goethe that was especially poignant--

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back...the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

This year I have committed to having a meaningful and nurturing relationship with myself. To look after myself and do what I need to find peace, happiness and grounding. To start saying 'no' to things that don't support that way of life. To stop the chaotic busyness. To notice the remarkable things every day.

Today's Remarkable Things

1. Diagonal rain pelting my neighbour's roof and, unseen, my own roof too.

2. Pumpkin and chocolate cake with Chinese tea.

3. An empty sofa on which to read poetry.

4. The end of the holiday season is just the beginning of a new way of life.


Happy New Year

They say that things just cannot grow beneath the winter snow, or so I have been told...

Found this song today, the link sent to me by a friend, and the timeliness of it should shock me, but it just doesn't.

It was the melancholy and joyousness combined in Sara Bareilles's voice that got me through at least half of this year, meditation and close friends did the other half of the support.

I'm wondering right now, today a day of wondering, about her lyrics I've used for this post: They say that things just cannot grow beneath the winter snow... There is a heavy winter snow on my heart still, but not the icy kind, more the powdery kind I might one day scoop up and make snowballs of and dig myself out from under the blanketing cold that has kept me safe, as well as walled-in too much for my liking lately.

Remarkable Things:

1. December feels right. Right where I am. I am where I belong right now.
2. The tree is up and lit.
3. The light shines the whole room and yet the darkness still has a hold, the shadows safe and warm.
4. Snowdrops, one of my favourite flowers, can grow in snow.
5. All of this gives me hope.

This is my winter song to You

I wanted to post this poem as I was searching for information on the author and came across several people looking for the text of this poem. It's a favourite of mine, discovered in the 90's when taking a workshop in Florida.

Eve, Learning to Speak

A world already named, already
deposed
in the urge of his stressed
consonants, vowels
slack:
mood and doom and sundown, logbridge
and pear,
the gouge of the creek, hunched
leaves—

For days I called him I,

called the root in his fist
water, called what fire does
bathe—

He’d close me
for hours in the rivercliff
cave, as punishment,
to make me remember,
then he’d teach me its name: alone.

Alone,
I practiced the unnatural sounds,
touching my lips as he did,
feeling air
move through my throat, my chest,
letting it stay there.

Then sometimes the hush, the
thrill
of seeing things I hadn’t learned to say,
things he hadn’t claimed yet with his tongue:
once I woke, wet, hands muddy,
to something quick and burning
cutting through the trees.
And pieces of river
clinging to the spiderswings
between the crimped, rough applelimbs:

I would have kept that
as it was, tangible, alien,
let the memory
swell, unsayable—
and I stared at him,
refusing words,
when he came to rescue me
and teach me rain and lightning.

But some things
I kept as my own: the hurt
low in my body
he knew nothing of.
I came to like it. And my own
name for the land—not “Eden,”
not, even, a sound,
nothing any body could reproduce…

He wanted everything
common, reduced, so we could
exchange it, as though it were breath,
as though I still lay
deep in the bone and muscle of his side.

Sometimes I’d see myself
as I thought he must:
cut off, inviolable—
and I’d sit with him
and watch the high, cold grasses
all blowing one way.
I’d give in and let my strange
voice come.
And I’d feel the world diminishing, name by name,
as we talked through the long hours, and my new
life

hardened into form.

Bruce Beasley, from The Creation

Wake you up in the middle of the night to say...

The skyline last night in my town. Bonfire Night! And the thing I love most about it all is the how the entire town looks on fire, medieval with flame and even from a mile away you can look to the sky and see exactly where the torches are still burning.

It was a great night and a great housewarming party that we had for both my new housemate and myself. After two years and numerous amounts of trouble in this house, I feel thoroughly warmed by friends and a night of just pure fun.

There's something stirring in me, I can sense it. And I realise how much has happened this year and especially since the end of July when I went away for my two writing retreats in a row but especially on my trip to the Outer Hebrides. I haven't written about that here and I suspect I may in the coming days now that I'm reflecting on it and the magical quality of the island and the people.

Remarkable things:

1. Outdoors in the elements last night--fire and icy breeze, clear moon, warm ginger beer
2. Reuniting with myself and what qualities I want in my life...starting to think about relationship again.
3. Cycles--old and new, past and present and how they sometimes touch one another and combine and diverge and grow.
4. Maroon 5
5. Silence after a night of fireworks and bangers and drumming. Pure silence except for the clicking of these keys.

I don't speak German, but I can if you like

I have restarted my morning walks since returning to the UK. As well as obsessively cataloguing wild flowers (a habit that developed in August when I was investigating a character I'm writing who is a natural historian) I love to watch for all the tiny signals that the seasons are changing. Since wild flowers are pretty much done for the year, I'll turn my attention to trees.

Remarkable Things:
1. More bright yellow leaves everywhere
2. Gaga's new album
3. Echinacea tea after my walk
4. The dart of green and copper as a pheasant crosses my path
5. My housemate's cat giving me love bites (a little too hard) in the morning

Have a good day...

He's the pauper of the surf, the jester of Tortuga...

Before I say anything, if you haven't already seen this video, it's a must before reading further.

So I went to a Halloween party on Saturday as Michael Bolton being Jack Sparrow. Complicated it may sound, but not so. Just hilarious fun to dress up. Here's a close-up of my beard moustache ensemble that took two hours of individually gluing hair to do (but worth it!).

Remarkable Things this week...

1. Internet dating...getting back into it and liking it so far.
2. Jack Sparrow and I are now like spirit-brothers.
3. Great feedback on my PhD poems from my lovely supervisor.
4. Bright yellow leaves falling like confetti on my morning walk.
5. Dark hours before it's even time for dinner.

Happy Day of the Dead / Samhain / Celtic New Year!

This ain't nothin'...

It isn't completely unlike me to cry at country songs, especially when I'm just back in the UK after a long visit in the US, but today it seems a watershed of tears...and I'm learning that it ain't always a bad thing.

While I was away I heard this very old woman say--Life's a bowl of cherries, if you allow it to be... and that really got me thinking about my life and how often I just don't let it be a bowl of cherries even when it is. How much I have to be thankful for, always. And even if I consider myself pretty good at remembering this, there are times I forget, good times, when I need to remind myself to just allow life to be good.

This morning I woke after a very restless night and a very odd dream about my ex coming back into my life and wanting to get back together in a serious way. And in the dream, I knew, in that deep kindof way of knowing, there was no way I would want to get back together. What a relief to feel this and yet how much sadness there still is. Some days it feels like I'm carrying this huge corsage of sadness pinned to my chest and it's so big I don't know how to walk around with it without tripping and falling over.

But once I got up today, and realised I have the day off, I decided to do something lovely and went out into my garden to clear away the old leaves and overgrown everything. And in the garden I had an odd surprise. Right in the back, underneath so much overgrown shrubbery and vines, I found a tomato plant. Just one. It was the tomato plant I tried desperately to ignore. It was the last remaining one left (I gave all the others away) from the crop my ex planted the day before we broke up. And here was the one I forgot about. And it was LOADED with tiny, sweet tomatoes. I mean the plant was low to the ground, just hanging with tons and tons of ripe tomatoes and apart from one or two, they were untouched by slugs or insects.

It was finding a gift. I love tomatoes. Their red redness, their juicy bite, the way you can twist off the green stem, the whole lot. At first I just stared at them, almost unsure what to do. And in my mind--Life's a bowl of cherries...NO! a bowl of ripe tomatoes... and I went in the house and got my favourite bowl and filled it and filled it with the little jewels.

It's time to try defying gravity

Home: is here, Tampa. Home is there, my town in the UK. Home is another place too, ten hours north of here, where most of my family lives. Home is a place and home is in me. A somewhere with the location In My Own Skin, regardless of the place I am.

Home is walking out into heat that wraps round me like the most comforting blanket in the whole world. And the past two days it has been unnerving to re-embody this warm acquaintance with the heat I spend most days craving.

Home is a particular colour of black-brown, the taste of the very beans that are this colour, over rice, for breakfast.

Home is watching my oldest friend steer her car with her left knee while she gestures with her hands. Home is not feeling afraid.

Home is a screen door that bangs shut behind me when I walk into a house. It is the carpet on my sister's stairs, as cat scratched as my own. It is the surprising width of my brother's back as he leans over to tie his son's shoe.

It is the triple swing step and big band music. It is a dance partner who looks in my eyes instead of looking past me.

It is no one swiveling their head around to stare when I open my mouth to speak.

It is the possibility of cockroaches.

It is my drooling cat, the river that runs alongside my house in England, cobbles in the street. It is my friends standing with me who don't flinch, even as others swivel their heads around to look when I open my mouth, begin to speak. My accent that never changes. My voice on which it rides.

Follow the sound down into my lungs, into the inhale and exhale, down past heartbeat and gut. Down strong legs all the way to my feet. On the ground. Cobbles and cracked English pavements. or

blood clay foundation. or

crabgrass and sand, Tampa Bay spread out before me.

All of these grounds.

Only my one pair of feet to walk them.

Never enough time. There can never ever be enough time to just let my feet stand in one place for awhile, be completely at home.