ASYNCHRONOUS PROCESS

Playing for Change

I find this idea something that touches my heart and mind, maybe it will you too. Music as international language seems so obvious but seems like the wheel it is often not noticed, taken for granted in way of being less valuable than it could be etc. I am going to leave this post here at the top of my blog until I find something else that makes me smile, cry and hope in equal measure. Peace such a small word a lot like love both over used and abused in this world of ours but in a small way I found this project to express something vital found in both those words if an open heart and mind approaches them. I hope you enjoy and go look at their website found here.

The most recent post will always now appear below this :0)

My Life in Verse

One of the things that I enjoyed hugely in the past month was a series of programmes put out by BBC2 called ‘My Life In Verse’ so much so that I watched each programme more than once through the help of the BBC iplayer. I was surprised how much I enjoyed the programmes as I usually shy away from famous faces presenting anything and it has to be something rather more than pictures flitting across a screen to entice me to watch as I am too in love with radio for TV to be huge part of my life.

However, I was captured by the first programme with actress Sheila Hancock selecting poems which she obviously was not just familiar with but were part of her life as intimate companions. Set against fine photography of places that reminded her of the poems and why they first came in to her life, her passionate reading of the poems and her conversations with poets and academics brought the poems alive without being overpowered by a reality TV feel but rather the feel of something real to this human being sharing her love of these words.

The other ’names’ who opened up new and old poems to me in the other three programmes were comedy performer and writer Robert Webb, singer and songwriter Cerys Mathews and writer Malorie Blackman.

What I enjoyed so much about these programmes was the expressions of transformation, support, empowerment, challenge that each of the presenters so evidently found through poetry.

Still counting

Finding a rhythm for a daily life could require in some people’s eyes the small matter of discovering a life first. I however have come to the conclusion that a rhythm and a life are slowly discovered together…at least in this woman’s experience.

Revelation seems a rather overblown word but that is the word that best describes the small but seismic shifts that have been happening daily for the last many months. Each day has brought discovery, shock and the kind of eye-opening moments that leave a jaw slack and a mind buzzing. This has not been on a cataclysmic scale or at least not to others eyes but in this small life the realization has brought me much more than just slack jaw and buzzing mind it is gradually bringing me awareness and understanding of what rhythm and life mean to me for the days ahead, for this day, for this moment.

My home, both cottage and garden are vastly and very much a work in progress but midst the chaos there is a tranquil small space, somewhere I find peace pours in to the slack jawed buzzing minded women and it is a still small space that I create and tend beyond bin bags or cleaning. It is a space that brings recognition of completion even as I wade through a bathroom wrecked by a body out of control or I sit wrapped in a blanket at 4am watching the sky grow light and bird song also light up the morning; in either so called good or bad moments there comes revelation but it is only as I tend that tranquil small space that this consciousness becomes understanding that a daily rhythm and a life, for me, are one and the same thing.

10, 20, 8457909090, zero...

… counting.

In numbers is there safety,
Do the sounds and sight of numerical utterances give me peace,
Can I find my way through numbers,
Have I reached zero yet.

In the days since the last ‘real’ post here numbers have become important and irrelevant. But the questions keep coming.

I have continued to spend time reorganising the cottage and the garden, both with some progress but still a steep hill being climbed.

There was a major ‘hiccough’ with the ensuit toilet and basin in my bedroom and that frankly is putting it very mildly. If a toilet is going to fail then why not in the midst of a full blown vertigo attack that escalated headache to mega migraine proportions that confuses brain that bit more so all personal plumbing just lets rip so to speak.

Coming up for air I leaned on the basin to stop the swaying only to be left with that away from the wall held up by me… of course being in my bedroom I found a piece of wood that I wedged in under the waste pipe and another wedged under the basin itself so was able to wet a flannel and mop the fevered brow. Thought I could hear a dripping tab but could see nothing under basin so thought it would be the weather outside I could hear.

What is time when life is precious.

I am not usually someone who gets political with a big P here but this last week I, like many others, have been watching the events in Iran and holding my breath.

The pictures and words have not just taken me to what is happening now but have taken me back some thirty years when I stood on streets that became sticky wih more than sweat, when a crowd wasn't a crowd unles it consisted of thousands of people and life was precious but oh so vulnerable. I watched as tanks turned corners and opened fire on unarmed protesters, I ran down streets with friends trying to protect me but by doing so putting themselves at more risk. I found myself for the first and probably only time thankful for being able to prove myself from Britain not USA with a passport and having enough wit to leave my international driving license with the authorities whilst my passport staid inside the hem of my burkah and enabled me to be smuggled out in to Afghanistan - which is another story.

But this week has brought faces and names swimming back into a brain low on memory capacity and tears to eyes. I have watched the crowds and realised with shock that I was probably the same age as many of the people I am watching now, then. Time passes but life is still precious but oh so vulnerable.

Someone has just sent me a link to a YouTube clip which has had tears rolling down my cheeks again, as this is what I remember so clearly from those days long ago, the noise after dark.

I had decided to begin blog posting again tomorrow on the day of longest light but feel I'd just like to place the YouTube piece here now and wish that anyone passing by will stop a moment and send peace and light to all the people of Iran and I do mean all the people. Only as a whole will there be solution, beginning, continuance of precious life. May wisdome and justice bring peace not guns,

Edging forward

So rain is edging in here again, nothing unusual in that but we did have one whole day of dry weather with uninterrupted blue sky with the golden orb making itself known in the valley and for a moment there was a whisper that it could be summer knocking early… of course we all kept our wellies on and baling buckets to hand as cotton shirts and pedal pushers were glanced at nervously at the back of wardrobes but as I said it’s been raining here again.

Midst the ‘delights’ of muddy paw decorations on kitchen floor and my trousers the first steps in to the jungle that truly is my garden have been made, much to the delight of muddy pawed companions. The sense that come autumn there will be obvious progress towards a place that not only lets RnB race on their joyful figure of eight constructed race track – don’t ask but it is almost 120 feet long and some twenty foot wide in places, a lot like my garden in fact:0), feels less of a hallucination more of a rather drunken imagining, progress then.

Having taken a serious look at the collected construction materials I’ve gathered during the ‘fallow’ time, the shrubs and plants that are still courageously growing midst pounding paws I realised that I may have actually been preparing for this new design rather more than I realised.

Place for raised vegetable growing area has been finally and conclusively decided, shape and size are still being paced and sketched but a motif has been chosen which will run through the whole garden in one form or another and I hope may manage to give the whole space a sense that it isn’t forgotten.

Page for thoughts plus questions and answers

Just to let you know that my thoughts on Winged with Death by John Baker and the questions and answers that followed are now all on one page whose link you'll find on the right under the heading More Of This Blog, You can leave questions for John in the comments there if you have any after reading the book I'll make sure he sees them.

Back to 'normal' posting tomorrow, as long as I can get my keyboard to stay alive after it seemingly giving up the ghost earlier today, aint technology grand when you haven't got a clue how it works or why it doesn't.

Winged with Death - book tour arrives here today

Thoughts on Winged with Death

History is fable agreed upon, said Voltaire. Fable is allegory left for interpretation, says Daisy-Winifred.

Fable is one of those words often used with little thought to its meaning and more often linked with children’s tales both created by and for them. But a fable can be a serious adult entity when created by skilled hands whose full stops are open windows for others to climb through.

Yes, a fable is a tale, a story but a fable is more; it can be a metaphor, a symbol left for a traveller as a way mark or signpost to add to their personal map; a parable for heart as well as mind which echoes in each foot step taken past that discovered way mark or signpost.

This fable, this metaphor, this symbol can also be a gripping, multilayered, engrossing, challenging, ripping good yarn. A story of human frailty and magnificence wrapped in poetry formed of prose found between the paper covers of a book.

Is ‘Winged with Death’ this kind of book. I could simply say yes and leave it at that. No damning with false praise or denunciation through disdain just a bald yes but then, fable is allegory left for interpretation.

Adjusted

Each day I watch my self negotiate with myself and wonder at my skill at placating and mollifying the sense of failure and despair with a smile or a long gaze at the clouds and wish it was really as easy as that. It isn’t but instantly I have to say it is.

The hard part is noticing that this self does need some attention, listening to and hearing of. That the noticing will only really happen if I do it, engaging with and in the moment and being prepared for that moment to stretch in to many moments and all the time still be only a moment.

My return from Wonderwool has meant very slow days since which someone recently asked ‘was it worth it’. My instant response was, of course but in the days since the question I have considered it more closely.

The question was posed after 48hrs of horrible bathroom activity, washing machine on two or three times and seriously dark mental broodings plus the not so small matter that I was actually talking to the questioner because I had to cancel a meeting with them and they were not the only cancelation.

The Hat

I love the hat Julia gave to me, as I said previously I wasn't the only one who fell in love with it as proved by the many women who rushed up to me at Wonderwool to express their enthusiasm. I have worn it a great deal since and it always makes me smile which is a real gift. I have named it my Alice in Wonderland hat but am not about to become a Walrus though the idea of a smoking jacket appeals:0) the fabric and the pattern of richness would be fun. Just the small matter of sewing machine to learn to use again but small steps will lead to large jacket!

The hat was found in the USA but had no identifying label on it, which has made me sad on one level as I would have liked to thank the maker but on another level it has just added to the sense of gift. Someone spent time and energy - I know about hand made felting it would have taken a deal of both, to fashion this object and then parted with it without the need or wish to be identified as maker, trusting the work would speak on it and their behalf. It does but I send thanks out in to the ether just in case the maker might hear.

Andre Breton, John Baker and Me

“No one who has lived even for a fleeting moment for something other than life in its conventional sense and has experienced the exaltation that this feeling produces can then renounce his new freedom so easily.”
André Breton

This is a snippet I woke with dancing in my head this morning. I blame it all on John Baker:0) I am finishing reading his book Winged with Death and preparing to write my thoughts down ready for our ‘meeting’ on Saturday afternoon as he stops at this blog on his virtual book tour.

I still wonder why me as I know most if not all the other stops have been to places occupied by writers or readers who regularly review the books they read… then there is me. Not someone who has ever gone in for book reviews here, is certainly not a writer in sense of being or wishing to be published in the way that most would-be writers of novels mean.

In fact the truth is I have been published, could go off to Ireland and get tax help etc., but my published name is not the one you find here or on my tax returns and none of what has been published is a novel except in the presentation:0).

I hear it told that everyone has one novel in them but I have to be honest my reaction to that is probably ‘that’s where 90% of them need to stay and just be personally drawn from’.