Writing Sanctuary | Day Eight

 

Responses to Beth Kempton’s prompts for WONDERING

I am sitting in the garden as the sun goes down. 

. . .

~ DAILY SPARKS ~

Whale Day

We didn’t see the Northern Lights, which was disappointing I’ll admit.

But we travelled through dark to find them and it was exciting

Whirling snow and strangers on a shared adventure and crunching out into the cold wilderness

We floated in the blue lagoon, and stepped back quickly from erupting geysers, and walked across frozen rivers and swallowed vertigo on the edge of cavernous waterfall

There was plenty to marvel at

But the true wonder of that weekend,

Our first away from the baby,

Was sleep.

The velvet northern dark that falls at four and sleeps right through til late late late in the morning.

I’ll never forget the bliss of it.

. . .

The real work you were made for 

[I’m cheating a little here, because reading Allegra King’s poem so strongly brought to mind a poem I wrote soon after the death of my mother in 2019. So my response to this spark is not with fresh writing, but with that sense of connection a poem can bring. The swoop in the stomach of feeling seen, of finding others who have noticed similar things and been moved to set them down . . .]

A life’s work

To be loved

To know that you are loved

For that love to be constant

true

steady

For that love to be challenged

and remain

The everyday background to the everyday

To be ordinarily

in love

To rage in love

and yet be held

To love in return

To work at love

and for that love to be

rewarded.

To leave a legacy of love.

A quiet steadfast simple love.

Responding to the invitation to wonder

:

I wonder if we’re really better off, you know, to know all the modern things we know

I wonder if I’d be happier, if choosing between butter or olive oil felt like less of a life or death decision and was simply about what I had to hand

Or buying a peach wrapped in plastic didn’t come with the guilt of smothering the planet, when I’d much rather be picking it from a tree

I wonder about all the knowledge that was lost, when they burned all the wise healer women as witches

I wonder how much better off I am, knowing I have osteopenia and premature ovarian insufficiency and low vitamin D and probably a brain that some medical men in the seventies have deemed Disordered, and worrying that I should be skipping twenty times a day and remembering to change the planet-destroying plastic patches but not sticking them in the same place twice and trying to choose between an unnecessarily bewildering array of vitamin supplements to decide which is better when surely just eating good food grown locally is best for all of us but somehow so damn hard to do.

I wonder if I won’t live better, if not longer, by just forgetting all that stuff and skipping like I used to skip, for joy, and eating an apple because it’s there in the bowl looking shiny and red-speckled green and enticing, and slapping a patch over my eye and playing at pirates.

I wonder about the language that is used, and the impact it has when we are labelled disordered, disabled, with an insufficiency. Who decided ordered was the only way to be and dreamed up meds to force us to comply?

I wonder if I already know the stuff I need to know, if I listen patiently enough. 

And I wonder why it’s so hard to hear the important things with all the background noise and sh*t shouting for our attention.

It’s just overwhelming, sometimes, that’s all.

. . .

Today’s Person from Porlock : Portfolio

Strawberry crumble with chocolate ice cream

A conversation about train tickets

. . .

It is dark now. The mosquitoes are circling for their blood-warm feast. The sky is deep blue behind the black shapes of the trees. A golden glow still lingers low, dwindling behind the rooftops. The clash and tink of supper time echoes out over neighbour gardens. Lights flick on in upstairs windows. Rumbling conversation and a sudden laugh lifts up. The aeroplanes are more frequent now. I miss the quiet of lock-down days.

. . .

Watering the garden, I thought about the way the invitations of today and yesterday, that guided us towards thinking of our work in the form of a finished book, are casting shadows from my former life. And my mind wandered to how many of the old marketing team are in a different, more creative place these days: three published authors, a screen-writer, an artist, a boutique-online-shop-influencer, the best yoga teacher I’ve ever had . . . And it throws up two things that make me wonder: why I’m finding it so hard to make my own creative work, even now i have the time; and why we have to choose between job security with a steady income or doing work that is true to ourselves, even in a creative industry like publishing.

. . .

The sudden shower of water disturbed a scattering of toads. And I wonder if the little cluster of pots where they live sheltered by broad green leaves of mint and strawberry plants isn’t one of the best things I have ever made.