Writing Sanctuary | Day Seven

 

Responses to Beth Kempton’s prompts for HARMONISING

I am home in the old workshed after yesterday’s adventures. For a moment I wonder about brushing away the fine cobwebs covering the pigeonholes above the desk. Instead, I sit a while and enjoy the play of light that turns them gold. I imagine the treasures that must lie behind such finely woven gates. If I were small enough and had the wings, I could accept the invitation of the wide round left open at the web’s heart, fly through and find out . . .

~ DAILY SPARKS ~

Before Solstice

These days, the secrets of the stones are snatched as we drive by in the car. 

A still point, grey and steady as golden grasses flicker past like early cinema. 

Distant, dark-speck humans crawl about. 

From here, the stones stand sacred still. 

Untouchable. 

Marking my escape route. My return home.

. . .

A Meeting

I birthed wild freedom

Slippery red

Outraged to be out

I held her

Calmed her

Tamed her

Set her on her feet

And pointed her

Towards the world

Then ― fearful ― 

Called her back

Each time she ran too far

And wildness raged

Against my fear

Until

I learned

To trust

And let her free

Responding to the invitation to explore a pair of opposites

:

Walking the dog in the sunlight and tree-shade of the local park, I pondered BK’s musings on light and shade, yin and yang, masculine and feminine. I called my good friend E__ to catch up and hear her voice and burst out thinking, as I always do with her, held in the safe space of her listening and knowing she will help me begin to understand what it is exactly I am trying to say. 

And now, coming back to the invitation to explore opposites, that’s the thought I loop back to. My list began blue / orange, running through the twins of light and shadow found in art: purple / yellow; red / green and landing black / white before the feelings showed themselves again and I wrote this, on sadness & content . . .

Coming to the realisation that I want to shift from describing feeling ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and having ‘good’ or ‘bad’ days. Accepting that it’s not binary, that we live in shifting states of sadness and content along a spectrum and that shift is between internal and external forces as well as between states of emotion: that i may have moments which feel ‘good’ or ‘bad’ independent of what is happening outside me; and in the same way, there may be events which others might deem ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but which don’t necessarily align that way in how i react to or experience them.

So perhaps I think of sadness and content not as opposites but as balances, on a fulcrum [pivot?] I imagine a set of Pisces scales: two bowls but of course that’s counter to my idea of a spectrum; but it can’t be a ball that rolls from one to another; perhaps i borrow D’s metaphor of water in a bowl sloshing from side to side; and H__’s therapist explaining sometimes the sadness fills up too high to be kept inside; or my own from Cornwall, of waves in the ocean but that doesn’t bring in the thought of balance. 

I settle on a bowl of water.

I like that because sometimes, however balanced, things may overflow, spill a little; and things may shift even if they are well below the surface, if tipped, or disturbed from within.

Picks up on Lemn Sissay’s image of an overflow pipe too, which is nice.

I think there is no drain or plug hole in the bowl.

I picture it dark wood, something like the bowls we found beside the door of our beautiful long-legged home in the secluded forests of Golden Buddha beach resort. Here we washed our feet, rinsing them with water scooped in gourd shells, dipping our toes in between floating petals. This way we left the dust of the world outside.

It is heavy to lift and hard to carry without tipping, taking care not to slosh and spill. And in it is carried both sadness and content, and the droplets in between. Touch it causes ripples, leave it to still.

Perhaps the water needs refreshing? Is that it? If we allow the petals to rot, the sediment to sink to the bottom and stay, the intended welcome becomes a health hazard and no one will want to dip their toes in to that small stagnant pool.

The water in the bowl is drawn from many sources: tears, of course, and rain. Perhaps cupfuls brought by others, scooped from puddles, splashed from oceans, carried many miles barefoot from the pump. 

It is contained yet open. Ever changing even when the nano movements of evaporation are invisible to human eye. Alive with unseen micro-organisms that could either harm or heal. Life-giving, essential. Cool or warm by moon or sun, showing nothing of itself but revealing all that it reflects.

. . .

Today’s Person from Porlock : [what is the name of those carousels of spinning photographs?]

noticing a tiny seed-head parasol

rearranging the hydrangeas (a lesson in editing)

s catching me on the way to gather up the dried flowers to let me know about this afternoon’s dental appointment

taking some time to open up the space around my desk and add to it inspiring things

a long conversation with my sister, about our times of energy and need for rest

a pause to walk the dog

. . .

I took my time today. Coming in to the shed, I knew I wasn’t yet in writing frame of mind. The empty pinboard propped on the side of the desk called to me, and I thought to fill it with pictures cut from magazines. Three white paper packets of clippings saved from my collaging phase. I open the top one, and remember saving pictures of the moon. A pen and ink drawing of an Eastern monk reaching for the moon ― perhaps he is a god? He floats on clouds and the swirling of his robes seems animated even in this flimsy paper reproduction. It’s perfect for the sloping roof above my head, next to the moon calendar my sister sent for Christmas and has only this week found its home in the workshed. I cut a second moon out of its night-sky background; a picture of an ancient beautiful artefact; a sculptured goat-being that looks as thought it would be good to hold in the hand. I fetch blu-tac that these days is white, and take my time attaching little dots to each curve and at the centre of my scraps of magazine; then reach up and push them hard to the plank of wood that lines the ceiling here. As I press I remember the shock of a poster falling on top of me in the night, long ago in college days. I have always enjoyed this kind of thing: finding just the right picture to go in just the right place, surrounding myself with images to lift my thoughts and speak to me.

And all today has been like this; drifting through the writing, allowing the distractions to flow in and take me where they want to go, gently accomplishing little things I hadn’t even noticed until the moment they called to me and seemed just the right thing to do right now.

Today i have remembered to follow the flow.