tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30284709316291533392024-03-05T23:40:49.596+00:00Strange Little PearlsBook nerd. Poet. Wannabe mermaid. Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.comBlogger97125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-77038827347932741132017-06-23T12:58:00.001+01:002017-06-23T12:58:08.677+01:00"I come into the peace of wild things..."<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVW4j1dxJGpxHr-9r5tU0oYaP8vHkpHK9j8oTA7P9BdakDE9zseUBL-cyzdjvvSmWsUisI6TCkWBGDGBWw3af0YtWiFAjG2SunPB_2FXlVrwCsV7KptfLIXRYYdHQZhWA5ksD1Eo_0zhM/s640/blogger-image--70043264.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVW4j1dxJGpxHr-9r5tU0oYaP8vHkpHK9j8oTA7P9BdakDE9zseUBL-cyzdjvvSmWsUisI6TCkWBGDGBWw3af0YtWiFAjG2SunPB_2FXlVrwCsV7KptfLIXRYYdHQZhWA5ksD1Eo_0zhM/s640/blogger-image--70043264.jpg"></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I wrote a short story yesterday. Only the second I’ve written in my adult life. Perhaps you won’t be surprised to hear that it’s about a selkie, a myth I have written about time and again. What is it about that particular myth that draws me back, like a moth taptapping at a lightbulb, or singeing its wings at the flame? The romance of salt and sea, of light falling in long slants through deepening water. The idea that you can split the skin between two worlds, and live – however differently – in each.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Writing has been my light more than ever in these last weeks. Through the terror attack in the city where I live, and the terrible events in London. Sometimes the world feels like a frightening place, and all I want to do is close myself away from it, keep myself safe with books, and sweet tea, and the comforting glow of a small lamp. Writing reminds me of how wide and beautiful it is, and how wonderfully, marvellously magic. That there is more out there to love and be glad for than there is to dread.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The weekend after the attack in Manchester, C and I went out to the country to camp, needing the peace and the clean air, to be out from under the weight of fear. Just before I dawn, I woke up needing to pee. I got up and left the tent, leaving the front door-flap open. When I came back from the toilet block,, C was awake and startled, propped on an elbow. “What’s the matter?” asked him. “A robin!” he said. “A robin flew in and landed on my shoulder. I felt his little birdfeet, and when I woke up he sat and looked and me for a moment and I could see myself reflected in his eyes – they were so black! And then he fluffed himself up and flew back out”. I eyed him sceptically, thinking he’d been dreaming. But sure enough, when I settled back down on the blow-up bed, there it was: a pat of birdshit, small and round as a coin.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That this can happen in the same world, and the same week, as a man belted in to an explosive vest kills children with hatred and nails. A timely reminder. That storms can flood a street of houses, then link them with a rainbow’s thread. That for every lamb who opens under the fox’s teeth, a dozen others sweeten their fields with play . There is this, always, after the worst has happened. Always the beauty, always the gifts. It’s how life sells itself, and how we are sold on the world, and all its terrifying eggshell loveliness. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I launched my book last month – at Waterstones in Manchester, where I have spent so many happy hours over the years, and so many of my paycheques. I got to hold my book for the first time – its beautiful cover, all pearly froth and swirl, and my name in neat letters on the front. I will never forget it. The warmth and joy of that room, with its high windows and stacked books – which people <i>bought, </i>and which I signed, afterwards, in looping script. The glass of wine I sipped throughout. The sounds of traffic like surf on the street, and the sounds of glasses clinking, and laughter, and good wishes. How lucky I am to have had that night: how blessed I felt. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And I am truly lucky, I know this. But also there is the awareness, now, that luck takes work, at least in part. That the world will conspire to help if you let it, but you need to be open to opportunity. You need to be open to everything. The older I get, the more passionate I am about shaping my life, rather than letting it simply collect like a shawl around my neck. I am thirty six, and I have a book in the world, and someone who loves me. And sometimes terrible things will happen, but dammit if I won’t keep looking for the beauty that comes after. Which <i>always </i>comes after. Always the rainbow after the rain, the robin after a city hit by violence. Always the smile for a faltering spirit. Life will keep on giving its gifts, if we give it chance. And I for one intend to give it. And give it. And give it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0OuX2Zg9q3c0NHy58FuYiy4gd7xbNIzBc4N_q5FIwqEIJ2miIG33tu0-tLsgcDtWmeP-S4XRaZuriwYBVuko0a6N9ZinRfM_e6BSbI7WLywqSvJXDEM99UO0kUlZY-hV5w3ocTRHsC5E/s640/blogger-image-1172632807.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0OuX2Zg9q3c0NHy58FuYiy4gd7xbNIzBc4N_q5FIwqEIJ2miIG33tu0-tLsgcDtWmeP-S4XRaZuriwYBVuko0a6N9ZinRfM_e6BSbI7WLywqSvJXDEM99UO0kUlZY-hV5w3ocTRHsC5E/s640/blogger-image-1172632807.jpg"></a></div><br><p></p><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">The Peace of Wild Things</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">Wendell Berry</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><br></span></div><div><pre style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; word-wrap: break-word; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><span style="white-space: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When despair for the world grows in me</span></font></pre><pre style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; word-wrap: break-word; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><span style="white-space: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">and I wake in the night at the least sound</span></font></pre><pre style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; word-wrap: break-word; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><span style="white-space: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, </span></font></pre><pre style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; word-wrap: break-word; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><span style="white-space: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I go and lie down where the wood drake</span></font></pre><pre style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; word-wrap: break-word; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><span style="white-space: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. </span></font></pre><pre style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; word-wrap: break-word; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><span style="white-space: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I come into the peace of wild things </span></font></pre><pre style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; word-wrap: break-word; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><span style="white-space: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">who do not tax their lives with forethought </span></font></pre><pre style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; word-wrap: break-word; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><span style="white-space: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">of grief. I come into the presence of still water. </span></font></pre><pre style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; word-wrap: break-word; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><span style="white-space: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And I feel above me the day-blind stars</span></font></pre><pre style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; word-wrap: break-word; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><span style="white-space: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">waiting with their light. For a time </span></font></pre><pre style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; word-wrap: break-word; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><span style="white-space: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.</span></font></pre></div><div><br></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><br></span></div>Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-72550843310870769382016-11-21T22:35:00.001+00:002016-11-21T22:35:07.099+00:00"Love yourself as if you were a rainbow, with gold at both ends..."<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A weekend in the Peak District, craving the hills and the wild air. My heart is happiest, there. The moment I step from the train into that rinsed light, I am lifted. And especially so this last trip, with snow whitening the hills like a gift. We wore woollen hats and walking boots, and climbed to the sky. Up the cold slopes of Mam Tor, past the cows and dreadlocked sheep, past the cheery hikers with walking sticks and pink cheeks.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What a feeling, breasting that last rise. The whole world underfoot. Cold white miles of it, beautiful, blinding. The air as clear and thin as a whistled note. The full bowl of the valley brimming with light. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Never, out there, the dazzled nerves. Never the ditching heart. Only calm, and open spaces. Only wide skies, and quiet, and grace.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mam Tor holds an extra sweetness for me. I wrote a poem there last year, and it won me my first major prize. There is magic there: I feel it in my bones, the way a water dowser feels the hum of water in his wrists.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The remains of an Iron Age fort in the grass at the top. Take a moment to imagine it. The centuries stilled and kept underfoot. Tell me that doesn't make your heart beat like a butterfly, fast and bright. All those sunk bones in loam, wrecked ships beached in earth. The wild red hair of those buried daughters, winding towards our ankles like weeds. The lost arrowheads, the bowls of rust.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The things I have learned from those high wild hills. To trust in my body, to tend to my mind. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What is it for, this life? I want to live with clarity. I want to be kindled, to be kind. And I feel it out there, like a thumb on a map: my part, my place. Like a flame that has guttered and whispered almost-out, and then been cupped back to a leaping flash.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I am burning, I am burning. I am finding my purpose, I am finding my way.</span><br />
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Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-51741990038537281642016-10-26T13:24:00.000+01:002016-10-26T13:24:17.857+01:00"Hello darkness, my old friend.."<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was golden at the weekend. C and I
walked the canal into the Peak District, our feet ploughing leaves the colour
of blood, of foxbrush, of tangerines. Light striped the green water through the
trees, and the underleaf was flush with that lovely light that always reminds
me of a jar of honey, a mug of ale. An almost-amber, a <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>gold that sweetens and warms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I needed that beauty. The black
butterflies with fire in their wings. The squabbling ducks. The pair of swans
bent sweetly at the neck like a pair of young lovers, a slow riot of leaves in
their wake. But what is it the poem says? <i>Nothing
gold can stay.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lately, I have been feeling unmoored.
Small, and soft. Full of doubt. Anxiety winds its roots in me like a weed, and
thistles flower in my throat. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">From nowhere, as always, this. It has
been a long time, but here again is that slant of dark. I move between four
places only: bed, and bath; the open flame of the Autumn countryside; the back
corner of my local pub, where I read and write undisturbed as the fire pops and
throws off its sparks. The familiar is important. The calm. I bide my time and
wait the shadow out; I know this game. I light the lights I can, strike the
matches of small poems and sink in long baths full of scented foam. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As jittery as
I am, as sick as I feel, there has been no rupture in my self-identity, no
quavering with regards to self-care. No temptation to lash out, as I once would
have. To cut or starve or stuff. Beneath this sensitive weeper, there is a
quiet core of tempered steel. Years in the building, years of pain. The way the
oyster builds the pearl from grit. How valuable it is to know that. To be safe
in the hands of myself. And this is where those years of therapy prove their
worth – that sure and solid floor of bedrock built in neutral rooms, the gold
seam of worth at my core.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I am a quarter
of the way, already, into a new poetry collection. The first fourth flowering
from the root of the last book, which is, until Spring, still that: still root.
But new buds are rising from that slow-building heat. New fruit from the old
seeds. Look to that, for my assurances. Look to that, for my proof. That I am
what? Living, and growing. Learning through doing. Digging through the dark
with a shovel of truth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I pull myself
through the nerves with a rope of language, tell myself <i>you have this, you've come through everything this far. </i>And these
are the leaps and bounds that put men on the moon. That distant from me. That
near. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Sometimes
light just takes its time to reach us. But sometimes
it races in the wake of a star.</span></div>
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Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-20422223155541555732016-10-08T13:37:00.000+01:002016-10-08T13:37:02.271+01:00"I must be a mermaid...I have no fear of depths, and a great fear of shallow living."<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">I am writing a story about
the sea. How many ways there are to say <i>salt.
</i>How many ways to describe the nets of light shivering on the water. How
many words for <i>hunger, </i>and for <i>deep.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">I once wrote here about wanting
to become a mermaid. About being an adult who still sometimes dreams of her
legs slimming to a single silver point, ending in a sweep of fin. Who tastes
salt and imagines breaking out of her true element into a bright slate of sky,
the taste of home in her mouth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Lately, I have been
feeling not quite myself. Anxiety rises in me like a drift of smoke: faint, at
first, then a choking dark that thickens my lungs. The way blood spilled in
water begins as a cloud, a slow-unfurling fog of pink, before it deepens, rusts,
and calls to sharks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">It has been a long time
since I felt this stirring. I stumble under its weight but I do not fall. I
keep on moving, keep on writing. I write of water, and this is how I keep myself
from drowning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">There is salt under my
tongue. My heart breaks blood against my ribs like a wave. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">In my mind's eye, I hold
an oyster, my favourite totem. A shut shell with a wash of light inside like a
sky. Remember the grit that worked its way in, the irritant, the hardness at
the beauty's heart. Remember that this is necessary before the pearl can start.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-19694891274984342522016-09-06T22:28:00.000+01:002016-09-06T22:28:15.460+01:00"To make an end is to make a beginning..."<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I write, and time feels geological. Vast
and slow. I move through the hours like a glacier, stilled to a cold and
concentrated point somewhere deep in my own centre. And then when I’m done, and
the last full stop is placed, I blink, and the world comes flooding back, a
rush of quickness and colour, sounds so loud I can almost see them, doubling
and redoubling in the air.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The poems in my first collection are
poems from the start. Of everything, of my life as a writer. Poems from the
tap-root, from the well’s heart. I imagine the book as a map: follow a line
with my finger, trace it all the way back. Here, I am twenty, and sick, writing
in the bright library between doctor’s appointments. Here I am thirty three, in
<st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>, and
in love. Here is a bedroom I remember
every detail of. A classroom. An office. Each poem a snapshot. Each poem a
journal. Each poem a lovely anchor, fastening me to a time or place. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Some of the words, I can almost taste:
the wine I drank while teasing out the tangles of a phrase; the vending machine
cocoa, rich brown silt at the bottom of the cup. I remember the paintings that
hung on walls, the glossy books thumbed thin. I remember the essays and articles
I read – a spark of interest that caught and leapt, and burned, intensely, in
my skull’s crucible. And I wrote while they burned, until all that was left was
the ash of black words on a white page. News stories. How sounds were sent on
discs into space: human voices, whalesong, nightingales. How a herd of three
hundred reindeer was felled by a single lick of lightning in a Norwegian
forest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My friend once saw an exhibition in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Manhattan</st1:place></st1:city> – human bodies,
split and cut. The heart, visible. The layers of spongy yellow fat. And the one
thing she described to me with exquisite clarity: a red net, delicate as wire,
hanging like art behind plate glass. A lattice of blood vessels, removed from a
once-living body by injecting the arteries with plastic and then dissolving
everything but that. These tiny tunnels that once ran with breath, with life; a
tangle in the air describing the place they once inhabited.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That is how my poems feel, now. Like an
entity separate from myself. They hang together, hold my shape - but they no
longer live in the dark of my body.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There is a tribe in the Amazon whose
chief wears a cape made from hummingbird feathers. Imagine it - a wake of blue
and yellow that falls like fire and sky from his shoulders. But the cape is so
heavy that he cannot walk when he wears it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I come to my writing desk, find the
slate completely clear. The first time in a decade it has been this way. I
imagine my book, I imagine that bluegold cape. The shrugging off of all that
beautiful weight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">How naked and vulnerable it is to be without
it. And yet, and yet: how utterly free, how wonderfully light.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-73006218830350073742016-09-03T12:54:00.000+01:002016-09-03T12:54:14.543+01:00"Perhaps one day you touch the young branch / of something beautiful. & it grows and grows".<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 10.5pt;">Months have passed again without my visiting this place. The world
turns, and the world turns. I have been writing, just not here. I committed to
journaling for a hundred consecutive days, so the words that normally spill
into this place have been diverted there instead, like a river forking,
carrying its water to the same sea, but travelling its light a different route.
And the poems have been coming and coming. My body brimming with them, my bones
humming with their bright particular music. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 10.5pt;">A week now, since I got the news that my first collection will be
published in the Spring. I remember thinking, <i>So this is what yes tastes
like. </i>As happy tears fell into my beer, as the pub spun. The weight of all
that work, the years of words, the book, there and then gone - fallen out of
its life with me, quiet and small, and out to live its own life in the bright
wild world. Is this how a mother feels when her child is pulled out from that
tucked place under her heart? There it is, after all that growing in the quiet
- fully realised, and breathing. A part of the world now, free of your
body, free of your blood. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 10.5pt;">I am flush with happiness. But there is also a part of me that is
small and scared. How I want people to be tender with this soft thing I have
made. How fearful I am of it failing, of my tiny fledgling falling, not flying.
Which would mean I have failed, and fallen. That my words aren’t good enough
(and my words are the best thing I have). I need to let go of that sense of
dread, and be glad, only, that my words will exist in the world at all. That my
mouth will not be their only home. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 10.5pt;">A confession: on Saturday, C and I went to the bookshop in the
city. I found the place on the poetry shelf where my book will fit – after <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><i>Paterson</i></st1:place></st1:city><i>, </i>before
<i>Plath – </i>and tested the way it will feel. To touch a finger to the shelf
and find my name. It felt like belonging. Like my life had both shrunk and
swelled to fit that slender space. The sweetest of beginnings, which is also
the sweetest of returns. The coming together of <i>me</i>, and <i>home.</i></span><i><span style="font-family: "Segoe UI"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 10.5pt;"><i>(title quote: from "Elegy", by Aracelis Girmay)</i></span></div>
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<br />Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-64806032652335939782016-01-22T00:56:00.001+00:002016-01-22T00:56:28.984+00:00"We love because it's the only true adventure..."
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">This is the last night in this bed under swallows and roses.
The last night with sighing pines behind glass. The last time I will hear the
neighbour's children cry, and the last I will bend my spine to fit the shape I
have hollowed in this space. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">From tomorrow, I live in a city again. And not alone. My
breath won't sit in my lungs just now - how it rises, and rises, like the sun
in the morning, like bubbles climbing the sides of a flute of champagne. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">How words can soften and shuffle. How meanings can shift.
How <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">home</i> can be walls in one moment, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">him </i>the next. Two minty mouths in the
bathroom mirror. Four lungs breathing the same sweet room.</span> </div>
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Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-48958504188656990512016-01-07T16:21:00.001+00:002016-01-07T16:21:13.760+00:00"For last year's words belong to last year's language..."<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">I lie in bed, my ribs
bruised from coughing, the wind lashing the wet pines outside my window, so
fiercely that it sounds like the sea behind the glass. I can almost taste the
salt on my lips. I can almost hear the gulls wheel and scream as they ride the
thermals, red tongues flying like flags. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">I haven't brought my words
here in a while, have been tending them instead in other places. I cycle
through phases like the moon. Sometimes, all I can write is poetry, slim little
slices that shine in the dark. Other times, I write ripe, and round, and full,
and more pages fatten the ever-growing book. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">And yet, as always,
something eventually draws me back here, the way the moon draws the tide from
the sand in foaming sheets, revealing a litter of treasures in its wake: crabs
with their hanging claws like picked locks; relics of bottleglass worn smooth
and blue; oyster shells, whose insides still swim with that pearly light, like
a sunrise is held there, like a secret, like a spell. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">I left 2015 with a full
heart and a kiss. That was the year I loved deeply, and well. That was the year
I wrote poems wrapped in blankets, where my body filled out from all the beer
and cheese, and I didn't care, because my belly was happy, and my heart. That
was the year I climbed hills wild with heather, saw shooting stars dance on the
tip of my lover's finger. The year filled with cocktails, and tender words. The
year of walks on the <st1:place w:st="on">Yorkshire</st1:place> coast with its
rolling mists, and sudden tides. The year of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>, and of camping in the Peaks, of
pizza and beers in damp, foggy fields, and of laughter, always laughter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">I move in with C in a week
or two, and still can't quite believe my luck. That the new year should begin
so filled with promise, and with love. Such constant, quiet happiness since
I've known him; it still feels like a gift. And so even as I lie here, sweating
in my sheets, my chest sounding - and feeling - like it's full of broken
crockery, still, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">still, </i>I feel the
wildest, strangest joy. For the year I've just spent, like so many handfuls of
gold. And for the next one, already smouldering in my pockets. I can't wait to hold it, gleaming, in my hands. I can't wait to see how it shines. </span></div>
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Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-41996928441089004122015-09-12T15:30:00.001+01:002015-09-12T15:30:25.008+01:00"I want to see the Kingdom come / I want to feel forever young..."<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">A twist of red and gold in
the leaves of the tree at work, this week; a blazing helix winding in the
green, a spiral of fire and heat. Cold lungs in the morning, and frost
underfoot, a lace that glitters and crisps where I step. Webs in the fences,
the hedges, the gates, stars of silk strung bright with rain. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">A time of turning, this.
The trees to fire, the skies to ash. The clocks turn, too, their fingers spun back
an hour into the past. The nights turn cold. Breaths turn to smoke and hang in
the air, rolling and fuming like genies let out of their bottles at last. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">These days of wiltings and
woodsmoke, wool gloves, and leaf-drifts, stars and fogs and fires. The closing
out of the old year, a quietness, a settling. It always feels like I'm resting,
here, like a bear gone to bed for the season, snug under rugs of earth and fur,
dreams full of sunshine and sea-salt and freedom. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The pull is too strong to
wait for that last night of December, with its lists of musts and wills, its skies
ablaze with noise and colour. The reckoning begins now, for me, as it does each
year. The past months gathered in my lap like flowers. I sort with practiced
hands through roots and blooms. Some I keep to press into forever. Some I toss,
too bitter for permanence, too faded to brighten a future hour. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">This, this life: like
tending a garden. What do I want to plant in the clean <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Spring rains? How will I weather the Winter? I
cut and prune, and plan for the coming calendar. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The trees cast off their
old greens and burn, and I, too, feel called to change. To rest before the next
rising. To contemplate - with clear eyes and a quiet heart - the next turn.</span></span></div>
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Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-38272778550998521802015-08-29T16:18:00.000+01:002015-08-29T16:18:29.182+01:00"Autumn days when the grass is jewelled, and there's silk inside a chestnut shell..."<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">A walk home from work on Wednesday this week, a walk through the alley overhung by trees. I watched my feet move, dappled with light, sun-coins scattered over fans of bone that flexed and flashed, then flexed again. Then a breeze, and a drift of leaves - and the sudden shock of the falling colours, all yellows and bronzes and reds. Who stole the greens overnight, left changelings rusting in their place? Who took the softness, left parchment-paper sheaves?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">I am a watcher, a notice, by nature. I see when the stars begin to hang colder, hang clearer. I notice, every year, the first bluebells chiming quietly in the garden. I see the first breath of frost in the grass. I watch the seasonal clock tick steady, even, through each neat quarter. And so I don't quite know how it happened, this year. How Summer faltered right beneath my nose. How brassy Autumn saw her chance and leapt.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">How I worried about turning thirty. About leaving the word <em>girl </em>behind like a clue for someone younger, like dinosaur bones laid down in the dirt, the ghost of who I was preserved under fathoms of fragments and dirt. How I worried that I had spent the best of my days, my twenties, in one wild spree, that all that lay ahead was wistfulness, and thickening hips, and a hairshirt of nostalgia and fond memories.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">The truth is: the only hurt of "older" is the seasons turn faster. And each one is sweeter and harder to part with than the last. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">The truth is: the only thing I lost in my thirties was my heart. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">A reminder to myself: <em>Attend to the moments. The moments are important. They keep the stars, and the Poles, apart. </em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">And so I write it, I set it here. I cast for moments, and I catch them: a wriggle of glitters, like fish in a net; a line of lights in a softly glowing string. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">I realise now that the moments are the bones. The heart's-blood, the breath. The moments are the molecules and the moments are the cells. The carbon and the stars. The real, secret shape of every living thing. </span><br />
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Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-68341599656331285122015-07-19T14:23:00.001+01:002015-07-19T14:23:07.058+01:00"I come into the peace of wild things..."<br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I live, now, in a city, where
the buildings nick the sky, and the streets are quick with chatter and with feet.
I live among a million shades of grey, the primary colour of every city - grey
pavements studded with gum, grey pigeons with petrol-spill skullcaps and pink
club-feet, grey cigarette smoke curling and drifting up to grey dishcloth skies,
grey tramtracks in their clean steel lines, which make me sad, sometimes, the
way only an incurable romantic can be sad - the way they run alongside each
other from beginning to end, but never, ever, get to touch.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I love it, mostly. The lights,
the noise. The way the sky looks like a mosaic between the officetops, cut into
patches and boxes of blue. But sometimes my heart swells for the quiet, and I ache
for wildness and green, crave rolling views of cool blue mountains, water
braiding itself neatly over stones.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I forget sometimes how close we
are to all of that. Just half an hour on the train, and it's like <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Alice</st1:place></st1:city> stepping through
the looking glass - everything reversed, the same world, but not the same, full
of light and colour. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Yesterday, we went out to where
the villages sit in tiny clutches in the folds of the hills, velvet folds of
green and gold and brown, patched all over with heather, bright purple. We walked
where the air was so clean and clear, it made our shocked city-lungs sit up in
surprise, and the water was bone-cold, weaving its gold-green way through the
fields.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM137KJvC-myJc6uOkMeVhm-z4b8wDkiMpWkyFWsMZYWwMNfg0yGGVbzplsEy7FPfj_pmVzCks-qnhyphenhyphen-7IwXHvfB_599haBv9vleJ9DF_tBL9jKLIIpW4eSXzGk982MfY3RsGUblA1F5c/s1600/11737970_10153410196125985_5363496743003976332_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM137KJvC-myJc6uOkMeVhm-z4b8wDkiMpWkyFWsMZYWwMNfg0yGGVbzplsEy7FPfj_pmVzCks-qnhyphenhyphen-7IwXHvfB_599haBv9vleJ9DF_tBL9jKLIIpW4eSXzGk982MfY3RsGUblA1F5c/s320/11737970_10153410196125985_5363496743003976332_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"></span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">We drank beer that tasted of
lemons in a tiny pub with views as far as the eye could see, and I felt a sudden
surge of love for it all, for everything. For C, his hand resting on my knee,
traces of silver powder from his work beneath the crescent-moon of each
fingernail, so that it looked like he'd been handling frost, or making
constellations. The air that made every breath feel like a gift. New freckles
like stars on my sunkissed shoulders. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I write these posts, sometimes,
and I wonder if I've anything left to say. It's not that I don't love writing
them, because I do, truly - stringing the words together like pearls, polishing
them until they gleam - but I wonder how many of you still find them
interesting to read. Is happiness - the calm, quiet kind that you live in day
after day - remarkable enough to read about? Once I wrote like a hummingbird,
all frantic beating, wild colour, and fervent heart. Now I am more like a <st1:place w:st="on">Jersey</st1:place> cow - sureness and solidness, quietness and calm. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I am at home in my life, and
happy in it. It is more than I ever hoped for. But my writing style has changed
because of it, has lost its edges and sharp corners. Writing fiction, writing
poetry - those things are different. They have their own sharpnesses, their own
characters, their own clean points and lines. But I feel like my blog posts have
softened like butter left out in the sun, melted into one long lovely golden smear,
the same words carrying from one to the next like a smudge pulled by a thumb: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I am happy; I love him; I am full of hope.</i>
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Blue dusks and gold dawns,
early-morning mists that wrap bare ankles like cats, or smoke. Beer in the sun
so the glass glows with light like a lantern. His hand on my knee. All the
words of the world in my throat. I want to do this forever, even if the readers
peel away, in time, like birds in Winter, tiring of the same words, looking for
different skies. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I want, almost more than anything, to touch people with my writing. I want to leave something
beautiful in the world. But maybe that will happen through writing of a
different kind. I write here hoping that people will leave with something - a
scrap of truth in their teeth, perhaps, or a thought clutched in a fist - but
ultimately, I write for myself - for the pure joy of it, but also to keep
something beautiful to look back on from my future, like roses pressed between
the pages of a book - <em>yes, look at the petals, I remember this; I can still, if I breathe in deep enough, catch the scent</em>. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Maybe it's her I write for most of all, that future self. I know how she will treasure the moments her own ghosts trapped and kept - the words in the library, the bones in the cool museum halls. This is my way of preserving my life - like butterflies in frames, like diamond-hard beetles pressed in amber, pressed in jet.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5FlXE5MoMZoyM1zim5UZVnB9hz3VeX1Z3OL3jp9lgtXuiRAx1dph_NG3X2J879BM8pajM8Oz0ZJfQopgQl3sy5VP4Nt7Jk9i-JhKrx6jGR0OnHbZ5ydQTD6bBF3N7GKzMQvudcy5E9OE/s1600/amber+termite.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5FlXE5MoMZoyM1zim5UZVnB9hz3VeX1Z3OL3jp9lgtXuiRAx1dph_NG3X2J879BM8pajM8Oz0ZJfQopgQl3sy5VP4Nt7Jk9i-JhKrx6jGR0OnHbZ5ydQTD6bBF3N7GKzMQvudcy5E9OE/s1600/amber+termite.jpg" /></a></div>
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Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-32223728955840722432015-07-11T16:59:00.001+01:002015-07-11T16:59:36.027+01:00"Into the blue, into the blue blue blue..."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4RFV1ZnNMm2GOpDKCtru8u_NROeWvd1qsOTq_o4uZQZ5ksJHv6ajXz-gsalEhqJfDValgFhwqOE2yYGgkm_pPssxnq4oVpa01EyqiW0t1mY24SPl1QeQpTeJEgPHqQ65rtoBihhf7kxQ/s1600/3571795-old-treasure-map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4RFV1ZnNMm2GOpDKCtru8u_NROeWvd1qsOTq_o4uZQZ5ksJHv6ajXz-gsalEhqJfDValgFhwqOE2yYGgkm_pPssxnq4oVpa01EyqiW0t1mY24SPl1QeQpTeJEgPHqQ65rtoBihhf7kxQ/s320/3571795-old-treasure-map.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Summer this year is the X on a
treasure map: a spill of light and gold that we know is out there, but is proving
impossible to find. It is buried under weeks of stone-greys and mizzling rains,
the occasional glint of a sunny afternoon like a lone coin under a boot-heel.
Where is the prize? The cache of gold mornings, the smelted afternoons, the
doubloons of a hundred suns, glinting, glinting?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">There is a heat that runs beneath
the surface of the days, but the sky remains cloudy, and blank as a slate. It
feels like living in the space between one thing and the next, the white empty
place between parentheses. It feels like being the open eye between two blinks,
looking and looking and seeing only the same grey horizon, never any closer,
never any further away. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">There are moments of
loveliness. Golden hours scattered here and there like clues along the trail. Last
night we sat in the fields while the sun blazed, watching the trees scatter light
across the grass like breadcrumbs, like petals, like flung gleaming seeds. We
drank beer and toasted, at last, to Summer. We sat until the evening deepened
into dusk, and the birds quieted, and the bats came out to replace them,
cleaving the air with their quick slicing flight until it seemed that the whole
sky must rain down in a tatter of confetti, a shredded shower of stars, of
night. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">C asked, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What is your favourite thing about the Summer? </i>I knew, immediately.
Those hours, early evening, after a long, hot day, when it's just beginning to
blue and cool. The gloaming, they call it. A sort of early twilight. When the
sky deepens into the most gorgeous, radiant blue, a blue I've never seen
anywhere else in life, that I don't believe <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">exists
</i>anywhere else - not in a Grecian sea, or on a butterfly wing, not in a
pottery glaze, or the painted folds of the Virgin Mary's robes, or the
gas-flame blaze of a lit Christmas pudding. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I said, simply, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The evenings. When it's blue. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I saw a fox once, on one of
those blue evenings. I was waiting for the train in the richness of that light,
the hush of the notquitenightnotyet. She detached herself from the shadows
between the tracks like a flame peeling off from a fire. Nose testing the air.
Delicate steps, like a ballerina. I stood like stone, the only thing moving my
hummingbird heart.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">What can I tell you about a
moment like that? The world compacts. Two points on a compass. Two creatures under
the same sky breathing the same blue dark.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">And then the train came, rattling
the moon, and shattered that brief and blinkless world apart. I remember
looking away for a second, looking back - and the wild thing was gone,
dispersed like smoke, back to her nest of earth and birdbones, her cellar of
tree-roots, her ceiling of moon and stars.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">These are the moments I
remember when the grey days smear and blur. The splashes of colour, the glimpses of treasure - red fox,
blue dusk, bonewhite moon. The lovely hum of magic in the air.</span> </span></div>
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Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-83207145364344644202015-06-28T15:11:00.000+01:002015-06-29T08:18:48.177+01:00"Give wine. Give bread. Give your heart back to itself".<br>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWZTBgPhdeUSONWH0OrRa6wox7cho3VTloyBGnQUTtb7Mx_cR92rcQqQfF8gSyqd-zQV_DttQsGoKQX8h46ha5mvMemV9LzjGZZFZ-QR5w4r9RuwWtMUl3eLAg-oCUTgyZL7bC3QJ_W1o/s1600/hands%252Cpicture%252Csummer%252Cglitter%252Cwater%252Chand-3cde3809f5c5dc6b79245f0ca133cebd_h_large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWZTBgPhdeUSONWH0OrRa6wox7cho3VTloyBGnQUTtb7Mx_cR92rcQqQfF8gSyqd-zQV_DttQsGoKQX8h46ha5mvMemV9LzjGZZFZ-QR5w4r9RuwWtMUl3eLAg-oCUTgyZL7bC3QJ_W1o/s320/hands%252Cpicture%252Csummer%252Cglitter%252Cwater%252Chand-3cde3809f5c5dc6b79245f0ca133cebd_h_large.jpg" width="320"></a></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The same question I asked last year, and the year before
that: where do the hours go? And the weeks? And the months? Sometimes I feel
like my life is an abacus, with a child in charge of the beads, slinging them
from one side of the frame to the other so that the numbers accumulate so much
more quickly than they should. Or a handful of sand that won't rest on a palm,
but lifts in the wind and is gone in a spin of scratch and glitter. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I went to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state></st1:place>
in April with C, for two long, beautiful weeks. We walked the grids of the city
until our feet were threadbare, drank American beer in the park with the grass wrapping
our ankles. We spent hours inside the 911 museum, and I left salt tears on the
floor there. We drank Manhattans in a bar above the skyline and watched the
clouds turn pink and gold; saw seagulls wheel and scream from the boardwalk at <st1:place w:st="on">Coney Island</st1:place>. I took photographs of everything: the oysters
we ate in a rooftop jazz bar; the <st1:place w:st="on">Brooklyn</st1:place> bridge
spoking out against the sky; the seats on the subway, the colour of Spanish
oranges; the elegant brownstones frothing with magnolia flowers, miles high. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span> </div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">What else?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I've been writing. Writing hard and fast. The cheap book,
the one I've pinned my hopes on like a flower pressed between pages. Between a
wish and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>dream. It's not good, exactly.
It's not the poetry I want to write. It's not careful or elegant. It doesn't
make me swell with pride. I won't even write my own name on the cover. What it
is, is easy. What it is, hopefully, is a means to an end. And so I keep on, and
my heart is on pause, and the words mount up, a pile of pebbles building a
little bridge. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgko7GJSnc9YlZnVO6O6xGd1Mkq2PJrwcR19flDtCLmtEC-LdIa7kbjVoHNqvHWKUKD1CucC_ECantAjxdPZ3BpyjBFQ9_upDsJQy5d0zLTAZh0kwNI34RFUx-mGcmWKldoA8IJg51Rpzk/s1600/DSC_0157.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgko7GJSnc9YlZnVO6O6xGd1Mkq2PJrwcR19flDtCLmtEC-LdIa7kbjVoHNqvHWKUKD1CucC_ECantAjxdPZ3BpyjBFQ9_upDsJQy5d0zLTAZh0kwNI34RFUx-mGcmWKldoA8IJg51Rpzk/s320/DSC_0157.JPG" width="320"></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"></span><br>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"></span><br>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">And also. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Sunday lunches with cold beer in the sun. Writing poems on
the train trips home, as the city recedes and fields flash by full of cows,
full of wheat. Friday nights in pyjamas. Bottles of wine. Long, lovely
Saturdays where he works and I write, he sunk in his passion, I in mine. Impromptu
trips to countryside farm stores to fill our basket with garlic-stuffed olives
and elderflower wine, and cheese, and smoked meats, and eggs, and fish. Movie
nights under blankets. Playing rock paper scissors on the weekend mornings to
decide who gets up to make the coffee. Painting the walls of his house, room by
room, so that when I move in, it's new, and ours, and clean, and shining like a
newly minted coin.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6JWULh2iqsfPCYmPGV2_SQqyQSxvswfJ87v2tbZB1rm0Rhr_t4nUe0NSR3WIuYt0PVhBcp_sTJvHVbWJUAbUvHIgHbnixV8xNf9jfaGwNjx7-Nt4zXEyYwsTbLeb9qeKflAQ9QTRroEA/s1600/11391533_10153288586595985_6529152673039743925_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6JWULh2iqsfPCYmPGV2_SQqyQSxvswfJ87v2tbZB1rm0Rhr_t4nUe0NSR3WIuYt0PVhBcp_sTJvHVbWJUAbUvHIgHbnixV8xNf9jfaGwNjx7-Nt4zXEyYwsTbLeb9qeKflAQ9QTRroEA/s320/11391533_10153288586595985_6529152673039743925_n.jpg" width="240"></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"></span><br>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">And then. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Sending out poems, like casting glass bottles out into the
sea. Waiting for the emails and the letters to return with a yes or no. Waiting
for the journals and anthologies to come with my words pressed into them like
footprints in snow</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4iLWZPG0jzEwH7qU2w2_f-EChvsa-gAtG1-BjvtR_40ctPVR3OzC0839OBm88_dTtR9Sdk3TX3AkZs9rWg_5owx_CLwOmSYEU8heP1ignGTsck75qTMX7ZoG39AATFKkqQYsc_gPbgo4/s1600/beach-hand-message-in-a-bottle-photography-Favim.com-649625.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4iLWZPG0jzEwH7qU2w2_f-EChvsa-gAtG1-BjvtR_40ctPVR3OzC0839OBm88_dTtR9Sdk3TX3AkZs9rWg_5owx_CLwOmSYEU8heP1ignGTsck75qTMX7ZoG39AATFKkqQYsc_gPbgo4/s320/beach-hand-message-in-a-bottle-photography-Favim.com-649625.jpg" width="320"></a></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span> </div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">These are the simplest and happiest days of my life. It's not about having money, or silk skirts, or clavicles so hollow that
rain can collect there. It's the quietest things: good food. Enough sleep. <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Reading</st1:place></st1:city> until my eyes are
so full I feel they could burst, and send sentences out like confetti. Kisses
goodnight and good morning. Corralling wayward paragraphs to make a book, like herding
sheep after errant sheep until finally they co-ordinate, a single, substantial
flock. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">If I could wish, now, for
anything, if I could rub my thumbs on a genie's brass lamp or spy the wink of a
falling star, I would wish only for this. To keep making these quietly shining
days. To collect them, like lights on strings. Like pearls at a throat. Like fireflies burning moon-bright in a jar.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-89384490041940600942015-04-01T17:56:00.001+01:002015-04-01T17:56:05.901+01:00Strange Little Poems
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghz80aWnE4lW2-0ATgrgQrwtwgDKbMS5il8RWvYjHSBf4vyKFRIG5kd6wMKFf9NKGQJZJN2Ez7eTSTymOmtytPrXDjLWNHdFTYFi8sWpiRp1QPbz6B-sekDdZel448UFybqOGJLuVvNQo/s1600/typewriter_RGB-for-web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghz80aWnE4lW2-0ATgrgQrwtwgDKbMS5il8RWvYjHSBf4vyKFRIG5kd6wMKFf9NKGQJZJN2Ez7eTSTymOmtytPrXDjLWNHdFTYFi8sWpiRp1QPbz6B-sekDdZel448UFybqOGJLuVvNQo/s1600/typewriter_RGB-for-web.jpg" height="247" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">NaPoWriMo begins today, and continues through April. I do this every year - come here, to my laptop, with
the intention of filling the month with poems - and every year, I work through the
same sad cycle. I write, at first, at a glorious white heat, all flash and fire,
all struck spark. After a week or so of a poem each day, the heat goes out a
little, and only glows. Then finally, by the end of the month, there's little
left at all -<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>just a slow gold
smouldering in the grate. A line here if I'm lucky, a single image there. An
exquisite state of frustration every writer knows.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"></span> </div>
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<span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">How to find the minutes, when the hours slip through
the fingers like small change. How to find the words, when the brain has gone
mute. It feels like waiting for lightning to strike. To be scorched by it; to
be that lucky. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"></span> </div>
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<span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I wanted, this year, to create a space specifically
for those April poems. An empty space I cannot help but want to fill. A space
that is invited-readers-only, and therefore, somehow, safe. A way of holding
myself accountable. An organised base from which I can link to the blogs of
other NaPoWriMo writers, and read some new poetry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"></span> </div>
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<span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Maybe it will help keep the momentum going. Maybe not.
Maybe the words will still leave at some juncture like the snow geese heading
South for Winter. But I hope not. I hope. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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<span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">If you're interested in reading, if you're participating in National Poetry Writing Month yourself, if you want access to the poetry I'll be putting on the new blog, please leave your email address in the comments so I can add you to the list of invited readers. I don't want the blog to be public as a lot of magazines and journals won't publish poetry that has appeared on open blogs as they consider it 'previously published', but I do want to share NaPoWriMo with as many of you as possible, whether you're along for the ride or just enjoying the view...</span></span></div>
Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-66426916322521900342015-03-29T11:48:00.000+01:002015-03-29T11:48:07.863+01:00"And in that moment, I swear we were infinite..."<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">When the
weather is grey and wet, this city is a mirror. Rooftops slick with rain throw
back the sky, and the sky returns the world a thousandfold in its drops. You
can see the stars in the street: I love that. I walk through puddles just to
shatter constellations, stand and watch them shiver, break apart. They recover,
eventually. Everything does. The ripples stop sending themselves out, and the
water settles, and there is the whole universe again, burning steadily
underfoot, at once infinite and the size of a fireside rug.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Sometimes
I am so struck by wonder that it feels like a bruise. Water, and light. Stars,
and darkness. Moons, and poetry, and love. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">These
sweet weekend mornings, when I get to wake up with C, and he absently threads
my hair through his fingers while we talk in that soft slow intimate way that
you have when you've just swum up from sleep, and snatches of dream are still
tugging at your ankles like underwater-weeds. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The long
blonde slices of light the sun sends through the blinds to stripe the wooden
floors like sleeping tigers. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Those
rare days when the sun is snuffed out like a candle-flame between finger and
thumb. I stood in the dimness of last week's eclipse, struck dumb by the
oddness and the beauty of it all. The light was tea-coloured, and everything
was strange, and it felt like the end of the world. I thought, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">maybe
I've died already, hundreds of years ago, and somewhere in the future, my daughter's
daughter's daughter is holding a sepia photo, fingertips finding her shadows in
my face, and the bit of me that lives in her, the cells in her blood, the
strings of code in her bones, is calling back across the centuries like an echo:
hello, hello, hello.....</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">It seems
that magic is everywhere. It is hard to explain. Its not that I'm in love,
which is its own wonderful thing and has its own sort of magic, but also has
its own particular trail of fears foaming in its wake (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what if I lose him, what if my heart breaks, what if I hurt him, what
if he doesn't stay). </i>Its not that I'm happy, because happiness, I know,
comes and goes like the light does, like the rain. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">It's more
that I feel whole, somehow. And not from being half or part of something else.
I am whole in myself. I'm not sweeping scraps of myself under rugs, or chasing
thoughts, like spiders, into corners. There is light in every nook and there is
light in every crevice, and if it shows up the dust sometimes as well as the
good, at least it's honest. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">There are
nights when I wake and worry, still, and the second between each clock-tick
lasts for days. There are times when the mirror isn't kind, and the old ghosts
clank and rattle their chains. But mostly, I am good. Mostly I am grateful.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">For the
breaths, and the words, and the breakfast eggs. The kisses. The glasses of
wine. The church bells that come through the trees on Thursday nights when the
ringers have their weekly practice. The scented candles, the sweet plum
tomatoes clustered on the vine. The daydreams. The poems I read that go off in
my mind like tiny fireworks, glittering, gold. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Today is
cold, and the sky is wide and white like a sheet. The rain is flying, a hundred
thousand scattered beads, and my wellington boots are on. I have my keys, my
woolly hat, my purse.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Contemplate
the wonder of your own life. I'm off to shatter the Universe.</span> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-50868418232074371452015-03-15T17:02:00.000+00:002015-03-15T17:02:16.956+00:00"There will be time to wonder, 'Do I dare?', and 'Do I dare?'"
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I'm meant to be creating today, but the words won't come. Instead,
I lie under blankets on C's bed while he works in the corner under one of those
desk-lamps with the flexible neck. I link from blog to blog, looking for new
words to love. I like the beautiful ones best, the ones that string sentences
together like pearls. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want to wear them
on the shelves of my collarbones, the two moons of my breasts. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I have books, plural, in progress. Pages and pages of words I have
coaxed and clipped and pruned into blooming. Like orchids, they are difficult
to grow, even harder to keep alive. But I try. I try. Meanwhile the years keep
passing and there are no spines on the bookshelf lettered with my name. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I dream of a neat little cottage in the future. A well-kept garden
with radishes and beets. In it, a room full of pretty things - cushions,
flowers, sun-filled lace - where I sit to write (and write, and write). All the
words I've collected over the years, all the words I've dreamed, free to spill
on to page after page, unkilled by hours in strip-lit offices and steamy canteens,
unkilled by mindless hours in front of flickering TV screens. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I think I've found a way to pick that future's lock. A way to open
the door to that room where I can sit and write the things that make my heart
fill and swell. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I must write, </i>I
decided, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">something fast, and furious.</i>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Not the book I want to write, not yet; not
the poetry, not the sentences that sweeten into something golden and fine. I
must write something quick and cheap, something that will sell, so I can leave
the creativity-killing nine-to-five behind. Goodbye buses, and vending
machines; goodbye logins that change every thirty days, and mechanical
window-blinds; goodbye, air conditioning that is always too high or too low, so
we roast like chickens on a spit in Winter, and shiver till our teeth rattle in
the Summer. <o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">It sounded easy, and it is, for the most part, it is. The words come
freely when I'm not being selective, when I'm not choosing based on how
beautiful something sounds, or if it holds truth. This is a different kind of writing
than I have ever done, all cliffhangers and wordcounts, and the battle is being
won. Even if the book feels a little shabby, a little thin. It's a bit like
dressing in grubby, secondhand tweeds after years in the fanciest and riches of
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>silks.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">To write fluff now so I can write gold later...does that make
sense? I think it does, but I can't help feeling oily of hand, sometimes,
shifty of eye<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">. </i>I go back and forth: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It is necessary; a stepping stone for the
future. / No, it is a waste, and mercenary.</i> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I know what I want to write. I want to write about things that
live beneath the sea, mermaids with silver tails like apostrophes, selkies that
peel out of themselves, heel to skull in pale curls, under full, complicit
moons. I want to write about love, and death, and every hidden fathom of the
human heart. I want to write about light: the way it moves on water, like a
scattering of sequins, and the way it falls through lace curtains to trace
florals on skin. I want to write about a girl saying yes for the first time,
about the boy she lets touch her with trembling hands. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I want to write and write of all these things... but instead I am
writing sloppy mass-market fiction with haste. This is the risk: if it works,
if it sells, it will all have been worth it. I will sit in my lovely rooms, and
drink lemon tea, and write all of the things that live in my heart for the rest
of my days. If it doesn't, then it will all have been a waste. But what will I have
wasted, really? Only, I suppose, a handful of weeks. Not even a full turn
around the sun. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I've never tried writing like this before. Forging words from
speed and fire, lines from time and heat. There's that, at the very least, to
gain. The chance I've never taken. The dice I've yet to cup in a hand and cast.
The newness of the experience for its own sweet sake. Maybe it's worth persisting
for that alone. That, and the hope it can't help but light in me, bright as a
newly-minted coin of moon.</span> </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"></span> </div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-59746209916395440922015-03-07T13:49:00.004+00:002015-03-07T13:49:51.066+00:00"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself..."<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ-h-eJT6mbUALTi6G2lDYJr2h0i3hDBh1igIIUo7-hVHnFghPlhX5B7D7yCAReBUYyyU8NxjtZuEXVEVRU7KGEbEEjirMbRYgnFCFR9n4FJp711A1-u-24-Fzu7mS4bHZrN9mZqFZ36g/s1600/february.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ-h-eJT6mbUALTi6G2lDYJr2h0i3hDBh1igIIUo7-hVHnFghPlhX5B7D7yCAReBUYyyU8NxjtZuEXVEVRU7KGEbEEjirMbRYgnFCFR9n4FJp711A1-u-24-Fzu7mS4bHZrN9mZqFZ36g/s1600/february.jpg" height="275" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Another
February gone, with its frosts and mists. Gunmetal ground, and stars like cold
fire. The white shoots of snowdrops. The Valentines flutes full of bubbles, full
of hope. Another striped candle on the sweet, sweet cake. A wish expelled in
breath and smoke. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I
sit and type, and rain flies at the window like handfuls of sequins flung at a
bride. The wet slate roof throws back the sky. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This is my life. My beautiful life. In all its wonder and all its
normalcy. <o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">It
seems just a moment since I wrote <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I am
thirty three. </i>Wrote of journeys, wrote of plans, and dreams, and the slats
disappearing beneath the path of a train. And now I am thirty-four, another
oak-tree-ring circling the shafts of my bones.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Twelve
months. A handful of posts. Words scattered like breadcrumbs across the screen.
I find the ghosts of my selves in the spaces: remember that girl; the one whose
heart was crushed like a flower in a fist? And that girl, too, a flat
balloon,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>filling, very slowly, with warm
air, new faith? I remember that perfect moment, and the moon. The gardens in
Summer - squirrels, pinecones, wine on my breath. I remember the notes I took. The
fingers that read the Braille of my spine like the dimpled print in a special <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>book. The seasons that spun in their slow carousel:
light, and air, colour, heat;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>new buds,
old bones, sunlight, snow. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: center 216.0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I have learned to let go, this year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I have learned to breathe before letting out the rush of words. I have
learned to be truer to myself, more clear about the things I want and don't. I
have learned that I don't always know, and that that's ok. I have learned to
say <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I'm sorry; I love you; I'm afraid. </i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: center 216.0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">What else?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: center 216.0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Oh yes: that there are more chances than stars in the sky. That you can
love without losing yourself to the process of loving. That you're never
failing as long as you try. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: center 216.0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I have learned to treat my life like a garden: to protect and to prune. To
water what is good, and full of life, what helps me grow. To cut off the rest
at the root. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: center 216.0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I have learned that change doesn't happen overnight, but that I can chip
away at the cliff face. I have learned that, ,through everything, goodness runs
like seams of gold through old rock. That sometimes it glitters, right there
for the taking, so beautiful, so free... and that sometimes we must sweat and
hack and chisel for it. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I no longer look at my age and frown. I look at the numbers and marvel. I
wear them like a prize. I still can't French-braid my own hair, or draw on eyeliner
in perfect leonine sweeps. I still haven't finished the books I'm writing, or grown
my own tomatoes. I still haven't tasted lobster, paid off that loan. But this
is the thing I have come to understand: all those things, they're the patchwork
pieces. The bits of your life - the experiences, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lovelinesses - </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that come together
gradually, over time, to make the whole quilt. The things we piece together,
the experiences that give the thing - the life - its patterns, its colour, its heft, its shape. And
my whole <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">life </i>is about finding those
pieces and putting them together. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: center 216.0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">But so far, my thirties - though not without the most gorgeous of patches -
has been about something just as important, and thus far lacking. The stitches
and seams. The things that hold the quilt together, give it cohesion, shape and
beauty. A sense of self, which I've found after years of working and searching,
and which I'm grasping as tightly as a kite-tail in high wind. An independence,
like sediment, at the seat of everything. A sweet sort of surety; a certain
calm. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Life is a process, not a destination. </span></span></i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I forget who said that, although
I've quoted it before, but never has this been clearer to me than now. Another
year struck from the calendar. Another beautiful square sewn into the quilt. I can
see, already, the edges of the next one. Gold like sunshine, like honey, like hope.</span>
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-19022242200641816722015-02-21T13:51:00.000+00:002015-02-21T13:59:14.079+00:00"Be in love with your life; every detail of it..."<br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Those days, when the tides inside
crest and swell, and your soul, like the foam on the curl of a wave, rides it all
out, in the simplest of joys, high in the blue, close to the sky. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Those days when bad luck or a
black mood is nothing but the vaguest memory, nothing but ash in the fire of
your cairn, and you burn with absolute clarity, you burn with focus and
calm. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></o:p></span><br /></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Those days when the words shake
out of your fingers <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>like grains of salt
from the cellar, and you lick your fingertips, you press your lips to your palms,
and you taste of ink, and sweat, and you feel the heat of your own blood moving beneath
your skin, and you've never felt so real, so alive.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></o:p></span><br /></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">These days, these days...I wish I
could cast them, now, as they happen, cast them and press them into glasslike beads.
I wish I could wear them in a rosary or rope, a string of my longest, most beautiful
days spilling over my collarbones, over my breasts. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span> </div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">To handle them over and over, and return to that wonder. To roll each moment in a thumb.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I want to be higher, and better, and that part of me says <em>Love every second...then let it go. </em></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span> </div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">But the human part, the girl with a heart so soft you could nudge it, knuckle it, knead it like dough, says, <em>Let me hold onto this for always; let me take my time with it, slow, slow...oh, let me keep this rush of love, this sudden golden flood of hope, of grace...</em></span> </span></div>
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Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-78501169811952794112014-10-11T17:34:00.000+01:002014-10-11T17:34:24.849+01:00"The moon and I are too much in love..."
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWOAmbKohjrXKB59L7DIYuO5EW4Ave-m-yJHrK2_KKK1hjZkiJON5dFfg7woviT0WcQedvV4D4m8My2uIZVqTMbb0zaDZwLnGydzT4Ybo_utJkHfry_72SsK8qF9-VioyrNqIatGTDigI/s1600/untitled.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWOAmbKohjrXKB59L7DIYuO5EW4Ave-m-yJHrK2_KKK1hjZkiJON5dFfg7woviT0WcQedvV4D4m8My2uIZVqTMbb0zaDZwLnGydzT4Ybo_utJkHfry_72SsK8qF9-VioyrNqIatGTDigI/s1600/untitled.png" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">First
frost. Spiderwebs like dreamcatchers, strung with the dew they caught and kept.
Leaves that break underfoot like glass.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Autumn may have slunk in like an alley-cat, all stealth and grace, but
she's a lion now. The streets are copper and gold where she's stepped. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">And oh,
the moons, the lovely moons. Why are the skies so much clearer in the cold? The
stars come back to themselves, are brilliant in a way they never are in Summer,
when they are gentled by the heat, and the Autumn moons are startling:
bone-white, diamond-clear, hauntingly bright. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">I read
somewhere that scientists think the moon may have been ours once, a commonplace
part of our crust. That something struck us from the wide white sky - a meteor,
perhaps, or a comet streaking fire the way a girl's hair streams behind her in
the wind - and a huge chunk of land broke away and spun off into space, where
it caught in orbit, and hung there, and became our moon. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">Isn't it
pretty to think so? I can't help but think of the moon as a girl, and that
theory leads me to imagine her up there on her shelf of stars, lonely and
wistful and Winter-white, always in sight of her old home but unable to return.
Maybe that's why the tides turn, because she's trying to sing them back. Maybe
that's why girls crease with cramp each month, because their blood follows the
same silver tune. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">There is
something magical about the moon. That's why so many poems try to catch her in
the nets of their lines, like a great silver fish. That's why so many artists
try to keep something of her for themselves, in ornate frames, in
cathedral-quiet gallery rooms. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">I wrote a
few posts ago of moths; of how they have become something of a personal totem
after they batted insistently at the glass of my life in their soot-soft,
silent-winged flurries. How I finally gleaned a message from their constant,
persistent presence: to make the decision that is right for myself in every
moment, and to always head in the direction of the light. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">It stands
to reason, then, that I may be more moon-obsessed, lately, than most, given that I'm
following the path of the moth these days, and the moon is the very source of
that light, in both literal and metaphoricalterms. I'm asking constant
questions in a way I've never done because of that little lightbulb moment
about the moths. I'm more engaged than I've ever been. I accepted my life just
the way it was for a really<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>long time,
because that's what so many people do. So many people just accept that they're
in jobs they hate, or have toxic relationships, or are in poor health; they
accept it because they take the attitude that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this is real life, and real life isn't all dreams coming true and
Prince Charmings happening along, and having jobs we really love and getting
paid a lot of money to do them; we're not in a Hollywood movie. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">And I
accept that; I accept that we're not in a <st1:place w:st="on">Hollywood</st1:place>
movie. But who wants a life where the endings are already written, anyway, and
the coincidences aren't strange and wonderful but scripted purely for plot, and
the moon, the gorgeous, miraculous, luminous moon, is just something small and
coin-bright on a flat screen?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">Life
isn't perfect. I've always known that. It took me a lot longer to realise and
really understand that just because everything isn't perfect doesn't mean that
nothing is. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">Last
night I had a perfect moment. It was both the loveliest and simplest of things.
I had a glass of really cold beer, my boyfriend's hand was resting on my knee,
and we were talking and looking up at the moon which was just wildly, insanely,
outrageously beautiful, all wreathed in blue cloud and turning the air silver.
And for a split second, I felt perfect, and happy, and absolutely full, and I
thought <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This is it, this is what pure joy
feels like. </i>And then it was gone, with just the lovely afterglow left
behind for a spell.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">I think
maybe the trick of happiness is accepting that we can't maintain that feeling
constantly. We're not meant to. Happiness without any other emotions to frame
it is empty. It's champagne without the bubbles. Fizz gone completely flat. We
can't rest in those happy, perfect little moments forever. But in keeping those
metaphorical moths in mind, I'm learning to move in that same, steady, hitching
kind of flight in pursuit of those moments. Zigzagging between my moments of
joy. Luxuriating in them when they happen, and then setting off again
afterwards, eyes on the next bit of light. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">The moon,
more than anything else, has the effect of making me remember how small and
human and mortal I am, even as it makes me contemplate how vast the universe
must be, and what a miracle it is that I exist - that any of us exist - at all.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">And so
I'm going to go out again tonight. Breathe in the cold, look up at the moon.
Know that if I could see my own eyes, there'd be a million stars reflected in
them. All those galaxies, all that old light, ,existing, however briefly, in
me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">What a
miracle that is. And how simple it is to find miracles when you only stop to
look. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-13102264929525133272014-09-27T15:31:00.002+01:002014-09-27T15:31:30.072+01:00Autumn is a second Spring, when every leaf's a flower...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">Autumn is
here. The stealthiest of all the seasons. In she creeps on little cat-feet,
trailing her bronzes and turning the leaf-tips to copper as she goes. One
moment the skies are jewel blue and absolutely clear. The next they are the
colour of unlit lightbulbs,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the smoky
grey of shoeprints on paper. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">We went
wandering a couple of weekends ago on one of those last clear days, and ended
up in the gardens of an old stately home. We bought ice creams from the little
on-site cafe, took off our shoes and sat on the grass beneath the old Tudor
mansion house. Couples threw sticks for woolly-looking dogs. Children toddled
by the pond, squeezing fistfuls of bread meant for the ducks in their chubby
little fists. Magpies rattled like gunfire in the trees. Midges fizzed. It was
beautiful. Later, we went for a walk by the lake, and I took photos of the water,
the sky, the trees. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">In one (the photo I posted at the start of this entry), a
single tree blazed orange; the others, all around, were still green. That first
sign of Autumn, even as the sky glowed blue through the gaps in the leaves.
Just two weeks ago, and now the green is gone, and we crunch through molten
colours in the streets. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">This
morning, we went to the food and craft market near C's house, and drank coffee
as we browsed the stalls. Breads studded with nuts and seeds, and peppered
cheeses; fat, split sausages spitting on the grills. Homemade ciders and local
beers. Steamer trunks with real iron bindings. and stencilled names fading prettily to obscurity on the sides.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">There was
a lovely chill in the air, and the stallholders were cheery in woolly hats and
fingerless gloves, and I suddenly wanted more than anything to press the
morning into my memory like a flower in a book, or a moth behind glass, wanted
to preserve it to take out and handle in the Summer months, in the Spring, say <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yes, I remember, this is exactly how Autumn
smells; of coldness, and coffee, of woodsmoke, and grilled meat, and clean,
good air...</i></span></div>
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<br />Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-74378667830979009382014-09-22T14:13:00.000+01:002014-09-22T14:13:03.889+01:00"One moment your life is a stone in you; the next, a star". <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqba5DIAETrgfEDrSUPx42bEq2Fa_NByYlU_MkhmSbgbT445EoAdz3VJyo4bkgm2aICRtxFN-QShSP_haqLLrFd3maHQgYESC1SIssoO3-5SMx9d9oJnWWjELyAKZ-I7QZdSkwvvXynR0/s1600/b93a1f6b7cffc8cc6df50afe2b083af7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqba5DIAETrgfEDrSUPx42bEq2Fa_NByYlU_MkhmSbgbT445EoAdz3VJyo4bkgm2aICRtxFN-QShSP_haqLLrFd3maHQgYESC1SIssoO3-5SMx9d9oJnWWjELyAKZ-I7QZdSkwvvXynR0/s1600/b93a1f6b7cffc8cc6df50afe2b083af7.jpg" height="320" width="218" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">Remember
when my heart was glass, and love songs were feet that stamped and smashed. All
those months when my face was grey, and broke open without warning, a sky full
of rain. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">A friend
told me then, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Some day, someone else made
of stars will be waiting in the wings. </i>I held onto that like a rosary or a
charm. Thumbed it in the dark. Pressed my wishes and my hopes into it, like
fingerprints in bubblegum or plasticine. Wanted to believe, but couldn't,
quite. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">In June,
I went on a date to flesh out the bones of my loneliness. Tired of spending
Saturday nights with a bottle of wine and my thoughts. Tired of Sundays where
the hours were endless and glutinous, melting and lengthening like Dali's gloopy
clocks. My friends were busy, my own four walls were driving me crazy, and I
just wanted out for a while. I wanted sunshine that wasn't filtered through
glass. Good wine. Some conversation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">I wasn't
looking for anything, not really. But I found everything. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">People
said, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">You'll find love when you're not
looking, </i>and, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">When you're ready, love
will find you. </i>I've said those things myself - many times, to many people -
and I've always meant them. It's just harder to believe when it comes to your
own tender self. Its hard to have faith, even the vaguest kind, when you still
feel like you have bootprints on your heart.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">This is
the beautiful thing about life. It's a truth that you sometimes have to root
for in the dark, but it's true like a root, like a stone, like a star. There
will always, always, always be a turning. Just as Winter will crack open into
Spring. Just as the night will lighten into morning. Nothing is permanent.
Everything, but everything, will change. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">I may be
hurt again, in time. Maybe it won't work after all. Maybe he'll break my heart,
or I his. But that's the risk, isn't it. The beautiful, terrible risk of it.
That's the chance we take each time we put our feelings - our eggshell-fragile,
mothwing-delicate feelings - into someone else's palm's. But rather that than
be lonely and be flat. Rather take a blind leap and a tumble than never start. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">I have
been a bud. I was a bud for the whole first half of the year, hard, and closed
and very, very green. But now I'm uncurling. I'm ready to be open again, I'm
ready for loveliness and light. Let the ashes of what went before feed my
roots. Maybe my colours will be all the better, all the brighter, for that. </span><br />
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Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-72856642412789518662014-08-17T14:52:00.001+01:002014-08-17T14:52:18.466+01:00"We are shining...and we will never be afraid again."
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">I last
wrote here in February. Half a sun ago. Six whole moons. It is August now. I
look back along the length of those months, and they warp and shift, the way a heat
haze makes the desert air shimmer. A trick of the light. A dissolution. A
rippling apart, a coming-back-together. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">It wasn't
a conscious departure. Only that the words left, for a time, the way words
sometimes do. I know that they always return, like the geese after Winter,
glide in on wings whiter than they were before, making their noises, ruffling
their feathers - I know this, I have lived through these wordless seasons many
times, and am used, now, to weathering them. I go to ground, like the bears do,
like the hedgehogs in their bristled sleep. I wait it out. I wait for the days
to stretch and the light to lengthen. I wait for the turning. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">In July,
I wrote in my diary: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The words have
settled in my bones like sediment. They will not rise the way they used to,
like birds, like bees, like the fizz in a glass of champagne. It's an
inconvenience, their absence, because there is much to write about. So much
change. I feel like the spark struck from a bit of flint. The woman pulled from
a rib...<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">I drank a
lot of coffee. I read a lot of books. Sometimes, there was sun, and I did those
things in the garden. Sometimes there were whole weekends in pyjamas. I ran
baths so hot that I couldn't see for the steam, and lay smouldering in the
water like a blind queen. I bought myself roses. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I went on a date with a beautiful boy, and I
felt that lovely flip again, for the first time since the last time. And still
the words were quiet. It wasn't always comfortable, but I gave them their room.
I didn't root. I didn't ruffle. I didn't try to engineer their return. It made
me itch, sometimes, the waiting - the way a broken bone itches as it
strengthens itself under plaster and re-knits - but it was a lesson in
patience. A lesson in trust. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">This last
year has been the toughest and loveliest and richest and hardest and most
rewarding of my life so far. "<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Experience</i>",
says CS Lewis, "<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is a brutal teacher.
But you learn; my God, do you learn</i>." And oh, I am learning. I am
learning and learning and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">learning. </i>I
have learned more, I think, in the last year of my life, than in all of the
other thirty-two combined. I fell in love, and learned how to be vulnerable. I
fell out of love, and had to re-learn being alone. I felt so crushed at that
time, the heaviness of heartbreak weighing down on me like the weight of the
whole sky, so that I thought I would never get out from beneath it. But I
wasn't crushed, in the end; I was only changed. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;">(Remember
this for the future. For times of uncertainty. Difficulty. Change. Times when
the words won't come, or your heart is broken, or the weight of the world
itself is on your shoulders. Remember this. That diamonds
are formed under just that kind of pressure. That leaves, under that weight, can<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>alter stone).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-77098941701640369242014-02-28T17:47:00.000+00:002014-02-28T21:07:01.776+00:00The Journey<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33044505" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"></span></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"></span></span></span> </div>
<div class="Paragraph SCX33044505" paraeid="{29294f83-1268-4e62-88cd-7ced89de7935}{190}" paraid="1286238948" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">It was </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">my </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">birthday on Tuesday, and now </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">I am thirty three. I say it to myself with something like wonder. It seems impossible </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">that those numbers apply to me. They are vast, immense, as old as the stars; a whole universe in the curve of double figures. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;"> </span></span></div>
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33044505" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX33044505" paraeid="{29294f83-1268-4e62-88cd-7ced89de7935}{192}" paraid="1239572095" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; line-height: 18px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"></span></span><span class="EOP SCX33044505" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></span></div>
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33044505" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX33044505" paraeid="{29294f83-1268-4e62-88cd-7ced89de7935}{205}" paraid="412633101" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">When I was twenty (and twenty five, and twenty nine), I imagined thirty three as a far off continent. Things would be different there, things would be simpler. I would be a mother, perhaps, with </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">children clu</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">tching </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">stickily</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"> at my knees</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">, </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">printing my face with </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">their </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">kisses</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">. A writer (of course) with poems in the world and a string of accolades. A wife with </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">a diamond ring and honeymoon sun in my skin, still, golden. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;"> </span></span></div>
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33044505" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX33044505" paraeid="{29294f83-1268-4e62-88cd-7ced89de7935}{207}" paraid="2073967452" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; line-height: 18px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"></span></span><span class="EOP SCX33044505" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></span></div>
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33044505" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX33044505" paraeid="{29294f83-1268-4e62-88cd-7ced89de7935}{221}" paraid="923858667" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">And now I am on that continent - </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">childless, bookless, </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">w</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">ithout a husband</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">. And the strangest thing about it is that I am happy, for the most part. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">Happy in my life. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">Happy in simply having a foot on the place, like I imagine </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">Columbus</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"> was, planting his flag in the earth of the </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">Americas</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;"> </span></span></div>
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33044505" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX33044505" paraeid="{29294f83-1268-4e62-88cd-7ced89de7935}{223}" paraid="1278984693" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; line-height: 18px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"></span></span><span class="EOP SCX33044505" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33044505" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX33044505" paraeid="{29294f83-1268-4e62-88cd-7ced89de7935}{234}" paraid="213567406" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">I have spoken, at length, about spending my twenties </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">grappling with </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">health, both physical and mental. Those years wh</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">ere every day was a whirlwind:</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"> food and booze, panic and bones</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">; </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">hair falling out in handfu</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">ls, </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">fainting like the ladies in Victorian novels, blue-lipped, wasp-waisted, eyes swarming with stars. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;"> </span></span></div>
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33044505" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX33044505" paraeid="{29294f83-1268-4e62-88cd-7ced89de7935}{236}" paraid="661556754" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; line-height: 18px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"></span></span><span class="EOP SCX33044505" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33044505" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX33044505" paraeid="{29294f83-1268-4e62-88cd-7ced89de7935}{249}" paraid="1254912624" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">It seemed dramatic, then - life was crazy, amplified, passionate, intense – but i</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">n fact, my life was</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"> on pause in those years. The </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">whole of</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"> my twenties a button pushed down and held. It felt chaotic but I was standing still. Nothing m</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">oved. Nothing changed, except</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"> the numbers </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">that flashed </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">on a series of scales, the numbers </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">that either praised or damned from t</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">he labels of my clothes. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;"> </span></span></div>
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33044505" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX33044505" paraeid="{29294f83-1268-4e62-88cd-7ced89de7935}{251}" paraid="1886231572" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; line-height: 18px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"></span></span><span class="EOP SCX33044505" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></span></div>
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33044505" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX33044505" paraeid="{7e08784f-75c8-4a26-860b-095204bccce3}{7}" paraid="526972001" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">I could regret the waste – and I do, sometimes – but the experience has turned out to have its gifts. I dug in the muck for years and came up </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">wild-eyed and </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">bloody-handed</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"> with the effort</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">, but I found my treasures</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"> in the end</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">, my fistfuls of gold: respect for myself, and awareness; empathy and acceptance; a hunger for</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"> truth and for knowledge; a burning</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"> curiosity and a mad thirst for experience. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;"> </span></span></div>
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33044505" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX33044505" paraeid="{7e08784f-75c8-4a26-860b-095204bccce3}{9}" paraid="747685526" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; line-height: 18px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"></span></span><span class="EOP SCX33044505" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33044505" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX33044505" paraeid="{7e08784f-75c8-4a26-860b-095204bccce3}{18}" paraid="1023647130" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">Perhaps the strangest gift is that of girlhood. I had it, once, and wasted it; frittered it away in midnight kitchens, bent over porcelain bowls in bathrooms. I gave it, freely, in return for a body I could carve the air with, all knife-edge and </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">cleaving slice. My friends were falling in love for the first time, and moving to cities, and kissing in bars, and buying spices in markets in foreign countries, and I was at home, alone, taking a savage delight in misery. All those years the other girls had, of trying, and finding, and fumbling towards something, I missed out on. I felt badly about that for a long time, as if I was behind, somehow, as if I needed to catch up. But the result of that now is that I feel like my friends did when they were in their twenties: li</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">ke </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">the world belongs to me in a way that it </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">has never belonged to anyone else, that everything is new, </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">and shining</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">, and waiting to be experienced. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; line-height: 18px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"></span></span><span class="EOP SCX33044505" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33044505" style="margin-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX33044505" paraeid="{7e08784f-75c8-4a26-860b-095204bccce3}{43}" paraid="495608820" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">Birthdays inevitably make me reflective. The sequence of passing years, the implications of mortality, the endless list of all the things I haven’t done or seen yet, the places I have missed. My thirties have been the </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">first </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">years in which this reflection has</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"> n</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">ot been synonymous with panic. I think before, I saw my life </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">as a sort of</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"> train journey with a beginning and an end, and </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">a series of stations I needed to pass through in between: education, career, marriage, children, and so on. Only in my thirties am I beginning to appreciate that the point of the journey is the journey itself, not </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">whether I’ve</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"> reached a particular platform by</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"> the time designated on the schedule (which isn’t, anyway, my schedule). </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">Life isn’t the checking off of station-names until </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">the final destination. Life is</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"> the miles of field flashi</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">ng in between</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">, t</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">he beads of rain on the glass. Life is</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"> the ot</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">her passengers in the carriage and the sheep outside</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">, sleepy-eyed,</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"> working mouthfuls of grass. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; line-height: 18px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"></span></span><span class="EOP SCX33044505" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></span></div>
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<div class="Paragraph SCX33044505" paraeid="{7e08784f-75c8-4a26-860b-095204bccce3}{51}" paraid="1013898458" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">It’s g</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;">ood to look forward, I think, but</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"> not too far. Not so far as to where the tracks converge to a single gleaming point on the horizon. You miss the wild flowers between the slats that way. You miss the </span></span></span><span class="TextRun SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;" xml:lang="EN-GB"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX33044505" style="background-color: inherit;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">way the dust turns like fireflies in the random slants of falling light.</span> </span></span><span class="EOP SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;"> </span></div>
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<span class="EOP SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;"></span> </div>
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<span class="EOP SCX33044505" style="font-family: Georgia,Serif; line-height: 16px;"></span> </div>
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Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-36026540054791704182014-02-23T16:00:00.000+00:002014-02-23T16:00:18.761+00:00"So, we beat on, boats against the current..."<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I have
worn new clothes to work this week. Shirts with lace panels, and dresses with
ruffles, and cardigans as finespun and delicate as cobwebs. I have been
spreading wings of blusher across my cheekbones. Fancily pinning my hair. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">For myself,</i> I thought, but in truth it
was for him. I wanted him to think of me as pretty. I wanted him to regret
giving me up so easily.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">One half
of me thought <em>If he wants me, I will tell
him no.</em> The other half thought <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">If he
asks me, I will go. </i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I was
happy on Wednesday. I could feel a light in my face, a radiance. I felt soft
and good and pretty. He stopped me by the copier, my arms full of papers, and
told me what I wanted to hear: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lovely, </i>was
the word he used. I blushed, and floated back to my desk.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Be careful, </span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia;">said R, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">He is trying to charm you. </i>I laughed, waved an airy hand, said <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">no, no,</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>even as a bubble of hope rose in me like the fizz in a glass of
champagne. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">He is not good for you, </i>said
N, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You have to let him go. </i>I nodded, said <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I know, </i>said <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yes. <o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I drank
wine in the evening. I wrote a poem about the moon. I painted my nails the
colour of beaten tin. All I thought about, the whole time, was him. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">It was
late when he messaged, as I had known, deep down, that he would. He told me
that he was thinking of me, that he missed me in his arms, his house, his bed. I
should have stopped the conversation there, closed over it the way water closes
over a stone. Instead, I put my spun-glass heart in
his hands. Turned my thin, pale belly up to his teeth. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I know
already that this is wrong. I am not the love of his life, but only the easy
option. I am not the object of his passion but only a desire.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">He bought
me a rose when we went to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Rome</st1:place></st1:city>
in November. I pressed it between the pages of a book to
keep the memory. I feel, now, a little like that flower. Like a rose in a book
taken down from a shelf. He only wants to look for a while, and remember. He
only wants a known fondness, the old familiar. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">And
still, and still, and still I am tempted. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Already I
am hanging, like a coat on a hook, waiting for him to fill my empty places and give
me shape. I am losing myself little by little to the air. He is wind and I am
sand, and he sifts me, endlessly, from myself. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I want
him. I don't want him. I want him. I don't. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I write to convince myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I write to untangle the need. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I feel
like a wishbone, snapped abruptly apart. My wishes spilled,
unsortable, across the table.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span> </div>
Cherylhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03035560366555484918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028470931629153339.post-24262325238173057672014-02-10T18:47:00.000+00:002014-04-01T23:04:10.318+01:00"I believe that the Universe wants to be noticed..."<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="normaltextrunscx241038824"><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">It's funny, the little bits of knowledge we
collect without really thinking about it, the way children at the seaside,
sandy, salty-kneed,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>fill their buckets
with shells, and stones, and the ghost-pale skeletons of tiny crabs. Mostly, we
don't do anything with our scraps of fact. We just like the way it feels to
roll them in a palm on occasion. We like their colour, or the shapes they make
in our mouths. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Giraffes have blue
tongues. Bananas are berries, but strawberries aren't. Pearls melt in vinegar.
Polar bear fur is clear, not white. </i></span></span></span></div>
<div class="paragraphscx241038824" style="margin: 1em 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span class="normaltextrunscx241038824"><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">I always accepted the fact that moths steer
their course by the moon. I repeated it when it was relevant. I thought it
poetic: imagined them, earnest little things, owl-eyed, flittering moonward.
And then, just this week, I found out that it isn't actually true</span></span><span class="eopscx241038824">. That although they do always head for the light - which
is why many moths meet a quick, frizzing death in the heat of a candle flame,
or spend hours batting at a lit window - they navigate, in fact, by smell. </span></span></div>
<div class="paragraphscx241038824" style="margin: 1em 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="normaltextrunscx241038824"><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">This is how they do it: they compare the scent
in two points in space, and then move towards the greater concentration.
Immediately, they compare two more points and revise their flight accordingly.
And then they do it again. And again. Which is why they move in those funny,
hitching little paths; they’re changing their course based on moment by moment
decisions. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span class="normaltextrunscx241038824"><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">Do
you believe in signs, in totems? I do.</span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia;"> I think they arrive when we need them, little
points of reference like a string of lights along a dark path. I think they
hold meaning and metaphor, the way dreams do when you look them up in the
reference books a stew of </span><span style="font-family: Georgia;">symbols,
portents, patterns. </span></span></div>
<div class="paragraphscx241038824" style="margin: 1em 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span class="normaltextrunscx241038824"><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">There is a beautiful quote in the John Green
book, “The Fault In Our Stars”, which says that, essentially, the universe
wants to be noticed; that it enjoys its elegance being observed. There are
times when I feel that the universe wants to be noticed so much, it leaves
clues like fairytale breadcrumbs or arrows chalked on a path. I can’t help but
feel that I am being guided toward something. That there is something I am
meant to see, or understand. It feels like a firm hand in the small of my back,
setting me gently but insistently in a certain direction. </span></span><span class="eopscx241038824"><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="paragraphscx241038824" style="margin: 1em 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span class="normaltextrunscx241038824"><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">Moths, at the moment, are everywhere. They
have infiltrated my life, a quiet sort of coup like snow dropping softly in a dark street. They crop up in the books I
am reading. In songs I’ve never heard before. Last week, a friend emailed me a
poem she thought I’d like. It was titled, simply, ‘Moth’. A tea dress in a
boutique shop caught my eye; when I took up a fistful of cloth, I saw that the
detail I’d taken for flowers was actually a scattering of tiny grey
moths. </span></span><span class="eopscx241038824"><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"> And then
there was the quote I read at random, the one that informed me how moths truly
navigate, thereby debunking my previously accepted moon-myth. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="paragraphscx241038824" style="margin: 1em 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="normaltextrunscx241038824"><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Simple coincidence, you might think, this
flurry of moth-related occurrences. Pure happenstance. I accept that that may
well be the case; still, I choose to disagree. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="paragraphscx241038824" style="margin: 1em 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="normaltextrunscx241038824"><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">There is an Einstein quote I have mentioned
before, in which he states that we have two choices: to believe that either
everything is a miracle or nothing is. (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Everything!
</i>my heart says; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">everything!</i>). I
have complete and total faith that there is more to the world and the way it
works than we can even guess at, that there is more magic than we can
imagine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="paragraphscx241038824" style="margin: 1em 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span class="normaltextrunscx241038824"><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">We can map weather systems nowadays. We can
follow a front as it moves from one continent to another and predict, with some
accuracy, its consequences. Meteorology is a science with its own private
language: isobars<span style="color: black;"> and </span></span></span><span class="spellingerrorscx241038824"><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">kerafonts</span></span><span class="normaltextrunscx241038824"><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">, anemometers, </span></span><span class="spellingerrorscx241038824"><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">mesoscales</span></span><span class="normaltextrunscx241038824"><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">, and </span></span><span class="spellingerrorscx241038824"><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">Rossby</span></span><span class="normaltextrunscx241038824"><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"> waves. A few hundred years ago,
this would have been unimaginable - this level of knowledge, this ability to
make predictions. The terminology would have sounded like an incantation or a
spell. Words like <i>sorcery </i>might have been used; words like <i>hubris. </i>And
yet, and yet; it was only ever patterns, being noticed. Just cause and effect
being studied and mapped. </span></span><span class="eopscx241038824"><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="paragraphscx241038824" style="margin: 1em 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="normaltextrunscx241038824"><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">When these little breadcrumbs
litter my life, I can’t help but think it’s a pattern or system I just don’t
have the ability or knowledge to understand yet. When the moths kept
happening, I noticed, of course, but had no idea what, if anything, I was meant
to take from it. I had no personal affinity for moths. There was no personal
symbology there, no discernible message. And then I read that quote about their
navigation techniques - almost like the exasperated Universe was showing me the
answers in the back of a complicated quizbook - and I knew, I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">knew</i> what I was meant to take from it. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="paragraphscx241038824" style="margin: 1em 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="normaltextrunscx241038824"><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I have been doubting decisions I have
made recently. Big decisions. I have been, if not in a dark place, then at
least an ill-lit one. It felt a little like I was scrabbling about for answers,
for reassurances that I had made the right choices. One moment I would be
holding them tightly in my hands, understanding, with relief, that I had done
what was necessary, that I had been truthful to myself. The next, they would
slip through my fingers like water, like light, and I would be empty and
answerless in the dark again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="paragraphscx241038824" style="margin: 1em 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="normaltextrunscx241038824"><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">And then came the moths. The moths
who, I learned, make their decisions moment by moment. Who pause along the way
to rethink and recalibrate before making whatever decision is the right one for
them <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in that moment. </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And always, always, while heading for the
light. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="paragraphscx241038824" style="margin: 1em 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="eopscx241038824"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">You may think this is far-reaching. Or wishful thinking.
You may think this is me building a scaffold of hope, looking for meaning where
there is none. You may, as I said earlier, think it nothing but coincidence. </span></span></div>
<div class="paragraphscx241038824" style="margin: 1em 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="normaltextrunscx241038824"><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I'll let you keep that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'll let you keep your doubts. I have my
moths and my sense of wonder. I have peace, and a view of the light. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="paragraphscx241038824" style="margin: 1em 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="normaltextrunscx241038824"><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">It turns out I don't always need
hard fact.</span> </span></span></div>
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<span class="normaltextrunscx241038824"><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"></span></span> </div>
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