Archives for the month of: November, 2012

Regeneration

November 15, 2012 //
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Saturday October 20th, early.

Stood here with cold air dribbling in on my toes, looking out into this odd place of history and newness. Dinosaur carcasses barricade me in and the day peels slowly under a heavy soft grey. The approaching unseen howl of engines, unknown in this white out, some break through and roar into my mirage, eaten by the metal landscape. My life is a Herzog film.
And as they threaten again but come to nothing I consider yesterday and our day ahead.
The easiest way is that it’s just not real. I’m not preparing to take our son over there to meet your hero, we can’t possibly be about to stand next to the actors you watched together, shared moments with and laughter over and I teased you because you insisted it was a documentary and totally believable despite polystyrene to the contrary. And yesterday he didn’t really shake hands with an omnipotent being who chatted and smiled amongst the hoards grappling for their moment.
And although none of it could have happened, our son was beaming at the prospect and had it have been real we would have managed the masses, the lights and the queues. And now my thoughts are broken by engine din ripping through and I watch it fly overhead with the wonder of a country girl, as though I’d never ventured to the big city before. But I’ve lived in towns most of my life, why is this all so surreal, so distorted and I keep waiting for you to come out of the bathroom because the room is very similar to all those other places but it’s not there, back then, it’s here on this other planet and the room is slightly Japanese and you’d have really like that and I do, as I wait for our son to wake. And I sip my hot earl grey and consider how to manage this long day. I still can’t get it, you know. Maybe I’m drawn to the movement of the place, the relentless energy, a purpose I’m trying to hack into. I don’t know.

The morning’s building up, a town starting over. Abstracted dog barks, solitary man stands by the railings, looks out to something he can’t see, wanders off with hand deep pockets and I want to cry but can’t quite, not now, stuff to do. Going to beam down soon with my away mission, making it safe for our small party on this strange hostilely appealing planet. The aliens are moving in down there, thick and fast, need to check my tricorder and go.
Another bizarre moment of being in this imaginary world.

And later,

just about survived the hoards and moments, the challenge of finding the right place and time and ticket and managing our sons needs and strop with my gossamer thin exterior against the desire to stand there, drop bags and scream. Surveyed the mix of the dedicated, interested, obsessed and good natured but struck with the disease of celebrity, their search for meaning, the exhaulted ivory tower, living a life through something else. But is it wrong if it makes them happy for a moment? Living out life in proxy, needing to connect, to belong, to be part of something bigger, all here in a big white cage on the edge of redundant docks.

Sunday 21st, earlier

Leaning up window in blackness. The coldness on my forehead and nose slightly comforting as my breath obscures the view. Without my glasses the lightscape dances and sprays with fractured patterns of neon, glowing emptily while some sleep. The horizon peppered orange, outside of my feelings. A beautiful band of unseen candles, lined and lit for anyone who cares to look. And it takes me back to New York and that holiday and I can’t go there, can’t get into that memory, not now. Keep moving like this place beneath me.
Better get ready, I suppose, lost in alienation as the dawn forces into the night.

I watch them. The Suits, standing nearby, handling their charge like fine china, looking out, scanning the crowds for things to fend off. Thousands focussed on a moment, their own seconds, their dinner party chat about the look, the laugh, their little snatched piece, their prize and we both had our own. Our son’s interaction and the Captains comment back to him, and mine? I managed to tread on his foot… You know who. And I keep our moments locked away, our timeless treasures queued for, held hands for, pushed through hot fans for, to fill his room with memories as we seek out our new life, ourselves in this new generation of being.

And on the way back, in the dark, in the raindrops, in the spangled glowing neon, passed old places of my childhood and flashing familiar signs, it came back to me, in all it’s screaming ceremony. It caught up with me and the windscreen wipers had little impact on the force and I dug my nails in hard and deep to try to stop the pain.

xxx

November 15th, in silence

The heating creaking through un bled metal, the clock beats in time with my cursor, under it all my elbow pushes into the space beneath my chin, my head leaning into palm, the sofa warm up my back. My nose stuffed, eyes sore, my hair wisps in front, head shoved against hand against arm of settee against the throw. I study terracotta, looks brown from this angle, in this light, shadows under tiny tufts, darkness over light, rows of waved patterns marching slowly above the new calico I’ve folded myself into. Back starting to hurt, shoulder reminding me this isn’t a good position, the deep blue hair band an accidental bracelet on my wrist, hair down, irrelevant.
My rings flash a moments warm gilt in the subdued fabrics, ears ringing, tummy reminding me there’s been little food recently, nail clicking on the screen. I like the smoothness, the neutral temperature of this hard edged glass, this touch sensitive life.
Ribs will pay back later, aeroplane soft faded hum over my morning.
Half drawn tree shapes out there, gentle beyond the curtains, a wiped out November, shaken, quiet.

I push tip myself up,
approaching kettle.

Make it so

X

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Tags , , , , ,
Categories Grief, Loss, parenting

Coffee break

November 6, 2012 //
0

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Sat waiting for some new furniture in my oddly tidy lounge. Yesterday made a few changes with the help of our son and cries of ‘oh I love this’ and ‘so that’s where it went’. And we moved and cleaned and sorted around and about the coffee table with it’s scratches and stains of our life, the faded deep pink from the coaster that bled, the one we got in the fossil museum on the way back from our last trip west. And the stickers collected from the Sticker Lady, degraded by time, from all those years ago when she’d come to the door with her smile and her parcels and a sticker made it a good day for our growing toddler. And the table has been around forever, bought home to a different home, hundreds of years ago by my Dad in the the life before the life before this one. I can’t remember the tale that came with it, some old crafted story that was polished through childhood until it took root in their lounge before my slow transition and I remember it in the early morning light when you stayed before some meeting, some nonsense you’d travelled to, to put up with when the put up bed was in the lounge and the chiming clock disturbed you.

And later the table migrated with me to our tiny home of beginnings and I nested and dusted around it, crawling on the carpet, preparing and arranging as our son turned cartwheels in my tummy, when the fruit bowl was the basket from your Mum and the coasters came from Africa by way of Boscombe where we fed the ducks in the cold. And it sat pushed to the stairs with plastic protection, cornering it’s points as the crawling became clambered and finally stood and was filled with assorted animals and breadsticks, finger foods and sticky mits. Often trying to simplify but never getting very far. And it moved to the centre in the new home, baskets of stuff underneath, the Thomas flash cards from the model railway and the books, books from earlier Christmasses, Christmas lists from when it was a big event and the post it notes, forgotten then remembered that stopped me in my tracks.

And yesterday I moved around, and worked through the mess of memories, found dried out, brittle places, shifted things from the days when the week was full of visits and visitors and elbows of vicars. And afterwards when the the table was cleared, for a moment before the doorbell, to be covered in things that weren’t real, that couldn’t be happening, that filled our lounge with colour and smell, that filled our senses with horror, that stayed for a while and then went. And our new world filled it with books of What now? Of How to and Why? And lendings from friends travelling similar but different paths by my lantern, bought for me from me in the final Christmas when I loved the market and amber glass warmed my complexion in the months before I bought candles.

And now I lie here waiting for the van, listening to our son’s breathing as the sun warms up a frosty start. The light in the room has changed, from winter grey, heavy lids, hanging onto the bed to get up, to a slow thawing deep blue, angling soft shapes on my wall. Downstairs the tidyness waits for a new shape, somehow both necessary and contingent, like your favourite concepts and it will take quite a while to own it, to make it ours but we will. And it’s similar but different with a deep dark place to hide things away, to cover over when it’s not time or safe to show, to fill it’s heart with the things that matter and only certain people will see inside, will know what lies within it’s old carved wooden sides, it’s secret places of pain and beauty, cleverly constructed to serve it’s purpose, to continue the role. Bought from a faraway land where you travelled to in the world before this one and the trees grew around you in the days before the cutting, before the shaping and forming of our special place, our new symbol, to look after and use.

A white glare of sun sits on the high glaze of my vase, it splinters out creating more light, reflecting the otherness outside my window.

I’m tired. I wait for the bell.
x

20121106-190604.jpg

Tags , ,
Categories Grief, Loss, parenting

Coffee break

November 6, 2012 //
0

20121102-235050.jpg

Sat waiting for some new furniture in my oddly tidy lounge. Yesterday made a few changes with the help of our son and cries of ‘oh I love this’ and ‘so that’s where it went’. And we  moved and cleaned and sorted around and about the coffee table with it’s scratches and stains of our life, the faded deep pink from the coaster that bled, the one we got in the fossil museum on the way back from our last trip west. And the stickers collected from the Sticker Lady, degraded by time, from all those years ago when she’d come to the door with her smile and her parcels and a sticker made it a good day for our growing toddler. And the table has been around forever, bought home to a different home, hundreds of years ago by my Dad in the the life before the life before this one. I can’t remember the tale that came with it, some old crafted story that was polished through childhood until it took root in their lounge before my slow transition and I remember it in the early morning light when you stayed before some meeting, some nonsense you’d travelled to, to put up with when the put up bed was in the lounge and the chiming clock disturbed you. 

And later the table migrated with me to our tiny home of beginnings and I nested and dusted around it, crawling on the carpet, preparing and arranging as our son turned cartwheels in my tummy, when the fruit bowl was the basket from your Mum and the coasters came from Africa by way of Boscham where we fed the ducks in the cold. And it sat pushed to the stairs with plastic protection, cornering it’s points as the crawling became clambered and finally stood and was filled with assorted animals and breadsticks, finger foods and sticky mits. Often trying to simplify but never getting very far. And it moved to the centre in the new home, baskets of stuff underneath, the Thomas flash cards from the model railway and the books, books from earlier Christmasses, Christmas lists from when it was a big event and the post it notes, forgotten then remembered that stopped me in my tracks. 

And yesterday I moved around, and worked through the mess of memories, found dried out, brittle places, shifted things from the days when the week was full of visits and visitors and elbows of vicars. And afterwards when the the table was cleared, for a moment before the doorbell, to be covered in things that weren’t real, that couldn’t be happening, that filled our lounge with colour and smell, that filled our senses with horror, that stayed for a while and then went. And our new world filled it with books of What now? Of How to and Why? And lendings from friends travelling similar but different paths by my lantern, bought for me from me in the final Christmas when I loved the market and amber glass warmed my complexion in the months before I bought candles.

And now I lie here waiting for the van, listening to our son’s breathing as the sun warms up a frosty start. The light in the room has changed, from winter grey, heavy lids, hanging onto the bed to get up, to a slow thawing deep blue, angling soft shapes on my wall. Downstairs the tidyness waits for a new shape, somehow both necessary and contingent, like your favourite concepts and it will take quite a while to own it, to make it ours but we will. And it’s similar but different with a deep dark place to hide things away, to cover over when it’s not time or safe to show, to fill it’s heart with the things that matter and only certain people will see inside, will know what lies within it’s old carved wooden sides, it’s secret places of pain and beauty, cleverly constructed to serve it’s purpose, to continue the role. Bought from a faraway land where you travelled to in the world before this one and the trees grew around you in the days before the cutting, before the shaping and forming of our special place, our new symbol, to look after and use.

A white glare of sun sits on the high glaze of my vase, it splinters out creating more light, reflecting the otherness outside my window. 

I’m tired. I wait for the bell.
x

20121106-190604.jpg

Categories Uncategorized