Giving Thanks

What is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?

Daily writing prompt
What is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?
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What is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?

Things I carry with me

            That old black cast-iron stove, wood-fired, that baked the best ever breads and cakes and warmed the bungalow on cold, summer mornings. The Welsh dresser with its age-blackened rails that displayed the plates, and cups, and saucers. The old tin cans that ferried the water from the one tap located at the end of the field. Full and wholesome, its weight still weighs me down as I carry it in my dreams. The Elsan toilet from the shed by the hedge and the shovels that appeared, every so often, as if by magic, as my uncle braved the evening shadows to dig a hole on the opposite side of the field, as far from the bungalow as possible.

            The outhouse at the end of the garden. The steps down to the coal cellar where they went when the sirens sounded, to sleep in the make-shift air raid shelter, along with the rats and mice that scurried from the candles. The corrugated iron work shop in the garden where my uncle built his model ships, the Half-Penny Galleon and the Nonesuch. The broken razor blades I used to carve my own planes from Keil Kraft Kits, Hurricanes and Spitfires, an SE5, and once, a Bristol Bulldog. Twisted and warped, they winged their ways into nobody’s skies, though once we built a paper kite that flew far away in a powerful wind and got tangled in a tree. The greenhouse from which I stole countless tomatoes, red and green. Kilvey Hill towering above the window ledge where the little ones sat when there were more guests than chairs in the kitchen. The old bombed buildings across the street. The bullet holes in the front of the house where the Messerschmidt strafed us.

            The old men spitting up coal dust from shrivelled lungs. The widows who took in lodgers and overnight travelers. The BRS lorries, parked overnight, that littered the street. The steep climb upwards into those lorries. The burrowing under dirty tarpaulins to explore the heavy loads, and many other things. The untouchable, forbidden drawer where the rent money waited for the rent collector’s visit. The old lady, five houses down who, when the shops were shut, sold warm Dandelion & Burdock and Orange pop for an extra penny a bottle.  The vicious, snub-faced Pekinese that yapped fierce defiance from the fortress of her lap. The unemployed soccer referee who on Saturdays walked five miles to the match and five miles back just to save the bus fare, his only financial reward. My father’s shadowy childhood. His first pair of shoes, bought at five years old, so he wouldn’t go barefoot to school. 

            Wet cement moulded onto the garden wall, then filled with empty bottles to be smashed when the cement set solid. The coal shed where the coal man delivered the coal: cobbledy-cobbledy, down the hole. The outside toilet with its nails and squares torn from yesterday’s newspaper. The lamp-lighter who lit the lamps every evening as the sun went down. The arrival of electricity. The old blackout curtains that shut in the light and shut out the night. The hand rolled fabric sausage that lay on the floor by the door and kept the heat of the coal fire in the kitchen. The kitchen itself with its great wooden chair drawn up by the fire. That chair: the only material possession I still have from that distant past.

Describe one habit that brings you joy.

Daily writing prompt
Describe one habit that brings you joy.
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Describe one habit that brings you joy.

Creativity. I was told, a long time ago, that genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. When I started creating – poetry, mainly – I waited for the muse to arrive and lamented when she didn’t. Then I tried to force her to visit me – and that didn’t work either. Then, in 1985, I started a journal. I wrote in it every day that year and, as I wrote, I realized that most of what I was writing was gibberish. But – and it’s a big but – a few literary gems gleamed out from the rubbish. The question then became – how to recognize them. The answer to that has come more easily, the longer I have worked at writing. It’s not the muse who needs persuasion, it’s the artistic eye and mind that need to be trained so that they can see the creative art in the surrounding world.

Now, after 38 years of regular journaling – and I try not to miss a day – I can distinguish easily between art and rubbish. My poetic creativity, often via a streak of surrealism, has wormed its way from poetry, into poetic prose (short stories and novels), and from there into my style of quasi-surrealist, quasi-expressionist paintings.

Where is the joy? The joy lies first, in the work itself, the contemplation of the blank page, then the slow tidal flow of words that fill the empty spaces. Then comes the joy of recognition, followed by the joy of selection, followed by the joy of polishing, and eventually, the joy of publication. The same is true of painting. Here, the empty canvas, like a beach with the tide coming in, fills up with color and shape and, like Matisse, I try to make meaning out of those colors and shapes. Am I great artist? Of course I’m not. I’m a dibbler and a dabbler, unknown and unrecognized, but joyous in my joy of creating something that will stand, for a little while, against time’s rising tide.

What strategies do you use to maintain your health and well-being?

Daily writing prompt
What strategies do you use to maintain your health and well-being?
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What strategies do you use to maintain your health and well-being?

Covid changed the world and my outlook on the world. Since the first rumors in 2019, I cut my own hair and stopped eating out. I avoided crowds, left home as little as possible, wore a mask everywhere, and maintained as much distance as possible between myself and other people. I stopped inviting people around to the house, and, as a result, we have hardly had a visit or a visitor in the last four years. We got regular shots and boosters. So far, with those precautions and a little bit of luck, we have avoided Covid.

My health care deteriorated during the Covid period. I had very few visits to my GP’s office, and most business, like prescription renewal, was done over the phone. Consultations were by telephone as well. I missed out on the regular blood tests that my urologist / oncologist had been scheduling for me, after a bout with prostate cancer. These picked up again in late 2021, and were resumed in 2022 and 2023. Things seem to be moving well currently. Thank heavens.

I interpret well-being as my state of mind, rather than my state of body. I would say that my well-being suffered from my lack of human contact, although I have slowly developed a series of online support groups. In this way, I was able to continue my writing, for example, in Zoom sessions. I also missed my family visits. I no longer travel well, and due to Covid restrictions, I did not see my daughter or my granddaughter from 2019 to 2022. Clearly, we all missed the family closeness and we were all affected. However, we are used to isolation from family. Boarding schools, travel abroad in the summer, emigration to Canada, saw our family connections broken. That said, the advent of social media, Skype, Zoom, Messenger, texting, free phone calls, have all lessened the miles between us and maintained a contact that we never had, post migration, with our parents and grandparents, and extended family. The isolation and loneliness have been hard. They are hard upon all ageing, isolated people. We have suffered less than most.

As for strategies, I really have only three: 1. to adapt 2. to survive 3. to create beauty via my writing and my painting. Painting, prose, and poetry – these I can share with my friends. Vita brevis, ars longa – life is short, but art endures. Pax amorque – peace and love.

What do you listen to while you work?

Daily writing prompt
What do you listen to while you work?
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What do you listen to while you work?

While I was actually working, although I never called it work, because I thought of it as a vocation, I listened to the complaints of the administration (often about my way of work). I also listened to my students (all too often their complaints about the system and the way they were being taught and treated). And then I listened to the problems that were daily laid before me in my office by these same students. These, problems and students, were many and varied. One day, I designed a label for my door that announced: Office of Creative Solutions. And yes, I provided many innovative and creative solutions to problems that, to young people, especially my students, seemed almost impossible to resolve.

Then I retired. At least, like an ageing horse, or an unwanted donkey, I was put out to grass. And in that clover-filled meadow, I grazed at leisure and worked no more. But I did have time to write and so I became a creative writer. At first, when I started creative writing, I forced my characters into the roles that I had chosen for them. Sometimes they complained. Then, one day, or maybe it was one night when I was dreaming, a host of my characters, minor and major, came knocking on my door. They carried a big arrow that had, written upon it, Office of Creative Solutions. They pointed it at me and began to complain about how I was treating them. I remembered the poem I had memorized as a child – The owl, he was a wise old bird, the more he spoke, the less he heard. The less he spoke, the more he heard. There never was such a wise old bird.

I remembered how I had listened to my students and how, by listening, I managed to find creative solutions to their problems. So, I listened to those characters as they yammered away. One by one, they told me their woes, and their problems. Then, the following day, I rewrote everything I had written previously and wrote the stories down in their own words, instead of mine. When I listened to them, I allowed my characters to tell their own stories, and to speak for me and through me.

Sometimes, when I run out of voices that come in the night and tell me what to say, I cannot write. Then I take a paint brush, and I start to paint. What do I listen to when I paint? I listen to the brush as it moves itself over the canvas. I listen to the colors as they demand attention and tell me where to place them. I listen to the paint as it says ‘just here, not too thick, not too thin, a swirl please, gently now.”

Now, when I am not working, I listen to flowers, trees, the wind in the willows, the songs of the falling leaves, and the voices of birds.

B & W

B & W

black words     white page

thoughts

floating in space

airs and graces

the world’s wind

blowing through

freshening     cleansing

cotton clouds     silky sky

that one word

waiting

to be spoken

that one thought

soon to be borne

out from the dark

a new existence

brightens

blinds with its light

Click here for Roger’s reading.


“If you look at a page of poetry, the slim words are couched in the empty whiteness of the page.” John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, p. 69.

Landscape

Landscape

Your face: a landscape
luminous in the darkness,
a mapa mundi in the light,
your heart spread out.

My eyes trace the contours,
follow the ups and downs
of your existence, track crows’
feet, crinkling by your eyes.

Time has carved, molded,
sculptured your features.
Wind, snow, wet weather,
sunlight, each has left its mark,
a wrinkle when you frown,
a dimple when you smile.

My eyes want to rest here
for a while, take in the tracks,
pause at the passes, climb hills,
descend into valleys and dales.

Such beauty spread before me.
Such a joy to contemplate
the way you are able to show
the paths I have walked of late.

Click here for Roger’s reading.

“It [landscape] is the most ancient presence in the world, though it needs a human presence to acknowledge it.” John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, p. 37.

Blessings

Blessings

I wish I could bless you
as you have blessed me,
with gifts of love and life.

Together, we have walked
this world, wandered its shores,
scaled rocks, seen rich tapestries
of land painted beneath us.

Only you know me as I am,
know what I want to say,
the difficulty I have in saying it.

You know why words trip
on my teeth and lip, and exit
with those little slips
that make me hesitate to speak.

Do tree roots speak? Does
the yucca, blossoming each
spring, share words with
the hollyhock growing beside it?

Do the birds and the bees
silently commune, as we
so often do, sitting together,
peaceful in our silence,
and doubly blessed?

I wish such blessings to fall
on all who need this verse.

Click here for Roger’s reading.

“When you feel love for your beloved and the beloved’s love for you, now and again you should offer the warmth of your love as a blessing for those who are damaged and unloved.” John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, p. 35.

Comment: I changed read [sound reading] to need in the last line, because most people who need such blessings will probably be unable to access this blog. My apologies for my initial short-sightedness. My thanks for being allowed to make the correction.

Deer, oh dear!

Deer, oh dear!


Deer

sitting here watching the deer
wandering through the garden
five six seven ten
never seen so many
twelve fifteen
a caravan
a convoy
one behind the other
walking in their footsteps
following on
so silent
then
ears pricked
turning watching listening
existential
here long before us
forever following old trails
knowing each change
each new direction
a connection
between us
and how it had been
for thousands of years
before we came here
to disturb them

Click to hear Roger’s reading on Anchor.

Car Wash

Car Wash

“What do you do with a dirty car, dear Liza?”
“You wash it, dear Henry.”
“Where do I wash it, Dear Liza?”
“In a car wash, dear Henry.”

So, off I went to the car wash. I chose a warm day, the sun was shining, and the car wash was packed. The line-up went twice around the yard and I could see other cars circling, their drivers looking anxious. I came home – the car unwashed. The next day it was the same. The day after, a working day, I got up early, had a cup of coffee and was at the car wash before 9:00 am, only to find a large sign announcing Sorry – Car Wash Closed. I came home again.

This morning, I again got up early, drove into town, went to the gas station, and stopped at a pump. I didn’t want to get gas if I couldn’t get a car wash – reciprocal points and all that – so I went into the office and asked if the car wash was working. It was. I filled up with gas, went in to pay, and ordered a car wash. A triumph – or was it?

I drove round to the car wash entrance and typed in my code. The light turned green, the door lifted up, and I drove slowly in. No undercoat wash to greet me. No lights came on. The door didn’t close behind me. The mechanical octopus didn’t wave its arms in the direction of my car. I drove out, backwards, the way I had come in, and tried again. Nothing.

I typed in the code once more only to get the Illegal Code sign. I pressed the button on the Intercom, A young lady answered and said she’d be right out and out she came. She looked at the machine, the open door, the lack of lights and told me she’d find somebody to fix it. And she did.

A minute or two later, the man who had first served me, re-appeared. He asked me a quick couple of questions, then walked bravely into the car wash. He tapped the door. Inspected the octopus, double checked the screen, then went to a large switch board at the back of the car wash. He fiddled around, pressed some buttons, the light came on – and so did the water – soaking him from top to bottom. He flicked another switch and the water stopped.

He told me to wait while he got me a new code. Then he punched it in for me. The lights came on, I drove in, everything happened the way it was meant to, and I drove out through the hot air blower with a nice clean car. As I came out, a rather soggy car wash attendant waved at me. I smiled and waved back. then I drove home – my car as good as new and me safe and warm inside.

Luminescence

Luminescence

Our world can sometimes seem to be a very dark place. Early yesterday morning, sitting on the back bumper of my car, breathing heavily, unable to shift the weight of snow, rain, freezing rain, ice pellets that had accumulated in our drive, I was gripped by the cold hand of old age and despair.

I remembered the talk show quiz games in which one option was to call a friend. So I did. He turned up after work, started the snow blower and did for me what I was no longer able to do for myself. He cleaned the paths round our house, at the back, to the bird feeders, and down the front the heat pump at the side.

He brought light and joy back into my world, made me realize I was not alone, and I gave him, as a token of my gratitude, this painting: Luminescence.

Those of us who are still capable of bringing light and joy to others must continue to do so. Whatever we do, we must not let the dark side and the shadows take over.

My friend – you touched my heart. I thank you.