It is that time of year: Lent, and the almost beginning of Spring. The birds are singing more but from my perch in the Signs Cottage study, I don't see very much happening and something seems to be not quite right in the garden. It is the absence of apple tree, which fell down last year, having covered itself in a swansong of blossom and final burst of fruit before giving up the ghost. My eye still looks for it and comes up against the hollow-eyed falling-down shed at the bottom of the garden, and the tall fir tree in the garden opposite. Everything changes. This blog changes: first white, then black, now grey; and my posts are becoming less frequent. No apologies. It is very cringe-making when people apologise for not having blogged - as though one has been sitting up twiddling thumbs waiting for them to come back while they were away having a life. The blog itself, though, begins to feel like a friend that one has not been in touch with for a while. The longer one leaves it, the more difficult it becomes to re-establish contact until finally, I imagine, the relationship begins to pale and then becomes an erstwhile rather than a current one.
On Shrove Tuesday I decided to give up the internet for Lent. Then on Ash Wednesday I decided not to because a) it isn't as though I have a terrible internet habit that is interfering with the rest of my life and b) giving things up suddenly felt like a bad idea as health issues mean that I have enough restrictions in my life. My best Lent resolutions have in any case been to do with taking things on. One year I resolved to write a poem each day. I didn't keep the resolution, but many more poems were written during the period than if I hadn't made it. This year I will be writing in the notebook every day.
March will be full of good things in the way of daughter's plays being put on at various places in London (she is one of this year's Royal Court young writers), and also a musical directed by son. So there will be trips back and forth to the Smoke. If health and strength are gold coins, I will need to get a stash of them.
**
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Stories and Lies
I have been reading John Burnside, who recently won the T.S.Eliot for his extraordinary Black Cat Bone. This and Hunt in the Forest have taken up residence by my bedside and I have also been reading his memoirs. I am interested in the narrative he constructs from his life. In a sense, all narratives about ourselves are stories. John Burnside's father was, he discovered after the father's death, a foundling - left on someone's doorstep and passed from place to place, an unwanted burden in hard times. So his father told lies, told this story and that, about who he was, where he came from and the identity of his parents. Any story was better than the fact of having been abandoned on a doorstep without even a label around his neck.
The stories we tell ourselves and others about who we are, where we come from, are perhaps a kind of lie, even for those of us who were not left cold on a doorstep. They have to be lies, partly because all stories are lies, and most of us need to place ourselves within the context of a narrative that makes sense. But there is something else: Jeanette Winterson's autobiographical Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit was, in a sense, a lie about her childhood and her mother. The story she wrote was not as bleak and dark as what really happened. She wrote a story she could live with. But even in her recent memoir, which tells her story as it really was, I find myself asking questions about her father and why he failed to protect her. He comes across as an essentially good person and probably was - but my guess is that the narrative JW has constructed requires this because at the very end of his life she was close to him and there was reparation - a kind of healing. She is still telling the only story she is prepared to live with.
The narrator of her novel The Passion says: "Trust me, I'm telling you stories."
I tell (myself) many stories about where I come from, pinpoint landmarks on the road that led me to where I am now. In terms of location, there were many as we were so often on the move, from England to Germany and back again, from one place to another, frequent change of schools. What strikes me now is that there is nowhere I look back on to say: this is where I come from; these are my people and this my language. There is no 'we' because I did not belong to a group, and family life was fragmented. In my working-class primary school my accent and manners were strange. I did not realise I had a German accent. In schools where middle-class children went, my accent and manners were strange. I had picked up a cockney accent and still carried a trace of the German. I met the boy who would be my first husband when I was sixteen. He came from somewhere - a tenement in Glasgow and a community. Where he came from was written into everything he did and said. I married him and picked up a trace of his accent.
This is the story I would have to lie about - what the narrative would need to cover: that I spent my childhood among strangers and came from no particular place. I lived in books and other people's stories. This is not so unusual, especially for an introverty child who is an early reader. I can draw a map of my childhood, say where I have been, in this book or that story, from Peter Rabbit through Narnia, Wind on the Moon and Mallory Towers to the diaries of Anne Frank. But this is the only map I can make and it is not enough for a satisfying narrative. I construct others, therefore - put together versions that feel coherent and reveal an aspect of what I feel to be true; of lived experience. If a story no longer serves its purpose, I make another one.
Trust me, I'm telling you stories.
***
The stories we tell ourselves and others about who we are, where we come from, are perhaps a kind of lie, even for those of us who were not left cold on a doorstep. They have to be lies, partly because all stories are lies, and most of us need to place ourselves within the context of a narrative that makes sense. But there is something else: Jeanette Winterson's autobiographical Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit was, in a sense, a lie about her childhood and her mother. The story she wrote was not as bleak and dark as what really happened. She wrote a story she could live with. But even in her recent memoir, which tells her story as it really was, I find myself asking questions about her father and why he failed to protect her. He comes across as an essentially good person and probably was - but my guess is that the narrative JW has constructed requires this because at the very end of his life she was close to him and there was reparation - a kind of healing. She is still telling the only story she is prepared to live with.
The narrator of her novel The Passion says: "Trust me, I'm telling you stories."
I tell (myself) many stories about where I come from, pinpoint landmarks on the road that led me to where I am now. In terms of location, there were many as we were so often on the move, from England to Germany and back again, from one place to another, frequent change of schools. What strikes me now is that there is nowhere I look back on to say: this is where I come from; these are my people and this my language. There is no 'we' because I did not belong to a group, and family life was fragmented. In my working-class primary school my accent and manners were strange. I did not realise I had a German accent. In schools where middle-class children went, my accent and manners were strange. I had picked up a cockney accent and still carried a trace of the German. I met the boy who would be my first husband when I was sixteen. He came from somewhere - a tenement in Glasgow and a community. Where he came from was written into everything he did and said. I married him and picked up a trace of his accent.
This is the story I would have to lie about - what the narrative would need to cover: that I spent my childhood among strangers and came from no particular place. I lived in books and other people's stories. This is not so unusual, especially for an introverty child who is an early reader. I can draw a map of my childhood, say where I have been, in this book or that story, from Peter Rabbit through Narnia, Wind on the Moon and Mallory Towers to the diaries of Anne Frank. But this is the only map I can make and it is not enough for a satisfying narrative. I construct others, therefore - put together versions that feel coherent and reveal an aspect of what I feel to be true; of lived experience. If a story no longer serves its purpose, I make another one.
Trust me, I'm telling you stories.
***
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Work in Progress
I was buzzing last night. It often happens before sleep, or the not-sleep time in the small hours. There are moments of near-blinding lucidity when I am able to name something, nail it to a great canvas of words that wait only for my attention, to be arranged into something meaningful. Next day, I think, next day I will do it, catch whatever it is. You can do this quite well if you make a habit of writing things down immediately on waking, straight from sleep. You can't do it quite so well or even at all when you are M.E.-compromised, as I mostly am and have been. This is why I was buzzing last night. It is the wretched creative creature, banging on the window frame wanting to be let in, like Cathy's ghost in Wuthering Heights. We are bewitched, bothered and bewildered, Heathcliff and I. But at least he is able to rampage across the moors in all weathers.
Sometimes I repeat words to myself last thing, hoping that by doing so I will catch the idea in the morning. I woke up today mouthing, "a work in progress." Last night these words had been pregnant with meaning. Today I have drawn a blank. What is this Work in Progress? There are several, but this time I have a feeling that the creative hooligan was not referring to one of my unfinished writing projects. I think it was referring to my life with M.E. It is a work in progress. Clearly there were things I thought I had to say about this. But what? I know I have to live with this damn thing, I continue to try and find ways of getting myself better, usually fall flat on my face but, you know, "Hope is the thing with feathers/that perches in the soul" etc. I have no choice but to be heroic. We all are. Just because we are many does not make our individual journies any less heroic. I have said this kind of thing before, surely.
Perhaps there is something else I have to realise about this particular work in progress. It is, after all, the only work that is always, at all times, available to me. I think we are coming perilously close to the business of noticing dust motes in the fingers of light that point through wooden (IKEA) slats and I have done this (and do this) almost to perfection. They spin like ballerinas dancing on points, is what I wrote in my last Dust Mote poem, which was really not half bad.
I am half sick of dust motes, said the Lady of Shalott.
**
Sometimes I repeat words to myself last thing, hoping that by doing so I will catch the idea in the morning. I woke up today mouthing, "a work in progress." Last night these words had been pregnant with meaning. Today I have drawn a blank. What is this Work in Progress? There are several, but this time I have a feeling that the creative hooligan was not referring to one of my unfinished writing projects. I think it was referring to my life with M.E. It is a work in progress. Clearly there were things I thought I had to say about this. But what? I know I have to live with this damn thing, I continue to try and find ways of getting myself better, usually fall flat on my face but, you know, "Hope is the thing with feathers/that perches in the soul" etc. I have no choice but to be heroic. We all are. Just because we are many does not make our individual journies any less heroic. I have said this kind of thing before, surely.
Perhaps there is something else I have to realise about this particular work in progress. It is, after all, the only work that is always, at all times, available to me. I think we are coming perilously close to the business of noticing dust motes in the fingers of light that point through wooden (IKEA) slats and I have done this (and do this) almost to perfection. They spin like ballerinas dancing on points, is what I wrote in my last Dust Mote poem, which was really not half bad.
I am half sick of dust motes, said the Lady of Shalott.
**
Monday, January 30, 2012
Pith in the Wind
Awake at five - no choice but to go with it: fruit, coffee, quality time with the cat who appreciates the early breakfast. Fruit and coffee is not the best breakfast and could play havoc with blood sugar. But I forestall this by having a second breakfast of bacon and egg. Between first and second breakfasts I gather bits and pieces for a poetry idea I have brewing. I do it quickly and haphazardly but with a certain kind of method born of long practice: the words have been whispering themselves in the small hours, I get them down before they grow thin as smoke and disappear. Remembering them later will not be the same as being in their presence. I look up a couple of references, but don't get stuck on this. Whatever you do, don't walk through the magic door of the computer screen and lose yourself in the internet or La Belle Dame Sans Merci will have you palely loitering, all words lost.
I am writing a short sequence about my stepfather, who died last year, drawing on memories (his and mine) and imaginings. I want to set down things for which I have no adequate vocabulary because they are closely related to a landscape I never really inhabited. But I have discovered that the hard, spiky grass growing on the dunes by the sea at Montrose in the north-east of Scotland is called Marram grass. It is good to be able to name things, but for much else I will have to rely on commonplace words like stone, water, wind, mist, and bring my imaginative eye close, so as to feel their particularities.
My stepfather, who was mostly my ex-stepfather for the many years that I knew him, more or less disappeared ten years ago, when he cut off contact with everyone apart from the one person he lived with. It was a loss felt keenly by his friends and family who learned of his death ten months after the event. So the bits and pieces I am putting together are possibly an attempt at some kind of restoration. The imagined past, he once said, reflects the lived present.
I just remembered that I promised something short, pithy and unspeakably heroic - and this is hardly that. Damn. But on the other hand, these few words and the others are probably the most I can do in the short time available. And considering the mountain (well, small hill) of other tasks that clamour for my energy and attention, there is something of the heroic here, even with the lack of pith. But you can't have everything.
**
I am writing a short sequence about my stepfather, who died last year, drawing on memories (his and mine) and imaginings. I want to set down things for which I have no adequate vocabulary because they are closely related to a landscape I never really inhabited. But I have discovered that the hard, spiky grass growing on the dunes by the sea at Montrose in the north-east of Scotland is called Marram grass. It is good to be able to name things, but for much else I will have to rely on commonplace words like stone, water, wind, mist, and bring my imaginative eye close, so as to feel their particularities.
My stepfather, who was mostly my ex-stepfather for the many years that I knew him, more or less disappeared ten years ago, when he cut off contact with everyone apart from the one person he lived with. It was a loss felt keenly by his friends and family who learned of his death ten months after the event. So the bits and pieces I am putting together are possibly an attempt at some kind of restoration. The imagined past, he once said, reflects the lived present.
I just remembered that I promised something short, pithy and unspeakably heroic - and this is hardly that. Damn. But on the other hand, these few words and the others are probably the most I can do in the short time available. And considering the mountain (well, small hill) of other tasks that clamour for my energy and attention, there is something of the heroic here, even with the lack of pith. But you can't have everything.
**
Friday, January 27, 2012
How Things Are in January
I have decided to be kinder to myself. If a family member, friend or (come to think of it) anyone were to commit to doing something and then couldn't, I would not berate them. I would not treat them as I have treated myself, pushing them to keep going as though kicking a poor, worn-out donkey. Shame on me for having done that. I am as deserving of consideration as the donkey. A digression: in our family the donkey has a special place. My daughter and I both had donkeys as our special stuffed animal transitional comfort creature. More than transitional, they accompanied us through childhood. We love the donkey and support the Donkey Sanctuary. Son used to send them his pocket money. End of digression.
I have not been strong or well enough to consider working on my novel project right now. It will have to wait until things change for the better. I am carrying on with poetry work though this too is circumscribed, for at the moment my bed and dear little Macbook Air is the centre of operations. I do get up from time to time - for essentials plus writerly engagements - but the earth's rotation and gravity have to be negotiated.
Signs Cottage is not necessarily the best place for me, it has stairs and other inconvenient things. But Mr. Signs works from home several days a week, and cat is here. Life, still. Sweet.
Tomorrow is the mater's 89th birthday bash (meal in a local posh hotel). She does Pilates and aqua aerobics and is in rude health and sprightly as a pixie.
Back soon with posts from the front. They will be short, pithy - and unspeakably heroic.
(The title of this post refers, quite shamelessly, to the title of Ros Barber's poetry collection: How Things Are on Thursday)
Sunday, January 22, 2012
never mind the title
Sticking my head in the door to say hello here. Hello to who? You, obviously, but to me too. People say that Tweeting is something akin to talking to oneself, and I have often thought this about blogging too. But in talking to oneself is there not the sense of some listening presence - an intimate other - or what some creative writing practitioners would call your 'ideal reader'?
Here at House of Signs we are quite happy with the less-than-ideal, or if not happy then realistic. At least I did not make any stupid resolutions that would now have been broken. But strength is once again at a low ebb. I am looking out of the window as I write this, at my neighbour with her young sons, digging in the garden, she in a green puffer jacket, the oldest boy in red and the toddler in blue. Grandma is there too in a mustard puffer. All are digging. I want to be digging too, not literally perhaps, but working my own patch of land, making grow the things I want to cultivate. A number of things come against this. Even sticking my head around the door like this is not without its difficulties. For one thing, I have to be sitting upright. No, seriously.
It has been one of those mornings when everything that is waiting to be written, sung or planted, the etheric spirits of them all, gathered around my bed singing their various possibilities. We are ready, they said, to incarnate. These voices. They have never listened to reason. They know nothing about Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. By this afternoon there won't be a trace of them. They stay only for the possibilities.
But this piece, all about someone doing something against all the odds, has made me feel very happy.
**
Here at House of Signs we are quite happy with the less-than-ideal, or if not happy then realistic. At least I did not make any stupid resolutions that would now have been broken. But strength is once again at a low ebb. I am looking out of the window as I write this, at my neighbour with her young sons, digging in the garden, she in a green puffer jacket, the oldest boy in red and the toddler in blue. Grandma is there too in a mustard puffer. All are digging. I want to be digging too, not literally perhaps, but working my own patch of land, making grow the things I want to cultivate. A number of things come against this. Even sticking my head around the door like this is not without its difficulties. For one thing, I have to be sitting upright. No, seriously.
It has been one of those mornings when everything that is waiting to be written, sung or planted, the etheric spirits of them all, gathered around my bed singing their various possibilities. We are ready, they said, to incarnate. These voices. They have never listened to reason. They know nothing about Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. By this afternoon there won't be a trace of them. They stay only for the possibilities.
But this piece, all about someone doing something against all the odds, has made me feel very happy.
**
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Signs and Labels
I have been looking at the various labels on my sidebar. Here are the top ten:
1. Writing
2. Life and Stuff
3. M.E.
4. Reasons to be Cheerful
5. Creativity
6. Food
7. How to Live
8. The Signs
9. Poetry
10. Process
Interesting (to me) that Writing is number one, though perhaps not surprising. When I am not writing, it is always what I want to be coming back to. And even if too ill to be doing much, I love thinking and reading about it, and talking about it with others who are on a writing path of one kind or another. When I began this blog, five years ago, I was having a gap year from teaching creative writing. The gap turned into something more permanent even though I had accepted a post to teach at a university, and even though I loved doing what I did. Still, the fact of not teaching any more has not diminished my interest in in creative language, process - and people. There are so many ways, hidden and manifest, to be and think creatively, even if (particularly if?) one finds oneself on a path that is not of one's choosing.
I have a small window of time each day when it feels possible to attend to something that is properly creative. I have been liking the word 'properly' recently, as you might have noticed. I think what I mean by 'properly' here is: with my whole heart. But also with enough vital forces at my disposal for me to be able to put my heart into whatever it is. And actually, I only have this window on a good day.
On new year's eve we threw the coins, as we always do. The I Ching says I have to "inquire of the Oracle again" to see if I possess "sublimity, constancy and perseverance." I think I can tick the last two. Full marks for constancy and perseverance, and I don't need the Oracle to pronounce on that. As for sublimity - posterity will tell. Or not, as the case may be. Perhaps I will throw the coins again after all, to get a sneak preview.
**
1. Writing
2. Life and Stuff
3. M.E.
4. Reasons to be Cheerful
5. Creativity
6. Food
7. How to Live
8. The Signs
9. Poetry
10. Process
Interesting (to me) that Writing is number one, though perhaps not surprising. When I am not writing, it is always what I want to be coming back to. And even if too ill to be doing much, I love thinking and reading about it, and talking about it with others who are on a writing path of one kind or another. When I began this blog, five years ago, I was having a gap year from teaching creative writing. The gap turned into something more permanent even though I had accepted a post to teach at a university, and even though I loved doing what I did. Still, the fact of not teaching any more has not diminished my interest in in creative language, process - and people. There are so many ways, hidden and manifest, to be and think creatively, even if (particularly if?) one finds oneself on a path that is not of one's choosing.
I have a small window of time each day when it feels possible to attend to something that is properly creative. I have been liking the word 'properly' recently, as you might have noticed. I think what I mean by 'properly' here is: with my whole heart. But also with enough vital forces at my disposal for me to be able to put my heart into whatever it is. And actually, I only have this window on a good day.
On new year's eve we threw the coins, as we always do. The I Ching says I have to "inquire of the Oracle again" to see if I possess "sublimity, constancy and perseverance." I think I can tick the last two. Full marks for constancy and perseverance, and I don't need the Oracle to pronounce on that. As for sublimity - posterity will tell. Or not, as the case may be. Perhaps I will throw the coins again after all, to get a sneak preview.
**
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