Monday 27 December 2010

Christmas at the Wheelie Bin Laws

The day began welll, it was Christmas Eve after all and I promised not to weep copiously for a change. To my deep surprise S gave me a lift into town, and may the baby jesu be praised, she was on time, in fact early. She'd left the B i L in the city to buy trousers and avery expensive bottle of whiskey- alas not my yuletide gift.

The roads were clear all the way to Bridge of Don until we turned into their road and there seemed to be have been a recent avalance. SpagettiBolognaise was on the menu and copious cups of cofffe.

Then by increments things startd to go wrong.

'Can I have one of your beers B i L?' he relied in the affirmative. yet, I swilled it down before he had a change of mind. While S and B I l were cloistered in front of Prince Caspian I stuck back to the fridge, twisted open the bottle and drank it as dast as I could in case they started looking for me round for mwe at the precious moment.

Thus it was that war began

B i L started screamimg, spouting on about the myth of self-control and wandered about with the remaining beers looking for a place to hide them from me.

The shouting of B i L and the cajoling od S lasted over half as I sat in the spare bedroom writing my journal. The rest of the evening went relatively smoothly and they even allowed me into a church without paying.

They went to bed and I remaind awake for 6 hours determined to finish my journal as I'd just bought a new one. Dotting down and up the stairs for urine breals, coffeee refiills and a slice of pineapple I left all the lights on all night.

The silence was plapable when I emerged at ten down in the angry den. Yet, my S and B i L are good, kind people, slow to anger and mainly tolerant of me so I wasn't battered senseless and made to walk to the garage to get milk.

Love, mygod, would you believe it

Saturday 14 August 2010

Changing names to protect no-one at all

Recently I have been thinking about pseudonyms, not that I haven't thought about it before, but it began to dwell in mind when I looked at a flier for a local poetry group. Unless my mind has diminished more than I had recently thought, Rapunzel Wizard-topping the bill- was not the name his parents came out with as the minister lowered him to the font. My thoughts turned from scorn to amusement as I idly imagined him on the pull, the quine he was chatting too had found that Rapunzel had ticked all the boxes and was waiting for him to tell her to get her coat. 'Oh, I'm Rapunzel by the way.' I heard him say as if to seal the deal. A set of doors and a port cullis in the quine's eyes coldly close and lock, are drawn up and to add to the metaphor a skinny dog barks fretfully and alone in an empty land. Laugh, she thinks, I'll leave that til later. An excuse? The loon doesn't deserve an excuse. I won't dwell on Rapunzel, I'm sure he had a reason and perhaps it is cool and if I meet him I'll try really hard to be polite and not ask if he'd let his hair down recently. But, of course, now. I want a pseudonym. Or the performance poet in me does. Last night I had whittled it down to Zyborg Redaction, merely 'Adam'-perhaps with a question mark or Mr Sylvia Plath, Apprentice Poet. Admittedly Zyborg Redaction stands out, seems to exude confidence and is impossible dismiss, the second isn't very original and I might as well not have a pseudonym at all. The last, as the evening wears on, and I've listened to Lady Lazarus and Daddy on You Tube almost continuously since the sun went down, if I have the guts is perfect. I was going to write one of her poems in my journal but they went on a bit. Zyborg Redaction in comparison is trite and childish and if not attention seeking, is at least lingering far too long looking at itself in the mirror. So poetry readings, poetry slams, poetry in parks, swimming pools and other venues the length and breadth of the land Mr Sylvia Plath has memorized his poems a bit, put on a new yellow swastika and is that person fidgeting behind you waiting to read.

Saturday 7 August 2010

The unincident of the optionable sided shape.

Now days without sleep, no morsel of food has passed my lips. Day magazine came with an year-old story- Pathway to the Beloved. I smiled out, yet within seemed storm wrecked. Writer's Muse comparable to whatever magazine you enjoy the most. I was 45 at the end of July and singularly spoilt. I got what I desired most. A day doubt scorned itself way fast out of the house. Lifting the rose bush to the sun. Since then I have reached beyond the middle of Thrice Advent. My friends have the story so far. 25 chapters, they are my backup frisbee disc. Friends are fun, don't you think, and family, but the nine muses watch over me, all my ancestors ever gave me was love. But, the muses leant me hope and strength and I know they will never ask me to give it back. But ancestors get the chocolate cake, for I find myself alive ever since I was born. But, really don't you think friends are fun?

Saturday 24 July 2010

The Moon that got me home again

A mirror of the future fell over me today- a one am taxi'd waited for too long, rode off with me as it turned and returned down the hill a tarnished golden pregnant moon minted long aeons past benignly watched our voyage. It banished impatience and the pacing wait within in my need to escape, the parchment moon hung in the taxi's windscreen as it returned with me down my steep slope down to the valley and the road into the city. I felt fey with all the uncounted dangers and pleasant strangers I passed and might met once I walked along beside them on the streets of weekend wonders. Only half way along the street was abrupt with violence the half crazed with pain and stimulants were forced to the ground, by the deft and offensively defensive men in blue who threw them to ground. Sirens blazed to the vicinity of the nights rupture of empty men's pain, and from all directions men and policewomen appeared as if they had risen from chip wrapped strewn pavements. At least there not after me I consoled myself, though I considered getting another taxi home.
I bypassed them criss crossing the road I found a penny, the panic of the violence the roars of hate, I left behind and walked on to what ever destination the night had gifted me. I found myself at a watering hole, no original thought had taken me there, but only the memory of my feet that seemed to led me nowhere else, I found myself there as if past and now and those seconds after had already collided and my final destination was what it always was. A side door to a club, where once I had danced, tossed beers down my throat, where smiles and hopes of love still lingered on the dancefloor.
But I see now that the past had always muisguided me I stood alone plasticwrapped in sound, and as I stood and drank the beer, wondering were they always so beautiful in here? But in that now-ness as I reached for a fallen fifty pee I smiled as I remembered the insanities of dance I had gyrated. I stretched up as if the beauty had not lost my face and now no longer would, tendrils of the future held me tall and I was blind, disguised me from myself and as I finished my drink I saw the ghosts of me I had shed long before, still dancing, nimbly, caught in masscara eyes and lips to touch. I did not linger and left my ghosts play as I walked back out into the orange cobbled streets.
The future pushed me up the crowded rowdy streets to the bus that would take me home, the ghosts of now, the shoes of my past sauntered along the teeming streets as if unwilling to be rid of me so soon. The future met me with the bus drivers smile. I looked down from the top deck and I heard the ghosts blessing me with goodbye, and river of colour and freshness danced long limbed and lithe found the shoes that the past had made me leave behind, put the tight about their bare feet and dance as if a solambulater would dance. And left me dreaming all the way to morning.

Wednesday 14 July 2010

St Swithan's Day and swithering

Will be St Swithan's Day the morn according a calender. I hope he has good one. All the work on the kitchen and bathroom is completed. I read two chapters of a novel I'm writing and denounced writing in all it's forms, especially mine. Then in the dusklight I wrote the end of a story. The rain is relentless, yet bold Eva is once more out. Soon tomorrow will become. My daughter is back from Tunisia and she will be seeing me soon. She's playing football this week. Have a happy St Swithan's Day in blogland and beyond.

Friday 25 June 2010

...like a book

He took down the slim-line tale of hearts
half-patched plastic,
bent edges to mark pages
caught by coffee stains
and dots and dashes of unknown origins-
like misprints on the page
they trick the eye making sense of them,
drawing away attention away, away from
the beautiful words,
that he restored every five years.
he took down the book, on dreams, of light
and night, on awakening, a being loved.
He took down the book that night, gave it
a new jacket and ironed each page and tried his
best to clean it, and as he worked along
the words many eyes had wandered.
At morning he took the book to its shelf, he'd miss it,
five more years, but, joy tonight, he'd dream her bonny face
by his, she who could read him like a book.
A pristine volume
and always worth a look.

Friday 18 June 2010

The day that my new bath arrived

As Ariel said in The Tempest: 'Hell is empty and all the devils are here,' and yes, they turned up at about eight this morning and are stamping about, battering hammers, drilling, sanding and swearing in a Dundonian twang. I am in the eye of the storm today, calm and tranquil as opposed to the raging psychopath I was on Wednesday. The cats are in hiding and probably will be for a while. Last night my neighbours called from Spain to find out if I'd given the gaffer their keys, this I affirmed and Ian asked me if I wanted anything from Spain. I had to think quickly. The deeds to villa on the coast? Mmm. A guitar? No, I'd have to get lessons Some Spanish fly? No, but maybe a Spanish butterfly. A tee shirt, I said, would be nice. Life seems to be on a bit of an upward slide, I'm loving my neighbours, my Father is better than he has been for years on a cranberry and stew diet and Debbie the Dentist fussed over my teeth for over an hour. However I still have not had a shower.

Thursday 10 June 2010

New Expectations

Now i am here, the thought headed me forward, the now of flesh and spirit and from the inner spaces of imagination a rumour of God whispers and gradually I step from that recognised route, that safe way, star shod over a rocky stream along single track roads trekking toward a horizon that reveals nothing I ever expected. Now though with a few more moments to dawn, when birdcalls break in through the double glazed windows and the swaggering sun steals in through clouds and burns indecision away, the night seems perpetually about me still loaded with yesterday waiting to filled with today. Contracters will be fitting a new bathroom and kitchen in my lowly Council dwelling, so by early July I will be able to have a shower for the first time in ten years. A story I wrote quite some time ago will be publish in a week or so and on Tuesday I will go to an Audition to get on a acting course. I hope I get on it, find a bit part in a new reality, recall all dreams that has led me to this future. I feel I forgot anticipation, excitement and I yearn to find it, find the childlike soul that is not suprised when new expectations greet me as the world slowly turns.

Tuesday 1 June 2010

After Edinburgh

Now home, awake at three- I find the need the write becomes overwhelming, my fingers itching to stroke the keys. Had my first holiday this year. Haven't been to great since I fired my psychologist, so it was good to get away and open my horizon's somewhat, see segments of reality that I forgot or choose to ignore, revealing other personalities that are always there whispering as they slowly wake and take the pen from my hand and add their voice to the pages of my Journal. Now though I am home and the hum of the hard drive seems to chew at my memory, so that the thoughts and the half thought out phrases my memory uses to explain dream images, day dreams wandering down Leith Walk, are coincidences caught out place. Perhaps I passed myself that day and didn't give myself a second glance. The old cat was out all the time I was away and now she makes sure I stay put, follows me from room to room as if trying to guess my next move. I will try not suprise her too much.. I know now that the power to act to be, to change, is now, this moment, this present and that forgiveness is here too. I pick up this moment, a diamond on a long stretch of sand. I leave no footprint as if I am the air itself the sun and the sand the diamond calls me too walk unfettered down a new path through the lands of Summer.

Friday 23 April 2010

Blogging to Banchory

Unlike the effortless recluse I am today I was consumed with excitement as I was setting off on a bus journey to Banchory. I dressed in my best funereal black and down the hill I went passed the stragglers going to Primary School. The 201 came along and so I set of on my journey to the west, breathing in the air of freedom-i left behind the dirt and dishes and the cats and the computer- and feel so light, dare I say it happy.

Now we are near Crathes with it's long, seemingly life long road up to the Castle. I recall last autumn a group of us kicked through the snowdrifts and mini-Murdo's of leaves on our even longer road through the woods up to the Castle.

The bus is speeding nauseatingly fast, the River Dee unseen today, but only a few fields of grass away. Yellow and black railway engines sit idly at the start of a couple of miles of freshly laid tracks, that will reach Banchory sometime soon some say. The bus has paused, there is a deep redness on the trees at the side of the road, for a while it seems almost autumn, but the next stop reveals a sandpit of a new housing estate. Now a deep corner and we slide down a soft slope through the rain towards the Town Centre, I could almost taste the coffee and bacon roll, I would eat before taking on the Charity Shops. Found a new bookshop, empty, but for the owner, she said they'd been open two and a half years. A shelf of poetry books, for some reason I was disapointed there were no Sylvia Plath books. Perhaps I would return, on another day finding freedom, I thought as I left empty handed.

If it wasn't raining I could go for a walk to a bridge over the Feugh where the salmon jump and take some pictures, but pangs of homesickness arose as the rain intensified and I didn't have to wait long at the bus stop.

Now I am returning, down toward the river, home and I am glad.

Sunday 17 January 2010

Love and other rhymes

As usual as the new year begins I am wondering whether to do any acting, or put my nose to the grindstone and write. Feels like the first three weeks of the year has lasted for about a year already, for me at least, the snow here has gone and with it my house adorned with icicles as thick as my waist. The street was having a competition on who has the most and longest icicles, I won.

Well at least I have made a new friend which is somewhat of a new experience, a girl whom I wrote about in a poem years ago that was published and re-emerged in the poetry book I got together last year around about the same time as Adrienne and I's path once more crossed:


Survived some semi-holocaust of our own
that leaves no kisses on the air.
Only anxiety waits, hard g's upon the mainframe.
I watch the way you have gone,
only amber light shielding you in the night.
Every atom urges me on. I cannot urge like this
I cannot hurt like this alone.
But cannot speak. Nor spin.
I had forgotten the taste of kisses, of being held. I hope we see again each other, that our universes attract each other, tonight Adrienne seems a long way off, but my thoughts resound with her and my lips still taste of her lips.