M Revisited: More Show, Less Tell

Re-reading the previous post, I’m not quite comfortable with it. All very well telling people how they should be appreciating their lives, when the point is, the clever writer should be showing them. Especially at the weekend when most folks are inclined towards relaxation, not lectures… this topic is riddled with the risk of ‘holier than thou’ syndrome: I am a real, therefore flawed person, always a work in progress. I get unmanageable, cantankerous, irrational, flabby, washed out, ineffective, dense, bad hair days. Still human! First challenge is to realise it is one of those days, second is to wrestle my bad self with brutal honesty until it tells me what’s wrong (pre-menstrual, tired, sick of being poor, angry with myself for doing something unaccountably dumb, those are the usual candidates.) Third challenge is to apologise. No one likes apologising, it reminds you of how you did something wrong, but it’s necessary. So, I apologise for the sermonising.

Here is a more show, less tell piece about my miracle obsession.

My first blog challenge to myself (as yet unfinished- see, still human!) was to find 1,000 Miracles In One Day:

‘Furthering my quest to appreciate life, to actually be bothered to find the extraordinary in the ordinary detail of life, I have set myself this task. I use the word miracle to describe the act of seeing [acknowledging] the moments where something wonderful is happening (if you are looking at it correctly.)

I think I need about 41.66 per hour to cover 24 hours.

Further miracle reports to follow….

What I have to say isn't particularly shocking, nor is it new. It seeks to wake you up to the beautiful view that is only here, in front of you, the particular things and moments that construct your experience of life.’

To date I have written 462 consecutive verses/miracle moments; up to approximately 11am on Miracle Day; have plenty of raw material, and plan to finish the set this autumn. Here (revised from the original posting) are the first three:

Down the wall a spider walks

Unseen, the whisper of eight feet

Unheard on the wallpaper, this is

A secret world, a spider’s world

At the zero hour it seems nothing exists

But the deep breathing of sleep

And the heaving of wind in darkness

Bowing trees as though dragons fly here

Uncounted leaves stream, pulling

On thin stems, twisting loose, one leaf

Takes hold of the air, it has no plans

For landing, that will just happen

I chose poetry first, because it concentrates language, but have since moved to prose, just felt the need to expand and experiment, of course. That’s the miraculous human bit of me I like best.