Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

We wake up when our dog shouts at us. Half past nine. Sun is shining. Mr makes toast in a frying pan: the grill pan is busy spitting sausage fat. Coffee is iconic dark. There's a line of medicinal wine stain on my lower lip. It smiles at me through mirror dust. It doesn't matter to anyone if I clean the kitchen or not, so I do it. A pot sits on the Rayburn top, sweating vegetables. The washing machine rumbles. Windows stretch open, let the sky spill in. No one looks at a clock until their belly prompts it. If it feels like time to walk on the beach, it has nothing to do with clocks. Some useful stuff is put in the car: like coats and house keys. Flip flops are kicked off. Feet in sand don't mind if the sun drops or the waves wash cold. 'What a nice life we're having,' Mr says. Bared feet feel the warmth of the car pedals. We could drive anywhere. 

What I wrote last night: only couldn't keep my eyes open long enough to post here! Woke up much fresher, with minimal wine staining... Wearing this tiredness as blinkers. Which is amusing, since the invention was to keep the focus of the coach horse on the road ahead. The immediate future is the thing I shy at. Except the fat glass of wine that gets skinnier each time I glance at it. Mysterious. I have an opposable thumb. Therefore I can lift the wine glass, therefore I can unbuckle the blinkers. I am more certain of the first, presently. After sleep, the second may be unnecessary. Either way, I am not a coach horse, however tired I may feel. (However: much more likely to wake up with wine stain on face than any horse I ever met.)

Full blossom on the cherry tree by the sports hall door. I notice it today. The sun is bold. I open the door and sit in shade. Students walking in: white suits bouncing blinding night. While I am sitting, I am thinking what sort of times are these? I am thinking of a dragonfly grub, sensing change, sliding feet, ascending a stem, feeling like bird food. After class the sky is light: pale blue, soft golden orange. I notice it today. The sun sinks slow over the beach while I walk and think and hear the waves telling me wise calm words. Rock pools so warm, like a Mediterranean beach. Where my trousers have caught the surf, a cold damp settles. Coffee in a flask, the car heater works.

Affirming sun splashes on every bared surface. Down by the river, Mr and me are climbing trees. The river runs lower than we've ever seen, the water clear enough to show where the rocks are pointed, where the mud slides to depths. Mesmerised, one foot slides astride a trunk, lands one leg in a bramble tangle. No harm done: if anything, more laughter appears. Okay, maybe today is not the day for shimmying out on the branch that overhangs those incisive boulders. But still, foot scuffs in the moss of the thick trunked fallen tree: they are proof of this: I was here: I laughed.

April's A-Z Challenge is put to bed :-)  Sleep is the drift between one day and another. Dreams come from this: tumbles of thought and hope and things that happened that we saw, or heard about, or felt. Night spreads like wet ink, slippery as squid, heavy eyelids sink, sink. Deep, down: drowned in sleep: subsumed. Held in suspension: sleep is a chrysalis. As we wake, shade becomes colour. Yes, I remember now. And if I were never here, the lightness would mean so much less. I remember, I regain: swim upwards, laughing.

A-Z part Y 'What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.' Richard Bach. An Emperor Dragonfly, tattooed on my shoulder, in flight, is always wings stretched, always having climbed from egg to grub to chrysalis to this leap of faith. Grub form lingers in half-light, calls the shadows home. Much is learnt in these formative shades. Grub feels comfortable in this mud, in this formational half-light: feels safe being half-formed, being unlaunched. This is the comfort zone of discomfort. If I hurt, if I am failed, I need not fear waiting for pain or failure to find me. Foolish grub! Life is not only harsh truths: not all truth need be harsh. Sunlight is no lie. Grub at the base of the reed, looking up, hesitant: drawn. What is it that I want then? To live in this half-light, as most people do, but to leave a body of work that is the beautiful, truthful guide to living in economic vagary, though people migh

X is the unknown, the independent variable: also the mark of treasure, of affection, of the illiterate. Here is a formula to consider: My life + X = perfect Dog and me, we wander the woods, hear only the wind, the river, a whir of duck wing. Thirsty eyes drink up the green, and cheer. There's a bough over deep water that I've seen, and dare to climb. Here, even my slight shiver of fright is refreshing. Giggle and get down, gently, as the bank is not sturdy. Walk then, over anemones, primrose, wild garlic, baby stalks of bramble and rose, down where the fallen tree has gathered a shale beach, and off come my boots and the water is not so cold and the rocks mud-slippy. If I had thought of it, I would have drawn an X in this shored up silt, where the sun was shining through the edge of the new leafed trees.