Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Oh gods - how long had the house been so terrible? We have been cleaning it, our distractions wrestled till there was room for tidier habits. Vacuuming has evolved to a regular sound; vacuuming through a shrinking floor space. Boxes of stuff: bottles for syrups, display cloths, kitchen kit for the van; the usual clutter of punch-pads and breaking boards, the pile of foraged cloth for projects. It all has purpose, it all lacks organisation. We have crowded ourselves out of our home, crowded our time with doing: we have got used to it and irritable with it. Little by little we have stopped using our impeded desks. Then last Friday I was closing my eyes, except I was driving, and then stopped my car to breathe night air, afraid. Enough. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, these were all booked for work. On Tuesday there was room for rest, by which I mean I was gifted a day without needing to look at a clock, without obligation. After coffee, no need to be at home, clutter-haunted...

I went to bed late, woke up early. It's warm for February so while the kettle fizzed I opened up windows. Birdsong flitted in. I found the last scoop of coffee in the emergency pot. Soft, fine powder and for a while I imagine a coffee dune and what sort of erratic foliage would tug a living there? (Answers appreciated - flora and fauna. I have a twitchy spider that looks like bonbons...) Sat in bed, lap top propped to never quite the right height. I've been working on chapters that are like a crazy patchwork and just trusting that they'll balance better than my keyboard and not result in carpal tunnel syndrome.  Musty-coffee coating my tongue.  How long has that pot been lurking?  Birdsong, blue sky... The answer is, get your hammock slung up.  Because of the tired way I am dropping and forgetting stuff, and drinking strong but muddy water.  Fresh air, rest.  Find your way then.

Update: the question of appropriation sat heavy. I went away and did some research and some long hard staring at colonialism in particular. Because this story arrived as a dream I had let it be, as though one's unconscious mind would be free of all complicity. What an idiot! But consequently wiser, rewriting the whole book, and finding the plot to be revising itself. I have three invented (admittedly similar, but this repetition of types is common to most mythologies) Goddesses now, one for chaos, one for order, one for compassion. Currently leaving this post up because mistakes and misfootings happen, it feels wrong to pretend they don't. And I loved Makari so much! He's a lizard now, still grumpy, and unnamed. Original post: Another excerpt and another cry for attention here: firstly, how's my writing? This is first draft stuff and can take a hit, please be honest! Secondly I am drawing on existing deities, so I am using their names and while there are pre...

A Work In Progress:  There's a book that is demanding to be written. All my work is bossy like that, but this one more than any previous endeavours. It is kicking its way out, then throwing itself like a possessed jigsaw. All I have to do is put it together.  This particular piece of it is from the point of view of a person with a profound congenital disability, and hopefully gives a voice where a voice would not easily be found. I don't know where it will fit in the big picture. Anyway, feedback appreciated...  UPDATE: this piece no longer fits as a chapter/character, but I like it, I will have to find it a home.  The ‘I’ that is writing this does not exist. No one can know what I can or cannot articulate, what it is that I know, even if I know myself at all: as you could not articulate the difference as you passed from unborn to born, but only react, involuntary. So this ‘I’ is a supposition. There are sheets of medical words to explain this conditio...

Granma Grace has weathered five or more (the doctors are not certain) strokes; she has a confusion that thickens as the day goes on, a deepening layer of impending doom. She has a foot that twitches, even while she sleeps, with this certainty of worry. Something somewhere is wrong, or will go wrong. That’s one layer out of many though: optimism is not obliterated, gratitude abounds, the love of simplicity: draw the curtains back, she will wait for the birds to alight on well stocked feeders. She will ask that the little cat who warms on the step be fed a treat. She will check the sky for the beautiful weather about to happen. She will love to go for a walk, however brief. Sometimes she cries for the loss of independence, quiet tears. She says she does not know how to repay us for our kindness in looking after her. Mock-strict I tell her this is prepaid love, and there’s a very healthy balance on this account. She blooms into laughter - it’s so good, it gifts me a halo. Tod...

Once we were on the beach, though not planned, swimming was obvious. Wellies off, socks off; just having a paddle in this clear water, it's not so cold, we should go out deeper... Leggings off, wade out oops, a wave rises. Now me and Dog are swimming, not walking. Floating fur blurs her edges. My dress darkens, green-black, moves like kelp-fronds. We are lost to the elements awhile. After this dip I wrap up, skin a-tingle, pinked, glowy. No one is surprised, except the owner of the spaniel that peed on the wet clothing I dumped on the shore. Oops! Back at Granny’s house I am peppered in sand, laughing. If I take off my socks there'll be a dune in here. We all warm up with tea, and more laughing. Me and little niece use fuzzy felt to create a goat headed farmer, a horse headed pig, a pig headed cow: then we name the imaginary objects we are throwing at each other. Spider-bellies! Phone-children! Haha! Slice of panettone. Tea. Tired from laughing, tired from a long shif...

Naturally the idea that wouldn’t leave me be this morning while I needed to get ready for work has gone off in a sulk somewhere. It will return when it needs to be written. I will drink coffee. Coffee with a rich silty aftertaste. Coffee that gives me that moment of pause, which when I’m busy maybe I neglect? The warmth of it welcome too, as I’m letting any old words wander out, as the rain pools under a cold push of wind and the sky is so dull and flat it’s like no sky at all. I’m sat by a wall’s length of glass, drafty, good view of the greenery flailing, chewing up my coffee dregs, thinking about lunch not because I’m hungry but because there’s no food. There’s pennies in my pocket, lunch can happen, an improvement on previous days. Fair to say I have bemoaned and embraced low income life - only first world poverty after all - and am loving moving on. Car, chromebook, a lit fire, lunch, a long list of things I am happy to have. Soon we can start to look for land ...