Once In A Lifetime

I am very struck at the moment by the terrible inevitability of aging. There is probably no way to say something new on this subject. Yet it seems to be all my thoughts circle around, return to again and again like birds. The passing of time. All the people who have already gone, and those who are beginning to steer in that direction. And my own surprising collection of years - it is always surprising, as each year passes, yet the more years in the collection the greater the surprise, or so it seems. The surprise now is realising how much of it is already over, this life of mine. How little of it has been anything like I expected (what did I expect?) How little idea I have what to expect now.

My nephew at 23, with his life ahead of him (as they say), with big dreams but not much apparent sense of direction (not apparent to me, but he has always played his cards close to his chest), reminds me of the time in my own life when time didn't seem to be an issue. There was plenty of time to find out what I wanted to do, plenty of time to do it, plenty of time to find love, work, a way to be creative. Now approaching the end of the fifth decade, there is clearly more behind than ahead, and it seems infinitely more important I should know what I want, and have some idea how to go about finding it, doing it, being it. All I've been putting energy into for the last 18 months is finding work, discovering how to become self-supporting again. That has been my one and only goal, dimly accompanied by a hope that maybe I'd be happier than this eventually. And now I have work, albeit not enough work, but I am more or less paying my way again, more or less standing on my own two feet. More rather than less. And hope ('the thing with feathers') has begun to fly again - the hope that I can not just survive, but even thrive. And so, in true Maslovian style I am once again able to consider my higher needs (!)

I want to feel as if I've learned something, as if I can contribute to the world both personally and professionally. I want to be able to feel better than I did when I was younger. I want to feel less anxious, less insecure, less haunted by ghosts, less troubled about how others see me, freer to experiment. I want to feel excited and be able to bring my excitement to my relationships, my creativity, my way of being in this weird (let the word serve) world. I want to let go of all the crippling fear and self-doubt that have held me back, and believe in what I am capable of. As a partner, friend, poet, as a therapist, maybe even as a teacher...

Nostalgia and longing are breaking over me like waves. Longing for some other time, when it seems to me life was more intense, when everything was full of meaning, of immanence. If I trace this I think it comes down to an association with other people in whom I experienced qualities of passion, intensity, and in whose presence I could discover more of these qualities in myself. Meaning after all is a participle, not just a gerund. You have to participate. Our meaning is our doing, is our intention, is how we live. You can't look for meaning outside yourself, though other people may inspire or mirror - you have to mean it.

Under Between

Under the weather

watching the flag stream

from its pole

the clouds break and gather

the sun find chinks

to shine through.

Another day

melts the clock's stiff hands,

the butter in the airless kitchen

losing its edges

shining hopelessly

under its lid.

You get up in the night

to look at your diary

to remember which days

you are between,

to fill in the blanks

that threaten.

Teaching

Up to my ears in human factors, situational awareness, mental models, error chains and red flags. Why so much jargon for 'people make mistakes, get distracted, don't notice obvious things, make assumptions... one thing leads to another, and there are warning signs when things are going wrong'?

PS I hate Powerpoint

All

All that there is

the wind in the chimney

my feet in my slippers

all that there is

darkness settling

round the shoulders of night

all that there is

the last but one song I heard

the taste of peppermint tea

all that there is

my hands

my chair

the ticking clock

my heart

Missing

When I'm dead I'll miss this rain

that blows horizontal over the fields,

and tipping my head back

to pour the last drop of wine

into my mouth, meeting the taste

of cheddar cheese and water biscuit

on my tongue. The strange thought

of alcohol entering my bloodstream

altering my brain chemistry

as it warms my scalp and blurs my mind.

My cold bones will miss my body.

Work In Progress

My head feels full. The school has asked me to stay on after the completion of my trial period, and I am pleased about this. And two sessions may extend to three at some stage. A secondary school is not the easiest environment to work in, but I've made my little quiet space in the midst of the hurly burly, and have enjoyed the work with the kids so far, and will be starting with a new one next week, another after half term, when my current young client goes on study leave for GCSEs. This week I have had two adult referrals for counselling/ therapy in my private practice. The only one to date never showed up, so I am hoping this time I'm going to get off the blocks with this part of my work. The work at the university is challenging, and comes with a big 'do not blog about this' label attached, since I have already mentioned where and what department. Certainly there is much to learn, and these slightly older young people are interesting and likeable too.

With all of this going on, I don't seem to have much head space for creativity. Poetry continues to whisper and suggest. All I really need is to make some space, get out the notebook and pen and let happen. Maybe this weekend, since I have no major plans. A walk with a friend tomorrow, a walk with L today if the rain eases, a very short one if it doesn't. Next weekend I'm off to visit my Ma for the first time in a while, as the Census prevented me from going away at weekends for over a month, and now we're waiting for the French Open to be on, so we can do our favourite companionable mother-daughter thing of watching tennis together. I shall also see my aunt and uncle while I'm there, which is a rare treat these days.

The allotment's doing splendidly with calabrese, beetroot and spring onions now romping away, the potatoes beginning to show a few leaves, the broad beans surviving well and flowering like mad despite the pea and bean weevil, the savoy cabbages getting quite big now, and the strawberries flowering promisingly, rhubarb growing great big pink muscular stalks.

We watched Inside The Human Body on the i-Player last night. Despite such gimmickery as the blue sperm and the rugby players looking competitively at theirs wriggling about on a big screen in Trafalgar Square, the awesomeness of human conception and birth shone through. The tiny tiny chance of ever becoming a fertilised egg at all, of ever making it to become a viable human foetus, of ever starting on this so very strange adventure at all.

Butterfly

Not many words just now. New beginnings and transitions with the spring. Mulling. I enjoy the rain that comes to damp down the dust and tinder dry moorland where wild fires have been rolling. I sense the nearness of poetry, but like that word on the tip of your tongue, or a butterfly, can't catch it. I am not chasing, will wait quietly.

Howl

The boiler at our other house has already cost us more money than I care to think about, and our local plumber has now given up. Today the boiler company are charging us an arm and a leg to get it going again, and L is down at the house now attending the engineer, as our tenant is currently away (fortunately as it turns out, since it's taking so long to sort it). After this chapter is concluded, I'll head off for my penultimate round of Census collecting. I shall be so happy to finish tomorrow. I am truly grateful for the opportunity to earn some regular money for a few weeks, but knocking on doors becomes wearisome after a time, especially when they are the same doors over and over again. The wind has been making the job awkward these last couple of days too, threatening to wrest my sheets of addresses from my clipboard, and whirling my hair into a charming 'hedge backwards' look.

I am not good at occupying myself in odd little interim chunks of time like this one. I can't make a nice cup of tea or coffee, as one of my Census routines has been a kind of nil by mouth strategy for a few hours before going out, to avoid the need for a toilet, since there are no public ones in the vicinity. I am struggling to get into anything much with the prevailing feeling of just wanting to get my last two Census shifts over and done. Then comes Wednesday, when I return to the school, and Friday when I make my teaching debut at the university. Even though it is quite a laid-back course, and the content not overly challenging, I am still nervous. I am not by any means a teacher. I've done training with volunteers - quite a lot of that really, so I'm not afraid of standing up and talking to a group of people. But medical students are an unknown quantity. I have at least met them, and on the whole liked them.

I went to see Howl on Thursday. I loved it, though the critics have not been overly kind. Imagine making a film of a poem - how audacious! Some of the animated sequences which accompany the section by section reading of the poem, were a bit silly, but I kind of got into them as it went along. And the other strands - the young Ginsberg reading Howl for the first time in a club; the only slightly older Ginsberg being interviewed about the poem and the creative process; and the obscenity trial which followed the poem's publication - all worked beautifully. Interesting, moving, inspiring. And the poem was indeed the star of the show, raw visionary rant that it is, full of wildness, flight and the sheer joy of language.