City

The city is strange with droves of dark-clad people

assembled outside buildings, in car parks.

Sullen sky reflects in the puddles of recent rain.

Sirens streak the air and a silent ambulance

drives away blue lights flashing.

You climb aboard a train and sit down.

A woman unable to open the doors

swears in two languages.

People stand on the platform

hopeful, shut out, while

the carriages are coupled with a jolt.

You are leaving the city,

racing a tram for a moment,

passing graffiti-covered brick walls,

trees fiery with dying leaves,

tower blocks, signal gantries.

Head

Having five jobs is doing my head in, and I am trying to learn not to worry about A, but no success there. Well, maybe a little. Because the worry-space in my head is only so big, and mostly during the week it's full of work-related this and that, except at 4 or 5 am when it is full on a rotational basis of jobs 1-5 and A. And my tax return, my mother, my poverty etc etc.

So, Merlot and the wood burner. And no I'm not at the writing event (see previous post and comments) and I'm not writing. Well, I'm blogging in a rather self-pitying manner and drinking Merlot. So. And L is at her book group discussing The Long Song by Andrea Levy.

I wish I could say something more positive than that.

The Road To Hell?

So many good intentions about writing more here, and here we are Friday and it's almost been a week... But I must must tell you about the wonderful reading at our local library on Wednesday night with Jackie Kay who is quite without doubt one of my favourite poets, authors, women, lesbians, human beings EVER. She read a number of extracts from her Memoir Red Dust Road, in which she goes to Nigeria to meet her birth father for the first time in her forties, having tracked him down (easily) on Google. She performs with humour and tenderness, with energy and impact. She makes you laugh even while you feel keenly the pain or poignancy of the moment - her father is a religious fanatic and sees her, his illegitimate daughter, as tainted, sullied by a sin from which he has long ago been cleansed. She makes his praying and dancing, his exhortations for her to accept Jesus into marvellous theatre, whilst never letting us lose touch with the hurt, the disappointment, the sheer emotional intensity of this encounter. And she reads chillingly the section where a young fascist aims racist abuse at her on a London tube platform, and then hits her (white) friend who tries to intervene. Jackie asks a business man with briefcase and raincoat if he isn't going to do something and he replies No, we support them. Her willingness to be so open about this very personally painful incident (in which she ended up feeling guilty about her friend's injury) in order to expose and explore the horrifying mystery of racism is brave, moving, enlightening. She also read a few poems (more would have been wondrous, but she gave her all so no complaining), and answered many audience questions with great attention, thoughtfulness and clarity. She's also incredibly funny, very warm, down to earth and utterly inspiring to me as a writer, about how one can use one's life experience as material for writing, memoir or poetry, the delicacy of judgement involved in negotiating relationships with living friends and family when writing about them, the personal and creative importance of the process. OK, I could go on, but I can't, because now I am sleep-deprived at the end of a long week, and having got up at six with only a few hours sleep in the bank to go and teach my medical students. Which went well, I'm happy to say and let us hope I will sleep in future weeks as this is very hard on the body and mind. Fortunately I only teach in the morning, and the crash only comes in the afternoon - about now in fact!! The Point about Jackie Kay though, is the inspiration. And this Sunday there's an event in town called Not For The Faint Hearted, billed as

the writing workshop that will put you on the spot... You have no choice - you have to write poems or short stories for a set amount of time and you HAVE TO perform them... Yes, we're scared too. Who knows what will happen? It's an exercise in writing with adrenaline and driving out those pesky inner whining critics for an evening.

What do you think readers? It is currently my intention to go.

Nocturne

A ladder in front of me, a roaring fire behind.

Now and then, now and then comes a fool such as I.

L throws little granules on the floor

and keeps marching up and down the room.

The smell of wood smoke. A vase of garden flowers.

Use it or lose. The writing muscle atrophies.

A car draws up along the road, red indicator light

winking in the early dusk. The clouds descend

lower over the moors, over the fields.

Why not write? Why not reflect? Why not try?

The wedge-shaped log burns with slender tongues

of orange flame licking over its edges.

Writing is keeping myself company

without it I grow lonely, empty, dull.

Nobody else can say what I say.

I say all the flower stalks are tangled underwater,

I say flowers in October are a joyful thing.

I say maybe everything's gonna be alright.

Mother myself, support myself, believe in myself.

The elder tree so cold and green, the wind blowing

back its leaves like the feathers of a stranded bird.

I can't remember why I came in this room, says L.

I can't remember why I came in this world.

The bus drives past, the legend Old Town B glowing

above the driver's head, windscreen wipers

smoothing away raindrops, like stick insect mothers.

Mixed

Want to say something not sure what. Life is very full, very rich, very hard ... to mix a string of metaphors. I'm busy, and my head and heart are full. It is an intense time with a lot to digest. It does not easily yield its pleasures and joys, though they are nonetheless there, waiting to be prised out of the ground. Specifically? Work is a strange dance with many movements, and takes me well out of the proverbial comfort zone several times a week. Especially tomorrow when I start with my first group of medical students. Deep breaths and Sauvignon blanc (tonight the Sauv, the deep breaths both now and then!) And A is going through storms, with his feet on the ground and his face forward, wet with rain and tears. And I am here at the end of a phone, firmly tied by heart-strings, and going down to see him and hug him in a couple of weeks.

The fire glows gloriously red in the wood burner, the wind intense in its urgent whisperings, today a symphony of hail and rain, sun and rainbows.

Show And Tell

So here I am in my life and I wish I could show it to you. Because it's so like yours and in other ways so different, and I know, because this is one of the ways we're alike, that you find that interesting. The similarities, the differences. I'll show you my kitchen, where I can just hear the wind in the flue, newly installed for the woodburning stove. On the chair is my mat with my gradually wearing out healthy back bag. I'm just back from my Feldenkrais class, where we lifted and lowered our pelvises in different orientations, lying and kneeling. Where I somehow shed the anxiety that had plagued me all day, and began to breathe more deeply, and ended up with my feet on the ground. Where I thought how amazing it is that I've been doing this class faithfully for maybe six years now, while a changing cast of classmates has come and gone, returned, departed. How committed I can be when something is right.

On the table a small vase of sweet peas from the garden. How the bright spotlights over in the cooking area cast funny long shadows on the cupboards, shadows of the door knobs which are unpainted wood. The inch of white wine in the bottom of a bottle of Sauvignon, brought to dinner by friends on Friday, and not, inexplicably, finished, then or since. A honey and sunflower loaf defrosting for me to take to my poets' meeting tomorrow, where we never normally have lunch, but this time plan to, to accommodate the host's changed schedule for the day. She will make soup, I will bring bread, and brie from Lidl, where we went today and bought fizzy water, tinned tomatoes, apple juice and Mr Choc caramel and biscuit bars, over which purchase we had much debate... but still bought them in the end. My credit card bill, the unfinished sudoku from Saturday's Guardian, a book about neuroscience research and therapy that I'm trying to get back to after a gap of a few months. A pile of papers, notebooks, folder relating to one of my jobs, my diary on top on the little four legged stool we use as a coffee table.

While outside autumn slowly devours the tail end of summer, breathing warmly, chasing bright leaves scratchily along the road.

All is well.

Look Out

Indian summer is giving way slowly to the inevitable march of autumn, the sky subdued today, a little more wind picking up, a gradual drop in the temperature. The unseasonable heat has been a little confusing to body and mind, whilst certainly delightful and welcome after the disappointing summer. Sun cream in October - when did that happen before? 1985 I read somewhere, but I certainly don't remember if so.