Guilt
The piano eyes me accusingly,
A blank page is spread invitingly,
Blue skies beckon longingly,
My radio sits silently,
And all the while the menacing clock's tick tocks.
Lost
Lost as the list that the wind
Whipped from a hand
And dropped
in a puddle.
That the author,
In a foreign land,
Holds in their mind,
Repeating and repeating,
Until it becomes a song.
Home
My hat on the finial,
Shoes on the rack,
Coats on the hooks,
Your scarf on the chair.
A stray hair,
That mug you bought us for Christmas,
My father's pen,
A row of books all mixed up,
Chosen words,
The silence of your absence,
The sound of your key in the lock,
The one you love waiting,
Taking stock.
Cinema 2
Blinking in the sunlight
The afternoon is blurred.
Behind us, lives another world,
Another story;
Magic lantern lit our faces,
Flicked us with its repetition,
Leaving us to wonder
As the lights come up.
Home
House
Your black faced stone,
Roughly dressed and dusted
in coveted smoke.
makes me sad to see you.
Taken from another place,
another not too distant time,
Heavy history transported,
Dismantled then rebuilt.
Dense with stories and breath,
You weighed the trailer down.
The builder took you away,
Furtive like, contraband.
-
Autumn's end - haiku series and poems
From the balcony
Burning brush paints Autumn’s hues
Church bell sounds the hourRunning out at night
Moon and Jupiter gleaming
The two old friends meet
Watching clouds go by
Leaves fly high then softly fall
Somewhere the geese call
Emptying my change
Autumn leaves begin to curl
A magpie’s harsh cry
It comes over me
Like dejas vu I feel sick
Hello Autumn
October lingers,
Shimmering in her red, gold and green,
November waits
on a cold grey stone,
His blood stained poppies restless
in their beds.
Learning to Speak. First Words.
Son
Your first word was Ahhhh ! which you would say whilst pointing up to the centre of the ceiling of any room whenever we entered one together. Sometimes you were pointing to the light that was on, sometimes to one that was not, and sometimes because it was missing, you thought, in which case, you would search until it was found, your body swaying back in my arm, your arm stretched out, waiting to point at the right place.
I can't remember how long it took me to tell you the common name for it. My first child, I oscillated between teaching you what I thought I knew and what I imagined you should know, and letting you show me the nature of things, through your unencumbered eyes.
So I think the big light, as your little sister decided to call it, was always Ahhhhhhhh !!!!!! between us and perhaps you've never named it anything else since inside your own mind because it's always there in the back of mine.
Daughter
Your first word came long after your gestures and shouts. I worried it was because you were deaf but didn't want you tested properly because I wondered if the grommets so popular as a remedy for slow response to sound in small children those days might interfere with the natural development of your actual inherent capacity and potential, if that makes any sense to you at all. Let it suffice to say that I was prepared to be patient and it paid off luckily - one day the blast of a plane overhead whilst we were at the top of the garden playing together startled you so severely I wondered if it had jogged your brain into paying attention to sound. You ran, terrified, inside and I had to coax you out over the next few days with games and lollies and lots of reassurance. Soon, you too would mooooo as well as point whenever a cow came down to the wall and moooooon also would escape your lips when we went in search of her appearance every early evening when Dada came home.
Addressing some thoughts upon dress.
I live in a Northern mill town. I've lived here forty years but I don't come from round here. I know and am surrounded by the history of the place but it's not my history. Generations of my family didn't build this place, nor are their bones resting in the local graveyards. The weather and the landscape has got into me over the years, I've planted trees and scattered seeds, my future might live on here, but the old history will never be mine.
When my son was very small, I had to take him to the eye clinic regularly. The waiting room was mainly full of elderly people, alot of whom were brought in by the day ambulance and had to wait until everyone else on their route had been seen before they could go home.
On one of these visits, I was sat next to an elderly lady who began chunnering about something or other rather grumpily. I couldn't hear her properly, she was obviously just talking to herself, but I got her gist when I caught the phrase ' she's probably ugly as sin ' and at the same time noticed a woman standing at the reception screen wearing a burka who seemed to be having some difficulty making herself understood.
I was at once struck by the beauty of the highly embroidered garment but also the ominousness of the grille which provoked many connotations of combat and imprisonment within me. I began to feel both sorry and frustrated that the woman appeared to be having difficulty making herself understood.
I looked down at my son, sitting beside me and he too was transfixed by the lady waiting at reception.
I could tell that the receptionist was not making much effort to understand the lady in the burka and this was drawing the attention of everyone else in the waiting room.
The old lady next to me continued to chunner and folded her hands I felt rather smugly over her ample stomach. I shot her a look I hoped might feel like daggers and stood up, taking my child over to the play area. He didn't usually like those areas because children often behaved in rough ways that disturbed and confused him, but I found a book and we sat for a while together trying to extract some respite and joy from its ragged, sticky pages until it was our turn to be seen.
I never asked my son about that incident, but years later we did have a rather heated discussion about my dislike of women covering their heads and faces. I confessed to him that I feared it exacerbated the already existing and annoying perceived hierarchy among women determined by how we dress. Clearly upset and shocked by my opinion, no doubt taking it personally though I didn't mean it that way, he retorted that I should give men some credit for having brains of their own, which pleased and amused me.
Yesterday, as I watched brave women in Iran burning their headdresses, I was put in mind of the bra burning symbolism which arose out of the civil rights movements in the sixties. Perhaps every town should have a regular trash can event when we can all stand and throw things away that we feel symbolise oppression in our troubled societies.
🍃🍃
Child
I take your hand
carefully
gently
firmly
and you flinch momentarily,
You don't like to be led.
You're not mine,
But it's my work to show you,
Some way,
The way to walk.
Nothing's ours she said,
Everything's borrowed,
Time,
Our children.
Try to love what's good,
That's all.
I don't know where my mother got her ideas.
Films I think
These things stick,
Like
I'll always be with you.
I find myself believing
In these borrowed things
These days
More and more.
Rainbow
Searching for words
which might not be
the tricoloured rainbow
fanned itself out
7, maybe 8 colours now dance
across our sky.
What are their names ?
They live elsewhere too.
My narrow lexicon
impoverished our view.
Searching for words which
may not be
within my narrow lexicon
the tricoloured rainbow
fanning itself out
now 7 maybe 8
or 9
colours dancing
some without names
coming in and out of view.
Carmine how could we
Alizarin I loved you
Yet soon the sap green spread
its leaves and tints the gaping stain.
It's not an antidote,
Nor equal opposite;
Insufficient tension lies between
to counteract the grief.
Viridian wouldn't hack it either;
Colour of fairytales
It fails to break the spell.
Then cerulean blue breaks through,
Containing dreams
through which the light will filter
onto the cadmium streaked and studded fields.
How bright they shine.
All the way up
To the horizon.
Twin
We learn from our first breaths,
Our mother's milk, given or denied,
The things we were blessed,
Plus those we learned to go without.
Do we even search for things we never knew ?
This space within,
Some say it could be our twin,
I feel the wind blow through,
I felt it first long, long ago,
An eye to see through.
I am here
to be or not to be
Is this a true question
whether or not be
true not true
Truth is not weather
Weather is always changing itself
Don't ask it about the truth
How to be
How not to be
Don't question such fine weather
On this beautiful morning
Bask in sunshine
The light
living within
never dies though it dims
Sometimes in the midst of sorrow
is pain
pain burns
Consumes us for some time then wanes
As dusk falls within us
Hope's cool breeze sparks
our light
The Arts
There's an art to everything she was saying and I understood the words, they rang true, of course they did, but I just didn't get it. Not yet. I was 18, sat in a lecture hall filled with mainly female students studying to become nurses and occupational therapists, listening to a ( very old, probably in her seventies ) psychiatrist explaining something through a personal anecdote about her own mother looking after the home, laying the table, decorating a cake etc and enjoying these things as a creative act thus finding her life fulfilling. Presumably.
I see that now. I saw it partly then because my own mother was the same, decorating the house, baking, making clothes and fancy dress costumes for us. Making the fruit and veg her husband, our father, grew into delicious dishes. Clothes and cakes, beautiful sweaters from complicated patterns, spreading the often inadequate earnings so dextrously we hardly noticed the weeks it wouldn't reach. It didn't prevent her having terrible outbursts for no apparent reason to us or going into long, dark depressions which left us all, or me at least, feeling guilt ridden and sad.
Everyone was creative in our house. Dad set a bench up in the garage and made things from wood, projects described in The Woodworker's magazine monthly, a bathroom stool, a pair of bookends, a tool box. Later he went on to make exquisitely detailed replicas of old carts, toys for his grandchildren and bowls on a lathe. For now, he also created nail and string pictures at work, probably with a mind to sell them, all the men in his quality control department at Fords would make things when there was some down time and sold them to whoever would buy them in the factory. My brother made wonderful go-carts as a young boy and then mobile disco decks in his teens. He hired himself out as a mobile disco for parties and weddings and made decks for mates to do the same. I sewed, cooked, baked, helped in the garden, made soft toys, drew, painted and decorated my bedroom with leaves and plants, poems and pictures. The whole house buzzed with the life of us.
So I understood a version of what the psychiatrist was saying, even at that age and stage of my life, but, here was the but; I wondered, why were we listening to the, albeit wise, lovely and experienced, thoughts from a retired psychiatrist. A retired person. Why, when we attended anatomy lectures were we expected to glean understanding from the overly-pickled dismembered specimens brandished from afar as we sat high up in the rising seats of the university lecture hall. Were we expected to. What was it we were expected to know and understand. What were we expected to be able to understand. It all felt like the surface skim of knowledge being passed on to us, the overly let down juice that would be given to a toddler. Something inside of me, from my own direct experience, knew there were hidden depths to people, to life, which I was not being invited nor expected to understand. Everything was being simplified, obscured, conveyed in some simplistic way from a long way off, having decayed and altered with the degradation of time. Of course, this is my analysis from here, at the long end of time too, a clearer view because I understand now why that felt so wrong, so inadequate.
🍃
My whole family imagined that being an occupational therapist would be a ladylike and acceptable career for someone like me, who they perceived to be a caring and conscientious person, capable of being of some use to society but not someone they envisaged getting her hands too dirty in an occupation such as nursing. OT was a fairly modern kind of therapy then, an adjunct to physiotherapy and one they hoped would stand me in good stead, make me independent, a well paid job I could do in and around having a family.
The all women OT college was like a finishing school for lower middle class and working class girls like me. Most of us lived at home and those who didn't had digs or rooms within the school which was housed in two large lovely late victorian buildings on the outskirts of the city, in short, it was a very sheltered existence. My first work placement was in the busy Royal university teaching hospital in central Liverpool. There I met some of the patients who would remain in my memory even until now, over forty years later. The first, a couple, a husband who had suffered a stroke who I would spend a long time helping to get dressed each day, time through which we would laugh and struggle together, he, patient with my lack of experience, me, patient because I was full of admiration for his good natured fortitude, and his wife, who had suffered a heart attack, was on a different ward, more acute, who I only got to know because this lovely man, her husband, asked me to take a message to her. She was very poorly and on the first day I went to see her I went home completely devastated by their situation.
Another day I was assigned the task of helping a young Asian man, who'd recently had one leg amputated, to negotiate the seemingly insurmountable task of using the toilet. He was in such a huge amount of pain and distress he was apparently unabashed about a young female assisting him, but I felt bad enough for both of us as I helped him work out how to balance.
Then there was the young woman around my own age who had suffered a stroke and lost her ability to speak. Her aphasia, luckily, made her laugh more than it frustrated her and her prognosis was good I was told; youth, general health, being treated early enough etc etc. Nevertheless, I worried for her future and sometimes struggled to hold back tears when talking with her.
There were others and more who would come later in other hospitals I was placed in. Some whose conditions and prognoses haunt me still from time to time, victims of fire, major accidents in the workplace, road traffic accidents. One day of each of those person's lives transformed the rest of their lives in ways they could never have envisaged.
I took my people and my worries for them home with me but never discussed them with anyone. When I finally moved into a house with some fellow students, we rarely discussed the people we met in hospital placements, our conversations being usually about bills, food, cleaning, exams, boyfriends and things we were doing outside of college, not patients, except sometimes when we were helping each other revise conditions and anatomy, we might briefly refer to someone we'd encountered on a ward and such was the understanding of the shared experience, we spoke very little beyond the basics of the implications.
And it all felt wrong.
But I just couldn't put my finger on it at that time.
The day I started a new work placement in the art therapy department of a notorious local psychiatric hospital I began to see what was wrong. For me.
The art therapy department felt wonderful to me. At a remote end of the dark, imposing victorian establishment, the painted brick walls in this room without windows were covered in patients' art. I wandered in and took it all in with growing wonder and a shiver of delight. I poked my head in the open door of the art therapist's office and, the thin, besuited figure twizzling in the office chair ushered me in enthusiastically. We had a long, animated discussion about art and how it liberated the mind. I felt rather out of my depth but considered that appropriate since I knew nothing about art therapy. Art had been my favourite subject next to English I confessed to the erudite interviewer. I told him about travelling to Liverpool or London once a month to visit galleries and the sort of art that I loved. He listened with intense interest. I'd never talked like this to anyone before. I was revealing even to myself, the profound impression certain works of art had made on me, some of them religious and I found myself explaining that it wasn't the subject matter that moved me so much as the devotion of the artist to their work, which surprised me and animated him.
He suddenly went off at a different tangent, confiding in me his thoughts about the electricity which he said was running right under our feet and up the walls. He then stood up to show me that he was wearing wellies for safety. I felt only mild surprise, I was, after all, in a totally new situation so was open to most anything.
In my memory, it was at this exact point that the art therapist entered the room. A large, lumbering Tom Bombadil kind of a man, smiling, gesticulating for the other thin, besuited man to leave the room and offering me a cup of tea, like an apology.
The time I spent in this department changed my whole life's arc. I found it quite painful to watch some of the work that went on, for example, when the art therapist would bring in a patient who was emerging from a state of catatonia, and help them choose a postcard to copy. Some patients would absorb themselves for days in this seemingly laborious task and it filled me with a kind of terror that I didn't understand until much later in life. Sometimes people would produce amazing work to look at. For some of them, art was a truly therapeutic release of inner turmoil and confusion and they had a great aptitude for illuminating what was going on inside. The besuited thin man who had greeted me on arrival was one of those people. I hoped he would be able to live as an artist and show his work, but for now, this strange place, truly a place of asylum, seemed to be enough for him.
🍃🍃
As an OT student, I was being trained to assess and assist patients in making things like rope woven stools. In the outpatients department of a general hospital, this was deemed quite useful as a therapy specifically for those people who had suffered hand or finger injuries as it helped to improve dexterity and strength in the hands and fingers and for those recovering from other injuries, it was a gentle introduction to a work-like task and a good start to re-building stamina. In the psychiatric department, I suppose they would have been considered therapeutic in various different ways; a pleasant distraction that had a creative point; creating a useful and aesthetically pleasing object which accounted for one's time, perhaps giving some sense of fulfilment, a reminder of the joy of achievement. OT training involved developing skills in alot of such creative, work-like activities which combined mind and body and could be adapted for various needs and abilities and stages of recovery.
It became obvious to me during my time in the psychiatric hospital that it was states of mind which interested me personally, though not exclusively. I was all too well aware of how the two affected each other through personal experience of being frequently ill, being insomniac, becoming anorexic and through members of my family dealing with physical illness and disability like my beloved nana who became crippled with arthritis and also became depressed and mute as she got old, sadly the long-term effect of the toll that war-time took on her whole being.
But I didn't want to do work I felt at that point was superficial.
I understand the potential values better now than I did then but if I ever come across one of those stools, on eBay or in a second hand shop, they still make me shudder.
🍃🍃🍃
A few years and quite alot of happy struggle later found me doing a fine art degree and sharing a flat in Moss Side, Manchester with my musician boyfriend. We had very little income and were subletting the flat from a friend who also had very little income and so most of the floors of this generously sized flat were bare. One morning, my boyfriend got up to go to the bathroom for a wee. I woke to his loud howl and he came running, gingerly, in bare feet across the wooden floor boards back to bed complaining loudly of how he'd just got an electric shock from the toilet. It wasn't the last time this would happen and a few weeks later, electricians were walking around our flat with heavy insulated boots on searching for the fault. I donned my wellies.
🍃🍃🍃🍃
The arc of my life ;
May's flowers
Lily-of-the-valley
May's flower Convallaria majalis May Bells, Our Lady's tears, Mary's tears, Apollinaris, Glovewort.
A well known and loved scent, described by perfumers as spicy, green, sweet and lemony, it's been used over centuries in perfumes.
An old French tradition was to give nosegays of lily the valley to the one you love and admire on the first day of May.
Said to have been discovered by Apollo, it's poisonous to animals and humans, but is used in a herbal remedy for sore hands.
Hawthorn
(Crataegus)
Named after the month in which it blooms and a sign that spring is turning to summer. The pale green leaves of this hedgerow staple are often the first to appear in spring, with an explosion of pretty blossom in May. It simply teems with wildlife from bugs to birds.
The generic epithet, Crataegus, is derived from the Greek kratos "strength" because of the great strength of the wood and akis "sharp", referring to the thorns of some species. The name haw, originally an Old English term for hedge (from the Anglo-Saxon term haguthorn, "a fence with thorns"), also applies to the fruit.
The generic epithet, Crataegus, is derived from the Greek kratos "strength" because of the great strength of the wood and akis "sharp", referring to the thorns of some species. The name haw, originally an Old English term for hedge (from the Anglo-Saxon term haguthorn, "a fence with thorns"), also applies to the fruit.
Hawthorn symbolises hope and great happiness.
There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.
Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts. . . .in act 4, scene 5 of hamlet, Ophelia in her madness names plants that were known for their capacity to ease pain, particularly inwardly felt pain. For example, the other names
Cameo
There she sits, hands and feet in the stocks, long blond hair streaming in the wind, her mouth set as if she is grinding her teeth rather than smiling. A once in a lifetime photo opportunity. Looking at it in her viewfinder from the small end of time's telescope, the onlooker creates a perfect triangle, a relationship completed by being seen.
Mai's Flower
🍃
I thought about you being called Mai, though you were born right at the end of May and really you are early summer's child, not spring's, nevertheless, Lily you are, or Rose, though I chose other names for you, they are your protection, handed down through our generations in order that you can know who you are and feel the strength of those who bore you forth, but here is your true nature; the delicacy of the Lily's flowers, with the strength of her full glossy leaves and her connection to a strong rhizomatous root system. Sweetly perfumed, a delight for all who come across you, and so also, rose-like, your beauty refined, your passions running deep. Your life with those running seams of beauty emerging from that deep.
My daughter and me and the compassion of midwives.
Late spring 1996 in the UK, my youngest child is due and I'm finding it quite stressful trying to work out the logistics of arranging for my son to be looked after whilst I'm in hospital. The mother of his best pal agrees to help, but I'm on edge about it, it's a big ask. I'm trying not to be anxious, I know it's bad for my baby, but I have very few people nearby to rely on and I feel I need a backup but I can't decide who to ask. I walk my son home from nursery in the company of another pregnant mum also near the end of her term and she tells me she's going to try cleaning windows to bring labour on. That sounds a bit dangerous to me but she assures me it would only work if the baby was ready. I'm sceptical, I'm not going to try anything that may put my baby's health in jeopardy, but then I make the terrible mistake of going on a tractor ride whilst on a Sunday day out at a local park. Bumping up and down in the trailer, I try to laugh but I know it's too vehement for my body and my baby and sure enough it triggers a false alarm, which is actually quite useful because the friend's mum comes up trumps and her prompt response puts me a tiny bit more at ease.
It's inevitably in the middle of the night, counting the diminishing minutes between contractions, that I decide I really should go into hospital. My son opens sleepy eyes when I tell him the baby is going to be born and says ' this is the best day of my life ' surprising me, delighting me, my heart explodes with happiness and suddenly I'm looking forward to the birth.
My daughter is born too fast after a well meaning midwife breaks my waters with something that resembles a knitting needle. I've got it into my head that I want to kneel up and the midwife, onlyrecently having returned to the job after a career break, tells me she's never delivered a baby that way before could I lie on my back so she can see baby's head, but I can't move. I'm firm in my resolve that no-one can help me move onto my back, so the midwife breaks her code of behaviour and uses her fingers to feel around my vagina and she's happy to feel the baby's head crowning. She's using some kind of gel and it feels amazing. A temporary relief from agony. At the very last moment I let myself be lowered onto my back and my daughter is born, shocked and cold. The midwife places her on my tummy with the cord still intact and I can feel it pumping. The cord is cut and tied. My baby is given back to me, unswaddled. I gaze at her every detail. She is so beautiful, long and slim, unperturbed, I feel elated, detached, yet a little unsettled. I try putting her to my breast but she doesn't respond. She's looking at me, her beautiful bright blue eyes are stunning, I'm mesmerised, so it takes me an age to realise she's a little too unresponsive.
The midwife has disappeared. I say to my husband, she's cold. I try to cuddle her but I'm cold too. Soon a doctor arrives in the doorway with a broad smile. She is very calm and says this is normal. Baby is just a little shocked. All we need to do is to keep her warm. She will recover. Then disappears, leaving me, half naked, with my naked, cold newborn, unresponsive baby girl.
This is the NHS, late nineties in a medium sized hospital maternity ward in a medium sized town in the North of England. I'm in here because I'm considered too great a risk to have my baby at home because I'm old ( over 30 ) and my first baby had to be delivered by forceps - which wouldn't have been the case had the people looking after me advised that I had an episiotomy much earlier in the proceedings. Apparently I'd written in my birth plan that I'd rather not have one and even though I'd been18 hours in labour, no-one thought to advise me that I really should under these circumstances. This time, I'm in the GP unit and I'm not quite sure what this means, except I'm expecting less intervention by doctors and more midwifery led care. Looking back on this experience nearly 26 years later, it seems ok, for the most part, but that's because it had a good outcome for me and my baby.
My healthy baby girl is eventually wrapped in a baby blanket and taken to the special care baby unit. I'm being wiped down rather vigorously with rough paper towels by an auxiliary nurse who keeps asking me lots of questions about where my baby has gone and why so I'm on the verge of hysteria when I'm wheeled to a private room, a kind policy and provision for women who've had complications during labour. There isn't anything wrong with me. I haven't had to have an episiotomy this time and my placenta was delivered whole apparently, but I'm shaking uncontrollably as the shock of the whole experience kicks in. My husband has gone home to check on our son and spread the good news.
I'm alone with my thoughts.
I've been told I mustn't get out of bed yet, so I call the midwife to ask if I can be taken to see my baby girl in the special care baby unit. I'm anxious to see her and feed her my colostrum. No-one comes. I can hear a lot of caffufle outside. Equipment seems to be being wheeled down the corridor and a lot of people are speaking in loud whispers to each other. I realise there must be some kind of emergency so I don't press the bell again. A very loud alarm suddenly sounds outside and I can hear people running. Panic rises within me and I press the alarm. Eventually, an auxiliary nurse enters the room and tells me there's an emergency but a midwife will be with me soon. I feel embarrassed but when the midwife eventually appears, an elderly lady with a strange ruff around her neck, she is calm and reassuring. I apologise for bothering her and she is adamant that I'm not being a nuisance, telling me that my needs are important and she'll get someone to wheel me up to see my baby as soon as someone's available.
By now, it's late at night and I'm feeling very adrift. My anxiety about whether my daughter is ok becomes unmanageable and I get out of bed and begin a slow, arduous journey up to the special care baby unit, which as apparently situated several light years away from the maternity ward. When I get there, many heavy steps later, the unit is calm, quiet and dimly lit. Two nurses are quietly at their work, taking care of these special babies. I find mine immediately. She's quiet and content in a plastic container, no lid, nor is she hooked up to any machine. My relief is overwhelming. One of the nurses, a male, smiles across the room at me. He asks if I want to do her cares, it's about time. I reply I feel a bit weak to stand any more but I'd like to try to feed her. He comes and gently changes her nappy. She doesn't fret. When I finally put her to my breast, she suckles eagerly and my breasts become engorged with delight.
I'm very reluctant to put her down again, but the nurse persuades me I need to rest if I'm to be at all useful. He kindly sends for someone to wheel me back to my room, but I soon sneak out to ring my poor husband in the middle of the night and tell him I've held her and fed her and she's ok. I hadn't even thought about the time, such was my elation, so I'm surprised he doesn't sound quite as excited as I feel. let the sleepy head go back to bed and return to mine to think of names and naming, the chain of ancestors, the women who made me. My whole being is buzzing.
I learn later that day how a woman in a room further down the corridor from mine died that night. I don't know if her baby survived. For many of us, birth is the closest we get to death in our lives. Giving birth and being born is a liminal stage when we teeter on the brink and carrying a growing child and giving birth is possibly amongst some of the hardest, most dangerous work some of us will ever do, not a fight, but a battle, certainly. A wrestling match with life and death.
Today, nearing 26 years later, I'm seeing it through the telescopic lens of time. I remember the doctor smiling at me in the doorway, waving her hand and saying, don't worry, the baby is just shocked, birth came too quickly for her, where I come from, we would just swaddle her, then she left me and my baby, both of us in shock, me trying to warm my baby up but feeling so cold myself.
I think now that, unbeknown to me, I was being left to bond with my baby, to let us feel and inspect each other. In retrospect, this was a well managed birth and the trauma for me lies within the separation from and worry about my baby's health. It's easy for me to see now that my feelings of guilt about going on the monster tractor so close to my due date marred what should have been a particularly uplifting experience for me.
I sometimes think of the woman who died that night and how the midwives' and nurses' care and compassion sowed the seed for my understanding of how our own sorrows, our own life, our own needs, count, even in the midst of the heavier sorrows and needs of the world.
∞∞
ANOTHER TIME
Time I scoff at your relentless tick tock
for what do you signify ?
The passing of trains,
Planes to catch,
Or some other appointment in your
O! so certain future.
As for my life,
It will not be measured by a mechanism.
Each grain of me passes through
so easily
and I am piled
then dissipated
spread wide upon a widening shore
to lose myself inside each wave,
Each wave that sifts me pure.
Should I Get Old
Should I get old I'll wear
a pinny with a pocket and I'll put
a paper packet
full of coconut mushrooms
in there.
My twinkling eye will smile
all the while you speak
and if you pause for thought
I'll rustle my packet
and let you pick one out.
Sea in me
Nevermore than 84
Miles and miles to the sea
A change in the light
opens a sky in my mind
and there is that church
the brow of that hill
will present the vista
how I've missed ya
your sound, your rhythmic surge
the Eb n' Flo of your laughter
seagulls whooping hooray
never go away
Always return to the sea.
New Lexicon
Weltschmerz - World-pain - in reference to the world
World weariness - in reference to the self
Coined by Jean Paul in his novel Selina, published in 1827
A deep sadness about the state of being alive
That physical reality cannot satisfy the cravings of the mind
The Deutsches Wörterbuch by the Brothers Grimm defines it as a deep sadness
about the insufficiency of the world.
Uht-cearu - from the old English
Early morning care
the worries that gather as one lies sleepless before dawn
cf Swedish - vargtimmen/wolf time
pronounced; oot-chair-oo
tchotchke - A Jewish American word, widely used, especially in New York, borrowed fromYiddish and
originally from Slavic.
Little treasures
Bric-a-brac
Trinket
Nicknack
Bauble
Memento
Schoures - Scots word, other, very old, variations are; (c)hour,
s(c)howr(e),
schure
schouer
s(c)hower
-ir
schuar
sure
scour
scurvier
Meanings and related meanings range from a downfall ( of hail or rain, or snow or sleet ) a
light fall of rain, wintry, to
harsh, ugly, or mild, beneficial and a source of beauty to
a conflict, an attack of pain, labour pains.
Syntropy - From Greek syn=together, tropos=tendency. It was first coined by the mathematician Luigi Fantappiè, in 1941, in order to describe the mathematical properties of the advanced waves solution of the Klein-Gordon equation which unites Quantum Mechanics with Special Relativity. As noted by Viterbo, syntropy is "the tendency towards energy concentration, order, organization and life" (http://www.syntropy.org/). In contradistinction to "entropy," syntropy is a result of retrocausality leading to persistent and more complex organization. This is akin to the concept of dissipative structures developed by Ilya Prigogine, expostulated in Order Out of Chaos, by Prigogine & Stengers (1984). Buckminster Fuller developed a definition in relation to "whole systems" as "A tendency towards order and symmetrical combinations, designs of ever more advantageous and orderly patterns. Evolutionary cooperation. Anti-entropy" (http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Syntropy).
' A tendency towards order,
symmetrical combinations,
designs of ever more advantageous and orderly patterns.
Evolutionary cooperation.
Anti-entropy '
In psychology; ' a wholesome association with others '
In anatomy ; ' a formation of a series of similar parts having the same orientation ' eg ribs.
In pathology ; ' the coalescence of two diseases into one '
In physics ; The Law of syntropy states that in a converging universe, energy is constantly absorbed from the environment. Syntropy is the magnitude by which we measure the concentration of energy and the increase of syntropy is irreversible.
Entropy - Breakup, collapse, decay, decline.
A scientific concept describing a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty.
Cóiste Bodhar. - Death Coach
Mana - From Melanesian and Polynesian mythology, mana is a supernatural force which permeates the
universe. Anyone and anything can possess this force.
In Hawaiian and Tahitian mythology, mana is a spiritual energy and healing power which can exist in places, objects and persons. Hawaiians believe that mana may be gained or lost by actions, and Hawaiians and Tahitians believe that mana is both external and internal. - from Wikipedia.
I
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)