More Scars

Four on my face.


                                                     Down the middle,

                                                     Starting at the top,

                                                 
                                                     On the bridge of my nose,

                                                slightly to my right side,

                                                     Hardly visible now, though fingers

                                                     can feel the ridge of it's healed edge,

                                                     It was a flap lifted by the metal catch

                                                     of the boot door as it slammed down

                                                     One day last summer when I was

                                                     feeling quite out of it,

And unable to judge my place

                       in

                                                                                             

                                                                                       space.


                                               
                                                    I can't remember now whether the bee

                                                    had already stung or would sting me afterwards,

                                         further over on the right cheek
                                                 
                                          on the bone,

                                                    Causing a cone of venom to drain

                                                       down  nearly to my jaw, the

                                                         brown stain of it visible,

                                                           After the swollen

                                                            angry redness

                                                                of    it
                                         
                                                                finally



                                                           s u b s i d e d.

       
                                                 
                                                Tracing the memory, I think the bee stung first,

                                                   Because I remember the afternoon it struck;

                                                 
                                                    I was feeling well, bought a new blue dress

                                                    like the periwinkle or a bluebell I was thinking,

                                                   And the day was warm, quite sunny,
               
                                                   So I sat outside beside my son reading,

                                                   Happy to chat, ( studying can be such
     
                                                   a lonely occupation ) and felt relaxed for the first time

                                                   after months of tension over all the things

                                                   life's tsunami thrashes into us sometimes,

                                                   Especially after fifty.


                                                   I remember in the dreamy warmth of the

                                                   shaded spot, seeing

                                                    that dark shadow looming into view and

                                                    clouding

                                                   The vision in my                      left eye

                                                   As I felt the delicate

                                                   Brush of an insect's wings or feet, who

                                                   could tell in the split second before I leapt,

                                                  Out of my chair and screeched at the sharp

                                                  Stab of the startled bee.


                                                 Well I may have hurt it as I brushed

                                                 it away from my face.

                                                 It flew away with the same heavy frenzy

                                                 it had approached, but when I stood in front

                                                 of my bathroom mirror and saw the thorn

                                                 of its sting sticking out of my already reddening

                                                cheek, I knew the insect would surely die,

                                                and felt another stab,

                                                This time of sorrow for its loss.


                                                We worry about bees now,

                                                And also,


 I'd become quite sick of loss.

 I know that seems a selfish notion to have,

 In my position,

 With so many blessings as those

 around would picture me

 surrounded by.



               (I, like a tree in a beautiful wood,

               with all the attendant flora and fauna,

           
              Or a stone in a pond,

              where creatures come to rest,

              sun warmed, rain drenched, wind worn,

              Resting,

              Waiting,

              Witness.


                                           
Yet no metaphor on its own is whole,

Transubstantiation,

Transmutation,

Certainly transformation,

is necessary for that,

and so,

dissecting the tree,

the stone that is me,

you find a space,

an airy gape,

the space of loss

that I'm coming to realise

is common.


It's hidden,

Which is strange for something

that feels so large and empty.

You'd think its   yawning               e  m   p    t     i      n       e        s         s

would be apparent

to anyone who looks.



It's eye-shaped.

Maybe a slash opening up.

A gash into reality,

Or some version of it.)



There is no visible mark that I can point to

on my cheek to illustrate the effect

that the bee had on me.

Perhaps the cone shape

of it's venom's trail,

revealing the lymph channel

in my cheek, will reappear

with the sunshine

this year.


I wait to see.


For now, there is nothing

but a round red patch, smallish,

remnant of something else,

Sleepless nights

Crying

Too much alcohol or

Worry and stress,

They all take their toll

on our epidermis,

To name but one part.


The heart bears the most brunt,

It's most susceptible to life's nuances.



People have sometimes complimented me on my skin,

How nice and smooth it is they've said,

How translucent and delicate they've exclaimed,

But,

It's beginning to tell the truth

about my age

and all the things

that have left their mark.

Scars,

Little signs,

Of life's events;

Time's telling tales on me.






                                                To return to the centre;

                                     
                                                Under my nose;

                                                A very old scar,

                                                Faded now to two

                                                white lines,

                                             They used to embarrass me

                                          in my teens when some would tease

                                     and say they looked a bit like faint trails

                                    of snot not wiped from my piggy nostrils.



                                               Two silvery threads,

                                               faint shadows where

                                              stitches had been put in

                                              about aged 4 or 5

                                              to stem the flow

                                           of blood that streamed

                                        when I fell onto the sideboard,

                                       Playing my game of wrestling

                                      that mimicked the drama on the telly,

                                      One Saturday afternoon.




                                                 It's funny,

                                     Though not laugh out loud so,


                                  I can still remember it now,

                                  Although I know

                                  that the original memory has faded

                                  and what remains in my mind

                                 is a mixture of images,

                                 Some of the furniture,

                                 The room I could draw you

                                  a detailed picture of,

                                  And details

                                  Like how I had the washing tongs

                                  wedged open around my waist,

                                  And what on earth that had to do with

                                  wrestling we'll never know,

                                  The thoughts and logic of the young child's mind

                                  make no sense to the adult brain,

                                  Even if it is housed in the same skull.



                                 Other details I know are from the tale

                                 told and re-told by my family,

                                 Each member to another when

                                 accounting for my injury.

                                 A lot of guilt and angry arguments

                                 about who let her and where did she get

                                 and why on earth and so on until,

                                 their words became my images,

                                 taking their place in my own memory,

                                To fill in those gaps that were

                                 probably lost under the trauma,

                                 And pain of hitting the wooden edge

                                 of the sideboard,

                                 Aged 4 or 5,

                                 One Saturday afternoon

                                 as I jumped along the line of cushions

                                 put out specially so as to soften my fall

                                 as I leapt along,

                                 The washing tongs around my waist.



                                Bizarre little child.

                                Why must she be so wild ?

                                Why weren't you watching her ?

                               


                                I think I may have knocked myself out.

                                It's a funny place just under your nose

                                and I know it needed stitches because

                                the evidence is still there.

                                They left their mark.



                                 The puzzle of it is,

                                 The thing that brings me back,

                                 Thinking about the memory,

                                 Is this ;
 
                                 I know I was in the front room,

                                 That the wrestling was on the telly

                                 behind me,

                                 Someone watching,

                                 My uncle certainly,

                                Maybe my aunty as well because I know she liked it,



                                But,

                                I also know that


                                 the sideboard was in the dining room,

                                And I can see its bevelled heavy dark wooden edge

                                as it rises up towards me

                                falling into its ornately carved door,

                                Then bam,

                                The memory ends.





Therefore,

It would appear that,

I was in a different room,

When I fell,

And the memory of the game,

Has been tacked on,

Stitched together,

Like the skin under my nose.







                                                      Down from my nose,

                                                      The fourth,

                                                       And for now,

                                                       My final one,

                                                      ( I better touch wood;

                                                       I am a superstitious person )

                                                       Is a white vertical line on my lower lip,

                                                                                          Just to my right of the middle where

                                                                                         I split it with the corkscrew

                                                                                         two Christmases ago,

                                                        When, coming home late to cook our Christmas

                                                         dinner, I opened an expensive wine and was

                                                         surprised by the long cork suddenly giving way

                                                       so that the corkscrew leapt up to my lip,

                                                       ripping it

                                                       god, what a fool I felt and

                                                       Oh ! What an inconvenience,

                                                       I was raging with myself,

                                                       But not surprised.

                                                       It was even appropriate,

                                                      Coming at the end of an arduous day,

                                                      A Christmas day like no other.

                                                      That began so sweetly;


                                                      An exchange of gifts,

                                                      Repeating a ritual

                                                     established so long ago,

                                                     Every time different.

                                                     At last reached a point of symbolism,

                                                     Each of us enjoying the thoughts behind,

                                                     the reasons for,

                                                     the effort and insight into,

                                                     presents wrapped and unwrapped.

                                                     The smell of coffee,

                                                     Excess of chocolate,

                                                     Quiet music that should be loud,

                                                     The wonder of it all

                                                     That we should be allowed to be,

                                                      Who we've now become.

                                                      Our small unit, tightly bound by

                                                      love and care and years.


                                                      Tense magic filtering the light,

                                                       Heightened sense of delight

                                                       In every detail

                                                      like the birds in the sunny garden.



                                                      Long time coming this Christmas,

                                                      A first and last in many ways.

                                                     These public holidays mark time

                                                     for everyone,

                                                     Aided or excacerbated by the sounds

                                                     and smells and imagery,

                                                     Dependent on how you feel

                                                     in the time.

                                                     The now that is calm.

         
                                                     And it came before the storm

                                                     Because later that day

                                                     we were busy

                                                     with a mission,

                                                    So impossible it seemed,

                                                    Even on this sunny Christmas Day,

                                                    To lever the ancient one out and cart him

                                                    to the home he'd once come from.

                                                    This old man.

                                                    He'd played time.

                                                    Played enough time to see himself

                                                    Taken from the life he'd imagined

                                                    Into some fantastic future

                                                    that didn't seem to involve him at all,

                                                    In his own eyes.

     

                                                   So we set out,

                                                   The four of us,

                                                   United on our mission

                                                   To take the old man home

                                                   from home,

                                                   One last time.

                   
                                                   And right on cue,

                                                   As luck and Yorkshire weather would

                                                   have it,

                                                   The heavens opened.

                                                   The cloud burst and emptied upon

                                                    the area as the men were struggling

                                                    to bear the weight of the oldest one,

                                                    Hoping, straining, to get him home,

                                                    One last time.

                   
                                                    Inside, my daughter and I busied ourselves,

                                                    Setting out the Christmas candles,

                                                    Opening the snacks and eating them as

                                                    we poured ourselves a steadying wine,

                                                    Another first; we'd never drunk together before,

                                                    The Rubicon was allowing us to cross that day,

                                                    Then as we bustled and busied about,

                                                     Helping the old man in and plying him with beer

                                                     and pie, and snacks and cake; too much food because

                                                     that's what Christmas means to the elderly,

                                                     Behind our backs,

                                                     In another room,

                                                     The water was seeping,

                                                      Weeping through the ceiling.


                                                      All heavens had opened,

                                                      All hands on deck

                                                     required to quell the flow,

                                                    To stem the tide,

                                                    Which has so often

                                                     coincided,

                                                     collided,

                                                    To run beside,

                                                    And create a living metaphor,

                                                   A parallel problem,

                                                   A thing in itself that mirrors,

                                                   And providing in its requirements,

                                                   Perhaps some therapeutic activity.



                                                   Wear yourself out.

                                                   It's some kind of release and relief,

                                                   To return dog-tired

                                                   and fall,

                                                   Fall through the door

                                                   Into the blackening calm

                                                   of the empty house.

                                                  Turn on the lights !

                                                  It's Christmas !

                                                  Time to make dinner !

                                                  It's so late we'll call it supper.

                                                  But first, let me open

                                                  the lovely Fleuri we saved

                                                  for this moment.


                                                  The rest is history,

                                                  I cut my lip.

                                                  And sat in silence,

                                                 Holding the napkin in

                                                 Semi-darkness wondering,

                                                 If it would ever stop,

                                                 This leaking of fluids everywhere.





                                                 Well the answer was no,

                                                 Probably not because

                                                 the next day we woke

                                                 to the strange sight,

                                                 Of the river down below,

                                                 Meandering, winding its way

                                                 and spilling like an inquisitive

                                                 lout,

                                                 Over walls and into playing fields,

                                                 Canal and River busting their banks

                                                 And joining ranks to flood the fields

                                                 and footpaths then onto the roads beyond.



                                                 We stood and watched in shocked silence,

                                                 Understanding by the look of it all that

                                                 The landscape irrevocably changed.



                                               


 
                                                 
                                                 
         







             





                                                 

                     


             

                                                   





































               








         



                         

                 




                                               

                                                   
                         
                                                   

                                                   
             
                                                   
                                                 

                                                   

Scars

One on each ring finger.

                                                                                             One on the right hand where,

                                                                                             It got trapped in the door jamb aged 4

                                                                                             the day my mother slammed it in anger

                                                                                             but told the nurse at the hospital that

                                                                                             it had been the wind and I wondered

                                                                                             if that was another name for an argument.

                                                                                           
       
This is a long story, but I'll remember it to you because it has many important aspects to it, for me, and perhaps some will resonate with you too.

At least, it may pass the time.


We lived in a sweet little council house, 3 up, 3 down, with a garden back and front made into 2 Paradises by my Dad. I lived there with him, my Mum, brother, Nana and Uncle. Another uncle would come back from time to time when his ship docked in Liverpool. He was an ex merchant sailor turned waiter on cruise liners such as the Cunard Line. To me, the house didn't feel crowded, but tempers ran high from time to time probably through close proximity and insufficient money.

On one of these occasions when my Mum was arguing, I don't know who with, I, aged 5, was hiding in the hall behind the door to the front room, listening. I must have had my fingers along the jamb because, all of a sudden, as my Mother slammed it shut, the ring finger of my right hand was trapped in it. Ouch.

I really don't remember this at all, which is unusual for me because my long term memory for events and places is detailed usually. I suspect the original memory has been replaced by the story of it told and re-told by my Mother who was eternally guilt-ridden about it.

I know that I was taken to the Royal hospital in Liverpool and that Gerry Marsden's grandad sewed the end back on, dressed it and put it in a splint for me.  (The Gerry Marsden who was the singer in Gerry and the Pacemakers who had big hits with Ferry Across the Mersey and You'll Never Walk Alone). Everyone in our house, excluding my Dad, but including me, was very much into pop music and so this was an ameliorating factor that was used to gloss over the horror of the rest of the sorry tale.


When I think about it, the end of the finger throbs a little. The nail is slightly different to the others; its bed has a raised, rounded shape and the free margin extends into a tiny square a little further down the nail bed on one side than all my other nails. It is here that you can see a slight indentation in the flesh where the top of the finger came off.  The rest of the line has become very faint, but if I press the skin above it, it feels strangely empty. Perhaps the nerve endings never quite mended.

I don't really consider it much now, except a little when I might paint my nails or try to file them evenly or in cold weather when it goes a little more numb than the others.

It's healed really well considering.  Especially considering the fact that within a few days back at school someone trod on it as I sat on the floor during story time and I had to return to the hospital to have it re-dressed. I wasn't allowed back to school after that until it was nearly healed. I forget how long that took, but I would have really enjoyed it. Perhaps the happy memory of this time has been overridden by the pain of my anxious Mother fussing over me.  One thing I do remember was how she was so zealous about it healing properly and it not leaving a scar that she took the doctor's advice to lift the newly forming nail up and out of the nail bed with an orange stick each night to the nth degree and it became an ordeal of torture for me, made more surreal and excruciating by my Nana singing "when you're smiling" in the background to drown out my cries, though she probably imagined she was trying to take my mind off it.

Whenever the whole thing was talked about, the argument was never referred to. The accident, as it surely was in any case, was blamed on a sudden gust of wind howling through the house. I liked the wind, I still do, but it did get entangled in my imagination with anger and danger and became a living entity that might perform acts of destruction both inside as well as out. Whenever it blows, it always reverberates inside of me.




On the other hand, same finger,

has a ring ridged around the top where

I ran it into the bandsaw whilst

making a small wooden sculpture

at art college aged 20.

It was a puzzle piece.

I finished it, then threw it away.

I didn't think it would be considered

sculpture.



I got quite frenetic about making this thing. I wanted to create a 3D solution to a maths problem that we had been told about by a trendy maths teacher whilst in my third year at secondary school.

Maths had become my least favourite subject. When a newly qualified, lively, female maths teacher arrived and started to talk about a different kind of maths that didn't obviously involve numbers, I, along with many of the other girls in my all girl class at our all girl grammar school, began to look forward to maths lessons, although I was always a little afraid that it was a bit of a con and maths couldn't really be this fun and interesting.

She did sometimes talk about probability and throwing die, which was complex and did involve numbers, so that salved our guilty consciences, but mostly she talked about interesting problems to do with shapes and one of these was a spacial problem to do with fitting shapes together. It involved finding out how many shapes you could draw if the only rule was that they all had to have one side touching each other. It is apparently 7. I tried many many variations of this theme, some geometric, others more organic. It was a very relaxing puzzle that I toyed with in my spare time and bore surprisingly interesting results.

Later when I opted to study sculpture at Polytechnic, I tried out many approaches to that. One day, the maths puzzle came back to me and once again I became obsessed with it and, since I was involved in making objects, extending the number 7 by creating a 3D shape, a little like a Rubik's cube was a natural progression.

I worked on it in secret because the atmosphere in the sculpture department felt combatitive, both amongst students and students and lecturers. We were always being challenged about anything we produced as if it might not be a good premise or the right approach or a satisfying result. Also, I had found myself amongst an unruly cohort who wouldn't comply with those in charge; a running theme throughout my life. I gravitate towards such people. I want to be one. We were under attack by the management for not producing proper sculpture in a traditional sense.

So, I produced many little maquets of my ideas in secret. It was difficult to find a way of thinking about it in 3D without actually producing an object, so I beavered away in a small storage room, nipping into the woodworking department to knock out rough versions on the bandsaw. They were fairly small. The finished thing was to be at most 18" square. When it came to completing the final piece, I decided to take the guard off the bandsaw which allowed me to use it for more intricate cuts. I was in quite early. I didn't want the technician to see. I worked quickly and was so engrossed that it was only the sudden spurt of blood that drew my attention to what I'd done.

Oh. What to do. I drew my sleeve over my hand. Took the wooden piece and put it in my pocket. Turned to make my retreat but the blood was of course revealing my sin. Lady Macbeth was I.

At some point, I was found out, taken, like a thief, by the wonderful technician who had assisted me so much throughout the year, to the A&E department to sit, dripping blood everywhere, in subdued silence together.

The workshop was closed for a week. I slinked in and out. attempting to make something else, perhaps a string table; the wooden puzzle hidden away with other secret vice objects in the little back cupboard I had annexed for myself to be hidden from prying criticism.


In due time, the technician forgave me and helped me make a large frame just the right size for me to stand in, based on the dimensions of my body. It was a kind of space frame, usually something imagined by an artist when making a drawing of a figure " in space ". Made out of 2"x1" pieces of wood. I painted them white and displayed it as a thing in itself in a joint exhibition with the other mavericks from my year. We covered all our work in sheets and white flour. It gave them a uniform look.

Somewhere in-between, I threw the offending puzzle piece away. It's not surprising really, though, looking back from here, quite annoying. I threw so many of the things I made away.  Partly through not having any fixed abode, but mainly through not valuing it sufficiently. Which was silly really, because I usually put a lot of thought and energy and care and time into them.

I could re-imagine them, but the thought process has moved on now, so I have to just let them go.


The two faint almost matching scars on matching fingers of each hand create a tiny electrical buzz if I press their ends together. Like the completion of an electrical circuit. There's something contained within them that can remind me of something if I care to pay attention. It's on the edge of indefinable.

Tell Me What to Do

Be strong, be firm,

Be sensible, though

the child in your arms is crying.

Set it down and walk

away.

Teach it to stand alone,

though you both feel bereft

and broken when separated.



Feel love but don't express it,

For fear of it's fragility

popping in the air of reality,

or it's magnetism making

everything cling;

all the things it touches

sticking and hanging and dragging along

beside you.

The Pied Piper of hearts.


Also;



Le mot ne doit pas être prononce,

Ne dis pas le mot,

Ne le dites pas,

Le mot non parle.


(amour)


For speaking the name of something

has the potential to

bring it fully into being,

Just sufficiently for it to

die.







There is strength in silence so

they say and you believe

in keeping your trap shut

tight when the weather

howls.

Walk away from the fight,

Try not to keep awake at night,

Keep well and keep going,

On and onwards through

the storm.


Until one day,

you come upon something.




There is your mother lying,

dead in her named coffin,

and though it is not her face

peeping out of the silk counterpane,

(was her body insufficient to be dressed),

nor is it the cartoon shape of the casket

itself

that causes you to catch your breath,

but her name.

Not Mum,  nor Mother,

but the one never called

by anyone else since baptism,

the one now, it seems,

called only once again by God

to come



and you see it

there,

reiterated,

loud in it's glaring clarity;

Her full and formal name

engraved so deeply,

into brass,

upon her lid

nearby waiting,


to cover her from view forever.


And though your thoughts are shattered

by its existence,

and you know there's no sense

in trying to rub it out,

or cover it up,

You won't

disturb her peace by crying out again

or crying outwardly at all now.


For you know no use for superfluous shows of

overflowing emotion.

Not now.





You understand she was due to die,

that we all have

a time and God will take us,

when we're ready, usually before

we expect and after

we know.

That's what you were taught,

Along with other things like





don't talk about your troubles

for life itself is only trouble;

It's hard and then you die,

for some, not all, apparently,

though I suspect it is the same

for everyone.



And :



Don't look at the meat on the plate,

It's normal for people to cut and

carve and burn the flesh of another

living being who cried

for mercy.


That's how we live.



You must:



Cut and eat and chew and swallow

and be grateful that you eat

and do not starve, like children

far away in hot and barren lands

where water dried and disappeared

like tears.


You must understand that:



All your howling and starving and

wasting the food on your plate

and the flesh on your bones won't

save the little children for

they are lost.



In this wasteland of being,

Sometimes we ask:



Tell me again what to do.

I've forgotten how to be.



And the response is always;

Nothing.

Do nothing for

there is only nothing

to be done.




As time goes by

and the nothing grows

into a vast enormous cavern

of longing and loneliness

and despair under the weight of all

the sorrow

until



Until one day,

Instead of wondering what,

what is it I can do,

In the midst of all this nothingness,

I think.


Now.


Give me the pen now,

I think I can write it how

it was,

And how I think it should be

now.

And it's bathos.

Only bathos.

And I know it,

but it's all

I can fill in the void.

Alice and Lyra - A Rambling

She yearned to feel like Alice,

But her destiny was to feel like Lyra.



Fear is the underlying impetus that drives so many people down certain paths. Fear of separation, pain, destitution, loneliness, boredom, age, and probably most of all death. Many more can be added to this list.

How wonderful it would be to treat life like an adventure through Wonderland. After all, the Earth is wonderful.

But being human, being a conscious being, requires us to respond in our lives as a social animal, with corresponding emotional responses linked to our basic underlying fears and longings. The longings seem to arise out of our wish to be free of our fears.

Locked within our bodies, our thinking mostly hidden from others, our outward version of ourselves so often seems undeveloped, incorrect in some way. Thoughts are modified for public consumption. Our visible appearance so often belies how we feel.


William Blake tells us that our understanding unfolds through our direct experience of living. Learning through reading, looking at art, watching films, listening to music, together with our daily interaction with the physical world, people and other living creatures, is how we evolve spiritually.


The doing, the living, our choices, our response to our situation, are all informed by this mix of life experience and our reflection upon it by trying to understand other perceptions of it. If we are blessed with longevity, our understanding gets more chance to evolve.



I am strongly drawn to the characters of Lewis Carroll's Alice and Philip Pullman's Lyra.


I would like to feel as Alice seems to do in her adventures, amazed, surprised and full of wonder at the often disconcerting situations she finds herself in. Here is a child's wonder, but a child who feels safe even in the midst of potential danger. Her attitude towards intimidating or hostile creatures or dangerous situations is to consider them absurd. We are soothed, along with her, by the overwhelming impression that this is all a dream and things will fade and change at any moment, that is the fundamental law of nature, even when ordinary logic or physics seem to have been suspended or warped in some way. Here is the scientist's brain, the artist's imagination, the writer's universe. Anything can happen and we respond to it with curiosity, embracing it's wonder, rather than letting it's strangeness or apparent volatility worry us. This is the ultimate " good trip ", for it is, after all, a psychadelic dream.


Discovering Lyra, I felt I knew her better. Her apparent fearlessness in the face of adversity, her strong sense of right and wrong. The way she led her gang with courage borne out of her will to do the right thing, the way they followed because of her passion and strength. She is good, but not perfect. She is wayward, rebellious, questioning, inquisitive, a tomboy, but enjoys dressing up and is entranced by beauty.

Lyra's deep attachment and love for her daemon defines a feeling inside that is incomprehensible. For my own part, I perceive it as love. Love seems to exist within us independently. We draw from it as if it was a well of water when we love others and even things or ideas, but, like the daemon who is so much a part of all the characters in The Northern Lights trilogy, love is there, within us, by our side, directing us, but also, somehow, interacting with us.

Lyra follows her destiny willingly, though sorrowfully, even to Hell and her final separation from Will, her soul-mate. She has wonderful adventures along the way. She experiences fear, discovers deep love for many others and forges unbreakable bonds with those on the same path. She sacrifices her own happiness for the greater good and for those she loves because she could not be happy otherwise. Who would not recognise this as the story arc of the life of a woman who has found her path. It may be set in another world, full of magic and unfamiliar things, but the way she feels and behaves seems familiar. She is who we aspire to be and her battles are ours. Fear may be lurking, but our destiny drives us through it.

Black is a Colour

On rainy playtime days in school,

amongst the comics and the games

of OXO and make a square from dots,

Consequences

Jig saw puzzles,

and books;

Piles and piles of books,

Were the fat, mottled chunks

of wax crayon alongside the stubs of pencils

and the wide expanse of thin, creamy

coloured slightly shiny paper

waiting to be filled

with the dreams and jokes

of us kids incarcerated in

the noise and smell of the

dirty classroom on a rainy playtime.



I would sort and sift to find

the seven colours of my rainbow,

arcing happy line after happy line

of red, orange, yellow, green, blue,

then purple;

(no indigoes or violets

in this childish box of crayons,

and anyway, I didn't know the

mnemonic at six, or seven,

or whenever time it was that

this memory relates to.)

It is so long ago now, 

I am barely there at all.

My love for drawing rainbows stayed

with me for many years,

along with a love for covering them

with a last layer of the thickest black

wax my hand could muster until

the page was completely

disguised as night,

a deep and tangible black,

with subtle hints of all the other colours hid;

because the black crayons encrusted themselves

with particles of all the other colours they had

all rubbed shoulders with).



After marvelling at the dense and subtle

screen for some time,

I would begin to scratch away the black

with a penny or a pin's head,

slowly with delight revealing the submerged

beauty of the covered rainbow.



Flakes of scraped black wax would gather

and roll and sometimes stick to the arc

of the spectrum so that the ROYGBP

became scattered with tiny black atoms

and I loved their riotous infiltration

just as much as I delighted in

uncovering the jewelled rainbow.



There it was before me;

a bow of colours arching out of

a vast expanse of glittering black,

then returning into its eternity

of possibilities.


Moment of calm

in the classroom of chaos.


Image of peace

emerging.

Returning.

Throughout life.

Stutter

I have a slight stutter.

I keep it under raps.


People I know won't know about it. My parents are long gone, along with any other family members who would remember. My brother will have forgotten. I never told anybody since.

I'd forgotten myself until a few years ago until my response to a neighbour, catching me by surprise when I was deep in thought walking down steps past his house one day, came out all funny and non-sensical, followed by the juddering, puttering, ungainly fluttering of the ensuing stream of my attempted undoing.

Unravelling.

That's what it feels like.

I should look it up really. Try and make some sense of it, because I know it's complex. It's not just about speech in a muscular sense, it's about brain processing.

My brain works very fast. Probably most peoples' do, it would be hard to compare rates, but I hazard a guess that most other peoples' work in a more orderly fashion than mine does. My brain absorbs stuff without my even knowing about it and it tends to scan the whole archive before it arrives at a thought. Or a sentence. All this at super fast broadband rate. I can feel it doing it. The chemicals have a heady effect.

But I digress, as usual.

My inner self has been scanning......






Back to stuttering.

Not to float my own boat, but just to give you the picture, I was a bright child. ( Or so I was told, frequently by doting family members. My Dad disapproved, kept his praise to the bare minimum, preferring to engage me in interesting conversations about science and meteorology, or activities like chess or gardening. He was a very wise man. )

So, an early talker and thinker was I by all accounts. I delighted my family when, at the tender age of 18 months, I had to stay in hospital for a bit and on visiting, a nurse told my mum that she'd been telling me to stop crying because there were poorly babies in there and I had replied that Lizzie was poorly too.

A sad little tale, trotted out ad-nauseum to demonstrate my brightness, but also, for my mother, tortured by not being able to stay with me, an illustration of the nurses' apparent lack of care for me. I became her little shadow for a long time after being released from hospital prison, worried by any slight separation from her and I know it caused her great pain.


Anyway.  My brain and speech were apparently functioning really well at that stage. It was going to school that seemed to initiate the havoc, probably partly as a follow on to that not wanting to be separated from my mother problem, but also because it was all too over-stimulating for me.

Everyone will have tales about what school felt like. Early school for me was about being bombarded with "learning opportunities" (it was in the sixties; there was a lot of experimentation). I could already read before I got there, thanks to my mum and other family members, so I was left on my own amongst the books for much of the day, which is where I felt most comfortable. Being dragged away to "play" with funny little bricks and sticks which I now understand as an early introduction to maths, was one of the myriad of things that had a stultifying effect on me. I felt very sorry to disappoint people, but I could not make the connection between these things and the strange hieroglyphics on the board that were apparently numbers. I quite liked the threading coloured wooden beads on a string game, although I was much more interested in the coloured patterns they made than attempting to count them and divide them up with the flimsy bits of paper marked with the same weird signs that I struggled to get much sense out of from the board. Counting was ok. Counting was a different form of labelling, it was sums I hated. They served no apparent purpose nor were they very entertaining. It drove me quite mad. I developed a recurring nightmare involving spinning, revolving numbers retreating from me then returning at high speed ominously and threateningly in a dark, soupy space that was probably the non-comprehending part of my brain. Some nights it was interspersed with the recurring nazi dream involving soldiers with guns looking for me whilst I hid in various small spaces. Being left to watch All our Yesterdays on my own and allowed to watch war films at 5 influenced my dreams.

Playing with sand didn't engage me either. We were taken to the sea-side a alot as kids, my brother and I. I enjoyed that. It was a whole experience, the anticipation, the arrival at the sudden vast expanse of space and sky, the air, the smells, the sounds, the light, the rituals; the kettle and the camping stove, the hunt for the best spot for the deckchairs, the journey down to the sea with a bucket to collect water with the stones and the shells bruising and cutting your feet, the hazards of slimy slippy seaweed and its black flies, the lurking lethal jellyfish, the snapping, chasing dogs who made you change your straight course and lose sight of where to return to .......

I digress again........

What to do with the unnaturally silky, dry sand in its tray, emptied of shells, or fag ends or bits of sanded glass or oil smears or discoveries of any other sort except for strange objects like aluminium funnels and plastic bottles so unnaturally placed on top of its sterile unfamiliar texture filled me with an anxiety that entangled itself with great boredom. It was beyond my ken. I remember a great urge to sleep. One day, I spied the rocking horse. Every day thereafter, I would hog that rocking horse. I could not be got off the rocking horse, not even for books. My mother was summoned.

Never described as a difficult child, never even really confronted face to face for any of my "aberrations", it seems, on reflection, that I was generally left to go my own sweet way, that is, until things got too far out of hand. Of course, I refused to go to school if I was not allowed to go on the rocking horse. I was told I had to share it, but I knew no-one else was as obsessed with it in the way I was. And anyway, I knew that my sense of time was quite different to everyone elses'. What they deemed as "sufficient" or "enough" was entirely different to my perception.

I can't remember how that problem was resolved.

I can, however, remember how I resolved an eating problem.

Each day in the school canteen, we were expected to eat everything on our plates, including the pudding. To say I was a bit of a faddy eater would, as you might guess, be putting it at the far end of the scale away from my particular problem. I had no appetite whatsoever for food. Full stop. Mealtimes were an annoying interruption to playing in my world and so the school canteen was a battlefield for me. I ate so little, it became a concern to the dinner ladies. I was asigned my own dinner lady. She would cheerily encourage me to eat " just another spoonful " all through the meal, until, that is, unable to contain my revulsion for semolina pudding one day, I just vomited the whole meal up over the dinner table.

I apologise for that last digression. It's an indulgence to relate it and it's not strictly relevant but I like to remember it because I felt so wonderful afterwards. No-one ever bothered trying to get me to eat again, not even my own mother, who had, prior to that, done a similar thing at home, sitting by me for hours trying to encourage me to swallow some hideously healthy concoction from sheep's brain or pig's liver or some other nutritious part of an animal she had lovingly prepared specially for me.

I was a kind, thoughtful child. I didn't like upsetting people, but I did struggle to keep them happy.


So the stuttering. I can't really remember how old I was. Perhaps 8 or 9. It was in the Autumn term and there were preparations for the Christmas nativity. I was chosen to be the narrator. I was often chosen to read because of my "nice reading voice". I'd carefully toned down my Liverpudlian, not really Scouse, accent that marked me out as different in my "woollyback" school by then. I knew I had to if I wanted to avoid being dubbed "posh"and bullied in the toilets and on the way home from school.

My mum was thrilled, of course. It was quite a task because I was asked to learn the words off by heart rather than read them. We set to each night and I learned it. I was word perfect. I managed to reiterate it perfectly at a couple of rehearsals at school until one day, I'm not sure why, my memory skipped a few lines and jumped ahead. I could hear that the sense had gone out of what I was saying and  I heard a few titters. I can't remember why it was funny because I can't remember any of the words involved now, or even the theme of the play. They were usually obscure. It was a progressive school in many respects.

This jumping ahead, skipping the sense of the words, trying to pull out some sense from the remainder of the words which had become just sounds coming out of my mouth automatically, so perfectly had I learned them off by heart, caused some part of me to halt whilst my mouth ran on and performed its function totally unaided by memory or sense. I  wonder what it sounded like. I became very detached as I sallied forth, possibly partly telligible, but probably mostly nonsensical in the usual, recognisable sense. I had become a free agent, floating in some alien world where words were random things that existed entirely separately from meaning.

The teacher supervising was undeterred, unmoved even, if only outwardly, as I remember it. I told my mother I did not want to do it any more and after a certain amount of wrangling and arguing with me, then with the teacher in charge, I was allowed to play the recorder with a couple of other friends instead which was much more fun. I can't remember which poor child was given the task to do instead of me.

I wasn't unduly bothered by the incident, or I at least managed to forget it due to the relief of being releived of the task and so, when, some time afterwards, I was asked to read a passage from a book out loud in class and my eye kept running on ahead of my speech once more, so that I had to keep repeating sentences whose middle had been skipped, then repeat words that had not come out coherently, then emphasise the first letters of words that I found my voice not even uttering, I became aware of what it was to stutter and I was extremely startled by it. I began to pause heavily with anticipation at the beginning of reading, determined to form the first sound precisely, coherently, and the more determined I became, the more the memory of how to do that eluded me.

Somehow, my conscious and unconscious had swapped places. What had been involuntary became a task that required conscious effort. What my conscious brain used to take care of i.e. the pacing of the eye, the tracking of the words, had been delegated to my wandering, meandering, whole encompassing unconscious brain that wouldn't stay focussed on one point.


At home, I briefly became an elective mute. I think I even stopped reading books. Alarmed, my mother summoned her psychological guru; her older brother, my uncle; Wall.

My uncle Wall had been my best pal up until the age of 6. We'd shared a house with him, my nana and my other uncle until we moved away across the water from Liverpool to Runcorn. He'd taught me lots of things, mainly songs, which involved remembering words of course. So, responding to my mother's cry for help, he came to stay with us a while and showed me how to train our naughty dog, Prince, to sit and stay for biscuits, attempted to help cure my insomnia by teaching me to think about relaxing each and every little muscle in my body and finally got me to sing some of our favourite duets together, like On Top of Old Smokey and Yellow Submarine. Words seemed to come out easily if attached to tunes. What a discovery ! I began to say the odd word again, music running alongside in my head.

Well maybe Christmas or Summer came and I got over it, because I can't exactly remember it being a huge apparent problem to me after that. I say apparent because, ever since the incident of nonsense with the neighbour, I have been aware that actually, my spoken memory for words is quite bad. When I speak, I often feel that the correct word has eluded me. It so often feels as if it comes out all wrong. Can I try that again and not only that;

the correct word, the most salient one, if I do find it, is often one I cannot seem to pronounce, that is, summon to the lips. It slips away into the far distant regions of the mind and if I try to chase it, I get tremendously lost. I spend a lot of time mentally running after elusive words and trying to catch my meaning before it collapses through want of support,

if that's not too abstract a description of what it's like,

to feel lost,

in a sea of language,

and thoughts.


I sound fluent most days. I might talk nonsense that sounds like some kind of sense but isn't quite the sense I meant it to have. At best, I contradict myself a lot as I oscillate between words and meaning.

Sometimes I might flounder and hesitate. The right words have defected altogether. I might say a whole stream of things that seem to come from the ether and not my own mind at all. I get into deep water. I suppose I'm always bobbing in it, except when;

I occasionally dry up.


I was given to shaking when speaking for a short time. The muscles in my neck and head became so tense they would judder with the effort it entailed.

Of course, the beginnings of all this coincided with things happening in my life that caused me some distress.

It's my personal reaction to such things I suppose.

That phase passed, thank god.  And now, nearing 60, as my fingers fly over the keyboard effortlessly - I'm so glad I learned to touch type - I can free my mind to wander and wonder and summon all the words it ever forgot or stumbled over saying.

Because I'm writing, not speaking.  And you'll never know, or suspect, I have even the slightest hint o f a speech impediment.


Would you ?

Would you ?

Nurse Moon

She saved me.

I was born with the chord around my neck.

Nurse Moon's swift action with her scissors,

cutting the chord,

gave me breath.

I breathed,

but didn't cry.

The family, gathered downstairs,

waited anxiously

for some time,

it is said.

I didn't disturb the household

for many many days to come.

Except with my uncanny

quietness,

my emotions expressed

only by weak little gestures

my tiny, strangulated cry

audible only

if you held me

very very close.