I am sat at my broken-toothed laptop now, trying to tap my way through sticky keys for love of this blog, all while singing and swaying shakily along to Helplessness Blues. I am suddenly - though perhaps more gradually than I ever realised - a teenager again. Having trudged through torrents of obnoxious, youthful years that seemed to pour down so mercilessly, so endlessly, I find I am right back there again.
I shake both head and body, wondering with quiet mirth what God must see when He looks down at this young old fool. Is this the cycle of growth? Am I now squinting closely at the millimetres as they move up in slow motion to find light, where once my faraway eyes only saw nothing nothing nothing and then suddenly - it was always so suddenly - green springs from dead earth. Oh little me, was the earth ever dead. I'm glad at least now, grateful for being shaken awake to bear witness.
So, other than to bend my mind back and forth between my youth and my age - to revel in how I'm reliving morsels of it with a hopeful and hopefully wiser head - what did I slink into this neglected corner to do? I came to tell you that I am, in fact, doing. Besides this present spot of writing and editing some poems I've been working on in the dark, I am taking in and spitting back out all the pure old forms of creation (social media, I'm afraid, really is a cesspit of regurgitated anxiety whose upchuckers would probably do significantly better being wrung through therapy before coming onto the internet to 'journal'... speaking as one who has partaken in the sick farce, I don't count whatever bilious matter I myself have in past or preset projected - or will in future project - upon that stage. obvs).
IN THE MAKING
My pottery class is progressing well - at the halfway mark, I had already thrown three pretty little vessels at the wheel, two of whom may survive the fortifying fires of Max's kiln. Max is my brilliant teacher, by the way. I've also finally taken to the hand building kit Sam bought for me last Christmas and have pinched and prodded into existence a decorative tile for some unwitting relative to receive this festive period... my parents always love being tortured with the burden of my "art" so perhaps they can have it.
What else, dear digital diary. I've been drawing a little, lubricating my creaky creative hands some more ahead of our art collective's next exhibition (a proper one, at a stately-ish home in London, not just at the school again). The theme of my own submission is 'how does your garden grow'. Currently: dead for winter - and you know how much I adore depicting dead things.
I took a great leap on the art front recently and submitted some works to a local arts festival. Well, would you know it, they accepted my humble pieces! Pavements, Altars and Swans (not their legal names) will be dotted about amongst the Great Makers of Wycombe! I couldn't be more giddy at the idea of showing my 'stuff' as I affectionately call them. (O ghost of Pompey, begone!)
Speaking of exhibiting myself, I'm currently contemplating letting some of that aforementioned poetry out of the dark shadow of this blog's drafting pit and seeing if I can get published (under mine own name!) somewhere... we'll see how many years of rejection this one takes.
We drift along to the other arts - particularly music and literature - which I've been buoyed along by lately. On these, I am most content to report that I've swallowed whole some new and old favourites quite hungrily. I have also booked myself onto some exhibitions (there are always a few irresistible ones about town this time of year), an opera and a ballet (!) but we'll report back on those another time.
Book-wise, I finished The Sea, The Sea by Murdoch and want every young person on this Isle to read it so they know a bit of what's in store for them come retirement... jokes aside, it is of course so much more than that. Read more here, as they say. I'm almost done with Anna Karenina and I adore every page of it so far. I've started on a contemporary author that I borrowed from the library for the sole purpose of proving I'm not a white geriatric classist trapped in the body of a fun young black woman. Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. I think I'm warming to it but I can't tell for certain.
Musically speaking, I alluded earlier to the sweet sullen voices lulling me to rest. The folk giants of my romantic youth have returned to tramp the earth this autumn - my favourite season, so no better time for it. Fleet Foxes, Laura Marling, The Tallest Man on Earth, First Aid Kit, Hozier, even The Lumineers and Mumford & Sons... all the old stuff of course, I'm no heathen. Oh but their voices, so earnest so raw etc. Like that bit nearly two minutes into 'The Shrine', moments before it crosses over into 'The Argument', where he nearly screams 'sunlight passing over me / no matter what I do'. Oh oh oh, you've gotta listen to this.
What else, what else. We've talked of art, of poetry, literature and music. Those are the main pillars that uphold my faithful life. But I've not been completely open with you. The one thing truly pinning my joyfully weary frame up is the heap of grace that's been lavished all over me. I'd be utterly, criminally deceitful if I did not say how much God has been working in and on and through me. It's almost ineffable - for once, I can't think of quite the right words to place around this shrine. Shall we just call it, then, with a simple 'Amen'? Amen.
Yes, I do believe that sometimes a good life, however long it lasts, is just as simple as choosing pure Love. No matter what. Every day you find yourself waking up, hold your heavy arms out for it, and hold on tight when it comes.
Goodnight.