A bit of nonsense

Strange what just falls out of my head sometimes. This is just a little something, totally undiluted and raw:

Light tingles spread across my arm and the smell of rain assaults my senses before I even feel the first drop. The dark purple bruises travel fast across the darkening sky all light reduced to a tiny shaft of brilliance caressing the leaves of the trees around me. I am standing alone amongst nature. We are in communion. The clouds pass over me, sending me into darkness and on to the rain. The first fat drop falls, barely caressing my cheek before tumbling to my chest to weave a meandering course on my skin and easing under the cotton barrier of my top. Others follow on until they have beaten down their predecessors leaving my body cloaked in slick moisture. My clothes desperately cling wet from the onslaught. The smell is overpowering now in my little patch of green and I welcome it. I am laughing as the lightening begins to strike. The energy it releases hits like a tidal wave. It is absorbed by earth and the air. Too much power for one living thing to possess, it has destroyed an oak in my forest. Vengeful flames lick at the air, cursing the water pounding at its soul. With this power the world is mine if I wished it. The power and the glory ripe for the taking. I will not take it. I do not wish to be consumed. I will just stand guard until my time is ended.

shivers

I'm just listening to some music and thought I'd check back in. The last week has been quite weird. I've kept coming on here thinking I would post something but kept drawing a blank. I found myself with nothing to say. Maybe I did but not something I was ready to write down.

Sometimes writing down what's on your mind feels so final. Thoughts are just thoughts until they are written down and then they're just out there, stark, open and vulnerable. Words can be a very frightening thing. They can express emotions and thoughts that we perhaps try to hide. Once they are verbalized they exist in a way they didn't within your head.

Facing them written down is enlightening but also incredibly scary. perhaps my head is a darker place than I would like it to be, maybe things aren't good. I've always been a fairly positive person, telling myself there is a way to do everything, a way to talk myself out of any bad situation.

I guess my own arguments are sounding a little thin these days, because it takes may take just one person to exist but you need more than one person to make a real life.

So I think it is time I headed out of my life for one inside my head and got a real one. How do I do that? I guess I've forgotten along the way, time to relearn.

reading

Recently I've been rereading a book I read a few years ago. Most of it I had forgotten and it has been good to rediscover a story I enjoyed in the past. I'm nearing the end now and have been reluctant to pick it up and read.

I know some of the events that happen at the end of the book and find myself unable to read them. I know one of the main characters die and that some bad things happen towards the end. Obviously things all work out apart from the one death I've mentioned but I can't seem to make myself read it.

I feel like I don't want to read it, which is ridiculous as I know I like the story. I wonder what is it that makes us shy away from sadness sometimes even when we know it is make believe. A good story can make us experience a whole range of emotions and sometimes we seek these things out, but what makes it resonate so deeply.

It's strange how the lives of people who never existed can touch us more than those who populate our own little worlds.

I think I might leave the book for a day or two and try again.

Hmm, a bit deep for me...

An Angel told me he wasn't holding his breath,
that some people just walk past the sign
for deliverance on their way to the supermarket.

My Angel says ignorance is not my excuse
I'm already a lost cause and there's only so many
times he'll hit me over the head with the sign.

Angel doesn't know I can always see it
never thought my blindness deliberate
or that I choose to walk away from salvation.


Just typed this straight into the computer and was a little surprised. Any thoughts welcome.

Loneliness

So for the past couple of weeks I've not really felt right. I can't really explain the uneasy feeling I've been walking around with. It was made all the more strange because I couldn't identify it. It was an alien feeling to me and not being able to compartmentalize this feeling disturbed me.

If you've read any of my previous blogs or have known me at any stage of my life you'll understand why. I am a control freak and don't deal well with my own emotions. They are identified, labelled and then stored away, hopefully never to resurface in a form more harmful than the co-ordinating of my underwear.

It hit me today as I sat restlessly watching tv what the emotion I've been grappling with is. Like a bolt from the blue I knew my problem and why I had not realized earlier.

I am lonely.

I have never been lonely before. It's hard to believe but it's true. I have managed to get to the ripe old age of 27 without ever being lonely. Its a very strange and alien concept for me to wrap my head around and throws into confusion the future I have long had in mind for myself (crazy cat lady).

I wondered why I had never felt this feeling before. There are times in my life where I have felt so alone and isolated but even in my darkest moments I wasn't lonely. I guess the answer is an easy one. I never let myself feel lonely before. I made my life so reliant on only myself that the thought that I could need something from another person that I couldn't provide for myself was impossible.

Now I have let that mindset go a little. I allow others to help. I think this is why I am lonely because I know I don't have everything I need. That I need more.

I'm not sure who is more sad, me back then or me now.

Leda

And lastly, this is the second to last poem I wrote before the barren years.



Leda


The distant hum of wings whistles through the water.

Minute droplets of acidic fear fall on her bare flesh
And refuse to burn away the blood
spattered on his pristine white feather breast.

His claws are rampant in the struggle for his prey.

The grotesque beating melody effaces
my eardrums as the sea ebbs away
from the majestic swan in triumphal stand.

Stirred by the gentle moans of the retreating surf

the bird takes flight leaving the figure still
swaying to the beat of wing on flesh,
a trickle of red on her ankle sinking in the sand.

Journey to Eden

Moving on through the years this is me at 19. Slightly less Emo.


Journey to Eden

Softly, Softly
on the cold stone floor
feet exposed to the harsh
abrasive surface
that nature created
and man carved.

Gently, gently
across the dew ridden grass
that clings desperately
to the sanctuary
of the creviced sole
hardened with cold.

Careful, careful
through the thorns to Eden
the yearning of
something promised
but not yet fulfilled
revives the heart.

Lightly, lightly
on the sandy shores
dancing through the
grainy sand that runs
through my toes
my naked feet.

Still, still
with death lapping
at my vulnerable feet
enticing me for a dip
maybe just
for a little while.

Conversations with my 16 year old self cont...

Savage Man


The world is turning
spinning on the axis of the mind
orbiting the heart
like a hunter circles its prey
waiting to savagely eat.
Primal instinct
runs through the veins
pumping the hunter adrenalin
as he lies in wait
for the stray young
of another man's tribe
to devour, destroy, to mutilate.

Conversations with my 16 year old self

So today i was looking through some old poems I wrote when I was young and hormonal. Thought I'd share a few with you.

Shades of Me

Endless shades of grey engulf the subconscious
blurred at the edges, devoid of clarity
Rainy in my heart, stormy in my soul
A million shades of grey that entrap the spirit.

Sparkles of moonbeam that shoot through the dull
so many shades of rainbow fighting
so little light battles and succeeds
A million shades of moonbeam hold the keys.

Searching for my purple haze on the horizon
never coming, waiting feels like forever
wind blows through my mind and soul
A million shades of purple haze is my hope

Endless shades of confusion in my conscious
Conflicting thoughts in heart and in head
whirling like tornadoes, hurricanes
A million shades of grey on my stormy sea

A million shades of me.


I know, I never realized quite how emo I was back then and this is by no means the most depressing!

Tracing Happiness

Curve of the lip and spark in the eye,
vague crinkle between mouth and nose,
a brief dazzle of pearl.

A carbon copy of a true emotion
does nothing to the original.

Not There

Ancient echoes tell me that you’re leaving
The walls leak shadows of hungry eyes
searching for words that choke in my throat.
The world waits impatiently

in the hollow of the silence as
feelings topple inward and seal the mourning
of the loss of what was never there.
So rings the timeless chime of life ill spent.



So this is my first poem in about 4 years. So bizarre that it came off the back of my last post. It is literally a first draft but thought it might as well go up as can't believe I wrote it. My poetry has been blocked for a long time.

Today I wondering whether I take enough risks. I suppose I've always been a very cautious person, not wanting to commit to something without being sure of the outcome. I have been accused of over-thinking things and Ive never bothered to deny it. Just recently, however, I have started to think about the things I could be missing out on by sticking to my regimented way of thinking.

I'm not saying I never take risks but they are rare. The biggest risk would have to have been my college course, which sounds a little sad now I think of it. The battle with myself that I went through just to show up to the interview was bad enough. My hands were shaking and my mind was blank except for the fear coursing through my veins. Self-doubt plagued me but that wasn't the main reason for the panic I felt.

I sat on a bench outside the building I was to enter, clutching a portfolio of work which the majority of I had never let another person read. I was about to hand over something that was incredibly private for somebody else to scrutinize. I was not there because I thought I had talent or because my work work was remarkable in any way. I was there because I loved making it.

In the deepest darkest moments of my life, when I just wanted to curl up and die, when I thought my world was empty of anything worth holding onto I could sit down and release all the hurt and the pain. Other times I would just escape into the world in my head and live in a place full of so much more than I possessed in reality.

The works in my hand were the products of my sanctuary and so close to my heart that I resisted letting them go. I didn't know what awaited them and myself on the inside of that building and it made me want to run as far away from it as possible.

But I didn't.

It was the bravest decision I have ever made and not just because I opened myself up to be judged but because I had no idea what the outcome would be. Would I be able to do the same again? That I don't know. Now I am a little more battered and bruised and also a little more open and vulnerable.

I would never have guessed that day sat on the bench where I would be now, 5 years later. I started a process that day that has slowly removed personal barriers that I didn't know needed to be removed. I am a better person for it but I am also much more cautious.

My decisions effect me more than they used to and risks become greater now. I wonder whether it has prevented me taking the risks needed to really live my life. I told myself after that day that I would risk more and think less but it didn't really pan out that way. The worst affected area I think is my artwork. My art can be good but it is not extraordinary and I think the only way it'll ever get there is if I put myself on the line.

I want be that person walking into the unknown whose willing to show herself to the world. Just to say "This is me deal with it".

Will it happen?

We'll see...