Zina Dreams

Mothers/Daughters

2012-01-31T11:00:00.002Z

I have been doing some writing and thinking about the myth of Demeter and Persephone, which has always fascinated me. As a younger woman it was Persephone's story that most haunted me. Now I find myself identifying more strongly with Demeter; after all, I have a daughter who lives roughly according to Persephone's schedule. She leaves me in September, returns in May - but fortunately spends the intervening months not with Hades but in Massachusetts. I miss her nonetheless, and to mark the passing of the midway point between her going and coming back again, I thought I would post two daughter drawings.

The first drawing was scribbled in the back of my journal. I was standing at the international arrivals gate in Heathrow among a herd of drivers from hotels and conference centres, all holding aloft their name signs. Feeling a little empty handed, I decided to make a name sign of my own. The ink was still drying when Luka emerged, tugging an enormous suitcase and with the flagging steps and bloodshot eyes of one recently released from the underworld. The man next to me - holding a sign for the Savoy - helpfully suggested that next time I make my sign before leaving for the airport.

The second drawing was done around the time of Luka's twentieth birthday - which due to the vast, cold body of water that lies between us we could not celebrate together. It is my dream of her dream.

The Elements: A 4-Week Creative Writing Course

2012-01-26T13:15:00.003Z

Ancient Sound, Paul Klee, 1925

This creative writing course will draw on the classical elements - Earth, Water, Air and Fire - as a source of inspiration.

For four weeks our group will use these elements to stimulate original and imaginative pieces of prose and poetry, working together in a supportive and collaborative environment.

The course is designed to encourage the creation of new work, and is suitable for both beginning and more experienced writers, including those who are interested in reigniting their creative writing practice.

WHEN: Thursday evenings from 7.30 to 9.00pm, beginning on 8 March, 2012, and running through 29 March.

WHERE: The Writer's Rookery, Lewes, East Sussex (a ten-minute walk from Lewes Station).

HOW MUCH: £44 for the 4-week session

WHO: A writer of fiction and poetry, I am a graduate of the MA programme in Creative Writing for Personal Development at the University of Sussex. I have developed and led creative workshops since 2002.

Please note that space is limited, so it is essential you pre-register for this course. You may do this by contacting me via email or on 07729 628427.

2012-01-26T13:15:00.000Z

This is where I will be tonight: enjoying poetry, beer and good company at the Lewes Arms!

Still awake, still fighting

2012-01-19T09:00:00.002Z

Today is the 19th day of January 2012.

It is a day I need to remember that I resolved this month to wake up and fight.

And a day to remember Morihei Ueshiba's words: Create each day anew.

Finally it is a day to go home from the office, walking into the dark and chill night air, and to spend the evening eating wasabi peas, drinking red wine, and listening to poetry at the Needlemakers with Siân.

Bunny Yoko says...

2012-01-10T13:15:00.009Z

Early January. Traditionally my time to hunker down and hibernate. Also traditionally my time for dance fever to take hold, as a way of fending off dread winter dark and cold. Things have been a bit different so far this year as I have spent the past week dog-sitting and living beside a river that is not my own. No internet, no mobile signal, but plenty of walks with Tilly and Sam along the Cuckmere. I am back home by the Ouse tomorrow, and am hoping to go out dancing tonight. And in the meantime the sun came out for an hour or so this morning and - although I sit with my back to her - Bunny Yoko has been busy sending her Wake Up and Fight chi in my direction. I appreciate this: and resolve for the rest of the month to be as elegant and determined and uncomplaining a warrior as Bunny Yoko.

Resolution 33: Wake up and fight.

2012-01-01T22:00:00.003Z

Thinking about 2012 and enjoying Woody Guthrie's New Year Resolutions for 1942 and doodling while watching Great Expectations and fondly remembering the splendour of both Siân's and Mr P's roundhouse kicks on New Year's Eve. The results of the doodling are to be seen above.

Also thinking about being determined and brave and having gumption, chutzpah and pizazz. I am relieved that the month-long writing odyssey we embarked on in December is over, and also glad that it has pitched me back into the scary realm of public writing. Things had got much too quiet on this blog, and there were several moments last autumn when I was thinking about hitting the delete button. I'm back at work tomorrow, but am resolved to keep pitching things out here without worrying too much if they fly or flounder.

So thanks to all my lovely collaborators in this particular piece of creative mischief; I hope the year 2012 proves to a wordy and wonderful one!

Day 29: The last toast

2011-12-31T10:00:00.005Z

Peter Greenaway, 'Water Wrackets', 1975

I drink to this narrow house;
to the river that sweeps our dreams
away each night;
to the Downs that hold us
in their green embrace.
I drink to the bone-white moon;
to the flint walls and twittens
of this town I call home.
And to you I raise my glass -
to your sharp profile, bright laugh.
To the warmth of your hands and heart.
To the roots, the shoot, the green flame,
the never-lasting bloom.

Day 14: My best dress

2011-12-27T22:00:00.000Z

Winter: the dress is red velvet, trimmed with French lace. In candle light it seems to glow like the embers of a dying fire. A small silk-eared Spaniel hides beneath the skirt's rustling folds. When I pull the dress over my head I inhale the scent of frankincense, balsam, wood smoke and mulled wine.

Spring: the dress is the green of a newly-minted leaf. Made of silk-lined linen, the pockets lined with moss, it exudes the smell of bluebells, rain showers, the lambing shed, dank vernal pools filled with mating frogs and toads, wild garlic.

Summer: the lawn dress is dyed the blue of a mid-summer sky, embroidered with sunflowers that turn me like a dial, following the sun's blaze across the southern sky. The pockets are full of sand, swallows, ripe strawberries, ham and cheese sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper. When I dance on the solstice the dress soughs like the wind stirring a meadow of uncut grass. It smells of hay, horses, mint.

Autumn: the dress is russet and gold, woven from soft merino wool. Falling leaves slip past the hem and drift beneath my feet. I kick my way through them as I walk into village. The pockets are lined with squirrel fur and filled with chestnuts, wet autumn gales, mugs of warm cider, a notebook - its pages blank - and a leaking fountain pen. I sit down on a fallen tree, watch the rooks tossed up like tea leaves against the pewter sky, and I begin to write.

Happy Christmas from Baba Yaga

2011-12-25T08:00:00.002Z

Day 15: Clinging to the craft

2011-12-24T20:00:00.000Z

An ink-stained index finger.
Lists of poems and stories to be written. Pages of notes. More pages of doodles.
Toenails clicking as he scampers down the hallway: I wake around mid-summer and discover the weasel of inspiration has run away with my words.
My throat is sore, voice hoarse. I sip ginger root steeped in hot water, sweetened with honey.
I write a poem to call my voice home. My voice remains down by the bridge, pouting, smoking Gauloises, flirting with the local boys, pretending not to hear me.
Words, pictures; different sides of the same coin.
Keep your writing friends close (Siân and Jenny, Moleskine notebooks, my grandfather's desk, Uniball gel pens, a hot cup of tea).
Keep your writing enemies closer (doubt, indecision, anxiety, DVD box sets, itchy feet, crochet needles, transition and change).
Whatever you have to say, get it down quick and slam the pages of your journal shut before it can slither away.
Do not let your dancing feet and fidgeting fingers make you forget why you were placed on this earth.
Write like you are 5 years old and making mud pies in your grandmother's garden.
Allow the terrier to have the last word.
The blank page is a boat; sometimes you must ship your oars and let the current carry you far out to sea.
Best write in blood; better still if the pages are also sweat and tear-stained.
Write as though you were turning over a vegetable garden or digging a grave; put your back into it.
Once the thing is grown, time to get out the secateurs and cut it right back to the ground.
Do not step on the fingers of those who have gone before you as you scramble down the ladder of writing.
Take not a torch but a guttering tea-light. It will periodically plunge you into darkness; the shadows it throws up will haunt and terrify you. This is all to the good.
Give no thought to whether you will find your way home.
Draw a map; scatter breadcrumbs; parse your sentences and diagram your plots; trace the stream to the source. It is possible that one day you will make your way out of the forest of dreams.
Feather your nest with whatever you glean, crowlike, from the dusty verge.
Pick pockets; turn over stones.
Do not lie; beware of telling the truth; do not seek to be virtuous; be kind; use your anger and fear and undiminished joy to flood your inkwell.
Watch the river; learn the lesson it is trying to teach you about ebb and flow. Do not fret if this one task takes the rest of your life.
Sleep alone.
Wear furs; wear emeralds; wear mittens; drink vodka and cranberry juice; do not be deluded into the belief that because you can write you can also sing.
Reveal as much of yourself as you can bear to; then let slip a little more.
Let your armour be a silk chemise, your spear a leaky fountain pen. Go into battle barefoot. Take caution by the scruff of its cashmere-soft neck and drop it over your balcony into the silty depths of the Ouse.

Speaking in code, 2

2011-12-23T11:00:00.000Z

From 'In the Mood for Love'

Raise your hands; allow your fingers to form the letters, flying back and forth like the shuttle on a loom, weaving words your tongue cannot fathom.

Punch in these four digits; give your mother's maiden name; your dying pet's last words; the date of your daughter's birth, inverted; the colour of the Wellington boots you lost in the November quagmire of a ploughed field between Devilsden Wood and Upper Platts.

The instructions could not be more clear, once you have unravelled them; begin with a slipknot - one that gently draws the loop of red wool tight around your throat. Chain 28: the circumference of your wrist; also, the number of steps leading up to your history professor's corner office; your age when you woke up for the first time in a decade and remembered who you were.

Hold the letter up to the mirror and the reversed writing corrects itself, the message makes itself apparent.

14 down: Daughter - stuck on Tube - has lost her handbag and is unable to call home. (10)

Day 22: Speaking in code

2011-12-22T10:00:00.000Z

In my pocket, 2

2011-12-16T16:00:00.000Z

Day 9: In my pocket

2011-12-15T18:00:00.001Z

In my pocket:
A string of amber beads, cracked and burnished;
A small book bound in calf-skin, gilt-edged,
tied with red silk cords;
a brick of black Chinese tea.

In my pocket;
an empty snail's shell;
an acorn;
a mint imperial.

In my pocket:
a grey pigeon's feather;
a tulip bulb, tissue-paper soft;
a gold ring;
my ticket home.

Day 8: An echo

2011-12-14T18:00:00.002Z

The red thread snags.

The red thread binds.

Tear loose the red thread.

Cut the red thread.

Cut loose the red thread.

Thread the red thread.

Thread and knot and tie

the red thread.

And; the red thread snags.

The red thread binds.

Tear loose the red thread.

Break the red thread.

Cut loose the red thread.

Thread the red thread.

Thread and knot and tie

the red thread.

And;

Day 6: St Nicholas - or a Gift

2011-12-12T23:00:00.003Z

The Colour of Words IX

Wosene Worke Kosrof, 2002

Words are the gift.

I treasure mine; steal yours; play both reckless spendthrift and miser; throwing them about me like confetti; stuffing them under the mattress and holding them close.

Words are the gift.

And so I string them like bunting, or minnows on a line; stir, sauté, roast and toast them; shuck them like oysters; forget them; spill them; squander them and mispronounce them.

Words are the gift.

On the pages of my journal I roll them like marbles; plant them; scatter them like breadcrumbs when I wander far from home; butter them; steep them in Barbados rum; fill my pockets with them; eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner; watch them fly south in the autumn; warm my mid-winter hands by them; play them fast and loose and for keeps.

Words are the gift and now - because I must - I spark them; toke them; knock them back with a lick of salt and a squeeze of lime; pinch them; sniff them; ride them hard; lock them up; set them free; stroke them; shake them; beat them; hoard them like dragon's gold; swallow them like pomegranate seeds; pass them on from me, to you, with love and squalor, word junkie that I am.

Here for saying

2011-12-11T19:45:00.001Z

Telling the bees, 2

Are we here, perhaps, for saying: house,
bridge, fountain, gate, jug, fruit-tree, window –
at most: column, tower......but for saying, realise,
oh, for a saying such as the things themselves
would never have profoundly said.

(Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies)

Lions, tigers, bears

2011-12-07T21:00:00.000Z

I stole this dream from someone called Jennifer. Sorry Jennifer. But when you sat and told a small group of us how a tiger came in through your open French windows, swept you into his arms and waltzed you out across the lawn - I knew there had been a terrible mistake. That dream was intended for me. It was my name on the envelope - which somehow was put through your nocturnal letterbox. And recklessly you tore it open; scattered the contents across your pillow; sank into the tiger's arms; felt the tender soft fur on the back of his neck where your left hand rested; felt his great, heavy paw on the small of your back; felt his claws graze your wrist as he took your hand; felt the tap of his tail on the back of your knees; felt the grass damp with dew under your bare feet. Tonight, I call him back - because although you have danced with him, truly he belongs to me.

Telling the bees

2011-12-05T22:00:00.003Z

This hourglass-beehive lady is only half done. I think she is also expecting a splash of colour. But as drawings and paintings take longer than words, and drawings are what appear from my pen these days more often than sentences, I thought I would post her as a work in progress. She looks slightly peeved - perhaps not happy with my decision. The bees seem to be busy and oblivious. More soon, I hope...

... And after an industrious evening painting at the kitchen table while drinking Earl Grey tea, eating wasabi peas and listening to Leonard Cohen, here she is in full bloom. She looks a little more satisfied with life, now her dress is gorgeous-stripy, though still not sure what to do with that rose she is holding. And whatever she has to tell the bees, I hope they aren't holding their breath waiting for her to spill the beans - the hourglass-beehive lady looks like one who holds tight to her secrets.

Standing behind me

2011-12-03T12:01:00.006Z

You: lifting my hair, pressing your face to the back of my neck, saying I smell like almonds, freshly ground coffee, baked yams.

My little sister: a bit too close and crowding me with eager questions. All sharp elbows and knees, skinny bones, blue eyes, the tip of her nose pink as the prawn-shaped penny sweets we buy at the Wolf Rec tuck shop. Voice as squeaky as the never-oiled chains on the swings; the ones that pinch our fingers and leave rust-red stains on our damps palms.

A crowd: the garrulous, the many-tongued, silver-tongued, the word-mongers, story-shapers. Reeking of tobacco and wood smoke, damp wool, spilt beer. Their fingers inky; the light flashing from their steel-framed glasses and the dusty rings that adorn their cramped hands. The sound of their voices; a soughing burr, the rustle of the leaves of a thousand books left outside for the wind to sift and fumble through.

A shadow: my own dark self thrown into relief against a white-washed wall. The thing I cannot lose no matter how fast I run from it. The self that in certain lights leaps stridently ahead; in others, sidles along behind me; fades, mocks, defines.

The river's source

2011-12-01T18:57:00.006Z

I did write today while sitting soggily on the bus to work. But I decided that instead of words I would rather post something I drew and painted in my journal a few days ago. Not only does it feel like just the right response to the day's prompt, but I am also enamoured of the anxious expression on the ram's face...

Reverb11 - An Open Letter

2011-12-01T07:54:00.005Z

painting by Remedios Varo

Dear Inky-Fingered Friend,

You are cordially invited to join Siân and me for a December writing challenge!

Last year I took part in something called Reverb10. It was inspiring and fun and for 31 days I did lots of writing, most of which found its way onto my blog.

This year, instead of leading Reverb11 themselves, the Reverb folk have suggested we come up with our own writing prompts and create a writing community. And so, in the seat-of-the-pants way we embark on things together, Siân and I have decided to do just that.

Reverb11 is a way of reflecting on the year that has just past, and looking forward to 2012. You can use it to both celebrate your life, but also to mourn what you have lost over the past 12 months. We've come up with a list of 31 creative prompts, which we will be posting everyday on Twitter.

If you want to join us then all you need to know is that there are no rules about word count or about whether you write just for yourself (keeping your words safe in a journal) or to share what you create on a blog. It can be as private or public an adventure as you wish.

The prompts are intended to be the catalyst for some freewriting (or drawing): they can be ignored or changed or subverted. Rebellion is positively encouraged.

Today's prompt is:

The river’s source...

Happy writing!

Rebecca and Siân
x

Hanmpf

2011-11-26T14:17:00.013Z

The writer is Tempted to believe that if she stay Hush for long enough, she will Hear something listening to.

Also, if she stay Hush for long enough, something will occur to her worth Saying.

Or that if she write in Charcoal on the back of an old manila envelope she will Write something worth reading.

In a fit of pique or hubris the writer decides to invent a new, abstract Alphabet. One in which the meaning integral to each Symbol is not fixed.

This is what comes of sitting and listening for an hour at a time to the Wind tonguing and mumbling and keening on a wire Fence.

This is what comes of walking empty handed to the Chalk crossroads. Of leaving as a Gift the only things you have in your Pocket: a broken Pencil and a crumpled Tissue.

The first Letter of the alphabet is formed from the Kink in the Minotaur's tail:

Today it is pronounced: HANMPF.

Yesterday it was a morpheme meaning: joyful movement.

Tomorrow?

Listen / See

2011-11-16T19:05:00.010Z

The writer makes excuses for not having written.

The writer says that the weasel of inspiration has run away with her words. She says that this past summer and autumn she has been all ears and eyes - listening hard and watching the seasons seep past. And she has hesitated to commit pen to paper, to place her fingers on the keyboard and punch in letters that become words and then sentences.

The writer mutters that words strung together by syntax and held against the glow of a computer screen seem to demand some kind of coherence. She claims her thoughts are triumphantly, unapologetically incoherent at this season of her life. She chooses not to yoke them or pin them down.

The writer coughs up her sleeve as she says this.

For in truth the writer is also afraid of embarrassing herself. It is safer to crochet mittens; to risk oneself on the dark of a nightclub dance floor; to spend an entire day in a summer meadow reading aloud with friends; to lie with her head on her lover's shoulder.

And it might in fact be this simple; the writer has not felt like writing. More particularly, she has not felt like being read. Instead, the writer has been content for months to listen and to look around her; to hear the stories of others; to hear the wind keen against the wire fence on the Downs; to hear an aria sung in such a way it splits her open like a nut.

The writer hopes that this quiet time has been useful, and suspects it has now become too comfortable to be useful any longer.

The writer begins to write.

Four Quarters exhibition

2011-04-21T07:54:00.006+01:00

Preparing for the Four Quarters exhibition in May means most of what I am doing is on paper right now. Siân, Johnny and I will be taking over an empty shop in Mayfield - about a mile from the piece of woodland we have spent the past year and a half visiting, writing about, and making art in and around. There will be an evening of readings, and a T.S. Eliot read-a-thon - otherwise our plans are generally as organic and formless as Parson's Wood itself.

Stitch

2011-03-23T15:11:00.005Z

I have been crocheting as much as I've been doing anything else recently. What started as a research project - a group of women in my novel were sitting in a circle knitting and crocheting, and I wanted to know what their hands were really doing - has become a minor obsession.

The gentle squeak and yarp of the crochet needle sliding between stitches; the turn of the wrist when I hook the yarn over; the thrust and parry as I pull the needle through - it is all oddly compelling. In a silent house, a ball of yarn in my lap and the fat tabby snoring beside me, stitching the odd strand of her fur into whatever I am making - I experience an intense, sideways pleasure.

Everything about the act of making myself a pair of wrist-warmers has become a writerly act: from the fact that I want these fingerless gloves to write in, to the joy in selecting the colour of the wool; from the pool of stillness I tumble into when I sit down to crochet, to the calming rhythm and the way I stitch or knit my thoughts into the yarn. I am intrigued to notice how I begin to keep these thoughts to myself. The weave holds them tight. They are acknowledged and transformed, but prevented from spilling messily into the world. The stitched-away thoughts remain mine, secrets absorbed into the warp and heft of what I am crafting.

As I crochet I reflect on the handiness and homeliness of what I am doing; the fact that focusing on the movement of my hands, the shape of the emerging pattern, is the exact antidote I apparently crave after a day working in a busy office, staring into the mind-draining glare of a computer screen. Even the crochet patterns appear to me as poetry, both on the page and as I read them out loud.

So while crocheting has taken up potential writing time, it has also rested my page and screen weary eyes. And I now understood why my little group of fictional women take such pleasure in knitting and crocheting. I can imagine why any woman, back in the days when clothes were often made at home, by hand, would relish this chore. The opportunity - perhaps rare - to sit down for a stretch. The time to sink into silence, give space to her own thoughts, to acknowledge and transform them, and then to stitch them away.

The houseguest

2011-02-12T17:00:00.007Z

I call her the Howler, Fat Tabby, Princess, La diva. Only occasionally by her given name: Amber. An older lady with issues, she has a hair-trigger temper and a finely honed set of claws. Watch out when she bares her enormous belly - it is both an invitation and a trap. Just as you sink your fingers into the softest tabby fur imaginable she will lash out, raking your hand with teeth and claws, energetically spinning her back feet and letting out an indignant squeal of protest.

The Howler likes to be fed at intervals throughout the day, and her caterwauls ring out loud when her needs are not met. She also celebrates her early morning visit to the litter tray with a bloodthirsty aria.

Being an unreconstructed, pre-Vatican 2 and pre-feminism lady, her needs are rarely met to her satisfaction and her rage with life is on permanent slow boil. She is always plotting vengeance or bemoaning her Fate.

We've been house-mates since November last year, and it looks like I will be enjoying her company for a while longer. We sit together on the sofa in a miasma of floating tabby fur and dander. The Howler yowls - a stream of consciousness song of protest and righteous indignation, something akin to Patti Smith's Piss Factory - though unlike Patti, she never made it to New York City. In mind if not in body the Howler is still stuck halfway up a lamp-post in Hailsham, singing the blues. I do my best to tune in and listen.

Light catcher, 2

2011-02-07T19:00:00.002Z

It is February! There are crocuses dotting my lawn, and the dark is barely drawing in now as I leave work. Soon I will be sitting in my garden in the sun, drinking tea and reading. And so it is probably time to come out of hibernation - although while things have been quiet on my blog, they have been busy on the pages of my journals and notebooks. I've been working on a couple of different projects quietly, almost secretively, enjoying the process but not feeling the urge to talk or write about it. Perhaps this has been in reaction to a very garrulous December, but over the past few weeks I've gladly succumbed to the urge to hush. I am only writing now with much throat-clearing and harrumphing, typing tentatively for a moment, deleting most of what I have just written, and then retyping it.

It takes me an age to lower myself into a swimming pool or wade into the ocean. Here I am again, dipping my toe into the pool of public writing. Trying not to flinch.

Hibernation

2011-01-20T18:00:00.001Z

January is the quietest month in the northern hemisphere. Everything is hibernating, buried deep, curled into itself - me included.

Mostly what I have done this month is:

*Make a New Year vision board.

* Write - working on a short story and in the pages of my journal.

*Read the always-comforting Moominland Midwinter; Emma Donoghue's excellent new book, The Room; Julian Fane's fabulous old book, Morning.

*Hunker down on the sofa with the Fat Tabby, watching films (we prefer ones with subtitles).

*Watch the bowl of hyacinths I was given at Christmas push their blunt green snouts into the light, then burst into bloom. My cottage is full of their scent; it reminds me of my grandmother; it counteracts the occasional pong of Fat Tabby-cat.

This month has been so dark and grey I could easily have retreated for the whole 31 days. Instead, work, writing and planning for the year has kept me mostly out of my pyjamas and engaged with the world. When it is dry enough I walk up onto the Downs and look down on a world drowned in fog and clouds or - if I am lucky and the day is clear - out across the tweed and corduroy of winter woods and fields stretching north.

In winter, it is essential to be outside, to draw the cold close, to breath it in. In winter it is also necessary to stoke the inner fires, not only by reading and writing, walking and dreaming, but also by dancing. So I have been dancing, too. Dancing holes in my tights as I spin and twirl, salsa and shimmy and cha-cha-cha.

When I open my windows in the morning, the chirping birds say spring is on its way; the bulbs planted in the bed beneath my kitchen window have put out green shoots since Christmas. Soon it will be Candlemas. The world is turning.

Light catcher

2011-01-06T22:34:00.005Z

A small doodle for the first week of the New Year. This is a page from my current journal. The drawing was inspired by the writing I did on my name as part of Reverb10. I often find myself drawing, doodling and writing fiction and poetry all on the same theme. If I have time over the weekend I might get out my box of paints. But for now here is the drawing as it stands - an inglorious black and white sketch, rather scruffy and unfinished.

Gift of the labyrinth, 2

2011-01-01T23:00:00.003Z

#reverb10 - Day 31

Core story. What central story is at the core of you, and how do you share it with the world? (Author: Molly O'Neill)

This is the season for cracking open nuts; for prising out the kernel and devouring the heart. Frost breaks us open, so in the darkness of winter we reveal what lies deep within. We warm ourselves by 'deep inward fires'.

My core story is that I am descending the ladder of writing. It is the knowledge that there is the air we breath and the water we must drink to live, and that the stories we spin are as essential to life as air and water. Stories are as permeating, pervasive and integral to our being.

Stories are the way through, the way inwards, the way down into ourselves. The door is blank as a sheet of unmarked paper - the entrance to the labyrinth. Words are the key. Through words and stories I found my place in the world as a small child. A book in my hand was a bird, an open window, a knife to cut an opening in the labyrinth wall.

I know my place, my path. I dare to leave my mark and I am audacious enough to call this my life's work. I descend the ladder, push open the door I find at its foot with purpose and also in holy terror.

I do not take the ladder or the labyrinth for granted.

Gift of the labyrinth

2010-12-30T19:16:00.003Z

#reverb10 - Day 30

Gift. This month, gifts and gift-giving can seem inescapable. What's the most memorable gift, tangible or emotional, you received this year? (Author: Holly Root)

I have just come back from visiting my brother-in-law in hospital. He is mighty poorly right now, though he will recover over the next few months. However, being with him for a while on the crowded, claustrophobic, chaotic hospital ward gave me a glimpse my first gift; good health. I treasure it and I do not take it for granted.

Other gifts I recognise from past twelve months include: a home, fulfilling work, writing and creative practices, friends, family, love, Luka, terriers, collaboration, the countryside of East Sussex, music, energy, freedom, France, Lewes, time alone, time to be lonely, a fabulous 40th birthday cardigan, a proper kitchen clock with a heart-beat tick-tock, good pens and notebooks, good books and ideas, contentment, self-knowledge, understanding and compassion, and the tools for self-exploration and reflection. Lots to say thank you for.

Dear future self...

2010-12-29T18:00:00.000Z

Mymble, by Tove Jansson

Imagine yourself five years from now. What advice would you give your current self for the year ahead? (#reverb10 - Day 21)

Let the future take care of itself. Don't judge yourself and your life by the conventions and aspirations of those around you. Go as you are, but more so. Everything you do, do with passion, verve, authority, joy, and enthusiasm. Live with vigour; embrace experience. Don't hold back. Show off a bit more. Demand things occasionally. Less dithering. Trust yourself and your intuition. When you say yes, say it only because you mean it. Do not be afraid to say no. Don't be afraid to say yes. Stand in our own authority. Put down roots. Be wander-lustful. Go to Italy. Get out of debt. Finish things. Really do that - especially finish the big thing that needs to be completed. Enjoy change and try not to fear it. There is no need to fear it. Embrace contradiction. Give of yourself and do not close your hands into fists or fold your arms. Give and equally be ready to receive. Love yourself and love and cherish those around you and the world you live in. Do yoga and walk every day. In 12 months time your body will thank you. Dance as often as you can. Be yourself. Learn to sing. Use your voice. You are fine exactly as you are.

Trapeze

2010-12-28T18:00:00.001Z

Everything's OK. What was the best moment that could serve as proof that everything is going to be alright? And how will you incorporate that discovery into the year ahead?
(Author: Kate Inglis)

The message 2010 has finally delivered is this: everything is okay and nothing is.

As T.S. Elliot would put it, 'all shall be well/and all manner of thing shall be well'. Which gets me a pretty long way towards where I need to be. Truly, hope is a mustard seed; fervent as terrier's loving heart; quiet as an owl on the wing; fierce and persistent as a blade of green springtime grass.

But there are also, undeniably, those times when you know that everything will not be okay. You know that you will be cast down, confounded, suffer sickness and defeat and humiliation, be alone, be so tired you cannot pull yourself to your feet. That the world might muddle on, but you will not always be its denizen. And what to do with that knowledge? How do you make that okay too?

I have carried Kate's Reverb10 prompt around in my journal for 4 days, now, trying to respond. At last, sitting in my parent's dining room with the terrier, looking out over the snow-blotched lawn and the close, grey sky, I sank deeply into an 'everything is okay' moment. Side-stepping from a place of anxiety and almost-fear, to a profound sense of contentment and acceptance. I recognised that everything was okay as it was, including the uncertainty and paradox and pain and possible dark clouds gathering just below the horizon. The morning world gleamed and was beautiful - for a moment. A moment I could not cling on to, could not grip too tightly, but must surely release, relinquish and then rediscover over and over again.

Fringe

2010-12-25T23:30:00.006Z

#reverb10 - Day 25

Photo - a present to yourself. Sift through all the photos of you from the past year. Choose one that best captures you; either who you are, or who you strive to be. Find the shot of you that is worth a thousand words. Share the image, who shot it, where, and what it best reveals about you. (Author: Tracey Clark)

This school photo was taken in my primary school classroom in 1975. The school was called Notre Dame and was run by an order of nuns. I went to there until I was about eight years old, and was fortunate enough to enjoy my first experience of school. Whenever I stumble upon this photograph I am immediately shot through by a number of conflicting feelings: envy, delight, remorse, pleasurable nostalgia, and a painful sense of loss.

My fringe shows the signs of my mother's frantic and rather inept ministrations. Inevitably on the night before school photos she would notice that my hair was hanging over my eyes, and so the scissors would come out and my mother would snip, snip, snip, chasing the ever elusive straight fringe up my forehead. The straighter the hair, the harder it is to cut evenly, the more unforgiving each frond and follicle is to the inexpertly wielded blades. I remember my mother's frown of concentration, her frustrated breathing, the maddening tickle of tiny hairs covering my face. The shock of seeing myself in the mirror after the deed was done, and the wildly sloping, arched, or crooked fringe galloping above my newly exposed eyebrows and astonished brown eyes.

Looking at my face in this photograph I see a version of myself still skirting the edges of true self-consciousness, still able to dip into the world of fantasy and selflessness inhabited by small children. I also see a self-possession and confidence that I felt as a child, and that was sorely battered during the sturm und drang of adolescence.

In this photo I see a girl who feels like herself, who knows the sound of her true voice, who is her own port in a storm. I recognise myself, sitting quietly in my own authority, hands folded in front of the Peter and Jane reading book.

There is, however, a touch of anxiety in the fold of my lips. A sternness, a sort of premonition in my steady gaze. I see the storm clouds massing, charcoal-grey, forbidding on the horizon. I might still get lost in them at times; lose my way in the darkness. This image of Rebecca-age-five is one of the small bright lights that guides me home.

Two gifts

2010-12-25T09:52:00.004Z

Waxwing in Lewes, © Audrey Jarvis, 2010

A cold and dark afternoon, the sun being behind clouds in the west. The landscape is barren of objects, the trees being leafless, and so little light in the sky for variety. Such a day as will almost oblige a man to eat his own heart. A day in which you must hold on to life by your teeth. You can hardly ruck up any skin on Nature’s bones. The sap is down; she won’t peel. Now is the time to cut timber for yokes and ox-bows, leaving the tough bark on,—yokes for your own neck. Finding yourself yoked to Matter and to Time. Not a mosquito left. Not an insect to hum. Crickets gone into winter quarters. Friends long since gone there, and you left to walk on frozen ground, with your hands in your pockets. Ah, but is not this a time for deep inward fires?

~ From Thoreau's Journal: 13 November 1851
Courtesy of The Blog of Henry David Thoreau

By another name

2010-12-23T21:00:00.002Z

#reverb10 - Day 23

Let’s meet again, for the first time. If you could introduce yourself to strangers by another name for just one day, what would it be and why? (Author: Becca Wilcott)

As a thirteen-year-old I would have loved this prompt. Like most teenagers I was constantly imagining new and improved identities, looking for the one perfect, absolute self. I was a shape-shifter, a concealer, a hide-and-seeker. And I longed to be anything other than what I was.

Nowadays I have given up on the idea of a perfect self, and rather I work towards embracing my disparate selves exactly as they are - with all my faults, all my contrary changeability, my dissembling, my mutability, my warmth, beauty, and wanderlust, my anxiety, my yearning, stubbornness, impatience, talent, my tiresome tendencies and winning ways. The whole damn shebang. I try, day after day, to accommodate and accept these selves, and it is proving to be a life's work.

And so I find that the task of choosing a new name proves to be as impossible as deciding which one hat I am going to wear from this day forward. I could never settle on just one hat, and similarly I decline to chose a new name. The name I have is enough, and it fits me as comfortably as any shawl of contradictions.

*Rebecca* - my Christian name or given name is in fact a Hebrew name meaning to bind, tie or captivate.

*Lucy* - my middle name originates from the Greek word for light.

*Hurst* - my surname is a Saxon one meaning a wood or grove or clearing. We are all descendants of people who tried to forge connections, to ground themselves, and to declare their place in the world.

I was born on the darkest day of the year - the winter solstice. I have always craved the sun, warmth, illumination. I also love darkness and trees and the secretive, forested Weald. I hold on to things, perhaps too tightly, binding them tight with cords of love and loyalty, not always recognising when it is time to let go.

My name fits me well - as comfortably as the big fur hat I brought home from a school trip to the Soviet Union. I no longer have any inclination to change it.

The Year's Midnight

2010-12-22T16:30:00.001Z

Yesterday was my 40th birthday and also the first lunar eclipse on the winter solstice since 1638. Things did not go exactly to plan due to the snow, but thanks to my wonderful family and fabulous friends the shortest day of 2010 was strange and celebratory in almost equal measures!

Time was spent with long-nosed and wobbly legged whippet puppies. Over the course of the day I was served toast and marmalade, butternut squash soup, cake and tea, red wine, hearty and warming rice and chili, whisky and ginger ale. Mid-morning and I was trudging across foggy, snowbound fields and clambering over icy stiles, following the dashing ginger terrier; part of the afternoon was spent tracking down a missing sheep. Dinner made for me by good friends was as it always is: just exactly right. At the Rose & Crown poetry and prose was read aloud against a background burble of conversation and one of Mayfield's dread pub quizzes - John Donne, TS Elliot, Dylan, DH Lawrence and Stevie Smith prevailed. The evening ended in the company of kittens Samuel and Hellebore (who enjoyed midnight romps), and also with bowls of Christmas pudding ice cream and a reading from the Gospel of St Thomas (because 21 December is his day). Among other things he writes:

Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for all things are plain in the sight of heaven. For nothing hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered.

Which seemed like a good thing to hear in the last minutes of this darkest day of the year, when in the Sussex Weald the blanket of snow both hides and reveals, and the full moon at midnight turns the world as white and light as it was at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

***Time lapse video above was shot by William Castleman in Gainesville, Florida - found on OpenCulture.com.

The Wisdom of Nobody's Darling, 2

2010-12-19T16:30:00.002Z

#reverb10 - Day 19

Healing. What healed you this year? Was it sudden, or a drip-by-drip evolution? How would you like to be healed in 2011? (Author: Leoni Allan)

This year healing has taken the form of learning to live alone. I have learned to walk alone, visit restaurants and museums alone, shop and cook alone, go to pubs, clubs, parties, poetry readings and concerts alone. It has been a wonderful and necessary journey.

Currently - although even as I write these words loneliness is sidling up next to me on the sofa - I am happy in my solitary state. Content to be nobody's darling.

I Am a Tortoise, 2

2010-12-18T23:59:00.002Z

Work finished on Friday with a company Christmas dinner and a swirling snowstorm. My twenty-year old Renault Clio, Josephine, slithered and slid her way back into Lewes and came to a relieved halt outside my little cottage. This morning I woke to a day of more snow; tea and toast on the sofa with the visiting tabby; a trek down the High Street to Waitrose to fill my backpack with essentials - cat food, bread, wine and onions; mince pies and mulled wine with friends in the evening; a late night walk home through town, crunching through the snow packed down on the uncleared side-streets. I saw saw a midnight fox scurrying across the alley ahead of me, children sledding down Keere Street, a hazy, gibbous moon gleaming above the street lamps.

My eyes are tired of computer screens after a busy time in the office and over two weeks of daily blogging, so I have decided to revert to my journal for the next few days of Reverb10. My journal is also easier to take with me as I set out across Sussex this morning, on my way to my parent's home in the Weald. So it's back to the pleasurable scratch and rustle of ink on paper! Above is today's journal doodle - the 'Do not hurry, do not rest' tortoise.

I Am a Tortoise

2010-12-17T21:30:00.003Z

The Tortoise and the Hare, Milo Winter, 1919

#reverb10 - Day 17

Lesson learned. What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward? (Author: Tara Weaver)

I am not a hare but a tortoise. Eventually I might - often do - get to where I want to be. But it will most likely take time. Even when something seems to tumble into my open hands, I look back and see in fact a lot of work and effort went into manoeuvring myself into that particular place, at that most opportune of moments.

Whatever I do in life will, apparently, require sustained, determined effort. Luckily, even when the tiny portion of my brain that I use for thinking goes off on a swooping tangent - loses both the plot and the map to where we were heading - there seems to be some residual, unconscious part of me that keeps plodding along. It unerringly knows the way; has the patience to negotiate obstacles and setbacks; ignores all the glittery distractions I throw in its path; my ability to forget where I am bound for. Just. Keeps. Going. For years. And decades. I inevitably feel amazed and grateful when I arrive at some recognisable station on my life's journey. Then I feel amazed at my own pertinacity in getting myself there.

Not a hare, but a tortoise. This realisation came to me like a thunderbolt quite late in 2010. It allowed me to reconcile many of the more tangled and disconcerting aspects of my life. The frayed edges and ill-fitting seams. In the light of 'not hare but tortoise', things make sense. I can hope to learn to be more patient with myself; less censorious; more compassionate and comprehending. I will learn (perhaps) not to hurl myself with such force against locked and barred doors; remember the lesson that they will open only when the time is ripe. That I need not dash and rush around, but instead I should work quietly and steadily, with cold-blooded determination and warm-hearted enthusiasm for my task.

In 2011 I will embrace my inner-tortoise. I will remember: "Never hurry, never rest."

Slowly I will get to where I am going.

Three Women

2010-12-16T22:30:00.000Z

Three Women at the Spring, Picasso, 1921

#reverb10 - Day 16

Friendship. How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was this change gradual, or a sudden burst? (Author: Martha Mihalick)

Thinking of friends who this year have been...

Sisters of perpetual disorder; inky-fingered sirens; barb-tongued harpies; tender-hearted wenches; fellow travellers; thunderbolt-hurling goddesses; welders of words; plunderers of poetry and prose; sloe-eyed witches; unrepentant purveyors of heresy and calumny; tireless wanderers; writers, we three.

Thinking of the two that have reminded me over and again as we sit - notebooks splayed open, pens poised above the page - that friendship is for creative play. Or at least is best that way.

Rebel (with chips on the side)

2010-12-15T13:09:00.005Z

#reverb10 - Day 15

Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in five minutes. Set an alarm for five minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2010. (Author: Patti Digh)

Still feeling rebellious and slightly irreverent. In that spirit I say, forget capturing memories of the past year. What about trying to remember what happened yesterday? The mundane and the everyday - things I would not normally try and capture?

*First, my memory of the sun creeping over the rim of the Downs at 8 o'clock in the morning and lighting my face as I sat eating porridge and drinking tea. The rumble and purr of my sister's cat on the sofa next to me.

*Walking up to the chalk crossroads during my lunch hour - in 15 minutes I am a million miles away from my desk, phone and computer. Transported by these surging hills we strange southerners call downland. The view stretches out to the sea in one direction and far across my beloved Weald in another.

*Coming home in the company bus - all cheery camaraderie - and walking up the High Street where shops and windows were already lit up, the pavements crowded with Christmas shoppers and school children.

*Going to the glorious Tabitha's yoga class; in spite of the frost and darkness outside being brave enough to take off my socks and stretch my bones.

*A spontaneous trip to the South Street Fish Bar (best chips in Lewes!). Walking along Rotten Row with the piping hot package of chips buttoned under my coat warming me twice (like Henry David's kindling) once in the fetching home and again in the eating. A glass of red wine. A night home reading and writing.

Tightrope

2010-12-14T22:00:00.002Z

#reverb10 - Day 14

What's the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it? (Author: Victoria Klein)

The air is cold. I can feel the wind in my hair and beating against my bare legs and arms. Not sure why I decided to wear a tutu; or why it is all so precarious. But that is life. Riding a unicycle across a tightrope that has been strung across a great, echoing void. No recollection of where exactly I've come from; no real idea where I am going. Terrified and exhilarated; wild with fear and joy in equal measures. Thankful that I am here. Enjoying the journey.

A Walk in the Forest of Dreams

2010-12-13T21:00:00.002Z

#reverb10 - Day 13

Action. When it comes to aspirations, it’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen. What’s your next step? (Author: Scott Belsky)

This morning I sat down to write for a few minutes before heading off to work. The time was sandwiched in between shower and porridge; I had a cup of tea on my left and a large, grumpy tabby cat (my visiting cat-niece, Amber) on my right. The tea steamed, Amber rumbled, and I stewed over the prompt du jour. Finally my pen began to move across the page.

My secondary school's motto was Action not Words - so perhaps it is the teenage rebel in me writing this but I dissent. I think that aspiration is about ideas and imagination, and about courage and integrity, determination, self-knowledge and then - finally - it is about taking the first step. I admit, though, that part is critical. Without a catalyst, the motor is not going to kick into life. Without a spark the driest kindling will not catch fire. And I must also admit that for me ideas are not the problem, nor is imagination, though certainly my courage might fail, and my determination waver. I also admit to being a card-carrying day dreamer; a lover of long walks, contemplative cups of tea, and epic doodling sessions; brilliant at starting things, but rather prone to be distracted by middles, and bored by endings.

My next step then, is to begin sending my work out again in 2011. To submit my writing to journals and competitions, and to look for an agent for the novel I am working on. This is not work I enjoy - it is tedious and time-consuming, and mechanical, and almost always I would rather be writing and making things. But it is necessary. And so it will be done.

Now. Rolls up sleeves. Sips tea. Feels relief that 2011 doesn't get under way for another couple of weeks. Decides to walk across Lewes and get the bus into work.

Fred and Ginger

2010-12-12T18:00:00.001Z

#reverb10 - Day 12

This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn’t mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present? (Author: Patrick Reynolds)

Fred and Ginger moments - that's what we're talking about here. One for all and all for one and all one. Yes. In 2010 there were many moments of cohesiveness, of falling into the universe, of stepping sideways out of and into myself in the same instance:

*Lost in the green and brilliant blue of the Wealden woods in springtime. The ground a mass of bluebells, a surging flood of indigo blue, filling the wood with scent and the hum of insects. Absorbing me into the blue and holding me fast for a long while, unresisting, submerged, entirely happy.

*Standing on my yoga mat, palms pressed together in prayer position, legs rooted through my feet to the ground and lifting through my spine and neck, growing like Alice, shooting up into the sky like a tree or a cathedral. Breathing in and out, and knowing I am exactly where I need to be.

*Wading out into the middle of a ferruginous stream and standing on a shelf of red-streaked granite and sandstone watching the clear, greenish water pouring over and around my Wellington boots. Seeing the reflection of the sky, the golden leaves spiralling down stream. Hearing the rush of water, the patter of rain on the autumn foliage. Knowing a small, rough-haired and reddish terrier is rootling for bubbles in the water nearby.

*Dancing, on a wooden dance floor or a faded living-room carpet, feeling the music gush through my body, feeling my blood rush through my veins, feeling my heart and feet pound, a hand catching hold of mine, spinning me round, letting me go.

*The mutinous murmuration from the chorus at the end of Benjamin Britten's opera, Billy Budd, as the music cracks me open.

Running Scared

2010-12-12T17:00:00.001Z

#reverb10 - Day 11

What are 11 things your life doesn't need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?
Author: Sam Davidson

Like the extraordinary Mrs Mediocrity, the first things I thought of in response to this prompt were universal rather than personal. What would I like to eliminate in 2011: how about war, poverty, disease, violence, torture, hunger, famine, cruelty, apathy, greed, and exploitation of our planet and its inhabitants? That would do for starters.

As for me? I will continue trying to let go of the nameless, faceless, shapeless fear that so often holds me back, has me running scared, has me hiding in bed beneath my quilt. Whatever my response to this yawning chasm of fear - anger, procrastination, self-doubt, self-delusion, distraction - it is not helpful and in 2011 I am going to hold fast to this knowledge. I will not lie awake listening for the wolf scratching at my door or imagining monsters under my bed. I will face squarely what I have to do in my life undeterred by the obstacles I know lie ahead, by the intimidating things I must undertake alone, by the knowledge that life is difficult, demanding, exhausting and also some sort of blooming, joyous miracle.

Fear be banquished!

The Wisdom of Nobody's Darling

2010-12-10T20:00:00.006Z

#reverb10 - Day 10

Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out? Author: Susannah Conway

My wisest decision? To give myself the time and space to tune into my own voice, to listen to what I had to say, to take notice! I've learned a lot about authenticity and wholehearted living from the amazing Brené Brown over the past year. But I also know that I was drawn to and listening to voices that urged me to speak this same self-truth from my late teens. That was when I first encountered and fell in love with a whole slew of women writers including the indomitable Alice Walker. Now I see it has taken me over 20 years to just begin to learn the lessons she was teaching me then...

Be Nobody’s Darling

by Alice Walker

Be nobody’s darling;
Be an outcast.
Take the contradictions
Of your life
And wrap it around
You like shawl,
To parry stones
To keep you warm.

Watch the people succumb
To madness
With ample cheer;
Let them look askance at you
And you askance reply.

Be an outcast;
Be pleased to walk alone
(Uncool)
Or line the crowded
River beds
With other impetuous
Fools.

Make a merry gathering
On the bank
Where thousands perished
For brave hurt words
They said.

Be nobody’s darling;
Be an outcast.
Be qualified to live
Among your dead.

Gathering

2010-12-09T18:07:00.006Z

#reverb10 - Day 9

Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans. Author: Shauna Reid

I have recently written on this theme about a day spent with friends. My post on what we called the Day of Meaningful Nothing finished with these words:

We invoked the new moon, and celebrated ourselves and each other. And when I finally left Siân's house at 1am the grass was already white with frost, the sky flooded with the light of the Milky Way. The day was silly and sacred in equal measure; unforgettable; indescribable (though I've done my best here). And I can't wait for the next one.

And so I have given myself a night off. Hurrah! Which is good, because after a long day at work I am going out to dinner with friends. In fact, looking back over the year 2010 I realise that it has been one of any number of wonderful gatherings: New Year's Eve spent around a table laden with fabulous food and wine, and culminating in wild, raucous dancing in a tiny living room; the quiet of three women sitting and writing together; midsummer opera and elegant picnics on the lawn at Glyndebourne; drawing pictures with three children in the kitchen of an old Burgundy farmhouse, October rain beating against the window and the sound of their mother, my friend, practising her cello in the roof and making the whole house hum; drinking Pimms and lemonade with my daughter, Luka, in our tiny garden, soaking up the evening sun and talking over our plans for the year ahead, soaking up each other's company knowing that soon we would be living thousands of miles apart. For 2011, all I can wish for is more of the same.

Different

2010-12-08T22:30:00.005Z

Illustration from the Ugly Duckling

by W. Heath Robinson, 1913.

#reverb10 - Day 8

Beautifully Different. Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful. (Author: Karen Walrond)

What makes me different?

My mouse-like courage. I am a fierce nibbler; a determined scrabbler. Though my courage sometimes fails me, it always flickers back. A spark that can be reignited with a gentle puff of air. I am brave then, if more than a little foolhardy. But I embrace my foolishness, too.

With no real innate sense of rhythm I find it hard to clap or march in time with a crowd. The beat of the different drummer is therefore my default. My heartbeat. My welcome home.

I value friends and family over money, books over all other material possessions, have a head full of stories and daydreams and the ken to sense the stories of others swirling around them, as some people can see auras. When we meet I will invite you to tell me your story. Urge you to be honest, to surprise yourself. I am scared of spiders and fascinated by their alien beauty, by the metaphor of the web and the loom.

I love both order and symmetry, anarchy and chaos. My life-soup has large pinches of all these stirred into its flavourful broth. Also a good handful of imagination, compassion, loyalty, peevishness, playfulness, art, a lusty love of stationery and chocolate, gunpowder, garam masala, night terrors, November storms, the joy of two feet planted firmly on a yoga mat, the joy of the dance floor, the siren's call of the blank page, the unfamiliar road and muddy, well-trodden path through the woods, the gate propped ajar, the red of chaleybeate, the black of charcoal, the terrier's rough coat, my daughter's affection and cheerful smile.

I am different not because I am aware of these things, but because I am always trying to tease apart the frayed knot of myself. Because I am both the fox and the hedgehog; because I love equally Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Akhmatova and Tsvertaeva. I thrill to the quiet of my empty home, and fill my life with friends, family, the company of others. I love people and I love the shadowy unpeopled corner. I will sit here a while longer by the fire; rub my long fox's nose; turn my hedgehog's prickly back to the crowd. Hook a story or two.

Community

2010-12-07T23:56:00.005Z

#reverb10 -Day 7

Prompt: Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011? (Author: Cali Harris)

A row of tea lights on the mantelpiece. The flicker of firelight. Glasses of red wine, dark chocolate. Three open notebooks, resting on knees, laps, the edge of a table or the arm of a sofa. Scratch of pens racing across paper. The rustle of pages turning. Something being scribbled out. Some word being underlined. A moth knocking against the window. One finishes, sits back, takes a sip of wine, emphatically puts down her pen. The writing of the others slows or hesitates for a moment- then a sudden surge of speed - and finished too. Who will read first? Someone begins, maybe eager, or apologetic, but confident among friends. A smile. A shout of laughter and delight. That sound, barely articulated, of recognition. Yes. Me too. These are my people.

Make

2010-12-06T19:00:00.003Z

#reverb10 - Day 6

Make. What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?
(Author: Gretchen Rubin)

Like Sas, today's prompt made me realise how many things I make over the course of a day or a week. Much of my time is spent creating - food, order from chaos, friendships, family harmony, good health, wealth, cleanliness, stories, art, happy terriers... Life is full and generally a joyful business, and the making and creating is without end.

So if I address Gretchen's prompt in one way, the last thing I made was a cottage pie for my sister - who is going through a time of troubles right now. We ate it in her sitting room while watching Mike Leigh's film Life is Sweet, a fat tabby asleep on the sofa between us and a fire burning bright in the grate.

Looked at another way - and I last thing I made was a painting. Really what I have posted above is just a doodle in my current journal, so the materials are: a page of my red Moleskine notebook, ink, and watercolour paint. Inspiration: Rogier van der Weyden's Last Judgement.

In answer to the question 'Is there something you want to make?' - Always. The American children's writer Jane Yolen once described keeping a string of ideas for books on the go, rather like pack horses. When it all got too much she just cut one or two loose. I have a small herd of idea-horses cantering along behind or beside me. Sometimes the clatter of their hooves and excited whinnying wakes me up in the night. I find it hard to let any of them go.

Letting Go

2010-12-05T18:45:00.002Z

#reverb10 - Day 5

Prompt: Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?
(Author: Alice Bradley)

Your introversion, which I viewed at the time as romantic and 'literary' and interesting became a tedious prison of my own making - a room without doors or windows. I had no choice but to dig myself out.

My life is better now that your darkness and despondency no longer casts a shadowy veil between me and the rest of the world.

I thought we would be together always - you wearing a beret, Doc Martens, and smoking acrid Gauloises or toothpick thin roll-ups. I believed that the furred smoker's morning mouth was my destiny. But mornings are so much brighter without the honk of your dragon's breath, and now I no longer have to listen to you recount your claustrophobic, nightmarish dreams.

The time was I used to find your impulsive recklessness exhilarating. Also your wild temper and your propensity to pour petrol on any gently smouldering fire you came upon. But now I realise you simply exhausted me, left me hollow and ashamed.

I admit, I will never stop loving your Janus-face, your light and darkness, the fist you make around a scalpel, a pen, a paintbrush, a key. But I am glad I have been able to step away from you even if that meant some nights I had to leave you outside on the doorstep in the cold; slam the door shut in your sulky face. The frosty nights seem to have tempered you; cracked you open; I no longer hear you sobbing when I wake up at 3am. Instead, I look out of the window at the moon and quietly go back to sleep.

When we meet on the street now, or in the tea aisle at Waitrose, or in some dark café, you smile a little sheepishly. I reach past you for the jasmine tea and say, 'Let's get together for a drink some time.' You shiver. Which is typical, and walk away without saying a word in reply. Before I can reach out and take you in my arms.

I stand by you, still, and by what I write.

*****
(This piece was written to the #reverb10 Day 5 prompt a few weeks ago during a Day of Meaningful Nothing. The fabulous Jenny Walters gave us the prompt then ('My Life is Better Without You Because...') so thanks to her, and also to the ever-courageous Siân Thomas for giving me the chutzpah to post it by leading the way. The person I am writing to - for the confused or the curious - is my 18-year-old self, pictured above. As a teenager I suffered from depression, as well as a general bad-attitude and a massive case of the sulks. I still view that Rebecca with affection. She is still part of me. But thank goodness she no longer is me.)

Cultivating Wonder

2010-12-04T11:45:00.004Z

The Clootie Tree, April 2010

#reverb10 - Day 4

Prompt: Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year? (Author: Jeff Davis)

I like the idea of cultivating wonder - the metaphor of a garden has always worked for me. We need to get down into the dirt in order for things to grow. We all, as Thoreau wrote, have our own little row of beans to tend to or neglect, as we choose. Life, like gardens, requires work - and the creation of wonder requires as much time and effort and attention as any other aspect of our existence.

From 21 December, 2009 to 22 September, 2010 I was involved in a collaborative art project called Four Quarters. For a year the poet Siân Thomas, visual artist Johnny Marsh, and I spent each solstice and equinox out in the same patch of woodland deep in the Sussex Weald. We entered the woods at sunrise and left at sunset (with brief sojourns at Johnny's nearby cottage to warm up).

In December and March we were cold, damp, and at times uncomfortable. In June and September we basked in the golden sunshine. Each day was a remarkable gift - to spend so many hours outside, to get to know one place so intimately, to see if changed and transformed over the course of twelve months and to be part of that transformation.

For the winter solstice we made fiery water wheels and set them spinning on the old hammer pond. In spring we decorated an ash tree and created a Clootie or Wish Tree that the local community has taken for its own. On the summer solstice we illuminated the hammer pond with dozens of tiny tea lights; then sat by the reflected pool of light we had created as the longest day slowly, reluctantly gave way to darkness. For the final equinox, in September, we created a sukkah in the woods, celebrating the Feast of the Tabernacle. It is still standing, visible from the footpath, a strange little roof of branches and moss hung between the birch trees.

Each of the Four Quarters was a remarkable gift, not only for the time we spent immersed in the natural world, but also for the sense of play and adventure the days returned to us. As a child I spent hours every week playing in the woods and fields that surrounded my Sussex home. It has been wonderful to return to the woods not as someone who simply walks through them but rather as one who has time, childlike, to linger; time to simply sit in silence; time to play.

#reverb10 - Day 3 - The Layers

2010-12-03T20:22:00.002Z

Drawing by Lauren Redniss

The prompt for today on #reverb10 was from the author Ali Edwards:

Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colours).

I responded to the prompt in my journal, but don't want to post what I wrote here. So instead I am putting up a poem by the American poet, Stanley Kunitz, that has been a source of continual inspiration for me over the past year - particularly the last six lines. I have constantly found myself paraphrasing Kunitz's words in my own journal writing - and his poetry is as satisfying to read aloud as Dylan Thomas' - try it. Don't be shy! Roll the words around in your mouth; inhale them; draw them into your very being; then feel them fall from your lips and take shape in the air around you...

The Layers

by Stanley Kunitz

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written,
I am not done with my changes.

Procrastination - Be Gone!

2010-12-02T21:45:00.002Z

I knew when I signed on the dotted line that I wouldn't be responding on my blog to every #reverb10 prompt. And in fact I 'declined' today's the moment I read Leo Babauta's offering for December 2.

Prompt: Writing. What do you do each day that doesn't contribute to your writing -- and can you eliminate it?

The question made me bristle. It made me feel defensive and more than a little snarky, and I decided that was not what I needed. And then, a moment later, I made my way round to the realisation that if the question made me feel that bristly then I should probably address it. Which I have done in a snarky internal-monologue sort of way for most of the afternoon. Now it is evening. I am feeling tired of defending myself from myself; weary of justifying myself to myself; fed up with weighing and judging. Does painting in my journal contribute to my writing? Does lunch with my snowbound elderly neighbour? Does reading Rumer Godden's novel The Greengage Summer? Does signing up for #reverb10 ? asks the snidest Rebecca of them all.

While beating together sugar and eggs for the chocolate brownies I made late this afternoon (does baking contribute to my writing?), I faced what I had been so energetically resisting. Yes. Busy and focused as I like to think of myself, there are things in my life that do not contribute to my writing and that I could eliminate.

And will I? I think I must. I think it is time. What I really would like to get beyond is what Susannah Conway calls The Dance of Procrastination. The thing that she coincidentally also identified as what comes between her and her writing. So I declare that 2011 will be the year I put my dithering, distracted, indecisive, procrastinating ways behind me. Starting - not twenty-nine days hence - but right NOW!

Reflect / Manifest

2010-12-01T23:23:00.002Z

I've never been much of a life-planner. Mostly the planning I have done has been in response to things that have just - happened.

I've enjoyed all the unexpected detours, the adventures and misadventures, the backtracking, the aimless and purposeful foraging, the being lost and finding myself, the unmapped roads I've taken, the no-name towns I've wandered through. But the past year or so I have come to realise that a bit more deliberation might be what I need nowadays. That things have changed, and I have changed too.

I used to believe that while I didn't know exactly what I was looking for, I would know when I found it. Now, though, I am reminded (thanks in part to Jack Zipes, Marina Warner, Jeanette Winterson) what I've actually known since childhood. I've remembered what I learned long ago from reading fairy tales - that it is necessary to know the names of things in order to have power over them, to protect yourself and defend yourself, and for the magic to work. Or as Zipes puts it in his book Creative Storytelling:

The process of learning how to tell a story is a process of empowerment...for we are all constantly trying to act out or realize the fictional lives that we imagine for ourselves. We try to put the dream into effect.

That is what I have been doing since childhood - what we all do, really, one way or another. We learn how to name things. We learn how to narrate our lives. We learn, if we are lucky, how to manifest our dreams.

So this December I am taking part in #reverb10 - a project initiated by the remarkable Gwen Bell. I am reflecting on the twelve months just past, and shaping and manifesting the forthcoming year. If 2010 was all about TRANSITION, I believe that 2011 will be a year of TRANSFORMATION. The journey continues.

Minerva

2010-11-25T08:00:00.003Z

While listening to a talk on creating elevated events within the Tessitura database and doodling on my conference notepad, Minerva - the warrior goddess of wisdom - put in an appearance. I don't know why. I wasn't expecting to meet her in Manchester, especially not in the form of an owl wearing what looks a bit like my favourite childhood outfit - a smock dress from Clothkits. But while I am waiting to find out what message she has for me, I thought I would let her see something of the world. As I don't use them any more, I had forgotten how nice it is to doodle in biro.

The Elements: A 4-Week Creative Writing Course

2010-11-20T17:00:00.006Z

Ancient Sound, Paul Klee, 1925

WHAT: A 4-week creative writing course drawing on the classical elements - Earth, Water, Air and Fire - as a source of inspiration.

For four weeks our group will use these elements to stimulate original and imaginative pieces of prose and poetry, working together in a supportive and encouraging environment. The course is designed for both beginners and more experienced writers. If you are interested in nurturing or reigniting a creative journal-writing practice, or looking for ways to go deeper into your own work, please join us.

WHEN: Thursday evenings from 7.30 to 9.30pm, beginning on 2 December, 2010

WHERE: The Writer's Workshop, Lewes, East Sussex (a five minute walk from The Shelleys hotel)

HOW MUCH: £45 for the 4-week session

Space is limited, so it is essential you pre-register for this course. You may do this by contacting Rebecca via email or on 07729 628427.

WHO: A writer of fiction and poetry, and a graduate of the MA programme in Creative Writing for Personal Development at the University of Sussex, I have developed and led creative workshops since 2002.

Giving Voice

2010-11-20T10:00:00.001Z

On Thursday Siân and I went to Lewes Poetry's last session of the 2010 season. The club meets at the Lewes Arms and is organised and compèred by the indefatigable Oliver Gozzard. It was an evening of some hilarity - a wonderful and supportive environment to read in. And read I did - putting my name on Olly's crumpled list - and taking a couple of poems out of the folder in the back of my red journal, happy to give them a bit of an airing. I was among 'my people' - that was clear. Even so, standing on the tiny stage in front of a small, friendly and intently expectant audience was still an intimidating experience. I have always disliked and been unnerved by the sound of my own voice - and then to have the audacity to fill a whole room with it - to expect people to sit tight and listen to nothing but my words, and the shape my breath makes of those words. I wonder that I dare. And yet, I do.

Working in an opera house, I encounter Voice in many of its manifestations. The memos from Company Office that a principal will not be performing that night as they have lost theirs. The critics' reviews describing voices that are leathery, eloquent, bumpy, glassy, nourishing, shrill, expansive, strained, robust and vivacious. All around the offices where I work are warm up rooms, and during the summer festival the buildings resonate with the sound of powerful, impossibly beautiful voices being put through their paces. When an opera is on stage, the tannoy systems carries the torrent of music through the warren of offices, corridors, rehearsal spaces and meeting rooms.

My own voice seems like such a feeble, unpredictable instrument in comparison to all this. And my airing it in public a positive impertinence. Yet as a writer I too spend long hours warming up my writing voice, soothing it with metaphorical doses of ginger and honey tea, going through my writing scales, searching always for a way of putting together words that 'sound' just like me.

A good place to end this post is perhaps a poem by the recently deceased American poet Steve Orlen. If you would like to learn more about him, a fine place to start is this post by the always-excellent writer Anna Leigh Clark. Meanwhile, here is what Orlen has to say about voice:

In the House of the Voice of Maria Callas

By Steve Orlen

In the house of the voice of Maria Callas
We hear the baby’s cries, and the after-supper
Rattle of silverware, and three clocks ticking
To different tunes, and ripe plums
Sleeping in their chipped bowl, and traffic sounds
Dissecting the avenues outside. We hear, like water
Pouring over time itself, the pure distillate arias
Of the numerous pampered queens who have reigned,
And the working girls who have suffered
The envious knives, and the breathless brides
With their horned helmets who have fallen in love
And gone crazy or fallen in love and died
On the grand stage at their appointed moments—
Who will sing of them now? Maria Callas is dead,
Although the full lips and the slanting eyes
And flared nostrils of her voice resurrect
Dramas we are able to imagine in this parlor
On evenings like this one, adding some color,
Adding some order. Of whom it was said:
She could imagine almost anything and give voice to it.

Wild Geese

2010-11-15T21:00:00.003Z

Wild Geese Descending on the Sandbank

***I've had this poem by Mary Oliver in a draft blog post since January. I'm not sure why I have hesitated to post it, but suspect part of the reason might be that thousands of other people have already written about it, and reproduced it on their blogs and websites. Something about its popularity has made me feel, over time, that the poem is suspect. I have always loved to root for the underdog, and Wild Geese is such a clear winner, such a crowd pleaser. But then I read it again this evening and found that, in spite of my scepticism, it still has the power to take me by the throat and hold me fast. Or, meeting Emily Dickinson's definition of poetry, that when I read it I "feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off". And how could I deny such an experience to someone who might never have come across this poem, until now? So here it is. A poem that might be everyone else's, but still, when you read it, somehow feels like it is all yours...

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Manchester

2010-11-13T18:00:00.002Z

A River Bank, L S Lowry, 1947

My visit was fleeting, but my excitement at being in Manchester for the first time was great. I have Northern roots - a grandmother born on Kitchener Street in Darlington - and along with my motorcar obsessed father, I'm a fan of the A1. What a road!

But there's none of the North in my vowels nor, alas, my vocabulary. And like a typical Sussex-bred Southerner I always feel a thrill when I see things that - for me - epitomise the North: canals, slag heaps, moorland and factory chimneys. This is a Britain I have read about and absorbed through music and art, but have not spent much time in. I love it because I sense its otherness. It is not home, and so is all the more fascinating. And what about the terracotta façade of the Midland Hotel, which towered over the Premier Inn where we were staying? Or the wild and mysteriously beautiful note the wind played all night, howling through Manchester Central? Or the lowing trams and the vigorous, adamant architecture? And the rain-soaked cobbles glistening in the street-lamps?

Of course, barely 24 hours on Lower Mosley Street won't do much to make up my northern deficit - but my walk around the city on a rainy Thursday night gave me a sense of things. And a definite yen to return.

Branches

2010-11-11T09:23:00.004Z

I want to put down roots - to bond with the earth and draw from it nourishment and inspiration. And, as the other half of this journal painting shows, I also want to stretch out into the sky. To grow strong, flexible and exploratory branches.

Some years ago I heard a wonderful piece on the radio about flamenco. The dancer described how when she moved the lower half of her body, her legs and feet, were grounded, drawing their power and energy from the earth. While her upper body reached upwards, into the sky, the spine and arms expanding and stretching. Having practised yoga since I was a teenager, I could feel in my body exactly what she was describing. And that is what I am doing now; drawing energy from the ground, and inspiration from the air.

Roots

2010-11-10T11:00:00.001Z

For the past several years I have moved and moved on, never going far. Sometimes moving less than a mile within the same small village. But always shifting myself with a sense of sorrow and dislocation. I've been living in my cottage in Lewes for just over 6 months now, and it looks as though for a while at least I will be able to stay on here. It feels like the time has come to unpack the last few boxes - things I haven't bothered to unwrap for the past three or four years. Each place I have moved to, I have held off unpacking these last few things. The things I know I won't really need - my fragment of charred pottery from 16th century Muscovy, for example. Or my grandparent's disintegrating collection of Shakespeare's plays.

It is risky to put down roots. I am scared they will be torn up again. Even writing this post makes me feel nervous, and I wonder if I can dare to say these things aloud? If I dare reveal how much I dread the effort that goes into finding a new place to live, and moving my boxes and books and bags?

But in spite of my anxiety I sense now is the moment to take that risk.

Roots.

I want to put them down.

Day of Meaningful Nothing

2010-11-08T19:30:00.000Z

There was a written itinerary - though it included items such as Eat some of Suzanne's cake and Prepare alchemical stew. The numbers of those expected fluctuated, but on Saturday there were 5 of us: Siân, Jenny, Terri, Suzanne and me.

We came to the Weald carrying notebooks and pencils, bottles of red wine, chocolate cake and pumpkin pie, scissors and glue, Wellington boots, pockets full of tissues, our affection for each other and our hopes for the day. Maybe nothing would be done, but it would be done with feeling.

The plan we had loosely made was for some creative writing, a voice workshop, food to be cooked and eaten, a walk through the autumn woods to leave our words and wishes on the Clootie Tree, reading aloud, vision boards.

And the day itself included all these things and also kittens, tarot, the terrier, so much laughter my cheeks still hurt, revelation and recognition, hugs, and story after story. The stew we ate was made with local meat and local vegetables - and right at the end we introduced some Spanish chorizo, to remind us of the stranger that is always among us. We made extravagant toasts. It all ended not with tears but dancing; ridiculous in-your-socks-on-the-sitting-room-floor-dancing to everything from Whitney Houston to Iron Maiden.

We invoked the new moon, and celebrated ourselves and each other. And when I finally left Siân's house at 1am the grass was already white with frost, the sky flooded with the light of the Milky Way. The day was silly and sacred in equal measure; unforgettable; indescribable (though I've done my best here). And I can't wait for the next one.

Thankful

2010-11-05T22:09:00.000Z

Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
'Novembre'

One of the things I miss about living in the United States is the tradition of Thanksgiving - and despite being back in England for 7 years now, November remains the month where I become more reflective and more thankful. And why not? As my old pal Henry David reminds me, it is the season "to walk on frozen ground, with your hands in your pockets" and also "for deep inward fires".

So even though this year I probably won't be celebrating Thanksgiving - seeing as all the Americans in my life have flown the coop - I'm going to welcome November by being grateful:

To my friends in Burgundy - Hazel & Wilson, for their amazing hospitality and the wonderful food, wine, walks, talks and outings we shared. And also to Tanguy and Sandrine, who pulled me right back into the bosom of their beautiful family.
To the EasyJet pilot who - never mind the cheesy jokes and slick sales patter - did a fine job of driving his plane and getting me home.
To my parents, who were on taxi duty to and from the airport.
To my dad, who fixed the heating on my car while I was gone.
And to all the others I encountered on my journey who cooked for me, drove the trains and buses I travelled on, answered my stupid questions, made the effort to understand my mangled school-girl French, and made me feel less of a stranger by returning my smile.
Home, I was thankful for the cottage I returned to, and the terrier's gleeful welcome.
Also for my lovely and loving daughter, and for the technology that allows us to communicate across the cold, deep ocean.
For a job I love and people it is a pleasure to work with.
And finally for the Weald and the Downs, and my friends, and my bookshelves, who all conspired to draw me back into my everyday life.

That is all, for now, and that is certainly enough.

Burgundy - Map 2

2010-11-03T22:00:00.001Z

Map 2

I'm not alone in this thing I have about hand drawn maps. There is, naturally, a Hand Drawn Map Association, and not only do they have a website with an amazing collection of maps, but this month they are running a competition. To enter you just have to send them a hand drawn map of your own.

Away

2010-11-01T22:00:00.001Z

Map 1

I've been away over the last couple of weeks - visiting friends in deepest, darkest rural Burgundy. And while I was in France I went on walks through woods and fields and vineyards, scribbled in my journals, read, drank wine and talked late into the night. And drew maps. See above, please, for hand drawn map 1. I have no idea why creating these was so satisfying, but the compulsion to draw a map of my walks and travels became a bit of a thing, while I was gone. More to follow!

6-Week Creative Writing Course - Brighton

2010-10-16T12:00:00.003+01:00

It is with great pleasure that - alongside my good friend Astrid Holm - I am preparing to teach a 6-week creative writing course in Brighton. Astrid and I have enjoyed a vibrant writing friendship since first meeting at the University of Sussex, and are excited to be able to offer this course of creative writing classes. If you live in East Sussex, please consider joining us! Full course details can be found below:

Writing the Body: The Five Senses

'Thirty', Wassily Kadinsky, 1937

A 6-week creative writing course focusing on writing the body through our senses of smell, sight, taste, hearing and touch.

For five weeks our group will uses the senses to stimulate original pieces of creative writing. The final week will provide the opportunity for participants to workshop a piece of prose or poetry in a supportive and encouraging environment. The course is designed for both beginners and more experienced writers.

WHEN: Wednesday evenings from 7.30 to 9.30pm, beginning on November 10

WHERE: Clifton Terrace, Brighton, East Sussex

HOW MUCH: £60 for the 6-week session

Space is limited, so it is essential you pre-register for this course. You may do this by contacting either Astrid or Rebecca.

WHO: An experienced Alexander Technique teacher, Astrid Holm writes fiction and poetry for children and adults. Also a writer of fiction and poetry, I have developed and led creative workshops since 2002. Both Astrid and I are graduates of the M.A. programme in Creative Writing for Personal Development at the University of Sussex.

Myth Country, 2

2010-10-10T11:11:00.005+01:00

Set Design for 'The Firebird', Natalia Goncharova, 1926

My myth country can only be reached through a secret underground chamber. The map showing the door leading to this chamber appears once in a true blue moon on the blank pages of your journal. The key to the first door is the one your grandmother wore around her neck on a silver chain. For the rest, carry a bunch of ash keys picked up in the wood after a windy night. They must have been blown free - you cannot tear them from the tree.

The final chamber is long, oak-panelled, warmed and lit by a brightly burning fire. The only furniture is a small round table, and on the table is a hot rum toddy placed at the centre of a silver tray. Drink if you want to stay in my myth country for a year and a day. If you chose not to drink, your visit will end on your first night - once you fall asleep your dreams will carry you home.

But you chose to stay. You drink. And leaving the warm room go down a twisting flight of stone stairs that lead into a maze of narrow cobbled streets.

My myth country consists of a single city, Kalkaska - which straddles the estuary of a great river - several small towns, a constellation of villages, and seven isolated monasteries. The streets of Kalkaska are a mixture of elegant, tree-lined boulevards and pinched, circuitous, steep, secretive passageways. There are many canals, bridges, archways, flights of stairs, monuments and unexpected vistas. It is a city of hidden parks, tucked away marketplaces, parades of cloistered shops, small squares, cafés, libraries and bookshops, cats, opera houses and theatres.

Lit only by candles and fire light, by myth country is one of shadows, moonlit assignations, summer picnics, riots, duels, secret cabals, guilds and underground poetry societies. Dancing is outlawed, which makes it all the more avidly practised and enjoyed. There are many secret dance clubs in Kalkaska, to which people go masked and disguised, in the dead of night. In the country, dancing takes place by moonlight, in clearings deep in the forest.

My myth country is ruled by an absolute monarchy. The royal family (alas) is plagued by various inherited diseases: a propensity to insanity and fits of paranoia and rage, red hair, weak chins and double-jointed wrists and elbows. These infirmities make them all the more loved by their subjects. They also explain the brief, bloody, and always unsuccessful revolutions that break out from time to time.

A punitive and intolerant form of monotheism is my myth country's state religion. It is just the right sort of repressive, guilt-ridden, blood-sodden, power-hungry institution which encourages a large number of idiosyncratic minor religions to flourish. The majority of people in my myth country are united in their loathing of and resistance to this state religion. They practise with fervour all manner of forbidden rites and rituals that joyfully celebrate a constellation of household and nature spirits. Every lintel, every spring, every gateway and tree and left shoe and lace camisole and pot and pipe and pebble has its own little sprite to be honoured and appeased.

Life is like that, in my myth country. And there are dragons, living in the mountains. And trolls that inhabit the vast, dark forests. And umapped inland seas, and mermaids...

***Written as a collaborative piece with Jenny and Siân, in response to Doris Lessing's claim that 'Every writer has a myth country.' There is more about our myth countries to be found here and here.

Myth Country

2010-09-12T22:00:00.001+01:00

by Jenny Walters

This country is my island of myth,

Where I root my feet to the earth,

Wriggle my toes under the grass

to anchor myself.

I throw back my head,

Stretch out my arms

and grow.

Now I am tall.

I can cover miles in one stride.

Feel the soft Sussex meadow under my bare feet

and the spikes of the coppiced woods

that snap like charcoal.

Heading north to London and the heat

of the summer concrete rises up and warms the backs

of my thighs.

I scatter cars with my fingers

and wink at cheeky office workers

in skyscrapers with my sky blue eye.

I catch a passing plane in both hands

and abseil off the salty coast.

I crunch handfuls of native oysters

in my massive teeth. Shells and all.

I plunge through the waves like a whale

and wave at chalky cliffs.

I haul myself onto the beach at Cornwall

and plop into the sand.

For a moment still.

The sun fills my insides

and rises up to my mountainous breasts.

Some beach-goers are frightened.

Some have been crushed.

I laugh and shake the sand from my hair.

Running fast now, east.

Slowing my pace I start to shrink

with each step.

And here in this country lane

I lay down on the warm tarmac

and sigh.

***This evocative poem is by my friend and fellow writer, Jenny. More 'Myth Country' posts to follow, I hope! Meanwhile, enjoy the way this piece so beautifully evokes the joyous and now-fading English summer.

August Break - Week 4

2010-09-06T22:35:00.008+01:00

Rather belatedly, here is my final post for the August break. It was a week that stretched clear from the dress rehearsal of Freddie Wake-Walker's anarchic and fabulous Renard and Mavra on Monday, to driving Luka to Heathrow seven days later. All that was in between these two events is a blur of packing and goodbyes and more packing, as we tried to fit everything she might conceivably need for the next 9 months into 3 suitcases.

So in the final week of August there was life and there was opera. Also some rain, some singing, some silliness in the streets of Lewes, some fish and chips, some cake, some cranberry and Amaretto cocktails, a walk on the Downs, much tea drinking, spidery visitors, and standing on the top storey of the car park at Heathrow - strong wind and bright sun - thinking, if I wave will she look down and see me?

August Break - Week 3

2010-08-30T22:00:00.000+01:00

I have finally managed to sit down and scan the 3rd week of my August Break journal pages. I thought this time I would add a splash of colour to the images. This morning I took my daughter, Luka, to the airport. She's going to college in Massachusetts - land of so many good things including but not limited to blueberries, bears, and our friend Pat. I arrived home from Heathrow to a resoundingly empty nest, and although I've had a good day my thoughts tonight are far from home. But that's now and these pictures are all about the week before last! Still got some catching up to do...

August Break - Week 2

2010-08-25T20:00:00.002+01:00

Looking back I see the first week of August involved rain, opera and laundry. Today is the 25th day of this month and apparently not much has changed. Rain is being blown in great gusts against my window. This afternoon at work I took part in a family workshop that brought to life Engelbert Humperdinck's opera Hansel und Gretel (really - life is so good!). And thanks to the rain my cottage is still strewn with laundry that refuses to dry.

But back to Week 2 which included: an 11-year-old visitor from France, Toy Story 3, a walk to visit the Clootie tree, a gazillion games of Yahtzee, more opera, a visit to Heathrow, and a bike ride down the River Ouse to Southease.

August Break - Week 1

2010-08-24T21:00:00.002+01:00

I don't have a digital camera or the ability to quickly process and post film, but in spite of this felt inspired to join Susannah Conway's August Break. So instead of taking and posting a photo every day, I've been trying to draw my week - a little montage that includes a quick and informal sketch for each day. I've been working directly in pen (no hiding my mistakes!), drawing freely and spontaneously and without much forethought. Scary stuff for a closet perfectionist. Even scarier to show the results of what I have been up to, but that's what I'm going to try and do over the next few days.

This is what Susannah wrote about the idea for her August Break:

No pressure - just looking at August through your camera lens as a way to be more present this summer. And to have a little break from the pressures and expectations of regular blogging.

She also (perhaps rashly) said there are NO RULES...so here I am, participating with no camera and no real idea of why I decided to jump into this particular pond. Except that drawing my August has been fun and liberating, and when I sit down with my notebook and pen I feel like I'm nine years old again. And that has got to be a good thing!

Increasing the Draught

2010-08-20T14:00:00.002+01:00

In a week I will be taking some time off work - my first proper break this year. I am looking forward to resting, reading and refilling my creative well. Right now the bucket is falling to the end of its rope without hitting water.

My plans are modest: to drink coffee and write in a small cafe near my home, visit Pallant House Gallery's Surreal Friends exhibit, wander round Brighton's lanes and stare out across the English Channel, celebrate my sister's birthday, and walk both in Wealden woods and across the South Downs. Thanks to Henry David for reminding me again that writing and walking are not merely linked but integral:

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live! Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow, as if I had given vent to the stream at the lower end and consequently new fountains flowed into it at the upper. A thousand rills which have their rise in the sources of thought burst forth and fertilize my brain. You need to increase the draught below, as the owners of meadows on Concord River say of the Billerica Dam. Only while we are in action is the circulation perfect. The writing which consists with habitual sitting is mechanical, wooden, dull to read.

(From the Blog of Henry David Thoreau, 19 August 1851)

Deepening the Stream

2010-08-07T23:00:00.004+01:00

It is rare that I am completely alone - my life is full, busy, joyful, rich. The times when I am alone are a real gift. Sometimes I squander the gift; I am restless, unsettled, anxious in my own company. Other times I am able to quickly sink into that blessed state of setting my own pace, that feeling of spaciousness and peace.

Often, it is as though my own life is crowding me out. I feel it chivvying me along, sighing impatiently when I stop to look at something intently or to listen deeply. This summer I have been feeling the need to spend more time alone. At work I walk up onto the Downs in my lunch hour and let the wind and the wide open space clear my head, or I find a place in the gardens to tuck myself away with a book and my sandwich. No creative work can be done unless I first clear room for it. I clean the house before I write or draw, and I must also spend time entirely alone in order for the spigot to open and the words come gushing out.

Recently I have been feeling again the strong compulsion to be alone. No sooner had I expressed to myself this need to be solitary, then other accounts of aloneness blew in. First off the serendipity express was my old pal Henry David:

My attic chamber has compelled me to sit below with the family at evening for a month. I feel the necessity of deepening the stream of my life; I must cultivate privacy. It is very dissipating to be with people too much. As C. says, it takes the edge off a man’s thoughts to have been too much in society. I cannot spare my moonlight and my mountains for the best of man I am likely to get in exchange.

(From the Blog of Henry David Thoreau, 2 Aug 1854)

And then I watched this wonderful short film - a collaboration between the film maker Andrea Dorfman and the poet Tanya Davis:

Finally I read Gwen Bell's post Slow Steep (2 Aug 2010) - an account of her month long digital sabbatical. So much of what she wrote resonated. As a creative person who thrives on collaboration and engagement with others, I am constantly balancing my need to be alone with my inclination to wade enthusiastically into the fray. When I begin to feel lost in the crowd, frustrated and anxious, then I know that it is time to step back, make space, sit with myself a while. Close my computer and take up my pen and notebook. It's time to do that now, so I'll leave you with Gwen and say goodnight:

I believe that to create intimate spaces in the (digital) world, we have to first be tender and intimate with ourselves. We have to cultivate spaces of retreat within ourselves, and extend from there. We have to observe our addictions with a tender heart. We have to cultivate awareness by sitting and observing ourselves.

To fully be present online, we have to be fully ourselves offline.

I can't squeeze (nor do I want to squeeze) everything I discovered in July into one post. Like tea leaves, I'll let it unfurl as it will. To give the experience time to slow steep. From now on, I'm making the decision to dive deep with you.

Topophilia 3

2010-07-29T16:00:00.002+01:00

Right now Arthur Rackham's illustration for Undine perfectly depicts my internal topography. Hopefully it is not spilling out too noticeably, but my inner drama queen is currently holding court. I am acknowledging her presence today (in fact, it would be impossible to ignore her) while trying to get on with my work and my life.

Truth be told, I secretly enjoy the days when I find myself riding an emotional roller coaster. For all the eye-watering, bone-shaking descents and the sudden, stomach-churning, swooping skywards, I feel wildly alive. It is like standing on top the Downs on a windy day; nothing remains the same for a second; the air is charged and virile and full of the scent and taste of the Atlantic ocean. It feels invigorating and alarming in equal quantities.

Last week my little writing group met for a Friday night session. The pub was crowded and raucous, and we so we found a table outside and read aloud pieces we had written about our myth-county, inspired by a quote from Doris Lessing's book African Laughter:

In 1956, I could have gone to see the farm, the place where our house had been on the hill, but I was driving the car and could not force myself to turn the wheel off the main road north, on to the track that leads to the farm. Every writer has a myth-country. This does not have to be childhood. I attributed the ukase, the silent No to a fear of tampering with my myth, the bush I was brought up in, the old house built of earth and grass, the lands around the hill, the animals, the birds. Myth does not mean something untrue but a concentration of truth...

Arthur Rackham is one of the illustrators I discovered as a child and who helped create my myth country. At six years old I stepped through the paper frame of his images and began to explore the place whose topography I both know the best, and which utterly evades and mystifies me.

My writing group courageously occupies a sort of outpost in the wild borderland that lies between my inner and outer worlds. I am so grateful to Si ân and Jenny for the forays they make into these hinterlands, and for the chaos we sometimes create, the discoveries we make, and the writing and carousing we do together.

Have Patience

2010-07-21T17:00:00.002+01:00

There used to be a time when I was good at waiting, good at biding my time, good at queues. I remember waiting for buses and rides as a teenager, standing by the side of the road smoking and reading - Sylvia Plath, Doris Lessing and TS Elliot keeping me company. Somehow I thought patience, waiting, letting things unfold was and always would be my thing. I like fountain pens and home-made cakes and opera. I drive a car that is over 20 years old and am used to being overtaken. I am at ease in the slow lane. My favourite novels include Middlemarch, War & Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, books that can also be used as doorstops.

Recently, though, I've found myself growing impatient with the time things take. The time it takes to write a novel, for example. Or the time it takes to make a change. Going slow might be my thing, but like a lot of people I find transitions daunting and scary, so I tend to rush them. Anyone who has ridden a horse at a hedge or fence with the intention of jumping it will tell you, however, there are some things you can't rush: moving house, changing jobs, relationships ending, a daughter growing up and heading off to university.

Honouring the process of things takes time. I know this to be true, but taking that time can also put me into a blind panic. I worry I will not hold myself accountable. That I'll let myself off the hook when I should be buckling down to work. That the transition will become an excuse for not doing. It was good, therefore, to read Chris Guillebeau's piece on transitions quite early on in my summer of change, especially this:

When saying goodbye to a person or place, some think it’s best to leave things unsaid, or walk away without reflection. I’ve learned that this is usually a mistake, at least for me.
I say: hold on to the moment as long as you can. Fight for it if you have to. Get up early and stay up late. Be brave. Choose the raw emotion, even the awkwardness if necessary. If we must go on to something else, let’s at least think about what was and what could have been.

The more intense the feeling, the better. If synchronicity and the feeling of being part of something meaningful comes with sadness, loneliness, and disappointment, so be it. I just know that I don’t want the alternative—mediocrity, routine, the safe and the comfortable.

I was reminded of Chris' words again today reading Sas Lockey's recent blog post, 'The Question I Can't Hide From'. For Sas, the question is 'Am I hungry?' That could easily be my question, too. But for today I am going to say the question I can't hide from is 'Am I hungry enough?' Am I hungry enough to wait patiently for the right time; hungry enough to know when that time comes; hungry enough to do the work I have do, figure out the way ahead even while putting down roots, making a home, holding steady?

I don't have all the answers, but I want to finish by thanking Sas for this quote from Rainer Maria Rilke, which truly addresses both of our questions:

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

Topophilia 2

2010-06-30T22:00:00.001+01:00

So, while at times over the past couple of months my feet have barely touched the ground, and while the phone company has taken weeks to get my phone and broadband connected - leaving me largely incommunicado - I have had moments of real joy getting to know my new home. And the odd moment of homesickness, too, even though I've only moved 17 miles. The landscape is so different here - wide open skies, chalk soil rather than clay, huge fields and swooping swathes of downland. Through all this winds the tidal river Ouse, entirely different from the steeply-banked and clamorous streams of the High Weald. Anyway, enough geography and back to topophilia. Here's my list of what I love so far about life in Lewes:

* Wallflowers and hollyhocks and sun-warmed roses in sweet profusion.

* The twittens - including Church, Paines and Sussex Twitten, Pipe Passage and Pope's Passage.

* Flint walls and black mathematical tiles.

* Walking up Keere Street and the cats I have met while taking a breather at the point where I am neither up nor down (hello Kipper and Scruff if you are reading this!).

* The copper beech at the heart of Southover Grange gardens, and the town's many chestnut trees - all in bloom when I arrived and now in full summer foliage.

* Finding the local rookery; noisy, quarrelsome and messy (I cross the street rather than walk under their nightime roosting place on Southover Road).

* The South Downs, and their ever-changing dips and swells as the shift in light carries them closer, then further away. And their never-changing profile against the sky, especially the hunched shoulder of Firle Beacon and the tonsured dome of Mount Caburn, both visible from the windows of my new home.

* The Tuesday evening bell-ringing practise at St John the Baptist Church on Southover High Street, and the sound of the church clock striking the hours in the middle of the night.

* Plumes of steam rising from Harvey's brewery and the musky scent of hops filling the town.

There's more, of course, but that will do for now. Lots to love and lots more to learn and about life of the banks of the Ouse.

Topophilia

2010-05-30T15:37:00.007+01:00

It has been thirty days since I last posted here. A month that has sped past. I still do not have access to the internet at home and have encountered *technical difficulties* accessing my blog at work. While there have been dreams aplenty and things I would have liked to share, this has been a very quiet place of late.

The cottage I have moved into, meanwhile, is slowly becoming a home. I've had visitors and letters arrive through my front door, and I have met my garden robin and introduced myself to the flower beds and chalky lawn. The move is not quite complete. There are two more bookshelves to find space for and several more boxes of books to unpack. My grandfather's desk has to be carried down several flights of stairs and then up to my new bedroom. The nesting instinct has been rampant, and mostly I have succumbed to it gladly; organising, planning, planting, preparing, head-down and heart beating rather fast. Moving is an utterly nerve-wracking business. Dealing with change, with the new, with the uncertain and unanticipated. I find that I both thrive on change, seek out new experiences and push myself onwards, and that I also become completely stressed out by it all.

Anyway, stressed or joyful, I am falling in love with my new home. And topophilia is a word I have recently encountered. How is it possible I have reached this ripe old age without hearing it before? In honour of the excitement of learning a new word I'm starting to compile a list of the things I am learning and loving about my new home. I'll post it soon - hopefully well before another 30 days have passed...

Goodbye & All That

2010-04-29T09:30:00.002+01:00

On Saturday I am moving. I've been a serial mover the past decade, so probably this news won't come as a huge surprise to anyone who knows me well. I am also flying the parental nest (again, my mother would say). A serial mover, then, and a serial returner-home. Perhaps this time I'll be moving out for good. Though honestly, who knows?

Mostly I am just grateful to have a place I can call home; a place I can come back to and a place I can leave. And this village, for all I can (and do) say about it in grumbling and satirical undertones, is my home. More specifically, the lane I live on is home. I moved here when I was thirteen years old, left definitively when I was twenty, and have been resident on it again for the past five years, ping-ponging between four different houses. I've walked this lane and the surrounding fields and woods in all seasons, all varieties of weather, all moods. I learned I was pregnant with my daughter while living on this lane. And my eighteen-year-long marriage ended here, last summer. The terrier is also an almost-lifelong resident, and when I go on May 1st, he will stay. Right now he is sleeping, snoring, his back pressed against the soles of my feet. We've been good walking companions the past couple of years. I wonder who I will walk with when I move.

So here is what I know about my lane:

*Since it is that time of year, I know where the bluebells are, and roughly when they will be in full bloom and the wood floor will be a flooded with indigo.

*I know the spot where a friend secretly sowed the seeds of a rare flower, not previously found on our lane, but which has now taken hold and blossoms every year, always in a slightly wider area.

*I know the two streams that cross under the lane, and have followed them some distance both up and downstream. I know which river they join, and where ultimately they will reach the sea.

*I know the heft of the clay and sandstone soil of the country on either side of this lane, and where on it the potholes are, and the sweeps of roadside gravel. I am a close acquaintance of its trees and ditches and seasonal springs.

*I know the history of many of its houses, have visited or lived in several of them, drunk tea on their lawns, eaten dinner in their homely kitchens or elegant dining rooms, danced in their sitting rooms, befriended their resident pets, raided their gardens and invaded their secret places.

*I know the best places for blackberries and elderflower; where to toboggan when snow falls; the boggy places on the tangle of footpaths that criss-cross the lane, and how to avoid getting my feet wet when walking home.

*I remember the lane before it was dissected by the village bypass and renamed a road.

*I've walked home from the pub on inky dark nights when the hedge and the road have dissolved into one pool of blackness that I must navigate by touch and memory.

*I've seen the lane bathed in the light of many full moons.

*And I know the route across it the herons take, and foxes, morning and evening. I know where the badgers have built their sett; they've lived here far longer than my family has been in Sussex.

*For the past 23 years the sounds of this lane have been wild birdsong, the peacocks' heart-wrenching cries, a donkey's bellow, horses calling to each other across the fields, the barking of various dogs I know by name, the hum of traffic on the A267, the distant roar of planes coming into Gatwick airport 21 miles to the north-east.

I can take a pin and press it into a map and say, 'Here.' I will take what I know of this lane with me - as I have done many times before - and translate all that I've learned about being local from this lane to somewhere new.

Creative Canapés, 2

2010-04-19T10:57:00.005+01:00

Mid-April. The dark moon. She woke to the sound of a bumble bee knocking on her window. Saw her shuttered window was framed in golden light.

Her door was winter-bloated in its frame; the letter box choked with leaves. Milk turned sour in the fridge; a withered apple mouse-nibbled.

Drinking strong black tea & taking stock: the 1st sharp blades of grass; chestnut buds; nettles & cow parsley emerging; daffodils, primroses.

She put on her camel coat; a violet in the buttonhole. Counting days not weeks. Hours spent at stations & airports. Watching other reunions.

~*~

Dressed in black cashmere, face winter-pale & lips pomegranate red, her daughter scrapes clean the last jar of plum jam with a silver spoon.

She packed her suitcase weeks ago, when even in this cold dark place the first signs were felt of the earth reviving. Mouths the word, soon.

Now becomes shrewish, impatient. The subtle movement of pale roots, flexing like cramped fingers, reaching thru' the dark earth, haunts her.

Time to begin the journey home. She touches his hand; he turns his face away. Alone along a maze of corridors, up endless flights of stairs.

~*~

At the station her mother waits wearing tweed, old Wellies; her mascara smudged, skirt askew; arms full of wilting hellebores and hyacinths.

*** This creative canape was originally written as a series of Twitter poems; composed on my lunchtime walk up to Saxon Cross on the South Downs, and typed out in between taking phone calls when back at work. Each stanza is exactly 140 characters in length, which I took as my form. The story is the retelling of an old Greek myth, one of my favourites, and one which has obsessed me since I first read it as a child - probably the Roger Lancelyn Green version.

The Tunnel, Part 2

2010-04-14T19:16:00.007+01:00

A page from my journal. This is a rough sketch I did while day dreaming and writing about the streams and tunnels I explored as a child. This particular tunnel runs beneath Luxford Road in Crowborough, East Sussex. The drawing - which is very rough and spontaneous and rather messy - both surprised me in the way it turned out and also perfectly captured the way I've been thinking / feeling about my childhood obsession with exploration and tunnels.

Little Red Riding Hood, 2

2010-04-06T19:30:00.002+01:00

Jennie Harbour, 1921

by Jenny Walters

A button came loose on your little red hooded coat,
You sat by my side as I threaded my needle and started to sew.
I click the TV to black and the room is silent like the forest.
The words come to me,
I cannot stop them,
Have I ever told you the story...?
I know you are frightened of the echo in my voice
From years before. It is written in you too.
You glimpse my teeth as I tell you,
Trust no-one,
Do not follow the path.

***Jenny is the bright spark who ignited our Little Red Write-a-thon (while Sian was the inspired genius who tossed in the handful of gunpowder and measure of bloggish chutzpah) and I am thrilled to be publishing her piece here. I also think Jennie Harbour's illustration perfectly captures the tone and mystery and quiet menace of Jenny Walters' poem; and of course I am nerdishly chuffed to have two Jennie's/Jenny's in one blog post.

The plan is that some more versions of this fairytale will follow. And feel free to post a link in the comments if you have a version of Little Red Riding Hood of your own, whether drawn or written...

Little Red Riding Hood

2010-04-02T18:00:00.001+01:00

(for Jenny & Sian, again)

At the edge of the forest I stand for a moment, looking back towards my home, the bright sunlight. I remember how my mother smoothed my hair and tucked the loose strands behind my ears. The weight of the basket drags on my arm; when I lift the tea-towel I smell the sweetness of rock cakes and a punnet of wild strawberries.

The path I walk along is dusty. It has not rained for almost two weeks. The buttercups in the field are dimmed; they bow their heads and ease their pernicious roots through the dark soil, searching for water. At the entrance to the forest chestnut and oak saplings lean towards each other making an archway. I enter the wood and, without waiting to allow my eyes to adjust to the dim green light, being walking briskly in the direction of my grandmother's house.

A blackbird, hearing my foot snap a fallen twig, flies up from the undergrowth calling his alarm. My shoes pinch and I stop to take them off, tying the laces together and stringing them around my neck. This is the first rule I break.

The earth path feels cool beneath my feet. When I step off the path the moss and sparse, pale grass feels soft, delightful. I stop beneath a broad-limbed beech tree. There are still bluebells filling the wood with their scent, their waves of fading indigo.

I lie among the flowers, spreading out my red-hooded cape like a blanket, and eat a rock cake. Then, because I am thirsty, I eat a handful of strawberries; they are small and sharp; the first fruit of summer. Their juice stains my mouth and fingertips. I lie back and wait for you to find me.

The Tunnel, Part 1

2010-03-29T22:00:00.005+01:00

Most poets are saved children: they are people
who have kept their childhood
alive and absolutely present.
~ Helene Cixous

The tunnel takes me back to the treasure house of my childhood. It is one way of returning; probably there are 10,000 more. Cracking open the pages of Margaret the Field Mouse is another. Its pages have been patched together with brittle, yellowing sellotape. The smell of hyacinths is also a way back, and the ancient, battered Quality Street tin that holds my grandmother's button collection. Also placing a Cadbury's milk chocolate button on my tongue; the juice of a Victoria plum running down my chin; summer rain.

But the tunnel - curved concrete walls, an algae-greened floor, and a fringe of ivy or bramble - this is one of the main arteries that leads directly from the heart to the mind to the memory. And recently, as I paddled with the terrier in one of the steep-sided, iron-red streams of my childhood, the sensation of the cool water deflating my Wellingtons and pressing them against my calves acted as a sort of madeleine. The body remembers. The body is another way back.

My friend Eva Silverman recently wrote that as a child her "favorite toys were a typewriter, a doggie doll and a ball. Pretty much exactly like now." We might think we have closed and barricaded the doors and passage ways back; even that we were compelled to do so. Or we may believe that because we have neglected those old places the locks and hinges will have rusted shut. But in fact, no one's childhood or past is entirely lost to them. It is always possible, I think, to paddle our way home, to find and break open the door to our long-neglected treasure house. This is the work of the writer, poet and artist.

Ask yourself, what did I love as child? And then ask yourself, what do I love now? Make a list of the things you did and the things you loved then, and the things you love now. Notice where they overlap and then go to that place - it is the tunnel leading back to your true self. It is the doorway that will take you home.

8Things: Mantras For Writers

2010-03-11T18:00:00.000Z

I'm writing this in response to Magpie Girl (Rachelle Mee-Chapman), whose 8Things I always enjoy. This week's post, coming at the end of an interminably long northern European winter, particularly resonated: how to overcome or break through the resistance to creativity. There are inevitably times (the end of winter being one of those times) when it seems my entire creative life is about procrastination, doubt and a deep, almost impenetrable resistance to actually sitting down and writing or making art. I'll still have ideas aplenty, just no energy to carry them through. The spring flowers are late this year, but the first shoots and flashes of colour are finally appearing. I know my creative mojo will return too, in good time, but thought the challenge of considering how I do get through these dark times would be a good one. So thanks for being the spark, Rachelle, and here goes!

*8 Mantras for Writers

1) Look back through your recent work and acknowledge how much you have actually accomplished, even during what feels like a fallow period.

2) Henry Miller says this best (and thanks to Keri Smith for the quote): 'The ground for any kind of growth and cultivation is prepared by lying fallow.'

3) Tell yourself, 'I am lying fallow.' Hibernating is important when you live in the far north (or the wilds of East Sussex).

4) Allow yourself to 'put off' working on one creative project (in my case that's usually writing The Novel) by working on another creative project. That way you get to procrastinate constructively.

5) Read books which will kick start your creativity no matter how many days it's been since you last saw the sun! Ideas? Pat Schneider's fabulous Writing Alone & With Others is my current creative rocket fuel.

6) Tell yourself just five minutes. Or just five words.

7) Create in company. Get together with some writing/art-making friends. Collaborate. Magical things are guaranteed to happen.

8) Get outside and walk yourself back into yourself. Then come home, sit down at your desk, and start writing before your blood has time to cool.

Rebellion

2010-03-07T22:19:00.003Z

March 8, Women's Emancipation, 1920
Adolf Strakhov

Right now I am exhausted after a work week that feels like it's never going to end - and much as I would love to write a blog post, there isn't a whisker of creative oomph in me. Luckily that is not the case for the aptly named Sas, who has creative oomph aplenty and puts it to excellent use.

"Today is International Woman's Day, " she writes, "And my hope is that you will speak. That you will ignore the Charles Tansley's of this world and their assertion that 'women can't paint, women can't write', and find your voice."

I haven't got the energy to say much myself other than please read the rest of Sas's post! You'll find it right here: how i joined the rebellion.

Onward the revolution - and goodnight!

Wild Rumpus

2010-02-26T12:00:00.000Z

I've never met anyone who claimed to have had a happy childhood. Childhood is too full of riotous joy, terror, mystery, melancholy, wildness, delight, anarchy, hope and confusion for words as benign as 'happy' to apply.

In my own childhood I remember more chaos than contentment. My mother's mantra was, "Calm down, girls!" But life was turbulent, relentless and exhausting. Maybe on the surface we would quieten down, but underneath my sister and I were wild to the core, reckless to our fingertips. My childhood was not happy, but made up of joy, terror, and mystery in almost the exactly correct proportions.

I carried the wildness of childhood into my twenties. And I remember the relief when I finally found a quiet place within me; some much needed calm; some long sought-after contentment. But the wild of childhood is never far away.

As a young woman I first read Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are to my own daughter. Although first published in 1963, the book didn't make it into the East Sussex of my 1970's childhood. But when I finally read the adventures of young Max and his monstrous friends, my response was one of delighted recognition. Sendak expressed something hidden deep within me; the photographer, Margaret de Lange, does the same. Their work is like a door or tunnel leading me back into the treasure house of my own childhood, a place still resonating with unfathomable mystery and savage delight. I am grateful to find the key to this place remains in my possession. That with a little weight behind it, the door swings open on rusty hinges. That I am still able to enter and call out in strident tones for the wild rumpus to begin.

Treasure House

2010-02-20T16:30:00.002Z

And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world's sounds - wouldn't you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past...

- Rainer Maria Rilke, from 'Letters to a Young Poet'

At first I love winter. My birthday is on the Solstice and in a way this makes it my season. I relish the frost, the muted monochrome landscape against which flashes of colour (holly berries, a goldfinch, a triangle of blue sky) seem so vivid.

Winter invariably starts off as a creative time. I turn inward, spend hours at my desk or reading in bed, the terrier curled up beside me. Being outside on a good walk is exhilarating; returning home is warmly comforting. The contrast makes me feel vigorously alive.

And then, sometime in January, things slip off-kilter. I am no longer in tune with the season, with the darkness and the cold, but at odds with it. The grey skies make me gloomy and I crave mango-bright colours, warmth, sunlight. My attempts to write or draw become exercises in futility and frustration. I feel scattered, exhausted, and full of self-doubt.

So begins the January decline, and so it continues until the beginning of March. Then the first daffodils and crocuses appear and yellow floods my winter weary soul.

Before spring arrives, however, there is still the remainder of February to endure, with its damp and frost and sudden snow showers. February is a frown; a tedious old fart; an icebound bridge between the seasons. How to negotiate it? How to live through it when escape is, alas, impossible?

Standing and looking at my crowded bookshelf I sigh with impatience at my own obtuseness. How could I have forgotten? It is time, clearly, for this flaked-out artist to draw a deep breath and return to Beginner's Mind. It is time to rummage through my drawers and find the keys to the neglected treasure house. It is time to reconnect with my roots and the well-spring of my imagination.

What lies within the treasure house of my childhood? What can be found within yours?

The Primroses Will Arrive

2010-02-16T12:40:00.004Z

With thanks to the fabulous:
www.blyberg.net/card-generator/.

Excited

2010-02-08T22:14:00.006Z

Get excited & change things: this is my mission for the next few weeks.

The snow is back in the south-east of England but when I was out walking a couple of days ago Spring was so close I could smell and hear her. The earth is stirring, returning to life. The birds are full of it and the first snowdrops are out. Crocuses and daffodils have pushed their bright green spears up through the damp, cold soil. From the darkness, light. That's all.

Jenny Wren

2010-02-01T21:00:00.009Z

by Jenny Walters

(for Sian and Rebecca)

I am russet brown on top and pale below. I am soft and round with long thin legs.

In the daytime I am alone but I am busy, busy, busy. I fly here and there and perch and peck and twist. Watching through my eyes both dark and light.

You glimpse me in the hedges. I will only give a little.

I am strong and brave, bold and clever.

But I am tiny.

Underneath my feathers I am brittle. You could break me with your hand if you wanted. But I can fill my lungs and stretch apart my mouth and shout until I am heard.

I have an incredibly loud voice for such a small bird.

At night, in the house that my husband built and I have feather lined, and where I have laid my eggs, I will close my eyes and be calmed by familiar wings.

*** I posted this last night while my daughter and I were in the throes of completing the financial forms for her US college applications. Things were fairly fraught, and during an enforced lull in proceedings (we were waiting for vital information to come down the line) I got busy with some therapeutic blogging.

This morning's addendum is to say that this prose poem is - as stated above - by my friend Jenny Walters. And, by way of further explanation, Jenny is one of the three legs on the stool that is my creative writing group. Sian, Jenny and I meet sporadically but regularly to talk, howl with laughter, occasionally lay our heads on the pub table and weep, make elaborate and ridiculous toasts, exchange hugs, tell stories, create full moon vision boards, read our work-in-progress and write. We open our journals amongst the pint glasses and beer mats, muddle our way through to a topic, and go like the clappers covering a page or two in loopy late-night handwriting. Sometimes we'll write pieces that ricochet between us like errant ping pong balls; occasionally shared themes, words even images will serendipitously appear echoed in our writing.

Back to Jenny though, who I hereby pronounce is the Dorothy Parker of the Carpenter's Arms, known for her acerbic wit, the elegant smoking of her Bic biro, and her powerful diaphragm (her laugh, when truly unleashed, can be heard as far away as the skate board park on Court Meadow). A trained actress, Jenny is our very own quadruple threat; she can act, sing, dance and write.

Thanks for letting me publish your work here, Jenny.

A Storytelling of Rooks

2010-01-28T19:00:00.011Z

Or the Rook Totem Replies...

(for Jenny and Sian)

Black-shawled, then, with a harlot's raucous laugh and a crone's crooked and grasping feet. Believe me when I say my laugh bears no malice, but pure and earthly delight.

Also, a scimitar-beak sharp for cleaving, digging, turning and slicing deep through cold Wealden clay. I dig for secrets, slice through to paradox, complications and earthy unravellings.

There is a bright gleam on my shadow. I am burnished; almost silver in the low winter sun. Masked, yet open as a child's hand. My coal-black eyes glint - it is my soul and crimson heart you glimpse, glowing like a cinder in their depths.

I will protect you beneath my fringed and ragged wings. Hold you tight. Call you sister. Then, too, I will shrug you off - though not through carelessness. I will rise up shrieking, boisterous, in the great rookish clamour. From the ground you stand, head tipped back, watching as we rise and fall, are tumbled by the wind, drop and dip against the fierce blue sky.

On the ground, alas, I am ungainly. I straddle the unsteady soil on sea-legs, walk with a roll, a sailor's swagger. I stand, head-cocked, and feel the wind stroke my feathers. Ruffle me, ruffle me.

As I work, I call out, Here! Here! Turning the soil; mining the landscape; remaking the hidden and dark and damp places. Looking for what is grubbish, tender, illuminating.

A home-lover, I return each spring to my place in the rookery. I know where I am, and how the world fits me, thrown loose and soft around my shoulders. I am a member of this parliament of holy fools, this building, this black net thrown again into the always-yielding sky.

I pack my nest with green moss, golden larch needles, little scraps of brilliance gleaned from the roads and byways, from other people's gardens and bookshelves.

I am a thief and a hoarder, an honest witness and a false-friend. Loquacious and surly, I turn and turn about. I am secretive and expansive, generous and frugal.

A lover of high, lonely places. Lover of home and hearth. I grip the smooth bark with my crone's feet and swing in the wild wind, feeling my way forward with my rusty, rowdy, remembering voice.

Digging

2010-01-18T10:30:00.001Z

Some writing is like bricklaying. It is like building Ivan Denisovich's wall - one brick, then another, working faster and faster before the mortar freezes or something changes, some barely perceptible shift that makes you sputter to a halt. I love this kind of writing. It is possible to enter a state of flow, to fall into the rhythm of the work and lose all sense of self.

And some writing is like archaeology. A lot of digging goes on. A lot of painstaking work, uncovering and revealing the layers. That is what my novel seems to require right now, and why I think I am running into difficulty. I love the times when I tumble right into what I am doing and am swept away by it. Mostly, though, I am down in the trenches with a trowel and a brush, trying not to shatter something important. This is true in part because I am writing a historical novel, set in a particular time and place. And again it is true because I am writing a story based on the lives of real people - my maternal grandparents.

Archaeology is all about the understory - what lies beneath and below - piecing together what happened from fragments. Constructing a historical novel that fictionalises my grandparents' lives is also about the understory. The stories my grandparents told me - wonderful and vivid as they are - are one thing. I could write a memoir, build a very pleasing wall with these stories. But in so doing I would miss the implicit by focusing on what is known, factual, explicit.

Focusing on the explicit would construct a narrative, tell the story of my grandparents' known lives. But by fictionalising their lives, by turning to and revealing the understory, by imaginatively uncovering what was never fully known or revealed, I hope to make those lives anew. My wall will have a door in it; a space I can invite my readers to walk through. Books are border posts. And fiction gives us humans the godly power of creating a new world. I can feel my grandparents' fictional counterparts - Zina and Gus - waiting for me. They are not infinitely patient. They won't wait forever. I must keep digging. Once the foundations are laid I will start building my wall.

Owning my Ambition

2010-01-14T12:00:00.000Z

In honour of Anna Clark's call for women writers to own their ambitions, and Jen Lee's Confessions, I've decided to come clean on an ill-kept secret of my own: I'm writing a novel. And what is more, over the past couple of months I've come unglued in the writing process, missed my self-imposed deadline, and stopped working on it daily - which I had vowed not to do. Because when you are wrestling with something as unwieldy as a long piece of fiction you must stay with it, every day, or lose energy and impetus. At least that's my experience.

So there you have it. A confession from one who is determined her blog will not be confessional, and who has recently admitted that she hugs her secrets close, like a tired old winter coat.

Yesterday though, after a break of about two months, I compelled myself to return to my novel - abashed but determined - and for a good half hour stood knocking on the door, asking humbly to be allowed back in. And somewhat begrudgingly, her eyebrows raised and lips pursed, my Muse finally conceded, cracked open the door, and let me slip in past her.

And I wrote - not necessarily anything that will even make it through into the first draft - but words on the page, one after another until I lost myself in what I was doing and the story became everything. For the rest of the day I felt as though, finally, I had made it back home.

Latest on the Four Quarters

2010-01-12T19:32:00.006Z

Benjamin's Paris address book

Inspired by our meeting last night I've posted an update on the collaborative art project I am involved with. In brief - there was frost, street lights on snow, Harvey's Old, a chocolate lab, a friendly landlady, warm fire, much laughter, and an impromptu reading of work in progress. You're warmly invited to find out more about the Four Quarters here:

Four Quarters: Benjamin at the Rose & Crown

Inspired - 39 Things

2010-01-08T10:00:00.001Z

Inspired by the fabulousness that is Andrea Jenkins (aka Hula Seventy) I proudly present my very own list of 39 things to do before I turn 40!

1. Knit a tea cosy.

2. See a ballet at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.

3. Create my third zine.

4. Get all my books out of boxes and onto bookshelves - finally!

5. Take 52 yoga classes.

6. Visit Monk's House and Farley Farm House.

7. Have a midsummer picnic on the South Downs with the terrier.

8. See Billy Budd and Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne.

9. Write letters X 4 (real ones) to Rachel and Sandrine.

10. Welcome a Cyrillic keyboard typewriter into my life and my heart.

11. Visit Italy with Luka - a first for both of us.

12. Stroll in the Piazza San Marco.

13. Cross the Arno on the Ponte Santa Trinita while eating gelato.

14. Go apple picking.

15. Step over the threshold of my own front door.

16. Paint 12 icons.

17. Visit the National Archives at Kew to research my great-grandparents, Zinaida and Eric.

18. Spend time with my great-aunt Sonia.

19. Make plum jam.

20. Visit my good friends in Burgundy (Hazel and the Monbrison-tribe)

21. and Ireland (Lydia).

22. Dance classes - salsa!

23. Have dinner at the Hungry Monk.

24. Find a comfortable bra.

25. Complete the Four Quarters project.

26. Subscribe to The Sun Magazine.

27. Finish my novel - first draft, all the way to the very last word. And revise it.

28. Ride my bike to Lewes (and back).

29. Swim in the sea - because the only water I encountered last year was in my bath.

30. Learn four poems to recite when the moon is full and I am feeling wild at heart.

31. Meet Rima in person. Drink tea and exchange tales in her home on wheels!

32. Hug these 4 & hold them tight: Cuyler Etheredge, Elliot Abhau, Pat McGinn and Sam Noal.

33. Take a nap in the woods when the bluebells are out.

34. Host a candle-lit dinner party.

35. Fill my sketchbook.

36. Read this translation of War & Peace.

37. Teach creative writing in a prison.

38. Make nettle soup in the springtime.

39. Publish a poem.

Grasping the Nettle

2010-01-02T21:47:00.008Z

Last year, it seemed, grasping the nettle was what it was all about. Doing the hard, painful things that just had to be done. Being mighty squeamish about pain - both enduring and inflicting it - meant 2009 was a hard year in many ways. But also the year when I finally understood that sometimes, in order to be true to myself, and in order to live authentically and honestly, painful things have to be done. There is no escaping the nettles. And that is what this picture is about. The first in what I hope will be a series of contemporary icons. It is not finished yet - right now the colour has been splashed on via that most rudimentary of graphics software, Paint - once I have the time and courage (its been a while since I have done much painting) I will paint it with watercolours.

And one day I will study icon painting at the seminary I once visited in St Petersburg. I will! Then I'll finally get to grips with egg tempera and spend happy hours grinding my own pigments and fiddling around with gold leaf. For now though I am doodling and dreaming in my Sussex bedroom, making simpler icons that serve as metaphors for my own life and experiences.

So 2009 was nettles and unravelling. And 2010? I have decided that the word for the New Year is Pilgrim. My Full Blue Moon dream board - pasted together in the Rose & Crown pub on December 29th - is covered in foxes and pathways. Let's see where they take me...