Hit the gas

The thing that I will always remember about 2008 is that it was the year of my return to writing. Not that we had ever been apart much. See, I have always written, no matter what else has been going on in my life. But writing has been a background activity rather than a priority.

What made it different this year, is the daily commitment I made, both in terms of writing every day, no matter where I have been, and of posting here most days as well. Sounds so serious, but the truth is, I've been having a ball.

So it will come as no surprise to the people who know me and some of the regular readers of these musings and meanderings, to hear that I have decided it's time to hit the gas and see where my writing adventures take me next. Raise my game. 

I guess this might mean I spend less time here at Inkhaven because I'm busy with my other writing projects and pieces for submissions. However, my blogging adventures are definitely going to continue. Sometimes, things just fall into place and you don't really have to do anything. The river flows along anyway. 

With that image in mind, I want to wish everyone many wild and creative times in 2009. 

Happy New Year, love from Annie

Staying cold

Cold cuts across the threshold

with a bolt of ice.

Breath flies out of me like smoke

like the life in me is on fire

against the harsh.

A feeling of being watched.

Big eyes at the window.

Busy fingers.

A squirrel, fending.

New diary

I want to stay closed, pristine, neat, unblemished. 

She can't wait to crack me open, crease my pages back and scrawl coffee dates that will get scribbled out three times before they finally make their mind up.

I want to welcome the first lick of ink on the first day of the year. 

She's already blasted HOLIDAY!! across certain weeks in a crude pen with ink the colour of bubble gum.

I want the events of the year to run naturally and inevitably onto my pages like a well-crafted symphony has themes and motifs.

She's already run out of space on the last page of last year's forward planner and the post-it notes make her social life look like we are in for a tarty carnival next year.

I want her to carry me in her jacket pocket, take me out on the train and add a few notes when we come to a stop. 

She writes the shopping list in me as she bounds down the hill, her words like runaways.

I like to sit by the phone, ready, or on the corner of the desk that she never has the dignity to sit at.

She stuffs me in the shopping bag against the steamy heat of new baked bread, throws me into her cavernous work bag where I might never be seen again, or strains to close the instrument case when I lie next to the viciousness of strings stretched taut and menacing in the silent dark of adrenaline before the gig.

I like to have it all planned out, careful, thoughtful.

She likes it best when she doesn't know what day it is.

 

Best parsnips ever

After all the waiting, this year's crop of parsnips are the best I have ever grown. Other years, I have to admit it's been disappointing to dig up pale roots that looked just like the uniform ones in the supermarket. This time, they are like something out of a fairy story - gnarled, bumpy, wild looking, with darker skins. In the darkness of their paper sack, they smell rich and sweet.

They have been great roasted and also in soup, but today, I'm going to try a new recipe where they are layered with onion, garlic, a little lemon juice and a cooking apple, all topped with Parmesan. Dinner might have to be earlier than I planned!

Must have been all that rain earlier in the year. I have watched a lot of it fall, marooned in my shed, hiding under trees that splattered fat drops onto my bare arms, or running for the cover of a bridge, or soaked to the skin sheltering in the play house of the kid's playground. 

Mostly, I didn't go outside. I watched the rain from my door, glumly waiting for it to stop, so I could go outside and pick salad or beans, but knowing in my heart that by the time it did stop raining, it would be dark. 

So, compared to other years, I have not spent a lot of time on my beloved plot this year. Luckily, it has got on and done it's growing without much help from me. And thanks to the rain, it has felt remarkable to find, growing among forests of weeds, some of the best ever crops. 

Feels great that half the parsnip crop is still in the ground, and there will be leeks ready in the next few weeks.

In your overcoat

In your overcoat, I am fading into the colours of stern faced utility and grey stone corporate. While I feel the warmth of lichened rock or the pale bleach out of driftwood would suit me better, my new camouflage will do. I am learning how to be invisible, unnoticed, uninteresting. 

In the shroud of your huge coat, I can sit out on the beach in the wind bite and face rush of zero degrees, warm enough to write for a while. 

The sea surges sideways into the shore, lurches in and scoops out curves, lines the beach with the wave shapes of a child's drawing. And I am on that sea, awaiting my sea legs, holding on tight to a smooth rail, as the far corners of my eyes cry at the blast of sun shimmer.

My last ditch

In the first light of morning, just enough light to see these words run onto the page through the oddly dark shadow cast by my hand over each word at the place it emerges. I think I can write in the dark after all these years, but it still feels a bit out of control.

In an effort to trick myself into doing more artwork than is normally possible to fit into my days and my tiny home, I often try out new ideas. This year, it has been to draw in a sketchbook in the dark, just before I fall to sleep. I'm sure it's no new idea. And I'm sure I'm not the only person who misses the moment by promptly falling asleep too soon. It's been fascinating to hear the feverish complaints of inner control demanding to see the results! Anyway, the sketches are certainly different to what I would normally shape when I can see. Some are beautiful, and not surprisingly, most are just weird! 

My newest trial, not held in the hours of darkness, is to draw with the opposite hand to normal. To say dominant hand doesn't quite hold for me, as I am naturally left handed, but write with my right hand. Anyway, I give the charcoal or pastel to my left hand and away it goes, no encouragement needed, out into the wilderness of an open page without hesitation or a glance back. It seems to run with the freedom I desire and it produces sketches that always surprise me. 

Anyway, it is a new venture, easy to do, and something that makes me incredibly content. 

One of my happiest times ever, was up high on the Lancashire moors, in an August gale, wearing every item of clothing I had with me, wrestling with a wonderful handmade piece of A1 rag paper that I imprisoned beneath rocks. I was up there with a group of artists who huddled behind walls like moaning grumbling sheep. I spent the day in a ditch, so warm out of the wind in such a painting frenzy that they didn't see me until it was time to go home. I felt tearful at the thought of that day being over. 

That kind of freedom is quite hard to match when you are worried about getting ink on the sheets or paint on the carpet. However, like in most recent years, it is going to be part of my New Year resolution, but this year, I think I might actually get paint on my hands more often.

Festive cheer

Dropped stars litter the street outside the plain neatness of the Strict Baptist Chapel. 

A Japanese girl in ankle socks, kneels to pick them up. 

Fallen stars shimmer, earthbound. 

Last night's cheer still shines.

__________________

Now it's my turn to spread some festive cheer!

I've been thinking about generosity and how the gifts that come when we least expect them to, the things that are impossible to wrap in paper and ribbons, the times when there's no actual gift that changes hands, are often the most wonderful. They are the gifts that gently direct us back into the teaming pulsing streaming life around us. And sometimes, it feels a bit magical.

Thank you to everyone who has been part of my blogging adventure so far - to all the followers, the people who have become on-line buddies, those who have commented, those who lurk, those who drop by occasionally, and those of you who know me. 

When I raise my glass later, I will raise it to you. Cheers! 

Have a very Happy Christmas.

Love from Annie and Spot xx

Dorothy

She stuffed fat bundles of used notes through the hatch, so much of it, as if she was depositing booty from holding up the bank around the corner, or the sleazy winnings from an all night poker game. 

The clerk's mouth fell into a frozen O. 

Dorothy chatted, carefree, looking like she did this all the time, like they were all old pals. The clerk occasionally managed to bring his mouth closed to shape an odd syllable while his grinning colleague counted and counted and counted, like all his fantasies were coming true before the Christmas party booze began to flow.

I could feel the brittle rub of banknotes flicking past the greasy money grub of cashier hands against a background haze of customers smiling to themselves.

*

In case you are wondering, she was dressed as Dorothy.

Last dregs

In the thin shadows of a late dawn, the Blackbird lets the cat out of the bag. Calls out with a voice that resounds with the hits of glass marbles blasted out of the ring. Can't help himself, as he gorges the last of the wrinkled grapes on the drooping vines. Like some swaying reveller who can't quite find his way home, he knocks the last dregs back and dribbles as he chatters with his mouth full. 

Beneath all of this, the pond holds the Carp as if time has been suspended.

Three brooms a sweeping

Suddenly, it felt wacky and festive, as street sweepers with wide bristle brooms headed down the hill. Three in a row, scratching and scraping in rhythm. Cans escaped from gutters, stop start, erratic, asking to feel the inevitable work boot flatten their sound.

Three brooms a sweeping.

A convoy of satisfaction.

Longest night

Their procession looked like a swaying garland of lights, unhappy about being tethered, slung between the rages of burning trees of torches at each end. It snaked along the ridge, dancing as white specks between the guardians of wild orange flames that licked the smooth night sky into a black that almost shone.

Solemnity and excitement edged closer to the bay where a fire had been laid close to the low tide's edge, and one by one, in the light of the torches that they speared into the sand, they extinguished the lanterns and placed them on top of the bracken and kindling and twiggy sticks. And one or two lanterns ran off on the breeze like runaway lambs and the children shrieked after them and brought them back into the fold, snapping the willow limbs in eager clutching arms.

Finally, standing back, they threw the torch spears into the waiting heap, and as the roar took hold, they cheered, or ran in circles or cried a private tear, depending on their age. The flames gorged the withies and spat them out in rushing splinters of sparks and the furnace heat drew them near through the longest, darkest night until the tide turned and began to bring in the morning.

______________

Tonight, Brighton celebrates the longest night with The burning of the clocks.

 ______________

I have a short Wintery piece up on ahandfulofstones today.

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Sprigs of cheer

Sprigs of Wren song 

cheer the dark hub 

of the Holly.

Blemished lemon

She rang the buzzer and told me that someone would run back and change it for a perfect one. I held onto it tightly, intent on taking it home with me, said it was the one I wanted and tried to get her to take the money for my few items. We waited. The queue behind me tutted and sighed. She looked at me a lot, suspicious under her big fringe.

I didn't tell her that I loved the blemishes on the skin rubbed smooth and pale by the sway of branches in a hot breeze and the place where a leaf had curled close as a shield from the sun. I didn't tell her that I liked the change in texture, from glossy wax and pock mark familiar, to the dull rough of sandy island archipelago in a dazzling sea. I didn't tell her that I like that colour there, reminding me of pale office envelopes, smooth brown wrapping paper waiting wide open for the boldness of folds and the clear decisions of tape and string. I didn't tell her that I wanted to draw the patterns on it's skin because they were beautiful.

I carried it home in my coat pocket like a precious find, sat gazing at it from every angle before putting the rest of the shopping away. Now, I look at it across the room as it sits brazen against the satsumas on a dark blue plate. I laid the plate on a cork mat on the closed lid of the piano. It looks like a Matisse still life. 

Pools

A swimmer so slow she hardly progresses forwards, gulps along the spa blue of the pool. Alone in the midst of the wavelets she creates, they wing out, lose interest and fade before reaching the edges. She wears a white rubber cap with a festive pink flower that drinks above her forehead as each stroke bobs down. The lulling rhythm of her limbs is all there is on this quiet morning, a consistent rhythm, digging out a groove in water quick to run back level.

Across the meadow, dark pools lie waiting for other arms to scoop and glide. Beneath the bone-like twigs of the Heronry and the cracked red lifebelt ring, only fish breath breaks the surface. This water makes for a strange soup. It's mirror is broken and steamed into clouds and speckles of mildew. The reflection it keeps is ominous and dark, but the red ring sings out, snapped in two beneath it's real self, it's block letters spelling out words too broken to read.

I once lay back there, floating, to escape the heat of July and gazed up to follow the paths of jumbos heading into Heathrow. Beneath the curving spiral stack of weight suspended and slowing, I touched a stillness so empty, so blissfully serene, that brown fish came to flip lazily over my feet and the Heron's gaze sharpened to a pinpoint of desire.

Back home

High above the street, in the half light of a morning that held the prospect of burning gold, the gulls moved back into their tenement. They creaked and groaned in turn as they kicked last year's thin bed out and away onto the faded bronze of the mossy rooftop. 

Restless like me today, they cannot settle. Eventually, they come to a quiet stand. When I look out later, they are still standing there in a flood of moonlight.

Herbarium

Beach scooped high, flung out, thrown up, heaved and hauled over what is man made. Pristine white beach huts are barricaded into enforced hibernation by slopes of heaped stones. Splattered against the doors, the lace of red seaweeds, cast aside, flattened. Like from the yellowing pages of a museum herbarium, the fronds are beautifully placed.

Lone tear

Carol gazed at the tiny encapsulated world of a lone tear on the scratched table, peered into a tiny face smeared with make-up, made clown-like and grotesque by the play of light on the curves.

Odd twists of coloured skeins dragged in from the curtains. The robust primaries of high street lettering on the shop fronts opposite, seemed to beat in thrumming patterns. A patch of grilled sky, bent at an odd angle like a window in a fairy tale prison, leaned towards the edge. 

She wanted to look in through that window to another world. 

She wanted to look out into her current world with a similar curiosity.

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This post was inspired by the photo for Monday Mural on 14th December at poefusion.blogspot.com

Thanks for another inspiring shot, Michelle.

Strange season

Wondering, as I put the finishing touches to home made cards. 

Stubborn ink and paint on my fingers as I make a cuppa. 

The whys and wherefores of this strange season whisper wayward. 

Suddenly, one runs up too close, shouting. 

And the deluge disorientates. 

Cabin fever.

Time for walkabout. 

In a graffiti doorway, a smashed pink umbrella with bamboo design. 

Abandoned. 

It did not survive yesterday's storm.

Young gulls turn stones, expectant.

Unlucky.

Three surf skimming Cormorants head out.

Stealth flight.

They overtake the speedboat.

Moneybags

"Don't know what to do with it all, sometimes. So, I've found a new way to share it with others. I leave crisp new bank notes in the back covers of library books. I've tried tens and twenties, but the red ones really brighten up a day."

Rooks

Steep there, in stunned stubble. It makes for a difficult walk. Shining out against faded frosted colours, a grounded flock of scattered Rooks stumbles uphill. Still behaving like a crowd, they all head in the same direction.

Cleft

Secret. Hidden. Beyond the promenade, on the edge of what is familiar, just a bit further from where you can see, there is a wild beach where no-one goes. 

Best to be there at the lowest tide, when the moon's pull is at it's tightest, when you will have the most time because your nervous eye will want to keep the clock in sight. A trembling voice in your head will incessantly recite tide tables, shout out warnings, tell you to hurry, to keep the shore in sight.  A neurotic ear will be listening out for the sudden rush and push of the turning tide, when it will splutter in a language full of consonants, urging your reluctant feet to run.

Instinct takes over, in some web and weft of other world and somehow, still in the feint shadow of fear, you are safe in the adventure.

Caves. Strange burrows and tunnels at the foot of towering cliffs, cleft and gouged out by the waves. Imagine - crawl in, wait for the flood, the suck, the draw, the gasp, the spit, the drown. Conjure up the moment before the fall - the splintering crack of chalk opening up to it's first view of sky, the slide of rocks coated in the dust of thin soil, showers of sand littered lethal with grit and slithers of stone, ancient faces of flint flung far out and windowed twists of whelk shells, empty of sound. 

Tangled birdsong

Turning left instead of right, my feet choose a different route home in the rare leisure of a long lunch break. Behind the resting swings in the tangled birdsong of the park, where the blast from the sea cannot reach, the trees still hold onto their gold. 

Sundae

Want to go the other way. Want to head West and keep going. Want to walk looking into that colour feast, into that ice-cream sundae palette that my eyes are gorging. I want to stroll that way until I only see darkness in front of me and the swaying white fringes of a quiet sea waiting for high tide to rush in. 

Roots

Straight after her sixteenth birthday, Ruth left. She thought that suddenly cartwheeling away from home would be enough to break the shackles of an upbringing that had always felt foreign to her. 

She tumbled, unprepared, into a hectic and hard-edged life in the sprawling city, where she never seemed to move on from being an overwhelmed wide-eyed stranger. 

It took years for her to realize that she could look back on her roots from the other side, that she could follow their crooked pathways with a slow and curious finger to ease the restless squirrelling acrobatics of what her heart needed to know.

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This post was inspired by the Monday Mural photo at poefusion.blogspot.com

Thanks to Michelle for finding another interesting shot.

Lost in good company

Throat mumbling flute, trying to find the lost humming of contentment. Creaking and fluttering violin like a hollow bird testing it's newly planed wings. Warped delay vocals in a foreign tongue, bouncing down a maze of virtual drainpipes, tapped by bright shards of a xylophone. Thud of old wooden crate is an empty, longing heart.

The strands came together and the room sang and a small dog lost in good company turned around to listen.

_________

Yesterday, I had a great time taking part in  a gallery 'happening' where the walls were covered in paper and decorated with words, drawings, prints, collage etc. It was very hard to tear myself away from the totally liberating experience of scrawling on a big scale without having to worry about making a mess. There was live music too, and I know my violin was dying to come out of it's case while I was spraying paint and getting the markers going. There was also a little dog called Bill who was so happy to have lots of new company and in the quiet bits, I loved hearing her nails on the vinyl floor.

 

 

Without gloves

Walking in the relentless flood of icy wind, I'm crying. I jump over the barrier and lean back against the warm side of the sea wall in midday sun, happy to have an eye-wide view of the horizon. It's good to recognize the simple pleasure of being able to sit and write for a while, without gloves. 

New character

You just caught a glimpse of her again, like the first bite of an image coming through in the darkroom's hush of held breath, like a lone fragment discovered by accident in reams of fingertip cutting office papers you flicked through before they hit the shredder. She managed to elude you somehow, and now you are tearing your fingers again in that heap of old paper just like a moment ago. 

You can picture her in your impatient mind, but she's buried in gritty sand and rubble, waiting to be excavated from a cave of unconsciousness. And like treasure from an ancient hoard, it could take weeks, or months to make the dust fly from her face without ruining her profile. 

She's back in the cobwebbed corner, like some thread of a distant tune entwined in the chromatic doodling of a muted trumpet. Out in the daylight, free from the last dregs of smoky air in the clarity of a crisp new day, the easy swing will straighten up and dive back to linger until another darkness falls.

She's waiting for another connection before the river mud yields. She's waiting for the generosity of a vivid eye.

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This post was inspired by today's prompt and photo at weekendwordsmith.blogspot.com      

Vines

Running down the long mossy wall, all fuss and flutter, like he is limping in too tight shoes, he clocks in at dawn every day, like a regular watchman, careful of every second. Narrowing days leave him less time on the job, but the season is closing. And soon, he will be gone.

He settles in the broken basket of twisting and twining vines, hidden there, in the russets and chestnuts of branches already looking for Spring. And from within this private city orchard, he guards the last dusky drooping fruits from the nose of next door's lanky grey cat. 

Guardian, harvester, connoisseur. Purple wine stains his clucking golden beak as he trips home at twilight.

Bite

Thrown to shore, a castanet mouth bigger than a hand glints in low sun like cracked eroded pearl. Pinprick homes from delving mites hold forgotten uncombed ancient hair. 

Shielding no harvest, the vigilant shell still snaps at fingers.

Parallel

Out in the water cloud

of pale spilt milk 

a sea kayak glides

parallel.  

Sometimes, he's ahead.

Sometimes, me.

George

She said it so many times that she thought about making a sign to hold up to him instead. But George never took much notice of words, spoken or unspoken. This child she had taken in was a wild one and she had decided, years ago, to leave him to the whims of the breeze. If George ever closed a door or a window behind him, then she would probably never recover from the sight of it. 

She had long given up checking all the entrances and exits. It was impossible in a house this size. But sometimes coming home at twilight it bothered her, not knowing if George was in or out, or who else might have walked in uninvited and might be sitting at the kitchen table.

Blackbirds, fox, neighbour's cat, children, dust, leaves, a homeless person in need of shelter, butterflies, all seemed oddly welcome in the rambling creaking house. The squirrel who took to sitting statuesque on the mantelpiece, with it's black beads of unblinking eyes and neatly folded hands, made her cry out a few times when it's tail twitched, but the truth was, they all warmed the house with their visits. It had always seemed so un-lived in before.

And now, with the doors and windows swaying as the weather pushed in, with the breath of breeze and the percussion of small feet and grit and leaf litter running down the bare boards of the wide hallway, it seemed like the empty house had never been more full.

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This piece was inspired by the photo on Monday Mural for 30th Nov at poefusion.blogspot.com

Thanks, Michelle.