With a little help from my friends...

Today has been a productive day.

With a little help from my regular Sunday night Rock Band crew, who have been waiting to read the novel I've been working on for-ever, I was placed in the situation where I had to provide them with some of it to read, by today, under pain of mockery or Chinese burns.

I am pleased to say that I handed over the prologue to Matt and Adam this evening with a list of music that kept me company whilst I wrote, or that fit with the tale...

Here's the list, expect the words next week...

The Last Man - Clint Mansell

Darkest Days - Stabbing Westward

Waiting For The Night - Depeche Mode

Crawling - Linkin Park

Disposable Teens - Marilyn Manson

Chinese Burn - Curve

Burn - Nine Inch Nails

Greedly Fly - Bush

The Noose - Perfect Circle

The Kill - 30 Seconds To Mars

Prayers For Rain - The Cure

Something I Can Never Have - Nine Inch Nails

A Beautiful Lie - 30 Seconds To Mars

I Put A Spell On You - Marilyn Manson

Ich Will - Rammstein

Get Your Gun - Marilyn Manson

Bodies - Drowning Pool

From Yesterday - 30 Seconds To Mars

Pet - Perfect Circle

Famous Last Words - My Chemical Romance

Broken Bones - Howling Bells

Blood - Editors

Low Happening - Howling Bells

Teardrop - Massive Attack

Haunted - Evanescence

Haunting Me - Stabbing Westward

Every Day Is Exactly The Same - Nine Inch Nails

The Trick Is To Keep Breathing - Garbage

Diving into unfamiliar waters...

Today's post is a poem.  This is rare for me, I don't generally write poetry, I find it incredibly hard when every word has so much weight and importance, when one wrong adjective can buckle the structure and bring all that emotion and thought crashing down.  (Although some writers I know say it should be the same case with prose, but if you're telling a story, shouldn't  the pace, flow and cadence come naturally?  You can over-think some times, I can certainly over-write and I kinda think life's too short...)

But I love the way poetry works, the way an entire piece can be a Polaroid of emotion, a parable, a metaphor and a riddle of meanings.  Poetry allows you to cloak your intent in deep, dark waters, so that on first reading it can seem like a summer's day but it has this edge, a promise of a storm, an unnoticed broken rung on a ladder, something big moving in the darkness of the lake...  Poetry is like stealth-prose, usually smaller, sleeker and full of surprises.  Good poetry anyway.

I don't often write poetry, but I find that sometimes its size and nature is ideal for emotional writing.  It can allow you to write about a subject without feeling the burn of the fire, without diving so deep that you suddenly find you can't breathe...

This is quite raw, I've not worked on it much, but the moment it captures feels true...

The Empty Chair

This chair;

worn and old but comfortable,

the wooden skin polished and varnish thin;

though I sit in it,

it waits for you.

Outside, the blue sky chases clouds,

bird's flight casts shadows.

The wind changes and I know

you're out chasing feathers in it;

following the seasons

from marsh to wood,

from sea to snow.

I can see your glasses pushed up,

high on your head, above binoculars,

Your hair ruffled like crows.

Your stillness and silence

making you part of the earth.

I can hear your key in the door,

The dog barking and your shout,

"Get out you stupid dog!"

The waxed jacket slides from your shoulders,

with a scent of trees, pepper and tobacco.

The chair creaks as you sit and reach for the paper.

We are the all singing, all dancing, crap of the world...

I'm sitting in the usual seat, the usual place and feeling very aware of the fact that I haven't written or blogged for a while.  Has the novelty worn off?  Am I in a creative wasteland?  Did someone steal my typing fingers while I was asleep?

I'm relieved to report that none of the above are appropriate, it's just been a couple of long weeks and there's a couple more ahead.

There are times when I want to write everything down, record these days in a way more reliable than memory.  Snag the moments in a butterfly net of words and keep them trapped forever, so that it's there to experience even after I'm gone.  No matter how good or bad I feel I write, there's probably no one else who will write exactly like me, who will live this exact life, who will see through these green-grey eyes...

Then there are days when I want to just get through to the end, ideally intact, with low body counts and no trips to the medical centre.

Writing is largely about communicating, about making a connection through shared experiences and emotions.  About letting even one other person know that you've felt the same, whether it be elation, delerium, ennui or boredom.  It's also about entertainment, watching created worlds spiral into Hell or greatness with an intimate audience, others who will grin and say, “Yeah, I was there when Highgrave burned...  That was a night to remember!”

But sometimes you don't want to remember, you don't want to share.  It's too tedious or painful for one person to endure, let alone to share it around.  Sometimes the cut goes too deep and those are the wounds that you keep to yourself, quietly picking at them in the darkness of 3am when you can't sleep.

There are times when it may seem that I'm not writing.  Sometimes it's because life has legitimately gotten in the way.  Sometimes it's because I'm being lazy – no surprise there, it's the whole reason I started this blog.

Sometimes it's not that I'm not writing, it's just that it's nothing I want to share.

By the way, for those who missed it, this blog entry was titled after Tyler Durden from Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club.

Wrapped in plastic...

Yesterday on the train returning from London, I saw a long white bundle lying in the ditch next to the train lines.  It looked like it was wrapped in twisted plastic or fabric, or that the material had bound itself tighter around the matter inside as it rolled down the weed thick slope.  The train was moving fast and I was tired, so it could have just been a row of white plastic bags from weeding the line, or illegally dumped rubbish...

But for a while there, I thought I was looking at Laura Palmer...

My heart rate picked up and my mouth went dry.  I craned my head to look back at the fast receding bundle glowing unbelievably bright in the pre-storm sunshine, my brain tripping over itself with thoughts of the emergency brake and policemen.

As the train turned the corner, a hill budding between me and that bundle, inside my mind - inside that vast book lined library of everything I've ever learnt and forgotten, every image I've ever seen and every experience I've ever had – the logical Twistedwitch snorted and turned the page of her newspaper, staring over the top of her glasses at the Twistedwitch of Imagination as she climbs on a bookcase to stare nervously out of the window.

“You know it's just rubbish bags...”

“What?”

“It's not a body.”

“You don't know that!  It could be a murdered prostitute or a love triangle gone wrong!”

“Do they ever go right?”

“What?”

Closing her paper, Logic sighs and stares at Imagination until she climbs down from her wobbling perch.  Imagination walks backwards down the library towards Logic, her eyes on that window, her feet coming closer to tangling with every reluctant step.

“It wasn't a body, it was too visible a place to leave it and forensic science is too good to chance a murder victim being found.”

“Maybe...”

Logic opens her paper again and goes back to reading the psychological dissemination of the dead poet.  Without looking she nods towards one of the other windows.

“Go look out of the window, we're going past a wood.”

Imagination runs through the clouds of glowing dust motes and scrambles up the books piled against the wall to press her face against the window.

“Oh my God!  There's something moving beneath the trees!  It's wolves!  No, it's the wild hunt!  Wait...it's zombies!”

Logic shakes her head and for one moment feels sorry for the lone deer that raised it's head at the wrong time.  She rustles the paper and turns the page.  Behind her the Twistedwitch of Creativity steps out from the shadows, a heavy book in hand.  Her eyes dart feverishly from Logic to Imagination and the hand holding the book raises.  It's a heavy book and it should give Imagination a few hours of unfettered wildness.

This is how my mind works.  This is why I never get anything done.  Damn my over-thinking mind.

In between days...

When I woke up this morning the light was grey with rain, the room softened by it, lulled by the patter of drops echoing in the double glazed window sills.  In bed, wrapped in the duvet, snuggled by husband and cat, this morning felt so familiar and I tried to snag the drifting trail of this sensation.  The cool, pale air, the warmth, the sense of waking naturally without an alarm...

I still can't place it, whether it just feels like a thousand other autumn or late-spring days, full of breezes, dampness and cloud coloured light.  Maybe it just reminds me of itself, my brain mis-firing and creating a circuit straight into memory...

What-ever it was, it was delicate contentment.  A moment of peace before thought, when you truly were only in-the-moment, in that space between sleep and coherence.

The weather outside is much the same now, the clouds bringing the roof of the world closer, the colour of a mourning dove's wing.  It's raining still, small drops shaking the spring green of the trees outside the window.  Enough to dapple the ground but too little to make the self-conscious brolly-holders feel justified.

I long to be beneath the duvet, chasing after that moment of familiarity, the darkness streaked with grey light, one foot out of the side of the bed feeling the coolness of the room outside the duvet cocoon.

That in between-ness calls to me, calls to all of us; the twilight between day and night, the dim empty halls between rooms, the space between life and death, the darkness beneath the trees on a bright summer day...

What if you were neither one thing or another?  What if you were always between states, places, time?  What if you were as intangible as smoke, the pale grey of a mourning dove's wings...

Maybe you are?

Maybe I am too.

Misplaced mis-shape...

"Your house was very small,

with wood-chip on the wall..."

Pulp, Disco 2000

I'm sitting at my parent's dinner table writing, the radio's off, the back door's open, one of the two cats is asleep on a chair beside me.  All I can hear is the clock ticking, the birds fighting over the feeder's in the back garden and the wind in the bamboo that grows right outside the back door.  There's coffee at my elbow and not a soul around.

It sounds perfect, doesn't it?  The ideal solitude for writing...  Instead, I'm distracted by the wealth of history around me, the largely unaltered shape of this familiar landscape.  The changes are all sub-terra, felt rather than seen, making what was once my home something like the button-eyed not-home of Neil Gaimain's Coraline.

Maybe it's just weird being here alone, it's a rare occurrence.  Before I left home, I would never have been here on my own and at a loss of what to do with myself.  The music would be loud, I'd be moving my entire bedroom around again or reading, writing or drawing...

But I'm no longer that person and despite being offered this precious quiet time in which to write, I find myself out of place, like something moved from the mantle-piece, leaving behind a ring of dust where I once was.

This place makes me look at who I was, the past that has shaped me, the generations which have raised me, the places that cup parts of my heart.

Maybe it's just the time of year, maybe it's just being here alone with the other dust ringed holes, maybe I should just go out into the sunshine and take a breath and remember to look forward.

And maybe I should just stop bitching and actually do some work...

Thoughts of summer...

Summer is finally here and I know this because I'm sitting in Caffe Nero having my first Iced Mocha of the year.  I've managed to grab my favourite table, first floor, front next to the windows, overlooking the market and the town hall.  This is great for three reasons;

one – natural light.  Although I'm a shadow hugger by nature, I can appreciate the sunlight with the best of them, mostly from indoors or beneath the dappled shade of a tree.

two – I can see the town hall clock perfectly from here, which is great on days when I'm cafe writing before work and I've forgotten my watch i.e. today.

three – with the sun shining on the squad of market stalls, the striped roofs look amazingly cheery and make me feel nostalgic for deck chairs, buckets and spades and those ever so slightly salty/crunchy picnics on the beach...

I have so many mixed emotions about the summer, whilst I enjoy the weather, albeit from inside buildings or thick with sun tan lotion, it makes me miss the long summers off.  That was school's biggest deception, the 6-8 week break.  I don't think you ever really comprehend how lovely it is until you've lost it.

I also miss Stoke Beach.  From my youngest age I can remember spending my summers with my grandparents in Devon and spending a lot of time at Stoke Beach which is where my grandfather had a caravan.  Stoke Beach was a Co-op owned private caravan park full of ramshackle vehicles that probably could no longer be moved, set within the most beautiful bay.  Originally a farm where tents had been pitched for child evacuees during the second world war, so many of the children loved the place that it became a private summer 'resort', populated with local holidayers, evacuees and the generations which followed.  Many of the friends I made there were the children of the friends my dad had made when he was young.  There was such a sense of community that the kids would spend the day rampaging around the beaches, in the woods and stumbling through each others caravans, all the parents utterly content that they were safe and that everyone kept an eye on each other.

Apart from the friends, community and camraderie, the thing that make Stoke Beach magical was the location itself.  The caravan site was small and set on stepped layers on the hill which sloped down into the bay, at either end there were sheep meadows full of bitter stubby vegetation that clung to the sandy soil.  A wood hugged most of the site, offering ample shade for tree climbing, fort making, knife throwing, child kidnap and nettle diving.  The bay the site was set in was about a mile across, holding within it a series of smaller bays, each perfect for different things; crabbing, diving, surfing, swimming, rock pool hunting, sun bathing and exploration.  One bay, on the far end of the larger bay, the beach directly below where my grandad's caravan clung on the very edge of the cliff, was full of eroded cliffs that had formed stone passages, twisted and organic, perfect for small bodies to slither through at low tide.

One of the most memorable things about Stoke Beach was the abandoned church.  Set in the middle of the caravan park, surrounded by a field of meadow-sweet, grave stones and trees, the church was slowly becoming part of the woodland.  I don't remember it ever having a roof apart from in one shaded corner, and wild flowers grew between the inscribed flagstones on the floor.  The place felt so serene, so much part of the land that was reclaiming it – I often wonder if this was why I always thought of nature being spiritual, if this was why I became Pagan/Wiccan.

Anyway, time for work...