Starting again - white mist

This is a weird one, written before my last post, but lost or so I thought, I now find it and they go together - both attempts at starting again on consecutive days so here is its airing:

inspired by a recent comment on this lapsed blog, I am going to try again. Can I create a different sort of writing space here, separate from the work wheel of deadlines, or the commissioned creative projects? Don't know but will give it a go.It's very damp today and white fog has descended on Tod so am looking forward to a cool morning run with beautifully-cloaked scenery to half-see - how not seeing, not quite seeing, enhances even the most stunning of views. Is what we like the reveal itself, the participation in discovery, the pioneer moment, like that ploughing of turf never touched before by man or woman....?

starting again - peripheries

Inspired to start again by a recent kind comment on my last two-year-old post. There are beautiful views on either side of this table where I sit typing. On my left the hill falls away in tufted grass towards the little town below and rises up again as woodland to the tops, On my right steps lead past my neighbour's carefully-tended vegetables and my rampantly grassy bank (I can't see that from here but I know it is there, can almost hear it growing) graced by an occasional berry bush. But it is all too easy to pour all my concentration into this little blinking screen, blinking so fast I don't see it. Is there a way of doing both? Is there a way of engaging on the net and being in the present now? Awareness of breath, of tiring fingers (threatened RSI helps motivate this particular awareness) - but also awareness of that soft light on either side, on the periphery. Enjoying the periphery as periphery. What Edward Thomas's poems were nearly all intent upon of course.....

2014 waste not

I like small resolutions, small in size but also ones I can work on every day. Waste Not. This is one which I formulated at Dhamma Atala (most beautiful meditation centre in the artistic centre of Italy, the rolling hills around Tuscany www.atala.dhamma.org). It is about not wasting any minute or moment of the day. So often I march down the road to work, unaware of the tender curls of mist over the trees near where I live, or (in early wintery mornings) the twinkling stars, or, indeed, the sensation of the buzz of cold on my skin, so engrossed as I am in the latest evaluation form I need to fill in for work. I guess it is also about not wasting water, paper, trees, food - Dhamma Atala is so short of water they have to drive in trucks to fill their tanks when a course is on so you really get to appreciate each drop, and understand the reason for the lavabos, unlike here in incredibly rainy Tod, where we long, sometimes, for dryness.

Patricia Wilden, photographer, has just asked me if she can use the vegetable haiku for a photography project - how exciting when art sparks art sparks art and, in this case, all thanks to incredible tod of course!

sri lanka here we come

The Sri Lanka trip with Ocean Stars charity, I am almost in the zone and it's seven hours before leaving: ostsrilanka2013.blogspot.com

the me of now

Sitting late, eating dinner in one hand and typing up the words of Derrida on spatial arts with the other. Ah Derrida. How I love Derrida. He makes so much sense: so eloquent, so true, so tight, so wise, so exhilarating - I wish I had been older, I had been the me of now, when I heard him lecture in the 80s, it all slipping far far far far over my head

Romania

Invited as a guest poet to the Brasov celebration of European women poets in Transylvania, I am the only native English speaker in a town so beautiful and brightly coloured with autumn reds and yellows that I am continually marvelling - a real feast for eyes and ears (Romanian being a mix of Slavic/Latin and its own very unique sounds). The beginnings of some good poetic friendships are also forged, in the shadow of not-the-vampire castle and the stunning peaks that surround the town.

wedding poem in my head

This is a draft, right? Came as I was sitting, aimed at me at all angles, rhyme to the fore. I couldn't have ducked if I'd tried. But once I started to type it up the flow slowed, halted, muddled, muddied and my memory of the lines was less clear as well, so has really made me think again about returning to composing in my head, away from screens, boards, papers, wax tablets....... memory-weakeners:

Malc & Sue's wedding sonnet (draft 2)

Shall I describe you as some other couple

who've come to plight their troth this sunny day

or are you something else, are you both double

that - mature and wise and brave enough to say

yes this is person that I choose

to spend my life with: even though they see

my imperfections well, they don't refuse

but welcome them with love as part of me

yes - both say this so happily, turning to look

straight in each other's eyes, with love, delight

reading their partner like a favourite book

with which, though earthbound, they can now take flight

to explore life's offers openly, together

and share with us in rain and sunny weather.