this.

Yes. (From 'Essential Poems from the Staying Alive Trilogy' edited by Neil Astley).

september.

July began with the hottest day of the year, full of light and promise, a moth’s wing*. It ended with what was probably one of the rainiest days, if not of the year, then at least of the summer so far (the holes in the road outside our house overflowed, the gutter outside my window spluttered and woke me up). After posting on here mostly every day that month, I didn’t seem to get round to posting a 'goodbye to July' (which is a pest, because I was super-pleased with myself for being so consistent. Ah well).

This is a bit of a pattern I'm noticing in myself. I’ve been keeping journals since I was about thirteen but I still freeze when it gets to the last page. Like a sort of writing-related stage fright. Sometimes I leave that page blank for weeks, avoiding it (only half-consciously)... which means all the everyday words and ideas and thoughts and happenings that I could write about are not noted down – they fall out my head and get lost – because, irrational as it might be (no one will be reading those journals besides me), I have this feeling that I need to say something quite remarkable and profound on the last page before I can close the book and start a new one...

Here’s a nugget of wisdom I know, but am yet to properly learn: when you tell yourself you need to write something remarkable and profound, ten times out of eleven you’re not going to write anything at all. You can only really get into a flow with writing when you allow yourself to write rubbish. When you give yourself permission to be remarkably un-profound.

So, that’s what this post is. Rather un-profound. But it's something. I am not writing a ‘conclusion’ to July (or August, because that month also slipped by since the last time I posted). The summer was quite beautiful and confusing and sunny and cloudy and maddening and exhausting and productive and not. But I'm not going to cement it - finished - in words.

I’m just writing to say: hello. I’m still here. It’s September now. And I’ll be back to writing soon. 

♥

Notes:

*click the link if the 'moth's wing' thing doesn't make sense.

Pictures: from here and there over the last few weeks. Arran, Millport, Largs (Viking Festival - thus the "dead" soldiers), home. Scotland's been showing itself off in quite a nice light recently.