Dear July, nine // gather ye buttercups while ye may

Dear July

So I came home for the weekend and don’t seem to have made it back to Glasgow yet*... On Saturday my Mum made the tastiest of dinners: aubergine parmigiana with salad, home-made Caesar dressing, warm ciabatta bread sticks with balsamic vinegar and olive oil for dipping, red wine, olives. Delicious. While we were eating, my Dad looked out at the greying sky and said, ‘Do you think it’s getting too dark to cut the grass now...?’

He’d been to-ing and fro-ing about when to cut it all day. My Mum looked out the window. ‘Mm, I say get up early and do it tomorrow morning,' she said. 'It’s best to do the jobs you least want to do at the start of the day...’

Very true words. (And ones I’m trying to take to heart this week. I'm trying to just get up and get on with what needs done – hair askew, eyes like a panda-bear – rather than dragging it out over the whole day, or avoiding it till late-late-later so I end up walking around with guilt thundering over me like a one-man rain cloud).

Anyway ... I was quite pleased he didn’t cut the grass because it was full of little wildflowers (or pretty looking weeds at least). Buttercups and clovers and – here my flower-name knowledge ends – purple ones and little white ones and so on. Before all those colours could get churned up by lawn mower blades, I ran outside with a pair of scissors* to pick a few of them for the vase on my desk. I’m going to try and keep this little study full of flowers to cheer me on (cheer me up) as I type away until the work is done. 

I can do this. I can do it.

//

A word on flower picking. 

Here is a nugget of wisdom for you: when gathering flowers, it’s advisable not to wear a maxi dress ...because insects resting on the petals are likely to climb up your legs – looking for some shade from the sun most likely – and it’s not 'til you go to the bathroom a little while later that you discover them – white with feathery wings – sitting casually on the spot of skin just above your knee and you end up getting a fright and shouting ‘OH!’ loudly to yourself – the syllable echoing around the bowl of the sink – much to the bewilderment of people in the next room.

I speak from experience. This happened to me. Not this time but back in June during my recent trip to the States. There was a lovely afternoon where Christi – the sweet friend that I’d gone over to visit – pulled in by the side of the road so we could pick some wild flowers for our table at night. Like everything in America, the flowers were bigger (bigger, at least, than these teeny ones on my desk now). There were daisies, and Queen Ann’s lace and other types – pretty ones with little white faces and purple ones with whiskery petals – of unknown name. Gathering them up, the cars whizzing past us (on the wrong side of the road), the sun on our shoulders, was one of my favourite small moments from our trip. Even in spite of the large white bug.

//

Notes.)

*The lease on my flat is almost up and I think I’m sort of trying to mentally re-transition into life at home. I’ll be moving back here again in a few weeks time (funding running out soon, rent money not growing on trees, needing to just get my head down and finish the PhD, seems like the sensible thing to do for now, etc.). It's been a difficult decision, but - loving this place and these people as much as I do - I think it will be okay. This isn't failing. It's just necessary for now. All will be well. 

*I should point out that I didn't actually 'run' with a pair of scissors. That would be lunacy. I walked carefully. Of course. Safety first. (On that note, watch this: from Fraiser).

there's a colour in your eyes that nobody knows but me.

For a while there, the world lost its colour. Everything looked a bit grey and washed out. September was quite a disorientating month. It shook things up and, for one reason or another, at various points throughout its days, it left me crying in random places – on a ferry, wind in my hair, while waving goodbye to three figures I love on the pier; in the car during rush-hour, slumped at the steering wheel after a heart-open conversation, a salt-trail winding down my throat; in my room, packing books and vests and shoes into bags and boxes, the thought properly hitting me: ‘I am leaving tomorrow. I’m leaving, I’m leaving. And what happens now?’; on the edge of my bed that first night after clicking on the stars my Dad had unpicked from my wall back home and helped to string up here, in my new room in the city. 

(‘You need your stars, Lissa,’ my Mum said when I was in a quandary about bringing them. ‘I know that for myself. Sometimes, you just need your stars...’)

♥

I was talking to my new class recently – in our workshop on ‘setting’ – about how there’s not really one ‘true’ way to see the world. Your surroundings look (and feel and taste and smell and sound) different depending on what day, and through whose eyes, you happen to be looking. 

‘What would your character notice about this place if they’d just had a fight?’ I said, getting them to close their eyes for a moment. ‘Or if they’re worried about an exam? Or if their heart has just been broken? What would they notice if they had good news? What would they see if they’re falling in love?’

At heart, studying writing – as in how to go about doing it, as well as just ‘what’s already been written’ – studying writing forces you to look quite closely at yourself. Or at least, it should do I think, if you’re hoping to write anything with resonance. You have to be willing to live and also observe yourself living. How am I reacting to this? Where can I feel it? Oh look: this is new – and what does that stir up in me? And how is it changing me?

Well, I observed myself recently being unobservant. My eyes were dried up. They were downcast and heavy and I’d mentally written the whole season off as grey and difficult. When actually – I looked up a few weeks ago to find myself staring at, swooning over, a sky so deeply red that everyone who stepped off my train pulled out their cameras – actually the world is quite beautiful right now. I mean, look at it:

Things aren't suddenly awesome now I’ve noticed the scenery. I don't mean to imply that (life isn't so simple). It's more - I'm just writing as a reminder to myself that: well, even so – in the midst of it all, the leaves are still crisping up (scarlet, gold, mustard yellow). The light keeps breaking through, turning chimneys and branches and window boxes and TV aeriels into something lovely. Something glowing. The world, your life, it’s bigger than ‘this’. Than ‘now’. Than ‘that’. Than ‘this feeling’. Take heart. 

The world is still turning. Look at it. 

Notes:

All pictures by me, from here and there over the past month: around Glasgow, and also back home when I've stayed for the weekend. 

I listened to this album, The Quiet Darkness by Houses, while I was writing. Recommended by my brother, Evan. The title is a line from one of their songs. You should give it a listen.

♥

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.

a gold dust glow (on possibility).

So, you might've noticed that I’ve changed things about a little (design-wise) on the blog. A small tour: look up! I now have links at the top of the page. Look to your right: there are little social media buttons which you can click on. Scroll back to the top: the messy looking fake-shadow header is gone! I think it looks a bit more like a proper blog now. (What do you think?)

On the subject of change, here’s something I’ve noticed recently: it is possible. Change, I mean. Change is possible. Here’s how I know it: 

I used to hate ginger* and now I don’t.

After years of feeling queasy at the thought, I’ve started enjoying ginger beer... and Three Ginger Tea has risen up the ranks to become my favourite herbal tea (as I described it recently in a letter: ‘it’s very warming and leaves a tingle like gold dust at the back of your throat’).

Other things I used to hate and now don’t include: mushrooms, uncooked tomatoes, coriander, and red onions**. I now love all of these things (deeply. In a moment of unchecked sincerity, I recently told my brother: ‘I’m really passionate about mushrooms’. He laughed quite a lot. I suppose it was sort of an odd thing to say in retrospect). These changes are encouraging. They give me hope.

If my taste-buds can change their opinions on coriander – moving from a place of disgust (‘it tastes like sick’) to one of near-fervour (‘we must have it with EVERYTHING’***) – then maybe other parts of me can change. 

Like: my inability to hear alarms in the morning or the way my first instinct is usually to hide from/pretend not to notice people I’ve been hoping to speak to when I see them on the street (o! shyness, you wily fiend). Things like: my phobia of insects, or the issues I have finding shoes that fit, or the way I fall in love with impossible notions, or my habit of leaving things to the last minute. Maybe. We’ll see...

(NB. My feelings towards marmite will never change. Gross black salty concoction.)

(Pictures snapped on my iPhone. Notes:

*I’m talking about ginger, as in ginger-the-foodstuff, not ‘carbonated drinks’ or ‘individuals with red hair and freckles’.

**I still don’t really like raw red onions, but this has more to do with the way they linger powerfully on the breath post-eating than their actual flavour.

***Everything especially includes: chilli con carne, fajitas, and chicken and mushroom curry.)