Dear July, seven // from the cutting room floor

Because it's been a while, I thought I'd type out some recent 'noticings' from my writing-notebook. (I've written about keeping an observational notebook a few times before on this blog, but specifically: here. Basically, I am a bit nosy but use the excuse of ‘I’m a writer’ to legitimise writing down interesting things strangers are doing in a little notebook. 'For the novel. It's for the novel'):

One // as seen from the library window

Two bald business men in lilac shirts are eating fish and chips in the company car. They’ve opened the doors – wide. And rolled down the windows – all the way. They’ve flicked their ties and lanyards over their shoulders. The larger of the two men smooths a white napkin across the lap of his black suit trousers before tucking in. And so it goes: the rain coming down outside, and the two of them - the air con blowing goose-bumps up their arms - eating chips on a Wednesday afternoon. Life is good.

Update 10 minutes later: It looks as though the larger gentleman also has a packed lunch with him, because he’s just finished eating a banana and a yogurt – the carton of which he’s just crushed in his fist – and there are crusts (from a recently consumed sandwich, one can only assume) sitting in little right-angles in the Tupperware dish he’s just put up on the dashboard. I suspect he’s eating this second lunch to smother suspicion when he returns home because he is, after all, meant to be on that diet ('Did you eat your fruit, Arnold?'). That’s why the windows are open, why the AC is causing an autumnal gust inside. (‘We can get chips if you like, Graham. But Marjorie must never find out...’

♥

Two // trying to describe a man I keep seeing about town

He’s the kind of man who tuts to himself while going about life. Tutting at the laptop screen, rolling his eyes at emails, mentally shaking a fist at the heavens whenever the rain comes on. He’s the kind of man who wears a blazer with his blue plaid shirts (always those plaid shirts. ‘Every day the plaid shirts’). The blazer and the plaid shirt and the jeans, and that hair on top of head like Fezzik from the Princess Bride. 

♥

Three // on the baristas in a coffee shop one morning

I’m writing in a coffee shop today, sitting beside the door to the kitchen marked ‘private’. Staff members keep walking in and out with cups and mugs, so the dishwasher must be in there too. The girl with the messy ponytail who served me peppermint tea has just walked past with a tray full of dirty saucers. 

‘It’s a busy day,’ she’d said earlier, her eyes tired. ‘I'm feeling a bit stressed.’ 

As she got closer to the door – ‘Private’ in gold letters – her colleague – bearded, happy eyes – bounded up the stairs towards her, almost skipping. 

‘Hey!’ he said, coming towards her. 

‘Hi,’ she’d said, her voice quiet, shifting her arms under the tray to balance the weight. 

She leant against the door with her back to push it open and at the same moment he reached out to help her – his hand on the door so near her head that his arm was almost touching her cheek – following her round with the movement of it. She breathed in. As the door swung closed and I heard the clatter of the tray being put down, and I did wonder whether he was going to kiss her in there. She came back out about 10 seconds later, her fingers touching her lips...

♥

(Pictures from an evening walk along the canal last week with a nice friend...) 

Dear December, nineteen to twenty-two: lumiere.

It's the winter solstice today, so: the shortest day and the longest night of the year. I'm sitting by the window just now and I can tell you: it's pretty dark out there. The solstice also signals that autumn is over and winter is here. It has officially arrived. If it’s anything like last year, I know it’s going to be cold. Cold, and dark, and rainy, and biting. I’ll need to stock up on hand-cream. I should really buy an anorak. The underbellies of my fingernails will no doubt soon be filled with frost from the windscreen, my fingers stinging from the spray of the can, the click and shake and the ice dissolving.

But even so, I can’t help letting out a small sigh at the thought of it: Thank God, that’s it. The worst of the darkness has been now (...right?) Light will be coming back. It might take a while, yes. The sun will continue to disappear mid-afternoon. My breath will turn to cloud on my walk into uni and there will be days where not even steam from the bath will be enough to melt the shiver in my bones. At times, the idea of ‘anything other than this’ will seem impossible. I know that. I know it. It's been like that all autumn. I’m bracing myself. 

But even if it comes slowly, inch by inch, it is coming. The darkness has been: the light is coming back. It will come back. (These are words to repeat on heavy days: It will come back. It will come back. It seems dark now, but light will come back.)

♥

Related to light: these (slightly fuzzy iPhone) pictures are from the Lumiere Festival in Durham back in November which I've been meaning to post for a while.  I was there for a weekend, giving my first ever (joint) conference paper (on 'fostering originality in student writing') at the National Association of Writers in Education conference ...and this quite, quite breathtaking festival of light happened to be taking place in the city at the same time. I’ve never seen anything like it before: both beautiful and eerie. Moving light installations all along the river, projections beamed onto the side of the cathedral and castle walls, double decker buses lit from the inside, street benches glowing. It felt like we’d stumbled into a city under enchantment.

Snatches from the weekend: walking round the streets and along the river in the dark - rain hammering down, seeping through my hat into my hair - but not feeling afraid. My heart in my throat. Moving images – stars, numbers, planets, stained glass figures – sliding up and down and along the sides of the cathedral. Standing on the grass, mud underfoot, eyes wide, and music surrounding us: so loud and drumming and achingly beautiful that I could feel it inside my veins. 

Sitting on a pew inside the cathedral for a few moments, arching my neck back, back, back to stare at the light lines moving, twitching, above our heads. Sitting quiet. Discordant choral music playing underneath the squeaking of boots and wet jeans slapping together as the crowd moved closer, forward, forward, towards the alter with gripped iPhone cameras. (‘How does it make you feel?’ Looking up at the light. Holding my breath, the lines shivering. Unsure how to put it into words. ‘Unsettled, I guess. Uneasy? There’s something kind of unsettling about the movement, isn't there?').

‘Do you want to light a candle?’ Thinking of Paris*, but unsure what to pray. Back outside and following signs for ‘fog this way’. Rain catching in the light, putting on a show itself. Twinkle lights strung up along the water's edge and then: the Fogscape. Fog pouring down the hill on the other side of the river, pushing through the trees, spilling onto the water, stretching closer and closer towards my shivering fingers like a spell had just been whispered. 

(*the conference and Lumiere took place over the weekend of the Paris attacks - and also the weekend my grandfather passed away - which made the rain feel more chilling, and the light seem more important.)  

♥

Song a day 

Saturday’s song: The Wisp Sings by Winter Aid. Sunday: Believe by Mumford and Sons (though I've actually been listening more to Only Love but can't find a good version online. Buy it). Monday: In Dreams by Ben Howard. Today: Allegri's Miserere (part of which was played during the festival.

p.s. // Technical question: I'm testing out changing the font on the blog. What do you think of this? I've been trying to figure out an alternative for 'Courier' for years... but all other fonts seem either too big or small for blogspot (and I can't figure out how to adjust size to anything between 'normal' and 'large' on here). Comments appreciated below or you can send me a note on my facebook page.

Dear July, fourteen, fifteen & sixteen: entangled with mysteries.

Dear July,

I'll say goodnight to you with a song, a picture, and some words. The song: Promise by Ben Howard. I've been playing it a lot since the Spring, and it still makes me pause. It sounds like a number of things to me: the dipping sun, and the hush of morning before the day's routine has taken over yet. Like the softness and ache and uncertainty that comes with loving people, like the stillness of the mountains, like that space between happiness and wanting to cry, like rain starting to fall. Evan, my good-taste-in-all-things brother, found it first. He told me to listen to it, with my earphones in, first thing before getting out of bed, to wake myself up. I'd recommend you do the same (or just before falling asleep). 

The picture: taken at home last night during the golden hour. I was heading down the stairs when this patch of gold yawned onto the wall. I had to run to get my phone so I could catch a sun portrait. 

The words: a paragraph that struck me from Starbook by Ben Okri. I've only just started it, but so far is quite lyrically lovely. (Bit of context: 'he' is a prince that is running away from overly watchful eyes...)

'If they hadn't worried over him so much, and made him seek escape, what happened would never have happened; and, mysteriously, the world would have been smaller for it. Destiny conceals strange illuminations in the suffering life visits on us. The tale of fate is entangled with mysteries. Dare one say such and such shouldn't have happened? History is replete with monstrosities that shouldn't have happened. But they did. And we are what we are because they did. And history's bizarre seeding has not yet yielded all of its harvest. Who knows what events will mean in the fullness of time?'

♥

Yesterday's poem: Ode to my Socks by Pablo Neruda (probably one of my favourite ones so far). Today passed without a poem... so I'll need to read two tomorrow.

Dear July, seven & eight: yes or no, or maybe

Dear July,

Another poem for you. Tuesday’s poem was William Stafford’s ‘A Ritual to Read to Each Another’ (see below). All the poems I’ve been reading so far have been by women, so I thought I’d try and balance things out a little by reading a male poet.

There are so many lines in this poem that echo... even if I feel like I need to sit with it for a while longer to fully ‘get it’ – if that’s even something worth trying to do. I’m reminded of John Keats words on understanding poetry:

‘A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it’s to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery.’

(I think this exact quote actually comes from the film Bright Star – really beautiful, albeit devastating film, if you can get over the silly hats. But it sounds like something – or the whisper of something – Keats would have said somewhere in his letters.)

So: luxuriate in this poem (sidenote: sometimes when other people post poems, I skip them out because they take too much effort to read. But really: don't do that. Read this ones a few times. Carry it about in your pocket. It's worth it). What stands out to you?

A Ritual to Read to Each Another

William Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider--

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give --yes or no, or maybe--

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

♥

Pictures from yesterday: the light in our kitchen, sun on a walk around the village, light in the lounge (reflecting twinkle lights around the windows and illuminating a slither of the bookcase in my brother's room). It wasn’t #hottestdayoftheyear kind of heat – like last Wednesday – but it was warm enough to hang my bed-sheets outside and have the window open most of the day (promptly shut, of course, when a bee tried to get in. I'm imagining bugs will be mentioned a number of times this month. It’s an issue, July. You’re a nice month, but if you could do something about all the bugs that come with you that’d be great.)

(p.s. By the by... I’ve made a writer’s page on Facebook. If you’d like to like it I’d like that. You can find it: here.)

golden.

Spring is here. It tiptoed into our lives a few weeks ago (bringing opportunities for eating lunch outside, light jackets, walks without-gloves, birdsong, general happy feelings). And then it snowed. And hailed. And rained. And sleeted. And the sky was grey for a long time. And I caught the cold. And moped around Glasgow wearing a blanket-scarf and hiding my cracked-skin-hands deep inside my pockets. But it's come back and it is quite beautifully golden. Spring is here. It's here. And it is most welcome. What are some of the signs of Spring you've been enjoying?

Picture of: me, on Easter Sunday, in our back garden, looking unintentionally bridal... and in need of a hairbrush.

♥

I will return to this little blog. There is much to write. My head is full of words. For now though, here's a song I've been enjoying: Make it Holy by the Staves (featuring Bon Iver).

think it's time to look out my woolly hat.

  

Yesterday was the autumnal equinox (according to the Darth Vader and Son calendar in our kitchen anyway). This makes me happy for two reasons. One: the word equinox is a crispy sort of word to say (it causes a similar sensation in the mouth to taking a bite out of a really delicious biscuit). Plus I like how it isn’t discriminatory against difficult letters (‘C’mon over Q and X. We want you guys at our party’ ‘...only if U can come too’). Two: I’m taking an exciting trip at the end of October, and the turning leaves signal it’s getting pretty close.

(Pictures: the arrival of autumn, as seen through my iPhone lens - a handful of leaves my Mum brought home after a walk, some leaf-kicking on the way to the train, a sky full of leaves, the view from my window on the early train into Glasgow this morning, Paisley Gilmore Street station glowing in the sun. Okay... time to do some writing now.)

♥

noticing light

Light and shadows. They make me catch my breath.

Our kitchen table in spring .. the dipping light of June as seen through a pine cone .. Paisley Gilmore Street Station .. the Royal College Building at Strathclyde .. a line of light at Wemyss Bay station .. Sonny and Vito's in Glasgow (lemon polenta cake, decaf latte, pink lemonade) .. my brother's room .. my room pre-tidy .. waiting for the bus. All snapped on my iPhone, first posted on my instagram feed (@teaandascone).

there's a certain slant of light.

After dinner tonight, the evening air was so still and the dipping light so inviting that we (me, my brother, my dad) decided to go for a small walk around Skelmorlie. It's a quiet little village, full of hills and cherry blossom trees and old crumbly houses made of red stone. 

When we came to the top of the hill we stopped walking and just stood, taking it all in: the birds singing, the sound of someone practising piano in a nearby house, the pink and orange light glowing behind the mountains, a tabby cat sauntering across the road, the midges gathering in little swarms (not so nice, alas), the deep green of the grass. Beautiful.

The light this evening made me think of the Emily Dickinson poem that begins: 'There's a certain slant of light-' ('When it comes, the landscape listens,' she writes. 'Shadows hold their breath...'). Only, the light she is writing about is one of 'winter afternoons'.  

That sort of golden light that's almost intensely beautiful, but tinged with sadness ('[it] oppresses, like the weight/Of cathedral tunes') because it is always followed by darkness. The Spring light tonight did quite the opposite: it sent me home glowing, the weight of worry that I'd been dragging about all day dissolving, disappearing, until it felt like I was floating up the path, tiny wings beating softly inside my chest. Hope.

come away to a quiet place

This weekend, I took the train to Perth for a silent retreat at St Mary’s Monastery, Kinnoull. 

It was a trip with two intentions: One.) to take focussed time out of my regular routine to be still, reflect, re-centre; and two.) to pay close attention to the sounds, textures, light quality, atmosphere etc of living in the house itself (...research for the novel. The monastery is an example of neo-gothic architecture and shares aspects with the house in my story).

Sitting on the train up – suitcase on the seat beside me, my journal open on my lap – I felt slightly apprehensive. Travelling alone is always – I hesitate to say ‘nerve-wracking’. That’s too strong. But there’s something different about going places alone. There’s no one to hide behind or lean into. 

You have to pay attention in a different way than you would if you were with other people. You have to stay alert – stand boldly and speak up. I also wasn’t at all sure what to expect. What was I going to do when I got there? What would I say? Would I have to explain myself? What if I went that shy way I go when I’m nervous? Why exactly had I decided to come again? (etc, etc.)

My worries, though, were unfounded. Such a restorative ‘enriching’ weekend (which went far beyond simply being ‘useful’ for gathering authentic story details). It was beautiful. Quiet. Peaceful.

Birdsong filtering through the wind as I wrote by the window in my little room. The sound of footsteps scuffing on the stone stairs. The warm smell of varnish as my fingers slid down, down, across the wooden banisters. Light silhouettes from arched patchwork-glass windows falling across the carpet in the oratory – appearing and disappearing, appearing and disappearing – as the priest read aloud psalms in the morning in his deep voice.

The smell of roast chicken filling the whole house before lunch. Eating in silence and tasting, really tasting, each burst of flavour. Whispered ‘thank-you’s in the kitchen. Plates clinking in the sink. Walking in the gardens, sticks and pinecones cracking underfoot, apple blossom branches dipping and bouncing in the wind. My fringe blowing across my face. Closing my eyes: the feel of air rushing against my skin, the force of the wind almost knocking me back, back. 

Back inside – the sound of someone whistling in the hallway. Golden light causing the trees below to glow. Sweeping crumbs from homemade scones into my hand. Daylight fading as we – me and nine other women – sat together in silence. Latin words sung without music. The window in my bedroom rattling, shaking, at night. Waking, after a deep sleep, to the sound of birdsong. Again. Their song coming gently through the wind.

Ah, it was beautiful. And interesting how refreshing just being quiet was. Being quiet, and listening. Not checking my phone every three minutes – not trying to think up chitchat while eating dinner – not playing music full volume while I got dressed. Just being – paying attention and finding space to think and let words from the day properly soak in. I want to leave more space for silence now that I’m back home. The world is noisy, but there are moments of quiet. I just need to listen out for them.

(Pictures taken on my iPhone throughout the weekend. My phone is the main reason I am unable to be still and rest most of the time. It beeps and purrs and flashes and whistles and I have very little self control when it comes to leaving it alone. It is a great Time Waster. But I am grateful for the camera. It helps me see ordinary details as artworks.)