Dear July, five & six: on turning 24.

A note: so, this post is a little introspective. The beginning of July always feels like a second New Year to me because of my birthday - meaning: a time for looking again and refocusing. (I shall widen my gaze tomorrow). But the ‘something I noticed’ comes in the form of these pictures. Yesterday my Mum and I left the house without realising we’d dressed up as opposites of each other. We often match unintentionally. Whether in clothes, ideas or our reactions to things my Dad says. Poor man. (‘What do you think of that car?’ ‘Hideous. It looks like a wasp.’ ‘Mm. That’s what your Mum said.’) 

Anyway – it reminded me a little of this illustration by Sara Soderholm. So when we got home, we tried to recreate the picture. 

♥

Dear July,

I turned twenty-four yesterday. It was the first of my 20-something years that I’ve been able to greet with a tip of the hat – ‘Well hello there, two four. How’d you do?’ – rather than with panic. My last evening as a nineteen year old (back in the day) was spent tucked behind cream coloured curtains on a window-sill, sort of (slightly pathetically) crying into the knees of my pyjamas because I couldn’t believe I’d let myself get to twenty without having Everything figured out yet. (Whatever that means. Still not sure.)

The person I’d like to be at twenty four is still more interesting than I am. She’s wiser. She’s written more. She isn’t so awkward. She’s less of a klutz. Her bedroom is tidier. Her hair’s not so frizzy. She doesn’t dance round the edges so much – she just says what she thinks: bam. She’s kinder. And wittier. And she probably doesn’t fall asleep at least one night a week on the sofa fully-dressed (a habit I seem to have picked up only this last year. Send help). She’s a lot less hesitant. She takes more risks.

But, hey.

I’m trying to treat these ‘could be betters’ with good grace. I might not speak fluent French. But, among other things... I did travel halfway across the world by myself this year to visit good friends. I built a website. I learned how to carve a pumpkin. I navigated the Paris Metro singlehandedly. I taught a class. I house-sat for my sister and her fiancé for a week and managed not to kill their cats. (That’s something, right?)

So welcome, twenty four. I’ll try and grow into you. May you be filled with light and love and may I write so much in the space of your 365 days that this novel I'm working on will be so close to completion that the words will sing.

♥

Today's poem: One Art by Elizabeth Bishop. (Quite a lot of these poems seem to be about losing. Any suggestions for ones about being allowed to keep things?)

Dear July, three & four: snapshots.

Dear July,

Yesterday was: waking up to sun, eating apples in the garden, painted toenails, driving in the heat with the air con up and the windows down justacrack (because, as I still haven’t shaken my insect phobia, I've pledged an oath to myself ‘to never – not even on the three sweltering days Scotland has in the year – open the car windows wider than a pinkie’s width while driving’ – because if a wasp flew in, I would surely die). It was sun on my shoulders, and buskers by the library, and sunglasses reflecting steeples. A conversation that wound up and down and around a hill and in and out of city streets. It was promenading Shakespeare in the park, bumping shoulders with close-packed play-watchers, laughter and ridiculous disguises and then holding-our-breath silence (the city beyond the park gates humming) as the play took a turn from the comic to tragic – ‘Worthies, away! the scene begins to cloud’.

Today was: waking up to rain smattering in the gutter outside my window and then gushing through the roof onto the floor of our sitting room, my dad running down the stairs to grab the recycling bin in lieu of a bucket to catch the water (the perils of having an old house). It was a leaf stuck to the kitchen window, and the opening lines from Don Paterson’s 'Rain' in my head:

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face...

It was frying sausages, and looking through Pinterest recipes, and smashing digestive biscuits with a rolling pin to make a cheesecake crust. Taco salad, and talking with my Mum on the sofa, and folding laundry (‘Life is really just a series of washing the dishes and folding pants, isn’t it?’ ‘Mmm. Daily rituals...’). Hearing fireworks outside and thinking of my American friends dotted about the globe. Reading some literary theory and realising that, after avoiding him for years, I may need to take a look at Derrida. Listening to Bon Iver with the slow cooker bubbling in the next room.

♥

Yesterday’s poem: Lamium by Louise Gluck. Today’s: Margaret Atwood’s The Moment.

Pictures by: Me Suk Lee.

Dear July, two: a poem.

A Glass of Water

May Sarton

Here is a glass of water from my well.
It tastes of rock and root and earth and rain;
It is the best I have, my only spell,
And it is cold, and better than champagne.
Perhaps someone will pass this house one day
To drink, and be restored, and go his way,
Someone in dark confusion as I was
When I drank down cold water in a glass,
Drank a transparent health to keep me sane,
After the bitter mood had gone again.

♥

After reading this poem this afternoon, I took out a glass from the kitchen cupboard, got some ice from the freezer, sliced a green fresh circle from a lime and - the ice clinking - poured myself a glass of water. And it was good. Water is simple. But it sustains. It allows you to 'be restored and go on [your] way' (unlike the fizzy-headedness of champagne). Water gives life.

Picture by Tahel Maor.

Dear July, one: a moth's wing.

I opened my eyes this morning to sunlight, feeling quite quietly happy. Happiness is a difficult kind of emotion (or ‘state’) because it is not – I’m noticing – the absence of fear. It’s clear-water-flowing kind of lovely. But it’s also fear-inspiring. It is fragile and translucent and if you hold it up to the light, you can often see through it. (I have the image here of one of the contestants on The Great British Bake Off holding up a square of dough she’s just been kneading, telling the camera-man, ‘If you can see through it, like little stained glass windows, then that’s how you know it’s ready’ – light shining through, but little holes already starting to form on the surface).

The question this morning then is: how to live with that? How to allow oneself to be happy – to feel the warmth of it, light of it, soft feathery touch of it – while living with this ‘fear’ (or knowledge) of its fleetingness. The temptation is to cling on tightly, to grasp.

Over the past six or seven months, I’ve been living with the phrase: ‘Hold all things with an open hand’. It came quite clearly into my head one day in the dark of winter and in the months that have followed I keep returning to it, trying to figure out what it means and whether it’s something that’s worth paying attention to. 

Last night, I was thinking about something my my Gran said a few evenings ago when she was over. She was talking about a moth my little cousins befriended in the garden last Friday when she was watching them after school. ‘Ollie the moth,’ she said, laughing. ‘That’s what they called him.’ They’d both been kneeling on the grass next to it, whispering encouraging things, trying to get the moth to climb onto their finger by pushing it with a leaf. When she realised what they were doing, she called out, ‘Oh, just be careful, girls. If you touch a moth’s wings you might damage them and it won’t be able to fly anymore. Maybe just let him alone.’

(Side-note: I remember her telling me this piece of moth-wisdom when I was little. Although, I can’t quite imagine in what context. My cousins seem much braver than me when I was their age as you’d have been far more likely to find me running away from the moth than christening it and coaxing it closer. From the ages of about seven to eleven, I used to go to bed every night praying: ‘Dear God – please don’t let any insects come into my room tonight.’ 

When, screaming, I discovered a spider lurking on the ceiling one night, and then a bluebottle a few nights later, I realised that my prayers were clearly too vague and God needed much clearer instructions if He was going to help me out. Thus began the ever-expanding List of Undesirables that I’d recite nightly to make sure He was crystal clear about what I meant. ‘No wasps, God. No flies, no spiders, no earwigs, no woodlice, no beetles, no worms, no ants, no caterpillars...’ I’m pretty sure moths were somewhere on that list).

Anyway – I was thinking about what she said again last night. ‘If you touch a moth’s wings, you’ll damage them...’ I think that might be what happiness is like: Happiness is a moth’s wing. It’s beautiful and strong. It allows for flight. But it’s also extremely delicate. So: notice it. Enjoy it. Sit with it. But be gentle with it. (A difficult thing to do). Let it come to you, but hold it with an open hand. 

Be gentle.

♥ 

Partly inspired by Emily Diana Ruth’s video series ‘Letters to July’, I’ve set myself a challenge to write something on here every day this month in an effort to be more attentive. (I'm also in the middle of a PhD, so most of the posts will be much shorter than today's...) 

As well as writing every day, I’m also going to read a poem each morning this month. Today’s one was: Full Moon by Alice Oswald.