Dear July, ten & eleven: again.

Dear July,

Last night was a lovely long much overdue soak-it-up kind of catch up with some good friends. We went out for dinner and ate too much Greek food, and the night ended with us standing chatting under a tree in Kelvingrove Park for about an hour because all the places that might sell tea on Friday night in Glasgow were shut (and tea was what we felt like), but we weren’t quite finished talking yet.

Today, I don’t have too many words. The rain is back again after a week or two of sunshine and, although this shouldn’t be surprising (this is Scotland, after all, and I’ve lived here all my life), it’s sometimes hard not to take it personally (‘What did we do, sun? Did we love you too much?’). Outside the café where I’m sitting doing a bit of work, people bundle past, linking arms under umbrellas. Rain sticks like little glass beads to the empty silver chairs and tables on the street. I do talk about the weather too much. And my mood too often matches the colour of the clouds. This year, I would like to learn to let it bounce off me. But, nevertheless. There it is: today it is raining, and I wish it wasn’t.

♥

Noticed thing from last night: Kelvingrove Park – pretty though it may be – is kind of bossy. It’s full of signs telling you not to do things. ‘No hot ashes in this bin!’ ‘Alcohol is strictly prohibited!’ ‘Give up on your dreams!’ ‘Don’t skate on the ice!’ ‘No dog fouling!’ ‘Children should be seen and not heard!’ ‘Don’t get ideas above your station!’ ‘Don't litter!’

Some more positive signage might be a nice idea to balance things out.

‘Thanks for walking your dog here!’ ‘Keep being you!’ ‘Well, somebody’s looking awesome today.’ ‘Isn’t this a great view!’ ‘You should totally propose to her on this bridge, man.’ ‘Have you guys seen how pretty these flowers are?’

I’ll write to the council. TBC.

♥

Notes. 

Yesterday’s poem: Ovid in Tears by Jack Gilbert. Today’s poem: The Faces of Deer by Mary Oliver (‘Unless you/ believe that heaven is very near, how will you/ find it?’)

Pictures by: Saul Steinberg (they just made me smile).

Dear July, nine: immersion.

Yesterday, I started the day writing in a coffee shop. While I was working, a table of three sat beside me – a grandmother, a mother and a daughter – and started a conversation amongst themselves about ‘what it would be like to swim in a swimming-pool of hot chocolate’. The grandmother was miming – doing the breaststroke mid-air – saying how she would swim with her mouth open, swimming and swallowing and swimming and swallowing, drinking it all up. ‘Just imagine,’ she said. ‘Imagine swimming in a pool of chocolate...’

Later in the day, after my friend (also a writer) came to meet me, we relocated to the library to work and ended up sitting at a table upstairs that hangs over the librarians’ desk on the ground floor. After an hour or two of ‘pulling teeth’ ideas-wise, I decided to listen to a bit of music to make myself focus and finally (finally) managed to get into a flow with the chapter I was working on. Ideas and words started coming relatively quickly. And then I heard a man’s voice below saying: ‘a lentil soup bath’. I stopped typing and took one earphone out. ‘Would it be lentil? Or tomato and basil?’ The librarians downstairs – three of them – seemed to be involved in one of those bizarre ‘it’s quiet and we’re really bored’ kind of conversations that only seem to happen at work. They were laughing and talking about what it might be like to take a bath in a bowl of soup. ‘Just imagine it...'

Weird.

I don’t know the significance of this. Might be the weather (last week’s no-tights-needed heat has been replaced by probably-a-good-idea-to-wear-tights-and-a-few-vests-and-some-jumpers drizzle. Right now, the idea of swimming in a pool of hot chocolate doesn’t sound like such a bad idea).

♥

Notes.

The music I was listening to included: this and: this. (Current chapter isn't a particularly happy one, thus the wistfulness...)

Today’s poem: Love after Love by Derek Walcott 

Picture by: Hazuki Koike (I found it: here. The artist's website is in Japanese, so I'm not sure whether to link to it because I don't know what it says!)

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.)

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?)