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.

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.