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.

♥

and the speck of my heart.

We live by the sea. (Well, technically the River Clyde. But the sea sounds nicer.) The ever-changing view from our window, the seagulls, the sound of the waves hitting the rocks if you listen closely. The thought of moving into the city (something that seems inevitable in the next year or so) is mildly heart-breaking. Even though I have to leave at some point, I can’t imagine not living here. The city just seems so soulless in comparison.

That being said – living near the sea means being very far away from everything and everyone else. Or so it can seem at times. It means trains that only run once in a blue moon, and stop running much too early in the evening. It means an hour-long commute, both ways, to get into Glasgow and the office where I study. And it’s the same for my Mum, who works just outside of the city.

Three days of the week, I ride in the car with her most of the way there, and recently we’ve started a small morning reading practice: to welcome in the day, to wake ourselves up. It’s a long journey, but it passes quickly when we’re reading. Once we’ve been driving for a while and the stickiness of toothpaste-breath has worn off, I’ll pull out her well-worn book of Celtic Daily Prayers (‘open our eyes ... open our hearts’) and read a little aloud from there.

And then we’ll read a poem.

At the moment, we’re working our way through Mary Oliver’s collection ‘West Wind’ (a poetry collection that you should buy. As the Library Journal wrote on the back cover: ‘From the chaos of the world, [Oliver’s] poems distill what it means to be human and what is worthwhile about life’. If anyone ever writes something like that about my writing, I will kiss them. #youvebeenwarned)

Poetry is really something that needs to be read aloud. And shared. When I read it into myself, I tend to go too quickly and miss things. So it’s been lovely to read them with her. We go through the whole poem a few times to catch onto the rhythm, letting the words soak in before pausing over lines we like and talking about what the poem might mean, or what it reminds us of. I thought I’d share one with you – a prose poem – that I liked. Read it a few times. Whisper it aloud to hear the sound of it. Even if you don’t fully know what it means, just let the words be. Here it is: 

♥ 

Read it again. Slower. And then pause, lingering over a line or a phrase or a word that stands out.

(What it makes me think of is the Sublime, that idea that was big among the Romantic poets. Shelly and Wordsworth and Keats and so on. That feeling that there's something more than the visible tangible touchable world. Something unknowable, both beautiful and terrifying. Something powerful and huge and dangerously close. Something inexplicable. Something that might be, maybe, God.)