Jumping for joy

I COULD TELL you what NASA research says about them, but I reckon you can read that for yourself should you have a mind to. Plus, this Shel Silverstein poem on the topic is far more entertaining:

He's pretty famous and all that apparently, but I'd never heard of Shel Silverstein until today. Maybe he was embargoed here in New Zealand or something. But I'm glad I've discovered him now. Not only did he create fantastic kid's poems, tales and cartoons, but also numerous songs, including 'A Boy Named Sue' made popular by Johnny Cash. Another example of his musical prowess is this unique little number. Hidden depths - or shallows? You choose.

Here endeth, at least for now, my hiatus. Back to jumping for Joy then (it's my middle name after all).

xx

Good evening and welcome

MY DEAR FRIENDS, I am here and I want to write. Of fairy stories and thrill seeking, masterbation and mystery. To relate, enthrall, excite and possibly - probably - bewilder. I want you. To let me whisk you on a jaunt from which you will never be entirely the same as you were before meeting me because a tiny crack in your skin has been rather rudely and unexpectedly tussled open and lit on fire. It burns doesn't it? Smoulders. And you don't really know why, except that some things inside you just don't quite fit into the same shapes they formerly did. They don't fill in the same blanks regardless of how you try to wriggle them around and manipulate them. Let's call it some form of evolution going on in there. An awakening perhaps. Not quite your cup of fine bone china, normally I know you wouldn't even probably pass the time of day with large dramatic landscapes typefaced by bold inspirational quotes and the name of some famous person. But this is different. It's fucking happening to you, I mean it's really happening to you. And you fucking know it. The big question I suppose is where does it all lead? Or questions... because, in fact, where will it stop? Does it stop? I mean, where do you know to draw the line. It must be somewhere, right? Because lines are likely one of your specialties. They were once mine. Lines are nice and safe, less drama, less unpredictability, mostly just less. So are you sitting down? Got your ruler and ballpoint out at the ready like the big guns they are? Put them away so, come along this goat track on the hillside with me instead I dare you, and we shall see in what direction the winds like to lead us astray. I know, I can't wait either.

Foresight

GET OUT OF bed hollow eyes, turn your corners up not down. Please don’t be sad, the day is nice. We could go out to the park, around the lake or into town …no …you just don’t feel up to it today?

Uh-oh. I see the mania in your eyes. You’re excited, gushing, telling those weird pointless little lies. There’s chocolate topping to put on our dessert, you say, following a dinner dished in empty pots and pans.

Today your eyes are hard, on a mission. A focus of steel, like the kitchen knife in your hand running down the hallway like a mad woman, chasing, screaming, afraid I’ve fallen into enemy hands.

Now your eyes are institutionalised. Quiet. Pleading in some lilted, half-slung watery way: let me come home; tell them that I seem okay. I peer around at the other eyes lurking in this place to comfort myself that yours are not as bad as theirs.

Both our eyes say tentative today. We are happy to be home, reuniting on the doorstep after our separate “holidays”. Let’s hurry up and get back to the way things were before, and before next time and the time after that.

Down on the farm

SOAPED UP HORSE sweat running races around the puffing blue roan gelding, sides exhausting, head hanging low. Sticky leather traces with rugged brass buckles, prior sheen now dull. A field ploughed manually, aggressively, on another parched typical Hawke’s Bay day.

Age-veined vinyl upholstery in the nearby car is much like the driver of both vehicle and hoe: red, hard, crackled, weathered. The same Austin 1100 my wonderful big bro boasts of getting to 80 miles per hour in a straight line. The back seat is itchy and clammy, like me, as I’m laid down, under garments quickly removed. What’s happening? What is he doing? To me? What should I do? Where should I put myself? Where on earth... can I be?

“I’m a baby”, I finally hear myself blurt out in a weird sing-song voice. “Goo-goo, gah-gah.” Even though we both know I’m nearly six-and-a-half. But why else would he be fiddling. Down there? All fingers and tongue. The licking especially… shhrriiink and cringe. Dum-dee-dum. Nothing to see here, goo-goo, gah-gah. I suck my most familiar friend, Thumb.

“Don’t tell your mum. This is our special secret. She wouldn’t understand”. Words her boyfriend would whisper numerous times in different apparently opportune moments and locations from this point in.

Navigatory devices

DEAR CRUNDLESTEIN,

THIS TIME IT is I passing time in an airport, Christchurch, awaiting my flight home on a Friday night. It is, in a word and without sinking to profanity, COLD. I’ve been here for the day, supposedly toiling. Translated: on a paid holiday from the kid! You know, of course, I love him most dearly but nevertheless my ‘adult’ days are glorious treats.

Things are not great here. In the Garden City I mean. The energy around a stalwart client of mine feels pretty bloody bleak. Not towards me specifically, and I have work now for the next two months all things going well, but new management appear to have ruckled things up rather and all my friends here are exuding undeniable misery in morale.

For over eight years I’ve been happily pottering along doing what I do for work, and producing some pretty great stuff. But I kinda intuitively get the impression now, from all these recent and repeated road blocks, that it just might be time to change tack, alter course. Which is fine… change has never unduly frightened me (stagnation does, in truth), except right at this moment it’s the “to what” question that has me drawing mysterious blanks. So tonight, on the aeroplane now, velocity swifting me home (Claude would be jealous), I’m putting out there into the ether, without being TOO shouty: “OKAY, OKAY, I GET IT. NOW SHOW ME THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD!!!”

I shall keep you posted as inspiration hopefully unfurls.

Thank you for your recent letter. I am very much enjoying our correspondence too. Your words are living breathing creatures exhaling colour from observing nostrils, artful rainbows across my sky. While I publish my own letters, know that when I write them, I do so just for you.

If knowing the background re writing to my mother found you in relief, then perhaps my words too might be working if you experienced some of my grief, i.e. I guess that is the point, that others can feel with gooses upon their elbows what I have felt. I have questioned whether I should be publishing that stuff, some of it falls quite blatantly over the crest into icky. It serves a number of creative and therapeutic purposes and I’ve decided squarely that reactions to my creativity are not my responsibility. And what others choose to do with their own truths is entirely up to them. Nature, however, dictates that at the end of winter comes spring.

Upon your soon return, and after getting the mutual licks with those you love out of the way, I’m sure we can come up with some new way of writerly exchanging things.

Love,
Me xx

The Dark

DEAR CRUNDLESTEIN,

“THE DARK” IS a book by Lemony Snicket which I think is rather good. I borrowed it from the library and have been forcing it down Claude’s listening devices ever since (yesterday). Oh sure, he isn’t yet fond of it in quite the way that he’s partial to Eric Carle’s ravenous caterpillar or the Reverend’s anthropomorphised locomotives of steam …no, not at all. But a wide love of literature is a wonderful thing, as is bribery. Read this book with me… I say… and I’ll help you build the best train set layout yet.

Laszlo is a boy, a smidge older than Claude I imagine, with a fear of The Dark. The Dark, naturally, lives with him (as it lives with all of us) all around, but especially residing down the stairs in the depths of his basement heart. “You might be afraid of The Dark, but The Dark is not afraid of you”, Lemony wisely and rather candidly points out. Indeed, this is very much the sort of statement I wished I had thought of myself. Eventually, Laszlo, who is a very astute young man in my opinion, does more than just illuminate The Dark. He stares it literally in the gob and befriends it. In doing so, it never bothers him in quite the same way again.

Perhaps the reason I’m liking this tale so much, apart from the warmth of Lemony’s witty technique (and Jon Klassen's groovy illustration), is that I am doing a quick-fire online writing course at the minute – ostensibly, utilising my darkest corners to improve my flow. I think of it, much like in business, as seeing competitors as potential partners instead of the opposition. Because The Dark always has an uncanny knack of being present doesn't it? So far this is a very interesting and rewarding experiment. But then, I like to stare fear boldly in the face, to call out the elephants in the room. Otherwise, I find, life becomes the epitome of futility and exceedingly bloody monotonous. Not to mention The Gloom.

So here’s to befriending The Dark in us all. And bribery, of course, given that it is such a politically incorrect child rearing tool.

Love,
Me xx

Discomfort

I was an accident, but a nice one. You've always told me that. Brother Jeff says I’m your favourite; the apple of your eye. But the truth is I’m not much of a daughter to you, am I Mum?

--YOU ARE EVERYTHING I WAS NEVER ABLE TO BE.

Why didn't you baptise me like my other siblings. Daddy said no, I know, but why? Why stop short for number five? Why didn't you push the issue? Doesn't the bible say only his flock will be saved?

--IT DIDN’T MATTER IN THE END, DID IT? YOU HAVE SAVED YOURSELF.

Why weren't you the supportive mother? You could have encouraged me to do activities, to make friends, to play sport, to better myself doing whatever. Instead you left me to do everything of my own volition.

--BECAUSE YOU WERE MORE THAN CAPABLE OF DOING IT ON YOUR OWN, DEAR.

“Never mind” was the best I could get out of you whenever something unfortunate happened to me. Whereas you were like some inconsequential vague nothingness that took to her bed for days and weeks in despair for no apparent reason. I was lost with it.

--AS WAS I. AND YOU COPIED ME FOR A TIME, BUT YOU CONQUERED THAT TOO MY ANGEL.

Why can’t you wake up, woman up and fulfil the destiny befitting for the hugely intelligent person I know hides under all your trivial talk about what the neighbours are doing, mauve things, the City Council and what’s on TV?

--I’M SCARED DARLING. IT’S LATE; THERE SEEMS LITTLE POINT. I HAVE PLANS FOR ANOTHER LIFETIME

Why, when you’re going through troubles now that I’m an adult, can I only seem to cry for me and not for you? You never hit me or treated me badly. You are kind and generous and loving. Why can’t I feel like most people feel about their parents?

--IT IS WHAT IT IS. IT IS AS MUCH MY JOURNEY AS IT IS YOURS. I'M PROUD OF YOU AND I LOVE YOU. AND YOU LOVE YOUR BOY.

Further despatches

DEAR CRUNDLESTEIN,

PAST THE CABBAGE tree bordering my neighbour’s back garden, further on still from the chimney pot proboscis of the next bod along, long wispy clouds flick up and about in all directions with the rampant fervency of an older man’s eyebrows against the silvery water backdrop of the boulder bank and distant Glenduan.

Reorganising my backyard the other week, I have inadvertently created for myself quite the whimsical little outdoor nook. Come… this way… slip through the unassuming dampish curtain of towels and endless toddler garments slung up over the undercover washing line to reveal, not only the ideal place to surreptitiously tuck oneself away should the JWs or Inland Revenue come calling, but to while the hours pleasurably musing and whatever else one can do with such a view.

I realise, upon discovering its potential just this very morning, further renovations to this fine writing space ideally are required… some mood lighting weaved hap-dashly through the upended garden implements in the corner pot perhaps, the acquisition of an outdoor gas heater or childproof brazier (???) given the season, and a decent tea pot/distillery utility, at minimum.

My old (and now deceased) granny’s rocker has a vacancy, but I have been preferring instead to take seat at the ramshackle wooden table, thickly sweatered and sneakered as fitting for the thrill of the chill running across my face this time of year. I rather fancy it could also be a very good place for cards or bullshit talk. There's a little blue swing for Claudie hanging from the pergola rafters, and a mini trampoline, should playing with clothes pegs get dull or one has a need to keep warm.

This little nook may not be grand enough for your decorous tastes, Crundlestein, but personally I rather like its rustic appeal and romantic sense of adventure - as long as one has decent merinos and a healthy constitution. I can well envisage good whisky also adding value, in cases where the company is boring or the writing flow needs a helping hand.

I once made habit of writing in bathtubs at odd hours you know. Especially in hotels when travelling for work in a previous life. For one reason or another, which I don't altogether comprehend, these various aquatica worked well for me back then. As for this quaint space… well, I feel it may hold great promise. We shall sea.

I trust you are travelling well.

Love,
Me xx

A letter to Turkey via Greece

DEAR CRUNDLESTEIN,

SOMEONE HAS LEFT the door to the north ajar a crack this morning, just a shard of sunlight creeps into the bowl that is Nelson CBD; enough to warm my left cheek and soul and not much more. Eleven-nineteen ante meridiem. The tide is out. The ramparting hills we both know so well wear a cloak of indifference today. Not unpleasant, in fact, it rather matches autumn’s moulting canopy and the hot cup of tea sitting here in my curling hand quite perfectly. Now, if only the dude next door would trim all the rambunction from atop his tree that encroaches upon my window view, I could describe it for you more fully. But despite this arborist absence, I’m sure you get the picture. No doubt there is always a woman somewhere needing a bush trimmed, so we must just do the best with whatever we have to work with.

Claude woke me at 3am this morning. Sometimes he just doesn’t want to be alone and I indulge him because sometimes I don’t either, and he’s not always going to want to cuddle sweet and warm (with the sometimes not so occasional kicks to my bladder) with his mama. He would have lulled off to sleep again quite happily too only I let my head fill up with futility, tossing and turning with it awhile, unable to let it go. Three months now since I’ve had any real work to speak of. Plenty of promises, bookings even, but seemingly constant postponements and delays. Oh the shit that keeps us up at night… I doused tense neck and shoulders in lavender oil and found peace somehow, before we both slept through until a very civilised 8am. Heavenly. And this morning, well… I feel simply that a change to the combobulation that is the continual mothering and supporting oneself juggle is required. If something aint working, then change the configuration. Hardly rocket science. There is always a way and, if my friend is to be believed, I am sure to find it. Apparently I am an asteroid of determination.

Please keep writing. I enjoy your colourful letters from the edge. They sound like you, which always a good letter writer makes. More selfishly, they also inspire me to scribble words down without the arduous requirement of thinking too much about what. I am not in Greece obviously, or Turkey, or anywhere else even remotely exciting (although re your letter, I would like it noted that I have been before to Venice, and last weekend I did go to Wellington). I once had a notion that even if one lived in a very restricted society or is imprisoned in some way, it is still possible to know freedom if your mind is free. This was followed quickly by a second notion that the majority of people living in the ‘free world’ do not have free minds and are, therefore, actually unwitting prisoners of their own making. My point, as I feel I should get to it, is that I wholeheartedly support and encourage you in gaily draping your laundry out to dry on any and all near lying ferry bannisters and balustrades throughout the Mediterranean. This act I see as surely being euphemistic for a free mind? Back here in lil ole Nelson, although some days I do feel a little physically encaptured by my current financial situation, be sure that I am hanging out laundry freely everywhere in my mind. Perhaps this is what this letter writing lark is all about, and these written words my at-home equivalent of the tourist selfie stick?

Love,
Me xx

Radio static

IT IS CONSIDERED rude of course to deliver lines to others such as "You're boring", "You're so f***en shallow", "How insecure are you?" and other shit like that. Because, I mean, who the hell am I?

Everyone, in my humble opinion, is most welcome to regale themselves with endless stories of past conquests, drunken escapades and other monologues from their glory days; times now past, but when perhaps life appeared more straightforward and less prone to feeling lost. To fill perfectly adequate silences with non-stop eager recommendations on where to buy the perfect child-sized merinos, Enjos and other must-have trivial crap. The weather perhaps? Go ahead. Knock yourself out. Complain, if you want, about something somebody else did, how much you hate your physical body, your job, the people you hang with, where you're at, yourself. Go on, don't hold back. While you're about it, why not get really self-righteous about something. There are plenty of causes to get opinionated about, just pick one and go at it all hard out - the state of the nation, the f**ked up choices people make as part of their democratic right. Whatever it is - you're RIGHT, right? And the opposers are just dumb deluded uninformed c**ts - isn't that how it generally goes? Hammer it home, fill up everyone's social media feed. There's a dude down Invercargill way ain't heard ya yet.

It's where we're all at at some point, usually repeatedly. While also being kinda dull and small-minded, at least I find it so. This is, of course, a note to self as much as anything, as I continue to be drawn towards lighter, clearer frequencies of more interesting things and the places and people where I want to spend time and go.

Said Ms Holier Than Thou.

xx

Connection

OUR BIGGEST PORES are on the bottoms of our feet. Designed, when barefoot, to connect us with and to take up the energy of the earth. Balance, alignment, soul.

Jacko makes his way back to his wife and granddaughter this weekend, so his children tell me. His final journey of this life. He too will become part of the crust beneath our feet.

It's not about me, I know. Yet all of a sudden I crave connection. To walk shoeless. To gather my son up and squeeze him even more fervently. To hug someone else and let them hold me tightly without worrying that they're taking liberties with my heart and me.

It's about time boys were given boys' names in this family, Jacky states out loud, as my delicately-featured, long-haired son makes explorations: beneath his robotic bed, inside his waste paper bin.

Jack is not my father. But such insulting endearments are designed to make me feel as if he could be. He knows, I am certain, how much over the decades I've appreciated, needed that. To feel part of something special. To belong somewhere constantly safe.

He would tell his own son what a fool he had been to let me go - biggest mistake of his life - even though I was the one who left.

Thank you Jack, for all of that. For loving me.

Queen's Park Rangers are playing someone or other on the tele. He tells us that he ate porridge for breakfast. But he's lying, so the nurses he serenades with Scottish auld time tunes inform us. That, and he's been caught smoking roll-ups from his bed. Outwardly frowned upon. Inside smiling that he's still got it.

Full of energy as always. The Highland Fling. Yet small, shrunken, jutting and spindly, as he has been getting more of in recent years.

Travel well Jack over the next few days without your machines. I love you. We are always connected. My bare feet on this earth. Your charming caustic wit.

Jack's 75th birthday back in 2010. He knows how to party.

xx

Along the merry way

I’VE BEEN WRITING and not writing here for some eight years. That could well be a record for anything I’ve done or not done. Except breathing, and being some girl that likes horses, neat handwriting and imagining things.

This began as company, when I moved my life to a new place, knowing next to no one and nada. Smoking endless reefers atop my keyboard to relieve the boredom, dreaming up romantic touch typed writerly dreams. Pleasantries tapped out, amusements, experiments – generally lolling about here often times for the lack of anything better to do. And pontificated, or my ego has, scathed and ranted in some perceived justification of whatever my crackled heart yearned for then. At the very least, I hope it can be said that I did so creatively :)

Life is fucken hilarious when you look back, which is just as well. And pretty wonderful too. Aah yes, the joys of feeling and self-expression. Which is why – although many times before now I’ve been tempted to delete this blog, to remove all evidence of some of the seemingly trivial shit my mind and fingers dallied themselves with through much of my fourth decade – I haven’t and am unlikely to. I kind of like it sitting here as a reminder of forever growing up, honing skills, fucking myself up and getting unfucked again along the merry way.

Listening into other peoples’ conversations over a cafe lunch today, I was reminded of how much I used to think I had to say. I don’t have anything particularly poetic, witty or inspired for you just right at this moment, but nevertheless, perhaps I can squeeze out at least another eight xx

We can rebuild her

THAT GIRL IN THE right-hand column there, I vaguely remember her. Upon peering at my own reflective murk these days I actually catch myself gasping momentarily, wondering whether it's the mirror that needs a bloody good clean or my eyes some form of greater assisted sight. It is neither.

It's a strange thing giving yourself over to somebody else to survive from, to take from you whatever they need to be nurtured, physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, time, all of the above. And it's awesome and wonderful and like nothing else I've ever experienced and tiring and easy to forget yourself and the sparkly conversations you used to have. I was shallower then.

I think some form of normal transmission is resuming however, physically I mean. I've been catching glimpses of my ankles this week and there's hope. Dare I say it, but I'm sure down there be seen some resemblance of tapering and shape. Now, if I could just get about a year's worth of sleep back, I reckon it would do wonders for my face.

In the meantime I've begun showing love to my feet, which I've always pretty much detested until now. I've decided it's mega important to love your body and all it's parts. It seems that I've just moved it up to the ankles. Well done me. Wish me luck on my journey further northward, won't you.

Naturally, convention has gone out the window. Again. I don't mean for things to happen this way, it's not a goal to be the one who is 'one of these things is not like others' or anything. It's just the way things pan out, but I've come to that place of peace where I actually like it. It's pretty fantastic being me.

Duly, with age and the slopping face comes what many likely perceive as madness, but I am thriving on it. Inhale and invite more. Living by intuition is true freedom. I wish more people understood how immeasurably grateful I am every single day not to be so much constrained by BS stressful, socially acceptable, stick it up your a-hole, rational thought. Einstein says it's the way to go, and he was one really onto-it dude, no argument.

An exceedingly clever chap. I agree with him, so he must be right.

So, I just figured I'd write something here to see how it felt. Now signing off, tipping my hat and into my bed I melt. Sayonara for now.

Absconderings

I HAVE BEEN NEGLECTFUL some might say, but I would disagree. Being one not for feeling obligation any further than doing the things that I actually want to do – oh, and some other minor stuff that the law impresses upon me that I must do, given that I am at heart a good girl, mostly.

With that lack of guilt or apology for my general communicative apatheia out of the way, now do let us continue on. That is, if I felt I even half knew where we might have left off previously, or particularly cared.

It isn’t that I haven’t been writing at all. Granted, mostly not, but not “not” entirely; I just haven’t been writing here. Where once I had to put my mindless waffles out into the world at large in some way to feel any hope that both they and I might have any salt, now I can happily scratch away in my notebook for weeks without mandatory subjection onto others.

I like the freedom of being unhooked. Not just in writing, but in life.

Taking the long way home

SYMMETRICAL DUCKS LEAVE Vs in their river wake, peace signs, fitting for this dusky subtle hour when folk, like me, launch their dogs and/or bodies about the neighbourhood. I am escaping a long day's work not yet complete, the man in my house whose primary hobby appears to be television sentry, the fact I'm so tired I want to ball, and yesterday's dishes. I ask the ducks what they're liberating themselves from, but no response. Perhaps they think I'm quackers.

A stringy cat and I make friends via mutual smooching. He's a cat on a hot tin roof, literally, only this aint Mississippi, it's The Wood. The shed he orgies himself upon is trooping in ants on reconnaissance some place to or from, who can ever tell. But Puss and I are both civilians and don't much care, we are bonding, that is until the little bastard bites me on the hand. I resist from cuffing him about the ears as I continue on my way because he's just a cat on a hot tin roof and that's what cats do.

Fused over time into letter Ls, two old white fellas stop on the bridge in front of me to resume a more natural position, elbows nosed over the iron hand rail, commenting on the lack of eels but plentitude of fish. As we three alight onto a leafy street bedecked with modern aquarium houses and insurmountable fences of irony, my heart smiles when the Ls break out into a loud, melodic and Maori rendition of God Defend New Zealand. Indeed.

They have chosen another path by the time, homeward bound now, I pass the clutch of tall poppies dressed as sunflowers dancing about happily of the evening from their dizzying heights. These make me happy too as I continue on my way, glancing as imperceptibly as possible into secret crevices of people's properties never before noticed, despite my frequent meanderings about my hood. Modern baby carriage waits patiently at a back door under an old lady shady hydrangea alcove, while another front door lies open onto the street revealing the butterfly décor preferences of the matronly-efficient woman often to be seen clipping her insanely tidily manicured hedge. And here lives the Rawleigh's Man.

Cornering my own picket fence, dinner fills any vacant space left in my curious nostrils and the world now seems like a definitely more aligned place. Fairies have even done the dishes in my absence, sort of. I am hungry, tired, happy and grateful. Peace.

Rolling with it

“What was left of her hair formed a vaporous tangle of white that seemed not so much to grow from her head as float in its vicinity.”

“So perhaps the greatest worry of all was that one day you would realize that all the worries of your life amounted to one thing: the desire to just stop worrying.”

LIFE HAS STEPPED BACK a chop or two, no longer lived at a thousand clicks an hour. I don’t mind it. I doodle snippets in my wee notebook that particularly take me along with them while reading. Like these from Justin Cronin’s ‘The Passage’. A not-normally-my-cup-of-tea genre, and yet for some reason, strangely compelling.

The usual burgeoning ‘to-do’ list instead replaced with a stack of ‘to-reads’, corralling in fervent invasion of my bedside table. There are worse problems to have. So far this has not resulted in my being clocked about the head with too much writing rampancy of my own or anything. But there’s something growing steadily inside me readying to pop out with its own brand of fanfare, I’m sure of it.

I read. I sleep. I eat. I doodle. I even search for new recipes that appeal to my senses and cook. How about that? Time passes swimming at the beach, sitting in the river, or whispering things into my horse’s delightful brown ears, even though I’ve hung up my stirrups for a while. I drink lots of water. Sometimes I even work. I ignore people. They talk too much, most of it of little interest or originality. It's nothing personal. Right now I just prefer a teeny-tiny coterie.

Junk shops get the once and twice over for creative purposes – inventing mystical spaces and cutesy dioramas in my little house – while other inspirations are dutifully catalogued on Pinterest for some future crafty date. Sometimes I even think about covering my head with a sarong and meditating tomorrow morning when I wake up. Always tomorrow so far. And I’ve learned that there is the equivalent of seven and a half teaspoons of sugar in a can of baked beans. Diabolical.

It’s a new year and the beckoning of very new frontiers. My grand master plan is just to roll with it, with as much serenity as possible xx

Intimacy at sea

SHE IS A MOUSE in his trouser pocket, snuffling around. Hearing echoes of footsteps trouncing up the gangplank, overheard conversations muffled by cotton lining and big city grime. The 5pm East by West ferry is departing on time.

-- "I love the way you see the world," he laughs at her once back on the telephone line. "A mouse indeed!"

The same merry amusement as upon discovering she likes to dress up cowgirl - boots, denim skirt, flannel shirt, horse head belt buckle with an old metal toy cap gun slung into her belt.

-- "You go out in public like that?"
-- "Of course."

A pause.

-- "Are you okay?"
-- "Yes.
    ...I just wanted to hear a friendly voice."

-- "Oh yeah?"
-- "Of someone special. Stop fishing for compliments. You know that's you."

-- "Uh-huh."
-- "Who doesn't judge me."

-- "Talking to you opens my mind, girl."
-- "Have you departed the shore now?"

-- "Yes."
-- "Goody. Keep a watch out for dolphins for me. If they appear, you could swim home with them. Even if just in your mind.
    ...So, how are you?"

He is, as always, busy. Busy being ridiculously good at whatever it is that he does.

-- "We haven't hung out for ages. Is it time for a weekend adventure with you, Ms P. and me?"

She loved his freakishly stunning Amazon-legged girlfriend of eons, because he did. That simple.

-- "Yes! I miss you. And I want to rub your belly, to see how it feels, your little guest."
-- "Ha, ha. Are the dolphins there yet? I've been feeding the fish too. But it's okay. I'm over that now."

-- "A grand adventure it is then. I'll check my diary as soon as I get home and text you. I'm going to lose reception soon."
-- "Surely swarthy sea dogs don't need cellphones. They have Morse code, semaphore, talking parrots on their shoulders and hooks."

-- "Hooks?"
-- "And probably warm wenches below deck with ruddy and inviting thighs... do you think there's any real pirates in Eastbourne?"

-- "Anything's possible. But I know one thing for sure."
-- "What's that?"

-- "That there's a mouse on this ship, snuffling about."

Semblance

WE MEET. NOT FOR the first time. I watch you considering me, wondering still, after all these years, where you begin and I might end. The lines on my face may tell a story, but the look on yours says more.

Wherever you go, you are there. So am I. I am the first to avert from our reflective gaze. Because I am of age, as my face honestly purports, and wise enough now to know how we feel without need to see your expression.

We are one. The mirror agrees.

Cuckoo's nest

I wake from another poor excuse wrestling with the padded white, and by now entirely sodden, restraints of once starched hospital-grade sheets.

Hello, yes, that acrid invasion is indeed wafting from me. A staunch and sweaty stench to sucker-punch Chuck Norris and then some. How the hell anyone can slumber fitfully in this place saturated in craziness is beyond me. Yes, it’s clean as a shiny new whistle, the warden insists on that, and I appreciate it. It’s materially comfortable and the food’s pretty good, but am I really to wholly recover stuck here in this loony bin? The revival odds, I fear, I'm losing faith in. I'm living a lie someone else told, or so my self-appointed publicist says. So sometimes I pretend, mostly to myself, that I'm just another troubled rock star doing mandatory rehab.

—- Lord, give me some sanity, please!

I'm forever hopeful.

Amy’s delirious screams from the next room are heightening in decibel as I lie here, demolishing any loaded silence that could ever exist. I’ll go and comfort her in a second, just as soon as my head clears enough to stand up and function. Clear head... that’s a silly bloody notion, I really can’t remember—-you know what? Sometimes I wonder if good old shock treatment wouldn’t be better. Short, sharp and to the point. Maybe then I could forget all that it pains to recall. Life would be simpler after that.

Right now I pitifully exist in this manic routined haze, the same basic experience over and over, week after week. All the while daydreaming uselessly about something else. These rituals are designed to make me feel secure in a mad mad world, but it’s... predictable drudge with the odd difficult drama thrown in (mental note, haha, don't loiter round the ablutions block or eventually someone will fuck you).

My pal Tom, he’ll be wandering around here anytime soon, looking for a manly chat. About stuff that doesn't really matter, because the important stuff, hell no, we don't talk about that. He has nothing much else to do either, but yearn for his next drink or his next life or whatever. He’s one that's into killing himself slowly I reckon, because he don’t have the courage to do it any quicker. Poor sod. 

Sometimes I wonder if it’s ever going to get better, what's my long-term prognosis? Will I ever be released from this berserk hole? I don't belong here, I deserve better than this, don't I?! I'm not like the others... or is this my lot for the next 20, 30, 40 years? Someone tell me, tell me please, that there’s a good behaviour bond for adhering to... well fuck, I dunno... to doing what’s expected I guess.

-— Yes, Amy darlin’, I’m coming.

She gives me the will to get out of bed. Far better than dwelling here darkly on my back feeling lost.

-— Stanley! Your daughter is screaming. Are you intending to go to her anytime soon?

The warden. I love my wife, I really do. But when the clouds do part on occasion, just momentarily, I can glimpse her confused understanding between the two; of motivation and manipulation. And not just her — I don’t blame her, cripes, it’s everywhere. She maneuvers and I deceive, the game we've learned to play together. Everybody seems desperate to gain control... of our own and others' minds... of all sorts of things. As if it will make us feel better. But it's the best we know for now.

-— Amy, sweetheart. Good morning!
-— Hey, honey. Good morning.

Kisses all round for both my girls. And the rich smell of fresh coffee to awaken a man for the start of another working day. I'll make my fame and fortune yet.

-— And good morning Tom! How’s the head? Glad you didn’t drive home last night, you were somewhat wrecked.

Yes, the more I think about it, the more I see. This world is a massive mental institution. And that acrid smell — I’m realising, it ‘aint coming just from me. I’m surrounded by it. And it's got me to wondering, maybe... could it be... what fear smells like?

(Inspired by something Don Miguel Ruiz said)

Jane Austen becomes seduced

Romeo has been entering by way of the window at all hours, and dare I confess to having been so encouraging of it. One should never deem to entertain thoughts of opening arms to such a creature, don't I beseech it. The obvious Lothario that he is, indeed, a professional an artiste of seduction as you could ever meet. To share or compete for an object of the male species is pure madness, it is without demonstrable self-respect, as all eventualities will be what the ego and wisdom (or lack thereof) justly deserves. This being so, I am in deep quandary.

I cannot but declare to being an utter fool. Knowing for a fact as I do that he frequents not merely at Number Two, but half or more of the ladies of the street in its entirety, and who knows whom else beyond, in lobbying for their sweetest caresses. So incredulous is he, such that he does not possess the decorum of mind to even attempt in hiding his true Casanovarian nature. Nay, instead he slinks and winds himself about me as we stroll of an afternoon, it can but be said, with the vivacity of a common gigolo.

And I duly swoon. Putting up defences no more than a warmly inviting smile, beckoning coo and becoming embrace. He winks languidly at me, purring in my arms all the while with manly pride during our brief snatched moments of intimacy, before I, with a heavy heart, doth relinquish him to another. For although I have not personally sighted her, I know they reside together in apparent, yet clearly false, propriety at Number Five. I beg, if her ladyship had any good sense at all, alongside the engraved address on his feline collar, she’d place also a warning bell for birds.