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.

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

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.

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