Poetry Thursday: Sharon Olds # 2
"Write hard and clear about what hurts"
~ Ernest Hemingway
This is the only poem I can offer today as it is the one that provoked such an unexpected reaction. I was casting around for something suitable, something that put into words how I was feeling, and then I read Sharon Olds’ New Mother. It might seem like a peculiar choice as I am not a mother and am not likely to become one in the foreseeable future, but reading the words tears came. For me this poem is about what I lost, what I might not have had, and what I might have yet. It is about a man I want to kiss so desperately it has been torturing me this week.
New Mother
A week after our child was born,
you cornered me in the spare room
and we sank down on the bed.
You kissed me and kissed me, my milk undid its
burning slipknot through my nipples,
soaking my shirt. All week I had smelled of milk,
fresh milk, sour. I began to throb:
my sex had been torn easily as cloth by the
crown of her head, I’d been cut with a knife and
sewn, the stitches pulling at my skin – and the
first time you’re broken, you don’t know
you’ll be healed again, better than before.
I lay in fear and blood and milk
while you kissed and kissed me, your lips hot and swollen
as a teenage boy’s, your sex dry and big,
all of you so tender, you hung over me,
over the nest of the stitches, over the
splitting and tearing, with the patience of someone who
finds a wounded animal in the woods
and stays with it, not leaving its side
until it is whole, until it can run again.
~ Sharon Olds, Selected Poems
For more poetic inspiration, go here
* the photograph is the first portrait I took of my goddaughter…
Portrait of a 33-year-old
Every morning I look in the mirror and see new lines on my face. I have the misfortune to have a sky light in the bathroom, so every line, every crease, every blemish is illuminated with forensic clarity – every visitor I have runs screaming from the bathroom after a few moments in front of the mirror of truth. When I was studying photography, all those years ago, I took hundreds of self-portraits. I’ve never particularly liked having my picture taken – I’m not the most photogenic person, and catch me in the wrong light the plains of my face meld into new contorted shapes that I just don’t recognise. But in my college days I was on a mission. I had the idea I could investigate the female condition through pictures of myself – a lofty ambition for a 21-year-old! Looking back at those pictures, the first thing that strikes me is how skinny I was. It’s incredible that for so long I was unhappy with my body, yet judging by the photos I was half the size I am now – I just couldn’t see it. Most of my self-portraits were nudes – I never felt self-conscious showing the pictures to others as I didn’t see the body on the paper as my own (how very revealing that statement is).
I have very few photographs of myself from this last year – it’s only recently I’ve wanted to start recording my life, with photos of friends and family, and places I’ve been. I took the photo above the other day to send to a new treasured friend, and looking at it again last night, I was struck by how my face has changed. I’ve always carried an image in my head of who I am and what I look like – for the longest time it was the face of a fifteen-year-old girl, and as I’ve never really looked my age (sure to be a blessing in my 50s) I would look in the mirror and see that same teenage face. But now I look and I see something new. I mentioned this to my counsellor the other day, how the lines are new, the bags under my eyes heavy, the eyes themselves a darker blue than before. She told me that it was to be expected that the past year is now recorded in my features. And surely the vineyard of wine I’ve drunk and plantation of cigarettes I’ve smoked hasn’t helped either, but it’s the grief and loss that’s etched on my face. That my lover will never look at my face again is something I still have not come to terms with. I don’t even know if he’d recognise me now – I have to wear glasses to read and work at the computer, after I discovered the headaches weren’t just from tears but my weak eyes too. My hair is blonder, my wardrobe has relaxed; but most of all this is no longer the face he looked at.
Today I’m working on my six chapters, polishing the old words and inserting new ones. I’m remembering what he looked like, and how he saw me. I’m remembering our first night together, and how I learnt the melody of his snoring. Bittersweet memories, like scenes from a film – I just don’t recognise the girl in that picture anymore. I only know who I am now.
Sunday Scribblings: First Love
My first love was called Jim, and he had no sense of smell – he was born that way. It would always make me sad to think that when we split up, as we so painfully did, he would never catch a memory of me on the air as another woman walked past him wearing my scent. We met in a nightclub three days into a new decade, in 1990 when I was sixteen and he was twenty-three. Precocious teenager that I was I chatted him up, on the edge of the dance floor, Pernod and black in my hand. He had long dark hair and a goatee, and the kindest eyes that had ever landed on me.
Our first proper date was a trip to the cinema to see When Harry Met Sally, and from that afternoon we saw each other every day. I was still at school, supposedly studying for my A levels, but I would sneak off to the bus stop before class and go to his house instead. Within six months I decided – with the wisdom of a child who wants to be grown up too soon – to leave school and move in with Jim. My only goal in life, back then, was to have a boyfriend, the legacy of an absent father. In my hurry to be grown up I found myself at seventeen living in a grotty bedsit with an unemployed labourer, permanently damp towels hanging over the wardrobe doors and two pet rats. Oh the glamorous life!
Despite the damp, I decorated our home with the standard issue hippy fare bought during trips to Glastonbury, our Mecca. I delighted in shopping for our groceries in the local street market, coming back home with bags full of vegetables and soya mince (we were vegetarian, of course, with rings in our noses and psychedelic swirls on our clothes). Weekends were spent dancing all night in chemically enhanced swells of joy, with occasional days spent with my family (despite the fact that Jim had stolen me from them, my mother and sister loved him). I had wrapped my needy arms around him so tightly I’m sure he couldn’t breathe, yet gradually we started to follow our own paths – me to art college to study photography, him singing in a local band. I loved Jim passionately and jealously, but the new world college opened up to me soon lured me away from him. I realised that I had outgrown my unemployed labourer, and one day, after listening to Joni Mitchell’s Blue non-stop to bolster my nerve, he came home from band rehearsals and I told him I was moving out. Looking back on that day now, I can’t believe how heartless I was, but I was only nineteen. I had no conception of real emotions, real pain. I was selfish, and I was cruel, but I knew no better. Jim, understandably, was crushed. It was the first time I had seen him cry, and remembering this makes me feel so ashamed.
The months that followed were messy, with us getting back together only to part again. While I became caught up in new love stories at college, Jim got together with a friend of ours and last I heard they had a baby together. The irony is not lost on me that he is, one hopes, now settled with a family and I am here, on my own and grieving. It’s curious how things turn out, where the paths we choose take us.
For more Sunday Scribblings, go here.
I heart London
On Thursday I discovered the perfect antidote to the stressful week I’ve had. It was Anna’s birthday and to celebrate we went to the Lucky Voice karaoke bar in Soho with her Canadian cousin Trevor and his business partner John, and sang ourselves hoarse. My friends, I never thought in a million years that I would be comfortable singing in public but within thirty seconds of the opening bar of the first song I had the microphone in my hand. Highlights of the night included Anna and I giving a forceful rendition of Electric Six’s Gay Bar, and Trevor and Anna’s impassioned version of Kung Fu Fighting (see above pic). I am now officially a karaoke convert.
The four of us ran around central London like teenagers, bar hopping and ending up in the most peculiar club I think I’ve ever been to, in the middle of the dreaded Leicester Square, filled with drunken waifs and strays – and us. Finally Anna and I rolled our bedraggled selves out of the cab at 5am, beyond tired, but still smiling. It was just what I needed for my heavy heart – friendship and fun, the perfect combination.
Each time I go back to London I become a little more seduced by my old town. While memories still haunt every street, a new life is being explored there too. As my confidence grows, and my sadness becomes more manageable, I can walk through the streets and the previous narration of sorrow – there’s the restaurant where he said… there’s the street where we… – is fading a little. It is always a relief to return to my home by the sea, but curiously, yesterday the flat seemed too quiet when I walked through the door.
London
First silvery ripples, liquid metal,
and the khaki camouflage of trees.
More louring clouds, heavy with moisture
pierced by spires and lost dreams.
Ornate houseboats sleepily bob –
Veronica, Kingsgate, Colne Dean -
twisted topiary on white-washed decking,
floating gardens of shipmates unseen.
Then, grey slabs broken with yellow-green,
life-blood pushing through to the sky;
the filigree swirls on Battersea Bridge,
arcs skim the water, and flying
along the street blushed petals
like confetti celebrating my return.
The coil of traffic stops and starts;
she doesn’t want me to leave, I discern.
The lighthouse
‘The only way [the book can be written] is to set the unbook – the gilt-framed painting of the book – right there on the altar and sacrifice it, truly sacrifice it. Only then may the book, the real live flawed finite book, slowly, sentence by carnal sentence, appear.’
~ Bonnie Friedman, Writing Past Dark
There is something happening, but I’m not quite sure what it is yet. Something is brewing out there. The rain is lashing against my windows, and as I live in an attic flat, the sound is deafening. I feel like I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours working so hard, and I have, but not on my precious unbook alas. The corporate work I am doing purely to pay my rent is draining every ounce of creativity out of me, and the unbook lies heavy on my shoulders, waiting for me to take a breath and pick up where I left off. Yet weaving through my days are sparks catching my eye, nuggets of inspiration. I felt particularly moved by Liz’s post today; her warrior call struck such a chord in my mending heart. Connections are being made all around me; bonds with friends are strengthened and renewed and kindred spirits are gathering close. Each time we read the words of another we send a ray of light into their world. Each of us is a lighthouse, shining ourselves, our secrets, across oceans and forests, our spirits travelling further than we could ever imagine. The candle’s flame is flickering as the wind pushes its way into my home; is the wind pushing me forwards or bringing something with it, I can’t tell tonight, but something is coming, something has shifted.
Ode to my desk
Well, I didn’t manage to bend time, but I have just filed my article. Why is it that I could be given a two-week period in which to write something yet still be finishing it the morning it has to be filed? This happens every time and in six years of being a journalist this hasn’t ever changed. It’s as if my brain doesn’t quite click into gear until the very last moment, when suddenly the words all jostle together in the right order.
Mooching through some of my favourite blogs recently I came across photos of their art studios/desks and it was intriguing to see the space where the artist/writer gets creative. Maybe I’m just nosy, but I’m fascinated by the knick-knacks, notebooks, brushes and ephemera they have around them when they create. Every time I visit my sister for a weekend one of the high-lights is always to sit at her desk and look at the pictures she has on the walls, and the trinkets on her desk (always a new sketchbook or set of pens, or a deliciously illustrated book).
So here is a picture of the desk I sit at every day and work/blog/surf/email. As this is the only table I have I also eat my meals here and have in the past cleared it of my precious computer and had dinner parties around it. I sit here, usually frowning, waiting for the muse to alight on my shoulder. Sometimes she comes and won’t stop talking; other times it’s just me and my iTunes. Mostly I either work in silence or with the same set of songs playing in the background, lulling me until I can’t hear them anymore, the white noise producing a space for ideas to bud.
I bought this table a month after I arrived here, one tear-soaked afternoon after a session with my bereavement counsellor. I wasn’t in any shape to start working back then, but I knew I had to fill the spaces in my flat, so I walked in to a second-hand furniture shop, saw this beautiful repro Edwardian table and asked the man to deliver it the next day. At first the table looked enormous, the dark wood so imposing in an empty room, but slowly slowly it has become an extension of my own body, as I sit hunched over the edge, a lifetime later, writing.
The blogging community around us is at once tangible and invisible, so I’m curious: where do you blog? What do you look at when you read other’s words, when you touch their hands and connect? Where are you right now? If you feel inspired to share a picture of your desk leave a comment so I can come by and be nosy.
Sunday Scribblings: Three wishes
I wish I had the power to bend time, to stretch this day out so that I can write my article and have enough time to polish the words before I send it to my editor in the morning. I would then bend time to take me back to Kenya in 2004, on the day I fed a giraffe food pellets from my own hand, his rubbery tongue playing with my fingers as his quizzical eyes blinked at me. I would bend time back to that very evening, when my lover and I ate mangos in bed, and talked and talked, and made love all through the night, waking tired in the morning, pulling on our clothes to go look for lions in Nairobi’s national park.
I wish I had the power to imbue the special women in my life with all that they need. To my sister I would give the gift of courage and the ability to see the strength in her heart and the talent in her fingertips. I would give Madeleine the gift of time to explore her creativity in peace with no arguments to break up and no school runs for a week or two. To Anna I would give the gift of breathing space away from deadlines and pressures, a space for calmness and connection, outside and within. To Denise I would give the gift of fertility, of ancient wisdom and divine patience. As it is, I can only give the gift of my friendship and sisterhood ~ and I give it freely and without question.
I wish I had the power to believe in myself more,to trust that all that happens is as it should be; that paths have been found to lead me towards a new life, and that paths behind me may be closed off but never forgotten. To trust that I am looked after by loved ones who I cannot see, but who I feel every day; that memories will not fade, even though I fear they are slipping through my fingers faster than the sand on the beach. To trust that I can write my story and it won’t be as painful to set the words down on the page as I think it will be. To trust that this is the path I should be on, and that all that went before was preparation for all that will come.
For more Sunday Scribblings, go here
A morning by the sea
How calm my home is
on a Saturday morning.
No television, no music,
no dishes to wash.
The computer hums,
the kettle rumbles.
I light an incense stick
and sit on the sofa in my temple of calm.
I hear no children’s feet,
no arguments or tears,
no baby crying for me;
no sleepy lover raids the fridge.
I see no crumpled sheets
from a night of tender loving;
there are no plans for the day
j
ust the two of us,
still wrapped in the cocoon we spun
the night before.
There are no phone calls, no texts;
there is only me sitting with myself,
echoes of the future ringing in my ears.
A quiet house, a quiet heart.
The future is safe
I blow upon
your least fingernail
& it flares cyclamen & rose.
I suck flames from your ears.
I touch your perfect nostrils
& they, too, flame gently
like that pale rose
called “sweetheart.”
~ Erica Jong, from Baby-Witch
I met somebody today. His name is Alfie, and in seventeen years and fifty weeks he will become a man. Madeleine and I went to see our friend Jo this morning, and instead of gold and myrrh we took rooibos tea bags and digital cameras. Born a month early, at only two weeks old Alfie should still be inside his mother’s womb, but instead he slept quietly in my arms for an hour while I sipped tea and watched him breathe. His skin is so soft his father cannot feel it, his own fingertips toughed from building furniture. While the women in the room talked and laughed, Alfie slept on, so very tired from his long journey to get here. The wind was blowing outside but his home was a calm place, filled with the only thing he needed: his mother.
Later, sitting with Mad in our favourite café, I felt so good, as if touching a new life had calmed the doubts I’ve been having this week. Jo is at home with her new little man, and she feeds him and cleans him and allows the world to carry on around her while she’s safe in her baby-cocoon. And I don’t feel broody, don’t have a great desire to have my own baby in my arms, but I would like a piece of that calm too, to be able to live in the moment so completely. This last year has felt like my own gestation, birthing my new self, my home and, tentatively, my book. I don’t know if I will ever give birth to my own child; once I thought that may have been a possibility but now I’m not so sure. It’s good to know that Alfie is here, that the future is in his tiny hands. And who knows who he will be, but it was healing, for a moment, to take myself away from thoughts of death and instead revel in the light from his little face.
Poetry Thursday: Anne Sexton
Every day a new blogging star finds her place in the firmament: I’d like to introduce my beautiful and talented sister, who at last has launched her blogship, Nettlestorm. It’s going to be wonderful to see how her blog develops over the next few months, as she finds her feet and explores her boundless creativity. Do pop over and say hello if you have a moment…
For Poetry Thursday this week I am continuing with my usual theme of love, lust and loss. Last night I took myself out to my favourite library aka my spare room, and sunk down into the words of Anne Sexton (1928-1974). For me, her poems have a harder edge than Plath; she was a storyteller who wrote about being a woman, in all its messy emotions and gore – the kind of poetry I relate best to, unsurprisingly.
For a long time my favourite poem of hers was Song For a Lady, but as I read Us I found the words I needed for the work I’m doing this week. Harvesting. I’m harvesting the corn of a relationship, spinning it into gold, remade, rewritten, fashioned into a new shape.
Us
I was wrapped in black
fur and white fur and
you undid me and then
you placed me in gold light
and then you crowned me,
while snow fell outside
the door in diagonal darts.
While a ten-inch snow
came down like stars
in small calcium fragments,
we were in our own bodies
(that room that will bury us)
and you were in my body
(that room that will outlive us)
and at first I rubbed your
feet dry with a towel
because I was your slave
and then you called me princess.
Princess!
Oh then
I stood up in my gold skin
and I beat down the psalms
and I beat down the clothes
and you undid the bridle
and you undid the reins
and I undid the buttons,
the bones, the confusions,
the New England postcards,
the January ten o’clock night,
and we rose up like wheat,
acre after acre of gold,
and we harvested,
we harvested.
~ Anne Sexton, Love Poems
For more poetic inspiration, go here
