October, 2006
Six reasons to be happy
1) The sun is shining and I can see blue skies out of my window.
2) When I got out of bed this morning I found a feather lying on the floor by my reading glasses. I love it when he does that.
3) I’ve done all the work I had to do and will spend the day packing…
4)… because tomorrow morning I will be driving to Heathrow Airport…
5)… because I will be getting on a 9-hour flight to Seattle…
6)… because I’m off to spend some time with some wonderful and inspiring women: Denise, Letha, Liz, Meg, Michelle and Thea…. All of us together under one roof (Letha’s)!
The idea was hatched months ago and now, with some sensational planning by Liz and Letha, it is a reality. If all goes to plan we will be writing, painting, singing (karaoke!), laughing (and probably crying a wee bit) and drinking a lot of wine. It’s my first visit to the States so I’m doubly excited to go see what all the fuss is about – I have a feeling I may not want to come home. I’ll be gone for a week so this is the longest I’ve been away from my seaside home, but I feel now is the time to stretch these new wings of mine and see if I can catch an updraft that will lead me to my future.
I’ll report back when I get home, so in the meantime look after yourselves while I’m away. :-)
October, 2006
Sunday Scribblings: Bedtime stories
When I was a little girl my favourite stories were by Enid Blyton: The Magic Faraway Tree and The Wishing Chair. My sister and I would get our grandmother to read these books to us over and over again, until finally we started reading them ourselves. Even now I can still remember the scenes I pictured in my head although I haven’t read the books in over twenty-five years. I wanted to be able to climb to the top of the Faraway Tree and have adventures in the magical lands there – The Land of Birthdays; the Land of Do-As-You-Please; The Land of Spells. If I were to go there now I would want to visit the Land of Endless Summer Days or perhaps The Land of Self Belief. This love of magic and fantasy morphed into horror and science fiction as I got older. Books by JG Ballard, James Herbert and Stephen King were always to be found in my clammy palms, and later the fantasy came full circle as I started reading Danielle Steel – her take on love and relationships is fantasy bordering on delusion but it was in those saccharine books I began to stitch together my romantic dreams. My teenage self wished for a man who would take her away from her boring seaside life and make her a real woman as they traveled the world and made love beside a roaring fire. Sitting here now in the Land of Hindsight I remember nights in Kenya with my love, and I see how the fantasy became reality; I also see how the tragic end could have been taken from the pages of one of my dog-earred books. Now I attempt to write my own book, one that fills in the gaps those other books left in my education – about grief and pain, about self awareness and empowerment. I write a story of survival, and of finding the grace to accept what has happened, of taking up the thread of the past and letting it lead me into the future.
For more bedtime stories, go here. Image borrowed from here.
October, 2006
Manifestation: Phase Two
So by now regular readers will know about my crush on Pierce Brosnan (ahem). What can I tell you? I’m a single woman (who’s grieving – have I mentioned that recently?) and in my mind there is an image of the sort of man I wish for in my future. And he just so happens to resemble a certain former 007. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that (at least it’s not someone really embarrassing like, I don’t know, Russell Crowe or Danny deVito. I imagine I’ve just offended a lot of 
October, 2006
What I felt today
Monday
Drowning in a tapestry
of grief; every thought,
every association, is threaded
back to him. I remember sex, the
touch, the pull, the slow
lingering push and wait,
and weight, and each
thrilling thought ends with
him; I remember talk, the
words embroidering the air
from my mouth to his, the
secrets, and lies, the
laughter and shout, and each
invisible ghost word
is sewn from my memory
of his lips, the flesh that
never rested until, finally,
it did. I remember steak eaten in
restaurants and in my
house, pans swimming in
water and suds, the clatter
of knife and fork to mouth
the wine drunk, us drunk
on each other’s skin, drunk
with food and love, and lust,
the dance to the bedroom
our bodies exchanged; I wore
his heart and he mine,
my hair woven around
his body, our entwined
embrace knotted together
like the silken threads of
a tapestry, threadbare in
places, but full of story,
full of the future tales we
would be telling each other
when we finally beat the
unravelling clock.
