Tag Archives: Cycles

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Boundary Conditions

It’s so still out there, so waiting. That sense of shh, don’t worry, it will come. It’s there in the way the sunlight holds the branches, in the faint call of a hidden bird.

And I pause, breathe, that’s all. And it passes by my window, up to the left with the sparrow wings and he watches me, watching him, watching them all. We slow down, the birds and I, pause to think of sunlight.

And there they are, my creatures in the trees, pecking and singing, ruffling new feathers in this spring. And I wonder do they sense their descendants, the ones I knew, the ones who gave me feathers years ago.

And while they sang outside that window from back there, in that house then, the hem of the dress caught the light as it lay out on the bed, as if to say look at me, look at me, lift me up into your arms. And later, a little later it would be held up as I clambered inside, as I manoeuvred into my new form, like a butterfly losing meconium, drying out its fresh wet wings.

Until its weight draped round my feet and I breathed out. Birds sang unseen as the hem brushed the dust down the wooden staircase and over new mown grass to rest and pause, where cameras winked and moments froze.

Sparrows darted to the neighbour’s tree, head on one side and down the path the hem of the dress shuffled leaves until it was bundled up into the car. It sat quiet, being, folded in upon itself, cushioned on the plush carpet of the foot-well until blackbirds cut the air, overarching the church gate.

And there with the creak of old hinges, with the warmth of a palm, with the click of heels on old stone, the hem of the dress made its way home. Home, on the short path to the archway, home to the hush of the slate and it dragged feathers and fronds as it swayed, as it made its way past pews to the front.

And there it rested for a while, settled in ivory, calm where it belonged. The hem of the dress over champagne silk boots, near to sharp creases in suits and it paused, waited, just to the left of polished shoes.

And then sunlight came back to stroke it, came to throw light at the door. The hem swept and rippled, caught the coloured flecks, scattered rainbows all around, then hands scooped it back up into soft contours in the car.

Trees moved above it unseen, voices chattered and laughed while it lay crumpled up and then the grass came back, daffodils nodded and bobbed as it moved around. Photons bounced up from the duck pond, white spots and sparkles, before it coated steps and carpet-brushed itself along.

And it swooned, the hem of the dress with the tiny remnants from the day and it danced over polished floors, glided as though it would always flow, would always sway, as though in its moment there was release.

And later it lay, much later it was still, smoothed out again and silent on the protective bag at the bedside, soon to be tucked far away.

And now hydrogen coalesces into helium, firing light and heat, like it did, like it does. How reassuring as it warms up the blackbird’s wings, as it listens to the soil.

And in a different wardrobe now the hem of the the dress sleeps its sleep, cradled and swaddled in plastic, over unused things and bits and bobs. But in its weft and weave it holds the moments when it danced, when it was free, when it could shimmer and it was home.

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For The Canopy

And I will brush up the leaves from the garden, so delicate and fragile in my hands. I will place them in small piles on my outstretched skirts and stroke each one in turn. And they will be so glad of the sunlight and of my cotton layered skirts on which they rest.

These leaves, these moments from my trees, my overarching glades that kept me safe. How gentle they sit in the folds of my clothes, how grateful they are for my care.

The trees are bare now but their silhouettes echo out my life, the shapes that formed me, the branches that held me close and I will dance in their shadows, I will blossom again.

I stroke the leaves in my lap, they appreciate my warmth, my hands that soothe them as the photons lift the last of moisture from their form.

I watch them, crumble into the weft and weave, fragments of leaves in my skirts. I kiss each one. I thank each one, each particle, each atom of my leaves then stand to go.

As I pull myself to standing, full of warmth despite the cold, they scatter to soil. They drift and drop, replete from the day, ready to take on the earth.

And I spin, I twirl round and around, my skirts billowing out, floating up like a balloon in a hot summer’s sky. Dancing under the canopy where I grew, sewing seeds on the breeze of the trees yet to come.

And we are whole and we are rested, where noon’s a purple glow. My leaves and I, together and we are safe and we are one.

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The Derivative with Respect to Time

And I drop like a stone from our window. It’s a blue slate slab of sedimentary rock from the sands at Bedruthan Beach, of course. And somewhere my old trainers still have grains in them from when I ran forwards.

And as my stone falls from the window I feel it bang against my thigh, pocket deep in my navy parka when I plucked it from the shore. And it was March, but a different March, not this brand new March right now.


And as my stone drops from the window I see it wrapped in something cream. Something ivory, like silk maybe. But it’s only paper and it’s bound around with twine.

And on the paper are faded words, written in black with an old biro. The biro was no doubt, a freebie from a recruitment agency, of course. And in those days it wrote well, its barrel was full of colour and it scrawled the words I’ll read. They’ll be written in that sideways print, that illegible loose flowing string of shapes where the f’s and g’s and y’s swoop to catch the the tops of the letters underneath. You know the ones.


And as the stone falls from the window the twine will come undone, the paper will untangle and float down to the ground. And there I’ll land with it next to me as I bump down with a thud.
I’ll pick it up to read a list of book titles, left justified, precise.
The House of Spirits and Cat’s Cradle
The Weeping Woman Hotel (of course) and No Time for Goodbye.


The sun is out this morning but it’s a push, it wants to go back in, as do I. I sit in it for a while beneath my open window, our bedroom window, from where I fell, to land in the dew of morning amongst the daisy heads. They’re not up yet but they will open soon and smile into the light. I may even join them.


And maybe there’ll be coffee and jazz will drift into my ears and bacon fat will sizzle on my finger tips, will claw me back into the day.

Yes, maybe these will be the points of reference on the compass as I lie in the grass. I must get up soon but for now, I’m crumbled here next to the stone that dropped me, next to the pen and paper from before.


And in the photons tiny creatures sparkle, they dance around your words, as if to say, here, read this, do this, be like this.
There are ideas and there are books and there is reading to be done.


I dropped like a stone this morning but it is our stone from the beach, so I’ll climb back up and carry on.

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Schrödinger’s Clock

And so, I watch my finger tap and move across the screen. I count in seconds. And so it goes, one moment merged into the next. I’m trying to find my way through this bracken, through these weeds and thorns. I push ahead. It’s quiet. only the robin knows I’m here and he understands me.

I’m muddled in-between loss and time, in-between memory and now. I try to makes sense of it all.

And here it comes, that sense that the universe reflects me, that mirror outside my door. I’m perched. I’m high up somewhere, somewhere cold yet warm enough for me. My long cape will scrape the earth, disturbing stones as I climb. And yes, my feet bleed into the soil but it’s a good loss, a purging somehow. Giving blood back to the soil. And then I sit.

I’ve been here before, high up overseeing the land, my land, the place we built upon and here and there through the spheres of teardrops I see our world turned upside down. Our boy and I on the hill that we built with our hands.

The clock ticks round. It counts in thousands now, eighty-seven of them and six hundred more but it means nothing. It’s a construct, a passing of weather, of seasons, of my body changing and our boy turning into a man.

The minutes are randomised up here, every possible second remaining on our probabilistic hill. And here we sit on the top looking back, looking down. We Made This. We call out, we shout it out into the clouds. Ravens catch it on their wings and take it higher. Their black rainbows glinting in the sun.

I remember this place, this bench at the start, the dog walkers, the litter eddies fluttering by the bin and pigeon shit on the picnic table. Even that was shaped in black and white, the residue of food, expelled into the air and landed just for me to notice on my own. It had dried to form a Tao symbol and I smiled and wandered on.

And I’m pulled, jostled as though waking from a dream to see our land now and how many losses have been carved out in people since our own? How strange it seems now to have walked and spoken to strangers back then, no masks in sight, no fear of breathing on each other and we could hug and they’d take my hand.

How removed it all seems now, removed from ourselves. That sense of severing. I sit here as vaccines are pumped into muscles, as charts change and people hope. And there’s that sense that we will come through this, that we’ll lift each other up in our arms and twirl around. I can feel it, that craving for how it used to be. To have it all back again.

And yet if there’s one thing this decade has taught me, it’s to let go of the linear and any sense that what we had will phase back in again and return.

Call it a new normal if you choose but like the hundreds of thousands of losses that bind us to each other now, this is not something that fades. It’s etched into who we are, into a generation now, into our psyche, into our souls.

I remember last spring and that sense that maybe, in a month or two, it would be behind us. Like queries from the un-widowed, hoping, questioning and do you feel better now? That sense that this will heal like a break, like the dull ache after the snap of bone. And they’ll say, oh look she walks with a limp now, but they won’t feel it, they can’t feel how the limb has been changed on a molecular level, the scar-knitting-collagen-weaving permanent change to your form.

And I wonder how we’ll move from this? I crave that the sense of solidarity which we felt, that dazed and disoriented need to connect, will remain. Don’t let it seep away, to be forgotten, to just be the Year That We Wore Masks. Let it open us up, break us out of our stale paradigms, our tiny fearful islands. Let this be our chance to focus on the universal self behind the form and the foolish idea that we are separate in any way.

And I pause. A blackbird winks at me, comes close but won’t cross the line. My outstretched palm is a step too far. He’s found a worm, he’ll be just fine.

The hands have moved around while I tap and I come back to time yet again.

I’m left with the sense that nothing is as it seems. That I live on a Mobius strip somehow looping and doubling back on myself. I am inside and outside of time in one breath, I am fluid, I’m here and there. And if I have a point (she often has no point, it’s part of her charm*) it’s this. I used to be time based, I’d be linear and I’d have plans. but then loss swoops in and caws, circles round and says no more. Who wants to be linear anyway, where life is predicable like it used to be? Now we float and flip, thither-zither in the air. Murmurations cut the sky, 87,600 birds, ripple, shimmer, dancing black. I wave to them from the hill that we made, they tip their wings to us in respect.

So I remain in the tangle of my quantum mind, both then and now, a superposition of me. I am Schrödinger’s girl; a wife and widow and it’s not till I notice my thoughts that I find out which one I am.

xxx

*A Few Good Men, 1992

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Teoría de Ondas #4

There was a time when white sands flanked them on the left as they wandered, when the beach framed the bay, resplendent, calming like a long out breath.

At the end of the road by the market stalls, Matisse’s house stood, elegant and shuttered, perfect angles under the startling sun. And thinking about his paintings, how they seemed to be lit by the same insistent sun, as though the paint itself was lit from within.


And in one breath she lived there, russet skirts brushing the stairs as she came down in the morning. There would be no rush as she chattered with the stall holders. A smile and a joke and then with her basket full of nectarines and oranges she would drift away to the edge of the beach. And staring out to sea she would feel herself ripple and drink in the day.

And later back in Cannes the moment was frozen by a passerby, dressed head to toe in baby pink and tripping by her feet was her clipped poodle, dyed pink to match the owner. Woman and dog sparkling in the heat.

Their day was a vibrant palette, bright colours on each brush. It was a painting to stare into on dark chilled autumn mornings. And there, in the South of France she wore white and she seemed to be lit from within.

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Teoría de Ondas #2

She saw their faces, Florida worn and florid as they bellowed across the starched white breakfast linen. She let it wash across her.

They were a freak show at the table, a curiosity over the crisp hot bacon slice, the entertainment in their morning, while the orange pulp left bits inside her mouth. And she saw themselves stretched out, distorted in the silver coffee pot, elongated versions of themselves, smiling as the table rocked, almost imperceptible with judderings under foot.

The overnight pitch and yaw still rattled in her mind, the slam and crash of metal, tipping, tilting hard. And down the narrow corridors, room service trolleys swayed, clattering into closed doors.

Bay of Biscay batterings until exhaustion beat the waves and by dawn the creaking eased, by dawn the swell had calmed and took them, in gilded lifts, to start the day.

And their morning opened in the background buzz of chattering, of clinking cutlery, of sausage sizzle with its fat dripping on their chins while seasoned travellers just shrugged off the storm.

A gentle rolling with short sleeved strangers in the constant supply of toast.

There were days, months ahead of her when this feeling would be common, when this fragile sense fighting foes, of wrestling waves would be familiar in her day. But not then, then it was just a squall to ride and nothing more.

She was being trained in storms.

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Temporal (All that Matters) #5

This, this now, this having slept 5 hours on diazapam and you’re propped up, wired up waiting for Johnny V, do you remember Johnny V ? Looked like Johnny Mathis in his way.

And you pulse, you brace, you ride the spasms as they come.

But Johnny brings fresh news and plans change yet again. And so you beamed at the prospect of a long day opening up ahead, of no need for surgery at all.

And it’s this kind of feeling, waiting for the needle team, for the back stab and their voices swirling, fading in and out.

And now, in the now, the warmth of cooking chocolate cake wafts up and frames the day. And you’re settled, softened to the carnival of colours in your head, to the moment when the needle took the pain away, to the sense of loss and separation from it all. And the minutes formed a day and early evening bought more work.

And now under the distant drone of passing planes, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that despite the pushing, your hours bled, theatre bound.

And there under green and lights, there in the clink of instruments, was the moment he came to be. Up and round and out, up and out, all pink and red and warm.

That moment, your time, all three together. Despite everything, all that matters is you came through.

Skin to skin and the sense of coming home.

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Temporal (All that Matters) #4

It’s morning for others.

It has become day 4.

.And you you know you’re not one to give up, to give in, you know you’re known for soldering on but last night was one of surrender.

Last night was sitting in their hard seated, hard backed chair watching the line of light down the side of the door where the night shift staff moved and soft shoed. And you pressed the buzzer as you rocked.

It was Delise, you’re sure even now, she said her name was Delise, not Denise or Louise but Delise. But she was the one who took your hand when white shards shot up your spine and round your front, when the night pulsed in and found you sleepless, twitching, in the chair.

Delise was sorry that the medicines were locked away till morning.

.Morning happened for others.

Even now through the hours since that moment, you can feel it. And He was called in, rung early from his bed to stand there helpless.

So somehow day 4 had emerged but not for you, for you there was no break, no rest no sleep, just a string of moments, holding tight and holding on.

Morning.

Day 4

Drunk on lightning strikes around your form, and you let go, 

It’s that Sunday feeling, that not really having slept all week kind of time. And faces came, agreed to surgery but it was Sunday and no one was around.

Tomorrow though, they told you.

Tomorrow they’d prepare you, break some water for you, tomorrow they would scrub up and take you down.

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Temporal (All that Matters)#3

And then it becomes the Saturday in your head, new nurse, new name, new plan and you try to see her face. Her hair, it’s dark, short and you find glimpses of her by the door, by the bed.

She prepares and you brace. And there’s a sense of being tethered somehow, like a child’s eager grasp on a balloon string. (The balloon is red) and somehow you float above your morning day-lit room, right now. Bobbing, weaving, deep inside the balloon, you live, young with spasms, tired with hope.

It plays out, looping like it did, like it will, shafts of light flicking up the dust particles and in each one you exist.

So you take a deep breath and they try again. It was morning, they were early, they will try two times today. Your balloon bobs, the spasms make their way around your body and it is Saturday there, on that bed, in room 3.

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Temporal (All That Matters) #2

You’re there in this dark room, here, in this still. But it’s not that room, back then, although there’s a sense of it, a soft essence at the edge.

And you wonder about the nameless nurse and what she’s doing now. And would she remember the young woman on the end of her arm, the woman propped up, laughing as the Entonox echoed her world.

How strange it seemed, how your world fractured and now, even now, you recall the sense of rippling circles as people’s voices swelled and swirled.

And you manoevered to a new angle, dozed when you could. And the waiting game continued, right there – day 2, room 3, trying to sleep with some resolve.