Tag Archives: storms

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Fieldwork

She found the small black marbles again, not that she’d lost them of course. They lived, making occasional ripples, in a secret jar she kept away from most people.

It was time to open the jar. She placed them on the floor in front of her but couldn’t decide what material would constitute the floor. Was it concrete, was it slate? Most likely stone and she sat there for an indeterminate amount of time rolling the marbles around her palm.

Despite their smallness they were heavy, dense, maybe made of osmium, some were tungsten, some were onyx but most hurt her hand with their insistent mass.

She studied them, placed them on the glass sheet in front of her and leaned over. If she was quiet and still she could almost make out her reflection, some distortion, something hinted at, a ripple in time then dispersed. 

The marbles were moved by her hands, arranged in rows though she knew they wouldn’t stay. 

Sometimes they clattered into each other and ricocheted off at sharp angles feeling the force of the ones with which they’d collided.

She tried again. Lining them up in order of size, then in mass. And if they stayed in a pattern she’d be fine. She noted there was no weather, no movement of air, just the tiny black spheres feeling no friction, moving of their own accord on the dark glass in front of her.

She wondered if they had any sense of their movement and if they did, would they care? She tried to imagine how they might feel, rotating on their planes and never understanding the formula of their volume. Why would they roll with no awareness of their form, how could they just be marbles, insentient, presenting themselves to her over and over and over again.

And again.

Discrete excitations, forming patterns in her field. Around and around, crashing and clashing, firing into each other as if to say, 

‘Look at us, watch us,’ and although she didn’t want to order them on the glass and although she knew they’d refuse her actions, that they’d make their own way, she did try. 

She tried to understand them, to control them. 

She wanted to make sense of them all if she could.

Like she did, like she does, like she will try again. 

Black marbles in her hands, heavy, chaotic, despite her attempts. Around and around again. She kneeled before them, helpless, committed to their action, trying.

On repeat, kneeling down in her layers of grey skirts, soft, bundled up against the hard coldness of the stone. Her skirts, in contrast to tiny dense black marbles every time. Vibrations in a field, patterns connected through space and time. 

And she played with marbles again; it was some kind of mid February fluctuation.

by

Six-Cornered-Starlet

It’s early, from my window I can tell it snowed over night. I have no curtains up now, nothing to block out the sun when it comes. 

Outside there are fresh ice crystals, six cornered stars and a thick layer that coats the streets, that demands to be looked at but not right now.

Underneath it, is the névé from a four year storm. Some of it has melted and reformed but it lies there, foundational, quiet and underpinning this new whiteout.

Deeper still, the firn, compacted, dense and undeniable.  I know it’s there of course, the core of my landscape. I have learned to walk on it by now, my boots are rugged, my legs are strong and when I fall, which I do, I grasp onto trees trunks and heave myself back up. I bleed and bruise but blood dries up and bruises fade.

Through the easy aperture, the room floods with light but I try not to rise from my bed, though I will. I don’t want to look out of my window, I want to pull the duvet over my head and push myself down into the mattress and hide away.

I won’t look from my window, not yet. The brightness floods in regardless, memories of carrots and coal, laughter, spiralled breath on the air.  Transient and magical, like something to cherish, to hold. Then just cold. It disperses back to the atmosphere, to be inhaled, to go around again.

Under the fresh snow the névé blurs over firn. The firn, almost glacial ice now. Years bleed into each-other, crystals creating new shapes and forms. If I pause, stop. I can feel the ice emerge, hear the minutes growing into time.

Time, when this firn was fresh snow, when my bewildered eyes couldn’t look at it. When tears turned to icicles and stalactites on my face.

Now it’s solid firn, deep underneath. Sometimes I go out, sometimes I can even skate, I cut patterns with my blades, decorate the landscape, spin and swirl. I dance.

But not today.

Today the fresh snow lies heavy over it all. Every flake, every crystal demanding to be known. 

I nestle down under the duvet for now. It’s treacherous out there. Drifts upon drifts, ice upon ice. Dangerous. But it is mine. 

In time I’ll build snowmen again. 

xxx

by

Breathe – November

Beetle in a box

Box on an island

Island in the ocean

Ocean at my core

by

Reverb (Not Right Now – Right Now)

1. Right. Fine. I’ll just look at the sky then, I’ll just notice how the may tree berries echo the salmon shade of clouds. Soft charcoal trees on the Ridgeway where I used to walk. I know, I know – someone made it February. What can I do? 

2. Pale lime and almost moss green of the parsley into soft lemon, fading now. Bright spots of chrome, diamonds on my tap, underneath uncertain cloud. Strawberry pink plastic peg on the Delft flower pot like a boiled sweet, almost translucent, promise of a saccharin hit. Not right now. Nameless old lady walks Jasper. I know the Jack Russell’s name but not hers.

3. There’s too much sky to my left, in the place where the Medical Centre used to be. How the building site disturbs me, can’t they see what they’ve done. I’m there somewhere in the rubble and cement dust, somewhere in tiny pieces, as if to ram home the point under their bulldozers. The High Viz jackets upend me.

4. If I iron, if I ease out creases and watch the smoothness spread then I’ll be able to take deeper breaths, then there’ll be control, of sorts, even if it’s only control over fabric. It’s a start.  

5. Cursor flashing, marking time. Come on in, the keyboard’s lovely. You’ll be alright, I’ll take your hand, your tapping finger, the one with the Lapis Lazuli ring. You know the one, the one with the hidden depths.  

6. My body starts to regulate. I feel tears drop off my cheekbones. I focus on the sound of the heating creaking through the walls. I notice the cold slate sky but it still warms me. I wipe my eyes, the boiler clicks off. Round we go again. I will be fine. My breathing settles.

7. Shhh, I’m not really here right now, so I’ll be quiet. It’s a honed skill but one of which I’ve grown tired. Workmen are tearing up the street, new fibre optics coming in, territorial parking in dissary. They saunter with wheelbarrows, owning the day, smashing up the pavement where I used to walk. Shovels scrape. I might nod to them if I go out, might not. See how I feel.

8. Boiler firing up, pipes chuntering regardless of where I sit or what I do. Underneath it all, like Miles Davis in the background, softened but there, inescapable. And through windows Yesterday’s Girl catches my eye. I’m trying not to look at her but she’s coming close.

9. The radiator tries its hardest. Still fails to get through to me. For a while all it can do is watch me go into a flat spin.

10. Hello granite, it’s been a long time. I’ll just lie here then, I’ll just be smeared out under your might and grace. Don’t mind me. Do your worst. And then. Throat punch. I swallow down, gag on my words.

11. The reliable expansion of my ribcage, my diaphragm filling with air. And in the micro pause before the outbreath all the other worlds play out around me. The possibilities of all the lives not lived and all the moments of this one cascading, overlaid, looping in a numinous form, every second a symphony again and again and again. And then I breathe out. 

12. What do I do with this then? White lines on the window ledge almost as though it’s a bright day, almost like a reflection of the sun, as though spring is demanding of me. I have noticed. It’ll be Thursday soon then I’ll look. I mean it will be Friday. Friday, not Thursday. It’s Thursday I’m careening into. I stumble over words and thoughts. Fraying.

13. It rained today, of course. I fought it hard, did my best, even tried my salsa moves. But my body knows better, it takes me to the Relative’s Room, too much orange paint, I don’t like orange paint, not now. Why didn’t they paint it blue, something calming? I press my face up the window, it’s cold. Black buildings reflect back at me. Harsh, empty, soulless shapes. Rain smacks the glass. I push my forehead into the pane. I feel nothing. I try to breathe. Tomorrow’s coming.

14. Rooms. Faces. Magazines, low coffee table. Their soft sofa. More faces. Mouths move. I forgot to take the food out of the oven last night. Some things I forget. I make a fist with my small hand, neat nails digging into my palm. Little indents, tiny smiles. Fade. Repeat. The heat in my lower back, push against the radiator, bring me back to now. Branches tremble in the faint breeze. Yes, watch the branches. Faces. Mouths move. Repeat.

15. I don’t remember my shoes. I wonder what I wore, not that it matters. I remember my coat. Blue. Blue curtains. Flash frame, freeze frame. Repeat. And yet sound is distant, vague. Unsure shoes always walking corridors. Rooms. Faces. Words. Always words. Mouths telling me things. Moving mouths. Still, the berries have almost gone off the may tree outside my window and the starlings in my roof embrace the day. Berries drop, some get eaten, some rot. Some I brush out of the way. I make movements with my arms, hold the broom like an oar, heave myself through thick waters and remember I have a body. My body tries to come back to me, hesitant, fracturing. Leave my head with the berries. They roll around, relational, atomic. I notice crocus pushing through the lawn, hesitant, striving. I brush my thoughts into the road. Spring soon. Always flowers. So many flowers and scents and dancing to come. And music. And colours. My body starts to come back to me. Carry me back. Bring me back. Make me Now. Make it magnificent.

Repeat. Make it magnificent.

by

Pockets (Underland #3)

I’m called to stand on my doorstep, I’m almost outside.

I need to feel the cold air bite my skin, the wind whip my hair, the rain brush the pavements as I feel my way to you.

There’s something about the blackout of early evening, something pulling at me to leave the house, escape the four walls that surround me.

And the rain shines the pavements as I puddle jump, rushing, a sense of hurrying to find you.

I’m wrapped up in red fleece, blown to kingdom come but I still know where I’m going.

The tall trees beyond my house twist and yearn like they know, like they truly understand despite the storm. I stand in the cold, hugging my earl grey. I crave this weather.

And if I’m still and listen, if I stop and feel then it’s almost as though there’s nothing inbetween us, no distance, no space and no time.

I shove my hands deep in my pockets, things rustle, like gifts, like precious moments to come. I hold tight to their promise.

Street lights, shop lights break the black, dazzle in the darkness, reflect up at me as I splash towards you. People blur, irrelevant.

And then later I’m there, shimmering, sparkling at your side.

by

Murmuration

And just like that, her head scattered across the fields. Wings battered into wings and feathers drifted down to nestle in the hedgerows underneath.

It was as though no decibels came before her, or after her, as though she, herself, created all disturbance on the air, that her thoughts created sound waves through the universe.

The fields shook under the force of her birds in flight. The sky heaved. She waited.

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For the Poppy Fields

I liked the terracotta tiles when we first moved there and the way the ribbed glass on the conservatory door shook every time we closed it. It was an old, neglected place, needing repair like me.

A deer turned up on the back lawn in the summer, must have come down from by the Clock House, the owners ran the local dance school, were always ferrying children or horses about. Their place backed onto the woods. The deer was startled, lost. Like me.

It froze when it saw us in the kitchen, then spooked itself and ran off, like I should have done but I stayed. Its white tail bobbed, flashed through the hawthorn, leaves ruffled where it passed, then settled themselves.

I tried to settle myself. I don’t remember the date when it first happened, somewhere near the start of that first year, I think. It just seemed a natural response, somehow. I do remember how I backed up to the white wicker laundry basket, I could feel the lines of weave as I smacked it with my hand. And then the melamine working surface, I noticed it as I shouted out and had a fleeting thought of how it might feel to bring my head down hard on it. Of course I didn’t, but it did help to think about it.

There were a lot of flies that summer, we gave up trying to catch or kill them, they seemed to take over the kitchen. I remember swatting at them, as though dislodging a thought, like something darkening which had buzzed across my mind. I was making sandwiches no doubt, my arm still hurt from earlier but it wasn’t my dominant side, so that was alright.

I remember the fake pine cladding in the hallway to the toilet, sometimes the bathroom was a place where I would stay a while, pretend I had tummy problems, that sort of thing. Keep out of the way, you know?

I wore a lot of bracelets in those days. I remember banging my fist so hard into the cladding that it dented, it formed a crevice where my small hand had smashed. My bracelets jingled in the force. A bruise came out later down the side of my fingers. I didn’t feel anything at the time of course, just the hot release of wood against my skin, something to let the energy out.

I grew to enjoy the sensation of my nails as they dug in. Well, enjoy is too strong a word but I would appreciate them, yes, I was grateful for my nails down my arm. I’d do anything to make him stop but still his words would carry on. And I remember thinking in some disheveled part of me at the back of my mind, the part of me that sat on the floor with my back to the wall and hugged my knees until it stopped, I remember that part of me was thinking this isn’t normal but by then it was already too late, by then it was just the way it was.

When we left there I took a moment with the fake pine cladding, I ran my small white fingers over the tiny gashes that I’d made. It helped me to balance things out. I didn’t want to feel sad for leaving there with all its endless lawns and deers, with the quails and rabbits, the chickens which we befriended and the summer house by the pond that I grew to call my own.

I wanted to remember how it was and where the scars were on the walls.

I wanted it to be a fresh start and I wished for that with all my heart as we drove away past the poppy fields where I had stood, smiling into the camera. I had lifted my hand to shield my eyes from the sun, lifted it up to protect myself.

I became used to that I guess.

by

Ephemeris

I have been avoiding myself for a while, she thought, but the leaves rushed in and said don’t worry. Watch us dither on the bluster, see how we don’t care.

And she strained her head to the sky, to the spaces where she used to be and watched. They maundered like old thoughts which caught her out in the night, like missed moments, like the regrets which crumbled at her door, twisted and fragile, the haphazard seconds of her life.

But the leaves taught her well. They cried out as they tumbled into her, thither-zither, helter-skelter to her palms. And for those which remained on the trees, she poured her love up to them. They were weary, clumped and battered on the undressed branch. They knew not to resist.

Clouds moved in, cumulus caressed her mind and she didn’t care, not really. Not now. Somehow the day was still gentle.

Listen to the leaves, she said. It’s only spacetime. It’s only 9,192,631,770 periods in the hyperfine transitions of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom. One second after another falling to her soil.

There was nothing to worry about after all.

by

El Techo de la Iglesias

It didn’t matter to her that she pushed English pavements under her feet, or that the maple leaves which cluttered round her boots were from local trees – she was not there.

And it didn’t matter that the spire which she was drawn towards, or the parapet which pulled her eyes up to the sky, belonged to Saint Peter’s Church or that the gentle whisps of white which framed it, came from her Hampshire sky – she was not there.

And because she wasn’t there it didn’t matter that her English streets were busy with people wrapped and warm. And because she wasn’t there, her form cast no shadow as she passed Saint Peter’s Church because her boots were in Barcelona and her autumn coat was a waterfall top. It billowed around her hips like the soft white fluff above the spires which framed the baby sweetcorn. And it was irrelevant that her eyes looked up to a Hampshire sky because they were not there. They looked out across the park and studied Gaudi’s glory which left an imprint in her mind.

It didn’t matter where her boots wandered in an English town because she wasn’t there. She was striding out across the Carrer de Sardenya as though her small feet belonged on Spanish soil.

by

Not a Leaf Flinched

So how would it be if the passing trees bowed over and came down to hold me, what if each leaf tore itself from the branch and flew down to keep me safe and I would smile.

I would welcome them into my arms and I would find shelter in their sap rich veins. The cobweb twists in the corner of the wing mirror, a distorted memory of its form, a shimmered recollection of when it stretched out, full of flies and dew and purpose.

It happened again.

I slid into the gutter like a chiffon scarf, like sea gusted hair, whipped and twirled, salted, sand sprinkled strands like the tail of a kite careening, flirting with ribbons and bows and the soft eager grip of a girl giggled and reeled it back in.

And I slipped, I gave myself up to the ground and as it welcomed me, the girl and the kite and the beach and my scarf flew away. Away like the beat of a wing, away like the startle of feathers, petrol pooled black mirrors as I lay.

My mouth smirked where they left it, upturned and silent beside the road. My feet, discarded by the gorse bush, one shoe on and one shoe off and Peter Rabbit trapped in wire rushed into my mind. And how the sparrows implored him to escape. And there would be stories and teacakes, jam down my chin and my kite curled up in the boot of the Austin 1300, tousled and day stained, like me.

But the gutter cradled and soothed, hushed me as the flock sprung, pulsing. Flapping, clattering, colliding, black diamonds and piercings, dustballs despatched as they poked.

I remember their beaks, eager, unforgiving, pneumatic drill in rain, dentist burrowing, twisting and the taste of salt in my mouth.

But not now. Now it’s the feel of the gutter and the little bits of me that still remain. Near the roadside, abandoned feathers where they took me down, straddled strutted, swaggered, like they owned the verge, ruled the fields where my kite flew. And now they peck me to sleep while I lie in brambles, near the pavement grey, I hear them as they laugh and caw.

Under midsummer rain on windscreens, fractured rainbows, I curl up. Little shards, little jagged remnants and I swoon.