lasuza

Late at night

2012-02-13T15:12:00.000-08:00

It's late and they are sleeping. I am tucked into the sofa; lost in revisions. Midnight wishes, I'm waiting for the pumpkin, or should it be the golden carriage. The words keep spilling, endlessly. I cut, shape, paste and add and add. Nothing ever stays the same. Bones ache, but I buzz endlessly, read Virginia Wolff and Issac Bashevis Singer, fall from one world to another. Words come and I scribble in a green and blue notebook. Handwritten letters to be turned into typed fonts. The manuscript will be ready soon. I'll come to an end and it is strange this last rush, different from the flesh and blood making of a play; so internal. Books just exist inside your head. Nobody can see the making. It's only manifestation is an utter mess of papers that flutter in piles, all over the house. Soon, I'll take a vacation, make bread and play. Breath real deep from the inside out. Then, it will begin again.

Today - I should

2012-01-31T08:08:00.000-08:00

Today, I should have practised Chi Gong when I pulled myself from bed, concentrating thoughts upon my coccyx. But, a little girl was snuggled in my morning darkness, whispering about her nose. I should have walked upon the beach and breathed in saline air; dragged my eyes from the digital screen and the revisions. This morning, I read pages of Virginia Wolff, switching the writer switch on. Recently, I took this photo of the sand. Unexpectedly, afterwards, I thought of Yves Tanguy, Leonora, floating sand and dancing deserts. Today, I should have, could have, would have. This weekend, a friend told me that as a little blond-haired boy in Southern France, he would try and change the course of time. He would stop halfway on his journey to school, stand still and examine his feet. He was convinced that by his stopping the whole world could transform because he wouldn't be where he was supposed to be at any given time. Then, he explained, came his utter disappointment as the school bell always rang at it's regular hour. Should, would, could have done, making everyday be...

more bread

2012-01-26T08:52:00.000-08:00

I can't seem to stop this making of bread. I don't follow a recipe, but feel the flour and water, a spot of milk, a sprinkle of salt. It's an intuitive process, a break from the lining up of words, the structuring of chapters, the revisions of manuscripts.

The evening

2012-01-25T01:25:00.000-08:00

Tick tock goes the clock on the upturned wine crate thatserves as my bedside table. Reaching into the tender cleansheets, toes curl at the thought of sleep. The books are piled in a crumpled heap, waiting to be read. Dust lurksin the space where objects end, creeping around my room. Hiding beneath a solace of blankets, hear the purr of passing cars. So soft the evening gloom.

lowtide

2012-01-22T11:45:00.000-08:00

Today we walk on the beach at low tide. Grey clouds paper the sky. A fine drizzle of rain coats the air. Everywhere is empty, uncovered, flat and raw. The sea has gone somewhere to dance with someone else. Seagulls streak across the sky. Puddles lap against brown sand, whispers of what is to come.

bread-making

2012-01-12T06:10:00.001-08:00

I have started baking bread again. I once did this before, before children, book-writing and job juggling. " I don't have the time now", I would say to my myself, baking bread takes time. Then, sometime in December, I baked a fruit loaf for one daughter, an enriched dough, studded with tiny black raisins, a melt in your mouth bread to be served with English tea in a cup and saucer, with a drop of milk. After the fruit loaf came some white bread, then, a brown loaf and then, another. "We are a family of boulangeres", my eldest daughter said. I giggled and stuck my hands back into the bowl of flour. For now, I am letting yeast bubble in a bowl of warm water, sprinkled with a taste of sugar. Having created a well in my mountain of flour, I mix until the sticky mess becomes a smooth warm ball, comfortable as a freshly laid egg. I knead, fold and work with my dough, muscles tighten and relax, I can feel it with my toes. I am dampening tea towels, letting things rise and then kneading a second time. I bake, turn the loaf, tap to hear a hollow echo. Baking bread. I found some time.

January morning 4 : this morning

2012-01-12T06:01:00.000-08:00

This morning is wrapped in soft grey rain; tiny drops of water like champagne bubbles, the wind and a heavy, charcoal sky. "Lets stay at home", I long to say to the children, "- put on bobble hats, thick socks and hide under the duvet eating buttery toast and coco pops". Instead, we bundle on coats, shove hats on heads and venture out into the darkness.

January morning 3: On the train

2012-01-12T05:48:00.000-08:00

I drink my almost cold, microwave heated coffee, eat a sliced bread sandwich filled with a skim of butter covered with pear and apple spread. Opposite me, a tailored, tall, middle-aged man reads the Figaro newspaper. He wears frameless glasses, a well-cut winter coat, a tousle of grey hair and a whiff of aftershave. I imagine his midriff as plump, from too much Christmas foie gras. He has slip on black shoes and a neat beak of an acquiline nose. His mouth purses as he reads, pulling skin forward from a slowly sagging jaw. He would, I imagine tickle a grandchild with glee, sack an employee fearlessly and must of tasted the forbidden delight of une maitresse. At least, this is what I imagine from my seat on the train as we travel through an early January hour.

January morning 2: On the train

2012-01-12T05:42:00.000-08:00

On the train, two teenage girls, in beige and black puffas, describe late nights, sleeping and lost loves, whilst a third, quiet girl listens. She scratches freshly washed hair with a bitten nail and fervently texts someone, somewhere. Under the citric glow of the carriage lamps, we speed through the early morning winter darkness. I drink black coffee, eat a spelt bread sandwich and dream of another day.

january morning 1: the pieces of my dream

2012-01-01T22:35:00.000-08:00

As I lie in early January darkness, the pieces of my dream clamber from the sleep abyss, climb up using ropes, hands, legs and strengthened pelvic floor muscles, pulling themselves into my morning and an attempted awakening. The dream pieces struggle alone, chaotically, smells mingle with sound, until I put them together, join the pieces ensemble; trying to remember who went where and why, which dark-haired woman put on plays and lived in China and held my hand softly as I explained ? Why does the sun set so beautifully behind the University Georgian buildings, casting a cherished golden haze? And, who is the twinkle-eyed boy that I am chasing, chasing, chasing in the corridors? I grab some of the pieces and lay them in a line, try to create an order, a narrative, a something from the pieces. Then, I get up, get dressed and drink Chun Mee green tea as my family sleeps. The morning has begun.

winter

2011-12-19T08:11:00.000-08:00

Winter is here, dark nights, cold rain, the wind blows us along the seaside streets. We pull out the sofabed, hide under the duvet and watch black and white films as the Christmas tree lights flash, red, green, red, red. Winter, the low sun casts our shadows like zebra stripes on the mustard sand. We push ourselves to walk alongside the waves that roll as thick as lion's manes. Winter, our eyes are tired when we wake in the morning, fill our mouths with hot Chung Mee green tea, sumatra coffee and long to lie in bed. We eat homemade bread, that I bake weekly, dough rising in tune to the smell of pine needles scattering over the toy-ridden floor. Winter, our bedroom is filled with boxes, brown cardboard masking endless delights. Winter, soon we'll be crossing the Channel, sliding over great waters to England, to family and friends, to tuck ourselves into a red-brick cottage, eat, drink and make merry. Winter, you are a half-loved season, sucking the blood from our too tired bones, wrapping us in cheery darkness, lit by a twinkling star.

June, July, August

2011-08-14T04:22:00.000-07:00

Three months of summer have almost passed by, our worlds spinning, colliding, transforming. Nothing ever stays the same. Everything is moving. We've organised a funeral, grieved the loss of a close one and spent nights dreaming, quietly of death; long lost relatives and friends haunting sleeping hours, a kindly reminder of our ephemeral journey, our brief blink of time on this turning earth. Cruel nature. I listen to PJ Harvey let england shake on boats, London tube trains and in our van. I smile, shed a tear and sing along. At the side of the road is a chateau, with a For Rent sign à louer.

We escape the grief and drive down South, the little one gets freckles on her pale white nose, whilst the elder turns a sophisticated brown. We admire graffiti walls and flowers in Saintes.

We swim.

The water heals our bodies and minds. Wet, soothing, fingers and toes slice through turquoise matter; in structured swimming pools and free form lakes.

I work on the revisions to my manuscript - a little - I long to write on this blog, imagine posts and telling stories, things described in verbs and nouns, black and white attempts to capture an existence. I want to write about the thesaurus, old friends, death and healing; the utter unpredictability of life. Instead, I wash and fold clothes in the forest heat, wipe ice cream from noses and wander. I love this slowed down summer time, when tasks are unsqueezed from between writing, my hospital work, lecturing, school. Days breathe slowly, unhurried; in and out from the diaphram. Breathing deep from the belly. Folding clean clothes is a pretty life in clover.

We travel through the Spanish mountains in the Valle d'Aran, visit medieval villages with Roman walls built into Christian Churches (the stuff of ley lines and palimpsests), share food with old friends, sing songs about Eskimos and ask "Is that Brian Eno?". We eat menu del dia, with red wine served in pottery jugs, have garlic soup, catalan tomato bread and patatas bravas, café con leche and want churros with hot chocolate, but never quite find the time. Next year. Last night we watched a documentary made by Banksy about street art, ephemeral stuff, made in moonlight, guerilla-style, in your face, ART. The film also explores the trash/cash flip side of the art world, is Thierry really an artist or did Banksy make him up?

This from my collection of station graffiti. Pictures taken from trains in June. Little grubby urban hideouts were viewed through carriage windows at the start of these three moving months. June, July, August 2011; months of boats, vans and swims, the tumbling revolutions of life and death. But, that story is for another day...

the old man with the green bag on the train

2011-05-26T05:17:00.000-07:00

The French high speed train stops at the station. The door opens. An old man steps in with a groan, carrying a large, worn rectangular canvas green bag. He's wearing shorts and a fluorescent sleeveless jacket. His skin is burnt a cherry red brown. There's an ugly whiff of old sweat, unwashed skin. He barks his destination at me. I answer and when he replies - in English- "Excellent", we get talking. He has a strange dent in his forehead, the size of a bullet, bloodshot red eyes. We chat about Spain, where he lives part of each year and France, where I live for all of each year.

"It's a cruel world now", he says, "There's no empathy, no kindness".

"I like your bag", I say, "Did you make it?"

He explains that he's had the green canvas bag for over twenty years. It contains his bike, a sleeping bag, a small tent and a change of shoes. "I'm in my late seventies", he says, "Every year I cycle the 800 miles between my house in Spain and a French port, to get the boat back to England. I've been on the road since March, but it got too hot, so I took the train". He wheezes, wipes bloodshot eyes with a crumpled checked handkerchief.

He describes how he cycles through the mountains, uses the pass where the pilgrims walk, "los peligrinos", he says in Spanish. "Saint Jacques de Compostelle", I say in French. He's been riding along the same mountain pass for over twenty-five years,

"I've met so many strange folk on that road. Last time, there were two Dutch women from Holland. They were pulling a cart by hand. I told them it's sixteen miles up that mountain. They just laughed. Sturdy they were".

When we arrive at the station, we get off together. "I'll just wind my way up to a campsite"he says with a smile. In the hazy brilliant orange light, I drive home, thinking of the old man and his rectangular green canvas bag.

the old lady in the waiting room

2011-05-12T12:21:00.000-07:00

It is nearly ten o'clock at night. In the station waiting room an old lady sits next to a small red suitcase, eating blueberries from a plastic box. She places them, one by one, inside her mouth, nips off the stalk. Munches. Grabs another. Her jaw quivers. She holds the plastic box of blueberries on her lap on a plastic bag, that she's removed from inside another plastic bag. She folds the bags, with decisive yet trembling gestures, puts them in her suitcase for a later date. The bags look reused, as though they have travelled round the world, visited Peru and the African plains. She looks at me across the empty room. I am eating a salad from inside my own plastic bag, with a spare spoon that I carry for such occasions. I have a paper napkin spread over my lap, to catch the crumbs from a bread roll that I took from the hotel breakfast buffet. We bite, chew and swallow in two separate rhythms. A homeless man walks in, betrayed by worn shoes. When he leaves, she looks up at me, with watery blue eyes, "Has he gone?", "Yes", I reply. " No fear, god will protect us" she says, crocking an ear to catch my words. As she shows me her ticket, I discover she has missed her train, that the last one is leaving in only two minutes. I rush her down to the platform, through lifts and escalators, bundle her onto the high speed train. She suddenly asks me, "What is your name?", when I answer she replies, "I'll pray for you".

freedom

2011-04-03T13:39:00.000-07:00

Etymologically the word free has it's roots in beloved, friend, to love. Today, a close friend revealed that one month ago he gave up his twenty year old office job and stopped, just like that. He'd been running, thinking and driving his time, living in the future and the past. I wanted to hug him for the courage in his action, for following his instinct, for his dream of being free, for choosing to measure his days in the growth of his fruit trees and to live with much less, not more. I share with this friend : a taste for the monastic eating of leftovers, an over zealous work ethic and a life that I try to shape to fit my bones. Today, he inspired me, made me remember, we only have one time round this clock, in this body, spin it to the rhythm of your heart.

wednesday

2011-03-30T09:14:00.000-07:00

Wednesday has been a day for roasting vegetables; scarlet red tomatoes, courgettes green as christmas trees and pale yellow onions coated in olive oil, burnt to an umber brown. I added orange lentils, bouillon, let it all simmer, bubble at a gentle, almost not there heat. Wednesday has been a day for afternoon naps that sent me swimming into soupy slumber from which I have not yet emerged. We've painted, made fairy cakes and stayed in our pyjamas. Wednesday is ten days since I've finished my manuscript, sent my book off. Ten days in which I've worked, ate, slept and trudged through fatigue; tiredness, heavy as mud, carried with joy at the gift of my left life. Wednesday has held me, focused on the body; food, sleep and the presence of two little girls. I don't plan, but soothe, pamper my brain which has been focused non-stop for over eight months. I am trying to come down slowly from the top of the mountain, sit and smell the flowers, rather than fall with a bump. My mind constantly strays to the inner world of my book, hankering for more, planning the next story. I itch to write, scrape more words onto the page, imagine, conceive, put down. Instead, I cook, walk, read books sat on red velvet cafe cushions, buy expensive cheese and drink champagne.

right now

2011-03-12T09:50:00.000-08:00

Right now : feeling tiredness travelling to the bottom of my spine, curves levering into curves. Bones ache. Near the end of my writing marathon, drinking green tea, eating brewers yeast; taking slow steps to the finishing line. Focus. Breath in, breath out. Last night, we sneaked off in our VW van, watched a mackerel sky turn Barbie pink and mustard yellow; felt like I was falling into newborn stars. We slept by a bush, overlooked by the sea and were rocked to sleep by the the sshh of waves. Sleep as deep as cobatt blue. I dream of vacations where I don't take work and my three year old sleeps; the holiday joys of doing nothing, floating on the mist of morning tea.

Preparing for the forest

2011-02-21T12:38:00.000-08:00

I like to prepare for the forest. To prepare is to make ready beforehead for a specific purpose. I like to prepare for the forest. I enjoy the beforehead as much as the journey and the holiday; it is the leading-up to, the equiping and the planning, the composing and constructing of an expedition. I have always enjoyed packing. Transitions; the pieces inbetween. The packing is the warm-up, the laying of the table, the awakening of a dream. I fold small trousers, bend tiny socks and roll tights into balls. I place clothes in suitcase corners as I dream of trees. I put together the ingredients for miso soup and special breakfast porridge. As I drink green tea, I pack Chinese Heaven dollars to surprise my girls, envisage secrets and paints for idle moments. For writing, I select sharp pencils and tie the knots around the folder that contains my manuscript. Words will be stitched into pixeled screens, characters and plots determined. The book is almost finished now. I think of birds cries at dawn, black coffee drunk on frost and wearing wellies kissed by icy grass. I think of a horizon of trees, infinite green and the freedom of a running child. I gear up, arrange the outside and the inside of my world for life lived at the pace of trees.

Quiet

2011-02-01T11:23:00.000-08:00

The house is finally quiet, after an evening of yelled songs, trombones and shared Cantonese rice. The children are sleeping in velvet almost black blue. I can hear the sudden space of this time; it is a slow yellow light in a darkened room, the last red embers of a midnight fire, the taste of a hot drink, sipped lying in bed, the sound of paper pages gently turning. The night brings blanket comfort and my muscles unknot, my brain slows to the pace of a purring cat. I go to join my daughters in the ebb and flow of an ultramarine dream.

trying to ride the wave

2011-01-26T03:09:00.000-08:00

In January I have written and redrafted these words, tried to find the black letters of the Roman alphabet, the verbs and the nouns to describe and to relate my cold winter days. This month is about perspective and focus; walking through the forest and smiling at the bears. Ignoring. Accepting. Bearing Up. We've had three phonecalls to announce three losses, three sets of mourning for three January weeks. In between there has been flu, travelling to Paris and - in a room reflected to infinity inside gilded mirror frames - eating long slices of baguette draped in apricot jam and coffee served in stout silver pots. In this first month I have wept, giggled and sweated with a fever as I lay in bed. In January, I have finished the first complete draft of my book. I put a full stop at the end of a page, where the story had, unexpectedly, reached it's end. Today, I printed up the pages, felt the ache of legs curl into my lower back. Tonight I am exhausted, holding on tight to this wild moving mass of our lives, trying to ride the wave.

when the year turned

2011-01-04T08:30:00.000-08:00

When the year turned, I awoke to a marble white sky, streaked with ashen grey. In the blanket softness of early morning children sleeping, I listened to the answerphone and knew that she had gone. She had held on until another decade began and fallen to another world at 5 o'clock in the morning, after nearly 90 years of spheres revolving. When the year turned we caught ferries, crossed the water and held each other. Red earth became intimate with our smartly polished shoes. We said prayers, ate egg rolls and squeezed familiar flesh; we recognised the living blood running through our veins. When the year turned, we said goodbye to her. We fell and we stood tall and we walked on. Turning, when the year turned.

Bonnes fêtes!

2010-12-21T06:39:00.001-08:00

stealing a day

2010-12-05T06:09:00.000-08:00

Last Friday, I stole a day. It was given by the snow, which fell in dancing flakes and soft rolls of wonder, blocking roads and closing the hospital. The snow gave me a morning to sit with a steaming cup of freshly ground Tanzanian coffee and peel a pile of apples to make pale brown compote. The snow gave me the minutes and hours to clean my apartment, which, afterwards, shone silently with pointed corners. The white flakes allowed me to pick up my youngest daughter early from school and walk with her little fingers tucked inside my palm. The snow stole the day and wrapped it in cinnamon scented tissue paper, tied a scarlet ribbon on the top of the box. The snow gave me a day which I chose to not devote to action but to being in time, drifting at the speed of frozen white crystals.

At the theatre

2010-11-24T10:25:00.001-08:00

At the theatre I get bored, watch the naked man strut ; as he walks around the stage, I think of the course I have been doing for two days on assessing suicidal behaviour. Before the theatre, we have met old friends, drunk coupes de champagne and eaten miniature vegetable kebabs : red, green and yellow roasted cubes impaled on wooden spikes. At the theatre, I listen to the machine-gun dictation of the French actors as they proclaim: NON, Non, non, non. At the theatre, I see the scarlet curtains, the exquisite back lit tableau of a shadow puppet wedding; toasted in black and white. At the theatre, sat in the second row, I hear a sudden gun shot. I Jump Right Out Of My Seat. Heart beating. At the theatre, we sit in a dull grey, muted silence as I long for the Shakspearean days, the Elizabethan theatre when people tossed rotten apples and walked free when they didn't like the play. In my theatre seat, I am itchy, bewitched and enjoying being in this dark live place; a double space to let my mind wander. Here. At the theatre, I feel sad and tired and suddenly remember all of the happy things that make my life worth living. I breath. At the theatre, I look at my watch - time ticks on and everything changes - I squeeze my lover's knee and surpress a giggle as the melodrama unfolds.

working through

2010-11-07T07:51:00.000-08:00

I am working through the tiredness. It's sat in my bones this part week, clouding my vision, numbing my brain as I fall from stretched arms into tracing words, from a train to a tissue-wiped nose. Today we drove along the bay, watched the sky turn from ash to pencil grey ; drift back into cobalt blue. The sand was a somber muddy brown, then a startling, mustard yellow. The sea moving from milky green to a dark dangerous blue. Crouched in the rain, a man in a cadmium raincoat dug for seashells with a rake. Sheltering from the storm, we ate buckwheat pancakes filled with cheese, mussels and chips and drank dry cider and orangina. We giggled as I drank two coffees pretending to be dessert. I came home and showered while the little one slept. I put sweet lavendar oil on my tired skin, enhaled the comforting smell. I wrote emails, grabbed dates and time and refiled my life into a respectable chaos, embracing the beauty of the disorder which is mine.

Listening

2010-10-20T10:10:00.001-07:00

My daughters are in the bath. I listen to them counting, splashing, giggling, fighting over plastic toys. Today, I've redrafted pages of my book, picked up toys, dipped chips in ketchup and looked in Thesaurus to find synonyms for 'orange', I found words such as apricot and flame. I've read articles about strikes and talked about petrol shortage with friends and passersby. I've watched videos of almost riots and wondered at the French capacity to say 'No'. I've heard about cuts in the UK, about losing jobs and I've made cheese and marmite on toast. I've carried a trombone and comforted a tired man and listened to tales of survival. I've been tired, chirpy, giddy, silly, inspired and now I'm at the end of my day. I can hear my daughters talking about farts and tickling in the bath. That is the end of my day.

Sorting

2010-10-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

Today, I sorted through their clothes: pink T-shirts, odd white socks and third-hand cotton dresses decorated with green umbrellas. I unrolled blue plastic bags and put things aside for one child and packed another for a friend. We found new second-hand dresses. Treasures put aside for a rainy day; despite the fact that it was sunny. I folded a tiny floral blouse, bedecked with little red roses, into a neat square and wondered whether I would hold another baby in my arms, need miniature trousers and 1 month old tights. I sighed with my seven year old as we tried to hold on to all of our favourite things, our arms too small for the weight of everything. " But, I want to keep it Mummy" my seven year-old said. I explained that we couldn't keep all our old clothes because there wasn't enough space on the earth. We had to learn to share and to say 'goodbye'. I was understanding, harsh, slow and fast; the odd mixture of the mother that I am.

the hand - la main

2010-10-04T00:41:00.000-07:00

The hand is the extremity of the arm below the wrist, the forefoot of a quadruped and the division of a bunch of bananas. Since I awoke, three hours ago, my hands have made Chung Mee green tea, wiped poo from bottoms, typed on a keyboard, spread blackberry jam on fresh baguette, clutched cereal packets, pulled up trousers, held hairbrushes, removed knots, closed zips, opened doors, pushed in keys and cupped tenderly a fist full of tiny fingers. This morning my hands have touched money, bread, cup handles, autumn leaves, canteen electronic cards, paper, books, keyboards, skin and water. I washed my hands with Neem soap, in a soft, lavish white lather. I plunged them in warm liquid to rinse off the froth. My hands come from my paternal grandmother, they are small, supple and like to gesticulate, to tell a story. In my hospital work, I often touch clients and staff, meeting people through my hands. Today, the tips of my fingers will be feeling keys all day, perhaps caress a pumpkin and flick a thousand paper pages. My twenty-six bones will be co-ordinating with my brain to make fiction, to forge a metaphor. My hands will finish the day under my duvet, clenched in fists, thumbs hidden inside my four fingers, sleeping tight. Where are your hands going today? Our bodies are the reflection of our lives.

La main by Lasuza, 1999

weekend

2010-09-18T11:13:00.000-07:00

Today I cleared books, changed where things lived, tidied places, looked at grey-haired cobwebs, chucked out decrepit objects. I am a keeper of physical things. I collect old magazines, buttons, other people's shopping lists, hats, shoes, bits of paper, books, newspapers, 1960's magazines, vintage fabric, worn clothes and second-hand china. I like things people have lived in, objects shaped, metamorphosized through their relationship to us. Stuff which is touched by time. These articles have been smelt, held, sweated on and in, hated, loved, believed in, ignored, chosen and discarded.
I have problems throwing these things away; I imagine that these objects will become a costume, a prop, a collage, a sculpture, refashioned and given, photographed, inspire a story, carry a novel inside their crumpled and stained outer shell. I am attached to their singular identity. Yet, when I clear a space there is a sense of carthasis, of a cleansing, of a purging.
Everything needs to change.

what we do with time

2010-08-22T13:34:00.001-07:00

Time. Bend it, stretch it, eat it up by glancing at watches, slow it down by observing fireside flames. Count time in stitches, laps, cooking minutes, sun and moon cycles, growing wrinkles. Time is what makes us know that we once began, that we are in the middle, that there is an end. Days and moments can feel like eternity and then children change overnight. You look around and they are no longer babes. You can make art from time and make time into art. You can be scared of time, like in a waiting room, or relish every moment, like a good slow breakfast involving people, newspapers, eggs, cheese, apricot jam, pretty napkins, green tea and then coffee. Time is repetitive, cyclical and then sometimes things happen which leave marks in time which makes a time start that never happened before. A new time. Childhood time is endless, flexible as a strawberry jelly fom a Spanish supermarket, especially before kids learn about death. My daughters say, " I will be like that when I am younger". Time, I want to make it last forever.

coming home

2010-08-13T12:16:00.000-07:00

We are home. On the journey back from the South to the North, we leave dry Aragon and the deep Spanish lakes; an arid red land patched with blue. We drive up and through the Pyrennes, with black smoke steaming from the back of our van. We slip into the tunnel that goes under the mountains. We stop in France, eat melon, cheese and chips, sat on a wall in the sun. We fall down the slopes into rolling countryside. The Gers makes us think of soft English landscapes. A man drives a silver rolls Royce in the summer sun. We stop in a town and buy blue sandals for two euros and a toy parrot, which my daughter calls Sky. We sleep that night in a municipal campsite near a man travelling with a tent the size of his body. He has walker's calf muscles and a sturdy face. Yesterday, tired in the white stone of the Charentes region, we find ourselves stuck in a leisure park with country-dancing, giant barbecues and far too many people. Too many people.

Today, we are home, sucking up the bits of the voyage. There is the washing, the answerphone, the emails, the post and the smiles of the courtyard neighbours. The emptying of bags. Crumbs of the holidays falling on our floor. Packets of tortes are arranged on a shelf. The flat feels big after the space of the van. There are the seagulls and the iodine smell of the sea. The small, quiet sadness that a trip is over. The happiness of the return.

here in aragon

2010-08-09T12:17:00.000-07:00

Here in Aragon, Spain, we are steeped in the shadows of spindly pine trees whose shadows shelter us from the blinding heat. The tiny campsite is almost crushed by cliffs of red rock, which surround us on all sides. I write on paper, we swim in another lake daily and drink beer in the waterside cafe. The temperatures sear, the landscape is arid, frighteningly bare. We all melt at some point in the day, recovering as night falls, after a six o'clock dip in the turquoise blue water. We have just eaten a meal of squid, red juice seeped in bread, drunk local wine, finished with sweet white melon. The light is fading, the insects are singing. We've being visiting hillside towns, watched priests chanting in beautiful byzatine cathedrals, drunk cafe con leche, searched for unfound cheap sandals. Got to go now, dark is coming.

in the forest

2010-07-30T07:58:00.000-07:00

Sneaking a post on a borrowed computer with a two year old on my knee. Here, we drift amongst green trees, watch coffee drip into a brown clay pot, swim in the lake daily. With no Internet connection or radio or TV, we yawn and watch the trees at sunset, as lizards dart at our feet. Whispering leaves sing hushed lullabies as we fall asleep to grasshoppers chants and the regular croak of a frog. Everyday, I write. Building words, wanting to take care of my characters and their lives. My daughter says that she's too tired now. I have to go and finish my tea. Watch the sky.

the tumble dryer

2010-07-22T13:15:00.000-07:00

Clothes are spinning in the tumble dryer- falling and rising inside the heated cylinder, cuffs touching trousers, caressing a hem. Tomorrow, we are leaving for the green forest. Rest. Space. Slow drunk coffee. Idle green tea. Words making a story unfold. This is what my dreams are made of.

In the last fifteen days, I have journeyed to Paris, flown to Korea, given a conference paper, tasted hot chilli cabbage, drunk fizzy fermented milky pale rice drinks, peeked at the elegant beauty of unvisited mountains, admired the stationery, flown back to Paris, spent the night in a stuffy yellow curtain-stained station hotel, caught the Eurostar, watched a girl cry too early in the morning, camped in a storm and woke thinking I was inside a flying spaceship, been to a red velvet cupcake Brighton wedding, returned to France, worked at the hospital.

Tomorrow, after work, we drive down South, hit the autoroute in our new second-hand VW camper, watch the kids grin in the back of the van.

For now, the children are sleeping in soft sticky slumber. The washing turns in the heat.

early in the morning

2010-07-04T21:43:00.000-07:00

It's early in the morning. Before they awake, before he awakes, the cat and I have opened our eyes and are creeping around the half-lit house. In the dusky, nearly-dawn, I half dream of what might happen. At the moment, doors are opening in my house, in my life. People are interested in my writing, which has been travelling around the Internet, neatly packaged in a file for them to open. Hope has been glaring at me from under my bed, reclaiming the light of day from amongst the dust bunnies. This summer, I must brush off the cobwebs from attic dreams, tie an apron round my waist, put my hands to work, finish my book. I will shelter in the deep green of the forest, drift in the emerald leaves and type.

disturbingly beautiful

2010-06-29T06:52:00.000-07:00

I would love to go and see Marion Mitchell's exhibition.

Unfortunately I'll be on the wrong side of the planet. Go if you can.

late at night

2010-06-28T14:02:00.000-07:00

Late at night; I sit on the sofa, tucked into the warm sound of a cat licking it's fur. In the soft lamplit evening glow I feel the day stretched into my legs. Around me my house sleeps gently in a chocolate darkness. Hours of movement have come to a slow, slumbering halt. "Sssh", that is what the night is saying, "Listen".

May and June

2010-06-10T12:48:00.000-07:00

May and June. Months for growing. June brought wet, greasy rain that soaked into the dry earth. In May, the sun shone, burnt the earth desert brown. We bought bright flowers and planted out our window boxes with sweet multi-coloured petals. I sat, back bent, eyes fixed to the pixeled screen and wrote, wrote and wrote some more. I sent my dreams up into the sky and imagined fairy dust for my daughter's birthday cards. We ate summer soup for the first time; rich, spicy minestrone, speckled with barley and courgettes, fresh tomatoes blended into deep red. We swam in the freezing sea, plunging winter white skin into icy water. For seconds. May and June. Unforgettable months with surprising answers. I catch a train, run a course, sit waiting at the station in the still of the heat. While waiting for my connection, I learn that immobility and stillness are essential in the cocktail of travel and high temperatures. I rest on a chair, eat sprouted spelt bread and wait. May and June. I neglect this space, do not unpack my case, have left washing dirty and to do lists unticked. May and June. I feel like the shape of my life fits my body and soul.

Postcards from my travels : 2. San Sebastian

2010-04-21T09:36:00.001-07:00

In San Sebastian we drink soft café con leche, admire sharp mountain landscapes, eat stewed red beans served with slow cooked cabbage and tiny pickled thin green chillis, play in parks with gentle carpeted floors, drink rough red wine, feel the heat, ignore keen drops on the winding roads, peer through the yellow beehived glass in our appartement's sliding door, eat a hundred second breakfasts of tender croissants standing at the bakery's wooden sculpted bar, feel exhausted, try to sit, walk through chic shops, spot Spanish fringes, bluntly beautiful, have a morning off the children, sit in the rustling comfort of a Reading Room in a Spanish public library, surrounded by old men, turning pages, browse articles in art reviews about John Cage and the Anarchy of Silence, relish in small bits of thinking time, fall into the colours of Stephen Dean, buy five litres of olive oil and a big blue sunhat, discover Spanish charity shops with my eldest daughter, search, look at the elegant remains of a Basque Palace, green seed packets and admire the smell of hanging laundry inside the internal courtyard.

Postcards from my travels: 1. Ten things to think about when you are driving to Bordeaux

2010-04-21T09:29:00.000-07:00

1. Think about the distance - it's five o'clock and five hours drive, 520 km. I've just finished a day at work; run workshops, seen patients, eaten a plate of pale institutional pasta, imagined.

2. Think about entertaining two little girls; bubbling in the back of the car.

3. Think about black coffee, eating food, having a pit stop. Starting and stopping.

2. Reflect upon death. A close relative just came to stay, talked peacefully about where he would be buried one day; a spot in a rural graveyard. When he left, I felt like weeping. In the car, I feel at peace.

5. Think about trees. As we drive further South, they line the roads to shade us from the heat. The trees change shape with the geography of the land.

6. Ponder upon the taste of creamy leeks and chips, at the restaurant in the giant blue shop. Relish in the fact that I love cafeterias, the anonymity, the meeting of people, carrying my tray, being in this strange, multi-coloured, plastic world.

7. Think about driving, hands on the steering wheel, over-taking, using the indicator, leaving it on when you're in the left-hand lane. He says that only old ladies leave indicators ticking. Tick tack.

8. Think about sleeping, resting your head on the seat belt strap, when he takes over at the wheel. Try to stop the buzz of your brain, drift off with the sandman.

9. Reflect upon the innocence of sleeping children, when I see their heads nodding in the back. Remember the early weeks after their birth, the terrible vulnerability of a new-born child, a fragility that is hard to bear.

10. Think about carrying on forever, never stopping the car, just driving through darkness. Drifting along in the inky blue motorway night, lit by the yellow lights.

my wall

2010-04-08T08:49:00.000-07:00

on my wall: a soft pencil drawn baby duck takes it's first flight, a glaring bobby baker carries shopping home, two anonymous female relatives from the 1940's grin in gum boots and baggy trousers, cobatt blue hugs burnt sienna, keri smith explains how to be miserable as an artist, a photo i took in bombay from the inside of a dark metal bus shows an indian man holding a pink balloon, my eldest daughter jumps, three green old ladies cluck in a pen and ink drawing i made when i was 16, i stand facing the camera with my siblings and father in my grandparent's shadow-ridden emerald garden, a jumble of printed letters bedeck a hand-made postcard, a bluebird flies on a vintage wallpaper envelope, flowers bloom for spring.

3. Learning about knives and thinking about objects in space

2010-03-31T03:57:00.000-07:00

I bought these knives on a market stall last week. Their colour is my favourite green; fresh and mossy, a 1930's dulled, creamy emerald. They are also small, reduced and I like petite things, despite the fact that I am tall. I think we are all comfortable, fit with certain shapes, dimensions and places. What objects and spaces we chose (or have chosen for us) are part of who we have become, influence where we are going. These ideas evoke this artists' work. I spend a lot of time in my theatre work standing in circles. A perfect, divine, but also closed shape. These knives are hallmarked with the letters EPNS. I have discovered, this means Electro Plated Nickel Silver, a technique used to fuse silver to the top and bottom of a sheet of copper or base metal. The knives are perfect for spreading peanut butter, soft ewe's cheese and mushroom paté on toast. Their almost blunt edges and slight size means they are also perfect for chubby two year old fingers and little six year old hands. Since they've been in our possession, they've been used everyday; the little green knives are gently cutting their way into our history. Their shape fits neatly into our lives.

sunday

2010-03-28T09:30:00.000-07:00

Today we all awoke and they ate pancakes made with spelt flour. I sipped endless cups of green tea with smoked rice and crunched on yesterday's baguette. It feels like Spring is nearly here, an almost soft emerald touches the trees. Dreaming of holidays, road trips down South and an appartment that I have booked in Spain, I think of climbing mountains daily, imagine my feet pounding, the view from the top. These broad-backed dinosaurs carry my dreams.

Yesterday I cleaned the house in a rage. Strangely enough, I observed a while back, I often clean with anger. I scrubbed and I swept and I scraped and I hoovered. I do my best cleaning furious. The house was beautiful once I had finished; outlined, sharp and new.

greek myths

2010-03-19T12:48:00.000-07:00

For your information. You get get the Greek myths book here. The text has been challenged, is quite old-fashioned and some ideas need double-checking, but what a fascinating read!

2. Learning about greek myths

2010-03-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

I've been reading this book. I love these old non-fiction Penguins, the muted colours of the covers and the old-fashioned, articulate texts. I have a secret collection at home. I've been understanding the sociological and anthropological background and the tales behind the stories of Greek myths. It's archeological, like hebraic study where scholars examine the bits and pieces that make up each word, scratching behind the syllabuls to the root of language, revealing a million meanings. In Grave's book myths are dissected, retold, understood through History. I learnt that the Three Fates invented the vowels of the first alphabet, that Palamedes added eleven consonants and that Hermes reduced these sounds to charcaters, using wedge shapes inspired by the formations of flying cranes.

being two

2010-03-13T06:34:00.000-08:00

Today we walked to the granite city. We wearily trudged by the lapping sea, bitten by the chill of the wind and went to meet friends for coffee. We chatted and drank dark strong bleu de bresil. Outside, our kids were playing. Outside, my youngest daughter ran. In the sunny cobbled street, under the blue sky, she walked backwards and then ran down ' WEEeeeeeee'. After a while I went out and crouched down, and she fell into my arms at the end of each race, joy on her two year-old face. 'WWeeeeeeee' and ' Boooom' colliding flesh and emotion. She loves running my littlist girl. She loves planes, trains and automobiles. She has curly blond hair and is as stubborn as a mountain. She is two.

1. Learning about lying fallow

2010-03-11T07:25:00.001-08:00

Amy has a project about learning. I want to join in, to go for the ride. Today, I learnt that part of making art is having the time to breath, drift, do nothing, drink coffee and listen to 18 year old French kids laugh, drink coke and gossip about Spanish teachers who swear. Henry Miller called this lying fallow. 'The plowing or tilling of land, without sowing it for a season; as, summer fallow, properly conducted, has ever been found a sure method of destroying weeds.' You plough the land then leave it empty, unsowed, rested. Who knows what can happen next?

Following Paris

2010-03-11T00:56:00.000-08:00

I drifted in Paris, met friends, went to the 104, a contemporary arts centre in the North East of Paris. I watched plays, walked in the snow, bought a pair of dungarees that I have not worn. I nibbled on Jewish cheesecake, gulped coffee, dreamed and stamped my feet on urban land. I took photos, rang my family and bought cherry flowers in salt from an exquisite Japanese boutique.

Following Paris, I've been researching and writing, caring for sick people, eating spelt and lentils cooked with caramalized onions and topped with white feta cheese.

Paris

2010-01-29T06:45:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow morning I shall awake in the winter darkness and ease myself silently out of the house. I shall cross dark streets and the midnight blue sky and drive my car through empty roads, lit by yellow street lamps. I will slip onto a monolithic train and ride my way to Paris. Alone. In a capital city. A present from time, an extraction from everyday living.

rushing or my being is doing

2010-01-27T10:49:00.000-08:00

I rushed today- collating research for a conference paper, making soup, baking a fish, writing emails, buying nappies for my friend's new baby, drinking coffee, drinking green tea, drinking Lapsong Souchong; drinking everything and anything to keep the seconds ticking while I planned a trip to Paris, thought about sitting down and read my daughter books and sent invitations to an artists event I am organizing. I was bred like this, through nature or nurture, through watching my mother or through my DNA programming; a large part of my being is doing. I split days into hours and minutes and seconds and check diaries, emails, blogs and bank accounts. The weather report can be accessed, along with the latest news and checking out cheap flights for a future holiday, while stirring a sauce and when I am at work I do not walk I run. My life partner is the complete opposite of this, thank goodness. I have the energy of a toddler, the buzz of a power station.

stopping

2010-01-26T12:14:00.000-08:00

The tumble dryer has just stopped turning. This morning we walked to the granite citadel, we stepped through the bitter wind, marched against a heavy ashen sky,we drank Brazlian coffee and talked of trips to Germany and pragmatism versus hedonism.This afternoon I made fairy cakes decorated in thick white icing with multi-coloured hundreds and thousands. Then we drank Japanese green tea and held a tiny new-born baby and felt the fire of new beginnings. This evening we made egg mayonnaise, did the washing up and danced to Grease Lightening à trois while he swam. Now, the day is finishing and I will fold hot washing as the tumble dryer has just stopped turning.

back again

2010-01-24T11:26:00.000-08:00

One year later and I am back again. I started writing here on January the 24th 2008. I wrote posts for one year, stopping in December 2008. One year later and I am back again. Back here to write of waves, upside down journeys, dark skies, the blue sea, granite walls, sleeping children and the little moments which set my fingers clicking on the keyboard; words falling soft as midnight snowflakes, white and cold against the navy sky. I am back with vowels and consonants, words and sentences and paragraphs to fill my pixel landscape. I am back scratching stories into the empty screen, snuggling inside the letters that I write. I return because of the very evrydayness of this exercise, this electronic trace of space and time. I go now to finish my bowl of carrot, sweet potato and cumin soup, my slice of brown bread and feta cheese.

today

2008-12-16T12:35:00.000-08:00

My head is not concentrated at the moment. I feel tired and weary and thin like tissue paper, like at any moment I might tear. I have been doing too much and holding up bridges and tending to sick people with bad bad backs and babies sleepless chicken pox nights. I want to write about my journey in London and finish a story before starting another. But instead life is overlapping again, one shift and click and the focus changes. I have to take a different picture. I have been meaning to complete and my head was filled with plans: tying knots, sticking stamps, sealing packages. But I got cross this morning and grouched at my children and then felt guilty like a stone as I walked home. I went to the market and bought sweet satsumas; ' doux' soft for the children the fruit man said. He grinned at my baby and she smiled back and then the world was better. So, we went and drank coffee and had a moment of respite. It's been a day where clouds have appeared and vanished and I have felt like rain and sunshine. Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat and I want to put a penny in the old man's hat and feel right and able. So, I'll sing a song for sixpence and fill my bed with water bottles with crochet jackets and send myself to sleep with camomile . I'll not dream of bad worms from my daughter's last night nightmare, for that worm makes little boys turn into other worms and is long and stripey and scarey as a bed. Now, a picture of a dreamcatcher bedecks the wall, letting only the good dreams filter through. The bad dreams will stay trapped in the net, disappearing with the light of day. The dreamcatcher will transform the night.

day one part4

2008-11-10T01:47:00.000-08:00

That evening the music continues. We travel underground to Kings Cross Place, get lost in a dark, harsh hail storm ; a shower of ice and hard snow that blows us from pavement to road. We fall into a pub called the Driver Bar to escape the weather and eat a sticky sweet salad and chips and an upmarket burger with nice mayonnaise. The barmaid is blond and friendly and trendy and wants me to taste gin and cucumber and I sip my drink and watch men in suits, looking smart, drinking beer with curious male camaradery. Later, we slip through glass doors into a huge open space with chocolate brown poofs shaped like mushrooms. Our tickets are booked to see an experimental music concert, part of the Multiplier Series, curated by composer graham Firkin. ' ..... with three oustanding ensembles exploring single instrumental timbres, The Veya Saxophone Quartetn Elysian Strings and duo Parkinson Saunders, performing music by French hard hitting iconic composer Louis Andriessen, English purist Howard Skempton, American pioneer Alvin Lucier and the rhythmic persistence of Joe Cutler and Firkin himself'.

We sit in cabaret style clusters and in front of the stage are huge piles of silk cushions in fushia, burnt orange, green and turqouise blue. We are invited to listen and lie. The music envelops, shakes and shudders; brusquely changing moving, waking. I am an intrepid explorer of this new territory, and my ears are delighted by what they hear.

When we leave the concert it is snowing outside. Huge white flakes are tumbling from the black night sky and gently coating the grey city pavements. We grin and make our way back to our hotel room.

Day one part3

2008-11-03T14:20:00.001-08:00

I unpack, make home, place and space, settle and nestle myself and my things. Tops and skirts are hung in wardrobes, fabric is unfolded. This is my first task whenever I arrive somewhere new. I appropriate. We go out again and eat under a church in a crypt where dead bodies lie. We sit on high chairs in a sandstone room and taste roast potatoes and pumpkin bake and hot gammon sandwiches. The dead may turn in their graves, but perhaps they enjoy the smell of the food and the idle lunchtime banter. Upstairs in the church we stumble upon a midday concert for the vicar tells us the church, St Martin in the Fields, has an open door. We sit in the pews and listen to the soaring, roaring black and white sounds of the Messianen Quartet for the End of Time . The notes quiver in the sepia light. I watch rustling leaves through a stained glass window. What bliss is this....

the first day part 2

2008-11-03T09:08:00.000-08:00

We then catch another train to our hotel. Emerge from underground onto Oxford Street - submerged by the throng of walking, talking, smiling, snarling, eating, crying, limping, striding, lonely, happy, dirty crowds of people. Feet hit concrete; sand, conglomerate gravel, pebbles, broken stone and slag in a mortar matrix. Our lungs breath in the fumes with joy, elation. We are free in the city. Anonymous. We have unacknowledged names. Our hotel is hidden behind a shop, opposite a haunted building with ragged curtains and smeared windows. The hotel has a doorman with a shiny black hat and a gleaming smile and a turning, swirling door. We enter the international, excuse me madam, just this way, may I take your bag, hotel. Our room is number 771. The mirrors on the walls of the lift glitter like diamonds.

the first day

2008-11-01T12:22:00.000-07:00

The first day we left early and I hated saying goodbye to my children and felt wrenched and torn. The sky was bright blue and the air cold and crisp. We jumped on the first train and our journey had begun. Travelling over and through- eating into time, savouring seconds and minutes. The underground is dirty and gritty and grey. Skins are the colour of ashes; tinged with diesel fumes and intimate with pollution. The vibration shakes our boney segments, quivers in the spine. We are unfathomed city walkers, we wear our country customs in our smiles. We stop at Euston station, jump from our train, meander in an unplanned fashion. I visit where I spent many teenage days, in this building, sitting waiting; watching for my train after reckless weekends with Z;. Camden market, pubs, cigarettes, smoking dope, raiding divine fridges late at night. Later, now, he and I drink black coffee on fat stinking purple sofas. The station smells of old cooking oil; rancid and sweet. I kiss him as he photographs the trains. I smile and our telephone rings...

the journey

2008-10-28T00:04:00.000-07:00

It is 7 o clock and in 2 hours we will be leaving. For three days we will be together, in the middle of the buzzing, moving, screeching, gliding tempest of London. Our bags are waiting in the bedroom upstairs. The children will be tucked into the creamy pink soft surburban love of their grandparents. We have three days of journey, of freedom and hard grey urban excitement. We will drift, meander and wander; discovering and rewriting our city walks. For days I have been imagining this voyage and now we are here. All the time I have dreamed and pictured and written will now tick in reality. The forseen seconds will happen.

autumn

2008-10-13T08:36:00.000-07:00

This morning I awoke and thought it was the middle of the night, so quiet and deep was the darkness. We hauled our weary bodies into institutions and now we're all home yawningly cozy and ready for sleep.

the sky

2008-10-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

Today the sky stretched up until eternity, as blue as a dream and smelt of summer; sweet and warm and true. We walked until the tip of the earth, where water met land, and watched the people: bodies hugged grass and conversation drifted as the bees buzzed and the rocks sat in lazy pools of waves. We ate crepes and lime ice-cream at a beachside cafe, admired the black dots of surfers scattered in the sea. The sky sang on and we hummed to it's turquoise tune and wished that the day would never end. A gift from the gods, an Indian summer, an unexpected heat, the arriere saison.

2008-10-09T01:22:00.000-07:00

return

2008-10-09T00:46:00.000-07:00

Back after 5 weeks away from this space. Been working, running workshops, thinking, organising and moving too fast for my liking. My fingers are touching the keys and I am returning to the here and now of words spilling and letters falling, creating this black and white pattern that you are reading and I am writing. Too long. Too far. Thinking of future and past and catching trains and booking planes and dreaming of hotel rooms where me and my man will sleep in late on a two night break without children. I've been spinning tales and feeling old wounds and trying to get the clothes from our July holiday packed away. Summer dreams and the smell of the beach are scattered across the spare bed, quietly waiting to be put away, to hibernate for winter. I've been cooking delicious soups, autumnal and golden and laughing about our mutual exhaustion as we cough and splutter and wheeze our way around the furniature. I've been thinking about loved one's and hoping for the future and astonished by the growth of my girls. I am back and I am happy as I was reticient to write, wondering if I would stumble from lack of practise. I am my father's daughter, a genetically programmer worrier. I am writing . I am drinking sharp green tea and now it is cold and crisp and blue and sunny.

There is something immediate about creativity, the capacity of being in the here and now where time stops, starts or just is. In any case I cannot be thinking about planning, washing and work obligation while I am here. Multi-tasking my time away. I am with the golden peacock, playing with the scarlet ball and singing the song of the princess in the tower.

tired

2008-09-02T09:48:00.000-07:00

I am tired. I've got weary limbs, snappy voice and the feeling of martyrdom is edging under my duvet and reaching out to the morning sun. I am wishing for absent mornings, writing and not being asked too many questions. The baby hormones are slowly drifting away and I can feel myself speeding up, saying yes and making far too many telephone calls. I am in need of long lunches, total illogical thought and to be unstructured and unobliged. I need to undo stitches, read backwards and forget. Memory is my millstone, I cannot forget what I must do, the lists of tasks build up inside my brain in extraordinary pyramid contructions. I constantly add more playing cards, marvel at the fragile structure. I continue to live as I began as a child busying myself from dawn till dusk, filling time with action, planning, organising and forgetting to breath. At the age of seven I created my own timetable for after school and weekend time- filled with sections on reading, gardening, practising drama and play. Scheduled play. Am I running from death or making the most of every tiny second that I'm here? Four months after my birth I nearly lost my life in an accident where my sister died - time stopped and we were marked forever.

sticky brain

2008-08-20T10:06:00.000-07:00

My brain feels sticky, unfathomable, messy and rough at the edges. I've been staying up late, celebrating birthdays and summer and working hard, burning the candle at both ends. Swimming in the cold, frisky waves every single day. Salty skin. It's the early evening, the dusk is here, the in between soft time. One child sleeping, the other transfixed with French Moomins. I am debating on another late night with a good film and TV dinner with my loved one or a sandwich and an early night with something trashy to send me to sleep instead of ploughing through another psychogeography book. I am thinking about bodies, sewing, land art, skin, spinal cord accidents and mapping ourselves with time, shaping the path, tracing the journey, relaying the lines of our story.

a holiday boat

2008-08-13T12:37:00.000-07:00

We're at home not working, and being. Unplanning days with attitude - drifting, moving, pottering and hanging out together- we're on the beach, mussels and chips with friends, dancing, laping up two types of miso soup ( one dark like treacle), we're narrowly missing rain storms whose drops catch our ankles as we scoot indoors. We're teething, screaming, washing, tidying and thinking that two kids are good but quite hard work. Today we took a bath with me and my girls in the tub together, bubbles, giggling and pink limbs in splashing water. I wrote paragraphs, sketchy and rough about sewing and bodies, made Tunisian chickpea soup with a squeeze of lemon, ate feta cheese with baguette. We drank coffee and white wine and tea and munched fleshy dripping flat peaches and wished for tiny sweet shortbread biscuits. We got cross, got happy, laughed, moaned and sighed with happiness. We finished the evening on our sofa which has transformed into a bed; a holiday boat on which we are all sailing.

swimming in the sea

2008-08-12T06:11:00.001-07:00

The wind blows us onto the beach, propelling forward limbs, whipping clothes and towels against sunburnt skin. We undress hurriedly, ever watchful of the darkening sky- half blue, half black. As we put on yesterdays damp swimming costumes sand storms sting our pale naked legs. In the distance rain paints grey stripes on postcard beaches, it is coming. The sea is covered in tiny choppy waves, each blue triangle tipped with whitish foam. It is rough, choppy, the water milky emerald green and dark dangerous blue. We run in- through the chill and the sudden cold and suddenly we are laughing and swimming caught in the exhilaration of the wind and the sun and the water- intoxicated by nature.

space time

2008-08-05T12:57:00.000-07:00

Baby is asleep, I've been writing - filling pages with black scratching squiggles, ploughing into the virtual paper of the screen. Space and time are on my side- everyone will be here on Thursday night. Two more empty days to fill with a thousand dreams and thoughts and sentences: words that have started to flow. This morning was hard, jagged and stammered as the writing started, stopped and blustered with the discomfort of new shoes. Off to bed now to wake up later, wish that it was morning now, but can't write all night with a baby.

green

2008-08-04T13:08:00.000-07:00

What I love most is the green. The hue of the visible spectrum lying between yellow and blue. I could drown in the emerauld sea of the leaves of the trees. Sea green, sage green, bottle green, chrome green, pea green, yellow green, dark green ,light green, jade green, chartreuse, olive-green, Paris green, teal. The green of the trees and the grass. The green of the pleasant land. After several hours inside the forest I feel decidedly green. The green, verdant, raw, grudging, gullible common isle. La Grande Bretagne, my green island.

back back back

2008-08-03T11:25:00.000-07:00

Back to the shape of the seashore which curves like a cat's whisker in the sand. We are home and sit on a concrete step and look at the sea, smelling the month of August. The appartement is empty and eerily clean and I am fuzzy from airport security and too much family. We have spent three weeks sleeping in other bird's nests, floors, sofa beds, guest rooms and spare spaces; bed-hopping, swapping, ducking and diving and not quite sleeping enough. For now we are divided, two at home, one in green, another in the city. Next week we will be reunited. I must, will, have to write this week. I shall catch every moment of my baby's slumber and scratch black onto the white of the screen. Illuminate my thoughts. Structure. Work. Do.

summertime

2008-07-18T11:29:00.000-07:00

summertime and we are walking through endless green landscapes, eating poached eggs, sharing unfolding family secrets that hang like dark bubbles, buying second-hand anatomical books, sitting on soggy lime green grass and licking white double cream from brown chocolate butterfly cakes. we are in our homeland our old land, where we were born but not where we live. As I write I have just been given my grandma's silver coffee spoons. I hold their tiny slender perfection, necks fragile and steely like swans. I sit, I write, I wish, I am, anxious and steady as the girls beside me watch Alice sliding through the looking glass, I hear the gentle clink of cutlery from the tidying kitchen and feel the jabberwocky haunting our soft sofa dreams.

packing

2008-07-08T13:50:00.000-07:00

I am packing to leave. I fold tiny clothes and place them in idle black bags. I add forgotten underwear, a present for my aunt. The house feels empty, clean and stationary; time is treading water. I tick last items from lists scrawled in red, green and blue, eat hasty meals and prowl like a cat through gradually vacating rooms. Half of the family has already gone; we'll join them in a matter of days. Inside I am unsettled, variable; likely to change. My space feels surprisingly too big; normally I relish my own company, devour the silence and the freedom. Now I am unresolved.

2008-07-06T13:21:00.000-07:00

There are days when all the world is tiny closed fisted hard little grey nails, pining bodies down with the herculean force that the Liliputs held Gulliver in place. These sneaking tiny unforgiving things hold spirits tight and will not let you be; placing undue strain upon the soul. Anxiety bleeds into hearts and crushes dreaming butterflies - miniscule moments binding fluttering wings. Other days all doors are opening every house across the Universe; stars are being born into night skies. Precious smiles trace upward curves on mountain tops reflecting eagle's eyes. All the possibilities are possible - then you are safe, you are free.

flying

2008-06-25T12:06:00.000-07:00

Feel at the moment like my head is buzzing from morning until night. There are plays to be prepared for community protests against cuts in education, bags to be packed, books to be written, dissertations to correct, patient evaluations to write and babies to be fed. Stop. The sea is blue as the sky is blue. A rich deep azure. The colour lies between green and indigo and when I swim I become a psychological primary hue. I am cerulean, lazuline and sapphire; a lycaenid butterfly afloat on the salty water. I have four wings covered in tiny scales, a slender body and knobbed antanae. I have metamorphised from the larval caterpillar, I am the imago, I can fly.

2008-06-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

Nightime and I should be asleep, brushing my teeth, reading my book, sipping my herbal tea like a little old lady with shaking hands in an old pink nightgown. In late adolescence I adored bedtime; sleep a natural reversible state common to vetebrate animals. I would jump onto my big double bed and wait for the sandman to come to kiss me goodnight. Snuggled in a silky purple eiderdown, slippery and warm, I could control my dreams, would experiment with flying, jumping through time and space. The unconscious mind awake for the blinking of a second.

life giving life

2008-06-22T13:43:00.000-07:00

they are growing and she is getting bigger. now she turns from me to meet the gaze of her sister or her father or another giggling child. she is nearly 9 months and her little teeth have started to nip when she feeds. today i wonder whether nursing is coming to an end. the thought is so very hard. the intimacy that we share, that bond is so very close. the feel of the rush of the milk when it comes, what her grandma calls the 'zinging in your breasts'. the feeding of the babe, the quiet ectasy, the warm blanket that envelops the universe, reaching up to the stars and around every planet and lonely meteorite until every last thing is so soft and calm that angels fall from heaven to join us. in these tiny moments i could live forever and all thoughts of deadlines and rushing and obligations fade into obscurity, blinded by the light of the here and the now, me and my child, hearts beating, eyes meeting. this is the beauty of life. life giving life.

finishing things

2008-06-02T13:08:00.000-07:00

I am trying to finish; to send the letter that I promised them with a quote for a price that they said that they wished would arrive before I finish putting clothes into drawers and folding knickers inside of fridges after I have breastfed a hungry child and given fresh soup to my hospital patient while I learn the words to a Spanish song and write another page of my story and hoover the dust from inside my brain and prepare the house for a family visit and clean the cat shit and try to understand my work teams behaviour and finish reading my chinese novel while booking my ticket to a wedding in spain and deciding childcare for a hot day in august and giving up coffee yet sorting through little girl's too small dresses and there is never a moment when it can all finish as the woman at the end of the earth told me so many years ago, completion is death.

home

2008-05-28T12:00:00.000-07:00

I walk home from the walled city, trailing pushchair and tired children, skin kissed by the warm evening sun. We walk home. Home that holds you fast and tight, a home that lets you walk out to the tip of the rocks where water meets sky and not fall. Not trip. Home the way we eat, breath, dance, work, dress and clean. To be at ease, to be at home, to laugh out loud, to be at home; to feel real rightness in each and every neurone and all the bones of these frail bodies. Home. The bricks are built around me. Windows peek outside and let the changing light in. When I first lived abroad and was travelling on a boat I would play tricks with myself in the middle of the sea, was I going home, or leaving home? I would stand on the slippery deck of the ship dizzy for a sudden undecided moment. Home. Where I am, where I will be, where I was. Home. The feel of a child against my breast and the eyes of my lover that understand my dissaray.

mother love

2008-05-27T06:28:00.001-07:00

From here I hear you gurgling in your room. Singing in soft darkness, waiting for my arms to sweep you from your bed and wrap you in a warm, cotton embrace. You are snuggled in your sleeping bag, curled in comfort; a soft toy in your mouth, stains from some meal decorating your sweet, sweet face. You awaken smiling, a one-toothed grin accompanying your throaty, bubbling song. You are bliss and irregular smelly harmony. I am a lioness holding my china joy.

grief

2008-05-24T05:30:00.001-07:00

Been a while since I've been here. A friend and colleague died last weekend in a car accident with his son. Death has swallowed me up. The funeral was a terrible day, suffocating us with silence as we failed to comprehend what had happened. Such grief. Church full of teenagers with tear-stained cheeks. The loss. The sun glaring down from a bright spring sky. The truth impossibly clear and blue.

hot rain

2008-05-08T09:32:00.000-07:00

We run home in the hot rain, her little hand in mine. Thick, greasy drops fall on our clothes, meet pink skin and mingle with our hair. The sky is faded grey. I smell brown mud and yellow heat - baking. Perspiring earth. We run through the tourists, across the bridge, next to the swimming pool and along the winding promenade. The rain is heavier now, warm and steamy. Our clothes are dappled with fat dark spots. We laugh and dodge the oncoming gaggles of umbrellas, skip in puddles and finally reach the steps up to our road. We skid across the shiny black tarmac, up the steps and open the old wooden door. We fall into the flat dripping giggles.

a day alone

2008-05-07T06:48:00.000-07:00

Today a writing day at home. I reread the work-in-progress and then venture out in the brilliant May heat to do some research. The beach is scattered with bikinis. My feet pound hot concrete, my head buzzes with ideas about characters, destinations, meaning and time. I imagine my characters, reach out to feel inside their skin. It ripples. I sit in the cold, calm of the study room in the library and ponder over the history of this town, of these 'corsaires', official pirates who pillaged boats with autorisation in exchange for a share of the 'booty', split three ways between my town, the King and the captain and crew. I turn pages and then hit the streets a second time, drink a creamy latté and dodge the tourists crowd, their eyes glued to shop windows, feet dragging. Today a day alone, all alone. Me, myself and I and the May sun and my keyboard and the words spilling out, flowing; a mini world in creation.

sick again

2008-05-06T11:45:00.000-07:00

Ill again, and grumpy. Mal dans ma peau, as the French say, uncomfortable in my skin. I read a dissertation I am supervising. The subject is work with the elderly, the author distinguishes between growing old and getting ill, aging is not a sickness. Time is an unpathological symptom of life. Yet aging can carry loneliness and pain, displaced in time and space, bereaved of meaning and place we forget the whereabouts of our elan vitale. People in institutions often lose their way, mislay the spark that keeps the light bright white and a twinkle in the eyes. Today, after working, I went to the park and sat amongst the green trees and the spring sun and the running laughing children. On the sofa my loved one says to me, 'remember life is sweet' .

more heat

2008-05-04T12:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the sun was hot and we lingered on the beach in the unexpected stifling heat. I hid with my baby in the shade of a parasol. Today was a tired sick day. I slept in musty silence as time drifted around me, the sounds of my living house stifled by my bed clothes . My bones ached, my throat hurt. I am rarely ill and my body surprised me by it's need for sleep. Three naps and I was still exhausted. Today I didn't leave the appartement but managed to shift ugly piles of laundry that had cluttered up our home. Cleaning clothes a thankless task that slides into infinity. Today I cannot think clearly, but can drink fresh vegetable and quinoa soup and eat white cheese sandwiches. Tomorrow I am working at the hospital, so now I must go to bed.

home again

2008-04-27T05:32:00.000-07:00

We are home again. Yesterday we drove through thick hot heat, burnt yellow by the sun, to reach our little city. We spent the week in Paris, our feet walking on pavements, grey concrete, splashing in dirty urban puddles and treading the edge of the elegant, forbidden green grass. We are back in our house. We spent the week looking at Renaissance statues, crossing golden bridges flung over chic rivers, admiring tall buildings and sighing at the sudden beauty of a hidden square. We are home. We told stories on the metro, rode on merry-go-rounds, ate daurade, saw the Mona Lisa who is, my daughter told me ' Happy because she was born first', we drank bitter black coffee and tried on pink shoes and were proud to be ' fit as pellypots'. The two girls slept as we walked through Paris on the last day, side by side. Happiness was with us, strolling in the sun, wearing a purple hat and eating falafel doused in chili sauce. We are home now and we remember.

my house

2008-04-17T13:13:00.000-07:00

It is a joy to come back to your arms at the end of the day. I have been caring for the mysteries of troubled minds, singing lullabies with patients as we hold hands. It is an unsung pleasure to return to this living home. Enveloped in hot tea, sipping crocheted blankets; laughter is written on these four walls. Grey granite keeps the heat inside.

2008-04-16T04:43:00.000-07:00

tired

2008-04-16T04:28:00.000-07:00

I am tired. Sleepy. Exhausted. Deprived. Thoughts get stuck in heavy mounds of laundry, old black socks and Barbie pants are clogging up my brain. I spent an endless night in the warmth of female talking, another tending to a teething baby. Today my brain aches. The sky is shocking blue but not quite warm enough to take off winter coats. Wear a little wool, my neighbour mutters in my ear. I drift from room to action to kitchen to speaking to cooking to shops to feeding to trying to understand the words falling from my friend's lips while we drink coffee in the purple bar, talk of hair and try to calm a gaggle of wriggling girls.

2008-04-03T02:43:00.000-07:00

the man watching the sea

2008-04-03T02:07:00.000-07:00

He stands with his suitcase looking out at the boats. His eyes glance over the marina, the yachts, the ferry, the lighthouse, the old walled city. A tourist, a visitor, his luggage sat by his feet, overlooking this town of dreams. The seaside. The port. The history brushed neat and tidy, power, blood, abuse and guts, packaged in pretty boxes to be sold to five million people trapsing these streets seeking the moment where love, pleasure and happiness collide. Children stick spades into the sand as parents rub cream on freckled shoulders. Sticky fingers hold metal rails, lads swill beer, water meets skin where battles were fought. The comfortable slide on limpid water in yachts with bunks and sip white wine. Russian sailors, white-skinned, blue-eyed, crew rust rotten tankers and dream of home. The drone of the little train filled with fat tourists, their hot skin sticking to fake leather seats. The grey granite walls have heard these stories a hundred, thousand, million, trillion times.

the couple at the window

2008-04-03T01:40:00.000-07:00

When we walked back from the park yesterday, I saw them. Spring had come, they had opened their window. They stand, side by side, shoulders touching, staring out at the road. Outside. Their tall broad bodies occupy in between space. A man and a woman with uniform oak carved faces, identical short white clippered hair. Regal nose's like eagles beaks top thin mouths that do not smile easily. When the weather is warm they stand here everyday, looking at the world. Cars driving, feet on pavement, push chairs rolling, bicycles, people. Few words are exchanged between them, shoulders brush shoulders. Soft and steely. I have never seen the inside of their home. They stand framed by the window, archaic, monumental, timeless. Male, female, dressed anonymously in sweatshirts, wide trousers that can be exchanged. They are standing guard, watching, waiting, filling time and space.

the gale

2008-03-21T13:18:00.000-07:00

It's blowing a gale outside. In the darkness of the night, gusts of wind are stretching branches till they crack. Inside we hear the whistling of the wind. It rattles windows, sneaks into the cracks and makes our house creak and moan. I am scared of this storm. From when we woke this morning until night time came, this tempete has been shaking our bones. It has blown this day from sunshine to grey hail to rain, dark inky clouds smothering the sky. The children sleep fast and I am too awake, too lively, too itchy, too much with this blowing wind. Perhaps I will join the storm, danse in the chaos of the freezing gusts of rain. Let the water beat against my skin and laugh as the sky groans. Or perhaps I too will snuggle under warm blankets and soft, soft sheets and drift into a dream. The gale outside is blowing, blowing, blowing. I hope that by the morning it is gone.

lunch

2008-03-20T06:46:00.000-07:00

We ate an omlette for lunch today. It was a bright burnt yellow. The colour of the sun. The eggs came from Marie-Annick on the market. They are hidden treasures, kept beneath the huge wooden stand, gold dust. Softly boiled the white is firm and silky, the yolks a molten lava of cadmium orange. These are the eggs of my childhood. The eggs my tiny child's fingers would touch hard and warm beneath the soft feathers of a bird in the dark bitter stinking darkness of the chicken shed. Eggs, a mystery revealed. I remember being 6 and the first time we ate our own eggs, with our own bread and our own butter, made with the milk from our Fresian cow Steady. Sweet and salty, brown bread like cake, spread pale and creamy, dripping with rich dark yellow.

bear

2008-03-16T02:35:00.000-07:00

There is a bear in the woods, standing in the white snow, sleeping in a cave, ripping red flesh with blood-stained teeth. The bear is called Nathanial. He has long, shaggy hair, thick and brown. He's a heavy carnivorous animal. In the sky the Great Bear and the Little Bear twinkle in rich constellations. Nathanial loves the stars. At night, in the winter, as his breath leaves white puff clouds against the dark liquid blue, he ponders upon the cosmos.

awordatext

2008-03-16T02:33:00.000-07:00

the writer will randomly find a word in the dictionnary and write a text based on the aforementioned group of letters

the rain

2008-03-10T09:49:00.000-07:00

Today the rain fell as I drove home. At times so heavy that all the road was blurred into a messy grey puddle. This morning it landed on my windscreen like hundreds of cold fat tears. There is a gale blowing outside as I write. Gusts of wind strong enough to break tender leaves from trees and push human bodies along the street. Inside I can hear the buzz of the television, the baby crying, the tumble dryer turning. I had a satisfying day today - ticked boxes, underlined words, spoke to people and made interesting plans. There are times when moving into action is as satisfying as a big bite of cheese, mayo, tomato and gherkin sandwhich.

sunshine

2008-03-05T08:53:00.000-08:00

We blissed out in the sun today. On the promenade there was a March breeze, but sat on a bench facing the sea out of the shade it was mild and comfortable. We watched the walkers walking, the joggers jogging and rollerskaters gliding. I closed my eyes and turned my face to the sun. Spring. The creamy yellow first heat of daffodils caressed my cheeks. I could just make out the ding-ding of the sail boats in the marina, the gentle woosh of a wave. I almost fell asleep for a second. Warm heat.

the wind

2008-03-04T08:17:00.000-08:00

The wind was bitter today. Here by the sea the gusts are sharp, cutting through wool, cotton and jean and until they have chilled every 200 bones in your body. This is wind from which you cannot hide. It is a sour, painful experience. A polar easterly which has wrapped itself round icebergs and dressed in frost. It is not yet a gale but blasts and blows us across the town. It lingers in our pockets and in the nape of our neck like an unwanted kiss from a sweaty-palmed man.

the unbearable lightness of being

2008-03-03T12:15:00.000-08:00

I am dreaming of tomorrow of a tidy house and the soft cheek of my babe and time and making soup and listening to the radio drinking a second cup of coffee and writing and unpacking and putting my holiday purchases into my drawers and drifting in mundanity and the bliss of being and laughing with the eldest as we walk to school and work forgotten in my briefcase in my car and thinking of writing and imagining another world and folding unfolding dividing and joining and space and time being here and now and my head not rushing five months into the future and holding the softness of time and suddenly i understand the unbearable lightness of being.

back

2008-03-01T09:13:00.000-08:00

We were thrown through the sea last night. Nestled in our boat, the waves tossed us back and forth, seaweed winding it's way into our hair and mermaids whispering lullabies into our frightened ears. The cabin was stiflingly dark and with every shudder of the gale the sweet sound of a car alarm greeted our song. I lay in the noisy silence of the witching hour and, for once, did not imagine death. I waited as the seconds ticked by, grew into minutes, into hours. Numbers piling upon numbers, until the night was done and the dawn rose. Night. I could not hear my babes breathe. The morn came and a golden light lit the waves edge. As we drank bitter coffee, chewed bread and crunched on cereal the walled city loomed on the horizon. Land ahoy. We slid between the rocks and the islands of the ragged, unfinished coastline.

night time 2

2008-02-22T12:27:00.000-08:00

Night time is inky blue and smells sweet and old like unwashed sweaters. I long to roll myself in stars and drift into the sky. In this darkness sounds are amplified. Floors creak with monsters footsteps and I drink the roughness of the blankets edge. But I am safe inside my boat bed travelling through the stormy seas. I wrap myself in the infinity of my duvet. I snuggle and I cuddle and I curl and whirl and toss and turn. My bed is an ocean. I am swimming in my dreams.