Preparing for the forest

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

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

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

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!

stealing a day

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

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.