Await what the stars will bring.

Words soar into my time like shooting stars. Daily heat. Black. Light. Night is here, I am tucked into my bed. As my feet mark time on the staircase turn, I know I have to write. There is the yearn. A longing. Just a few words, something before sleep, like the skinning of an onion, oil heating in a pan. A promise. A hope; a vision of a dish. A story. A text. A beginning. A burn. This is desire, from the French, de sidere, to "await what the stars will bring".

The Whispering Fig

Summer dwindles, seeps into autumn. Time is like a snake, it sheds sandy bathing suits for the scent of burning wood, a skin made from cold, damp earth. Before we left the forest this summer, I gathered figs, plucked from trees, and gently cradled the soft, warm flesh in my palm. I thought, a fig is a promise, a delicate kiss, a secret purple smile. So easily damaged, so soft, so welcoming; a fig seems to beat with a human heart. Split me in two, the fig whispered; just take a bite.

the baby came....

The baby came. A bud of wisdom. A flower of hope. We drift together in a muddle of time, running on a thread of feeds and sleeps. I try to eat, drink and write with one hand. "She is so tiny" everyone says. "You forget how small babies are". We marvel at her delicate, miniature limbs. Tender. Ferocious. Cradled in my arms. She has changed lives. In a blink of months she will be transformed. For now each day, hour requires an Everest force; meeting the mountain, smelling the flower, tasting the breath of fresh life.

Rilke's Double Kingdom: Coming back, going forward, stepping around

Spring is here this week, soft as the smell of warm baked cake. Gentle temperatures and tulips decorate our days. I've fallen from this blog, had my head in hospices, death, funerals and grief; dark, intimate spaces. I am also pregnant. So, I've been traveling in two directions, living in a place akin to Rilke's Double Kingdom. Orpheus comes and goes perpetually, as the poets come and go, roses blooming, falling and dying, only to bloom again. In the double kingdom voices are mild and eternal, mourning  becomes music. So, maybe, I'll be saying goodbye to this space. Maybe, I'll step around here a little while longer. There are so many goodbyes and new beginnings...

Black beans and Vermeer

I was cooking black beans yesterday. Piles of black diamonds in an inky broth, studded with a carrot, a bay leaf and silky strips of leek. 

Suddenly, I thought of Vermeer's domestic scenes; dull, "dead coloring", over-layered with glazes of red and yellow, locked into place with a touch of pearl.

Served with greek yogurt, Jamaican hot sauce, cheddar cheese and a sprinkle of spring onions they tasted delicious too!

granite flesh

December is here. The year is almost turning and the word flesh has just come whispering in my ear. An Old English poetry-word for "body" was flæsc-hama, literally "flesh-home." The French say we can be bien dans sa peau, to feel right inside your skin, to be comfortable in the body we call our domicile. These days I am encircled by bodies travelling through illness and growth, spinning pirouettes on the tightrope of  life.  I recently visited a rock collection in a Musée d'Histoire Naturelle. Hunks of granite, ancient earth flesh carried the memories of a million other days. Softly, spoken words. Sshhh..they murmured, we are still here.

Half-hidden november mornings

Today, I nestle in a half-hidden morning, tucked inside the taste of croissant crumbs and a return to bed, after breakfast. Returning to bed is always good. I curl like a cat into the spirals of dull clouds that line the sky; autumn is here. Two busy months have spun my body into a peripatetic pace, measured by alarm calls, train coffee and limbs reaching out to strangers,  the logos trying to twist a rope, upon which we may walk together. Today, I unwind the cords, unpack the bags and dismantle the relentless clock. I sink into the sofa with detective novels, listening to The Godfather:Love Theme while I think about eating raclette; melted cheese and pencil grey skies. Movement and repose. 

the reclusive room

Am away from home, in a hotel room, where the bathroom tiles are edged in Air Force Blue. Night has fallen and trash TV fills the space between the walls; a mild, restful, gaudy background buzz. I am draped or slumped upon the bed; my limbs burrow between a phone, a damp towel, a loop of cables, a winter hat, a blue leopard print umbrella; I am waiting to eat a pot of rice pudding, spoonfuls of comfort laced with cinnamon. Next to me, there is a much-thumbed magazine that I purloined from reception, as a plump young woman with empty chocolate eyes said "Bonne soirée".

I am here, admiring the curve of light falling from the standing lamp, colonizing this makeshift home. The Air Force Blue bathroom tiles remind me of my grandparent's house, the heady scent of the lavender hedges that lined their short garden path. But, nothing else here belongs to me. Anything could happen. There is a freedom in this anonymous expanse, a dreary land where everything is to be invented, again. "Aren't you lonely when you travel?", people ask, I always smile. Movement was written into my childhood and I developed a passion, a taste of wandering, I own a thirst for lone ranging that has yet to be quenched. This borrowed, short-term occupation is my interim caretaker; a fleeting hearth for my frame. Fleet from the old English to flit, to float; in this hotel room the flash of a bird's wing across the sky would have to be called evanescent. 

thinking....

Thinking about this post written by Marion, about staring horror in the face. Thinking about packing to travel, shaking summer dresses free from boxes and the fact that the sun might shine one day. Thinking about a book I am writing about anthropology, bodies and hospitals ; what is traced between the walls while you lie in sickness and the person who cares stands over you. Thinking about spirals painted in paint, a vortex of trickled, splattered colour. Thinking, as the sun rises to a sullen sky and the wind puffs cold breath on a slate grey sea. Thinking about a day soon when we hit the road, with the kids sprawled in the back of the van, surrounded by a nest of books and dolls. Thinking about clowns, women and another text about sex and laughter; Pan and the right of a mother to roar. Thinking about an image of green, emerald rockets blasting across the sky. Thinking about waking up soon and just aiming that day to buy some cake and swim in a river and bask in the sun. Just thinking...

Green is the color of June

Green is the color of June : verdure, soft moss, chartreuse and lime. A color born from too much rain; drips and drops, torn from the sky, an unbroken deluge of water. Green is the color of June. Green is unlucky whisper the actors, the sailors and my grandmother-in-law, who wore red lipstick and hitched up her skirt to catch a tan when the sun shone bright. Green is the color of June.

Green was my favorite color as a child. I had green underwear, socks and pants, a green and white striped top and a pair of shorts. Green is growing, green is living, green is envy and rage; bearing burnt copper. Green is the color born from the mountains, emerald lava trickling from the skies. Limpid green, the sea is thriving. Green is the color of June.

running on empty, riding on the train, everywhere is blue

Ten days ago, I caught an evening train. I was running on empty, end-of-day, end-of-book, end-of-course; the sky was the gentlest blue. I could have sat in the carriage for days, for years; watched the flat green, the night fall, the street lamps alighting one-by-one, dots on the i's of the railroad towns. Slumped in my chair, I leant my head on the accordioned curtain, watched the passengers reading, caressing screens with idle fingers. On the station platform, a plump man stood on tiptoes and exchanged unheard words with the driver. We left, the women opposite giggled. A pretty girl with a spotty forehead gazed anxiously at her phone, hesitated as she read, chewed gum and tucked one arm around her waist, protectively. Everywhere was blue.

Dancing with the moon

I've been in a vortex these past six weeks, spinning in a twirl of flu bugs, decorators, running courses and learning to love the night. Sliding shuffle shoes, I've embraced the midnight hours, been burning the candle at both ends while I finish my book. I am tired from dancing with the moon. But, I am happy to have befriended time from sunset to sunrise; sweet, relentless, nocturnal hours.

slipping into 2013

Here is a pretty picture of a door knocker, taken in the hot August streets of Pamplona. I am sick in bed, sliding gently into 2013. Tucked under my duvet, surrounded by my manuscript, Battleborn and a scary French book about linguistics - that I have promised myself I'll read - I alternately groan, rewrite paragraphs and window shop food blogs. I am nursing a bad head and wearing thick socks. Still, it's cosy in here. Bonne année.

digging into Christmas: tartelettes au chocolat

We dig into Christmas, hollow out a space and fill it to the brim with: homemade stockings, pound shop key rings, mistletoe and stewed red cabbage served with chantrelle mushrooms that the vegetable man said he picked from the forest just next to his house. We sit beside the fire and mislay our sense of time in embroidered vintage tablecloths and silk PJs. Gifts are unwrapped, toys built and thank-yous said. In the middle of the day, he encourages fresh air and we are blown from the appartement and venture outside wearing fake fur coats that are not discreet, but fun. Upon returning, we eat, nibble, drink and I finish the day munching my chocolate ganache tart. Pre-bake little tartlettes of a sweetened pastry. Then, melt chocolate in a bain-marie. Heat double cream until nearing boiling. Add to chocolate with a smidgen of butter. When it resembles chocolate mayonnaise stop stirring. It's ready. Fill pastry cases and refridgerate. Yum. Parfait.

these days, just before christmas

These days, we are walking in the forest, nestling into our cosy home, burrowing into Christmas. I have baked a cake, unexpectedly. Decorated a tree. I am reading Foucault, Claire Vaye Watkins and a book about the origins of writing. Science is reassuring, I tell him as we sip tiny glasses of blackberry gin, lit by the winking of fairy lights. Philosophy structures thought, I explain and we talk about that and then my vegetable soup, made from turnips, carrots, leeks, potatoes and a handful of chestnuts. I flavoured the soup with sprigs of thyme and a solitary bay leaf; liquidized it was divine. 

art rhythms

On the 14th of December, I am thinking about the way we organize time, our rhythms as we make art: do you snap time into pieces, travel to and fro, hold it, encircle it or lose all sense of time. When I make theatre, time is ritualised, an organised limbic experience for the actors and spectators; a collectif sense of time preceding from beginning to middle to end. Whilst, writing time is constant, always at the back of my mind, words and ideas churning; like waves that rise up from my inside until I am full and then, the water pours out onto the page. 

handles turning on the last days of autumn

Early, I leave hot coffee and jumble of brooms. Outside clouds hang like sky whales,  pencil grey on turquoise sky. A pinky ink is seaping into the daybreak. Bold golden light carries the dawn to a tar black, starless earth that is frozen, stone daubed with a swift breath of frost. Soon the sun will rise, unlatching the door to green grass. Handles turning on the last days of autumn light.

a winter morning

I leave my home wrapped in the smell of baked christmas cake, driving, steering through the darkness, the cars opposite like miners with headlamps, ready to descend into the pit, the trees line the hedgerows and point us forwards, driving, on this road there is no turning back, half-awake and half-asleep in this period of hibernation where the animals are tucked into earthy holes, suddenly when i turn there is the winter light, a hot globe burning, hanging low, just above a lace of black branches, hope and warmth where life goes on.

jam tarts in bed

There is nothing quite like jam tarts in bed, crumbs wriggling into sheets as you take a bite. It is comfort, safety, like a bedtime kiss from a parent who says it will all be right.  A chill draft is sneaking through my window, but I under my Welsh blanket I am eating jam. Slivers of pastry linger at the back of my mouth as I creep, deeper into my bed. There is nothing quite like jam tarts in bed. Do try!

watching what sophie calle saw...

Sat in the Perrotin gallery, I watched three screens, three backs, three people watching the sea, meeting the sea for the very first time. I watched what Sophie Calle saw. I watched the waves roll, shoulders shift and then one of the people turned, faced me, watching me as I watched him having first seen the sea. On another screen a man turned, faced us, watching him as he looked out of the screen, the experience marking each line on his face. Eyes closed, open. Tears ran. On the third scree, a women turned. Faced us facing her, her face facing us. All of meeting in the gallery, for the very first time. Sat in the Perrotin gallery, I watched  the three screens a second time and then, a third. Mesmerized by first times, I wanted to stay there, in the pure white room, in the tenderness, caught in a neat nostalgic rewind, for the first time, another first time, another first...