tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80739624746116123372024-03-05T12:27:28.169-08:00Lily Freeah LeomaLilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-43792044596700967522023-10-27T07:43:00.000-07:002023-11-23T07:55:09.442-08:00Handprint<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-19hrZMonzhf40x55ZVpRLLRkLMSjchgLUSX_03-ocX5fvn5mxMsB4FZquBzZ0GfZiQSSHMPzI2QbEkwHu48VCmcVTnBWs7e3C2D3-DzKDmcdBhI6bV01X-0qvw487p4-CcKqdOMSQdcRS5DigHI71lTo9d8_ZTOt-XlrcA222WESPKyN8dgbtUHVyw/s3806/20230826_105915.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2140" data-original-width="3806" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-19hrZMonzhf40x55ZVpRLLRkLMSjchgLUSX_03-ocX5fvn5mxMsB4FZquBzZ0GfZiQSSHMPzI2QbEkwHu48VCmcVTnBWs7e3C2D3-DzKDmcdBhI6bV01X-0qvw487p4-CcKqdOMSQdcRS5DigHI71lTo9d8_ZTOt-XlrcA222WESPKyN8dgbtUHVyw/s16000/20230826_105915.jpg" /></a></div><p>Walking home from work I am struck by the silence. Two white wardrobe doors sit horizontally against a low wall, their doors frosted glass or plastic. The front garden with the tall hedges on three sides sends out its watery sounds; there is a hidden fountain inside and miniature raised beds holding secret vegetables or perhaps new flowers. It is always colourful in there because passersby can’t see it. </p><p>Ahead there is an ambulance with its left-hand side fully open, a side door wound up and lights shining out into the late afternoon, somehow alive in a way I’ve only seen in films. Two police cars flank it, both empty with their lights turned off. One is pulled in towards the pavement at a sharp angle as if it stopped in a hurry but now all its urgency has gone. Three police officers loiter on the pavement. Their voices murmur like the water of the fountain a few doors down. I cross to the other side of the road, walking past a man waiting by the parked cars. As I pass him he starts to follow, a few steps behind me.</p><p><i>Foxes</i>, he says. </p><p>I don’t say anything.</p><p><i>There was a fox just up there, eyeing me. </i></p><p>I look at him as if to ask if he was scared, and he says, <i>I wasn’t scared, but have you seen that video? Of a man getting chased by a fox? Nasty.</i></p><p>I tell him I’ve not seen it. Something in his voice is warm. He’s in a light puffer jacket and black jeans, headphones on. </p><p><i>It was watching me, see?</i></p><p>We look around as if we might find it. My road is coming up. </p><p><i>They always congregate here</i>, I say, and it’s true, though you don’t normally see them until later.</p><p>We part at the corner and he says goodbye as I say good luck, and then he says good luck too. At home all the lights are off; I’m the first one back. I unpeel myself from my clothes, step into the shower, feel the air warm up. I dress and make tea and sit at the kitchen window. </p><p>In my peripheral vision, there are handprints on the walls. Bodies from warzones fertilise the soil; their skin feeds the vegetables. I cook spinach and sweet potatoes and black beans and not one of these things grew locally. I wonder when local became both insult and aspiration, as I look more intently at the marks on the wall – no, they are footprints. Sole prints from attempted inversions, toe marks trailing down the paint. I still can’t do handstands without the solid support of a bare wall, but I’m trying. The flat downstairs opens and closes its front door with an anonymous, high-pitched thanks bye, meaning the Australian woman whose name I can’t remember must be in after all, though I believed myself alone in this building, walking up and down singing loudly, always reinventing songs from a past life. I wonder what she’s received and think of all the letters I used to send out into the world, all the notes and torn-out scraps, all the ink on paper, all the hands my words have passed through. His scarred fingers.</p><p>I walk through late sunlight, past a house plant whose leaves sound papery as we move against each other. I think of him elsewhere in the city, moving through the same light. I dreamt about him last night; he’d grown larger and my mum was there. She told me she regretted all the things she’d never said to him and went up dream stairs to find him, to tell him that no, she was angry actually, so angry the anger might never stop, but in the dream I told her it didn’t matter. Over messages she often tells me how sorry she is – <i>I should have warned you off; I should have told you to leave, to get out of there </i> – but it wasn’t her fault. Whenever I have these dreams I think about relaying them, but one of my colleagues at work whose older years and panoply of stories are eternally appealing told me that dreams aren’t for analysing, but for the processing of the soul. I wash my hands and light a candle. Train sounds mix with late builders packing up across the road. </p><p>The dream residues are less enduring now. I dream that I have a complicated but not bad-natured conversations with people from the past. When I tell new friends about the life we used to live, they look confused. <i>They’re not what I was expecting</i>, my housemate tells me. She studies their faces on her phone screen, having searched for them on Instagram, pinching the pictures to make them bigger. <i>They all look very… normal.</i> I tell her I can’t imagine a life where I didn’t know what it felt like to go down to the living room every day and find them sitting there in musty dressing gowns with greasy hair and plates of scraps on the arms of the sofa. </p><p>The front door opens and closes again and my housemates filter in. I hear them chattering, hear music filling the kitchen, hear my voice being shouted up the stairs, and: <i>still ready for nine?! </i>We’re going out. </p><p>Everyone told me it would take a year and a half, maybe two, to be <i>over it</i>. I realise, now, that this sense of moving on is more like moving away, as I struggle to remember the contours of the kitchen sink or the hob at which we cooked. I cannot conjure up his laugh, no matter how hard I try. I struggle to remember him as anything other than a collection of words and walks and body parts which only exist in the memories of the ways they touched me. Perhaps this is normal, or perhaps it isn’t. </p><p>Tonight, we’re going out to dance in a gallery that stays open late into the night, and when that closes we’ll walk along the river to a smaller venue where the rooms are warren-like and the music changes with the lights. We’ll wear matching suits without meaning to. We’ll know all the words.</p><p>Sometimes I wonder if my brain is still in the throes of breaking down, working through the slow violence of his aftermath. I Google it, of course, and learn about the causes of unexplained tinnitus. I learn that I might experience overeating, undereating, anxiety, slowness of breath, quickness of breath, insomnia, lethargy, hopelessness, and depression in the wake of it all. At least he left his mark, perhaps he’ll muse, as he completes his order on Deliveroo or sits on his swivel chair, laptop screen dimming, late light glazing the lower ground floor window. His room will smell of salt, or maybe the women he sleeps with will give him generically wood-scented candles for his birthday. </p><p>When everything closes, I’ll suggest that we stay up. We’ll stumble to the nearest station and catch the earliest train to Brighton. The sky will be getting lighter but we’ll race down to the seafront anyway and catch the last of the pink dawn reflected in the sea. The pebbles will be damp through our clothes and we’ll plunge our hands into the water to test the temperature. It will bite. As the promenade fills up with people on their morning runs we’ll go in search of coffee and breakfast. </p><p>I’m ready before the others so I make drinks for us all and watch the sun going down. My candle has a few minutes left to burn. I watch them both until the light disappears. </p><div><br /></div>Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-3703905659085093182023-10-13T07:34:00.000-07:002023-11-23T07:39:27.433-08:00White Sheets<span id="docs-internal-guid-7c0a4b59-7fff-f000-0a87-be42a47b3a24"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV3nTZI8xTnrsodK_fhT_cdt_0gJOSfm8RSMkStnm9_2ApbrVgfLpCDGlAL5AsNrV-Y98f4GbyTak7P2-xUCdgDmy6J2WFUvh9WiWrMzNa3nfL0OOwck77cUbXlb2jM9zKScbmWyJNP-nBF93urB1oaSuQjHB3ygSp9B4BkkNGBiomwNHQDFS8Uyf6yA/s4032/20230502_065631.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV3nTZI8xTnrsodK_fhT_cdt_0gJOSfm8RSMkStnm9_2ApbrVgfLpCDGlAL5AsNrV-Y98f4GbyTak7P2-xUCdgDmy6J2WFUvh9WiWrMzNa3nfL0OOwck77cUbXlb2jM9zKScbmWyJNP-nBF93urB1oaSuQjHB3ygSp9B4BkkNGBiomwNHQDFS8Uyf6yA/s16000/20230502_065631.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">i never liked white sheets </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">before</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">i thought they showed up</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">too many secrets - </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">cat shit on the pillow</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">blood leaking out</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">from places it wasn’t supposed to</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">back then </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">i always favoured psychedelic</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">headache prints</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">patterns to worry along to</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">with head nodding</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">dropping off into uneasy dreams</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">of a busy life</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">like the blue and pink </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">flowers he ripped </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">off sleeping </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">me </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">the last time he stayed over</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">mouth a </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">big O </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">and words</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">coming out</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">which usually didn’t</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">come out</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">usually so quiet</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">usually nicer not so </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">rough not</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">like that</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">sit in bed on white sheets</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">now</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">better to know they’re not the same</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">and when there are stains</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">to wash them</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">and to sit quietly</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">with a careful selection</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">of songs in the background</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">thinking </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">about the pieces of me that went with him</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">more than</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">a few books and a clock and</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">a banjo mandolin</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">i left my body too</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">in his mother’s house</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">he said</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">he’d never enjoyed having sex</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">with bleeding women</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">and i said o </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">okay </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">without the heart to tell him</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">everything that made me feel </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">because he was mine</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">and i thought i could make him</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">good</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">he’d always been told</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">he was so good</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">and i regretted telling him</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">like the others</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">because we let him remember</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">what he wanted to</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">such a giver</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">total pleaser</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">nosing between another pair of legs</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">and liking the smell</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">actually</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">though he didn’t remember to check in on the girl </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">who texted him in tears from London</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">after days of silence before a single message</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">made of mostly ampersands </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">to tell him it was over because</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">she was never meant to be the other woman</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">that he’d made her become</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">but he did remember the first time</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">she saw his cock</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">and told him </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">it was </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">good</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">his chest puffed up for days</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">growing out of his clothes</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">hunched over laptop screens</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">fantasies of easy access</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">under summer dresses</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">memories which smell </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">of patchouli in too-long hair</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">from when he stayed in my hometown</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">to tell me all about it</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">the way she squirmed</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">under</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">it had to have been </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">so good</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">to be her</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "EB Garamond", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">under his hands</span></p></span>Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-81571633531797559112023-09-22T07:16:00.000-07:002023-11-23T07:34:07.625-08:00morning headache<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0G3B67pmw-MD6GQNmxNrB3PVmbPWW7ue_dgo1FFRRiGXI5OY9-XYcuZIgyHu37FvDG5izdvQgzGS1t4fB7loDFygHeeHHG9MwpV3Gd028nHDl-EPDXoPDLHWAWl3mjn-bhk9JUbhhSIWsMUFPyHD0KV2ymA-CpyV8A72RA1KiAoyi4yc7fT_0U-LqbQ/s4032/20230621_120829.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0G3B67pmw-MD6GQNmxNrB3PVmbPWW7ue_dgo1FFRRiGXI5OY9-XYcuZIgyHu37FvDG5izdvQgzGS1t4fB7loDFygHeeHHG9MwpV3Gd028nHDl-EPDXoPDLHWAWl3mjn-bhk9JUbhhSIWsMUFPyHD0KV2ymA-CpyV8A72RA1KiAoyi4yc7fT_0U-LqbQ/s16000/20230621_120829.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p>Tight knot at the back of my neck, two tight knots, from muscular nots lining either side of my spine, filling my head with sleep, creeping into the back of my eyeballs, sending feelers of red into capillaries, circling the iris and dancing up the corona of gold and back into the brain again, through the thick pink worms of it, lining them, making them constrict, holding back the blood, sucking out the oxygen, demanding sympathy and skeptical permissions to stop, go home, lie down, take it easy. Write yourself in history, write yourself on history, lean on something, someone, lean harder, lean sideways, lean sideways, look askance, pick the leanest piece of meat and eat it for pudding. Mix flour and dates and call it a cake, mother. Mix berries and oats and feed them to a crowd. Ask for no permission, ask for no elision or ellipsis, do not judge when you overeat or overcook, don’t cry when you spill your cup of lemon water. Let the ritual take on a life of its own, let it cascade around you. Write x’s as if you were still in algebra, look down over your shoulder as if it were not the reason for your aching head. When we sat in Chester, down a set of stairs and on a table to the left, we ordered cocktails and nachos and olives and breads. We ate cheeses and olive oils. We waited a long time for our dinner and we had already missed our train. I clean my nose for ten minutes twice a day and use it as an excuse to look at my own face. Do you know how much your face changes for me, depending on the length of your facial hair? It is strange to think that the amount you love someone can be predicated on the length of their beard. If hair grows on after death, imagine the love I will hold, the flame I will shelter, the bone I will hide for your festering corpse, your skeletal frame, your skull still clinging to its long black fringe. We walked the same path every day with the smell of hops in our hair. You told me it was sugar. They told me to buy gummy bears for my hair. They told me not to let gimmicks slip into my writing; I am not that kind of girl. She said that she wasn’t a girl at all and that I should call her they. I wished that I could go away and come back as a mouse or an orchid. As a little ant on the planes of astroturf. As an old book in the bowels of the city. As a cornice in the reading room. A corona. Ovule. Minuet. Pirouette. Lanyard. A piece of paper, a note from the doctor, an unworn swimming costume, an old towel, a toenail in my jacket pocket, a piece of sellotape pressed against my arm. When I read that, I remember, she was as slippery but solid as her prose. I want to pour from the sink and slip down the plughole. I want to be salted and earthed. Make love to the soil. Make me into coffee and boil me. Eat me for pudding. Make me lean. I will sing out this pain. I will scream. I will be a child again. I will look at you over my shoulder and feel something slip. I will rock with the washing machine as it creaks on its plinth. I will drink from a straw that harnesses me and makes me again, builds me up from the bacteria that lives inside my lower lip. I will be born again as a sweetener. I will kill villains on television. I will murder you when you bash your spoon against the lip of the pan. I will tell you I love you and we will vow to live forever. You will give everything to me and I will consider giving it back. We will talk about the numbers thirty, forty, and fifty. Water will come out hot and go in cold. Blood will go round hot. Air will come out hot. Feet will be cold and then hot. I will long to be a feather in another person’s duvet. Someone will start hammering and I will wonder why someone would do that, surely everyone knows I am ill. I will think of winter, coming. I will imagine your bare feet on gritty carpet. I will be a droplet falling from the shower. I will feel pain. I will be pain. I will ask myself for permission to lie down. It may or may not be granted.</p>Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-20223777239359580932023-09-04T06:59:00.000-07:002023-11-23T07:15:48.410-08:00You, Precursor<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL2MeMLDxlrm1OBwoPuaRvaRZqJiEi_rWv68AgL-nAX1ox09ww0sHeJLNXhbEv5THzNdYsfyeyrpXagSRhUw3fYZ40oG_hyp4WiogzK5WWZ8UTj8g44ITR01BYbapoW1SU1Onj5Tsv5FnXCpxUkJGc00yMIT0i-vVJUmTyNuLzNmv4DD-cVAKG5qFawQ/s4032/20230819_103606.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL2MeMLDxlrm1OBwoPuaRvaRZqJiEi_rWv68AgL-nAX1ox09ww0sHeJLNXhbEv5THzNdYsfyeyrpXagSRhUw3fYZ40oG_hyp4WiogzK5WWZ8UTj8g44ITR01BYbapoW1SU1Onj5Tsv5FnXCpxUkJGc00yMIT0i-vVJUmTyNuLzNmv4DD-cVAKG5qFawQ/s16000/20230819_103606.jpg" /></a></div><p>I said that I would buy the flowers myself.</p><p>I said this despite finding their names off-puttingly medicinal and reminiscent of foot cream. They rolled up the screen of the nursery catalogue website, with an RHS plant profile opened for each new suggestion: aspidistra, oxalis, acacia, calendula.</p><p>The garden was rented, damp, and overshadowed by a neighbour’s horse chestnut. It seemed like a sad thing to invest in. In the pink of the afternoon, it clung to one streak of half-sunlight, a watercolour smudge across the paving stones and the dirt.</p><p>As you scrolled, you read phrases to me, as if trying to prove a point: <i>Oxalis corniculata has a creeping disposition and diminutive yellow flowers. In time these give way to upright seed capsules...</i></p><p>I watched your teeth as you read and wondered who wrote these things. I didn’t like their use of adjectives. If I were writing your plant profile, I would invent an inaccessibly long Latin name and describe your growth patterns according to the hours of the day. Favoured aspect: early morning, North, South, East, or West. Exposure: sheltered and well-wrapped, susceptible to frost.</p><p>In profile, you are uncannily like a weasel, I thought. Your face was pointed and perfectly-toothed. When you spoke, it sounded like each word was a seed, held between incisors and flicked into the air. There was a fine down of hair all over your face. You were too unselfconscious to pluck beneath your eyebrows. </p><p>My mind was wandering. I thought about us inside the house as if we were two characters in a book, and wondered if you could tell that I wasn’t listening.</p><p>I pulled myself off your tightly-made bed and went to the kitchen. I made a cup of tea in the dark. I couldn’t stop thinking about the name of the flower that had just started to turn brown on the trees outside my window. I wondered how it was that flowers could grow on trees and bushes, from seeds and bulbs, with no discrimination.</p><p>My stomach was so empty that I started to shake. I ate five biscuits with no breaths in between, but I wasn’t any less hungry afterwards. I turned to the kitchen window and put my hand on the glass, hoping to leave a handprint and wondering how hard I would have to push before it would break.</p><p><br /></p><p>*</p><p><br /></p><p>You told me that the parakeets that had taken over Hyde Park, Richmond, Hampstead, had hunted London bats into extinction. Meanwhile, the shadow of a suspended shirt swayed across the vegetable patch. It swung back and forth on the washing line. I lay supine on a deck chair and let my skin be dappled, longing for freckles but getting the patchwork shadows of leaves and catkins and the corners of bed sheets instead. The blue was hot from inside my sunglasses. We might never see another cloud again, I thought.</p><p><br /></p><p>*</p><p><br /></p><p>I wanted to make a narrative that meant something without autobiography, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I made shapes out of silver eyes and wings and set them loose. A beautiful, strong-winged bird. A girl with metal rings in her eyebrows, arm outstretched, leading me up a set of stairs. A tiny, thin-boned bird with translucent skin, held in place with ink and metal bars. A feathered, soft-winged thing, lifting me into a nest lined with bad timing and impossibility. </p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I am</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I will</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I know </span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Maybe I did</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Maybe I do</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The room had blurred into block colours and silver eyes. I saw a moth on the wrong side of the window. The lamplight-moonlight-headlights-would-be-candlelight flashed over every face and held it there, for a moment, for a lifetime, between each blink. There was never enough time, and too much possibility. The sting of it pushed through my ribs and expanded inside like a bubble.</span></p><p><br /></p><p>*</p><p><br /></p><p>I am staring down at my lap and in my lap there is a picture of your face. I am staring at a picture of your face and trying to visualise how this picture of your face differs from your actual face. You are far away. This picture was taken from across a field and zoomed in using a long-focus lens. It has spotted the spot on your cheek that you thought would be invisible from all that distance. You are far away. You are not you in this picture anymore. You have grown older. You have wrinkles now - just two, between your eyebrows, but they are there and they were not there on that day in the field when you looked back over your shoulder at the glint of the lens in the sunlight. You looked sad the last time I saw you. In this picture, you are smiling, but I don’t feel as though you are smiling at me. Your eyes don’t meet anything - they are focusing on a glimmer, on a flash, on a reflection of light.</p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So when I stare at this picture of your face and into the reproduced eyes in the picture of your face which are themselves looking at a something that was so transient that it might as well have been nothing, I can’t see you at all. The harder I look, the more the components of the picture of your face become unfocused, disconnected, unreal. We are both looking at nothing, but our looks don’t intersect. We are both too far away.</span></p><p><br /></p><p> *</p><p><br /></p><p>Sometimes, though, happiness creeps up on you without any reason or notice.</p><p>Tomorrow, I would step off a bus at the stop nearest to home, and it would start to rain. The drops would fall timidly on the pavement, not quite there. I would feel myself flushed with warmth from my toes as they almost touched the drops on the ground, as new drops fell imperceptibly into my hair which smelled of your shampoo. I would walk in the halo of that scent, in the echo of your voice, cross the road without looking and wish that a car would crush me, then, and let me die in complete and unfounded happiness. I would reach the door, put the key in the lock and feel it turn. I would wish that all locks were so easy to unlock and that I could make myself turn, so predictably, so gently, just like that, with so little pressure.</p><div><br /></div><div>- L</div><br /><p></p>Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-50395301033455492782023-08-29T09:58:00.005-07:002023-08-29T10:01:25.360-07:00pleasure extension<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDx8wriHICQZKZJ2cdAjTVvpkk5sEqzl-gdfK-My5JE7WCqjKoYAdOrM8eQkm8Qv_vrgUY2Fh0fz7-D6KGu6W3F-0yBqnOD5kLxqUqhZuFohRWbCyMK78Ky7KiIf4GitV4fifBAaOPKPNl-iYI-mhykkRC6dY-pno6CrGySsDWnOcyNnCREyKv-xtbIg/s1024/WhatsApp%20Image%202023-07-18%20at%2020.43.07.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="771" data-original-width="1024" height="482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDx8wriHICQZKZJ2cdAjTVvpkk5sEqzl-gdfK-My5JE7WCqjKoYAdOrM8eQkm8Qv_vrgUY2Fh0fz7-D6KGu6W3F-0yBqnOD5kLxqUqhZuFohRWbCyMK78Ky7KiIf4GitV4fifBAaOPKPNl-iYI-mhykkRC6dY-pno6CrGySsDWnOcyNnCREyKv-xtbIg/w640-h482/WhatsApp%20Image%202023-07-18%20at%2020.43.07.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><p>swallow fish and barnacle rock, steep steps up but harder down on heel-press, cut, want to bone. not having the right words for this new country. found goggles and fresh eyesight down to the base where a white bag hung like jellyfish and a plastic cup surfaced, reserved for the bin - eat up, eat up. buongiorno and words misunderstood. waiting for initiative but it doesn't work that way. beautiful man chipping at marble drain covers - hammer and dark hair, face down into the ground. hands on hips and thighs, proprietary. patron. pool and gather resources. espresso. due. my due. paid but also not. idyll that can't last so rag rag rag. not good enough to stop the shutter at the speed we need. too late. texts sent home and more questions than answers. more answers than we knew to ask for. fior di latte. i don't know the right words but i know they're not these. topless in the sea. naked and topless and anyone could see - old man, green shorts, vegetables growing. artichoke weeds and peaches on the verge - grass scrub, dark phone lit, pair of men, dog between the legs, not bad people just a lift to the bar. plenty out and too young to kiss so just one there, on the cheek. prego. burned legs. instagrammers i admire eat chicken from fast food shops and i feel strange. i read my old self's wishes and i feel sorry. i'm sorry. there is so much more. look up. catch eyes with flowers i can't name. but when i float up i'm carried. it's miraculous. i'm carried and i could flip over backwards, feet in the air, and find myself in otherworld caves climbing out to this brighter light, if i could only fall - open - apart - up.</p><p>L x</p>Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-10999757721297293982021-07-29T05:06:00.003-07:002022-01-13T05:57:32.643-08:00Starting Again II<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEidD7n9InA9reV67U2qct09epaRlE_QuTzEiKUtkAxxA2fQasg9OnBobQL9UE3yVYiNo1DSfrDrjpDUFahCRGE6M3OK5A3L0O9LUSMEJHoobckrTBCnAtL5U4gD2Gc8gj1SiqLDNQUpDNHq_90BGaPHByHzcZYMT8wGt-xiKgk7PICsVzolitO9dxg=s4032" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEidD7n9InA9reV67U2qct09epaRlE_QuTzEiKUtkAxxA2fQasg9OnBobQL9UE3yVYiNo1DSfrDrjpDUFahCRGE6M3OK5A3L0O9LUSMEJHoobckrTBCnAtL5U4gD2Gc8gj1SiqLDNQUpDNHq_90BGaPHByHzcZYMT8wGt-xiKgk7PICsVzolitO9dxg=s16000" /></a></div><br />I have lived before, and imagined, and written, and been read - but when life is very hard, these things feel impossible to acknowledge or remember. <p></p><p>So I'm going back to basics - I find the trunk from under the bed and pick through old achievements, pictures, stories, fragments. I find my first prize-winning poem - a sonnet. I find demented drawings. I find shrines to people I've loved and friends I'll always call mine. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh4TGW42pmGl_KrFJIxw3Ffui4YJFZ-n6b0VL8GgAkLOZl7aem5RgZzgq9p_PDlzXVc2cHwQx53T0Wb7-XsvTtuE-6_0vsKKtBJfHSt-WTl-oCe5Rs4hyk9cd-DpT17T5HIfZ5d9DXAblVoFgbqYNI5JOWNULL0JZov5ISCB1VJCYYu6pcZsa-mgT8=s4032" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh4TGW42pmGl_KrFJIxw3Ffui4YJFZ-n6b0VL8GgAkLOZl7aem5RgZzgq9p_PDlzXVc2cHwQx53T0Wb7-XsvTtuE-6_0vsKKtBJfHSt-WTl-oCe5Rs4hyk9cd-DpT17T5HIfZ5d9DXAblVoFgbqYNI5JOWNULL0JZov5ISCB1VJCYYu6pcZsa-mgT8=s16000" /></a></div><p>L x</p>Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-28013139022055446942021-07-22T09:14:00.020-07:002022-01-13T05:57:58.071-08:00Break<p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgeWCt2FY8tRGFkcfcplCttoegp1QxkgPzhg_9poK3BYhWF-iz4fIKCv2ghQTFz_L9obI-ocgJ9_KLTjuhElOKYzAkdTS0KIXqLlmR1JmRgJfInSvGxjcSZlYScrC8HabgZBBIjmLA6-e69VCmHr3ry9xJ924RmJjmCkxxO5r1xYZIFKKeSJMBTx04=s4032" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgeWCt2FY8tRGFkcfcplCttoegp1QxkgPzhg_9poK3BYhWF-iz4fIKCv2ghQTFz_L9obI-ocgJ9_KLTjuhElOKYzAkdTS0KIXqLlmR1JmRgJfInSvGxjcSZlYScrC8HabgZBBIjmLA6-e69VCmHr3ry9xJ924RmJjmCkxxO5r1xYZIFKKeSJMBTx04=s16000" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p style="text-align: left;">break (verb)</p><p style="text-align: left;"><br />to (cause something to) separate suddenly or violently into two or more pieces, or to (cause something to) stop working by being damaged</p><p style="text-align: left;">to destroy or end something, or to come to an end</p><p style="text-align: left;">to fail to keep a law, rule, or promise</p><p style="text-align: left;">to go somewhere or do something by force</p><p style="text-align: left;">to lose your confidence, determination, or ability to control yourself, or to make someone do this</p><p style="text-align: left;">to become known or to make something become known</p><p style="text-align: left;">(of waves) to reach and move over the beach, hit a cliff or wall</p><p style="text-align: left;">(of the weather) to change suddenly and usually become worse</p><p style="text-align: left;">(of dawn or day) when dawn or day breaks, the sun starts to appear in the sky early in the morning</p><p style="text-align: left;">a short period of rest</p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">I sat in the common that was more mine than anyone else's. I knew the roots of every tree, the place to find the damsons, the loops to make when you wanted to walk for hours without seeing a car. </p><p style="text-align: left;">I wrote on a fallen trunk. The date: the same as all the days before. I wrote about all the ways a body could break and all the ways it could be forced. To split in two, four, six, more, to reach too far over beaches and cliffs and lakes and walls, to rise too early, to change irrevocably, to become worse suddenly, to feel the hurt violently, to be so destroyed that the only thing left is to end completely. But when you survive, there are ways to make hope out of all that breaking, and the rotten parts start to give way to green shoots and new years.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The date hadn't changed in a month and three days, but I would - eventually. I wouldn't be a coward. I wouldn't walk on and say nothing. In the night, three boys sang Angels outside the bedroom window and when I woke up there were fresh sunflowers by the pillow. I sat amongst blue velvet cushions, drank coffee from a small cup, and put on a new white shirt. The air smelled as I knew it would and the sky was as blue. I slipped out into a morning already as warm as skin and went to reclaim the pieces that had survived. </p><p style="text-align: left;"><br />L x</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p>Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-42760421571820598852021-06-10T03:04:00.000-07:002022-01-13T09:54:33.931-08:00Video: june<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fjxDc63HuKo" width="320" youtube-src-id="fjxDc63HuKo"></iframe></div><br />I want you to imagine falling in love with something so completely that all you want is to be drowned by rain. I want you to think of the lightness, the highness, the colourlessness of being obliterated by feeling, just for a moment. If you’ve known the rush of an epiphany, this should be easy. If not, try to picture coloured lights strung between trees, outshining the pale yellow stars of a London night in June. A piece of life whiter than sun, darker than an open mouth, softer than the shortest hairs at the back of your neck. Feel them. Imagine them smoothed under new fingertips, deep into the night, closer to dawn now, rabbit-soft, a moment to live a whole life for. Pause. <p></p><p>Now, imagine being so beloved that the outer limits of yourself become clear water and golden light, suffusing the earth and the sky into which you are plugged with the hum of possibility. I want you to feel your own expansiveness and to know that some would pour out every breath they’ll ever breathe to fertilise the soil you stand in. Picture the soft silver viridescence of lambs ears and birch trees, or the butter-hued greens of seedlings unfurling from their paper cases and into their first sighting of spring. Feel the slow warm rise of sap and the shade-dappled coaxing of the sun, dimmer and lighter, lighter and dimmer.</p><p>Remember that this newness is time-bound. It is a feeling always on the point of gone, about to be nudged off by the wind, by the rain, by a catch in the breath, spilling over itself and into the romance of the past. So. There is usually pain to come. There will be silences and misunderstandings and the slow falling away of frost. But in this moment the leaves are nothing but leaves and your lungs are full. Brush a thumb against your palm and draw a circle there. Imagine yourself high and light, strings snapped and blown away. A flutter in the whiteness of remembering. A life seen and passed over, burned out in a flicker. Water-weighted, if just for now. Brought down again and sated by the blessings of the rain.</p><div><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">- for the only you I'll ever write to, after Ali and 'May'. First screened 21 June 2020. </span></i></div><div><br /></div><div>L x</div>Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-77589637712921708702020-06-10T09:54:00.003-07:002022-01-13T09:58:24.743-08:00Writing: the opera<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi0PIr9tecFEXODxQw5aY5uOgYDENSArUo8ZHLAIpiBoXoaLUbLt2Wtx3CYFTSYEcG0fY8ACVnvf8-7NHPSCsekaIA1XXUfTf6Jc_vRB8WNVlqX1Q996Sae_-f7aFO23LvgZS4u_3YFAQQ_JHMibNS3-t8Iqbh6uc3A7Sh-SaHD_yffXAj0vXOsiQU=s4032" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi0PIr9tecFEXODxQw5aY5uOgYDENSArUo8ZHLAIpiBoXoaLUbLt2Wtx3CYFTSYEcG0fY8ACVnvf8-7NHPSCsekaIA1XXUfTf6Jc_vRB8WNVlqX1Q996Sae_-f7aFO23LvgZS4u_3YFAQQ_JHMibNS3-t8Iqbh6uc3A7Sh-SaHD_yffXAj0vXOsiQU=s16000" /></a><br /></p><p>It was late as I left the opera house and I felt constricted by the tragedy of everything I’d seen and only half-understood. I liked to listen to proper music as often as I could because it made me feel older and more in control. For minutes and sometimes hours afterwards, I would sink into the kind of absorbed stillness that some people must feel when they are doing crosswords or filling in spreadsheets. </p><p>The best music I’d ever paid to listen to had been in the grounds of Blenheim Palace, before I knew the history of the place or the dubious reputation of the composer. I enjoyed the way the violins toyed with each other, rising and falling in patterns that I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe, before slowing down and fading away like sleep. </p><p>As I climbed onto the bus to take me back to town, I tried to grapple with the strained feeling in my throat, hating to admit that father/daughter stories always got to me like this. Two white-haired men sat down in the seats behind me and started discussing the cost of putting on the Ring Cycle and whether or not that justified the price they had paid for their concessionary tickets. In the row in front, a pale woman sank down next to her handbag and cried into the sleeve of her shirt. I could see her reflection in the bus window but I tried not to meet her watery eyes in case she felt embarrassed. </p><p>The seats of the bus were red and orange, crosshatched in thick streaks, with yellow headrests. The engine started and we turned slowly out of the car park. A few of the overhead windows were open, letting in the sound of churning gravel.</p><p>I thought about the times I had cried in public places but realised it might be easier to list the places I hadn’t cried. </p><p>The pink summer evening streaked past. The men were discussing travel cards. The woman continued to cry. Someone coughed at the back of the bus and someone else closed one of the windows, shutting in the air. </p><p>I thought back over the opera and wished that I’d remembered enough German to read between the top-notes of loss and despair. Admittedly, I enjoyed going back over each scene and putting in whatever words I wanted, but I couldn’t help but feel guilty about this habit of retrospective rewriting, as if I were sacrificing intellectual nuance for something trashy and indulgent. </p><p>I’d only had time to look up half of the synopsis beforehand, up to the part where the daughter disobeys her father and agrees to help his son. All in all this seemed like something a father should want, regardless of political dealings, but I knew the feeling of being pulled in too many directions, and I felt a twinge of sympathy as he wept and put his daughter to sleep on a big, grey rock. </p><p>Men often cried in literary settings, but I had only ever seen my dad crying when he had the flu. I tried to picture him tearing up at a piece of art - perhaps something nostalgic, end-of-life music, tinged with age and the almost-dead. I imagined him on the stage, limply holding out his arms as he doomed me to an eternity of fire, and hoped that I wouldn’t comply as easily as the daughters of fiction do.</p><div>L x</div>Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-4869020820305311382020-04-22T09:34:00.000-07:002022-01-13T09:48:25.143-08:00Writing: a story of you<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgl_z0d6e2APjZxddcrHRHmud2gmMTJ6gkg8M86IHNC2EAQEzztk7i-pf7AQf4gzNUQ9iMmdftrWzTBaWSu1nqO5K2gtQWHyJasVN7-FOCnP73XgX5FU6Kx8ePbAi0nk9Gvz2c6lyGq64_-buVTGJayXKh5nsdlB--IZTSbex6AzzvUbRBttlHq2zk=s3780" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3780" data-original-width="3024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgl_z0d6e2APjZxddcrHRHmud2gmMTJ6gkg8M86IHNC2EAQEzztk7i-pf7AQf4gzNUQ9iMmdftrWzTBaWSu1nqO5K2gtQWHyJasVN7-FOCnP73XgX5FU6Kx8ePbAi0nk9Gvz2c6lyGq64_-buVTGJayXKh5nsdlB--IZTSbex6AzzvUbRBttlHq2zk=s16000" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div><b>A story of you<br /></b><br /></div><div>I am meant to be writing a story, so I’ll write a story of you. <br /><br /></div><div>One</div><div><br />You are underground,<br />growing into spores and fungi, <br />little pieces of green. <br />You will flower into poppies<br />and daisies and everything <br />but lilies, you leave those for funerals.<br />You uncurl from the ground<br />like the screams of children<br />which are actually birds<br />calling to each other <br />from across the common. <br />You are a cocoon of heat<br />which you will only share with<br />the orchids and the ants <br />and the worms. <br />I push you into the ground<br />as a bulb and let the sun warm<br />your bulby head;<br />my mother, my children, <br />my life’s work, my dinner, <br />grown from death to little death<br />in the air pockets under the topsoil.<br /><br /></div><div>Two</div><div><br />You are a sunflower. <br />You are the seed in the centre of a sunflower. <br />You are the erasure of light and substance <br />that exists in the blackness <br />at the centre of a sunflower. <br />You began as a tiny seed, one of a collective. <br />You grew bigger and bigger, <br />developed a hard shell, <br />shone out darkly in a mass of buttery yellow <br />at the height of summer. <br />To the pupils of tired eyes, you are unexceptional. <br />Others see the deliciousness <br />of extracting you by the fingernails <br />and feeding you, one by one, <br />to the birds.<br /><br /></div><div>Three</div><div><br />You are autumn. <br />You are words in a stream of oranges, yellows, and reds. <br />A tree-lined lane and strokes of paint on paper.<br />A carpet of leaves impossibly orange, still, <br />and therefore untrodden,<br />so if I came any closer I would wear you down<br />so I can only love you from a distance, now,<br />and soon the rain will brown you anyway,<br />and then the frost will hold you<br />in premonitions of winter.<br /><br /></div><div>Four</div><div><br />You are a bird.<br />You are a bird nesting in the crock of my heart. <br />You are warmed by my ventricles massaging your bony claws. <br />Held like this, in my centre, you are soundless. <br />Feathers can’t rustle with nothing to rustle against, <br />and the sound of a bird moving in a bath full of feathers<br /> is the softest unsound I can imagine. <br />Now you are a male bird, a baby pheasant, <br />rescued from a fox and left in need of nurturing. <br />Your fragility makes a mockery of masculinity <br />and in the hot orange glow of a winter fire <br />I want to cry at the thought of <br />cold on your back and heat on your face. <br />You are nesting, sleeping, maybe <br />forever or maybe gathering strength for mating season <br />when memories cross-pollinate<br /> and bring new remembrances, <br />imagined memories, rewritten in a new light, <br />in morning light, in the light of a smudged kitchen window<br /> or the light filtered through the yellow petals <br />of a man-sized flower, <br />high above the fence, <br />none of which is real, but is anything, really? <br />Except the soundless rustle <br />and the closed eyes. <br />The little bird. <br />The beating chest.<br />The scaly pink eyelids <br />and the gentle thought <br />of a pursed beak, <br />clicking occasionally, <br />perhaps in dreams <br />of flying or snow or dust baths <br />or the light-grasping far reaches of the trees. </div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>First read in November 2019.</i></span></div><div><br /></div><div>L x</div>Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-58285300084560412992020-01-26T04:36:00.025-08:002022-01-13T05:58:18.576-08:00Project: Tupilak II<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjYTirJtd43cqrs9fpvJh6g5AW74drhbyoHZbCI1UKnW5PXpGRaxindrezp2Sa-EQZ882QiMa_YDEFtQBrWYUl8NAizgzceEqfUXoBWh9dI-wA4qywiNxZM583_jZKB2pSyemXi5fzk3wcF24EX0EXGt_FvO4RqroY8wVviEf8rnilp85fCfxnebo8=s1600" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1066" data-original-width="1600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjYTirJtd43cqrs9fpvJh6g5AW74drhbyoHZbCI1UKnW5PXpGRaxindrezp2Sa-EQZ882QiMa_YDEFtQBrWYUl8NAizgzceEqfUXoBWh9dI-wA4qywiNxZM583_jZKB2pSyemXi5fzk3wcF24EX0EXGt_FvO4RqroY8wVviEf8rnilp85fCfxnebo8=s16000" /></a><br />We screened the film in a little cafe in Hackney, to a group of friends and family. We were lucky to do so before Covid appeared! The full film is available to view <a href="https://andrewhall.org/tupilak/">here</a>.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjRULiyseTUpLyN-LFsh3gVwHTT6bRlqlbIUmyxsY4K0xs8xmLTFbRGc1fWuB6QxG-u1ZP4ebLsc40PQU1OczifWvw0LBng_T6xfW8X7ir38hf4hSgJUJF24Rwksm_ZAVFMyXS-QELKPR5GVcabGepxF3eplOIGjH04uGeL3dlLDEgZI2Q5oCbXFIc=s1920" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjRULiyseTUpLyN-LFsh3gVwHTT6bRlqlbIUmyxsY4K0xs8xmLTFbRGc1fWuB6QxG-u1ZP4ebLsc40PQU1OczifWvw0LBng_T6xfW8X7ir38hf4hSgJUJF24Rwksm_ZAVFMyXS-QELKPR5GVcabGepxF3eplOIGjH04uGeL3dlLDEgZI2Q5oCbXFIc=s16000" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: center;">For 500 years, the Norse Greenlanders made their home in the wilderness.</p><p style="text-align: center;">In 1450, they disappeared without a trace.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">an Andrew Hall film | TUPILAK | starring Lily Taylor | cinematography Ashley Hughes</p><p style="text-align: center;">with Alex Newton | music Jordan Dobbins | design Matthew Ceo</p><p style="text-align: center;">special thanks to Bec Taylor | Alex Wagner | YHA Idwal Cottage</p><p style="text-align: left;">L x</p>Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-49478152785875474732020-01-12T03:28:00.018-08:002022-01-13T05:58:47.891-08:00Project: Tupilak<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjgy5JKrGmStjTh9dtSr5QxEpZipmENyQQVqV5RK8ohtuj7TUy5zhhH_2WAM7l1nygLZ923JEiN9Dn5tgJ6cW3X9uoY5jB5gCft30Tg1CzPtGnHqm6pWFC5K06MQeXC8FcIybmNdagXJOLmjjiHrP3LpNq_2M2hAipdQ5NPpFqcnvmX5xSmtn2uYo0=s1912" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1912" data-original-width="1352" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjgy5JKrGmStjTh9dtSr5QxEpZipmENyQQVqV5RK8ohtuj7TUy5zhhH_2WAM7l1nygLZ923JEiN9Dn5tgJ6cW3X9uoY5jB5gCft30Tg1CzPtGnHqm6pWFC5K06MQeXC8FcIybmNdagXJOLmjjiHrP3LpNq_2M2hAipdQ5NPpFqcnvmX5xSmtn2uYo0=s16000" /></a></div><br />Almost two years since working on The Beachcomber (<a href="http://www.lilyfreeahleoma.com/2017/12/making-films-every-story-tells-picture.html">see my previous post on making films</a>), I joined up with Andrew and Ashley (and our friend Alex) to begin filming our new project - Tupilak. We spent five days wandering around the mountains of the Idwal Valley in Snowdonia, in costume, transporting ourselves back into the 1500s with the help of some cast iron grates, heavy pans, a fishing spear (made from a gardening tool), and one sad little fish (from the supermarket). We imagined what life would be like for the last Norse Greenlander, alone and barely surviving. <p></p><p>The project was inspired by an article from <a href="https://www.ernestjournal.co.uk/">Ernest</a> journal about the magical totems carved by the Inuit people of Greenland to deter enemies and the inadequately-explained disappearance of the community of Norse Greenlanders in around 1500 AD. I led our research - reading about the buildings and artefacts that remained - and from there we crafted the script. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj8St18AEUMi1PJk-UGcZDTZXRerSVbJd98l8e7ODhMyISvXXDgYlwwoUm4XHxu8QI1_ix-EoCor226rm1GTuQjNpfQ5del0Ye14qVQmIAHcYkIgxHvvSuQVMUbsrgl0laDmYaD4HqjpWdpBQfQ9YO17wqM0_lY7Or_YPmj6toXy0OWU9rD--Kl0DY=s1352" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1352" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj8St18AEUMi1PJk-UGcZDTZXRerSVbJd98l8e7ODhMyISvXXDgYlwwoUm4XHxu8QI1_ix-EoCor226rm1GTuQjNpfQ5del0Ye14qVQmIAHcYkIgxHvvSuQVMUbsrgl0laDmYaD4HqjpWdpBQfQ9YO17wqM0_lY7Or_YPmj6toXy0OWU9rD--Kl0DY=s16000" /></a></div><p>Andrew, on the 'tupilak' itself: "Acquiring a tupilak carved by a Greenland-based craftsperson was one of the key artistic decisions we made for the production. I thought it was important to have a daily reminder on location of the powerful history and wicked intent that was bound up in these objects, echoing the RSC’s use of a real skull in its traditional Hamlet stagings. We had previously stumbled across an Inuit art gallery on Paris’ Right Bank which sold a range of carved figures including replica tupilaks [I remember this day! It felt like a sign], but although we certainly hope that ours is no more real in the ominous sense, I felt that getting one from Greenland was important. In an age of lazy cultural appropriation, I thought the very least we could do was strive to work with authentic source material."</p><p>This was one of the most exhausting and rewarding projects I've worked on so far. Racing the sunset down the mountain. Chasing birds in the sky. Walking back and forth between the hostel and the hills. Paddling in freezing waters - as seems to be my calling card, now. Breathing in woodsmoke and waking up with the smell in my hair and my skin. Carrying two books around with me but never getting the chance to open either one of them. Drinking beers at the end of the day and cooking huge dinners and watching the footage back. Dealing with problems - a broken SD card, a missing charger cable, a misplaced fish. And then - at the end of it all - finding a knoll that caught the sunrise between the trees, with a view over the valley, and sitting there alone for five, ten, twenty minutes, and listening to the birds and then the silence - as if I were the only one left. </p><p>You can see a trailer for the film <a href="https://vimeo.com/385830511">here</a>. </p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiRLupwgjXl5KMbkofatyrsu6BWb7zOELR1ppVVkkBqlDefwSxe93ljruUHSg2KRsbd8skaTshCTjrCvy0zoLVU5Mw8eT6OpfabVzCO86UWtQcfpIaDTkhga-LV-SaYb0Ybnp9wP57KTEOE8QDESa13y_jHd_2J1tBN8X4UPhCAug8Owyb-NoL78sY=s3264" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiRLupwgjXl5KMbkofatyrsu6BWb7zOELR1ppVVkkBqlDefwSxe93ljruUHSg2KRsbd8skaTshCTjrCvy0zoLVU5Mw8eT6OpfabVzCO86UWtQcfpIaDTkhga-LV-SaYb0Ybnp9wP57KTEOE8QDESa13y_jHd_2J1tBN8X4UPhCAug8Owyb-NoL78sY=s16000" /></a></p><p>(From Paris)</p><p>L x</p>Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-46312520647730279062019-12-31T08:53:00.000-08:002022-01-13T09:47:13.617-08:00Writing: Stories Archive II<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEghkOh7_BCe7wNKXOmxlQIg7GJ4Mv5cYec6411qCRRxo-ltCQbdjaPJ-DodIsx-viA-keCIXu7BLMGazIzbc3b5UXA8_wXSLPqZZZhEFRzzlo2ybKY516LQMwkgqZttlY77U_4vjmfUY06a4gbvozUB2oSmOxdCvd4XYyptaiRA6rV8-qKf3pYlx4Y=s2076" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2076" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEghkOh7_BCe7wNKXOmxlQIg7GJ4Mv5cYec6411qCRRxo-ltCQbdjaPJ-DodIsx-viA-keCIXu7BLMGazIzbc3b5UXA8_wXSLPqZZZhEFRzzlo2ybKY516LQMwkgqZttlY77U_4vjmfUY06a4gbvozUB2oSmOxdCvd4XYyptaiRA6rV8-qKf3pYlx4Y=s16000" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjD_36ou9QAu0BNztw1vntJ4Tf7BSyAfO_btkkQuUEJ_0BNtBFQOk3G3vrifzuLMnFswdAjNHmCWE5BVjwvtDHP0XTpPRM9FhnNLg0_yfTWiS5c6xq97S7MGxf3rgyxMZSvcu3EKBi0ZXpPLXDiWiM-P_CfaadUTW3b4bbDow4VGOs0NpG3sy38tDU=s2076" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2076" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjD_36ou9QAu0BNztw1vntJ4Tf7BSyAfO_btkkQuUEJ_0BNtBFQOk3G3vrifzuLMnFswdAjNHmCWE5BVjwvtDHP0XTpPRM9FhnNLg0_yfTWiS5c6xq97S7MGxf3rgyxMZSvcu3EKBi0ZXpPLXDiWiM-P_CfaadUTW3b4bbDow4VGOs0NpG3sy38tDU=s16000" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj7VIeODkxYqlPczgV5IUElBfp9S-Z03vEEtEbqLF3FJCba-eN0VhLdIrb9QFPOKWeuxCwAwuEt-crp6yhznUslBJfP2R6NAanqGkUUPEIi6hLtcgR_gTphKOJkmA3rRdn-pJpSfccGVlGViZDv2o7hgBEF1rHOaCwTJgJtGWmvLPLcjR-RPF0i1Fc=s2076" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2076" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj7VIeODkxYqlPczgV5IUElBfp9S-Z03vEEtEbqLF3FJCba-eN0VhLdIrb9QFPOKWeuxCwAwuEt-crp6yhznUslBJfP2R6NAanqGkUUPEIi6hLtcgR_gTphKOJkmA3rRdn-pJpSfccGVlGViZDv2o7hgBEF1rHOaCwTJgJtGWmvLPLcjR-RPF0i1Fc=s16000" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2076" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgO4kMsi1TUzp6dx_nWyrJdGRAKKpEJqdoxKOf4OZ6RG1qkXS81hrA00g46V0zHpX7RyjQ2CI9-XXdC6vR_YQJXlluTFT_wGV6lhOd-Dpzg806e44XDn7yRSe7ZGvKvnBcR8hnJFkQrDGl3gsgcfqmm0D_34jcis6TLBtMDzhnOFNPt4uEXMt2eTYg=s16000" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>L x</p>Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-71865157095435029582019-12-15T08:43:00.000-08:002022-01-13T09:46:45.765-08:00Writing: Stories Archive<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg4fpU0kz7DKP_fgSzsZi8mttogMTo-vxV12PzuaADwipMSML1utsObBBWYgi9nLHGeCb5JdB4glOU96yg8IVShmkiy8jsRcyOHZR9_l5MR600ufvHwX0xJWNVoNFBvcXw0Vbg3S6tmSEjMDIgPpjrbyU8Ybfr90NRvOngMakNgHa_GXkBIdrX7C88=s2076" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2076" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg4fpU0kz7DKP_fgSzsZi8mttogMTo-vxV12PzuaADwipMSML1utsObBBWYgi9nLHGeCb5JdB4glOU96yg8IVShmkiy8jsRcyOHZR9_l5MR600ufvHwX0xJWNVoNFBvcXw0Vbg3S6tmSEjMDIgPpjrbyU8Ybfr90NRvOngMakNgHa_GXkBIdrX7C88=s16000" /></a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEivoXTGLAxP1tW2KPlHX1-4psB8l5T_mP4HfMeRatv8QLaRRGt829sDoXbRJxQ9xOipMzNIrqEYZNpsWjeMRXYL-_BELoE8uxkpev9PftsxdbNDDgjZKHJyjH55ltoOtkTxXlg_fuV5eSPtiQKo_sVKt4hzbd8oIPuWTdTw0ULO2_yPTFb7o5rDx8w=s2076" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2076" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEivoXTGLAxP1tW2KPlHX1-4psB8l5T_mP4HfMeRatv8QLaRRGt829sDoXbRJxQ9xOipMzNIrqEYZNpsWjeMRXYL-_BELoE8uxkpev9PftsxdbNDDgjZKHJyjH55ltoOtkTxXlg_fuV5eSPtiQKo_sVKt4hzbd8oIPuWTdTw0ULO2_yPTFb7o5rDx8w=s16000" /></a></div><br /><div>L x</div>Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-13534293746068190922018-08-31T04:12:00.007-07:002022-01-13T05:59:28.906-08:00Project: Mabel and Mickey II<p> A few pictures of the process - from making our flyers and press releases, to script-editing, to teching (and learning how to use the tech box in the space of one afternoon), to finishing our first show.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhh4PWbgtZA9ySUwUq4ZVznFhp127wMfZ-k_mu31Ot40hO4uvlEL1g2z49GMqbV5xAFBd4zELf66OrGxjGX9JxuKiwDcbTPpWS-WOchTvFwcZjXC-6jvY53o7nACtN1-A-1W0a7pBtFAkkJV0vq46hajSvvsa7d7l04XO8B3l9AbUtJoxa-z8d51PQ=s1080" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhh4PWbgtZA9ySUwUq4ZVznFhp127wMfZ-k_mu31Ot40hO4uvlEL1g2z49GMqbV5xAFBd4zELf66OrGxjGX9JxuKiwDcbTPpWS-WOchTvFwcZjXC-6jvY53o7nACtN1-A-1W0a7pBtFAkkJV0vq46hajSvvsa7d7l04XO8B3l9AbUtJoxa-z8d51PQ=s16000" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiH6r9Md-PiIopCSH4CLWJHFtGTUjE5ISQiX_g5j3j5tLnbeqaAxEaGQv9A_l6sr4PE7CdjazJZFEE40V6QuM0zPsIcYtxcxZmJn4T1Gk0LFRGBmp2yRaL_Tbg3s08D04JA_F4Uxa0EvT4-48XbQ8K05HuQg3OPk8EkLM_tGNUxsdN-64papaq7_O0=s1080" style="margin-left: 1em; 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text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KLJHlkXDlnM" width="320" youtube-src-id="KLJHlkXDlnM"></iframe></div><br />I've spent the last year co-producing and directing a one-woman show - it's a mixture of spoken word, true crime, biography, and shadow puppetry. It's been performed at the Wandsworth Arts Festival, Camden People's Theatre, the Roundhouse, and now at Underbelly in Edinburgh. <div><br /></div><div>I shot and edited this trailer just as it began to snow back in March. The snow settled and lay on the ground for days. It got so cold that the water pipes in our part of South London burst and we were cut off completely for a while. It felt like camping - collecting drips in big pans, showering at the swimming pool. I think Mabel was trying to tell us something. I think she'll probably haunt us all forever after this.</div><div><br /></div><div>I played around with a few video formats - spoof vlogs, deleted scenes, a haunted camera roll (our house got broken into and we filmed the wreckage afterwards, but decided it was too sad to make into a proper video). I'll post some here, as a record.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BVTv0Bk8GRg" width="320" youtube-src-id="BVTv0Bk8GRg"></iframe></div><br /><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_mSFgLkx_0E" width="320" youtube-src-id="_mSFgLkx_0E"></iframe></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>Finally, our teaser trailer - which I had the great pleasure to see played all over Edinburgh on big screens. Wonderful!</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_xEfVKtNpA4" width="320" youtube-src-id="_xEfVKtNpA4"></iframe></div><br /><div><br /><p></p><p>L x</p></div>Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-1162731588043080952018-07-21T04:53:00.011-07:002022-01-13T05:59:53.391-08:00Writing: Unclean II<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh0Uvra7Or_26WZHsCppcRxxEYMbCtd5wJXvLkMZHL0570lJXkQHwtrVnKm_cp92pmlB6fgsHPrhTBWf3j3U3GR7ICoDiW5vGK1IKvb0PCGx4Lw8Jv5uywUdPC3f-t41H8xK0kjp7_nOrJlPhz8sDLWsaBCBtR4m986JD_vx4Rb2DR66k6-ZGwZiDo=s4032" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh0Uvra7Or_26WZHsCppcRxxEYMbCtd5wJXvLkMZHL0570lJXkQHwtrVnKm_cp92pmlB6fgsHPrhTBWf3j3U3GR7ICoDiW5vGK1IKvb0PCGx4Lw8Jv5uywUdPC3f-t41H8xK0kjp7_nOrJlPhz8sDLWsaBCBtR4m986JD_vx4Rb2DR66k6-ZGwZiDo=s16000" /></a></div><br />Extract II, from a commissioned novella completed last month.<p></p><p>*</p><p>Existence is one long terminal illness. If something is terminal, it is formed or situated at the end or extremity of something. It can form at the end, or at the beginning. It is predicted to lead to death, usually a slow and incurable one, full of pain, though the dictionaries and the books often leave that part out. It is the end of a transport route or railway track. It is the final stop. It denotes the end of a part that is furthest from the centre of the body, though no one can agree on where the centre is. According to the law of gravity, the centre is between the hip bones, in line with the second sacral vertebra. But we are always moving, and the centre of gravity moves with us. No matter where it is, the centre cannot hold. A terminal is also the closing of an electric circuit, a place to enter data, a final exam, a bud at the end of a branch. Who knew there were so many kinds of ending.</p><p>*</p><p>I am always open to collaborations and commissions.</p><p>L x</p>Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-47794351082919891592018-06-21T04:46:00.003-07:002022-01-13T06:00:08.752-08:00Writing: Unclean<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhBQcqibV4x0W_MGPPB9cnaJAkmeV4_lKWYIy6icEEoquPmpnNMwOcfZXJlBGMoW3Effm4W7nKpYGwial9MpROEyKWMWTOFXHlvOSxNaarDSBj3oui-vObnapI8d2iX-Xx3PVnoV36tThpqSb-I1g-GgDtZQJbeJb07SYxhh5FKq3AE1NKBcx9LdUQ=s5184" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="5184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhBQcqibV4x0W_MGPPB9cnaJAkmeV4_lKWYIy6icEEoquPmpnNMwOcfZXJlBGMoW3Effm4W7nKpYGwial9MpROEyKWMWTOFXHlvOSxNaarDSBj3oui-vObnapI8d2iX-Xx3PVnoV36tThpqSb-I1g-GgDtZQJbeJb07SYxhh5FKq3AE1NKBcx9LdUQ=s16000" /></a><br />In addition to my own writing, I also write on commission. Below is an extract from a 30,000-word novella that I was commissioned to write on modern paganism and possession.</p><p>*</p><p style="text-align: center;">Prologue.</p><p style="text-align: center;">The Settlers and the Fire</p><p style="text-align: center;">from the Book of Settlements, 1214-84</p><p>The old stories told that six days’ sailing from the north of Britain lay an uninhabited land. It was said that this land had neither daylight in winter, nor darkness in summer. It was said that travellers ventured there, among their number anchorites from Ireland, farmers from Norway, and Scandinavian seafarers blown astray by northern winds. To those who asked, it was called a land of snow.</p><p>A man named Gardar Svafarsson went in search of this land. Guided by his mother and her gift of second sight, they sailed around the island and anchored in the north. They built a house for shelter in the winter, and in the spring they departed. At this time, trees spread from the uppermost mountains to the fringes of the sea. It became known as Gardar’s Isle.</p><p>A second man named Flóki Vilgerðarson went in search of Gardar’s Isle. Before the voyage out, his daughter Geirhild drowned. This was a bad omen. Led by three ravens, he found the land, but suffered many trials. He landed during warmer months, when the rivers were teeming with fish. They ate their fill but set no stores aside and made no hay for the harder times to come. His livestock starved in winter, along with many men. Mourning his losses, he climbed a mountain and saw the land gripped with ice. He named it Iceland, and left the following winter, full of sadness and bitterness.</p><p>A third man, a viking named Ingolf, made a plan to find the land of ice with his blood-brother Lief. But they were embroiled in fierce battles and many winters passed. Finally, they journeyed to the land but did not stay, returning to Norway after one winter. The following year, Ingolf made a great sacrifice and the oracle told him to return to Iceland. The blood-brothers readied their ships, but they were separated at sea, and landed apart. In view of land, Ingolf flung his highseat pillars from the ship and declared that he would settle wherever the pillars were washed ashore. His brother drifted west and built houses with his slaves, whom he mistreated. One day, they tricked him and his men, and murdered them in a forest. Meanwhile, Ingolf sent his slaves to search for his pillars, and eventually found them in Reykjavík. He learned of the death of his brother many months later, and mourned him fiercely. He lived in Reykjavík for many years and fathered a son whose name was Thorstein. He, in turn, fathered a son: Thorkel Moon the Lawspeaker, who spread wisdom and a love of the land to his only daughter and to his people. Stories told of his deathbed and how he asked to be carried into a shaft of sunlight. They said that he died before he could utter his final words, dedicating his life to the god who created the sun. Some said that these words were to be a plea for forgiveness on behalf of his grandfather.</p><p>The old stories did not verify the tale of Ingolf’s transgression, but through spoken words and songs, it entered the myths of the land. In his second winter in the land of ice, Ingolf learned of his blood-brother’s murder. When the body was brought to him, he ordered a site for burial. But the earth was frozen and the slaves’ tools bent and broke against the icy ground. He ordered a pyre lit instead, but again he was thwarted. The sky and earth were filled with snow, and no kindling would catch. After much toil, the slaves begged to be released. Overcome with rage and grieving, Ingolf slayed them all and called on the gods and spirits in despair. He asked for the power to lay his blood-brother’s body to rest, pledging his soul, body, and life to anyone who would give him fire and light. At his words, the sky glowed green and the pyre glinted with emerald flames. Ingolf fell down in fear at this unnatural sight. It was said that the fire was not the gift of a friendly god. It was said that Ingolf’s words woke a spirit that should never have been sparked from its slumber. It was said that the gift was unclean and that his descendants would suffer its taint for centuries to come.</p><p>Despite his fears, Ingolf accepted the gift and laid his brother in the fire. The flames glowed cold and green throughout the night, dancing into the sky and leaving nothing of the body behind. For a week they burned. Some said that Ingolf extinguished them with drifts of snow; others said that he took the fire into himself. All the songs said that he was a colder man after that night. </p><p>*</p><p>Do get in touch if you would like to discuss collaborations or commissions of any kind - poetry, prose, film, or theatre.</p><p>L x</p>Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-25225612063920764202018-06-09T15:00:00.005-07:002022-01-13T06:00:22.926-08:00Writing: Shadow-wall<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjdYChuBwVwWPmjFS85uyTV4DS15VaP1wxxb_bkNPm8ZgqZBojSdIRl0RcMjIj9d6Ej3WN0tdp7woHwBYr1wA1L7alvrECA9uL6AJy8rj0xFJyui1xZxhBB6MGM54rMazQAF9U0Xpv6I1zsw6VT0rCh0VcGFWECVZz0us1IixWAOKS0Q6Oz8qsDZV0=s5184" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="5184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjdYChuBwVwWPmjFS85uyTV4DS15VaP1wxxb_bkNPm8ZgqZBojSdIRl0RcMjIj9d6Ej3WN0tdp7woHwBYr1wA1L7alvrECA9uL6AJy8rj0xFJyui1xZxhBB6MGM54rMazQAF9U0Xpv6I1zsw6VT0rCh0VcGFWECVZz0us1IixWAOKS0Q6Oz8qsDZV0=s16000" /></a></div><p><b>Shadow-wall</b></p><div style="text-align: left;">After too long wrapped in the absence of the sun<br />I decided to draw a line between myself and the shadows.<br />I piled rocks upon rocks, small and large,<br />And stopped the gaps with dying leaves,<br />Fistfuls of grass and twigs which snapped underfoot.<br />The mound grew monstrous in proportion,<br />Its height perilous, but I did not pause until<br />All the darkness was out of sight. Through sinewy<br />Leaves the sunlight dropped around me, warming<br />My aching joints, too long inactive whilst mourning the <br />Brevity of things. I buried the reminder of my grief,<br />Ever striving to suppress my weakness. For an hour<br />I felt like spinning, and smiling. But when the sun<br />Tumbled from the top of the sky I felt the darkening<br />Afternoon leech between the gaps I knew I must have left,<br />And saw shadow pooling, lapping at my heels,<br />And I ran from its inevitability, chasing the day<br />Through the thinning trees, all the time feeling<br />Damp rising from the earth, and the wind’s taunting bite.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Published in </i>Paris Lit Up <i>in 2013.</i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><br /></div><div>L x</div>Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-81572370530869943662018-05-26T06:13:00.002-07:002022-01-13T05:54:29.302-08:00Starting Again<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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[More of a rambling life update than a blog post, but maybe that’s what this is for?]<o:p></o:p></div>
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So, I finally quit my job in March, and have been trying to navigate money-making, job-searching, and creative-life-building ever since! <o:p></o:p></div>
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I enjoyed tutoring and working with children, but the lifestyle (or the way that I was managing it) was making me very unwell and unhappy. With weekly migraines, erratic schedules, and constant stress, I found myself in bed for days on end, followed by always-slightly-headachy hours on the computer planning lessons and travelling to and from distant areas of London for lessons. I loved working with my students, and was especially enamoured with the younger ones, who showed their enthusiasm (or boredom) without any reservations, unironically declared their love of school, and begged for more homework (or hid under the sofa, depending on their mood).</div>
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Fortunately, after leaving that job, I’ve had the time to explore migraine treatments and eventually found an amazing osteopath and acupuncture specialist who could help. I had three sessions with him and have only had one almost-migraine since then. Turns out using the laptop was the main cause of the problem, so long sessions of online tutoring and intensive lesson planning certainly didn’t help. Less fortunately, leaving due to illness meant that I had no alternative jobs lined up, so I’ve spent a lot of time over the past two months sending out applications. I found some part-time work quite quickly, including freelance writing, proof-reading, and editing. More recently, I started as an Assistant Producer at a small feminist theatre company, which has shown me how much I love working in theatre and production (and, even if it does sound extremely dull, being organised). I also started doing some social media marketing for a cool craft market in London, through which I’ve already met some lovely makers and impressive entrepreneurs. Their successes doing what they love will hopefully prove inspirational. (Annoyingly, everything I write now has undertones of (bad) cover letters…)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Living in London remains expensive and tiring at times, but in amongst job applications and freelance/part-time work, there are sunny days, friends, and time to fill with creative things. I’ve been recipe-developing, writing, and co-producing and -directing a theatre show which will be at the Roundhouse in July and at Underbelly during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (mabelandmickey.wordpress.com). I’m also trying to find moments for smaller things – reading, swimming, gardening, drawing. Hunting for house plants. Watching weird films. Eating dinner in the garden. And writing – there’s always room for more writing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-47127908672250461882017-12-22T08:43:00.000-08:002019-02-05T06:15:11.784-08:00Making Films: Every story tells a picture<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Every story tells a picture, every picture tells a story. My literary obsessions seem to work this way, with hard-edged moments glowing out from the pages and insisting that I return to them again and again. Solid objects hover in and around these moments, a pearl dropped and found (or unfound) in pale blades of grass, a smoothed shard of sea glass, ocean-green and softly grained, a gold chain nailed to a tree. More recently - an oval stone, rounded, almond-eyed, a human head, levitating, tapping at the skylight. A man, dead, ancient, lying on a beach and turning slowly into a tree. A leaf, full. A watch, removed from the wrist and flung, sideways, into a canal. The undoneness of the thing. The absolute not-doneness of it.<br />
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I chased that vision of sea glass, like John of 'Solid Objects', taking his role as he surrendered everything for the pursuit of fragments - the resulting film became another of these fragments, a short 5-minute piece of film, cut and stuck into sequence. Screening 'The Beachcomber' for the first time in Oxford, in the company of my most wonderful friends, was one of the best things of the past year. In November, we screened it again at Picturehouse Central, which was another highlight of the year and of my move to London. With the addition of Jordan's score - which is perfect - the film was properly whole and complete. (I think, or, at least, hope, that Woolf would have approved.) Thank you so much to all of my friends who came to see it twice!<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFwoqdbgDnOq67VRVB1Ry_6tefGU6rsQsosCnDwXNwPE5VuaiufOjGU3h6S76skdOQDBwtCvRmwmUMA_kML-cySKxv4sVqBfmOWCRlLr6zBY7RgvAXEqjAHaTRYH_QbwZejlCbB-e_o_c/s1600/IMG_20171112_192600_517.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1250" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFwoqdbgDnOq67VRVB1Ry_6tefGU6rsQsosCnDwXNwPE5VuaiufOjGU3h6S76skdOQDBwtCvRmwmUMA_kML-cySKxv4sVqBfmOWCRlLr6zBY7RgvAXEqjAHaTRYH_QbwZejlCbB-e_o_c/s1600/IMG_20171112_192600_517.jpg" /></a><br />
With that moment deliberated and revised, translated, screened, and concluded, I'm ready to greet the next one. This time, the watch and the collage, the conversation by water. The challenge of dialogue and 16mm film. I've been warned of the difficulties of casting and 30-second takes (turns out it's much easier when the only character is me and the most difficult direction is stepping painfully into pebble-churning, freezing waves in the early morning). I have a week at home to deliberate script cuts and tweaks, to ruminate on the best pictures for this particular story. For now, I don't want to give away any more. But it is all very exciting - festooned in the additional excitement of Christmas as I travel home through solid, grey, Shropshire fog.<br />
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L xLilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-87737512009600416522017-11-04T05:33:00.002-07:002019-02-05T06:15:22.392-08:00Fireworks, from August to November<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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Spark. Flame. Fire. Sparkle. Hiss. Bang. Rocket. Up they go, and mark another summer’s end. They used to be such an occasion, as we all decamped to the steep, down-from-the-boys’-school hill opposite the Quarry to watch the show from an un-ticketed spot (all the while watching out for sleeping cows). <o:p></o:p></div>
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Now it is November. I am so-called-teaching late into the night, staring into the blue-light laptop screen, when suddenly the familiar hissing shoots of sound puncture the quiet evening. We are analysing a passage by George Orwell, midway through, discussing in detail the vivacity of the condemned man. I pull up the annoyingly-always-on-the-verge-of-breaking blind and allow myself to be distracted by the intermittently sizzling lights reflected on the window-panes. I explain the noise away, as we continue our slow deconstruction of every sentence, semi-colon, clause. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In the British Library. Coffee with soya milk and three email tabs open. Picking through old folders and come across an old dream narrative about fireworks. It’s very bad indeed, but I like the serendipity of it, beginning and ending with fireworks. ‘Fireworks. I’m prisoner and guard. The fireworks are in my honour…’ My dreamscapes (so-called) often start like this one, with weird statement-y statements which stretch the sentences as each paragraph develops. I need to learn to prune and chop.<o:p></o:p></div>
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My London house has started hosting salons, where we read or show something creative. We’ve only had one so far, but the quality of everyone else’s writing put me to shame. Particularly when I come across scrawls like this one, written half-asleep, with no attention to grammar or sense or logic. I’ll have to start writing again (anything that isn’t another email or lesson plan, please!!) to have something to show at the next meeting. In the meantime, here is a topical if terrible remnant of an old dream. I’ll come back sooner this time – I feel like this place should be a good remedy for children-induced madness. (An anguished, screaming toddler is dragged past my table as I write these words. Oddly appropriate.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Fireworks. I’m prisoner and guard. The fireworks are in my honour and at my own expense. Each little explosion is mirrored on the globed eyes of the observers and observed. Here it works that way: we encompass juxtapositions and antitheses in one body, or perhaps one mind. Such distinctions hardly seem to matter.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I lean upon a shoulder that is also mine, warmth swelling around our mass, as if to each other we are a comfort, these two lonely bodies without distinction. Perhaps in some way we’re hoping that through grammatical aspiration we can materialise, realise, give matter to this plurality. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Equipped with only four corners, the prison is a modest one: a rectangular box with a large glass wall, on which sporadic fireworks are reflected to muted acknowledgment. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Conversation develops in one corner.<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘I created all this for you, even from within this prison’s walls,’ I say. <o:p></o:p></div>
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‘You shouldn’t talk to me,’ I say. ‘You shouldn’t tell me these things.’<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘I can’t keep them from you either,’ I say.<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘But everything you say is empty,’ I say. ‘Your words mean nothing.’<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘Then why have they made you sad?’ I say.<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘Because you look at me as if I’m something unknowable,’ I say. ‘How don’t you see that everything I know, you also know, and everything I say is something you have always been planning to say but never could?’<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘Because I am your prisoner and you are my guard,’ I say. <o:p></o:p></div>
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‘Why are you here?’ I say. ‘Why are you a prisoner?’<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘Because I foresaw that something might happen,’ I say. <o:p></o:p></div>
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‘And, perhaps,’ I say, ‘because you dreamed of making it come about.’<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘And now I comfort you,’ I say.<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘In my imprisonment,’ I say. ‘Though still –’<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘– nothing has happened,’ I say.<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘Maybe this is all that needed to happen,’ I say.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I watch the proceedings, and feel the rush of warmth again. I am beginning to understand something and someone, even if that one remains only myself. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The fireworks continue to rain their fiery showers on the glass, and on our watching eyes.</div>
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Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-33304267273562660992017-09-04T11:19:00.001-07:002022-01-13T05:54:48.922-08:00A New Place<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSTOwACK-DoFl3LuDc62WKpZ7AtEAPSYWH-NvRiiXEir6Nu_XOscZXFTkchNeorys8eZqFVVoJe0LLX_F8aWt-397iL2TJvCOoh_KpHVe1v3dmrZYOw7ohNvIyVWIz8ruWthDbBYJV_to/s1600/20170904_183928.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSTOwACK-DoFl3LuDc62WKpZ7AtEAPSYWH-NvRiiXEir6Nu_XOscZXFTkchNeorys8eZqFVVoJe0LLX_F8aWt-397iL2TJvCOoh_KpHVe1v3dmrZYOw7ohNvIyVWIz8ruWthDbBYJV_to/s1600/20170904_183928.jpg" /></a></div>
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Moving to London and stumbling into a job before I know
what’s happening. Not to say that any of this was easy – or that I am
completely happy with where I have found myself. I expect that I am bad at
adjusting to change. Everywhere I go, I bring a fleet of furnishings, chests of
drawers, tranklements, perfumes, coats, and books (with bookcases to house
them) – I’m not really <i>in </i>a place
until all of this is set up. This time, everything happened so quickly that many
things were left behind (all very much my fault): a cream-coloured wooden box
containing all my earrings, my winter coats (I’ll have to go home very soon to
retrieve these, even if I do it one coat at a time), swimming costume, jars of spices
and homemade jam.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi349ktDevpEAT32dXNFQ3BCLnvwv7RQg8k3e-avlu3BE2aK9_VEAVDUJHV8skF7KeR90Or7vo-Sdyj-uHroNMeXVG0sli91zb8vgypwa8b1JLSOrBebAnyv2PhqXC_Z8pmvlhHI6ebg4/s1600/20170904_184336.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi349ktDevpEAT32dXNFQ3BCLnvwv7RQg8k3e-avlu3BE2aK9_VEAVDUJHV8skF7KeR90Or7vo-Sdyj-uHroNMeXVG0sli91zb8vgypwa8b1JLSOrBebAnyv2PhqXC_Z8pmvlhHI6ebg4/s1600/20170904_184336.jpg" /></a>My new room is still lovely without these things,
thanks to my parents bringing a van-full of furniture for me and my housemates
all the way to London. I can now sit at my desk and look out of the huge sash
windows onto the apple tree by the fence and the two church spires which seem
to bookend our long and narrow garden. We have elaborate plans for cooking and
gardening. We want to build raised beds, and grow potatoes, peas, carrots, and
herbs, write a cookbook (even if the world doesn’t need another one), and
collect lots of plant pots to line the patio. Yesterday I rescued a bag-full of
apples from the ground, peeled and chopped them, and have just started to cook
them into a sauce for porridge. The laziest form of cooking.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Really, though, all I want is a holiday. I haven’t
had time to legitimately do and think about nothing for at least a year. However,
here I am, and there’s no time to stop. Instead, a surprising turn of events
has me reading maths books in my spare time. Puzzling over fractions, decimals,
and lines of symmetry, getting frustrated over long division, and outlining the
properties of a rhombus: these are not what my mind was designed for, but I
hope I will learn to like (and understand) it before long… All of this means
that I haven’t been able to read much else, and have spent too many days without
even opening a ‘fun’ book. Fortunately, there is a lovely local library – it’s
very airy, with high ceilings and a lot of space in which to work. I’m looking
forward to spending more time in there (when we can work out its bizarre
opening hours). Our house also has a tiny spare room which we’ve turned into
our own miniature library. It’s full of books already and will hopefully
encourage (or shame) me into reading again. Maths books are not enough!</div>
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xxx <o:p></o:p></div>
Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-42156116778950529352017-08-19T02:54:00.012-07:002022-01-13T03:03:36.034-08:00Video: face the truth<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HiL5xiO8c0o" width="320" youtube-src-id="HiL5xiO8c0o"></iframe></div><br />in appreciation of a former self who published this despite the sound quality, and the nonsensical made-up-on-the-spot lyrics, and the bad note.<p></p><div>in the hope that a future self will carry on doing the same.</div><div><br /></div><div>xxx</div>Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8073962474611612337.post-7563426484926589592017-08-10T10:49:00.000-07:002019-02-05T06:15:47.543-08:00Absorbing Conversations<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgznNPvvDfLziud3ocySDHEW4UCWWIuSPDSpqoCEIWi52d67RPXtpLDo-gqGdyqIO7GkBz5H9R0F2cCEsAY_kp7UgKs90zSg1tsqCvTSfpum7Htr6YWg5ou3xk7V0_RYlUr3Vr1G69pS9M/s1600/20170627_154108.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgznNPvvDfLziud3ocySDHEW4UCWWIuSPDSpqoCEIWi52d67RPXtpLDo-gqGdyqIO7GkBz5H9R0F2cCEsAY_kp7UgKs90zSg1tsqCvTSfpum7Htr6YWg5ou3xk7V0_RYlUr3Vr1G69pS9M/s1600/20170627_154108.jpg" /></a></div>
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Last week, a friend and I ate lunch on a bench in a
busy town square. Opposite, perching on a bollard, was a well-dressed man doing
exactly the same – eating his lunch (a sharing-bag full of what looked like
vegetable crisps), and watching people walk by. In fact, he probably ended up
watching us too. A triangle of people-watchers. We were only there for a few
minutes, but so much can be gained from just observing, listening, and
reminding ourselves to be aware of our surroundings. So many people I know like
to write and work in cafes. A moment of boredom strikes, look up, and
immediately you have a world of distractions at your disposal. Watch as people
walk past expansive café windows, showing off their best clothes, or catch a
gasp of conversation as groups pass by an open door.<o:p></o:p></div>
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On a train home this week I sat at a table
opposite another passenger, expecting to spend the next few hours reading,
opening and closing my notebook, scrolling through Instagram. Instead, this
passenger and I ended up talking throughout the three-hour journey. I learned
about the swimming costumes people used to wear fifty years ago, made of heavy
quilted material that sagged in water. I learned the names of her
grandchildren. Food took up a large part of the conversation. Hummus, sundried
tomatoes, artichokes, and a pile of salad leaves. Halva crumbled over ice
cream. Sliced banana on toast. We shared an obsession with coconut: macaroons both
chewy and crisp (but those ones from that place whose name escapes her were too
sweet, wouldn’t recommend), porridge made with the thinner milk from the carton,
shredded coconut toasted in a dry pan to top a morning smoothie, peanut butter
with a touch of coconut oil. Dhal with coconut milk and spinach. Crumbly
biscuits made of coconut, oats, and raisins. We were both very hungry by this
point.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Earlier in the day, sat in a little coffeeshop with the
tables packed in side-by-side, I couldn’t help but hear the conversations going
on around me (I’m sure people on the train heard my meandering conversation too).
The women at the next table were so close to me that we were almost sharing
tables, and their words drifted over along with the steam from their turmeric
lattes. Everyone’s words muddled together. I’ll put some here – not a coherent
conversation, but a random collection. For no real purpose at all. Just for the
sake of listening better, and finding what inspiration we can, wherever we are
and whatever we’re doing. (And for the sake of writing – with no aim and no perfectionism.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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“I’ve got a new diet regime. I think I’m going
vegan.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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“I don’t like all this publicity… bovine TB…”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“I’m not… it’s really put me off, actually.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Also put me off dairy, actually.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“So I’m struggling slightly because I don’t know
what to eat.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Good as new. Bring it over.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Cash or card?” “That’s fine.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Should have done that at the beginning.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“This morning I had kale, blueberries, something<o:p></o:p></div>
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called fax… flax, a superfood, ten cashews<o:p></o:p></div>
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and some mint from the garden. Whizzed it up.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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[Sound effect] <o:p></o:p></div>
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“Take this table, clean now.” “Sugar there.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Made some dhal. So easy to make. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Absolutely gorgeous. So cheap, so delicious, healthy.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Caramelised onion, cheese… made four – one then,<o:p></o:p></div>
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one the next day. Easy. With salad.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Have you met David? That’s him, with Thomas and
Sarah.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p>Make what you will of that...</o:p></div>
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<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
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xxx<o:p></o:p></div>
Lilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699210949295317477noreply@blogger.com0