Video: june

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. 

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.

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.

- for the only you I'll ever write to, after Ali and 'May'. First screened 21 June 2020.  

L x

Video: face the truth

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.

in the hope that a future self will carry on doing the same.

xxx

Blackberry-Picking

Late August, given heavy rain and sun

For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.

At first, just one, a glossy purple clot

Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.

- 'Blackberry-Picking', Seamus Heaney

I hunted for blackberries today whilst walking one of our dogs, watching him run and play in the long grass. Though it’s still early, and most of the berries are still nobbled and green, I found a tangle of riper ones in the fields between the river and the old railway bridge. I had – very wisely – decided to go for this walk at midday, thinking that if anything it would rain, but instead it turned out to be stiflingly hot. As it perhaps should be at this time of year. The sun was so bright and the air so still that the smell of ripening blackberries hung about the hedgerows. I tasted one, but it was sharp and sour, and sent shivers through my teeth.

The other week, on another walk, we harvested two small bags’ worth and cooked them into a crumble. We mixed in some apples from my grandma’s garden (frozen from last year), and made two little puddings – one without sugar for my brother. Both were eaten before I even thought to take a picture. There’s another cluster by the chicken-garden just down the path from the back door – they have ripened the fastest, and my mum has been filling bowls with them this morning. Maybe I’ll bake something more adventurous with those later, if I have time to spare.

I don’t know why so many people have written about and mused on the act of blackberry-picking. Perhaps because people are now more likely to walk along a road than beside a neglected hedgerow, or because the act of picking free food from a bush seems like something from another time. A few years ago, there was an abandoned ‘waste land’ near home, which, though it may sound unappealing, was my favourite place to play, make up stories, or read in the sun. There were little mossy hillocks, a pond surrounded by perfect climbing-trees, forest-like grass, and banks of buddleia covered in butterflies. There was also an enormous clump of blackberry bushes, which produced the fattest berries I’ve ever seen. When I later read Heaney and Plath writing about blackberries, ones whose juice is barely contained within their thin, globular skins, I knew exactly what they were talking about. I learned Plath’s poem off by heart once, and though I cannot recite it so flawlessly anymore, I still remember the blackberry alley going down in hooks…

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,   

Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,

A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea

Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries

Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes

Ebon in the hedges, fat

With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.

I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.

They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

- ‘Blackberrying’, Sylvia Plath

xxx

Botanical Walks

I used to know the names of all the flowers, trees, and crawly creatures that we encountered in the garden, or on walks in the fields and up the hills. I still know butterfly names, but am no botanical expert anymore. I do still love to note what’s flowering as I walk with one or both of the dogs. 

If Maisie is coming, the walk must be very slow – she is old and likes to amble. Though Chewie, a three year-old shih tzu, prefers to scamper and toddle as fast as he can, walking slowly does leave time to appreciate the hedgerows. On our last longer walk, I had my camera with me, and snapped some of the flowers we passed, though I still can’t remember all their names.

xxx

Dresses from Attics

As anyone who knows me will attest, I am slightly addicted to clothes. Long coats, so long that they drag through puddles. Second-hand silk shirts, completely transparent but so pretty with their tiny floral prints. Designer dresses snaffled up for less than £5 from a charity shop. An ideal shopping trip right there.

I’ve also had a lot of trouble with clothes. I have never managed to find the perfect black shoes. In the depths of winter, I eventually find passable black boots, and in summer my Birkenstocks take over, but I have never found a transition shoe, which I envision as a substantial but subtle brogue-type thing which will withstand miles of walking and wandering. They must be versatile enough to match dresses and cropped trousers, and not so prim that I look like I’ve gone back to school. I will probably continue to complain about this (seemingly endless) hunt until the shoes have been found. It may be some time.

In the vintage clothes department, I’m very lucky to live in a town with so many charity shops, a second-hand designer shop, and my family’s own antiques business. My parents are constantly uncovering attics full of vintage items, many of them odd, homemade, and occasionally downright ugly. But it’s always fun to re-discover these pieces, to wash and iron them, to see them given a new life, first on the blustery washing line and, later, in the hands of a customer who’s discovered just the thing s/he was hunting for. I hope my shoe-hunt has a similarly happy ending.

xxx