The Cerebral Mum

There is a lot going on right now. Good things. Life things. Rather than being stuck in my fog, I am now flooded by things to do. I’m inspired again, motivated again, and that’s exciting. I won’t be taking a break - I’ve found that I can’t stay away from this blog - but I will be trying not to post every day. I’m currently considering 4 posts a week, Monday to Thursday, or every second day. I haven’t decided yet but regardless of what I decide, it can only improve what I write here.

I don’t want to burn out. I have a terrible habit of burning out and, although I used to get so much done before my candlewicks met in the ashen middle, with Caspar now I just don’t have the luxury of recovery time and I have to find new ways to be productive. That sounds so tedious, “productive”, yet that part is exciting as well. The idea of focussing my energies on the things that matter to me (including this blog), of giving them the quality and consistency of attention they deserve instead of flailing around helplessly torn between the things I have to do and the things I need to do, just seems… hopeful.

I’ve always felt as though I had a purpose but all to often that feeling has been theoretical, overwhelmed by the demands of daily things if not completely incompatible with them. At times it has been present as a burden; something I used to beat myself down with, a weapon made of imagined failure which cut me and starved me both literally and figuratively and multiplied into an army. At the worst times, it has been hidden from me entirely.

Purpose.

I don’t think purpose is something ordained at birth: I don’t think it is something given to us with the colour of our eyes. I think it evolves in us through experience: I think it is our discovery of what is important to us, the unfolding pattern of the things we care about. Whatever those things may be - and they could be anything from cross-stitch to a cure for cancer - when we are struggling to give them space in our lives, we don’t feel important. We lose our sense of connection to the world. Everything becomes grey.

Right now, in my hemisphere, life is not grey. The sun is coming out from behind the clouds and it is Spring. Life is happening again. I was asked to join an online writer’s group and am now able to post draughts from my novel, get feedback and interact again with other writers facing the same issues, so I am no longer going to put off until tomorrow what I can do today. I’ve been asked to help create a new charity, which will entail a lot of work but which will be very worthwhile. I have a stellar idea for another blog, one which will create a resource rather than a record of my personal thoughts, and I want to start on the planning for it. And I also need to put some energy into my desire to go back to university next year, fill out more forms, make phone calls, make sure I’m not just another file on the course co-ordinator’s desk.

I have a lot of purpose. And none of it is theoretical.

The 12th assignment from 30 poems in 30 days:

“Write a poem using syllabic verse. You can assign length ether by line or stanza. If you are stuck for a way to begin, start with this two-word ten-syllable line:

Incompatible Participation”

I wrote two, using set forms.

Summer Cinquain

Sunshine,
Lure me again
to Lych Gate; December
cherries; dense green shade; picnic lace
and words.

Winter Tanka

So long were the nights
of our grey stolen season.
Cold glitter of stars,
in the mist corporeal,
broken by morning’s bright frost.

It’s been interesting experimenting with formal structures as I have previously written most of my poetry without them, although I have used syllabics often in the past without realising that constituted an “official” technique. (Incidentally, I used them for the last three lines in each stanza of Barcelona.) I chose to use recognised forms here, without rhyme, as I did with Sapphics on the Deep in order to keep my focus on the specifics of the assignment.

But isn’t it odd what you pick up via osmosis. I remember in my first year of Professional Writing & Editing taking a long, complicated poem I wrote to my grammar teacher, the adored, illustrious Captain Slusher, and asking him to check it for me. He told me I could do it myself. I told him I hadn’t learned enough grammar yet and he said, Not consciously…

The first assignment from the 30 Poems in 30 Days project.

“Write a poem about your childhood. Explore an actual event that had some emotional significance to you. Avoid using any description of how you felt about the event then or how you feel about it now. Instead, try to make the emotion of the event come through in your descriptions of what happened.”

Drought

every day is summer
violent, unrelenting
barefoot and I am running
black tar, the road is melting
dry heat, the air is shaking
burnt skin and I am flying
down the road, the tar is sticking

every day is summer

passed the pubs, the men are drinking
passed the shops, shopkeepers idling
passed the town, the road is widening
through dry fields, tobacco dying
along dirt tracks, the dust is moting
then the shade, the trees are standing
by the river, water calling
water cool and dark and greening

every day is summer

I slide in and I am smiling
and the days are never ending
until the rain comes, then the flooding

every day is summer

I thought I’d keep my commentary until after the poem. I never read the introduction first. I like to make up my own mind.

All I have to say, really, is that I found this extraordinarily hard. My childhood memories are nebulous so trying to find a subject which I could limit to pure description was a challenge. It’s been a long time and I’m sure this won’t win any prizes but I don’t feel as though I have to apologise for it.

I like it. I like the rhythm and I like that, to me at least, it conveys something about growing up in Australia.

So, that’s one down. 29 to go.