It’s in the cards

Working tonight, talking on the phone to a young Glasgow woman who could hardly understand a word I said.

‘What does that mean?’

This was her constant question. I wondered if I had slipped into a second language I didn’t know I had learned. There was no bond, female or otherwise – no connection through intuition, tarot cards or universal sense and sensibility. Now, I hate to talk about people in a negative way or slate women or talk down to people but this woman was plain stupid without being special in any way. Yes, she had special needs but didn’t have the intelligence to recognise that there is a multitude of choices in front of even her!

No big words were used or hurt in this experience; I would never call what took place a conversation or a counselling session – it was a struggle and I was drowning, and it lasted half an hour because she had used a credit card and bought thirty minutes of my time. There are furred creatures out there with more knowledge of the world.

I can’t feel sorry for her because she should be capable of looking at the world and judging where the edges are and how safe the path is in front of her. And, she has a child and is planning to have another one even though she knows hardly anything about the man she calls her partner. Is this a new breed of human? Is this evolution digging holes in the sand hoping to find the next link…one that will resist destruction?

Well, thank the gods I won’t be there when they take over the world.

Confession Time

I confess that I fell off this wagon on the third day; the postcard stuff still has a grip of me – does this mean that I am not a real writer, only a hobbyist? Who cares? I don’t. My life is my own and I’m having fun, also – I don’t want to earn a living as a writer, well not until I’m retired. The idea of pressure and conformity is definitely something I have always rebelled against and will not allow in my life. Of course this state of affaires is only regarding novel-writing; my poetry continues and is published every now and then in literary magazines.

Arts and crafts have reared their heads again, partly because of Christmas but also related to the postcrossing obsession. I want more fairies in my life, so I’ve just bought an artists source book on how to draw fairies and tomorrow it’s coming to work with me. Or rather, later this morning as it’s now 2am. There are not enough fairy postcards in the world…and, I want to make some fairies for my friend for Christmas – she doesn’t have enough either.

The story I was working on for Nano will sit quietly until I slip back into it; it won’t die or get lost.

That Time Again: Nano Nano

I’ve been lost on a postcard spree but am now calming things down to get ready for Nano. After last year’s effort I began a new project for this year, writing pages of notes and summarising maybe about ten chapters; it hasn’t been out of its cage since and I have no idea what it was about but I’m going to keep it there until Monday night. When I come back from work and settle down I’ll open it up and remind myself of the story and then at the stroke of midnight I’ll begin writing. As always, I’m excited at the start of something new.

I haven’t written anything since the end of August except a hundred postcards. It’s been a wild couple of months but I’ve had a brilliant time, choosing, writing and posting cards around the world…and receiving the same back. My collection is building and I’ll soon be able to set them up on the walls of my hall. There will be an alphabet section, one for art, handmade cards, sunsets/sunrises, cityscapes and ad-cards. So far I’ve received 60 – here’s the link

https://picasaweb.google.com/111965780384663756179/Received?authkey=Gv1sRgCJ_20NCU6LyRUw

The one I can’t show is a beautiful but very naked man; trust me, it’s great. I suppose I could make a fig leaf for him. Actually, he has to remain hidden at the bottom of the pile in case my grandchildren find him…and I should be ashamed of myself for drooling over a man who looks young enough to be my grandson (almost).

Well, of course I didn’t wait until Monday night. I opened the folder and prowled through what’s about to be my new WIP. It took a while to find everything and re-capture the sense of it. So now I am quite excited about it and have been nipping in and out of the document all evening to note down images and lines as they come into my mind. I had sketched six chapters and looking at it after all this time I can see where to begin – and that’s with the sixth one: invisible editing.

 

Obsessions

It was suggested to me that all the passion I used to give to men I now spend on creative arts; I can live with that. The obsessions I fall into with any new project must be none other than love – my mind is like a runaway bride as the interest gathers and I am clutched to the breast of poetry, novels, art & craft and recently Postcrossing. My enthusiasm propels me into the heart of these things and I am lost.

I was getting dressed to spend the evening at my friend’s house when I realised that I had no real shoes to wear that fit me well, so I had to trip over there in the old black trainers my feet have become so comfortable in; they are the reason I end up wearing the same old clothes all the time – there’s not a lot that goes with black trainers. This is the reason I’ve just bought ten pairs of shoes…and did I mention that I’m skint?

Same old thing; I found myself surfing Ebay because I had £15 lying in my Paypal account. Round about midnight I hit on the idea of buying some shoes and spent over an hour prowling for bargains. In the end I put minimum bids on about twelve pairs I liked and settled down to listen to a Margaret Attwood book before sleep. It did cross my mind that if I won all the auctions I’d be swimming in shoes and that I’d have to keep back half the rent to pay for them, but I dismissed it.

As the clock ticked by this morning one after another email clunked into my box announcing that I had won an auction; thankfully, I’d bought two pairs each from two sellers so they combined postage and I saved a few pounds. So instead of postcards or tarot cards winging their way towards me in the post I have shoes – lots of them. This means I have no excuse for the way I dress in future; everything will get an airing, and this might even spring me into action on the diet, though I’ve just made my way through two slices of fabulous cake from last night’s birthday tea.

No wonder I’m bloody skint!

I’ve just calculated how much I’ve spent on stamps in the last three weeks: approximately £28! And, probably much the same on postcards…and knowing this I’ve just been back on Amazon and spent another £9 on Tiffany glass cards and Irises. Am I sane? Was I ever?

But, now I’m set with a decent bank of cards and the wild & woolly virgin days are over. I can sit back and receive all the cards coming to me. Nine lovely and interesting cards from across the world have flitted through my letterbox so far and as far as I can work out there are about thirty more on their way. If I can just settle down to less than five a week things will even out.

One good thing about spending all this money on cards and postage – that ate up all the chocolate funds!

Home Alone

Ooo, I’ve spend ages surfing Amazon and Ebay and came away with angels, Indian gods, Banksy, Princess Di and Hollywood musicals, on postcards. Ah, my life is complete.

I mailed a dozen cards yesterday and five today and there will be maybe six or more tomorrow. Then, I’ll slow down a bit…but it is sooo addictive! And, there are LOADS of cards winging their way to me. A fairy slipped through my letterbox today – so how can I complain? Of course, I haven’t done any writing but I’m thinking of blasting away at NaNo on the first of November; I might give the main character postcrossing as a hobby. Happiness is doing what you want, and that’s all I ever do; I’m not in a hurry to become a novelist and be forced into that pressure of sales and ‘putting myself out there’. No. I’m very happy with my position as a poet who shows herself at festivals and readings a couple of times a year.

The writing on the cards is great exercise and I really enjoy sitting down to discover what an image will drag out of me; sometimes little truisms and bites of wisdom appear. Tonight there were two memories about dressing up in the late sixties and teenage broken hearts. But it’s just as well I’m skint and can’t go gallivanting into Glasgow throwing money at Costa coffees – I’ll just have to stay here and write.

Postcrossing

As is my way, my enthusiasm for new writing projects consumes me. I am eaten up with excitement at the prospect of sending photographic missives all over the world and receiving the same in return – though probably not from poets. The very thought of strange postcrossers choosing a card for me, scribbling a message and mailing it across the world is spectacular.

There are several aspects of this hobby that interests me but the main one is as a writing exercise. Most people find it difficult to write postcards – it’s a bit like visiting sick folk in hospital. What do you talk about? Some writers are afraid of the blank page, and believe in that thing they call writers’ block. I’m never afraid and I don’t believe. If someone tells me to write, I point my pen at the page and see what comes out; it’s a matter for my head not my mind and at the beginning I have no idea what’s going to appear on the paper. I don’t worry about it; I just do it and tell myself I’m not responsible for whatever results.

There are now nine cards on their way to people I don’t know. The really stimulating action of all this is looking at someone’s profile to see what kind of images they love and hate then measuring that with a collection they’ve posted on Piccassa or Flickr before perusing the cards I have in front of me. Research and matching, looking for the perfect pairing, and all the while my head sending out feelers for a theme to link the two. I engaged a pair last night; she said she would be interested in religious images and I had a jukebox on a card with stained glass so I married religion to music – I hope she likes it and isn’t offended!

Tonight I noticed that one person liked black & white and the perfect card was a dancer’s legs against a black & white tiled room; white tights on the legs led down to red ballet shoes. The piece I wrote was about blending and disappearing but also of something stealing limelight.

The writings on these cards are not exactly poems; they are geared towards someone and have only the slightest knowledge of that person’s desires but I try to leap into something in a small way. This is why I include them along with the images of the cards in a new page of the blog here. Maybe one day I’ll work with some of them but at present they are only exercises; I wouldn’t want to be accused of self-publishing. Anything I put on here is either an exercise or not for serious publication.

I love the idea of just letting go but being drawn into a small frame of reference with limitations and the pressure of getting it some kind of right first time; these pieces are written straight onto the card with no room for mistakes or too much thinking – it’s a postcard and I know the readers will forgive me…well I hope they do. Only time will tell. Maybe I’ll be run out on a rail never to darken the world’s doorstep again with my scribblings.

Friends in High Places

This has been a day of new soup and old curry, and a bus into Glasgow dragged my mind through all sorts of crannies. On the way there I read most of the poems in a collection by Hugh McMillan called Aphrodite’s Anorak; there are some great poems in there and you have to concede that a bus is useful some of the time. Slim volumes of poetry are light and don’t weigh you down though I can’t say that about some of the subject matter. On the way back I stared out of the window like a teenager trying to skip the conductor. It was raining and my brain strained to catch tendrils of poems.

I can’t remember why I caught the thought of children with different fathers, and out of that came the notes that had to be written into my notebook:

Siblings of the same womb – there are no half-measures; half-brothers/sisters are all their mothers’ children.

The stream processed itself into adjectives and how last week I recognised a friend’s writing in an old Poetry Review. I know this, I thought, that voice and how it describes impossible hospitals…then my mind cut to gentle cemeteries because she’s dead and her last collection of poetry concerned the struggle with cancer and the anathema of cures.

So yes, I’d say that it was worth a trip on the bus today – I got through a lot.

Picture a castle on a rocky island in a loch

This island is not a man, yet
character and memory bleeds
from its pores – the gash of life
fought from these windows
a step back in time. See the days
flash on sunlit stone.

This castle is a choice to stand
on its own, take what is doled out,
accept, absorb, absolve.

 

yesterday’s postcard poem on its way to Atlanta, Georgia 

Postcard Poems in August

I love these postcard poems, and the fact that I will have written 31 brand new poems by the end of the month – no easy feat that, getting me to work so much in such a short space of time. I’m very happy with the core poems that are appearing on the cards straight off my pen; some of them will need a little tweaking and become short poems but others will mix and match, blend into each other. This is a great habit to cultivate and I would love to continue, even if I don’t actually send the cards to anyone I’d like to collect them for myself – must find a nice box.

They have been slow in arriving, mostly because they are all coming from the US and Europe; I am the only one on my list from the UK. One has arrived with a typed patch stuck on the back, but maybe the poet has very bad handwriting and actually printed what she’d written straight off without editing; I’d like to believe that. So far I’ve only received one that I actively don’t like. Can’t wait for the post tomorrow.