alpha

I’m listening to a song that a famous someone is completely turning into a complete personal indulgence, but I am sat sitting as they say and so I, not you, am going through the excrutiate. I do wonder why those who once were so brilliant, return obviously compromised. It’s a Judy Collins number and she, for certain, was the only one to sing her songs. Moving on. Where was I?

Today felt like a bit of a sladge, my word. It’s sludge with an A and that’s a bit of an uplift in itself, A being the firstborn, the Alpha. I rose, ate, sorted, cleared a thing or two, brought in wood, watched the moon the cantankerous madam slip behind the hills. I washed up, prepped for my trip into town (it isn’t a town btw) which takes many manoeuvres and swingtwiddles to get through because it’s single track and that whole single track is always compromised by the Parkings. The Parkings on this island almost define us, or they do in the summer months, mostly because there are none. This is due to the crap knowledge of Parking. I have known some who take over too much for their parking thing and then head off for the day. Often. I could have got two minis in there. Two locals.

Back to the point. A sladge, yes I said that already. I tramped in the rain, I did, and the waterproof coat failed me. I could feel the sky invading my skin. I waited for my mini to be fixed, dripping and cold. I had gone to no shops and why was that? My damp tramp sladge. I admit. The shops are alight and bright and welcoming. Oh. so it’s me and my self pity, my angst and sladge? what happened to the frolics in me, the wild and inspire, the fun, the mischief? Good question. It seems that we have learning, And we have turnaround. Oh we can’t do anything much now, to save the world, the ones we love but we can do something for ourselves and more for the young who want to know, who are listening, and there’s another think. Whom of us have been honest with our own children? When have we sat to talk with an emerging adult and hung our heads, opened our hands, admitted we have no idea, being completely vulnerable? Not many but the Brave.

That’s me. And you.

I quote……’ What’s the greatest thing a woman should learn? That, since day one, she already had everything she needs within herself. It’s the world that convinced her she did not.’ Rupi Kaur

Trouble is, we, born with vaginas listen to worldspeke. We do, and it can confound and punish and confine us. I so wish I was 20 now and not 70, because I would have been a frickin menace. I had, I confess, hoped, that somewhat more of a freedom would have become a norm as my own daughter moved into the world of man control, and it has changed, but not enough. Perhaps, as our planet sucks her gasping breaths, the old structure might just collapse into a new alphabet.

It oftentimes struggles me that the allowability to shout out truths only seems to come at the time when there is a load of ‘there,there’ in our ears. We can be ridiculous, inappropriate. How come it’s not ok when we are 15? The world says, ‘It was the Time’ as if that makes it alright. They turn away at that point, I have watched them do just that, as whoever ‘they’ are, or ‘is’ move or moves onto the next painting, choice of pudding. I have felt absent all my life, as if the norms within which I lived missed letters or numbers, as if the alphabet and the math would never find solution. I still do, but in the now of my now, because I have become an old frickin menace, with a vagina, I can say what I like. I have seen what I have seen over 70 years, and I am often pissed off with the whole alphabet. A is alpha. Z is Zeta. Are we saying that one is greater than the other? Are we even bothering with all the letters in between as if they have no significance? Think of the in-betweens in your life. Do it now. Those sitting on the pavement in the face of a night right there. Think of the waitress who is slow to serve you because she is on minimum wage, feeding kids and holding tight to her meagre home. Those, as you walk by on the way to a concert, theatre, a film, dinner, where you plan champagne, a proposal, those who unnerve you, swerve you.

Shouting out is good, but that way of thinking can become a thing. What we need, and I hesitate to use that word (history), is inclusion, (too wordy), love. Might we forget the old alphabet and move, regardless of letters, word shapes and sentence approval? All good things are wild and free. (not my words) ‘The fire inside me can either warm or destroy. The choice is entirely my own.’ Thoreau. So much of life is about words, the way they are stroyed, the random way they stray, the weight of them as they land. Words. All constructed and constricted by the alphabet.

I have learned this. I can go from A to Z without the rest of the alphabet knowing. Again, not my words. Writers, painters are nothing if they don’t pinch bigger ideas.