anger

I love to mess with the way things ‘should’ be. Accordion to whom, is what I want to ask? Although I do recall, clearly, the easy hours of English Literature at A level, the rule book the size of a small country and berating my errors like a crowd of elders blocking any off roading. It isn’t that I don’t respect the construction of a good sentence. I absolutely do. In fact, I am the very first to throw a badly written book out the window. However, the essence of good writing is not a perfection of grammar. But, wait. This may not reflect my own truth. As a student of the language, of the best way to construct a sentence with noun and verb, avoiding adjectives, adverbs and other ads and coming into land on the line to say something remarkable, I appreciate that the only time anyone can play with a structure is when they know it very well. Perhaps this is why, when I read bad spelling in an official piece of writing, I cringe and throw. There is no excuse, these days with every help available online. Grammar check, spell check, information check, all is there. It is a case of not bothering and not bothering is, well, cringe and throw.

But, and this is key, the person who dreams about writing a book, essay, short story or children’s book, should never ever and ever again bother with whether or not they have a diploma in the complete labyrinth of English language, and it is. A labryinth. You can get lost in it for weeks and nobody is looking for you. You have to get up, dust off and keep going with your eyes crossed. and your brain a bucket of worms. It is important, nonetheless, to gain understanding of how language works and this is why. We have softened the borders of our language and let in some ghastlies. We have allowed in the complete change of a single word’s meaning, losing, on the way, a g or an h and this does matter, not necessarily to hold on to the old, onto what was, but just to know it was there, once, a part of the scaffold that lifted a writer higher. We, the Brits, are still celebrated world wide for our writing, our films, plays and tv series. We are strong with our understanding of our language, and its structure. And sometimes that confines us, especially if we did not do ‘well’ at English in school or have been ridiculed and mocked for our ‘wrong’ use of words in a sentence.

Bin all of that. We need writers and not just those who have gained degrees or diplomas and (often) done little with that stored knowledge. We need enthusiastic passionate writers who don’t even believe they are writers. The works, the classics, the honoured novelists, I revere and respect. But, people, these times are new. We are living in a conundrum (look that up!). An anomaly, a confusion, a splitting of the ways, a confoundment on boundaries and with a big hole in that wall which offers an opening into something new and scary. If you have that drive, do not die with your song still in you. Do not accommodate old rules, confinements, mockings or perceived prison bars. Fly. Do it. Write. The experiences each one of us have tucked under our belts over this past year are fuel for Talk, for Story, for Ideas that break boundaries of space, time and language.

Come on people. I know there are many out there and I will tell you why. We have so very much to say now. We have gone through loss, grief and struggle, pain, abandonment, sleepless nights, eating up, eating down, evasion, confusion, anxiety and identity crises. In the old days (I remember them) we knew who we were, where and when we met. We collided, avoided or we came together. We knew parameters and levels and the land on which we stood. We knew the way forward and the way back. This all came from the ‘elders’. They spoke and we believed, well, not me, but I went with it anyway because there was no other direction on offer. Now we are spinning like tops. Circling each other, unsure. And it is a writer’s perfect space. Use it. Talk about it, write about it. Let the pain rise and the sky fall. Let the anger out and watch it turn into rocket boosters. Let it out. ‘out’. because it if doesn’t ‘out’ we, as dynamically creative individuals, will just join the ranks of those with mental health issues who have gone beyond inspiration, inventive creativity and a Sunday dinner with pavlova instead of tinned custard; those who will bury this year of troubles and sink down into a permanent Lower case.

Just saying.

As I wander through this grieving process, I know that a deal of that grieving is for myself. That might sound weird. I don’t consciously grieve for himself. Our life together was never on a clear wide road where we could see the views and the way ahead. It was more a stumble through the tangle woods, where sky is visible only through a knit of branches, the views, although yearned for, scarcely wide enough to be thus named. One of us always seemed to be trying to lose the other one, and, yet, afraid of exactly that.

This is the time of year to find snail shells. I think about the life that curled within those shells once, before even snails began to move more slowly, too slowly to avoid the hungry and vigilant thrush. I wonder if this snail was a happy snail, blissfully slithering across the ground, a living creature with eyes at the end of its tentacles, with a liver, a kidney, lungs and a heart. I know it has a memory, of sorts, one that will tell it where it has been and whether or not it would be wise to go there again. Such a tiny creature to be so well assembled. I found one, once, on the shore. It was almost bright pink, or, certainly, pinker than the ones I might find in my garden. Perhaps, I thought, it has eaten something down here, and, over an extended period of time that has elevated it from the other run of the mill snails, become a hybrid or royalty. It was certainly something to take back home and to put on display.

Each day wanders along as it will and I consider my feelings, notice them. The one that most surprises me is anger. I am angry for my past. This, I tell myself, and roundly, is surely the road to madness, for who can do a thing to change their past? But, I say, turning my head to look back, all that stumbling through the tangle woods seems like such a lunatic way to live a marriage. Who would ever choose this when just up there lies the clear wide road with views and visibility and service stations every 50 miles or less? I’m not sure we choose it. What we do is choose each other and then find ourselves in a Somewhere we would not have chosen, had we been availed of consequence. Too late, mate.

The anger I feel is busy with criticisms, mostly of me. I am almost word perfect in criticising me, as my friends tell me. This anger is like a catherine wheel that shoots off a post and spirals dangerously close to whoever stands too near. Children for example. Why did I not do this for this one when………Why did I not take action for this one then……Why did I accept this, or that, or this again and again and again? Oh, I know that this sort of self-flagellation will only ever hurt myself but it keeps a-coming, like Christmas and Fridays and lunchtime. At a sensible and logical level, it makes sense to dispel with such…..what….self-indulgence? Put like that I am right with you, but feelings will arise no matter how much logic and sensibility I bring to the table and this anger keeps on arising until I want to bash it over the head with a mallet just to silence it. I know there are others, unlike me, who can address life in general in a way most perfunctory. Their logic is king over their feelings. They can decide to deal with things in a way that never, ever, allows them to indulge in any collapse into confusion. Why would they? It would be (and I agree) a complete waste of time and just might mean they miss the start of Countdown. But I cannot seem to be that way. I am the one who scrambles and scrapes over sharp rocks and who slips down every crevasse, who flounders in the power of an incoming tide and who cannot sleep as the gibbous moon fills to her fullness, lighting up the sky like a super trooper on steroids.

As I walk today, the ground is icy. One degree the whole day long and the temperature will drop this clear wide night. Frost will sparkle on the ground, diamonds, twinkling. The woods are silent. No birds. The branches of the trees hold ice particles at the very tips of their fingers, droplets of water halted and frozen, natural jewels, catching the slow pinking of the sunset and making tiny rainbows. Deeper in, the silence is all around me. I hear only the scrunch of my boots and the rush of an incoming tide. The woods are mysterious, elegiac and waiting.

As am I.