creative-writing

You can say this. I have checked. If you swift off a vowel and pull down another, pull in an alternative and jinx with the ing of itself, a ditsy swing with the ‘acceptable’ , `you shift the lines.

I like to shift the lines. I have fat-battled with dictionnary confines for years and will continue to lift my sabre. ~~ I love the language, the english lanuage, it was my study for all my student life which, as you may know, wasn’t that long. But my draw to wordage, the melding and infuriation of words, those word which wanted to move forward, against a finite within the darkened and cloaked halls of the Official Dictionary, the word is pretty much spent. Nowhere to go with an ing at the arse of itself.

Back to the cold. I feel it, smell it, see the seep of it under my doorframes. I also remember Tapselteerie and that cold was pervasive, almost vindictive and it lived on for weeks, months. When that first ‘Spring’ elixered itself in, it brought no warmth. I do remember walking out with collies, with shivers, to check the dawnlight lambing, the frost like a stopping on the parks, each ewe lit up by my torch, icicles lifting from each fleece. I remember feeling shy about my feeling cold thing. It’s different now, for me. No sheep, no dawn walks, no need for me in the cycle of life here. My home is warm and I have no calls to be out there in the out there of anything. It is a loss for me.

I come down the stairs just to come down the stairs. I smell the old ways, It comes from my right, up there, somewhere, The rut is over, the hinds are safe, Sheep wander like numpties, grazing. I see a good mother hind, her two year calf with her, her one year boy with nubby felt horns. They graze without fear, just there. I tell them, I ak no threat. Their heads go down. They’re not afraid of me.

I fry mushrooms in garlic, boiled linguine. I am warm in here.

I believe many of us have this condition. It’s not like cancer or a chronic disease and doesn’t hurt the body much, but mostly, the brain, and we all have one of those. However, the urge to write can play havoc with every other part of a living soul, itchy fingers, running feet, sweats, chills and a strong desire to escape from a perfectly ordinary confabulatory experience because you just have to get this down; what she said, what his body language told you, how the atmosphere shifted from a warm fuzzy into an arctic abandonment. And, if you don’t get gone, or cannot, or if the whole being gone thing would turn everyone else there into statues, you will lose capture. I’ve been in that oh damnit to hell place many times before, but even if I followed my own advice and had a wee notebook concealed somewhere about my person, I doubt I would have pulled it out, because the invasion of an interrupta femina (allow me, latin scholars) pulling out her quill and slate would, I am sure, have had the same upsetting effect. This situation is rather constipating.

So, to be able to remember and to retain the lift and twist, the moments before and just after the ‘noticing’ is a giant skill. Not only do I want to remember the words, the way they swirled and ebbed, lapsed and spiked, but I also want to remember how the whole whatsit made me feel, and that is the part which slides away like mist, because there will have been a resolution, or a stop, or a happening, and all of those are as round as a full stop. How fickle is my mind, how easily does it move on to the next moment and the next? I believe distractions are my problem. Someone says something unrelevant to the time I just left, with all its vitally connected feelings and emotions, and it is as if I have let them all go, some forever.

I find the same with memories. I can vividly recall the events, according, I know, to my perception. I know who said what and to whom. I know how I felt about it, the rachet resulting from that human encounter, the lift, the slump, the delight, the fear, but the depth of these feelings have become splat over time, levelled like sand on a beach, flat, a straight line. It isn’t the truth at all because, back then, I was purple with rage, set to take somebody’s head off, my feet ready to run, to save, to murder. Well, maybe not that, but nearly. So, to relocate the feelings around a memory, even if that memory is minutes back or decades, is, as I have said, a giant skill. I could make it up, guessing here and there, and sound quite plausible, although I have an issue with those two words conjoining. You are either plausible or you’re not. There is no ‘quite’ about it. I find the same with pretty amazing, or slightly curious, or vaguely interested. Such placid nonsense. You are, or you aren’t. I digress.

As I write a bigger piece of work, I am going back into memories. I scribble over many of them, my pen helping me to dilute my astute; to cave in, untrusting of self, reminding myself that my brain may well have added, subtracted, divided and multiplied; that others will not (I absolutely know that) have seen this and that through my eyes, my experience, and here’s a thing for anyone who has the guts to write their story. Nobody knows how you felt when you saw what you saw. Nobody knows how you felt, and for so long, about your life. The thought of speaking that out, of owning it, of sharing it, is very scary. However, and nonetheless (can’t resist lovely words) if you don’t tell, if you don’t risk judgement or rejection, if you don’t step out into the unknown, how will anyone ever know how life has been for you? And, in this stiff upper lip bollix that thrives in this country, a country, I might remind you, which once owned half the world and is now feeling rather skinny and alone, we need brave voices to speak out, better, to write.

If you want to write, never think nobody cares, or wants to know. We need you to speak out. Begin.