I suppose it's about reaching for that piece of truth, the one that whispered to you, the one that had you lean forwards to hear it or that just bitch slapped you in the face and telling it your way and if your way is with a paint brush or a song or an anything really and if it's still true when you're finished with it, illuminated, if it arrives wearing its criss cross through you and only a little polish, only a little, and if it lands on the ear or eye, heart or soul with a weight that causes even the slightest hesitation, if it breathes a little of what you felt when you cared enough to begin, to continue, then I guess you've done your job. I guess it's time to listen again.
Monday, May 28, 2012
surprise
Running out of money is liberating. It answers questions. I know I want to stay in Berlin when I chase business English teaching jobs like an an actor does roles. I'm comparing myself to an actor, like I'm not one. And I'm not. Not now. Not at the moment. I am perhaps, hopefully, a teacher of business English. Not a sentence I envisaged ever coming out of my keyboard. Also never envisaged having a keyboard with the German umlaut.
I did envisage a partner, maybe a child and certainly a 'career' by my 35th year. Didn't envisage being content without all three.
Some say it's in the detail, others, the simple things, I believe it's in the surprise.
I did envisage a partner, maybe a child and certainly a 'career' by my 35th year. Didn't envisage being content without all three.
Some say it's in the detail, others, the simple things, I believe it's in the surprise.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
eventually
Writing has always been a refuge for me. Feel a bit exposed saying that as I am not sure my best writing lies in these posts. But that's just pride. The perceived quality and success of my work isn't the point in this instance. I mean the following statement in the least sentimental way possible - writing is a part of me. It is as much a part of me as my left shoulder, I don't remember not writing. Someone said to me years ago when I told her that my childhood trantrums weren't greatly appreciated let alone understood "No wonder you took refuge in an imaginative world". I don't think this statement is completely untrue but I have decided it's a little unfair. Every profession can be classed as a distraction. If I had become a mathematician the same statement should apply, I would have liked numbers, may have escaped into them. This statement may fit a workaholic better, regardless of their craft. And when it comes to writing I am most cetainly not a workaholic. But like I said, her response is not completely untrue. I got through the intense bordem of my religious and educational system by setting up camp in my imagination.
When I was 10 a gifted self taught dancer from a very poor family, who sat next to me in school, told her mother that during class she "makes up dances in her head". Her mother told the teacher as a 'cute' story and then the teacher announced it to the class. My classmate's face burned. I hated her mother and the teacher for this, not because I was a true and loyal friend but because I was doing something similiar and could imagine the pain of being outed. As an adult of course I believe the only question of real value we can ask young people in education is "what are you day dreaming about?" and then, as long as it's not drugs, savagely champion their every instinct regarding it, even if it changes, even if they throw it away. Humiliation is powerful. That classmate went on to inject herself with heroine for 12 years, luckily, she stopped, survived, and now, she is a dancer. I am not suggesting that her drug habit sprung from this single humiliating moment but I would be curious to know if she was savagely championed would the dancing have been enough to keep her from the needle.
What makes us tick, what makes our heart sing is not just capable of trumping humilitaion but it's also consistent, unrelenting and incredibly patient. It is an intimacy with the self, it is an obligation to others and it is of course still always a choice.
The choice in my case would be the equivalent of keeping my left shoulder still forevermore, it would have quite an effect on the rest of my being.
I have a second draft due on Friday, I am keeping my writing muscle very still. It is having quite an effect.
Writing has always being a refuge for me. I really don't want it to become humiliating and therefore unsafe now that I'm being paid properly to do it. However I imagine the pain of keeping my left shoulder still for too long would have me stretching it eventually.
When I was 10 a gifted self taught dancer from a very poor family, who sat next to me in school, told her mother that during class she "makes up dances in her head". Her mother told the teacher as a 'cute' story and then the teacher announced it to the class. My classmate's face burned. I hated her mother and the teacher for this, not because I was a true and loyal friend but because I was doing something similiar and could imagine the pain of being outed. As an adult of course I believe the only question of real value we can ask young people in education is "what are you day dreaming about?" and then, as long as it's not drugs, savagely champion their every instinct regarding it, even if it changes, even if they throw it away. Humiliation is powerful. That classmate went on to inject herself with heroine for 12 years, luckily, she stopped, survived, and now, she is a dancer. I am not suggesting that her drug habit sprung from this single humiliating moment but I would be curious to know if she was savagely championed would the dancing have been enough to keep her from the needle.
What makes us tick, what makes our heart sing is not just capable of trumping humilitaion but it's also consistent, unrelenting and incredibly patient. It is an intimacy with the self, it is an obligation to others and it is of course still always a choice.
The choice in my case would be the equivalent of keeping my left shoulder still forevermore, it would have quite an effect on the rest of my being.
I have a second draft due on Friday, I am keeping my writing muscle very still. It is having quite an effect.
Writing has always being a refuge for me. I really don't want it to become humiliating and therefore unsafe now that I'm being paid properly to do it. However I imagine the pain of keeping my left shoulder still for too long would have me stretching it eventually.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
an extract from something I'm writing. sick of blogs. back in fiction.
Little did I know I would collect each rushed scribble, a number scrawled on a torn piece of paper, the corner of page 128 turned down in the novel you were reading, the prose you underlined and made notes about in the margins, I just didn't know in April of 2011 a kingdom of devastaion would crash down around me and I'd scurry around it's floors in search of scraps of you, pouring over your handwriting forever.
Coloured in hearts and stars on the cover of the phonebook. You would have been talking to Maggie. Only your daughter could have generated such doodled effuciveness.
I call them all. Any scrawled number I find. The hardware. The gym. Trimphant, I hang up, having filled in a piece I didn't know. I join the dots, colour in my hearts and stars until I have an afternoon with you. You had been thinking about joining the gym. I lie with these discoveries like they are you. As if by learning something you'd done, thought of doing, when I wasn't there brings you back. And then it happens. The price we pay for fantasy is high.
Winded I am back on the floor looking for you. But you are running out. And I am on my hands and knees breathlessly reaching for you always.
Coloured in hearts and stars on the cover of the phonebook. You would have been talking to Maggie. Only your daughter could have generated such doodled effuciveness.
I call them all. Any scrawled number I find. The hardware. The gym. Trimphant, I hang up, having filled in a piece I didn't know. I join the dots, colour in my hearts and stars until I have an afternoon with you. You had been thinking about joining the gym. I lie with these discoveries like they are you. As if by learning something you'd done, thought of doing, when I wasn't there brings you back. And then it happens. The price we pay for fantasy is high.
Winded I am back on the floor looking for you. But you are running out. And I am on my hands and knees breathlessly reaching for you always.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Oline and me
So oline and I met outside cyberspace. In Berlin and Prague spaces. We knew part of so many of each others stories. We knew nick names for the characters and we knew nothing. We were live complex 3D versions of ourselves and we spent three days together.
We knew or thought we knew slices of each other.
We drank too much in Berlin, we dined in an Irish bar in Dresden, we climbed up hills in Prague, we slept more than usual and we hunted for Cuban cigars.
Then we knew some more.
So Oline and I met outside cyberspace. I am certainly the better for it.
We knew or thought we knew slices of each other.
We drank too much in Berlin, we dined in an Irish bar in Dresden, we climbed up hills in Prague, we slept more than usual and we hunted for Cuban cigars.
Then we knew some more.
So Oline and I met outside cyberspace. I am certainly the better for it.
something happened
A play got written.
A second draft.
It's there.
My computer died last week and I just got a new one and I don't have word and cannot download open office yet and edits on my hard copy need to be done and the muscles in my back are angry but
I have a second draft.
I do.
And it's not due for submission until April 24th.
There are still questions, about ten where there were thousands.
There will be many more once it's processed by the employers. But I have about 10 and they don't make me hyperventilate anymore.
This is good news because I have many more stories to tell.
A second draft.
It's there.
My computer died last week and I just got a new one and I don't have word and cannot download open office yet and edits on my hard copy need to be done and the muscles in my back are angry but
I have a second draft.
I do.
And it's not due for submission until April 24th.
There are still questions, about ten where there were thousands.
There will be many more once it's processed by the employers. But I have about 10 and they don't make me hyperventilate anymore.
This is good news because I have many more stories to tell.
reaching
My father is dying. Slowly.
I can still walk with my mother. Have a conversation. Be understood. Yet it's her death that haunts me.
My father, in his lifetime recited poetry. A lot. Too much at times.
Not long before he could no longer do so he recited the Wayfarer by Padraig Pearse. A lot.
I think it's only after my mother is gone that I'll realise I cannot reach into those minutes where she put pig tails in my hair.
I can still walk with my mother. Have a conversation. Be understood. Yet it's her death that haunts me.
My father, in his lifetime recited poetry. A lot. Too much at times.
Not long before he could no longer do so he recited the Wayfarer by Padraig Pearse. A lot.
The beauty of the world hath made me sad,
This beauty that will pass;
Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy
To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,
Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk,
Or little rabbits in a field at evening,
Lit by a slanting sun,
Or some green hill where shadows drifted by
Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown
And soon would reap; near to the gate of Heaven;
Or children with bare feet upon the sands
Of some ebbed sea, or playing on the streets
Of little towns in Connacht,
Things young and happy.
And then my heart hath told me:
These will pass,
Will pass and change, will die and be no more,
Things bright and green, things young and happy;
And I have gone upon my way
Sorrowful.
This beauty that will pass;
Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy
To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,
Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk,
Or little rabbits in a field at evening,
Lit by a slanting sun,
Or some green hill where shadows drifted by
Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown
And soon would reap; near to the gate of Heaven;
Or children with bare feet upon the sands
Of some ebbed sea, or playing on the streets
Of little towns in Connacht,
Things young and happy.
And then my heart hath told me:
These will pass,
Will pass and change, will die and be no more,
Things bright and green, things young and happy;
And I have gone upon my way
Sorrowful.
I think it's only after my mother is gone that I'll realise I cannot reach into those minutes where she put pig tails in my hair.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Spring.
O and I went to the playground today. The sky was at it's bluest.
We talked about falling for ideas rather than people, not waiting to know the person but imagining who they are, falling for that, waking up 3 weeks or 3 years later and realising they were never that. Grieving ideas rather than people. If O was co-writing this blog she'd clarify that I said most of this. But she definitely nodded. We lay on a gigantic hammock together. They don't make playgrounds like this in Ireland.
O said "Let neither of us leap up too quickly off this yoke or t'other'll go flyin." No wonder nobody has a clue what we're saying.
I think we are not supposed to have so many ideas about people. Expectations.
Ideas are great if they don't get tagged to actual humans.
I like ideas.
I love O.
We talked about falling for ideas rather than people, not waiting to know the person but imagining who they are, falling for that, waking up 3 weeks or 3 years later and realising they were never that. Grieving ideas rather than people. If O was co-writing this blog she'd clarify that I said most of this. But she definitely nodded. We lay on a gigantic hammock together. They don't make playgrounds like this in Ireland.
O said "Let neither of us leap up too quickly off this yoke or t'other'll go flyin." No wonder nobody has a clue what we're saying.
I think we are not supposed to have so many ideas about people. Expectations.
Ideas are great if they don't get tagged to actual humans.
I like ideas.
I love O.
Monday, March 5, 2012
weekends in Berlin
Saturday just gone we went to Zum Elephantin. The architects, O, the Irish, the German were there. I gave O a backer to Film Kunst on Reichenburgerstrasse and turned inexplicably towards walls a great deal.
We danced in Film Kunst. A lot. We met the tallest guy. Then it was just the Irish, the German and the tallest guy. We danced some more. Then it was bright. Coffee and U-Bahn home.
Four hours sleep before I was back on the UBahn yesterday. I'd promised O I'd be at brunch as two Irish musicians were playing. We know them. O's brain child of course. Getting these two to play at the most popular brunch in town. And they did. And the set designer came and the painter. And they played and they played. Piano, trumpet, guitar, guitar, guitar. Lenord Cohen's 'Secret Life'. We stayed all afternoon. Bloody Marys. The set designer and I talked about the sea, the theatre, Berlin, making work, the sense of having multiple personalites.
Then we went to Film Kunst.
We danced in Film Kunst. A lot. We met the tallest guy. Then it was just the Irish, the German and the tallest guy. We danced some more. Then it was bright. Coffee and U-Bahn home.
Four hours sleep before I was back on the UBahn yesterday. I'd promised O I'd be at brunch as two Irish musicians were playing. We know them. O's brain child of course. Getting these two to play at the most popular brunch in town. And they did. And the set designer came and the painter. And they played and they played. Piano, trumpet, guitar, guitar, guitar. Lenord Cohen's 'Secret Life'. We stayed all afternoon. Bloody Marys. The set designer and I talked about the sea, the theatre, Berlin, making work, the sense of having multiple personalites.
Then we went to Film Kunst.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
an observation
When on dates recently with German men I've had a really good time. Interesting. Cerebral. Challenging. Polite. Not too much alcohol. Not out too late. Gentle. Walked to the UBahn. Followed up with texts. Compliments. Nice. Fine. Civilised. One of them told me my eyes "shimmer" I looked away. As The Best Man says when I tell him I love him "There was really no need for that."
A few weeks ago an Irish guy, friend of a friend, shouldered me onto the road when a car was coming and then pulled me back onto the path just in time punctuating it with the word "Spa!".
My eyes shimmered.
A few weeks ago an Irish guy, friend of a friend, shouldered me onto the road when a car was coming and then pulled me back onto the path just in time punctuating it with the word "Spa!".
My eyes shimmered.
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