Wannabe

aching with the desire to really be somebody tonight. It comes over me in terrible drowning waves. The heavy turbulent sort, or like a misjudged river, suddenly I’m swept under. 

FAME
It is then, a spiritual yearning, must be. The pandemic has given me this pause, I can take a breath and watch myself feel, more clearly than ever before. Not always immediate, but quicker.
I’m watching a show that has me enthralled, and all the music is everything I listened to when I was in my early twenties, that gave me that feeling of being swept away, spellbound. The double hit of nostalgia and wanting so badly it hurts, is overwhelming.
To watch me be overwhelmed is to watch someone lying on the sofa eating jelly babies by the pound. There’s no obvious dramatic outburst, I get completely submerged and voiceless for hours at a time. It used to be months. 
But I can tell now, what’s happening, that’s the gift. And once I know I don’t stay long. I bring out the self care and compassion and I can usually make it through one way or another.
My great friend Margaret always says ‘I’m still waiting to be discovered’. 
How very true, I think, dipping my hand in for another jelly baby, even though they are making me feel sick, while I think about how I could have been Rita Hayworth if I’d only applied myself better.
Of course, this is the moment when I must remind myself that art is not the final presentation, but the practice.
I had lost my practice and I am currently realising why. The bouts of cruel attack from my own private Hades are excruciating, no wonder I so rarely made it out the other side with any kind of finished piece in my hands. My mind is inordinately mean. 
As I watch something that I admire profoundly, that moves me, I am hit with violent regret and desire. I want to be the actor, the writer, the director and the producer, whilst simultaneously despising myself for wasting my life. The old fear of wasting my life, dread regarding my lack of talent, old artistic wounds resurfacing, this is what a deep creative block feels like. 
But hey, the reason for writing this piece is because I feel hopeful right now, I have found a healing process, I am moving and making. There is a solution, I have a strategy and a schedule. It goes like this:
I run a weekly session of The Artists Way, which reminds me I’m not going mad, that creativity is the Great Mother’s will for me, and that this fuzzy path is a real way, no matter how vague and dark it seems at times. 
I have a group of women I meet with two mornings a week to focus on female power, politics, spirituality and fearlessness. They keep me grounded in my true self, disrupt the old patterns of perfectionism, over achieving and capitalist / materialist ambition. 
And I have a friend holding me accountable for my work, I have to check in and confirm I have done my practice today. Every day I get another hour done I deepen my understanding of what my practice might be. The finished piece is not arrived at through theory, it is a practice and I have to live it. 
This consistency of structure is holding me together whilst the inner chaos rails and defends against change. 
Ultimately this defense is a survival instinct - I have real trauma around making mistakes, so I can’t afford to be a failed artist, I can’t afford to take those kinds of risks. My protective self says absolutely not to this ridiculous idea of making art, what do you know about it? you will not make a fool of yourself by showing people your ridiculous work, and so on. Self preservation run riot. 
So, the schedule as per the above, awareness, or mindfulness increases, and I find ways through.
The antidote for self condemnation is praise, and the salve for perfectionism is love. Love of self, cheerleading of self.
As on I trudge.

island

grand old townhouses, an abandoned project of Victorian seaside developers to turn Hayling into a mecca for rich socialites, with a racecourse in front no less. Taken over by the council or somesuch, brutalised with fire doors and communal staircases with shabby carpet. the steps, like a genteel New York with men sat whiling away the hours in the glimpses of October sunshine. friendly and frayed at the edges, my efficient communication hangs terse in the salt sea air. I slow down, come to rest, and make more room for time. trying to remember something I can't quite put my finger on.

there is very little evidence of waves on Hayling until they rise up on the shore and dump into the banks of pebbles brought in to hold back the winter storms. only a small swelling of the water is visible before they erupt. in the photographs yesterday the horizons wander - only noticeable when posted on instagram. as you slide through them the horizons flick up and down. unsettling. instagram is a poor substitute for a gallery. you lose yourself in that tiny rendition, striving to punch through two inches of backlit lightless artifice.

i think i am going ot have to try and remember how to develop film and make prints on paper. I cannot find a local darkroom so far so I'll have to set one up here at the house. I can probably develop the negatives, it's the printing where it starts to get difficult - getting an enlarger and a space to black out. oh maybe the attic actually. or the utility - at least that has a sink.

I didn't photograph any people. I wandered around with something else on my mind, past the townhouses, and only this morning did I start to think about what a place that is. A little edge of time place with windbreaks and old TVs and piles and piles of bike tyres and an old Hayter 48 lawnmower just sitting on the street waiting for nobody to notice. 

morning

my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. someone is stroking my head.

morning morning morning ok ok. I have to go to work fuck can you, uh. Fuck uh.

I smile small. My stomach heaves.

I need a piss, I'm late.

He is cheery, gathers his things, his face a moon, mesmerised, grateful? I watch him leaving out the window. Don't look back don't look back. He looks back, cheshire cat cream getting thankful waving. 

I look in the mirror, she looks back. Can't hold her gaze. The tap offers no solace, every morning that cunt infects me with suicidal thoughts, in its silent judgement. I do not look at the shower, its dry sarcasm from lack of use is unbearable.

I shove down painkillers, drink pints of water from a cracked glass, find something mimicking clean from the shitpile on the floor and run for the bus. The sky is shimmering with my dying braincells. 

Tonight when I come home I will see that I left the door wide open again, and a note. Thank for a great night, you are amazing. Topher.

Ah that's his name.

candy

The lawn has given up, it is a parched and bleached shadow of its former self, the earth compacted and giving way in places to grassless patches of what will eventually become a dustbowl. We have sandy soil that desiccates with the slightest hint of warmth. Out the front, on the track, we get tiny dust devils as Pete flies in, electric motor whirring full tilt, appearing out of the blur like the cavalry arriving in some Western.

I must wash the windows.

sweet peas

Bringing much needed solace in the face of a yellow lawn are the deliriously heady sweet peas. Absolute knock out, slap in the chops perfume. They are no more than a foot as yet, and have a whole pole up which to grow, but they are kicking off the season with great promise.

In other news, two huge and juicy grapefruits arrived, and stared balefully at me from the kitchen counter, alerting me to their uneaten existence. Something had to be done.

I have had time to consider how to get hold of things during lockdown, and apparently our milkman can bring all manner of goods. So, an organic fruit & veg box is delivered every Saturday along with 4 pints of milk. He also does grow-bags, which are a precious commodity here in Surrey, but they come in a separate delivery so no sense in that.

As per said grapefruit, another consideration has been working out what to make with what comes, I remember some years ago giving up on a box, as I had neither the time nor inclination to work out what to do with the celeriac that arrived every week over the course of a month. The guilt was intense.

Do you remember when you wouldn't have known what a celeriac was, because you didn't have a tiny computer on which to find out at any second of the day?

candied grapefruit

The baleful grapefruit were cut open and turned out to be ruby, sumptuous ruby, making for a lovely pink juice. The peels I boiled in sugar for several hours. Now we have candied grapefruit in the fridge.

Who knew that so much could be done with food?

I throw so much away when I'm working and whatnot.

For shame.


Tomorrow - the judgmental oranges, as they arrived in the previous week's box and may mutiny.

swift

Oedemera nobilis
the flower beetle, on an ox-eye daisy

I sit on our driveway, which I am now calling the courtyard, as I have parked the cars at the other end, precariously balanced some fence panels to cordon it off, and filled it with pots and pots of flowers, vegetables in grow bags of varying sorts and hanging baskets of fuschia, verbena and begonia.

There is a narrow sliver of sky between the buildings, our house and next door's garage, that focuses the attention, and the swifts are diving across that slice of blue dusk, with the peach sunset glimmering on the underside of their wings. Big birds swifts, as they dive deeper and deeper you can see their form and scale. Much bigger than you would think.

A thrush is giving its evening hit parade, what a racket. Peep peep, car alarm, budgie trill, blackbird yodel, cheep, arcade gunfire. Repeat.

this guy. The Magyar Prince of Hermitage

I walked. Walking the dog. We got Bruno at the very beginning of lockdown, and his incessant demands give us focus. Service to his needs, attempting to understand his communication style, tending to his various wounds, limps, tennis ball devouring, delicate allergic skin and finding new ways to feed him that take longer than ten seconds (I recommend the Kong Extreme if you have a Vizsla of similar oversized stature), all this is an act of love and takes us out of ourselves.

The moon is sharp tonight, a perfect half bright above me.

It's 930pm, time for the Woodcock to pass over ahead, flitting over the woods and the lye (ley or lea - meaning pasture or meadow) with a sound like he's breaking the sound barrier. He passes over nightly on his 'roding', part of the mating ritual. I'm going to get my binoculars and lie in wait.

kingfisher

our bit of canal

Kingfisher absolutely fucking streaking up the canal. a flash of orange and that aerodynamic determination. I live on the towpath, just sit at the front of our house and the whole of nature puts on a fine drama, every day a new gripping instalment.

I can hear something peeping, I can't find it, I think it's in Mary's holly tree. I stood there for ages earlier trying to spot it but lockdown explorers kept getting lost and looking bemused. I felt that pull of civic duty and kept pointing the way. I'm Welsh, it's unavoidable, it comes over me like a force - look confused within 10 metres of me and I will give you eye contact, friendly encouragement and detailed instructions of how to get where you need to go. Even when what I would really like to be doing is standing silently waiting for a whisper of movement to identify a creature. Sh!

Couldn't find the peeper. Now sitting in the window with the binoculars on standby in case it reappears.

I can however see the plump bullfinch. I had never seen one before I moved here, and now him and his missus feed on the sunflower seeds out the back and appear to be planning a single storey deluxe new build in the russet beech hedgerow between my neighbour and I. He is so pink. Like otherworldly, heavenly, gloriously pink. He sits about a lot while his lady friend does a lot of the work. But he is a real prince, so I can see why it would be hard to resist.

the foxgloves are beautiful this year

A fly just crashed straight into the window I am sitting at. Quite loudly. It is now doing a fourteen point turn of utter confusion. Can flies get concussion?

I'm doing the Artists Way, and reading Women Who Run With The Wolves. I return to these books over an over, trying to unhook the claws of capitalism seeping into my brain. The raw anxiety of having made nothing of my life, not having lived up to expectations, not having capitalised on my talent driving me ever upward on a ladder I never meant to climb.


Thank the goddess for time, and a garden.

I potter.

Today I watered everything again and again in this dry and all pervading heat. My sisters and brothers drooping, gasping for a drop. I stared at the baked earth in the still empty pots, hoping and inspecting for any sign of germination. The kale is up - cavolo nero no less, little seedlings bleached by the sun. I keep moving them round the garden chasing the shadows. I think once they have some sturdiness they will be fine wherever, but I need a germination place. This garden is cooked on every axis except the front, which is unsuitable for such an endeavour being the public facing aspect of the 'ouse. Things I never imagined I would need - a germination zone.
Things I never knew I would care about - how passersby experience my garden.
I like people to enjoy it.

We have had one crop of cress at least. A tiny nod to the possibility that more produce may yet surface. I have so far planted Maris Pipers, and the green tufts burst from the soil just this week. Reassuring. Spring onions, garlic chives and rhubarb - of these no sign. I have a tray of runner beans begging to be put in the ground, it's on the long list alongside potting up the annuals I bought in delight at their exuberant showing off, jewel coloured trailing geraniums and velvet black petunias. A tray of grey-pink cosmos are parched and thirsting in too-small pots waiting for all the other jobs to go first. I have dug borders and planted wood geraniums - cranesbill in pink, blue and white, delphiniums spiking blue and white too, amidst the glittering dew on the leaves of the lady's mantle. I tried some anemones, they look so unbearably sad, I don't know why they are so unhappy but their leaves are yellowing and dying back into the earth. Maybe they hate this free draining sandy dry soil. There was manure, but maybe not enough.

The most glorious success of spring so far is the intensely scented sweet peas absolutely crammed in to a couple of old terracotta pots I usually do me tomatoes in. I had no idea they needed pricking out, but I can't bear to split them up now, so scores of vines are snaking up the pyramid of canes, the colours bursting deep purple, bullfinch pink - filling the garden with the most heady perfume. It takes me back to my grandfathers garden in South Wales, a wall of sweat peas and beans, delicately fragrant lilac Blue Moon roses, and the very particular smell of a Grandad's greenhouse circa 1986, with gas bottle heater and green encrusted windows, concrete path up the middle, the scent of tomatoes all earth, must and marigolds.

I'm learning Sketchup. It reminds me of when I first got sober and had nothing but time. Amazing how blackout drinking can take over your life. During that first year off the sauce I was so bored it was untrue, I used to wander the streets of London and drink coffee at all hours on Old Compton street and watch the night sights out the window. I learned Photoshop in my basement flat in Peckham, ignoring the mess and the thoroughly unsettling experience of waking up to my own mind, and could eventually retouch with the best of them. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I am a fast learner. I like to shallow dive everything, eating up knowledge buffet style. Cramming as much onto my plate as I can. I am creating a model of our house in Sketchup, I think it's actually quite good.

Bruno

Bruno has the zoomies. He has flumped on the floor in utter frustration, sighing and pleading with those amber-green eyes. The next stage will be boinging around the house looking for mischief to get up to because he knows it's walkies time. He will buffle for non-dog items to chew and run about with until he is taken out. Chris is in charge of taking him, not me. I did the early today for the first time in months. We swapped. Bru and I went out at 530am listening to nothing but birdsong and our own footsteps on the path. It's amazing how well you can communicate with a dog silently when there are so few distractions.

Sheets Heath at dawn

It was spellbindingly beautiful on the heath. I thought of the Great Mother, and how, at 43, I am only just realising that I have always defined my higher power as essentially masculine. This has not turned out to be the kind of primal, wild and ferocious power that I need. Of late I am practicing communing with the spirits in female form, and let me tell you my friends, it is wild. Juicy and hot, multi-dimensional and fecund. It is a portal to some secret place in myself that has been buried, starving and dark underground. I just needed time, and good minds to delve in with.

Every single day since just before lockdown, I have been Zooming with 3 other women and some occasional visitors. We are hunting, scenting, sniffing the air and looking for answers. We read from various different religious, spiritual, recovery and psychological texts and discuss, for one hour and share our experience, strength and hope. It's some good witchery. I did not know how much I needed it, lacked it. My spiritual practice is so personal it has never fitted well within a church or organised place. This gives us a station, an anchor, as we all discover our own conception of a power greater than ourselves.

I am hungry. On many fronts. But I must forage for supper and leave this be. I intended to go out and get some elderflowers before some other thrifty local spots them and I miss out. But it's too late now. I'll pray for a harvest tomorrow. I will leave you with a poem we read this morning by Anne Sexton.

Her Kind

BY ANNE SEXTON

I have gone out, a possessed witch,   

haunting the black air, braver at night;   

dreaming evil, I have done my hitch   

over the plain houses, light by light:   

lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.   

A woman like that is not a woman, quite.   

I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,   

filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,   

closets, silks, innumerable goods;

fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:   

whining, rearranging the disaligned.

A woman like that is misunderstood.

I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,

waved my nude arms at villages going by,   

learning the last bright routes, survivor   

where your flames still bite my thigh

and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.   

A woman like that is not ashamed to die.   

I have been her kind.

Anne Sexton, “Her Kind” from The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981). Copyright © 1981 by Linda Gray Sexton and Loring Conant, Jr. Reprinted with the permission of Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc.

Source: The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1981)