I was looking for an appropriate photo of a long-haired cat to accompany this post, but this kitten said ‘pick me, pick me!’. Look, you can see it in his eyes.

My parents came to stay after my bro ran the marathon, and managed to politely hide the horror in their eyes as they waded into the cat hair covering my carpet. I had bought a ‘pet-friendly’ hoover when I moved in, but it only seems to clean up after certain (hairless) pets – snakes, for example.

A few days later a brand new hoover arrived, courtesy of my mum and dad, and this one has suction like you wouldn’t believe. It almost sucks the entire carpet inside it. I’m not going to tell you how many bags I filled with cat hair because you might be eating your breakfast.

So hooray for hoover buying mums and dads. Whether they’re still around or not, what can you say thank you to your parents for today? If you can’t think of anything, read the poem first. We all do the best we can. Leave your thank yous in the comments section.

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Someone has actually bought Thaw and The Blue Handbag on Amazon today, the first I’ve sold for weeks. Thank you, book-buying person. I shall buy half a drink with my proceeds this weekend and enjoy every sip.

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AFTER 37 YEARS MY MOTHER
APOLOGISES FOR MY CHILDHOOD

When you tilted toward me, arms out
like someone trying to walk through a fire,
when you swayed toward me, crying out you were
sorry for what you had done to me, your
eyes filling with terrible liquid like
balls of mercury from a broken thermometer
skidding on the floor, when you quietly screamed
Where else could I turn? Who else did I have?, the
chopped crockery of your hands swinging toward me, the
water cracking from your eyes like moisture from
stones under heavy pressure, I could not
see what I would do with the rest of my life.
The sky seemed to be splintering like a window
someone was bursting into or out of, your
tiny face glittered as if with
shattered crystal, with true regret, the
regret of the body. I could not see what my
days would be, with you sorry, with
you wishing you had not done it, the
sky falling around me, its shards
glistening in my eyes, your old soft
body fallen agaisnst me in horror I
took you in my arms, I said It’s all right,
don’t cry, it’s all right, the air filled with
flying glass, I hardly know what I
said or who I would be now that I had forgiven you.

Sharon Olds

This week, my first boyfriend very kindly returned the diary I’d given him when I was seventeen. I haven’t it since then. (If you’re reading, Glen, could you get in touch? I have moved… and thank you.)

As you can imagine, it has been interesting listening to what my nine year old (up to fourteen year old) self has to say for herself.

I was surprised to read that I decided not to drink when I was twelve, and that I wanted to be a child psychologist when I was eleven. How often do we dismiss the things children say about themselves and their futures?

I also learnt that my main obsession pre-twelve was food (endless ‘we had porridge and golden syrup for breakfast, it was lovely’s and ‘we had a cheeseburger and I ate it all up’) and post-twelve… well, you can guess. I thought I’d share some twelve year old wisdom with you, on ‘the differences I have discovered between French and English boys’ after a trip with school.

FB leer, EB smile.
FB are handsome, EB are pretty plain.
FB undress you wtih their eyes, EB chat you up.
FB express their feelings for you, EB keep their feelings bottled up.
FB show off and fail, EB show off and succeed.
FB are v. forward and take advantage of tourists (female), EB are scared of you and don’t.
FB are thin but sexy, EB have nicer bodies (sometimes fat)
FB are funny, EB are serious.

I know which list I prefer ; )

I also liked this bit:

“I woke up very late, and I played on top of the fridge with Duncan, and pretended it was a boat, and said the kitchen floor was sea.”

Sounds like my kind of morning.

I’d like to leave you with one of my first poems – it has a very serious message, and I hope you learn something, people.

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Smoking

First people want to try
Just to see what it’s like.
Then they give a sigh,
Because they can’t stop.
They start to cough and splutter
Get bags under there [sic] eyes
When you think about it
It nearly makes you cry.

Look at the pain…

My bro raised nearly £2K for Epilepsy Action, and finished the London marathon in 3 hours 52 minutes. For the uninitiated, that’s pretty damn impressive, especially with a wonky knee and in the heat. Yay Duncs.

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Elliott has done a little interview with me here, thanks Elliott. He’s one of the 70-odd readers who are still reading my novel Thaw online every day – I don’t think I’d have the stamina. My hats go off to them. Is that the phrase I’m looking for? Maybe it’s just hat?

*

I found these quotes on whiskey river and I wanted to save them somewhere. Here is a good place if I want to find them later, unlike that poem about finches which I fear is lost forever.

“You are flawed, you are stuck in old patterns, you become carried away with yourself. Indeed you are quite impossible in many ways. And still, you are beautiful beyond measure.”
- John Welwood

“Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is really worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It’s okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.”
- Miranda July

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Thank you Jo for pointing me to this excellent piece on how to love/how to write.

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Finally, I enjoyed this Writer’s Almanac poem, and thought you might too. Happy Wednesday!

Stripping and Putting On

I always felt like a bird blown through the world.
I never felt like a tree.

I never wanted a patch of this earth to stand in,
that would stick to me.

I wanted to move by whatever throb my muscles
sent to me.

I never cared for cars, that crawled on land or
air or sea.

If I rode, I’d rather another animal: horse, camel,
or shrewd donkey.

Never needed a nest, unless for the night, or when
winter overtook me.

Never wanted an extra skin between mine and the sun,
for vanity or modesty.

Would rather not have parents, had no yen for a child,
and never felt brotherly.

But I’d borrow or lend love of friend. Let friend be
not stronger or weaker than me.

Never hankered for Heaven, or shield from a Hell,
or played with the puppets Devil and Deity.

I never felt proud as one of the crowd under
the flag of a country.

Or felt that my genes were worth more or less than beans,
by accident of ancestry.

Never wished to buy or sell. I would just as well
not touch money.

Never wanted to own a thing that wasn’t I born with.
Or to act by a fact not discovered by me.

I always felt like a bird blown through the world.
But I would like to lay

the egg of a world in a nest of calm beyond
this world’s storm and decay.

I would like to own such wings as light speeds on,
far from this globule of night and day.

I would like to be able to put on, like clothes,
the bodies of all those

creatures and things hatched under the wings
of that world.

May Swenson

I’ve just been watching the goldfinches delicately tap at their plastic tube of black niger seeds.

It sparked the memory of a poem about finches – there are finches in it, and a tree, and when I read it, it makes me feel golden.

I thought it was by Kinnell, but I just looked and I can’t find it. I found this instead, so I hope it will do. Have wonderful weekends x

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Everyone Was In Love

One day, when they were little, Maud and Fergus
appeared in the doorway, naked and mirthful,
with a dozen long garter snakes draped over
each of them like brand-new clothes.
Snake tails dangled down their backs,
and snake foreparts in various lengths
fell over their fronts, heads raised
and swaying, alert as cobras. They writhed their dry skins
upon each other, as snakes like doing
in lovemaking, with the added novelty
of caressing soft, smooth, moist human skin.
Maud and Fergus were deliciously pleased with themselves.
The snakes seemed to be tickled too.
We were enchanted. Everyone was in love.
Then Maud drew down off Fergus’s shoulder,
as off a tie rack, a peculiarly
lumpy snake and told me to look inside.
Inside that double-hinged jaw, a frog’s green
webbed hind feet were being drawn,
like a diver’s, very slowly as if into deepest waters.
Perhaps thinking I might be considering rescue,
Maud said, “Don’t. Frog is already elsewhere.”

Galway Kinnell

I’ve had a rich and glorious weekend, all soaked in sunshine. Mooching round the Fitzwilliam museum with my friend Esther (do buy her beautiful book), sneaking into the secret gardens of her old Cambridge Uni college, lying on a fallen tree in Richmond Park and then walking with Heather and seeing stags, feeling very hot in Rosie and then remembering I had air conditioning, reading, reading, musing, journalling, reading, musing. I just feel so OPEN to everything at the moment.

I wish you could have seen the blue of this painting: Virgin and Child, painted by Andrea di Vanni d’Andrea circa 1400. Circa 1400… can you imagine?

I’m reading lots of new books and listening to lots of new music too, and these two quotes came together for me this weekend. The first is from Karen Maezen Miller’s new book, Hand Wash Cold:

“A marriage is a lot like a silent meditation retreat anyway. In both cases, you come face-to-face with the most unloveable aspects of yourself, your messy unpleasantness, your selfishness, and the panicked impulse to duck and run. Neither experience is anything like the honeymoon you signed up for. The point is to pitch all that out and stay put. With my meditation practice, I can see that I’m still a cranky person, but I try to be a kinder cranky person. One who says less but always says ‘I’m sorry’.”

The second is from Ezra Bayda’s excellent book of short meditations, Saying Yes to Life, and I might have shared it before but, hey, it’s worth saying again:

“The spiritual practice of relationships is about working on ourselves only, freeing ourselves from the constricting grip of our own unhappiness. It is not the other person’s job to take our unhappiness away; our discomfort is our own responsibility. Attending to our own spiritual tasks – seeing our judgements, opinions, beliefs, demands, and staying present with the fears out of which they all arise – frees others to move towards us. Then, when they no longer feel the need to defend, they become more willing to take care of their job. Thus joy in relationships becomes possible.”

Combine the two (expect relationships to push ALL the big buttons, and then take responsibility for your own buttons) and we’re laughing. Easy, eh? ; )

Ah, and now Mark E Smith is ranting on Radio 6. Could the morning begin any more perfectly? Oh yes, it could. I need a cup of tea. What will you have?

Here she is, looking wistful.

I can’t imagine she looked wistful very often. I like to imagine her striding around doing practical things without a fuss, and dispensing advice hither and thither whether it was asked for or not. Wikipedia tells me she practised handstands well into her eighties.

Brenda Ueland wrote ‘If You Want To Write: A Book about Art, Indepencence, and Spirit’. My much loved copy is right here in front of me. Let me open it at random and give you a taste of her unique voice.

“These people who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas, such as: “I see where I can make an annual cut of $3.47 in my meat budget”. But they have no slow, big ideas. And the fewer consoling, noble, shining, free, jovial, magnanimous ideas that come, the more nervously and desperately they rush and run from office to office and up and downstairs, thinking by action at last to make life have some warmth and meaning.”

“Of course, in fairness, I must remind you of this: that we writers are the most lily-livered of all craftsmen. We expect more, for the most peewee efforts, than any other people.”

“The only way to find your true self is by recklessness and freedom. If you feel like a murderer for the time being, write like one. In fact, when you are in a fury it is a wonderful time to write. It will be brilliant, – provided you write about what you are furious at, and not some dutiful literary bilge.”

I also particularly like this chapter title: “Why Women Who Do Too Much Housework Should Neglect It For Their Writing.”

Time for me to re-read her book, I think. Does anyone have a copy of her autobiography, ‘Me’? I’d love to read it but it seems to be more than £40 to get a second hand copy on Amazon…

I’m feeling particularly Buddhist today (which is probably the kind of thing a proper Buddhist would never say) so I’ll finish with this from the woman herself, which seems to fit beautifully.

“But remember always that the true self is never a fixed thing. You can never say: “Good. Today I find at last what I am really like: splendid type!” You cannot say that because the true self is always in motion like music, a river of life, changing, moving, failing, suffering, learning, shining. That is why you must freely and recklessly make new mistakes – in writing or in life – and do not fret about them but pass on and write more. Active evil is so much better than passive good, which is just docility, feebleness, timidity. And do not try to be consistent, for what is true to you today may not be true at all tomorrow, because you see a better truth.”

Permission granted. Go on, go ahead and make your glorious mistakes. As Brenda says, “Since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of time, you are incomparable”. And “Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.” Everybody. That’s you.

I have just spent what some people may say was an unecessarily long time choosing the right Rufus photo to accompany this post.

What a beautiful, sexy boy he is. I’m pleased to read that he’s in a happy long term relationship now, but I wonder if he (or his music) would be quite so beautiful without the gut-crunching pain and passion? Cigarettes and chocolate milk…

Anyway, I wanted to challenge anyone to watch this video of him performing Zebulon without getting a little tear in their eye. Here it is.

There’s a good interview here too.

There, enough Rufus-love. Spring is unfurling. From my window I can see a pink cherry, the blossom just shyly appearing, and behind it an ancient magnolia. The huge walnut tree is still in winter, but I’m hoping something is happening inside. The sap is getting excited.

I thought this poem fitted with Rufus-love and laviscious blossom – bursting with juice and love – the grown-up variety of love which just grows and grows. [Make sure you read it slowly, it deserves to be properly tasted.] Enjoy.

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His Wife

My wife is not afraid of dirt.
She spends each morning gardening,
stooped over, watering, pulling weeds,
removing insects from her plants
and pinching them until they burst.
She won’t grow marigolds or hollyhocks,
just onions, eggplants, peppers, peas
things we can eat. And while she sweats
I’m working on my poetry and flute.
Then growing tired of all that art,
I’ve strolled out to the garden plot
and seen her pull a tomato from the vine
and bite into the unwashed fruit
like a soft, hot apple in her hand.
The juice streams down her dirty chin
and tiny seeds stick to her lips.
Her eye is clear, her body full of light,
and when, at night, I hold her close,
she smells of mint and lemon balm.

by Andrew Hudgins