Well – it’s over. Three months of daily posts from Ruth’s diary… If you’ve been reading, then here is my thank you to you.

Thank you to Christine, who has written an exquisite review of the novel here. Thank you to those who’ve commented over the months, especially Jorgelina and Elliott. And thank you for reading, and for making me a writer.

A little list of things I’m feeling grateful for right now: a secret person who knows who they are. Today’s lunch invite. Lilies. Fatty snoring at the bottom of the bed and Silver on the window-sill. The earl grey by my side. The chaffinch singing outside. Lauren Lavern and Radio 6. Banoffee pie (!) All the people I love. You. Add your list to the comments – I want to know.

This poem feels like the right poem today – for Ruth and for anyone else who is living through difficult times. There is always hope, even in the darkest of the dark. We cannot be predicted.

*

Anniversary

Suppose I took out a slender ketch from
under the spokes of Palace pier tonight to
catch a sea going fish for you

or dressed in antique goggles and wings and
flew down through sycamore leaves into the park

or luminescent through some planetary strike
put one delicate flamingo leg over the sill of your lab

Could I surprise you? Or would you insist on
keeping a pattern to link every transfiguration?

Listen, I shall have to whisper it
into your heart directly: we are all
supernatural every day
we rise new creatures cannot be predicted

Elaine Feinstein

This is my lovely radio.

Lots is happening in my life right now. I’ll try not to sound too mysterious about it all, but it means everything might change.

Everything might change, but everything changes all the time anyway.

I need as much clear space as I can find. I need to read and read and read. I need to sit on my bench in the sun and let the dust (which sparkles in the sunshine) settle. I need to drink tea. I need to breathe.

I also think I need some radio silence for a while, but I wanted to let you know before I go that I’m very well (i.e. you’re not to worry about me) and that I’ll miss you all.

(Disclaimer: I may change my mind next week and re-appear. I reserve the right to change my mind at any time because I’m a girl and a changey-mindey one at that.)

Enjoy your summers, lovely people. Keep paying attention.

At the weekend I was bridesmaid at my beautiful friend Heather’s wedding, and I shared a hotel room with one of her friends Claire.

It was an expensive (gorgeous) hotel, and so had thick curtains and well-fitting doors. When we turned the lights off,

This reminds me of what Dogen said about ‘a hand reaching for a pillow’

Fifteen years ago (more?) I started copying poems I liked into a little book. I’ve been flicking through it this morning, taking a breath and diving into the past.

Some are deeply familiar. Encountering these poems again (Levertov, Wright, Roethke…) is like remembering people I have deeply loved and then forgotten. The patterns of words are laid down inside me, deep down. Reading them again sets off peals of happy or painful chimes and resonances.

Some of them I’d completely forgotten, like the one from A. R. Ammons below. There are also the hundreds of poems that I didn’t copy out, and the millions I will never read. We cannot hold on to everything.

But what I have is enough. What I have is abundant, radiant, full of light.

*

I’m off to my psychotherapy course block on Saturday (sandwiched by two weddings) and I’ll be leaving my computer behind again like last time. I don’t even WANT to take it with me. I’ll see you when I get back…

*

The City Limits

When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

that birds’ bones make no awful noise against the light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue

bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider

that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then
the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the

leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark
work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.

A. R. Ammons

I realised this morning that maybe 98% of my tweets are about breakfast, puddings, and earl grey tea.

I tweeted this, of course, thus adding to the 98%.

I also realised that I wasn’t tweeting about the election. Does this mean that banoffee pie (and whether or not to eat it for breakfast) is more important to me than the election?

Well…. yes and no. It may be and it may not be. But there are things I talk about in public, and things I don’t.

This reminds me of the lovely comment steeleweed left on my last blog post, in which he wonders if I write dark novels and positive poems. If you’d read Thaw and a few of the poems I’ve published here recently, you’d definitely think so. But Thaw is my darkest novel (The Blue Handbag is much lighter and more cheerful), and some of my poems are blacker than black.

I suppose we only ever catch glimpses of each other. There are always whole swathes of who-Fiona-is that I don’t show you, and other dark corners that I don’t show even those closest to me. And more – I can’t even imagine how much of me I don’t know about myself yet.

And yet. You do know me, and I know you, even from the glimpses I catch in the comments sections. We are all human beings after all, with all our mess and glory.

And it’s good to know you. Thanks steelewood. Thanks inventor-of-banoffee pie. Deep bow.

My bunch of Buddhists have a small rural retreat centre in 30 acres of countryside in the heart of France.

The Buddhism bit is optional – you can attend morning services or not – but you’ll find the loveliest group of people (although I am biased as they’re my friends) living simple, authentic and ethically engaged lives.

If you want to try Massimo’s bread, or Taize singing, or wandering alone looking for orioles, or swimming in the lake, or just giving yourself some SPACE then go and have a look for yourself.

This is the one I’m going to, but I’d also love to go to this one or this one or any of these.

I’m also going to a day retreat at their London centre on Sunday, or you could always pop in to The Buddhist House in Narborough (near Leicester) where the main centre is. Or come and say hello to me on our ning community site. Enough links now, do you think?

Here’s a poem I wrote when I was staying at another retreat centre with my lovely friend Esther a couple of years ago. I’m edging my way back towards writing, I think. I’m trying not to breathe too hard or make any sudden movements. I might scare my unborn poems away.

*

Group meeting on retreat

There is so much space here.

We sit for an hour, practically strangers.
One of us has felt truly present
only twice in his sixty years.
One of us knows that soon
she has to go back
to be that other person.
One of us has a pane of glass
between her and the world.

Afterwards I trail around the library,
touching books like bodies.
There is no need for words.

I go outside.
I stand under shelter with all the dark split logs.
I open up a blue iris and sniff at the cup.
I sit on a bench opposite high brick walls,
watch clouds creep across the sky.
Fine rain exhales on my face.
There is no need for words.
I come in to write this,
despite myself.

I was going to write a post about going back to bed and reading today, accompanied by the appropriate poem by Raymond Carver.

It seems I already wrote it. When I use google to find poems or quotes, I increasingly seem to find things that I’ve already written. Oh well, I can be a happy goldfish.

Today my list is: 24a, sticky toffee pudding and vanilla custard, Lauren Laverne on the radio (I have a girl crush on her), fast-asleep-cat, bagpuss, St. Nadie in Winter, Blades of Glory (note joyful juxtaposition of high and so-low-its-underground-brow art), my journal, a view of the budding walnut tree.

What’s yours?

PS update… Carver’s ghost must have just read this post. It wasn’t when I was writing, but now the rain is bucketing down. Even more reason not to go anywhere. Thank you rain (and thank you from my landlords veg patch too).