24.02.10
24.02.10
I’ve long since subscribed to the Things To Be Happy About way of thinking…Because some days there is just stress. Stress, and a lack of tea. Stress, a lack of tea, a sudden incapability of Nurofen to do the trick and incomprehensible people by the bucketload. You didn’t finish everything on that to-do list, never mind the to-do list of life, and, for what feels like the umpteenth night running, the sofa claimed you within minutes of stepping your tired little feet through the door.
You could probably throw in a little acne, a lack of having been food shopping lately, and a persistent little twitch behind your left eyebrow, but why compound the misery matters?
Thus the time to Just Step Back presents itself. Just step back…grab your notebook…and think of every little thing that makes you happy.
Like the rumble of thunder during a proper summer storm
And the lengthening of days as winter recedes
White sheets on the washing line slowly arcing in the breeze
The OC Soundtrack & the way it takes me straight back to the cobbled streets of York
Swing dancing in the dark wings of a theatre, just awaiting your cue
Lying on the grass, gazing at the sky until you can feel the earth spinning around you
Raspberry and white chocolate cookies. Warm.
The sound your dad’s shoes made coming up the path to home
Rain. Heavy, warm, droplets. Hitting your window.
Cold peach juice
The scent of Piz Buin lotion
Asterix comics and The Jill Series
Building dens (everywhere)
Cantering along in thick fog, only able to hear but not see the other horses along for the ride
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07.02.10
Certain writers are easy to fall in love with. Shakespeare, Harper Lee, Austen, Donne. They live among the authors who transcend a bad teacher and a bad mood, who pluck you by the scruff of the neck from the place you sit, to immerse you easily and completely in their own world.
And then there are some authors who you never really made friends with. What does that even mean, anyway? What are they on about?! Maybe you couldn’t get past a slow first few chapters, or the themes were alien, or the rhythm tripped you up, but whatever it was, they were doomed to a base layer of memory that isn’t often picked at.
Carol Ann Duffy was one of those poets for me. I didn’t like the GCSE anthology poems. I didn’t want a bloody onion. It wasn’t a “moon wrapped in brown paper”; it was a sodding pasta ingredient. No, I didn’t want to write an essay about it, thank you, unless it could be 5 para diatriabe as to why-I-thought-an-onion-as-a-moon-was-a-crap-metaphor-and-what’s-the-point-in-this-class-anyway??
But lately, I’ve been returning and rediscovering, and I offer you this poem that proved to be the turning point in my relationship with Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry:
YOU
Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head.
so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name,
like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables
like a charm, like a spell.
Falling in love
is glamorous hell: the crouched, parched heart
like a tiger, ready to kill; a flame’s fierce licks under the skin.
into my life, larger than life, you strolled in.
I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine,
in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze,
staring back from anyone’s face, from the shape of a cloud,
from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me
as I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are
on the bed, like gift, like a touchable dream.
***
04.02.10 - A little Ray of Sunshine
You know those weeks where you’re not entirely sure why you got out of bed? At all? Though there have been brief moments of wonderful and #win in these (not yet finished) 7 days - #Twespians, this morning’s soy peppermint mocha, a perfectly written scene - it’s definitely been otherwise a case of the heavy, heavy week.
But yesterday, a little ray of sunshine broke into my funk, in the form of another writer’s happy thoughts. Monica Bhide is one of those wonderful writers who it may have taken me years to discover, if it hadn’t been for falling simultaneously in love with Twitter and the Renegade Writers’ books.
I’ll leave you to discover her amazing recipes and writing for yourself, but to start you off, here is the post that cut through yesterday’s foggy head: Monica Bhide on Why the Best Is Yet To Come.
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24.01.10 - Sunday <3
My favourite day of the week, without doubt. Today was an especially good Sunday. A fresh white t-shirt. Pale jeans. Jazz. A stroll around London. Hummingbird Bakery. And a great Caramel Macchiato:
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23.01.10 - An introduction
Welcome to the inspiration corner…a brain-dump of a page, where I’ll be posting a little something every day that inspires me. Think of it as a virtual mug of chai. Or your favourite fuzzy sweater…Just a little something to get those creative rivers flowing.
So.
Kicking off this section is one of my favourite passages of writing, ever ever written. Whether you’ve read the book or not, love it, hate it, whatever…the opening to Nabokov’s Lolita is just pure poetry:
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“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly in school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
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