Tell me what hope feels like?
Tell me what hope feels like... we sat on the long empty beach in unfamiliar weather empty stretching greyness vast but misty suffocated sunshine You were a shell of yourself and yet filled with maybe 5 or 6 words you were turning them over and over with no where to put them speaking these words to me they seemed such cumbersome objects, oppressive but insubstantial yet looming large in between us both like the horizon - it all seemed endless - I tried to listen - fearful that it wasn't enough. Tell me what hope feels like? I still can't answer. Reaching into something unknowable talking, touching, walking together getting lost in a small circle climbing endless steps by the sea. There is no definitive feeling, there is no definitive answer, maybe there lies the hope in hope.
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Unplugged
Fuck doing anything on Thursday that I don't do now - already. It will all encroach. I will always feel guilty. There will always be stuff to do which isn't my insignificant contribution. Fuck. Stare at the TV. Listen to shit. Buy into the shit. Help everyone who will never be helped. Post meaningful posts on Facebook. Have a smoke. Try abit. Give up. Try again. Never really do it. Die. Had a cigarette now the whole room stinks of it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Letters to You
Everything from then is boxed up now or wrapped in feathery plastic bags with rotten rubber bands labelled and kept for decades You think the was no passion but the letters tell you otherwise writing twice a day leaving work undone bodies shared jokes and anxious apologies These letter were for her and now they are for you but you tell your daughter: "I don't remember writing them it's like reading another person's words''. So much changes. Do you listen to the letters? Do you learn from what you give to yourself? Yourself remembered. Seeing my mum
So I find myself seeing my mum. I plan the hours I will visit, I consider carefully what we might do What we might say I wonder what gift I may take to her What would she like, what would be useful? I'm not sure anymore. I enter her home with a smile on my face Ready for whatever I find I try to be both flexible and determined. There are too many 'I's here Where is my mum? I listen and I smile and I reach out until I feel like a rainbow with a headache. A dual perspective deep profundity mean meaninglessness Inside Mum's bag
I went to see my Mum, she reached into her bag and gave me: 2 small apples (windfall) I went to see my Mum, she reached into her bag and gave me: 2 small apples (windfall) a questionnaire (all possibilities meticulously ticked) I went to see my Mum, she reached into her bag and gave me: 2 small apples (windfall) a questionnaire (all possibilities meticulously ticked) a Christening photo (strangers in a church, all mementos muddled and hoarded anyway) I went to see my Mum...windfall, possibilities, strangers... Where is my mum's heart?
She left it on her allotment and the weeds grew up and people complained, too much fruit dropped off the tree and projects were started and forgotten. Sitting in the Spring sunshine Mum talks about Christmas coming soon. About the cold coming in and that it's too late to plant things now. She left it with our next-door neighbour, my surrogate Auntie who taught me to knit, our family friend, helper, cleaner - she left it with her, visiting everyday for years after her stroke. Gradually she became an annoyance to Mum, always talking about the same thing, always moaning and complaining. My perceptive mother drowning in her mirror. She left it with my two year-old daughter, keeping the changing mat, the toddler books, the wet wipes, the small baby bibs. My growing daughter and I rolled around on the changing mat together, laughing. She is moving out of the place called 'home' after 35 years. Where is her heart? Her home? She called me 'a charm' the other day. She has her heart. Let me always find it. Sitting in our garden, May 3rd 2016
I have a sudden feeling of being a glass vial, chemicals cooked inside me by the sun. Seven years ago I lay here - on the grass (on the cracked path now - the grass is piled with dead bush, nettles, brambles) - I lay here as a bulging question mark. A happy question mark with calm, yearning potential. I sit here alone now and my inner question is putting her coat on now ready for the end of the school day. I feel hollow, brittle, used - full, pliable, worthy. My friend's brother died yesterday. I feel sad that we are leaving this house. I feel happy to move on. A mixture in a glass vial. Communal life
How lucky we are, to not be dying tomorrow. Yesterday I went to a health spa, Communal changing with everything you could need. Wooden lockers and shared benches, women half naked applying creams, brushing hair, good-naturedly chatting. One transforming from wet lycra to soft flesh to sturctured dress. In the pool my friend and I join the others, all making leisurely transitions from dry heat, to steam, to bubbles, to the cool enveloping weightlessness of water. A pair of friends take time to sit and talk, One man stoically studies a newspaper in the sauna. A large group form a circle in the jacuzzi. Chatting or silent, alone or together, We are all present and here to enjoy. Everyone sips water out of a slim, blue cup. I imagine a bomb smashing this place. Nothing of sense left, a hole in the ground, the water all gone complimentary lotions scattered, hairdryers hanging dementedly from a pointless wall. Today I sit in a play centre by the sea watching my daughter make friends, bouncing around a multicoloured foam funland. The adults sit and drink coffee, companions continue our endless stories about ourselves. A man stares out at the sea. Some slouch nonchalantly over another Sunday. I imagine another bomb obliterating this. The shell of the building an improvised playcentre of ruins. The coffee gone - what stories would we tell, perhaps with fewer words? The sea still there, no pleasure beach but a route for escape or attack. Tomorrow, I assume that I won't be dying. How lucky I am. Late for the rehearsal in a hurry I enter the chapel and
no-one is there. It is white large quiet. A shock. An hour early. I am surprised to be admitted into nothingness. I wait for something. Nothing arrives. Some muffled creaks. Far-away traffic. The zip of my bag is too much. Looking up, the ceiling seems to be a perfect imitation of a ceiling. Pastel blues, greys, greens, geometric vaults overlapping soft depths from hard wood. It is a dream of a ceiling. Alive - hanging in the far corner - a candle. I imagine someone lighting the candle. I try my flute. A single note reasonates beyond itself, Becoming a house of mirrors, reflecting itself, reflecting me, reflecting the room. In this space, things refract in a single note. I am early and eager to capture this. To write it down in my stolen time. I leave and merge into our crowd, I buy a paper, a coffee, I start to lose it - browsing the stationary, the booze snacks leisure wear displays the texters, the chatters, our days... I write some words. I play my flute. People, noise, dreams. Radiator
Woken up by the radiator spitting out tritones into my dreams In my dreams I don't know what it means half asleep, feeling, this chord of augmented urgency, reaching, dropping, getting stuck. A-tingling, a-shimmering, (God and the Devil, a sweet song, fairies making cups of tea) An annoyance A question A silence. soft silence Prick bang chord - it jumps at me! I'm awake, With my humanity and the radiator, remembering my dreams. |
AuthorRuth Molins - musician and teacher. Loves playing the flute and the piano, playing with words and actively sharing the creativity present in us all. ArchivesCategories |