on parade

Every time i see them they glare at me, or rather beyond me. You know that look like "I see you but I am not looking at you". They cling to each other defiant, I always recognise his white hair first, he is literally old enough to be her grandfather, I wonder if he is. Whenever I see them they are holding each other that tightly, as if to say "we must defend our love" "how dare you question our right to be together".

Maybe that's what keeps their love alive.

You know that kind of love, that only exists because it's supposedly not supposed to. If you spent all that time defending it you would look real stupid turning around and saying "Ah shit, after all that it's not really working is it?" "Isn't this a total sham?"

I don't think I love you anymore, but I wouldn't want to let anyone down. Not after they had me figured for a real trooper, they were so impressed with how we weathered the storms and the sneers.

There's nothing wrong with loving someone, anyone, whoever they are, how ever old they are, but just be sure you love them, that you will always love them, even when there's no paraffin left to stoke the flames with, even when your bellows have run out of puff. Just make sure you've got a few ounces of respect left, and a few candles for a warm glow on a quiet sunday evening.

the old (for Margaret Atwood)

i am the tender age of 30
while you in your 40s, single,
still crave and distract yourself from your purpose in life
i confer my compassion upon you
you say i am doing so well
you offer your support and would stick a knife in my heart
given the opportunity to take down my youthful glee
"she's doing so well" they mourn
i love you, women over 40, i am your little sister,
here simply to distract your husbands,
to offer my fine unlined face upturned in your direction.
i rarely get the chance to giggle,
like a silly little girl
but you give me plenty of room
i might as well be seventeen

the following is a direct plagiarism of Margaret Atwood's piece "The Young" from her amazing book of short stories The Tent. It's an exercise for me, to develop something else Margaret has written with traumatic insight on - The (writer's) Voice.

i have decided to encourage the old. Once I wouldn't have done this but now I have nothing to lose. The old are not my rivals, fish are not the rivals of stones. So I will encourage them open handedly, I will encourage them en masse. I'll fling encouragement over them like rice at a wedding. They are the old, a collective noun, like tthe electorate. I'll encourage them indiscriminately, whether they deserve it or not. Anyway, I can't tell them apart.
So I will stand cheering generally, like a blind person at a football game: noise is what is required, waves of it, invigorating yelps to inspire them to greater efforts, and who cares on what side and to what ends.
I don't mean the very old, those who can wear curlers in their hair with gay abandon, take blue rinse, carry sticks, or push zimmer frames with contempt. The beckoning of Death is their armour: to them I'm a voice balloon with nothing in it.
No, it's the still conscious old I mean, the ones with recent divorces and teenage children, those who've learned that if you try and try and try again you'll still not succeed. How disappointed they are! Yet unfaltering in their persistence, they march through their insomnia, their alcoholism, their bulimia, their fear of open spaces. They are still trying to live up to themselves. Bummer.
Here I am, happy to help! I'll pass around the encouragement, a cookie's worth for each. There you are, old! Whatis a big stupid clumsy mess like the one you've been massing in the corner there behind the laundry and the Ikea sideboard. Let me rephrase that, what another understandable human error, but a learning experience. Try again! Follow your aim! You can (still) do it!
What a fine and shining person I am, so much kinder than when I'd finished being young myself. I was severe then, my standards were exacting. The old - I felt - were allowed to get away with far too much. But now I'm generosity itself. Affable I smile and dole.
On second thoughts, my motives are less pure than they appear. They are murkier. They are lurkier, I catch sight of myself, in that inward eye thsat is not always the bliss of solitude, and I see that I am dubious. I scuttle from bush to bush, a firefly at the edge of the dark woods. Yoo hoo! Old! Over here! I dance, my tail aglow and flitting through the tangled undergrowth. That's it! Now, remember this? Here's a lavish gingerbread house, decorated with your name in lights. Wouldn't you like to return to it, reclaim it as your own, stuff your face on sugary fame, Of course you would!
Ah the old, they come in droves, peering through the windows at their hope, dusted with a light nostalgia. They stare at the cages they were fattenned in, the fruit they were poisoned with. Their clockwork images and talking shadows flit in madness through the rooms. Their life's blood sits in a phial on the table as they press their eager old noses up against the glass and crumple sadly.

sunday clouds

life is repeating itself. she is in the bath and while she's there I'm thinking about her watch, and how nice it is, and how stained with nicotine. and it is as i was, the things i had, the tired, sleeping life that was left when i brought myself to you. i have been inspired by finery and fancy and the ability to have a bath every day. she asks the same questions i did. there has to be a better way of writing this.

i look after my girls, we work together to sobriety. we drink a lot of tea and talk a lot about everything and pick it apart and look at it from a new perspective, we rip it apart, we can be brutal, we are honest, we carry pocket mirrors and bright torches, like security guards, we make sure we never miss a trick. we are good at what we do, with our revelations, we examine every response and reaction, every action and its consequence, no stone is left unturned. be brave we say, be bold, us girls we look at ourselves from every angle, our snarling tempers to our ugly misshapen bodies and unformed childish ideas, we stare and stare until we know what we are dealing with and then we begin, we take out our knitting pins.
we are misshapen at first, and unformed, you cannot tell what we will be, but we knit and knit, we try new things, different stitches, we unpick and start again, we go and go, our ladies crochet club. whatever takes your fancy. until we have a shape, it begins to form, and we are excited, we start to see what we are after, a direction, we make plans, we feel the thrill, and the skeins of wool of many colours and widths and fluffs are on hand, in our little kit, handed down by our many mothers. We knit in sequins and love, buttons and hearts, rainbows and laughter, lace and sad songs by desert cowboys. And here we are we ladies of the sewing circle, becoming whole, holding our regukar kit and looking you square in the eye, with one eye on you and another on the past and tomorrow. And in our hands our needles and pins, our torches and pocket mirrors, can you guess what it is yet? No need, you feel warm, we wrap you up and up, we twirl you round and round until you are smothered in our passion and love. We are big and mighty and mad and marvellous, we are thrilling and devastating and we seek the truth, we are your girls and your grandmothers and we will take care of you.

must be i been smoking too long

last night i dreamt that my sister was dead. no, i woke up this morning. i am thinknig about her, she was laid out on the kitchen table, she'd been hit by a car. it's about my love for her, my family. i've been thinking about them.
he won't step up to the bar, he won't raise his game. we may not make it through this one.
i am driving upward, creating a respectable space aroundme, health and love and life, breathing easy, being happy, clean, sumptuous. not for material gain, but for self respect. i only asked for a bed and a smoke free room with a clean carpet, am i being so unreasonable? i will not bring my children into a dirty nest. and that's the truth of it isn't it? marriage and children i guess.
i'm still dying, my chest hurts, i can't even dance without setting it off, and that's not for me. what did i do to myself?
what should i be doing to myself? well listening to Nick Drake is a start. writing tunes and cacophonous grand piano melodies on the new Edirol is bringing me some sweet occupation. it's just perfect, this composition.

the crystal appendix

slipping slowly like a silver leaf from a tree
like the ones you see when you're walking through the woods of Galilee
maybe
Because I can't say I've ever been there
But it's a place I'd like to go
But only just to find out what's the same

Dreams of magic twisting memories of knowing how to fly
are tangled with the tears I shed for Puff and his scaly friends
and sitting on a train with a penny whistle
watched by a blackbird after morning broke
and the St Winifred's school choir grew facial hair
and Grandma died
and Lowrie's matchstalk men were struck and lit my fags


I've been dying, briefly, more than normal anyway
I went to hospital
Sharp pain in the chest spreading to shoulders, mildly crushing bruise in the centre
near my heart
But my works are not done here, He won't be letting me go will he?
They put stickers and wires all over my chest and I lay there wondering
While she took the output to the doctor
And came and told me I was fit
It's the cycling
It's probably the cycling too
That causes the inflammation in my dead centre,
the ribcage rubbing and swelling tendons
so every time i breathe in i get a wee ache
but it's ok now I'm on 400mg Ibuprofen

That really should't have been a piece of poetry mind you, it was just a recount, recap, posterity. There are better fucking words in me than this. I've got stuck in some weird meter, and I actually know that I can pull off something different but when it's going to happen I don't know. It's fighting to get close to the surface, like I am right now I suppose, trying to get some air between the pains. Oh they'll all panic when they read this, but it's nice to be the one who isn't coping sometimes.

Now do I have things to tell you, about the children we all are. Is it of use? The young, how I shall encourage them - that's Margaret Atwood, she's something of an inspiration at the moment, and even though I think she's writing a few years older than me, that's how I feel. I shall heap encouragement upon the young. The fools, their arrogant charms, their transparent seductions.

You are see-through, there are few of you now who aren't, with my latest gadget, my crystal appendix. When I was seven they ripped from me, that end piece of bone, something to do with the digestion of raw meat, it festered in me and they yanked her out before she burst and poisoned my wee babby body. Imagine me at seven? I laugh! Oh I must have been so sweet, so pale and my little belly would have poked out like my sister's did, all skinny we were, and round bubbles for tums. We smiled our gorgeous rosy smiles and bounced our black bobs and I hit her over the head with an orange plastic recorder, and no doubt she got me back. I love her, I adore her, my skinny schwartzkopf schwester.

After a morning's lessons in the conservatory with its giant iron radiators that burnt your bum, I was up and puked a puddle every few yards all the way to the girls toilets. Kneeling there alone, rocking, staring weakly at the eggshells in the eggyolk on the pink walls, do you remember that weird toilet painyt, like chinese crabstick soup? And the Kimberley Clark paper sheets with no absorbent properties whatsoever, oh the children think they'v got it tough these days.

They come to find me, the big round faces of big grown ups, and pile me into the Volvo and drive me home. A proper doctor with a beard smelling of pipe tobacco confers his diagnosis while I lie in the butterfly sheets. Then they drive me back again, to the Royal Gwent, me and Samted, and lay us in gowns on a trolley counting to three with the sweet smell of gas and air as we drifted off to sleep. A last look at my mother's face which i only remember now as the look of fear, and tears. Imagine to have that buried deep within you, that ultimate treasure, a mother's look of love so clear and strong that she will grip your wrist and her eyes implore you not to leave this earth before her, for she could not live without you. She was transparent too. We didn't disappoint her, me and Sam, we came back, the both of us stitched up with black butterflies. It's took me another 19 years to grow a replacement but it's here at last and getting clearer every day, my little crystal appendix that tells me who you are, and what you want, and how you feel about me, you can't lie to me, you can't hide from me, I know you, I see you and I can let you know if I have what you want.

tents and other inspiration

i want to take all the words i have ever written and draw them around me in a cloak of sentences. i am filled with pride at the thought of that manifestation. there are a lot of my words out of me and guts spilled on pages.
i have had a lot of thoughts i am so fucking inspired by my private blogspace again. it's like i want to be private, i don't want anyone in here, maybe i could start a new blog for published works only.
i have done a load of stuff today. D lost his job, I didn't lose my temper over it. I went to see Cassie's latest play and was left cold and empty by it, and i think that is a valuable result.
she shimmered in blue.
Di is here so it's not easy to concentrate on my private space, maybe more tomorrow.

"well he's autistic and he's into music, maybe you identify with him"

la la la

what is it that goes on in that head of yours?
is it like "la la la la...oh PRETTY!" and then "la la la la...ANGRY!"?

heart shaped groove

i want my boyfriend to come over and be around. i want him to be just in the other room smoking fags, except not in my house, i want to hear him tapping the keyboard while i boil the kettle and make the coffee. and say here you go bunny. i want my flat to be reconstructed within a three bedroom house with a garden and enough room to park four cars, two motorbikes and two cats. i want that prescence, i want to do everything so we can do nothing for a few days and hold hands and go to the beach. i say it like this because i think if we did that we'd be ok but lately we got no time and everything's a bit under pressure cos he's got so much work to do that we don't really see each other and when we do we fight and we don't stare deep into each others eyes or enjoy each other much right now. i got a missin him bad.

mm tea mm fuck yeah
first i'm gonna eat my beef sandwich ;)
and then i'm gonna drink a cup of tea
and then i'm gonna wash it down with biscuits
and they'll be chocolate mcvities

i fucking love tea
nothing, no, nothing beats that perfect cup of tea

winehouse

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HFVM5pVTwkM

fascinated by this girl i am. like watching a car crash.
fairplay tho, her producers know what they're doing.
there's something of substance about declaring you're no good
i can't put my finger on it, maybe something of the Nina Simone about her
she's a live tragedy
i've met a few like this, wonderful exotic tortured souls
very seductive

clarity

what matters?
children matter. what matters to me? inspiration matters, beauty and colour matters. my beautiful home matters, my friends and my family. more than that, I dream, I panic and I ponder over expression. i want to share some of my solutions, both in strategic, professional and creative forms. i've never really wanted to leave my job, firstly i was too scared to and now i'm too sad to. i wish i was in a position to do more. read what Jim says.
He seems to know what he is talking about, I know that I know what I'm talking about.Certainly more than would first appear in this space. This began as a forum for the breaking of an old life and the initiation fo a new one. Well, not life, experience, the first shattering of an ego and the rebuilding of a new concept of self, the definitions of gut felt principles. One key thing defines me in this space, and in many others, I am a recovered alcoholic. I stopped drinking relatively early, at 26, and I have had the last few years to develop a new identity and to repair damage done.
This is a huge part of how I see myself, everything sometimes feels as though it is in relation to my alcoholism, where I am is as a result of actions I took when I was drinking, and I was very far away. I did not live in reality, I lived in a dream world, of surface and emotional interactions, I was disconnected and egotistical and concerned only with a path I defined for myself out of limited experience and in direct retaliation to emotional experiences. I was consumed by my passions and recovery has offerred me an opportunity to quench the thirst and so I also define myself as 'in recovery' and following a set of principles for life, initiated by suggestions but interpreted in free will. So I live with the consequences of my drinking and I grow with the program I live by. It is such a huge part of me and I am now no longer able to escape it, it is me, it lives and develops through me and I don't know if there is now ever going to be any other way. Which sounds tragic to my younger self, which rails against distinction and separation and the laying down of experimentation, but then I never knew when to stop.
I have a voice in my head ansd it speaks with the most irritating pomposity, I feel as though it really has something to say and I'm giving it a voice to see if it will wear out. I've got loads of voices in here, and each of them has their way. In the verbal spoken world I am a storyteller, when I am giving advice I am full of anecdotes and myths and metaphors to explan how to do it, how to manage. I am terrified that I cannot seem to translate that ability to a film form. How did I lose my fucking way? I am so angry that I seem to be floundering since Pretty Shitty, it was so honest and free of self consciousness. I knew in my gut it was right and true and that is clearly apparent. So what now? Amuse Bouche is fantastic, but maybe the thing about Pretty Shitty is that it was truly and completely within my control. Not Ready for Drowning became a shit fight with my co-director and I remember his hurt expression as he explained that i had no need to fight and lose my temper because it was so clearly my film and my ideas. I had in fact shut him out in my graceless naivete. Two Dragons was huge and terrifying and incredulous and amazing. It looks so beautiful when screened in its intended format in the cinema on a wide screen. It was controlled and surrounded at all times by the wants and intentions of others and the process lasted such a short while that it remains as a beginning. A beginning of a story, but also only a tase and a tiny moment from which to learn the system and attempt to make a mark on it, to negotiate with many personaliaties and stakeholders, to barely scratch the surface of creating within a rigid business environment. I can't begin to imagine what it must be like inside the studio system, because this was just a wee Welsh film fund.

I said yesterday that I had to respect a man who had succeeded in his dream. He is in such a seemingly tantalising position. He must have really set his mind hard on that goal. I was referring to a well known musician and a theory that sprung to mind. A theory that we somewhat more capricious human beings demand the complete and total material satisfaction of our basic human needs. Bill Wilson calls it "demanding more than our fair share" and our needs are love, respect of our peers and community, shelter, money, isn't it Maslow's hierarchy? We take no delight in the path and only charge towards the prize, at the cost of everything around us. Once in our hands it becomes worthless perhaps, or we bring a circle around ourselves to congratulate us and perpetuate our dream come true. I don't know because I keep stepping down, and shortly after that I begin to fear that I am a failure because I omit to recognise that I no longer have the necessary definition of a specific dream or the sheer strength of will, determination and lack of conscience to carry it out. I'm after something else.
I am gathering creative experiment equipment, but my success seems to have more reference for other people than for me. This success outcome I proferred and chased so gladly, I shared my empty ambitions with everyone and now I complain when they expect something from me. "Still making films?" Fuck I hate that question.
I am always 'making' films. They are imprinted on the inside of my head, the screen behind my eyes projects. I know these people, here they are always arguing and loving and adventuring, smiling and laughing and crying. They're just not ready to come out perhaps, or I am still looking for the way. The way that suits me, the way that remains true, that goes back to the strength of voice. We blame Newport, we auteurs, they didn't teach us to get jobs, they taught us to claim ourselves. What freedom that place has shown me, yet I am only now clawing my way back to that starting point. I just don't understand how I got so lost.
I have run and run, I have run from village to town, then town to city, then city to London and everytime I have created some dreadful severance and you can never go back. You know this age old story, the dissatisfactions. Once you have opened Pandora's box, or tasted the apple or taken the LSD nothing will ever be the same again, irrevocable.
If I return home, though the village might as well be my own body for I know it so well, it contains nothing but emptiness, I can only conncet with the colours of the tress, because the people are someon else, like a caricature of my history. They must have lives, but not to me, I don't remember them, I do someties, but now they are not who I remember them to be. They are living new lives and I can only make new connections on a new basis, I can't have my old life back. I can't have my old village back. My nostalgia for what I couldn't see then and can remember now with new eyes. This is an indulgence now. Because evrything is as it should be of course. I wouldn't have it any other way, but I wonder what it would be like to be as happy as Julian Jones:
" I love it here Em, I've never left, I've got my house, my car, my wife and my kids, I love Abercarn."