The Imagination of Trees: Back to life...Back to reality

Thursday, 16 October 2008

Back to life...Back to reality

And now I am chilled out no longer. Sooooo NOT Zen. Stillness and listening my arse!
Am totally unable to sleep or to stop beating myself up. My mind is in chaos and I'm convinced its a full moon but I can't see it because you can't see the sky in Birmingham.

Nothing works, if I go and make hot milk I'll get bad breath in the morning and if I make chocolate I will have to deal with the guilt on top of it all.

Its all hormones and hysteria round here. Why, pray tell, would the good Lord in all his wisdom pick me to be still, peaceful etc etc? I feel like I just stuck my finger in a socket

Total paranoia set in without warning about 12 hours ago and seems to be currently resident. This makes me behave like a strange, badly house-trained puppy scratching at the door to go out and then beggin to come back in.

I started feeling persecuted about church chairs this evening, you could make up the most random thing, select anything and i would turn it round to some kind of failure on my part. All the Moose in Alaska are catching foot and mouth (for example...and no, I had no idea...I thought I'd made it up). It isn't that I would blame myself for the plight of the Moose with immediate effect, I would just convince myself that you had a point and that I was partly responsible. I would somehow turn it around. I'm not sure how I do it in theory, but in practice it works. I might (for example)assume that you assumed that I had a Moose flannel with which to lather my Radox. I would argue that you had been shocked that I would use a Moose-fur flannel and should be ashamed of myself for lathering my Radox with it. Especially when that poor Moose had been battery-farmed in Alaska, the source of the outbreak of Moose disease. I would then be perfectly at ease explaining to the long-suffering Graham that I thought maybe you were right and that my flannel really was developed from Moose-hide in an appalling fashion resulting in a foot and Mouth outbreak in Alaska.

Furthermore...it would seem reasonable, until the next morning when I read my Blog and wondered what on earth was going on...in Alaska, with a Moose taking a shower with my flannel.

...I've lost it

1 comment:

Aunty P said...: It is pink! I think you are hallucinating again - too much cheese ? Persecuted about church chairs how? Manadrin oil to soothe an overactive mind and rescue remedy to calm you down. Either that or I'm buying Mr B a rubber mallet!; 16 October 2008 at 16:39

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My original introduction

This photo was taken by my husband Graham on Iona. It is important here because it represents the way in which my Mum's death and funeral offered me healing. It marks a point at which I have decided, as she did, to be fully myself and live every moment given to me as fruitfully as I can. As part of this I wanted to start a 'new thing' and start allowing people to see more of my writing and therefore live my life more openly.
This blog is a response to the insights so many shared at Mum's funeral. I discovered there that my Mum was so much more than simply my Mum. She was never a saint, had many flaws, she could be frustrating and difficult like me. But I realise that these things were tiny when balanced next to her capacity for living and for giving. What emerged from her funeral was an image of a woman whose appetite for life and for quality of life was remarkable. She was entirely herself with everyone, whatever the cost. She gave all that she had to the people she loved, she fed us, nurtured us and showed us that every detail of every day was a blessing.
I am giving you my writing as part of the fruits of my life and person in honour of her memory and continued presence in my life. It is a risk I am now willing to take. She has given me the courage to live my life boldly.
When my Mum was dying I went to the Cathedral and imagined her saying goodbye at the side of an expanse of water. In my imagination there was a boat waiting for her to depart. In my mind I urged her to get in her boat, turn her back on us all, never look back and hope for the light on the other side of the water.
The boat story of Jesus telling terrified disciples not to be afraid in the storm and calming the waves has always been comfort to me in the storms of my life. There are so many ways of looking at the symbolic meaning of a boat.
For me this photo speaks to me about a song called 'Lord you have come to the lakeside' and in it there is a line. 'Now my boat's left on the shoreline behind me; by your side, I will seek other seas.' It is a line which kept coming to me as a friend of mine sat at her Aunt's bedside in her final hours. I sang it for her and her partner as they said their goodbyes as a prayer for them, because I knew how much they liked it. I think it began to speak to me too. When I urged my Mum to the other shore it seemed that her boat was only her own and no one could be in it with her. In her death I do feel called to 'seek other seas' as a new beginning with which to honour her departing.

Books I'm reading & books I've just read

The New Black; Mourning and Melancholia by Daniel Leader
The Time Travellers Wife
Retribution by Maureen Duffy
The Summer Book by Tove Janson
Voice Over by Celine Curiol
Perfume by Patrick Siskund
Loads of Alan Bennett's writings
Writing Home by Alan Bennett
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Salmon Fishing in The Yemen
Engelby, Sebastian Faulks
The Lolipop Shoes; Joanne Harris
The Prospect of Heaven: Musings of an Enquiring Believer, Frederick Levison
The Courage to Connect; Becoming all we Can Be, Rosemary Lain-Priestley

About my Writing

My writing tends towards the poetic, it has also been described as filmic. It is intensely personal and seeped in Christian imagery and thinking. I think it is spiritual writing in that it is rooted in the belief that there is a God and that God is very real to us in this time and place on earth. I write because it is something I am unable to live without. I write because it is healing and therapeutic. I write out of instinct and because I am by nature 'a writer'. I write for myself and for others that I know and love. I write for specific occasions and for purposes as well as for its own sake. Writing is a pleasure for me.
I write sporadicallly and as the mood takes me, it is not a disciplined exercise but something which emerges from my soul when it needs to be created. I have been astonished to find that people around me need my writing. They ask for what I have written and they ask for more. This blog is an attempt to meet that demand, not because I feel pressured to do so, but because God has given me a gift and it is begging to be used. People are asking me to us this gift fruitfully.
I think my writing is healing in its nature, it is soulful and intimate, it reaches places within us which we do not understand and it sometimes moves people to tears. It doesn't seem that writing like this is a productive or lucrative affair. It is not a 'niche market', it is not designed for profit or thought through in any sense. This approach would disable it.

The Imagination of Trees