{ L E O N I E . W I S E }

everything is going to be alright. unknown
(if you know who the photographer is, please tell me so i can credit them)

so, now there’s been a great breaking down, days where my toast would have landed on the floor buttered side down if i’d dropped it, what happens next?

natalie goldberg, in her marvellous book writing down the bones says:

you can’t go deep into your writing and then step out of it, clamp down, go home, “be nice”, and not speak the truth. if you give yourself over to honesty in your practise, it will permeate your life. you can’t straighten up during writing and then hunch back down when you let go of the pen. writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth, and it spreads out from the page into all of our life, and it should.

i guess then, that gives me a few options:

1. stop writing the truth of my life
2. keep writing the truth of my life here, but not allow it to spread out from the page
3. keep writing the truth of my life here, and take that same truth out into the world

because what i did was fairly easy…
i didn’t have to look you in the eye as i was writing. i was hiding in bed, sharing some of my dark thoughts and how i really feel, sharing the truth. because a lot of people who read my words here don’t know me, have never met me, and i don’t have to interact with you during the course of my daily life. so you’re never gonna know if i don’t live with this same honesty as i emerge from under the covers and step back out into the world.

the real change will begin when i learn to take this same truth out of my writing and into my daily life – speaking this truth as i interact with the people around me… because if i don’t, or if i continue to only speak this kind of truth when i write (on, or offline), then i will end up living a dichotomy that is likely to be my undoing.

this is my promise to myself for 2010

• i claim VOICE as my word for the year and TRUTH as it’s backup singer
• i will speak my truth gently, understanding that whoever is listening has their own truth and may not want to hear what i’m saying
• i will ask for help if i need it
• i will begin

(thank you to you all for your wonderful responses & lovely email messages. i am braver because of you)

speak the truth. unknown.
(if you know who the photographer is, please tell me so i can credit them)

suddenly everything has piled on top of me at once and i can’t see my way out.

i am fucking angry right now with some parts of my life, yet i’m not doing anything to change them.

i’m feeling lost. worthless. might as well be dancing with ants (it would be just as useful).

i have watched Gabrielle Bouliane, speak to me about things i already know and am still not doing anything about. she challenges me to get up and do something with my life. she’s dead now and i’m still alive. and still not doing anything.

i was offered a writing gig that, while unpaid, is fairly high profile in some creative circles. there was excitement and disbelief… mostly disbelief. with so many amazing writers on this planet, why did they choose me?! and when it came to selecting photos to go with my words, looking back through all the places i have been, i am really struggling to find six that i really love now.

i have lost faith in my writing & photographic abilities

my head knows all the words

1. i get to choose how i react to things in my life
2. if i don’t like who i am, then change it
3. make a list and start at the top
4. just start with one thing
5. …

i’ve read motivational books, websites, know all the right things to say to offer encouragement to myself, to write my way out, or do the work

i have been struck down with a fever of the mind and spent the last two days in bed. with crazy thoughts going through my brain…

• like selling all my cameras because i feel like i take crappy photos
• like how much i hate a part of my life, but have no fucking clue what to do if i don’t do that thing anymore
• how i have a book that i still haven’t managed to finish
• how my style statement book is sitting in a pile of other books because i haven’t been able to finish working through it
• how, if someone had to come into my flat to clear it out because i just up and left, they would find so many unfinished things; like unsent mail, unframed art, unfinished creative projects
• how i can’t fill in susannah’s lovely worksheet because i don’t have a word for 2010. i did think at one point that my word might be voice, but since i have such a hard time with saying anything, then how can it be?
• how i don’t have a clue what i’m doing with my life and, if i didn’t have my beloved right now, i’d be screwed because i’m hiding in bed (not working) and wouldn’t be able to pay the rent
• that i have one coldsore on my face already, with another threatening to appear and keep it company
• how maybe my new haircut wasn’t such a great idea after all
• how trivial all of these things are compared to the problems of others, so how dare i stay in bed and feel sorry for myself. like, how fucking self-absorbed am i?!

but rather than getting up and doing any of these things; or starting with just one thing, then moving on to the next, i’m just sitting here.

feeling like shit. not doing anything to change it.

i myself am made entirely of flaws
stitched together with good intentions
- unknown

what i don’t need:

• platitudes
• judgement (talking mostly about myself here)

what i do need:

• the space to allow this to work itself through me, rather than trying to subdue it and make it not okay, or make myself wrong for feeling any of this
• carol’s siren red angel
• friends who can help me get my big girl panties on and deal with it

i am the wind screaming across the canterbury plains
i am the untranslatable language of dolphins
i am undiscovered life-forms at the bottom of the ocean
i am the last cookie in the jar
i am all those words you wish you’d never spoken aloud
i am the arms of time, pulling us all a little closer to death
i am in two places at the same time
i am the five pound note that went through the wash in a pocket of your jeans
i am one left shoe and it’s accompanying shoe-lace
i am the blanket draped over your legs for warmth
i am the sun kissing your face
i am the unexplored places in the universe
i am understanding
i am all the books yet to be published
i am the memorial to all we have lost
i am the cotton-wool-soft feel of your lips touching mine
i am the pathway, worn by travellers
i am jumbled the sentence
i am ; used incorrectly
i am nonsense rhymes read aloud to a confused audience
i am the feeling you get when you skip instead of walking
i am the poet with writer’s block
i am the pre-dawn fisherman
i am burnt toast
i am the arms of your lover
i am a poem waiting to be read
i am what’s waiting on the other side of the silence
i am a borrowed library book
i am lost

it is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy, it is disposition alone. seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other and seven days are more than enough for others.
- jane austen

to my beloved on our eighth wedding anniversary,

i have found that even eight years has been insufficient to make us fully acquainted. i hope our intimate conversation lasts for many, many more years to come.

i love you

venus (after surgery). banksy installation at the bristol museum 2009

so, anyone who reads this blog (or any of the blogs of emma, jo, lisa, megg, penny, sas and susannah) will already know that last weekend we all got together in a cottage in a small village in england. i still don’t (and don’t think i ever will) have the words to adequately describe the weekend, even to those that were there with me! it was a gzillion different kinds of wonderful.

the weekend was full of such openness, sharing and love that the only way to be there was as my truest self. i come home on a high, with a heart full to bursting point, fallen in love a million times over with each of the beauties i shared my weekend away with.

and i find myself returned home to the same place, the same husband, the same job, the same clothes in my wardrobe (okay, apart from a new coat purchased after being inspired by emma) and yet not the same life.

it’s the same feeling i have had upon returning home from being held in the company of women in the past; a feeling of being accepted, fully, simply as myself, then leaving that safe space & making my way out into the world once more.

and it’s hard.
hard to come home and integrate back into the world.

because i am no longer physically cocooned in a cosy cottage, within a warm blanket of loving arms, understanding and love. all i have here is me and the world.

yes, my friends are still there and still love me. but they are not here. and i am not there with them.
yes, my husband is still here and still loves me. and i love him dearly, that hasn’t changed.

but still i feel like a piece of me is missing…
it’s like all my friends suddenly grabbed their coats and left the playground, leaving me standing there alone with just the sound of the empty merry-go-round grinding slowly to a halt.

as i said before, it’s not the first time i have come home from a weekend away feeling like this. and the realisation came to me today that this is all i really have.

me. here. by myself.

so, everytime everyone else has said their goodbyes and gone home, i better bloody well be willing to love myself; to sit down with my reflection, greeting myself with the same look of love in my eyes that i have seen in others when they look at me.

that is my love after love.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

thinking today about simple pleasures:

1. stopping for a nice cup of tea (or hot chocolate) during a frosty sunday walk
2. a loaf of freshly baked bread
3. a slice of cake
4. a quiet place to reflect

the glittering object of desire is often seen as the answer to all present difficulties. the natural thought is that; with this incredible thing, with this incredible woman, with this car, with this workspace, i will be different. a person without the problems i possess now. but there are manifold drawbacks…

…it is a want that may actually be a way of stopping real things from happening.
- david whyte. the three marriages: reimagining work, self and relationship

i could think of at least a dozen times that this has been true in my own life. those times when i think about how much better my life would be if only i had a bigger desk or an allocated room for all my creative projects. how i could take better pictures if i had a better camera. how a new mixing bowl or item of fancy kitchen equipment will almost certainly guarantee that i am a better cook. how that very sparkley object is, without doubt, going to change my life if only i could have it right now. or, i would be successful or feel beautiful if only i had … (with conditions attached).

david whyte has me thinking about the possibility that i might be preventing real things from happening in my own life whilst i am seeking answers through obtaining desirable objects.

he leaves me wanting to be more mindful of future objects that i introduce into my already cluttered life.

these thoughts also goad me into taking a good look at all the things i currently have in my life that might have arrived there from me imagining (consciously or unconsciously) that they were an answer to a difficulty/problem.

i am back in a place where my heart is full and my head is empty…
…because i don’t have any words to adequately describe the weekend i’ve just had with seven glorious women.

so, in lisa’s words…

the realest of real women gathered this weekend. shed, nourished, clear, expanded, relieved, and ready to give voice and take action on all possibility.

emma, jo, lisa, megg, penny, sas and susannah… i love you more than crumpets toasted over an open fire.

…it sets one to dream to think about being called out to greater things…
…but at the end of it all when we put any book down, no matter how inspiring, we are left facing ourselves in the mirror, with the need to get up each morning walk out the door and live our own lives.
- david whyte. the three marriages: reimagining work, self and relationship

anxiety.

it’s a small word that really doesn’t adequately define the feeling…

… the one where I go to meet a friend, perhaps for the first time, perhaps one I have met many times before. it is the quiet moments before the encounter, where I am opening my heart, readying myself for the moments we are together.

it’s when i wonder if i am spiritually presentable; whether the gift that i bring of myself, my heart, my willingness to meet and be seen is enough. i wonder if i am about to be caught out somehow, shown up as being a fraud, an impostor, coversationally or spiritually inept.

yet, to my surprise and [often] delight, i discover that the people i find myself gathering with are a reflection of where i am in my life…

this friendship.
this conversation.
this meeting.

… these are perfectly timed, beautifully orchestrated moments that exist because of all that has gone before.

i let go of wondering how on earth it was that i got to meet this person, or that person, and trust instead in the magical way that life opens up to me in all it’s glory simply because I show up and am willing to be met, wherever i am, however i am, in this moment.

these moments exist because i am ready for them;

this friendship,
this conversation,
this meeting…

… and they are ready for me.