On the Tip of my Tongue

From somewhere/ a calm musical note arrives/ You balance it on your tongue,/ a single ripe grape

(I love these lines - read by Marlene. I must ask her the author.)

I am still sad without Rob. No music drifts down from the attic. The jasmine incense no longer burns. No ear to listen to me ramble. No driver when I go to town. I must choose my own fruits and vegetables. I cook without imagination. It lacks his thoughtfulness, his love of experimentation.

We would drive hours each summer to the jazz festival at Marciac. Jazz was Rob's true love. And yet he wanted me by his side. He would carefully choose performers who sang as he knew I loved lyrics. I felt this was a gift. He was sharing something that brought him joy. We would sit at small cafes and before the waiter could bring our drinks "a calm musical note arrives".  

Small bands of musicians roamed the town. They erupted everywhere.

For the most part, we lived peacefully together and apart. He worked. I worked. We were both constantly in motion. But at the end of most days, we'd sit and eat together. Sometimes, he would yell down the stairs that dinner is ready and sometimes, I'd begrudgingly leave my desk and sit across from him.

Now I worry that I wasn't kind enough. 

 When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Gift from the Sea

My sleep is disturbed. I sleep for two hours and wake, perhaps have a cup of camomile tea, light a cigarette, leaning out the kitchen window, looking over the messy tangled garden below. Sometimes I weep but never enough to water the garden. And then I fall asleep again...

This post is a little aimless but it pleases me. Here, I am free to say what I please. "Dare I disturb the universe?" 
I think something is gelling inside of me and it's on the tip of my tongue.

Curriculum Vitae

 I have been working on this forever, practicing Louise DeSalvo's "The Art of Slow Writing", and trying to mimic Lisa Mueller's poem "Curriculum Vitae". She is much cleverer than I am. At the last moment, I changed to present tense. 

I have decided to move on and do one for Rob. I might return to this some day. I really like some lines and am uncertain about others. 

Curriculum Vitae

1. On a green isle, razed by bombs, hungry for coal and potato, I am conceived for a house.

2. Cows low and milk in my grandfather's barn, as I slide out of my mother, underweight and ravenous.

3. I gain, nourished by her big fat Quaker family until my grandfather laughs at my father. He retaliates by crossing an ocean with his elder's first daughter and only grandchildren.

4. In the country of strangers, my mother weeps rivers.  My father sends his family back to the old country.

5. My mother runs free while her sisters coddle my sister and me.  Months later, her conscience pricks: women belong beside their husbands, she says. She wore out her welcome, my father says. 

6. Another sister is born.  We move house. Another sister, another house. The pattern repeats itself. 

7. When I sprout breasts I understand that lust, not houses, makes babies. I am appalled.

8. My body extends and grows graceful in a room with mirrors and barres. I share my first orgasm with a dancing teacher.

9. I fall upon books by clever women and leave family and small town for a university sprawl. 

10. I meet a quiet man whose arms and lips stir my blood. Although I have sworn never to marry, I break my oath. 

11. Long days writing advertising. Long nights in household drudgery. I trade my quiet man for a room of my own and a piano bar. 

12. A year passes before he slips into my bed and leaves his scent and a love letter. I succumb and we have one, two, three children.

13. While my quiet man is making a name for himself, no one calls me by name. 

14. Escape to sunflower fields and grape vines. While the children school, I school: in open-air markets and small cafes,  I read volumes and fill notebooks. A letter erupts into a literary fuck feast.

15. Home to old routines. In the back garden, my quiet man builds a writing house. 

16. Lessons in humility. Up and down, round and round on the carousel of time. Three small beings grown tall, independent and leave. 

17. I turn 60, then 70, and celebrate with cherry blossoms in Japan.

18. An evil virus roams the globe killing whoever wherever. We lock our door, sharing wine, conversation, and music across balconies.

19. In Morocco, the unimaginable happens. My quiet man falls down seven mosaic-tiled steps. After 53 years, death do us part.

20. The sound of silence. I dissolve and reshape, like cumulous clouds, not knowing what form to take in my final act.

Courage Kindled

The last days of the year were filled with fun and games, good food and wine, and sitting cosy, watching movies in our matching pjs (a gift from Brendan and Jane). We chose a lemon tree (no evergreens left) and decorated it with Christmas ornaments, got stuck in a muddy field in Mary's car - heavy with wine - and were pulled out by a tractor. 

We drove to Castres to dine at Cuq en Terrasses (a gourmet feast) and to Causades to visit a hat store for Jane. The last day we spent in Toulouse, eating at Entrecôte (a favourite) and then onto La Halle de la Machine with giant Minotaur and Dragon that moves, breathes fire and scared poor Seb. Ten days passed in a flash and my family left to celebrate New Year's Eve in London. I welcomed in the new year by myself.  

FOR A NEW BEGINNING

by John O’Donohue

"In out-of-the-way places of the heart,

Where your thoughts never think to wander,

This beginning has been quietly forming,

Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,

Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,

Noticing how you willed yourself on,

Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety

And the gray promises that sameness whispered,

Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,

Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,

And out you stepped onto new ground,

Your eyes young again with energy and dream,

A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear

You can trust the promise of this opening;

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning

That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;

Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you."

I've been trying to write a blog for the new year but the wonderful ideas and sentences that form in my head never quite make it to the page. I am always afraid of appearing too simple, and of becoming so vulnerable that I curl into a ball and die. (I always had a flair for the melodramatic.) 

Still the fear I felt when I read my last proprioceptive writing exercise about my shattered heart was as real as the childhood fear of monsters under my bed.

I would like to "find ease in risk". I think my biggest problem is that I haven't been writing and am out of practice. Easily remedied. I have begun. Since January 1st, I've set myself the task of writing for 15 minutes, after my morning coffee. And yes, the writing is pretty simple and I do write the obvious but my friend Susan once told me that this is my gift. 

On January 1st, I wrote "I wish to grow old disgracefully like Billy Connolly. I wish to be kinder to myself but not bullshit myself. I want to feel freer about asking for help. I want to face my fears (here I go again) and do it anyway. I want to stop being so self-effacing. I want to love myself. This reminds me of Brendan's question of many years ago. "Would the people who love you love you if you were stupid, worthless? And underneath this thought is the thought that I smoke to remain a bad girl, a rebel who doesn't want to spend every minute trying to be perfect." 

And so the new year begins...

I am trying to establish new habits. I am learning to ask for help. Before Rob died, I simply yelled up the stairs. Now, I must ask an outsider. So be it. 

I do not want to live a small life. I must give up - for now - trying to find the perfect word, sentence, transition and just write.