Category: writing

Posted on

Connections and Constrictions (but no poem)

Why do I always come up to my study to write my blog on the PC? I don’t know – there’s no reason why I shouldn’t sit downstairs and write on the laptop. I’ve been working on here for the last couple of weeks, finishing off the book design job because I have software on here which isn’t on the laptop. So it’s habit, I suppose, sitting here feels like I’m doing something serious (as if).

The two poem lines I started with yesterday, I was questioning them before I even sat down to write about them, then I got carried away down tunnels of memory and snatches of songs which made me think of other things. But the distinction I initially made in my head – of a net that links versus a web that binds –  was always a bit of a false dichotomy, because a net, just as much as a web, is designed to trap whatever blunders into it. I was thinking more of a net as a network, a positive kind of connectivity, which links us with the necessities of life. As a corny example (no pun intended), the connections between people through the supply chain for food – farmers, processers, distributors, retailers, cooks – ‘field to fork’ – even that’s a gross simplification, which can be extended indefinitely in either direction, with microlinks in between. (Note to self: ‘Chain’ is another monosyllabic word, but when you think about it, that too can imply constriction as well as connection.)

There’s a lovely quote, (I think it’s from Martin Luther King), about how by the time your food reaches your table, it’s already travelled half way round the world. Though that’s not such a good thing is it? There was a time about twenty years ago when I used to get incensed about air miles – even had a letter published in The Times about it – but as always, nobody listened.

Which reminds me – yesterday I invited people to like the FaceBook page which is linked to this blog, but quite honestly, if I keep drivelling on like this, won’t I scare them all away? As I’ve tried to explain to a friend who was encouraging me to share my writing more widely, I can’t always guarantee to write ‘the good stuff’, and I don’t see the point of just trying to pick out the odd sentences that ‘work’ and sharing them out of context.

But on I go, and here I am again, pumping up the word count. Guess I should try and write another poem today, only four days in, ye gods, how am I going to do this for a whole month?

Connections and constrictions – that’s the point really I was trying to make. And perhaps the two are inseparable? Anything which supports us breeds reliance, holds us into a familiar position, if only by imposing a sense of reciprocal obligation.  You scratch my back…? ‘We’re all in this together… ‘ at a minimum distance of two metres, naturally.

Posted on

A Poem That I Meant to Write

‘The net that links us

Is not the web that binds us’

Linda Rushby (unfinished)

I thought that was going to be the start of a poem, but after an hour of rattling around, nothing else has appeared. So now I’m sitting at the keyboard, and – I don’t think this has struck me before – although I usually write as I go directly on the computer (which is why my posts ramble quite as much as they do), it doesn’t work that way with  poems. Mostly they come into my head fully formed, and then I have to write them down before I forget them – like a line from a Paul Simon song of 50-odd years ago :

‘I was twenty one years when I wrote this song.

I’m twenty two now, but I won’t be for long…’

Paul Simon, ‘The Leaves That Are Green’

You said it, Paul. And the first time I heard it I was even younger – sixteen, I believe – though the song had already been around for a few years. I think it was the first time I grasped – or at least caught a glimpse of – an adult understanding of the passing of time. That and Neil Young’s ‘Old Man’ from about the same: ‘I’m twenty four and there’s so much more’. (To me at that time, even twenty seemed impossibly mature).

How did I get here from there? Oh yes, ‘The Leaves That are Green’:

‘Once my heart was filled with the love of a girl.

I held her close, but she faded in the night

Like a poem I meant to write

And the leaves that are green turn to brown.’

That one: ‘Like a poem I meant to write.’ Exactly. If you don’t grab them while they’re there, they get away from you – Poems, I mean, not girls (or boys). I wrote once about ‘catching the words in flight’. It may be in ‘Single to Sirkeci’ or it may just have been a blog post. It might be the one I wrote in Tulcea, on the Danube Delta – which would have gone into ‘The Long Way Back’ – if I’d ever got round to finishing it. Or maybe it was just a random, throw away blog post that at most a handful of people might have read.

Do poems matter more than people? That’s a bit contentious – though once out they’re out there, they can live forever – I’m not claiming this for mine, I hasten to add, but I was thinking of the likes of Wordsworth (whose birthday is next Tuesday – I have a reason for knowing that which some of you might work out), Ovid (who was exiled to and died on the Black Sea Coast at Constanta, from where I went to Tulcea) or even poor Sylvia Plath (enough said).  Even mine will still hang around for a while after I’ve gone, out on the internet and in unsold copies of ‘Beachcombing’. Some have already lasted far longer than the relationships that provoked them – but that’s another matter.

Of course – a haiku!

‘When we are ourselves.’

Linda Rushby
Posted on

Raw poetry

Not a haiku today, just something that popped into my head – partly inspired by a photo of myself on Facebook from seven years ago, which I hadn’t seen before.

That’s how it goes, I think of something, and then I write it down (or not). I don’t really put any work into it. It just happens (or it doesn’t). So sometimes I share it, and sometimes I don’t.

I suspect there will be a lot of this stuff this month (unless I give up). I was trying to remember the word for oil when it’s first extracted, before they refine it, then it came to me: ‘crude’. I don’t think ‘Crude poetry’ conveys quite the right meaning, so I’ll stick with ‘raw’.

NaPoWriMo 2 (No title)

Nearly a grandmother,
wasn’t I too old
to start again?

Why do I go back,
Endlessly filleting
the years that were?

I’ll never change the past,
The present’s hard enough

Sunny days beside one river,
or another.
Mornings on a beach.
What’s here is now,
Another spring.

Linda Rushby 2 April 2020
Posted on

NaPoWriMo Day 1

Sunrise, Southsea beach

I’ve backed off from the 500 words today and possibly for the rest of the month, but I have a good excuse.

April is  NaPoWriMo, short for National Poetry Writing Month – why April, I’m not sure, it’s not as though it’s midway between NaNoWriMos, being five months to November (or seven depending on which way you look at it). Anyway, it’s been suggested to me that I might join in. Two years ago I sort of cheated and posted a haiku every day, (not to say that writing haikus is easy, but at least the typing isn’t too time-consuming). I intended to make a small hand-made book out of them, never quite got round to it. Maybe one day.

But this is today’s  poetic effort:

Morning beach, waiting
for the sun to come crawling
over the water.

Linda Rushby, 1 April 2020
Posted on

Any Normal Monday

I didn’t see the sun rise from the beach this morning – too late, I didn’t wake up till 7. Maybe another day.

I did do my half hour of combined yoga, tai chi and meditation before breakfast. It worked well. The mornings are filling up.

On any normal Monday, I would aim to leave home by 8 and walk to the leisure centre on the seafront. The pool closes at 9 for the parent and toddlers session, so I try to get there before about 8.30 or it’s not worth it. I could drive, but I’d have to faff around getting parking places at the pool, in the town centre, and back at home, and, honestly, I’d rather walk.

Which reminds me, my steps per day must have gone down massively.

I swim for about 20 minutes, then sit in the steam room for about another ten. Then shower, wash hair, dress, dry hair, go out and lean on the sea wall for a while. Some weeks over the winter, it’s been the only time I’ve been near the sea, these Monday mornings. Then I walk to the town centre, to a particular café where I have a bacon sandwich on granary bread, with brown sauce, and a pot of tea for one. I do killer su doku while I wait for my sandwich, drink tea and watch the world go by through the window. Then to the library for 11, where I buy a coffee and meet up with my writing buddies. Sometimes I even write, or more recently, edit (not my work though, a book I’ve been working on for a client – the one that I’m currently designing the cover for). Before Christmas (in the ‘black Friday’ sale, though I hate to admit it) I bought myself a notebook computer, so that (in theory) I can be more productive during these sessions.

About 1 o’clock, we start to disperse (the last two weeks I went I was the only one who turned up anyway), and I either walk home, or catch the bus. The bus also takes me back past the seafront, though only a small part of the way. I might pop into the co-op or the health food shop on my way home from the bus stop, if I need anything. At home I potter around till 3, when it’s time for the daily drama on Radio 4 extra, and crochet – usually yesterday’s square for my weather blanket. At 4 I’ll get an early dinner, veggie or at most pescatarian, because I have yoga in the evening. At 6 it’s 4 Extra again, and I get ready for yoga so I can listen to A Good Read at 6.30 so that I’m (in theory) ready to leave at 7, though always lose something, – cushions, water bottle, keys, money, coat – it starts officially at 7.15, but when I’ve got everything together it takes me two minutes to walk round the corner.

That is, any normal Monday.

Posted on

Paradoxes

If nobody reads what I write, have I been wasting my time?

Question which arose from a comment I received yesterday, pointing out that I keep repeating myself, suggesting that maybe I should try writing things that other people might find interesting, and offering an idea of how to do that. I replied that it was an excellent idea and he should try it, but I might just decide not share my writing any more.

I also realised that someone who was commenting earlier in the week telling me how wonderful I am might just have been taking the piss, and I got quite angry, not so much at him but at myself for not noticing at the time and responding in a suitably cutting fashion. Gremlins again – Gremlin 2 getting angry because Gremlin 1 didn’t step in and sort him out. Or maybe it did, and that’s why I didn’t hear a peep out of him yesterday.

Oh, the paradoxes of wanting people to take notice and then getting annoyed when they do. Or, probably more accurately, wanting to be anonymous and invisible and then being disappointed when they don’t notice.

Well, here I am again, shouting into the void. It is paradoxical though, I admit that. Why write about my deepest thoughts and feelings and then share it where it can potentially be read by anyone in the world (or anyone with internet access)? My usual answer is that I never expect anyone to read it, so it doesn’t matter, but then why bother at all, why not leave it where no one can read it but me? There’s a long and respectable history for that kind of writing.

I guess I keep coming back to this because there was a time when the people I met and the things that I shared in a blogging space had consequences in the real world which genuinely did change my life in fundamental ways. Of course, I have no way of knowing how my life would have been if I hadn’t met those people and done those things, but I can be sure, for example, that I wouldn’t be living where I live now – and that has made all the difference to the future I was anticipating, say, fifteen years ago – though there might have been other alternatives that would have turned out ‘better’, who knows?

So I am here, and I’m writing still/again, and maybe it’s because somewhere inside me I’m still looking for that flash, that transformation into another self, the portal into another world, the rabbit hole or wardrobe that will flip the dimensions, the two roads diverging in a yellow wood, the Crystal Space where all is potential and decisions must be made blindly, the ‘fast running rivers of choice and chance’ (David Crosby, ‘Delta’). The micro-choices that we make every day that can affect our lives and those of others – as the current situation reminds us only too well. Life is fragile. Writing is important.

Posted on

Gremlins

Here I am again. Today I feel overwhelmed with the pointlessness of it all. I suppose a week isn’t that long. I said last Friday that I would keep doing it ‘for as long as it takes. As long as what takes? I guess if I don’t identify a ‘goal’, how will I know if I’ve achieved it? And a week is nothing. In the grand scheme of things.

There are things I have to do today – nothing that awful, just stuff beyond sitting in the sunshine, listening to the radio or crafting. Or writing blogs. So the gremlin on my shoulder says: ‘why bother? Who’s keeping tabs on you? Nobody but you. Tell that bitch to go and…’

‘Okay, okay’ I say. ‘I get the point. No need to share that sort of language on my blog.’

I’d forgotten about the gremlin. I was flicking through ‘Single to Sirkeci’ the other day – can’t remember why, it was something to do with checking the layout related to another book I’m designing for a third party. And the gremlin caught my eye. I seem to remember it came in quite early on but I dropped it and don’t refer to it much later in the book. Shame, because it’s quite a good idea. Every time I want to write about what I really feel, my deep, dark, nasty feelings, I should just say: ‘the gremlin says…’ or turn it into a bit of dialogue.

But reading back what I’ve just written, I realise the gremlin has two aspects. The one I mentioned above is the one that says: ‘f*ck it, f*ck them all’ (but without the asterisks). The cynical, vicious, nihilistic one. Then there’s its alter ego, the judgemental one: ‘just get on with it, set those goals, do those chores, you worthless piece of crap. Enough with the whining self-pity, you know why nobody loves you? It’s because you don’t deserve it, you have to earn love, you don’t do that by moaning about how miserable you are.’ Ooooh, I think I prefer the first one.

‘Celebrate your achievements’ says some non-gremlin – or maybe just a more subtle, and hence more powerful, gremlin. ‘You’ve blogged every day for a week, and you’ve nearly done it again, so you have 4000 words – at that rate, you’ll have a novel by the end of May!’ Or maybe not.

‘You’re “pantsing” again’ says Gremlin 2. ‘It’s a week since you did that online meeting, and you downloaded the handouts and have you filled in the table yet? Of course not, you’re an incurable “pantser”, and that’s why everything you write is – well – pants! You go through the motions, you go to the workshops, and still you don’t get your finger out and do anything worthwhile. Do you seriously think that writing this bullshit every day is achieving anything? You’re just deluding yourself…’

‘… except you’re not really, are you?’ pipes up Gremlin 1. ‘You know perfectly well you might as well give up.’

Posted on

Fifteen percent

If you’re reading this and find it interesting, I have a request – please, if you can spare the time, go back and read at least from the start of this week, because I suspect my ramblings don’t make much sense if you don’t know the context, and, although I do admittedly repeat myself quite a lot, I am also trying to build on and make allusions to what I’ve said before.

Of course, this writing is mostly for myself, and I don’t anticipate anyone else reading it, or even understand why anyone would want to. It’s an exercise in trying to understand and hopefully learn to accept, maybe even love, myself, though god knows my efforts to do so over the last fifteen years don’t seem to have got me very far. In the past I’ve defined faith as: ‘continuing to believe in something against all evidence to the contrary’, and I’ve taken a leap of faith (it is leap year, after all) in throwing my thoughts out into the void, where theoretically they are accessible by all, although in practice only a handful of people ever bother to read them (which is just as well really, I’m not sure I want people I bump into every day – well, not at the moment, obviously, but any normal day – to be aware of all this stuff – which begs the question – why do it at all? And that’s a whole other can of worms for a whole other day).

What I’m saying is, if you do read this, I hope it’s not just because you like my quirky way with words, but that you understand that behind the words is a person who at times is genuinely struggling to get through life. I’m not saying this to ask for pity, or advice, just maybe a little respect (just a little bit!)

I’m limiting the length of my posts to 500 words a day, whereas I used to write 500 minimum. That’s an arbitrary limit I’ve set myself because I don’t want to end up going down rabbit holes and spending hours over the thing – and also because, I just thought it would be interesting to do it that way. It does mean that I won’t always reach a resolution – or even get to the point – on any one day, which is all the more reason to go back and see where these thoughts have come from and to follow where they’re going.

I’ll end the way I intended to start, with a comment from an email I received from an old friend last night: ‘…you don’t half think a lot. You think more than anyone I know. Please my dear Linda, give your mind a rest sometimes. Be calm, be still.’

I do try to be calm and still, but I’ve never understood how it’s possible to silence that constant inner narrative, until recently I assumed that everybody’s mind worked that way, but I’ve been told it’s approximately fifteen percent.

Posted on

500 Words

Sun shining today. Will I venture out for a walk? Or to do some gardening? Hmmm. The eternal conflict between what I ‘should’ be doing (what would ultimately be better and more positive for my wellbeing in a general sense) and what I ‘feel like’ doing (back to the su doku again). Living alone gives me enormous freedom to ignore many of the ‘shoulds’ without suffering under anybody’s judgement except my own – until such time comes as I’m forced to interact with the outside world, or even (god forbid) allow anybody from outside into my home.

What am I saying here? What am I trying to say? I decided that writing 500 words a day would be a Good Thing for me. So I am trying. Because I know I can do it. This is what I always say (I’ve said it many times, in many ways, to many people), I know I can do it, because I’ve done it in the past, but nothing good has ever come out of it – well, wait, is that strictly true? If I look back fifteen years, I could argue that it has changed my life fundamentally in startling ways – but never in the way I once hoped for, ie turning me into a professional novelist.

So much of the advice I’ve received down the years has stressed the need to write, write, write regularly, write often and write at great length. Write spontaneously, do a brain dump, draw up all the rubbish from your writing well and that’s how you make yourself ready to write the Good Stuff. But, congenitally lazy as I am, all I ever want to do is keep writing the easy stuff. I don’t have the self belief, tenacity, staying power – let’s face it, guts – to face the difficult stuff, the hard work. And however much of this easy, spontaneous stuff – this drivel – I write, it’s not going to miraculously open the way into the source of ideas that I need.

I don’t think like a novelist – or a short story writer, come to that. Sometimes I think like a poet. Mostly I think like a confused woman approaching the end of life with the sense that I’ve never worked out what I should be doing, never made use of whatever talents I might have had to make a difference to myself or others or the wider world, amid the consciousness that I am now running out of time and options, and without the energy, enthusiasm or motivation to follow any of those options even if they were pointed out to me.

That isn’t quite 500 words. Do I keep going for the last fifty or so? It’s just an arbitrary challenge I’ve set myself. I can say I’ve done it, but like the 50k words I wrote for NaNoWriMo in 2018, it’s worthless because there is nothing there – well, nothing I haven’t said or thought or written a million times before. That’s the story of my life.

Posted on

Blobby Canvases

I went to a writers’ group yesterday, one I used to attend every week but have more or less given up on over the last couple of years. I picked up a card and letter to myself which I wrote last year at this time defining my goals for the year. I haven’t opened it yet because I  know I won’t have done any of the things I said then – to be honest, I probably realised when I said them that they weren’t going to happen. Next week it will be time to do it all over again, and what will I say?

Why write every day when nothing ever leads anywhere? That is the dilemma I keep wrestling with. Maybe I should define where I want it to ‘lead’, because often that’s taken to mean fame, fortune, book sales, when really I just want it to lead to something I can be proud of producing, to fill the crack in my soul and help me feel good about myself. I used to think that writing every day would lead me to better things, but instead it all feels futile – though, if I’m honest, no more futile than the other things I spend my time on. I guess it hurts more because writing has always felt important to me, a precious thing – I’m not sure what I’m trying to say here, but I guess I’ve always hoped to do something real and worthwhile with it, but instead it seems that however hard I try and however much I do it, I end up just throwing it out there without ever constructing something whole and finished. It’s like an artist who puts a few blobs of paint on the canvas, then the next day starts another canvas with different blobs of paint, and so on ad infinitum without ever creating a complete image.

You can call me ‘talented’, but it’s just a micro-talent, for stringing words together in a pleasing way. The macro-talent of constructing plots and creating characters always eludes me, I’m forever trying to grasp it but can never quite get there – or maybe it’s just that I give up too soon, that is likely knowing how readily I give up on other aspects of life – still, the fact remains that without the ideas, plots and characters, there’s nowhere I can take those words, and so the stack of blobby canvases grows.

Perhaps that’s why I’m more drawn to poetry than fiction – a poem can be just a few stanzas – even a few lines, or a few words. It doesn’t require the same degree of structure and commitment as even a short story. That said, I rarely set out to write a poem – they just come to me, and if they don’t, I can’t force them – but once I start it usually doesn’t take too long to draw them to a satisfactory conclusion – or at least some sort of provisional ending (though even that doesn’t always work).