The Words

I ask her: “Do you enjoy listening to poetry?” and without enough time-space for a heartbeat to break the rhythm she says “Only just as much as I like breathing.” And I fight not to hold my own breath as the sentence loses the last of its wind like the emptying of old church organ pipes.

Inhale. Let words ascend your throat to arabesque on your taste-bud pin heads. Exhale. Pray they don’t abseil your mountain lips meaningless. Do not let them fall short but teach them to climb high and descend carefully through cracks and crags.

If rock-climb ropes snap you can’t magic man hat trick, up my sleeve back track so don’t snap for me if my words don’t bite your tongue. Do not clap for me if I don’t lay rhythm that runs. Sometimes I lie half-awake hoping that the constant beating I impose on my ear drums will remind my metronome heart how much it likes the safety of the silence when it comes.

Listening to the same song over and over again takes me different places and reading the same story over and over again tells me different faces and I wish that if I said the same words enough times in enough different ways they’d teach me to think different of myself. Beautiful. BEAUTY full. Beauty FULL. Beautiful. Still nothing. I was never told that although the dictionary describes the meaning of words it can never ascribe meaning to people.

It’s a lonely life to lead if your best friend is a pistol to your head. You begin to understand that in order to be understood you’ve got to speak steel words, you’ve got to learn to make love to lead. Pull back. Gun shot. Skin pop. Body drop. Full stop. Here, words replace wounds like prosthetic limbs pretending to be the real thing but they will never have pulsating heartbeat pumping in them.

I ask her: “Do you enjoy listening to poetry?” and without enough time-space for a scarlet wave to break within her veins she says “Only just as much as I like breathing.” And I begin to write, etching my soul into the lineage of trees where there are wizards drawing wisdom from words buried beneath the soles of forests’ feet.

This is not a process; this is the path I walk. This is not a path less travelled for there are barbarian armies that have braved butchered battlefields before me. This is a crowded walk – it is as though no one has walked here and yet all have walked here at the same time. Humans acting as landmarks so ignore the road signs. Dream. Go far. Forget who you are and learn the names of galaxies you’ll never have the privilege of shaking hands with. Come back to earth and delve into the depths – the places where words fit my palms and pen tips like ocean floors eat sinking ships.

Do not drown. Look around. Admire the wreckage and be grateful it’s not you. And it’s not me.

I am not ship wreck. I am not hidden treasure. I am not eroding soul. I am not lost.

I am North and South Pole. I am true. I am unmoved but travelled.  I am gentle strength unrivalled.

I am mind. I am body. I put “art” into heart. I am learning to breathe a new way, a pure way.

I wonder why she never asked me if I enjoyed listening to poetry and perhaps that’s because she knew that’s how I’d been surviving all along.

 

Captured in part

Allow me to paint the scene for you:

I’m sitting on a wind-worn-white plastic beach chair with my bare feet propped up on a small wall that surrounds the top-floor balcony of a story-filled block of flats. Just inside this particular home comes the melody of an easy morning – piano keys kissing finger tips, not desperately but like two lovers that know each other well. My body, outside, feels like it’s thawing in the sun – winter-blanket heat from the rays, mug of tea in hand – not because I’m frozen but because there’s frost in the air blowing off the mountains.

The mountains are glorious; that’s the only word I’ve found apt since I’ve been here. They frame the city, like someone painted something magnificent and wanted only the strongest frame to keep it properly, permanently set. The frame of rock in itself is near-magical; sometimes it simply appears as cotton clouds kiss its feet, sometimes it is black as rain threatens to tarnish, sometimes it simply is – proud and pure as it was carved out to be.

The streets below both the balcony and boulders breathe deeply, sometime coughing like the city has something stuck in its throat. Enough cars to confuse traffic with the ocean – it’s that close – but not so many as to drown out the sound of birds, and wind, and conversations happening at that traffic light over there. I’m still on the balcony but I could be a million different people in a million different places if I closed my eyes. I never want to close my eyes here; so much to see and do, so many people to meet, so many tastes to try, so many lives to listen to.

How is it that a place can feel so much like home and so much like a really well-preserved artefact at the same time – like I shouldn’t touch anything, but everything is mine? Perhaps this is the wonder, perhaps this is the way it has always been.

A letter from the depressed to our loved ones.

Reblogged from kendallharbour:

Dear loved ones,

Please, do not give me your Christian stories of how ‘He has overcome, and the joy of Him is my strength, or how He is my comforter in the valley of the shadow of death’…not yet anyway. Do not give me your Christian words of encouragement for that is not what I need, not now anyway. Do not give me Bible verses of how ‘He has been through what I’m going through.’ Do not give me lyrics of songs that say “All our heartache, all our pain, God our healer, He has overcome.” Do not give me your prayers asking that I’d have strength and joy and faith and hope.

Read more… 2,310 more words

If you've ever encountered depression in any sense - whether it's running under your own skin, or if you've seen it in others - take the time to read this. Raw. Eye-opening. Hopeful.

Hold someone’s hand

I sit writing overlooking a playground on an early Monday morning. The sun is trying to crack the icy air so children warm up to the idea that today was made for living.

Three swing-high girls walked two skips ahead of their skyscraper teacher. (Playgrounds were made for jungle gyms, not high-rise buildings.) They were all wearing, what looked like, cloaks finely woven from Jacaranda flowers – a lighter shade of royalty.

I will not stereotype their individuals frames; they have not yet made that awkward transition from being blissfully unaware of their shape to being unable to see beauty within themselves. They are young and untainted and still willing to try.

In their lilac row, vanilla-cake hair shuffling in the wind’s whisper, two had taken hands while the third hobbled uncomfortably trying to keep up. In her odd left-right-lose-balance-come-right step she reached out to take one of their hands.

Fingers brushed, but before they could lock, the pair pulled away. Gawking wide-eyed and wounded, the third tried again only to have the reward of reaching out, ripped apart. So close in height, in age, in look, in proximity and so yet so separated.

From where I sat I couldn’t see why, but I could see the hurt. It’s not so different from what we do sometimes. When someone reaches out – because they need to be held, need to be loved, we pull away.

So, today, go out of your way to meet the extended hand half way and hold it. Hold it tight and do not let it go. Let the fingers lock, lock eyes, and do not look away. Your reassurance may be the first aid they’ve been waiting for in the pain.

Perhaps they will learn to love again.