Tuesday, June 27, 2006

c'est mardi - c'est bon

all is bon in this part of the world.

in short, it is extremely hot and dry, and we continue to consume good food and good wine, read good books and listen to good music, while having good chat, usually in the evening over aforementioned wine. which adds up to a lot of good.

tomorrow we become three.

au revoir...

LB, x

Sunday, June 25, 2006

c'est dimanche

mon dieu, c'est chaud...

having established that the dial up connection's functional, i shall return here again later. it's easily hitting 90 degrees and this morning's cafe double and cafe au lait have long worn off. i am feeling muchos in need of an afternoon nap.

all is as beautiful as we remembered it. vive la france and all who sail in her.

til later,

LB, x

Saturday, June 24, 2006

perfect white facades

London...

delivered a great day, but, having sat with fingers on keys while staring aimlessly into space for the past twenty minutes, i realise a day of wall2wall meaningful chat makes for a lot to reflect upon.

taxi took us on an amazing route through the city tonight. so many grand and beautiful buildings in every architecture, i was... mesmerised. it was belgravia that took my breath away.

bed beckons... hmmmm.

LB,x

Friday, June 23, 2006

Night the first

London...

began with a hug that lasted almost as long as the bus journey from the station to the flat. jude cheffed up a deelishuss thai green curry and we vegged in front of a dvd. cath made us all a cuppa and she, me and mcleary chatted and shimmied to take that while jude uploaded her photos from Cardiff. a nice relaxed end to a hectic day...

my journey here was kinda remarkable. and weird. in a good way... still trying to process how it is that for the first time ever i entered an airport and then walked onto a plane and didn't feel anxiety. no increase in heart rate. no panic attack. i was calm. at peace. go figure... i kept waiting for the usual claustrophobia and vertigo to kick in, the overwhelming mortal fear. but they didn't show up. maybe they went ahead of me to Provence, where it's 33 degrees...

right. must try and catch some zzzz. tomorrow's gonna be a big day with lots of chat. i'm meeting kristen in 8 hours...really must get into bed now.

nite y'all.

LB, x

Thursday, June 22, 2006

there's pink sticky stuff on my keyboard

so - later today i fly to London. my suitcase sits beside me here in the office.

tomorrow i get to spend the day with Kristen, in town from DC on a PhD research trip. it'll be an emotional reunion i know. so much has happened in the last 16 months since we last saw each other... beginnings and endings.

last night saw the commune celebrate the solstice, ironically the darkest night we've had in ages, with a pile of folks coming round for cosmopolitans...public service announcement: don't surf while holding a fulltothebrim martini glass.
it was nice to see the smiley faces of my compadres and it cut through the anxiety i've been feeling this week. monday saw the lid of pandora's box swing open and since then there's been rioting of emotions and trying to keep them all in until i have the space to just let go. so it was a good thing to be able to hold the people i hold so dear to me and feel their friendship in my arms. i will miss them over the next couple of weeks and i know that i will think of them often... wishing they were each there in little moments...

i'll hear gail's infectious laugh as we choose cheese and wine
i'll imagine willow's endearing indecision as we browse the market stalls
i'll see beauty with ricky's eyes in the converging lines and small details as i wander through the narrow streets with camera in hand
i'll feel keli's arm on mine as i browse in the antiques quarter
i'll hear stu's enthusiastic, 'let's go people!' as we jump in the car on an excursion
i'll want gareth to remind me the name of that film with yer man from that other film about that thing, the one with whatserface, as we chat over dinner
i'll think of jayne as i collect little scraps and pieces to put on my collages and stories i'd want to tell and hear
i'll smile at the thought of the boys at CGs as i sip my morning coffee on the terrrace and miss their greeting
i'll chuckle with Pad, Lynn, Mo in mind as i people watch in front of cafe de france and hear their comic running commentary in my head

this is the crew, well, many of them... as rainbow dreams reminded me, not with me in body but ever present allthesame...a loveable bunch of dysfunctional misfits if ever there was one. as i wrote the above and let two worlds merge together in my mind i feel the anxiety over having to go to the airport in a few hours ease a little and the warmth of their place in my life calms me...

so 12 days away from my nest...and there to share all those moments will be jude, one of the best friends a girl could ever ask for and when i turn to her or feel her presence at my side, i'll know i am blessed... i'll treasure each day of the trip, because too soon it'll be over and i'll be back home and missing her...

LB,x

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

so soon

it still hasn't quite hit me...

in 48 hours i shall be in London with jude. 48 hours after that we'll be in L'Isle- sur-la-Sorgue. sunday morning we will be in the weekly market, our senses filled with the heady mix of lavender, peaches, strawberries, gitanes and coffee, cheeses, the boulangerie and the patisserie...

12 nights away. not a very long time in the grand scheme of life but a milestone allthesame...leaving the familiar, the everyday. going to a place i also know...but it is familiarity of a different kind... walking back into that place will be a strange experience... memories will be replaying... a haven that is needing to be reclaimed and redeemed, reowned and reremembered...

i will depart alone. i will return alone. such significance in that.

LB, x

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

community shommunity

...as we lovingly call it, so as not to take ourselves too seriously.
but maybe we should. in spite of ourselves we are in radical transformation of being some kind of family to one another in a place where circumstance and distance means many of us find ourselves without familial arms to hold us together, bound not by blood but vulnerability.

we try to understand what it means when we say, home, bound up in all its evocation of nostalgia, broken memories, longing, fear. maybe that's why i like 'nest' - a provisional dwelling meant to protect and built with care from what we find around us...but all the while learning how to be in some sense home to one another...to embody safety...a slow painstaking journey of mutual give and take... allowing trust to grow like moss...damp with tears and soft to touch...

the twine and twig woven togther with our sharing, our attempts to find common language... to define our vocabulary and hence be able to speak with mutual understanding and depth...this creative act allows us to communicate within this invisible nest...a space where one is understood for what one actually means and not what the other wants to hear...to have a common tongue that by its nature keeps others out as much as it invites :us: in...

brave little birds... doing the best we can with what we have... and somehow having hope that when the bottle of self belief is close to dry with spent tears somehow something someone will be there to pull us through so that we can face another day...

to those that carry me through... you have my love and gratitude...thank you for sensing...finding me out...for holding me together when grief in all its guises bears me down...you know who you are... you know you got me to today.

she asked,
what's the biggest risk you ever took?
i see now
it is to trust
and i do it every day

LB, x

another ::live through this:: track from chris - suffer in silence (from burn the maps) by the frames...

come back, show your face
dont you see
your too good for this place
can we leave.
its not your fault, what they say
dont believe..

or would you rather suffer in silence.
and defeat
or would you rather suffer in silence
needlessly

ah come on, show the way
ill believe
welcome back, youve been away
hows it been.

or would you rather suffer in silence.
and defeat
or would you rather suffer in silence
needlessly..

wake up.. its your love calling..

Thursday, June 15, 2006

the one to beat...

i put up for offer the following ::track of the summer::
everyone is a VIP to someone by the go! team - the final track on their album thunder lightening strike.

please feel free to offer others to create a virtual compilation. songs do not have to be recently released, but they have to be worthy of blasting out of your favourite cafe and make passers cock their ear and smile and currently be getting airplay on your stereo.

my chosen track has been a strong leader on my iPod in the recent sunshine... it makes me want to wave at strangers and take someone by the hand and give 'em a twirl, or indeed to be given a piggy back ride to the corner shop for a choc ice, making sure to speak into my trusted steed's ear guarantees of VIP status in my life.

this is what i hear...

::lemon jelly are guest appearing on sesame street and joined mid-way through by the degrassi junior high school band. the air is filled with the fragrance of light summer rain on earth. kids are running around with laughing faces covered in ice cream. teenagers are helping the elderlies carry their groceries. policemen shimmy in the street. adults put down their tools and defences to look each other in the eye and grin. welcome to the kingdom::

LB,x

post-script: after posting the above i headed down through botanic gardens to the cafe to pick up some lunch. feeling nervous about an approaching necessary, but guaranteed difficult, conversation i played the above track to lift my spirits. it did its job and serendipity provided the live action to go with...a line of about 25 five and six year olds of every race on god's good earth walking past the bird house, hands linked with the one in front and the one behind. all cute as buttons, the girls in red and white gingham dresses, the boys in tomato red sweatshirts... many of the kids with heads lolling back on their necks gazing off up into the trees...some clearly off in their own little kingdoms of imagination as they clumsily moved along in little steps... a few yards on by the glass house and out on the expanse of grass there were more children, these in pale blue sweat shirts, running to and fro... some playing kickabout with a ball, one pretending to be an aeroplane...with their shouts and laughter in the background, i walked in step with music, and just damn well grinned, thinking good thoughts of my VIPs...xo

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

herstory

Padraig, poet that he is, likes to send his friends poems that he thinks we'll connect with... sometimes by his good self, sometimes by others...and on occasion i've been known to return the favour...

here are not poems, but lyrics... narratives, if you will, that i like to inhabit, but which have me today thinking of an ongoing conversation we are having... or at least to me they do... i always enjoy these exchanges - to show him stories that i carry with me and to hear what he sees there... he perceives ::humanity:: like no one else i know...he helps me understand why they speak to me, or as one friend put it, the ongoing revisiting relationship i have built with these stories... to allow them to keep evolving in meaning and interpretation... this past year some of these tracks have taken on very differnet significance and the characters in some are now played by different actors from my life than before...

so, my love, 4 very different lyrics from 4 songs on a compilation i was listening to this morning... and which all had me thinking of our conversation one way or another... there's green and magenta, and indeed charcoal, here in wombfuls... 4 women... all i'd settle to be reincarnated as... 4 very different stories... the kristen hersh one was a gift from chris - an anthem for last winter. he encouraged me to live through this by having frequent interactions with this track...

i'm weaving them into the themes we've been discussing... these undercover goddesses... adding their tales to our own...


::

Invisible Ink

There comes a time when you swim or sink
So I jumped in the drink
Cuz I couldn't make myself clear

Maybe I wrote in invisible ink
Oh I've tried to think
How I could have made it appear

But another illustration is wasted
Cuz the results are the same
I feel like a ghost who's trying to move your hands
over some ouija board in the hopes I can spell out my name

What some take for magic at first glance
Is just sleight of hand depending on what you believe
Something gets lost when you translate
It's hard to keep straight
Perspective is everything

And I know now which is which and what angle I oughta look at it from
I suppose I should be happy to be misread-
Better be that than some of the other things I have become

But nobody wants to hear this tale
The plot is clichéd, the jokes are stale
And baby we've all heard it all before
Oh I could get specific but
Nobody needs a catalog
With details of a love I can't sell anymore

And aside from that, this chain of reaction,
baby, is losing a link
Though I'd hope you'd know what I tried to tell you
And if you don't I could draw you a picture in invisible ink

But nobody wants to hear this tale
The plot is clichéd, the jokes are stale
And baby we've all heard it all before
Oh I could get specific but
Nobody needs a catalog
With details of a love I can't sell anymore

Invisible Ink, Aimee Mann


::

Polaroids

Please no more therapy
Mother take care of me
Piece me together with a
Needle and thread
Wrap me in eiderdown
Lace from your wedding gown
Fold me and lay me down
On your bed
Or liken me to a shoe
Blackened and spit-shone through
Kicking back home to you
Smiling back home
Singing back home to you
Laughing back home to you
Dragging back home to you


I was so wary then
The ugly American
Thinner than oxygen
Tough as a whore
I said you can lie to me
I own what's inside of me
And nothing surprises me anymore
But forests in Germany
Kids in the Tuileries
Broken-down fortresses
In old Italy
And claiming his victory
Shrouded in mystery
He went running away with me


Back in our home New York
Walking these streets forlorn
We all in our uniforms
Black and black
Doing that slouch and jive
The artist must survive
We've got all we need we cried
And we don't look back
Thinking we had it made
Poised for the hit parade
Knee deep in accolades
The conceptual pair
But ever the malcontent
He left without incident
Vanished into thin air


Now I am always amazed
Words can fill up a page
Pages fill up the days
Between him and me
But the vows that we never keep
From bedrooms to business-speak
Make me remember how cheap
Words can be
And the letters I wrote you of
Were those of the desperate stuff
Like begging for love in a suicide threat
But I am too young to die
Too old for a lullaby
Too tired for life on the ledge


But I had a dream last night
Of lovers who walked the plank
Out on the edge of time
Amidst ridicule
They laughed as they rocked and reeled
Over the mining fields
Coming to rest on this ship of fools
But he just took polaroids
Of her smile in the light
Of the dawn of the menacing sky
And before they went overboard
She turned and held up a card
And it said Valentine


Polaroids, Shawn Colvin

::

Deep Wilson

Slipping down railings
And balconies
With a sleepy ease i never knew
I never gave my way to you

Indigent darkness
Thick as a dream
A liquid party underneath
Though i'm still shaky and weak

Knees pressed against the leather couch
I couldn't find my bra
You were so familiar
I think that i lean out too far
I wouldn't have if my heart and my stomach hadn't fallen
So hard

That's some hat trick
An effortless move
That tearful frantic creature seems far away from here

My new orleans nickel ring
Your deep wilson tattoo
Under the bullshit radar
I came to find you

Knees pressed against the leather couch
I couldn't find my bra and
You were so familiar
I think that i leaned out too far
I wouldn't have if my heart and my stomach hadn't fallen
So hard

::

Hyperballad

We live on a mountain
Right at the top
There's a beautiful view
From the top of the mountain
Every morning I walk towards the edge
And throw little things off
Like car-parts, bottles and cutlery
Or whatever I find lying around
It's become a habit
A way to start the day

I go through all this
Before you wake up
So I can feel happier
To be safe up here with you

It's real early morning
No-one is awake
I'm back at my cliff
Still throwing things off
I listen to the sounds they make
On their way down
I follow with my eyes 'til they crash
Imagine what my body would sound like
Slamming against those rocks
When it lands
Will my eyes
Be closed or open?

I go through all this
Before you wake up
So I can feel happier
To be safe up here with you


Hyperballad, Bjork
::

LB, x

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

gotta do something 'bout where i'm goin'

i spent the weekend working on my piece for the greenbelt website. it's very nearly ready but it's in the style of a correspondance with a fellow traveller and i want their approval for me to use their words before i submit it. i finally sussed that writing it here in blogger got me over the hurdle - being able to look at it in the preview section as if it were one of my postings made all the difference.

had a relaxed and quiet weekend on my own in the house while my fellow communers were on the north coast...before they left, keli and i made wheaten bread - a delia recipe so damn easy, it's embarrassing. i'll post it here sometime. spent saturday evening watching a dvd of the bbc version of pride and prejudice with colin firth for the first time. needless to say, darcy won me over.

other nice small things of wonderful ordinariness and surprise that deserve reminding of in no particular order but probably sequential allthesame...


first magnum of the summer

friday nite music at the cafe and making headway on the greenbelt piece in the bargain

being interviewed before the congregation in city church at their cafe service, in my guise as a cafe regular...it was a pretty good experience... i even mentioned the gospel. do i hear 16 hooves? i was described as :the femme fatale of common grounds:.... i still don't know how to react to that... but i reckon i'll settle for (bitter)sweetly misunderstood...

enjoying the hot heady lush sonambulence of a sunday afternoon in botanic garden, slouched in dappled shade

discovering padraig was a gymnast

summer dinner with pad, gail and ricky that segued into a later than expected night of mirthful chat and musical beauty...

the sunset seen from my bedroom window

an hour and a half of good will conversation and letting someone inside my broken memories when they asked... to be struck by the courage it takes to allow it and the immense trust never offered by but demanded of the other allthesame... being near-crushed by tender insistent absolution of heavy burdens unspoken til now...

chatting for the first time to ben's beautiful sweet waif of a gal, sarah... thanx to zippy boy for the zippo...

if level5 conversation is a prayer a deux then it was answered today when i learnt that my last day of my current job will be 27 july. didn't know how i'd feel 'til i heard it but i'm relieved... the unknowing has been an unfirm basis for living...

site rec of the week...http://www.blueguitar.info/

::
it's not your fault
and it's not the rest of your life

it's not
and it's the now
::

each rung is a step of faith... back to climbing...

LB,x

Thursday, June 08, 2006

there's something in a shade of grey...

When love beckons to you follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions
May wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
As the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you
so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth
So is he for your pruning.

The Prophet
by Gibran Khalil Gibran


::

Love is such an inadeqate word... covers a multitude of graces and sins...when we say i love you we so often mean such different things... over time the quality of what we mean can strengthen, weaken, transform... but the words stay the same and the subtlety of meaning goes unnoticed...
when we hear the words, we hear what we want to hear, which is not what is always intended. and when we utter those same words, we so often mean something other than what the hearer will hear...it can conceal far more than it reveals...tricks us as much as it seals us...

three little words perpetually binding us in our unrequitedness of being human...

LB,x

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

666


happy birthday to stu! (yes, that be him)

27 today, so he is...last night we toasted the last hour of his being 26 by cracking open a 26 year old bottle of port brought back from their recent trip to portugal. mmmmm.

as i type i am sitting on the front step at work under the shade of my cowboy hat - it really is shaping up be a scorcher today, and it ain't often we ever get to say that round these parts. for those peering over my virtual shoulder as i scribble who are not familiar with the climes of belfast, a good day can be described as 'warm'. we get to use the term 'hot' about 5 days a year by my guesstimate. and that's if we're lucky.

please give a thought to stu's beautiful wife keli, who, having very kindly dropped me off at work, (meaning i get to wear a pair of cream flairs that i wouldn't risk wearing on the bike for fear of a chain oil incident), is currently down at B&Q asking for "a bottom filling ball cock"... try saying that with a straight face. all going well our cistern will refill by itself by tonight.

trying to decide if i want to go see the remake of the omen. loved the original...

LB, x

Monday, June 05, 2006

things with wings

my evening was spent sitting in the fresh air under my favourite tree reading and jotting in my journal, reflecting on simplicity and presence in the moment - a lesson i find myself returning to again and again...

::

"in all of these particulars, the fact that shines forward for me is that in writing abut my life i cherish it. i value it. i see it. writing is the act of opening the eye to the absolute beauty of ordinary things. that is dailiness and dailiness is sanity."


- julia cameron

::

mere minutes after i copied those very words into my journal i received a text that ended with the words, "continue cherishing". and so i cherished the grace of synchronicity...

::

i met a mallard down by the ormeau bridge. he had a broken wing. completely dislocated, it was all but hanging off. he kept shaking it as if it might spring back to life and into its rightful place... i hated having to leave him in his bewildered predicament...

::

but there were 30 swallows doing their acrobatic best over the lagan, silhouetted against a tangerine sunset.

::

moments later, cycling along ormeau embankment, i was thrilled to find a heron flying along at eye level beside me down the river, with what i can only assume was some kind of eel hanging from it's beak. in the moment i felt just like tom cruise whipping along on his motorbike in top gun and punching his fist in the air as a plane overtakes him in take off. i may actually have uttered an exclamating whoop as i lifted myself off the seat and sped up, trying to keep pace with this, my favourite of all birds.
but what came next was even more exhilarating and had me cutting back and forth along the side of the river to follow the action.
mid-flight a gull came up behind the heron and in an outrageously ballsy move attempted to grasp the eel from the heron. there was a mid air struggle like a clumsy WW1 dogfight but the heron evaded the gull and headed to the relative safety of the bank. what ensued over the next five minutes was a game of cat and mouse as the heron moved along the embankment trying to find a safe spot to swallow the eel, now being pursued by four gulls. they flew in co-ordinated arcs and even when my view of the river was obscured by trees their sweeping fly bys told me the heron's position. the drama was concluded as i peered down from above through branches to the water's edge to see the heron finally guzzling down the eel and then taking off back down the river in majestic triumphant flight.

::

who the hell needs soap operas when this kind of drama unfolds everyday in our neighbourhoods? it was magnificant, and i cherished every breathtaking ordinary moment.

LB, x

Sunday, June 04, 2006

feck! failed to frizbee...

ach well, with mochaccino's to drink, the observer to read and Level5ing to be embraced, hanging with the crew outside on botanic sufficed more than adequately to make a sunday afternoon pleasurable... i wandered back along the Lagan feeling as content as i've been in a while...

::

we cannot tear the pages out of our book and start a new one... we can only continue the story where it last left off... we are the sum of the unalterable chapters that brought us here. if i lost control of the plot, if i find myself in a new, unpreparedfor scene, then in these days i find myself in the process of claiming authorship again... perhaps for the first time ever... if i fear, it is because i face so many choices...

but i know this much: we do just keep on writing...one line at a time... may we be mindful to make room for the moments of joy as well as inevitable pain...

::

F is fear
but it's also for faith
and for friendship

today i embraced all three just a little better


LB,x

FWIW...

you wrote, "i'm not strong. i was afraid."

::

another believes we should read the old testament in the same way we read plath, or listen to radiohead, or any other writer for that matter...for these prophets with their mad images, their meanings obscured by millennia and miles... so forget it's the WordofGod and just let them tell their story...

::

another said that christ exists in the place beneath words, to witness the pain of another and be helpless to do anything to take it away... you can do nothing but be present to that pain and sit it out... day in... day out... to be 'here'... down in the dark gethsemene depths that lie under the moment...

::

i wept as i dreamt of the crack opening, the fault line widening enough for me to enter in... to walk with terrified steps into the deepness of your own sorrow and fear...and even there in the cold dark to steel all my courage to reach out into that inky blackness so pitch i could not see the shaking hand that i offered... but i reached out all the same... because to love the precious humanity of another is to live with risk... knowing there may not be another quivering hand waiting to grasp your own... faith so often looks like recklessness... but i believe in a mighty grace...

::

i wept. was it for you or for my own powerlessness? was it for me and the risk no one would come? but there in the dark, i heard these strains of promise come unbidden from whoknowswhere...

::

free of the fear
free of the fear
and that's the game even if no angels came
one day to be free of the fear

on the day that i feared
an angel appeared
in the field where the beast never came
and the angels had words
that i'd never heard
words that like arrows take aim

free of the fear
free of the fear
and that's the game even if no angels came
that they'll be free of the fear

i believe i would stand
to the right of the hand
that held back the night for a time
but fear of the night
will hold back the light
like a thief at the scene of a crime

free of the fear
free of the fear
and that's the game even if no angels
came
one day to be free of the fear

one day, one day
the beast from the field will
be torn

free of the fear
free of the fear
and that's the game even if no angels
came
one day you'll be free of the fear
and they'll be free of the fear

free of the fear


Words: john stewart
Music: Lies Damned Lies (reid, butler, irvine)
Album: Lamentations, (1996; sticky music)

Saturday, June 03, 2006

a little more peace

a little later in the day and a little brighter...

kai's been off marking the boundaries of his new territory with ever growing confidence, the precious mullingtons of the commune (see last posting) are off at the race track and i've spent my day writing and pottering about in an easy, unhurried manner... there are clothes drying out in the sun over the back of the church pew in the yard, my books are up on the shelves, the dishes are done, my bed is made, my hair is washed, (my feet are not but well, it's progress - flip flops and urban living is a grubby business)...
no tears since waking (i may have run out) so i decided to push the boat out and put on eyeliner. so far so good.

got some much valued nourishment reading bananie's latest posts (link on right) - seeing her beautiful portraits from memorial weekend in nashville, and the testaments to love in this week's words.

i find it hard not to believe in the Divine when i think of Bananie and Helen and their love for one another - their story is a witness to persistant commitment, grace and courage. to see them do their beautiful thing, gives me hope.

profoundly gratitudinal for finding words and will... thinking of those in my life with a growing, warm appreciation, a little more longing, less fear and resistance...letting the walls down bit by bit...

i might make it over to the good Dr's barbeque tonight. we'll see how the next hour goes. no pressure.

LB, x

(thanks Paul - right back at ya)

there is no other way

She lay on the bed, a small shaking thing curled up in the blanket.

"You're not okay are you?"

A tiny whispered response, "No."

With matter-of-factness he lay down behind her, spooning her.

"That's okay. You've done so well."

"I feel like I just wanna give up."

"It's okay to feel it."

He curled around her in a fierce embrace, planting a firm kiss upon her shoulder blade and held on to her quaking frame as if his arms would hold her limbs together. As she heaved with wracking sobs that filled the quiet of the room his hand rubbed circles across her back, and she thought of him as a living soothing. Beneath the keen of her wail his tenor tones repeated a low mantra, "I'm so sorry, so very sorry, so sorry." Within she was at war: the need to feel the security of this kinship of presence to her grief, fighting with the fear that to let it in would be to lose it later.

"I don't know who to trust."

"You don't need to leave this house. Maybe not ever. But certainly not tomorrow. You're safe here."

::

“I feel like I’ve been climbing a mountain for nearly a year and the baggage is just too heavy. I’ve tried so hard... to keep it all together. I feel so alone and too high maintenance. But I just want to give up. I feel like I’m gonna completely fall apart. That’s what opened up...this deep rooted insecurity...fear of the abandonment caused by I know not what that underlies everything...a complete lack of presence as I caved in on myself...to feel so isolated... my defences are up now and I pushed them all out...as I lay there I went to a place where it'd truly be better for everyone if I left here. Quietly exited stage left...and to believe it would make no difference save for the better for them, for him...”

“What would happen if you fell apart?” asked the other.

“I think I’d… I guess I fear…I always fear... I’d lose... everyone,” she whispered.

“That’s a terrible burden to carry. No wonder you’re tired, love.”


::

They sit at the dining table, strewn with yesterday's grocery shop yet to be layed away. ("Maybe today I'll make bread.") She had slept and woken, feeling tired but with the hints of calmer clarity after dreaming. Made coffee and they browsed recipes while she lightly tapped the keys. "Good online connection today, the router's playing nice for once."

They talked of Coupland and the City of Glass and she admitted this was the only one she couldn't and hadn't read, "I feared it might make we want to go live in Vancouver." She smiled wryly, "I guess that makes no difference now. Why not..."

The buzzing of an incoming text vibrates against the wood, pulling her from contemplation of possibilities. As she lifts her eyes from the simple prayer for tranquility staring up out of the phone that lies in her palm, the other leans across the table and offers the book: a photograph upon the page of a tree in BC, five bald eagles sitting in its branches...

"I think I've found my writing chair." Right here by the window with the blue sky above the narrow yard and the yellow and red of the crane standing strong beyond the back wall - always there, always present.

::

LB, x

Written as the latest comment came in from anonymous... i'm glad anon, really glad... that you weren't in a place to see that truth was what caused me to be so disconcerted for you. but the last couple of days i had to learn it all over again myself...it's been tough... we live, we learn... peace be with you. with us all.

thanks to Level 5 Paul for the reminder of the complicated simplicity of it all...

Thursday, June 01, 2006

nothin' fake or plastic 'bout Love

wow.

colour me kinda speechless but also heartwarmed at the sudden burst of comments. thank you for the sentiments contained therein...i hope the words of the others are of some kind of comfort to our anonymous sojourner...

we'll keep this blog thing going for now... but (and i say this only in kindness to others and to myself) please know that i take very seriously what gets posted here by others... i don't mean that as some kind of virtue but as a slice of my psychology. this little page we got going here really came into its own at one of, no, at the most emotionally vulnerable point in my life - a point i am daily journeying beyond and healing from. i'm still not sure how wise it is to write in this medium, even with all the editing i do to maintain some kind of privacy for myself and those close to me... but somehow my attempts at honesty seem to prove that the more real and personal we are then the more universal our expression, and therefore seems to be of a little benefit to more than just me... but that brings with it for me a sense of responsibility to accompany the vulnerability... hence a lack of sleep... exacerbated by the added lack of knowledge and thus control (that looks like helplessness) brought about by anonymity... i can't save any one else's life, nor anyone else my own, but we learn day by day how to care for one another just a little bit better and a little more present...

i am gratitudinal that here in this virtual space people are willing in their beauty to step up to the plate and be present to the moment and the emotions expressed...

the gravenhurst link ewan posted is well worth checking out - can't decide which i like more - the guitar line or vocal melody - which makes for a stunner of a track in my book...

right. must get back to the work i am paid for - much to do. but the bends is pouring out the speakers so i can't really make any complaint...

much more later i'm sure,

LB, x

anonymous

not sure where to begin...but i guess i'll try and be honest and see where that takes us...

those that know me out here in the real world from where i type will not be that surprised i imagine to know that on reading the comment posted in response to yesterday's posting it took me a long whiles to get to sleep.

i sat on the back step in the yard...
i tried to cry but couldn't...
i thought about smashing some plant pots...
i drafted a dozen different responses but all were found wanting...
i considered switching back to registered user comments only...
i pondered closing the blog, or at least taking a break from it...

12 hours later and i still cannot find adequate words...

but Harbour of Ourselves did. and for now that will have to be good enough.

LB, x