Creative joy
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With love and forgiveness
A poem about love and forgiveness.
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Broken toys
My son left home for six months in September last year and I (finally!) found time to develop a hobby. Okay, I write this blog as a hobby, but I also started having weekly guitar lessons. I’ve been playing guitar since I was teenager and I’m mostly self taught, so it has been great to learn how to play properly. I also did a creative writing course last year. And at the same time I went through (another) break-up and rediscovered Radiohead. I wrote this song at the end of last year, inspired by broken love, Fake Plastic Trees, Tinder and stuff that went viral on the Internet. It’s the first song…
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The waiting game
Waiting. For an answer. Yes or no. When all I have is maybe. Maybe. The most uncertain word ever to exist. My heart stands still while time beats on. It is still with you. Waiting for a moment in time. The moment where it will be set free. To love or to let go. The answer is not clear. It waits patiently. Thoughts and feelings come like waves, changing in constant motion. Crash, calm, repeat. All that is certain has been swept away. Abstract shapes on the sand remain. Changing with each moment. Time moves on but time stands still. I stand silent on the shore. Waiting for you.
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Painting class
“Let’s paint!” he says, flexing fingers that know paintbrushes I can tell, as his shirt knows paint (Are we going to get dirty?) the class leaps up – limber bare-bellied girls and a trio of tatty superior blokes – my friend and I too organise easels, brushes, squeeze out small neat turds of thick glistening gloop onto ice-cream lids – red yellow blue white black (Are they the only colours we get?) crisp new white paper covers last term’s spilt paint a table is made manifest in the middle of the easel jam a red-checked tablecloth arranged a bagful of shoes tipped out painters dart from behind easels to poke…
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Fiddlin’ about
All my life (it seems) I have filled in time spent waiting – which is a LOT of time, as all women know – by imagining myself playing the violin. I have played symphonies in parked cars, concertos in dentists’ waiting rooms, the ‘Four Seasons’ in cafes (of course) and etudes lying on the beach. In my imagination I have tucked a fiddle under my chin and set feet tapping in all sorts of unlikely places. I have loved the imagined feel of the thrumming instrument on my shoulder and the sensuous glide of the bow awakening the silent strings. In 60 years I have never even got close to…
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Giving birth to my first book
Conception I started writing my first book in 2002. I filed the outline in a ‘secret file’ in case our children stumbled across it on our shared computer. Funny thing was, I forgot about the secret file, and besides I had a very busy life to attend to, so my first book quietly faded into the background of my busy brain. Then, in 2005, my lifetime partner and I took our first overseas holiday and went to Bali for eight days. On the second day of the trip, I started writing a letter to mum. The letter continued for the next seven days. Before I knew it, it had became…
