Sunday
Was perhaps the most beautiful day in June
I’ve seen
Sunny all day
Nothing cold
(It’s supposed to be winter here)
I gardened
And pottered
I drank tea
And afterward
I wrote a post
For SubStack
I haven’t written over there since March
I got to the end
And nearly left it sitting
As a draft
Laptop lid closing
But I realised I was sitting at a crossroads
Whether to be a writer
Or just a thinker
I prefer writing more
Because in the passing of a thousand thoughts
Nothing forms
And it all just comes back again
But when I write
And share
I discover who I am
Which allows me to move
Into skin
Bone
Fingertips
Of an evolving human
And the success of the thing, it isn’t about someone reading
It’s about being
Who I’m supposed to be
Writing for me
Is living
*lately WordPress has been regurgitating old posts – three or four from over the years all the way back to 2016 and I’m reading them and remembering.
I wish I hadn’t discarded old posts as I turned them into books – most of which I subsequently unpublished. Still, what remains is a significant amount of writing.
And the beauty of building a body of writing is not for other people, it is for ourselves. Because the person who wrote those pieces is me. There is something about poetry that is deeply authentic and I write from a place that isn’t connected to the surface level confused and conflicted human. It is connected to something deeper, some subconscious or even meta conscious part of me. That part is worth revisiting to take advice.
That output is worth both the writing and reading. Even if it is just me going backwards to the records that exist now and thinking “that was hard and then it was easy and then it was hard and then it was easy”
And so cycles end
And begin again
And it’s all just living
The header photo is a combination of my dog Bodhi and two trees I planted long ago.
I planted those trees before Bodhi had come into my life and without knowing they would become markers for her grave.
I planted the trees with Mum in the sunshine, chattering and laughing, not realising she would develop alzheimers and so be stolen away from me, piece by piece.
Through it all, the ups and downs, nature surrounds us, changing and growing. Writing reminds me that a similar cycle is happening internally. We are not separate from nature, we are part of it. Writing makes visible our seasons and new forms, old habits and thoughts.
So through it all, writing.
Life. It’s worth it, keep going.
