Singing as the Darkness Lifts 27/11/2023 (Episode 13)

 Singing as the darkness lifts 27/11/2023

The full moon is somewhere behind the cloud this morning. The air seems to carry the scent of trees, but I am unable to determine what kind. Something in my head is telling me sycamore, and the ground is scattered with sycamore keys so maybe it is.

There are poem drafts in my journal as a result of Pascale Petit’s workshop last week and I know I will craft them slowly to relish in the moment and ensure I have squeezed all the poetry out of them that I can and extended them to their fullest selves as poems. There is a slightly different style to what is evolving and that may be resulting from the fact that my second book is now so very close to completion.

Yesterday my editor and I worked through some final tweaking to bring the book into fuller clarity for the reader in its structure. This was also the time to discuss the cover. When I heard what Josephine had in mind I felt giddy with excitement. I cannot wait to see what comes back from the designer and I know I will love sharing the final image. My brain does not think in concrete images and although I can recognise a good cover and get tingles from it and I am never short of ideas I cannot pluck these kinds of things from my mind and turn them into images for other people to see. It feels weird when I try, as if my brain is saying, no you don’t hold that kind of picture in you here.

I met with others on my coaching course last week to discuss the essay and it was good to talk about some top tips that people had. I laughed when I heard myself admit that the section that we were clearly directed to write in four distinct parts would be far better if I had written it in four parts. When I drafted it I wasn’t sure how to dig deeper for this particular aspect so I wrote about each coaching competency separately (and yes there are more than four) and this made a long section. Comparing this to the criteria I knew I was going about it the wrong way, but it took me a while to admit to myself that rewriting it to match the criteria was exactly what was required even though I know, know, know this!

I have seen this need to follow instruction from an editor’s point of view recently too. The deadline for the latest Sidhe Press submissions period is fast approaching, and it is surprising how many people submit without fully following the guidelines. My resolution? To follow guidelines and criteria in all things I am asked to submit. Oh, and I have another one... to pay attention to my ‘Hurry Up’ driver. Over the past few weeks it has surprised me how much it is in me and how it can affect how I approach things when under stress. I attribute that driver to me starting to draft the essay at an early stage in the course and to my feeling of wanting to time tasks to see how long they take if I have been procrastinating about them and getting on my own nerves.

And here I should perhaps mention my recent urge and desire to make a podcast. I feel a little sorry for my wife in all of this. I downloaded an app and read that I could record and upload simply. That is true, but to get it to link to my website and to make sure it looked right on the podcast site took longer than I had thought. And there was some googling of instructions involved and oh my, that ‘Hurry Up’ driver was rearing its head. Seven episodes now exist of this blog recorded as podcast, and I will soon be at the stage of being able to record the one I have just written. The site only has capacity for me to upload three a day so I have some stacked on my desktop ready for tomorrow’s uploading. During all of this podcast decisioning I think I interrupted Kath a great many times to ask her about things or celebrate a minor achievement along the way. I might need to learn to be a little quieter about my own processes I think!

I have come a long way though, because my reading out loud is improving and I have learned enough about recording software to make minor edits and upload these into what is now evolving to be a whole album of podcasting. When I started my YouTube Channel I did it because I wanted to set something down into the world during lockdown, and I also wanted to improve my confidence in reading out loud. The podcast will continue to help me set things down at the same time as encouraging me to pace my breathing in my reading. And it makes this blog accessible to people who would like to listen.

This week's photograph is of a tortilla on the glass on the backdoor. The tortilla is imitating a full moon. This photo was taken in memory of a wonderful friend and colleague who I used to speak to each Friday before we left work and went into weekend world. She got me and my sense of humour and I got her. And she once sent me a photo similar to this when I was doing some poetic social media posts about the full moon. Now I am smiling at this memory of her and her sense of humour, and because as I cut and paste the photo the ALT TEXT suggestion is ‘A Tortilla on a Window’. Well done ALT TEXT, well done.

Here's to things that dawn on us as we learn about how we are in the world and to the continued singing as the darkness lifts. And here's that Fruit Fly poem that did indeed make its debut on Top Tweet Tuesday last week:

We Studied Fruit Flies in our Lunch Break

 

Held our lenses with care.

 

I remember the focus on looking,

how we blinked the spider legs

of our eyelashes clear out of sight.

 

Exactly what we charted escapes me,

like the day I dropped the lid

to expose the wrong chamber

and saw a thinning puff of flies

head for the ceiling.

 

Something to do with patterns of shading,

or dots like gently painted on freckles,

or simply the curve of the abdomen.

 

Now I find out

males vibrate those thin wings

to play a courtship song

and that people have been

watching their lives closely for years.

Click here to acess the podcast version of this blog.