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Add Value Bring Joy (Episode 33)

 

Singing as the Darkness Lifts, Episode 33

Add Value Bring Joy

 PodBean Link for those who like to listen

 

 

This morning I have scented the world. It is salted vinegar on moss. At the weekend I bought myself a wire brush and some organic cleaner to help remove the moss from the driveway and the smell is in the air. It was quite therapeutic to see what could be removed by hand, and to realise how much mud collects in the grooves to let the moss grow. The mud gives the same scent as beach mud when I disturb it and it needs to go because it makes the surface slippery after rain. Once I was hit on the head by a cake tin because of moss and mud. I had got out of the car from visiting a friend and was bringing back an empty tin when I slipped and landed flat on my back. I must have closed my eyes at the sudden shock and when I opened them to concentrate on whether or not I was hurt I saw the tin just before it hit my forehead. It was quite a good comedy moment that had no real audience.

 

Alt text thinks this week’s photo is a person holding a card, but I say it is me, by the pink camelia with my new ‘ADD VALUE BRING JOY’ t-shirt holding a copy of my new book ‘Welcome to the Museum of a Life’. I bought the t-shirt because I wanted something that was definitely ‘me’ to wear for the forthcoming book launch, and I wanted to try it on as soon as it arrived. That’s a nice feeling. It comes from Jaz Ampaw-Farr’s merchandise and is one of her ‘t-shirts of truth’.  I heard Jaz speak many moons ago, but she is one of those people that once heard is never forgotten. Jaz herself says: “I make audiences laugh, cry and leave on a high.” and that was exactly what I experienced. I love it when someone’s story resonates.

 

I don’t always like having my photo taken, but I am embracing the fact that I do like capturing moments and therefore it’s actually good to have photos taken! I even offered to be the model for Kath’s Sugar Loaf Cardigan and did not one but two goes at getting some helpful pictures. It’s a great cardigan, but it won’t be part of my daywear!

 

There was joy this week in a peppermint tea... I texted a friend on the off chance they could meet up for a catch-up and got the reply “definitely”... that one word made my heart sing just when I needed it to have a song.

 

Thinking out loud with my coach has helped me to recognise the things that I want to say yes to and get going with stuff. I still have moments of doubt, but they are diminishing and responding well to, “What’s the worst that can happen?”  

 

So I am planning a set list for my in-person book launch and whether the audience is small or large I am doing it and airing my words. I am readying a creative workshop for adults and excited to see how the first one goes. Oh, and there was learning from this because there is a me that then decides that having written one workshop I had better have another one up my sleeve in case it goes well. There is a definite version of myself that likes to be prepared ahead of time. However, for the first time last week I fitted things in before an appointment and arrived exactly on time instead of early and it felt rather splendid to have focused on more than one thing even though I had an appointment. Just gently pushing myself and who knows where this can take me!

 

Here's to words and shared time. I will leave you today with “WHEN I SAW JESUS IN A TOMATO” (An earlier version of this poem was published by Fevers of the Mind). It came to mind yesterday when I saw a mattress in a skip and was transported back to the time when I was young and there was a mattress in the back garden waiting to be taken to the tip and I would look forward to going out there each morning and running straight at it to feel the rebound. There’s no mattress in this poem, but it does come from being a child and being lost in the moment...

 

When I Saw Jesus in a Tomato

 

I was at my nan’s

and there he was

rocking to steadiness

in a halved tomato

next to a rough cuboid of cheese.

When I showed her, she nodded

murmured affirmation

but I wonder did she really see him?

Maybe her eyes were like mine are now.

 

I ate him;

he was a woody version of grass.

I swallowed him hard

not wanting him to get stuck

in my throat.

 

No phones then to capture the moment

only a headline in my mind.

When I returned home, I told my mum

what I’d witnessed.

I think perhaps she thought I was lying

or had conjured him from my imagination.

 

Months later, I worried them all:

nan, grandad, mum, brother.

Quick spit it out,

Get it out of her mouth! I heard

as the grown-ups stood in horror.

They’d watched me

bite through the first glass

I had ever been allowed to use.

All I knew was

I had been staring at the new wallpaper

making crucifixes from the repeating squares.

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