Sometimes it is just words, words that seem to float about in my head during my dreams. They are mostly said inside my head, a spoken thought, so to speak. Finding-down eggs was one of them. And it definitely wasn’t referring to the act of coming upon the eggs, ‘finding-down’ were a kind of egg. What kind of egg I cannot say. So evocative, so full of richness. I love this part of me, it is so free of rigidity, of fear, of fear of judgement. I wish I could remember more, but it is quite a thing to wake in the dark and struggle to write things down before they are lost. Equivalent was another word that hung around. Not sure why.
There is a blue sky after so many days of grey, overcast ones. Though the wind is wild. I remember our horses becoming skittish on windy days and galloping around the confines of their field, kicking up their hooves, tossing their manes and flicking their tails. I can see the white flashes on the waves on the sea.
I’ve much to do. And I’m hungry already. So much for oranges, eh? Coloured water, he says, coloured water.
I woke around 9.30 pm needing a pee and happened to look out of my bedroom window. It was still light and the sun had cast a sharp beam upon the piece of wasteland just beyond our block. It was a deep yellow that turned the greens of the grass, scrub and trees into a bright, brilliant lime. When I returned to bed the yellow had gone and the light returned to the dull grey of the coming night. Had it woken me? That light, that temporal glow?
I dreamt of an old friend from my MA days. We were outside on a stretch of tarmac. It was where she used to live and she was explaining where her garden used to be, in great detail. I struggled to follow her. It was gone and I couldn’t imagine how it had been. An earlier dream had involved living in a small, close space with lots of other people, young people. Were we on holiday together? The gist of it was that we all had to keep wearing the same clothes. And there was an irritation in that and the fact that we were packed so closely together. Pictures made from daily concerns. Silly, trivial concerns.
The sun is out this morning. The wind is sharp but there is more light than we’ve had for days. I appreciate it. The commission is on hold, perhaps cancelled. I am disappointed, it gave me a fillip when it was offered. Wait and see. Wait and see.
We did it alot as children, mostly coming home from being away in Ireland or Wales or Scotland. We’d be put in our nighties and tucked in sleeping bags in the back, then carried, when we got home, straight to our beds. How I loved that, that being taken care of, transported from one warm place to another. I also relished being tucked up in the car and yielding to its motion. I adore being driven (if the driver is steady and careful) – that succumbing to going forward, somewhere, anywhere. As a young child I’d look at the streetlights, the motorway lights and watch the line of them flickering as we sped past. But this was a dream. And I wasn’t asleep, no I was very much awake, overhearing plots of assassination. He was asleep, comatose in the car, oblivious to all my fears and concerns. It made me tetchy with him. Is it the moon?
I wake from dreams into the still dark and the shadows of them stay with me as I bathe, get dressed and walk. They linger. The two worlds becoming one. He wants to shake his off as soon as he wakes. Mine trouble me and yet I still want to understand.
I finished it in a day. He was pleased, impressed even. And then there was another email offering more work. I’m glad. I’m pleased and even the fear of failure is so far manageable. Hello, I say to it. You still here? So be it. We will work together you and I. Won’t we? A gentler day today, experimenting with alphabets. Let me make these ideas manifest. Let me open to the possibilities of myself. It is all there. All of it. Within. I need nothing more. Except him. How I shall miss him when he decides to go. It will happen. I will be alone. But not yet. Not yet.
I’d heard the programme before. Radio 4 Extra my favourite station keeps repeating things (perhaps no new material is being commissioned during this time). I don’t mind. To re-hear is often illuminating. Anyway, this one featured Lemn Sissay talking about finding and meeting his birth-mother, I think it was in the Gambia. He writes well, from the heart, it is almost visceral. It’s a moving story, he says. Not moving in the emotional sense but ever changing, in flux. I want it to be that way, he says, I never want it to solidify. He is fearful of self-pity, of telling the tale so off-pat that it ceases to have authenticity. I get that. It is apposite for me. For how does one tell such things, how do they remain as elusive as they are? I want to learn from such luminaries but not be so awe that they make me frozen with fear.
I hear from her. She tells me of the children. The eldest is learning so fast. Lots of words. Her favourite, she tells me is ‘investigate’. How I love them.
The details of last night’s dreams are lost, all I remember is being angry with him. He’d let me down in some way and I was seething. Sorry, love.
I fell to sleep quite quickly, breaking the habit that had set in of my lying there unable to drop off. Then I was woken around 9ish by some voices beneath my window. I heard the name David and tried in my now wakefulness to ascertain who was speaking. One of the voices was American, or Canadian. This must be one of our near neighbours I thought as I lay there, he and his wife are living here, we don’t know why, perhaps one of them is studying at the University. They are both quite round and small, he has a rolling walk and breathes quite heavily. She always dresses very well, lots of flowing linens. I think he has some health condition. Who was he talking to? Perhaps it was the Chinese man from the flat on the corner. They’d woken me from a dream about deadly deeds concerning the securing of a role in an important role. At least that is the interpretation of the dream that I wrote down when I went for a pee. I think the play was a Shakespeare one. How I was involved, or where the phrase ‘deadly deeds’ came from I do not know. I did return to sleep when the voices ceased. And then didn’t wake until the alarm. I’d been dreaming about my forthcoming marriage. I was sitting on top of a vast moor, in Victorian dress, waiting and crying. I could see the wedding guests advancing towards me across the heather and scrub. It was very cinematic, I was high high above them. One couple had a dog that bounded ahead towards me. Then my sister came. She was looking very beautiful in an Empire Line Dress, dark blue with a ruched midriff. I was in grey. She tried to cheer me (without success), hugging me and saying ‘Do you remember when…’ I continued to cry thinking to myself, surely I am not supposed to be alone on my wedding day. Then I woke.
The blackcurrants arrived in one piece. What a pleasure, though I fear I have eaten to much for breakfast.
I’ve an interview to do today. I always get a little nervous. I know she will be lovely. But I want to hide under a stone. This is the problem with staying in and seeing no one, one gets a little scared of encounters. Though I long for escape too. Just to sit somewhere in a hotel or cafe and empty myself of all thought. That would be good. Wouldn’t it?
I wrote out the brief ideas for the short stories and let him read them in the sun in the afternoon. He was kind and encouraging. I’ve made a start. It’s such a leap. Can I do it? I want to know them, to grow into them and to find my voice. Can I do it? How about if you try?
The cleaning is done, though I wish I could learn to approach it with more joy. I love a clean house. I love the smell of it and the order. You don’t look very happy about doing it, he said this morning. No, I suppose I don’t. There is so much I’d rather be doing. But that is neither here nor there, is it? Keeping order for both of us is important, just as important as more high-falutin’ earning money sort of work. So let it be and instead be grateful that you have a home to clean, many don’t. Like the man I see sleeping rough in the shelter on the Prom. Was it the same man? His sleeping bag was red today. How can he sleep with the howling of the wind surrounding him? He is sheltered from the cold of it but not the sound. Do you become immune to it? The sound makes my very bones feel cold.
I rushed my walk this morning so that I could get back to mop the floors downstairs. Our neighbour was at his window when I went out. At least it’s not raining yet, he said. No, I said. He was smoking, coughing and reading a book at the same time. It looked liked a sci fi or fantasy novel. It was a paperback with a plastic cover, a library book perhaps? I tried to read it’s title. He interests me, a singular man, I think but seemingly most content. I think it was something like ‘Monstrous Revolutions’. I should’ve asked him but didn’t like to.
The moon took me by surprise this morning. I turned the corner onto the Prom, trying to avoid being toppled by the wind, and there it was big and almost full, shining a white-yellow in the sky. There were clouds that scudded in front of it but when they didn’t I could make out a star nearby to it, or a satellite maybe.
I’m glad I went.
She emailed me to say that she’s sent me some blackcurrants. What a treat. And she is so busy and yet she found the time. Well, her husband posted them while she had her hair cut. She says that the PO removed the string she’d tied around them so they may not arrive in one piece. I hold my breath longing for the smell of them, the taste of them. Will they come?
How nice it would be to sit with her, with them, in their garden.
It was all about her slugs and snails yesterday. They are ravaging their vegetables. She doesn’t want to use anything chemical (to protect the chickens) and we discussed a variety of ways of discouraging them from garlic salt to egg shells. Nothing, as yet, seems to work, they munch away regardless. Another friend talked of the impact of the wind and rain on their garden, the vegetables in particular. The cauliflower has bolted and the gooseberries haven’t come.
I didn’t catch hold of my dreams last night, just a residue of the first one before I went for a wee at 10. Something to do with an inheritance and a long cotton nightdress ‘this much wide by this much’. The second one I lost. Gone.
The lifeguard hut has been erected on South Beach. A portent of summer. Wales is open to visitors from this weekend, he said at breakfast. I suppose it has to start sometime. Will it ever be the same again? A broken umbrella had been shoved into a bin along the Prom, just below the castle. Several of its metal spokes lay like spillikins on the ground, the rest of the structure, blue, draped from the mouth of the bin.
Rain and more rain. A grey morning. I don’t think he will walk.
The wind was stronger this morning as I walked. Things clattered about me. Seagulls flew about haphazardly, tossed by the gusts. Signs creaked and a gate leading to the backyard of house on Llanbadarn Road flapped open and shut as I walked past. The latch hadn’t been put down and the wind caught at it, rattling it then thumping it closed, only for it to open again. A jangling sound. A bit like my temper yesterday. Was it the tea?
Things went wrong yesterday, or perhaps it was my approach to them. Both of the main irksome wrongs have been put right, well as much as they can be. The kettle has been replaced for free though we were given a rather bland colour. Can I have a red one this time? I’d asked him before he left for town. There was only one left, apparently. So we are stuck with taupe. We’re calling her Jane, plain Jane. Like it or lump it, eh? And the tap top has been stuck back on, though it wobbles, rather like a tooth soon to be dislodged. Ah, how I hate bodging things.
A good day otherwise. I loved doing the research though I’ve lots to do before I get to the meat of it. Oranges this morning for breakfast. The rice fast has been broken after 10 days. I was good to have something light. And the tea was a joy, even if it made me cross. I shall try harder to be nice today. Onward. Admin to be done, then quilt and phone call, then letters to journals, then baking. Enough, I think.
It was a dream anagram word. I woke with it in my head and lay there trying to work out what word I could make from it. Nothing came. I made him laugh when I told him of it at breakfast. Two dreams. Paul Weller sang of having 22. Is that possible? The first I had to write down at 12 ish when I got up for a wee. Something to do with letters to be carved in stone but couldn’t be made permanent. And then I was in a public loo and I couldn’t turn on the lights. They wouldn’t come on and then I found the central switch and hey presto they worked. The second dream was more comprehensive and it involved a community of artists in Manchester, somewhere like Whalley Range. They lived above their studios but were threatened with eviction. I sat in the downstairs cafe with one of them as she bemoaned her fate. Then the word Pallop came into my mind and I woke trying to solve it.
My nerves are jangly this morning. Two bad things. First a minor one. The taps in this flat are very frustrating, old seventies designs. The kitchen ones keep losing the metal caps that hide the workings. Today the cold one came off yet again. I’ve glued it back several times but it won’t stay. Shall I just leave it? It looks so shabby and shoddy. Then the kettle went. We both like it. Love it sometimes. A retro one, a copy of course but a beautiful shape and hue nonetheless. It’s the element, certainly, for the light still comes on. I get so discombobulated. And then people don’t respond to emails just when I want, no need things to be in place. So we must buy a new kettle and a new dehumidifier which still comes on but bemusingly doesn’t collect any water. Just when things get tight. It’s always the way. Let the abundance come and to cover it. I am happy to work hard for it.
I begin my research today. I’ve no idea how to do it best. Just start. Remember Goethe. Just begin.
I struggled to get off last night. And then when I did the dreams came in luscious detail. I’m getting better at remembering them. They speak to me, certainly. In the one I recall I went off on a walk before a meal I was to have with a group of people. When I left them it was gloomy but when I was out walking it was a clear sunny day. I must have been abroad for the walls that encased the path were whitewashed and glaring in the sun. It was warm. The path took a fork and a woman on a horse was coming towards me from one side, she was bare-back and hatless. We spoke and she asked me the way to somewhere without waiting for my answer, then she laughed and said that she was going to wrong way and took the other turning. I took the other fork and came to a gully that was full of clear water. A man who soon became a woman was squatting by the water, I followed suit. We both touched the water, it was warm and quite shallow. I suddenly noticed that a complex of houses and flats had been built around the water. I spoke to the now woman about what it was like to live there. It was communal but the flats were discreet and private. She was thinking of retiring out there. Then I was watching her performing at an event held at the complex. It was evening and she was on stage with two other colleagues. They were using large cards to cover their faces and singing. The cards were beautifully illustrated with old Punch and Judy imagery and they flowed seamlessly between reality and hyper-reality. I was spellbound and saw the woman in an entirely different light. Such inventiveness. The symbolism speaks to me. There is much there for me to decipher. I write to remember. I hope it doesn’t bore you. Welcome to the inside of my head.
I sent him what I wrote and slept while he read it. What did you think? I asked him when I woke. I’m not sure about the Norway bit, he said. You don’t know enough to write about it. He is right, and it smarts a little to hear it said. But I need to write it regardless, if only to blue pencil it afterwards. I’m on a path and I need to get to the other side. I am writing to understand not to explain. But you can write, he said. It’s a clear as a bell. How lovely to hear that. It felt good. And he wouldn’t soft soap me, not ever. See how blessed I am. I have to put it aside for the moment. I’ve a mountain of things to put in place now and I’ve another small writing commission just come in. But at least I know what to continue with, even if I am still in that fog. I will come through it. I will.
