There is a hard frost this morning. It is on the road, on the pavement, a shimmering glister of slipperiness. I walk gingerly. A result of ageing, that vulnerability, the one that does all it can to stop the body falling. All that time taken up repairing, it takes too long. It is beautiful though and makes up for the loss of the Christmas lights. There is nothing to see in people’s windows, they are all gone. All that cheer. Just January and her bleakness and cold. The cold is strange this morning. There is warm air too. It smells sweet, like gas. Is there a gas leak in town? It doesn’t smell like it used to. They changed it. It used to be odourless, I think. Until people started gassing themselves in their ovens. Just like Sylvia Plath. Was it like going to sleep? She put blankets up against the doors to protect her children from it. How desperate. Poor love. To get to the stage where there is nothing. You can’t see anything worth staying for. Leaving. Leaving it all. So the air was sweet, first along the North Prom then down towards the harbour. It smelt like chocolate. Was someone baking cakes or biscuits at three in the morning? Some people believe that spirits conjure up smells. I read some where that someone kept smelling fried onions, or is that from fiction? Was it the ghost in It’s a Wonderful Life? Was a spirit haunting the Prom? Where was the warmth coming from?
Sometimes I don’t want to listen to things I see on the radio listings. I think I want one particular thing and then another offers itself. I think about doing a piece of writing/sewing where I just list what I listen to while I work. Anyway, I didn’t want to listen to the biography of Muriel Spark and then I did. It was great. A Vital Spark. The author writes about visiting her in Italy. She was famously impractical and moved in with her friend Penny, a sculptor who did everything for her, housework, cooking and typing manuscripts. ‘Writers are only half there’, she said. Am I less of a writer, artist because I do the other too? It is a perpetual question. The myth is of the obsessive, the one who writes/makes through the night eschewing food and sleep for the great work. I am too regular for that. I like my rhythm, I like a neat house, order. And yet, she was fascinating to listen to. A liver of life, certainly. And we had our leaving in common. I tried to do the best I could with my son, she said. Yes. A vital spark. Yes. That is good.
I am so edgy about tomorrow. So uncomfortable with the not knowing. The clumsiness of having to put myself in someone else’s hands. All will be well, at least it will be what it will be. Let it go. Let it become what it can and will be. Trust. That is all you can do, just trust.
