Dark Days

It's getting dark, the days are going to really draw in now. The clocks going back brings a feeling of shutting down, closing the door on the summer, and in fact today it's really depressed me. I've visited my gran who is dying slowly of lung cancer. I've said goodbye to my sister, again... so many goodbyes, it makes my heart ache. I haven't touched a school book while having a week off, for which i am going to pay dearly tomorrow. Am i the only teacher in the world who has given up trying to conquer the work load? Probably. It worries me that i care so little about my job. Please don't shoot me for saying that. Oh dear, sometimes sundays can really be too much. When the light of tomorrow comes, metaphorically speaking as well as literally speaking, i will feel better. Even the antiques roadshow is having a hard time cheering me up today though.

All day i have laughed and made jokes, yet when i look deeply into myself, there is sadness in me, clambering to get out. To bathe me in its healing. A few days back i was sitting on top of a huge cliff, looking out on an ocean of possiblity, and healing then too. I have to remember that i can take myself back there in my mind whenever i wish, so that it can show me the truth again, and that really no doors are closing on me. And how ironic.. the album i'm listening to has just sung these words to me:

Don't let your soul get lonely, in time it will go by.
Don't look for love in places, in faces,
it's in you, that's where you'll find it.
Be here now.

And how true. And now my emotions are flowing again, rather than trying to survive in a stagnant pool of nothingness. Now my colour is returning, and i can remember what is important again.

Finding the world in the smallness of a grain of sand
And holding infinities in the palm of your hand
And Heaven's realms in the seedlings of this tiny flower
And eternities in the space of a single hour

Don't lose your faith in me,
and i will try not to lose my faith in you
Don't put your faith in walls,
for they will only crush you when they fall

Walking

Waves crash past the stack, the rock
jilts out into the ocean and white stallions
force their might over it,
while i sit with him, sun on our faces
as we look out into the blue ocean.

A mother runs with her giggling child
as the waves move in further than expected,
Trousers rolled up, now edged with the sea
And with their laughter
And he places his arm around me, safe

A sleeping dragon lies behind us, the rock face
houses the Kite which flies above,
and as we walk up high, then higher, then higher still
i become small, a dot
on the great landscape of this earth
which is beautiful,
and wild
and home.

I remember walks from long ago,
How much i wanted to return home
and not be faced with this vast expanse
of air, and life and perspective
Whereas now i could stay forever
in this place, and remain identity-less
and without the mirrors of other faces and realities

This world is truly beautiful,
And how much it has to offer us
There's so much colour in the landscape of my soul
when i rest in this place
everything is suddenly possible again,
And i'm alive with it
A world of art born again inside me

10 Statements to Sum Up My Week

Doctors know NOTHING about our health. Never visit a health professional, unless you are bleeding so much that you are about to die, then i reckon they might help.

Bournemouth is an ugly place, full of losers in BMWs who think they've made it.

Full time jobs imprison you in their bubble and allow you to forget that you are alive, until you go on holiday, when you remember that you have a personality again.

Dreams stay dreams until you make them a reality. If you want something then you have to go for it. It might be a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason.

Ray Lamontagne's album 'Til the Sun Turns Black' is one of the best albums in the world.

Life is full of poetry and full of art. These things give meaning to experience and allow all that we go through to become something living and real.

The relationship which we have with ourselves is the most important relationship there is, and it will mirror the relationship we have with everyone else. And the only thing to fear is fear itself.

King prawns are the best food of all time.

Sometimes i have to let out my complaints against the world, no matter how much i hold it dear.

My Dream

When i lean in to it, through the crack,
sparkling down there is myself opened,
a diamond hidden within a mine,
the depths nowhere to be seen, fathomless.

With it deep bliss, i sink further into it,
away from this surface, this skimming,
and rest comfy in its immense space.
I recognise this place, of course
For millennia have familiarised me with it

A synaesthesia of colour: deep red, deep blue, pure white
Drown my soul and fill it to the brim
As i close the door behind me
A hand on my shoulder welcomes me back
Once more

And the longing surfaces again,
The longing to be back here, to live this reality
And not this dream
To find this secret stairway in the wall before me
And fall down it head first
To land, the moment my feet leave the floor.

If I Could Have One Wish...

Love Monster

When i look back on my life i can see that i have always been afraid. And who hasn't? There isn't a single person on earth who doesn't carry some fear with them, or else they wouldn't be here you could argue, there would be no point to them living this life here in this place. But i genuinely feel that i have carried more than the 'average' person, whatever that is. I can see that even when i was a very little person i have felt this fear, unable to understand what it was, what it meant, unable even to comprehend it as fear rather than, at times, a feeling of near insanity and a kind of darkness in my soul. At times i have felt almost evil with it as it's coursed through my veins, felt that there was a monster living inside me.

I realise that sounds very heavy. Fortunately i have come to understand my fear, come to manage it, learnt how to deal with it and find light in my life more readily. When i left home i had to learn to deal with it or drown under it, which sometimes i felt close to doing. I have learnt to fight it through letting it go. I've realised just how irrational and outside life it is, and learnt through it who i am in a far more meaningful way. I am grateful that i have been so afraid of myself, as otherwise i would not know just how much point there is to life, just how beautiful our existence here is and why we must fight to attain light. I've come to realise that fear is in fact one of my greatest teachers, and that it has in fact shown me a path to happiness rather than driven me from it, because i have allowed it that. And all these things i am humbly grateful for, because i know that without them i would not be who i am now.

And yet today i wonder, how much more fear can i release now? How much longer will i have to go on battling with myself, sacrificing my darkness, letting go of the knot in my stomach which prevents the light coming in? When will i learn to let my life flow, to have in my life those feelings and those things which i image so frequently which are full of life, full of meaning, full of hope and love? When can i have them? I know that i will never be totally free of fear, or as i said, what would be the point of living? This is what makes us human after all. And i know that i am much closer to achieving this state that i dream of. But still i want to feel my own self without consciously having to make an effort to do that. This is what i yearn for. If i could have one wish, it would be to have this. And to give out this knowledge to all those who feel themselves amidst the darkness.

Eyes That Shimmer

How you look at me with those eyes,
Child-like, smiling, reflecting my face in their squinting happiness,
Just a glimpse before you lower your head, hide from my gaze.
Can i box those moments up please and carry them with me?
A friend for my lonely soul.

How you pierce me with that fragile face,
A wide eye of fear and love, emptying you out, bottomless, void,
And it draws you closer to me, and i pull you in, shield you from all that torments you,
And a tear rises up from my heart.

How expansive is my future when i look into your eyes,
Light-filled, deep red and dark blue
And i ride the wave onto new shores which lie far from this place.
An ocean travelled, the distance between my love and me.

Mounted High Your Fortress

My love, i can see
Mounted high your fortress, majestic legacy of war.
Lit by moonlight, soft and eerie,
Its armour a deep shade of grey, walled high above the sodden land.

Encircled in deep waters, there you take rest alone,
Your lookout far from the touches of the armies which attempt to conquer you.
Driven here in time now forgotten,
Often you will sit with a blind eye, head lowered, your waking sleep a cosy blanket.

From your tower the view is beautiful, although a little far removed
High above, stars will watch over you peacefully.
On clearer days you have often imaged someone coming in the distance,
From that place you once called home.
An old, old friend, her footsteps sunk deep into the mud.

You have felt that the key which you have long held close
Is about to be offered to another,
And sure enough you are right.
Invisible hands wind up the chains, allow your visitor to gain entrance.
To join you in your empty palace, just for a little while.

Enraptured in remembrance you dine with her, rest with her,
It is wine, not blood which drips from the knife
Pillows are softened by sweet carresses
The emptiness of this place masked with your eye for detail

And in rooms where the walls have no pictures,
You allow her to speak of where she has come from.
That land of peace and beauty nigh unimaginable
Which you had long forgot.

But speak just a little, you say:
Too much and the pain of what is lost becomes too apparent
For you lived there once also,
Your place there lost to stronger forces within you.

You will her to stay, to accept the warm generosity of a welcoming host
Who has forgotten the nature of his environment
And for a while she agrees,
For rarely has she felt so welcome, so comfortable, so surrounded

Yet these walls are so high, so grey, so strong
Here she cannot sink her feet into the ground and let it cushion her voluntary falls.
Her privileged place in your tower allows her a view of the place from whence she came
Sparkling dimly in the distance, she knows that it is home.
And yet she knows also that no visit was as richly lived as this one.

And so he wakes to find her gone
Just a saddened shadow moving through a hidden door
And once more his walls become the bars of a prison self-constructed long ago
And as he sinks to his knees the cry is let out
Shattering the windows once clad shut
Anger rising from deep within his belly, lighting a spark within his soul

Pushing outwards it moves to all around
A ripple of fiery energy conquering all
Battlements are rased back to the ground from which they sprung
Burning long through the night