Friday 6 August 2010

Fierce Imaginings - spherical metaphors

Imagine a soap bubble brushing the side of your face. Nice, isn't it? Now imagine a cricket ball. Okay you can get up now. The soap bubble is the desire to write, the cricket ball is the thing that prevents you from writing. This could be anything; rejection; having to spend time on a 'proper job' which pays the bills etc. Now I won't include having children in this I'm afraid, because I found having children helped the writing process. It sped things up; look at those unspolit, faultless faces! Life is short, do the things you want to do etc. I certainly won't include tidying or shopping, because that's a rotten excuse. Having a clear 'mental space' helps and perhaps to achieve this you have to put aside your own feelings and emotions and just write. The writing itself is what counts.

Back to soap bubbles. They're beautiful aren't they? Fragile, fleeting, they burst at the merest touch. My toddlers are always trying to grab hold of them and look completely perplexed when they fade. The beauty is in creating in them, watching them float by, letting go eventually. Blowing about a dozen of them before you get the right one, the perfect one and even then there are more waiting.  You could spend your whole life creating and watching. Do you see what I'm getting at here?

Writing will find a way. I have spent many years of my adult life either avoiding or ignoring the writing urge and it's only caused a lot of grievance. I get sucked by into the body and memory of myself as a little girl who used to write, consider and dream. Knew there was a way of saying things differently, couldn't quite tease it out but was determined to get to the truth of it somehow.

I may be 80 years old and still be no closer; it's worth a try.

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