Apologies to anybody who came over to Fractured Paths last
week. For those of you who did, and saw no new content, no new verbosity of
ideas about what and why we each do and when we do it (much of which, I can't
quite get my own head around); well, for those of you who invested time in me,
and who were dissatisfied, I am truly sorry.
As I write
this, I'm listening to progressive metal in a soundproof booth-like alcove in
the National Library of Wales (thank you, Aberystwyth, for something), sniffling.
My third
and final year of my Undergraduate degree is now in swing (I can't really say full swing, because, as a student of
Creative Writing, I only have four hours of seminars/workshops each week...).
What this vast block of weekly liberty should be is the opportunity for me to
find myself sitting in front of this very screen, typing ideas for my Writing
Project (the Creative Writer's Dissertation at Aberystwyth), and focusing on
ideas for blogs now and far into the future. I should be reading and reading
and consuming the techniques of the craft until my head aches.
Soon, I
promise.
The flu is
a harsh mistress. Especially when I have spent all summer being excited about
my next academic year. I've got so much going on – my W.P. as mentioned, a
module on writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, a module entitled Textual Interventions,
which is all about writers experimenting with our writing ideas; decentring,
re-centring, minimal-izing, and whatever else is in store. Therefore, sitting here,
in the National Library, with a bottle of cough syrup, two packets of cough
sweets and a box of tissues, why has my immune system decided that now! is the best time for me to have the
energy of a corpse?
The last
four, maybe five mornings I've woken up with sinuses less willing to unblock
than the most obdurate, stubborn child would be to turn the television off when
they're watching their favourite cartoon. I'm certain (I promise, I am) that
the moment when my body begins to revitalize, and instauration hits me and
suddenly I'm a swath of irrigable land in springtime, is only a day or two
away. As such, I've roused myself to come and do some work, because from last
Friday, all the way through to yesterday morning, I was in stasis. Not writer's
block, rest assured. I've been making little notes here and there about my
Writing Project all week, trying to cast a parochial and more insular eye on a
project that in its earliest planning stages might have been looking at
accumulating a much, much bigger word count than the one we are restricted to.
No, what I've had over the last few days, is a complete lack of motivation.
Shortly
before I returned to Wales, three weeks ago, 130 miles north of here in murky
Manchester, I made an Aberystwyth Work Plan to get up between 8-9am each
morning, and work until maybe lunchtime, do some reading later on, and after
some more work, go to bed around midnight (during this time, I might even eat
some food). How naive! It was as if I'd forgotten what being a student is. Not
just being a student, but being myself.
I'm the sort of person who can be sitting at my desk one minute with no plans for
the day, and then suddenly, three hours later, be drunk in a bar with a friend
who sent me an off-the-cuff text saying "Lunch?"; I'll walk three
miles to buy something, and if it turns out the shop does not have it, I'll
smile and walk back home, and the experience will have been helpful. I won't
complain, because what I did was unplanned. I was in complete control of my own
decisions, I took the risk knowing it
was a risk. There was little point to the objective, no doubt, since all I
really buy these days are books and bottles of gin (neither of which preclude
the other; no, in fact, they complement
one another!), but for me, even when I plan, I try to bear in mind a need to
adapt to the oft-forgotten small print of life, the unwritten rule of one's
day: random stuff happens. It will. Have you ever read a thriller or a crime
novel where an ordinary guy's day suddenly becomes the most accelerated
life-or-death-everything's-on-the-line scenario? If not, I highly recommend
Simon Kernick.
This week,
throwing up two fingers to my schedule, I have been waking up at around 10am.
My father sighs when he hears of such obscenities, but only because he was in
the bar by that time when he was a student. My Productivity Zenith is usually
mid-afternoon or in the evening; however, even this has to be a bit unplanned,
and never at the same time as the day before. The muse works differently for
everybody and, for me, harnessing the puissance of my imagination isn't
something I can do in a regimented fashion. At least, not right now. For me, it's about finding that right moment as much
as it is about letting the moment hit me. It happens every day, to be sure.
There have been times in lectures where, while not really listening to the
litany of tragic happenings to some ye olde writer, I've ripped out a page from
a notepad and started scribbling the plot of a short story. The ideas come to
me quickly, so I have to group words in my head that I can store and come back
to. Themes such as faith or guilt that, with any character in any story, you
can come back to, exploring and exploring and each time, you'll learn something
new about the theme, the character, and yourself.
Usually
when I finish a piece of fiction or poetry, I'm immediately dissatisfied with
it and ready to reread and edit; what I often find when I finish, though, is
that I've not written a skeleton. I've written something that has touched me
emotionally, and that's good, I suppose?
Last Thursday was National Poetry Day. I have decided,
therefore, to add this small little poem of mine to this post.
Liquid
Paths
The ink fades from the page,
Corrupt droplet stains mark
The poison that lingers,
As deep as your breath, as
Vivid as your touch, as
Cruel as your smile.
The memories waver,
A life shared, fractured,
Carved into nervures anew;
We each take a new path.
Yours, you have chosen;
Mine, mine is in shadow.
I wrote this poem nearly two years ago, and I've read it
perhaps ten times in total. I like it. It is a poem that drips emotion as is
clear in its very first metaphor of ink fading from a page. Droplets and
stains, marks; lingering. These words are not describing a huge blotch on a
white canvas, at least, not in my head.
They are small. A droplet is not a splash. Stains are usually small and
irritating and occur most in my life when I forget that I'm eating a curry with
a white linen shirt on (dumbass...). Yet, we take these words, and we spin them
around, give them a new focus. This poem, alas, is not about curry.
When
something lingers, it adopts a sort of background presence. You know it
remains. A smell, a feeling, a shade of something. The lingering of something
almost seems to embody the idea of a mid-presence. Something that is not there,
and yet is. The ghost of something now gone. The remnants. The caried teeth and
desiccated corpse of a once boisterous, vivacious person; the thin, greying
mist of an October rain. Breath, touch, smile. Think of a lover, a friend, a
relative. Now, respectively, imagine their breath on your neck, their
reassuring touch that everything will be OK, and that smile when you say
goodbye until next Christmas. They become memories. Fond memories, and they
linger positively. Until something fractures the link. Breakup, betrayal, bereavement.
The links change. To remember is to remember the good times, and yet invite
your conscience to revile and chastise you for looking back. To go back is to
linger in a physical, dwelling style. To go back is to see the differences, and
create comparisons.
We cannot.
Life changes every day.
This poem
is powerful to me, because the first stanza allows you to think and interpret
what is happening, what might have happened, and what will come next; the
second stanza speeds up psychologically, and everything is unravelling,
contrary to how the narrator wants it to be, and when the poem ends, the
narrator is in a state of unknowing. Mine,
mine is in shadow.
In many
ways, ink fading is not a metaphor. The narrator hasn't been talking about ink
though, has he/she?
Account for the occasional lack of motivation. Be prepared
for the odd day or two when you won't achieve as much as the day before. It
happens. Random stuff happens and gets in the way. It took me nearly two hours
this morning to prove my identity to the National Library. I hadn't expected
it, and so I've missed lunch. Yet I've shared something I hadn't expected to
share, with you, dear reader. We are a little closer now, you and I.
Be
yourself. If you're ritualistic, then accept it, but check you didn't drop
anything, twice; if you're spontaneous, then I challenge you to do five star
jumps in a public place in the next five minutes. But would a spontaneous
person listen, or only do five, even?
Don't let
the ink fade too much.
S.C.
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