Moving #writeme30

This week’s #writeme30 photo has been supplied by the beautiful and super talented Lynden Nicholls. Lynden was our movement teacher every Wednesday during 1^st year Acting at the Ballarat Academy of Performing Arts back in 2006.

I loved movement class – I’d easily say it was my favourite class that year – and Lynden was a fabulous teacher who really suited my learning style. And I love that through the power of facebook we’ve stayed connected and I get to see little updates from Lynden popping up in my newsfeed every now and again.

I have really bittersweet feelings about my year at BAPA,

I loved it.

I loved the classes, the community and the learnings I was having but I was also personally (and with family) going through a really difficult time, which led to me leaving at the end of first year. I continue to feel that my performance studies are an unfinished business – and yet leaving led me to some amazing opportunities and experiences in the Riverland (not to mention meeting the beautiful man who is now my husband) so I certainly don’t regret leaving, but it was difficult and I do feel like I lost a fantastic learning opportunity and community by not completing my studies.

*bittersweet *still trying to articulate what it means to me *sigh

With all of those connections and memories these are the words that spring to mind when looking at the photo Lynden sent me for this week’s post:

• Ripples
• Movement
• Life
• Moving on
• Transparent
• Vulnerable
• Skin
• Flowing
• Earth
• Connection
• River
• Home
• Hope
• Promise

The Photo:

                              Photo supplied by Lynden Nicholls

The Response – Moving:

These ripples behind eyes,

the sting.

The shift.

Into,

weighted skin,

waiting dreams,

The hall is too large for the small group that waits there fidgeting. Some familiar. Some new. The walls catch our words and bounce them into smallness as we greet the familiar. The new shift self-consciously on the edges of our smaller group within a group. Jessica, our facilitator arrives in a wave of sound and energy, pulling us into the comfort of a workshop circle. We play a name game. We laugh at ourselves. We twist our bodies into shapes. And then.

A new exercise. A movement moment. Find a space by yourself. Feel the music. Respond. Don’t censor. If you find yourself in close proximity to another person, allow yourself to be changed by them. Move with your whole self.

Jessica dims the lights.

Fingers, dig in. Deep into this skin I wait in. My head bowed. Breaths shallow, but ready. Ready. I’ve always been ready. The sound opens beneath my feet. Welcomes my limbs to unfold. My feet to spring into empty space. Tied to a beat I cannot hear. A fear I cannot reveal.

Bodies move beside me. Around me. In the darkness between our beating hearts. We are lost. We are found.

The lights blast on again. The music ends. Chests heave. A woman’s voice speaks. Jessica. I do not hear her. I hear only the sound of the hairs on my arms reaching towards HIM.

The group comes together again into that safe circle. Still huffing. Not unfit, but so terribly, deeply, painfully open. None of us can look at each other. We are too open. Instead we focus our energy onto the floor, in the centre of the circle and fill it with our fears. Jessica’s voice is subdued. She feels our energy and how fragile it is.

“I’ll see you all next week. You’re all beautiful. Be kind to yourself.”

We all exit out into the cold night air. The other bodies drift off. To their own spaces. Homes lit ready for them.

HE lingers.

We stand awkwardly by the bumper of my car, words tumbling easily into each other’s hands. Our bodies are awkward. Our words are perfect. We skin history. We skim the future. Weave possibilities unknowingly. Lose hours. Eventually fallen silent in the face of what we find.

HIS fingertip brushes my arm as he turns away to head home. Deliberate, but gently.

My arm stings all the way home.

I lay in bed.

Thoughts.

Floating. Stinging. Moving.

 

*This particular piece is entirely fictional though it was inspired by some real life experiences. *cough* Nic Tubb…

** I will be a few weeks short of photos so if you would like to submit a photo for me to respond to, you would be very welcome to. Email it to me at: pressurelandsATmeDOTcome

** Note – #writeme30 posts are published ‘as is’ without any editing or curating as the project is about exploring my responses to the photographs supplied. Some posts may plant the seeds for future writing projects but each post itself should be considered a raw and unfinished piece.

 

 

 

 

 

More on Home and the Fragile Soup of Family – 26th March Cafe Poet Update

This month has become all about home and family. Every poem I’ve written and every poem that’s been written to me. I’ve had this preoccupation with trying to pin to paper my range of feelings about the Riverland, the complexity of my family. What home means to me. Reading through everything I’ve written there have been some obvious patterns emerging. Home needs a sense of connection to others, a sense of safety and inspiration from the landscape, home needs the people that you love and the people that you love are complicated and messy.

I’m lost in this place. The place between who you were and who you are. I’m trapped there with you. My fear traps me. My love. My hope. My baby brother. Because I see. What you could be. What you have been. What you are. My heart is breaking. Breaking. Broken. A broken soft footed thing. Reaching. Are you reaching? Falling. Just falling. No. Reaching. You reached and I reached. Now we’re waiting. To fall. To fly. For something. A tipping place. A new face. A way through. It’s worth it. It is. I believe absolutely that it is worth it. Actually truly worth it.

This is the last day of Café Poeting for March, the next time I’m here it’ll be a new month and I intend to make a concerted effort to explore a completely different theme and place – but for today it’s still March and I’m thinking of those people I love. Those people who make the fabric of my life. Complex, damaged, precious and unnameable.

*

Hear the catch.
The smash.
The something.
Voice on the other end breathing.
Wonder.
Is this it?
All there is?
And
I’m saying
All the wrong things
Reminding you
Of what you’ve
Lost
I hate that
Hate you
Hate me
Want to keep you safe
Want to wrap you in love
In hope
Instead change the subject
Ask a question
Tell a funny story
Pretend I don’t hear you
Crying
Smashing
Losing control
Pretend I don’t know that you’re close
So close
Because
I’m so small
So far away
Nothing
Nothing
I can do
I’m afraid
Sharp
Tangy
Deep

Stay

*

An awkward boy. A less awkward time. And something else slipping quietly past. Someone loved. Someone precious. Who are the people we’ve lost? The people we’ve left behind. Snapping shadows on your shins. Gulping windows in your eyes. Forgotten over and over and over and over and over.

A better brain – 19th March Cafe Poet Update

After a three week break I return to my little Café corner – pleased to find an envelope waiting for me in the poetry box (yay!). The residency has been slow to start. I’ve been busy and tired. Not giving the time I should to promoting and sharing what I’m doing. I know it. I feel guilty. I smile at the people that come through the door. Think I need a better sign. A better poetry box. A better brain.

The poem I find within that envelope is about home. This home. The Riverland. This place of opposites. This place of hope within the fear. I like this place. I think about this place as home. What is it to me? What will I write? How will I say it? How will I stretch what it means to me across this accusing blank page?

I’m forcing them. The words. Having to work three times as hard as I expected to. It’s an uncomfortable feeling. A heavy feeling. A something, something feeling.

I know there are so many people out there who tap a bit of poetry into their laptops or their phones or their diaries at night. Where are they all? Why can’t I hear them? Find them? Reach them? I’m trying…..really I am.

*

So home. I said to you. Sit down. Be quiet. Let me think.

My dreams dance around
Something precious found
Sinking

Home, another place
A new lonely face
Waiting

Teach myself to sing
Still a broken thing
Slowly

I try to reach, past
The fear, still the last
To Love

*

Describe to me that tree. The man said with a sweetened voice.
I said. No. Maybe. I can’t.
Deep rich red. Scarlet in a rainbow. Only shades of scarlet on my plate.
He said try harder
I said. It’s big. It’s lost. I’m small.
Reaching, swaying, a woman’s curves, a smoothed over hill.
He said it’s not those things.
I said. It is. It must be. That’s what I say.
The river runs by. An eternal friend. I’m like to be swimming
He throws his hat at me. Dives deep.
My words are small. I sit.

*

Family Soup, a little overwhelming – 20th February Cafe Poet Update

No real update -just some of the poems I’ve been working on….

So hello said the little sleepy town
Waking gently.
Not quite on the road to ok just yet.
Who ever is.
Something and no one and everyone and everything
That’s what it’s all about isn’t it?

*

And my brother. Strong and silent.
Asking.
And me. Loud and scared and something else.
It’s the moments between those places
The words beneath our eyelids.
A hand on a shoulder
A quiet word
Letters on a tiny screen
Reaching.
Trying to.
Missing you.

*

Red face
Angry eyes
I’m sorry
Not at all
I sipped in a breathe
Caught myself before I cried
Looked at your puffing cheeks
And felt
Nothing
Only a remembered pain
Half lit
Because
I’m big now
Grown
A woman
Or something

*

I want to wrap you in this feeling I feel
Tell you somehow everything will be wonderful
Or at least alright.

I want to kick those fears from your eyes
That’s what I’ll do, I’ll chase them away
Further than the furthest star

I want to ask you – who are you?
And hear your reply with both my ears and my heart
Walk forward
I’m just spilling out a spray of words. Half connected, barely formed thoughts. Searching, reaching, slipping. Finding my feet in this big wide aching world. I’ve covering the white with questions. Knowing it isn’t supposed to be this way. But not quite knowing what it is supposed to be…

A catch. A rip. A tear. A twinkle in your eye. Softly. Slowly now. We’re building a life.

*

A big wide street. Tansplanted palms. It’s not the tropics. It’s another sleepy somewhere town. Trying to pretend we have the water to last forever. Too much pride. Need a little more love. Not enough pride. To shout and stamp out feet and say ‘We are here’. We fold our thoughts behind our eyes. Sit with it. The fear. The knowing. The believing. Stopped reaching for each other. Now just waiting. For someone to tell us it’s all over. I want to be braver. Stronger. Harder. Faster. An aching. Aching. Aching. Aching. Something without a name. When did this happen to us? I remember your eyes under the fluro lights. Your cheeks were red and our hands were hot and sweaty and we thought this feeling would last forever. Now the hall is empty. The fluros dimmed. And my darling I don’t think you’re ever coming back to me and it actually. Breaks. My. Heart.

*

Family. It’s a soup. Spicy and hot and warm. A little pleasant. A little overwhelming.