Are the voices in my head too loud for you?

Connie

Ok, time to come clean.  We are trying to choose a name for our soon-to-be new dog.  Another Newfoundland is joining the pack!  Humphrey Lyttleton, our brown Newf is just over a year.  Our joint birthday present this year is a female Newfie puppy.  We collect her on Sunday.  The trouble is we are not sure what to call her whcih is unusual for us.  My partner favours Connie.  I rather like Tabatha or Pickle.  My partner has suggested Panda as she is black and white.  Maybe Constance is growing on me.

Production Valued

Quiet day.  Have tinkered around with a first draft for two openning scenes for a local charity event.  It is a reprise of a production a group did in 2002 and will be for charity.  I've enjoyed myself.  Still twittering and amazed who is out there!  Old friends and new.  Haze - if you catch this - get in touch.  Have lost your e mail after an unfortunate incident with my hard drive!!!!

 

 

Relaxing Lunch and Future Plays?

Wonderful, relaxing lunch that rolled gently into the afternoon with friends and a carpet of dogs - our black lab', Rainbow and their two collie xs.  Talk of a production on the Black Isle maybe next February, ostensibly to raise funds for a Malawi Hospital.  Something short and funny to go with a supper - I am certainly delighted to be asked to direct - but the big issue is material.

 

I have now read their last drama which was written by one of the people I lunched with.  It is very well shaped and very funny.  I think if she and I can make the time - we will produce something fun for the charity event.

 

We are thinking of something to do with wind turbines which are a cause of some consternation in the Highlands.  We will have to see whether this runs.  I am certainly up for it.

 

Heard today that our friend's pet roe deer had died at the grand old age of 14.  She was an absolute fixture in the family - popping in to sit on the sofa - but she died of natural causes in her shed in the garden - certainly living much longer than she would have survived in the wild.  Just feels strange to think she isn't about.

 

 

Relaxing Lunch and Future Plays?

Wonderful, relaxing lunch that rolled gently into the afternoon with friends and a carpet of dogs - our black lab', Rainbow and their two collie xs.  Talk of a production on the Black Isle maybe next February, ostensibly to raise funds for a Malawi Hospital.  Something short and funny to go with a supper - I am certainly delighted to be asked to direct - but the big issue is material.

 

I have now read their last drama which was written by one of the people I lunched with.  It is very well shaped and very funny.  I think if she and I can make the time - we will produce something fun for the charity event.

 

We are thinking of something to do with wind turbines which are a cause of some consternation in the Highlands.  We will have to see whether this runs.  I am certainly up for it.

 

Heard today that our friend's pet roe deer had died at the grand old age of 14.  She was an absolute fixture in the family - popping in to sit on the sofa - but she died of natural causes in her shed in the garden - certainly living much longer than she would have survived in the wild.  Just feels strange to think she isn't about.

 

 

Twittering

My name is Jane and I am a twitter.  It is already addictive.  I have attempted a tweet today for the very first time and made links that I didn't think I had!  I had a sense of extreme foolishness when having spied Stephen Fry's twittering I joined in - and then thought I was adding something for more general consumption only to find out it had landed back in his dialogue box.  The process is addictive even in embarrassment, but I was astonished by the intensity of the feeling I experienced when I realised my error.  Can I tweet without everything going to Stephen Fry?  (Sounds like a possible title for a play????)  It is weird but also strangely wonderful that the incredible Mr Fry can cast a glance over my 100+ characters.  In reality, I felt awfully humiliated when my anouncement that I was well on with the Sun pome appeared.

 

I was astonished by my depth of feeling.  I felt as though I went physically cold all over; my eyes were shut before I realised; I felt thoroughly disassociated.  It was nothing - why such a sudden and really quite violent sensation?  I suspect I have tapped something deeply set in my psyche.  I relaxed and tried to discern what the current scenario reminded me of - nothing came except something happened when I was very young (no prizes for insight there).  Whatever it was it was humiliating - and clearly involved someone a little girl desperately wanted to impress.

 

Stephen Fry isn't just an astonishlingly talented person - he is also a person to admire for his straightforwardness as much as anything - and his effervessing articulateness.  So I feel a bit of a pratt - but hey - if I don't experiment I won't find out how to enjoy the web even more - and also gain some much needed critiques of my poetry.

 

Hey I can justify anything when I really try!!!

Sun

Sun

(Gaia’s Lament)

 

Why will you not shield me from the harshness of your rays?

Listlessly I struggle to cover my searing, startled flesh with the tinder of the forest’s canopied haze.

Still you seek me out,

Scorching the deepest scars,

Disturbing the abuse of the godless interference of the damaged human race.

Where they once planted promises

To mould me into a whole state,

They left instead the rancid poison of exposure to your rays.

Hear my soul’s lament, Distant Suvana,

My chariot of hope riding imploding oblivion.

Hear the cry of your sister communicant

Whose unsated thirst seeks replenishment at the well of all Matter;

Hear the one gasping, asphyxiated by the stranglehold of the species forcing me down into the darkness of non-existence.

Dear Asia, Most Fine Shams, hear the cry of Gaia as I die;

Shield me from the wrath of such ignoble inquisitors!

Sibling Raveena, Sustainer, Give Me Life,

Claim me as your own and sear your indignation on those who harm your Beloved!

You hold within your grasp the power to sustain that which humanity carelessly destroys.

With the gentle concern of a mother for her wayward child, direct your healing heat to sooth my fevered brow;

Breath fertility into my brittle, withered form.

Dearest Kalynola, Electra, Nylama,

Turn your gentle setting face to me and sooth the trauma humanity has begun.

 

The names used in this poem are used throughout the world for the Sun with the exception of Gaia which refers to Mother Earth.

 

© Jane Wallman-Girdlestone  8^th May 2009

 

Kiss Me Quick

Inner ear infection is abating - but I am not going to The Peatbog Fairies gig tonight which is devastating.  I love TPF and we bought the tickets months ago.  If you read this blog and are in the Inverness area and can get to Ironworks for 9pm - the tickets are yours for a donation to Christian Aid.

 

I'm not getting very far with my poem about the sun.  The song - "The Sun has Got His Hat On" keeps singing it's way through my thought patterns; is it from "Salad Days"?  Great song but not quite the gravitas I was aiming at.  It's not a bad place to start though - I am writing about cheery postcards and stripey swimming costumes in my imagination - not anthing D and M (Deep and Meaningful).  Kiss me quick hats it is.  Trust my psyche.  I suspect it's a childhood spent near Blackpool.  Were the days really longer and warmer back then?

 

I was cogitating how complex being young is today.  I guess the process of discovering self identity is much the same - but along the way the decisions are complicated by a globalised image of what is desirable.  Are hair straighteners and a mobile really as essential to self understanding as a personal journal and singing into a hair brush was thirty odd years ago?  Growing was seen in terms of personal reference points - the internal journey; now we define ourselves much more overtly by how others view us.  We believe our text messages and facebook friends - not our inner emotional compass.

 

I'm a tad frustrated today - day two of an inner ear infection and it hurts!  I am such a wuss - really I am.  At least I'm upright this evening and able to be on the computer for a bit - so there is an improvement.  However I have missed my window to see the Rehab Officer from the Guide Dogs Association so I will have to wait another few months before I have my assessment for a new dog.  This is a blow - but I couldn't sit up earlier in the day without dizziness and sickness - so I wouldn't have been much use.

 

I'm frustrated to be leaving jobs - chiefly the redecorating of the guest room and afternoons painting.  But I am doing some reading.  Just finished Fay Weldon's "Stepmother's Diary" - oh, yes - very astutue - particularly if like me you are probably a closet Freudian (is that possible?  Probably not).

 

I'm just into "The Interpretation of Murder" which won the Galaxy best read award largely after a lot of promotion on "Richard and Judy".  It's a very well constructed yarn - I'm enjoying it!

 

Reading isn't a huge compensation for what I am not doing - but on the other hand it is always illuminating as a writer to read and feel inspired by what you read.  In the case of Weldon she never fails.

 

Working on a poem for writing group on the given topic sun/son.  I am going for sun and trying not to get cliched or caught on too much hyperbole.  I can get a bit grandiose when the subject needs simplifying rather than illuminating (forgive the pun).  I am just writing - sort it out later.  I am hoping I'll gain some clarity when my ear infection clears - now that's an interesting mixed metaphor.  Maybe I should say I will hear more clearly the muse (reach for sick bag) when my ear is better!  I'm as daft as a brush just now.  I'd like to say it's medication related - I think it's just that I'm happy.

Bend, don't break

Something has clicked in a very deep part of my psyche and it concerns choice.  I have choices which do not depend on the assessment or views of other.  I can create opportunities and choose the direction my life takes.

 

I have spent many weeks emotionally spring cleaning.  It has been a necessary, but at times, a painful process.  I have chosen to reject and let down.  I make no excuses.  I made choices.  I have said good-bye to a friendship of thirty years - because rather like a relative who has decided to separate after a not disimilar length of time - it was necessary for me to own up to myself about my feelings and deal with them.  I feel I am travelling lighter in the deepest emotional sense, but I still find it an excruciatingly hard thing to choose healthy ways - physically, emotionally and spiritually.  Empathetically and intuitively I am drawn to supporting and nurturing.  Now I am channelling those energies into my painting and into fulfilling a dream of breeding Newfoundlands and getting a horse (one day - when my waistline won't permanently debilitate the beastie).  These are healthy ways to channel my need to nurture and support.  Human friendships which drain me emotionally or result in a pervading sense of high vigilance or fear of offending  do not.  Most people who find acquaintances hard work just give them a wide berth I seem to have my compass reading all over the place so there have been times in my life when I have had nothing short of a magnetic attraction for people in need.  In the Christian faith this is given credence in a terribly unhelpful way by calling it pastoral care.

 

So my care is primarily for me.  If I care well for myself and take my needs seriously - it is enough. It is a relief.

 

I have often attracted people who want something to either take aim at or idealise in the past.  I'm a marmite person - they either love me or hate me.  One of my dear friends once called me a tall poppy - and like a poppy bobbing above the corn - I have a personality and a physical presence which can create an aura of being on show.  Writing this actually makes me cringe as I am a deeply reserved person.  But - large, a guide dog user, arty-farty and articulate - well, enough said.  I also attract people of mutuality and to whom I look up and learn alongside - but they - like me - are busy doing the things that make them what they are.

 

There's no easy way to understand why I am making the changes I am in my personal life except to say that I feel like a plant who in recent years has neglected her roots.  They have been attempting to sustain life in the most demanding and alien conditions to the natural requirements of my rather delicate species - so I have pruned some of the things that have contibuted to my stress and mixed in fertiliser in the form of cultural and creative activities.  I have at last taken myself so seriously that I have my own 'cave' (they're not just for men from Mars!) and it has a studio, office, library and relaxing area.  I am finding me and giving her the space to work uninterupted.

 

The results are as unexpected as they are fascinating.  I am working on two commissions for Guide Dogs Association which will eventually hang at their HQ.  I've been surprised how whimsical and playful my interpretation has become of a Highland Harbour as I have allowed my imagination to run away with ideas about how to make the composition as tactile and fun to explore as possible for visually-impaired viewers.  Something interesting is happening.  I am learning to bend but not break.

Seize the Day

 Sometimes it is very hard to know where to begin.  I have been a busy girl - filled to the brim with rising sap and with a bunny bounce in my step.  It is wonderful to be blasting on all cylinders.  A taste of recent adventures:

 

I am working up an idea for a system to enable mental health professionals to quickly gadge the mood, value systems and self-sabotaging techniques which may be in operation with their clients.  I am hoping that if those who have had the care of me see value in it - we may be able to take it significantly further as an idea.

 

I have grieved more recently perhaps than before, for the fact that since being so very ill, my vocation as a priest and my faith as a Christian has not returned.  It is as though the part of the brain that facilitates religious experience is switiched off.  I am sure this is my psyche remaining protective of my identity for the time being - but it has meant I have had the energy and space to think about myself and my future in new ways.  It is a privilege to be able to think outside the box of the conventional expressions of vocation.

 

I've decided to re-train as a psychologist - something which wil tessilate well with my writing and art. I am especially looking forward to working in an environment which has healthy, clear and professionally regulated boundaries of intervention and care.

 

We have also reached the final decision on moving from here.  My partner and I were having one of those long ponderings when he asked a rather poignant question:  "When I die, would you continue to live where we'd moved to?"  At the time we were focusing on Somerset.  My first reaction, without giving it more than a moment's thought was to say " I'd move back to the Highlands."  "Then we have our answer" he replied.  Why move when here is home?

 

We did acknowledge in the next breath how much we enjoyed being around family and friends in England.  Our solution is to consciously make an effort to travel South more often.  Atlast we have the physical and emotional freedom to truly embrace this and include this pattern in our current living.

 

So being at home has a whole new resonance of being a setller.  We have settled and we feel we belong.  The local identity is our identity too.  We fit here.

 

I've sent off sketches for two pieces I am working up for a summer exhibition of visually-impaired artists.  I won't hear until next month whether either of them - or both - have made the grade - but I am enjoying the challenge of working in a tactile and three-dimensional way.

 

Now we know home is here - we are beginning to plan.  My next task which has taken ages to organise is the decorating of the guest suite.  I have really searched for the aesthetic choices I have eventually made and I am looking forward to the DIY - I love it.

 

My next big 'adventure' is to create a small kennel block in the garden.  I have founded - in principle - a small breeding kennel with a very good friend.  Our dogs are yet to be shown - but assuming the rossettes come in and our respected breeders release the dogs for breeding - we hope very much to create a new line of Newfoundlands.  I am thrilled with this.  I'm passionate about the breed and equally concerned that stable, generously natured dogs are reered.

 

It's funny, I don't feel guilty about moving on anymore.  Life's far too short.