It's going to be a happy Christmas

I'm going to paint my nails red and re-connect with the kitchen: mince pies with butter pastry; baked rice pudding with Jersey gold top, double cream and vanilla pods; potatoes roasted in goose fat; crispy salted crackling; deep rich gravy.  The best part is that it's cold enough to justify saturated fats cut by swooshing red wine... burp.  'Tis the season to be jolly.

And music, lots and lots of music!

 Especially Les Douze Noels which I love to play but which the family, frankly, have enough of by Christmas Eve.

Discipline has to come from somewhere

messy desk

One month at a time                              
A week at a time

Focus on what you can influence
and change and what is a priority
Debunk big things,
make lists and tick off.

One of my daughters said to me, 'What would you do if you had a child who
wasn't attractive?'  Without hesitation my response was, 'Encourage her to
develop a life of the mind.'  As she laughed spontaneously I ruminated on the
implication in her question; that she and her siblings were attractive enough not
to require any such drastic intervention.

tidy desk

 But I do require drastic intervention as my resolve slips into the dark days of December.  In my attempt to recapture something of my mind, I set to this afternoon to clear my desk.

Gone are the black things; the work laptop and the inordinately over-sized printer.  Removed are books I might need within reach or at least where I can see them to remind me that I have actually read them. Gone are the boxes that cluttered, heap of papers waiting to be filed.

In their place, in its purity, lies my own laptop, ready for tomorrow's work.  I have an external deadline. I can and will keep.  I have internal deadlines, which I will fail.  But it's OK  because no-one will know how bad I am, will they?

Here's my old school song.  I can still remember singing it proudly at my high school and I remember being read Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress at my Church of England primary school.  These words meant something to me then because they were about human endeavour.  Since then the combination of catholic guilt and protestant work ethic have wrought their effect and I'm only too aware of my weakness.

Who would true valour see,
Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent,
To be a pilgrim.
Whoso beset him round
With dismal stories
Do but themselves confound;
His strength the more is.
No lion can him fright,
He'll with a giant fight,
But he will have a right
To be a pilgrim..
Hobgoblin, nor foul fiend,
Can daunt his spirit:
He knows, he at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away,
He'll fear not what men say,
He'll labour night and day
To be a pilgrim.

I really like the hobgoblin bit.  And here it is sung the way we never sang it:

Inside out

First glass of beautifully smooth Remy Martin fixes the blues; the second one is liquid Lethe.  Who needs reality.  Home cooked poetry and performance curry married to discipline encourages confidence.

Remember 'woman must write, just write' said Cixous.  Well Helene, belle Helene, de longue haleine, here are the words, words, words, wors, wors, wors, rows, rows, rows, dros, dros, dros, drows, drows, drows.  Ah the power of three.  Ha, ha Perseus, it's all yours. There you go!

Requiem

All mechanical things are done.
There is nothing left in me now.

Laughter is a betrayal.
In which I want no solace.

Surrender is the imperative.
Humanity exposed.

Raw, open wound into which
blows dirt, grit, spit, pain.

Into this vacuum, a new bedfellow
comes - joy thief of my years.

Point of View

I've been listening to this song for some time now; comes up in a playlist I use while working at home.  Until recently it hasn't been available on YouTube but 14 hours ago someone posted so here it is.  It catches me every time  with its haunting little melody and its sentimental lyrics.  It's the kind of song my mother would have liked. It would have appealed to her romantic spirit. Although lately I've been hearing a lot of things about  her that suggests she needed more romance than she got.  I don't think you watch me mother but I  find the song comforting because it's the sort of relationship I'd wish for.

There's no voice more powerful than the first voice you hear but is it yours or your mother's?  And when your mother's is gone whose voice is left?

The stars and I come out
And hang from up above
The stars shine down their light
I shine down my love
The perfect place to be
To watch you from afar
Do you ever see
How beautiful you are

For those who have a mother still, Allison Mooorer, 'The Stars and I (Mama's Song)'.  Indulge your sadness for without it how can we know when we're happy?

Silence

In a week when a 14 year old girl is shot in the head by a grown man for promoting female education, in the UK more revelations emerge from abused women who didn't have a voice less than 40 years ago.

 It’s interesting to note how ‘unsurprised’ many people are about these recent cases; how conclusively collusive silence muffles victims’ voices.  But in the Swat Valley 14 year old Malala had a voice; she wrote.  She was that most dangerous of creatures, a new women writing.  At 11, when she started her blog, her liminality protected her.  With approaching womanhood, her voice jeopardised her as fear of her potential power threatened the ignorant around her. 

There’s a 16 year old girl in the north who’s afraid of the power of her own voice but through support she is moving towards confronting her demons. I hope she makes it, she deserves to.  She’s kind and intelligent, full of wit but terrified of becoming a woman.  Why? Because she’s had first-hand experience of seeing one particular woman’s condition, her lack of agency; locked-in syndrome of the domestic variety.  What would recommend womanhood to a girl who’s witnessed these things, a girl who’s too bright for her own good, a thinking girl, an analyst? 

I hope Malala makes it with enough of herself to carry on. I hope A makes it by finding out there’s another way to be.  I don’t know what to hope for the many victims of sexual abuse, male and female, throughout history but I know this.  As we walk through our days, we are surrounded with them holding their secrets in lest anyone should judge them as harshly as they judge themselves.

Looking back on those decades which allowed Haut de la Garenne, the transportation of children, who in turn were abused and countless other revelations, the only surprise is that it’s taken this long to emerge.  How well I remember the sense of freedom that magazines like ‘Cosmopolitan’ offered to our tender coming of age with the advent of reliable contraception.  Finally, women were free from the fear of pregnancy and could enjoy unfettered sexual freedom.  Really? As quickly as that?  

The other day, what appeared to be an amusing encounter in a lift aptly summarises what contributes towards silent disempowerment.   Early morning in the lift going up to my office, one male companion cheerful and communicative.  Lift stops, a man and woman get in.  Woman is carrying a green plastic box under her arm labelled ‘Orthodox Christianity’.

I take a risk; make eye contact, smile.  Then to explain my boldness, intrigued at the charming absurdity of being able to carry an entire religion, and all that goes with it, under her arm.  She gets it but seems unimpressed. A shrug as if to say, ‘this? it’s nothing’. Cheerful male companion picks it up.  He’s already been charming enough to hold open the security door for me so we’ve bonded in human spirit.  ‘Don’t lose it’, he says laconically. 

The fourth person joins in.  His timing is a little quick as if he’s amused himself with his observation and has to get it out before the lift stops.  ‘Wonder what colour box Islam is in?’  It’s good, it’s contributing, just.  But he can’t leave it and continues by describing an office scene, with dialogue,  to do with what coloured box will be chosen according to its religion.  Then he muses on appropriate colours.  He has appropriated the potential power of that encounter.

To paraphrase Nietzsche, a joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling. The encounter was good; four people interacted, spoke their thoughts and then went separate ways.   I am an older woman now, getting older still next week, so maybe it’s ok to have a voice, to engage people with it.  No bullet in the head for the old.  We fall into the sphere of desiccated experience along with coconuts.  Is women’s fecundity so powerful that it requires entire religious and socio-political systems to control it?  To be a victim is a terrible thing but to live in so much ignorance and fear that that these pernicious systems are your only form of empowerment must be so much worse.  Is it Islam, Orthodox Christianity or something else that strikes you about the photograph on this post?  I’m not sure where one religion ends and another one begins but one thing I know, it’s not women who are man’s enemy or custodians of their comfort.  Both men and women need to find their voice and protest at cruel and devisive structures that prevent all of us becoming who we really are.

This is for two young people who know who they are and what they've got.

Care

Only because it's National Poetry Day... and because putting together Poison and Wine by the Civil Wars change these lines to a place where I used to be once.

The long silent scream

Screams on

Don’t care how many cigarettes you smoke

Don’t care how much you drink

Care how you drink

Exclusively, desperately

Thirst that won’t be quenched

By wine, by time

Made of stronger mettle

Best left to one

Who knows best

For the little I know is enough