We come full circle, blogversary

The wild garlic was unfurling along the cliff as it is now. I began writing this blog in March last year, tentatively, speaking to my many selves, speaking from my many selves. Hoping to bring them all together into a whole and connected one. I think I've succeeded, because nowadays, I'm a lot more comfortable in my own skin. I'm a lot less afraid of what I might find, well anywhere. Bringing light to dusty corners of your psyche can do that for you. Finding amazing friends and community along the way, that's a truly unexpected blessing. Thank you my friends, and my mentors, my guides along this journey.

Here is a poem about voice and grief. Many, many years ago now, I attended a funeral of a girl in my class, she was a young mother, she was diagnosed with a particularly fast acting form of leukemia and was dead before many of us even found out about it. As I drove through the evening home through the landscape of rural New York, this was just like what the spirit of place was saying:

Bare Boughs still this Spring
(In memoriam)

Rain and apple trees.
Lilac buds swell on black stems,
Secret, clitoral, rapt.

I can’t untie this knot, deep
where things come from, deep
at the bottom of my voice.
Joy, sprung rhythm,
clenched and petrified:
A fist, that born words batter against.
A fever in the blood.

By the stream, the clay leans
toward the water, eager for swiftness,
eager to reflect the sky,
Deadpan.

Only the colours of old paint,
Spread and bloom,
Like roots.


Don't let this be a gloomy poem - the spring here and now, is full of hope. Let's wish the knot untied. Let the fist unclench.

Happy Blogversary to me.

You know, blogging takes an unprecedented degree of technical bravery. Not only that, you have to dissect your own identity and decide which parts of yourself will be on display: which is your public face, your dark side or your avatar. OK, I'll admit there's a part of me who likes filling in forms and ticking boxes, that's what has got me this far.

I'm a little bit worried though, I've spent the past two years trying to take all the comparmentalised parts of my self and integrate them. Have them see each other, talk to each other, mention one another while speaking to other people. Blogging makes them want to go their separate ways again. Be one thing to each person. This doesn't seem to be the case for most people - many people seem to want to present all the parts to themselves, but I'm naive. It's all probably still part of the illusion.

It'll take a little while for me to figure out what this is all about and what it is all for. Happy to take that learning curve. Feel the walls of the room I'm in streeeetch a little.

see ya'll