Monday 20 March 2017

Several Pieces for My Mindometry Collection

Work in Progress. 

I am writing and collecting pieces that mirror my reflections on my time over the last three months on experiencing what the medics call  'low mood.'

 It's not all bad.

I hope eventually these pieces will build into a collection called:


Mindometry

States of mind

La Même

Thinking he was someone else
you leaned down and kissed him
But he wasn’t someone else,
he was the same -
the same slow delight,
the same pale, bright eyes,
the same puckish smile.
But you must admit
he was not the same.
Not the same.


Descartes

You sheltered under a dry stone wall
on the windy side of the moor
sharing the contents of his leather bag:
red wine and round biscuits.
You spoke of thinking and being,
your laughter echoing his,
across drying heathers.
When the storm blew up
you scampered down,
his leather bag over your shoulder,
leaving behind an empty bottle
and the last round biscuit,.
Je pense donc  je suis. 
OR 
Cogito ergo sum
OR
I think therefore I am 

Promise

It was a new car.
You did like your cars
You drove me two hundred miles
to the place where you were born -
the street where you played as a child
and the beach where you fished with a long line
and then to the road
across from the grammar school
where you walked with your father.
He said to you,  'The red brick building 
over there will be  your gateway to power.
Be sure of that.' 



Still a Problem 

Turmoil in your mind
stops you sitting down
to do what you want to do
These are not hard tasks –
simple transcriptions or
straightforward amends. Easy.
But it’s like I’m stone or steel
Lacking the power to move from
sofa to  desk.
  
  
  
   

The Door


The desk in the window is making a difference.
She see the light streaming into the room
and onto the grass and the tall trees. Easy to sit here
for three hours and concentrate on a book or a blank,
naked page. Sweeter than the other place
.
The other place is a back room with a big door. Once,
she chose this as the perfect workroom with a living fire,
space for shelves and tables for papers.
And a big technology corner. Sun only after noon.
But that room became a forbidden place
Darker than this room with its sunny window.

She thinks the back room must contain some essence.
Already in her life she’s glimpsed and heard things
That she knew weren't there.
She’s no longer reacts to this, remembering
the half-smiles shot in her direction.
As a child she’d been accused more than once
of being away with the gypsies.

But what about this essence? Is it the dread-feeling 
of  some eighteenth century maid who feared the place?
More likely it’s the world flooding in 
through the firecracker-gateway of the computer: 
a world too vast, too packed with too many people,
 too many things, too much pain.

But perhaps this crisis of the door, the room,
represented her own guilt about work undone:
tasks untackled, obligations unmet
Or perhaps it's the timid soul
which sits there at her core
not daring to try to breach that door.

So now, in the window the sunny room,
she decides to pull herself together,
get out of the house, away from the door
and away from that essence, that dread-feeling.
Wouldn’t it be too easy, to stay locked in
and fall asleep yet again?

So she flees the house, drives out through trees
and finds a cool space where she can focus –
manufacture order out of chaos, move on forward.
New feelings surge through her, freeing her
from the visceral strings that tie her down, that
make her dumb and stop her thinking straight,

Now, away from the dull routine and the person 
she’s become. She knows she’s not that person -
the person she’d invented to meet the low expectations
in the house with the room with the big door
and its threatening interior spirit,
its emanation of pain. She thinks now that

she loves the house, even the room  with the door.
Surely after so many years they’re woven into each other
like a precious carpet. She begins to see that
caring for the house is no different to caring for herself.
Sensing that spirit in the room where she works is sensing
herself in turmoil. Something to deal with, not to flee.



Yes, it's complicated. Be sure of thatsk in 

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