Who Are You?

I am a reluctant wordsmith

Words would dance up and down in my cerebral fluid, seeking birth, sniffing for a way out like a dog on a rabbit scent, jostling to flow into sentences and be born on a page. But I was often to be found slumped in my chair, lassoed to the TV, and heavy with lassitude, the word foetuses would gravitate down my spine and loiter near my buttocks.
This was the crux; I believed my words were valueless; that they belonged ‘bottom chakra’, near the anus, where all waste is excreted. On a bad day I considered my words a by-product; the gristle which would end up on the abattoir floor destined for the budget sausage rolls.
I am a walker; it is how I survive the anguish of being alive. These times of footfall on pathways are dangerous; words would escape as I was momentarily entranced by the black arms of the silver birch supplicating the ice sky, marvelling at its flexibility and wishing for a similar suppleness. I was aware, in these moments of clarity, of my own skeletal system being jammed with words. And sometimes I was forced to release just a few. My writing material, such as it was, was any crumpled tissue in my jacket. All of them were, at some stage, commandeered and decorated with small shimmering jewels of language; the vowels and consonants nudging a place in my festering pockets with shells, bird feathers, acorns and twigs. I am a collector of nature and, if I remember, my cache would be retrieved and imprisoned on a shelf, where the inmates looked at their wild counterparts through the glassed windows. But the handkerchief words remained where they were; safe, unseen, unread, still mine.
I like to Om in the wild. Different landscapes induce different notes. I imagine the sounds resonating down into the Earth, and roots snaking from my size seven soles and tethering me into the umber of the hills. I could hear in my voice the song of each vista. It was the last remaining spiritual practice I upheld after God and I were divorced. Like all intense relationships He had wanted too much of me and in particular, what He saw as my ability to see the world through words. In our terminal row I had accused Him of using me as a filter for all the things He wanted to say to His world. As I slung Him out of my life I had yelled that ‘He could go and find another fool’. I am quite aware that He had, and evidence of His current conquests was to be found on bookshop shelves. Others had held their arms up to inspiration and had not only received, but had sifted, and put their own unique angle and experiences into what had been downloaded. But how could I even begin to write what I saw and felt about the world without it destroying me in the process?
It was the beach which was to be my eventual undoing and a spring sunshine that scolded and cajoled through the cracks of my Venetians, demanding to be noticed, to be dallied with. It was, I had to concur, ‘a seaside day’ with all the inherent dangers of turning off the television, leaving the house and travelling. But oh what joy, after an hours driving, when I reached the place where the light changed its qualities, just on the bend beside the pig farm. Its luminosity signified freedom, artist’s palettes, ice creams and a whole patina of textures and colours, of sounds and smells.
I abandoned the car readily. My feet carried me rapidly, scuttling over the road next to the café, across the tussocks of Marran grass, skirting a beach hut and onto the sands. It seemed, that day, as I inhaled that air full of blue, that the sand was part canine; the horizon was scattered with mutts, their carrot stick shapes slaloming hither and thither, their tails dispensing joy into the breeze. I tried to guess the moment when their wind born exuberance would have reached me, far down the beach, and I held out my hand so that I could catch it, embrace it. But all I felt was the soft feathering of my fingers as it refused to be anchored to anything other than the elements.
The tide was so low it exposed the sand’s private parts and I wondered if it minded or if it longed to pull the water up over its nakedness, over its skin patterned with dead elephants ears. I tracked the edge of the sea, pausing to gather shells. I liked them with holes in so that when I was home I could thread them with coloured wool and anchor them to the land although they seemed to resent their displacement and would become lacklustre.
I walked to the prow of the sand spit, watching the tide which seemed to sense prey and stalked my bare feet with a determined stealth. I was so far from the beach, from the hinged dunes that no one could see the spittle of freedom on my lips as I whispered words to the salt water. Then suddenly I sank to my bare knees and with a shell began to write. I crawled backwards, filling up the landscape with words, shuffling, shuffling. From the land it must have looked as though I was praying but I was only aware of the tide closing in to read. It lapped at a sentence, retreated a little as if savouring and then ate it. Word by word. It made no comment but I thought it must like my disclosures as it followed me back to the land. I had written the whole spit and I was exhausted. I stood and retreated and sat in the sand dunes listening to a shy lark who sang notes downloaded from God. Oh yes, even though I wasn’t speaking to Him He relentlessly tried to communicate. He refused to even acknowledge the Decree Absolute and I had thought of obtaining a restraining order.
In my pocket today was a shopping list – I am a Virgo and therefore lists are important. But it was paper I needed, as the sand had run out, and my knees were raw from its abrasion. I felt compelled to continue to release the words which still poured into my mind. My spine eased into its new position, my arms were relaxed, and in tiny letters I began. It was enough. The dam had been opened by the chicanery of the water, words have escaped, had been read and I was still here, albeit freer and looser than when I had risen this morning, although that small fact had, as yet, gone unnoticed.
Home and the words still slipped through the chink. An old notebook was filled. For the time being, the drug of the TV was ignored as I continued to loosen up, and flex and stretch the muscles, sinews and tendons which worked my hand. Only once did I read a single page and the slight facial scowl was at odds with the light you would have seen in my eyes.
When sleep eluded me during the very witching hours I added to the word bank. Only this time I wrote on the wallpaper beside my bed, covering the magnolia analglypta. I wrote out the angst of the world which had filtered into my being. When I woke, I drove to the DIY store, bought paint and covered my sorrow with matt emulsion. It had been cathartic enough to have birthed the words and I did not need to revisit them. I felt purged and began to include God in odd conversations again.
I walked still but now a notebook had to share space with the feathers, stones and wood. I breathed deeper as my lungs began to expand into the space in my chest as the words emptied. There never seemed to be an end to them but they were no longer fetid and dank but free flowing like a mountain stream, bubbling and gurgling onto the page. I had begun to read again, after an exile of a year. It had been too hard to take on others’ words when I was constipated with my own. Now I was lost, transported, inflamed, infuriated, disgusted and enthralled by what mankind had to say.
Was it God’s hand at work on the serendipitous day when the beach shopping list fell from my shelf and I was drawn in by the hitherto unread words, perusing them with a stranger’s eyes? And then as I stooped to tie my bootlace, a poster on the village notice board, caught by only a single red drawing pin, flapped in a sudden breeze. A writers group. I rose with dignity, I thought, and walked swiftly up into the Copse. Nobody could see how hard my heart beat in my chest. I had let God back in just a little and now He wanted more.
I resisted for 11 days and then succumbed on the day of the meeting, phoning the coordinator and then freefalling into fear. I dressed 5 times. I became an artist, a walker, a housewife, a student and an interviewee all in the space of the Six O’clock News. Finally, exasperated with myself, I slung on a pair of leggings and a tunic, adding a scarf as an afterthought.
“If You say a single word….” I had snarled at God as the pile on my bedroom chair had grown. But He had kept quiet, recognising a victory, small as it seemed. He knew all about acorns growing into big oaks.