sweetness + sadness
a writing practice: watermelon, deep listening + keeping your hand moving
This week is a two INKLINGS week. Last week was a no INKLINGS week.
The day-to-day was stripped back to essentials as tiredness and sadness found their home in the bones. January can be a tricksy month, and I was going to write something here about Blue Monday and its origins, but apparently this is a pretty modern creation. Instead a google search brought up New Order’s track Blue Monday, which I am now listening to and feel a perk to my step, in a 90’s shoe-shuffling, head-bobbing kind of way.
see below - 15 minute unedited free writing on ‘sweetness + sadness’.
I returned to timed writing practice on the page for this INKLINGS.
I write a lot in my days - the mornings usually start with morning pages (free writing 3 pages on waking) where all of the things mulling around in the mind untangle themselves on the page. Here I find ways forward and process through niggling things that need attention. Here, writing is a process and practice. These pages are not aiming to turn into anything. They are what they are. An anchoring.
I am also often planning, researching, note making, idea thrashing. 99% of the time this is with pen and ink. There are also a slightly erratic bunch of notes on my phone.
Writing practice, where the writing gets really into writing, I find in timed sessions, with a starting point. Something to jump off from. Learned from Natalie Goldberg’s books and teachings encountered a number of years ago (I was also lucky enough to spend 2 months studying with her online in real time in the early 2021 lockdowns) Writing as practice. Getting to know the mind. Observing it. Accessing our most alive, rich, human layers and stories.
The first rule of this practice is KEEP YOUR HAND MOVING FOR THE WHOLE TIME. There is no demand for perfect sentences or for punctuation, spelling can be as haphazard as you like, this is purely about the act of writing. A kind of excavation. A relationship with mind and language.
I always feel good after a timed write.
I often forget what on earth I have written, within moments of writing it.
Something else takes over.
In the realms of NATURAL INK. and following the INKLINGS, writing practice is one of the main anchors here. The journeying on the inner landscape, rooting into what is present, the details of life and the stories that wish to be told.
In writing practice things emerge that I would not choose to verbalise in a conversation. There can be an intimacy to what emerges, and when chosen to be shared it goes on to be received - either through being read aloud or read on the page - it lands in a different place.
Writer to reader. Writer to listener.
The language of conversation and the language of writing are vastly different. A different platform, different senses, different ‘rules’, different needs, different ways in which we speak.
This distinction came to be last night, after a wrote another timed writing session. Something in me softened at this.
Another beauty is 10/15 minutes will absolutely do. 30 is great, 40 is deep, more is a whole other realm.
I love to write, to read and to hear people reading their writing.
We know that we are listening to something else when we share the written word.
When we close the book having read the final page. The silence after a poet shares a poem, after a writer shares a few paragraphs of their work. We pause and let these words sink in. Another conversation is happening. There is space around the words. Silence around the letters.
Created with consideration from the compost of our lives.
15 minute timed free-write (writing continuously for the full time) with the starting prompt ‘sweetness + sadness'. I have not edited this, but put in some punctuation to make the reading a bit easier:
Sad and sweet. One heavy a malaise in need of watermelon pips chewed after red flesh has been sucked apart and swallowed, refreshing drink you chew. Hot days when any movement creates sweat in the creases of the elbows and behind the knees, let alone upper lip a wet slick. Regular sliding finger to clear the skin, hankerchief at the ready, already sodden and salty.
This sweetness that sits in the belly of the gullet of the longing so keenly staked to the sadness - Brene Brown says ‘rumbling with grief’ is 3-fold: loss, longing and feeling lost. I sat upon the zigzagged rug, soft from life done on top of it for so long, and wept for this cameraderie in the longing. Brene speaking her research, her knowing, the graphs and data and qualitative, quantitative (from what I remember from school) and all the sceince pointing more and more wisely and gently to the cavernous human heart and its unquantifiable ways. She speaks of longing taking the breath away, the longing for something we have lost - human, history, self, what could have been, what is, what hasn’t been.
I long for her in her post-office red bathrobe, towelling robe, warm from sleep, her flat backed skull stuck with hot hair, flat feet cooling on the kitchen floor. To hug in those moments of morning before the order of the day has been placed. Few words, just quiet companioning. Glad, so glad, so sweet the comfort and trust. I long for her hand to gently take mine as tears well over the Rooibos brewed in the glass teapot of Cafe Kino, window surveying out onto busy people, busying on foot and two wheels, in cars, going about their days. Our cocoon of care and friendship, a field of warm invitation. The syrup in homemade flapjacks sticking to the roof of my mouth as we talk around the houses into their attics and down into the dark basements, via the bathroom and kitchen. We would spend hours in our bustling nest, her thumb with its carefully filed nail, rubbing the soft skin between my thumb and forefinger. Circling between a love that cracked us open and a laughter that rattled out strong and cackling.
I long for this sweetness and nod to the sunlight and breeze that brings me back to here where I sit today. This moment away from the memory, planting feet in the dusty boots on this well pummelled soil around the side of concrete blocks, sprayed with purple peeling paint. Siren simmers over the hedge and a familiar gratitude for this pen, this paper, this time, held by my phone - 15 minutes on the clock and away we go. I will tell you when you can stop. Away you go. I will be here when you finish to call you back. Go be with her, go revel in the sweetness.
Parts of me are unsure to share this free writing with its aliveness in it. Not crafted from the sense making, put together selves but the eager animal that writes to be alive and awakens in the invitation to fill the page and 15 minutes with itself.
With curiosity, care and a hearty welcome to all that arises.
With warm wishes to where this finds you,
KJ
🌿 I am percolating and planning some online, and in-person, Write Club workshops. If you would like a space and support with your writing practice, get in touch to register your interest.
GOOD THINGS
Link missed from last INKLINGS of David Whyte’s talk ‘Poetry of Self-Compassion.’
The NATURAL INK. Project is now happily part of the East St Emporium in Bedminster, Bristol. Stocking inks, bundles, art + cards.
It is ok to not be ok. If you are in the UK and could do with some extra support this January Better Help online therapy offers accessible, affordable and convenient support. Also the 24/7 support phone-line from Samaritans is open, free and available for times you need to talk to someone.
For a good chuckle Elis James + John Robins show on BBC 5Live. For a particularly chuckle inducing story scroll to the Shame Well feature 2 hrs 3 mins 30 seconds. (with some poo based pre-amble.) + their sister podcast How Do You Cope.