This morning, sitting at my dining table thinking about writing — trying to complete a piece, I let myself slip into a daydream. The outside spilled in ‘and the walls became the world all around’.* Writing is a book of dreams. A wild and peculiar dream I create, full of perceptions and adventure and reimaginings. A paradox of being seen and unseen; wanted and unwanted; falling and flying. Sometimes I feel lost in its familiar forest and sometimes I feel like it’s the only place I can breathe. Other times I long for a sanctuary of a different kind; somewhere to forget everything I know about the world and escape the pressure to assimilate into the chaos for a while.
The songbirds are becoming quieter as the molecules continue to shift in the atmosphere. I listen to their melodies fade into the distance and imagine them perching and tree hopping the way they do, gathering their flock before flying away to warmer skies whilst the evergreen leaves of spring and summer begin to turn and resemble rust. The songbirds know what life is. Their seasonal migration is a blueprint for balancing this precious life. I sing my own song as I move a little closer towards a breakthrough with the words I choose to make the sentences I write feel like something akin to being alive.
I am revising sentences by moonlight, waking with bloodshot eyes that squint through the sunrise — ready to begin the process all over again. Night after day, I am learning to pay better attention to the information inside the random thoughts I notice and those fragmented memories and the world around me rushing by. I am exhilarated and terrified by the act of surrendering to the pull of the rabbit hole that is a blank screen or page. All for the chance to make one good sentence — again and again. Everyday people, like me and you, know too well that this being alive thing can feel like heaven and hell at the same damn time. We have one life to construct worlds of our own; limited seasons to tell timeless stories full of vulnerability and rage.
Will I have to work ‘real jobs’ whilst moonlighting as a writer forever? I don’t know. For now, I’m navigating poorly lit side streets that lead nowhere and avoiding miserable people who crave my company. Dealing with literary gatekeepers — who don’t care about you or the integrity of your name, but will gleefully promise exposure and offer old rope as a currency to a writer they barely pretend to see — is weary. Don’t they know they are trying to trade and barter for the priceless words of the underrepresented and underpaid? As if everyday people can eat exposure or pay sky high bills with old rope.
I’m trying not to fall through the cracks that appear with every (mis)step. But perhaps I should allow myself the grace of learning how to fall better, after all, I’m only human. I am the custodian of (at least) 99 problems that need to be solved and a body made of a billion and one grains of sand that are slipping through the hands of time every second of every night and every day. But who’s counting. I’m holding on to tell the stories that are ours/mine. I do this for us; for liberation; for love. I am writing. Preparing for a season not marked by any calendar. And then one day, the days, weeks and years will reveal if I have been waiting for my turn or just wasting my time.
Yesterday afternoon, Autumn played with my senses when it blew an unusually warm breeze through the south London air. I stood in the car park at the supermarket off loading my bag of empty plastic water bottles into the correct orange recycling container, flirting with order while daydreaming about what paradise would look, feel and smell like and how I would show up in a world beyond this pandemic. Wondering, would I still be struggling this much to gather my words together?
In those moments—the sun reflecting in my eyes and blowing kisses that feathered across my cheeks and down my neck to nestle in the space between where my collarbones meet — it felt like the return of a weekend love and summer against my skin. I choose to receive this as a small act of kindness sent on by the Universe to encourage optimism as we do battle with despair and try to avoid sinking into abject misery by inventing the lives we want to live. For everyday people, like me and you, I suspect that gratitude and elements of civil disobedience will be major keys to moving forward. In any case, those moments were breathtaking and gave me poetry and butterflies of a different kind.
Tonight, the rain fell on and on and on, saturating the city and my bones. And all at once everything felt grim. But if anyone were to cut through any one of my 206 to 213 bones, they would find deep rivers and sleepy oceans pouring out and my tallest, darkest and brightest stories etched inside like the life lines of a tree. In times like these, I’ll do well to remember that perhaps this is always what I’ve been; becoming a writer since before the beginning, since before the world tried to tell me what a writer should be. The songbirds know what life is. They know one day I’ll rise and fly away too. They know our paths will cross again as we forget the world and just be. They know I am a writer evolving with the seasons. And I’ve been moonlighting since way before I first spilled ink onto paper and called it prose or poetry.
Authors note: Thank you loads for reading. *A line from my favourite childhood book Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.
