Past, Present and Future

This is in place of today's Learning Journal.


I suppose that before becoming a mother I used to do quite a lot. While I went to university in Nottingham, I also worked two jobs to pay for university... at Habitat (leading UK furniture and housewares designers since 1960) during the day as a part time bedroom department consultant and at a liquor store during the evenings and night. My elusive days or nights off were spent drinking far too much coffee while writing bad poetry, attending poetry readings, going to clubs and parties, taking photographs, exploring abandoned buildings, traveling to wherever, etc etc.

With a small child, you find yourself busier in some respects. In other areas you are forced to slow down.

Of course a part of me misses the things I can't do anymore. It's not like I can drag Mikey around asbestos filled, dirty needle ridden abandoned hospitals and military bases, climb 6ft walls and squeeze through broken windows with him and run from the "residents" of the buildings. It's not like I can scale 5 storey high scaffolding with a toddler strapped to my back. Or run around at night in questionable locations with friends. (Where this film was shot, you should watch it.)

Photographs by Adrian Hudson

I can't just randomly pick up and go places. It's not like I can take him to parties (at least not the sort I used to attend!) Traveling is a little more difficult. Although before the age of 2 Mikey has already driven from Texas to Chicago (16 hours, 8 months old) been on a 10 hour flight (11 months old) and been on numerous short flights. He loves going on adventures, we just have to tone it down and fit it into his schedule somehow.

I still remember when climbing up the steps to the Cupola di San Pietro within St Peter's Basilica, The Vatican, Rome there was a lady carrying her small child up the stairs. She got to a window near the top and showed her baby the view. She had tears in her eyes and said "I can't believe we made it up here." I didn't think much of it at the time, but it obviously stuck with me. I want to experience amazing things with my family, I don't want to do it all alone anymore. That part of my life is over and done with, I've taken what I can from it and moved on. Of course in hindsight the good things tend to stand out more than the bad. There are plenty of bad things that I can say that I am glad in some way to have experienced, but I absolutely never ever want to go there again. Just because I have no regrets, doesn't mean I want to go back.

I don't think this means that I have to spend my days lamenting the loss of my "youth". It's just a different stage in life, change is a wonderful thing. So what if I've switched parties for cooking dinner and watching cartoons? Or arguing with and removing drunks from the premises (little, quiet ol' me? Hard to believe sometimes) with wrangling a toddler. Or abandoned buildings for the zoo? So what if we spend half of our time dancing to indie music in the house instead of in clubs?


Our life experiences are only what we make of them. We fully intend to make the best of ours now as a family, whatever they may be.

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April is the cruellest month,

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. Excerpt from The Wasteland, T.S. Elliot

This month is National Poetry Month. To celebrate, The New York Review of Books has chosen 30 poems from the archives and will be posting one daily. I am in love with today's.

Sunday Papers

By Charles Simic

The butchery of the innocent
Never stops. That's about all
We can be ever sure of, love,
Even more sure than the roast
You are bringing out the oven.

It's Sunday. The congregation
Files slowly out of the church
Across the street. A good many
Carry Bibles in their hands.
It's the vague desire for truth
And the mighty fear of it
That makes them turn up
Despite the glorious spring weather.

In the hallway, the old mutt
Just now had the honesty
To growl at his own image in the mirror,
Before lumbering to the kitchen
Where the lamb roast sat
In your outstretched hands
Smelling of garlic and rosemary.

Yep.
I have another flower picture for you.

And some awesome tadpoles that are in my dad's pond. The big black bit in the first one, if you can't see it properly, is all tadpoles... loads of them.

And Dad's Beehives. There were lots of Bees flying around, but you can't really see on the picture.

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Midnight Coffee Break

I was reading through some of my old "work". Interesting, interesting.

Thank You For Your Most Recent Rejection
2007

I keep the walls of my cheap
apartment blank as their birth, except
one wall in the back of the office where
I spend nights slaving over cover letters,
proof reading and
licking the glue from envelopes.
This is where I keep my rejection letters.
Behind me now, light
from the open window slowly
fades black type on letters carefully
pinned to the wall.
Thank you for your most recent rejection,
I now have enough letters to cover
the wall entirely
and perhaps things will start looking up for me.

A Night At The Paper Factory
2006

Florescent light painted
sleight by hand
on plastic cups, black coffee
into mud.
Grimy metal grind metal -
spark, rust and
squirm. Cannibal conveyor belts
whine, devour dust
and their own emerald tongues.

Asphyxia
2006

In web-like net,
grimey and
green with algae,
we lie in wait
like limpets.
Anticipating
the approaching storm,
waiting together
for the ocean
to wash us
away.

He Is Silent
2006

He is silent.
Smoke curls from his nostrils.
Eyes slowly wandering,
rest for a moment
on strewn bedclothes,
vagrant pillows.
Bringing the cigarette to his lips,
the scent of sex lingers.

She does not.

Loose Change
2005

autumn to winter:

we speed through the
transition of the seasons

racing each other

like clouds upon a storm,
skittish and impatient.

we are still in anticipation
of tangible change.

revolution.

The Psychology Of Moths
2007

we sleep
back to back
bodies curled
foetal
and dream in
unison

on a bed
of folded paper
and flesh-toned
ink

Perhaps I need to read a "How to write Poetry for Dummies" guide. I forget. I don't rhyme. I need to purchase a Thesaurus.

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it ain't what you do

Today I was reminded of one of my favourite poems by british poet Simon Armitage that I had not thought of for a while. Despite absolutely detesting his poetry when I was forced to learn them in school for my English Literature GCSE, I'm actually a big fan of his now it's not being force fed to me by an insufferably benign english teacher.

It ain't what you do it's what it does to you

I have not bummed across America
with only a dollar to spare, one pair
of busted Levi's and a bowie knife.
I have lived with thieves in Manchester.

I have not padded through theTaj Mahal,
barefoot, listening to the space between
each footfall picking up and putting down
its print against the marble floor. But I
skimmed flat stones across Black Moss on a day
so still I could hear each set of ripples
as they crossed. I felt each stones' inertia
spend itself against the water; then sink.

I have not toyed with a parachute cord
while perched on the lip of a light aircraft;
but I have held the wobbly head of a boy
at the day centre, and stroked his fat hands.

And I guess that the tightness in the throat
and the tiny cascading sensation
somewhere inside us are both part of that
sense of something else. That feeling, I mean.

Now if I could only remember how to write. that would be nice.

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