Live session 11/5/20 ~ Trees by Herman Hesse

Today's writing prompt

a kernel is hidden in me

was taken from the remarkable 100-Year-Old Love Letter to Trees by Herman Hesse. It was brought to my attention through the marvellous Sunday delivery of "Brain Pickings" by the Bulgarian writer Maria Popova. This week she features an art video taking you on a virtual tour of Kew Gardens while  the dulcet Natascha McElhone reads - this is a highly recommended escape from lockdown! This project of Natascha's film is called Wander, and this is episode 4.

With a little time to hand near the end of the session we sought out a second writing prompt from "The Weighing" by Jane Hirshfield:

only the strength we have

A typically powerful and moving collection of pieces came out of both prompts today (come back to this blog to see it) - a mixture of fear, compassion, frustration and uncertainty that seems to be the result of our locked down status.

Water Story aching to be out on Loch Lomond again...

I am moved to share with you a sound piece of advice I received from a wise woman in Zimbabwe after I called her this week in a floundering state of angst.

Stay Sharp
by Sonia Pereira

One would have to be an incredibly realised being to know what's actually going on amidst the magnitude of forces and influences from a multitude of dimensions impacting this existence at this time. Given that, it would seem the best orientation would be to be as informed as possible keeping an open mind and also bearing in mind that in a wounded, fragmented world there are all manner of distortions at play.

We cannot in any way predict what will unfold here in the interplay between the polarities of 'this is the evolutionary leap' to 'this is the ultimate dystopia in the making'. Neither is that far fetched and certainly either are plausible/possible. We don't know... 

Perhaps the more important question to ask rather than trying to project into the future from the place of not knowing is:

What am I aligned with?
What am I giving my life force to?
Fear, separation,  blame and judgement    OR     love, connection, inclusivity and empathy?

My personal belief is that this is what will ultimately influence what is to unfold, not our argument about what is true or not true... we don't know! Be informed as best you can - inclusivity means listening to all points of view without adhering to any.... an open mind knows it doesn't know anything for certain and thereby remains alert and responsive. A closed mind that thinks it knows is much more likely to get hoodwinked or blindsided.

Stay sharp people!

However this major disruption unfolds one thing's for sure - we're all in this together so let's take a breath and stay grounded as sensibly as we are able.

Twilight and Mary Oliver words

Twilight 
by Aileen Paterson

The terns hover over the estuary at dusk, plummeting into the water. Turnstones fly in a flurry of white wings before settling into the shallows. Twilight is the magical time when all the people disperse and the tide recedes to leave a shoreline for me to wander on. Trees become silhouettes against an amber sky. The beach is abandoned except for the birds. My feet make soft footprints in the sand. The water has woken from its sleep and glimmers with hope. I walk home and hear the owls calling and a dark shape swooping high in the air over the fields. Dusk clings to my skin and infuses me with magic, the sunset caught beneath my skin.

Photo by Aileen Paterson

Using Words from Mary Oliver
by Kay Ritchie

Times turned strange.

Days seemed weeks.

Weeks seemed hours &

after months locked down,

when only watching seasons

saved our sanity,

autumn comes &

wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

(where planes once sliced through cloud, streaked skies with crystalled contrails),

are heading home again.

A plump of v’s.

Black on blue.

Their honks & hoots,

like those we made each Thursday,

surely signal hope.


*************************************************************


influenced by Mary Oliver’s "The chance to love everything"
by Kay Ritchie


this may be the first story

shared amongst us all

this plague-time-telling

whose dark heart

left an ancient ache &

there are many reasons for its passing

down to children

and to children’s children

and their children’s children’s children

for the world stood still for once &

took a look

at what was going wrong &

people learned to take more care

to be aware of others

of themselves &

of the planet

so let’s not be the first to

forget

Live session 4/5/20 ~ Poems for Refugees

Today we made a difficult journey towards our awareness of suffering in less privileged parts of the world. This might usually be considered an armchair approach to altruism, but the unfolding implications of Coronavirus on international economic activity are devastating. I guessed, correctly, that these concerns would be lurking among Water Story writers as much as they are with me, waking me in the small hours with fathomless despair.

Writing prompts drawn from the anthology POEMS FOR REFUGEES (Jarvis and Haywood) were called on to help us invoke such worries in the hopes of pouring positive energy towards situation so far from our control:

September 1, 1939

by W. H. Auden - 1907-1973

from which we used the prompt

children afraid of the night

Spared

by Wendy Cope

from which writers chose their own prompts

Midway through the session Tara led us through a 5-minute mindfulness session; these have become part of our regular Monday mornings and go a long way to stopping the slosh in our brains! Thanks Tara!

To ease out of the intense emotion of today's subject we noted some trivial afternoon activities only to discover some concerted insustry:

Tara will clean the fishpond for Samuel the fish, Aileen begins art journalling! Helen has some serious sounding dyslexia reporting to do but will reward herself with the last brownie, carefully hidden from her husband and son. Sandra will deal with some clutter and Sheila, an abstract painting... I was mortified to confess my much lesser ambition of eating a roll and sausage till Giovanna joined me in the realms of humdrummity with a clear determination to do no more than make a coffee. Kay will lie on the floor and Pat will exercise for just two minutes while Mary cuddles her cat. 

Now that's more like it!

Word processing skills came up and it occured to me that zoom might be a handy opportunity to show some basic settings... which I duly did while sharing the wrong screen. Rather than create a fact sheet I will zoom this in another session soon. 

Finally the group asked if I would share my blog about Peccadillo's journey to capture waters of the 5 canals of Scotland.... here it is. Thanks to one and all for another rich session.

Clyde to Caledonia

 

Rannoch Moor and Shed Bodegon

Roaming on Rannoch Moor
by Pat Sutherand

Seasonal chameleon, backdrop for epic history, epitome of bleak. The world saw the moor in Skyfall, but seeing is a poor substitute for standing there, breathing bog myrtle air, transfixed among the cries of its marsh-loving birds.

Winter freezes the tiny Lochans and the burns tinkle under ice. Horizon peaks are snow shrouded; mist hangs heavy over the rushes and silence rules the icy vastness.

Spring is a latecomer to Rannoch Moor. Its herald is the curlew making its  nest among tussocks, sending its come-hither song through warming air.  In Summer the moor tumbles through rain and sunshine, the network of waters flashing  mysteries in signals.  Treeless in Autumn, without  gold or scarlet relief, the moor is lonely, sinking into its history.

*****************************

In the absence of a Rannoch Moor photo I am sharing promised photos of MY shed. Many of the zoom sessions have been taking place in our writers' delightful sheds... Here too is my attempt at a "Bodegon"... a still life.
 

SHED BODEGON
by Cap'n Bev

Ah my shed.
Hopeful queues of things to do
a mix of screws
and here, a scented pile of sawn dust.
A rusted file, grinding paste,
ancient as this precious fid and darning tool
from which, atop my happy stool,
I long to coax old shine.
Dull, white glow of snow seals up
the sleepy garden window.
Ardent Tits inspect their old box,
but here’s another partly made.

Magic spell of sanity
laid out upon the table
awaits my incantation
to make, fix, sing and do… waits…
till I am well and better able.

A journey, an old friend and silence

This untitled piece is by Peter Gallagher
With both arms open wide to the enveloping sense of space, I launch into a journey within my mind to a place beyond the familiar.
The certain knowledge of the past erased and the drawers, full of once useful and long forgotten  keepsakes, pulled open and tipped purposefully upside down on the floor of my ivory tower.
The whiteness of the blank paper is blinding . The potential for rebirth is there in front of me , to be grasped and held preciously in both hands . The future is uncertain but the path of the journey is clear

Early days of Water Story with our dear departed boat woman Morag Anderson

Thoughts on Silence

by Pat Sutherland

Silence

happens rarely

a singular gift

when traffic ceases

or the sky opens

at the end of a peewit’s cry

amplifies itself

when water laps on stones

and leaves rustle

On a shedding tree.

Silence 

spirit-calming 

sound of creation

split by our first cry

in a clamorous world

unwelcome only 

after angry words

Live Session 27th April ~ Dark Hearts and Wild Geese with Mary Oliver

On the wings and among  the starlit, bulging haunches of  Mary Oliver's poems we enjoyed another rich session. Today, for the first time, Tara took us on a short mindfulness meditation between prompts; extraordinary how quickly we all relaxed into that, thank you Tara! Hats off to Sheila, battling with Covid among all her other afflictions; she is soldiering on, recovering slowly, writing plenty and writing powerfully (see below). I can only imagine the chicks starting to hatch on the canal... here are some photos from the past.

Our first prompt today comes from Mary Oliver's well known poem Wild Geese:

wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again

We managed a second prompt from her poem "The Chance to Love Everything"
These last few lines echo the atmosphere of Water Story... writers were invited to use any or all of these lines (or indeed, as ever, anything else that comes to mind) as a writing prompt.


"...
Did I actually reach out my arms
toward it, toward paradise falling, like
the fading of the dearest, wildest hope - 
the dark heart of the story that is all
the reason for its telling?"

Watch this space for more writing coming in. 

Grounded
Sheila Buchanan

My first day out after 5 weeks alone
Roads deserted with runners not cars
Shops boarded up no sound of their tills
No cuckoos around to fly over their nest
Where am I in this world of ours?

It’s the day after my terrible news
My pen is speeding down the page as I relive my terrible dream
I want to scream and break the silence
I am now one of the diagnosed
My mind is racing my heartbeat up
I’m breathing so fast to grab oxygen.

My scan is over I breathe a sigh
I’m told by a doctor wearing a mask
There are changes in my lungs
My mind exploded I cannot hear a thing
Not me, not now. it cannot be real
I head outside with my mask in place
I cannot believe what is happening to me
Tears run down
My throat closes up; feels like a rasp

Now it’s another day all alone with my thoughts
My scribbles overrun the page
My body is sore and very fatigued
It’s the pandemonium of this pandemic as virus crowds my heart and mind.

Should I - Shouldn’t I?

Meeting online means we have May joining us regularly from Inverness. Here is an sunset from there and a poem from May.

Should I - shouldn’t I?
by May McIntyre

It twirls and turns as it glides past my window like a ballet dancer experimenting with new moves.
It’s gone out of my view but still exists.
I know because it exists in my world.- our world- everybody’s world.
Exists in this surreal world we are all living in right now - yes right now- right this minute.

Should I or shouldn’t I?
That’s the question on my lips that has arrived there from my brain which seems to be on lockdown too.
It’s on more than lockdown though - shutdown would be a more accurate description.
Why has it shutdown?
To block out all the sadness that surrounds it?
To try to find happiness again?
Or to just let me be at peace during these turbulent times?

Should I - Shouldn’t I
Go and investigate to see where it has gone on it’s journey on this windy day.
Today I do not know the answer to that question.
Months ago it would not have been a question at all.
How our world has changed when I am in doubt whether I should pick up that piece of rubbish or not!