Lost, or: The chrysocolla and the butcherbird. A blogpost in two chapters.

I've lost.

Lost you: my thinking, feeling reader.

Lost me: your writer, um, your thinker-feeler.

Now what?

Chapter 1

Got in touch with my late husband, desperately. He 'told' me to buy a fancy bottle of wine. A minute or two later, still standing in the supermarket aisle among the wines (before the latest lockdown), a dear, late friend of mine 'told' me to buy another, fairly fancy bottle of wine.

I meekly obeyed both of them. Opened the red on Christmas day and toasted my late husband vocally in the presence of my parents. Has ever a wine had a more soothing, centring, balancing effect on me? Never.

The next day, Family day, I opened the white and toasted my late friend in everyone's presence and, again, the afternoon turned golden.

My obedience to my heart and her loves is simply the right thing.

Need to put that in bold.

My obedience to my heart and her loves is simply the right thing.

But still, I was lost: in the tyranny of daughtering. When my father came into the kitchen the next day, where I was, as usual, cooking, and said, "You are SO kind!" I replied morosely, "Yes. It's awful."

He said he would help if he could, and so he polished the blackened silver cake forks, while my poor, paralysed mother audibly lamented her helplessness.

Unkindly, on the phone to my Beloved later, I ranted beyond reasonable about the curse of being kind. I guess I was balancing (cancelling?) my kind deeds with highly ungracious words revealing pretty septic resentment.

But then.

I confronted the disturbance in my heart, the ungraciousness.

Chapter 2

I'd made my parents a calendar for Christmas, as usual, and for the month of May, which is my birthday month, I used a photo of myself, looking at a bird. Underneath the picture I'd pasted the words: 

 Listen to the song in your heart, whether the sun shines or it snows.

The bird is a butcherbird and although the photo (taken by my Beloved) is stunning, and the quote does speak how I have by and large lived my life, the vicious reputation of the bird bothered me.

However, Google (butcherbird) told me, with exquisite immediacy:

The fearless butcherbird reminds us to protect our territory. If it has shown up, you may be at risk of being undermined or of losing a thing of value.

 

That same day, my mother, ill-advisedly or wisely (which is it?) tippling once again from early on in the afternoon to assuage "the bitter taste in my mouth," said, 

"I keep trying to think of the name of a stone, but can't get away from croissant."
"Chrysoprase!" I said.
Her eyes widened. "Chrysocolla," she retorted. "How did you ... ?"
"It's obvious," I retorted in turn.

The daughter is not that for nothing.

She sent me to fetch her big box of various pieces, designed and cut and polished and smithied by her, and gave me a necklace with a Chrysocolla pendant. The cabochon and every link is fashioned by her. In better times, of course. (was fashioned = simple past: upon a time)

I danced! How it suits everything I am and wear! (am, wear = simple present: true forever)

"I have never seen it," I said.

"I never wore it," she replied, "I made it thinking of you. I wanted to give it to you."

Google (chrysocolla healing and chrysocolla sound) supplied more than enough for me to begin to be able to dissolve the septic resentment and ungraciousness that had been holding my soul hostage.

By means of words.

To myself.

To you.

Truth is not straightforward.

Chapter 3

Please forgive the photo of the pendant, the evening was getting on.

Appendix Note

You can still see the pendant and necklace enough to get a sufficient sense of things.

Butcherbird and me (passing though Hermanus). Photo: my Beloved.

Chrysocolla pendant with handmade silver necklace, by Sigi Heiss. Bad photo: Silke Heiss

 

 

The joy of reviews

I have periodically reviewed volumes of poetry and, at times, novels, too. It is an honour and a responsibility. The more experience one gains, the greater both the honour and the responsibility become.

The reviewer has to be an aunt or uncle to the child that is the book. He or she has to detect and point out things the parent (author) could not perceive. She or he has to nudge or even lead the book towards a friendly and supportive environment (the right readers). A reviewer needs to flag room for improvement, partly in case there may be future offspring, and partly to demonstrate the delicacies of readerly discretion - that beautiful relationship between the thinking self and somebody else's text.

This week I had the joy on one and the same day to receive two reviews that have been produced by two praiseworthy people. Both reviewers show awareness of the job they are tasked with. Both reviews are humble, knowledgeable, sincerely concerned with poetic detail, and balanced in judgment.

Troy Camplin's review is of Norman Morrissey's and my love books (Tryst, 2012;  Learn the Dance, 2013; Hogsback Hiku, 2013; Simply in Love, 2014; To The Far Horizon, 2015; Love Letters To The Earth, 2016; A Shell Held To The Ear, 2017. It excludes The Only Altar, 2018, as I sent him the books prior to that book's being produced.)

Camplin's appreciation is substantial, of the technical details in two of Norman's and my poems, with reference to his own experience as a poet. His receptiveness, furthermore, to the nuances of voice is enlightening beyond the purely technical - it provides readers with the possibilities of reflecting on gender differences as well as relationship dynamics. It is a joy to me to share with you the link to his review, in the hope that you will treat yourself to a full read https://medium.com/@troycamplin/on-the-poetry-of-norman-morrissey-and-silke-heiss-df1f32c85911

Marike Beyers' review of the latest Ecca book, Staying Hungry, too, models the illuminations, which close reading can bring. Her efforts to communicate these illuminations provide both writers as well as readers with her unique thinking feelings - yes: thinking feelings - whereby you are invited to access the varied poems in the collection. Marike's review is not in the public domain just yet, but I will post it on this blog in the next day or two.

    

"Without you, this book would not be"

The stretch between writing, publicly reading and launching a book is extensive. It mirrors the very differing states of being pregnant, talking about being pregnant, and actually giving birth.

And then.
Then there is the advertising, the marketing, the work of selling your book. This mirrors breastfeeding, burping, nappy-changing and generally doing all those things that your darling needs, in order to keep thriving.

If you had known exactly what was coming at you, you might not have chosen this route. Well, I should probably rather change that sentence into the first person. I might not have chosen this route.

But I had an ulterior motive: I badly wanted this baby. I wanted a beautiful, fat Heffalump. Did I know she would start walking the moment she was out? No.

Well - it has been a steep learning curve, giving birth to a herbivore: they really do stand on their own legs immediately. I have held for dear life onto her tail, as she has galumphed happily into the world, reminding me that I am merely human, while she ... is of another order altogether.

It's a beautiful thing. My wildest expectations have been exceeded. The Hogsback launch could not have gone better, my reading in Grahamstown was well-received, and next week there will be a launch at Exclusive Books in Cape Town.

However, the dramatic increase in social buzz, organising, online communications, meeting lovely people, autographing with special messages - all this boon has robbed me of sleep and of peace even during the daytime, as my mind sprints through the to-do list and my neglected creative soul sits and sulks.

Busyness has caused me to re-tick the boxes with my basic priorities: SOLITUDE, QUIET, DOMESTIC BLISS, LOVE/ INTIMACY, PERSONAL FREEDOM.

That is all very well. Yet I am responsible for my Heffalump, and I am responsible to the good people listening, reading, buying her.

So I have no choice but to balance the responsibilities, patiently and wisely.

As Walter Benjamin said, the work of art gives birth to the artist, who must reinvent herself.

And Norman? Where are you in all of this? You, whose face is represented now in the homes of all who've got the book, and whose spirit and quirks and moments with me are being perused and pondered?

Why do these questions bring a strange peace into me?

Something has been fulfilled that was waiting. It has all been worth it. Like Strandloop, which you inscribed for me as something that you could not have put together without me, Greater Matter could and would not be without you.

Norman's inscription in my copy of Strandloop