Four-footed Fire

I want to re-ignite momentum on my blog! 

Through a series of blessed synchronicities, I find myself here again, at last, after almost seven months.

Today eleven years ago I formally wedded that beautiful soul, the poet Norman Morrissey and, in the wake of that event, I created a hand-made book of poems for him - most of which have never seen the light of day.

I'm moved to share two of them with you. 

They are quite distinct in their energies. 

Four-footed by Silke Heiss

Four-footed

My ring has four loops
round the green eye

of the centre stone.

Wisdom is an animal:

four paws on the earth

keep the heart humble

and the mind

uninterested

in suffering.

        *

The above poem was written in Grahamstown, where I was staying with my fifteen-year-old son, who was not at all happy, at the time, about my marriage to Norman. Norman, for his part, had his youngest son staying with him in Hogsback, so we were both, during and very shortly after our wedding, more or less absorbed in parenting, more than we could be in one another. This was painful to me, but the ring (which I had designed myself) gave me strength, it gave me the sense not to indulge myself. At least, my poem led me there, to a better self, you could say.

The second poem is entitled Fire. I like it because, as far as I'm concerned, it reveals me to myself more articulately and more wittily than I could do. If that makes sense. Here it is.

Fire by Silke Heiss

Fire

Hestia and Aphrodite

- the virgin goddess of the hearth

and the brazen goddess of love -

in me

somehow combine -

Hestia's fire keeps

my loins loyal,

while the love goddess' spark

illuminates my kitchen

and all I conjure

in the heat there.

Ag, it probably sounds very grand and unlikely.

But it's true

my eggs are in two baskets -

both very 

near fire. 

    

       *

Hmm. I shall be curious as to whether this little bit of breath on that little bit of tinder does, indeed, re-ignite my blog.

Strelitzia - my chosen wedding flower,
blooming in Sunrise-on-Sea, where I now live.

Happy to be sad

I had become wary of building my writerly career online, because of a sense of the ephemerality of the online world - load shedding in South Africa is a reminder of the tenuousness of electrical power; during the 'dark hours' (which can happen at any time during the day) one is obliged to turn to the tangible world for activities, duties and amusement, and there is much reassurance to be derived from going for a walk or taking a rest, because there is simply nothing else to do at a particular moment. Of course, there are always dishes; and perhaps one browses through a forgotten book and finds phrases and fragrances beyond the reach of the internet.

The second, more complex, reason I sidelined the supposed career, which I was building in my imagination, is that my elderly parents became increasingly needy, and I simultaneously said yes to a new love relationship. I was thus obliged to choose between paying attention to my 'career' or to real human beings and it seemed unethical to prioritise the former, as it is a vanity, while my parents, and my beloved, are irrefutable.

And so I neglected my online writerly presence and productivity. The decision to do so has lost me much energy, as there is little that refuels my soul as effectively as when I release my poetry and feminine philosophy into the unknown currents that run the worldwide web. It turns out that supervising my parents' combined wilting as compassionately as possible saps my life force in the extreme. Not infrequently, I have felt the need to die in advance of them, in order to show the way - a mood, which it would shock them to know I experience, if they had the presence of mind to know it, which is a presence they do not, fortunately however, have. 

I have been in shock, though, for the past three years - ever since leaving Hogsback, arriving on the Garden Route and covid lockdown slamming the brakes on any forward movement. I have, I realise, lived in a state of shame about the unutterable sadness of my life. A shame, which, on learning that I am once more forced to move house - the third move in three years - has suddenly left me, and lifted me up, this spring, to the joys of complaining unrestrainedly. I am pushed beyond endurance! Praise be to complaint! And praise be to my beloved, who endures it, and you, my reader, if you are here. I need no comfort other than to utter what saps and uses my loving, giving heart beyond her limits.

So it could be that complaining may yet help me to prevail. Thus, this blogpost is a preliminary blub and my online writerly presence resumes in a spirit of watery melancholy. 

In short, I am happy to be sad.

"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

Tuesday tidy-up by Tortoise

There is a calm. Pleasant and unfamiliar.

I've revised my Timeline at the end of my book; applied the changes suggested by one of my beady-eyed editors; and emailed the other editors saying I need their final input by mid-April, so the proofreader has enough time to work his miracles before I submit the manuscript to PoeTree.

In all my years as a writer (I made a start in 1974) I've never published anything in this way before: I have no solo publication with an ISBN number, nor anything loaded on Amazon.

I breathe a sigh of relief at my vegetative slowness: I like myself being this late. It is wonderful being a slow developer. My disappointments, failures, resentments, frustrations, hopelessnesses, madnesses, despairs, depressions, manias and resignations have made the most extraordinary compost: it is soft and warm with my failures, my traumas, my giving-upnesses over and over again, having to gather my broken bones and reconstruct my self and my life.

Upon this compost of psychic energy I am now carried forward - by the force of my own shit, you could say ... transformed over the decades into a mysterious source of quiet, something is happening, which I've been dreaming almost since birth. Or before. Who knows?

I am producing a 'real' book. A book with an ISBN number, which I will market properly and make available to online buyers.

This is truly nothing special. The book industry is a zillion ants in their antheaps, and there are only so many ant-eaters about to devour them.

And yet, like the birth of any living baby, my book has its own bright star. As it currently stands, there are 238 poems carrying the narrative - the journey with my husband to his death and beyond. The poems are like 238 survivors of the 1000 eggs the Tortoise I am has laid in the sand over the past 20 months, with the patient sun of time now finally close to hatching them.

I am grateful. Keeping close to earth.

Photo: Silke Heiss

   

Learning to stand!

"...

those last months' refrain
is still in my head,
you tied to the bed:
"I can't get well
if they won't let me get up
on my feet."

..."

- extract from What never was (After 'Five Pinecones' by Arja Salafranca), in Section 8 of Greater Matter - Facts of Blood

Gearing up for tonight's reading at Off The Wall at Roxy's in Woodstock, Cape Town, I'm looking forward to seeing my dear friends and brave editors, fellow Ecca poets Ed Burle and Jacques Coetzee, as well as OTW veteran Hugh Hodge: whose poetic midwifery started and nurtured me on the first leg of my journey 13 years back, as my poems slowly traipsed their way into more and more public readings. I'm also looking forward to greeting people I've not met before ...

I'll confess it here: it feels like a part of the journey of becoming me, as if my feathers were losing fluffiness, growing by some inner secret programme into sleekness and I'm learning to oil them by fluids I did not know before were there.   

It's a journey taken before by a million others, but, like any baby born, it's the first of its kind and will never be again. Learning to stand!