Trinity of blogposts 2 Course correction (with yoga, dance and fairies)

So. Life drives you with a momentum that makes it really hard for you to take stock. “It’s all too much” is the daily feeling, you’re in survival mode: keep going, keep going, keep going, keep gggg ... And I kept goinggg, stuffing my days up with humdrum duties, dredging ever deeper down into – actually beyond the remains of – my energy (!) to summon patience, more patience, AND MORE patience and loving kindness for the endless admin and communications required, to organise the daily physical and emotional support my parents asked for, fitting in (against my, secretly somewhat languid, nature) with THEIR WORLD (a world of, to me, too many false securities); and, simultaneously, trying to learn more about my new partner and his – to me, in many ways, completely foreign – outlook on life. Looking back now, at the three moves in three years, which I was obliged to weather, they reveal something about the panic my own heart and its lostness.

I ‘skidded’ off the mountain in Hogsback, which had been my home for 8 years, and skidded up and down the coastline, in a manner of speaking, as each place Jay (not his real name) and I found to rent, albeit all were beautiful, was quickly sold, due to unfortunate circumstances besetting the owners. Were we hexed, Jay and I?

Absolutely. The hex was: my utter idiocy. Possibly that germ of languidness. So, what was the turning point in the tragi-comic tale?

Well, the first course-correction, I believe, was that I chose to leave the beautiful village of Brenton-on-Lake – or, rather, I chose to accompany Jay, who was set on returning to what I privately call “the belly of the beast”, that is to say, the Eastern Cape, where it is impossible to ignore or avoid South Africa’s notorious problems. Jay had never felt at home in the Western Cape, I was sure he was secretly yearning (my take, not his) for his home environs outside East London; and he also wanted to be closer to his shop again. As for me, I listened to my heart in following, not just Jay, but a ‘geographical piety’ – a kind of deep, inner compass that drove, despite everything, joy into me on seeing again the lush green grasslands and roaming cattle so typical of the Eastern Cape (definitely not a mis-take).

We found a place to rent that had been advertised, of all places, on Gumtree, and it turned out to be situated in the very village where I had enjoyed art lessons during my latter four years of living in Hogsback. The rocky sea shore was more familiar to me than it was to Jay – I’d sat there every other Saturday with sarmies and a boiled egg after the art class, writing poems whipped by the wind.

I was now geographically twice as far as I had previously been from my parents and, although my father’s dementia made him unable to remember where I was now, I could hear in his voice over the telephone that he felt in his heart – as I did in mine – that I was distancing myself from his and my mother’s extreme emotional dependence on me. This was no bad thing for any of us. They have the privilege of very loyal and loving carers in the familiarity of their own home. Of course I kept up with my duties to them, and of course I visited them for Christmas, but, even so: there was new room for sanity to re-enter my sphere.

Several people mentioned that I ought not to feel guilty about re-moving myself, geographically as well as emotionally, further away from my parents – to be honest: there was no energy left for any guilt in me. I knew that a cycle had, necessarily, ended. True to their natures, my parents did not complain at all. There was an overall feeling that things could not be otherwise. This, of course, is the precondition for inner peace and, I daresay, they have grown more peaceful.

So the daughter in me was making progress. But what about the wife/ female partner aspect? Unmarried though we were, my womanly heart was given to Jay – and she was distraught, if truth be told. Jay is a lifelong nicotine addict and, although I knew this when I first teamed up on the journey through life with him, I had become increasingly intolerant of what to me was his enslavement. I was helplessly jealous of his ‘first love’, Lady Nicotine, whom he cherished a hundred times more devotedly than he cared for me. As I saw it, Nicotine was his true partner in intimacy. Clearly, I needed to detach from him, too, leave him in peace, and give myself space to lose my possessiveness. But how?

It was the second ‘course correction’ that helped me with this question. The second ‘course-correction’ occurred very recently, as a result of three momentous events happening in quick succession.

Firstly, my yoga teacher, Cher, invited me to offer a writing workshop at her upcoming yoga retreat. This opportunity, again to collaborate with a woman whose mission I respected and chimed with, blew the exact wind into my sails that I needed. At last I could be working again on MY terms! I’ve been eagerly getting back ‘out there’, renewing my commitment to my writerly calling, not merely in private, but as a public phenomenon; and also focusing on my connection to my precious readers again – even this trinity of blogposts are evidence of that.

Secondly, I signed up for a Journey through dance with Cher.

And, thirdly, I went for a fairy card reading with Angie Vanstraaten.

I had consulted the fairies, as mediated through Angie, a total of three times in my life at major crisis points and each time I had been shown a way forward. This time, though, I was in for a shock of major proportions. The fairies warned me in the strongest terms that I was drained to the bone from endlessly giving without replenishing myself; that my masculine aspect was completely upside down; and that I would lose everything and suffer extremely painful experience if I did not step out of MY addiction to SERVING THE PRIORITIES OF OTHERS AT THE EXPENSE OF MY SOUL.

Wow. They freaked me out big-time, those fairies. There was one, whose hideous face with missing teeth has stayed with me in particular – fittingly called the SOUL SHRINKER! – who warned of keeping company with people, including loved ones, whose comments were habitually, unconsciously critical in the most innocent (unconscious) ways, steadily eroding my self-confidence and strength. The habit is probably best summed up in the old proverb ‘familiarity breeds contempt’, expressing with wondrous brevity the harmfulness of not maintaining proper boundaries – something I had NEVER learned!

Shaken, the days that followed I was on hyper-alert and actually began to notice this habit – both in myself as well as in Jay. I consciously applied the medicine of kindness, accepting nothing less than genuine warmth from either myself or from him at ALL times, no matter how insignificant the occasion might seem. If it isn’t kind, rather keep silent and self-examine. Fortunately, Jay was completely with me on that particular track. You could say it actually helped our relationship become ‘more professional’; we orbited in our respective (very different) worlds, with greater distance between one another, which actually gave us both the breathing room we each craved.

The Journey through dance took place three days after the fairy card reading. What a truly healing process! It’s re-ignited my passion powerfully. I’ve documented it, with view to showing a way for others, who may be at similar crossroads in their lives as I am. I urge you to seek your kindred spirits when your soul is as emptied as mine has been.

Best of all, the Journey through dance brought me a fascinating insight, which I definitely had to explore. This insight came through an offering, during our feedback session, from one of the participants, owner of the venue Driftwood Studios, ClaireKockott.

To be continued. 

Angie says: The Singer of healing tells us ...
Healing begins when we let go of what hurts us,
and embrace and nurture what benefits and heals us

The terrifying soul shrinker

The beautiful venue for Journey through dance @Driftwoodstudios

Trinity of blogposts 1 The great mis-take

 “A mistake is an invitation to look again,

more closely, at something, so you can

understand better what is going on.”

 – Philippa Podlashuc

Shit happens. It happens in life, at times, that it tears you, suddenly, along with it. The tide of demands, which you feel are on you, can be so great, that there is no chance to think or ask yourself whether what you are doing is actually for the greater, or any, good. Being ‘caught off-guard’ happens to many of us, time and again. The wonderful thing about such times is that they usually, hopefully, come to some kind of end – possibly only when you are completely burnt out. But that point – the point at which something else occurs, enabling you finally to yell STOP! – is the turning point: the moment when you are able to “look again, more closely”, in order to get another ‘take’ and in order to understand a situation better. 

What you are about to read is the first in a trilogy of blogposts, in which I am allowing myself the freedom to understand my previous take(s) better. May it increase your compassion for and interest in your own mis-takes. Here goes.

A sudden heap of demands descended upon me after a two-year lull of sorts and I guess I was, at the time, too contented (blasé?) or too busy, to notice what was happening.

The lull occurred after my husband (who was a poet) died in July 2017. I’d stood by him without pause in his last months, when his health plummeted dramatically, but he also made dramatic comebacks, several times. When it was all over, I began to assemble poems I’d written in his bodily presence, as well as ones that were blossoming in his purely spiritual presence. In the space of two years, I published two solo collections, one fat and one slim, entitled Greater Matter and Sweet Nothings, which were launched in October 2019 and February 2020 respectively.

The creation, publication and marketing of these books signalled the beginning of my independence as a poet ‘in my own right’, and I was working hard on nurturing a small readership, as well as keeping up with the daily discipline of writing and self-editing, ever on the lookout for ways of improving my craft. Although I was still very much grieving, I felt deeply fulfilled by having finally learned to hearken my inner voice.

As anyone who has lived a little knows, whenever anything “finally” falls into place, it is a certain marker that one thing has ended and something else is beginning.

The momentum of my life upped significantly when I fell in love with a charming person, who was intrigued by the fact that I was a poet – a phenomenon he had not encountered before. His educational background at a technical school had been largely untouched by poetry, and famous titles from the literary canon had never been part of the curriculum. He’d made a life for himself as a businessman, who, amongst other ventures, had owned bookstores; he was well-read in crime thrillers and latched now, with happy fervour, onto my late husband’s extensive Zane Grey collection; journeyed from there through non-fiction and survival stories into, at this point in time, philosophical classics, such as Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. Love naturally pulled him closer to learning why poetry is special; he’s written some of his own poems and has, over the years, occasionally been a sounding-board for mine. 

As a poet, my prime interest is, of course, not poetry, but life itself. Intensely romantic and idealistic as I am by nature, as far as I was concerned my life was, here and now, presenting me with the most remarkable and undreamed-of opportunity! This man, no doubt, would sell my poetry books and turn us into a formidable team, with me creating and him promoting beautifully shaped words to reach and heal the hearts of all humanity. (Off-stage, whispering: mis-take.)

Well, to give him due credit – he did sell six copies of Sweet Nothings, the first nogal on the day we collected it from the printers – AND it was Valentine’s Day! I couldn’t believe it! We were on a roll! (mis-take)

However, to my naïve surprise, Jay (not his real name) had limited patience with things that are difficult to sell and, of all the things there are in the world that people do NOT readily put their hands into their wallets for, poetry wins first prize. To put it more succinctly, when it comes to saleability, poetry and ice cream are poles apart.

Well, Jay’s realism about marketing my poetry personally was a bit of a damper on my high hopes, but I still had my eye on life itself. He had (and still has) a shop in Hogsback, where he generously (at no profit to himself) gave shelf space to the poetry volumes I wanted to sell – my own, those by my late husband, as well as books by the Ecca Poets. This set-up has worked, and is still working; the books sell slowly, as is to be expected. I love to imagine the poems flowing out like starlight, reaching people long after they are first published. For THAT is their power. Unlike ice creams, poems do not melt.

BUT. BUT. BUT.

Here I was, a novice poet still wet behind the ears, choosing to be with a person who could not be blamed for having no inkling of what it meant to BE a poet. I would have to teach him what that is and what it means to live with one. Did I turn out to be a bad teacher, phew! If one can excel at failure, then I am truly excellent. For, clearly, as it turned out: I did not know myself what it meant; certainly I did not know how to manage it in balance with nurturing a new love relationship. So, being a good woman (not a mistake), what I did try to do was choose to serve my love for Jay. I put that love higher than my love for bringing poems into the world. It felt like an ethical choice – that is to say, not a choice at all. Of course a beautiful, living human being has more value than words strung together! (Not a mistake.)

However, looking at it now, I guess that was the story I told myself – in order to justify the rather unbalanced belief system I clung to, which was: my relationship with a beloved other is more important than the relationship with my independent self.

AT THE SAME TIME.

My parents were growing increasingly dependent and, one month into hard lockdown, my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I REALISED then (mis-take). Life is asking me NOT to be a poet (huh?), for that, I told myself, is selfish, irrelevant, economically unviable and socially irresponsible (???). Besides, there are millions of poets out there, with a few hundred of them bloody excellent, so the world definitely does NOT need to read anything I write. FINALLY I was going to be a PROPER PERSON, an ORDINARY person, just like everybody else, who PUTS SERVING REAL PEOPLE BEFORE WRITING POEMS.

It’s sad, or maybe it’s actually, ultimately, funny, but my poetry seemed to me to be nothing but solipsistic (mis-take); nature- but not people-centred; pampering nothing but my own soul and helping nobody (mis-take!). I ask, on my knees, forgiveness – for all this mis-taken, negative self-talk – from my loyal fans and readers. You guys truly helped me, privately, lovingly, patiently, with steady encouragement, to keep my waning little flame alight despite myself, during these years of my own stupidity descending, mis-take by mis-take, onto and spreading out its darkness within me.

Truth was, I felt I owed society something for having published two solo volumes in the blissful solitude of a paradisiacal house and garden. And here, before my very eyes, in front of my own door, so to speak - where one is, for good reason, told to sweep first and foremost - were my parents, one struggling with her own body (my mother is paralysed in a wheelchair), the other with his mind (Alzheimer’s is an unnerving disease for the person suffering from it). As for Jay, he was soul-searching, writing his own book, trying to understand his nicotine addiction. The last thing any of them needed, so it seemed to me, was my poetry, let alone the complications involved in creating it. I confess I imposed it – very gently – upon them, at times (if for no other reason than to give myself breathing room). I can testify that they were never the worse off. My mother’s and Jay’s responses were virtually always sweetly affirming. But, too often, their interest was painfully temporary. I see now, with a grimace of resignation, that I was looking to them to give my poetry the attention I wasn’t giving it!

As for the rest of the world – clearly it agreed with my negativity, so it appeared to me at the time. Covid and lockdown, government corruption, the continued desacralisation of nature, poverty, hunger and, later, war screamed at me: DO YOU FINALLY SEE HOW IRRELEVANT YOUR POEMS ARE??? I suppose, dear reader, that you might relate to some of this? When harmful self-talk blots all your blessings and sadistically breaks all your motivation?

For, despite this illness in my soul, my guardian angel, and my God, called me – often – and gave me motivation and encouragement. The extraordinary blessings in my life during that out-of-synch period put ever more real conflict inside me, making it impossible to COUNT those blessings. I was invited to read alongside other poets, musicians and dancers, at the African Women Writers’ Symposium in 2021; I painted poems onto a public wall, working alongside formidable artists in Knysna in 2022; I publicly read a well-received poetic tribute to those artists at the launch of that wall; I collaborated in an amazing poem-dance at an animal charity art exhibition. I organised two successful poetry readings in the privacy of my home; AVBOB accepted three of my poems for their poetry library, and also, very kindly, did a punt for me; I had poems and even art published in respected US literary magazines; I walked and wrote daily (for me, those two activities belong together) and continued, albeit erratically, to trial modest poems on my precious private readers – all the time at war with myself, feeling completely fake. Why? Because: I was failing properly to acknowledge these achievements, they were strange, if exhilarating, puzzles, more than anything else, to my confused mind. (No-take) I cannot emphasise enough that the word “count” is all-important in the idiom, “count your blessings”. Alone to create the links now to all those precious moments has been more than humbling.

At the time, all the puzzledness and confusion, by the way, was taking place OFFLINE. Online I continued to show a more ‘professional’ face, as best I could, hiding the grimy truths of my soul and – even though I did try to be honest and published some posts on this blog about bitterness and sadness – the fact was that I felt utterly out of control. The best I could do was to announce that I was taking ‘a Sabbatical’.

During that ‘Sabbatical’, I burnt myself out in the service of loving my needy loved ones.

Organising my parents’ household from afar; being there for them emotionally on a daily basis; driving the long journey to visit them once a month; being there emotionally as well as in very practical ways for Jay – all of this, thank the Lord, I could do and did. (Not a mis-take.)

But, prioritising this service, and simultaneously trying to make THEIR PRIORITIES mine, giving insufficient time, attention and authority to my craft, my readers, my finances, was a mis-take. I felt unseen, unacknowledged: I had been caught in the web of a plight endured by far too many women and men, who attend to their loves at the cost of paying attention to their independence, inner balance, fulfilment and own resources.

My vicious temper, which had disappeared with the appearance of my poetry publications, returned.

My feelings of serenity and fulfilment, which had blessed me when I was centred in my independent creativity, evaporated.

My experience of being at one with myself gave way to feeling more and more torn.

Stress will always show the places in you that require further attention.

Yes, I was still feeding morsels to my Facebook Page and social media platforms, was still showing up here and there, as I could. An online persona really gives one the option of faking it – not necessarily a bad thing, I suppose, as you can give faking it your all until you actually do make it. I couldn’t bear to come out publicly with the conflicts on my heart and the severe loss of a sense of control I suffered privately, because, on the one hand, the world seemed to be ending in disease, lies and violence, how could I possibly, in good conscience, add to the bad news? On the other hand, I also did not know in the least how to write about my stuff WITHOUT mentioning all the dearly beloved non-poets I was so focused on – so, on top of everything I was in a permanent spin about the ethics of what poetry and writing were asking of me. Posts on this blog, in which I came out with some of the facts of my life, were a source of inner pain and turmoil.

Closer to home, my duties towards the Ecca group kept me strung into those beautiful people, who had once been my fellows; friends, who still saw me as one of their own.

I tried as best I could to conceal it, but I grew increasingly unsure of myself. I actually became afraid of speaking publicly, especially, for some reason, of being seen on the zoom poetry readings at Off The Wall and The Red Wheelbarrow (where I was even featured!) all too often I’d want to say something and then just sit, with a horrible hardness locking my throat. I can’t believe it myself, and I won’t blame you if you don’t, but I actually cringed with the sense of shameful inferiority I felt in the presence of other poets.

I began to doubt the power of love itself, I felt abysmally disappointed in myself and convinced that I did not love enough.

As time went by, however, I gradually began to understand that – like so many PROPER PEOPLE, like so many ORDINARY PEOPLE, who put THE PRIORITIES OF THOSE THEY LOVE BEFORE THEIR OWN PRIORITIES I was living a life of “quiet desperation”.

Thankfully, by the grace of God, I would be given opportunity to course-correct. Seeing your MIS-TAKE is always an opportunity for a RE-TAKE.

 To be continued.

Two of the very good reasons I am infinitely grateful to have made my mis-
take: and why I have not a single regret!
Photo: Brian Bartlett

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.