Tuesday 8 March 2016

Sing, ring, ping.

Spin, grin. Sip, gin. Nip. The words you can scramble out of the six alphabets of Spring seem to fit the season so perfectly.

I stare at this new blue sky and smile and take in a deep breath. Everything is birthing. Things are coming out of burrows, tearing out of buds. If I didn't hate ostentatious little phrases, I might've said they were leaving winter's womb. I've just said it though haven't I? Strange how you have to say something in order to say that you won't say it. Suddenly it exists simply because you thought it should not, and in thinking so, brought it into existence.

Sorry, the season does go to the head a little. The air smells raw, like new leaves.



I felt like drawing. This feeling always comes in spurts, and I go hunting for paper and paint. Drawing, like photography, helps my writing; even if it's only by letting me procrastinate better. It fills the space in between writing and not-writing. It takes me out of my comfort zone - I'm much less confident telling a story with a paintbrush than I am with a pen. Every time I draw, I'm like a child learning to walk, and that is liberating in many ways; I don't expect much from myself. There's nothing more beautiful than creating something without any purpose, without expectations.


I don't like the outlines on the finished leaves; I wish I'd left them blurred. But I can't change it now - I committed to the black ink as soon as I put it on paper. But I will, yet again, live and learn. And be reminded of how freeing writing is in that sense. You can rewrite a sentence till it's as sharp or as blurred as you want it to be.




We all tell stories in our own ways - we might paint them, write them, freeze them on photographs, tell them aloud in a room, sing them in the shower. If you had to choose one, which one would you choose?

Did I tell you I started working on my first novel? I'm two chapters in, into what looks like a five-year plan. Do give me a virtual kick on the backside now and then, remind me that it won't get written if I don't sit the hell down and write.

Love and springtime to you my friends,
Pia