In January this year, I wrote this:
"if you'd asked me to describe myself in one word in 2004, I would have said - Damaged. If you ask me now,I would say - Alive"
The journey toward life - a greater embrace of life - had its beginnings in this post.
"The story goes that when John Lennon first met Yoko Ono, he met her at one of her wacky art shows. As he toured around the strange white shapes, he came upon a ladder in the corner. At the top of the ladder, the ceiling. On the ceiling, a magnifying glass dangling down. As he climbed up the ladder, he expected to see something in the magnifying glass like Stop the War, or Fuck You. He expected it to be incendiary and confrontational. Instead, when he reached the top of the ladder and peered through the magnifying glass, he read, in teeny tiny letters, yes."
Yes. Yes to good food and people. Yes to learning more. Yes to leaving fear and negativity behind. Yes to leading a greater,more fulfilling life. Yes to focus and self control. Yes to the love of life.
Yes to discovering that I have flame within and not tepid waters.
I want to be, all that I can be.
There is this hunger to reach out, touch and learn, from everyone,from everything.
There is the desire...
to read - everything but especially, oh especially poetry again.
Re-read Elizabeth Jennings several days ago and it was akin to greeting a long lost friend. There is so much I left behind,so much I have not done, read, seen.
Ben Okri, Steinbeck, Robert Graves, Arundhati Roy, Carver, Eugenides, Diana Wynne Jones, Dorothy Sayers, PD James, my divine and beautiful Shakespeare, AS Byatt, Webster, Ishiguro, Pratchett, my beloved John Donne, Philip Larkin, Banana Yoshimoto - All my old friends, I want
them back in my life and to make new ones too.
to write and write - anything, everything. Journal entries, blogposts,doggerel verse, poetry, stories, letters to friends, random scenes and lines.
The day this desire to write returned, I felt loved once again. I am near tears writing this- so great was the rush of mingled joy and relief - that I had this within me, all the while. That it has come back at a time when I had almost given it up for good. Never mind the rust and unfamiliarity, never mind that it has been so long ; it is here again and I have it locked in the fiercest of embraces.
to learn - about God, about music, about dance, about diving, about food, about film, about writing, art, photography - there is just so much!
to sing - schmaltzy chinese pop, schmaltzy english pop, and with all my heart, the hymns I know.
to have fun - laugh, crack stupid lame jokes, to run with wind in my hair, watch comedies, silly films that I can make fun of, embrace friends and jump, laughing, into every swimming pool that I see.
to have great conversations, to meet great people and to live fully and joyfully, every single day.
Oh and finally,
to dream - great big cartwheeling dreams that fill up my night sky with stars and fill my day with light.
It started with the telling of a story and has ended with this - Life. It has only taken 10 years, two relationships and much much heartache. But I sleepwalk no longer.
No, no drugs - recreational or otherwise - involved here. Merely that I am alive, deeply and thrillingly alive. The kind of alive that caffeine and rollercoaster rides could never give you. The kind of alive I never thought I'd be.
No more room for fear, if only, should have been or regrets. There is only now, this life and all that it can be.
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