Saturday, August 05, 2006

Make Me an Acorn Bed

and I find it kind of funny,
I find it kind of sad,
the dreams in which I'm dying
are the best I've ever had...


It has just rained, spray over pavements and flowers and on the beach. I am hiding behind my spotted curtains, peeping out into this blustery evening, enclosing myself in their shadow. It's only seven o' clock. But tonight I want to shut out the street and the damp air, and the wind blowing over the sea that churns at the foot of my road.
     I'm dissatisfied with the evening, and myself in it. I'm an unmoored boat, adrift in its tides. I've been looking up writing courses today; I've had more ideas for a book, the music making is still in process, tomorrow I sculpt - in short, I am not bereft of creative juice. But tonight I am scrabbling for an excuse just to turn off my light and obliterate the day. How lovely that would be, in one sense. And how tragic, in another, to ever want a day to end, to ever want to dull the senses to it so that one cannot feel so much. I can understand that desire, need even, when life bites hard on your shoulders, but today it's almost the mildness of it that's doing me in. Mildness can be deadly.
     I wish to be an animal in the woods tonight; I don't want to be human. I want to be feral, sniffing out hedgerows and following tracks to my burrow. I want the moon to guide my whiskers; I want undergrowth to be my bed sheets, my paws to do the talking. I want my nose to be my ally, and my belly to rub on the fur of another, roll amongst the fir cones. I will jump away from strangers and shun all that's human in this kingdom. Only a catkin and the most tender of branches will do. Only the soil will keep me happy.
     Else let me be a penguin, high on the ridge of the whitest world.