What Is Friend?

We all know of the archetypal writer, an introverted character, struggling to find the right word, passionate with a message, a muse an inspiration. 

I describe the writer of leisure, the writer who is able to indulge a creative whim, the writer who does not have to get up and go to work tomorrow, or see to the dinner or put together a fancy dress costume at late notice for a play you missed in the school newsletter.

The leisurely writer is aloof and mingles with only a select few. OK I might be going a bit far with this, but this is how I always envisaged a writer. When in fact the only way a writer is likely to come up with new ideas, original notions and character driven narratives is by getting out there and mixing.

In the past month my family and I have been doing quite a lot of mixing, we have done two craft fairs (one in the pouring rain), we have been to one private art showing of contemporary sculpture, and then last weekend we part took in a Cos-play event and later that evening we attended an international language and cultural event where I read my poem My Mother’s Land.

I love people. I like nearly everyone I meet and am generally a dreadful judge of character. I enjoy talking to people and people give me ideas, ideas for plot lines, ideas for characters, even just ideas for character descriptions.

During these past weeks of mixing I have met and talked too old ladies about sewing, young mothers about children, a well traveled woman who wrote for the world of fashion, a doctor of philosophy who didn’t know what sominal realism was but defined nominal realism for me. I have met and talked to games enthusiasts, I have discussed gardening, community projects, I have petted numerous dogs and conversed with several tramps all of whom were enamored with my husband’s art work.

At the language and cultural event (LESIN) I met my first Mexican (South America fascinates me), I spoke to some Arab men (two of whom turned out to be visiting from my home town Cardiff). I chatted to several Spaniards; who were all quite stereo-typically smoking on the balcony. I talked to a chap from the Czech Republic, an American travel writer and a Syrian Asylum seeker.

These have all been great experiences, new conversations, new music, new dancing (from the Philippines) the beautiful rhythm of foreign languages and exiting exotic food. The language and cultural evening was several hours of thoroughly enjoyable newness; but for one thing…

The Syrian: he stood alone in the corner of the balcony, I spoke to him and asked his story. He said “I am Asylum”. He has been here for eleven months and his English is poor. I asked had he made any friends.  “What is friend?” And I struggled to explain with words he might understand.

Mixing is important, it’s where you get ideas and inspiration but it’s also how you make friends and everyone needs a friend.

The Delights of Delirium

I have succumbed to the phenomena known as Dry January, JessHelicopter is doing it again and I realize it will no doubt be good for me; furthermore abstinence can lead to great spiritual insight and by default creativity. I can be more or less guaranteed creative clarity probably even a burst or two of uncontrolled genius; indeed during an exceptionally wet Last Day of December, I was so overcome with the planned content of my next lecture that I wrote it as sixty eight page screen play, with Anne Hathaway in the leading role.

Then the delirium came. At first I assumed it was a hangover, I've had hangovers enough to know them well and to recognize an impostor: the common cold masquerading as a regular hangover, like the tail end of a hurricane promising to “clear the air”. No air was cleared, the throbbing head of shrunken brain did not lessen but worsened and spread to throbbing nose and aching teeth, until the cold became more than an ailment of the head and seeped into an affliction of the bones, of the joints of the nerve endings.

Teenage reading of Victorian novels has left me well versed in the art of convalescing and so I retired to my bedroom chamber where propped up by a mound of tapestry pillows, and beneath a hundred feather quilts I entered that delicious stage of delirium; my skin so sensitive it might have belonged to my sixteen year old self about to explode from the brush of my true loves fingers, my mind a whir of disjointed Dr. Who like thoughts and acid house fractals, where a thousand ideas fluttered about me laughing at my fingers too weak to hold a pen, my eyes too pained to see the paper and my logic thwarted by the marking of seams and UV unwrapping of a billion honey combs. I tossed and turned, I felt every lump and bump in the mattress as though I were a Princess brought in from the storm only to have my night’s sleep ruined by a single pea. I sensed every speck of dust in the room, heard each rain drop as it slid down the window pane and saw shadows in the mirrors that did not belong, as there are no tapered candles here to flicker on Grace Poole’s table.

a new look me as illustrated by  AndyArtisand

The adventures into which I was plunged that night, the terrible dreams, the falling through abyss after abyss and twisting from one warped reality into another; left me cleansed. Two months later or was it two days? I emerged as a young tribesman might from initiation into adult hood, as a fresh Witch from her first flight across the moonlit sky, and the jumble that was honeycombs, shadows and snippets of yes I must confess: Leonard Cohen songs, cleared to open a pathway onwards and deeper into January. Yes I am still tender and require gentle care, I can only drink consommé the colour of August sunshine but I have found the next lines to chapter nine. I can go on! I embrace you Dry January, I thank you Delirium and I hate you Mondays, for tomorrow is back to work.