On the make

Reverb10 task for today:

December 6 – Make.

What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?

Easy peasy this one:

1. I made a salad for me tea
   
2. tomatoes, artichokes from a jar, hummus, beetroot, black pitted olives, fake cheeze, a fancy-dan half baguette, a knife, a fork and a plate to put it all on so I could carry it from kitchen to the other room
   
3. some nice pasties followed by a massive sponge cake with lots of chocolate cream on the top and down the sides (and maybe in the middle too)

Am guessing this prompt was meant to be a little more 'spititual' than this - particularly given the way the last few seem to have been heading - but then, lets face it, you can't fill your butties with poems.

[Note: At first I thought maybe 'make love' would have been better for number 3, but then its not just about clearing time is it? (in our house you have to clear the toys off the bleedin' floor as well)]

Reverb10 - moment

OK this one is about a moment from this year when you felt most alive. Also supposed to add lots of descriptive bits.

Initially I just thought I was just going to be lazy and put a photo up of a time I remember in the summer when we were with Tammy's family, walking back along the seafront after a nice meal out together.

It was one of the most relaxed nights out we'd ever really managed with Jake, particularly for me as he was very well behaved, ate well, but mostly because he was happy to play with other people - not just me for once.

It was still warm when we left, had just got dark and the moon was shining bright and full behind us out to sea.

I was running and playing games with Jake and Alyx (his 12 year old cousin), laughing a lot, feeling like a kid all over again. I remember running backwards so I could watch Jake try to keep up - make sure he didn't fall over and hurt himself. Jake simply beamed with energy and joy (God knows where he got it from - or where my energy came from for that matter - must have been the sea air).

Behind me I would catch glimpses of Tammy walking arm in arm with her brother. I couldn't really see closely, but I like to imagine she was as content that time as I was. Long held plans had finally come together and people seemed to be having a good time. An actual holiday. A time when we could relax a bit. Something we hadn't been able to do for far too long.

It made me feel as if things didn't always have to be the way they were, and that maybe, just maybe, we could live a normal and happy life again some day soon...

.

Couldn't find the photo. I know we had some. I also remember how disappointed I was with how they came out. How they just didn't get anywhere close to capturing the beauty of reflection of the moon against the sea.

Why bother? #Reverb10

Prompt: What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it? (Prompt Author: Leo Babauta)

There is an implication in this prompt I find a little scary - ie that you should live purely for your writing, or turn all you do into creative fodder. That sounds a bit too extreme for me. Maybe that is because I am not a serious writer. Maybe its because I have become cynical over the years. Maybe its because I think that balance is more important.

I go through phases when I feel like I need some kind of creative exercise to stop my mind freezing up. Right now it is this Reverb doohickey. Before it was doing drawings and paintings, and pretending to be a Mexican finger puppet living in a kneepit world of corruption and sadness. Long before that there was music and films.

This creative urge is not daily for me by any means, and since my son was born it is rare that it has even crossed my mind at all.

But I know it is there, somewhere inside me, as it probably is in all of us to some degree, and it feels good to let it loose once in a while.

So to answer the original question - I do lots of things that don't contribute, and many more which make it practically impossible. But within all that I know that if I really want to write, and can start to enjoy it for the sake of it (rather than for the hope that someone somewhere out there will like what I do) then I will make the time somehow.

Right now what I really need to eliminate is the fear that I have nothing worth saying, and my own laziness.

I also need few more good prompts.

After all, we all need a good promting every now and then don't we?

2010 - Gubbins, 2011 - Survival

A new challenge, prompted by my other half.

One word that describes last year -

Gubbins

This means its not been great, there has been stress from many sides. Not least having to watch the suffering of someone special to me, from an ever increasing and helpless distance. Thankfully Jake gives us so much energy and purpose that this year has also been one of the most liveable and joyful I can remember.

I chose the word gubbins because it is something Jake increasingly now uses to describe anything out of place around him, and is one of the few things guaranteed to make that person I was telling you about crack one of her incredible smiles.

Next year - I would wish for survival. That should be enough for all of us. One step at a time.

---

Gubbins is a chiefly British and by now old-fashioned slang term that originally meant the fragments of something. It then became used to describe an amount of nondescript (and presumably useless) bits and pieces - "I can't even get into the shed because your father's got all his old gubbins lying around." - and therefore figuratively to mean unimportant nonsense

.............

Fuck

Jake does a poo

At least we think that's what he is doing...

Here's what we have been up to lately

Say hello to baby Jake

Born 23 July 2008 at 8.45am. 3.85 kilos.



The music you hear is Gulag Orkestra lp by Beirut.

Aliens have landed...

A little something created recently.

Hope to have it finished in July.