postaday

Inspirovend

church end library

Inspirovend

“It’s quiet, I get to concentrate.” I feel the need to explain myself to the librarian, because no one comes here anymore. He answers me with a soft smile and returns to his seat to do, well, whatever it is that librarians do these days.

I have the wifi password on a slip of paper in one hand and my laptop in the other. I’ve come here to write. There is just too much stuff in my study, and too many people talking about the novels they are writing in the coffee bar. I just need to write, not be distracted, not talk about writing, but write.

The shelves are all scattered at odd angles, labelled with little laminated signs taped onto the melamine. I wonder through geology and ancient history looking for a desk. There are some visible through the gaps in the books, but when I turn corners there is nothing there but another row of shelves. Looking back I can’t see the librarian’s counter anymore, and when I turn again there is a single plastic seat and a small metre square desk in front of me.

The rows of books are clearly doing my head in, but since there is a power socket and a vending machine nearby I decide not to pass up the chance for some quiet writing time.

I haven’t been to the library for years. We used to hang out there all the time as kids, pretending to study, and spending time being young and carefree in the neighbouring graveyard. Then age happened, and the internet and ebooks. When the kids were born the shadowed coolness and silence of the library suddenly became very attractive.

I settle into the hard plastic, slipping a little until I learn the right way to place my feet on the parquet floor. This isn’t the welcoming cushion of my study chair, just the durable function of an L shape on legs.

Ten minutes later and I’ve been staring at the screen and not written a word. It is as though the silence has sucked language out of me, and there is nothing left to be said. The scrape of the chair as I stand echoes in the stillness.

My heels tap as I wander over to the vending machine. There are little cardboard squares in the spirals, with an alpha numeric code and a description. I have to read them twice over before I realise what they say.

I take a step back. In neat Times New Roman there is inscribed across the top “InspiroVend”, and what it seems to sell is inspiration. The little cards are labelled: “plot twists”, “character outlines”, “locations”, “tropes”, “haiku” and so on in a dizzying array.

I can’t resist, but there doesn’t seem to be a keypad to make a choice, or a coin slot to pay, just a slight depression the size of a bottle top. I push my thumb into it to see if there is a flip out panel, and then snatch it back. There is a small ball of blood on my thumb, and a needle sliding back into the machine. Instinctively I put my thumb in my mouth to stop the bleeding, and the machine grinds into life.

A card drops into the slot below the viewing pane. I pick it up with one hand and twist it open. There are a couple of lines from a poem inside:

The black dog orbits the horseshoe pond

for treefrogs in their plangent emergencies.

S Cassarino

I stare at it, smoothing back the thin card with both hands. A little smear of blood marks the stark white card.

I know this mood, I know this moment, I hold it very very gently. I’m back at the laptop and the keys begin to tap.

When I leave, that indeterminate amount of time later, when the words have finally run out, and the enervation of coming off a writing high kicks in, I pass the librarian at the counter still doing his unfathomable thing.

“I hope you found what you were looking for,” he says quietly.

 

End

Photo lifted from BrokenBarnet.Blogspot.com until I can get over there to shoot one of my own.

The full text of the gorgeous poem by Stacie Cassarino can be found here

Links to my books are available from my Amazon author page, they are also sold by other reputable bookstores. Please read, rate and review.

Catching Cats

2011-01-04 17.32.45

I don’t sleep enough to give my mind and body their full measure of rest. I know this because only 5% of men in my age bracket sleep less than I do.

I was given a Fitbit for father’s day; it is a little pocket spy that counts every step and stair, and through the night monitors movement. The sleep monitoring is the part that interested me most, a chance to prove whether the perception of my restless tossing and turning is real, and when (if at all) it happens.

It happens. Periodically through the night and then in the small hours: three in the morning, a little flurry of movement, enough to break the depths of slumber, sometimes enough to wake me up entirely. I know. I don’t know what to do with the knowledge.

The gadget has changed my night time rituals. I am now a slave to the data. The day’s record of steps, stairs, calories, active minutes are squeezed to the last moment, pored over in the study.

At times I have fallen asleep over the stats, only to stumble down the stairs and into bed, fumbling with the wrist strap and hoping I have hit the sleep button.

That’s when the drowsiness flees. A startled cat that had been still and now is gone in three bounds. I lure it back with books and solitaire, realise when the tablet falls from nerveless fingers it is here, purring and ready. I rescue my spectacles, check the alarm again, knowing I will wake half an hour before it rings, and try to hold on to the furry somnolence.

 

END

Links to my books are available from my Amazon author page, they are also sold by other reputable bookstores. Please read, rate and review.

 

Constant companion

 

Constant companion

Constant companion

I was given this watch by my uncle on my 21st birthday, and I have worn it constantly for the last twenty years. Well, perhaps not constantly, it has been to the dry cleaners twice in the pockets of trousers, and was recently back at the factory for a month having a service and the glass replaced.

A quick look on ebay showed I could have got myself a new one for half what I paid getting this repaired. I’ve lost count of the new batteries and the new straps I have been through. This is the ounce of home that goes everywhere with me.

The Million Words

The Million Words

A sestina on word use

 

There may be as many as a million words 
In English – lingua franca of the world 
Which sponge like soaks up other tongues 
And claims all new inventions as its own 
Despite this fruitful garden we still choose 
To limit the range of language that we use 
 
Is it abuse to not put into use 
The full breadth of the lexicon of words 
To slam shut the brace of Oxfords and to choose 
To constrain ourselves into a smaller world 
Do we forsake the very thing we own 
By shackling the freedom of our tongues 
 
Or is it that we fear speaking in tongues 
Turning phrases others do no use 
If we claim the rare and complex for our own 
Always ready with les mots justes, perfect words 
Do we depart from the rest of the speaking world 
Is true erudition something we can really choose? 

 

So, fearful of ridicule, we choose
To lay conforming yokes upon our tongues
Denominate ourselves low in the world
Demote to the demotic what we use
To the commonest and easiest of words
We bind the cadences of what we own

 

But what if there was more that we could own
What if we were truly free to choose
From that list of nigh a million words
Free to twist and stretch our willing tongues
Bring the forgotten and obscure back into use
To enlighten and enrapture the whole world

 

Will we deal a recumbenitiban blow to the world
As we autohagiography the expressions that we own
And manifest what could be put to use
Or,  revealed as philosophunculists by what we choose
Will we trip upon our hamartithic tongues
As we dentiloquently squeeze out words

 

The world I fear will judge by what we choose
Nor are we free to unfetter our own tongues
We will never use that million list of words

Me

Today.

 

Monsoon IV

Monsoon IV

by Ruswa Fatehpuri

 

It does not rain in Singapore

The heavens weap single tears

Four miles wide, six miles deep

The pavements that we thought so even

Hide inch deep pools to soak your feet

As I once washed your mother’s

Before the thought of you

 

Small hand in my hand, ice cream sticky

Humid, wet as we splash puddles

Bath water warm, spring water clear

You learn what it is to love the rain

And I learn again

It does not rain in Singapore

And this small hand in my hand is not love

But something deeper, wider, something more

 

You can find more of Ruswa Fatehpuri here

Unsafe Containers – Schoolroom vignette

The DP prompted me to make a little more progress on my novel The Streetsweeper of Between: here is a little developmental extract that will slot in somewhere:

–>

“It is highly acidic, don’t spill a drop.”

Cecilia’s arms were aching, and the heat of the glass bowl was making her hands go red. She was standing on one foot on top of a pile of books, holding the bowl at arm’s length and trying to balance. It wasn’t, she reflected, the most unusual of Miss Bridges’ lessons.

Her governess was holding a candle underneath the bowl, keeping the fluid inside it warm. The bottom was slowly turning black with soot. The slight quiver from Cecilia’s arms made the surface of the supposed acid ripple, although Cecilia doubted Miss Bridges would take such a risk.

“How long do I have to hold this?” Cecilia asked through clenched teeth. She had been at this for almost five minutes and her strength was draining rapidly.

“That’s up to you.” Sometimes Miss Bridges had an annoying way of not actually answering a question, but Cecilia had learned that it meant the wrong question had been asked.

“What are my options?” she tried.

Miss Bridges smiled as Cecilia risked a glance her way. The little flash of approval steadied her on the pile of books for a few moments more.

“You have four. You could drop it.”

“That would damage the school room floor.” Cecilia shot back.

“Very well, then you could drink it down.”

“It is acid I would die.”

“You could ask for help so you could let it go.”

Cecilia paused. She knew her governess’ methods. “Why would someone help me?” Miss Bridges smiled again, “Let’s come back to that one. It’s too late for your final option. You could avoid letting the bowl fill up in the first place.”

With a sigh Cecilia stepped down from the pile of books and placed the bowl on her desk, the fluid inside flowed back and forth with the movement, almost, but not quite spilling over. “So this is one of your allegorical lessons.” Miss Bridges nodded, blowing out the candle and picking off the little bits of wax that had dripped onto her fingers. Cecilia sat down on the pile of books, and rubbed her aching arms. “The best solution is to avoid the liquid building up, which means there is a choice. Once it has built up the best way to let go of it is to find someone to help. I could let it go, or drink it down, but there are consequences to each. And I couldn’t hold on to it because eventually I would tire.”

“A reasonable summary.”

“Could I stop the fluid dripping, so it didn’t need to be caught?” Cecilia asked.

“Possibly, but for most people that would be unnatural.”

Cecilia supressed her own smile, it was unusual for Miss Bridges to give away a clue like that, but there was no reason to let on that she had picked up on it. “Anger.” She said, looking up at Miss Bridges.

“Go on.”

“It is natural to feel anger, but the trick is not the let it build up. Once it has accumulated the best thing to do is get help, discuss it, resolve it. If you let it all go you hurt those around you, if you take it all in yourself, you hurt yourself.”

“Very good,” Miss Bridges picked up a little square of paper and dropped it in the bowl. It turned yellow and began to dissolve. “Now one more lesson for today: next time I tell you that you are holding a pan of acid please be a little more careful where you put it.”

END

If you are interested in my storytelling look here

The Patron Saint of Daydreaming

The Patron Saint of Daydreaming

I am the patron saint of Daydreaming (sidebar: procrastination)

So consider long your pilgrimage to my half-built, abandoned shrine

The provisions you will take, the relics you may find

Then strike out in your mind’s eye for than far destination

Draft up your list of longings, as I have scribbled mine

Not in any published form, but in the novel of the mind

Then plan how you will seek me out in search of your salvation

But do not take the primal step, wait first for my sign

Just ruminate and cogitate, if you are of my kind

When I do nothing with your service, then call it affirmation

Ruswa Fatehpuri (Me) 2014

 

I’m also reminded of one of my favourite songs by All About Eve – Freeze – one of those “I wish she was singing about me” songs, which includes the lines:

“You’re like a favourite saint, kept alive in prayer and paint

One looked a lot like you, saucer eyed and stoned and out of the blue”

Although on the point of daydreaming the very dreamy Wishing the Hours Away is more relevant.

End

Find out more about my writing here.

There is a Ruswa Fatehpuri chapbook out there too