2010 June | Sleep is for the Weak

Writing Workshop: Light

Posted by Josie on Jun 24, 2010 in Writing, Writing Workshop | 16 comments

Welcome back to your Writing Workshop.

At the bottom of this post you’ll find the widget to link up your posts. I hope you found a prompt to inspire you this week and help you create something new, a new piece of you.

I’ve chosen prompts number 5 – light. There was a reason I chose this word this week, for light has been all around me.

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I am addicted to light.

The heavy, hot kind. The kind that covers you like a blanket. Fire on your limbs and on your eyelids. The burning kind.

I am addicted to that sticky light, that comes just before the sunset. Coating everything in thick, syrupy honey-light. Sticking to leaves and branches as it drips through like liquid gold. I want to drink it, to smother myself in it and glow like it does.

That half-light, that filters through the curtains at sunrise, when I often seem to wake, if only for a moment or two. That light that comes threaded with solitary bird song, and long shadows that make my legs look long. It is the kind of light you would like for looking at someone beautiful, mouth slightly open as they sleep. The light mingling with their breath and kissing their face with soft shafts.

I am addicted to that last light. Hanging in the air like a grapefruit. I want to stretch up and pluck it from the purple clouds and eat it down until there is only darkness and I can sleep.

And I am addicted to moonlight, too. When gold turns to silver and my mind wakes up. When dreams mingle with reality and my thoughts and body are moved by a force that is not my own. It is a light of fantasy, and submission, and deep water that stirs and swirls.

It is like love, light, as a particularly lovely sunbeam said. It IS love. Bringing with it synthesis, a knitting together, recombining of parts of self to create something new. It feeds growth, pulling me in new directions like a climbing rose.

I turn to face it, running towards it arms, open wide, and I breathe it in. I let it fill me up and surrender to it, until it is I and I am it.

I will let it take me to wherever it leads.

Solstice Sunset

So now it’s your turn. What prompt did you choose?

1. Tell me about a time you felt sexy, completely comfortable in your own skin. Or if you struggle to feel like that, write a story in which you do. What would make you feel sexy?
- Inspired by Catherine at ‘How to laugh in the face of it all’ and her BRILLIANT short story about a Denise who dared to bare.

2. Many, many people have or do suffer with depression at one point or another, myself including. What does depression feel like to you? Find words, descriptions, poems, stories, to give shape to that dark place that so many of us share.
- Inspired by Holly’s moving post: ‘Anatomy of depression’.

3. Write about a time you put yourself first. How did it feel? Or if you end up feeling an eternal ‘second’, what about yourself and your life would you like to be made more of a priority? Time to be a little selfish!
- Inspired by Sarah at ‘A Life More Lived’ who’s been brave enough to say no.

4. “It’s your fault!”. Time to write about a time when you felt the blame was firmly with another person. Absolve yourself from responsibility!
- Inspired by A Modern Military Mother’s musings about blame and original sin, which made me smile.

And finally, the last prompt is just one word. This should allow you a bit more creative freedom if you feel like taking the safety harness that particular week.

5. Your word for the week is: Light
- Suggested by @amylane from Cooking, Cakes and Children, and in honour of the longest day.

Leave your name and the URL to your post in the MckLinky below (the URL should be to your post not just to your blog) and leave me a comment to let me know you’ve taken part. If you have the time it would be great if you could try and read and comment on at least two other entries. And be kind! It’s supposed to be a bit of fun – we’re not looking for the next Booker Prize winner here.

If you haven’t had chance to respond yet, then you’ve still got till Sunday to enter your link! Or just wait till next week, when there’ll be five brand new prompts to get you thinking.

This Writing Workshop is brought to you in association with Mama Kat’s Losin’ It – who’s lovely author came up with the concept and runs her own workshop over in the U.S.

The Gallery: Creatures

Posted by Josie on Jun 23, 2010 in Photography | 24 comments

This post was written for Week 16 of Tara’s Gallery.

The theme this week was Creatures.

I chose my favourite bird and a piece of my soul. The Owl.

Words by Laurie. Photos by me.

Torn Owl

by Laurie Lee

On eves of cold, when slow coal fires,
rooted in basements, burn and branch,
brushing with smoke the city air;
When quartered moons pale in the sky,
and neons glow along the dark
like deadly nightshade on a briar;
Above the muffled traffic then
I hear the owl, and at his note
I shudder in my private chair.
For like an auger he has come
to roost among our crumbling walls,
his blooded talons sheathed in fur.
Some secret lure of time it seems
has called him from his country wastes
to hunt a newer wasteland here.
And where the candlabra swung
bright with the dancers’ thousand eyes,
now his black, hooded pupils stare,
And where the silk-shoed lovers ran
with dust of diamonds in their hair,
he opens now his silent wing,
And, like a stroke of doom, drops down,
and swoops across the empty hall,
and plucks a quick mouse off the stair…

Down to the woods (part 2)

Posted by Josie on Jun 22, 2010 in Photography | 6 comments

Yesterday was trees, but Weston Park, where we visited on Sunday, has gardens too. I was on a review trip there on behalf of Have a Lovely Time and you will be able to read all about it there later this week.

In the mean time though, here are flowers, for you.

Breathe deep. They smelt WONDERFUL.

You can view the whole set of photographs from my day here

It’s a week of pictures this week, hope that’s ok. Gallery post tomorrow and then some words for you on Thursday.

Thanks for looking x

Down to the woods (part 1)

Posted by Josie on Jun 21, 2010 in Photography | 18 comments

Yesterday was a near perfect day. Sunshine, laughter, a solitary walk through the woods while Ant kept Kai occupied.

Mesmerising light flickering through the trees, the shape of the leaves’ shadows on my face. The sound of the bees and bird song in the quiet afternoon.

Like I said. Perfect.