Issara Simone Edwards's Blog, page 16

The Oracle Series: The Patron Saint of Loneliness.

‘The Patron Saint of Loneliness’ New print now available: https://society6.com/product/the-oracle-series-the-patron-saint-of-loneliness-art-print_print

[Aka, Saint Barbara. The patron saint of thunder and lightning, storms, winds and hurricane. She blows away impurities, leaving the atmosphere cleansed and fresh. Also the patron of miners, military personnel, mathematics and learning.]

28.01.2021.

I finished ‘The Patron Saint of Loneliness’. She has a crown above her head, signifying her sainthood, with five… crown points? signifying the five stages of life, which is also represented by the moon phases emerging from her chest. Behind her is a pool of green water, a sea of lost souls. Or it’s the moon eclipsed, the sun trying to shine out from behind it. Unlike ‘Hekat’, she is mature, womanly, motherly, ready to embrace and comfort, or drag you down into her depths if you get too lost in her.

25.02.2021.

The green pool behind her is heart green, heart chakra green, hearth expanding, all encompassing, loving, embracing green. Loving green, opening green, expanding green.

‘The Murder of Miss O’ is also available from Amazon.

It’s a Lovely Day for a Garden Party.

Saturday 30th of March 2019

I opened my eyes. I could not see. But it was just my destination.

It’s foggy outside and the words ‘silver shiver’ come to mind when I stare into it.

I’ve been invited to a child’s birthday garden party today. The child I like, the rest of the group, not so much. Also, I’m not a child, and have no children, it feels awkward going to a children’s party. What do I do? What do childless people do at children’s parties? Honestly, I don’t think it’s appropriate to invite us, we have no reason to be there. I have a plan though, arrive late, leave early.

Also, I’ve never understood why its considered rude to bring a book to a child’s party when you have zero kids to look out for and no one wants to talk to you because they don’t trust a childless adult at a kids party. And, I have nothing to say to them because I have nothing in common with people who only talk about their kids.

This won’t be my first, or even my fifth awkward rodeo.

I love to complain don’t I?

Okay, I get to wear a new dress today, perfect for a garden party. I get to see my little buddy and I hope that she likes her present. Ummm…. I got nothing else.

I’m sat at the kitchen table drinking chocolate tea. The living room’s too loud with the TV on, it’s five to nine and I’ve only had five hours sleep so my head’s killing me. I stayed up watching ‘The OA’, and my neighbours are savages who don’t believe in quiet time in the mornings.

Update on the boiler, still no heat or hot water, but whatever. I’m getting used to it, I depressingly knew I would.

Last night, well, this morning, before I went to bed, I questioned and I answered. I knew and I questioned some more. It has to do with Reed and Elder, exploration and living, reality and illusion. Let me go look for a sharpener.

Later:

That took longer than I thought, there were detours.

Okay, so last night, early this morning, I asked myself a question. What if I gave up my fantasy world and lived here? Connection is what keeps me here, when I’m spending time with my sister, I’m here. To live here, I would need someone to live here with. Until then…

Then I was told I would find the rest of my answers in a book. I should explain.

I think the universe speaks, but it doesn’t have a voice of it’s own. It’s like The Prophets in ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’, it borrows, it uses what it can. Like a song that pops into your head out of nowhere, repeating lyrics until you realise “Oh, that’s what it’s trying to tell me.”

Now, it might not be the universe, it could be aliens, it could be the subconscious, it doesn’t matter, at least, not yet. The point is, I’m told to look in this book for an answer.

There’s a character in my head that I always return to, he’s sometimes different, but he’s always the same. He always has the same name, Reed. Right now he’s Jona Reed and his partner, Emery Elder.

The universe asks me why I always return to this character, and why is wife is now important, then tells me the answer in a book. It’s something I haven’t looked at yet, but I find the book upstairs in the bookcase and find that I’m looking under Celtic Moon Months. Reed and Elder are together, twelve and thirteen. I read what it says:

[The Reed Moon is the time to withdraw from the outer world and look into yourself. It is the month in which we honour the dead and receive messages from the spirit world.

The Elder Moon is the time of endings and beginnings, the last cycle in the Celtic moon moths. It signifies the renewal of energy and the continuous journey of the soul towards greater happiness and understanding. It’s the time to break old habits and patterns that have restricted your growth, to evaluate the past and work out what you want for the future.]

I have learned so much from my ‘inner world’. It’s been a continuous, stable and safe place for me to explore different aspects of myself. But is it keeping me from living? Is it an ‘old habit’ I need to break?

The sun’s come out. The fog has descended back into whatever rocky crag it sprang from. It’s time to get dressed for the party, do my hair, get cash out for later tonight. I’m going to a ‘Casino Royale’ party tonight, it’s my sister’s birthday too. I don’t have it in me to dress like a Bond girl’ so, I’m dressing up like Luna-Rose instead. I even bought a white wig.

‘The Murder of Miss O’, it’s a novella, I wrote it, I’m promoting it.

Okay.

Print available on Society6.com https://society6.com/product/photography5192280_framed-print?sku=s6-20404188p21a12v65a13v54

Saturday 23rd of March 2019

I woke up feeling better today. We still have no heat or hot water, but I just feel better. I started the day by making a list of things to do, things I haven’t been doing because I didn’t feel capable of doing anything. It’s a really long list so I’ll give myself until April to get through it.

The sun’s also out, kinda. It’s still cloudy, but it’s brighter, a white grey as supposed to a black grey.

Also available, this book, ‘The Murder of Miss O’ not from Society6 though, from a booky place, like Amazon.

Another Update.

Thursday 21st of March 2019

Still no heat. Still no hot water. The insurance company can do nothing. The insurance company only covers accidents and emergencies and this doesn’t count apparently. We have blankets, we have a kettle, it’s fine, whatever.

We’re not eligible for financial assistance and a new boiler so what we need is £2,000, or near about. Okay. Fine.

If we wait two months there’s a scheme we could get on to where we’ll only have to pay £240. Okay. Fine.

It’ll be another five days before we find out if we’re eligible for this scheme. We might be, we might not be. Okay. Fine.

I’m getting used to being cold. It’s not quiet like I used to think, it has sound, it has gravity. It sinks into bones until you’re not just cold, but are cold. I’m cold down to what scraps of personality I’ve managed to cling to. I’m just cold and I’m okay with that. I’m not feeling much of anything else anymore, just this one things and it’s fine.

It could be peace, this cold tone, silvery humming. Maybe this is peace. I think I would like it, if I could feel it. I’ll go back to sleep instead, sleep is

‘The Murder of Miss O’ available from booky places, like Amazon and Kindle…

This World is a Faulty Video Game.

Sunday 17th of March 2019.

Yesterday I felt accomplished. I watched a YouTube video with my sister, and together we learned how to bleed our radiators. We were bosses, taking charge, being in control, not needing anyone’s help. The heating worked perfectly for the first time in months… for about an hour.

The boiler broke down. No hot water, no heat. Then the boiler started leaking and we had to switch the water off at the mains. No water at all. The rest is dark, let’s not discuss it.

Yesterday was Saturday. Today the insurance company sent a balding, sickly sweet smelling man to turn off the water to the boiler and tell us we need a new boiler. We have running water again, but still no heat. The insurance company will call on Tuesday to tell us what they can do.

I’m trapped, I’m stressed, tired and something else. I don’t think there’s a word for it. It’s like homesick, but it’s for a place I don’t remember. I don’t want to be here anymore. I’ve had enough of this perceptually faulty video game. I want out. But my sister’s here, and she needs me, so, I’m willing to stay for her. End of story.

I thought I’d suggest another book today, how about ‘Slade House’ by David Mitchell, it’s really good, if you’re into weird fiction.

Progress Report.

Thursday 14th of March 2019

I woke up to discover my expertly made holes in the door have been covered over by a towering mountain of books. These piles consist of some very interesting books, which I guess is part of the point. I have to read them to get to the door, only then can I start again with the hatchet.

I know what you’re thinking. Why don’t I move the books? Well, I’ve tried that. Then I turned around and they’d moved right back. Why don’t I take the hatchet to them? Well, every time I think of doing that, the hatchet disappears.

I think, no, I know, I’m being sabotaged. I see something, out of the corner of my eye sometimes. I hear whispers. This hotel is huge and I’ve bee stuck in the lobby. Who else is in here with me? Maybe before I can get out, I have to find a way to go further in? Maybe. Is that my new favourite word? It can join why.

I keep seeing spiders but I know they’re not real, real spiders are consistent, they don’t vanish and reappear, like a light flicking on and off.

I thought that maybe the books could be the way out, but they’re probably just here to distract me. I said before that I’ve never been able to explore the rest of this hotel, I don’t think I’ve really tried. On the other side of this lobby is a door, kind of. It’s door shaped. It’s a door of stars, and empty blank space. It’s beautiful and terrifying to look at. But, it’s a way out, right? It’s space, right?

I’ve tried to walk through it, when I’ve been brave enough to, it always bounces me back, as though there’s a rubber shield in front of it. But it is door shaped, so maybe it just needs s key. Maybe, again.

I went to a ‘Writing for Wellbeing’ class on the 10th, did I mention that? I really enjoyed it. Now what? There were five people in the class, including the instructor. One person arrived late, another left early, so at time there were four, including myself.

Progress is never progress, not really, not here. I think this is hell sometimes. It would explain a lot. I died, probably a lifetime ago, and this is the hell I’ve trapped myself in. It’s not intended to be cruel, just to keep me here, because sometimes imprisonment is punishment enough. What did I do, you wonder? How did I get here? I lied, I stole, I was disrespectful and ungrateful. I was manipulative and cruel. I was a coward, I was false.

One of the books in the pile is called ‘The Little Book of Mindfulness’ by Dr Patriza Collard, 2014. I’ve read it before, but I’ll read it again. I’ve got time. I’m not going anywhere.

‘The Murder of Miss O’ available on Amazon and stuff, check it out if you feel like it.

Nightmares.

Tuesday 12th of March 2019

This morning I feel so anxious that between the wind outside, my mother’s aggressive cough and just everything, I feel like I’m going to break. Every sound is making me feel terrified, like the world itself is about to break apart.

It started last night really. I looked in the mirror and my face wasn’t mine. I saw it change right in front of me, and it was the scariest thing of my life.

My face is never exactly how I leave it, I know that. It changes. Something is always slightly different from one day to the next. I’d always assumed it happened when I was sleeping, something in sleep would reset itself. But to see it happen in real time, to see my face change shape, my eyelids shift and reform, I wasn’t prepared for that.

Maybe I was tired, maybe I was hallucinating, but I avoid mirrors for the rest of the night. This morning I looked, the changes are still there, so maybe I wasn’t seeing things. But now every sound is startling, every emotion is bracing, including my own. I’m scared and I don’t know why. So, I’m just gonna lie here. I’m just gonna lie here until the world makes sense again.

Later:

I cause trouble. I make life hard for the people around me. I cause trouble. I should be silent and invisible, or not here at all. That would work. Not here at all.

A piece of paper just disappeared. I saw it, I tried to touch it, then it just wasn’t there.

Okay, okay, that’s fine. That’s fine. It was never there. Maybe. Okay.

‘The Murder of Miss O’ a novella, available now, on Amazon and stuff.

Ants.

Saturday 9th of March 2019

I want to write in microcosmic bursts. I see printed pages, yellowy, fluffy to the touch as oily thumb prints stick to the corners. The pages that turn seem daunting.

I need to be small, a peanut out of its shell, an ant slowly coming out of the soil to build something great.

“Work like God. No task too humble, no scheme too grand.” I can’t find where I got that quote from, so forgive me for that, I’m still searching though.

I was going to write about my dad but I feel I’d just be repeating myself so let’s forget him and move on. Which is what I want to do, because I have a horrible confession that I don’t want to make. I want him to die. I want to be free of the obligation of feigning care for a stranger who I feel no connection to. I want to be free of the contract that states I have to care for a man who has abandoned me not once, not twice, but three times, just because we share blood. I want to not feel obligated, just because he now has cancer, to a man who stopped speaking to me for four years because my questioning of him disrespected him. I want to be rid of the man who, after said four years, walked up to me one day and said “Give me a hug” as though that fixed everything. Who does that?

So, that’s where I am right now. Feeling cold and guilty and struggling to accept what this want makes me. If he wasn’t sick I wouldn’t want him in my life, so why should his illness make a difference?

This isn’t a movie. I didn’t get the news and suddenly and instantly feel that we needed to reconnect before it’s too late. I felt sad for him and his family, the way a stranger in the street would upon hearing such news. And then I went back to my life, and my family, as a stranger in the street would.

My favourite question is why. It has been since I first learned the word. Why sparks so much, it sparks exploration and beginning. It’s the start of something not the end. By not knowing this about me, by not knowing anything about me, by not speaking to me for four years because I asked him “Why?”, that marked me. He doesn’t know me and I will never know him, I’m okay with that, why can’t he be? If I asked him that would I get an answer, or be shunned again?

I have all this nervous energy. I’m tired of sitting here. I want to do something to change the world. I feel frustrated, exasperated, disappointed, in myself and in the world. But I’m impotent in my desire for change. I see so many things broken and wrong and what can I do, lone wolf that I am, to change anything? People need to change, societies need to change, our ideas, our beliefs, everything needs to change, and I’m just, a person. One. Individual. Not mass. Not enough.

I can share my thoughts, I can hope others see merit. I can pray for change. Beyond that? I can donate to worthy causes and hope it gets to where it needs to be. I can keep feeling frustrated.

I could be like my cousin and rant on Facebook and believe that the venting does anything other than make me feel better. Or I could ignore and focus my attentions on celebrities and only support a cause if someone famous supports it too. I can keep writing, hoping, try to make things better in my own way, a word at a time.

Later:

You write something in a journal ant nine in the morning, then somehow at one in the afternoon it appears to be coming true. My dad has been hospitalised. I just got the news.

Later still:

Okay, where to start. I’m not back peddling, but he shouldn’t die. He has a family who care for him and he needs to live for them. The fact that I’m the last to hear that he was hospitalised on Thursday, two days ago, should speak volumes in itself. Despite this, I went to see him, dressed like Death, as a reminder. I cared as much as an acquaintance would, because I see the reality of what matters, appearance. Despite being the last to know, and the last to visit, as he pointed out, what matters is I visited, my true feelings are irrelevant, as are his. He needs to live for his family, his wife, daughter, son, adopted sons, grandchildren, the people he’s been there for, the people who have mattered to him. And I just want to be done. The insertion into his life is starting to feel too forced, I’ve always been his afterthought, at best.

Life Lessons:

I think things will be worse than they usually are.I blow things out of proportion.I overreact.Nothing is good or bad, it’s my thinking that makes it so.‘The Murder of Miss O’, it’s a book, it’s on sale, yeah, that’s it.

The Witness of Reality.

Thursday 28th of February 2019

Sometimes I forget that I’m real. I live so much in my head that sometimes I forget that this world is real and not just something I’m thinking.

I’ve lived in worlds of my own creation since I was eleven, is it fantasy-prone or obsessive?

Anyway, I don’t know why I’m here. I picked this up wanting to write, no, needing to, but I don’t know what I need to write. Maybe we should go back to the lobby.

The hatchet has made four large gashes in the boarded up door. I can see people on the outside, just going about their day. None of them notice me watching, none of them notice me. I’m not really there, I’m not a part of their world, I’m still in mine.

I keep looking out. In the distance there’s someone, someone staring back, holding a hand out to me. Just behind her is something else, something I can’t quite make out but it’s scaring me, making my whole body tense up. I don’t know what it is but it’s moving closer.

I look around the lobby, I realise it’s both empty and full. It’s huge and spacious, but I’ve exceeded it’s limits. It’s dimensions are crammed with me, my thoughts, my ideas, my plans, dreams, memories, desires, everything. I need more and because of this, I need more space. I’m not done growing yet, learning, and this enclosed space has reached capacity.

I feel broken. I feel like a broken toy that’s been smashed to pieces by an angry child with a large hammer. Not even an angry child actually, just a dumb child who likes the sensation of smashing things, with a large hammer.

No wonder I can’t seem to get a hold of anything, to grip anything. Everything just runs through my fingers as though I’m the one made of sand.

Give me some solid ground to walk on, give me a clear path to follow. Take away this doubt I have in myself, in the universe, in reality. Give me something to believe. Does everything have to be made up, to be subjective, to be gossamer in air?

‘The Murder of Miss O’ available now on Amazon.

As Long as There are Stars in the Sky.

Sunday 24th of February 2019

This is going to be short because I’m really tired.

There are two scars in my hand from when I was a baby. At some point they were in the centre of my hand, but now, one is by my little finger and the other nearer to my wrist, opposite my thumb.

This, to me, can only mean one thing. Nothing really changes, I have had the same skin since I was a baby. It has only stretched to accommodate a bigger form. I have had the same skin since I developed in the womb.

This is insignificant, until you apply it to the universe. It suggests that everything in the universe has always existed, it has just spread out.

Now applying the fact that nothing truly dies, everything is energy and energy can’t be destroyed only recycled… everything in the universe has always existed and will always exist.

Then bring it back to the body. I am part of the universe. You are part of the universe. We have always existed and will always exist.

Is that frightening or liberating?

Have you read ‘The Murder of Miss O’ yet?