Issara Simone Edwards's Blog, page 8
May 13, 2022
Illuminated Pages: Oceans and Dust, the Poems for Loneliness.
Book available now on Amazon and Kindle“There is no shortage of wonder in the human spirit. We were born to ask why. We are here to make up our own answers. This is the poetry of being alive.” – Jacqueline Suskin.
A few years back, I took an introduction to writing course, because it was free, and I was bored. The instructor was a beautiful, well-travelled woman, full of stories, sweetness and a little something under the surface that suggested she had some dark secrets waiting to be pulled out. But, I’m digressing, as per usual.
On one particular day, during one particular lesson, a fellow writer asked how one goes about writing a book and getting published. The answer she gave is one that I both understood and, down to my bones, disagreed with.
‘No one here is ever going to get published.’ she said, ‘Writing a book is difficult, it requires a lot. I should know, I’m currently writing a book myself, as a ghost writer.’
The guy who asked, nodded sullenly, everyone else in the class looked dejected. There’s a part of me still, to this day, that regrets not speaking up, not saying the words that I held in:
‘I’m a published author, so are you sure no one here is ever going to be published?’
Only three of us turned up to the next lesson, she had lost over half the class.
Why didn’t I speak up that day? Was it because I liked knowing something that she didn’t, or because even after being published I still lacked confidence in myself and my writing? I signed up for the course for a reason, right? Was it just because it was something to do once a week, or because I still felt I had a lot more to learn?
Why am I telling you this? Honestly, I have no idea, I’ll know when I’m done writing… hopefully.
July 2020, I took another course, this time it was online and with the poet Jacqueline Suskin and called ‘Every Day is a Poem’. Sorry, I just got distracted by a fidget spinner I made the mistake of leaving on my desk. Where were we? Poetry. Wait, I have notes on this. Okay, look at me being all professional with notes. And if you’re reading this and thought this was going to be an intellectual, ordered piece, I apologise, you’re in the wrong place, can I interest you with a wild ride through my consciousness instead? In all sincerity, I’ll do my best to keep things orderly and get my point across, if I have one, we’ll see. A wise person would cut all this out. A wise person wouldn’t be writing any of this down in the first place.
Okay notes. Not that one. Nope, not that one either. Maybe this one? Okay, I’m not using any of my notes, they’re okay, just really pretentious. I should cut all of this out.
Lesson one of Jacqueline Suskin’s class was called ‘Be in Awe of Everything.’ It came with the question, “What does being in awe, mean to you?” Which is an interesting question to answer.
Her answer was that awe is transformation, it can transform something mundane into something otherworldly beautiful. Or it can transform something painful into something elegant and enlightening. ‘Be in Awe of Everything’ became part two of Oceans and Dust: Poems for Loneliness, but I’m leaping a little bit ahead of myself. Let’s get back to day one, to being in awe of a kiss, to being in awe of anger, both felt and directed to you.
Being in awe of a kiss is easy, but anger. Can you find something beautiful in anger? In the vitriol and spite directed at you by someone you once loved? At the vitriol and spite you can direct at someone else in those weaker moments, when the pain you’re feeling wins?
What about anxiety, self-doubt, isolation, loneliness, could you find awe and beauty from those moments? And, if you can, what does that mean?
I didn’t expect this course to become anything. I didn’t go into it thinking that by the end of it I would have an anthology of poetry. I especially didn’t think that it would make me look at some of the most horrific moments of my life and find a beauty in them and a tenderness for them. And bear in mind, we are still only on day one.
Day two was ‘Make Meaning’, day three and four, ‘Purpose and Inspiration’, and day five ‘Practice’ (starting a daily practice). These five things, awe, meaning, purpose, inspiration and practice are the base, the foundation stone on which you can build, quite possibly, anything. In four days, I found the voice my self-doubt had stripped away, I found what I couldn’t find in that writing course I’d taken years earlier. See, I had faith it was all leading somewhere and would circle back around, and you doubted me. I’m guessing.
What happened after this course was that I kept writing, I’m still writing. If you like Oceans and Dust: Poems for Loneliness, there is another collection on the way. If you don’t like Oceans and Dust: Poems for Loneliness, there is another collection on the way. And, if you haven’t read it yet, why? I worked really hard on that.
Seriously though, putting it all together was a fun experience for me and understanding that poetry, like art and love, is subjective, I hope you give it a read and share your honest opinion with me. What do you think? Should no one here be published, or do we all have a right to do what we love and share our voices?
A Letter From the Playground
Thursday 16th of April 2020
‘We need to remember how to play, we’ve forgotten.’ Says something small, invisible to the eye. ‘All these knots in our shoulders, tensions in our muscles, stiffness in our joints. They weren’t always there you know? Do you remember when they started?’
‘We grew up, and we started to change. We went from playing outdoors with flailing arms and skipping legs, to sitting in rooms in straight backed chairs. We moved from looking wildly around at all the wonders of the world, to staring straight ahead at screens. We need to remember the way our bodies used to move. We need to remember how to play.
‘Learn to play through movement, learn to move your body again. Learn to relax, learn to release the stress of motionlessness.
‘We’ve let ourselves become contained, constrained, confined, to simple movements, simple movements. We’ve repressed our natural states for the social norm sitting still, in one position, for hours, for days, for years.
‘Remember how to play. Move. Reclaim your body. Remember how to play.
‘When we remember how to play, we remember how to love like a child, to see the potential in a person first and not our own projections of doubt, fear, hate, anger. We begin to see people for who they are, not who we imagine them to be or expect them to be. We begin to embrace trust. We learn to be open.’
Sheep are lambs who have forgotten how to leap.
May 12, 2022
A Letter From the Forest
Wednesday 15th of April 2020
‘The forest speaks’ they say, ‘an old voice that very few can hear. The first voice to raise itself above the stoic silence of rocks and the sullen chatter of the sea. When the forest speaks, you bow’ they say, ‘not just due to the reverence from such an awesome voice, but from the power in it, the knowledge that within that almighty sound, we are nothing but its echoes.’
‘What does the forest say?’
‘Let go. Let go of what you think you want to start living the life that’s meant for you. Stop holding onto a dream carved out by a child, modelled on half truths, misconceptions laid out and held up by others. Let go of what isn’t to see what is. Trust in me, trust that the path you see twisted out for you between my trees is yours to take. Don’t walk another’s path because to you it looks simpler, easier. There path is made for them, yours for you. Follow the path that is, not the one you wish for, Trust the path I’ve made for you will lead you where you are meant to go.
‘Listen. Feel. The first step on your path is to quell your overthinking mind. Listen to your feelings, let them be your focus. Ask: ” How do I feel?” and bring it to the front. You rely too much on your critical thinking self, you over-rationalise until you’ve obliterated your own wants and desires. Ask: “How do I feel?” first, then look at your thinking. How much of what you’re thinking has been coming from your feelings? What is the root of your feelings? Does knowing the root change the thoughts?
‘Once you’ve mastered this, you can balance thought and feeling into rational thought and emotional clarity.’
Thus speaks the forest.
May 11, 2022
Update III
Sunday 5th of April 2020
During today’s meditation I kept seeing geometric patterns, folding, forming, reshaping, dancing almost.
There have been mounted police officers patrolling, making sure people are staying in. It’s had the opposite effect, as it would in Bristol. People don’t like to be pressured into doing something they were already doing.
Why do I feel empty at night?
It creeps in slowly during the day, and then at night… Is it because I run out of things to do, to keep my mind busy and occupied? Or, is it a habit, a default setting my brain falls into when the sun sets?
I used to be such a night owl. I suppose I still am. I wake up when the sunsets, so to speak. The world belongs to me in the dark. The problem is I have nowhere to go and nothing to do now. My body longs to be outside at night, soaking every part of that blue-black in. Maybe that’s what’s wrong. Maybe that’s the void, the unfilled need.
But the night doesn’t belong to me anymore. I gave it up. I got too lost in it. Now, I stay close to home, away from the predators that lurk in what was once my bliss. Maybe it’s time to reclaim what’s mine.
May 10, 2022
Freedom
Saturday 4th of April 2020
‘I was thinking about my past and how it doesn’t feel like my life. Well, it does and it doesn’t. My memories feel like the faded memories of a past life. There’s a detachment from them, an, it wasn’t me, I was a different person back then. I suppose it’s true, I’m not the same person I was. But I can’t help wonder, is this this detachment, this separating of self from self, healthy?’
‘It’s what you needed to do though, to leave people behind. You had to make it so you never loved them, it was someone else. But you had to do it, it was time for you to move on.
‘You befriended people who were outcasts, like you, people who were on the fringes, people you could relate to. The problem with outcasts though, is that they long to be part of a herd, and when that opportunity arises, they will take it.
‘You’re different, you never wanted that, Your’re not a lone wolf, you’re… the crow left of the murder. You’ve seen all the other crows, gathering around scraps and stale bread and no matter how much you said “Look, there’s something better, something shiny glistening just over there” They were too deaf to hear you and too blind to see for themselves, too consumed by what’s in front of them.
‘You would rather explore the possibility of something more then condemn yourself to the certainty of less. You’re still flying towards that something, that possibility. And it’s hard, it’s exhausting, but you know you’re getting closer. And when you see the crows you left behind, they look at you as though you’re crazy because to them you are. But you know deep down that you don’t need to hold on to them, their doubts or opinions. You’re dead to them. They don’t see what you do, they can’t. When they see you, you’re a ghost, a memory. But I see a crow, flying free.’
Why has it taken me so long to realise that I’m not a joiner or a follower? Does that make me a leader? I don’t think so. Maybe it makes me a forger. I’m forging a new path, my own path. I forge myself. If someone wants to follow, that’s their business. That sounds right. Follow me if you dare.
May 5, 2022
Research Day
Friday 3rd of April 2020
I’ve been trying to meditate and do yoga every day, I’ve gone eight, nine days so far. I’ve also been trying to incorporate prayer and mantras.
So, yesterday, and the day before yesterday, maybe the day before that too, I’ve been having this experience of going somewhere else (during meditations) and it’s starting to get freaky. It’s almost like I’m not in my body anymore but I’m still aware of my body. More importantly, I become aware that my room has fallen away, my house, this planet, everything, and I’m somewhere else.
I lose the ability to feel my limbs because they’re not my limbs, I’m a mind unattached, but there’s still a cord leading me back to my body when I want it.
I want to know where I’ve been going. What is that space? I can’t even accurately describe it to you, its like I can’t quite hold the memory of it.
Anyway. Today’s Friday, which means research day and movie night. The problem is, I’ve been on a role with my writing and I don’t want to stop to do research. What to do?
Right now though, it’s meditation and yoga time. So, I’m gonna go.
Later:
It was movie night. I watched ‘The Dark Crystal’ – 1982, again. According to my phone, Venus and the Pleiades are conjunct and it’s currently 10:00 pm.
I feel hollow, empty, but not in a depressed way, but who can tell anymore. It’s an unfulfilled sort of empty, a not fully living empty, a not living to my full potential empty, a not doing what I need to be doing empty.
Can anyone tell me what it is that I’m supposed to be doing so I can do it?
I’m tired of the answer, ‘figure it out for yourself’. What do you think I’ve been attempting?
May 4, 2022
Peace
Saturday 28th of March 2020
Today is the day my grandfather died.
Not an unexpected death, not an unexpected reaction from the people that love him.
It’s been cloudy all day. Let’s set the scene with that.
It’s a gloomy, bitter day, with wind that bites at the skin like toddlers cutting their teeth.
I’m not sad that he’s dead and that sounds awful, but hear me out.
My uncle died when I was in secondary school, and it broke everyone.
I felt like this emotionless island in this sea of grief. I didn’t feel what they seemed to be feeling. The main reason was, I didn’t understand what death meant.
My much younger cousin was devastated, and I thought, maybe he knows something that I don’t, maybe he understands what death is, why don’t I?
My teenage understanding was that death just meant I couldn’t physically see him or hear him anymore. I was sad about that, I knew I would miss him, but I didn’t understand why everyone was crying and breaking apart. For me, it felt like he had just moved away to a place no one could visit, he’d just stepped into another room, out of sight. It wasn’t that he suddenly didn’t exist anymore because we all still remembered him. He hadn’t stopped existing, so why was everyone so upset?
I believed that in time, a person could get used to no longer seeing someone or hearing from them. I guess, because that was my reality at the time. People were always leaving and vanishing from my life, it was just something you got used to.
When people around you are falling apart and you’re not, it feels like they know something that you don’t. You feel stupid, you feel like something’s wrong with you.
My sister was the same, she was in primary school, and after the wake she said to me: ‘I think I’m not as sad as everyone else is because I don’t know what death is. It just means we’re not going to see him anymore, doesn’t it?’
I think she wanted me to explain death to her, but I didn’t have an answers either. I probably just shrugged her off in the way teenagers are prone to do.
So, today is the day my grandfather died, and I’m not sad for myself. I’m sad for my grandmother, for my aunties, cousins, mother, but I don’t think I feel what I should be feeling. I don’t think I feel what they feel.
A little while after I got the news, I went to my room, looked out the window and spoke to him, in a way that I couldn’t when he was alive, without getting yelled at or ignored, or both, he had a talent for that. I can’t remember exactly what I said, something along the lines of:
‘I hope you’ve found the peace you never seemed to find here. I’m sorry it took me so long to understand you.’
A person doesn’t become a bully if they’ve had a good life, if they’re happy, if they feel safe and worth something, at least, I hope not. So, I honestly hope that he’s found some sort of peace, this life was obviously terribly hard for him.
I don’t know if there’s an afterlife, I don’t know if reincarnation’s real or if it’s just oblivion, but, I still hope he’s found peace.
I feel sad that no one can say goodbye to him in the traditional ways since travel to Dominica isn’t allowed right now and I’m also relieved by that. I’ve had nightmares about his funeral, about what grief brings out in people, one of my aunts in particular. In these nightmares she makes my grandparents deaths about her. She says no one cared about them as much as she did, that no one has the right to be at the funeral but her. She screams at me in front of everyone and everyone watches, looking on, taking her side.
Maybe the other reason I’m not sad is because I’ve been subconsciously preparing for this for years. That’s what my brain does, prepares me for all the worse case scenarios. I’m prepared, somewhat, for my mother’s death, and my dad. I think that’s just what you do, isn’t it, when both parents have cancer diagnosis’ hanging over them?
I’m prepared for my own death, for the peace of it, the relief of it, no more bull, no more problems. I’m only partially joking.
When I spoke to my grandfather, when I said goodbye to him, the sun came out for a bit. The clouds parted, the sky was a shimmering, still blue. Then the clouds began to close back in again, knit together, like healing a wound. But, for about twenty seconds as it did this, there was a hole in the clouds that looked like a bird in flight… for almost twenty seconds.
April 28, 2022
Oceans and Dust: Poems for Loneliness
‘Oceans and Dust: Poems for Loneliness’ is out now if anyone’s interested.
Available on Amazon and Kindle.
April 20, 2022
A Predisposition
Wednesday 25th of March 2020
On a piece of paper, on my bed, is written: “Fear is a habit that you fall into.”
It can be. When this happens we call it phobia, we call it anxiety, and it becomes something we live with.
My sister’s talking about moving in with her boyfriend, and it’s not really a big deal now, with the nation, the world, being in lockdown, but it’s there, a lingering unspokenness, that this is change. It’s a change she doesn’t see yet, but I do, I’ve seen it before. Her world will become about him, her home, their home, her life, their life. Spending time with my sister will become about separating her from him, or spending time with ‘them’. I’m just selfishly not into that. It only works if you have a partner too, then you’re not intruding on a couple, you’re participating, not looking in. Couples like to spend time with other couples, and slowly, or sometimes not so slowly, you get phased out.
I can see it in her in a subtle way, I can see her trying to navigate how to be a sister, a daughter, a friend, and a girlfriend. Maybe she’ll master it, find the appropriate balance.
In me, it’s induced a sort of mourning. I’m mourning the recognisible, the familiar. I’m trying to find a balance between accepting the changes and the changes to come and fondly remember how things used to be.
I want the simplicity of the familiar, I want the world, well, my world, under my imaginary control.
I heard this the other day and repeating it makes me feel better:
“Relax. Nothing is under our control.”
On the surface it sounds scary, but it’s not, its:
“Relax. Nothing is under our control.”
Nothing but ourselves, nothing but our own reactions, nothing but our own choices, nothing but our own outlook. Relax, the world too big for us to control, it’s gonna do what it does regardless of us, we can’t change it, don’t exhaust yourself trying to, don’t worry yourself over it. It’s pointless, it won’t help. It’s released so much panic. For example, whilst everyone has been panic buying toilet roll and hand-wash, I got two new pieces of art for my home, and I’m currently eyeing a third, and miraculously, I haven’t run out of toilet roll or hand-wash. I’ve been working on some cover design ideas for the novel, and making plans for future work. These are the things that are important to me and everything else… my loneliness, my phobias, my anxiety, they’re just habits I’ve fallen into, things I live with and have given names to normalise, things I’m used to.
There’s a stillness over the world right now, a holding of breath, a collective tension in our jaws and shoulders, a weight on our brows. And I wonder, would it be better to go through this with someone? Would it be better to be part of it all, rather than the observer, looking in?
April 19, 2022
Dress like the devil’s watching.
Thursday 19th of March 2020
Good morning.
So, yesterday was a bit of a dark day. We don’t need to go there. The point is, I’m on the other side of it and have decided to dress up, even if no one’s going to see it. It’s for me, to make me feel better. Just put something on that makes you feel and or look good. I’ve also been listening to so much music. A continuous soundtrack is following me from room to room and I love it.
I’ve also noticed something interesting. Everyone who has kids right now are currently regretting their life choices. It seems ‘kids are the best thing ever’, ‘you really should have kids’, ‘you’re missing out by not having kids’, goes right out the window, when people are stuck indoors with their kids and can’t get rid of them. I am loving the fact that I don’t have kids right now, how are you guys doing?
The next door neighbour started on her kids at seven this morning, so I’ve been up since seven this morning. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing that I’m used to it now. It used to be the most triggering thing in the world for me to hear her shouting and screaming at her kids. Now, I’m just, ‘oh, she’s at it again’, ‘what did those kids do this time?’.
I’ve decided to treat this lockdown as a mindful, spiritual, learning, healing retreat. Yep, that’s what I’m calling it. If this isn’t the time to focus on ourselves and do some inner work, heal the whole by healing ourselves first then, it’s going to become something else, something dark and malicious. I don’t know. This is just how I’m choosing to see it. I should probably set an intention for it. What do I want to feel at the end of it? Who do I want to be? What do I wish to achieve?
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Thursday 19th of March 2020
Good morning.
So, yesterday was a bit of a dark day. We don’t need to go there. The point is, I’m on the other side of it and have decided to dress up, even if no one’s going to see it. It’s for me, to make me feel better. Just put something on that makes you feel and or look good. I’ve also been listening to so much music. A continuous soundtrack is following me from room to room and I love it.
I’ve also noticed something interesting. Everyone who has kids right now are currently regretting their life choices. It seems ‘kids are the best thing ever’, ‘you really should have kids’, ‘you’re missing out by not having kids’, goes right out the window, when people are stuck indoors with their kids and can’t get rid of them. I am loving the fact that I don’t have kids right now, how are you guys doing?
The next door neighbour started on her kids at seven this morning, so I’ve been up since seven this morning. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing that I’m used to it now. It used to be the most triggering thing in the world for me to hear her shouting and screaming at her kids. Now, I’m just, ‘oh, she’s at it again’, ‘what did those kids do this time?’.
I’ve decided to treat this lockdown as a mindful, spiritual, learning, healing retreat. Yep, that’s what I’m calling it. If this isn’t the time to focus on ourselves and do some inner work, heal the whole by healing ourselves first then, it’s going to become something else, something dark and malicious. I don’t know. This is just how I’m choosing to see it. I should probably set an intention for it. What do I want to feel at the end of it? Who do I want to be? What do I wish to achieve?
