Karen Little's Blog, page 3
July 2, 2018
Too Late
My life has few consistencies, but it has one consistency since I got older: things arrive too late. I’m thinking in particular about opportunities and rewards, which are so tardy in arriving that I’ll have gone past caring by the time they turn up.
June 12, 2018
Angelica
Today I have a poem up on Atrium Poetry. I would highly recommend reading and submitting work to this fabulous online magazine….
Angelica
The Inheritance of Loss afforded him
opportunity to leave her. The Other Hand
was saved for us, shaped how she raised us.
Intimacy meant getting close enough
to have our blocks knocked off. The Great Beast
was tucked behind curtains or under blankets.
Slaughterhouse fueled my nightmares; her
choosing from curtains of meat at Snapes’s
while I gazed at meringues next door in Burton’s.
Topped with angelica, I knew they were reserved
for The Most Beautiful Woman in Town.
Karen Little trained as a dancer and a fine artist. She is widely published as a poet in the UK and further afield.
May 25, 2018
Three Drops from a Cauldron
One of my favourite online magazines. I have an artwork in this issue. It’s free to read and a great one to submit writing and art to.
May 17, 2018
The Writer’s cafe
This is a great online magazine to read (for free) and submit to. A different theme each month. I have four poems in this issue:
https://thewriterscafemagazine.wordpress.com/2018/05/16/the-writers-cafe-magazine-issue-8-corridors-and-passageways/
April 21, 2018
Drawing
I rarely put my drawings up here. Maybe I should. Today I wrote a poem and then drew this, using the (writing) prompt ‘Wearing your Charmed Life’[image error]
Attracting what we Fear
I believe we attract the very thing we fear and want to avoid. Probably by feeding it with attention and energy. I think we keep repeating lessons until we understand the message. I think life is primarily about learning. I believe we carry all of our learning into our next lives. I won’t label that belief with ‘reincarnation’. I would like to avoid labels . I believe labels are a convenient way for other people to squash us.
At this point in time I’m living in a trailer on a trailer park. The surroundings are beautiful, BUT I have a vindictive next door neighbour who is trying to get me ousted. This is not paranoia. Yesterday a friend on the trailer park came over to tell me that Jill is hammering on doors and trying to get neighbours on her side. I’ve done nothing wrong.
This is not the first time this has happened. That fact doesn’t mean I’m doing anything wrong. It means the thing that I most fear, being kicked out of my home is on a constant repeat cycle.
I’m happy with the kind of minimum, undecorated, mish-mash of an existence a huge swathe of my friends would be horrified by. But I really need to feel secure in the place I live. I need to feel (and it to be the case) that I can stay somewhere for as long as I want.
April 19, 2018
Skipping Therapy and Drawing a Map
Some people will know what I mean when I said I felt ‘too mental for therapy today’…..even though therapy was turning up at my Trailer (since I keep feeling too bad to do the bus ride) I decided to draw a map to show next session….even though previous therapists have not been massively happy when I do art for them. It’s a map showing my childhood …when my dog was savaged by a Staffy…and had to be pts….connected to three and a half weeks ago when my dog was savaged by a Staffy….and is just about recovered physically from the attack/surgery. Art therapy of my own devising…[image error]
When I feel Really, Really Bad……….
When I feel really, really bad I deactivate Facebook. I don’t have the energy for other people’s lives if I barely have energy for my own. Facebook feels like spilling to a fairly wide audience, whereas my blog is pretty much a private journal. A couple of people will see it, but won’t feel the need to comment, they don’t know me, so my ridiculous thoughts are just released from my chest and i feel calmer.
Much as I do ‘things’….I write, get published…I ‘art’ (drawing and painting keep me as sane as I’ll ever be)….. I also don’t do things. I rarely see people. I don’t ‘go out’….except with my dogs. Noodles and Chicken are my pack. I’m a member of a pack. So when Noodles got savaged by a Staffy three and a half weeks ago, it was one of the most horrible things I’ve witnessed. Yesterday…after weeks of worry, vet visits, pet hospital visits and admission, surgery, panic…. I was reassured that the wound has healed well…the puncture wounds too…his heart, lungs, respiration are back to normal. It’s a huge relief. My Trailer is back to normal….I flattened everything so Noodles couldn’t literally ‘bust a gut’. He is more anxious, I am a lot more anxious, on walks. The fact the attack happened a hundred yards from my home, that the dog that attacked pounded towards us along that hundred yard path to the High Street. The fact the owner is an idiot. Which is the thing. I haven’t had the energy to be angry about the idiot who wasn’t controlling his dog and walked away scot free because I was carrying my injured dog and looking along the road for my other dog who had slipped her harness in panic and raced off. While a passer-by took us to the emergency vet, that idiot went home with his dog. That idiot hasn’t had weeks of worry, travel, vet bills, sadness, horror at seeing his dog savaged. Now I am angry. Finally I am angry. I understand when some senseless idiot harms an innocent6 victim…how that victim needs to know the idiot was punished and prevented from ever doing that selfish stupid act again.
April 16, 2018
Not in a Great Mood
Three weeks ago my small Chinese crested rescue dog Noodles was savaged by a Staffie. During the attack my other rescue dog Chicken, a cross-breed. slipped her harness and tore off down the road. Both my dogs were on leash, a hundred yards from the Trailer Park where we live. The Staffie was off leash, not in the control of the owner who was a hundred yards behind his dog as it tore towards Noodles and viciously attacked him. When the owner arrived he couldn’t get his dog to release mine, who was screaming in pain. Then a blank. I’m walking down the High Street looking for my second dog, and someone points out where she ran to, then seeing the terrible state of my other dog, drives us to our vet ‘out of hours.’ A huge vet bill, a terrifying time at Pet Hospital where Noodles’s stomach was sewn up (it was herniated) and the puncture wounds all over his body treated. Stitches are now out, but we are all a mess. I am trying not to be a mess, because the dogs pick up on my emotions, but I am a mess. I have reported the attack, but as I was not in a position to take details from the owner, he and his dog are still doing what they do. I imagine in a new area, because I will recognise them. But who knows? Stupidity and arrogance very often go hand in hand.
