When I'm feeling low - and let's face it we all go there sometimes - I need to remind myself to step into the virtuous circle, the upward spiral. Notice the good all around and more and more of it will come to you. Pick up coins in the street, yes even pennies. It is a way of accepting the wealth that you are asking for; the universe is checking how serious you are in your request. Are you willing to stoop? Notice the wild even in the city, in your garden, between the railway tracks, on city walls –
wild isn’t just plants, it’s art and imagination too. The more we notice, the more there is. The plum tree across the road. Blackthorn and Hawthorn in Gypsy Lane. Primroses along Earlham Road. Flowers growing between the cracks. The first bluebells greeting the last snowdrops. Daffodils are haughty out inthe wild, but smile abundance if you bring them indoors.
I think: green ribbons, soft carpet, the texture of my caramel coloured armchair...the breath coming and going...that there even are such things as elephants and mobile phones...that I am learning to love someone differently, to give both more and less of myself.
There is more wildness to explore. More enchantment to divine. Languages to dive into, happy memories to feast upon and untold ones not yet made. Que sera. Beautiful, wondrous things. Light and dancing.
And books. The postman in his bright red jacket brings a surprise package. A padded envelope that was sent from Iowa City, sent to New Jersey, and then to me, with a return address in Holland. There are names and addresses linked only by the journey of an envelope. I wonder what was in it originally – a book for certain – it says so in the same big black marker print that gives the New Jersey address: BOOK. Emphatic, like don’t you dare suggest otherwise. Possibly even this same book, because it came wrapped in a sheet of newsprint from an Iowa paper.
My first thought is that I will never know any more about these people and this postal-route unless I do something crazy like writing to one of those addresses. I note in my journal that I will do no such thing. I’m now wondering if maybe I might. I am so tempted!
The book in question - at least the one in there when it got to me - is Old Friend From Far Away, Goldberg on memoir. My journal notes that there “is a risk that I will lose the whole day to reading it – but it will be time invested not spent. It will be pleasure and inspiration.” It is both of those things.
I did not lose the whole day. I did invest most of it. The only reason I went out in the middle was that I had library books to return and collect, and there was only one glass of wine left in the house. I went to the library. Stopped by a speedwell in my garden and bluebells in the cemetery and cursed my decision to leave the camera at home. I cleared my 60p debt at the library (again) – I’m sure this is a recurring payment that I know nothing about. Or perhaps the one that erroneously shows up in my on-line account as a credit. I bought courgettes and broccoli and, yes, wine too. I came back to the book.
Reading it through in a sitting feels a little like cheating at exams. Knowing where she’s going to take me when I start to use the book (which is a workbook, rather than just a reading book) gives my back-brain a chance to warm up.
In the meantime I do a bit of internetting. I am disappointed beyond belief to know that 560 Huyler Street, South Hackensack is a post office depository. It sounded like it should be a run-down home. Romantic and clinging on to life. Instead there’s a two lane street, with yellow stripes, lots of small-business lots, all with their white vans parked outside.
The Iowa City address I won’t quote because it meets my expectations – a single storey home, half-hidden by trees, out in the suburbs. I wonder who lives there. I have a name but google throws up nothing (I’m sure they’ll be glad to hear).
I’m left wondering whether the person who sold me this book “Used. Good” had bought it for themselves, and if so whether they used it, whether their own memoir is out there somewhere. Or whether they are clearing out the remnants of another life. Maybe one day I will write and ask.
Coincidentally, after months of inactivity my ‘seller’ account produced a flurry this week, four more of Clive’s books sent back out into the world. Always a pleasing thing. I see a connection between my accepting someone else's 'used' and being allowed to send on ours.
The Old Friend From Far Away has the feel of having sat on a shelf for too long. Pages thickened in precisely the way human skin does the opposite with age. Yellowing we have in common. Now it will be put to use. I have spent most of a Saturday cheat-reading the assignments and cannot begin to imagine how long it will take me to work it through.
The good news is that this will not become “yet one more thing”. I already do short form memoir. I call it a blog. You are reading it. I am already writing a long form memoir via the creation and curation of my home. That is slowly being released elsewhere.[i] I have already moved away from Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages to try to focus my morning journal entries based on Natalie Goldberg’s writing practice. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. But that is where I and this new-to-me book will become more deeply acquainted. I can’t wait to get started.
And alongside of all of that I feel the need to investigate South Hackensack and Iowa City. Maybe they are places I might like to go – or places I might be glad to have escaped. Is it ok to write to a random address that turns up on your doorstep as a re-used envelope? Or does that count as stalking?
Just wondering.
But the main thing is: a day spent spotting the good stuff and allowing myself to be swallowed up into it: the wildness in the city, my ordinary home, the delight of books delivered to my door, the possibility that I could connect without someone way out there...
