Morning Pages

Welcome once again to my morning pages: the occasional, unedited spilling of my morning mind on to the screen. Approximately seven hundred and fifty words  of stream of consciousness, transparent writing inspired by Julia Cameron. So you can dig a little deeper in my head. For my eyes only,  for no doubt I will say too much.  And for those of anyone who cares to set their own minds straight in the morning time, by feeling inspired to do the same…
Saturday. Seven o’clock in the morning and I am typing this into my iPad while the rest of the world sleeps. Sometimes I think it may have been a rather excessive amount of time since Finn saw me without a screen for a face. Now he is lying coughing in the room next door: a bizarre red rash fluttering over his cheeks. His breath heavy with dreams of Supermen.

Supermen don’t exist do they? They come in many guises, but underneath the snazzy suits they are all the same bundle of vulnerabilities and hearts broken by jokers and ladies wrapped in poison ivy. We are all the same. Supermen. Wonder women. All the same. Naked under the skin. Raw. Yes. That’s it… raw. Dangerous. Like raw egg. A salmonella of half-truths and feelings unacknowledged scrambled.

I’m hungry. The mere mention of food makes for the most perfect of distractions. I think about Dad’s sausage butties and resolve to invite myself for breakfast at their calm, warm house. For isn’t the child refusing to go to his daddy’s for the weekend? A day I have been dreading because I cannot contemplate hurting a man who loves his little boy deeply and I know how much this will hurt him. Never mind how very often he reminds me that one day I must give this house up so his wife can have a bigger one. No, never mind that. He is barely himself anymore. But children have to have their voices and their voices must be heard. Their reasons for even their most outrageous desires contemplated. But oh what to do with him today. When all he really needs is cosseting, cuddling, cosying and comforting while he coughs and splutters and feels ever so slightly sorry for himself.

Someone gave me the gift of music once. Songs that go round and round in my head. Feels like home. Feels like it but may not be. It’s difficult this: spilling my head uncensored. Shutting out that which says some things must go unspoken, but speaking them anyway. Speaking in tongues. Double dutch. Conflicted and desperate to do nothing more than read all the books stuffing up my Kindle. Books. I swear I have got them coming out my ears: I need to take another box to the free book shop. To deliver them to the man who stands freezing in an old furniture warehouse, a woolly hat on his head, no lights on in the room so that we have to squint to see which books we would like to exchange for those we have delivered. A wonderful scheme. What could be more wonderful than free books.

Red shoes. Well they are wonderful aren’t they? A red so dark it is almost black. Like a dried scab. Ugh. That’s the kind of imagery one would usually censor. But it is what is. Heels that make them impossible to wear. And so they stand unworn, speaking of another lifetime, under the Grandmother clock in my bedroom. Another ornament in a life decorated in scabs and flowers. But I think that’s ok: shoes that speak of my heart. Yes I think that’s ok.

Heavens there is so much to do and here I lie waffling about shoes and books. I could work all day long. I could shut the whole world out: words that will sting and must be said regardless, breakfast at my very own Tiffanys – and instead I could lie here and type out my entire head. What would that be like? A book length edition of my morning pages: the most self-indulgent form of writing that there surely is. And the closest I ever come to feeling whole. If only I could get to grips with my penchant for comma’s. I stick them everywhere. Wherever I feel like. As if the English language is malleable enough to reflect my relentless need for possession. But some words, like some people do not want to be possessed. And others want to be consumed. Heck: consumed by a comma. This my darling, is why editing exists – so paragraphs do not turn into nonsensical dreams.

Today then:  Get up. Send a message that will hurt someone. Splash my face with ice cold rosewater. Burn peppermint and sage for mental clarity. Drive the car that works again around to my Mums. Be an all grown up little girl for a while. Eat bacon. Drink tea from mugs that do no allow boiling tea to cool. Stroke my little boys head. Laugh. Worry. Today.