How love can change your life....

I don't know where to begin. For anyone who actually reads my blog, you would have discovered there is a common thread throughout my poetry.....light/dark. Most of my obsessions have been about the dark, and for years now it has been "my monkey on my back" I have carried this burden of pending blindness, and the fear of what my life will be like.

Enter SABOTAGE, my belief is that if I ruin things before they ruin me than that's alright...THAT is all wrong...

While I have been consumed in darkness I didn't even realise that there was something far bigger in my life...LIGHT, a life full of amazing colour and joy and love.

I want to say say that the revelation came easily but it hasn't, I've missed out on opportunity through avoiding failure and disappointment. I've said no to things because of fear, I've said no to life because I really believed I didn't deserve it. That's reality, we all do it.

However, over the past few weeks, something in a small way has shifted. Something very small but enough for me to just feel different. I believe in love....and I believe if you give it in your everything it can free you on so many levels. It has broken me. But it's broken me in half and I feel my light.

The result has been creation. I will be showing a piece of art at my mothers art show, based around "scattered vision" and how light is so powerful. Thanks Mum for pushing me to see the story in my life. I know you as my mother struggle with my darkness but you have guided me strong and guided me independant and now you have shown me that my life has to create, and if I become half the artist she is I will be happy.

I also must thank my friend Melanie, her friendship has opened my mind to so many creative possibilities, and constantly I am grateful for her. I am constantly taken back to my writing where things seem clear to me, thanks to Melanie for YOU!!! Love your motto in with love-out with love.

I think she may be onto something....

you brush your hand across my heart
as you strip me back
to the seed that rests in my lung


you carve your name
into my wound that you healed
while you whisper your tiredness around my dreams


you hold my hurt
and my weakness in your breath
as you become the calm that clings to my throat


you have shown me love
in the warmth of your touch
as you peel away the darkness from me

when the sun kissed the night

The claws of gold

Break the flesh

First light says goodnight

Last night was first light

And last light went calling

Its broken cry filled the night

Its song caught in the wind

Light bled from us

As the dawn bird

Called in the night

Our dreams

Caught in the light

A yellow glow flowed from us

As daylight returned to the night

We are no longer held captive

Held captive by first night

THE HAPPINESS QUEST

the happiness quest is like

strawberries dripping with

sunshine and dew

being drawn to your scent

the brown chair next to the fading print

sunlight breaking the dream

car rides and loud music with your glancing eye

lattes in takeaway cardboard cups

birds on a wire on winter mornings

my heart in the nape of your neck

it is his cheeky grin and cars made of dough

purple scarves draped like lavender fields

when you won’t let me go

the freedom of having a heart broken like

waterfalls crashing on rocks

summer evenings walking on warm cement

the photos that line the archways like

carefully paved cities

movie nights and homemade ice-cream

the shadows drawn on your back

honeysuckle vines choking red brick alleyways

the bike tyres dodging the gaps in the bridge

the rattling bones in my ear

pressed leaves in old phone books

long grass and white butterflies

your hands dancing like ribbons twirling in the wind

hot chips on the beach

when you spoke the words of your people

my shadowed eyes searching for visions

like forgotten flowers

scattered upon the aging stone

dressing the spirit in light

like a dress made of autumn silk

the happiness quest

INSPIRED BY LAURA LAWSON

On the 20th of August 2010 I posted my first entry on this blog

Its time to give in and let the journey begin.

May I firstly be inspired beyond my minds belief and the inspiration guide my spirit to

BE AND BELIEVE!

There are two key things here GIVE IN and BE AND BELIEVE.  I think (perhaps at times over think) the world.  I am not always convincing in my thoughts and probably at times present myself as less intuitive than in fact I am.  The reason I began this blog was to discover myself through my words and USE the words to speak through the darkness of living with Retinitis Pigmentosa.

A year ago I began the search for other young visually impaired artists, particularly writers to follow and be inspired by and I began following a gifted young woman, Laura Lawson, on Facebook and reading her blog Believing is Seeing.  This was the first blog that I found, ironically I soon discovered Laura too lives her life with RP, she is a gifted artist and was presented with the loss of sight as I was at an age where her life was full and the dreams were budding, the heart was alive and then BANG the"gift" of RP fell in her lap.  Today, on my train journey home from work I read an article that Laura wrote for Motif Magazine, which has cemented me in a place I have never been before.  I have had moments throughout my life where I have known that where I am is right, but after reading this article I felt a sense of self that sits in my heart.

The article is titled Believing is Seeing(page 29) http://motifmag.com/index.html

I want to highlight the word gift because I think that there is a curse of losing your sight when you paint, write, create anything through sight, where you heavily rely on visual cues to provide inspiration, direction and creation and to be faced with losing the key to the creation means you are losing your dream, your purpose,YOU.  However, once working through the grief the realisation is that the loss is also the gain, the gift.  This is because you are forced to open your heart, your mind and your soul to a world that would not have been experienced without the loss.  I personally draw most of my inspiration through what I don't see visually but what I see through my spirit and from this I write.  What I write I admit is not always uplifting and mostly about loss, but for me this is part of the acceptance of the gradual loss of sight.

Yesterday I was trying to work out how I can convince my world how much I have gained through the journey of loss.  I realise its not something I can convince anyone of, its something felt or experienced. For ME I find little joy in struggling visually, but I hope I do make it to a safe place where I can accept that I am NOT just my eyesight.  Where I am at now is still in a mixed up churning river, caught in the current and am trying to swim to the shore of safety.......in the mean time it is the observations and poetry and hundreds of photos of fading sunlight skies and breaking dawns that will help me to float.

Earlier this week I was told "tell a story" and you know what THIS is my story, the shades of light and dark, the shadows, the fear of loss and being left alone and deserted.

a story

tell a story

feel the words

the fumbling

know the sunshine

wear it like the dress

with the pink button

you know that dress

folded into the yellow

and orange pleats

is the child

who danced

and glided in the air

holding out little hands

she still cups her hands

towards the sky

given away dreams

as the stars fall

from the neatly draped

night

buring the child in the soul

the rich earth

which feeds the presence

the child never forgets

her heart remains nestled

beside the longing spirit

her love endless

even when the darkness falls

she will remain

KNOWING HEART

I knew

I know

I have moved

My heart sleeps alone

I am now not the same

Violent violin

As I long

For the belonging

As my heart wants mending

Darkness throws wild threads

Around the edge of my dreams

The hurt doesn’t believe anymore

As today is confused

By yesterdays light

Comforting tomorrows fear

Surrendering to the dread

That makes the soul bleed

Breaking the dream of flying

I walk

Dragged down by the heavy step

The path hiding the glory

Shadows glide from the falling sun

Playing tug of war with the measurable beat

Drowning the thumping heart

As the sound won’t change

Feeling its deepest tunes

Empty words you have given me

Washing me with a wave of confusion

Lingering in my standing presence

Your free soul burns

And I continue to crave your warmth

But my chance has fallen away

As the truth hides behind the beat

The habit clutched in the hearts

Waiting for to me be fixed

The man with the red suede boots

Observes with his fountain pen

And crumpled paper

He lies about the heroes

That still cry

I knew

I know

HEART THINK

Waiting for you

You are late

Mist floats from my mouth

My heart quivers

Darkness waits with me

You promised

                Here I am

WHY DO YOU DO WHAT YOU DO?

Thie question was posed to me a few months ago....and as we embark on a new year, I return to the question and I return to the words.....

My “job” is not me.  My job is the in between place where I stand searching for what I want for my life.  A job, a place I go to make money, so I can live, and leave that job at the end of the day and do the things I love.  This job has no ties with my inner world, my inner desires.  Why do I do this job?  We have to work....does this make me happy?  A question, separate, yet probably the one that is important.

I write to free my inner voice that seems to have little room for expression in the world I live.  I write to show, to be free, to discover, to feel and ultimately grow.  If this was posed as the question “WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU WANT TO DO” writing would complete me.

I be the person I am because to me there aren’t enough good hearted people.  It’s the thing I strive hardest at, be the best person I can be, to love and share and give

I don’t know why I do what I do.  Maybe because you HAVE to do, and does that doing mean you have to do what makes you happy???

GOLF BALLS, SAND AND BEER...."A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future....." Michael J Fox

Today .  Mmmmmm today, confusing, questionable, undeciding.  Until I found a new book.  I was searching Target, looking for a present for the undeserving and I ended up wandering (of course) toward the book section.  Please I begged inwardly, find a book, find a book to take home.   Just as I was about to turn around and leave, without a present for the undeserving, or a book, there on the bottom shelf a small book glistened its sparkling lights at me.

“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future.....” By Michael J. Fox was now mine....”life is a ride. Strap in. Hold on and keep your eyes open.  Exactly the words I needed to hear. 

Desperate to get onto the tram so I could begin it....

CHAPTER ONE: Finally the beginning

Begining with a little sotry

A university professor standing at the front of a class with a large empty jar and a bucket of golf balls. The professor asks a student to fill the jar with as many golf balls as she can
possibly fit in. When the student is finished, the professor asks the class if the jar is truly
full. After they say that it is, the professor pulls out a tray with a mound of sand. With
great care, he starts pouring the sand into the jar, shaking it gently to help the sand
work its way in. So is the jar now full? You may think so, but the professor now pulls out
a can of beer, opens it and to the students amazement is able to carefully pour over half
of the can into the seemingly full jar. it is a story about how we choose
to fill our time and our lives. The golf balls represent the important things in your life. If
you put them in first, you will still have room for some of the less important things.
However, if you allow the less important things (the sand and the beer) to come first,
you will never find time to devote to those things that really matter.

And here I begin.  Ready to fill my jar with golf balls, sand and beer.  If I needed a sign today, this is it.  Another book I already know will impact my thinking, my feeling, my life....