Sunday Scribblings - In The Kitchen

Sunday Scribblings has been running for a year! I haven't participated every week, but most weeks, if I've been about, I've tried to post something, and also tried to get to read some of the entries. As time's gone on, there have been more and more, and it hasn't always been possible, but I've met some marvellous people through this group and am hoping this just keeps running and running. Thanks to Meg and Laini for their dedication and hard work in maintaining the site, in coming up with inspiration to offer us and in encouraging writing in whatever form through the medium of something that is so simple and yet so profound in its effects for many of us. Thank you!

This week's prompt is In The Kitchen:

-------------------------------------------------------------------

In the kitchen… right now, disorder and mixtures of aromas. There’s the spice and heat of last night’s cooking. Black lentils and that new Tunisian courgette salad – Aljouk-al-Iforgetwhat. Tasty and sharp with feta crumbled on top. My hexagon-patch crocheted afghan is draped on a wooden frame to dry by the radiator. Two pairs of discarded shoes sit under the rocking-chair – one black, one beige. I am wearing tatty green slippers, with the shape of my feet in them, comfy slippers. Not elegant. The table has gathered the remains of Saturday’s Times, the bits I’ve already read and the bits I won’t read (sport, business). Unanswered letters keep a vase of chrysanthemums company at one end and advertising leaflets on their way to the bin somehow got waylaid here and are taking a rest along with the letters. The sink is (almost) empty, the cooker-top clear. There are no piles of books sitting anywhere, but a few stray boxes, candles, postcards have found their way to the counter, to join the fruit-platter (reduced now to apples and oranges: no banana, no pineapple, no pomegranate). The round gold papier-mache box that holds my angel-cards has one card on top – today’s choice, reminding me to be aware of “Responsibility”. Hmm.

The broken chairs have not yet been replaced, so the table is surrounded by a sorry collection, none of them reliable, and all destined for a visit to the recycling centre very, very soon. Two that were Nana’s, two that came with that ill-fated kitchen set eight years ago. I may tell that story another time, but not now.

The table likes its new position, the angled place we found for it after the new flooring was put in a few months ago. There’s a lovely clear triangle to walk about from sink to cooker to fridge, and there is a flow of air about the table. Here is a place to breathe, even if all is not ordered and clear right now. It’s become a manageable kitchen, a place I like, a room I enjoy working in. It’s mine. It no longer serves as office (despite the letters on the table). The rocking-chair is a spot for the dog to snooze on, rather than one for me to sit in while I read. Now that the house is mine to use as I wish, I read with no intrusion from TV or radio in the living-room whenever it suits me, or on the old couch in my study. The kitchen that once was my retreat, my domain, my sanctuary, is no longer a place in which I spend most of my day, but it is still the place I come home to. When I come home, that’s where I go first. It’s when I take my coat off, and switch shoes for slippers; plug in the kettle, there in my kitchen, that I feel myself to be really, completely, at home.

Poetry Thursday. What an image prompts

Poetry Thursday's (completely and totally optional) suggestion this week is that we write a poem inspired by an image, and post the photo which prompted the poem. OK. I took the challenge, and decided to go to the photos I've taken over the past few months, select one without giving it too much thought, and see what it would prompt. This is the image I chose:



.........................................Under the Rainbow

................................This is what fell to earth for you, my sister:
................................All the wishes you have sent into the sky,
................................night wishes and wishes whispered;
................................wishes I was sending with you too.

................................Look what landed outside your window,
................................Sister. Look at the wealth winter brought.
................................Across the long shadow of a January day
................................colour dropped, and its echo, and the echo
................................again – Brightness for you.

................................Mine are the echoes of the echo. Mine are the
................................little rainbows that come into my room, now,
................................on the eve of a new year, as spring turns
................................round. Through the prism of one joy-tear.

................................This is what falls to earth for you, my sister:
................................every smile you have given out, every kindness
................................you have offered, your goodness returned.
................................Love has come to find you. Love.

----------------------------------------------------------------

I took that photo from my sister's living-room window in January. She's just become engaged, and this poem is to celebrate that and her birthday this week... She's the friend of my heart, my companion through life in many ways. We are 15 months apart, and have shared a great deal of the ups and downs in life. So, here's another view from A's window. Can you make out that that is a double rainbow? It was!

For more image-ispired poems, go to Poetry Thursday.

Sunday Scribblings - Inspiration

Inspiration.

Today it is in the wind that’s whipping the viburnum about, tossing her new petals with the hail that lashes my windows. Where is inspiration? It’s in movement, in moments of change. When that point of transition is spotted – from one season to another, from one emotion to another – that’s where I find my breath catches, and I want to capture the moment, the essence of that shift.

There’s the word, inspiration, and what I’ve heard of it. It has to do with breath. But for me, it also has to do with spirit. Something moves the spirit. Something catches the attention of spirit and won’t let go. It tugs at the sleeve of spirit, twirls a lock of spirit’s hair round and round, until I pay attention. Not hard, careful, work-like attention, but the kind of attention that’s easy to give, the loose, wandering attention that I might give to a summer’s sky or the flow of people past the window of a coffee-shop.

Inspiration is waiting there, like a puppy, ready to pounce out, hind-quarters in the air, front paws stretched forward, and a lolling, giddy tongue. Woof! Find me! Follow me! I have something to show you. Or inspiration comes swooping like a May-time swallow, dipping, wheeling, calling me into a new dance.

What I know is it can’t be forced. It must be cajoled a little, but not too obviously. It needs to be welcomed with a very open door, and slightly rumpled cushions on the chair I set out for it. Inspiration takes a bite of a sandwich I make for it, but runs for the hills if I try to cook it a hearty meal.

When Inspiration hangs about, life is joyful. There are whispers, and when they are followed, there are treasures. Not gold and diamonds, but feathers and the glint of sunlight on one perfect little puddle – just there, and the reminder of a memory long forgotten. Inspiration calls together past, present and magic to create what’s new, what’s special for now, for this moment, and oh, inspiration gives permission to say That, whatever it may be, and now, just now, not my words, but inspiration reminds me to share these words:

.........................Stop the words now.
....................Open the window
....................in the centre of your chest,
....................and let the spirits fly in and out.
......................................................Rumi

There will be more Inspiration at Sunday Scribblings - HERE

Poetry Thursday -- RED

I am so, so, so taken with the new Poetry Thursday site. The columnists have begun to show up, with words of wisdom, words of inspiration, words, words, words. I didn't think PT could get much more invigorating, and here it is, with daily doses of life. Exciting. Happy-making! Go check it out, not just on Thursdays, but as often as you think of it. You'll probably find something new there! Or, rather HERE

This week's (completely and totally optional) prompt was to go find what's red in the natural world. I've taken a slight liberty with the prompt, but am pleased to find that something current in my life fits for me. Here's my take on RED.


Natural Red

(for Nicola)

My niece has fire in her hair.
When she turns her head,
sparks light the dull March day.

I show her my home.
Her first visit, we drive
out into the hills.

She wants to see wild, and we find
mountain, rock, dead heather, and
red rust streaking through the hills

Trees that hold what’s dead,
hold it, as though there is heat
in that flame, as though the blanket

of last year’s spent needles, tawny
old-blood red will bring life again.
I’m sorry the day is so cold.

"Wrong time of year", I say,
she shakes her head No.
"I prefer red to green any day".
----------------------------------------

Find more Red things HERE

Sunday Scribbling - Superstition

I brought it on myself. There was that email that was to be forwarded to my very best female friends - and returned to the sender; there was another that promised luck if I made a wish and forwarded the email to five friends (and the sender) within 15 minutes; there was another with a prayer to St. Theresa (was that to be forwarded to 9 or 19 people? I can't recll). I left them all undealt-with.

I have spurned the blessings of various saints and gods; the luck of the Irish; I have disdained promises of wealth and jobs, of love and eternal happiness. I have turned my back, time and time again on the promise of unimaginable good things falling into my lap if I would only hit the "forward" button and send on the message to others, let them share in the good fortune that is right now winging its way to me (or would be, if I did what I am being urged to do).

I can say that it is modern-day distaste for spam and its ilk that causes me to ignore these emails, but in truth, it is my old-time anti-superstition rearing its head here. Chain letters and the fear they engendered in people during my school days are alive and well and living on the web, and I don't want to be part of carrying on that chain.

If people send me a pleasant message asking me to share it, I might well do that. I often do. But when it comes with attached threats of dire consequences if I do not comply, well, then, that's exactly what will guarantee that I will dig my heels right in, and say NO! No, I will not forward this to my friends. No, I will not tell them any such thing. And if there are promises of great results, well, No. I will make no such promises either.

So, friends, if you have sent one of these emails to me, please don't be surprised that it does not return. I'm sorry if I've broken chains of good luck, but now my reward has come to me.

For no reason, no reason I can see or discern, I'm being regularly (but not regularly enough to see a pattern) locked out of email and the net. Or I'm being let in, and then blocked up. So, if I have spurned one of your messages, you will know now, that all my bad luck has come at last. And the punishment suits the crime. My computer is the instrument of torture, and it will soon bring me to my knees, repenting, and promising to forward, without murmur, any and every piece of spam that comes my way. Yes. I may well be converted to cyber-superstition!

----------------------
To read more Superstitions, go HERE