threshold

Coming to sitting, each vertebra ascends and rolls into place across the tomb of an unspoken narrative. Eyelids break and then a cushioned sigh as the the interim place between moving and witnessing fades.

a long circle

Coloured cushions mark the circle, here and there accompanied by a shawl or blanket in a fallen pile of woven wool. A few sit, eyes soft with the seeing of others moving their deep stories.  One is met by another and a short striking contact unfolds through which the face of the first grows lighter, awoken somehow, eyes still closed. The second, in awareness of this change or in ignorance, moves on and the first is left, uncertain, unknowing.

on being quiet

The acquisition of silence brings with it the tension of sitting still. The slightest unguarded movement of her thoughts or body reveals this silence for the conflict that it is. In the shift of recognition the grip of focus is loosened and an ordinary silience rushes the cells, like an unrequited love fulfilled.

tracks

If thinking is movement, then not thinking is stillness, she reasons, but the concept of thinking and not thinking are both equally thoughts of themselves. She repeats this falteringly, following the words like tracks in the mud. The shift from thinking to not thinking, she continues, the shift from movement to stillness so sought, is absolutely not what it appears to be. Smiling, everything vanishes save for the cold damp windy walking of the day.

standing

Take off your shoes, show me your feet, bare on the holy ground of your experience. Look down at mine and see me standing lightly, see the honesty of my toes, the unsung hope of these arches. Lean your weight towards me when you will, and take one step.

Inspired by the words of poet David Whyte recalling a Sunday School story.

weightless

Sitting unarranged on a favourite armchair her body has merged with a fleecy grey softness that is wrapped around her. It is the dark early morning and others are sleeping. Breathing and counting, the felt sense of the body separates from the felt sense of being aware of it. Breath by breath it falls into a deep abiding comfort. The counting stops. The formless, weightless sense of presence clarifies.

missing

A little bit of her identity isn’t there anymore. A familiar touchstone that had been in her pocket for a very long time has gone. She knew it well, found it everyday with her finger and thumb, knew its shape and surface, but today someone showed her it wasn’t there, hadn’t ever been there. Puzzled, her hand checks the pocket but her fingers confirm only the unchanged space. It was true: a little bit of something that had felt firm and solid and had shone dimly in the dark of her pocket had never been there at all.

hospital 2

She walks determinedly through the unavoidable warmth of the ward, pulling off her woolen hat and unwinding her scarf with each step. Blinkered like a spooked mare she blurs the peripheral view into each six-bedded bay but breathing deeply offers a bright smile into the eyes of her father’s companions. All the young boys are old now.

hospital 1

Pushing her mother through long uninteresting corridors, pink as stale marshmallows, she is 5 again hitching a ride home from school on top of a slate grey pram with shining spoked wheels. The child sees the mother, sees the chestnut hair that has been shampooed, set and brushed into soft waves, soft waves that on looking down are now colourless and threaded darkly. Dazed by the frame of time and the turn of their roles, her skin is becoming cold and translucent, her body hollow. No blood, no bone, while the pace of their progress remains unchanged.

stars

With surprise the mover observes a familiar constellation, as familiar as the lines on her palm or the shape of her nails. She ignores the errand that brought her into the damp of the evening and lifts her gaze to scan the deep space of darkest blue; the darkest blue that could never be black. Seeing is happening beyond the organs of her eyes and without a movement of breath, she diminishes into a prick of consciousness.