Veronica Foale

I tell stories.

Stop

Stop.

Just stop,

Take your moment; this moment and stop. Breathe in and savour the smells of living and stop thinking, because the world is likely to overpower you with it’s wrongness.

With the wrongness of a 6 year old not knowing what a tomato was, with the wrongness of a chicken living 39 days from birth to slaughter, with the wrongness of oil spilling into the Gulf and the cheers when the leak is stopped, but why are we cheering? Aren’t there still eleventy million barrels of oil floating on the water down there? Aren’t there still pelicans suffering and turtles being burned and a journalistic silence being held?

Why are we smiling?

Because it could have been worse.

Worse? It is worse. THIS is the worse.

When the spill was stopped, we shouldn’t have cheered. It was not a success. It was a chance to just stop and breathe out.

In relief.

In disgust.

No cheers, because things are still broken. Stopping the spill is not better.

Things are not suddenly fixed.

The wrongness is still there, lurking under the surface, tainting the smell of seagulls with a darker undercurrent.

When hormones can produce you a chicken for eating in 39 days, we should not be cheering for profit margins and congratulating ourselves on a faster turnover. When did people become removed from suffering? When did we become so overloaded with wrong that we couldn’t see for the dark? When did humans lose their humanity?

But, but there’s too much. I … I can’t.

Stop.

Just stop.

Take measure of where you are and breathe deeply.

When the tipping point comes, when you say ENOUGH and you stop.

Then stop.

Not numb

Poke poke.

Does that hurt?

No.

I think it’s meant to hurt.

Poke poke.

Nothing.

There’s meant to be something there. I’m meant to feel something I’m sure.

A yawning chasm opens in my soul and swallows my emotions. I’m not anxious anymore, but I’m not happy or sad or angry either.

I don’t like this. I’m meant to feel something when I poke there.

The numbness spreads like anaesthetic and I ignore it, repeating to myself it’s for the greater good like a mantra. A fortnight later I stop the drugs and shockingly; amazingly, my emotions flood back in and things look sharper, brighter.

Poke poke.

Does that hurt?

Oh yes. Oh god yes that hurts.

I’m back and I can write again.

Blog Carnival

AMB blog carnival button

One of my early posts is being highlighted by the lovely Kristin, as part of the AMB blog carnival.

You can read the post here, or you can read all the other talented entries here.

Notice me! Notice me!

Something happens and I stand up, walk away from my computer and stab myself in the eye. Falling forwards, I lay in a pool of blood and wonder if this is less painful that what I’ve just witnessed.

Wait.

Rewind.

Something happens and I stand up and walk away from my computer.

That’s where this story ends.

***

Notice me! Notice me!

We all shout it.

This is the InterWebs and we’re all crying to be noticed, while hiding in our corners, under a blanket. We’re a giant flock of male robins, trying to impress a future mate. We dance and we sing and we flap and somewhere, another bird watches and wonders what the fuck?

Screeching to be noticed, hoping that we’ll find an audience.

It’s sort of interesting.

***

If you scorn a label, only to be noticed and slapped with that label, do you tear it off and walk away?

Or do you preen, happy to have been noticed in the first place.

Which is more important, being noticed? Or your truth.

***

This is my truth:

I steal time away from life in order to write.

Or is it -

I steal time away from writing, in order to live.

I’m not so sure anymore. Everything is tied up in my imagination, in my could’s and possibly’s and maybe’s that I forget that I’m still sitting in front of my computer watching a cursor blink on an empty page.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

My toddler laughs and while I watch, a bird flies – THWAP – into the window.

That is my truth.

***

How long until we hit the glass in here and come up short; left stunned and lying flat on our back.

What on earth hit me?

What on earth did I hit?

***

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

I Like…

I like to stop and watch humanity swirl past me, a rock in a river of flooding water. Catching glimpses of reality; the way light falls on her hair, a chubby ankle as a baby learns to walk, a smile for the stranger.

I like to watch and listen, silent against a wall, a small smile as I pick up bits of someone else’s life. A he said she said conversation, a teenager with angst, a mother at the end of her rope.

I like to live inside my head, holding imaginary conversations, wondering if this time, this sentence, will it be the branch that breaks the dam and leaves me head down, drowning in a sea of words – a beautiful thing.

I like to lay on my back in the grass in the warm sunshine, feeling the earth support me as I breathe in time with the world.

I like my imagination.

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