Navelgazing

On looking forward and back

by Veronica Foale on July 4, 2011

I look around. It’s dusty here and a little damp. It seems I left my blog in the darkness and it’s started to grow moss.

Never mind, I like moss anyway. It gives character and somewhere for the bugs to crawl. What use is light if there is no darkness to balance it out.

I’ve been stuck. Caring too much, wanting too much, not wanting enough. The landscape has shifted under my feet and riding out an earthquake appears to be harder than surfing a wave. I don’t want what you’ve got, I want what I want.

I want to write. And I’m going to, even if I’m tired. Even when it hurts, I’m going to write.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

***

I’ve lived in my house for three years now and it wasn’t until my grandmother died that I hung pictures on the walls. Her pictures, the paintings and photographs that had lived in her house for as long as I could remember. I hung them and I thought of her and missed what used to be.

But you can’t go backwards. This life of ours dictates forward movement only and here I am, moving along. A snails pace sometimes, but it’s movement. Time passes and I pass with it.

Yesterday, I went looking for a manila folder I knew I had. Dusty and tired I eventually found it, the detritus of high school. Inside, paintings from another time, done when I had time to spare and no one wiping snot on my trousers.

Carefully, I pinned them to my walls, wondering if I was still the same person who painted them.

I haven’t painted in years, now.

***

Blogging is strange for me lately. Peeling off layers of my own skin to poke around underneath and see what falls out.

It’s still a shark tank out there and while I’ve got my oxygen, I’m not sure I’m going to last much longer.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Forcing it

by Veronica Foale on March 1, 2011

in Navelgazing

Autumn came, seemingly overnight. I’m not entirely sure where my summer went, but I know that it’s gone and I’ve lost my chance to lay in the sun.

I’ve got writers block and I don’t know if I’m falling apart or not. Not writing, I’m twitchy, but forcing it isn’t feeling much better.

Good things have been happening, in a relatively consistent stream and yet, I’m still left laughing maniacally at an email that comes through, because fucking hell, could this whole situation be any more bizarre? Sometimes it’s like an elaborate dance I’m dancing, keeping all my balls up in the air and my feet away from the cracks. Blogging is insanity personified and I’m pretty sure twitter is the gaping jaws swallowing all my cohesive thoughts.

I wonder if I’m going mad and content myself that as long as I’m still trying to work it out, then I’m probably not. My head feels all messy and I’m coping, I’m functioning, okay? but there’s the dark underbelly I can’t think about, or talk about, or write out.

I’m pretty sure I’m going mad, I’m just not convinced it’s an entirely bad thing. It feels like an imagination overload and imagination is a good thing when it involves giant scenarios with small heroes and large problems, less of an asset when it makes you run through your emergency drills over and over and wonder how things would look if that person fell down that cliff.

My imagination is a bit of an arsehole sometimes.

I’m forcing it out, making it work. Every hill can be climbed right? You’ve just got to keep walking?

Yes.

I think I’m going mad, but sometimes, you’ve just to write stuff and trust that people will know you’re still okay. Things just need out.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

I’m trying hard to not be bitter

by Veronica Foale on December 17, 2010

in Family, Me, Navelgazing

Writing is cathartic for me and sometimes, I need to write things out before my head explodes from the words and the hurt going around and around and around.

Sometimes though, once I’ve written them and gotten some feedback, it’s better. The words stop and the insanity stops and I can shake off the hurt and move forward again.

This time, I don’t need to leave the post up. I’ve got no real need to sit and wait for the vitriolic emails to appear in my inbox. And don’t doubt me here, I know they’d appear. This is the Internet and I’ve always known my writing could be found by everybody.

My family is difficult and nuanced and complicated. They are annoying and forgetful and biased. Even when I don’t like them very much, I still love them. I suspect they’re very much like every other family out there.

The people who need to know how I feel already do and the people who made me feel that way in the first place, well, I’m doubting that a shitfest will make me feel better.

I suspect my twitter stream has more spies than Russia and I am fine with that. My twitter stream is not private, in any way shape or form. If my highschool principal was so inclined, he could read what I was up to. In real life, I am intensely introverted. My blog and writing help to combat that and keep me balanced.

So really, this is just me saying that while I don’t feel better as such, I’m not letting it hurt anymore and I’m walking away.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

It starts with a drip.

by Veronica Foale on July 27, 2010

in Life, Navelgazing

A drop falls on my hand and I look at it, mildly annoyed. Shaking my hand, I continue with my evening, my hand slightly damp.

This is how it starts. A drop falls and leaves a wet patch that chafes and irritates me.

A second drop falls, followed shortly after by a cup of water thrown on my head. Gasping, I look around, soaked to the shoulders and wondering where it came from.

Before I know it, I’m in the middle of an icy ocean, fully clothed and wondering where the fuck my shore is. Shaking, cold, I swim towards the light until I can drag myself out of the water, to stand, dripping and shivering; sand caking between my toes as my teeth chatter a rhythym.

That is how it ends.

The trigger is something different each time:

A waft of perfume;

a photo on the wall;

a stray thought that I can’t shake.

A trigger that once pulled, drags me towards it’s culmination.

Sometimes, I walk silently, waiting for the drip.

Other times, I scream and wail; kicking and screaming like a child.

I’m BUSY. Can’t you see I’m busy? I don’t have time to swim right now.

FUCK YOU.

It’s inevitable; the drip.

This is what soul pain is. It starts with a drip and ends with a slow icy slog towards shore, knowing that you’re going to be cleaning sand out of your toes for days.

And you never know what your trigger will be until it hits you, like a brick wall at high speed.

SLAP.

No thought for what you were doing, suddenly you’re swimming.

Again.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Stop

by Veronica Foale on July 25, 2010

in Life, Navelgazing

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 its 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.