Poetics of the soul

a place to be and find home

this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if(so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm — e.e. cummings

I keep returning to the inglorious past.

What am I seeking?

Or why am I seeking to return there?

For answers . . . more than likely; and yet, they do not come.

Is this what they call sensemaking?

If so, I find no meaning in the decisions I apparently made.

Why this? and not that?

Do I wish things had turned out differently?

It depends what I mean by “wish”; do I mean: I wish I hadn’t lost myself in work?

Yes, there’s that but there’s also a sense that from my very earliest days I lived in my imagination and loved to create — even if it wasn’t always tangible.

I can see now why I’m so in love with William Blake and his visions:

Peckham Rye Lane
by Amy Blakemore

The sun, today –
it leaks desperation,
Gunmetal droplets of perspiration

gather.

 

I take the bus – through Peckham.

 

Knickers lie flaccid

in Primark.

Like salted jellyfish – tentacle pink,

grandmother mauve

 

briny in £2 racks of rainbow.

 

Peckham Rye lane is tight

as damp and crammed as a coconut shell

 

afro combs and mobile phones in the white heat –

punctuated cornrows and seed beads,

cornflower scrunchies, liquorice weaves.

 

The delicate babies in KFC,

children, plaid-dressed children,

wailing, clutching drumsticks like weapons.

 

Underfoot

the pavement is a gruesome meat,

each person is a sturdy hairbrush bristle on its surface.

 

Angels gaze from the treetops

like William Blake

 

and radiate

 

comfort.

If I try to apprehend (and this is the best way I can put it) this sense of loss, it’s indubitably hard. In fact, it feels so hard that even to open up about the near 40 years of banging my head against a capitalist, proletariat-infused brick wall brings me to tears.

What was I thinking qua my soul?

Did I think that any of the clothes I tried on, or the guises I so dutifully obeyed, or the BS shtick of trying to build a legal practice was in supplication to my soul?

I don’t honestly know but they feel so remote, black-hole like that it’s a wonder I didn’t annihilate my entire imaginal state, leaving me if not a broken man, certainly monotone in my purview.

(I do have a sense of humour, or I’d like to think I do, but when push comes to karmic shove, or this is how it was, I’m apt to go all out to get what I want but not for something touching and kind on the soul, i.e. pursuing the creative endeavour, but something more akin (mea culpa) to WIIFM.)

I recognise that the foregoing is entirely my own doing (save for the brainwashing from my earliest years!), and in sharing these words it’s not so much a cathartic experience but to make it clear — crystal clear — that despite the likelihood that I’ll still have work in the legal trenches for a while yet, I’m ready to roll the dice again apropos the creative act.

I’m under no illusion quite how hard it’s going to be to find a space in this information-saturated, marketing-unabashed world.

Perhaps I should lower my sights and acknowledge the fact that showing up requires immense courage, particularly in the face of all those plaintive, inner voices that think me (inter alia) a loser for believing I can create anything of merit.

I need also to consider: what is my highest calling?

Is it to write?

Is to write poetry?

Or is it to bear down on what it means to be and become a cultural activist?

Perhaps all of them; or none of them.

Truth is, I won’t know until I try.

And that doesn’t mean, as I’ve previously said, having to be online or to share anything online but to dig in and find a solid place from which to work.

I pause at this point to ask myself:

Am I an avowed procrastinator?

I mean: I’ve been here so many times that it’s (frankly) embarrassing. That’s particularly the case with all the ink I’ve generated with my blogging efforts when I could/should have knuckled under to create (my) “art”.

Again, this is something else for me to work through. Not in the sense of leapfrogging all the things I’ve done but to elicit the joy and beauty that has previously so lifted my soul. (I know it’s words that continue to inspire me; a few people continue to encourage me to write something book-length; and I might; but I’m not ready to commit to something; if I do anything, the best thing I can do is: simply write the bloody thing and be damned.)

If there’s a message to this post, it’s this:

We’re here for a reason. We don’t know what it is. And we’ll never find out unless we go all the way. But we won’t do that or be inspired to do so unless we try to connect with something that sustains us through all the broken pieces of our life. Our imagination is there to withstand the slings and arrows of the marketplace and to nourish our soul. But it can so easily wither or get lost and we need to constantly be leaping from the known to the unknown for to do otherwise means we end up living arid, moribund lives where we live by someone else’s rules.

Of course, you may have a very different take on things, and if you do, I’d love for you to share your own experience.

Take care.

Love,

Julian