I will wait until they are in bed and then I will go out and I will set the world on fire.
Away from the walls that my hopes are too fat for, I will be the line, the highlighted journey you follow across maps from a bird’s eye view, as I board trains that tunnel and chuckle away into the night. I will run through cities, cities that make me things I’m not, colour me in the same way as dresses and bright shades of lipstick could.
I will find things, some which I looked for and some which I didn’t – places with the uncertain familiarity of the faint orange glow at the end of a cigarette in the dark.
I will find music, I will find laughter and noise and heart. I will find people who belong to it all and we’ll dance, in sweaty, fairy-lit bars that stench of sticky beer and of smoke.
I will walk, I will get lost. I will lose, find, lose, find, and at some point I will learn the way.
My shoes will be muddy, my back will ache. But even then, when my eyes are prickling and through stations I draw closer and closer to what I recognise I won’t have any fear anymore because I’ll have done it, I’ll have been and come back in the blink of an eyelid, in a puff of smoke and I will have won.
When it’s 6am, and I’m oddly enough back between sheets, closing eyes against the uncomfortable pale grey of the early morning sky I’ll still know. And as my worn and achy body goes to sleep, in the bed nobody noticed was vacant, I will for a while believe that I am no insomniac and no depressive but a wanderer.
They’ll never know.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Friday, 20 April 2012
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
Milk Bottles and Artificial Flowers
We’re sorry what we’ve done to your dead.
We didn’t mean to let this happen,
And we’ll do something, we promise,
To fix;
The long, browning weeds, whose arms snake around sinking tombstones,
Though their limbs, too, hang weep and limp and without strength,
Like the rotting flesh and bones.
The bluebells, turned brownbells,
The traffic, breaking the hum of silence.
The headstones, eroded and grey.
But,
They’ll come, with knuts and bolts and hammers and nails,
Litter picks and plastic bin-bags,
And the preacher’s son will mow the grass,
Cut down the loose ends and the bedraggle,
And let it rise again, green and bright and full of life,
But for now we’re sorry
What we’ve done to your dead,
And we want you to remember that we apologized, and please tell them that we loved thy neighbour.
We didn’t mean to let this happen,
And we’ll do something, we promise,
To fix;
The long, browning weeds, whose arms snake around sinking tombstones,
Though their limbs, too, hang weep and limp and without strength,
Like the rotting flesh and bones.
The bluebells, turned brownbells,
The traffic, breaking the hum of silence.
The headstones, eroded and grey.
But,
They’ll come, with knuts and bolts and hammers and nails,
Litter picks and plastic bin-bags,
And the preacher’s son will mow the grass,
Cut down the loose ends and the bedraggle,
And let it rise again, green and bright and full of life,
But for now we’re sorry
What we’ve done to your dead,
And we want you to remember that we apologized, and please tell them that we loved thy neighbour.
Thursday, 9 June 2011
FUSIATIFTPQ Part Deux: "When do you feel most like yourself?"
Feeling Uninspired So I Asked The Internet For Thought Provoking Questions: Part Two! (that abbreviation is not catchy :( )
Maybe you can remember that a while ago, I hadn't written anything for a while and I was feeling a bit bleh and so this happened. And... well... it did again.
TODAY'S GOOGLED THOUGHT PROVOKING QUESTION:
When do you feel most like yourself?
I read this and for some reason I thought straight away the answer was being stuffed between sweaty bodies at concerts, singing along and feeling all swept away, other people's spilt beer sticking to my shoes. And then I reconsidered, because although that's my favourite part of myself to be and the one that comes easiest, it's not the one that I am the most of the time.
I came up with a lot of things - when I'm with the group of eight or so of my friends that talk in the cloakroom at school every morning, and then the less tight-knitted group of about twenty I'm with at the bottom of the fields at lunch time. I'm someone else fighting with my parents than around my mother when I tell her about my day, when I listen to music with my dad in the car and we sing along. If I'm alone with someone, I like to think I try to cater to the things they want to talk about as well as myself, but my favourite people have enough in common with me than we don't have to, or I'm comfortable enough with to know that they can listen to me talking about what I care about.
And then I came to the obvious idea that we are "our real selves" when we are completley alone. Maybe that's true. It could be that the second we do, or even just think something we wouldn't necessarily want other people to know about, it stains who we are and becomes a part of us. I think we take it in turns to mask and unveil the bits of us that we need to show or to cover in the situation. Ultimately, I think every conversation we have is because we want to loosely gain something from it, and that could be anything from an information, employment, a sandwich or just to be brought closer to someone and find common grounds. We can pull out different ways of speaking, different interests and overall, entirely different people we want to be.
Although we could probably assume we're most ourselves left alone with nothing to prove to anyone, I don't think that's entirely true. Because the way we are around other people and how we react to things are what forms us. If I the things I do alone were what I did all of the time, all I would do is read and sometimes write, watch videos on the internet, listen to music antisocially outside at night time and occasionally drink heavily and cry. And without just sounding like I'm trying to escape that but I'm glad that isn't my entire personality. Being stupid and lighthearted around my friends and polite around my teachers and generally a mixture of everything/just awful around my parents is what makes me a person.
________________________________________________________________________________
I wrote something for Drabble Day Challenge again and I don't know how I feel about this:
"GARDEN"
The alarm went off at half past twelve.
He opened and closed his eyes once or twice, fighting the magnetic tug between his eyelids and yawned once, reluctantly flicking on the light. His clothes to dress into were where he’d left them, with his good-grip shoes and winter coat.
There’d be other boys when he got to Daisy’s house, out down the street, in the cold , and they’d climbed over the tall fence faster, with less struggle than him.
Then, imagining the winter and the elbows digging into his sides he thought, tomorrow night, and he slid back into the warmth of his bed.
_____________________________________________________________________________
As usual, thank you for coming and I'll see you next week :)
Lizzie
Maybe you can remember that a while ago, I hadn't written anything for a while and I was feeling a bit bleh and so this happened. And... well... it did again.
TODAY'S GOOGLED THOUGHT PROVOKING QUESTION:
When do you feel most like yourself?
I read this and for some reason I thought straight away the answer was being stuffed between sweaty bodies at concerts, singing along and feeling all swept away, other people's spilt beer sticking to my shoes. And then I reconsidered, because although that's my favourite part of myself to be and the one that comes easiest, it's not the one that I am the most of the time.
I came up with a lot of things - when I'm with the group of eight or so of my friends that talk in the cloakroom at school every morning, and then the less tight-knitted group of about twenty I'm with at the bottom of the fields at lunch time. I'm someone else fighting with my parents than around my mother when I tell her about my day, when I listen to music with my dad in the car and we sing along. If I'm alone with someone, I like to think I try to cater to the things they want to talk about as well as myself, but my favourite people have enough in common with me than we don't have to, or I'm comfortable enough with to know that they can listen to me talking about what I care about.
And then I came to the obvious idea that we are "our real selves" when we are completley alone. Maybe that's true. It could be that the second we do, or even just think something we wouldn't necessarily want other people to know about, it stains who we are and becomes a part of us. I think we take it in turns to mask and unveil the bits of us that we need to show or to cover in the situation. Ultimately, I think every conversation we have is because we want to loosely gain something from it, and that could be anything from an information, employment, a sandwich or just to be brought closer to someone and find common grounds. We can pull out different ways of speaking, different interests and overall, entirely different people we want to be.
Although we could probably assume we're most ourselves left alone with nothing to prove to anyone, I don't think that's entirely true. Because the way we are around other people and how we react to things are what forms us. If I the things I do alone were what I did all of the time, all I would do is read and sometimes write, watch videos on the internet, listen to music antisocially outside at night time and occasionally drink heavily and cry. And without just sounding like I'm trying to escape that but I'm glad that isn't my entire personality. Being stupid and lighthearted around my friends and polite around my teachers and generally a mixture of everything/just awful around my parents is what makes me a person.
________________________________________________________________________________
I wrote something for Drabble Day Challenge again and I don't know how I feel about this:
"GARDEN"
The alarm went off at half past twelve.
He opened and closed his eyes once or twice, fighting the magnetic tug between his eyelids and yawned once, reluctantly flicking on the light. His clothes to dress into were where he’d left them, with his good-grip shoes and winter coat.
There’d be other boys when he got to Daisy’s house, out down the street, in the cold , and they’d climbed over the tall fence faster, with less struggle than him.
Then, imagining the winter and the elbows digging into his sides he thought, tomorrow night, and he slid back into the warmth of his bed.
_____________________________________________________________________________
As usual, thank you for coming and I'll see you next week :)
Lizzie
Friday, 27 May 2011
lizzie writes to you, then tries to make small talk...
"SECRET"
Quickly, you tore out a piece of paper from the back of your biology textbook,
You scribbled something, folded it in half, and labeled it, "secret".
And you looked at me with a question mark, and offered it in the palm of your hand.
Hesitantly, I clicked awake my biro, and I did the same,
Writing down all of my thoughts and all of the happenings in one nine letter word.
We swapped, quick and fast,
I flicked my eyes away from your judgement, and unfolded slowly a joke.
And I watched your eyes as you opened up my message, confusion twisting your expression, suddenly, and you looked at me,
like you were sorry.
____________________________________________________________________________
I'm writing a lot of things recently I feel sort of "eh" about. And then they end up here. Are Productivity Fridays going to be a thing? I won't say I'll stick to it, it'll only curse things.
I watched The Social Network tonight and I liked it a lot but I was disappointed, through no fault of the movie, I'd just waited a long time and my hopes were ridiculously high.
I was planning on saying something about The Social Network which was more intelligent or made more sense than that. I'm tired. Meh.
So I'm off school for a week now, except it should mostly be full of revision I can't motivate myself to do. This weekend I'm going camping with my friends for the bank holiday, so that's exciting.
Why does today feel like "you" and I are stood awkwardly trying to think of things to say to each other?
Anyway, I'll be home on Wednesday and I'll talk to you then.
- Lizzie
Quickly, you tore out a piece of paper from the back of your biology textbook,
You scribbled something, folded it in half, and labeled it, "secret".
And you looked at me with a question mark, and offered it in the palm of your hand.
Hesitantly, I clicked awake my biro, and I did the same,
Writing down all of my thoughts and all of the happenings in one nine letter word.
We swapped, quick and fast,
I flicked my eyes away from your judgement, and unfolded slowly a joke.
And I watched your eyes as you opened up my message, confusion twisting your expression, suddenly, and you looked at me,
like you were sorry.
____________________________________________________________________________
I'm writing a lot of things recently I feel sort of "eh" about. And then they end up here. Are Productivity Fridays going to be a thing? I won't say I'll stick to it, it'll only curse things.
I watched The Social Network tonight and I liked it a lot but I was disappointed, through no fault of the movie, I'd just waited a long time and my hopes were ridiculously high.
I was planning on saying something about The Social Network which was more intelligent or made more sense than that. I'm tired. Meh.
So I'm off school for a week now, except it should mostly be full of revision I can't motivate myself to do. This weekend I'm going camping with my friends for the bank holiday, so that's exciting.
Why does today feel like "you" and I are stood awkwardly trying to think of things to say to each other?
Anyway, I'll be home on Wednesday and I'll talk to you then.
- Lizzie
Saturday, 21 May 2011
"Hair"
“HAIR”
It’s late and I’m lying in bed, trying to imagine a time when I’m in more pain than this.
I imagine you, running me a bath, the perfect temperature. You lower my wasted body carefully into the water, and I feel a slight sting as I make sudden contact with the heat. With one hand you raise the showerhead, whilst you rub shampoo and soap into my scalp, my skin, between my fingers; I’m too tired not to let you. Once it’s dry, curiously, you plait my hair, weaving all of my dead ends in and out of each other, like cloth.
________________________________________________________________
I found The Drabble Challenge today - to write something about a given theme, within a five word range of 100 words. But despite how much the idea of it inspired me, this is the best I could squeeze out, it's also vaguely based on a scene in Skins. I was sort of hesitant to put it here, of all places. But I never post writing here and I probably should, and I won't want to do this in the morning.
K... enjoy, I think.
It’s late and I’m lying in bed, trying to imagine a time when I’m in more pain than this.
I imagine you, running me a bath, the perfect temperature. You lower my wasted body carefully into the water, and I feel a slight sting as I make sudden contact with the heat. With one hand you raise the showerhead, whilst you rub shampoo and soap into my scalp, my skin, between my fingers; I’m too tired not to let you. Once it’s dry, curiously, you plait my hair, weaving all of my dead ends in and out of each other, like cloth.
________________________________________________________________
I found The Drabble Challenge today - to write something about a given theme, within a five word range of 100 words. But despite how much the idea of it inspired me, this is the best I could squeeze out, it's also vaguely based on a scene in Skins. I was sort of hesitant to put it here, of all places. But I never post writing here and I probably should, and I won't want to do this in the morning.
K... enjoy, I think.
Saturday, 26 February 2011
I wrote some of this blog wearing a hairband.
I think I've always thought names were something quite important. When I was younger, I'd always wish I was called something else, and often try to get something to catch on, even up until I was in the first year of high school I tried to get people to call me by my middle name.
But as a writer, oddly I've never thought or worried about naming characters that much, up until tonight. The first serious thing I wrote was my NaNoWriMo novel in 2009, and seeing as I was making it up as I went along, and it was set in the present day, in a mundane town in England, my characters names were Tom and Sam and Matthew and Jack, nothing exotic or out there, and the same happened for last year's Script Frenzy.
I think for the last thing I wrote (yes I'm trying to sell Walls to you some more;) ) my character's names were more special and exciting, though I didn't really mean them to be. My characters this time became more colourful, and with them so did their names. Something really special happened involving this: one character's a huge fan of David Bowie is in love with a girl named Janine (partly named after the IAMX bass/synth-ist) , and until somebody told me later on I had no idea David Bowie has a song called "Janine". Maybe it's fate.
But currently I'm in that stage of planning out something before heading into writing it, and it's strongly based around some people I know, so what I'm doing really is renaming. And it's unbelievably hard to find a new name for a friend when they already have one, especially when it suits them to the point that it becomes a part of them.
I've tried to do some kind-of tricks, for example using meanings - for one character I used behindthename.com to look up meanings for words like strong and red and fire, and also used birthdays as internation naming days, which my French exchange partner taught me about, as we don't have them here, and it turned out her naming day is my birthday.
On top of one of my best friends and some other people I was quite close with a while back, I also had to re-name myself, which was actually really hard. Because there's those names you feel you'd like to be called, though just for a while, like Lolita or Persephone, then there's obvious ones, like maybe a middle name or the name of a relative or something. But then I thought of another way and I think I have a name now. Maybe.
I don't know what the point of that was.
- lizzie
But as a writer, oddly I've never thought or worried about naming characters that much, up until tonight. The first serious thing I wrote was my NaNoWriMo novel in 2009, and seeing as I was making it up as I went along, and it was set in the present day, in a mundane town in England, my characters names were Tom and Sam and Matthew and Jack, nothing exotic or out there, and the same happened for last year's Script Frenzy.
I think for the last thing I wrote (yes I'm trying to sell Walls to you some more;) ) my character's names were more special and exciting, though I didn't really mean them to be. My characters this time became more colourful, and with them so did their names. Something really special happened involving this: one character's a huge fan of David Bowie is in love with a girl named Janine (partly named after the IAMX bass/synth-ist) , and until somebody told me later on I had no idea David Bowie has a song called "Janine". Maybe it's fate.
But currently I'm in that stage of planning out something before heading into writing it, and it's strongly based around some people I know, so what I'm doing really is renaming. And it's unbelievably hard to find a new name for a friend when they already have one, especially when it suits them to the point that it becomes a part of them.
I've tried to do some kind-of tricks, for example using meanings - for one character I used behindthename.com to look up meanings for words like strong and red and fire, and also used birthdays as internation naming days, which my French exchange partner taught me about, as we don't have them here, and it turned out her naming day is my birthday.
On top of one of my best friends and some other people I was quite close with a while back, I also had to re-name myself, which was actually really hard. Because there's those names you feel you'd like to be called, though just for a while, like Lolita or Persephone, then there's obvious ones, like maybe a middle name or the name of a relative or something. But then I thought of another way and I think I have a name now. Maybe.
I don't know what the point of that was.
- lizzie
Saturday, 31 July 2010
stranger inspiration & killing time
hello,
I'm leaving for the airport with my family to go to Turkey at three o clock this morning.
Seeing as it's the summer and there's no school, my sleeping pattern's changed and I've started going to bed later and waking up later also. So seeing as it's only adding 1-2 hours onto the time I would normally go to bed at the moment, I decided to just stay awake until 3 tonight.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. I am bored already and the internet is lonely.
Um... so on the off chance anyone reads this, feel free to email me? lizzie.hudson@hotmail.co.uk
I started writing a novel today. This is how the idea started.
My grandfather died last week. He isn't my biological grandfather, but he's been with my grandma since I was born and it always felt like he was. On Thursday, the day of his funeral, I got to my grandma's house slightly earlier to bring a tray of brownies for the wake.
There was nobody there except a tall man, I'd say aged about sixty, but I'm really bad at guessing ages. My grandma introduced me to him. "Oh, this is a complete stranger," she said, and laughed.
This man, Dan, his name was, had turned up at the door that morning and told her that the deceased's brother, who was supposed to read a poem, was ill and is friend had come to do it instead. Nobody had heard from Clifford at all, just sort of automatically trusted this man because humans trust other humans, it seems, unless they are slightly odd and eccentric or under eighteen or possibly German.
He was an awkward man, tried hard to join in conversation and fit in, and didn't have much of a sense of humor (A distant great aunt or something to my mother: "You're Robin's wife? I've never met you before." Dan guy: "Well, I've never met any of you before today. Heh.") He had very pale blue eyes and a frowny serious expression and the way he moved and acted reminded me slightly of a football manager.
Throughout the funeral, he was gradually bumped up to the point that he was... let's call it part of the main procession. If it were a wedding, he would have been bordering on best man. Whilst my grandma's friends and neighbours kept distance whilst close family comforted her at certain times, the stranger Dan would instantly by her side, squeezing her hand, reassuring her as if he were a close friend or a brother or something.
The part that scared me the most was at the wake, I heard my grandma say to a group of her friends, "Dan's been great, hasn't he? I feel as if I've known him for years."
The polite brownie making grandaughter I was stayed quiet and smiled and acted like you do at funerals.
The writer inside me was driven crazy with excitement. She dragged my body to the bathroom, with a napkin and a biro I'd fouund at the bottom of my handbag. Together, we spent a hurried two minutes scribbling on both sides of the napkin and along the parts of my arms that were covered by my cardigan.
I have a lot to thank him for, the creepy man that arrived from nowhere and got under everybody's skin. The exaggeration of Dan in my head has hopped straight from reality onto the page, but the rest of the characters in my novel, some made of flesh and others imagination, were born this morning. I was too excited to wait for NaNoWriMo, I have laptop and an empty notebook and a five hour plane journey to write with during tomorrow, as well as being in a strange place for two weeks.
I will leave you now. Here is a picture of a ketchup bottle I took in Key West last year.
I'm leaving for the airport with my family to go to Turkey at three o clock this morning.
Seeing as it's the summer and there's no school, my sleeping pattern's changed and I've started going to bed later and waking up later also. So seeing as it's only adding 1-2 hours onto the time I would normally go to bed at the moment, I decided to just stay awake until 3 tonight.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. I am bored already and the internet is lonely.
Um... so on the off chance anyone reads this, feel free to email me? lizzie.hudson@hotmail.co.uk
I started writing a novel today. This is how the idea started.
My grandfather died last week. He isn't my biological grandfather, but he's been with my grandma since I was born and it always felt like he was. On Thursday, the day of his funeral, I got to my grandma's house slightly earlier to bring a tray of brownies for the wake.
There was nobody there except a tall man, I'd say aged about sixty, but I'm really bad at guessing ages. My grandma introduced me to him. "Oh, this is a complete stranger," she said, and laughed.
This man, Dan, his name was, had turned up at the door that morning and told her that the deceased's brother, who was supposed to read a poem, was ill and is friend had come to do it instead. Nobody had heard from Clifford at all, just sort of automatically trusted this man because humans trust other humans, it seems, unless they are slightly odd and eccentric or under eighteen or possibly German.
He was an awkward man, tried hard to join in conversation and fit in, and didn't have much of a sense of humor (A distant great aunt or something to my mother: "You're Robin's wife? I've never met you before." Dan guy: "Well, I've never met any of you before today. Heh.") He had very pale blue eyes and a frowny serious expression and the way he moved and acted reminded me slightly of a football manager.
Throughout the funeral, he was gradually bumped up to the point that he was... let's call it part of the main procession. If it were a wedding, he would have been bordering on best man. Whilst my grandma's friends and neighbours kept distance whilst close family comforted her at certain times, the stranger Dan would instantly by her side, squeezing her hand, reassuring her as if he were a close friend or a brother or something.
The part that scared me the most was at the wake, I heard my grandma say to a group of her friends, "Dan's been great, hasn't he? I feel as if I've known him for years."
The polite brownie making grandaughter I was stayed quiet and smiled and acted like you do at funerals.
The writer inside me was driven crazy with excitement. She dragged my body to the bathroom, with a napkin and a biro I'd fouund at the bottom of my handbag. Together, we spent a hurried two minutes scribbling on both sides of the napkin and along the parts of my arms that were covered by my cardigan.
I have a lot to thank him for, the creepy man that arrived from nowhere and got under everybody's skin. The exaggeration of Dan in my head has hopped straight from reality onto the page, but the rest of the characters in my novel, some made of flesh and others imagination, were born this morning. I was too excited to wait for NaNoWriMo, I have laptop and an empty notebook and a five hour plane journey to write with during tomorrow, as well as being in a strange place for two weeks.
I will leave you now. Here is a picture of a ketchup bottle I took in Key West last year.
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