Dear Monthlies
The end of another year, and after attending eight writing workshops, one that has been incredibly productive for the Monthly writing groups. This year we have truly written awry, thanks as always to Anne’s inspired and inspiring workshops. We have reached the sky, felt the wind, swam towards meaning, climbed way out of comfort zones, listened to the earth as she breathed, let thunder roll into our writing, burned away the dross and finally found ourselves in the Valley of Joyous Expression.
It’s been a great year for many of the monthlies – what with books being accepted by publishers, art exhibitions, second books being launched – the monthlies are hot! (And if you don’t believe me, take a look at the Karin Andersen’s news about Afrika Burn for a sizzling end to the exciting news for the year! Make sure you watch the video too – especially 1 minute 22 seconds in!)
Portfolio Day was brimful of writers showing what they had done during 2009, but Anne still managed to get us writing for the blog – Shadorma after Shadorma, followed by yet more Shadormas! They are such fun to write. I tried to find out more about them, but very little is known, and so I think we’ll just go with the Monthly interpretation of this poetry form: poems redolent with sleeping shadows!
It’s been my privilege to edit such talented writers – thank you for making my task so easy! May I end this with a gift of words to the wonderful women who make up Anne Schuster’s Monthly Writing Groups?
Mairexx
Shadormas for the Monthlies
I
O Shadorma
Are you but
a sleeping shadow-
poem of dreams
hovering?
Your name gives me the freedom
to think of you so.
II
The Monthlies
She who writes
swings on threads of words.
Eyes open
she mind-dreams,
falls aslant into stories
and writes her way out.
Reverie - Simeon Solomon (British, 1840-1905)
I am in
this day forever
in a feathered hat
adventures
hover in-between the lines
glittered and sparkling
The long grass
Weaving to and fro
Dark clouds gather
Frightening
Then thunder and lightning
Unload their cargo
She is pale
The colour of death
Her eyes closed
No more pain
Clouds roll in; lightning strikes
A soul burns
Her brothers
Had become lovers
Not of her
But of Jane
Jane with flaming flying hair
A famed wild beauty
pink flowers
in the lake of joy
reflections
purity
presence is abundance
simply the free-flow
All women
in the lake of joy,
you said now,
start knitting!
In the distance – you with child,
count me in, I will!
Lovers
Syrup souls
sink and sigh in love,
flailing flesh,
rise up raw
then slide in sweaty silence
beneath lilac light.
expecting
hysterectomy
bones to pick
aches and pains
and they happen every day
2.
memories
days before dying
no grudges
all around
the miraculous process
to open our eyes
Goosebumps on water.
Spread like wings
raising goosebumps on
water I
in wavelets
words are priceless but I can
not hear them speak to
infinity
as I slide into
my skin my
breath catching
caressing my toes falling
into that bath of
feeling as
water trusts the tide
so that I
arms outstretched
I feel free to float on the
may never happen.
What the wind brings.
The wind stirs,
rippling the smooth lake
like old skin,
a leaf drifts,
a fragment of memory –
exquisite sorrow.
Valley and lake.
Two concentric lines
of colours on paper
I paint across
the diagonals.
Suddenly I see
a valley
in which with
a brush stroke of blue
I paint
a lake.
Night and Sleep: Evelyn Pickering De Morgan 1850 - 1919
Joy returns,
floats me into blue.
Higher than
clearest light,
higher than the clouds, I am
gossamer threaded.
Reflections
Light glowing throughout
Bliss absorbs
through skin as
thoughts assumptions and spirit
dance in perfection
unworldly
dappled through glades
deep sorrow
hot lava
burning and angry and joins
the moment of death
Caring claws
Help flowers grow
Talons hard
To protect
To soothe, to smother, to kill
Granite with soft edge
He stumbles
In the sun’s last blush
messages
streaked with pink
How she loved chrysanthemums
The man remembers
klein damask
ingekreukelde
volmaaktheid
styf verpak
jou blaartjies wat al oop is
ruik soos roos moet ruik
alles is een
so sê die wat weet
dood en lewe
oud en jonk
dít perfekte roosknopppie
laat my tóg wonder
bewussyn
die grootste gawe
wonderlik
toegevou
hoe ver is ons nie almal
van die hierwees nie
Permission to glance below
She’s alive
Possibly poisoned
Ice rainbows
Shaped all this
Fire boils my blood menopause
Ultimate excuse
As we played
sitting on the rocks
reflections
just perfect
and the lake would be alive
with sounds of laughter
New writing,
creative tension
polarised,
yin and yang,
to reflect the profound truth.
Paradoxical
Sunset glow
It is so sacred
Red hot earth
When rain comes
Rain in the Khalaghadi
Elders sing and dance
Love of Life
Love of life
We remember you
Joy, child’s play
She lights up
The heavens open the sky
Praising, upraised arms.
Don’t forget to have a look at the end of this month’s blog where Trisha Lord, Linda Price and Cathy Stagg all have very inspiring and useful workshops and courses for the monthlies to look at.
Linda is offering a course called the Practice Diaries, Cathy invites you to join OPEN BOOK writing workshops and Trish will let you know all about TIME TO THINK
Early Spring
First standing still on a
day dancing, prancing, pretty – a tale
of falling flowers, fluttering.
Spring sprung –
I find a dandy lion, a daffodil;
keep it close, safe, a secret snowdrop.
Thinking of kings and queens – and I’m quiet
about the hidden hoekkie high in
the top of the garden – lost in the
end of never. The ever-never memory
of flowers – of those first spring days now
autumn is almost all about left of my life.
First-ly let me explain the day-to-
day yearning to be heard.
Of-ten this stops me from speaking or – I
spring a leak and can’t stop gushing.
I try to
keep each aching desire subdued,
thinking, sinking into thoughts
about you and how you lit
the taper until, at the
end, burned down and out
of air, I am doused by
autumn’s falling silence.
Autumn numbs the plumb line
of reaping the stillness, the lingering
end of dusty cobwebs, musty with staleness.
The gusty south-easter blows
about the blotted spots of Jackson Pollock.
Thinking about the new leaves of flower-dotted hills
keeps winter’s sleep wilting into wakefulness.
I feel a fresh newness, a clean sweep to
spring- a tring of a bell, the note of hope,
of expectant, searing reason, groping for
day prayers as they stray unbidden.
First on my list is to listen.
/ as…
autumn turns to ruin numberless dreams
of fruitful trials,
end is defined as end, days numbered by
the invisible nibbles of time. Marking crossings with o u t,
about-turns plummet then run dead.
Thinking ahead, sinking on slitherslide, I weep : Oh
keep me on, reap me not now,
I long for life! Free me for one final
spring or so. Spare me once more, one silly summer
of frolic, one lusty love. I beg for hope’s horizon to be adorned with
days unnumbered. Steadied thus I shall succumb, creep towards winter, heart
…first and perhaps ://
First things first: when
day broke, he got out
of bed, and realised that it was
Spring. “Daffodils,” he said to me.
I answered, “Not here. Here we have daisies which
keep the veld blooming.”
“Thinking about that, yes; er..
about that trip we’re taking to
the West Coast Let’s
end our visit to the flowers
of Darling, Clanwilliam and the Bidouw Valley before
Autumn comes again.
Noise
(Diastic poem)
Longing for your noise.
Crick-cracking down the passage.
Clanking a door.
Your deep, gentle voice
trawling by the river.
If only you were.
Bleeps overcame you.
Big hands released the jangle of the leash.
The last time
big hands soothed my forehead.
If only you were.
Slurping your tea,
your knees and feet clicking.
Noisy you – never treading gently.
Sleeping to your piano clinking hands.
If only you were.
S P R I N G on the Highveld
grasS burnt black, revealing shy green stalks
innocence Polluted, cast away without thought
past the tRain, flash pictures – fields of flowers
amongst piles of rustIng metal
I regret in autumn Now
longing for lost days of sprinG
First rays yawn
Autumn mourns, rightly, of foetid, tired days
ending the eternal darkness.
The heat takes kinship
around amazing ambushes.
Thinking new wishes,
keeping careful count,
I laugh gently.
Spring sings songs
of familiar music,
day dreams dance,
first rays yawn.
Two poems
And still it rains
First falsehood of spring falters as
day discloses the truth
of obvious lies.
Spring. Spurious words sprout petals, wings and horns
I claim virtue only for the thoughts I
keep constrained in my throat.
Thinking “thank god for silence” – thinking
about absolution, thinking about
the tenet of world
end. Endless silence, end
of all seasons.
Autumn abdicates and still it rains.
…And still it rains
First fucking day of spring and still it rains. My
day in ruins. What did I expect? Sunshine, T-shirts and skirts? A crock
of sentimental shit brewed up by the stupid weatherman.
Spring! Scabrous words sprout forked fiery tongues and the devil’s tail.
I can’t believe this! Angry and disjointed thoughts
keep up a cacophony in my head –
Thinking
about striking out at someone. The Someone Up There! Thinking about
the maker of all seasons – the one who decides when a time will
end. The bearer
of ominous tacit, this rain, on my wedding day.
Autumn abdicates and still it rains.
Spring
The deep scent of my lover
coals are red, darkening, deepening
Forest breath to catch my cheeks
Galloping hooves to thunder
fog swirls around a lantern
Dampness. I long for the burning flame
Sadness, tentacles stuck in the tide
White, translucent
release
Feel the auburn of autumn again
Pine needles covering earth. Brown. Dusty. Dead.
Squirrel into the hole in the tree
bragging from the branches
Rain. Scent of new birth.
Boasting beady breath out to the blue sky and beyond
Green shoots. Tight buds.
Spring. It moves through the wind.
New blood to pass through my veins.
First flings are funny but the
day it ends is not.
Of(f) mountain edges we want to
spring, but cling ferociously to
I: I will, I won’t, I want him, I don’t
keep racing through our
thinking – and then our hearts make a turn
about and around – dancing our souls out of
the doldrums which had us mourning the
end – and now we can smell the softness
of spring and say farewell to
Autumn.
Personally speaking …
First flings are funny but the
day it ends is not.
Of-f mountain edges I want to
spring, but cling ferociously to
I: I will, I won’t, I want him, I don’t
keep racing through my
thinking – and then my heart makes a turn
about and around – dancing my soul out of
the doldrums which had me mourning the
end – and now I can smell the softness
of spring and say farewell to
autumn.
Nostalgia
Everywhere, accursed and banal
Past disowned
rising unbidden
to random stimuli
akin to a blush
Nostalgia
Blessed reclaimed treasures
Heartfelt experiences
powerful and defining
to take reference
like navigational points
The Gypsy
On a cold windy midnight in a deserted railway station, Rachel, a gypsy woman is lighting a fire. Her colourful flounced skirts are grey and tired and she wears a red woollen shawl over her shoulders. A scarf hides her hair. She looks desperate and angry. In the station, a fierce, northern wind blows, made fiercer by the drafts whirling around the high walls and the open doors and passages.
She is preparing to spend the night there, as the next day she will be begging from the hurried travellers. She will try to sleep next to the fire on a mat. She is not allowed to light a fire but at that time no-one is around to forbid her or chase her away.
The wind howls, making the station a foreboding, frightening place. The fire starts to crackle. She bends and puts her hands to it. She remembers her young hands, her dancing feet, and her long raven black hair. She thinks of the days of old, when her parents and all her younger seven siblings lived in a brightly painted caravan that Raja, their old faithful horse, pulled along the narrow Irish roads, between the stone walls, up and down the green valleys. Raja was a powerful shire horse. Dark brown, he had wide hooves covered with long pale hair. He walked slowly but surely. Rachel loved the way he smelled, warm and a little acrid, after he had worked for several hours. She enjoyed rubbing his coat with folded straw to dry him and covering him with his blanket for the night. As she did this she would talk to him, confide in him sometimes, thank him for his friendship and then she would kiss him good night on his silky black nostrils. She had been so careless and happy.
In those days they could stop in a field, and the farmers would let them drink from the well. Her parents would repair their furniture; weaving new straw on the chair seats, carding old wool and stuffing the new wool into the mattresses. She enjoyed plucking the new wool with her fingers, smelling its oil as she helped them. After that, her hands would be moisturized and soft. Her father used to sharpen scissors and knives on his portable wheel. Her teeth were set on edge a little bit by the sound of the metal grinding against the fast wheel, but the sparks were like fireworks going in all directions and she always wondered why they never scorched anything.
As they passed through towns and villages, they would go into the streets and onto the square and her father would shout “Grinding knives, scissors”. Doors would open and the lady of the house would appear holding her knives. Her father would sit on the little stool he carried, and start spinning the wheel on his grinder by hand; Rachel would then collect the knives from the housewives, one lady after the other, and take them to her father. He would shout the price and Rachel would collect the money as she returned the sharpened implements. She kept the change in a small cloth purse hanging from her waist.
In the summers the whole family would be employed making hay. They then slept in the straw. She loved the smell, the comfort and the rustling of it. After work, they played the fiddle, accordion and tambourines and danced around the bonfire; many villagers came to watch them and the bolder and friendlier ones joined them. That’s how she had learnt to dance. At the gypsy yearly competition, she would win year after year.
But here in the station, gone are the fiddles and the tambourines, gone is her dancing and her happy skirts. The gypsies have been relentlessly ostracized and chased away. The family has scattered. She has lost her luscious hair; her face is now wrinkled by too much sun, too much cold and too much sorrow. All she can do is to wrap her head and shoulders in her shawl and dream of the past.
It’s a cold winter’s afternoon and the confused priest is determinedly walking his dog in the rain on a deserted beach. The wind pushes and shoves against him and the rain pulses into his face. The waves thump and crash as spray fills the air. He staggers as the wind taunts him, whipping his scarf around his neck like a noose. His dog, small, furry, its ears blown back like streamers, coat rippling with each gust, weaves by his side. The waves draw out, thunder in, draw out, and the priest walks on, a lost, lonely, blundering figure, struggling as much to make sense of his life as the weather.
Salt stings the man’s eyes, water drips down the end of his nose. It is easy to cry here, to sob out his emptiness and frustration – no one will hear him even if he howls with the weight of the anguish in his heart. In short, juddering bursts his chest heaves with ragged sobs. As his misery consumes him, his crying intensifies. His dog whimpers in unison, glancing up every now and again as if to reassure himself that his master is there in body if not in spirit. The priest gives into the pressure of the pain which splits like a rock, snags and jabs at his heart, beats and throbs in his chest, spills out of his eyes and pours down his nose.
The sea surges against the shore, sucking sand, spitting spray, whipping white water into a froth of bursting bubbles. He wipes his clammy face with his cold hands and fumbles in his jacket pocket for his handkerchief. He keeps thinking about home, his home, which lies across this vast unthinking, uncaring ocean. A land of openness and broad blue skies, of stillness and sunshine that buries itself in his hair and his neck, caresses his back, and lifts his head. Lord, the lifter of my head. Phrases from the psalm swim into his mind. Lord, did you bring me here? Even if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there, my right hand will hold you fast. Here he is on the far side of an enormous ocean. But he doesn’t feel as if he is being held fast. He is every bit as adrift as the barnacled log that he sees being cast up onto the sand, sucked back, down, drowned by the waves, only to be vomited up once more. What has brought him to this soulless place? Does God really care? Is God real?
He remembers sand in another place. Warm sand, a sandy river bed that lies beneath vast skies. A wide expanse of sand through which is threaded a blue ribbon of shallow, clear, running water that sparkles with stars at midday. He remembers the quietness of that river, the slow step of the elephants as they come to drink in the evening. He recalls the sandstone cliffs that rise like a protective fortress across from his camp, and how, in the evenings they glow coppery-pink as the river turns from blue to a sheet of molten gold. He remembers the smoothness of the worn paths under the canopy of riverine trees, the carpet of dry leaves that crackle into the quietness under his feet. He remembers waiting, still and calm under the shade of a massive fig tree, his stealth and patience rewarded by the appearance of a shy nyala peering at him through the long winter grass. Deep brown, unblinking eyes that looked straight into his soul. He remembers the cry and majesty of the fish-eagle, the deep, reverberating grunt of the ground horn-bill, the comforting song of the mourning dove and the raucous squawk of the francolin as they nestled into the peace of the night. Night. Reveling in the warmth of the sand that crept through his thin cotton shirt, he would lie on his back gazing up into the huge, far flung tent of creation. God’s presence was very near as a million stars shimmered and sang above him.
He returns to himself. The beach, his dog, the endlessly crashing waves. The wind pulls at his jacket and berates him as he presses into it. Seagulls whirl and wheedle, a flurry of white wings and feathers as they swoop and dive, oblivious to the cold. His fingers are numb as he slips the dog’s lead over his right hand and pushes it into his pocket. But the rain has stopped.
He halts mid-pace and turns around. Instantly his world quietens. He strides now with the wind propelling him forward, a partner rather than an opponent. How much easier not to fight, not to be ensnared by short, parrying thrusts of agony, but to let the sweet flow of memories ease his mind. As the wind slackens, and the surf drops, his breathing slows. He finds he can offer a prayer of thanks for the present, and of supplication for his future. The phrase The past is another country comes to him, and he stops walking as the truth of it seeps into him. He stares out at the ocean and the clouds part to reveal the setting sun shining with sudden brilliance over the sea, bathing the beach, his dog, and himself, in a wash of gold.
It’s 4 p.m., cold and dank. In a ruined country chapel, a concerned citizen is conducting an orchestra with lethargy.
A concerned citizen conducting the orchestra with lethargy. Craig concerned about making this earth a better place, concerned about making others succeed, concerned and conducting choirs and orchestras. Oh, this orchestra requires a kick in the rear. Oh, the efforts he has forged to get the crumbling country chapel repaired.
Craig is tired of trying, tired of incompetence, tired of trying to teach these incompetents – it’s impossible in this disintegrating country chapel. It could be so distinguished if only someone would listen to him and do something. He feels so lethargic, so loath to put any more effort into this crumbling orchestra and this crumbling building. He conducts in the cold and dank, dying to drive home to his drink and dinner.
Craig the concerned citizen thinks thoughts of bygone days, when he conducted in cathedrals, orchestras containing competents, some of the finest in the country. Cathedrals and theatres, theatrical recitals and reverent reveries. How did he end up here in this crumbling chapel with this incompetent orchestra? The finery, the fame, the recognition he received. The finest in the nation; he himself one of the finest and here he is now. Her majesty herself saw him perform. Here he is now; how, he wonders, wandering reflection.
Concerned citizen Craig conducting in a crumbling country chapel to nincompoops. Look at them, lot of losers, misfits and mongrels. Are they thankful for the favour he bestows as benefactor? For whom is he doing a favour? Time to terminate this arrangement and manage his life differently, favouring himself. Droning, drowning, draining derelict of drinks and dinner.
White Gucci Shoes
In the middle of the night in spring, at a gloomy train station, an angry prostitute is checking emails with frustration. He is cold and his white replica Gucci shoes are muddy. How did he allow himself to be talked into this trip? There is one old wooden bench on the platform. He sits on it gingerly as one plank is missing. Hopefully his batteries will last long enough to find some friend on his email list who will rescue him. Although it is full moon, the tracks are not gleaming. Could be rusty. Maybe there are no trains. Where is he? He walks to the old sign at the end of the platform. Lyndoch. Where the hell is that? Anything could happen in this forsaken, place or even worse, anything might not happen at all. Forsaken, just like him. He wills himself to stop shivering, hugging himself against the cold breeze. He knew that he shouldn’t have messed with the dice, but ‘what the hell’, he thought. ’I have to be lucky some time.’ Not that time. They left him his clothes and his laptop because it was too old to sell. He asked them to give him a lift back to town but they dumped him here and drove off laughing at him. He had hoped that they would come back to fetch him, but no such luck.
So angry. Angry with himself. Angry with his parents who lost him his home and just disappeared. He warned them that if they did not pay rent, they would be thrown out. Last autumn they were all sitting, cosy and joking watching rugby with the meths stove keeping them warm. His sister Patience hugging the teddy she was given by Aunty Nadine. Arguing about the rugby and which player did well. Pop and him, beer in hand, shouting when SA scored. Ma ladling dish of hot fragrant vegetable curry with soaked dried snoek, just how he liked it. He smelled the sleeve of his jumper. He liked the softness of it and its sweet smell. ‘Why do you like soft clothes?’ his Pop said, ‘You’re just like a moffy.’
Alone on that cold abandoned station, the wind stops and he looks up. The dark is slowly lightening. He sees fresh white daisies between paving stones. A tap. Clean clear water. He cleans his shoes, wiping them with an old tissue he finds in his pocket. ‘Lucky they are not leather. These clean up good.’ He stands up straight, flaps his arms up and down like a penguin and then prances along the platform. There in splendid solitude, he break-dances, Michael Jackson style, on his feet, does a handstand, flips backwards and then turns fast on one hand swinging both stretched legs round and round as fast as he can. His shoes flash white in the early sunshine, forming joyful circles and stripes in the fresh air. When he is finished, he bows to an imaginary audience. He does not notice the small group of ragged children watching him until they cheer and clap, stamping their feet with joy.
Fire rages gloriously.
It’s a cold winter morning and the priest is determinedly walking with a dog in the rain on an empty beach. The sky and sea are a confused hazy blue grey. The tide is going out and shells lie scattered on the sand. The wind has dropped, small waves murmur as they break. Shhhh, shhhh. They cling to the shore leaving a wiggly line of bubbles. His head is bent eyes cast down, behind him his boots imprint in the sand. A wide stride and an almost straight line. His heart judders, his breathing is shallow and the rain is beginning to seep through his woollen coat. He raises the collar up around his neck. The dog knows the beach well yet does not belong to him. He walks with him as a friend.
Fire reveals everything; yielding clinging falling into fathoming depths
And how can I speak of him, or write of him, of falling into that love, of such a suffering soul, and of such beauty? It needs a new language, the tracing of his bones and the touching of his flesh. And that last meeting before I lost him to the cloth we lay together in my small brown Renault. The seats right back. It was August in the Cheviot hills. He had been visiting Scotland, we met at Berwick on Tweed, on the border. In an empty car park over looking a reservoir the windows steamed up with our breath. On Hadrian’s wall he had stood astride for me to take this picture. How handsome a Roman invader. At a stile he took hold of my left hand to help me over and held it longer than I would have expected. I should have pulled it away. I did not want to. The flesh of his hand was exciting, warm and smooth.
Fire light fleets and flickers on flesh; flaunting flurrying fingertips .
Our arms around each other I kissed his neck. The smell of him, of rolled tobacco, pine resin and almond oil. After he died I remember searching for it in his robes nuzzling them with my face, yearning for a last sense of him. He placed his hand on my left buttock, clutched it and pressed his body into me. I shivered vigorously, my cells shaking. He looked a little startled yet held me tighter and my eyes filled with tears at the relief of it, the comfort of it. The potency of possibility, of sex, of love, of finally finding home. I remember sobbing like a baby lying in his arms. The sorrows of my whole life pouring into that moment. That first moment of tenderness, a hint of joy waiting to explode
Fire brightens fearless then dies. Ash remains. Advances from nothingness ignite.
He stops and stands still turning towards the sea. His boots sink a little into the sand. A slight shiver down his spine. Suddenly there is no shoreline between his body and the sea. It is all heaven, the unfathomable ocean, holding the vastness of sorrow. The grammar of grief, the loss, is not a noun but an eternal verb like god. He feels warm inside his coat damp, his heart beats steadily. He breathes slow and deeply. The dog has stopped beside him, its snout sniffing the salt air. The rain has stopped.
The Practice Diaries
‘Write Reflect Renew’
The Practice Diaries is an interactive process whereby people who are professionally involved in the development of others, reflect on their own practice and how it is developing. It is a one-on-one or a facilitated group collaboration. Reflective writing and personal narratives are used to make sense of life and work trajectories and to strengthen skills, knowledge and direction.
The process has relevance for individual practitioners, or teams that work together, to deepen their purpose, knowledge base and collective identity. It also creates a structured group process for independent practitioners who work in similar fields.
Journal writing, as an aid to professional development, prioritises learning and deepens processes of reflection and understanding.
Read more here—->Practice diaries
OPEN BOOK writing workshop
The Open Book writing workshops are a fun way to meet other people who love words, and to uncover your creativity.
Join Cathy Stagg at Oracle Art Mart, shop 11, Aurora Shopping Centre, corner of Burton and Aurora Streets, Durbanville, at 9.30 for 10am on Saturday November 14 . Bring a notebook, a selection of pens and a pencil with you.
The cost is R100. A portion of the proceeds will go towards art materials and art classes for Durbanville children whose school cannot provide extra mural activities.
Open Book writing workshops will be held on the second Saturday of the month and each session will cover a different topic.
For more information, call Cathy at 083 267 1017.
Nancy Kline’s Thinking Environment®
What is a Thinking Environment?
A Thinking Environment is the set of conditions under which people can think for themselves with rigour, imagination, courage and grace. After many years of research and observation Nancy Kline, the founder of the Thinking Environment methodology, together with her associates, recognised that people generate their best thinking if the people around them behave in 10 specific ways. These 10 behaviours have become known as the 10 Ten Components of a Thinking Environment .
Each of the components is valuable individually, but it is the system of all Ten
Components working simultaneously that gives this process its transformative impact.
Why does a Thinking Environment matter?
The quality of every single thing human beings do depends on the quality of the
thinking they do first. So, if you are interested in generating the best decisions to lead to the best action, you have to know how to generate the best thinking. The Thinking Environment is a process that does just that. This is why we believe that creating a Thinking Environment is the first act of leadership. Every subsequent act gains quality from there.
How to develop Thinking Environment expertise click here to learn more —-> Time to think
Struck by lightning
Dusk settles like the wings of a moth. His face is taut in the blue glare of the TV. I sit a cup down on the side table and say in placatory, soothing tones, ‘I made a nice cup of tea for you.’ He turns towards me, eyes alight with anger. ‘Why don’t you have a nice cup of arsenic?’
For a minute I think this is a joke. A joke of the vulgar, music-hall variety – give her arse-a-nick. But then I see the relentless stare, he is on the rampage tonight. He has another song-and-dance routine in mind.
As if on cue, a jagged forked tongue of lightning flashes into the sea. I feel the destructive intent behind his words; he sucks on his cigarette, the tip glows red, acrid smoke pours from his nostrils. The message is clear; annihilate yourself.
‘What have I done?’ my voice shakes, I stammer, my lungs hold my breath prisoner.
‘You know what you did.’ I think frantically. I wasn’t here when he got home from work? I can’t pay all the bills, money is short? Just my presence irritates him? His anger is corrosive, it burns into my brain, sears my nerves. My heart begins its nervous pumping.
‘You,’ he leans closer, jabbing a forefinger in my face, ‘tried to get off with poes face – whatsisname? You tried to seduce him.’
What? I blanch. I did what? Now my brain is jelly. His eyes leer at me with cunning smug satisfaction. They promise hours of goading.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Thunder drowns my words.
‘What? Don’t mumble,’ he shouts. ‘I can’t hear you.’
‘I haven’t done anything.’ I raise my voice a decibel.
‘You wrote a poem,’ he says savagely. ‘I read it in your diary.’
The penny drops. Poes face is the kind neighbour who helped me when my car broke down. I curse my compulsive need to write, to record things.
‘You have no right to read my diary.’ He bats my feeble protest away as if it were a gnat. ‘You have no right to write a poem to another man. ‘Undone by kindness’– stupid fucking title, by the way.’
‘You’re being ridiculous,’ I say. ‘The man was kind, he helped me get my car started. He patted my arm and told me not to worry.’ Not like you, I think, you would have blown a gasket.
‘I wrote a poem, that’s all. Hardly seduction. He never saw it. Just a kind man.’
‘And I’m not kind? Never the helpful husband?’ His lips tighten into a hatchet line.
‘Not always.’ I manage to say the words.
I can’t tell him the stranger’s kindness was like a sudden beam of sunshine in an otherwise stormy existence. A reassuring antidote to permanent anxiety. I always feel jittery, act guilty under his suspicious scrutiny.
‘Ungrateful bitch. Next time you want to write a ‘poem’, he spits out the word as if it has the taste of poison, ‘to a kind man, be sure to drink a cup of arsenic first.’
I swallow bile as it rises in my throat. His words strike lightning fear into my heart. Thunder rumbles, echoes against the mountain above the sea.
A storm child
It happened only once. Bristol. It is the month of September, the twelfth day. The maternity hospital at the top of Black Boy hill. A lightning strike, her signal to descend. A storm child born into a rumble of thunder. One sharp crack announces her arrival. She, youngest of three girls, comes with speed her mother barely in the delivery room, her soft head drops into my hands. My name is Carmen. Her mother invites me a month later to drink tea in her drawing room in Clifton, the other side of town. The new born sleeps in my arms. When she wakes she has a wide smile and sparkly eyes. Four decades, four years and four months later l ife changed in an instant. Just after midnight, a chill. A blue tremor of air. Then complete infinite darkness.
Cumulonimbus clouds gather
There came a day that caught the summer. In Yorkshire on the sixteenth of August. Sisters clear a garden that is not theirs. Secateurs, a rake and trowel. The escallonia is everywhere, an invader of space. ‘ I like giving the weaker plants the space to grow’ the middle one says to the eldest as she snips with speed throwing its spiky branches over the fence. A pink hydrangea comes into view gasping for light. The eldest clears a patch of earth with the trowel while the other makes hay. The smell of vanilla. On the buddleias’ last cones of cream a tortishell butterfly rests in sunlight. The two sister lie on theirs backs on the earth,warmed, ripened and dependable. A dug bed awaits tulip bulbs for spring. A flutter of wings vanishing over the fence.
A taste of lightning
In a pocket of my pink rucksack I have a photo of you, my baby sister. It nestles in an envelope of shiny lilac paper. It was tradition the seventh birthday outing when we went to London alone with Mummy. In Trafalgar Square you squat on the stone square with seeds in your hands wearing a tweed coat with velvet collar and double breasted buttons. A bob cut with a fringe. Pigeons flutter around you. They peck on the flesh of your palms. The pillars of the National Gallery are your back drop. You smile as she casts her eyes down catching you in her box camera. Kisses land on your face. Still to be with you. I stroke your little cheek with my fifty year old thumb.
A muttering of thunder
I saw her from the ward door she looked bloodless, blank and exhausted, her face strained with lines. She recognized me instantly raised her head and mustered a weak smile ‘ Ahh sorry you had to miss seeing Bren.Thanks for coming ‘. I sit by her hospital bed and take hold of her hand rubbing the top of her thumb lightly with mine. I sense she cannot feel it. The motion gives me a purpose and consoles me. A slither of reassurance holding us back from the magnitude of death. A faint smell of petrol in her hair. ‘ I don’t want you to die’ I say softly.’ Oh so you want me to suffer then’ she quickly replies, a sharp blade through the space between us into my heart. I cannot speak. My thumb continues its motion, to stroke hers. Her skin next mine for the last time. I leave and walk out into December sunshine.
None sees God and lives
I am a corpse. It worked this time. I lie in the mortuary covered in a green cloth. I know you will come.The phonecall you received the night before.The motorway south from Leeds is lined with small rainbows. I am certain you will notice me. On the way you tell Louise of the tragic news.’ Beyond words ‘ you text her. You are not the first to enter to identify me, you come in after my husband. I sense you through my eyes that cannot now see. Vision is the first to go.The policemen Mark who found me sits quietly behind, I am in his gentle custody. You place your right hand over the place of my heart and the left on the crown of my head. It is wide open,it closes with your touch.You kiss my forehead. I am frozen. A chill lingers on your lips. A sparkle drops from my right eye still slightly open. A diamond for you. I am after all light, a window through which we can touch.
The last instant of things as they were.
Angels
It’s 11.00am in Hertfordshire, riding on the back of Lionel’s huge motorbike, clear sky, sunny day, joy of smell of earth and masses of bluebells under the trees. Holding onto Lionel, wind in my hair. Happy day ahead of us.
Then the bike suddenly swerves out of control and I fly off the back.
Blue, blue of bluebell woods, rushing past me. Bile at the back of my throat. Too fast to control. Flying high into the air. This is death. Then flash of road. Impact. Taste of lightning. No. Lightning has tasted me, unconscious and witnessed by the tall dark green-scented firs, but I can’t smell them. I am somewhere else.
Time to die, but no time to say goodbye.
Body I cannot feel smashed on grey black tarmac.
I am at the merge.
Bright Light.
No feeling, just bright light
Light. Shaft of brilliant light.
No more body. This is dying – floating with the light
Blackness. Then rainbow colours flashing with unbearable intensity.
I see from above, my body, broken, burnt and crumpled.
I am unconscious for forever or a second, lying hard hit on that harsh road.
My being, reshaped.
Insistent, strong, the scent of bluebells wakes me up. I don’t want to return. I want to travel where the lightning goes when it leaves earth.
Black again. Then a blackbird tells me it is time to come back. Don’t bring me back yet. I need more time to feel and taste that brightness of light.
Then nothing.
I wake up, cushioned on a pool of my own blood. Three angelic beings are above me, tall as the firs, murmuring. Their love and concern wraps around my heart, my being and my body.
The three angels lift me into the ambulance and I lose consciousness again.
The taste of lightning
Jean- Louis had spent the afternoon painting. He was a fairly talented artist, but he was lazy. This time he was using the fashion pages of Marie Claire, as his models. His technique was good, and he reproduced the photographs skilfully. Two weeks later Hugo, an artist friend came to see Jean-Louis’ latest works.
“Shit, man, J-Lou, these portraits are damned good. Yeah – they’re ‘commercial’, but they’re still bloody good. Did you have a model or are they copied from photos?”
“No, it’s a model – a French girl who was visiting- she’s gone back to Paris.”
A feeling of metallic, dark nausea filled my mouth. I knew he was lying – how often had he lied to me before?
Lightning Baby
It is 1am and the midwife has wrapped the baby loosely in the blanket.
“Do you want to hold the baby?”
I nod, unable to speak. I pull the blanket down a little and feel the child’s soft flesh against mine. Paper delicate but alive; a new soul is linked forever to mine. I hold and hold, the soft hair frames a perfect face with huge brown eyes that stare, not blinking. Mine I think. But the child is its own, I know that.
The midwife interrupts gently, “Don’t you want to know what it is?”
I stare at her blankly. It’s a baby, what does she mean?
“Boy or girl?”
Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. The midwife looks down, and I open the blanket to look further. A girl. She whimpers.
Then a problem.
My placenta has not expelled itself. It has snapped and popped back in. They call the consultant. They take the baby and prepare me for theatre.
I am wheeled into the operating room. The anesthetist comes over and holds my hand. “Don’t worry,” he says, “I’ll look after you.” He’s the only one I know in the room. The others are new doctors, only called for emergencies. The room is crowded; they have woken up the junior doctors for whom this event will be a useful teaching exercise.
I vow then, make a pact with whoever is in charge, if I survive this I will be a better person, a better mother than I might have been. I see clearly my past, and I see clearly my futures. In that moment I shed an old skin as they scrape and expel inside me. A new being emerges from that theatre, an older, sadder elated woman who has faced leaving and now has someone for whom she must stay. She has understood herself in that cold sterile place where life has come and life almost went.
The baby has stayed silent in her father’s arms. They have changed her into the too-big clothes I chose in a previous life, the sleeves folded back to reveal her tiny hands. She has waited so patiently, my daughter, and when I put her to my breast she sucks with the vigour of the thirsty. Each suck is a pull of pain and relief.
I revere my body: in all its flab and flaps it gives sustenance to another I surrender to what will be, trying less to control than be controlled by what is, and should be. I embrace all my futures now; her future; my future, our futures entwined. I want to survive, for myself, for her and the other children I want to have.
She continues to suck clumsily, and I help her to reattach until she is sleepy and her sucking slows, and then she is still. I look and look at her, drinking in her beauty, holding that feeling of flesh against flesh forever.
It is Time
avoiding the truth?
there it is again
jangled up inside
more dilly dallying?
diminishing of spirit?
to fly let go of all
short distance away
that inner knowing
clouds disperse
She was exposed
to confidence alone
avoiding the striding
terror of a ninety-year old
She wanted storms
pelting her skin
disturbing her soul
The sounds eased
and crept into her heart
Every time I scratch it seeps
I mop it up with wads of words
But still the paper is the colour of hard crimson
The colour of dried blood
My shattered heart
For all the world to see
Threads
We swing through the heights
on a cosmic trapeze,
our safety a golden thread
Ascending the universe,
beyond breath, all matter,
all that is
Passing The Little Prince,
ghosts and spirits,
we’re high wire flyers
There, in dark stillness,
clouds gather fierce and round,
shorn wool, grey with chill
I swing through the heights
on a cosmic trapeze
Coming through thunder,
strong and long,
to rest in rays of turmeric
on a trampoline sun
My safety – these golden threads,
guaranteed
Mind storm
In comes the storm,
a clanging, scattered
army.
In her mind, jagged threads,
running,
playing.
A door creaks.
Tender husband
enters the storm.
He takes her anger,
envelops her gently,
lets her rage.
Peace descends slowly.
Tense, unheard rooms
fall quiet, easy.
Limp cool hands
in silent acceptance
flick in zigzags across her lap.
The brilliant lightning
throws their sky
into surreal silhouette.
Broken branches fleeing
before furious winds
forcing my little Fiat
into the face of the storm
bucking like a frightened horse
as it confronts the gale
seething streaks of lightning
replicating the rhythms
of the riotous elements
in the cocooned cabin
of my racing heart.
Closing in around me
in dark swirling clouds:
the Power of God .
My feet are the ground;
decades of here
like the elephant.
I am about to be the person who,
leaving my shadow, the storms of the past,
is home at her feet.
A plateau of pain –
here is where I need to make,
alongside this forest,
me.
The elephant sees what I am doing;
the herd of her eye
watching me.
She listens forever
to what I want.
Leaving my shadow,
coming through the storm,
the bird shows its face;
life awaits an island.
I hasten to heights
I have longed for.
Healed now I am still,
my body, my cells renewing
my life – a quiet place.
The big storm is out.
Coming through,
I walk across the years,
the storms of my life.
I came to my marriage,
I find it, waiting
for the place to reveal itself.
I am home. It is a place
of thirty years
and I am surrounded by
the brink of hounds
and birds beautiful.
Stepping into it means
rewiring the elephant,
to be under her reorganizing eye.
I’m washed up on this garden
years after I had shipwrecked.
I wait;
I am a plant.
I shake myself, the soil has settled.
I am rewired for the process – to go
anywhere.
The thunder is over.
The sky is singing.
