This is a series of freewrites I did from Margret Geraghty’s excellent prompts book The Five Minute Writer (2009). This was one of my
favourite exercises, and it goes like this:
The British Council
recently did a survey about what the most beautiful words were, in the English
language. Voters in 46 countries, over
40,000 of them. The top 3 were: mother,
passion, and smile. (No chocolate, shock!) Something universal here.
Exercise:
Pick one word from the British Council’s Top 20 and
freewrite for 5 minutes.
Then make own list and do the same. (I’ll get to that in the
subsequent parts of this series – my own list got long!)
British Council’s Top Surveyed Beautiful Words are:
- Mother (I’ve done this one elsewhere, another blog post, so won’t include it), Passion, Smile, Love, Eternity, Destiny, Freedom, Liberty, Tranquility, Peace, Sunshine, Sweetheart, Gorgeous, Cherish, Enthusiasm, Grace, Rainbow, Fantastic, Blossom, Hope.
Passion
The thing that boils your brain and makes your veins feel
like hot soup is running through them; the broths of a thousand cold nights
breathing in your body. Sweeps of red
velvet and purple chiffon as you hold your arms open wide, running past you and
the colours take your breath away. A
humming feeling of joy and purpose – in life, in touch, in love. The purring contentment of many cats seizes
your mind and soars you high, with the birds, up with the birds. Where the way is plain, and route clear,
however long it will take, it is your life to be lived. And in the meantime – the stare between 2
people, pulled together by chemicals and a sense of almost divine connection;
they stare at each other and feel the burn between them, all parts of them
heated and moving.
This beautiful drawing from: justpencilonpaper.blogspot.com
Smile
It’s not a cliché to say that a smile from a stranger can
brighten a whole day with its spaciousness, the sudden sense of sun. It’s not a lie to say a week’s worth of bad
mood can be cleared and healed, to a degree, by one smile in the right place at
the right time. Smiles of children,
smiles of grown ups, smiles of those you love.
The way cats seem to smile, with their sweet faces stretched back. Those little black lips, so dry and warm, the
scruff tautness of whiskers. The love of
the hug and the smiley face, walking all over your stomach as you try to nap on
a Saturday afternoon, on the sofa. Once
upon a time, a while ago.
Love
The thing that makes the world go insane. The thing that makes the world slide into narcissism, that thinks it’s
altruism. The thing that makes a child
smile or cry to see a loved one; that makes a dog wag its tail, that makes a cat
thread through your legs, a small weave in a life of weft. The thing that makes you lie awake at night,
crying quietly and alone, even with someone next to you. The thing that makes you feel like life is
worth living, because of the you that you see in someone else’s face, reflected
back like the best mirror. Or the thing
that makes you want to die because it has been removed and you don’t understand
it. Or you don’t love yourself and see
no hope. Love is hope. Maybe, possibly.
Eternity
On the one hand, this is a glossy romance cover from the 80’s,
where a couple on a windswept beach are clinched, and she is barely able to
hold her eyes open as her passion drags her head so far back, the weight of her
hair, golden and kissed by all suns, falling heavily behind her. The man has heavy muscles, again kissed with
suns, and he holds her bowing back, his hair dark and monstrous. They are locked together, like this – for
eternity.
Eternity is also where you go if you don’t believe in Christ
– eternity of hell, of torment – the ultimate punishment for disagreeing with
someone. The punishment of a child who
has no more words, no more arguments, no logic or reasoning – or
compassion. Its one thing to say that
those who prosper in this life through deceit and lies will get a comeuppance
in a life to come; another to doom those who disbelieve because of lack of
brain damage, to the same place. The
urge to fascism in humans is almost unparalleled.
Destiny
I wonder why so many of these words have been hijacked by
perfumes, or marketing campaigns of some sort, to the point where I don’t see
their beauty in this list. To me,
destiny sounds a hard thing. A life of
suffering that you are doomed to.
Hmmm. Sounds like a curse word –
‘It is your Destiny!’ She raged at him.
Or else…this is a Bond Woman, Ms Destiny Waits: she’s oiled
and limber, has a sassy mouth and is quick with a gun. She runs in high heels, she doesn’t sprain
her ankle (as I would); and Bond – well, he may think he has her (he certainly
Had Her), but really she’s already gone, on her speedboat, off to the next
thing; ‘cos surely, she’s an international art dealer who also plays the harp
and violin – she has concerts to attend, places to be. He is but a dalliance; he was fun for a
night, and dodging bullets is hot,
after all. And that camera crew, that
seemed to be everywhere…what was that about?
Liberty
She lit the cigarette, watching the flickering of the little
flame with a feeling of wonder. These
little moments of relaxation outside of the office were what made the day
doable. She looked out, seeing the many
shades of green on the returning colour of the shrubs – the trees still bare.
Most of her life spent feeling oh so tired, and just this
small sacred tiny moment, one of not many, where suddenly the world looked
gorgeous and new again. It roared
through her, the song of herself a song of happiness and sweetness.
When she went back upstairs, moving lightly and slowly, she
felt an airiness that had been gone from the morning before. Now, though the time till it was hometime was
long, really, it felt as if it could be done.
She sat at her desk, tapping away, at varying pace, while her thoughts
led her gently onward, feeling in a small bubble of happiness and
peacefulness. For however long. A precious time of quiet in the mind and
quiet in the body.
Freedom
6 o clock in the
morning and alls well….the echoing wind, and the pent up flat voice of the
speaker call to me from 6 years old, standing in the dark curtain covered tiny
room. The Fire of London will rage any
moment, starting from Pudding Lane
and branching out, via small lights in buildings, spreading ever onward. The cracking of buildings; the way they blew
the buildings up, trying to stop the fire feeding. People escaping via the river with all they
can get onto small boats; Samuel Pepys buries his things, and stands from far
back watching the whole spectacle. Time
moves in a bubble. A thousand times I
have been to this room in the Museum
of London, and always,
from the smallest age, I come and stand here.
Transfixed by the freedom produced by devastation. A new world of nothingness and ever greater
harshity, facilitated by crackling and soot and people’s faces blackened for a historical
disaster I was never there for, but which haunts me onward. I always come back to the moment of freedom
here. It started so small, and leaves
you with nothing. A moment of
exhilarating freedom; before you realize nothing really is nothing, and all your freedom – if you were an ordinary person –
was taken away – your home, the possessions and savings you spent years
accumulating to get away from where you were, to better yourself. History is full of such harshness. And now – that room is forever gone in the
form that it had – they have remodelled the museum, and while the Fire of
London room still exists, it’s a pale pale shadow of what it once was – it has a
degree of detachment in its telling of the tale now that takes its monstrosity
and reality right away. I do not
approve.
Tranquillity
A moment in a Japanese garden I have never been to, it’s not
even an echo of the Kyoto
Gardens which I have been to. It’s a Japan where small women swish back
and forth. Their constrictive dressing and tiny feet, their imaginary painted
faces (the weight of much stereotyping leaden on their serene faces, serene
with being held in place by too much makeup, painted faces not real faces)
passing by me, as I sit on a bench, watching the scene. An ornamental fountain makes tinkling sounds,
a small gardener rakes over some gravel far to the right. Is he very small or
far away, like Father Ted and Dougal – he might actually be very small – he is
a figure from a tiny executive toy zen garden, ever raked by uneasy hands of
palpitative directors, looking to settle their minds of worries about their
careers in this sodden economy, all the things they had to do to get right
here…shake shake go their hands on the tiny rake – crack, it cracks in half
under the weight of their guilt. I sit
in what may be a snowglobe of a garden, feeling the soft weight of sun on my
shoulders, warm and bathing me. There is
peace sitting here in the sun, watching the imaginations of a thousand
westerners go quietly past, with a soft bowing of head; past and into the den
of imagination of someone else, who imagines these women elsewhere, doing other
things, releasing their small bodies from their garments. I sit and watch the birds fly gently
overhead, small birds, pastel coloured – hint of pink. In the far distance is a rice field, a paddy
field, and its composed like a painting of serfs working. So pretty, not being the one to sweat and
work. Imagination is so often composed
on unreal things. This tranquillity is
unreal. But pleasant. I realise I am in fact sitting within a Willow Plate…
Peace
The idea of me sitting in an empty ballet studio, in a ray
of sun, in a perfect lotus position. My
spine straight. I sit there, eyes
closed, and feeling the bake of the light on my lids – all is red behind
them. I see stars and redness, the
madness of running veins. The horses of
imagination pull past me, and gallop on.
I am entering a state I have never been in. I feel a strong connection with the floor
under me, the air around all of me. I
sit, bathed in the light of the cosmos and feeling my inner space stretch and
grow. Planets swirl in my mind; fast and
incredibly slow and leaden – yet suspended, great heavy gaseous masses,
suspended and non dropping. Meteorites
move through.
Really, I am in bed.
Weightless on the point of sleeping and cruel is the day I must get up
into. Cruel and bright and screaming
with light. Beautiful and harsh and
strong. I lay there, eyes closed, a
moment more, feeling the peace of having woken, and the peace of being able to
go back to sleep again really soon. The
peace of a little thought, but not the churning wave that usually pours through
and tires me further. I feel the
strength of the minds fight to reactivate and I still it – a feat rarely
done. I say to myself: ‘I am at peace’,
and I lay there, so heavy and stapled, in what feels like my truest state –
prefect ease and rest and warmth, covered by the duvet; a cat sleeping on my
feet; a boyfriend with one leg thrown over me, his breathe warming my
cheek. I let it all go, and slide away, back
to the place where I lie prone, my hands soft and unclawed, and nothing matters
but floating away, sinking and the redness behind my eyes, that fades soon,
soon it fades. Away and gone, am I and
it.
Sunshine
And then I awaken, finally, and I see that I am sitting
upright, cross-legged. My back rests
against the shed. I am bathed in light,
from head to foot. The sun sits high
above me, to the right, a perfect glowing orb that I cannot look at, though I
always do, and see that moment of pulsating before my eyes burn the image and
then everything I look at after is a black hole in the middle of this dark
blotting sun. There is nothing but
meadows in front of me, green and rolling and getting dry. Fields boundary the huge field, and far off,
cows low to one another, or just low because it’s what they do. They chew peacefully, and the birds sing, up
in the trees, an endless twitter and a rustle of branches. The smell is of warmth, warmth and possibly
something assort of honey-ish. I have no
inclination to move. I stretch out my arms, and I watch the sun glint off every
one of my hairs; I watch my arm be golden.
Its beautiful, my skin glitters as if I’m wearing body cream and
sparkles – but this is just sun. Here it
is warm deepest spring – almost summer, and everything is awake and going about
its business. I am here to watch and
feel and soak it up, and that’s what I do.
I sit in sunlight, and I don’t really stir. I put my hands to my head and feel the heat
being absorbed by my hair. I consider a
hat; but here, if I get drowsy and fall asleep in the sun, I won’t feel sick, I
won’t burn; I will simply wake up later, still warm and smelling the honey and
still tan, ever more golden. There will
be no pain, because this is where I rest; this is the sanctuary. I’m on the Lands, ever safe.
Sweetheart
Sweet, sweetie, sweetheart my love. The little things he croons, that I croon
too, as we lie there, twining, naked and sweaty and like little furless
kittens, a pack of two. In the bed,
where all is heaven, and almost unspoken, there we lie. The sun comes through
the curtains and against that lifeless 80s wallpaper, makes all look
golden. We lie there in content, eyes
open or closed, breathing softly together.
Or its what I used to say to Fry, when he was younger and he’s
sad and flopsybunny, and thinks the world will go on forever and him too scared
to take a part and thinking it will never come to him either – ‘oh sweetie,
sweetie, it will be ok’, I say. And if
he’s with me, we curl up on the bed and watch some dire horror film or a
comedy, and bond out giggly or grossed out way through all disasters of the
mind.
Sweetie, sweet, sweetheart: this is the word that makes
things feel better, that lets the love and the sweetness come through.
Gorgeous
This is a doubled word.
It’s partly the word that is overused by fashion gurus as they gush
their spittle of redtipped nails over their models; or Gok Wan convinces yet
another curvy woman that her arse is really not that bad, especially 20 feet
high over a public building, projected down for the gazes of surprisingly kind
passersby. (It does restore your faith
in humanity, those makeover programmes – specially when they simply makeover
how you think of your appearance –
have been known to cry out loud and shed real tears while watching someone stop
feeling fat and start to feel curvy and perfectly fine.)
It’s a word that speaks of overdone praise, a word that
creaks with the weight of Easter baskets and pastel covered goo; necklines that
only skinny tall women like Nicole Kidman can wear, in adverts that last 30
seconds attempting to tell the story of stars overwhelming fall from mental
poise, supped back in the eyes of a single strangers adulation: you’re gorgeous. That ad was 2009, I think.
In the mouths of ordinary people, it’s a word for presents,
that’s gorgeous; or a fur collar in
the dead of winter white quiet – wow that’s lovely, it’s gorgeous. It’s the love of
me for boy, you’re gorgeous, and you’re lovely, my sweetie, my gorgeous boy…
Cherish
Sounds like a cherry tree streaming with blossoms that you
stand under like a shower and catch all the small pieces in your hair, a pink
river breaks over your head and in your eyes, running in air, on streams of
cool breeze, the smell of tiny sweet blossoms catching in your throat. You sink to the ground and lie there, a
snowangel of blossom all around you, and small dogs, other peoples, come to
gallop up and smell you, little park eohippus’s. Cherish the pie, that Agent
Cooper always paused to eat, before he was lost to his double and did not
cherish anymore. The tartness of
cherries, the soft click of the fork against the plate as you push down on the
crust and break through with a soft give, against the pastry and through to the
cherries inside; the push out, oozing sweetness and the capabilities of
cooks. Somewhere, someone stands smiling
as you break through that sugar crust, and they watch you as Maggie Gyllenhal
watched Will Ferrel learn to love sweet things – glorying in imperfection and
getting away from tax and columns. Did
you see that film?
Cherish the cherry pie, and streaming blossoms of
spring. This is your life.
Enthusiasm
This is Fry leaping from the earliest of ages. When he was a tiny baby, this is him being
held upright in my arms and trying very hard to jump up and down. This is him being sturdy in the face of the
storm that whipped his face when we were going home. This is him jumping up and down to this day
whenever he feels excited about something.
This is him jumping and then that Star Wars model of Stanley’s falls off the shelf and crashes
sadly to the floor and looks like a dead body.
We are all gobsmacked and Fry lays sadly on the sofa and wants to go
home because he feels so bad. Stanley, being Stanley,
gets over it quite quickly, when I promise to buy him another one when I
can. Fry jumping while I watch his vids
and tell him he’s very good, smiling hugely and saying, ‘I feel like God!’ as I
watch the latest one for the tenth time, because it really is very good.
Grace
This is 2 things.
Firstly, it’s a small Irish woman with her black hair in a loose bun,
wiping the surface of her kitchen clear of crumbs, after her family has
finished eating the freshly baked bread, still warm, that she served them. Now her children are running in the
countryside outside, squealing through the fields. She finished wiping and sits in a slant of
sunlight, by the table, smiling softly to herself, tired but full of
contentment. The next batch of bread
raises in the corner, covered with a dishcloth; the last in the oven.
The 2nd thing is a catholic girl sitting quietly
in a pew in church, her head bent. She
is covered with one of those little black lace mantillas. Her head is lowered reverentially, her hands
clasped loosely together before her. Her
mouth moves soundlessly and she fingers the rosary, beads flying past her
fingers. She is beyond a stereotype, she
is a dream of a piety that someone somewhere wishes would exist. In my mind she is the beginning, likely, of
something dangerous and unthinking. The
little Irish woman in her kitchen is far beyond her in terms of what I consider
grace.
Rainbow
This is the land of 70s childhood with Geoffrey and
Bungle. This is me wearing little orange
trouser suits that my mother has sewn for me, and eating little bowls of
frosties with a teaspoon (as I still do, except I eat crunchy nut cornflakes or
Special K now – but still the teaspoon!).
Its me dreaming about the first part of the Lands that I
ever invented – where unicorns ran freely, in my secret valley, topped always,
by a rainbow, sitting softly in the sky, over all, over the verdant greenness
of the earth, turned always by the heels of the unicorn as they move through,
always on their way somewhere before returning to the spot where they gather,
whinnying, stroking each others necks with their noses. Never scared at my approach and always happy
to see me.
Fantastic
This is an old word – it’s the Fantastic 5, sweet mildewy smelling books from crumply and dusty
second hand bookshops in Worthing. Its old comics with Pow and Kapow and Kazaamm and lots of exclamation
marks. For some reason it’s the bracing
early morning seaspray and a 5 year old running along the edge of the shingle,
his little fists pinwheeling. It’s a
myth, a boy word.
Blossom
My old first cat, an American sitcom I’ve never seen,
springtime in film, springtime in life.
The walk we had one long ago Saturday that went through West Ham Park –
a tiny park but sweet enough (after being used to Hyde Park and Kensington
gardens it felt more like a very big back yard than a park). Through to Green Street, which
was like an alternative universe. It got
slummier and slummier – old houses falling down almost and everything dirty and
uncared for looking. People standing
about looking unkempt in the middle of the pavement having patois pidgin
conversations with others. People
walking slowly, lots of very worn or very unfortunate looking people, ugly and
breeding. Lots of contradictions – a
girl with a very strict hijab hiding most of her top half as well as her head;
then skinny of skinniest jeans, and red stilettos, swaggering – what’s the
point, any modesty gained on the top half was lost on the bottom?! Loads of brightly coloured clothes and sari
shops – I was sad I didn’t have much money and wanted to buy lots of tops that
I saw. Beautiful whites, and leaf
designs, sequins, but not garish.
Flashes of colours; the cheapest pashminas. In one shop we stopped and Stanley bought paneer cheese, and a coconut
water drink for me, that had little bits of pulp in it. It was lovely, but Stanley wanted me to throw it away as he
didn’t like it. Kept showing me bins and
saying, ‘throw it away, there you go’ and I kept saying, ‘but I’m not done and
its lovely’. He walked hand in hand for
ages, very slow, strolling, and eventually got near home again. I saw a tree in massive bloom and picked a
tiny sprig of blossom off, for my altar.
When I got home, and we collapsed on the sofa, I remembered it, and got
up and put it there, on my Robin Hood plate.
Hope
Hope is the name of a child I once had in my head. She did colouring in while she sat in a small
ball on the ground. She was very self
contained, in her little Aran sweater, all of four or five years old. Little green cords, and small hands,
colouring neatly in maroon and green – a big hippy sunflower – a joyful
colour. In the dream of the head, the
patio doors onto the garden were wide open, and the breeze coming in lifted her
soft fine hair, a gentle golden colour, tipped with red sheen. She has the most perfect little skin and
bones – she is all unbroken as yet, all unbroken and soon to be willowy. But for now, she is small and untouched and
she is waiting for dinner, but has forgotten about it. I make scrambled eggs in the kitchen and
watch her though the door, as she sits bent over the colouring, humming to
herself some slightly tuneless song but which I vaguely recognize. She hears a bird in the garden and her head
cocks like a cat, but she doesn’t really look up. It swings softly back to her work, and bends
over it slightly more. She is absorbed; it’s
in the angle of her shoulders and the way her little knees are locked
there. The eggs are ready and I stand
full in the doorway, smelling the air from beyond the garden. It is coastal air, we are up on a hill, and
down lower, glistening with all its cold and salty promise, is the sea in
summer, waiting, always there and always patient. I look over at the sofa, and see towels from
earlier, when we went paddling.
This is an alternative life I never lived, where I am (where
am I?) down in Dorset, or Cornwall,
and I sing with the breeze in the mornings.
My man will come home soon, and I might be sketching in the garden,
while Hope sleeps on the sofa. He’ll
come back mellow, because the work was satisfying, and he feels good about it,
and that is usually the way for him with an absorbing project. I’ll hear him come in, and I’ll try again to
capture the line of the fence leading out to the meadow beyond, and for the
thousandth time, I’ll think how lucky I am, how incredibly lucky I am. We steal out of the room, to not wake Hope,
and go and lie together upstairs on the bed.
We smile at each other and just hug.
Soon Hope wakes as we are just dozing off, and she comes and lies between
us, and we smile at her and hold our arms over her; we all sleep, and soon the
cat wanders in and twines herself around our feet too.
The day is dying slowly and hope ate her eggs. It’s a peaceful world and we are charmed to
live it.
**********
Next part in this series - my list of beautiful words, and some freewrites on those.
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