The Writing Hour, 24 May 2022

New Writing North Writing Hour led by Linda France.

Prompt 1: The loveliest sight/site on E/earth is...

It's bucketing today. The gardens need it. The ground is parched. Linda was talking a lot about embracing mistakes and trying to allow the consciousness to drift and dance. Allow the mistakes to happen and dance on the page. I struggle with letting the mistakes be because I'm always trying to improve. Will try to cycle round to the prompt somehow. I suppose imperfection is the answer. Imperfection is the loveliest sight and the loveliest sites are imperfect. Which sight/site/cite it was - homonyms? - was not specified, which I like. Nor was earth as in ground or Earth our planet. Both, really. All. Imperfect thinking. Distractions. I'm having a lot of anxiety dreams lately. Normal for me, but they'd calmed down. Now I'm waiting on quite a few things at once. All uncertain. Unlikely to happen, which might be disappointing, but if any do happen, everything changes. Change might be good. Too stagnant. Too young to be stagnant. Must get on with things. Make things happen. Never knowing the right answers. Always mistakes, always failing. Pressure to make decisions, but with decisions always come mistakes. Why can't we wait and assess? Some things need swift action, but others need consideration. Why is it wrong to not want to be rushed? The world hurtles through space whether I get new specs or not, whether I get that job or not, whether I keep bothering or not. It's filling time. It fills time to be busy. To write that job application, or funding bid, or tinker with a website, or put things up for sale no one wants to buy, or cleaning when I'd rather do something else, or procrastinating because I'm scared of more failure. It has been my mission for the past few months to embrace failure. I've embraced it well so far, but its frequency is tiring. There have been successes, but they are minor. Miner. Miner's strike. Was talking about that last week. Precursors in Northern Ireland that Brits don't know or care about. Derry Girls dredges up as much pain as it does joy. Those were before then, but it brought back so much I'd studied 10+ years ago. Vindication, I suppose. I was on the right tracks. Can't help but wonder if someone involved in production knows my book. My old, out-of-date book. 2014. How is that 8 years ago? But what's the most beautiful, no, loveliest thing on earth? Growth. I'm struggling to get my seeds to grow this year. The ground's so parched. Good it's raining. Feel cold, but glad of the rain. I wanted to go and stand in it when it was heavy. I couldn't face the mess it would cause. Always in the future. Mind always in the future or the past. Mithering about things that haven't happened. Often won't happen. I dreamed I had a job interview where I'd interviewed twice before and my letter - actual physical on-paper letter - didn't have the information. Was expected to know. Or I hadn't look. In my haste I hadn't looked. Turn the page over. More information. Buried but there. Times. List of times. Itinerary. A day's itinerary. Missed most of it. Then couldn't find the room. The interview room. Passed loads of artwork. The building was different. Labyrinthine. Kept leading to more big rooms full of big sculptures with students arranging them. Colours. Lots of oranges and yellows. I normally have lots of blues and greens in my dreams, but reddish oranges and yellows. Why was that? Maybe the morning sun. What I've planted may not be growing but lots of other things are, which seems to reflect my activities. Placing lots of seeds, but no growth. Growth of other things instead. How to take that. I don't feel bad. I don't feel jealous. Happy that something is growing at all and making fertile ground. Because that's what happens, isn't it? Something more suitable grows and makes the earth more fertile for the next thing. 

Prompt 2: I do not expect...

It's strange how appropriate Linda's prompts keep turning out to be. Maybe we listen to the same podcasts or something. I don't expect anything to come of my actual and metaphorical plantings, but if something happens at all, if I nurture the ground, the path, whatever, well maybe something can grow at some point, whether it's mine/me, I don't know. Just lots of waiting at the moment. Trying to learn the rules, the strategies, to live honestly, to be true to whoever I am. It seems pointless because so many who don't succeed anyway. Is it empty success? It doesn't matter. Cultivating what's in front of me, what I can reach, matters. I do not expect my peas process/Pea's process/peace process to work this year. Not one has emerged. Plant more ever couple of weeks. Ground not right for them. Maybe more moisture will help. Healing rain. Maybe other natural growth will help, nurturing tired ground. Maybe things are in the wrong place. Repositioning. Pivoting. That's what we've all had to do. And then many pivoted back the way they were before. I can't. I want change. I want better. I want progression. It won't progress if we don't change anything. I don't expect anything to change necessarily even if I do try to make it. But at least trying is its own achievement. It's scary, putting yourself out there, continually failing even when you try hard and learn all the time, and you'd do great. I don't expect to be wanted. That's a tough one not to take personally, not being wanted. Because you're good. You demonstrate continually that you're good. But not wanted. Regardless of being good, you're not wanted. Maybe they think you're fine, don't need it, don't want it that badly. You stick your neck out, made yourself visible, took you days to regulate after, and you're not wanted. Where to put that? It's one thing to not expect, but where do you put the feeling you're left with when you're not wanted? When you fail? Where did Samuel Beckett put that feeling? How many times do you have to fail better before it doesn't feel like failure anymore? If science published more failure, we'd all accept it better, I reckon. We know it's part of the process. There are more failed experiments that successes, but we don't learn of them because it's all a corporate machine. The neoliberal corporate machine of academia. Knowledge is a commodity. Only 'good', 'worthy', 4-star knowledge gets a look in, even when it's false or biased. Normalise the failure and we all win. Those are systems I don't expect to change soon. I expect them to implode under their own pressure. How did we get from the Savannah to this? It's all exhausting and wrong. Mistakes are great. They're our greatest teachers. So why do I hate them? Hate making them? Socialised to hate them. To hate making them. To want to make them go away and not have happened. But they happened and happen. They never stop happening. We're all mistakes of birth. Mutations. Not evolved, but mutations, a lot of us. Not realising, thinking we're evolved when we're mutations. Not the same. Whole species evolve, as I understand it, and types within species mutate. Simplified. Don't know the proper words, but then the experts can't agree either. Just keep making mistakes and correcting.

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