interruptions

and their beauty?

The early morning train journeys are so very quiet - quiet in sound, but stuffed full of people. Sometimes I have to do a mad wee dash up the platform to find a gap to squeeze on at, shuffling between coats and armpits. I’ve been dancing a fine line lately of trying to figure out how to honour the hermit in me, while still filling my life with people and joy.

I’m writing before work, in a cafe up the road. A regular comes in, and the barista is thrilled to see their dog. “What’s the word on the street?” He asks the dog.

The owner answers. “We’ve been to the wee Indian up the road last night.”

“And what sauce did you get to go with him?”

“Oh, I think sweet and sour!”

And they laugh and laugh, and I laugh too, and for a moment, things feel so warm. The air is broken. I chat to the regular too, we discuss our lives, she offers me a cup of her pot of tea; I say I’m okay, I’ve my coffee. I learn that the dog is a therapy dog, his “day job”. She tells me he goes to the local care homes, even the prison.

Eventually, I finally return to my laptop and my essay, exploring the idea of writing being more about listening. The act of writing is really about noticing; about feeling ‘the work’ in your body.

In my essay research, I’ve been collating the thoughts of other writers on the act of writing. I found this brilliant interview with professor and author Simon Han, who speaks of writing as both a practice and a conversation:

“Writing is a practice of attention. It’s about not only being able to focus on something, but also knowing how to orient your attention, and being able to pay attention to things you might have skipped over otherwise… To be able to sit in the stillness of writing – that to me is a really important practice.”

It’s had me thinking about the act of attention. The act of being present. How to continue to be present, even when life doesn’t go the way you plan on it going. Interruptions to my plans have been many of late. Car troubles galore – not only for myself, but for others, which have meant last-minute solutions and help in whatever form it takes. Things have not gone according to plan. I’ve had to accept that this is a part of life, it has been forever, and it will be forever. It’s how we handle those upsets, those interruptions.

I’m not always so great at that.

So I keep coming back to the good. To the sunny days (spring is here! the sun is shining between the endlessly wet days - true April showers!). I remind myself that there are so many incredible, wonderful things happening where I live, so many community projects, so many people working to create the world they wish to see.

I believe in the work I do. (Well, at least I repeat this, like a mantra, a fake-it-’til-you-make-it motto.) I believe in writers (this is very true; this is easy for me to say). My idea of what writing is has shifted over the years, but the core of what I know and believe to be true still holds: writing is power. The power to change minds, the power to influence, the power to make us laugh and cry.

I’m so lucky to work in a bookshop. I meet all sorts of readers of all sorts of books (and the authors of some of those books, too!). Sometimes it’s the kids – the fans of a certain series, the ones just starting to read – who make me feel a little more purposeful in my role. At times, seeing their joy at discovering new worlds, new characters, reminds me of how much reading meant to me as a child, how much it unlocked my imagination. How lucky I was to be read to as a child. My aunt passed away when I was on the cusp of teenagedom, yet I vividly remember her reading stories to my sister and me as youngsters. Percy the Park Keeper and The Animals of Farthing Wood in particular. There are so many fantastic messages buried in the pages of these colourfully illustrated books.

Kindness, acceptance, community.

The books of my youth taught me to pay attention to the world. To pay attention to others. And what is this life if we do not attend to it?

This morning, as I made a coffee, I watched the trees and the old tenement flats in the rain beyond the window. For some odd reason, our kitchen doesn’t have a radiator, so in the morning it tends to be particularly cold. I watch a grey squirrel trapeze a branch and remember the red squirrels that spun like acrobats on the bird feeders in the caravan park I spent a few seasons living in. Writing encourages me to make connections, to thread together past and present, to play with time, to circle around the thoughts in my mind, the things I see before me.

I’m not sure what else to say this Sunday. Sometimes the newsletters come easy to me, sometimes they don’t. Today, I don’t know if I have much to say, so I think I’ll leave it at that.

I’m off for a drink at the wine bar up the road from us this sunny evening. I hope your Sunday ends warmly and well.