You listen to see if you can hear the sound of heaven opening up to let another soul in.

You listen to see if you can hear the sound the snails make as they leave their trail of silver as they walk.

You listen to see if you can hear the tornado created by the flap of the butterfly’s wing.

You listen to see if you can hear your heartbeat skipping triple time to keep you moving and shaking and hoping and dreaming.

You listen to see if you can hear the creaking and moaning of the house telling stories of the changes it has seen both inside and out.

You listen to see if you can hear what an idea sounds like when it is being formed.

You listen to see if you can notice the moment a pulse quickens when someone falls in love.

You listen to see if you can hear the morse code messages in the crumpling of a newspaper.

You listen to see if you can hear when a baby’s gurgling turns to words.

You listen to see if poor and rich make a different sound.

You listen to see if a comet’s tail makes a whip cracking sound.

You listen to see if inspiration has a voice.

You listen to see…

She preens and picks,staring into a mirror, layering and layering, hiding in plain sight, covering beauty with beauty. Someone told her this was better.

She reaches over and holds his hand. He removes his quickly. She looks used to it.

He talks, over loud, into his shiny, new fandangled gadget, while typing on his shinier, newer, fandanglier gadget. He wheels and deals. He looks exhausted. It is the middle of the day.

He ignores his son, whose “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” gets the attention of everybody else in the carriage but his.

He stares, pencil poised. He thinks. He writes. He smiles. He frowns. He erases. He starts again.

She reads and puts the tome face down on her lap, facing up towards the sunlight. What she sees out the window is all the more interesting

She quickly wipes a tear from her eye. More come streaming out. The fragments of her deteriorating tissue are not a dam enough to stop the flow.

We chug along, our destination the same yet different. I watch. As I always do…

Things are great. He’s here, his stuff is everywhere. He’s situated and it’s like he was always here. Always with me. He is my safety, my saviour. I’ve let the love in.

I look forward into my future and I do not see hope. I look into my past and wonder how it all turned out like this. I throw down my gauntlet to this thing called life but wonder if I’m really up for a fight. I am charged but I feel flat. I am coiled in a starting block with nowhere to go. No sprint, no marathon. Just stumbling. Perhaps like hurdles. Like a short person, trying to run the hurdles. I wonder if I should just go under, instead. The hurdles, I mean. It would be better than trying to jump over them.

I keep being told not to worry. I keep being told that I am good at what I do. I am unable to follow the instruction or believe the compliment. I keep wondering how to turn these skills, the inability to follow or believe, in which I have some practice, into some marketable and profitable trade. I come up against a wall. No inspired thought here. No, just that dull humming. And the strains of Elmo’s song.

I look forward into my future and I see hope. I look into my past and am grateful for the trouble. There is love here, perfect in its imperfections. I am finally being treated kindly and that is a wonderment to me. I am spoiled, cared for and I do not have to fight. I have put my gloves down. And I do not have to stumble alone. I am guided, sometimes carried. The electricity hums, the laughter forever ready to spring from my belly. I am amazed life could ever be like this. Even for a short person.

I sing songs still, and drape myself in yards of words and emotions, woven by more skilful hands than mine. I escape the day by appropriating another’s. Their imagination is enough for me. My head is too stuffed with worry for any flights of fancy. Let the dreamers dream for me. I give them full permission to. And I dance. To the strains of Elmo’s song.

When did I become all jeans and shirts and flat sensible shoes, and not strappy dresses and dangerously high heels and the perfect handbag? When did it become all about whether or not it would fit and not about whether it was just the most perfect ensemble, whether I made a statement that was totally unique, in a fashion voice that was all my own. When did I start to care what people thought, or whether they did at all? When did I decide I had to hid myself beneath volumes of fabric because perhaps it wasn’t perfect, and all I required was comfort? When did I lose my sense of fashion fun?

When did I lose the sense that I too deserved to enjoy style?

I don’t even have children to blame for this…

Write it down. Regardless the expectation. Take the pressure off yourself. So what if it isn’t poignant, so what if it doesn’t make sense. If there is a need to share, then write it down. Even if there isn’t a need, only a desire to say something, a desire to break the silence, then write it down. Even if it isn’t well written, witty or pithy, still, write it down. Even if it isn’t worth remembering…

Write about the high pitched squealing that keeps you up at all hours in the morning in the dinky, dreary, expensive flat in Nottingham, where the bed squeaks with the slightest hint of movement, so violently it squeaks that you have resorted to sleeping on the floor, for a price greater than that of your own, much larger, home. Write about performing in empty theatres, to those that number few, whose appreciation is great. Write about the pains of choosing a sofa, about letting your rear end do the talking, about lounging around in showrooms to the great entertainment of the masses, about letting him lie on your lap to see if the sofa was comfort worthy.

Write about Radio 4 versus Black Eyed Peas, about blockbusters versus classic movies. Write about what to do with the cat when his visiting means being away for days on end. Write about the great changes in life, and space when one becomes one plus one and one has to decide how to share wardrobe space, and the mental calculations involved in deciding where his stuff will go.

Write about the loss of icons and whether that loss only just happened, or if, with that loss, the icon was regained.

Perhaps, I should write about those things. Or I could just go make myself another coffee.

I’m singing and dancing again, making happy work and helping people forget their sorrows by shedding tears at ours. I love my work, but my work has not been loving me of late. The chances seem to be drying up and now I am reduced to offering my skill to the smallest and most silent of roles. I came close to the question of quitting in Brum. I have not yet answered that question.

I started asking myself the inevitable. ‘What could I do, if I didn’t do this?’ I am met with a grey mist in my mind, an impenetrable fog of fear and indecision. I cannot imagine not baring my soul for all and sundry. I cannot imagine not creating joy and laughter and happiness where there might be none. I cannot imagine not using my imagination to free the imagination of others, not letting my creation run riot in front of an audience of many, who pay me to play the clown, the fool, the player.

But I wonder if this world is done with me. I wonder if I have had my time, if I have already made my last hurrah, if my glory days are past and now I am a clawing has-been at 35, still searching after my big break. Maybe I am one of those sad people who cannot see that which is staring them right in the face. Perhaps…

I must go pound a treadmill towards clarity. If I reach it, I shall tell you.

Visit him. He’s my new favourite web presence!

The love/hate relationship of a girl who lives alone with delivery guys continues…

So I leave you with this

No great man ever complains of want of opportunities.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Now, where’s my tool belt?

I’ve been lost, wrapped in the arms of the new boy, he of the North, he at the end of long train journeys, he who cannot help but take all of my attention.

I have been experiencing life, rather than standing out the outskirts of it and observing. I have not been watching too closely, the excitement is far too much for me, the fear far too palpable. It may disappear at any moment, so I am being present, lest I miss any precious moment, that I could not regain, should it become too late. I have been being giddy, dear friends. I didn’t know I could do giddy. Giddy, for the most part, irritates me. Yet, that is what I have been doing. Being giddy. Irritating myself. Finding my irritated self quite amusing. Laughing at myself. And being giddy again. Quite tiring, really. And so I’ve been too tired to write.

Or perhaps too lazy. Or perhaps too giddy.

I’ve been tweeting and audiobooing and making new friends in cyberspace. New friends who know how to be interesting and entertaining and educational and sharing in 140 characters. Friends that have succinct wit and education down pat. Friends that know how to get to the point, who say a million things with limited space. They are creating my new philosophy. I am learning intently. And having tremendous fun.

So until I come from beneath my giddiness, from behind my Balvenie haze, from beyond reason, I leave you with another copy and paste link http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp (until I figure out what’s up with the link button in WordPress…there must be a notice somewhere, but I’ve been too busy to notice…) One of my Tweeps passed this on to me. Have fun and let me know your type.

I’m ENFP – The Champion.

I leave judgement to the brave…

No matter how much coffee you have at home, you will still buy a coffee at the station, because…well…just because.

The train platform will be put up 5 minutes before departure time. Everybody’s carriages will be six minutes away. There will always be mild cattle-like panic. The carriages are not a suitable thoroughfare for many people with large cases.

If you book your ticket in advance, chances are, no matter how empty the carriage is, you will be booked into some awkward seat right by the toilet and overcrammed baggage storage area.

There will be no trolley service when your carriage is a million miles away from the catering car. There will be a trolley service when you’ve been organised and gotten all your provisions before you boarded.

Someone will always be drinking cans of lager at 10 in the morning. That person will always be sitting opposite you. That person will want to engage you in talks about football. That person will ignore the fact that you are staring intently into your computer screen.

No matter how many books you have packed for your travel, you will buy a magazine in WHSmiths.

Small children always get underfoot. Small children always get underfoot of people who don’t like small children. Small children smell fear and loathing, like dogs. Parents of small children generally don’t give a shit what their demon seed are up to, and see these moments when the little bastards are bothering other childless people as a moment’s peace for themselves.

Children like to scream for no reason. It is acceptable for children to scream for no reason. It is not acceptable for adults to scream for no reason.

No, I do not want to read your copy of the Sun. Yes I know there are tits on Page 3. No, I still don’t want to read your copy of the Sun.

Headphones are inadequate protection from an invasion of personal space and quiet time.

The speed of time is directly proportional to the availability of on board broadband.

You will almost always have to go searching for your ticket when the ticket inspectors come along, no matter how carefully you stashed them for exactly this moment. You never pay attention to where you put your ticket at the time of stashing. Hence the mad rifling through everything while the lovely, patient man stands there…

Profuse apologising and nervous giggling never makes it any better.

Your tickets are always the first place you looked when you started searching. You will spend a few minutes after the episode wondering how you didn’t see them the first time around.

There is a strange ‘table space politics’ that happens on trains. Try to play fair. Try not to mind if somebody’s jacket sleeve is creeping over your keyboard.

That attractive guy will only ever notice you when he’s getting off the train at a stop before yours. He will smile and say hello with palpable disappointment that his moment has passed. You will look away uninterested, but seriously chuffed that you still have pulling power.

The journey will always be just a bit too long until you’re in the pair of arms that you wish to be in. You will find ways of amusing yourself until then.