Hasn’t it? I think I last blogged at the beginning of the pandemic. At the beginning of the pandemic! Imagine, there was time before all this. It actually doesn’t seem that long ago as I have very little recollection of the year 2020. I went to work all Spring and Summer, I had a Summer vacation on the island, I went back to work, stayed home alone for Christmas, cut my own hair on New Year’s Eve (because why not?). And that was the year.
I have to say there were other things too, now that I consider it, a new school to attend which I had to pause because of some health challenges. Umm… I wanted to mention something else, but there really wasn’t anything else. Oh yes, the time I crashed the car into a ditch on my way to said school for the first time (I’m totally fine, not even a scratch, though the car didn’t fare so well).
This year I’ve started to write poems again. In the summer when I was working at the garden shop, an old neighbour came by. We had worked at the same office about ten years ago, so I knew her quite well. She’s about my parents’ age and a really nice lady. We talked for a while and I mentioned I’m writing as well as working at the garden shop. Instead of that awkward side-eye, she laughed and told me what I was like when we first met. She moved into the same yard as us when I was about five years old. She remembers listening to me in astonishment as I started spouting rhymes.
Such a little thing to remember and mention, such a huge difference to me. I’ve been tentatively returning to writing poetry, as I’ve worked on a collection of fairy tales and fairytale poems since March 2020 (I just couldn’t continue with my novel manuscript, I couldn’t). But that made me think that maybe if I used to publicly speak in verse when I was five, when my polite society filters and ashamedness had yet to emerge, maybe that’s something I need to look at.
It is nice to have some kind of structure. A structure makes me do things that I might not do otherwise, so I wrote rhyming poetry until the start of my summer vacation. During my vacation I let myself slip as much as I wanted, but I think that I will go back to rhyming poetry now that the vacation is over. It is as awful as I can really make it, but that’s what makes it so good.
I guess blogging on the first of September is a cry for some structure and something new in my life, but we’ll see…
One of my poems were about this cup-and-saucer vine that looks almost carnivorous.
Mayu's Teapot 