How do we merge two voices into one? Tell a story from two perspectives, a story that might fuse disparate views such a pattern can emerge. A dynamic between two people?
‘A stuck writer is a child alone,’ writes Anne Entright. I’m not stuck exactly just caught up in a maelstrom of thoughts which refuse to settle. One central idea, one image.
Bees, Bees, she writes. Come to my funeral and immediately, I’m captivated. Back in the movie Lark Rise to Candleford where one of the central side characters keeps bees for the honey and their life-giving properties.
She talks to her bees about the people in the village, their lives and deaths, as if seeking the counsel of a wise person.
‘The choice was mistaken; the choosing was not.’ Sunday in the Park with George.
What do you make of these words? Why do they resonate?
To make a choice is to manifest a level of self-agency which is fundamental, even if your choice turns out to be a dud.
I have made many such choices throughout my life. Strikes me it’s a good one that can both operate as a good decision and acheive a successful outcome.
And then there’s this Japanese saying:
‘Watch your thoughts, they become your words.
Watch your words they become your actions.
Watch your actions they become your habit.
Watch your habits they become your character.
Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.’
Too much watching might paralyse but an unobserved mind is indeed a dangerous thing. If we do things, say things, express things in words and actions without reflecting on their meaning, or significance, their possible effect on others, their consequences, then we are likely to get into trouble.
Hence the value of a reflective mind. One which hopefully begins in childhood when caregivers and parents speak to their children about what might be going on inside their little minds. Helps them to find words for their feelings.
I’m anxious about my heart, the way it sometimes trips into a different gear as if something has shocked it out if its peaceful rhythm when I don’t even notice it’s there. When I notice it because of this sudden surge of fearful energy as if I have nearly hit another car on the road or just righted myself before tripping over a branch to stop my fall. As if someone has shouted obscenities at me for no reason I can discern and I’m back in my childhood again with a scary and unpredictable father who does not watch his words or actions and resorts instead to moments of sullen or explosive rage.
A mother who flutters around like a moth trying to find dark places in which to stay safe at the same time drawn to the light.
‘Take it to the doctor,’ my husband says, but I’m reluctant, the way people avoid confronting their worst fears for fear they might even be worse.
I have a friend in hospital following major surgery on his heart. He’s doing well but it’s a scary thing to have your insides ripped open and your heart held beating manually while surgeons tinker with the plumbing as one doctor once told my husband after operating on his eyes.
‘We’re just plumbers,’ this doctor said. I saw red that day thinking this doctor’s bedside manner was lacking. My vulnerable husband stuck in bed and this person who had only just taken a knife to the side of his skull telling him his body required plumbing.
I’m usually good with metaphors but this one lacked sensitivity, or at least it did in this moment. I called the hospital care team to complain about this lack of sensitivity and the surgeon later returned and apologised to my husband who was less perturbed by this gaffe than me.
And writing here I can see in some ways I might have overreacted to the clumsiness of a surgeon who is skilled at human plumbing but not in sensitivities of the heart.
The territory I’m in at present.