A Life in Words

A Little Book On Trees

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

You see the thing is, there is only so much time. You know that, and I know that. It creeps up your spine every once in a while, reminding you. You see it in the dead leaves on the ground, in the flattened squirrel, in the lines that deepen on your skin. So there is not much time before I cease to exist. I am fighting a losing battle to do all the things I want to do, to see all the things I would like to see, to read all the books, to listen to all of the music, to write all of the words…This is just me making excuses though, because most days I am sickened by my own ignorance.

So I was thinking about this the other day. About how old I am, and how much time there might be left for me, and about all the things I do not know. It caused me panic. Not knowing things. It led me to thinking; what do I know? What should I know by now? What have I already forgotten? Have I forgotten more than I will ever remember? Chances are I have. Chances are this will only increase as I get older. How much does the mind allow you to hold onto? Snippets and fragments. Important things come first. Like walking and breathing, and riding a bike, making a meal, driving a car. What remains once your aged mind has sieved through the rubble? How to tie your shoe laces? Bake a cake? Send an email? But what happens to the rest?
What is probably worse though, is all the things you never knew in the first place, all the things you never read about, or learnt about. Time wasted? Opportunities missed? I am embarrassed by how little I know. How little I have to hold onto and pass on.

So what do I know?

I know how to drive. Just about. I know how to plant seeds and help them grow. I know a thing or two about writing, a thing or two about parenting, a thing or two about how not to train a dog…I know a few things about politics, but so much of what I believe is personal and emotional, heartfelt rather than researched. I have forgotten most of what I learnt at school, college and University.

But what I don’t know shocks me and holds me back. It is staggering in its enormity. My mind closes itself in a panic, shouting there is not enough time, it is not my fault! I can’t help it. But I wish I knew so much more.
I do not know the names of all the trees I love so much. They are a green canopy sheltering me, filled with birdsong, they surround my walks and my imaginings, and I like to look at them and think about how old they are, and I like to stop and touch them if I can. They make me feel close to nature and to the point of everything. I know the oak and the sycamore…pines…conifers. I will learn more and then forget them. And I do not know the names of the hundreds of birds that fill my world with song. I know the robin and the pigeon and the blackbird and the magpie…the easy ones. I will try to remember what I have seen, and I tell myself to go and look them up, go and learn, but I will forget to do even that.

Flowers like the daisy, and the rose and the geranium and the daffodil..of course everyone knows those ones, but there are so many more, ones I have planted myself in my own garden by my own hand, and they still live on nameless to me. Not to mention the flowering weeds that line the lane, pinks, yellows, purples and blues – what are you? Tell me your name and your purpose. It is like all of nature is sat there being ignored. It is becoming unknown and unused.

Space and time and maths and physics…What is electricity and how does the TV work? Mobile phones, and the inter-net. I live with them and I rely on them, and yet I do not have a clue how they work or how they came to be. I am soaked in ignorance. I am weighed down by the guilt of not knowing enough. There is so much to know. Maybe I should make a list and start ticking them off. I would like to expand my knowledge and I would like to not have to keep saying ‘I don’t know’ when my kids ask me things. I would like to know what my ancestors knew, and what weeds to pick and cook, and how to fix a broken bike, and how to change a fuse and what kind of bird sings like that and why…I would like to hold onto the little that I do know before it gets bored and wanders off. What would I be left with?

Self-doubt and rising panic.

I could have done so much more. I could have learnt so much more and put it to good use. If only life was not so short. If only life was longer and not so stuffed full of washing clothes and hoovering mess and sweeping floors and changing beds and making ends meet. I’m running out of time and fear so many things will remain a mystery to me, languishing in the pile of ‘I’ll do that later’, ‘I’ll read that later’, ‘I will ask about that later’. But what if I never do, and just keep scurrying on towards death and getting by on the little bits I have picked up and held onto along the way?

I don’t fear death.

I won’t mind it because I will be at peace and not in a panic.

Meanwhile I will experience the turning of the days and the missing out on knowledge, expertise and experience. So many things I wish I had done. But I didn’t have the money, or I didn’t have the time, or I didn’t have the courage. I played it safe and stuck to what I knew because it was enough to survive on, enough to get me by. I won’t be a wise old woman passing on essential knowledge. It saddens me. I am sickened by the shame.

But I found a little book on trees and I keep it in my pocket.

Hope is a heartbreak

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments

Children are a heartbreak from the moment you know you are having them, from the moment you find out they exist.  This hope starts to grow inside of you, because that is what they are and that is what they become.  Hope.  For better times, for a decent life, for smiles, laughter, health and memories.  You can have all this without children and it is probably less painful.

I look at my children and it hurts.  The love itself is terrifying, and you would like to run away because it brings such hope, and hope is painful.  They never told you that, did they?  That is can rip you open and rub you raw.  They are a heartache from the start, I tell you.  From the moment you feel the love you are doomed.  They start ripping you up inside.  They grow too fast for one thing.  They make you fall in love with them.  I mean, you would kill for them, as well as die for them, but what you start to do is live for them.  But soon they don’t even need you anymore.

See one moment they are helpless without you, dependent on you for life itself.  Then the next they are pulling their hand out of yours.  It’s a piss take.  They are slipping through your fingers from the start, and they are never truly yours, although you are theirs forever.  They start growing and changing, and you start falling behind, because that is what it feels like.  Like you can’t catch your breath, can’t keep up, can’t hold on.  And the slipping gets faster and faster, every day, every week, every year gets faster than the last.

You would like to hold time still, fix it in your eye line and challenge it not to move.  You would like to grab those moments, those ones that sink your guts and moisten your eyes. You would like to be able to grab them and feel them and stuff them somewhere, hold them somewhere they can’t get free from. But the moments slip faster, one blink and they are gone.  You smile and carry on, but deep inside is a pain that will never heal.  Because it all starts going too fast.

The pain and the hope exist side by side; they are one and the same. They feed off each other. The happier you are, the more hope you feel lifting you up, the more the fear swells with the realisation that it could all fall away at any moment.  That’s what hurts, that’s what kills.  They are fragile things like all human life.  And the trouble is, their pain is now your pain, their sadness will be yours as well.  You would take it away for them if you could but mostly you are pretty helpless, and all just at the mercy of life, and whatever lies around each corner.  Living life with a constant squint in your eyes, ready to duck or dive should trouble come your way.  Try and see it off.  Try and see it coming.  Never knowing if this happy moment you are in is going to be the last for a long time to come.  Never knowing if each simple perfect day is about to fall off the tracks and change everything.  You live in hope and you live in fear.  I don’t know why we do it to ourselves, but we do.

Hidden

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

Happiness and sadness, similar and overwhelming. The same, because they are frightening and testing. One feels safer than the other, and then it changes. Sitting up in bed this morning, I could see the sky and the trees and the rain, feeding the baby, content. A song comes on the radio and my heart swells because my memory jolts awake, and it’s always like that, always a shiver down the spine and across the skin, a kick in the backside, or a punch to the gut. It’s the little things that make me so happy, he said, all I wanna do is live by the sea. Kind of dark and sad, but who knows why? I just think oh well, it is true. It was then and it is now. Because it’s good, yes it’s good, it’s good to be free…So I’m awake and looking at the sky and the tops of the trees are shaking as the rain batters down, and the baby is suckling, and I woke up older than I was when I went to bed. And all of these lives are hidden. All of these thoughts are unknown. And all of this was so very long ago yet no time has passed at all. All the little things that go on, like food falling out of cupboards, and socks growing dusty under beds, and bedsheets that need changing, all these little things go on inside rooms, inside houses, inside towns, inside countries, and all of these lives are hidden all over the planet while we just get on with our own. When I think about life ending I take a massive breath, the biggest I can find. It is moments we are built from, it is moments we all live for, the sad ones as well as the happy ones because they are all glorious, and none are so glorious as the memories we hold onto and take with us. Because we have no choice in the way time spins us forward, in the way it kills us, second by second, minute by minute, it is killing us while we breathe, and we fight to the death. And we’re all doing it, us and them, and you and me and the rats in the woodpile and the spider on the ceiling and the rustle in the bushes and the cries in the night, except they don’t care as much as us. They are living in the moment, not haunted by the past, not tortured by the future. They just live and breathe and die in their secret unknown lives. While human life is made up of snippets and flashes, and glimpses of what has gone, of photos and songs and smells and laughter and stories and a future which is precarious and wished for, ominous and eager, feared and desired. Then there is you, stuck in the middle inside that moment called now, alive while you remember how to breathe, while you can still recall what made you you. You don’t want to look at the time, you just want a chance to exist, but when you come back round it has still passed by and the next thing happens. It’s not really fair, when you think about it, how conscious we are. You can try and ignore it and fall through life, but it will still knock you sideways every once in a while, and you will take the deepest, longest breath. And one day I won’t be here, and neither will my footprints, and there will be no imprint on the bedsheets, no breath against the glass. All those little things, all those tiny moments, all the things I did and said and thought and believed and touched and dreamed and wrote and read and saw and heard, they will all be gone too. No one will ever know. It will all remain hidden.

Writers Blog Tour

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments

So I’ve been passed the baton by writer John Needham, which makes it my turn to run with. At the end of my post I will be passing it on to two blogging writers, Nicole Nally and Michael Hawke. As is the whole point of the blog tour, they will then do their posts and link to some more writers, and so on. Seems a great idea to me! It’s certainly introduced me to some new authors and their blogs. So anyway, onto the questions! (Interviewing myself, how weird!)

What Am I Currently Working On?
A tricky question right away because there is no quick or simple answer. I am working on several things at the same time, which to be honest is a bit of a nightmare! There is the sequel to The Boy With The Thorn In His Side which I wrote a few years ago and have only recently decided to make public. This Is The Day is in its last edit and will hopefully be available in the next month or so. You can read it as a sequel, but it will also make sense if you have not read The Boy With The Thorn In His Side. Then I have another finished novel named This Is Nowhere. It’s currently being edited and when I get it back I will spend some more time on it before releasing it. It’s essentially a family mystery and deals with subjects such as dementia, mental illness, suicide and family conflict. Then there is a brand new book I have started writing, to be aimed at young adults. My book hungry almost twelve year old has been a major inspiration for this. She devours books like nobodies business and my ambition is to write something so gripping that she cannot put it down! Quite a challenge I can tell you. I can reveal that the book is called The Tree Of Rebels, and is set over a hundred years in the future where a thirteen year old girl begins to question the apparently perfect society she lives in. It is about nature to a certain extent, the human kind as well as the wild kind, but more importantly it is about rebellion. And finally that brings me to my debut novel The Mess Of Me; a first person narrative from the perspective of a cynical, body conscious sixteen year old girl. This will be re-released with Autharium at some point soon. Long story, but it was snapped up by another publisher, with whom things have unfortunately not worked out. I am looking forward to giving it the once over and getting it back out there!

How Does My Work Differ From Others In My Genre?

Hmm, another toughie. To be honest I am not really sure what my genre is, which is one of the reasons I decided to go with an independent publisher. It gives you the freedom to write what you want, whatever genre that may be. I suppose you could call it realist fiction, (although The Tree Of Rebels will obviously be a young adult fantasy) as I tend to write about real people in real situations. I have a tendency to write a lot of dialogue, and I would say that my books are largely character driven. There are plots, and sub-plots, but I like to feel it’s the characters that stand out and drive things forward.

Why Do I write What I Do?
I like this question! This one is easy! I write what I do essentially because I have to. It really is as simple as that. I never really decide to write about a certain subject, and I never really devise complicated plots before I start writing. It is always, always the characters that come to me first. They quite simply walk into my mind, set up home and refuse to leave. They start talking, and soon they have a particular voice. A way of speaking, as well as a way of looking at the world. They will eventually present a dilemma, or a journey, and then I will start to see the other characters that surround and influence them. Bits and pieces will link up and join together in my mind, becoming like this spider web of words and images and situations. Eventually it gets so noisy in there that I have to start writing things down. So that’s why I write what I do. The voices in my head make me!

How Does My Writing Process Work?
Well I probably answered some of this in the last question. It starts with the character and their voice, and then when it gets too much to contain I will start jotting bits and pieces down. It will probably just be in my phone to start with; just random notes and ideas as I am walking the dogs, or trying to sleep at night. Eventually I will need to start a notebook, and this takes over from the phone. It is sadly never as organised or as neat as it should be. There will be pages about characters, with their names, ages and physical description. There will be a timeline somewhere. There will be ideas for the plot, and many, many snippets of conversations I envision my characters having. This will all take place as the book is written though. Nothing is planned out in advance. The notebook takes shape alongside the story. It’s really just a way to stop my head getting too full. Most of the time the actual writing just flows. If it’s how it should be, then it just happens; word after word, page after page. To me, writing should bring out the same emotions in me as reading. I should be addicted to the story, desperate to get back to it!

Well that’s enough about me and what I do. Please let me introduce you to my fellow blog tour writers, Nicole Nally and the poet Michael Hawke;

Nicole Nally has told stories for as long as she can remember. After dabbling with the idea of joining the publishing world after University, and working in several desk jobs that left her crying in the toilets, she finally realised it was possible to make a living from writing and has done so ever since. Writing as a freelance ghostwriter, she is also working on her own stories and trying to worm her way into the world of webcomics. She currently writes a monthly post for Autharium’s Tuesday Takeover and writes for her own blog several times a week.
http://nicolenally.blogspot.co.uk/

Michael Hawke retired twelve years ago, after running his own pharmacy for twenty years. He started writing poetry as a way to communicate to his five children and six grandchildren a bit about who he is and how he feels about things. He has a book of poems called Vignettes published with Autharium and has a brand new book of poems called Love From Dad-Poems of Love and War coming out soon. Michael can often be found reading his poems to audiences in pubs, cafes and writers groups. You can find out more about Michael in his blog.
nompie.wordpress.com