The Angel is in the detail

With a dip in one’s spirits comes the opportunity to grow

Portrait of the Writer as Bonfire.

In the early days of my recovery from alcoholism I made a few pacts with myself.

One of them was to reconnect with my feel for writing and chart my attempt to break-out of the spiritual rut I’d been stuck in all my life.

Sounds good to me.

I’m now almost two years sober on the second of October.

Sounds like the beginning of a ballad.

In my post-war deflation becoming Fiona lit the smallest of penny candles on a shelf inside me.

The flame was weak and the wick was made from a toothpick but thankfully it kept me company as I tapped my musings out on the old laptop in my garret.

I would record rises and falls, doubts and delights; now I had nothing left I could chew over my existence at my own pace and slowly allow myself to change it.

It’s a human thing to expect a linear trajectory, especially of the upward variety.

A gilded line describing the smooth curve of an angel’s butt-cheek on a sky ripped out of a Blake poem.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if things could be like that, but they most certainly are not my dear.

I’ve come to the realization I was looking at my transition in the completely wrong way.

The Angel is in the detail, you see.

The falls beneath the weight of this most ultimate of changes are as important as the successes.

I’m not the first to be plagued by doubt. Pic borrowed from Tumblr

I lost sight of the yellow brick road and plumbed unaccountably back into the Forest of discontent and spent a week there withering and pining for the visions of beauty I’d beheld the week previously.

The little treasure trove of my achievements to that point hidden under a black, dour looking blanket and rendered null and void.

I tend to push my face into the moment like it’s a child’s face distorted and gawking through a pane of glass.

The change wasn’t happening fast enough and Miss Shirley Temple had herself a little strop.

A watched kettle will never boil and the same rule of thumb applies here.

Pull your face from the window a sec.

With a dip in one’s spirits comes the opportunity to grow.

Working through what is giving you gyp helps you to straddle the next wave of euphoria the little changes light in you.

Fiendishly simple in some respects but can be soon forgotten in the hurly burly of civil war.

The hair on my face isn’t as thick as it used to be.

Up you go, here’s your fedora, and don’t forget what I told you.

Bright eyed until next time. Bring it on.