Hope is a Creeping Creature

16 days ago I told myself I would write every day for 31 days. Getting here hasn’t been easy. Writing every day is more difficult than it sounds. Just showing up is more difficult than you can imagine.

Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul.

If hope were a creeping crawling creature it would be a lizard, slinking down through the patch of shadow on the wall just as it basked in the sunlight not a few moments before.

If hope were a thing with feathers as the poem proclaims, what monstrous beast would it be? Or would it be delicate, and lithe, a thing to cherish and stroke gently?

Hopeful Future Acts

Things that I hope will happen in the next two weeks (some people would call them ‘goals’):

· Finish The Bee Farm (or at least find out where it goes). Already thinking of submitting it to the Dublin Review.

· Write 500 words every day strictly and with no deviation

· Meditate daily

· Be mindful. BE. MINDFUL.

Poetry

A snatch of a poem came into my head as I was cooking dinner (turkey schnitzel, potatoes and vegetables) this evening:

I am the custodian of clattering pans,

a queen of steam and

the trivial day.

I wonder if it will turn into something finished.

Back to the task

What does hope mean? It’s by no means a feeling of certainty. You can only hope that things go one way or another, that the odds favour you in the end.

Hope is a lizard in shadow, a delicate, trembling thing. Hope is a chameleon; it changes colours and shapes to always be there when you need it.

I keep feeling like this scribbling does not count as writing but I have to remember this fact:

Words are words, not matter what they are. Words are words are words. Thoughts are not facts.

This is something that’s linked to hope in my mind: thoughts are not facts. Hope is above your thoughts. Hope has nothing to do with the turmoil of your brain.

I sit in the near darkness of this gloomy room occasionally hugging my mug of chai tea, watching the colours of evening collapse into each other.

I think about hope. I think about people sharing their dirty laundry on Facebook in front of the whole world (which makes me think of the first thing I ever wrote in this 500 words a day challenge — an open letter to Queen Bitch). I think about love, and greed, and my day at work tomorrow (I seriously hope I don’t get screamed at by my boss like I did on Friday. Nobody should talk to anybody like that.).

My brain is a tinkering thinkering machine, always tick tick ticking over. It moves like clockwork in my skull. It moves like something manmade. But yes, oh my, I think we’re getting somewhere now with this one-word-in-front-of-another business. We’re warming up, aren’t we. Words are words are words. This is fabulous. This is writing. This is what I always wanted. This is it.