Writing Fragments

Writing used to be a joy for me, but it became so much harder for me since I had a stroke three years ago. In January, I did a workshop with Wanda Barker at the Raglan Summer School, and although it took me a week to rest and recover, I enjoyed it immensely. I haven't managed to keep up the writing habit though. Recently I realized that although I could write in the workshop, at home I expect myself to turn everything into 'a piece', and if I can't see a final context, I won't start. I do so enjoy the process of writing, trying to find the best words, the best order. I have never been interested in getting work published: I like to share with people who will offer constructive criticism of my writing, and I like to share with people who enjoy my words and experiences, but the rest of the world doesn't matter. So, I've been writing a couple of things that are not really poems, nor essays, nor short stories - just fragments of my life. And I've accepted that fragments are okay.

The Freedom of Selective Memory

I have discovered

the joy possible

in selective memory.

Remembering as if reading

an ancient, brief item

in a yellowed newspaper,

voices and faces faded out.

It tastes like freedom.

The Hills From My Window

From my favourite chair, I see the ridgeline followed by Maungatawhiri Road. I cannot see the road, nor my friends' homes, but I see hills, paddocks, trees, and a few houses and sheds of strangers. This morning the misty rain blurs the shapes and mutes the colours.

In the mornings, on the rare occasions I rise early enough, and weather permitting, I see the sun's rays switch the spotlights on to the highest fields, turning them a wonderful gold-green, and then the colour moves wider and lower, like a Mexican wave, across the landscape. Next the tops of the trees are highlighted, and eventually the sun become visible in the east and reaches the windows behind me.

At sunset, that same view, framed by my window, is always the same, always different. Those particular trees on that particular stretch of the ridge, are sometimes backed by glorious reds and oranges, bright pinks and grey, but my favourite evenings are the ones I suspect are painted by Salvidor Dali, when the pale but luminescent white gold or apricot outlines the hills and no matter how hard, or exciting, or busy the day has been, all is well with the world, and I breathe out.