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Are you holding a grudge? About?
I don’t hold a grudge, it’s too painful, and it makes no sense. If you hold a grudge who are you harming? Yourself. Painful thoughts about someone else don’t harm them, they don’t know about it, but the worm of a grudge bores inside you and makes poison in your thoughts and harms your moods.
Oh I have held grudges before now, and for a long time, but I have it up as a bad idea. Don’t hold grudges, it’s not worth it.
What brings you peace?
Folk music, lyrical music, gentle music.
I like light classical music, piano sonatas, even film scores.
I don’t always know the name of the musical piece, or the composer, one of my worst skills is answering music quiz questions. But it doesn’t matter what it is as long as it gives me a feeing of gentle calmness.
Singing with a choir has the same effect. Especially when we are practicing and not performing. I hear the other parts, soprano and alto, and try and meld my voice in with the others. It gives me a real sense of peace and quiet. Gentle Maori lullabies effect me, and sweet folk aires from ancient history. They are all really meditations. That and the breathing required to do it help make me feel at peace.
I wish I could speak to my mother, my sister, but they are gone. If there was a phone line, a way to communicate. Just to say hello. To get some comfort. To just say a few words and get some response. It’s hard to lose people, it leaves such an empty space. Even when I’m busy I think of them. I thought I would learn to cope, and I have to some extent, but the older you get it seems the more the regret grows (at least for me). Sadness, regret, pain, loss, mourning, they all crowd in on me sometimes.
I keep meeting her name
I see someone
They have her name
Each one a gut wrench
Bullet to my heart
Didn’t know how many
People I know
Had her name.
She’s gone,
But I’m reminded
Constantly
Surge of sadness
Bumps into my mind
Almost daily.
Goodbye forever
Twin.
Too many bad things
Drugs and war and poverty
Make me sad and weary
Fearful situations
Is it wrong to cocoon myself?
In a little room of kindness
I wish for peace in all things
Seeking
Calm repose
I want to help
Others get there too…
What public figure do you disagree with the most?
I cannot be specific. There are too many politicians I strongly disagree with. I know that any person can be bad. Whether they support right, left or central politics. But somehow they all seem to be capable of misdeeds.
So why right not left? I just think currently in our country, we have had too right wing politicians for too long. They have been in power for thirteen years and things have not improved. Our health service which was the best in the world has been partly sold off, and what’s left is succumbing to cuts in beds, loss of doctors and nurses who are leaving to go to better paid jobs abroad.
We voted to leave the EU (Brexit) and turned our backs on a whole continent that supported us. We have always been ‘little englanders’, but that was a ridiculous idea and we are all suffering for it now.
Our politicians want to ignore human rights and are getting more and more vindictive. A series of political scandals including the miss selling of Protective equipment for the pandemic, (which was not fit for purpose). Sewage being poured into our rivers and sea, and tax cuts for the richest, all have destroyed our reputation. And we have awful treatment of migrants who cannot safely get into this country so are risking their lives trying to cross the channel in small inflatable boats. And one of our ministers had the gall to call them ‘migrant shoppers’ or similar phrase, as if they were not desperately seeking refuge.
So no, I know there are awful people everywhere, but I need to think about our government. If we cannot act in a humane way how can we expect anyone else to do so?
I found this on my phone and once again remembered. Those thoughts came back again, sadness, guilt, loss. To lose a sister, it’s not right. When it’s a twin it might be worse. I don’t know. But as our birthday approaches, will I be OK? I somehow feel this should be both of us. I want to get to my next birthday, but the idea seems wrong. I will keep going but I’m not sure I will be happy on that day. And it’s not just me, it’s the rest of the family. I guess we will wait and see…. Sorry to post this but I couldn’t get the idea out of my mind.
Sleep, memory, chases my mind.
I remember we were twins
When you were still here
Now your shape is gone
A space left in my landscape
So before I weep again
Bring me more dreams of you
Here beside me
Her next to me
Sister, twin.
Grey Dawn awoke me
Went to bed at three
Read a book to soothe
But could not grasp sleep
Dreaming the word eluded
My mind on fire
Swirling like smoke
Snap a nap then awoke…
I want to find a way in
To oblivion.
What makes you most anxious?
The world I’d bleak and I don’t know what to say or think. Words and thoughts churn round in my head. I feel anxiety about not getting something right, something I should have done months ago that could have massive consequences now or in the future.
Because I was focused on myself I didn’t see other people or a person who might have needed my help. It’s six months and the Earth has travelled half way around the Sun. That’s 186,000,000 miles. And now I’ve only just realised I should have been there for someone 186 Million miles ago! I feel idiotic, I feel great anxiety that I will not be forgiven. I feel I have lost a chance where I could have been of help…..
Even now, writing this, it seems a trivial response, too self serving, am I writing something that will help, or to just try and exonerate myself. Guilt and anxiety, mixed emotions and sadness…
Mallaband-Brown