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Luke and the Photo
My hands are shaking as I hold the photo. I don't need to be reminded of this. I sit with it every day, its toad-like presence: dark, watching, ready to leap, blinking stoically day-in day-out. I can feel it getting twitchy now. I want to squash it.
By Rachel Deemingabout a year ago in Fiction
Bethan
I try not to relive that day but it's difficult not to when the anniversary of it comes around year after year. The loss comes rushing in like water through a weakened crack in a pipe. Most days, I manage to hold it back, although it's pressure is always there, pushing at me.
By Rachel Deemingabout a year ago in Fiction
Stream
I don't know how to write stream of consciousness poetry because stream of consciousness to me just means writing what comes into your head as you are thinking it and stream implies that this should be continuous, like a flow that just keeps going with no breaks or stops or anything and I have real trouble with this because I dislike the disorder and where it puts me. For me, poems have form and this is formless and not poetic and not anything really other than the ramblings of me, on my computer on a wet, grey day in semi-rural England, having just eaten a really scrummy lunch of paoched egg on toast on seeded bread. I love seeded bread, I had it for breakfast as well although it was with butter and marmalade and it was scrum - diddly - umptious. I don't know why I'm writing about that. Yes, I do. It's because this is stream of consciousness and that is what this is and it's not very interesting is it? And this is why I'm struggling, because I've read loads of other people's stuff and they all read really well about cats and rhythms and other cerebral stuff but I try and I just can't do it because it just doesn't feel real for me to construct something like that. That's the problem. I can't reconcile the idea of a stream with something that has form. Even all the punctuation that I'm putting in is making my skin itch because it's providing form and my thoughts aren't punctuated. I don't have cartoon bubbles appearing in my head to tell me how something should be said: where the stresses should go or whether it's funny or not. They just are and they just come and then I just go with whatever my brain conjured up in that moment and thinking about that, that's pretty cool isn't it because there's all this electrical process going on (I don't really know how my brain works - Gerard, enlighten me please) in this big pink thing, or is it grey? Poirot talks about little grey cells. I don't know. Anyway, this isn't a medical dissertation so I suppose it doesn't really matter, although I do like to be as accurate as I can. I'll await Gerard's advices. That's Gerard on here, Vocal. I've got to hope he reads this now. I don't know where I was. I've gone down the rabbit-hole, Alice-style. What am I doing? This is just rambling. And yet, I feel this is more true to the brief. I feel like this is a stream, even though it's a fucking awful one but looking at it on the page, it is just me, telling you my thoughts as they come and unfiltering it and this looks like some sort of arty shite which someone would applaud for its originality even though it is banal and so uninteresting. I'm having a James Joyce Ulysses or more likely Emperor's New Clothes moment here. I mean, who are you to compare yourself to James Joyce? I mean, that's a bit up yourself. You know, that's reminded me of Virginia Woolf too and wasn't she one for stream-of-consciousness? I seem to remember that from my English degree, many moons ago. We went to my old university the other day and I barely recognised it. I had this image of it in my head and it just wasn't that anymore. It made me feel old but not sad because if there's one thing that I know about living, it's that everything changes. But you! Oh no, now I've got Take That in my head and I've still not got the ironing done and now I've been interrupted by TikTok playing in the background on my son's phone.
By Rachel Deemingabout a year ago in Confessions
Little Red Leaf. Content Warning.
All the leaves are brown, and the skies are grey. Autumn is here and you're away. I look at the richness of the world around me, the pageantry of royal colour in the golds and the reds and the oranges that adorn the trees in their final flourish and it makes me sad that you can't see it.
By Rachel Deemingabout a year ago in Fiction
Rachel Reviews: Midnight Sun by Jo Nesbo
I wasn't sure about this book as I had tried to read one of Nesbo's Harry Hole series called The Redbreast and found it difficult to get into. But this was a gift and so, there is added importance and it should be given a go. And I'm glad I did because it was an excellent read.
By Rachel Deemingabout a year ago in BookClub
Rachel Reviews: We Are Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
Karen Joy Fowler has written a family story with a difference in this book. Told by Rosie, it is a tale of siblings and tensions and rivalries but it is also a conversation about our relationship with animals and how humans variously have differing views of whether or not animals should be put to use, kept for purposes other than as pets or if what is needed is a reimagining of how we treat others who share our planetary space.
By Rachel Deemingabout a year ago in BookClub
Snow-man
I await the first flake. For with it, my love will return. Lumen. My Lumen. I hold his heart all year round. It sits in a box on my sideboard. The box is nothing special but what it contains is everything to me. Sometimes, I open it and I look at it, quickly, blue, beating and marvel at the fact that it's mine, that he has chosen me over all others.
By Rachel Deemingabout a year ago in Fiction
Anemology
My chosen word: Anemology - the study of winds I love wind. Windy days, I think, make you remember more than anything that there are things on this planet over which you have no control - and I love that. Wind is passionate; it's a driver. That feeling of it pummelling you on a really windy day just cannot be beaten.
By Rachel Deemingabout a year ago in Poets
