Feeling Better after Illness

I have been pained to write since all of last week. My Muse trails me like a shadow, determined to infuse my restlessness not with guilt but with that soft, tender ache...it acts very much the worried child waiting to be picked up and cuddled.

I have heard its cries and felt its perplexed sorrow at the very anxious thought, that it may be left behind. Alas, I have been ill and am only now on the road to a thankful recovery. I am seldom ever ill and itch to be rid of a subdued countenance once it happens.

Sadly, this means that although I have kept to a commendable focus of everyday living, I have not been able to write as gladly as I've wanted.

There is always that moment of careful adjustment...the art of attempting a skillful climb back into vibrance. It takes patient rest and a gentle diet.  It helps that  I have relied upon an assortment of artistic pleasures to be plumped up as soothing, cushioned friends. 

All last night, I stayed up, intently reading and so finished Teju Cole's Open City.  A haunting novel, the plot is made up of a series of personal melancholic journeys in Manhattan, Brussels and also Nigeria, that may be had to the seeking journeyer, a time of strange personal discoveries amid astonishing revelations.  This afternoon, I finished a small biography A Card from Angela Carter by Susannah Clapp. Its plot-intent circled around postcards, jottings and letters from the late Angela Carter to a friend. I have long delighted in Carter's novels of the absurb and fantastical - how happily her books adorn my shelves - that this biography appeared a godsend in many ways for me, the grateful reader. Without logic, the celebratory book prodded me on with matching bliss, to recall some Enya...Orinoco Flow, Carribbean Blue and possibly a touch of Moby. In once more, reading about Carter, all things surreal, rose like angels to meet my hand.

I am holding on to my Muse, with affectionate bated breath. Slowly but surely.

Introduction to this Writing Journal

I'm at a serene but also ambitious time in my life, where caught in the reflective throes of my now exciting middle years;  I yearn to curate and perserve every good thing as a celebratory legacy  for a forthcoming era. Of course, I talk of a personal journey...one that stays propelled aboard a complex destiny. I am keen to record this present time that has seen me shrouded  with independent blessings too many to count, after a few good years of harrowing circumstances.

Perhaps also, it is because I have learnt the value of life and hold knowledge as precious. Perhaps my sunsets have grown to be a little more romantic and flamboyant than I would have dared envision them, in the now forgotten calendar seasons of old pencil markings and teardrops.  Or that I would have somehow succeeded in turning the meticulous and focussed thinker, for better or for worse. The latter would best explain why I feel the need to curate every footstep of a returning writing journey, record every memory of a splendoured childhood and remember every bookmarked essay, novel and film that I have ever come upon. 

I want to read more books than I already have done, watch more films that may result in encompassing that overhelming number that presently jostle away to rest jovially in my mind, travel with a fitter spirit than I already do and write more intensely than I may have ever attempted, before. I want to memorise, collate, curate, record, note, jot...write and write some more of all the beautiful, wonderful things I have ever encountered, that currently makes my life the tiny garden of paradise it is.