a jazzy storm, space... and poetry

So it's late, and I'm sitting in the lazy chair, glass of wine, candles burning, chilling to Kevin Flanagan's riprap jazz (genius) - - and the furiously ferocious early autumn storm letting rip outside and blowing my 6th floor apartment away to wonderland...... glorious rain, wind and scudding clouds this evening which is so totally my kind of weather.  Sweet.  No - I'm not being sarcastic; I love wind, rain and clouds.  This kind of weather has a certain air of privacy about it and quiet meditative reflectiveness.  It has a mood of change, purposeful determined activity and freshness to it.  And the moon is waxing; it's beautiful shining behind clouds drifting on the wind.  Full harvest moon is this coming Monday.  It's the most beautiful full moon of the year.

People give me strange looks when I say I revel in walking on the beach in a gale-force 12 storm.  Did that; in Wales once, walked on the beach in a raging storm.  It's so liberating.  Birds fleet and whirl in a vortex of swirling winds, so free.  Private weather, I call it.  Weather where most people want to be indoors and so outdoors becomes.... well, distinctly more private and clear of clutter and noise.  Man-made sounds fall away and then all you're left with is the clarity of nature's music; rushing wind, deluge of rain, a storm let loose.  Nature's peace.

A gale-force 12 storm at sea as opposed to alongside the sea, that's another story.  If you're not hanging over the toilet, it's amazing.  Towering force of waves - nose-diving shuddering ditch of bough into the trough of a wave followed by pitching and heaving starward to waves' peak; resulting in stuff flinging around in all directions uncontrollably in the cabin, hearing it breaking in the pitch black and wondering what broke this time...  And a feeling that you're afraid you're doing to die, which is inevitably replaced after 9 days at sea - having endured a one-on-one relationship with the toilet - with a shame-faced furtive hoping that you will die.  Then it's decidedly less romantic and amazing.  All astoundingly beautiful nature, dolphins and whales included, velvet night sky with bright stars; but that's another story, another time, out of a life long gone. 

So anyway tonight I had a blast fixing up my balcony while it was storming, I cleaned up the water fountain which is now enthusiastically babbling as opposed to the slow sluggish drip-drap of earlier, and I hung up a few small lights.  Took away the low coffee table from the middle of my living room.  Funny how such a simple action can make such an impact.  Suddenly there is space.  It's a relief.  And that got me to thinking; why do people put tables in the middle of rooms anyway? 

What dude decided that This Was How It Should Be Done?  Then realised, I'm not people, I'm me, and I don't have to do what everyone else does.  I am allowed to have space in the middle of my room instead of a table if I want to, I am allowed to be:  so I was.  One thing comes with living alone; if you want you can paint purple spots on your walls and hammer your furniture to the ceiling, you can put upstairs downstairs and downstairs sideways if you want, or fill your walls with your own artwork... except your visitors (if you have any) might be slightly alarmed and more than a little ruffled.  Well, that is neither here nor there.

Anyhow; The      *S  p  a  c  e*      looks good.  Now that blasted table's out the way, I have the room to pace back and forth in my living room whilst mulling various creative ideas over in my head and listening to music.  I'm going to get rid of more stuff too; I've been thinking I'd like to get back to being minimal and uncluttered.  Anyway; why does a person need so much stuff?  Lately I've been realising more and more how rubbish stuff is.  It's only taken 38 long years for the penny to finally truly drop: you can't take any of it with you when you die.  Why bother with it.  It only gets in the way and clutters your mind.  Stuff is a *conclutterance* of things.  Oh yeah!  I love making up words.

I'm out of here in a few days, I'm going to the sea.  Hopefully it'll be storming then too and it'll blow the cobwebs right out of my head.  I'm heading for a couple days of long bracing beach walks, alternated with a bit of a nice sit down and a fair few cups of teas on windy terraces, combined with some writing of poetry.  Also hoping to sit on a horse again and have a bit of a gallop.  This week as I was enjoying a pleasant cup of Yorkshire golden tea, the words of the poem below tumbled out of my head in this order and form onto a piece of paper.  It is one of a series of poems I am writing for a collection entitled 'Harvest Moon'.  So I am curious to see how that project works out for me.  It's risky.  But anything worthwhile in life usually seems to be.

silver rush of rain fleeting like
spears piercing leaves at night
dancing light reflected moon-bright
at sight all seems quiet
but still
a pause
in the fury of clouds brimmed full
with wrath and pensive thought
ominous white stab of light
blinding illuminate for a
moment bright then
dimmed softly
fading into
night

As usual I am obsessing with this blog tweaking it trying to get it just right and and have ended up editing it about 20 times since I posted it yesterday.  And I'm getting grumpy now so I'm going to leave it alone.  Stop it, just STOP it now already.  Edit: post: STOP.
Goodnight...

H.