Torn Between Two Lovers


 

(It’s not what you think.)

My life, to quote Carole King, has been ‘a tapestry of rich and royal hue’. For as long as I can remember my tapestry has been stitched, not with fine and silken threads but with words.

I can remember, even as a little girl, the excitement generated by the yellow blocks of paper that Mom would bring home from work. I drew pictures and invented words and worlds that took me away from the loneliness of being the youngest child and only girl in our large family.

When I was twelve, I won my first writing competition. The story, about the 1820 Settlers, has long since been lost but I still remember what it felt like to write that piece. The story was submitted to the competition by my English and Maths teacher, Mrs Dorothea Knox. I still remember what it felt like when she beat me with a long wooden ruler with a metal edge. She called the ruler Mr Persuasion and wielded it daily on those of us who did not shine at Maths. I never shone.

In high school, I won other writing competitions but was given zero for an essay in Matric. The teacher didn’t believe that the poem that I’d started the essay with was mine and so accused me of plagiarism in front of the class and refused to mark it.

I’m torn between two lovers – the lover-words that dance through my life as both demons and angels. They love me and destroy me.  It’s always been my words that have shaped my life. They have taken me around South Africa, to Botswana, to Lesotho, to the UK, to Egypt and to China. They’ve also taken me to hell.  The poems and fragments of poems leap/crawl in my head when I’m teaching, when I wake up, when I’m shopping. It’s a madness; my head is never still. I crave stillness, yet when I’m still, the fear comes.

There is always fear: fear of writing; fear of not writing; fear of not being good enough; fear that words unused will evaporate.

It’s fear that joins us. I think most of us are torn in some way. We live one life and long for another. I’m not sure that there is another life. There’s just this and what we can make of it in the time that we have.

There are choices though, the choice to choose love over fear. Behind the fearful thorns of words, is also the lovely stillness of words.

My name is Ruth and I am addicted to words. Whether I ask for it or not, they weave me into the world that I must inhabit. I choose to love them.

(*Torn Between Two Lovers is the title of a song made popular by Mary Macgregor in 1977. Yes, I’m old enough to know the words.)

Be still with me for a moment.

The nature of Things

Birds chirp-chip at silence,
A woodpecker knocks out
A morse code message:
...-.-.--
(Stay)

The old winter sun
Leans against my back,
Buck come on cautious feet,
Sipping reflections of trees
And sky from the water's edge.

The wind lifts my tiredness,
I am air and cloud and wings.

Sky-feathered  kingfishers
Catching hovering time,
Plunge me into the water,
Deeply drowse drowned,
I am part of
The nature of Things. 

Ruth Everson

 

 

Comments

  1. D.J. Kirkby14 August 2013 at 09:32

    A sublimely beautiful post Ruth.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nicolette14 August 2013 at 16:51

    LOVE your work Ruth. You have a gift and use it well. Thank you for sharing.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Have The Conversation

On Thursday, I was invited to discuss my poem Black and White with 90 Grade 7s. The poem is about my second mother, Johanna Rapule. At the end of the talk, the girls asked a number of questions about the poem but there is one that has haunted me ever since. ‘What would you say to Johanna if you could speak to her again?’ The easy answer would be to tell her that I loved her. The real answer would be the deep regret that, although she knew my hopes and my dreams, I never knew hers. Growing up in apartheid South Africa, it seemed normal to have Johanna living in the tiny khaya at the bottom of the garden. It was normal to have her cook and clean and iron. I was five; my world was shaped by adults. As I grew up, visionary teachers, like Maureen O’ Gara, awakened me to the injustice that kept Johanna in her place. As a student, I protested and waved placards. We ran from the police down the streets of Benoni. We wrote angry poems, smoked furiously and drank too much wine. ...
Read more

Now is the Time for Courage

Image
A new year beckons. Before you know it we will be challenged by another 1st of January.  It's time to effect the change for which we yearn. Along come all the hopeful resolutions that briefly see the light of day before dying their usual death. Don't make resolutions - again I spoke to a group of people recently and asked them if they had made resolutions for 2020, many of them had. Most were horrified when I told them to ditch their grand plans as they would cause more stress than they were worth. The 1 st of January is like some magical line in the sand – there is a vague hope that we can step across the line and suddenly be all the things that we haven’t been for the last X number of years. The right inspirational moment Things that need to get done, get done. If you amputate a finger while cunningly carving a radish to decorate a salad, you don’t sit on the couch waiting for the right inspirational moment to go to the closest casualty room. You put your...
Read more

Tear Ducts, Onions and Chillies

Image
I’ve had a blocked tear duct for at least two weeks. It looks a little like I’m keeping a giant Easter Egg under my eye. I’ve checked, there’s no Lindt or Geldhof surprise waiting for me, which is a pity. I refuse to visit the doctor for something as puny as an eye duct. When I go, I like to tick off things like back ops, neck fusions, foot reconstructions or the odd skin graft on the troublesome head. Eye will not admit defeat to something the size on a pin prick. I have tried various methods to unblock the duct. Using my powers of deduction (see what I did there?) and Google, I set about finding a solution. Dr Google suggested a hot compress. I heated up a face cloth and reclined on the couch in a tragic pose, calling faintly for tea. The compress did nothing. I’m still hoping for the tea. The next was to try an eye solution. I poured drops into my eye. Nothing helped. Julia did mention that the drops were so past their expiry date that Noah may have dropped them of...
Read more