Two short poems and a spinning world.

Edited version - Quick read, I promise: Work in Progress, People in the Pub... sea legs and wobbly head won't let write so here's this one again incase you missed it:

The Moon, by James Edwards. (Help from Mummy getting the edge right.) This picture was a gift to my friend Nicola. I remember how proud he was giving it to her. It hangs above her desk. I’ve had a print done as a gift to mindbodydance studio because Lisa is very moonie.

Old news, tidied up, ignore if you’ve read already. Update on the vertigo: Cannot have sodium. Only sea salt. The Chronic Pain Clinic in Wadebridge is brilliant. ALWAYS seek holistic alternatives. Also been recommended Brenda Pretty Homeopathy and acupuncture is on my list. Thank you to those that reached on this subject. Good to know I am not alone. I have to beat this. It’s impacting my life. I am afraid of noise. And when I look at my screen for too long the spinning starts again and my heart falls into my stomach. So I can’t write. So here’s this old one re-hashed incase you missed it in your inbox. Bit of editing. (In my writing mind, off screen, I’m planning my next newsletter. I must tell you about a woman I met. She told me something you won’t believe. She’s a link to something greater. Coming soon)

This poem is one of the last things I wrote on Tresco. It was my last Sunday. I went to the pub, and the whole thing felt awkward. The noise of groups eating roast. When I am stressed my noise tolerance vanishes. I ended up in large group of people. Lovely people. Sam our I cannot describe just how much effort it felt that day - to speak. Every word felt dragged from my throat, kicking and screaming.

PEOPLE and the 29% of me

PEOPLE in The pub

my mood’s not right

Alone at first, just me and the dog

Don’t come over

FFS - don’t come over

look busy, write a list

Remember:

GET THE WASHING OFF THE LINE

need a Bottle of red-

Crisps

Beer, numb the dread

I love a list

Sipping Guinness

Eating peanuts, bit pissed

writing a shopping list

Alone , bliss

Biscuits , wine, Dog treats

Milk bread butter

Eggs , and I need a pizza cutter

(I like the atmosphere, but don’t want to be seen?)

Damn it, They’re coming over

I’m smiling

I’m screaming

I’m crying

(obviously I don’t need a pizza cutter but it rhymes with butter)

Is the fake bit the bottom 20/29%

The heavy grey

The drag in my foundations

The pressing down

A grumbling deep and far away

But just there - there is effort, enormous effort

Under skin, excused from light of day

I was there in the pub

Mascara pinned back the lids of my eyes

Lipstick drew a smile on my face

I am people

I’m there - in the pub

Two of us

Me and not me

I’m so full, tucked into jeans and jumper

Denim and wool

Bones and blood

Heart boiling, Hands freezing

I am skeleton behind flesh

It’s uncomfortable - skin too small for two of us

Me and not me

But look at my beautiful earrings and necklace,

keeping my head on

I’m convinced

I’m a real person - A people person

Lifting glass to mouth

Hi! How are you ?

Well tbh

I wish I hadn’t come out

I can’t think of anything to say

I don’t know how to relax

totally authentic

Finding you funny

we laugh , you said it

Outrageous

Isn’t she funny

Saying all the right things

It’s so loud

All the people - jaws, eyebrows, cheekbones

That shirt/those shoes

I’ve counted 32 smiles

stored his and hers smells

let it all in

Heavy musk and woody floral scents

When you go home you’ll dive on your bed and sob

The relief

Bitter sweet

No more pretending

But you’ll go to the pub next week

and do it all again

Because you are human

You need people

You are people

There’s only a few hours left of today. You should be working, not checking emails. Tonight you will be busy enjoying evening midsummer sun, it’s nearly mid-afternoon. I’m stuck in, unwell, should be resting. The sun makes me dizzy.

Last week: It’s Sunday morning, Father’s day. I will go to see Dad in the care home. I’ve bought Simon a card saying - Best Dad in the world, but I’m going to ask him if he minds if I give it to Dad.

Days later. I did go and see him, and I picked him up and brought him back here. He dozed on my sofa watching tennis. I showed Simon the card and he said, Yes, give it to your dad. He appreciated my intention but why go out and buy another one. Simon walked the dog alone on the camel trail and saw dad’s with children carrying balloons, that said, DAD… he came back in a terrible mood and didn’t leave the house again that day.

It’s now Thursday, 19th June. I’m stuck at home after another episode of vertigo yesterday. I want to be at work. The sun is hot and the breeze is warm. Yesterday I swam in the sea. (I do not miss the sea in Tresco. It was so nice to swim without being in agony.) Afterwards I went into a shop - Constantine Bay Stores. I looked at the bread on the shelves and they began to sway and spin. NO, please no, I told myself, this is not happening. I turned and staggered out of the shop, fell into a chair outside. I pleaded with the universe to not let this happen again but the spinning wouldn’t stop. I asked a woman sitting having coffee if she could ask someone to bring me water. A sweet boy from the till handed me the bottle and asked if he could do anything else. ‘I’m sorry, I need something to be sick in,’ I said. he brought me a mop bucket.

I poured the water over my neck. I sipped and I tried to focus on the point of a roof opposite. But it was useless, head down on the table now… UGH, disgusting. So disgusting, that’s the only way I describe this. After a few minutes a friend stopped their van and got out, heading into the shop, he paused, assuming I was struggling with the heat. I told him I have vertigo and could he go up the road to the village and pick Simon up where he was cutting hedges and bring him to me. No problem, he said and off he went. (Thank you Taz.) And then the dreaded vomiting began. Sorry to the couple who’d just sat down to eat ice cream. Sorry to the shop people who had a woman being sick outside of their shop where they were trying to sell food.

I was dreading having to get into the car. I could not move my head. I know too well, that if I move my head a mm, the world will shake violently and my stomach will want to turn itself inside out. Simon came to my rescue. He got me tissue so I could wipe my mouth. I crawled onto the back seat and for twenty minutes was sick into my swimming towel. Got to bed after harrowing walk from car. My friend came with a long bendy straw so I could drink without moving my head. She sat on my bedroom floor and folded piles of clothes in a heap. Finally the spinning stopped after an hour. I’m crying now, writing this, because it’s so fucking awful. To anyone living with Meniere’s Disease, my heart goes out to you. AVOID SALT. Salt is your enemy. That’s my 5th attack. The first one was nearly 20 years ago. That’s when the tinnitus started. I was on a shift waiting tables at The River Cafe in London. Next thing I am in an MRI scanner. I remember the doctor kept asking me, is it me that’s spinning or the room? I couldn’t answer that question and still can’t. Today I feel beaten up and guarded. I live in hope that one day someone will find a cure, at least just for the tinnitus. It’s like the M25 inside my head.

Before all this, yesterday morning I was walking the dog down the road and up to the cemetery to sit with James. On the window sill outside the launderette I saw this: (Apologies to the owner of this lost biro. Finders Keepers.)

So now, I am doing what I have been told to do by the sign on the sill. I am sharing very rough words, thrown out of me as if causing discomfort. Why share when they are so young and sprawling? Because knowing my scattered mind I will never come back to them and then what if tomorrow didn’t come and they just stayed here locked in this machine, a page never seen. So sod it, I’m throwing them out. I think they are about grief as a physical being, rather than somber facts and thoughts. They are moving feelings without boring sentences; it seems so much easier to handle.

Untitled, work in progress

Grief is a word

gruff, ruff, ruff, like woof woof

Grief is rough, rough, like tanned skin, tough,

Like a stain. Stubborn, it makes you tough.

It makes you laugh at love.

Grief is a bark, ruff, ruff

grief is a lark, a shriek and a chirp

wings out wide – flit and dash

Grief is an owl – a screech, a glare and a twit twoo

A howl in the dark, claws curled, gripped

Grief goes on and on, grief goes bang, thump, punch,

stamp and kick, like a liquid lunch

like a shadow you can’t give the flick.

Grief is a stone in your shoe, a chip on your shoulder, ants in your pants

it’s none of those things. It’s the biggest pet you could ever bring home.

I’m looking around the room. Do I want to be here?

I have no idea. (Post-vertigo day is fearful. I’m terrified it will start again.)

I moved out for a year but took myself with me

and now I am back in

Loss makes me strange, I know that

It’s easier to press return

Come down here on this next line

Or right over here, separate.

Anyway, not sure where that’s going. Ideas and desires come in showers. Every drop scatters, disperses, lands and is gone. What I shame I can’t catch them. I just don’t have that kind of brain. But it’s ok to just be me. (School reports said, “Jessica would do better if she wasn’t staring out of the window.” I fell asleep a lot in class too. The boredom was agony.)

To go outside with scissors… why dead-head when you can live-head?

Ernie in the Pub, totally relaxed. The New Inn, Tresco. Everyone on the island knew Ernie.

Coming back to this house is perplexing. Am I settling in or just passing through? Have I come back to check it’s real - that it all really happened, that’s he’s not here, looking for me? I can’t know the answers. I can’t live at the end of the story. I must be at ease with not knowing. Don’t live for the complete narrative. But I do now have some proof. A woman I met told me a secret. I’ll tell you about it next time.