L’esprit du jour…

Mood of the day - one photo, one phrase.

“Be silent or let thy words be worth more than silence.”
― Pythagoras

Dearest readers, wanderers and weavers of words,

As always, you are very welcome, it is wonderful to have you here sharing a few moments with me once again.

I’ve found myself stuck in a deep murky mire over these last few difficult days, wondering how I can still be creative as well as stay abreast the many hours when I am too bound by obligations of the mundane kind to even think of pen and paper, other than perhaps for administrative and work purposes. This isn’t the first time that life has taken hold of every second so completely obviously, it happens to us all. However, having ridden this now habitual creature for a year I don’t want to stop. And, the fact that I have to is causing a very distinct, frustrating tension that staples itself to my head, my neck, even my shoulders and back and damn those staples hurt.

When mind and body are bursting with ideas minus a space in the planning to even jot them down but you continue regardless, eventually something gives and invariably the result is messy. In this case, my case, not worth your valuable reading time.

Last Wednesday afternoon I had the great pleasure of meeting a very warm and wonderful human being in a Zoom meeting (I’m not sure it deserves quite such a banal title, let’s call it a friendly chat). Barrie who writes

Feasts and Fables

. This was a day when I was still fragile, raw around the edges from last Monday’s horror story, but I don’t think I could have spoken to anyone more capable of lightening the unbearable weight of unwanted memory.

Barrie is one of life’s natural uppers, a smiling force of easy going positivity and encouragement, impossible not to feel immediately comfortable with. During our conversation, which flitted with much joviality and friendly ease between writing (of course) living in France, number obsessions and the difficult task of learning and speaking languages we didn’t grow up with, an idea, several actually, sprang into peripheral vision. Barrie very cleverly and quietly fed into our chatter little sparks of inspiration for those days when words escape us. I have taken these sparks, soldered them together and hopefully created something you will enjoy but at the same time doesn’t cause me to turn in circles trying to extract painful staples while attempting to write something interesting when the week has been anything but.

Henceforth, when my time is short, when my mind is clogged and fuzzy with mundane necessities, when, at the end of a day a red light signalling critical overload is flashing furiously in the space reserved for calm, rather than leave my page devoid of creativity, I will send you something a little like an old fashioned post card (ish) an image plus a few words, maybe even just one, to say something about the day. A reminder for future days.

For days when words appear as indecipherable as stars in a cloudy night sky…

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Errances et émerveillements - wanderings and wonderings.

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Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment below or just tap that little heart!

Having written far more than was probably necessary to say something very simple I’ll stop but not before I say this; if you ever get a chance to spend an hour in one of Barrie’s encouragement sessions, don’t hesitate, if not do visit his publications; here and here for inspiration on writing micro fiction - 50-100 words and so much more, plus encouragement by the bucket load!

I hope the week is kind to you all, for those of you who don’t use Notes I posted this with tears of relief at the end of last week.