When you’ve come from a place of hurt and brokenness and you have lost much and you have these stories and a whole bunch of imaginary friends who continually show up for you no matter what and help you put things back together and you prefer keeping to yourself because when you’ve been hurt or broken you fear the world like nothing else and all the things that could possibly go wrong (again) and you’re fragile and exquisitely sensitive and you want to protect that very precious breakable thing and hiding away feels majorly comfortable and showing yourself feels like being dropped out of a multi-story building but you take fear’s hand and in the other the most strength giving thing you have and together you venture beyond the hurt and brokenness and you’re mildly terrified and slightly excited but you have everything you need to take that brand new step as the one you’ve put back together again and no one can take that from you and you’ve made it and you know from now on you’ll keep on making it and you’ll never be alone again I love you Clunk & Jam .
Clunk & Jam’s Story …
Clunk & Jam evolved from an idea (back in 2008) to create a street newspaper, a printed way to share the art and stories from The Black Dog Project website. This was with some good people who kindly created the Black Dog website – Mike Cairns, Che Douglas and Kareen. Stormie Mills and Miso were some of the artists who kindly agreed to contribute artwork.
On the night you’ve gone to the dark, look to the black tinsel sky and see how small you really are. Let it shrink, for a moment, the swell of emotion that engulfs you, anchoring you in your small and fleeting space, so you can feel the splinter of time that holds you here until the next.
For anyone who has experienced overwhelming sense of hopelessness and despair, you’ll know how hard it is pull up out of that space. And it’s not always the ‘light’ that consoles us when in a dark space. This poem arrived at a time when in the grip of one of these moments and how taking myself outside into the dark night and looking up at the stars helped put things in to perspective. Offered reprieve and relief from the state of mind that gripped me ‘inside’. And for those supporting someone in a dark space, it may be helpful to know that you don’t necessarily have to make things ‘bright’, ‘light’ or ‘right’ to help someone. Sometimes just keeping them company, sitting quietly, can help to secure a line to something outside of the head space they feel lost and alone in.
The poem’s picture comes from the documentary film ‘Man on Wire’, about a French tightrope walker who strung a wire between the twin tower buildings in New York and did the impossible.
Imagine a lift – dropping. Air is pinched tight through the holding breath. Stomach pressing against throat’s base. Your footing – gone. You’re falling into a moment lost. Trapped in time, travelling at lightening speed towards a target. And you know what lies at its centre. You wish, like you’ve wished time and time before, for a floor in the falling. A line securing reality to an altered mind. To hold you suspended from the end. Mark a path back. And then … you turn the corner and you’re back where the drop began. Landing on a returned breath. Stunned by its convincing lie.
Footnote: Reposting for ANZAC day for those who experience PTSD. Art (original in colour) by Harley (Manifold).
Wonder about the disconnect within the world of screens …
Imagine….peering through a cake shop window. The longing. The want. The drool. A space you desire to enter – and know you can. Through the glass, see the temptations before you. Grasp the definite depth and dimension of space occupied by cake on tray and shelf – in mind. Feel the common ground you share – the inside and out. The reality of the moment, not before or beyond, but right before your eyes.
Stand fixed to the common ground between you (cake and mouth), in a world you both belong – sliced in temporary two. Now imagine … the shelves begin to move towards you. The box space of the window flattens to a screen. And the place through which you were once connected, narrows to nothing.
Gone…. is the act of entering through a welcoming door into the warm space of another. The possibility for taste, sniff and touch. Gone … are we on a ‘pie crust promise’ from an endless space. Gone … is reality. The time and space to sit and wonder. And wonder we should, if the loss includes the joy of personal discovery. The capacity for the mind to bend, stretch and strengthen through real lives fully and truly lived. Going, going, gone is the wisdom once held by the earth and sky of a planet in no rush.
Then….’Ding-a-ling’ goes the bell on the cake shop door and you step into the faithfulness of the sniff and taste – and touch.
Footnote: Photo taken in St Kilda, Melbourne. A ‘pie crust promise’ is a Mary Poppins line – ‘Easily made – easily broken’.
I wouldn’t be anyone’s box of chocolate, but my difference would be why I’d be chosen by those who feel it too. I imagine I’d be loosely wrapped in fine white paper soft that breathes and whispers the essence of my humble beginnings – melts in mouth. I’d have a centre soft to roll with ease around the palate, and linger long and thoughtful high above the swallow. My shelf life would be preserved for those in search of something true, and those who cherish the longing, the mystery and the joy of not being found. I think I’d rather not be credited as sweet or popular or nice, just simply filed in mind as unusual and very interesting to sample.
And to be a better chocolate? I’d add time to sift all that’s new and stir the bowls of dark and light. Adding a little at a time. And behold. I save the best for last. With a solitary quiet, “Dah, dah”, the moment when my chocolate self settles warm in its new-found form, and the mould just melts away.
Footnote: Image from CD cover of Grace Jones ‘Hurricane’ album. Reposted from 2012. Find in book, Clunk & Jam.
There is a ship on the horizon, carrying a container that confines a lonely soul, who can’t see where the ship is taking him, only feels where it has been.
There is a dancer, dancing in her own light. Her space glows with a warmth he doesn’t allow himself to feel. She invites him to come closer, to join her, but he feels undeserving of the light she offers – preferring the shelter of the following dark. For he believes his steely space keeps others safe, spares them the pain of who he is yet to become. But his reluctance to join her deals a much sharper blow.
Her efforts to spin him into her embrace, her offering to feel the soothing space where her fingertips touch the soft painted sky that holds her balanced in the shadows, falls into the dark space between them.
She wonders if he misunderstands her offering. For she doesn’t long for him to dance her dance. Her only want is that he allows her dance to hold him in a moment she believes he deserves. And that he’ll step from the following dark, carrying nothing more than a desire for moments – and the freedom to dance in his own light.
