Writers Block II

19.11.13

It’s 5:30 am and I’m contemplating at this early hour whether to write or play patience (or solitaire, depending on where you come from). I feel a part of me protesting wildly at having been dragged out of bed at this so called ungodly hour. Yet all hours belong to God don’t they so that part of me really doesn’t have a strong case of defense? I wonder why we use that phrase ‘ungodly hour’, maybe it’s just the Brits. There’s another part of me demanding I turn out the light on the terrace, surrounded by a myriad of greens and the early morning calls of the fauna – actually read here, the almost annoying squawks of one particularly boisterous crow at this point. Somebody give me a gun… He’s sounding very excited, almost like an insistent child who knows if they continue in the same monotonous pitch, with the same word, for long enough they’ll get the attention they vie for, “Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum…”

Oh God, I’ve suddenly gone deaf! Oh no, the crow just stopped mid-track, leaving a gaping void in the noise space. Not to worry there are more coming, one’s there already with a slightly different, somehow more acceptable pitch.

As you can see, the part of me which wants the light off so it can listen to the world waking up is quite a healthy and hearty fellow and I force myself to write what I see, hear and feel. Even now the silence is interspersed with the distant sounds of the cockerel’s chorus. If you take the time to study these sounds you’ll discover that their crowing is much the same as the messaging system used by the dogs. The morning chronicle seems to echo for miles. First one ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo’, followed by one a little more faint and coming from the village half a kilometer away, followed by another more transparent ‘Doodle-do’ still a bit farther away, probably the village down by the sea…and then suddenly back next to your ear in an unapologetic, “Wake up I’m hungry” kind of fashion. At least that’s what used to happen with my cockerel Lucky Chucky as he would do this from just underneath my bedroom window – but that’s a story for another time. I realize that they are very polite, the cockerels. You never hear them fighting to be heard. We humans could learn a lot from the behavior of most of the animals we deem stupid enough to eat.

There’s a calming but powerful ‘whoosh, whoosh, whoosh’ overhead as a bird, outlined black as coal against the early morning dusty blue hue of the new sky pushing the moon away, hastily yet effortlessly flies about his business. I realize that what only seems like moments ago, when I raised my pen to transfer my agonies and indecision to paper, to extrapolate all the negativities so as to begin anew, I realize that it was then what one might consider to be night-time. Now there’s soft light all around me and the first glittering’s of the stretching sun on the tops of the trees. Did the earth suddenly accelerate its rate of rotation or did I maybe doze off into my coffee a while? No, it can’t be the latter as the honeypot, sitting tantalizingly on the tired, wooden-slatted blue weather and grime washed circular table hasn’t got any ants feverously trying to scramble their way up to the lid where they might wiggle their tiny bodies into the helter-skelter spiral under the ill-fitting lid. It can only be a matter of minutes since I began my little exercise as the coffees still hot…which now proves to me just how easy writing everyday should be if I can only firmly and resolutely apply some self-discipline and perseverance.

The bonus for this morning is that the water in the already leaking, brand new Prestige kettle is still hot enough for a second cup of brown and sludgy elixir so I have a little light work to do.

Plus tard mes amis…Louise x