Our stories, partly told

(in response to Walk by Imtiaz Dharker)

Frost on the broad walk. So many lines in this poem feel like they could be titles of other poems or novels. I feel sure the poet’s story is only partly told. If I were to write the story of my friend Rosemary, for example, who recently died, aged 94, I would write of her teaching history during the war, the child of the soldier, the sister of the priest, the keen blue-eyed intellect, her ‘take no prisoners’ mentality, yet her overwhelming kindness and compassion. Her non-judgemental outlook. Her nurturing of her pupils. 30 pupils from schools in which she’d taught, came to her funeral, her ‘gals’ nurtured by Miss Irvine. Now the bleak-lived Amy Winehouse is invading my thoughts with her song and her partly told story. How her lyrics – back to black – tell us only of her resilience and her pain. The documentary of her life told ‘a’ story, but was it the story? It was a tragedy. Astonishing to me was the amount of home footage there was of Amy as a teenager with her friends. Of course recorded on their phones when they were larking about. Pyjama parties and drunk evenings, singing into bottlenecks. Then the press coverage, the filming by professionals, the sunken, drunken gigs, the pressure. What else was there to know? What else is there to know? I feel comfortable with an element of mystery. Some people - that ex-boyfriend who was an investigative journalist - cannot abide a single unturned stone. Certainty was the only truth. But I am comfortable with the idea of some murky areas, truth fudged, stories re-told. I know how smoke and mirrors work and while they deceive at least they declare themselves. This part is unknown. The rural idyll is only part of the story, after all. The grimy paved street is the safer home for the unbeloved. Hardy country is only for the truly hardy in the end. No glossy living magazine can turn the country into an easy life. We are composite. There is no absolute idea. Yet on and on we seek to pin it down, that elusive butterfly. In words or in pictures or in stone. Let go of that notion and live with the mystery.

This prompt brings up some ideas, but at first my mind was blank. I'm thinking just now of a funeral I was at recently; it was of a friend who I had known for a number of years, or thought I had known. One of his family had written his life story and I was amazed at how little I actually knew of this friend's life. I think this is a fairly common experience, certainly in my life, I have often been surprised at things you hear about the deceased of which you were unaware. I had a friend who died some years ago, about whom I could say "I had not known him for 30 years".

When chewing over, after, even soft-intimate action with Others

I always keep something back

It’s why [now] I can enjoy

... with some relief ...

Prepping short-story Pasta-dishes

Courgettes, Spring-Onions, sweet red Peppers &

dicey chicken-breast, cut ~ Cubicalled

A simple Cahemal Sauce with Vintage

Cheeses ~ A shock of swivelling, circling black

Pepper & mixed-herbs ~ Pesto & Aubergine, or Lime, Chutney

This I can enjoy ~ [because]

I never know with what swollen spoon will return to me ~

I eat every part & piece ~ deliciously bowled

Eating what is there

WHOLE

Stories. Our stories. Always partly told? How can you tell a complete story. Encapsulate all the perspectives not only of all involved, but of all the parts of oneself, known and unknown. And yet isn’t that what metaphor is for? We only partly tell our stories. Much more is revealed. Our stories show more of themselves than we know. Some stories feel complete, they wrap around a core succinctly. They get to the heart of something, it lands in you, touches a place of deep knowing, without any self consciousness. Just a story being told, a tale. I am frightened of tales. Telling tales. Tell-tale. Negative words flung across the playground. My experience, my voice stamped upon, branded, seared with shame. I don’t know what the tale is here. Was it a real event? There was a time in the new school where I was struggling to find a sense of safety and place for me. Someone slamming me on the back, laughing, “a red hand of Ulster” they called it. Assault I call it. I went and told the teacher. No-one called me a tell-tale to my face. I don’t even know if they knew I’d told. The teacher didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with what they’d done. [She looked at me with unveiled distaste]. But the voices were there in my mind, in her not responding with any scrap of empathy or interest, that this was unimportant and not worth telling. It was telling tales. No-one was interested there. So [shortly afterwards,] when I’m pushed down on the ground and a boy I don’t like, barely know, forces himself on top of me, forces his mouth on mine, his tongue in my mouth, I don’t tell. I sit [in the classroom] with the shame and revulsion and outrage, inflaming within. My anger is a story so very much partly told. How many stories are untold, partly told, distorted by ourselves, by others. Stories too shocking we feel to tell, too unimportant, too frightening/precarious – where will they lead? Where will we lead ourselves if we tell our true stories, our whole stories? I hold myself back with abstraction, obscurity, half a story, holding back the feeling, the real shape and texture of it. Hold myself back from getting inside it; shut in a closet, a trunk, feeling the roughness of a suede lining, inhaling the must, muffled breath…