a poem for lippy

 

a mood is lippy on a cup of something crucial

a person’s choice of lip shows social preference

hear your red and you’re redolent with riches

touch your pink and you’re prior to other pinches

taste your lip and you’ll experience that fully

see your beaut and you’ll believe you are lovely

smell your grey and you’re grazing something truthful

listen to shade: you’ll touch your wounded core place

Poem for Day 5 of NaPoWriMo 2020: partly achieved

When you’re ready to follow your Soul, synchronicities will show you the way

As a journalist, I know when I’m onto a good story when I hear it from three different sources. That’s why I know my Soul’s telling me something when the synchronicities line up in threes (often in one day!)

My Soul talks to me in ‘meaningful coincidences’ that often come in threes. (pic: istockphoto.com/kellyreekolibry)

Synchronicity, in the words of the wonderful Carl Gustav Jung, are “meaningful coincidences”. They’re stuff that happen to you that can’t possibly be a coincidence, but they have a pattern and some meaning to you personally. They’re external happenings that have symbolic significance for what’s going on internally for you.

I take synchronicity as a sign that my Soul is talking to me. It wants to tell me that I’m on the right road, that all doors I push against will open without force, and that I’m evolving beyond just the skin I’m in.

Anyone on a spiritual path will know that at some point the Ego will surrender to the Soul. That surrender can take a while, and it can involve months and years of battle. One’s defences can take some dismantling. They cling on with their fingernails, refusing to give up. But when it’s time for the Ego to wave the white flag and admit time’s up, that’s when the Soul steps in. Ever graceful, ever elusive, the Soul has symbolic messages that the Ego has to be in a mood and state to receive and interpret.

I’m often in awe of how Soul can communicate. Here’s how it reached me three times in one hour:  Continue reading

The steps I take (literally) to avoid my novel

I had to laugh the other day when I was reminded of the phrase I heard in my teens about whether a guy is interested in you or not: ‘Don’t listen to the mouth. Watch the feet.’ I was never quite sure what it meant, but I thought it boiled down to ‘actions speak louder than words’.

What made me laugh, however, was how the body acts out what the mind (conscious or unconscious is feeling/wanting/wishing). Body language gives everything away, if you know how to read it. In my case, my body was literally ‘acting out’ what my mind was thinking.

There are a bunch of temporary ‘Wenlock’ and ‘Mandeville’ statues around London as part of the Olympic Games London 2012 celebrations, which encourage little kids and grown kids alike to follow the ‘trails’ around London, being photographed at each one. Every Wenlock is detailed according to his environment, and so you have City Wenlock with bowler hat and striped suit, and a PhoneBox with suitably red phonebox attire.

How can I keep avoiding such an entertaining reminder of my novel?

Except that the Wenlock closest to where I work – as I discovered weeks after he was first placed there – is called Novel Wenlock. And I have been AVOIDING him every day, either walking past without noticing or taking a different route across a square rather than the direct route past him.

I laughed when I realised. Because I have totally been avoiding my novel (the one that passed the MA examiners, but which needs so much work on it still). Perhaps I’ll be more conscious and mindful of it now I know that I can’t pass by Novel Wenlock every day without saying hello.

why trust and commitment are the keys to healing

It’s funny how, when you set your mind to something, all the right things appear, happen, fall into place, and show that really you’re on the right track.

They say there’s no such thing as coincidence, which is why – when I was thinking of the power of writing in its ability to heal, and how I can work with other people to tap into that power – I get included in an online group called Continue reading

Finding synchronicity in a singing stuffed toy

I found synchronicity in a singing teddy bear yesterday.

Bear with me (if you’ll pardon the pun!) One of my daughter’s teddies fell out of bed yesterday morning and set off his inner melody, singing some unrecognisable but cute ditty. Anyway, this teddy must have fallen awkwardly onto his foot (where the music mechanism is activated) and the singing just wouldn’t stop. He was still singing after breakfast… after we got dressed and brushed our teeth… after I’d come home after dropping her off at school. The singing turned into whining, but Continue reading

Listen with your eyes

A photographer caught my soul today – even without his camera lens.

Listen with your eyes (istockphoto)

I had arrived at a breakfast meeting this morning feeling out of sorts. Much as I’d like to blame London Transport for not putting on enough Tubes, the source of my unease had been an unwelcome and unwieldy, claustrophobically uncomfortable hatred of other people. Hatred may be a strong word, but it’s certainly in context when it comes to considering the insidious anxiety that fills the commuter-me: the angry individual whose boundaries have been invaded by too little space, too little time, and too little patience

What is it about the London Underground that triggers an uber-survival urge to oust any object that gets in its way (human, animal, vegetable or mineral?)  There is something about a closing Tube door that symbolizes rejection, frustration, abandonment: being too late; being too uptight; not being good enough. Continue reading