Small Stones

My friend Fiona is currently on a 'blog tour'. This appears to be a very easy sort of tour to me as she doesn't actually have to leave the house. Perhaps it's a little light on groupies, but you wouldn't have to stay in a Travelodge at any point. Ideal, really!

She is doing this blog tour to promote her book. Here it is:



And here's the blurb:

Do you ever find yourself rushing through your days with no time to pause and look around you? Do you pay attention to the smell of your coffee? Do you notice pigeons gulping from puddles? This book contains 365 'small stones' - bite-sized truffles of poetry celebrating the extraordinary in the everyday and the ordinary. It will remind you to slow down and engage with your own world, because right here and right now is where the wonder is.

Do pigeons really gulp? Anyway, it's a nice looking book isn't it? And this paying attention thing must have something going for it, as - without wanting to give too much away - Fiona is highly likely to have some more books out next year. Oooh! You heard it here first!

Now, other people on the blog tour have talked about things like Buddhism and meditation and such like - which I am not really qualified to discuss. It's interesting though - the idea of taking time to slow down and think. Much as I like the idea of being a bit more Zen and gazing with rapture at leaves and blossoms, I find that I have increasingly little tolerance for anything that I consider to be potentially unnecessary. I am not saying that gazing with rapture at blossoms is unnecessary. Not at all. I consider staring at things and also napping to be very important. It's just I don't have the time right now. Things that I do consider unnecessary are traffic jams and marketing strategies and call centres and talking to stupid people and generally being impeded by stuff. Also - it should be noted that I have very little patience generally. (Mars in Gemini, Mercury in Aquarius star fans - an astro combination incapable of suffering anything, let alone fools and bureaucracy.)

There are just so many THINGS I want to DO and I need the time to do that - so do not judge me too harshly when I look askance at your offer of an Indian head massage. It's not that I don't think it wouldn't be nice, because I do. It's just that I am living in the moment as much as you, and I am aware that these moments are moving by very quickly, and there is an awful lot I have yet to do. My Zen is high-speed. My Zen is a heat-seeking missile. When we get to where we want to be (on a hill with a dog and a light heart) we'll come back to you about the massage and the blossom.

I think what I am trying to say is that sometimes we have to fight and work to find the space we need in order to do the things we really want. And that does require a tortoise-maneouvere mentality, to a certain extent. But that's not to say that we can't stop and pick up stones along the way. In fact, it's probably more important to do it when all around us chaos reigns and roars, no? Here are some of Fiona's 'small stones' from her blog:

morning fur ball
less of a ball, more of a sausage

Sunday morning, sun after rain
feathery dill seedlings scent my weeding with aniseed

I want
that pair of snow-white long-haired boots on the way to the Gay Pride march


And here are three of mine, from today, off the top of my heat-seeking head:


the butterfly pauses
in the hedge just above the woman's head as I pass, like an animated fascinator

the distant seagulls
sound like see-saws, as the text arrives from you, already on the beach

the email is a disappointment
after we ran down the pier holding hands in my dream, feet thudding on wood, surely just about to kiss

Ah - see how absorbed in the Self I am - always with the emotional hooks, eh? Now go and buy Fiona's book. It's really very good. You'll enjoy it. I did.