Amelia Draws

Its been a moment since the last post. That is how it will always be with this blog – the writing coming one idea after another in hasty bursts. Then a pause.

I am an avid journal maker and diarist. I have a big wooden chest filled to the brim with diaries, journals and notebooks from the last 36 years of my life.

I got my first journal when I was eight. It had a little gold lock, with a key and an embossed pink and blue cover. It smelt of lovely cheap, floral perfume. My first entry was about the birthday presents I had recieved that day and a grumble about Caroline from school, which would be a theme for that year.

Sometimes I stop writing for a spell as my creative eye and drive pivots. Or, maybe, my domestic life demands too much. Or, I just don’t feel like it.

In those times I harvest. I go and grab a handfull of my past from that wooden chest and flick through. I take stock of my life, pat myself on the back for having grown. I wince a lot and I cringe even more. But. I also copy and transpose quotes, drawings and words I still want to think about. Still want to consider and to dwell upon. Carry with me.

That is why this slip of paper with its verse from the William Blake poem Auguries of Innocence has found its self appearing in journal after journal since 2006.

Twenty years

For 20 years, 4 homes, 4 children, 4 careers and all the life in between – this little poem has hopped, skipped and jumped its way from year to year, journal to journal. From then to now.

It’s a beautiful verse. I don’t think much of the rest of the poem, but this bit, these words – they sing to me.

It makes me think of seeds, of potential, of the power of small joys. Of the moment when one is getting in close to smell a rose, to inhale its sweet scent. In that moment it is just you, the breath, the petals and that heady aroma.

In that moment there is eternity, and you are at the center of it

At least thats what I thought about when I found this poem again last week. It’s what I thought as I pulled it from my past and stuck it in the journal I carry with me now, into my future.