afterthought composer

Time 2021-10-30 13:08:52

Web Name: afterthought composer

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PagesHome about mecontact Tuesday, April 28, 2020 for the girlI have watched you
carefully, and
I have seen you

work by force
every rail
every rope
every plank that built the bridge between us

hastily
buried

I know why you did it
it was easier.
You were not allowed,
so you didn't.

This field is laced
with the unmarked graves of our memories.
There will be no monument
to who we were.
no bearers will sing
there will be no stone
upturned.

Every morning, the Messenger comes to remind me
you are gone.

Every morning, I tell him what I know:

I tell him about you.

I have crossed this ocean before,
anchor-tied,
tongue-cut and lifelines set ablaze,
near drowned, yet
Mercy helped me find you.

Our bridge is dismantled. Piles of rubble and dust where once stood
the delicate balance.

here am I,
open hands to the sky
open heart to the surgery of your removal.


I told you recently, soul alight,
No one can steal your joy, dear, you have to let them

and the irony
is how you still thought it was possible
to steal mine.

I see these pieces and I raise you.

If you stay on that island
and watch those fires for a decade, eventually
the smoke will clear to show
you, it was not I who moved.

Stunning and on-point photography by the incomparable Rosie Hardy.
www.rosiehardy.com
insta @georgiarosehardy
Posted byafterthoughtcomposerat10:23 PMNo comments: Thursday, January 2, 2020 Hindsight Is 2020

I have been everywhere but here. In time, I will unleash these recent journeys onto the page. For now, I am poking my head above the blanket of necessity to tell you: I am still here. I'm just...not writing. I am immersed in our newest baby and also in the world of our toddler. I am balancing Motherhood, joy, task, threshold, sleep-deprivation, limit, boundless to-do's, wishlists, daydreams, and rabbit holes. I am a thousand people with four hats to share among them all. I am happy, I am working, I am here.

And I will be back.


Posted byafterthoughtcomposerat2:13 PM1 comment: Saturday, February 2, 2019 The difficult work of tidying upMarie Kondo. By now you've heard her name - and if you haven't, may I ask if there is space to share under that rock? I could use a quiet hideout. For now, though, I am rockless, which means Marie Kondo is everywhere I look. I don't mind; she's adorable. Her impeccable dress and sweet demeanor are so darn wholesome and pristine, it makes me feel like a giant unkempt gangly galoof. But I don't even mind that, because Marie Kondo would never make me feel that way herself. She's far too nice.

When her book, The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up, first hit the shelves, I hit the road. I have very little interest in following trend for the sake of it. Tidying up? Yeah, I do that every grace-filled day. Besides, we've moved so much in the last fifteen years (almost once a year, but who except our Exhaustion is counting!?) that the art of Stuff Purging now comes quite naturally. So, I forgot all about her.

But then, her Netflix special showed up, and she was, once again, everywhere. And this time, I could forgo the time and effort of reading a book I didn't really want to read. I could, instead, sit down with a bowl of popcorn and my skepticism and call myself informed. After a few weeks of resistance, I went for it. Change my life, Marie, I said.

Ironically, I had to approach her method like she does with clutter: find what brings me joy and discard the rest. That said, there was a lot of good to keep.


What I loved about the #konmarie method:

1) Gratitude. It's where she starts, and her entire process depends on it. I am thankful for my home, I am thankful for these items, I am thankful for what they taught me. Keep, toss, donate, or not; it's all done with intention. Without gratitude, her method falls flat. There's something quite beautiful about that.

2)She doesn't do the work for them. I was expecting her to sweep into these homes and do all the organizing for the camera and then leave; because, you know, Reality TV. Not so. She enters the chaos calmly and without judgement (in fact, with excitement!) and encourages change with her method, then, just like that, she leaves. The family is then left to work their way through their stuff, item by item. She comes back when that work is completed. She gives them their next category, and on it goes.

3) The timeline and workload are realistic. Each episode covers a span of approximately one month in real time. There is no quick fix when it comes to setting a house in order. I appreciate that this method doesn't promise a quick fix, but seems to invite a steady pace, and it begins with the acknowledgement that this is going to be a difficult process.

4) To keep what matters.We should be choosing what we want to keep, not what we want to get rid of." - Marie Kondo.Unlike so many other methods of organizing, the #konmarie method asks you to find the important. The motivation as you start is to hunt through the pile for the obvious joy-bringers. This flips on its head the most common approach to clutter: get rid of it! why do you still have that! you have too much stuff! No, Marie Kondo non-judegmentally says to keep what brings you joy.Naturally, as those decisions are made, you will of course remove a lot of items from the home. But she doesn't start there. This is a good thing.

5) "Does this item belong in your life moving forward?" For the nostalgic (*who are you looking at*), the concept of de-cluttering is kind of panic-inducing. I am a nostalgic collector. As much as I let go, I accumulate more. Every item has meaning. Most items spark joy of some kind. I can attach memory and importance to a lot of things. In Episode 7, she poses the question above to her client, and you can see a visible change as he answers the question, "No." There was a lightbulb there, and it clicked on for me too.

******

Before the show, I assumed that the many moves and garage sales and donations I've made over the years have made me an expert on getting rid of stuff, and I suppose, that is true. Many of Marie Kondo's practices are things I already do: go through items by category (check), one at a time (check), organize messy drawers and cabinets in boxes (check). But it was the theory behind these practices that was missing for me. Despite my work, I am still overrun with stuff. Clearly, I was due for an organizational tune-up. I am thankful I caved to the trend and tried to learn more about the #konmarie movement. It didn't change my life, but it certainly changed my mind.

Now, onto joy.





Posted byafterthoughtcomposerat12:17 PMNo comments: Monday, October 22, 2018 Stay
I was talking with one of the counselors in my life a few days ago, and she spoke to me about the physical reaction that comes with certain memories. She said that even though the original pain may be gone, and the situation is no longer a "problem" for someone, our bodies can still create a physical response to triggers that remind us of the pain. I know this to be true for myself. I know the nervous energy and analytical anticipation that come from flashback, and these can create results which feel fresh, even though the memory and the hurt are anything but; even though I have moved on from something.

I've been ruminating on this since she spoke to me about it, and have been recognizing myself in the concept, too. When something triggers an old memory, I can speak about the pain as if it's brand new. This frustrates my counterparts. "I thought we were past this!" is a statement I've heard many times, and I can understand why. I know what this looks like, and feels like, for those who stand with me in the mud of this life.

How does a person stop feeling pain for a situation without resolve?

This morning on my very early drive to work, I was playing CBC Radio 2's Nightstream, which as a sidenote, consistently plays some of the best music I've never heard before. This morning was no different: Late night and less sleep than I needed had me feeling heavy in every facet. And then, these words:



Take your heart like a drink off a tray
Play the part, cause we wrote it that way
Every year that goes by doesnt change the way it feels
Im alright, with the highs the lowsIn a place only you I knowBut Im through waiting round for a better kind of you.
If you wanna go on hiding from yourselfWould you be so kind and take me off your shelf?

In times like these you turn and walk the other wayTil you find something that makes you wanna stay.
Stay by Justine Vandergrift


Her words address every inch of my processor these days: the feeling of playing a part for the sake of something, the desire for time to fix things, pain that must be kept quiet, the dichotomy of knowing someone won't change, yet still waiting for them to do so. I have begged to be left out of the story, and then in another breath, wished to return to the reader. Our hearts are, in their nature, contradictory.

I am working through what it means to let go. I do believe it's possible to feel past pain without considering it a backwards step. I believe every thing we do is forward motion, and the revisit comes from the carry, not from return or regression. But the ability to carry something for a long time, and the physical response creating echos that still make too much noise: these are probably best left by the roadside.

I am thankful for those who hold me while I figure out what to do with everything I've carried. I'm thankful for those who help me put things down. I am thankful that the days keep coming, the sun keeps rising, those mercies stay new.




*Perfect image by Alicia SavagePosted byafterthoughtcomposerat9:38 AMNo comments: Sunday, September 30, 2018 #Metoo is a movement because the stories are real.I was six years old the first time I received an unwanted sexual advance, though I didn't know what to call it back then. A boy we looked after exposed himself to me in our basement. The entire experience lasted 2 minutes. We were not unsupervised. We were playing house, and he wanted to have sex, so he took his pants down. I was six, and I didn't know what he meant, or what sex was. Thankfully, he didn't really know either, and his sudden exposure and his pushing himself against me were as far as it went. Even at six, though, I already knew I didn't want what had just happened, I was very upset, and I created a vault in my soul. No one can ever know. This is the first time I've told this story outside the confines of secrecy and shame. Admittedly? I'm still embarrassed.

When I was seven, our neighbor's son saw me playing in our backyard, got my attention, and when I turned to say hi, he pulled his pants down and stood there naked. Nobody else saw. As I turned away I remember feeling embarrassed and uncomfortable, as if I had done something wrong. Why did he think he could show himself to me? When I was 8, a boy in my class physically held me against the wall and kissed me despite my protests. When I pushed back to defend myself, even telling the teacher why, it was I who got sent to the principal's office, got in trouble, got a talking to for my behavior. He stayed in class.

Skip ahead to grade six. I know very well by now that boys will be boys; we all do. I hear them talk about and to the girls in my class, about their bodies and body parts. I see the girls in my class pretend to be stupid and laugh things off so the jokes won't get worse. Thankfully, mercifully, I was an awkward teen, and expressly unwanted and unnoticed by the boys. Except for the occasional cruel joke, I didn't get attention. My friends with breasts, my friends and classmates with beauty, they got attention. Even at twelve, I knew to be thankful I was being ignored.

When I was fifteen, my sister and I were walking down the street in our snowsuits, armoured against the cold so only our faces were showing. A man walking by stopped, looked intently below our necks and said, "I'd love to see what's underneath all that."

When I was eighteen, I attended a conservatively minded college, and there it was solidified what I had learned my entire childhood. There were speeches from leadership about it: if a man should desire us sexually, unwanted or not, it was our fault. The onus of responsibility for their behavior fell entirely to us. I was used to that information: it's the kind of information life and learning had given me already, many times over. But I was eighteen, and it was starting to piss me off. I began to say so. When I talked to the guys who'd been raised on the same information I was, it was news to them. They believed, like I did, that it wasn't their fault. If a woman tempted them, they could not control themselves as a result, nor could they be expected to.

When I was in my twenties, I dated a man who professed publicly to be an upstanding citizen, a man with a congregation of devout followers. Close the doors, and everything changed. Emotional abuse is a brilliant tactic. Fast forward a few months in to the quiet dismantling of my self esteem, where everything I said was wrong and stupid. My self esteem had been held to such a low standard before this, that it plummeted without control. I started to believe him, I didn't question him. He was a man, after all, and my worldview had been carved from a sick tree, where men could behave as they would, and it would always be my fault. So when he started to push the boundaries of our physical relationship, I didn't say much, because I didn't know I could and I also didn't know how to. And then, it was like I turned eighteen again: I started to speak up. He started to get more and more violent with his words, and more abrupt and frightening with his actions. And then one day he picked me up by the shoulders (I can still feel his hands), and tossed me four feet through the room (it all happened so fast, my hair rushed in front of my face), because I wouldn't sleep with him. When I broke up with him, a shameful few weeks later, he told me I needed to repent for being a whore and leading him on.


I'm 35 years old. These stories have been buried, and these are only the ones I remember after years of keeping things in. I've never been raped, thank God, but I have had to fear it.

Women stay quiet because we know what happens when we don't. Holding a story in secrecy provides a certain type of solace: nobody cares, because nobody knows. But the real heartbreak comes in this: even when we tell our stories, it doesn't matter.

What if I had named all the men in this article? The boys I wouldn't: in adulthood I learned they each faced abuses during their childhoods that are traumatic in their own right; because of their exposure, our trauma was shared. But what about that last man? I know he's not a safe person: I was there. After I ended it, I grew strong, found my footing, learned truths that sustain me even now. But I could still name him, and would if it became necessary. Even as I say that, I know, naming my abuser would bring me more grief. Publicity would allow him to deny it and act the victim for my obvious instability. Because no one else was there, I am immediately discredited. He knows as well as I do: what happens to women behind closed doors is a world cloaked in immunity. Bringing those actions to light is a task marred with impossibility. It is only by a woman's fault that an action takes place, and only by her agenda that an abuser is named.

I am realizing in a new way, now that I have daughters, how important it is for women to share their stories. I needed the freedom, even from the age of six, to say no, to tell without fear of blame. The shame from my childhood only feels that way because of my education: I was taught by a world, and therefore I believed in the way of that world. Now it's decades later, and these stories are as true as they were the days they happened. I tell them knowing how many women could write their own six-paragraph version of events. There is power in story: either to hold us, or to be held by us. Let us continue to free our stories from the vault, so our daughters don't have to make their own vaults, too.

Posted byafterthoughtcomposerat8:28 AM1 comment: Thursday, July 5, 2018 My girl







I wrote this a little while ago: eight months ago, to be exact. Eight months plus ten months plus whatever is to come: these words hold true. Love you, love you, I love you, little girl.


Ten months to the outside world, and fierce as ever. She's rad. A spitfire, a wonderful human, so full of love and curiosity for everyone she meets. She looks openly, stares unabashedly, and watches the world make waves before her. She is joy and love in sweetest human form.


I have not written much since her birth. Admittedly, I've written very little. This surprises Past Me. Even I assumed her arrival would send me to the page. But in truth, it's sent me far away from it, and into life full tangible. I have not felt the need to reach for poetry because she is poetry; she is every word I've tried to write, and every word I've written. She is my heartbeat and my blood, my soul's now-known purpose; she is the freshest of pages, every time I see her. I have not written much on paper for you yet, my love, but I have written you on every surface of my heart.

love, mommyPosted byafterthoughtcomposerat12:56 PM1 comment: Wednesday, June 20, 2018 what i would say to youYour pain will never matter to them.
You are fodder.
You are candy for the taking. You are seen as small and sweet
to greedy hands, to mouths who long to feed, teeth that yearn
for another bite; bitter tongues that crave the high of another
one's unwrapping.

But they don't know you like I do.
They've not seen that you aren't a small thing. They don't know
you are the whole damn store; take as they might, they will never really get you.

Children chase after the instant gratification of found sweets,
but my dear,
you are an entire feast, and their bellies will explode before they reach your center.

I have watched them take
take
take

but honey, I've been watching you, too.

I have seen the way you magnify under pressure.
I have seen you rally against fear.
I have heard your bones creak as they grow to the rafters, incapable as you are
of being kept to the ground.


Am I mixing analogies? Let me be clear.You are a giant, my dear.Your lineage was severed because
they are too small to be a part of you. You were birthed and released, so wear those wings with joy.

You are a flame and the moths are drawn to you. But remember, moths can only consume
what is not already on fire, and you are that flame: higher and higher. Your life is big
and your heart has the universe and stars inside it
(so reach for those, love, and leave the mud of earth behind you).
Your children rise
to call you blessed
so let the awful do their best, then know this:
they can not touch you.


Posted byafterthoughtcomposerat8:41 AMNo comments: Older PostsHomeSubscribe to:Posts (Atom)afterthoughtcomposersome wear their hearts on their sleeves. I wear mine on my keyboard.View my complete profilefind me on FacebookAfterthought Composer

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