One thing about this, it doesn’t have to be anything. It’s not meant to be anything, I’m going to do it every day. It’s a day book. A few hundred words to describe each day.

This morning when I was writing, I wanted to write this. I wanted to write it then and there. But I’ve waited till now, not long before bed. There is a poem that I wrote this morning. There won’t always be a poem, but there is one today. There is also a picture. The picture, like the poem, is not completely complete, it is a picture I found. It is relevant, because it is the lamp that is shining on these keys now, but it is just a picture. Nothing special.

I think I’ll find the poem now, paste it in, get that bit done. Then I’ll go on about the day.

Click click goes the radiator

Tap tap go the keys

The adult herring gull

hops onto the chimney pot top,

I write it, look back, gull gone.

There were starlings too,

I look back, gone too.

 

I’m trying to picture the world,

trying to work out what it is,

and write it here.

I’m reading a lot,

and looking around as I walk about.

I can’t see what I read

when I walk about.

The excitement

and the despair

that I read about

doesn’t seem to be out there in the real world.

It isn’t in my life.

 

The starlings are back

about ten of them.

I’ve finished my peppermint tea for the second time

Click ckick goes the radiator

Tap top go the keys.

 

You get the small world in novels and stories,

The big world on the news

And this world, where I sit

and look at starlings,

write, eat, talk.

 

Three worlds,

an unholy disintegrated trinity.

 

I’m thinking about Robert Lanza again

and somehow that makes me think

that nothing matters

except, now this is me,

being nice to people (including me)

and keeping the house clean.

I’ll give it a try.

 

In some ways these poems are like these words, they are me trying to figure out the world. Because the world needs figuring out, but it can’t be done with argument or logic. It has to be done another way. My way, my attempt, is to live in it, and describe how I do that.

Today I did clean the house, well the living room. I hoovered all the cushions and aired the rug. I put a new clean rug on the sofa, and thought that I would put the aired one over the good clean one, and then the dog could sit on that one, and the other one and the cushions would stay hair free. I forgot to tell the dog, her name is Boo, I forgot to tell Boo, and she was sitting on the sofa before, well before, just before. And then tonight when I watched TV she sat beside me. Sometimes thoughts are only at home inside there point of origin, and have no existence outside it.

Other achievements today include going into town and buying some hand made organic face cream from Rachel who is making such things, walking the dog with me, bumping into Coral, Rachel’s daughter, with her son Otis. Coral has a strength and confidence that is quite disarming, and very attractive. I also met Cali and later friended her on Facebook, hadlunch, hadtwo boiled eggs for tea, spent quite a lot of time sitting here not writing, and thinking that I should be writing, or should be walking in the sunshine, or should be sawing up logs.After I hadn’t done any of the should be things I remembered that I wanted to go on a train trip this summer to Estonia, so I began to make a plan. That was a good choice. I’ve signed up to rail.cc , a website that seems to offer lots of help, and I started to work on timings, and got as far as Warsaw.

The birth of the idea for this trip came about because I have decided, slightly half-heartedly, not to fly any more. Not that I ever did fly much. Anyway, I want to go to Estonia because I came across Oru Park and Palace when I was searching for something to do with the novel I’m writing. In the same search I came across Lake Peipus and somehow these two places are significant in the novel, but I need to visit them. It can be rather fun being a writer, especially when you are newly retired from that other thing you used to do, and are now actually admitting – I’m a writer.

And so today has been a good day.