Reflections in purple…

I went to dip my toes in the cold water…
Instead I stubbed them on my reflection…

Light in Red and Green

When you can’t sleep…
Play…
When you start to dream…
Stay…
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A Lonely Place…

I stand alone inside... this quietly empty space…

I cannot help but think… how I hope to see your face…

Once we stood side by side… our hands touched, our hips met…

Now, I’m here and you’re beyond… cold and trying to forget…

I press my face against the glass… the ice, it steals and keeps my breath…

Every time you turn away… it becomes another silent death…

The strength I will find it… as I grip the window sill…

I know, you loved me once… and I know, I love you still…

Standing here alone …  silent in this empty place…

I cannot help myself… when I cannot see your face…

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Words and Photography by Cicely Robin Laing © 2011 All Rights Reserved.

Cracked…..

The ice grows thinner, underneath my feet…

Tiny lines spreading out, tendrils of the weak…

Betraying my passage, betraying where edges meet…

Buckled, cracked, thrown up against the shore…

Undercurrents pluck, waters rise and pull…

Slip beneath the brittle ledge, to surface never more…

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Words & Photography by Cicely Robin Laing © 2011 All Rights Reserved

 

 

 

More Nonsense…

Today, instead of doing laundry or paying bills… I went for a walk by the Mississippi River. On a whim I took the spiral note book we use to record mileage from the glove box. My fifteen minute walk turned into a two hour, outdoor writing session. The sunshine… the wind… the river flowing by… combined with all the stories in my head, and I became lost to time. I became nothing but the voice that narrates my journey.  Today… a journey down to the river and back.

When I got back to the car, and realized how much time had passed. And how many pages I had filled… I couldn’t help the feelings of guilt. All the responsible things I had left undone… all the chores that had piled up during my many trips into creative bingeing. I was barely capable of driving home… I had skipped breakfast and now it was lunch time… I had also forgotten to take care of myself. Over and over again the thoughts in my head said, “God, I hope that someday my insanity will be worth something! Someday my compulsive need to create will feed my children, and keep a roof over our heads. And how am I going to do that?”  

Almost two years ago I started a project called “A Year of Nonsense”… I realize now that it has been more like a lifetime of nonsense… maybe even an insanity of sorts. I am like two people… no… one person with layers.  An outer layer that is fun, pragmatic and fairly ordinary… and an inner layer that is whirlpool of ideas, dreams, feelings and creative contradictions… The pragmatist says I have to do this, this and this… and she gets things done.  But the whirlpool layer underneath eventually… always… surfaces and drowns out the pragmatist. Overwhelming the “real world” with a need to create… to express what ever the soul has to say.  Regardless of “worldly” expectations and common sense. If the pragmatist fights it… nothing gets done on either front. And I lose… and society frowns.

And so, that is where I am today… contemplating a lifetime of nonsense and praying that it means something more. That it is not just an insane whimsy that  I cannot control…

Tell me that someday, my nonsense will really be worth something….

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Words & Photography by Cicely Robin Laing © 2011 All Rights Reserved
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Steps…..

When I turn around, to view where I’ve come from…

I gaze upon the a path transformed, a future laid before me…

The easy steps down which I have so recently sped…

Now test my resolve, an upward feat of endurance beset me…

Footprints traced in the snow, patterns of ancestral evidence…

Shadows defined as future children, guiding, leading me…

A mobius trail of black and white edges, never ending…

Just beginning… traveling in the stillness, revealed to me…

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.Words & Photography by Cicely Robin Laing © 2011 All Rights Reserved

Touch

 

Touch me please

you’ll find nothing

just an empty tide

pulling out against a void inside

Tell me please

what I’ve done

to leave a mark on you

drawing star lines in the morning dew

Hear me please

I have a song

that voices never sing

jagged tones with barbs that cut and sting

Feel me please

making love outside

blown across a summer’s breeze

turning over falling in a biting freeze

There is nothing here

can you find me lost among the evening stars

There is nothing left

but good intentions and ancient caring scars

Now I choose to run

leaving shadow trails

and burning suns

it’s the end… and I have just begun…

It’s the end… and I have just begun…

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Words & Photography by Cicely Robin Laing © 2011 All Rights Reserved
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