Nothing To Say

In November, I’ll have been writing this blog for four years. For the first year I posted every Sunday. I then moved to bisundayly – I know this is not a word but I hope, like me, you think it’s ok to play with language. I’ve rarely missed a Sunday post. Once I wrote on a Thursday when things were very busy at work; a couple of times I’ve been up a mountain and had to skip a week. Occasionally, I’ve written an extra post outside my regular schedule. But mainly I’ve written my blogs, biweekly on a Sunday.

I try to ensure they’re all connected in some way to the pursuit of motherhood which is what my blog is called. Sometimes I write it during the week when something happens in the world that urges me to put fingers to keys (I’d rather write pen to paper here but playing with language is different from playing with truth and the truth is I rarely pick up a pen these days, my laptop has become my paper). Most times I wait until Sunday arrives and then decide what to write. Sometimes my blogs are long (too long?). Most of the time they’re short. Sometimes I wonder why I bother writing. Most of the time I know why I do. But today, I’m afraid, I have nothing to say.

So I hope you’ll forgive me for a little digression. Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about poets (stay with me and one day you might find out why). I listened to an interview with Philip Larkin in which he said that he wants his poems to be understood at first reading, line by line, but he doesn’t want their meaning to be exhausted at that, there should be enough to make you want to read them again. The Welsh poet Dannie Abse once said something similar and, to me, utterly beautiful – he said he wanted his poetry to be as translucent as water but, when you get in, you can’t quite touch the bottom.

Today as I write my bisundayly blog – on the tube to Cockfosters, thankfully there are no delays on the Piccadilly line – I have nothing to say but I hope my words have made sense to you word by word, line by line. And perhaps beneath the surface of the water there’s something more – although you may not be able to reach the bottom.

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