So I’m no longer in the town of streams – of the god Bielos in Bienne.
But I’m so near the good waters of AUBONNE – saying it out loud in French helps.
The Armary stream flows just next to my home. Water water everywhere.
The leap from an island to a landlocked country is part of the study of contrasts that inhabits my life – my two cultures and countries and astrologies and tastes are a tightrope of oppositions. And yet I love my extremes and work hard to steer the rocky middles to port. The path to torture is to force a choice.
Both Jamaica and Switzerland at least boast mountainous terrains, but where I can gaze out to the horizon and feel the endless possibilities that this space allows in an island, here in Switzerland I can sometimes feel fenced in and watched by the sentinel rocks encircling and limiting my view of the infinite.
And this is just the difference in geographies. How do all these contrasts manage to fit in my unimposing 155cm frame? Clue: I’m not as small as I look.
So I cannot always choose between dairy and spicy (I have on occasional done a home fondue with scotch bonnet peppers.)
I do not want to choose between business and creative endeavours. So as I used to do in Jamaica, I always had the luck to have my side activities going on like the “side chick” or mistress, occupying their own space and demanding rent money. An entire entity living and breathing on the same foundations as the corporate and high heeled professional.
The punk hippy took over evenings and weekends, going to festivals and occupying workshops, stages and recording studios, sometimes leaving the businesswoman with an unidentified headache. She became like a Ms Hyde, except that she took on the name SAFFRON. Saffron the alter ego took over the wild virago independent feminist partying revolutionary and fist pumping persona. So my day personality could remain demure, cool and efficient. Saffron was the expensive spice that injected the colour and the delicate but unmistakeable aroma to that special meal on that so special occasion. Saffron actually enjoyed life more…
Every year I commit to jumping out my comfort zone and into my destiny. Last year it was symbolically chopped down by a broken foot. This year the landing space is out of bounds – no crowds here, no more than 10 persons and close those restaurants will you? We are under quarantine.
But the water is fine, l‘eau est bonne. And again this year I leap – and if the landing is not guaranteed, I may just get soaking wet in the brisk currents of the water surrounding me. It may not be the Caribbean Sea, but there may be spaces for my dreams to swim to shore by the river banks or the lakeside which actually looks out to another country. It helps – having an exit point, even though it is not infinite.
It is NapoWriMo season or GlopoWriMo now that it’s global. It’s for April and Printemps des Poètes and all those wonderful burgeoning things that copy or accompany Spring. I hope several of my poetry fellows will join me and the Pernessy Poets from the Lausanne region in rising to the daily challenge of creating poetry. Please share your results. But even if you don’t share them, just do it. Join me and jump to it.
The Aubonne river a few metres from where it joins the Lac Leman (Lake Geneva)
I had this thought – that if you didn’t do a blog up to five years ago, that it wasn’t worth it. That it would just get swallowed up under the sheer mass of blogs. And I had promised myself not to get swallowed whole, so stayed away.
However, only fools never change their minds?
So with the 2018 edition of NAPOWRIMO, and with a nudge from my poetry group in Lausanne, the Pernessy Poets (thank you ladies!) I finally am doing this. Aside from learning to master the many pages and views, this is a work in progress, and I hope it will get better looking and more efficient with time. So bear with me if things don’t work, or add a comment and I’ll take a look.
So, let’s get to it. I hope you enjoy some or all of my posts.
Saffron, April 2018
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
Some bridges and canals in the town of the god of streams, Bielos – Bienne.
MellowYellow 