Finding a pair

A worldful of odd socks
Black and beige and yellow and tan
So many, so scattered
You would think it impossible
That any sock might ever find
A pair with a matching sole
Knitted from the same stuff
To curl up and grow shabby with.
And yet, the mathematicians tell us
It’s easier than it can appear
For each sock can be half
Of more than one matching pair
And sometimes matching perfectly
Matters far less than you think.

This week’s prompt at Weekend Wordsmith reminded me of the following maths puzzle:

In your sock drawer, you have 10 blue socks, 12 white socks, and 6 red socks that are all mixed together. It is dark and you can’t see the colors of your socks.

What is the least number of socks that you have to pull out to make sure that you have a matching pair?

>

>

The answer is four. If you have pulled out three socks, the only way you will not have a matching pair is if you have one sock of each colour. And so the fourth sock you pull out must have the same colour as one of the socks you’ve already pulled out…

It hadn’t occurred to me to see this as a metaphor until I came across this prompt!

The photo is SPT: new warm socks, originally uploaded to flickr by yumptatious.

Dancing

Mama, see, see! The bright salmon moon
is leaping high in the sky – and soon
All my friends will be dancing

Mama, I’ve put on my dancing shoes
Which long to sparkle through the music’s hues
Like my feet, they’re keen to go dancing !

Mama, you may think I’m still too small
But I’m old enough to hear the music call
So don’t stop me going out dancing.

Mama, please, don’t smother me so tight
But let me go honour this magical night
With my feet and their happiest dancing

This was the first poem I produced in response to a picture by Rick Mobbs – I wrote it without the picture in front of me, and realised, on seeing the picture again, that it didn’t really fit. So I produced another poem, which is more closely linked to Rick’s picture, and posted it yesterday with the picture. But I didn’t want to lose this poem, which I thought was rather fun, so here it is in a post of its own.

Annunciation

Well, it wasn’t
quite what I’d prayed for.
I wanted a few more months
- was I greedy, to ask for so many? -
of a girl’s freedom. Those days
before skipping gives way to weaving
playing to childbearing, planning to wishing.
Or maybe a few more weeks
when I could still leap like
a dancing salmon under the new moon,
spring up the mountain paths
with no matron skirts to weigh me down.
Or even just a few more days when I
could still dance along the borders
of my innocence, flirting with what
I didn’t quite want to know,
not yet, anyway.

And when I saw
Those cascades of angelic feathers I thought
- for just a foolish minute – that I might
indeed be bidden to go to the ball.
I rejoiced at the possibilities
magnifying before my eyes.
But the bright light somehow
erased my dreams with its dazzle.

And before I could get my head around
this – admittedly unusual – announcement
I found myself placed, gravid
on an unwanted pedestal.
Where people prayed to me
in the name of the blessing that was
the rejection of most of my prayers
the miracle that forever trapped me
within my innocence.
My soul rejoiced, dutifully.
But something in the wellspring
of my young body
felt cheated.

This is a response to Rick Mobbs’ picture above.

When the woman in your life is crying… reprise

Excuse me for revisiting an old blogpost, but it’s one of my favourites, and today I came across a fascinating article in the Independent which supports it very neatly. It includes the great quote:

“In truth, crying isn’t weakness, it’s a relaxation system in the human organism,” says Hodson, “In order to function, we have to function with our emotions, not against them. You cry when tension needs to be dissipated. If we don’t use this system we’re not being very intelligent.”

So with no further ado, allow me to repost my 10 tips for men on what to do when the woman in your life is crying…

1. Don’t panic. You are not going to drown. Your girlfriend/wife/partner is not going to dehydrate. The only really important difference between someone upset with tears in her eyes and someone equally upset without tears in her eyes is that the first scenario tends to make many men freak out… it’s just salt water, guys!
2. Do not attempt to get her to stop crying. This will happen in its own time, but more haste, less speed. The problem is not that she’s crying, the problem is that she’s upset. Focus on trying to understand why she’s upset.
3. Establish reassuring physical contact – hold a hand, give a hug, find a tissue. Best to keep it non-sexual at this point though – chances are fairly high she’s really not in the mood. Kissing away tears may be a very sweet gesture, but a woman will generally appreciate it more after you’ve attempted to talk about what’s going on.
4. Talk about what’s wrong. No, wait: ask, and then listen, and then talk.
5. Never, ever, ever tell her that she has no reason to be upset or tearful – this will make her feel so much worse that it is an incredibly bad idea unless you want to prolong the weeping.
6. Provide sympathy, not solutions. Do not attempt to solve her problems or feel under pressure to do so. After crying, most women will get on with sorting out what is wrong, though it’s always good to offer to help if you can and want to. But this is far less important than giving her time to express the emotions she’s feeling, and letting her feel that she has been heard and understood.
7. If you’re feeling upset or uncomfortable because she’s crying or because of what she’s said, say so and say why. A solid and dependable rock is useful at times but it’s often nice to have something a bit softer to cry on! Important caveat – try to avoid giving the impression that what you really mean is, “I’m in an even worse situation than you and look, I’m not crying”.
8. Try to remember that she’s almost certainly not doing it just to make you feel bad. It’s easy for a woman to underestimate just how difficult a man can find it when she cries, particularly at the moment when she’s actually crying! Yes, I’ll admit that some women do use tears to manipulate men by making them feel bad, but do give her the benefit of the doubt until you notice a consistent pattern. It may help to bear in mind most women can’t stop and start their tears on demand! Also, tears only succeed as a manipulation device because men tend to ignore points 1, 2 and 6, and get so desperate that they’ll do anything to stop the tears flowing! So this advice should work either way.
9. Remember that tears can be triggered by a lot of different things – from serious trauma to mild frustration to hormones to a sentimental film!
10. Crying in someone’s presence is also a sign of trust and openness. So if you care about someone, try not to make her feel uncomfortable about crying in your presence. Nobody likes their partner to be upset, but if she is, would you really rather leave her to cry on her own?

Disclaimer: These are sweeping generalisations based on grossly oversimplified gender stereotypes. My only claim to expertise is my own experience, but that has given me grounds to think that these suggestions might be useful to a few people out there….

(Photo – Tear!, originally uploaded to Flickr by ::: *TearS* :::.)

Vibrancy

Dear Dana and Dave

In a world muddied by fake vibrato the real thing
becomes mythical. So rare for the ears
to glimpse the vibrant voice that springs
from the stretch of a diaphragm sinking low
to touch the gutrock of emotion. And yet
when you hear that voice coming up from
the depths of the soul, trembling with the
force of its intimate journey, you know
why there are so many imitations of this
pulsing heart-sound. The endless shabby
imitation doesn’t flatter – it clutters,
makes it harder to find the real gold -
yet cannot debase the real coinage
for those whose teeth know how to bite it.
Still sad to see the thousand wild goose chases
of shaky singers, who, like celebrity chefs,
pretentious poets or arrogant artists
seek to show that they are great cooks
by pouring salt and spices over
tasteless battery meat when flavour
comes from the deep bone marrow of a life
lived as free-range as a skein
of geese winging their heart songs
across the face of the coming dawn.

 

I’ve just butted into a poetry conversation between Dana and Dave, who have been exchanging poems, each one responding to the previous poem. They’ve kindly extended the invitation for other poet-bloggers to join them. If you’d like to reply to my poem, or any of theirs, all you have to do is link back to the poem you’re responding to, and leave a comment with the original poem so that people can follow the conversation in both directions. Have fun…

Red river morning

Wary shepherds sleep
while hunters scan the mist with
red-flushed camera eyes

Another beautiful sunrise, taken in the same spot (on a different day) as my post fire and water. Again, no photoshopping or colour alteration – this is exactly what it looked like!

For Skywatch Friday

One way

Pages of my past
Smudged with wild drafting errors
Stubbornly resist
The most fervent eraser’s
Attempts to prettify them.

A tanka for Totally Optional Prompts – this week, “one way”.

Hormonal winter

The bleak, black land
is stormridden with tears
that do not irrigate the earth
but fall helplessly
from bruise-heavy skies.

To the mist-clogged senses
trees appear like monsters
with ravening branches.
Friends have the faces of enemies.
And reason is too exhausted
to deny these illusions
the belief that nourishes
their tormenting forms.

The bright galloping of life
is mired. And even if hope
does not sink forever
its flanks are stained by
the suction of despair.

Here the ghosts walk,
their magnified voices
turned harsh and cruel
by the echoing loneliness
of this deep chasm
between unscalable cliffs.

The wanderer knows
the valley will end
in a bright hot tide.
Yet that’s poor consolation
to feet still waterlogged,
plodding on through the dark
of grey mud
and tears.

Still, the feet plod.

This responds to the Tuesday Title prompt at Poefusion. I’ve had some very bad episodes of PMT, of the depressed rather than irritable variety. One day I would be fine, the next day it would be as if the sky had fallen on my head. And I wanted to capture something of how it feels to have your moods overcome by negativity that is too pervasive to fight, even when you know exactly what is happening and why you are reacting in that way.

Defending territory

This giant otter is another photo from my recent journey… he was very determined about defending his territory, but actually the smell would have been enough to keep most people from coming too close! Thank heavens for zoom lenses!

Poetry rules

….OK?

Actually, I’m thinking about a post I saw on Kelli’s blog Book of Kells, where she explored the rules she uses for poetry. Which made me ponder, what are my rules?

1. Mostly I write from the topic outwards, letting the poem find its own form. Sometimes the poems stay as free verse, sometimes I notice patterns of rhyme or rhythm or repetition starting to form, and choose to encourage them. Less often, I decide on a structure early on and try to fit the poem into it – it can be an interesting exercise but some poems just don’t like to have a particular form imposed.
2. I try to make sure I read my poems aloud to get a feel for the rhythm and sound of the words. I should do this more often though! I almost always use stress to structure the rhythm, rather than going for strict meter which tends to distort the poem.
3. For me the idea at the heart of the poem is crucial. Sometimes I just let the idea stand and don’t fret with the words too much.
4. I am trying to spend more time marinating the ideas before I put them into poem form – various exercises recently have shown me that this makes for much richer poems! Which can mean gathering ideas and letting them sit around in a notebook, or starting a poem with a writing practice.
5. I feel every poem needs some element of brightness about it. I don’t feel a poem’s finished unless it has at least a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Yes, there is sadness in the world, and expressing it is important, but for me brooding on it without any brightness just makes me and my readers more gloomy!
6. I try to write about the things I don’t want to write about, for whatever reason. In particular, I deliberately decided to allow myself to write as many poems as I wanted about my last relationship – the creative process has contributed greatly to the healing process, and vice versa. And I don’t want to choke off that fruitful connection by worrying that my readers will get bored, or will judge that I’m making no progress at all in getting over it.
7. I try not to use words for the sake of appearing “poetical”. I do like the vividness of language that flows from taking a different perspective on the situation – for me that’s the essence of poetry. But it’s the perspective that has to come first, otherwise it just becomes a pose!