Out of the ordinary

Van Gogh, V. (1888) Bedroom in Arles. [Oil on canvas] Van Gogh Museum: Amsterdam

Office, home

I write at a table my sister gave me,
an old wooden table,
the grain all van Gogh curves, alive.

It’s covered in a jumble of books and papers,
‘to do’ lists, receipts, lip balms, pens, notebooks and notes,

and – resting on a stack of papers –
a poetry book a friend gave me. Its bright red cover
and bright blue ribbon to mark the pages stand out.

I see how many things received make up my ordinary world.

More gifted things:

• Two paintings

• A geranium

• An orchid

• The sheepskin behind me

• An Indian bag

• A well-used apron, flung on my armchair as I moved from kitchen to Zoom room

The mirror on my wall,
my sister gave me too,

and looping below it,
strung on an almost-invisible thread,
stuck with Blu Tack at each end of the hand-gilded frame,
seven coloured sugar paper cranes,
made by my daughters during that first lockdown.

Angular and still,
the birds fly beneath the mirror
and over the hearth, over and over,
taking their shadows with them.

~ ~ ~

I wrote this piece last night by paying attention to the items around me and not looking any further than my walls and window sill. My eye and mind passed over some of the items quickly, staying longer on others. I noticed stillness and movement in the items, though all of them were static, and I reflected on their transience, permanence, and value in my life.

This morning, I lightly edited the piece, turning the fabric of my first free-written draft into a poem. It’s a creative process that suits me – free-writing, sleeping, re-reading, and shaping. I find it pleasurable, too.

• Someone made my table out of wood.

• My daughters made the cranes out of sugar paper.

• I made my poem out of my free-writing.

to make something out of something (phrasal verb) = to create a thing (or stuff) from a thing (or stuff)

I like the idea that when we write, paint, sculpt, compose, choreograph, embroider, bake, or undertake any creative endeavour we are drawing something – our thing – out of some pre-existing thing or stuff. We are bringing it out and into the light. We are making it apparent. Something is left behind: as a seedling leaves its seed case behind, so the table leaves the tree, the cranes leave the pad of sugar paper, the poem leaves the free-write … and yet the new still embodies the essence of the original stuff or thing.

Extraordinary. Not extra-ordinary, but extraordinary, where the prefix extra means ‘outside or beyond something’ (think extracurricular, extramarital, extraterrestrial): out of the ordinary again.

Just before writing ‘Office, home’ I wrote ‘On van Gogh’s “Bedroom in Arles”’ (below) in response to looking at his painting. As I looked at the painting and wrote the piece, I was both inside the bedroom and also enjoying what the artist had made out of it (while in it?). I was reminded that my ordinary is worth paying attention to, and that by writing into it, I can take time to slow down, reflect and feel.

~ ~ ~

On van Gogh’s ‘Bedroom in Arles’

Ordinary bed
Ordinary chairs
Ordinary table
Ordinary floor

Extraordinary blues – the doors, the walls, the clothes, the items on the washstand.
Extraordinary perspective – the bed, dancing almost, the floor leading my eye to the window.
Extraordinary floor! My bare feet walk across it.
Extraordinary verticals – making the horizontals all the more special.

Ordinary day
Ordinary place
Made extraordinary.