It's Balance Month. But I won't be doing any of this. (Have you seen 'Man On Wire'? It made my head hurt)
On Saturday evening, H Ren and I held our sporadic conference as to what the theme for July might be. Although my inebriated state led to my forgetting said theme (it was Carnival, OK?) she later reminded me: July 2011 is Balance Month.
Contrary to this theme, I then went on to have terrible insomnia the last few nights and feel distinctly out of balance. I’m much more on-theme today, though – thank goodness – so thought I’d post something up to honour it. I’ll come back and write some more about the idea of Balance – which I think was part-inspired by debt, balances and payback again – later on.
But for now – after my Twitter-based brush with one of my very favourite writers, Margaret Atwood, on Monday and my conversely Twitter-based failure to get Carol Ann Duffy to read a poem which mentions her (there’s some balance, perhaps?)…Here is a poem by CAD which has a great image of ‘balance’ in it.
I was reminded of it recently and remembered how much I like it: the highlighting of text-as-image, words-as-thoughts and thoughts-as-objects – and in such a brief poem. The sense of how we create the world, generate risk and failure, strive or don’t-strive to achieve things, and live through thoughts and images are all really palpable, despite its brevity:
Talent
This is the word tightrope. Now imagine a man, inching across it in the space between our thoughts. He holds our breath.
There is no word net.
You want him to fall, don’t you? I guessed as much; he teeters but succeeds. The word applause is written all over him.
– Carol Ann Duffy
Oh and if Carol Ann Duffy happens to read this (teehee!) then here’s my previous post containing a poem about you (or rather, your name – and names generally). There’s a few links to ‘Talent’, in fact…