DAILY RITUALS #7

VANESSA:

Rituals?
Oh those things we do each day?
Well you’re asking a Cancerian who’s also a writer, so we’ve got rituals and superstitions and funny little habits coming out our arse. Wait you didn’t  say superstitions did you? But they’re one and the same for us C.Ws ...

So ... I walk every morning and I walk the same time or thereabouts and I wear the same cap with a picture of the old Paddington showground clock tower on it because … remember your roots my dears … and so I also walk the same route or thereabouts because I don’t want to have to think too hard about where I’m going you know, I just want to go. I want to step and breathe and step and breathe, past the big sign with the time and the temperature which, oddly, is different depending which side you come at it, step and breathe, step and breathe and this is good, this rhythm without thought, because then maybe after all the other fearful, angry, horrible, negative, boring thoughts have passed maybe then there will be one of those other thoughts, you know the kind, yeah? The creative thought. The nub, the seed, the smile, the baby play.

And plus sometimes I might be walking towards the racecourse just as a horse gallops past and those hooves just fly and in my mind I think something good is gonna happen and just saying it may even make it happen and then that becomes a sort of demented Kate Bush earworm until I get to the pub on the corner. I walk over the old bricks and I think of paved rues in Paris and if I see anything important like a coin (all day long you have good luck) or a hair band or a rubber band I will pick those up because I am, in truth, the Good Little Girl in the Baba Yaga story and you never know when anything will come in handy.

Any think.
I cross the big road and walk the opposite way towards the sign which I now assume is the wrong time (or perhaps it was wrong when I started and only now is it telling the truth) and the wrong temperature so for instance it may be saying it’s hot when I am definitely still cold and back past the magnolias and the dog that barks too loud and back past the tree containing all the nerf guns and nerf bullets that my child and a neighbourhood child have painstakingly tied into the branches. And then I might water the garden because again plant growth is a sign of good things. I look at the fish in the pond. I sweep things. I strain the keffir. I make porridge (and if it’s on the stove as opposed to hurriedly flung in the microwave that leads to a whole lot more ritual of stirring) or muesli and I always polish Tricky’s school shoes. I might ride on my bike with Tricky to school or maybe walk with him and I love that even at age nine he still holds my hand as we walk and talk and finally finally I am back at the computer with a cup of coffee and read to start proper writing at about 10am.