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The man who walks through music
In a section of Mike Oldfield’s instrumental and voice album Amarok there is a man who walks through music, you can hear his footsteps as he walks down imagined shadowy vaulted halls. This music is the kind you paint with, woods, wars, adventures, mountains, sun rise, danger, triumph, exhilaration. But there is other music too,…
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The texture of silence
Silence has a texture, a soft gauze landing on the surface of things like a dust sheet. In its fabric is the interweave of the invisible waves, light, heat, radio that are travelling through and there are pinpricks of the barely audible, the leap of a solar flare, the fizzle of a star, the gurgle…
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#FridayFlash That faithful friend
I wrote this several years ago, before I knew the internet existed! I hereby issue a (slight) dog lovers/black humour alert. ‘It’s for the best’, Ben thought to himself as he made his way back along the cliff walk path, but he felt a pang of guilt as he watched groups of dogs and walkers…
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Untrammeled joy
My 3yo and his baby cousin playing happily alongside each other with alphabet blocks. My son crawls alongside the baby to keep him company. They do the kitchen, hallway, living room circuit. They look at each other directly and with untrammeled joy, laugh out loud, delighting in each other and their game.
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Sugar coat frosting
A walk in the shy sun, everything still. A large panorama of a wide field with a sugar coated frosting.
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Zen and the head of General Grievous
In college years ago my Cognition lecturer told a story where he and his son walking on the mountain and his young son lost a chocolate bar while climbing. To illustrate the Zen Buddhist way of being, he said that he suggested that rather than search intensively for it, they ‘keep an eye open’ on…
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Tracking my agitation
On the school run, when my son falls and loses a part of a beloved toy, on the way to a meeting, in the queue in the post office I can feel a restlessness, a tap tapping that doesn’t manifest in outward signs but seems to propel and spin me anyway. The man in front…
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Children in the alder woods
Two of the children running light like deer through alder woods, then negotiating the dark green undergrowth, their voices the only clue. I pull back out of their world so they can find their own adventures, discover themselves brave, strong, wily, alive.
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Paisley curtains with faces
Do you remember the paisley curtains with the faces in them. You could look and look and see something different each time. At home from school in bed you would stare and find a creepy thing, then a flower, then an upside down goblin, then a nose or a shoe.
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All at sea
The wind sounds like waves crashing against this fragile shore. A crescendo of sound then the whish that is the falling on battered rocks. This house is a boat in the dark, my bed the life raft. I am still safe.
Welcome to my Head above Water blog! I’m Alison, writer, mother and public librarian with a background in Communication Studies and Psychology. I have a particular interest in creative resilience, motivation and how nature and wonder can restore us. In my day job I run book clubs and creative events for children and adults.
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