Cloudbursting

Guys — I’m struggling a little not being able to listen to other tunes I won’t lie. Luckily, tonight is a gig night so I get to have a groove to something other than Kate Bush. I am currently sitting in my ‘rave’ outfit ready to get the night started, but first a brief word as is policy and an unedited poem to bulk it out and celebrate National Poetry Day.

Cloudbursting is a wonderful story tied to some very real inspiration, as a lot of KB’s theatrics are — and I say theatrics in a positive sense. Check out Kate Bush Encyclopedia for a bit of a downlow on the story if you are after it, because this is a short write up and I’m not summarising. Despite the actual story behind the song being quite sad there is an overlying sense of hope with the way this song unfolds. Not to be cheesy but the rising string instruments really make your heart sing. The first time I properly got into this song was during lockdown. I felt like I was losing my mind trying to write/research for my dissertation in the later hours of the evening. Cloudbursting was the perfect song to release some energy to by prancing around my room, especially with the lyric, “I just know that something good is gonna to happen” — a very comforting mantra.

Today had those Cloudbursting feels. Not in the sense that my father was being arrested and having to wreck all his life work, but more in a, “sun coming out” kinda way. It was a magical day where I picked up Aniwa and we went for a swim and then let the vitamin D balm our worries and thaw our souls. Today felt like summer; a good and proper summer, there was giggling and salty hair and a trip to a Four Square for an ice-cream. The clouds are bursting and it’s time to frolic.

Anyway it’s National Poetry Day SO here’s a poem I am yet to format and edit. I’ll put it here to make up for me being distracted the whole time I was writing this — (Liam’s currently going through my wardrobe so I’m half talking Kate Bush half giving feedback on looks). Hope you guys are having a beautiful Friday:

I am foraging. Preparing for hibernation. 

Instinctively collecting blue glass, pressing flowers, and rearranging my bookshelf. I rearrange by colour, aesthetically merging The Iliad to Erosions. 

I am preparing for hibernation. So, I clean my room and hang posies from the roof. I want to make sure everything I face is pretty. 

It’ll probably be very difficult to work when I’m hibernating. So when it comes I’ll call in sick from work everyday and read about how spiders can be a sign that you’re not comfortable in your own body. 

When hibernation comes I’ll cut my fingernails. Cut the dirt out of them from when I repotted my monstera. Its roots had stained the carpet. I’ll cut the dirt from my fingernails as I tell my monstera that I’m not buying another pot for the duration of my hibernation. My monstera reminds me that it doesn’t care either way if I lose my bond. 

When hibernation comes I’ll learn to cocoon while I watch the 1997 film Batman and Robin. 

When hibernation comes I’ll draw gnarled branches all over my walls and finish in a tight band around my abdomen (bad omen).

When hibernation comes I will wake up and greet my reflection each morning. I will say to my mirror-self, ‘You have no idea what is going on.’, and they will laugh at me and say ‘You wish you had no idea.’ 

When hibernation comes I’ll write letters to my friends. Letters that I’ve been meaning to write for a while. Though my brain will struggle to complete a sentence when I start hibernating. You have to sit still for 15 hours and light 7 candles before you send pieces of your thoughts out to others. I will seal them with wax stamps. 

When hibernation comes I’ll use the dictionary my dad gave me as a pillow, but I’ll never open it.

When hibernation comes I’ll wear a veil (shield) when I go out in public. I want to be separate, in the between, encased just in case. 

When hibernation comes I’ll collect my tears in the knock off smeg jug I got from kmart. I will boil them to make myself cups of tea. 

When hibernation comes, and when I have this tearful tea I will go swimming. Or, I will dance in the rain. Or, I will swim in the rain, or I will dance in the moana, and my tears will be the sky and the tea will be the ocean and my body will be warm 

from the pins 

and the needles 

and the goosebumps. 

I wish I could hibernate in the ocean. During hibernation, when I find myself wishing that, I will burn a piece of my veil (shield) and the ashes will become the dew drops on the spider’s webs. 

When hibernation comes I want to hibernate stock still stock standard stoic style. I’ll lie on my bed and feel nothing and everything from the other’s perspective. 

I will feel nothing imagining myself as everything, and I will feel everything as if I was nothing. 

The point of this hibernation is to try and get my nothings to everythings and everythings to nothings. It is softer than it looks, but no less difficult. 

When hibernation comes I will consider the synonymity of calm and chaos and how we think chaos is too much when really - in myth - chaos was what was first, what was before and beyond both nothing and everything. 

In hibernation I shall look up at the moon and encase myself in chaos. 

When hibernation comes I will make soup. I will make soup so things seem tangible again. Spices and grooving. I am a witch and my hips are alive and well and the grating of the ginger root makes the kitchen smell delightful.