Writing on

Most of my writing is form of place-holding.  A kind of ’something ought to go here’ gesture, so that I can remember - if vaguely - that I need to keep thinking about this.  You try out different things, often half-heartedly.  They are all place-holders, some of them better than others; some appallingly stupid; some near the mark but apparently far off (just a change of a word, a reversal of punctuation, adding ‘-ing’ to ’bird’ or ‘a’ shakes it out, puts it on the path home).  I sometimes think of it as like a tailor cutting a suit.  You start with a bit of cloth (most of the cloths in my case are rags, cast-offs, bargains got in a jumble sale, things that I came by through the Red Cross), you toss your cloth on a board, iron it a bit, trim it, hold it up to the light to look at it squint-eyed, reverse it, invert it, think the better of it and toss it in a bin to be looked at later.  Leaving it in the shadows.

… Later, you start to think seriously about the thing it is to be made into.  Perhaps a section of a jacket, a collar.  The gusset in the trousers.   A square of cambric might be useful for a back pocket.  It all takes a great deal of measuring and fine sewing.  Button holes are the worst.  In the meantime, I need offer no apologies for the loose threads, the absence of a lining, the uncut seams, the generally uncouth appearance of it all.  The scarecrow fluff.  It will be very smart in the end.