19th Jan 2024 – Innerdialects

I write for a group of writers :Five minute Friday and this week we ‘Say‘ in five minutes, what’s between our fingers, asking to be said. I’m thinking of Ghezu a local Dancer and she was good to feature on a video shoot for my daughter, but

we got the feeling she was holding back,

though every word she said was affirmative. Yes she’d be there, she said – terrace shoot, or field, wherever.

Ghezu moves like a swan, she’s a worshipper, a leaner on the Everlasting One. And yet the arms fall a fraction too late, the toe moves a step behind, as if her conversation with movement is being reined by another emotion.

We spoke again, and in person. No, her dates did not coincide with ours. She blended and took my movement to the next level, this was sheer genius.

We’d planned a five second of a Lazarus rising, and one with the woman leaning to touch the Hem of Jesus’ garment. Ghezu worked it like a vision in slashed jean and frayed white Tee. She had more to say than I could even visualize for her. She’s not camera shy, she and the lens meet eye to eye and there’s a story happening that Jesu Himself must’ve designed for her. And yet, she’s not ready yet.

Maybe later I say. My daughter is disappointed, Ghezu herself is. We have a quick limesoda and leave with a prayer….

then I know Ghezu needed that more than any work.She’s tired and worn out with schedules. She’s asking Time and the space to do nothing for a bit.

I start to say something but the words sit down in my tongue. Yea, we all need the Pause;

the space to say nothing at all, before we really speak.

..they travel in our bags and hair, in the lashes of our eyes, in the accents of our curries.The word “Secret” can make you think in darkish undertones, but an “ish” is an “ish”, a suspect emotion.

And Families are fantastic streams of discussion. That cupped with traditional plates and sauce of soul-chat, is sheer sweet goodness…

we gather in a huddle - yesterday. There’s foodsongs & jabber,

but like a death defying Artery, there is always communion with the Creator. As a child I gawked at the Unseen in the Centre of our elbows and knees, presiding over Ma’s vindaloo

and Gran before her; He brought in fish from the seas He made along with our coriander leaf and rock salt, oh green chilli.

I stared and still do, at Him here, like the Silence of the Sun,

and it happened last night as nephew Sky (name equivalent) played the guitar like a prayer;

it made me think of a Bird-Shadow on sea, going past the night to breaking dawn: its Shadow plucking waves and earth, up a slope to dawn mountain

where Shadow & bird become one in the Light surrounding all.

Sky* stops playing; he and his gentle blue-grey eyed Eidd’m (name altered:) lock wrists. I tell them about Bird Shade.

Paint that for me, Neph* says.

Eidda shows me her stunning Fluid Art Collection; we chat on Alcohol-ink from city ArtStore, we look at mediums of water colour & my oils;

there is the Family selfie/ group hug; how we’ve grown! How much more I look at Us, not as Yesterday but as a new Creation winging into Dawn soon enough.

Tradition can be a Purdah – veiling, shawling, shoving our innerbeing away from Freedom or

it could be speechless Chords nudging us toward our Unknown.

Fav Fam Trads. ? in the above mentioned & more in the fingerbones of prayers we don’t know we do; but like homing birds we go instinctively to Where the Light surrounds

.. in the Secret place of the Most High, in the Shadow of the Almighty Who will recklessly follow the human spirit to where our Trust is without borders, and we walk on water…