Words escape me
Plus a retreat and some special writing dates
They can be so elusive, can words. Slipping down the side of the sofa, disappearing up your sleeve, drifting out of the door left ajar. Like notes, like tissues, like smoke.
They tend to disappear when we need them most, or stay stubbornly indoors refusing to breach the threshold of the throat. It seems that in the moments when we must stretch for them, words insist on existing on the edges of vision and diction, exasperatingly out of reach.
Words escape me, we say when it seems there is too much to say, or when words alone threaten a grave injustice. To even attempt at language contains an insult at times, or at least the risk and possible injury of getting it wrong. Better to say this placeholder of silence then, words escape me. Sometimes, these three words make an exit.
I was an English Literature student in a group discussing postmodernism when I ventured, heart leaping, that we are forever removed from one other in our innermost lives and that language in all its meaning and mischief might be our best attempt at bridging the spaces between us, reaching for connection. Since then I’ve thought that all art makes the same bid - to touch in on the depths of being human, to affirm our shared and unlikely existence. I still see the look of irritated bemusement my tutor wore, still feel the ghost of irrelevance and moving on in the group. Not a word.
I do still believe it though. I think we reach for language to reach for one another, to help one another understand our complex human lives both individually and collectively. To make ever unending sense of this life. In recent times, as the world seemingly accelerates into chaos and collapse, I have been hungrier than ever for the words of others. Devouring poems and essays and novels and think-pieces in an attempt to understand from outside everything I felt (and continue to feel) within me: the worry, the grief, the wonder, the community, the fear, the joy, the anxiety, the strident despite-it-all aliveness. Trying to make the outside make sense inside me, trying to make the inside make sense outside of me.
Words have never mattered more, perhaps because of their very inadequacy to express the absurdity of living in times riven through with injustice. Paradoxically, their value has only increased. They show me my endeavour to understand, to know the old stories and to begin to weave new ones. At the same time I feel in company more than million-strong with my fellow readers and writers and critical thinkers.
So I am not seduced by the internal shrug, words escape me. I refuse any mutual abandonment. When I reach for them, words of some kind, in some infinitely renewed arrangement, do find me, and I find them. I discover them, emergent, when I venture to speak in courageous spaces, and most especially when I write. Despite the blank and blinking page, despite my seeming wordlessness, words do indeed escape me. There they are on the page, a fossil of having tried.
I hope they find you in their reach, and I hope you keep reaching too.
Upcoming Writing Dates & Alchemy Retreat
Communing ~ Writing with Ruth - Thursday 12th May 7-8pm online FREE
This is part of a series of free events hosted by several creators on The Portal, where I now hold all my online experiences:
‘The Portal isn’t another course platform - it’s infrastructure for a different way of relating to knowledge and to each other. In the face of polycrisis, we need spaces where wisdom can flow unimpeded by algorithms designed for profit rather than flourishing. We need digital ecosystems that mirror the collaborative intelligence of natural ones.’
All you need to join is a free account on The Portal - all the details are here as well as the full list of Communing events. So much goodness on offer, and it would be wonderful to share in it with you.
The Sunday Pages ~ Spring Equinox - Sunday 6-7.15pm online
While I have reduced the frequency of The Sunday Pages sessions for now, writing is increasingly core across my practice both therapeutically and personally. It takes a central place in my current programme Refugia and I’m welcoming a new area of supporting those who want to work closely with their writing either in fortnightly or monthly mentoring. It seems many of us are finding it of vital resource in turbulent times, and I am finding it myself evermore a trustworthy practice. I envisage a time when I move again to offering a more frequent writing space, but for now perhaps it will be the more special for its relative rarity.
On such note, the next Sunday Pages will be on 29th March, just after the Spring Equinox, for an extended hour 6-7.15pm. As you may well know, this is a space in which you are warmly supported to meet life through the wisdom of your own words, and at this coming time of rising energy you can expect a collection of enlivening and uplifting writing prompts. Places are £15 and you can book here.
The Alchemy Retreat - therapeutic writing & movement in the Scottish Borders - 14-17th May 2026. There are now 4 spaces left on this experience of deep rest, reflection and connection at a beautiful time of year. Take a look at the details here.
