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Thanks for coming by Brooks and Boon Unspoken. Unspoken is a postal arts project between Chantal Brooks and Stephanie Boon.  This blog is our project journal, please browse round and enjoy.

Dear Brooks

I hear your slow breath in the stillness.

I see the fog enveloping you.

You stand on the edge of a wood

where dry leaves fall.

You are stronger than you believe.

With love, B x

Monday December 8th

Dear Boon,

When all else fails and I find myself amid chaos, I start to close down.

From somewhere deep, guttural,raw, and visceral I become animal.

No longer recognising my own reflection, I steer away from peopled places and stalk the fringes of the darkland.

I watch for the quarters of the moon.

And breath with instinct.

Brooks

Dear Brooks

It was extraordinary. I reached from my coracle to take the rusting handle of a white suitcase as it drifted by. It was heavy with water and I had to pull hard to wrest it from its aimless journey. It wasn’t that large and I sat with it on my lap for some time, staring into the dark waters wondering what this could mean. I could hear the song of curlews and realised that dawn must be breaking; I was so cold and alone. Yet here, on my knees, was the possibility of a connection to someone else. A thread. A rope. A lifeline.

But why had it come to me? Should I open it? Tentatively I slid back the two clasps that had held it together as it crossed the seas; the sudden snapping sound jolting me into the present moment. Inside were the stories of a woman. Her loves, her fears, the things she had lost. Her Bewilderment. I was unpacking her former lives and as I touched and smelled her past I sensed how she had been betrayed. In this battered suitcase her time had stood still. I furled the stories back up and lay them side by side, as they had come to me, nestling together like ducks under a mother’s wing.

My eyes are heavy and I pull a thick blanket round my cold shoulders, rising and falling on the waves, drifting who knows where. As I drift I think of you and your stories and I plan another letter to you, which I will set sail to you soon. Hold on tightly to the deepest roots my love, and you will not drown.

With love B x

Dear Boon

Saturday 4th October 2008

I am stranded,

things once so familiar have shifted, become alien.

I do not recognise this territory.

Packing in such a hurry, I find the things that I collected, useless for the reality that we face.

How can you plan for such a journey that sweeps and devours.

My suitcase has gone astray, upon its own trajectory.

I am at a loss for direction, trampled by the informed,people who know where they are going.

I am jostled in one direction and then another.

I stand still and try to gain clarity, but there is no stillness to be had.

By night, in restless sleep, I am hunted, constantly seeked out by a preditor, who hears us breathing, who will torture and maim, I have seen it done, and relive the events even in daylight.

In the morning hag-ridden, I stumble into the dawn light, retracing my steps.

Exhausted I have stopped fighting, I drift with the current in order to rest. Downstream if I have not drowned, I will drag my body onto the bank of this river and wait for light.

Brooks

Dear Brooks

I’m worrying.  I don’t know whether the first letter I sent to someone new has reached its intended destination.  I’ve had no word at all.  Could it have got lost on its way, do you think, caught on a breeze and on a new journey now?  I’m worrying.  The little packet I wrapped up carried something precious: an imprint of life, a tangible relic.  I’m worrying…

With love B x

Dear Brooks

I heard the clap and flutter of grey wings and slowly realised your letter had been quietly waiting for me, as I quietly wait for you to return to my shores.

I was talking of another journey only this morning.  There was an open boat full of people shouting and I was alone in smaller one, scrabbling and fighting to get on to the other.  But they didn’t want me with them and they constantly pushed me back with great force, jeering.  The sea was like a Turner storm, and I feared that if I didn’t get into the larger boat I would perish.  So I tried and I tried, until the struggle was too much and I just let go.  I drifted off behind them and the waters around me grew calm and quiet.  I could still see the storm ahead and hear their tumultuous voices, but they had forgotten me already.  I looked up and for the first time could see the moon, bright, clear and golden.

I am still adrift and don’t know how or where this journey will end, but at last I can hear the sound of the water lapping the hull.  It’s beautiful.

I send this letter to you in a bottle.

With love B. x

Dear Boon

Friday 26 September 2008

Sorry that it has taken so long to respond to your letters. I have been travelling.

Far away without leaving these walls.

I send this message to you by carrier pigeon, as I have ran out of postage stamps.

I write this, as once again I am packing our belongings into a small case to depart in a hurry. I don’t know where this journey is taking us or how long we will be gone, but please know that something is on its way to you my friend. I will write again once we have arrived.

Brooks

Dear Brooks

It’s gone!  Letter number one has left my hands, maybe even the county by now.  I sent it from Falmouth post-office, which is a horrible ‘corporate’ place compared to my local one – I won’t go back there if I can help it.  It’s odd, but I never expected a post-office to be so important a part of the process; a place like that destroys the sense of intimacy that you build when you make a letter.  I much prefer the haphazard little counter at the back of the village shop where the files are hand written and form towers that look like they’re about to topple over, somewhere a bit Dickensian where you can while away the queue time reading posters about obscure events.  Somehow it just adds to the whole experience.  My letter, squished into a Hessian sack, travelling the length of the country, dancing to Auden’s rythm.  That’s how I picture it, how I want my first letter to make its way to its intended reader.

With love B x

Dear Brooks

I finally finished my first letter to post today. I can’t believe how long it’s taken me to get it ready and on its way; it’s been half-made on my kitchen table for a while now. I wonder if others will be the same? I think I took so long deliberating over it because it wasn’t to you. It still seems strange.

I decided to send it on its way at the post-office down in the village, thought I could do with a walk. The sky was such a deep grey and the air had a stillness that was as eerie as if I’d been walking lost in a forest in the dead of night. I walked along the old farm track and cobbled byways, where the soft mud was ankle deep after all the rain and the hedgerows were full of ripening blackberries and the songs of robins. Autumn is definitely here.

It had to be a quick walk so I almost marched along, one hand clutching the brown letter, the other one shoved deep into my coat pocket. I was thinking about the journey the letter would soon be going on, wending its way far up north, wondering about the hands that would open it, what they would make of the contents. Soon enough I was in the middle of the village and wandered in to the shop. It’s like walking into a time warp: the shop still has all it’s original pine fittings, covered in layers of chipped paint, little drawers and shelves supporting each other on turned posts – there’s even a spiral staircase in the middle of the room. The post office is in a dark corner at the back, behind the stairs. I joined the queue, reading the ’save our post-office’ posters while I waited. At last I handed the letter over to the clerk, who tried to put it through some plastic contraption to determine whether it was a letter or a packet. A packet, he said. He put it on the scales, which I couldn’t see, and told me the rate. I delved into my pocket fishing out the change that I’d picked up on my way out of the house. I stood there counting it all out only to discover I was a penny short. Yes, one whole pence. (I know you’ll be laughing now!)  The smiling clerk suggested I remove some of the packaging so that it would fit through his plastic thing and could go at a cheaper rate. I decided I’d rather go home with the letter and come back with an extra penny, so off I stomped back up the lane.

I rushed around for the rest of the afternoon doing all the usual stuff and didn’t get home until gone 5.30.  When I came in through the door the first thing I saw was the letter, still there on the kitchen table where I’d left it in my haste to get out of the house again, trying not to be late.  Less haste, more speed did I hear you say?!  Hmmm, I wonder if it’s something else altogether: a letter that doesn’t want to leave…

lots of love B

Dear Brooks

Here I am again, sitting at the kitchen table daydreaming. I look up out of the window at the grey sky and the bird-feeders swaying in the hawthorn tree, hoping to see a wren or a blue tit. Spread out in front of me is a range of intriguing objects that I’m sure I can make something with. You can imagine what they’re like! But, at the moment exactly what I’m going to make is eluding me.

It’s going to be strange sending things to others and not you. I find the whole process so intense that I imagine myself being in a state of emotional turmoil for months! I’ve already got a small pile of names, people waiting for letters – hopefully patiently! Each letter I make will be especially for that person, special, which puts a certain amount of pressure on and is probably why I’m still sitting here looking at the things on my table. And, of course, I still have to write back to you…

I can hear a black bird now, singing it’s heart out. So beautiful.

With love, B x