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November 06 The End of The Song Funeral today. Brisk, cold day with some sunshine. No appetite. Returning to places I knew as a child when visiting you. Your house just down the road still full of your things. You left it so suddenly and unexpectedly your pots were still in the sink, your slippers shucked by the bed, your little fire still on. Odd to think of it there, full of your things still. Such a beautiful church -  Victorian and full of wonderful stained glass, a painted organ, bas relief. Good to see the family again. Cousins I've not seen for years. I don't know why we do that. Your sons and grandchildren spoke about you and they all said the same things I thought - about your great kindness, your wisdom, your strength which was of the kind that some see as weakness but was 'like grass' - small and slight, but able to break through concrete. Your eternally child-like wonder at the world and what is in it, your wise council, which - knowing so well the follies and weaknesses of our human natures, gave comment without judgement, and was always given with such love because you had a care for tender things, like plants, creatures both bovine and savage, and especially people, with their foolish, foolish hearts. I
was ok until they played the opening music - Ar Lan y Mor, sung by Bryn
Terfel. Can't find a track of him singing it, but here's it is by some Welsh woman: not the same at all, but you can always google Bryn.
Ar Lan y Môr Down by the Seaside Ar lan y môr mae rhosys chochion Beside the sea, there are red roses Ar lan y môr mae lilis gwynion Beside the sea, there’s lovely lilies Ar lan y môr mae ‘nghariad inne Beside the sea, my sweetheart lives Yn cysgu’r nos a choddi’r bore. Asleep at night, awake at morning. Ar lan y môr mae carreg wastad Cold is the frost, and cold the snowfall Lle bum yn siarad gair âm cariad Cold the house without fire in winter Oddeutu hon fe dyf y lili Cold is the church without a vicar Ac ambell sbrigyn o rosmari. Cold am I also, without my lover. The church was warm, colourful and full of art and history. Your friends were there, including your Quaker friends, and I could almost see you smiling - your head tilted to one side, gently as you always did, and you may have laughed at what everyone was saying, because you knew yourself I think, and would have been amazed. But that was your gift. You did know yourself, and in your own life, full of richness, tragedy and colour, you could see us all as in a mirror. That's why you smiled. Then you exited to the Ashoken farewell. And then we went home October 23 Ffarwel fodryb P Half past six tonight, while I was fighting the roundabouts, you finally went. Here's some of the things you gave me: A Book each year on my birthday, each of which were huge in my life, and made me want to be a writer, too. A view of religion that transcended church buildings and vestements and narrow thinking. Your Jesus wore boots and was always ready to take you back. Masses of wonderful knowledge because you were so very clever, with a lively, unconventional mind. The fact that though you didn't suffer fools gladly, you had a kindness in you, that understood humanity and it's weakness. Your laughter. Long political discussions and arguments. You and Dad, who liked to wind you up. Your company on trips to the theater, museums and galleries. Your beautiful eyes and indomitable spirit through everything life threw at you. I remember: When you buried the cat, in a nightie and wellingtons (you, not the cat) in a thunderstorm at midnight - sliding it down into darkness like a ship into deep water, because you were independent and crazy. You giving all the trees around your home names, and visiting them on your walks, leaving them little gifts at their roots. You feeding the vixen and her cubs every day at your back door. You, falling in love with a Welshman, and learning Welsh. You - on the cliffpath out of Mousehole to Lamorna Cove - where you can walk free now whenever you like, along with all the other spirits that dwell there, waiting for me: "Diwedd y gan yw'r geiniog." - At the end of the song comes payment. "Bum gall unwraith - hynny oedd, llefain pan ym ganed." - I was wise once: when I was born, I cried." Bye, Aunt P. February 01 Snow flyingSnow flying Did you ever do that thing, when you were a kid, when it snowed at night? You find somewhere where the light is shining up into the sky, making the falling flakes shine, but you can’t see any trees or buildings, and just stare up into the whiteness unblinking. After a while, an optical illusion makes the direction appear to reverse, and instead of the snow falling, you begin to rise. Just for a while, before your brain kicks in and puts things right, it feels like you are shooting upwards in a spray of white. Up into the empty places of the sky like a rocket or a bird, like a soul flying free, the way you hope it will, one day when the traces of life are cut. Tonight we had snow, which may be commonplace where you are, but is not common in my part of the world. At best a smattering of white over the ground like icing sugar over a mince pie. Maybe up in the hills of Scotland or Wales or Cumbria the sheep are huddled behind rocks cursing the elements, but down here in the seamy cities, the hot breath of the underground blows up and melts the snowflakes as neatly as you like. Tonight we had snow – nice, fat and jolly, and I went outside in the darkness wearing my father’s cap. I went onto the lawn away from the house and looked upwards into the ‘singularity’ from where all snow comes. I waited and I waited, and in that silence what thoughts come. And then in the silence, what thoughts go. Maybe one day. Perhaps the soul is what we are underneath and inside, deep down. No flesh, no bone, no genetic inheritance. Nothing in the way, like your weight or your height or your ethnicity. Just the essential you that can go wherever it wishes. Standing there letting go, being a kid again - some things remained stubbornly the same: The night was still cold, I was still worried, the wine was still warm in my veins, the cat was still grumbling for her dinner, it was still sunday night into monday morning, and I still loved you. In the end I rose.
( and to think I was treading on these.)
October 31 WaterIf you take the train along the coast into Dublin, you can see
the sea pretty close up. Picture a track with just enough room for two trains to pass, with a high wall on one side, and a short wall on the other, and then picture the sea.
It's a thick, shiny metal grey sea, the same height as the window of the train, and no more than twelve feet away just over an ordinary little wall. Today its an angry sea, because it's cold, with sleet on the Wicklow hills, and the surface is no mirror flat blue, but this boiling metal that leaps up and around in sharp peaks and troughs, billows and breakers, sucking and blowing and throwing up spume at the top of which little marbles of water are pitched upwards to tickle the feet of gulls who seem to make a game of ducking and then leaping away from them like kids on a tideline. Now and then, an especially enthusiastic wave breaks over the wall and sprays the side of the train with brine, and the wall is breached here and there with runnels of sea water. What happens in the true heart of winter when the storms are flying is a mystery - how could the train possibly run? The track would be flooded and overwhelmed, shells and fish flapping and cracking along the rails - and Lord only knows about the electrics!
Later, I manage to get some time to myself in Dublin, well relatively anyway. I'm in the Writer's museum, looking at typewriters that wrote the original 'This' or the first draft of 'that'. With the writer's things - a suit, a beer mug, a pair of glasses, a typewriter allegedly thrown through a pub window by Brendan Behan' - behind glass for our perusal, as if they were somehow clues to what made them able to write as they did. I like it for the silence and the beautiful old building, the temporary respite from noise and clamour, the chance to let my mind hum along its own lines, taking your hand through the rooms and the glass cases, smiling at you, grimacing, letting the scent of the scant sunshine through the glass, the colours on the odd illuminated page, the ink, the black and white photos curl between us like fog.
My mind hums like a machine on standby, the engine ticking over but the microchip still, one light blinking. This is peace of a temporary sort, within which the bare bones of peace can begin to clothe themselves again.
The Brandy Glass
Only let it form within his hands once more -
The moment cradled like a brandy glass.
Sitting alone in the empty dining hall . . .
From the chandeliers the snow begins to fall
Piling around carafes and table legs
And chokes the passage of the revolving door.
The last diner, like a ventriloquist's doll
Left by his master, gazes before him, begs:
'Only let it form within my hands once more.'
Louis Macneice.
I even managed to walk along Grafton Street:
'In Grafton Street in November, we tripped lightly along the ledge. . .'
sadly, Grafton Street is a shopping centre full of brightly lit shops, but never mind.......
' . . . when the angel woos, the clay, he'll lose, his wings at the dawn of day...'
Bydda i'n aros amdana ti am byth os oes angen Cariad. Be well.
September 21 Two Gifts The World Gives UsIt was sunny here today, which made people stop in the streets and gasp in wonder - what was this thing?
For the whole of August it was away from us, except for a day during my visit to Scotland when it filled the valley with light like butter in a bowl, illuminating the sheep, energising the thistles and bringing Nessie to the surface of the loch to sport and gamble. I would have had a photograph of him to show you except that I found when I got there that I had only one shot left on my camera, and I'd already spent that on a particularly attractive ewe. Two things came to me while I was away, that I've thought about since. Two Gifts the World Gives us.
When people knew I would be travelling alone, they split into two camps. Those who sympathised as if some terrible calamity had come to pass, and those who just said, 'Oh.' Now I like to travel alone. I like to be alone (not lonely, that's when you have no choice). I liked rambling about pleasing myself, syphoning up sushi without having to ask if someone else liked it, watching the Olympics while dropping gravy down my front, and when I got there, strolling up the lane talking to myself and chatting up the locals (those short horns have very nice wool too.) I wondered what it must be like for people who don't feel at home with themselves, until I remembered exactly how that feels - rather like a liferaft with a slow puncture.
As wanderers, it's nice to find a home in someone you love. Long ago when we pattered across the planet perhaps we developed the habit of carrying a little bit of those we love, and who love us, in our hearts, rather like a backpack, or a handwarmer, so that wherever we are, we are not entirely alone ever. Gift one is the gift of home that we carry with us.
And then there is Sleep. While I was in Scotland, there was, in the evenings, an abundance of whisky and beer and after partaking I would go outside, halfway down the lane in the darkness to stand on one leg and 'phone home' after which I would walk back, warm with this, and fall into my bed where I sunk into a swift and deep slumber like a warm pool. Normally it takes me hours to get to sleep, but not then. Like an otter I dived and the waters took me down and rolled me gently in a tide swell until morning. Gift two is the gift of sleep that heals and soothes.
Here's Bryn to sing you a Welsh lullaby:
And here's verse one so you can sing along:
Huna blentyn ar fy mynwes Clyd a chynnes ydyw hon; Breichiau mam sy'n dynn amdanat, Cariad mam sy dan fy mron. Ni cha' dim amharu'th gyntun, Ni wna undyn a+ thi gam, Huna'n dawel annwyl blentyn, Huna'n fwyn ar fron dy fam. |
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