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October 15 TreesYou tube video to read along with - Kate Rusby, Fare thee well (Growing up)
I was thinking about something today, and read this post of Jorge's. It fed the thought, and here it is:
When I was quite young, my aunt lived in a house near Esher. She had a wild garden with some interesting plants - my favourites being three apple trees up near the house. It was my game to climb into these trees, and make them, in my head, into a city. I'd climb around from branch to branch, chattting to unseen companions and fighting wars from the 'walkways'.
One day - perhaps I grew a little too big for the apple trees - I scrambled down and approached 'The Silver Birch'. This tree deserved its capital letters. It was a great king of trees, tall and straight as a ship's mast and home to birds and squirrels who rambled around listening to the the incessant whisperings of the wind in the long skeins of leaves. Well. This day without thinking, I tried as I had before to reach the lowest level of branches and found I'd mysteriously grown tall enough to reach them.
I climbed. First of all just up to a sturdy branch where I could sit and look down onto the tops of the apple trees, and then I turned round and climbed some more. I was heading for the crows nest, up in a windy sky where the wind was spraying me with salt and the ship was pitching into sparkling waters. I climbed until the branches became too thin to risk going any further, and then I perched on a branch, arms round the trunk, and looked around.
Isn't it great to be a child? Even now I can remember the feeling of utter joy and achievement as I sat in that tree with the ground so very far beneath me and the feel of the wind on my face. I was utterly unafraid, and I was bursting for someone to see me, so I called .....
'Muuuuuuuuuum........ Daaaaaaaaaaad.......... come and see where I am!'
After a long time, I saw people below me in the garden. They were looking for me - on the ground, in the apple trees, in the shed, anywhere but up, so I called again:
'Whooohooooo....... look where I am!'
And then they saw me.
Mum screamed; my uncle went to the foot of the tree, shading his eyes while he looked up. 'Be careful!' he shouted, 'Don't move!'
Mum was calling my dad, 'Oh my God,,,have you seen how high......... what if he falls?? Don't move!'
Suddenly I was afraid. Looking down, It came to me that going vertically down again would not be as easy as going up. My hands on the trunk began to sweat, I began to doubt. If the adults were scared, maybe I should be?
I can't remember much about getting down. Something about ladders and people coming up to meet me, gripping my feet and guiding my hands. I only remember how disappointed I was. I remember the first stirring of doubt and fear intruding on the magic of the moment, I remember that once down, I looked back up the tree and felt a fear that hadn't been there before. I had been robbed.
Of course - it was adults who had been there before me. Adults who saw only broken spines and loss; who knew more than I did about how the seemingly safe and certain can turn on you in an instant; about how fragile our happiness can be.
For me, I still feel the loss of that moment in the tree - that feeling of certainty, that nothing could possibly go wrong, that I could do anything, be anything.
Life has taught me, along with most others, the facts of life since then, and another thing I remember is that when some of the worst times were over and things were at peace again, the thing I valued most of all was that peace. Just to go to bed easy and get up again calm. Just to be alive when the wind is hurling you along a seafront, or the salt is whipping up from some small cliffs along a rocky coast, throwing rainbows into the blue air. Just to be loved, to be whole. What else really matters?
I'm still afraid because I've seen what comes, and I don't want to be.
I keep forgetting the only things that really matter, and I'm sorry for that.
This is a translation of the Forough Farrokhzad poem 'The Wind Will Carry Us' In my small night, alas, Listen. Now something is happening in the night The clouds have gathered like a bunch of mourners A moment Oh you who are so verdant ******** April 10 CorrectionsYou tube music vid. Eric Bibb, connected
A Correction - Amir Or Translated with the poet.
for the sin of being spoiled with words and mistaking the call of love;
for turning away from myself like shadow from body, face from heart;
for the sin of 'What will they say?'; for self denial; for pride;
for the sin of having followed the spell of praise under the stage lights;
for my ear that has abandoned listening,
for the utterance of the mouth which I have spoken, yet my soul has not;
for sins I've committed against my own body with the rod and no
kindness, beating my breast;
for calling Yours my own;
for having sinned before You by anxiety and vain fear,
for having fed the fire of doubt from the log of the tree of plenty;
for having been dilatory in growing;
for having shut my door and having neither heard nor seen nor let
happiness enter me
when beholding Your being.
For all that and more. Sitting here this Easter, realising that there's a part of me that is frozen. A part of me that stands and looks, with both hands out pushing away. For letting myself get to a point I didn't even know I'd reached.
For failing to take my mother to the cemetery which is lonely and gloomy, and finding that she hasn't gone at all when she needed and wanted to, because she wouldn't ask me to go. For not having gone myself in all this time; for the coldness inside me that prevents me from doing it. For not having realised that I'm actually isolated here with whatever it is. For what it's led me to be.
For spending this Easter about as far from church as I've ever been. For feeling that I don't belong there, for forgetting that it's not about the building and the people, for forgetting that it's not an institution you have to be first shriven to enter. For forgetting what led me there in the first place. For everything I haven't done.
God's Friday
'Are you religious?' he asked me,
leaning half up-half down a city
lamppost, arms spread and chewing
on sunrise with a ruined mouth.
What sins and welts you bear
I thought - unafraid now as my
journey stalled, and fearless in the face
of having nothing, foundered
in his asking me for bread. 'Oh
Jesus' - on his tongue it was
a benediction far more worthy
than the ones I'd heard before.
My Saviour. This Easter found me
in a dark shop doorway with
your Judas and your Jezebel - those
long neglected children. Nothing
we had between us but the
love that comes when no one
else will have you. Soft he smiled,
'Shhh. Have patience; Sunday comes.'
February 21 Land of my FathersOne time there was an old farmer out in Wales, who every morning went out to milk his cows. Shuffling through the timeless morning skies when everything was still black, ice on the puddles and a wind from hell. Five o'clock without fail every morning. One day his son came over the water to visit and heard his father get up. He stumbled down into the kitchen but the old man had gone out, so he waited, making up a fire and putting the kettle on, until his father came back and placed two empty pails by the kitchen table.
'What are you doing Da?' he asked perplexed, 'You haven't had any cows now for twenty years'
'I know,' the old man said, 'but I don't know otherwise what to do, and if I close my eyes in the barn and keep very still, I can still hear them breathing, and its warmth makes me remember home.'
I push you away so that I never have to risk being pushed away first. I won't let you know me in case I give you myself and you don't value it. I won't step out so that I never have to be betrayed. I won't let you comfort me when I cry, in case you laugh in my face, in case you didn't mean it.
Bloody hell I should raise cows. There's more shit here than in a milking house.
Your comments left are really sweet, surprised me on my coming back here briefly today - quite why I inspire them I really cannot fathom. I'm writing this to show I'm still alive - its just not really a good time right now. I'm conscious of coming over as a total wimparse here, so enough of my crap, and instead, here for you are the scrum boys in full voice - (not many of them worthy of a calendar, but their hearts are in it).
and here's the words in Welsh and English:
Welsh: Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau
Mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn annwyl I mi,
(Cytgan/Chorus)
Gwlad, Gwlad, pleidiol wyf I'm gwlad
Hen Gymru fynyddig, paradwys y bardd,
Os treisiodd y gelyn fy ngwald tan ei droed,
English: The Land of My Fathers
The land of my fathers, the land of my choice,
(Chorus)
Wales! Wales! fav'rite land of Wales! (Land! Land!)
Old mountainous Cambria, the Eden of bards,
My country tho' crushed by a hostile array, (The English!!!) (There, isn't that a cool anthem? Though translation always loses something. Does anyone have a better one? Except maybe the Irish and Danny Boy? I promise to stop being so bleak. I will try soon, to make you laugh. Just as soon as that rusty organ resurfaces in myself. Sorry. And I promise to try and stop saying sorry. Sorry.
January 24 Snow and hypocrisy - The Church and gay adoptionToday, snow and hypocrisy. Both served to bind me up more closely than I already feel. The snow came in overnight. Nothing was there at 1 or 2 am, just a bitter biting cold that made the tiny crescent moon look like an ice chip; only a raft of constellations across the dark as I stood and had a last thing late night/early morning? fag outside. It was so cold it made most things shrink, even my eyelashes, and you could feel the chill on your eyeballs as you looked up. This morning it was there covering the outside world, where it remained until about 2 pm.
The hypocrisy came from the Anglican Church, who have decided to demand exemption - along with the Catholic Church - from the new proposed law to allow single sex couples to adopt. It's not their opinion, which they are welcome to hold in this land of free speech, that angers me, it's what I see as their dishonesty.
Archbishop John Sentamu argued this morning on Radio Four, that 'Being gay is not a sin' (since when?) but that it was 'gay actions' (Ithink what was the word he used), which are a sin. I pondered on the possible meaning of this. Gay actions? Does he mean a specific brand of sexual practice? Well John, heterosexuals are increasingly into that too, and many gay people never are. Does he mean sex outside marriage? Well John, many heterosexuals are also into that. If this is the case, he'd better ban all of them from adoption too.
If, however, it's just because both partners in a gay relationship are the same sex - gay, then what happened to his first comment that 'Being Gay is not a sin?',,, or did I miss something here?
The other thing that bothers me, is that being gay is not on the list of the Ten Commandments. Lying is though - bearing false witness, so, does the church intend to ask that it is allowed to deny adoption rights to all who have ever told a lie? How about covetous folk? Folk who don't love the Lord their God with all their hearts...... and their neighbour as themselves? the list goes on. Seems to me, there will be no one left to adopt anyone.
Oddly, these things don't bother the Church at all. Not a mention. Divorcees also can adopt, just about anyone in fact, as long as they have opposing genitalia. This apparently guarantees that you are a fine parent (despite sad evidence in the adoption and especially fostering areas, not to mention the general population, which argues the contrary).
No. I think this quote gives it away: 'This (parliamentary wrangling) does no justice to any of those whose interests are at stake, not least vulnerable children whose life chances could be adversely, and possibly irrevocably, affected by the overriding of reasoned discussion and proper negotiation.....'
Ahh. So its better to let a child languish in council care - with all attendant figures on what happens to them, especially when 'released' from the system to fend for themselves at 18 - than to allow them a home with two loving people. It's clear that their concerns take in a sadly bizarre view that all homosexuals (especially men), live what is known as a 'lifestyle', which seems to mean that they spend their time having twisted sex with strangers, interfering with children and running around in women's underwear while popping uppers. Unlike the commonplace man of heterosexual origin who clearly never does any of these things.
There were also voiced concerns that Christian hotel owners may have to allow same sex visitors to book rooms! And all this couched under the umbrella of 'matters of conscience'. I would think that Bishop Sentamu, being a black man, would have some idea about such discrimination, but it appears racial prejudice is one thing, religious prejudice quite another.
Personally, not good enough. Too many lives are blighted, even ended, by the blind prejudice that leads people to hate themselves and others for their differences. I want to leave you with a video link that I saved from Geoff's blog (see right) some time ago. This boy says it all for me. (It may be slow to load, but it's worth the wait).
So. Snow. And me looking around and seeing what it covers. It's bright white, gleaming appearance covering goodness knows what that lies beneath. You had to be careful. The kids on the school field were picking it up to make snowballs, exposing the murky stuff that lay beneath. A dog turd here, a bit of broken glass there. Not all that glisters is gold. Not all the pious statements in the world can cover up the results of our actions and attitudes on those we plaster them over.
January 08 What a life, eh?'Well. What are you doing?' said my father.
'I just don't know' said I, 'I just don't seem to know where I'm going'
'Where is your compass?'
'You were my compass once, though I failed, totally, to follow the map you made for me. I'm sorry for that'
Dad makes his 'face'. The one that said he was thinking, and probably had something to say, but wasn't going to. I always picture him in that garden, the one I dreamed him in, though I don't know why. He was crap at gardening and left it all to my mother. He would wander round the beds with a cigarette (a vice he never surrendered despite losing part of a lung to TB earlier in life). Sometimes I still go and sit in his study and smell the air which is still redolent with smoke in a comforting, country pub sort of way. He liked to retire there surrounded by his books, his old medical paraphernalia (including a real human skull, which we used, as children, to slap a flat cap on, and, unlit cigarette between its teeth, chase each other round the house) - I bet the person who donated it to medical science before their death never dreamed of such a thing, but we learnt a lot by rattling its teeth and staring into the eye sockets. 'As I am, so will you be' never dreaming for a moment how too soon that might be for some of us.
To this day there are people's x-rays hanging around in drawers, and the hideous text books which put me off following him into medicine. There are also lots of sailing bits and pieces, the memoirs he'd begun, reaching only as far as his early life in the hills with his ponies and pet lamb (drowned by the local bully). He was an introspective, private man, driven by his work, and closed perhaps, rather like me. He was often disappointed by people generally I think, and probably also by his children. But he did say he loved me.
Now, I can feel his eyes on me. I can feel his disapproval. I can feel him telling me to 'get a grip', to get on with life, to take the tiller between my teeth and get up, out of bed, out of my head. I wonder if I imagine it? I wonder if I always did. I don't know.
I am thinking of giving up my job, but I don't know what to do.
Dad sighs.
'In the end,' he says, 'It's all silence. But he's giving me that look. In my head or not, he's giving me that look. Will I never get anything right?
Why the hell didn't we talk more, why didn't I ask him these things I want to know? But he was a man you could never get to the bottom of, scratch as you might. As far down as you got, there was always this locked door. Always that look, that you had to interpret as you would.
Why do I always seem to return to this? Maybe because I want him here so much right now. To sit in the drizzle with me, have a fag, give me that look. Take my hand as he sometimes used to and say:
'Ohh, I don't know. What a life eh? What a life it is'
December 04 Something like a heronThe other week, my evening class started back and I went. (yeah, or this would be a short entry eh?) I was a little late and while the guy on coffee rota served me, I looked round and realised there were only two places left to sit. One was a dining chair a little on the periphery which, being that it always was on the edge, I thought of as kind of 'mine', and the other was on the three seater sofa between two other members of the group.
Coffee man's notes were on 'my' dining chair, and I stood still for a minute before realising that there was no way I was going to sit down on the sofa. I'd rather have hung upside down from the central light fitting. Coffee man looked at me and must have seen something in my face because he picked up his notes and said, 'I think I have 'your' chair.' I blinked. We looked at the sofa, he looked at me and he smiled. 'I'll go there,' he said, 'It's ok.'
The evening wore on, but all the time I kept thinking about the chair and the sofa, and why I can't do that. About how stupid I must have looked, about what must be wrong that I'm threatened by sitting between two people (even if one of them was Diarmuid). At the end I went up to coffee man and said I was sorry about him having to sit on the sofa, but I just....... He waited. I waited. He smiled. 'You feel....... hemmed in?' he was throwing me a rope and I took it. I said yes that was it, he said no problem and we went home. (not together!) I realised on the way out that I'd at least actually mentioned it, and I'd said thank you. Like some sort of autistic child who's managed to make eye contact. I got a star on my chart.
For heaven's sake - how old am I? On the way home I stopped the car. I pulled over to the side of the dark road that leads home, lit up a cigarette, opened the window and looked at the moon. I remembered my notes from the end of last year's study. The 'note of intent' we'd all made. Mine read: 'I will keep taking the parmesan' No. It's ok, I haven't developed a weird habit (makes crap snuff - I know. Don't ask)). This came from a meeting last year where I'd refused to accept some cheese from a woman after leaving the stuff I'd bought behind in the shop. I was so adamant about it that it made everyone laugh. 'It's some cheese!' this woman said, 'not a pint of blood - cheese!'
They ribbed me all night, until I explained that I had a pathological inability to accept anything even approaching help or a favour, but thanks anyway. At the end of the evening she handed me the tub and said 'I know you can't, but you'd make me happy if you did, so take the bloody cheese.' Everyone was laughing - it was cheese for goodness sake, but really it was more than cheese. Sitting in the car, I felt really depressed. Suddenly my old armour was failing me. Always before, this magic armour would tighten and seal itself up at the joints, and we'd go on together because that's how things are.
Now however, I wanted to know why, and I think perhaps this is lesson sixty-four in this handbook I've landed. I've done a few, including discovering why I have the knee-jerk reaction of wanting to scalp someone when they make me feel powerless (which may save me from prison in the future!). When I fully grasp why I can't sit between two people, why I can't accept help, why I can't hug unless I'm having sex, why I would go to work when someone died and not mention it rather than have people know, then maybe I will finally let that go too. It's been amazing this process, like deleting failed programmes from your computer memory, but I'm really rather tired of it.
I can't cry with people either. I can only cry with you if I love you, and you love me. I'd rather die than be that vulnerable. There's only three people in the world I'd cry in front of. One of these is my friend J who is good with being bluff and silent and takes little notice. Last time, he just sniffed, and went and bought me a vast kebab from a van which should probably be condemned, which I ate in three bites (the kebab, not the van), and then called me a tosser.
It will come to me. I will find out what it is in a blinding moment of insight. Sometimes I'm so sick of being held in place by things that happened years ago, that weren't really anyone's fault. That I seem to lack the guts to say fuck it to. Fuck it. Who needs it?
Finishing the cigarette, I sat and looked at the moon for a bit, and then, something that looked like a heron did an ET across its face, startling me. Herons are not well known for flying by night are they? They are solitary birds who inhabit lakes and waterways and never share their fish.
Maybe this one was going out for some cheese? On the other hand, maybe it had just pooped out of the best party in heron land. Sad git.
November 29 No More TomorrowsOn January 12 this year, Tom ap Rhys Price left a London train station to go home to his fiancee. He was holding the information he'd got from a priest regarding their wedding details. On his way out of the station, he can be seen on CCTV cameras. As his brother says '...he appears to slide his feet on the shiny floor...... this was a sign that Tom was happy...'
He wasn't to know that he was moments away from being killed. He was attacked and stabbed to death by two street robbers, who chased him from the station. There is a long trail from where they met him, to only yards from his front door where he eventually died. They got away with a mobile 'phone and an Oyster card, and apparently, before they ran away, they took the time to 'mark him' on the leg, with a sort of 'signature', as if they were artists signing a canvas, as if they had done something to be proud of.
His fiancee gave a statement to the court to express the impact of his murder - something I wasn't sure of the value of doing, since I thought, murder is murder, whether or not you are a fine upstanding guy or a vagrant, whether or not you leave anyone behind - but after reading it, I thought it has value for the people bereaved, some small way of expressing their feelings, and maybe to make people think. Her statement, which you can read there in full if you wish, expresses beautifully her sense of loss and is remarkably free of anger and bitterness. The part that made me wonder is this:
Greed fuelled Carty's and Brown's attack on Tom but it is obvious, particularly from the trademark injury which they inflicted on his left leg, that they were also trying to play the 'big man'. I despair at their deeply misguided sense of logic - because it is not a man who attacks a defenceless person with a knife, or any other weapon, or hunts victims down in a pack - it is a complete coward - someone who lacks the confidence to take someone on an equal footing and instead feels the need to put themselves at an unfair advantage.
There can be no sense of victory for Carty and Brown over Tom - he never stood a chance in the first place. He was alone, defenceless, and a stranger to violence.
I wondered what it is that makes people think there was anything to be proud of here. What bizzare sense of twisted belief makes two young men think its manly to attack, two-to-one, an unarmed man? Why they would want to 'mark him' as a sign of their handiwork, as if it was something for anyone to be impressed by? I'm not even going into what is wrong with the mind of someone who thinks its ok to rob by force in the first place, let alone to kill. Even when I was younger and ran around with some ropey people, it was considered the lowest of the low to take on anyone in a fight who was younger, weaker, unarmed, old. Of course, we've always had morons among us - those who pick on, for eg. things like colour or sexuality as a excuse. Not so long ago a young black guy here was killed by being stabbed in the back of his neck just for the 'crime' of walking down the street with his white girlfriend and a mate. They were chased into a park where sentence was carried out. And a man was murdered on the heath for being gay. Morons. In the last few years though, there has been a rise in these street crimes, many of which are apparently done 'for kicks' or to 'prove' yourself. What is there to prove? That you are no better than a hyena (sorry hyenas) who needs a pack of others to take down someone weak and defenceless? What the heck happened to the idea of pride? The increasing use of arbitrary violence too - several robberies of very old people in their homes, where you need - if you must - only hold them still while you take what you want, have instead left the old people with smashed faces, broken bones and worse. The two young guys who killed Mr. Pryce showed no apparent remorse. Shortly after killing him, they were using his 'phone to call their girlfriends, and the only people they seemed to feel sorry for was themselves - hugging each other when their long sentences were read out - 'poor us' maybe? I do want to know though, what we do to change the idea that there was somehow anything to be proud of in such a cowardly, soulless attack, and what we are supposed to do about it? I don't want to live in a place where you can't skid your way out of a train station on your way home without looking over your shoulder and wondering if the next moment is going to be your last because someone values your life less than they value their own shoes.
November 08 Trouble at MillKatharine Jefferts Schori has become a bishop, and the news seems set to tear apart the Worldwide Anglican Church. As I looked at her smiling face in the paper yesterday, I grinned back, and now tonight at my class, what we were studying jumped out at me like a monkey with a tub of ice cream. In short, we were studying the role of men and women back in OT times, how the role and the relationship between the sexes differed between the Jewish, Christian and Roman societies. To begin with, that the societies were patriarchal. Aristotle's world held that '...the male is by nature superior.... the female inferior..' and women could only step 'up' when men failed to live up to their role. The jews held that God gave the authority to men. Now, is this really the way things are? Or have we moved on from there?
The biblical role of women has also been misunderstood - washed over by a partial understanding of a few lines of Paul's, and by some skillful Roman editing out. Women in Jesus's circle when they began to 'serve', weren't waiting on table. The word used was diakoneo - 'minister' - the word for priestly service, the same used for Jesus. It was not doing the washing up. The women around Jesus had an active role - some of the most important roles, and I think these were further edited out when Constantine wanted to make the formerly 'upstart' religion official, when it needed to be acceptable and fit the Roman status quo.
I think its about time we stopped considering people on the basis of their genitalia. Can we really believe that is seriously a consideration of the 'creator of the universe?'
Then again, this article bothered me. There was a photo in my newspaper - black and white - which I at first thought was from the war. Then I noticed that this was Jerusalem, where both Jews and muslims are protesting. The bonfires and attacks were not being directed at them, but but by them towards others. I would have hoped that people who know so much about prejudice and hatred would step backfrom these things. Sure, no one is saying you can't protest if you feel that is right, but why have the days not gone when we feel the need to do such things to each other for - surely - so little reason, and in the name of anything, let alone God?
The world is so vast and so small, look around and see. The shortest of glimpses will show that it's not so much what you are, as what you do.
I for one, am glad to see this woman made a bishop. Now we're getting somewhere.
September 18 King for a day Back on the blogwalk:
Have a great weekend and I'll see everyone on Monday.
This is what it said barely two weeks before this blogger died. I didn't know him or his blog, but it reminded me to think. Just before my father went up the stairs and died in his room alone, I said, 'you go up, I'll come up in five and have a fag with you if you like' I waited while mum made him a cup of tea. I played patience while I waited. I can't remember the last thing I said to my brother before he too slipped off, but I recall one evening someone saying 'Have you heard from **** recently? I think he should have 'phoned' and I said, 'No. Not for a few days, but that's not unusual. When there's trouble, he'll call.' Of course he never did. The next night I had a 'phone call from my mother. The police were with her and I wasn't. Even now I think, 'I'll do that next year,' 'I'll say sorry tommorow,' 'sometime I'm going to...' 'See you tomorrow, catch you next time, when I'm older/fitter/less angry' All those things. And sometimes I'm reminded that when you least expect it, there is no tomorrow, there's no time, there's no way to take things back either. Those things you said or didn't say. Sometimes when I'm cleaning the toilet and wondering if it wouldn't be more fun to be skiing down a black run, I remember the dark times when I'd have given anything to clean a loo just with peace of mind. His (King Tom's) last few entries too, reminded me of the letters of Philip Larkin, who logged his increasing stomach problems then his hospital visit with his typical gloomy slightly hypochondriacal tone. So. If I were King for a Day I'd make this law. It couldn't be written alongside the traffic rules and thou shalt nots of course, it would have to be a cosmic law, and it would be this: 'You shall never clean the toilet without remembering you may never use it again' When people aren't there any more, it's just too late. You end up shouting up at the ceiling in case they are floating up there and can still see you. You end up reading old letters and wishing you could reply. You end up old and wondering where the day went.
September 09 For whoever, my friendWith apologies to A A Milne, Piglet and Pooh. Oh, and especially rabbit (who I'm sure would never swear.)
It was evening in the Forest, and Piglet and Pooh were taking a walk together after a very long time.
'What exactly is love?' asked Piglet
Pooh smiled. 'Ohh,' he said, 'You'd like love.... it's really the most splendid of things'
Piglet considered. 'You mean like a sunrise?'
'Like a sunrise' said Pooh
'Or.... an especially nice sandwich'
'Definitely like a sandwich' said Pooh, thinking it must be nearly lunchtime.
'Is that why you were gone for such a long time?' asked Piglet, thinking of the whole summer during which he'd hardly seen Pooh at all.
'Yes,' said Pooh, 'that was why.'
'And now you're back'
'Now I'm back'
'Does that mean we can do all the things we used to do all over again?' said Piglet, dancing.
'I'm afraid not' said Pooh, 'that's partly what I wanted to talk to you about'
'Oh.' said Piglet deflating like an elderly balloon.
'You see,' said Pooh, 'I don't think I want to do those things anymore. I'm tired.'
Piglet nodded. He'd noticed that Pooh had been sleeping more often since he'd been back. He hadn't even come out for the picnic last thursday.
'Will you do the things with Christopher Robin instead?' he asked, trying not to be jealous.
'Christopher Robin's gone' said Pooh
'Gone?' said Piglet
'Gone.' said Pooh
'Why? What did you do?'
'Nothing.' said Pooh
'Nothing?'
'exactly' said Pooh, 'though sometimes nothing is a nice thing to do'
'especially if the weather's nice'
'Oh, the weather was very nice. We had a hammock'
'Oh.' said Piglet, thinking that a hammock would be a very nice thing.
They wandered on through the Pine woods, over the rise and out onto the hilltop where the trees drop straight off the edge and you have to watch your footing. Below the slope was covered with heather and they could just make out rabbit hip-hopping through the purple clumps.
'What do you suppose it would be like to fall off here?' Piglet asked, holding on to a low branch.
'I think,' said Pooh, 'it would be rather like flying'
'So, what will you do now?' asked Piglet
'I don't know,' Pooh admitted, 'I've never been very good at saying goodbye, or letting go'
'No,' Piglet said, regarding the low branch, 'It's not always an easy or sensible thing'
'But there isn't always a choice'
'There isn't, no'
'Perhaps I'm in need of some therapy?'
'Undoubtedly. I've always thought that.'
'Well,' said Piglet at last, when rabbit had vanished into a burrow below them, 'I'll keep coming here anyway, looking for you. You might want to just come and sit out with me sometimes.'
'Yes,' said Pooh, 'that would be very nice, though I might not say much'
'You never do'
'I know. But what I do say, I mean'
'I know you do.'
'And I know you'll always come,' Pooh said, 'however much I get it wrong. Whoever else goes away, like everyone does. I know you'll keep coming.'
'Why is that?' said Piglet, trying very hard to think.
'It's because you love me' said Pooh
'Oh!' said Piglet jumping up and almost slipping over the edge,'Is that what it is!'
'Yes' said Pooh
'Well that's alright then,' said Piglet, 'I thought there might have been something wrong with me'
'No,' Pooh smiled, 'there's nothing wrong with you. And thanks Piglet'
'That's ok Pooh'
'You know, you are a bit of a miserable bugger' said Rabbit to Pooh later on, 'can't you cheer up a bit?
'I can't' said Pooh
'Ok. Be a miserable git then'
'Ok, I shall'
'Oh shut the f*&** up!' said rabbit
'Ok,' said Pooh. 'I will'
August 07 Tuesday blog Walk (after a gap)Blogwalk - The Garden in Your Mind What pests haunt my garden? Many people say gardening is an ‘old man’s game’, something you do when you retire, or have ‘nothing better to do’ but this is not so. I think gardening is something you forget – you love it when you are young – digging and exploring, planting and gathering in. The tallest sunflower that you grew, the handful of runner beans from the seeds that you planted. It’s the first time you get to play God, to make, create, feed yourself from something you put in the ground, water and warm, and allow to grow, which transforms itself into something wonderful. And only those who are unlucky have no memory of lying in tall grass, drowsing to the sound of bees, tickled by the whispering grass. When I came to consider a garden as a metaphor, it seemed so apt. I tried for a mental picture composed of memory and insight, searching for the plant that typified my ‘pest in the nest’. I identified quiet corners, a place where someone made a bonfire of what was intended to be a quiet place, a section where something began to grow tall and beautiful and surprising, only to wither, or remain un-gathered. Plenty of those. No plant came to mind, except briefly perhaps, brambles. Then I thought – ‘You know the pest. You just need to be vulnerable to name it, and you can’t do that, because you know what happens’ – and there I had my answer. I have a photograph from a while ago, of a group of us who’d been on a study course once in Wales. There everyone is – in a vegetable bed, holding up lumps of soil, ‘look what we did!’ grinning into the future. Well, everyone but me. I was on the path next to the photographer. I couldn’t get into the soil bed and turn it over. Couldn’t take the risk. It’s not things on the surface that scare me, its things down below that I can’t see. I have a pathological fear that most people laugh at, but it stops me doing the most simple and enjoyable things. So, to extend my metaphor – I can hack and slash back the undergrowth, as long as the ground is dry. I can enjoy the flowers and the swing of a hammock, but I can’t dig deep and plant seeds, or even lie on the grass without concern. I can’t harvest the seeds I sow. I can only stand on the patio and watch others reap what I’ve started. This last year, I’ve realised that there’s a lot of hidden ‘bugs’ in my psyche. Things that make me react with a mental knee-jerk and lash out, or run, or hide in the shed, and like a miracle I’ve been able to recognise them, and once seen, they have faded away like dew. Except for one that goes down so deep, I can’t shift it. It’s been recommended that I try hypnosis, or ‘exposure technique’, but the knee jerk is too strong. I’m simply too afraid. Once or twice I’ve trusted people with the secret – and trust for me is another bug – and always I’ve been let down. They either throw it (once literally) in my face and laugh, or they forget how serious it is, and hand me a bag of compost that is literally heaving with ….. So. My garden is one where I can only look at the sunshine on the leaves, the grapes on the vine. It’s a garden that other people come into and take what I’ve planted because I’m just too afraid to dig down and harvest it for myself. I’ve had a couple of good friends who’ve been willing to stand on the edge with me, but almost all of them want to step on the lawn and play volleyball with the other guys after a while – and who can blame them? Sometimes I long to step off the pathway so much that I could scream.
August 02 stamp a message on my heartOn tuesday I went up to London. I woke up with a distinctly jittery feeling that I remember from what seems a long time ago. I think it was because of what I was going to do. I was finally of a mind to take my dad's stamps up to the specialists there and see about having them auctioned.
I've had them here in their special albums among the back layer of my books (yes, I have layers of books, going back in time) - and about once a year I take them out and look at them. I know nothing about stamps, some look the same but they're not. There in dad's writing are little comments - 'perforations misaligned, colour printing error (rare)' and so on, which I value more than the little squares themselves. It seems odd to think he wrote those things, and now he's not here. I've been worrying that they might deteriorate, or get stuck together. I worry that they are not being appreciated or looked after, but so far I have just put them back. Getting rid of them would seem like throwing something of him away.
I remember going to the odd auction with him - he always refused to tell mum what he was spending - not that she would have cared, neither of them ever thought to veto one another's pursuits - but he was amusingly funny about it. I remember driving all the way up north with him once just for one stamp - it cost him almost a hundred pounds, and I recall looking at the little thing and marvelling. It was something we did together. Just occasionally.
This week though - I've been taking stock. I'm getting better at not being held by neurotic reasoning. I figured someone else would take better care of them, get pleasure from them, and that if I took the money they make at auction and buy something that I love - a rare book, a painting, that that would be more of a tribute to him than this sentimentality. Dad had no time for sentiment. He was practical and quite down to earth. I can hear him saying now: 'OOOh, don't be so silly. Sell them. They're no good to me.' I checked with mum, as they're not really mine alone, but she agreed, so off I went with them, with this nasty disturbed feeling on what should have been an hour's journey.
Of course, me and trains. I got the one that was picking up a series of geriatric snails, and instead of two stops, we endured a total of fifteen. The photo below of one of them sums up my feelings on the matter perfectly. I passed the time with the crossword - got this one, bet you didn't! and managed to be privy to a heartbreaking mobile 'phone conversation across the aisle. Poor guy in tears to his lover - the whole story laid out to the carriage, but he was beyond caring. So was I. I looked out of the window and squeezed my eyes shut.
Well, I did the deed. Left them with the man, which felt like leaving a baby with the big bad wolf and then wandered out into the streets with no clear idea where to go. I turned left (why do Americans say 'took' a left?) and found myself on the edge of Trafalgar square, by St. Martin in the fields (not that there's many fields nowadays). I wandered round the crypt, then found myself admiring the lions and the fountains underneath good old Nelson. I took a picture of the controversial sculpture of Alison Leppard pregnant - by artist Marc Quinn. I think its cool. Then I decided to wander round the National Gallery and look at the paintings, chatting away in my head to my ever present muse, my friend. On the way I had a chat to dad - careful, don't do it out loud! - asked him for a sign that I was being a twat, and when I went into the bookshop in the Gallery, I turned round and there on the shelf in front of me was a book. On the book was a painting. A not so common painting. A painting which I had given mum in card form just after dad died. It shows a man with his back to the artist, one leg up on a rock, gazing out to sea. The man's hair was just like dad's, and he loved the sea too. I smiled. I decided to take that as a sign. Guess I am a twat after all eh.
Anyway, I had a snack in the cafe there and wanted to ask the waiter whether the serving staff were selected specially for their looks - all of them looked like they'd stepped out of the pages of vogue, GQ, Attitude - not a 'munter' among them. I had a goat's cheese and chargrilled chicken on toasted brioche for the price of a small continent and wandered round the galleries again until I was tired of that, then spent the evening in a bar or two - music and a little life.
I also partook of a small 'Waterloo sunset' - one of my favourite songs. Stood on the bridge and pondered. Stood on the bridge and thought.
Friday I find out what the stamps are worth. If only everything was so simple. I hope this creepy feeling leaves me by then.
  Effingham junction. (Quite, eff 'em all.)
Allison Leppard (thalidomide victim) pregnant, vacant plinth, Trafalgar square.
July 26 Diarmuid's socksI wanted to write something amusing or perhaps profound, having that itch to put some words down somewhere, as I sometimes feel the itch to put down paint or colour. It's so hot though - even though its become dark and threatening rain, the heat is worse, making you feel you can't breathe, that you want to get out of your own skin even though its all you're wearing, lying under the ceiling with a fan playing across your chest, not able to move.
All I can think of is small things - the little piece in the paper about two thieves who robbed somewhere and ran off with their loot only to find that they'd picked up the wrong bag and instead of a shed-load of money, had 'only' a large bag of strawberries. What sort of people were they? I wanted to see their faces, hear what they said. I wanted them to have sat down and laughed together, and eaten the stawberries just as they came, to have seen them as a kind of gift - a message to them, a new way of looking at things. I suspect instead they had an argument about who had grabbed the bag - what dunderhead thought a bag of strawberries felt the same as a bag of cash. I wondered if the beautiful smell of them had lingered, the stain of them round their mouths like a little blood where someone kisses you too hard.
I finished my psp game last night - a daft thoughtless bit of a thing that nevertheless kept me occupied. I finished it at 3.30 am (as the birds were getting up), giving a silent yay! then flopping back onto the sheets with the realisation that I had to be up in about three hours time. I lay there and recalled the last of my class study I'd attended that night. A night where we 'rounded up' the year, decided if we wanted to do the next one, and told each other what we thought of one another. I looked at Diarmuid sitting next to me and was glad that we were urged to be positive. (Not fake or schmaltzy) - genuine and positive. (I've wanted to pummel Diarmuid so many times over the last few months, with so many different objects.)
Saying this stuff was hard for me. I think good things about people, but I find them hard to say, and harder still to accept from others, for reasons too tedious to explain, which I've been dealing with. One of the nicest things said to me was this:
'If there's one thing I wish, it's that you could see yourself as other people see you.'
It was nice, and I could also hear it being said in another voice, and I smiled, and said, ' Thank you.' The other thing I learned was how vulnerable Diarmuid in fact is. He's someone who needs so much to be affirmed. Who makes out he's a better friend of our 'leader' than he actually is, who despite being immoveable in his views - 'I have thought about other positions this year - but they've just made me realise exactly why I hold my own' - is in fact probably more insecure than I am in many ways. I looked at his knobbly feet in their wooly socks, and some antagonism melted away - for now!
So, nothing funny for you, nothing particularly profound either, or new. Just me and my head. Sitting here with the fan going, thoughts a long way away. Brain frying in the heat. The hiatus is in a mood. It wasn't keen on being called a 'mere noun.' I told it that's what it was - a mere noun, and it went off and made some origami birds out of one of my drawings. I'm going to set them out on the windowsill to catch the rain when it comes.
July 07 We whisper at rabbitsThis place I go walking. A tiny, curled part of England, the same as its always been. As the old pictures in the pub show - a time before cars and computers. Little men in suits and hats hold scythes and cider jars and pose by a hay-cart. In those days the pub was a bicycle repair shop and houses, but it lay in the same little secluded bowl of church - on the site of a pagan temple - amid farmland and hush.
I'm being a good 'child'. I watch my mother eat a jacket potato -
"Are you sure you won't have anything?"
'I'm sure.'
"Someone's looking at you" (winking)
'Oh yeah? Oh, yeah.'
I'm antsy. I want to get up and walk. She finishes. I pay, and we go out.
The shower has stopped, and it's hot in this little bowl. Silent except for birds and a low drone of sleep and acceptance. She likes the churchyard with its ancient graves, and the gentle descent into the past.
"These are real lanes," she says, "like when I was a girl."
We walk through the narrow tunnel of sunshine. On the left are some miniature woods with a short wildflower meadow. Once there were bluebells. Now its a riot of butterflies - we count eight different kinds - rabbits, bees. On the right the hedge rambles full of holly, hazel, berries, flowers and punctuated by ancient oak trees. It opens to one side into a vast sweep of meadow - sighing grass cresting over into a sky violently blue. We see more rabbits, crows, white doves. She exclaims so loudly it frightens the bunnies.
'Mum,' I say, 'you may be deaf, but the animals aren't.'
"Oh." she says, even more loudly, "I'll whisper!"
The crows take off. I make a rusty kind of smile and stroll on, lost in something. She comes behind pointing out things here and there - a lightning blasted tree halfway across a meadow, a sudden gate that shows us a white chalk yard with stables where two horses gaze out. She stops to rescue an up-ended beetle, chattering unconsciously about the passing of time. I notice how soft her face is now, her grey eyes more watery. She looks so small compared to when it was she who walked ahead clearing the way.
We come upon a rabbit warren beneath a huge tree, and some more doves bathing in the puddle beside a horse trough. Swallows scream overhead and the heat swirls. Then there is another gate, another meadow of sweeping grass and a breeze which I lean into gratefully.
"Are you alright? You're so quiet. What can I do?"
I smile. 'Nothing. Fancy another drink before we go back?'
'I like you being around. Stay as long as you like."
'I can't really. I need to go sometime soonish'
"I know."
I also know that sometime she won't be making this walk anymore, that then it will just be me. This is just another place I will go walking with ghosts. I look at her smiling out over the field. That's what I'm going to remember.
We have to remember the smiles; the sound of people's laughter, their peaceful sighs. Otherwise we'd just go mad.
  June 23 Happy BirthdayToday is my brother's birthday. I wanted to say happy birthday to him.
The other night, someone said something to me about living with duct tape fastened over their mouth and nose so hardly any oxygen was left. While I was listening to this, a buried memory rose to the surface, of having a pillow held over my face one night until I began to see red dots on the surface of the blackness, and I ran out of air. I was trying to shout and tear the pillow off, and at last it was removed and I looked up into a grinning face.
'ffs you wimp, what's your problem, did you think I was trying to kill you?'
Well yes I did actually. You made me afraid a lot, and I was never sure quite what you intended, but it was your laughter that was the worst thing. It really wasn't funny.
Then this morning, I saw the date come up, and remembered it would be your birthday, and I felt guilty that all anyone seems to know about you is this sort of thing. I felt guilty that I've forgotten your birthday for the last few years, that I never visit your grave, that all I seem to remember now is things like that above. I'm not the same person I would have been if you had been different, and the thing I regret mostly about that is the impact its had on other people, through me. I'm still a wimp. I still wait for everyone to put a pillow over my face while telling me to lighten up. I'm still afraid to answer questions, or tell people how I feel, because the answer, however I phrase it, won't be the right one. Because I can't bear the impending duplicity, the smile-with-a-fist, I prefer to trust no one, answer no one.
Still. Today I think its time to put that aside. Perhaps its time to grow up, to remember that you weren't yourself. That wherever you went, between the injury and the alcoholism and the shambles you fell into - when you died, you still had those little matchboxes of seeds, labelled in Latin, and the shells you collected from the beach where you walked to watch the boats out at sea. Memorabilia of a life that never was, that you wanted to have, but didn't.
There's a photo of the two of us when we were small, making a sandcastle on the beach. You were older, and your face is turned down to the serious business of putting flags on the wonky battlements. My face looks out at the camera. I'm holding the flags I think. At that time, I was the selfish one, the baby of the family, and you were my big brother who could put the sticks in without demolishing the crenellations at the same time.
I want to say happy birthday to you, and I'm sorry that no one knows the things about you that were good, that got lost somewhere, that ended up in a matchbox on a table in an attic room by another sea-side a long time after. I'm most sorry of all that I haven't yet managed to say, 'it's ok. I'm ok. I'm big enough to forget all that.'
Happy Birthday anyway my brother. I hope you found a garden to plant those seeds in after all.
June 06 Tuesday blog walk - a toughieTuesday Blog Walk Topic: Blabby "It is my belief that in spirit we choose the circumstances in which we will be born into in life. That we also (In spirit) set certain goals to be achieved and even our own obstacles to overcome while achieving these goals of spirit. Holding that contention What are some goals that you feel have been prevalent thus far in your life and what characteristics have you had to overcome in order to achieve those goals (so far). Feel free to elucidate on current goals of spirit you are facing and what ego characteristics you are having to overcome to attain these goals?"
I’m not sure I believe this. If we are rotating souls, I don’t know that we can choose anything. I can’t believe any soul would choose the misery that some people live in. I’m not sure what I believe about previous lives either. (I had a conversation just last night about this subject with an online friend in fact). I know that there are things that touch me in a familiar way for no exact reason, and I know that meeting some people is a bit like coming home, but I don’t claim to know what this means. But. Taking the question as the one asked, I can say this: If my spirit has a goal perhaps its to be free of the inner tangle that holds me like an octopus and prevents me from reaching for what I want. I wrote that last night and stopped. For some reason this Tuesday’s blogwalk is a halter for me. It doesn’t want to be written. So instead, I decided to look at something a friend gave me. I don’t know if you’re familiar with, ‘The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz, but if not, have a look. In any case, this friend gave me a box of cards with the nutshell ‘sayings’, and I decided to take three cards today, to see if they could answer this question for me. CARD 1: ‘Transform your life’ When you refuse to take things personally, you avoid many upsets in your life. Your feelings of anger, jealousy – and even your sadness – will simply disappear if you don’t take things personally. Well yes indeed. On the surface this may seem glib. There are some things too deep to ‘disappear’, but for me, I know exactly what this means. Its one of the things this year has been teaching me. That many of the things I do, feel and react to, and in fact knee-jerks from the past, unresolved issues which still affect me now. I’ve been able to recognise and let go of more than one this year. CARD 2: ‘Enjoy Heaven on Earth’ Impeccability of the word can lead you to personal freedom, success, and abundance. You can attain the Kingdom of Heaven from this one Agreement: Be Impeccable With Your Word’ This means something to me for sure. In the past, since the bad times, I have tried to be honest. I never promise unless I mean it. I don’t talk behind people’s backs. I never break a confidence. But, the thing I dread most in life is to let people down, to disappoint, To fail to bring harmony to the garden. Sometimes that makes me hedge, Sometimes that makes me avoid. This is something I don’t need. This is something I need to learn. CARD 3: ‘Discern The Truth’ Don’t make assumptions. The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they are the truth. We make an assumption, we misunderstand, we take it personally – then we react by sending emotional poison with our word. This creates a whole big drama for nothing. Well. Anyone who knows me will agree with this one! Actually, this is what I do. I spent so long trying to work out others, think what was wrong, was it my fault, what could I do to restore peace? that this is what I did. I made assumptions. When I’d made the assumption (always negative towards myself), I reacted to it, usually by walking away (See The Miller of Dee).
Well, that was quite odd. Those cards were two of the cards I first picked when I was given the box. I shuffled the box well before I did this too, so maybe I’d better take notice. This last year in fact, I think I have grown more than in the previous five or so. I’m sloughing stuff like dead skin. Bit of a lame blogwalk from me I’m afraid. I found this oddly hard.
'What could a soul be, but a live light burning in the habitation of the heart. How delicate, how easy to crush. But even in its darkest hour it flames small in its delicate shell, as small as a universe, as large as hurt. The soul though, remains pure with an unquenchable light, always ready to burst out again and grow with love. if not this, then nothing.'
May 24 A hand on the shoulder'God is judgement! God judges the sheep from the goats' said Diarmud tonight. 'Ooops,' said I without thinking, 'looks like I'm f.........' Diarmud looked at me. A flummox went round the room and blew up everyone's kilts; I bit my tongue and managed to save myself: '.....finished then.'
And I guess maybe I am. The more I listened, the more I wondered, and the more I wondered, the more I wanted a drink, and the more I wanted a drink, the more I wondered. In a world where everyone thinks they are right, is there any one truth? Where there are so many different views, where does the truth lie?
Sometimes in the group, I have a lot to say, and sometimes I don't. Tonight I listened while people talked about their idea of God and predestination, judgement and love. Our mediator noticed that our ideas of judgement were very different; from Diarmud's idea of the sheep and the goats, the right and the left, the eternal bliss and the eternal fire and the 'simple' choice of yes or no to God, to Jackie's idea of a loving God who waits in the wings for his children to turn back to him with their hurt and be folded away in his arms. We had a time of quiet reflection, thinking about a favourite psalm. Mine was Psalm 121:
"I will lift up my eyes unto the hills
from whence comes my help.
My help comes from the Lord who has
made heaven and earth. He will not
cause your foot to stumble, nor will
your guardian sleep. The guardian
of Israel never slumbers or sleeps.....
....The Lord will guard you against
all evil; he will guard you, body and soul.
The Lord will guard your going out
and your coming in, now and for
evermore."
There was something rather desolate about it tonight. Amongst all the sin and judgement was me. Grand waste-of-space, master of cock-up city, who does nothing much, is nothing much. Sat there in the quiet with nothing to say, nothing to think. Sending up silent prayers to the only one who listens without end. Then, in the quiet - nothing much - just a sort of hand on the shoulder. The sort of hand your father (if you had a good one) might put there. A hand that says, 'No comment. You cocked up. You're a fool. You're the classic disaster, yes. But I'm here. Not going to say anything right now, don't need to.'
Sometimes that's all there is to hold on to. Because that's all there is between us and that huge hole that opens up in front of us.
Standing balanced on the edge of the hole, gritting my teeth, squeezing my treacherous eyes tight, mind as blank and painful as the moment of loss, sometimes that's all there is. And Diarmud's sheep and goats, his abandonment and judgemental finger didn't matter any more. A hand on the shoulder and no words.
One time years ago, I took a walk on the school playing field with my headmaster. He'd taken me out there because I'd shipped up in his office again for punching a boy who'd pushed me over the line that was constantly tripping me up at that time. He asked me, 'What on earth is the matter? I know we are virtually enemies right now, but still, tell me, what is the matter? What is really the matter?' And I couldn't tell him. Too much, too complicated, too much to articulate, and he hated me. I knew it. I stared at him. I wanted to jump on him and pummel him too. I was afraid I was going to blub in front of him.
'We're going for a walk,' he said, 'and if you want to talk, talk, and if you don't, don't'. We went out and we walked round the school field a couple of times while I wanted to talk and talk and talk, but couldn't. Too much, too complicated, and he hated me. I knew he did. When we went inside again, just before we entered the building, he put his hand on my shoulder. Eloquent things, hands.
It was raining on the way home after the meeting tonight. It was quiet in the car, quiet outside. Big, black, wet, and empty. Sometimes that's all there is.
May 19 The Nature Of Man'I don't know what to do father'
'Well that's alright, I've told you. In the end it all comes to this'
'And what is 'this' father?'
'If I knew that I'd have died a rich man'
'I love you'
'I love you too. Nothing you could ever do would change that'
'But I've got it all so wrong'
'Oh, fy annwyl, that is the nature of man'
The last time I was in Wales with Dad, we walked round my Grandmother's grave, watered the flowers, looked askance at the low hills behind us that had always been the same, and remarked on the loose slates on the old church. I'd been coming here with him since I was small and he seemed so big and all-knowing. Now he strolled along the path, past the old, ivy covered graves from the 1600's and back, into the newer part where the granite was shiny-new, and I had a sense of continuum and inevitability. He strolled back and we walked to the pub where I once had to wait outside, and we sat in a corner watching the fire and looking at the old sepia photographs, and he started to tell me a story about how he had once been cheated.
He told me how when he was younger and just starting out, he'd been working under a more experienced doctor, and they had a patient who was puzzling everyone. What was quite wrong, and how to treat him. Dad said he'd thought of something that was really quite new, and he mentioned it to this older man who rather pooh-poohed the idea. However, not long afterwards he heard this man being praised for his skill in considering this fresh procedure, how it had worked, and how he was now being asked to write a paper on it. He made no sign to dad or anyone else that the idea wasn't his, and he knew that anything my father said would be discounted and work against him.
As he told me the story, my eyes widened with surprise. He sounded so bitter, so freshly hurt, and that was just not what my dad was like. I asked him -
'What's this? Why now? After all this time'
'People are bastards aren't they' he said, 'what would it have cost him really to give me the credit? He was already successful.'
'But it was so long ago - what's brought it back now?'
'There are some things you never forget - and when you get towards the end of your life, you know what they are. Obviously this is something I've never really exorcised'
We walked back outside, stopping to look at the memorial to Wil Hopcyn, and then we headed for the car with him singing under his breath, letting the welsh come out in the words as if he wanted to shuck the elocution classes he'd been made to take to wipe out the 'peasant', and then we went home.
Sometimes when I'd get hurt or angry, he'd let me rant and then he'd say,
'Be gentle. People hurt one another, and there's enough of that. If you can catch it like a ball and resist throwing it back, you can stop it getting worse'
'But, if I do that, I might be sitting here one day getting angry and bitter about something that happened years ago too.'
'Oh, fi annwyl,' said Dad rather sadly, 'that is the nature of man.'
Sometimes, I really miss him.
April 11 The Gift of Forward LookingOk, Ok, I've been asked to answer my own question. I think, like many others, that one answer is always, 'nothing' because then we would not be where we are now. I think, if I could have the opportunity to come back to where I am, I would like to go back and change these things just to see what might have been:
First, I'd not have done some of the things I did when times were difficult. Some of those choices meant I hurt people. Some of those choices made long lasting, negative imprints on me. I'd like to see what I might be now, where, and what I might be doing, if I had not taken those roads.
I would have done things differently. Maybe I'd now be the writer, or archaeologist I wanted to be. Maybe I'd not have the guilt I have over the people I hurt, the regret over lost opportunities. Maybe I'd not be afraid of failure, maybe I'd not be the closed book I am. Maybe I'd be a better person, a braver, more trusting soul. So many things. Picking one thing, one point is hard. Perhaps if I could go back, I would change how I responded to the troubles we had. Yes, I'd change that. Perhaps I could have then been a light not only to myself but to others.
As it is, like everyone else, there are things I have now, maybe even certain understandings of other people, things I've learnt, things I am, that I wouldn't have if I changed the past. Maybe if I knew I wouldn't have them, even if I knew I'd have the things I originally dreamed of , then maybe like everyone else, I'd not do it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
How many times have you heard it said?
'If only I'd known beforehand I'd never have.....'
'Why couldn't someone have told me.......?'
'If only I'd had a crystal ball.....'
A friend of mine said this about her marriage the other day. 'If I could have looked ahead..' She'd just watched her husband drive off to meet his new woman, leaving her to pack up and move to a flat somewhere at the cheaper end of town. She was 'diminished', 'washed-up', 'rejected'.
When I looked back over what I'd known of their marriage though, I saw three children through the trees of Windsor Great Park, heard her voice breathlessly talking about their latest trip together, her guiltily whispered expressions of amazement at how good the sex was. I saw the sand in her hair, the whipped cream on her lip, their hands holding, the two of them on a blanket by the river. I remembered her voice one time saying, 'I don't know what I'd be without him'
It's like the woman who steps into a meadow. She's wearing her best floaty dress, the sun is high, the meadow is shining with flowers and promise, her friends are with her. As she takes her third step though, she slips in a cowpat and ..... zing...... down the sloping grass she shoots..... through another cowpat, right over a thistle, into a smal stream with a gravelly bottom.... bump, over a hillock..... through the air and.... down into another cowpat. All the time she's trying to stop herself, grabbing hold of the grass as she goes, shouting to her friends to help her.... until finally she slams up against a tree and comes to a halt. Soaked to the skin, covered in cowpatty and with an arse as raw as a hard morning in winter, she surveys the ruin of her dress and wails
'OOOooh. Why did I have to choose this meadow. If only I'd known, I'd have stayed at home' One of her friends catches up with her and grins. 'Well,' she says, 'We enjoyed the chase, and you must admit it was a hell of a ride.....'
The woman looks up and considers. What might have happened if she'd chosen any of the other meadows? She feels the tingling of her arse beneath her, and looks in her hands where she's still holding the grass she tried to stop herself with. In fact, she's got two handfulls of flowers bursting out of them, that she hadn't even noticed.
Sometimes we look back and wonder what we've lost, or what we might have gained if we'd done things differently. Some people seek to cover other people in cowpats to pass the blame on to them. Some try to see the flowers passed from one hand to another. Yeah, sometimes you hit a tree, but its always been a hell of a journey, one taken by no other. You did what you did what you did.
Our Ben didn't post a blogwalk this week. He's probably wrestling with the same sort of questions. We are some of his 'friends' who are gathered round his tree. If he doesn't post, and you want to, how about answering this question instead:
If you could change just ONE thing you ever did, or didn't do, what would it be?
April 04 Ben's Back blogwalk
How do you know you truly love someone? Is it important to you that that love is returned? Who do you love and why? W ell Ben. Is this one I can do in one sitting here? Without thinking? Maybe so, let's see..... to the strains of 'No one's sleeping' here goes... In my life, I've thought I loved a good few things and people. My first black beetle Norman, who died when I shut his head in the matchbox lid. I cried for him in a cupboard in my bedroom while I held him. Then I got a bee instead. I fell in love with someone in infant's school and gave all my puddings away until she went off with an eight year old. I loved liquorice and ate it until I was sick.I loved my mum and dad without anyone telling me what love was, what it meant, so 'How do I know I truly love someone?'Well, maybe sadly for me, I think I know that I truly love someone when they can hurt me and I'll stick around. I never questioned my love for my parents and they never hurt me, but certain others, well. I struggled with intense feelings of bitterness, fear and even hate at one awful time, while knowing all the time underneath that I still loved the person. T o me, love is something that endures beyond the moment. Sexual lust, desire, all that hot chillies stuff, doesn't always transmute into the pure gold of 'love', and when it does, it isn't always a good thing, a healthy thing, but real love is something you can't put aside like a well gnawed bone, its just there like a second skin, and it has to be worn away slowly by time or misuse, like a rock beneath the sea. That's how I know I love someone. I can't stop loving them even when they kick me in the teeth, and if its a romantic love, I find I can't think of anyone else.T he time I know I've gone off someone I'm romantically involved with is the time I find myself in bed with someone else. That's cue time for me. I can't run a string of hotties; it's like my wires run on a closed circuit.' Is it important that love is returned?' Hmm, well, if its not, it can be terribly frustrating of course, but true love is true love, romantic or not. Nothing much you can do. True love permeates your whole day - the leaves shining in the sun remind you of their teeth (just seeing if you're paying attention) - your first and last thought of the day is theirs, everything you do, is overlaid with the subtle presence of them. True love hovers in the background when you are brushing your teeth and tickles the back of your neck. (Or in the case of your mother, shouts at you to remember to reach the back ones). So, I guess if its not returned, that's ok, not much I can do about it.' Who do I love and why?' Heck Ben. Well. I love my family without reserve, those who are still alive, and those who are not. Don't know why, I just do, and of course, they're all lovable! Myself? No, not really. My friends? In a different way again, and one other person, because I can't help it. Because it grew over time, taking me by surprise like a night attack by stealth snails - slowly but inexorably. Because now I can't help it like I said. Because they are themselves, because, because.... there's no one reason. Do you love a sunny day because of the warmth? the sun on the water? the long warm evening while the moon rises over the trees? Just because.W hen you fall in love, everything about the person sings for you - even that long hooky nose becomes an object of cute desire - the long yellow toenails adorably eccentric. And even when they hurt me, the hurt is mostly for what I've done to them to make them act that way. There's no why in love, only a million reasons that the heart alone knows.'The heart has reasons that reason knows nothing of' Oh, and the best description of love I can think of, whether you're Christian or not: 1 Corinthians Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things; believes all things; hopes all things; endures all things. and here's William Blake
Well, didn't I ramble on. Anyone who has made it this far can claim a Mars bar for their trouble. Well done! |
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