The Godly Homer

In the spring of last year, during one of its brief and too-soon summer-like glimpses, I was acquired by Homer; for it is said you don't acquire Homer, Homer acquires you. And this, without meaning to rhyme, I found to be true.

I was gradually seduced, pulled towards these ancient tales and epic poems, first by Margaret Atwood's telling of Penelope, and then entirely by Adam Nicolson's personal musing, The Mighty Dead, the title taken from a line of Keats' poem Endymion. And though Keats is a personal favourite, I know more about his love affair than his poetry, just as I've mostly been aware of Homer through Penelope, the faithful wife of Odysseus, and Adam Nicolson because of Sissinghurst and his connection to Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, so you might say there was more than one magnet involved. Or that there were many iron filings which in attaching themselves to my person had weakened my, partially conscious, resistance, and thus caused the mind's compass to oscillate and alter its course.

I'm not sure which analogy is more compelling, nor which Homer would be: the greater magnet over all other magnets or one of the many iron filings, perhaps not ultimately pulling me towards Homer but some other destination: somewhere equally unknown but aware of that I'd tried to evade.

The attraction, however, was more subtle than instant; it evolved, book by book, as knowledge was gleaned - new, retold or revived - grain by grain until such a time when conditions were favourable for Homer to call, sweetly and unmistakably, in the manner of a Siren's song, and when I, lacking Odysseus's foresight, had left myself unprotected: my eyes and ears open, ready to absorb and be absorbed. Ready to be won.

What was I won by? I've asked that of myself. I was in a myth and legends phase. It was Penelope and her maids, the maids that Odysseus on his return orders his son, Telemachus, to kill. It was the similarities between Odysseus and the Norse shape-shifting god Loki. It was the enthusiasm (and the exploration and the reasoning) of Adam Nicolson. It was the mention of John Keats and how Homer enlarged his world. It was....it was...it was...neither one thing or another. It was everything and nothing. In particular. There was no Homeric moment.

In a sense it was as if I'd missed a part of the plot bringing me to this point: receptive to Homer's epics, like a lapse in continuity which to a reader is glaringly obvious and yet has been overlooked by the author and editorial team, not that I appeared to be the author either of my reading destiny; whomever that author was they had taken me in a backwards rather than a forwards motion, or possibly chosen for me the harder path, because usually you wouldn't open, let alone read, a literary appraisal before the text, though you might read it (or refresh your memory) alongside. But after enjoying prose based around these epics there was a demand within me for a more thorough examination (and explanation) of Homer, except the excerpts given, given as they were to emphasise a point, weren't therefore provided in book order (from either the Iliad or Odyssey) and so my understanding of the unfolding dramas was akin to Penelope's ploy to weave a shroud for her father-in-law to keep her suitors at arm's length. In other words, my grasp though improved upon was like Odysseus himself: slippery. And the verses, like broken-up pottery, interspersed with commentary would not come together as a whole; as pieces they were though sublime less valued by my mind, and in that way unlike archaeological finds where even a small shard (on its own without any discourse) can transmit something of a settlement and its people.

There was nothing else for it, to appreciate Homer at his finest and fully, in all his majesty and tragedy I had to read the verse form, although again they would be through somebody else's gaze. Nicolson acted as a guide as to which translations and adaptations to search for, and so deserves some of the credit, but it was Homer (or scores of Homers) that did it, that got me started on a Homer-odyssey, from which I emerged hungry for more (Greek myths) like Achilles (and his men) waging war or city-ransacking Odysseus.

Picture credit: A Reading from Homer, 1885, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (source: WikiArt).

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Why is That So?

In the kingdom within me there resides many questions, some deep and some less so; some that desire answers and some that just need to be asked. Those with an explanation I don't always care to listen to, for it's pondering the thought aloud that's important, as if in some way it's enough to prompt another's mind. Yes, why is that so?

It's not done, I can assure you, to prove my intelligence or idiocy, or to test whether your knowledge is level, higher or lower than mine, nor to suggest my thoughts are more provoking than yours. No, it's just a why? put out there. Which if I can be enlightened is all well and good as is if I'm laughed at because I've missed the obvious or made some blunder.

It's funny since as a child I infrequently asked Why? in a wheedling tone unlike my younger cousins who asked every few minutes, although more to annoy than to know, and yet now I question everything, though the questions I put tend to be more considered.

The asking itself (or the restraint in not) can be dicey. Like in an interview where at its conclusion it's inquired if you have any questions? Answer 'No' and you leave them with the wrong impression, one of disinterest or ill-preparedness; ask throughout and without being prompted and the panel duly answer and then towards the end act offended: Are there any more? The unsaid being: if not, then leave!

No, I haven't got the balance quite right, and some questions, I admit, might seem random because while they've been formulating the conversation has moved on (or has always been on a completely different footing) and now I'm taking it back one or two steps or in a whole new and unconnected direction. Though I mostly do that in more appropriate circumstances i.e. not those where the objective is to impress and not to flummox.

Is there some truth in that? I ask to confound... to trip familiars up with questions I know they probably won't have an answer to or a reasoning for. Again: why? To expand their mind or to suggest, despite my earlier claim, superiority of mine?

The latter notion's not pleasant because of course I want to state (and to believe) pure curiosity, in its simplest form, is the driver and not some snobbish intellectualism. Certainly the thoughts I have do not always lean towards the intellectual, and would be, I think, beneath them, whomever that term is applied to and whomsoever they happen to be, and therefore, if put, would be responded to with: Well, really!

So, perhaps then I do (deliberately?) over and under-reach my audience... perhaps my subconscious takes a perverse pleasure in it and from it? Then again, maybe I just think too much, so the questions come when they come, independent and regardless of who they're put to, as if there's an urgent need to get them out like busting for a wee and being nowhere near a lavatory, because if left unsaid to perhaps a more fitting moment the danger is that moment will never come about and so, in the course of waiting, their potency fades or you find yourself back-pedalling and recklessly inserting them into the discussion. Willy-nilly, and causing such diversions as to exasperate people and upset their narrative.

It might interest you to know I'm more successful with my bladder, which has, by those who know me well, been likened to a camel's. My pelvic floor more resistant to the dam behind its doors than the flood of questions my head muscles might have to contain; their point of release reached well before the stream, although the relief, which you too might have some knowledge of, is somewhat different. In one I can continue to attend to other things and in the other I cannot, but I'll let you conjecture as to which the mind or bladder belongs to.

Right now, my bladder is empty and my mind is concerned with how to give you a taste, a selection, of the deep and the meaningless questions currently at the forefront and of those that pass through: are asked but go unanswered. The best approach, I think, would be to allow them to flow in one continuous stream: whendidthenationfirsttakepeanutbuttertoitsbosom?wh y,ifJesuswasaJew,wastheChurchestablished?Andwhythenthedividebetweenthosefaiths?Whyd otheyalwaysshowEddieMurphytalkingtotheanimalsandneverRexHarrison?Whyisthattheyolks ofpre-packedhard-boiledeggsneverturngrey?

Picture credit: The Little Stream, 1890, Vincent van Gogh (source: WikiArt).

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Haps

What to do with all these observations? Of this and that. Those that commonly occur that you pay attention to but which have only just struck you as strange or in a new way, as something to remark upon, silently smile to yourself about or squirrel away for some future unforeseen use, which as a writer can be very useful indeed. And those that occur unexpectedly and so strike you as odd with immediacy. What's going on here then? and can be a source of amusement or pose themselves as riddles, waiting for you and only you to solve.

Some of this stuff you couldn't write, and yet so multitudinous and multifarious are they a story could not be hung on them or stung together, for if it was it would be a very tall tale. Although tall tales are often believed, despite the realities in which they're set seeming far-fetched and entirely the work (and at the mercy) of the imagination.

Sometimes history you weren't a part of, that wasn't made in your lifetime can appear this way: it didn't happen, those leaders and military figures never existed, that battle didn't take place at such and such a location, at such and such an hour.

That's not my view, wholehearted view and wholeheartedly given, because I like history, neither condemning or celebrating it, nor wishing the nation and its peoples rid of it; I believe it in and what it can teach and impart, if we let it; and also, well, because the history I'm part of seems more incredible and far less interesting, which I realise is contradictory but I'm that type of person. History that's made while you are living sometimes seems clearer long after it's been made and established, not when you're in the thick of it, though more likely than not this will mostly mean debating the topic rather than partaking in the decision or action. But then I'm also the cloistered type, of the sort that keeps abreast of such matters but rarely involves oneself directly though I might share my opinion with the TV or radio, as my maternal grandmother did and as do my parents. Then, later when we're together titbits, gathered for this purpose, are disseminated and general points are aired in our attempts to right this crazy world. Naturally to our own reckoning of how it should be.

But where was I? Ah yes, observations (haps); those are somewhat different. Distinctly random, though history is inclined to be that too. But what to do with them? since they mostly occur when you least expect them to, similar to a foul or pleasant scent assaulting your nose which you either hold (with thumb and index finger acting as a peg) your nose against or deeply breathe in as if it were a substance to sustain body and soul.

Foul: decomposing matter; pleasant: freshly baked bread. The obvious. Though, for me, wood smoke and bonfires also fall in the latter camp, causing me to open, not close, windows, which is surely not sensible, and some aftershaves can send me into raptures, so I have to be careful to not behave like a truffle-hunting dog or at the very least a woman who sits too close and sniffs lapels; the scent enslaving me even if there are no other attractions. More subtle perfumes, alas, don't have that effect. I say alas, because if this hap was more frequent then perhaps I wouldn't respond as I do; perhaps I'd grow immune, and only be drawn by smells less hazardous to health and safety. Perhaps unassuming men would be safe from me.

Health and safety. Oh, how I loathe those words! They now consume everything in their path. Act like a flood or a fire, except without those elements (or any that might cause thousands of pounds worth of damage) in evidence.

Our culture loves extremes.

While I enjoy those little events that take one out of oneself; a minor blip in the ordinary that doesn't make your heart thump and doesn't have to be accounted for, as to to why? and how? You take note; they pass. They may cause you to laugh or seem to smile idiotically because nobody else has noticed, or reacted to, them. Sometimes they can seem just for you, celestially arranged. Unless you've convinced yourself that your penchant is for the small; those small but nonetheless observable haps that are there for all to see, if only they would see. Lift their eyes from the palms of their hands, from screens and hand-held devices.

Picture credit: Face by Hand on a Red Background, Fernand Leger (Source: WikiArt).

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Boy

Awakened to the knowledge I look bloody awful and could look so much better should I clothe myself in a manner more flattering to my physical frame I thought I would be compelled to act on it: hire a personal shopper or at the very least make off in the direction of a department store, but no, I merely acknowledged the fact and did nothing.

I'm indifferent to clothing, my own, others' and the dying-to-be-tired-on-and-worn that sit on racks or headless shop dummies. I don't know what suits, I don't know what doesn't, and nobody, possibly in the whole of the Surrey county, has anything resembling my figure. I'm twiggy, an ironing board. The top half can't make up for or balance out the bottom section or vice versa. Nothing hangs right or hugs in the right places. And, although I'm sure it won't surprise you, I don't do fashion, because I don't think you can have comfort – as in cut and feel – and still be stylish.

But then what I took to be passable clearly wasn't.

Oh God, is that how I truly looked that day? Why on earth before I walked out the door did I think that ensemble was okay? Long and narrow with no conceivable or even false impression of shaping, and yet I had no notion of that until I later viewed snaps of the occasion. Well, does it matter then? you might say if you had a good time and nobody stared or remarked upon your willowy frame or style of dress, and you yourself didn't feel your attire was distinctly unflattering. Yes, that's a fair point, but what hit me after was the realisation I hadn't, that my perception although not way off was marginally different to what in actuality it was. I hadn't realised it looked quite that bad, that I looked how I've long dreaded to look, like an overgrown yet-to-develop schoolgirl, complete with the obligatory ponytail and uniformity of colour, particularly when once upon a time I observed that in an older adult woman and decided, firmly so I thought, I would never return to or become that. But then she probably didn't see it either – it coming or its permanent presence.

I used to be described as slim, then lean (there's no spare fat on you) and now skinny. Of course I'm aware; I do not see me differently, to how people see me, in a mirror: a long face on a long neck into a knotty clavicle, to a flat chest and narrow hips unsuitable for child-bearing and a stomach that's a bit less flat and soft, into a droopy pancake-flat bottom supported by stick-like legs. And with bones that jut all over like craggy rocks in the sea that go unnoticed then appear and cause boats to run aground, and their peoples to drown.

Clothed: an exceptionally long torso with gangly arms the same width from wrist to shoulder and legs that fail to make any statement and only make me average height. There, I've just described a sapling; an accurate picture of now but not of all time.

At one stage, I was, though still slim, more shapely and more at home in my skin, but then I was younger and plumper, my flesh firmer and boosted with moisture. Now it's just dull and dry and reacts sensitively to all weathers and all situations. It's an emotional creature, entirely separate from my own less revealed emotions. And so as figures change (or our perceptions and acceptance of them) my dislike and discomfiture has only grown, like having thick wavy hair (which I also have) and wanting the straight kind that shines and hangs curtain-like, because while waistlines have expanded my figure, in comparison, appears more elongated and unreal as in not what people have adapted to or want to see. It's all about meat and curves. Real women. The hourglass and the apple, not the boy.

'...an airy slim boy in shrimp-colored tights...' and blue silks and dainty laces and ruffles, with long yellow curls, like Clarence, the page, in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, except he was indeed male (and not a female in disguise) who would probably be further modernised as a dandy or a Byronic romantic. The likes of Spandau Ballet or Duran Duran. That pretty description would never be given of a woman with a boyish form, though the 'forked carrot' comparison might still be made. (p.16)

Nobody wants scrawny. The scrags, of the kind you might save for a stock or stew, which without embellishment (padding and deceptive lines) have no prospect of improvement.

Picture credit: Silhouette Boy and Bird, Hubert Leslie, as photographed by P R Francis.

All posts published this year were penned during the last.