Gold Star

Everybody has one teacher that inspired them, made them what they are today. Do they? Because speaking for myself I'm not sure who that teacher was. Or even if I had one. I had plenty of teachers who taught – some who taught well and some who had absolute control over the class - and plenty of teachers for whom I had respect for – I've always thought well of the profession – as well as some I showed respect for but in actuality had none at all, but none that schooled in me a passionate interest for a subject or help me nurture an ambition for I didn't have any of those, and none subsequently either. There were goals but they aren't the same as none in the end led anywhere – to a career; they were mostly finishing points: a classroom test, coursework or exams.

Some teachers saw something - A light? A fire? - in me I didn't see and have never seen; some saw in me the capability to do great things: to sit A-levels and withstand exam pressure (I disagreed. I knew I wasn't capable then and proved it again years later), to specialise in English Literature or Religious Education. Ding, ding! The battle lines drawn between two teachers - one who always called me by my surname thinking it was my Christian and which knowing she meant me I always answered to, and one who was too forceful with her feminist enthusiasm to have me as her student and who I knew I would only disappoint if she was declared the winner. The conclusion was: I disappointed both. I called the fight off and instead opted for a vocational subject and multiple choice, which pleased my domestic science teacher who had quietly sat in the background and observed.

So I did have teachers that championed me; I just didn't share their faith. And I still struggle to, to understand as well as to partake of it. I like to learn but I've never been a fan of the classroom. I don't want to contribute and I hate being forced to. I like to absorb and to be left to it, and I absorb much better without that fear of being singled out for a question to be put to or to in some way publicise my comprehension of the topic. Dissection has always put me off. And I've always worked more successfully on my own, entirely on my own, in a room of my own with no other niggling distractions. I excelled at homework, well, if it wasn't maths or science related, but that all stood for nothing when put in a hall with rows and rows of single desks and single chairs where we were to demonstrate our knowledge under timed conditions.

I aced some, in others I did okay, in one I barely passed, in spite of all the extra mentoring and Rescue Remedy.

My Maths teacher had tried his best and given up, and as for Science, well, it was obvious I never had the aptitude for Physics or Chemistry, though I did have a very patient teacher. My Biology teacher - she of the raven-black hair and a hard exterior like a boiled sweet – scared the hell out of me. She never softened towards me, nor anyone else, and make correction after correction, in spiky lettering, with a red ballpoint pen. I longed to have kind but firm Mrs Jenkins and envied all those that had their lessons with her. Jolly Miss Smith for History however made up for that hard luck. Her love of history was catching. I was genuinely sad when she retired and another teacher also by the name of Smith took over her class. Younger and just as passionate – as most History teachers seem to be – but with nothing of the previous Miss Smith's nature.

Yes, I always found it difficult to part with favourite teachers, just as much as I found it difficult to like others, although god knows I tried. Ms Clark, a PE teacher, was particularly hard to like. She was all masculine energy, with no soft edges anywhere and a bark like an army officer's. And I'll never forget Mrs Bone, a primary school teacher, who reminded me of Miss Trunchbull. You never knew where you stood with her: was she going to be nice or horrid? As for Herr Worth, he, in many ways, resembled Mr Bean: very likeable but comic.

Not one teacher, in my experience, was head and shoulders above another. I did the work, I put in the effort, as well as, at times, the tears of frustration. A gold star, if I had one to give, would go to the teachers' pantomime because hilarity, at their expense, was guaranteed, scripted and unscripted. 

Picture credit: The Teacher, 1933, Helene Schjerbeck (source: WikiArt)

Written January 2020.

The Mouse of Frankenstein

A little black mouse sat above my right breast for an entire weekend last January. A woman whose pet it was put it on me and told it to stay, and so it did.

It made a nest without me seeing and slept for forty-eight hours. My skin was the sheet on which it lay, my collarbone its pillow and my layers of clothing its bedclothes. In sleep, its eyes (and I presume it was in possession of a pair) were closed – I never saw them open nor in dreaming flutter; when I checked beneath the covers its heart was the only part that winked at me. A tiny heart which at its centre flashed green. On and off, on and off, every twenty to thirty seconds, with a faint or strong beam depending on what illumination I myself was under. I mostly looked down the neck of my jumpers so as not to to disturb or distress it. I never did; it never once woke up from its deep slumber, and therefore afforded me many opportunities to study it. For I was drawn again and again to its heart, though it would be more accurate to say this, for although I'm no biologist I knew it wasn't in its rightful place. It had obviously been put there – by whom? - so possibly it had two: a scientific and a natural heart, or the scientific had for experimental purposes replaced the natural. It had a black button, of a different shade to its own black colour, sewed to its body too, which the woman, I remember, said I should press should there be any problems i.e. unusual displays of behaviour, and these too should be noted with date and time (using the twenty-four hour clock) of occurrence in a logbook.

I didn't think of it then, but I've wondered since whether prolonged sleeping was one such display?

How should a mouse usually behaved? I haven't had much first-hand experience of rodents unless you count hamsters. Of second-hand knowledge I had some from Beatrix Potter tales, although I don't think you can swear by them that that's how mice conduct themselves. I didn't for one moment consider, for instance, that this mouse was a tailor from Gloucester. Nor that it might have worn itself out making a dress for a lady mouse, who when the dress was ready admired herself in a magnifying glass, and saw, from behind a screen, that all was to her satisfaction. No, I refused to let my (and Beatrix Potter's) imagination run away with me.

However, it did give me an idea, which at the time I attributed to my intellect and not as I do now to the image of the lady mouse: I used a mirror to inspect my sleeping mouse guest further. It was then that I noticed that quite aside from the stitched button it had three tails, all of different lengths and each unusually long – one snaked its way over my chest and down to my waist – and a tattoo of an archer (a torso with a bow and arrow) in red ink on its body.

The tails I felt I could account for: they were a birth defect or a genetic mutation. Perhaps its mother when pregnant had eaten food laced with a toxic substance. But the archer...well, that was more difficult to speculate about: how does one tattoo a mouse? I didn't think it likely mice frequented tattoo parlours, man or mouse-run, and so it must have been done to it, perhaps under duress, or at least without its consent. I very much doubted any mouse would have chosen to have an archer, aiming an arrow, inked on its body, but then (and this I say with hindsight) I knew and still know next to nothing about the world mice inhabit. Nor did I know (and I never did subsequently find out) how the woman who put it on me came to be in possession of this mouse. Perhaps it was a rescue; perhaps a tamed house-mouse. Perhaps it was one of many; perhaps this woman did this all the time: planted perfect mice-guests on people. A mouse for the weekend Sir/Madam?

I knew even then I would never get to the bottom of this mystery: the woman, the mouse with its quiet sleepy behaviour and unusual appearance, the tattoo. The latter 'clue' the most curious of them all as it made me think of mad professors doing goodness knows what or a secret police operation, conscious as I was (purely due to its position) that I felt tempted to talk into it like a walkie-talkie. If the mouse at 11:20am on the Monday, after exactly forty-eight hours of uninterrupted slumber, hadn't suddenly squeaked – eek eek eek – and promptly died, I may have broken my resolve not to and spoken into it: “Testing, testing...”

Picture credit: Lady Mouse in Mop Cap, 1902, Beatrix Potter (source: WikiArt). 

A Thin Thread

I live by and on a thin thread. It neatly sews everything – all the pieces of life – together and just as neatly and unpredictably gives way; breaks, with one end still tightly wrapped around a finger and the new, frayed end dangling in mid-air. The felled end, with its thoughts, its ideas, its interests, lying in a heap on the table underneath, on the floor below. Their import lost, their value swept away. The chain once damaged is beyond repair. That chain, a new one will quickly form, until it too will break apart or vanish when made use of. When each bead's been explored, when each petal of a daisy has been pulled off. When the hour has been told on the dandelion clock. Puff! When I've been told whether I do or don't like butter, and when my hands are done with flower milking. When even the ants don't want to play, don't want to carry or march, or investigate an obstruction in their path.

The day has gone, the light has faded. Night has come, its hours are slipping by. Time moves quickly when it wants, never when you want it to. It has moods, just as you or I. It undoes, it influences. As do art and books and music and conversation, good or bad. It, they, corrupt. Change, in subtle ways, what you were working on. Something new emerges. But is it novel? Its not what you set out to say, it's not how you wanted it to close. It's not what you intended, but there it is.

A gap, where your ideas are worked up but not worked upon, alters the whole course of the whatever you're working on. Sometimes in the mind alone and not in any physical, visible form. Then you return to the work in progress and the words, ideas that seemed so right then seem so wrong. They leap off the page, they run away, they hide, in plain sight, from you. What you had, maybe just yesterday, has been lost. It refuses to be added to, and only allows itself to be tinkered with. The fire with which you wrote has dampened overnight and it doesn't appear as though it will be reignited. A junction will insert itself, which to you will be obvious and so you assume to everyone else.

But there's nothing to be done. No cure. The thread will not, cannot be, picked up. And so what do you do? You carry on, because that's the recycled slogan isn't it? You carry on carrying on. You could scrub it, but the first part of the work is good. Short, too short to be anything, but good all the same. However, the you that wrote it is no longer in evidence and cannot be called upon. There must be a way, there has to be a way to finish it. Before the flame dies, if it hasn't died. Before the bats announce dusk - because that's what they do at least in your head if not in nature - the piece will again be picked up and the same needle that yesterday was weaving in and out will be threaded with new thread.

Pop is at the window watching flitting bats circle against the backdrop of a reddened sky. You see that in your mind's eye, as well as you standing next to and a little behind him. You as you were. Him as he was. Then. Now it's just a picture. The house is not his house. The house is not part of the family. The house has for some years belonged to somebody else. The bats have disappeared, no new descendants to replace the old. This will be thought as the thread recommences work or threatens to snap and undo any links that had been made earlier, in preparation.

Preparedness fires the imagination, but the imagination too fired is a hindrance. For when the time comes to make sense of it, nothing can be made sense of. A new puzzle to grapple with or to forget and tear up. By thinking and continuing to think before the thing is complete you have stressed and strained the fabric. It looks pinched in places. The thread too tight; too loose in others. You have no idea of what you're sewing. But sew you must, whether it be mending or making. The thread itself doesn't have an opinion. It can be corrupted, it can be interrupted; it doesn't care. It enables hands and voice to imitate or to draw from its own well. It disables thought and judgement. It is a wave, with its own tide. A tide that never tires of reinvention.

It's not the thread of a novel; there's too many of them. It's not even the thread of a short story, for it breaks at will, at random, and prevents the ending, ends it with no ending. These thin threads I continue to take up but they can't be the thread of life-work. 

Picture credit: The Mice Sewing the Mayor's Coat, 1902, Beatrix Potter; Illustration for The Tailor of Gloucester (source: WikiArt).

Written January 2020.

The Howling of the Dogs

In the pitch black night there comes a yelp. Followed by another and another, then a chorus of them, all yapping and yelping, their voices thrown to the wind, to the sky, and then returned to them.

Adults and children, half-asleep, shiver in their beds as much as from the cold as from the disturbance. Yelps mean only one thing. A series of them means a long howl will shortly follow.

These yelps aren't the bark of foxes, and as it's night they can't be hounds excited for the chase, the kill. The howl, that will come, won't be that of wolves either. It will be dogs, unseen dogs. Though of what breed nobody knows. Legend says these dogs are large or of medium build; able to pull like a Husky and protect like a terrier, and bred for a witch's use only. Their howls signal her approach.

These familiars run ahead or alongside, or pull the sleigh on which she'd ride if she was in native land. It is said her home is Lapland, though others claim it is Thessaly. In Thessaly, she would, I believe, run. Run with the dogs. Who might urge her to run faster and nip at her heels. She is not Mistress then, she is one of them. Just a woman who runs with dogs. In the dead of night, when the undead awaken.

When she's abroad, the moon is Queen, just like Marlowe says; when she's home or visiting another land, the moon is Shelley's: a dying woman. Lean and pale, wrapped in a gauzy veil, and tottering feebly in and out and amongst the clouds. In layman's terms: the moon as woman hides. Her power, and indeed her position in the sky, weakened by a witch's presence.

Darkness, the wife of Chaos, laughs. Adds the echo of her laughter to the howls of the dogs. Sometimes she shuts the dying woman Moon in her chamber so creatures of the darkest, deadliest night can do their worse: instil fear in the beating hearts of men. All men. And their children and their children's children.

Darkness's daughter-in-law Night prefers an firmament with pinpoints of light, but darkness must be allowed, for her child Light must rest or have time to play with his sibling Day. A night-hag is, therefore, a necessary evil, one that her father-in-law Chaos has permitted. And found, like his wife, pleasure in.

There are other signs, besides the dogs and the moon, to the night-hag's coming. When it's as cold, as Toni Morrison was fond of saying, as a witch's tit. If you've not heard that quip you're not keeping the right company.

And if anything of yours too shrivels up then that's a sure sign she's on her way. She brings the cold to the warmest of countries. A sudden drop in temperature, a chill air that clutches at throats; a bitter wind that chafes hands and strips cheeks of their blush. She spoils even the fairest of complexions.

And yet they say, those that have seen Her (or one of her kind), she is not a hag. Witch she is in name alone. Her good looks will blind the freshest youth, the oldest man. Her sweet temper will beguile the cleverest young lady and the wisest of women. If that does not, her black dog will. For, in these sightings there is always mention of one at her side, though the descriptions of this companion are vague: wolf-like, mastiff-like, hound-like, hunting dog; small and playful, a lady's dog. But always black. A deep, rich black coat.

The oldest, the cheapest trick in the book. Beauty and beast. Beast and beauty.

Victims have been snared, victims have been spared. There have been disappearances; attempts have been made on lives. Those snared, (we presume), did not live to tell the tale, any tale, whilst those spared were toyed with and drained of any mental capacity to remember. 'A beautiful lady all in white...'; the rest a blank. A dream, a nightmare that cannot, even with the probing of the best doctors, be recalled.

Survivors, unable to tell their tale, will feel the cold, a life-long cold. Their pallor a blueish-white: lips, fingers and toes. Their skin so thin, all their veins show. Black dogs, or ghosts of, camp under their windows and howl. For a creature of Darkness has kissed them.

Picture credit: Woman with Lyre and Dog, August Macke (source: WikiArt)

Written January 2020.