The Impatience of Kings

The image of the sun represented in cards also looked, from my seated position, like a child's drawing: its rays like spokes of a bicycle wheel, in blue and white like a china pattern and not a fierce crayoned yellow.
A cold sun: the centre bare, no card yet set there, for they had only been dealt once and my hand was just about to place the first central card in its destined spot when the thought of the sun occurred. I hoped it wasn't a king.
Second round. Third round. Fourth.
It hasn't showered today as it did yesterday, when I was at this same stage: arranging the cards. There's been no pitter-patter against the window panes to arrest my attention and delay my appointment.
So...
A sundial made of cards. Yet no shadows by which to tell the time of day will fall across its face. It's already getting dark. Outside. Inside. Late afternoon light. A pink-greyish shade, that will with time grow deeper and darker. The pink will fade to blend with the grey; the grey will deepen and deepen, sometimes to an oily block of black, but by then my curtains will have been drawn and its transmutation to this: the dark of night, will have gone unnoticed, and yet its barred presence will be felt because the upright lamp's on, casting shadows on the wall and ceiling, and the circulating air feels colder.
Or is that just my imagination? Sensitive to the direction of the wind and to bright or muted light. Wherever I am. Regardless of the time of day.
However, light cannot change to an all-engulfing black as quickly as that in the three games I play. That comes after, in the hours set aside for writing. In that dedicated segment where ungovernable thoughts are mastered and where nothing else is permitted to interfere; in that all too brief period before the body vocalises its needs and I try to delay then resign myself to: a hot shower, food.
I could easily live on Spanish time. Or I do only feel this because I'm a couple of years off forty? My digestion doesn't mind. I eat carbs at nine. And feel tickety-boo.
I digress. For the clock face with its card numerals has no influence then. Its pause spent, its games won. The kings united and standing firm, two stern and two with more gracious expressions.
Yet in that suspension, in that gap of time where a door to all thought is opened, there's always a chance a king will forego his given moment to cause the loss of a life or a blow that signals death. That final strike, like the last stroke of midnight when any magic is undone. Everything reverts to what it was. The day unchanged. All because each suit of king made an ill-timed (though for them it was timely) appearance, thereby putting an end to the unfailing hope that maybe, just maybe, they'd be licked.
Just once out of three games. That's all I ask for.
There's still two more to play, so the hope though dimmed remains. And a king might in the next two fall in the wrong place on the clock face or in the pack, which will give the opponent the advantage, if an advantage in a game of probability can be had. It cannot be pressed or made, that's for sure; the odds are mostly against you. I think. Because I'm not good at computing that kind of thing, and I think a lot of it comes down to the shuffle, at which I think I must be poor.
I've grown more conscious of how I collect the cards. I gather them back into a pack in an unsystematic manner, divide in two and shuffle five times over, ensuring the corner of each card in each half overlaps with each other as I flick through, like one of those tiny books where the drawings form a moving picture, so they'll not be side by side with their equally valued cousins. This technique, however, needs perfecting, for in this USA printed deck the kings generally outwit me and appear all too quickly to take up their rightful central thrones.

Picture credit: The Shower of Cards, John Tenniel, 1832, Alice in Wonderland

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Misty Land

The frustration of not having a definite thought from which to start has combined with the fog of January. I want to write, I want to write, I want to write, these determined words if printed with a pen would stab the paper, the nib pushing through and so causing a tear or a hole. I'm not however applying that same forceful pressure on the Lenovo keyboard, though the temptation to do so is there. In the mind, which is inwardly raging and poking the clotted air. Further poisoning and choking it, because, if by some miracle, a half-baked idea occurs and is pounced upon then the pounce is too slow, for the intent changes mid-flow so that the whole article if completed is altogether unsatisfactory.
I could let the simmering rage take over and with both hands jab with one finger rather than tap lightly as I'm doing with all digits as if I were playing a piano and a piece I knew by heart and therefore didn't need anybody sitting next to me or standing beside the instrument to turn the pages.
Huh, bluffing. Successfully. But I don't know this score. I know nothing. The keys, of course, are helpfully marked with their letter, yet I don't know in which order they are to be played. It's an improvisation, which will in all likelihood be about nothing. Except filling up space with perfumed words, rather than those that leave a stink or unease. An awkwardness pervading the room, of the sort where shoes are looked at with increasing interest and eye contact is avoided.
Duh. I've just described modern life. Though it's phones that are looked at for no reason other than because...An uncomfortable feeling such as that above unneeded; it would have gone unnoticed anyway. Because surgically attached to people's hands, their gaze is always down, and their expression stupefied. Nothing else around seen or heard, and if their attention is grabbed their heads only lift momentarily before returning to the mobile screens they carry in their palms, like vicars on Sunday services expounding the Bible from their pulpits.
Are there still Sunday services? They must be...even in this largely secular and multi-faith society and, dare I say (I do!), era of useless time-sucking technology worship?
Before you think ERROR like a computer program, I did not mean to instead pound out 'saving'.
Ha! The minions on planet Earth have been fooled. They're so zombie-like we can soon make our attack; they'll never see us coming and we'll be in control in no time.
System down. Internet Explorer has stopped working...
See what I mean. Anything can happen when your bubble is a screen rather than real living: the small part of world that surrounds you. For God's sake, notice it before all of us succumb to being cartoon alter egos. Oh wait, too late, it's already happened hasn't it? And where the rest have gone, the rest will surely follow. Was that a nursery rhyme? Mary had a little lamb...Google it...is it important? No. Though tender lambs are sacrificial, and there are many more lambs on this planet compared to mutton. The old can be lambs as can the middle-aged. Actual young lambs are much more belligerent (these days), their white as snow fleeces harbouring overly righteous hearts which, with confidence, they lend a voice to. Bleat, bleat, bleat...They may be right (not in every instance) but can be tough to listen to, whereas mutton, so I hear (and I'm finding to be the case) can be surprisingly tolerant, having reached that place where they don't have to care. It's all gravy, one way or another.
See what happens when you refuse to let rage lead and suffuse it instead into a stew. Thickened, to a chunky soup texture, it's developed bite and some astonishing exotic flavours. I cannot account for it (there's not room to), and anyway the thrown-in ingredients came of their own accord. A pot-luck, which if started over would be different (as is the point), for that same spirit with which, some might opine, spleen was vented, no longer influences my mind or my fingers. The latter, you might like to know, are hesitantly hovering over the keys as if afraid, once again, of hitting the wrong notes and being lost, permanently this time, in a misty land.

Picture credit: The Opium Smoker's Dream, 1918, Lajos Gulacsy

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Penserosa

The details I'm about to mention have only recently passed, but you, reader, are farther from them. For you they are a year ago, whereas for me they are fresh, undimmed by time and Christmases to come. Not even the one just passed, where they will have receded and been replaced by those just made.
Twenty-eighteen has, in my time-frame, just begun, so that hasn't occurred. But like preceding years, in January 'the thoughtful one' (or 'penserosa' as I learned from Goethe) makes her presence known, more so than at other times, even if she, meaning me, is not that deep in reflection i.e. only fetching images back from an arm's throw away. However, on rereading (in your window of time), it will, I hope, feel like standing in the middle of a bridge, contemplating the water or greenery that stirs below, pulled ever deeper into the jungle of leaf or swirls of pond.
Hypnosis by Nature. And to induce that I must record these trivialities.
Trivial they will seem, maybe even puzzling, and yet offer, again I hope, amusement at this rather pensive, gloomy time of year. Other people's families or pastimes often provide merriment, though it might if it's yours – family or hilarity – be concealed.
Get on it with woman! Yes, but please remember I'm no Sue Townsend. Or Victoria Wood for that matter. I don't think I know what it is to be witty, not purposely anyhow.
I wanted to begin with 'Last Christmas...' but that always reminds me of George Michael, and as much as I admired the man, that song once it's recalled is a blasted nuisance. And as I didn't give anyone my heart, it's inappropriate. My heart, you might like to know, is a dried up old thing. Oh, it still goes, it's just a bit shrivelled and rarely expands as it might have once done in former days, which isn't to say it's not warm and generous but it stops short of loving (new) people, outside family, to that degree, where you actually want to offer up this mechanism inside you. To present or be presented with a figurative heart seems too much of an obligation rather than a token of love.
But let's not get on to that; how did we get on to it anyway? Oh yes, George Michael, and the perfect link to another George, a castrated, food fixated and hard of hearing George who didn't seem to know what presents were, nor care really. Though he was transfixed by my father's gift to himself – a mini model train set – and successfully caused a few derailments, and then later from his bed watched the locomotive with a sleepy eye, probably dreaming its attached carriages transported bone-shaped biscuits.
An elderly dog's first Christmas with us, three bored adults, then is the most noteworthy episode, while those that followed were mostly sole occupations. My father created more fake news of a political (and photographic) kind with a 'Vote 4 Jez' graffiti tag line and with Jez, the Labour leader, in a baseball cap, singlet and wide-legged shorts carrying a spray can; and then separately Nigel (Farage) and Theresa (May) playing Jack and Rose in that famous 'Titanic' pose and with a rather crude strap line.
My mother travelled between the kitchen and living room reporting breaking news or was, whilst preparing food, engaged with ITVBE's 'Real Housewives' (of any state or county) or TV quizzes, and if not doing that pouring over crossword puzzles.
I, meanwhile, was travelling too but from a seated position - to New York, to Italy, to Russia, to Germany, to Switzerland, to Manchester, England, and at present (the first week of January '18) to 1960s Budapest, as I continue to follow these book crumbs. And when I have a rest, for the revived Christmas addictions haven't yet abated, it's Kriss Kross or clock patience.
What remains unsolved is the two NHS 111 calls which we received late eve Christmas Day: the number they rung right, the emergencies not, and which I believe (research tells me) might be similar to Raymond Carver's Whoever was Using this Bed, so I advise you to read that instead, because I want to end, as I started, with Goethe, who apparently said: Our world is a cracked bell that no longer sounds. Mine does, occasionally. 

Picture credit: Emily, 1903, Lajos Gulacsy

All posts published this year were penned during the last.