The Nitpicker

The nits were big, the nits were small. Mothers and babies. Mothers-to-be with their unhatched eggs. They either crawled rather ponderously, scurried in front or behind, or rested but remained alert.

A strand of hair swayed in a breeze. Calm, a moment of stillness, before teeth were raked through as if hair were wheat in a field, and fingers, as deft as swifts, teased, undid further knots, plaited, tied.

The nits disturbed from their perches, uprooted and swept to a new area. Dislodged. Resettled. Mothers and children separated. Eggs clinging to home, abandoned.

The eggs will still hatch. The children of nits do not need their mothers. They are resilient to tremors and floods. Surviving, against all odds. With human as host, human as transport.

Indiscriminately. Their host's identity disregarded: boy, girl, adult male, adult female, dog. Some prefer a shiny clean home, some just want a home, any home, in which to propagate.

These nits I speak of are not the species of nit you think I'm speaking of. Although they are picked just the same: turned over, their legs wiggling and examined, then destroyed. Between thumb and finger; wiped on a square of tissue paper. Monkeys might, I imagine, pop them in their mouth. Pop! Grin, chatter. And repeat.

Groom and be groomed.

An exercise that can be strangely satisfying, but which only fires the blood; releases, in mortals, cortisol and not oxytocin. Tempers flare, hair is yanked. Voices are raised above their usual level. The atmosphere is hostile, crackles with electricity.

Jove, however, does not appear, make his presence felt with a thunderbolt or fork of lightning. No, the electricity comes from, and is mostly contained within, the one with the nits, who at times may also be the nitpicker.

Like the egg and chick, with this type of nit nobody knows which comes first. And with conflict, both within and without, sparks can then fly like Vulcan's fire. So that if such a god exists you wonder what it is he's making? And for whom?

Passion, roused or raised, needs armour or chains. Vulcan, or if you prefer Hephaestus, the Blacksmith God, is the master of melting, hammering and beating metal to protect, to defend and bind.

Nits, like these, though microscopic, have the power to make people rant and rave, akin to the frenzy once seen in worshippers of Bacchus. So the skills of Vulcan are desired. Of blacksmiths, however, there are not many. The sounds of a forge rarely ring out.

Rage does, in all its degrees. In towns and cities. Urban and countrified. Suburban and pastoral; bordered by sand and sea. People afflicted with nits talk to their TVs, to voices issued from speakers.

Pick, pick, pick, like a hen chucking corn, at the commentary; gobbling and gobbling and finding fault. The programme itself doesn't matter, the narrative of it does. The narrative has flaws.

The volume is increased to a shout or decreased to a whisper, dependent on whether the nitpicker wants to answer back, with a lion's roar, or soften the speaker's tongue. Mute only when they'd like to rip the tongue right out, as Tereus did to prevent Philomela from telling, and find they are denied this mutilation: the real execution and the bloodiness of it.

The narrator shapes words, the viewer blusters and babbles. The opinion-giver makes audible sounds, the listener echoes these back, in a sarcastic tone and then adds further opinions of their own.

The curses grow in length and pitch; like a worm cut they wiggle. Alive, divided; still alive, soon-to-be dead. Will they be heard? Not by those they're aimed at; blows like these aren't intended to hit the one being criticised. Rage, if mild or exercised in the right manner, does not need a flesh-and-blood victim, or something to pour itself into.

But through. Walls have eager ears pressed against them.

Picture credit: Thisbe, 1909, John William Waterhouse (source: WikiArt).

This post was penned in 2019.

Visits from the Living

As back as I can recall I've been told I talk in my sleep. Random phrases, mostly, or words that can't be caught, though in my dreams I know I'm having full-blown conversations: frank discussions and those of an intricate nature, sometimes with people who in waking I wouldn't have a lot of chat with, just the exchange of pleasantries or the usual comments on the weather. Basically, the small talk that the British engage in more than any other nation.

So what is going on here? And do these dream conversations actually take place? so that you don't have to have them all over again (if you wanted to) in a wakeful state. It's not practice, it's for real.

It's possible, isn't it? Because haven't you noticed that when you come across those people you've had recent dream conversations with in waking life they act sheepishly, as do you? Because, presumably, neither of you can be sure, entirely sure if the other was or wasn't there; or one has that uncertainty and the other picks up on it and displays behaviour different to normal which to the dreamer seems to suggest: Yes, I was there too!

It's just so darn awkward! Speaking, gesturing, standing, even. Forget looking each other in the eye, it's anywhere but, and the laughter's false: a nervous laugh, a faltering laugh, a laugh that says I know you've had a dream conversation with me and I know you know I know.

But do we remember them, that's the point: what these conversations were about, what was said? Er, no. Em I did this morning, vaguely. Only bits and pieces, mind, and which now don't seem to hold quite the same import as they did last night. Whereas in the dream it was deep, it was meaningful; insightful. I wouldn't go as so far as to say it was beautiful, because I don't parrot phrases if I don't mean them and beautiful is not often in my vocabulary. Anyhow, a conversation, discussion, whatever, can't really be beautiful, can it? If poetry had been spouted then maybe I would think so, or if something profound had been said and it had stuck in my mind, but I can't remember it can I.

But I do remember the person whom I was speaking with, and their face, unlike the conversation, refuses to fade. Is that face beautiful? H'm, possibly. I wouldn't know. They're them, I'm me, that's all I can say. I know their face as they know mine, not necessarily intimately, but recognisably so. Unless, of course, the person met and spoken to in the dream had never been seen (by me) before, because then, well, I might take more interest in their features, but then I also forget them, after perhaps wondering: who are you? and do I know you already? If no A-ha! moment arises then it's bye bye because wondering further would be a pointless exercise.

The alternative would be too weird, wouldn't it? To meet someone in a dream and then meet them in the flesh. Ooh, goosebumps! Nope, best to wipe them from your memory. And then if that meeting does come about just have it with a strong sense of deja vu. I know you, I know you, I know you; where from?

Perhaps other dreamers though remember what was said and not whom it was said by. Perhaps for them faces, recognisable and unknown, blur. Only words: silky spoken, whispered or shouted, remain in the memory and repeat themselves.

It's not a topic that's easy to bring up, as to do so might be seen as intruding catlike, robber-like, into another's mind: into an room with no door but one which should stay barred to visitors, unless you're being psychoanalysed and have permitted entry. Dreams are private.

And other people, too, if you don't have a relationship with them, don't really wish to know if you've for some unfathomable reason dreamed of them. Try it and see the reaction: they will take a few steps back and the expression on their face will be a mix of horror and curiosity. Although you might, just might, also get: Oh yeah, kinky? accompanied with a cheeky wink and an even cheekier smirk. No, on second thoughts, I advise you not to do that. And DON'T (if you're better at remembering utterances) attempt, in real time, to re-run that conversation either. Real living people won't be word perfect, and prompting (from you) will not only seem odd but will deepen the split between dream and reality. 

Picture credit: Sleep, c.1800, Francisco Goya (source: WikiArt).

This post was penned in 2019.

Lady Slane

In the absence of Juno, I turned again to a lady of Shakespearian quality and forty-nine years my senior, she, being, as Aristotle might have said in the evening of her life, although in the course of our friendship she will rise and die repeatedly, and the gap in our years will, over further stretches of time, diminish.

I will grow nearer; she less far away.

I will continue to hope I attain her maturity and cease to take sides; she will continue to criss-cross her days, past with present, as each new day allotted to her falls.

In this lady, twilight is ever-present; whereas the evening of day is ever extinguished by the rosy fingers of dawn and the noon sun.

Lady Slane is a woman to be admired, not for years but for her audacity; whereas the descent of night is a poet's delight, since a shepherd only delights in a red sky.

Her passion has been spent over many days, spread over eight, almost nine decades; day's in a single day; and mine, never. Or hardly ever. I've ceased to care about my inconsistencies and my failure to love as she has ceased to take sides.

Calm of mind, my passion is and has been spent in other ways, and I don't think in old age, when my day turns to evening, I'll regret that I didn't spend it with more abandon rather than with caution. But when twilight comes to permanently rest on one, I may feel differently. My eighty-eight year old mind's reflections may be more wistful: a what could I have done, what could I have been; or perhaps memories will merely visit as if they were shades from Hades' halls, and being closer to shade I'll feel less connected to them, an impartial observer, and therefore able to mutter: silly girl.

When you look back you'll always a girl, regardless of status: wife, mother, widow.

Widowed Lady Slane will sit in her chair in a tiny house in Hampstead, bathed in sunlight; or in the garden under the south wall and the ripened peaches; or on a bench on the Heath with or without Mr. FitzGeorge.

Husband-less, childless, I will sit in mine, placed by a window, with the sun's dying light falling upon me.

Envy enters not for those who have husbands still, nor for those who are husband and child-free; envy enters not for those who have husbands, have children, nor for those who have suitors that call. There's just the one heart on which to depend. A heart that's borne pain, and may bear more. A heart that says enough, I want to live for me.

Death parts people – men from wives, women from husbands, children from parents, parents from children. Although Death can also reunite them, if you believe in the existence of an underworld, an afterlife.

Two badly behaved women, then; two women behaving badly. Independent and sometimes loose-tongued. Society shunned, as it might, should we choose to associate with it rather than distance ourselves from it, shun us in turn. Would Lady Slane have cared? Will I? if society, according to the order of the day, thought of her, thinks of me in this way?

Cease to care; cease to take sides in debates, in arguments, yet be firm. Do not acquiesce.

Women, though, must have guardians in the form of men or children. Both supposedly know better. The war of sex. The war of elders and offspring.

The ravens gather; as do the maggot-pies.

A council forms. The question's asked: Youth or old age? Which is fair and which a burden?

The jackdaws and jays argue for youth, the ravens for old age. None are indifferent. A bully-boy crow, however, stands up for bloom and wisdom, but he is ignored. Visitors have no rights here.

Lady Slane is amused, as am I, though we, unlike them reserve judgement. We've ceased to care, have ceased or are ceasing to take sides. Maturity beckons, with a crooked finger.

Ah, and here comes Juno, looking more Elizabethan than Roman, to light this path. May the earth, each time you pass, fall lightly upon you, Lady Slane.

Book recommendation: All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West.

Picture credit: Juno, c.1662-c.1665, Rembrandt (source: WikiArt)

This post was penned in 2019.

W.

Women and education. Woman and fiction. Women and work. Women and politics. Women and power. Women and war.

All areas in which women have had a raw deal, and are still trying to claw their way up to the light. Women and the home was of course won long ago, well, not won exactly, but awarded to women as their domain. Their rightful place. That domain has changed beyond recognition, in terms of labour and time, though women have not entirely escaped it. Moreover, I don't think they will, but nor does that mean I'm in agreement with men (and some women) of a bygone era: that this is a woman's place. I don't think that; but I do think it's a bit rich (if you're a woman) to employ a woman to do such tasks for you: freeing yourself yet confining another, when maybe she doesn't want to confined but has no choice. That, to me, is no different to a man feeling (and believing) he's superior to any woman.

Women do that too, to each other. Some of us try to belittle men, also, and so come across as more man than woman. A manly woman. A man's woman. A woman aping man in a patriarchal society. Playing the game.

Do women like each other, though? You'd think I'd have a definitive answer to that (being one), but I don't. Virginia Woolf had more certainty: 'Women are hard on women. Women dislike women.' Is she right, or was she just right then, in 1928? Is that view, her view, out of touch with how women today foster support networks and friendships?

I remain to be convinced that it is. Women, despite the images and testimonies we're all subjected to, don't always stick together. Help fight each other's battles. Promote a cause in women's name. Lend our voice to this, lend our voice to that to raise awareness of inequalities still existing – the pay gap for instance or the career ladder – and the health issues that cut down women, more women than men. Our army, if we were to raise one, an all female one, would be quarrelsome, because an army contains all manner of characters, all manner of personalities – the forceful and the dutiful, as well as the competitive. A band of sisters would be a band of little gangs, pockets of hate and gossip and plotting. Sisterly devotion, a sisterhood, is an image used for publicity purposes: this is what women can achieve! It's not how it is. It's not entirely true, not in my experience of an all girls' school or of some workplaces where the workforce was predominantly female. Even in a nunnery I imagine there's back-biting and the telling of tales. There will always be some sort of disgruntlement in the ranks. Minor issues will be picked and picked over, like a vulture pecking at a corpse.

Is this true of men? If it is, it won't be exactly the same. And men, anyway, have used their, these same, superior notions, against women rather than their own. Men made that their task for many years. Too many years. Some still do. Man trolls, who spew vitriol like some mythical vortex, a Charybdis of the modern age, as they attempt to drag those they bully down, down, down.

And so, just like a woman, I've turned the tables. Hating my own sex to hating the opposite. Hate, though, is too strong a word, for a person who, outwardly, is too docile, too passive, too submissive. Perfect wife material. Of the Stepford kind, though in temperament only and not in appearance. Behind this exterior, however, rage boils; hopes for a Juno to command it, to use her as an Iris: a winged messenger who having delivered the message she was sent with leaves a rainbow in her wake. In my imagination I see Olivia Newton John on skates. Xanadu.

Women can be cruel. To other women. Women are distrustful. Of other women. All women have snakes that twin about them - round their waists, round their arms and wrists, in readiness to tighten and hiss, and strike if need be. Only those with snaky hair have no boundaries, for it's a fight – of self-defence or survival - they're after. A war the enemy – of any gender - may not realise is being waged, until they're engaged in hand to hand and mouth combat. With an Amazonian warrior; a warring cry, a flash of bronze, a flash of steel. With a female MP; stern of mouth and stony gaze, weapons to be feared.

Women, beings of ever changing moods.

Picture credit: Amazon on Horseback, 1897, Franz Stuck (source: WikiArt)

This post was penned in 2019.

A Cattle Myth Retold

Kings like presents and demi-gods like to serve their kings, by bringing these gifts to them and preventing other gods, other kings from getting them.

Hermes, the trickster god, perfected this art, the art of deception, as well as the act of envoy, along with his more serious role of guiding souls to and from the Underworld. On the side, he guarded flocks and played tunes on his lyre or shepherd's pipes; annoyed his sisters, stole from his brothers and bumped off giants. But for all that – his mischief-making - he was well-liked. And in spite of his fondness for cattle, of the horned type.

You'd think he'd have learned his lesson when, as an infant, he stole from Apollo. But Zeus was delighted and failed, as a father and as the king of gods and as the king of kings, to reprimand him. He went unpunished. And won Apollo over, also.

That myth is renowned. Recorded in a hymn and needs no retelling. But Hermes had a hand in another. Though set in a land very different to his own, where the cattle were stone. Great lumbering beasts, and numbering only five. These he stole from a king, well, two kings, to be precise, to give to and please another king, his father, thundering Zeus.

Hermes, however, in this escapade, was not so sharp-eyed and mucked up. Royally. Upset all three kings; their queens, too, and started a war, where the gods had to again take sides. Helen is somewhere described as a heifer, but on this occasion ruin was brought by five such creatures, stonier in flesh, who excreted gold, or at least were reported to.

But as with Apollo, Hermes, thief and herald, acted in accordance with his whim when he came upon an old man herding five beasts with twisted horns and gilded tails.

Hermes was the first to speak: 'Old man driving your precious beasts, let me help you with the task. How many days will it take us to get through this pass?'

'That I cannot say, Stranger,' the old man replied, 'another night and day, maybe two,' he mused. 'I've never been this way before, through the shadowy mountains, but King Huiwen commanded I deliver these rock-like cows to the kingdom beyond by this road and no other.'

'What fine-looking animals they are,' Hermes said, 'and strong, too. I'll accompany you, old man. Perhaps my pipes will hurry them along.'

So the two together drove them on, the old man talking of his faithful wife and his hard-working sons, with a joyful Hermes, in step beside him, piping and singing. All day the mountains echoed his song until the sun dipped and the cattle tired.

In a grassy nook, off the road, they stopped to rest. Hermes, with cunning in his heart, offered to settle, feed and water the five cows so as to examine them, and their tails, more closely, which he was at liberty to do since the trusting old man was busy laying out a feast of bread and cheese and the red nectar mortals call wine.

As soon as they had eaten and drank their fill and the old man slept deeply, Hermes, his wand in his hand, was away, driving the cattle, hard, on hooves he'd silenced with winged words and a poultice of herbs. Since the road was built of stone there was no need to cover their tracks as he'd had to before, with Lord Apollo, his far-shooting brother. But in his haste to quit the place, his sharp eyes missed the nuggets of gold the troubled cattle excreted. The Archer, an ever watchful eye on his robber brother, scooped up the mess.

When Dawn rose from her bed and sat on her throne, the old man woke and saw at once his companion of the day and night were gone, and so too were the precious cattle he'd been entrusted with. He wept, tears running down his cheeks, but had no choice but to reverse his path, back to the king's splendid palace, where he confessed to illustrious Huiwen that his goods had been snatched.

The king was naturally suspicious and convinced it was not the work of some god but the work of Shu, the province the cows were being gifted to, for the people there, he said, were lawless. Angered, he roused his army, and the road that was constructed to trade was used instead to invade. The war raged and raged and the cargo were never recovered, if, the bard sang, they ever existed at all.

Picture credit: Mercury, 1873, Evelyn de Morgan (source: WikiArt).

This post was penned in 2019.