After the Feasting

After the feasting an outburst of weeping was raised up, much noise in the morning. For bodies had slept when the feast was done; dreams had come and they had not woken.
The sky's candle had been lit, as if in honour. Its flame glowing stronger and brighter as the lamentations grew in number and in strength. Sob and string – a harp - sounded together over those laid fast in their beds. Even a dirge must be performed as ritual demands.
So many women overcome. So many men felled.
And so much mess in the mead-hall.
A hall of rest, now, and perhaps known as such forever more, for last night the benches had been cleared away and the floor covered with beds and bolsters; and littered, too, with the weaponry of war. Guests and warriors, action-ready.
Yet unprepared for what was to come. And for the speed in which this foe came. It stole in, this hideous creature, a man-giant, and snatched up men; picking them up at random and consuming them, or pitched them against stone walls. Some he carried off, bloodied, to his lair, which it is said he shared with another: a partner or a mother.
What a banquet he had!
Whilst those spared, in distant chambers, and in a deep sleep, dreamt, unaware of the carnage unfolding below.
The alarm raised at the break of day, a melancholy cuckoo cry, which in these parts is not the harbinger of spring but of sorrow. The white-haired King, old in winters, heard it first. And knew the worst, long-dreaded, had occurred.
The dirge set up - the string drowned out by sobs - and the candle flamed.
The King, arrayed in robes, raised a shield to call for silence, for the loud laments to cease and made speech:
'We must avenge this loss. Those that have survived must stand against this foe. Boys must pick up their kinsmen's arms. And bring me the giant's head, for only decapitation will prove his death.'
The boys, roused to battle, cried their support, 'to arms, to arms.'
The women trembled, first their men, now their sons. Would there be no end? The guests, sadly departed, had been reluctant to attend. This was their King's folly.
The King turned to his man-servants, those remaining, and addressed them: 'Prepare the war-horses! Build a pyre, the biggest of funeral fires! We'll mourn our losses; perhaps roast this giant on it. Death and battle must this day be joined together.'
The servants scurried away like mice to do their King's bidding.
To the women: 'As you were,' said the King in stiff voice. The harp was struck and a wail once again went up.
The boys, still in the hall, picked up from the floor shields, spears and swords; took off and put on coats of mail and helmets. Soon, war-ready. And eager for the fight.
Some went mounted, some went on foot, but all followed the black trail the giant's victims had left, hoisted as they were over his massive shoulders, up steep screes, along scant tracks, and fearing this might also be the way to their destruction.
Where it led was to a den beside a pool; bones scattered before its entrance. The giant nowhere to be seen...yet there was a stirring from within. With the sound, not sight, of fire. The young fellows drew their weapons and entered, found their finest warrior still alive, resting beside a glowing light. He had, in his weakened state, fought back, with hands, with knife, until the giant, merely scratched from this sport, had tired; had gone somewhere to wreak some other havoc. And would no doubt return when hunger overcame him.
The boys dragged their leader, this battle-bloodied fighter, out. They had not half his strength, nor his war-rage. Saplings, they would be no match for their grisly rival. The survivor, in wearied words, convinced them to turn homewards, to face their King's wrath instead of the giant's. Alas, more blood!

Picture credit: Beowulf wrestles with Grendel, 1933, Lynd Ward (source: WikiArt).

An exercise inspired by Beowulf and old English verse, written December 2020.

All Good Things

Wealth, Pleasure, Health and Virtue competed at the Olympic Games. The Olympic Games of ancient times, which is why the narrator (the present included) does not say in which fields they participated; all you need to know is that each came first.
The prize was an apple; a single apple. Which it is presumed was golden, though there is no proof of this, nor any evidence to say that it was not. It could have been from the tree for the fruit might have been scarce in those parts.
Golden or edible, it was an apple and they all had claim to it.
Wealth wanted to possess it whole, for 'with me all goods are bought.' Pleasure thought it should be possessed by Wealth and herself in turns, since 'wealth is sought only to have me.' Health wanted to divide it equally, to cut it in half and half again, although she asserted that without her there is no pleasure and that wealth is useless; however she was prepared to be just. And Virtue, in this version, made no claim. At this point in the proceedings she said nothing.
There being no consensus, the others were content to argue on. Wealth would never, he said, consent to share or cut up the prize. Neither Pleasure or Health would award it to Wealth, and Pleasure was insulted by Health's assertions, which Wealth didn't care for either but had not the patience to contest. Pleasure, too, didn't think the prize should be cut up into equal parts, for although they had all won their events they were not equal and never would be. Health had made her case very plain, and now stated it again in plainer terms, 'You are right, Pleasure,' she said, 'the apple belongs to me, for, like me, it is health-giving. You don't need wealth to buy it and pleasure comes from partaking of it.'
('Ask Adam, ask Eve', interjected one narrator of this fable, 'they may not concord'; but as he is only here in spirit alone I will continue.)
Pleasure now too, having listened to these changed terms, decided the apple should be all hers, for what was health and what was wealth without her. Each were meaningless on their own.
Virtue had still said nothing. In truth, Wealth, Pleasure and Health had forgotten she was there and, though yet to make a claim, had an equal claim.
She piped up now, astonishing the other three with the clarity of her speech: ' I am superior to you all, because with gold, pleasure and health one can become very wretched if one misbehaves.'
She was right of course and each knew it, but the truth of her words was not enough. Wealth, Pleasure and Health could not deny themselves the apple. (They were not as magnanimous as the original (and beautifully short) fable reported.) Their claims, they felt, though less good, were still valid and worth debating further.
A philosopher, by the name of Crantor, had at this moment stopped to congratulate them on their singular wins. Their dilemma explained to him he was appealed to to act as judge. At first he demurred, he was having a day off he said from moral philosophizing, and besides he had no wish to be another Paris, though none of the contenders for the prize, it should be noted, had offered him anything.

Wealth had been on the verge of doing so, but had decided philosophers needed very little. Pleasure didn't think philosophers sought her at all, for their own sake; they only desired to think freely. Health was confident a bribe was not required and Virtue gave no thought to it.
Crantor having decided to settle their dispute on condition they abide by his judgement, make him no offers and in the aftermath start no wars, had each state their case to him again for thinking the apple belonged to them, and then arranged these good things in the following order (being a philosopher of some renown he did not have to give his reasons): Virtue, Health, Pleasure and Riches.
His ordering of them has been argued for and against ever since by his fellows and by those who consider themselves amateurs. However, that day, as on this, Virtue, goodness itself, was awarded the apple.

Picture credit: This is not an Apple, 1964, Rene Magritte

Fable by Crantor, A Greek moral philosopher of the fourth century B.C., as related by Voltaire in his Philosophical Dictionary and altered and expanded upon.

Written October 2020.

Cooking with Trump

The film had started. The opening titles had rolled and the opening scenes had been missed. Having walked in late, the first shot was of a kitchen. A country kitchen, where things are hung: things to chop, things to stir, things to boil or fry in, which had a large wooden station in front of the range. A bit like Downton Abbey's but smaller and more modern. There was no Daisy or Mrs Patmore, just a man who looked like Trump, from behind and in front, in a suit and myself who was it appeared his assistant. There was little or no conversation, but a following round from here to there, selecting and collecting pots and pans from the different country-style kitchens, one of several, it turned out, in the same building. Trump, the scene translated, wanted to cook for Melania, though the what hadn't been decided upon or the ingredients gathered.
I fell out of sleep as the alarm went off. 7am, 5^th of October 2020.
Trump had been hospitalised for two days. Last night I had watched his drive-by, wondering why the 11 o'clock headlines had been given over to all things American lately, not that I have a problem with that country or following the ins and outs as reported by correspondents of the presidential election, but neither do I think it is the greatest in the world. Every country has its merits and its failures, and its problems, which each leader either contributes to or solves.
However its attitudes did interest me, although I couldn't be sure that what was reported was accurate. Foreign correspondents are not, I would say, entirely unbiased or neutral in their reporting. I think you can tell which way their judgement falls, and the edit, too, if not live, can present a view that might be popular in Britain but false in America and vice versa. What we see might be what we want to believe or the view the media would like us to.
Prior to cooking with Trump I had heard some of his supporters voice their opinions of his personal handling of the virus, they thought he had demonstrated caution of it and maintained social distance. Here in Britain we hadn't seen that, only the opposite. Trump, most of us thought, was reckless, but then we might have said the same of Boris Johnson and then the next day accused of him of being too cautious.
That both, Trump and Johnson, had been brought down by the virus was a positive, it made them human. That, at least, was the opinion, though I'm not convinced it swayed any decisions they made in the hereafter. If anything it seemed to further confuse their decision-making powers, or the processes to convey them. So the people of America and Britain with their befuddled leaders in the days that followed battled on. One striving to be great and the other to take back control, while their peoples weren't pulling together but further apart. The virus proving to be just as divisive as any policy with too many clauses, where to understand the rules and the loopholes you have to delve deeper or employ an investigative journalist.
Trump clearly thought he was Superman, as did some of his fans. (I'm not sure which super hero Boris thought he was.) One interviewed on radio even thought the virus had been introduced into America to bring Trump down, though by whom the speaker couldn't or wouldn't identify. (China was on the interviewer's lips but was brushed off, “I'm just a small-town boy”.) Others, however, were more sensible: Trump hadn't taken the virus seriously at all, or set the example; they were surprised it had taken the virus so long.
The talk is of a war. We are at war with an invisible enemy. We are going to beat this thing. And when at war, or in the midst of a presidential campaign, strength needs to be shown and the troops' morale needs to be boosted, or alternatively sympathy elicited. If everyone's confused, too, as to the state of the country and what is truth and what is fiction, nobody can be blamed, not even those claiming to run it.
Above all, what struck me more than before Trump's Covid downfall was the ageist attitudes towards him and his opponent, Joe Biden. Some voters had already written both off as 'too old' and 'unlikely to see out the term'. I personally don't see age as a problem, but then I've always respected my elders, regardless of what they might think or whether I agree with them.
Cooking with Trump was therefore not an unwelcome dream.

Picture credit: Trump, Jon McNaughton (source: WikiArt).

Written October 2020.

Id Est

The morning sun somewhere played on an open window; there was a flash every time a bird flew past. A wink from the camera's eye, which in turn caught one of mine as I breakfasted with Horace.
For the last few mornings I'd been breakfasting and lunching with Francis Bacon so this was a change, some might say welcome but I quite enjoyed Bacon's essays. His brother Anthony intends to pay me a visit soon in the company of Daphne du Maurier. Yes, a most unusual pairing, but I've been told they are worth entertaining. Before them, however, comes Woolf, her singular person i.e. without Leonard, on a repeat visit, bringing her essay voice and not the fictional. I imagine she'll be amusing but rather teacherly i.e. at times stern. (I like, if you haven't already guessed, the i.e.)
But for the next week, at least, I'll be dining with, and out, on Horace, for I speak on what I'm reading to other bookish persons whether they are of like mind or not. I write, too, on what I'm struck by, for the people I speak to usually aren't. I see a significance perhaps where there isn't any or perhaps where they can't. Learning is not infectious, only the spirit of it is i.e. my immersion does not make people race out to read what I'm extolling about, but it might encourage them to read (if they don't already) the printed word.
I can be so awash with someone else's voice and style I begin to imitate them, not unknowingly but unwillingly and yet this compulsion to do so cannot be fought, it must be allowed to play itself out, just as the sun plays.
Bacon grabbed my pen (and Woolf always does), but Horace as of yet shows no signs of the same. He hasn't arrested me, not entirely, but I think the problem is my reading of him and not him i.e. it's me. How should a Roman poet like Horace be read? Perhaps not in one go as I've been doing, as if his works contained in two volumes were novels, but, you see, I've never been a dipper-in or a reader of more than one book at a time. I turn page after page in order i.e. as the page numbering dictates I should; whereas with Horace and his like i.e. the writers of satires, epistles, odes and epodes, and even short stories and essays, the better approach is, I think, to dip or to read one piece a day and no more. But the compulsion to read on always wins out, which perhaps means I grasp only the essence and not the substance i.e. I read and fast forget.
No; for those of us with a systematic mind the reading habits of a lifetime cannot be so easily dismissed, and nor can one's relationship with time, for I'm forever slipping backwards then only moving forwards by slow degrees. I'm not sure I will ever again reach the contemporary literary scene i.e. a novel set in present day. I seem to prefer writers that speak to me from the grave, who may not have in their own time been praised, or perhaps were and are still reaping criticism and approval in equal and unequal measure. (Horace argued with me on this very point one misty morning. And he's not the only dead but unforgotten satirist that took the opposite view i.e. readers should look to the new.)
I cannot help it; I have no interest in the recent, only in what has gone before. Where Horace on occasion catches the glitter of a lovely word, I see whole pages filled with them, in a tongue that is not alien (though occasionally translated) but aged. Why should modern writers, because they are new, have all the glory? 'Why should the old?' Horace replied, forgetful that he was now in that very position i.e. still consulted and enjoyed far beyond his closed box.
However I take his point: there is indeed room for both, the old and the new; neither should be resented or revered. People should be able to read what they like, each to their taste i.e. without judgement or recrimination.
As for myself, I crave a different wit and a different wisdom, and a different take on the complexities of life altogether, which only certain poets and writers – the made-modern, the revised, the re-printed, the translated and the antiquated - can administer to i.e. if they are unable to the failing is mine and not theirs.

Picture credit: Horace, the Roman Poet (Source: The Guardian). 

Written September 2020.

Two Scholars

Two scholars shared a house. One spread her papers over a single table, the other over a floor. One confined herself to a lower room, the other took over the entire upper floor. Notwithstanding this lack of or need for space, both however were content in their studies, though not always with the progression of them.
I can see them now: one with her arms buried deep in boxes pulling out piles of papers, journals and the like, with here and there a soft or throaty laugh at something she's unearthed; the other his nose inches from a book, brow furrowed, and his pen, in his writing hand, poised over a sheet of paper. (I would venture to say he might on occasion nibble at his pen, but somehow he doesn't seem the type.)
But what are each working on you inquire? One is on the trail of history, a trail which leads somewhere, then nowhere, then somewhere else with its beginnings and dead ends and no ends; the other is on the trail of something obscure, nobody (not even the other scholar in the house) knows what, it could be literary or philosophical, or neither of those. Some opine it's concerned with French, the French and the translation of, for spies say telephone calls are made (at odd hours of the day) where phrases in colloquial French are queried, but what these spies don't seem to know is whether the answers given are helpful, or how the quest (if this is the quest) is coming on. What is evident is that it's secret, and can therefore only be conducted from the top of the building.
What can be said with some certainty, I think, is that one dapples in dates and documents, and the other with texts of a scholarly and classic bent. (Each would, I think, take offence at the word 'dapple'.)
I should say I suppose something on their backgrounds, but what I know is all a little disjointed and hazy. It would be safer to say one seems to have led a rather bohemian lifestyle and the other was for some years a teacher of English. Neither could be said to be conventional or conservative, and both have interests that could seem surprising. What however does not come as a surprise is that both, in and outside their chosen fields, are extremely knowledgeable. (Some might say Enlightened.)
This arrangement, then, between them, was amicable (they were married, Reader). Both had their own space in which to work, though both would have liked more. Each, separately and together, had given some thought to how this could be achieved, but the garage already held the overspill of books and music and films, and there was no garden as such to extend into or construct something new in. Inside, there were no extraneous walls to knock down and the cupboards, the few there were, were full to overflowing. Every house, too, whether its inhabitants are donnish or not, needs its kitchen and designated space for other utilities, just as a cat, feral or domestic, needs its perching and hiding spots. (Their black cat, it's worth noting, was very particular with these regards, though of laps too he was fond at most inconvenient moments.)
So the problem, it seemed, could not be solved or shared to any satisfaction. And anyhow, give a scholar a space and he or she will find a way to work in it or if large enough fill it. Each has their own method of working. And problem solving of this nature consumes too much time and too much thought, leaving less for critical (of the sleuthing kind) or philosophical thinking. A resident cat, black, tabby, tortoiseshell or marmalade, in all instances can help to lighten this load as well as relieve the boredom of a scholarly life. (Fact: many a scholar has had a cat, for when a cat invites you to play, you play; or capture what they've brought in to play with.)
Life is not all books and papers, as any scholar, including these two, will tell you, for life has this annoying habit of interrupting study, serious or contemplative. One might be hunched over writing rapidly or the other looking through a magnifier at something absorbing when the cat wants feeding or the bed needs changing or the dishwasher emptying etc. The golden rule to mitigate such household disturbances is to: only yell at set times.

Picture credit: A Scholar Seated at a Table with Books, 1634, Rembrandt (source: WikiArt).

Written September 2020.

More Country Ahead

I have not received from God or my parents the gift of true eloquence so my duty therefore is to remain silent, for to not would reveal this lack of talent. And unhappily too in a public setting, for that is what eloquence, if you possess it, calls for: to stand up and talk, seriously or wittily, to an audience who might be genuinely appreciative or who might show their appreciation in ruder ways.
Of the gift of knowledge, I have some, gained through study: a programme of unstructured self-administered learning which I make no attempts to pass on. For I lack that skill too: I cannot teach. I can only absorb. Though what I absorb (and later remember) could also be called into question. It's there, I make notes on, I write articles about, it's gone. The brain, or my brain, can only soak so much up, and the room it makes never expands. What remains is fragmentary: thousands of words float with picture memories.
I cannot quote. I cannot recite. From memory. Though if I see the front cover of a book I can tell you if I've read it but only if it's that very edition. If it has a different cover it might only seem familiar, so that my memory of it will only kick in upon reading. My memory, you see, needs prompting. And some book covers are so attractive they beg for the text, even if the text's already been read, to be read again. My memory, then, is tactile, too, which as it turns out is not conducive to a Covid environment or the digital age.
As a person, a whole person, I don't think I'm compatible either. I like the antiquated. Tales of romance and chivalry. Old French, of the twelfth century, translated into English. Philosophical wanderings with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Michel de Montaigne. And Voltaire. I start somewhere, then more accumulates. I don't quite know what trail I'm on, but it seems I'm following one, which stops as suddenly as it began. I have studied all I needed to know at this present time. A new opening then appears which leads god knows where...and a new quest to know sets itself in motion.
There is more country ahead, more words that I may enjoy but might not later remember, nor even the page I found them on, yet I will know that they are there, still there, waiting at some other junction to be thought of again, and maybe rediscovered. I am shaped by what I learn. I may not borrow in words, but I borrow in essence; and these borrowings will in time become mine and not the author's. Montaigne, if memory serves (and it may not), believed something similar. Knowledge, I think he said, has no other aim.
Knowing by heart was not Montaigne's idea of knowledge, for being able to retain is not necessarily to understand; some knowledge, too, needs to be applied. Theory in some things is all very well, but it doesn't make you an expert, your understanding also has to be set to work. Through 'play' you might find a better way suits, as there is never just one way of doing something. You should never be told there is, particularly if the outcome, the end goal, is the same. What then does it matter how you get there?
When it comes to learning of the self, Man's in general, I, however, mostly lean on a bookish foundation rather than demonstration or verbal instruction, for it seems to me you can learn a lot about the self (and indeed your own) from other authors scribblings. They can, in fact, corroborate what you yourself may have felt at one time or another. The period they lived in matters little, though often the insights they provide are just as fascinating. Through them we learn: we have not come such a long way as we thought. For example, the power of the mind - commonly known today as the 'placebo effect' - was known of in the 1500s and made much use of. The imagination has been seen for a long time as both a gift and a scourge.
And so it is. There are no words truer than this. Or perhaps there are...? for I've said this for effect, which some might say is eloquence making itself felt, because such words are only spoken, or in this case written, to draw attention to themselves. But effect was not my only reason, since I think I also believe this is so although I couldn't tell you neatly why, which suggests I am not yet ready to deliver it outwardly.
In the pursuit of knowledge there is always more country ahead.

Picture credit: Country lane with two figures, 1851, Vincent van Gogh.

Written August 2020.

The Farmer and the Spider

The farmer was shooting at pigeons with his rifle on a hot summer morn.
Pop, pop went his gun, and pigeons flew.
His wife was in the farmhouse before a window, speaking through it to a fly,
resting on the other side,
“I wouldn't stay there if I were you.”
Tap, tap, tap went her finger on the pane, the fly didn't move.
Tap, tap, she went again.
The labourer in the field abandoned his hoe and watched the birds scatter.
Pop, pop, pop. Up they flew and down again.
Nearby some ponies with small children on their backs trotted sedately on.
A blue dog tried to escape his lead and collar, and his grey-haired owners too.
Only the farmer's wife knew who was the pursuer and who the pursued.
The farmer was after pigeons; the spider, in time, would get the fly,
a fat juicy fly, for dinner.

The pigeons had been scared, scared off the land, scared from their nests;
the fly caught, bound with thread as strong as steel, vibrated to the wind's caress.
The farmer's wife had nothing to pluck;
the spider had had her sport, but was not then hungry.
The labourer retrieved his hoe and again set to work;
the birds, none of them pigeons, settled, in their familiar roosts.
The ponies with their loads went on their way;
the blue dog, somewhat calmed, hastened his owners to the car.
The day progressed and the hour of sext was nigh,
the sun rising higher in the sky, to blister the earth beneath it.
And still the fly, dying or dead, waited.

At the hour of nones, the sun had shone and shone.
The spider's web had been gilded gold, as had the fly imprisoned in it.
The farmer's wife had been keeping an eye,
“I warned you,” she'd said to the fly a number of times.
The farmer had heaved a heavy sigh on hearing her and gone away,
to what he knew how to deal with: his land, his workers, his animals.
Having heard the door bang, she had turned her hand to making pastry,
for a pie which would now be empty of pigeon.
Down the road, the ponies riders had departed long ago; all was quiet.
The blue dog happily played, with his owners, in his own back garden.

As vespers approached, the pie was in the oven,
filling the farmhouse with its fragrance, of steak and of kidney.
The farmer's wife stood, red-faced, at the now opened kitchen window.
Pie! On a hot day!
But the farmer wants what he wants, pigeon or no pigeon.
The body of the fly had disappeared, as if it had never been.
Had it, the farmer's wife wondered?
The spider had not taken it, she didn't think, perhaps the wind?
Ah! Both had been thwarted: the farmer and the spider.
The farmer's wife smiled, for the pursuers had not got, on this occasion, all they desired.

Picture credit: Landscape with Farmer, 1896, Henri Rousseau (Source: WikiArt.)

Written August 2020.

The Soul's Dressing Gown

My soul took to its dressing gown early.
Ah, you say in response, but it's autumn, and a dressing gown is needed for the chilly mornings and frost-bringing evenings.
You mistake my meaning, for the style of gown you mean warms the body only. It does not warm, nor protect, the soul. Though I do, of course, wear that style of gown too. Usually over clothes, night or day, like the housecoats women used to wear. Mine gets removed no later than eleven, at both ends of the day, but its put-on time varies, as does what's on underneath. Never bare, so don't get any ideas there. This is not a revealing piece, not in that way, so I suggest you take yourself somewhere else if that's what you're looking for. Return as we move into spring then summer for some middle-aged flesh if that's your thing; there'll be more of it then on show, though not for your pleasure but for my comfort.
For that's what it's all about: comfort.
My soul without a dressing gown, its own or another's, for it has tried on others, has never felt comfortable. It requires some form of protection, not armour exactly, for invisible robes aren't made of such stuff but of strong material that still allows movement and yet prevents unwholesome life from penetrating its folds. Mine, in general, can be wrapped around my person one and a half times before being tied with a belt at the hip, never the front, and never in a bow but in a knot, a single or a double knot. They have, too, to be at least ankle if not floor length; in other words shoulders to feet, and with perhaps a collar that turns up to cover the neck. And I do prefer those without a hood, although I sometimes think a hood, if you're pretty and free of spectacles and with your hair done just so, with tendrils, can look quite attractive. The feel, the look important even if you're the only one aware that you're wearing it and know you can't be complimented on it. It should make the soul feel good. And safe.
To echo Chekhov: 'How soft, how snug, how warm, how comfortable - and how bored you are!'
Bored? No; I'm not bored, for the dressing gown my soul adorns itself with may be all of those things, but it cannot prevent life from happening, in general. It may not happen directly to me but it happens to other people, real and fictional, whilst I sit observing it from a white chair with a green seat cushion. Vicarious living is much more interesting and satisfying, especially if the lens is positioned to spy on people farther away, as in down the years, because nearer to the current age it's all petty squabbles and Me.
Ah, Me. My soul cares not a jot for that (it's lying).
Does it care for itself? Well, it thinks it does, due to the fabulous dressing gowns it often dons, wide sleeves, a swirling skirt, so soft or so silky to the touch, so pleasing to the eye (as they would be too to another's gaze if they could be seen), so pleasing to be cocooned in, but no, it has been known to neglect bodily concerns. What is hunger? What is cold? When there is tea and books, and a little light for warmth and to read by. And peace. Where no other beasts (of the human kind) disturb it. It would, if it could, cast off its own image, and disengage completely, but the human has its hold.
I, the human says, I. And You must stay. Grounded.
For the human knows the soul likes too much its dressing gown. It is a cowardly lion. No medals for courage have been pinned to its breast, and it no longer strives to win one. This is life it has said, the dressing gown.
The dressing gown gives it more more than life ever did. Acceptance for one thing, of what is and what isn't. Of its own nature, which seems so different to the healthy and normal ordinary human. Of the part it has and still might play in real life. Of its own fear.
Yes, the dressing gown was taken to early, at thirty-five or thirty or some years before, but this, though it suggests retreat, though it suggests rest, wasn't retreat or rest it was work, and that work, although now different in tone, persists, as does the gown that must be worn at all times while it's done.

Picture credit: The Dressing Gown, 1892, Pierre Bonnard (source: WikiArt.)

See An Anonymous Story by Chekhov.

Written July 2020.

Impressions of Paris

One more meal eaten, one more dish washed up, drying in the rack, put there by my soapy hands as thoughts wandered to France, van Gogh's France, the South, the North, then to Paris, my own first (and only) lasting impressions of Paris.
The year, 1994. The month, April.
Or at least I remember it as being around April as it wasn't winter and it wasn't summer and the weather was very changeable. The year I'm a little more sure on, but trying to affirm either led to disagreements with and between the parentals and so...
it was '94, it was April. I was thirteen. A moody teen, and a still quite new vegetarian. My older brother, the dog, had died that January, and so this was my first European foray if you exclude the Channel Isles. Prior to that it had mostly been dog-friendly staycations (though the phrase itself hadn't been coined then). We didn't fly, we went by Eurostar. Off the back of an exotic (and it was exotic then) late booked holiday in February to Tunisia during Ramadan.
Paris, then, had a lot to live up to, though I knew little, other than it was meant to be a romantic city, or at least that's the marketing my thirteen year old mind had picked up on, and I was determined at that time not to like romance. Or boys, unless they were older and cooler. I was equally determined, therefore, not to be impressed, and so I wasn't. I really wasn't.
In 1994 this was not a city to be a vegetarian tourist in; it was all cheese baguettes and omelettes and overpriced pastries which my brain and body didn't thank me for and it became rather a bore to eat, as well as the cause of some fierce arguments.
Culture fared a little better, but only a little. At thirteen I wasn't all that interested. And yet it's amazing what stays with you: going up, not all the way, the Eiffel Tower on a windy day (it might have been raining also), my mother, with her vertigo, staying put on firmer ground; the crazy driving round the Arc de Triomphe; the exterior of the Notre-Dame, I don't recall seeing its inside; queuing for the Louvre and the Pompidou Centre; the smoky cafe atmosphere; and the chic women, walking little dogs, and the pretentious men, though I wouldn't have known that word then, just that these men were careful to exude a certain air.
On the whole I felt Parisians were rude and rather disdainful of the English tourist, but then I had un petit peu French at that time (I don't have a whole lot more now), my mother was the fluent one, so to me it was all sights, sounds and smells. It was all, for want of a better word, foreign. And made me feel, at thirteen, ugly; uglier even than the ugly duckling, and hungry too for the beauty I had been promised and hadn't found. Where was it? Paris, aided by the weather, seemed so gloomy. I couldn't for the life of me understand, all thirteen years and four months of it, why it was so raved about. And I've never (once grown) returned to find out, at least not in person and not to modern Paris.
The Paris I have been enthralled by and revisited on more than one occasion is the Paris of the 1920s. The Paris Hemingway wrote about in A Moveable Feast. That is still there, you'll say, but I have very little appetite now for real travel as opposed to that from a comfortable chair. No; I prefer reading of the Parisian atmosphere, for I think, much like van Gogh, I'm more of a small town and country person. At thirteen, I wasn't, I was for the bright lights but Paris didn't hit the mark.
A year later we went with extended family to Normandy, which is mostly memorable as the house we stayed in was full of medieval artefacts like something out of Bedknobs and Broomsticks. There were country roadside walks too to the market, in single or double file, with most of the bread bought being eaten on the walk back. The year after that (and the one following too) we went to Euro Disney (we watched Princess Diana's funeral on the train), but that I don't think you can say is France. It's American French, or French American. It is not France, just as Las Vegas isn't America. It's a playground.
No, the real France, the one I was too young to appreciate, though I had already been introduced to drinking a little wine with meals, is grown up. Paris especially is for adults only.

Picture credit: The Roofs of Paris, 1886, Vincent van Gogh (source: WikiArt). 

Written July 2020.

Knees Together

What I didn't have, like J. in Three Men in a Boat, was housemaid's knee, nor was I like him sure what it was, but then nor did I have all the ailments he thought he had. No; what I had didn't have a name but came to be known by me as knees together. For that was the advice given: to keep them together when transitioning from one position into another, anything, in other words, that involves twisting the lower half of the body. By keeping the knees together the movement will not be pain-free but more comfortable. It became in certain situations, getting, no, crawling into bed, to be more accurate, being one, my mantra: knees together, knees together, keep knees together; yes, that's the way to go from all fours to the side, and from the side lain on to all fours then a backwards crawl to get out and onto feet placed gingerly on carpeted floor.
Knees together when sitting too; no gaps. Knees together when getting into and out of a car. Oh, but it was hard, because with a car the leg and foot had to be lifted first, first one then the other, just a little ways off the ground, but that little way was challenging, to bring knees together, turn. Keep the knees as close together when putting on trousers too, from a seated position, with the trouser legs gathered up like tights so the foot can be wiggled, toes, then heel, through the hole. The same with socks and shoes, seated, knees together, and bending over them. The difficulty, as with getting into and out of a car, is how to lift the leg and get the foot into the sock, into the shoe. The answer: the leg has to be helped with hands – yours or the loan of another's.
And obviously knees together when preparing to get into and then into a kneeling position, before going onto all fours or into a slightly modified Child's Pose: sat back on heels, chest lowered, arms stretched out or down by sides, palms up. Ah, relief, some. But how to get out and get back up? Knees together? Well, yes, but still how? Will my pelvis allow the toes of my feet to take my weight? Yes, it will. Sit back, lift and pull yourself up at the same time. Each side equally in use, no dominance here. This is exhausting...
And yet sleep is had, if it's had at all at the end of an interminable and exhausting day, in fits and starts in-between repositioning of the body and the pillow. Pillow, eh? Yes, but not the one beneath the head (and it is just the one) but the one that is essential to sleep on your side with it between your thighs. It cushions the pressure that otherwise would have been applied had you remained on your side without it, and I personally have no chance of sleep in any other position even in more mobile times. Generally I start out as a starfish (in yoga I believe it might be termed Corpse Pose, which is somehow though more appropriate much less dignifying) – it helps the body to relax – and then turn onto my side – one or the other, and curl into what is known by the professional and non-professional circle as the foetal position, but knees together (with pillow) needs to be established straight away so as to lose as little sleep, and to cause the least discomfort moving again so soon after getting into bed, as possible. But always, of course, even throughout the turnings of the night, alert to pain.
Pain is a funny thing, as those of us with a clumsy or accidental nature or of a certain age, will have by now come to acknowledge. When it's there, as I've aforementioned, you're alert to it and the danger of causing it, but once gone it's hard to recapture, by mind alone, exactly how it was or how you bore it. And it changes too, with the occurrence (or recurrence) and over the course of your complaint. What worked one day to mitigate it may not be so successful the next, and the pain, particularly if it's relative to bearing weight, your own, might have moved, and so a new remedy to it which allows for some mobility, if not flexibility, may have to again be found. What's also peculiar to it, as I was to discover with knees together, is that I was although alert dumb: I failed to take much else in, around and in front of me.
All routine had broken down. There were limits now. Had I been a drinker, I might have thought like J. 'a little whisky with a slice of lemon would do it good', or perk me up at any rate, but no, it had to be knees together and (mostly) stoicism.

Picture credit: Kneeling Nude, c.1888, Edgar Degas (source: WikiArt). 

Written June 2020. 

The Artist Thief

'All artists are thieves anyway', the radio voice said.
Are they? News to me. Is it really? said my mind.
No; perhaps not. But the expression is. I'd not heard it voiced like this before, quite flippantly as if it was a well-established fact. Perhaps it was, or became so, and I'd somehow missed it.
Actually, the missing bit is less surprising. Bubbles in my world – living in one – are not a new phenomenon. Often I'm not really listening to the radio if it's on, until a few words like those above break me out of a philosopher's reverie and put me into another.
But does a thief know he or she is a thief? They may not.
There are only so many ideas in the world, I forget how many, and instead lots of variations on, especially when we're as far along in history as we are. Nothing is really new, just a new take on it. And so it's inevitable a similar storyline, the same sequence of notes will occur. In my book that doesn't make a thief, unless it can be proven, and then it's a homage to isn't it? Although if the latter the artist thief should have long ago acknowledged it and have got in first, before a story of their stealing could be made.
Ideas thought to be original can bear traces of the past, a past unknown, a past unresearched. The idea thought to be your own turns out not to be. But should you then acknowledge something that isn't true? No, because it seemed to come to you, from nowhere, from somewhere, but not from there.
The original can also be had at the same time by different people. Two people work on a similar book and race each other to the finish line. Thief! One will say, it was my idea. They battle it out, use the same sources (and possibly ask those same sources to withhold information from the other), and then wait to see what the critics say, who they declare the better. Critics always weigh; there will always be a winner. And that winner may not be the reader's choice. Both books may throw different light on the same subject, may actually complement each other, but still there will be an outright winner, if not won by review then won in sales.
Another:
The bones of a story are contested. Was it mine? Or was it yours? Both deny all knowledge of the other. So who is the thief and liar? And how should it (if one is indeed a thief) be determined? Seeds are sown. Some promotional material might have semi-consciously been taken in, in a publication it is known one regularly looks at, wherein the bones were contained. These bones, it is supposed, sank into the thief's conscience. The story they began sometime after therefore a lie, for it would not have occurred (the other claims) without this influence. The thief's story then is also theirs. And the similarities don't have to be strong for a case to be made. Doubt casts doubt and advertises doubt and promotes the need for an investigation, though it will, where it occurs, not conclude to the satisfaction of both concerned. One will lose and one will win, and there the matter will rest. Except it won't because it will from time to time be brought up, be remembered even after the writers themselves have gone to writer heaven.
Such a lot of fuss. When the assumed thief was likely innocent. When they had no knowledge of taking anything, especially not from anybody they confessed to know or to have read. And so instead their unconsciousness is accused of theft. Can you be a thief without knowledge, any knowledge of your crime?
Perhaps you can if you've grown so accustomed to your thieving nature that you don't recognise when theft is being committed. If it's become all part of the process, the writing process. What you read you think on, what you hear and what you see in the course of the day you also think on. Who can say how any of it influences? Will the artist always know when it does? To tell apart which the theft and which the art?
The declared artist thief might see it instead as weaving; weaving from or into another's story their own story. As more of a tribute than an act to be punished.

Picture credit: Portrait of a man writing in his study, 1885, Gustave Caillebotte (source:WikiArt)

Written June 2020.

How Does That...?

Would my authentic self have done that I wondered? Was I my authentic self now, or was I that self then? Do you always think the self you are is authentic, therefore the one past either must have been too or can't have been?
If I think the latter then who I was then and who I am now? In psychoanalyst babble: how does that make me feel?
I don't know I don't know I don't know. And I don't much care. There is no answer to that pathetic question. To the ones before it there might be but I don't know it.
What makes me the genuine article and what makes me fake? Er, it's er, like this...yes?..Er, well, you see...yes? Said with kind sympathetic (and a little bit curious) eyes and bent head. No, sorry, I can't explain it. Let that be your homework then.
I won't be coming again. Goodbye.
A scenario, imagined. Though I know what it feels like to be in a room sitting across from one person, squirming in my chair and trying to be earnest. I know I said I prefer one-on-one but not this type of one-on-one. I don't want to be the one talking; I want to be the one listening and making notes. Or do I? No. I don't. It's intrusive and unhelpful. Why should I have to explain how my mind thinks to a stranger? It makes me sound cuckoo. And I know I'm not.
No one can't understand your mind like you do, and if you're not good with the spoken word you'll never be able to make yourself heard. The words you say won't be right. The words you say will be construed differently; a different emphasis put on them. You will leave each time frustrated, without any insight, and with your mind nettled rather than settled.
How does that make you feel? In turmoil. I wasn't before.
The cooperative self is not my authentic self. That much I do know. The cooperative self has to, well, you know, cooperate, against its will, but still, it does.
The authentic self wants what it always wants: to be left alone. To be left to its pondering without answers. There just aren't enough classic thinkers.
What do you have to say about that? Nothing. Silence is employed so that you fill in it. Silence will be met with silence then.
How does that...? Oh God!
Perhaps I should have a meltdown....? A breakthrough (they'll think) for them; an embarrassment for me. I try not to do PDE (Public Displays of Emotion). No, I couldn't engineer one. I struggle to control myself as it is. Empty supermarket shelves tipped me over the edge last time; I actually had to be consoled. And I did have an outburst over my temperature once, for it being too low: what was I doing to make it so? How should I know?!
The hackles raised. I will come out and fight if pushed. And when I do it takes everyone by surprise so then I apologise, profusely, as if I'm not entitled to rage.
Yes, so no PDE if it can be helped; it very often can't. I'm so damn sensitive. I take the little things personally, not the big, and will think about something that's been said, or that I've said for days. Years? Well, I might return to it.
But I know this about myself. I don't need to analyse it, talk it over, with a well-meaning stranger, assigned to me, not chosen by me.
I know exactly what I need, just not always how to go about it. I'm not, as you probably by now appreciate, the run-of-the-mill client. Is anyone?
Talking to paper for me is a positive thing. It doesn't reply. It doesn't always make sense, when I read over it. But then it doesn't desire further clarification. It just accepts. Sense will come. If it needs to, maybe it doesn't. That's not really the point of it. Whereas a person you speak to has expectations. Your journey is being plotted, week by week. They say you have time, yet each week there needs to be progress as otherwise they'll ask: why?
So the cooperative self appears, only for the authentic self to leap out at unexpected moments and leave you all a-flutter and them agog at your reaction. And when you've both calmed: how did that make you...? Aargh!!!

Picture credit: Chair near the stove, 1890, Vincent van Gogh (source: WikiArt).

Written June 2020.

Mil and Daisy

Once upon a time in my life there was a Mil, there was a Daisy. Mil and Daisy. Two 1920s babes in arms. Two 1920s sisters. The two youngest of a large family, residing in South West London.
You will say this is too like Angela Carter's Wise Children but it's true. It's also true to say, though, my re-acquaintance with her last novel reacquainted me with them, in memory, because one I know has gone and has been gone for some time, and the other I can only presume followed suit some time after. Of course, if she is still with us (even if in the land of the fairies, somewhat aged) I profusely apologize for casting aspersions that she wasn't.
I'd like to report they danced and sang through their childhood but of that I can't be sure. It seems unlikely; they were orphaned young, sometime before the outbreak of the second world war and were left to the care of their elder brothers and sisters. To hard times and hand-me-downs.
I knew very little of all that and found it out piecemeal, a snippet here, a snippet there; none of which ever fitted together, seamlessly. Those times weren't talked of, nothing like how it is in books, chapter and prose. It should be verse, shouldn't it?
Forgive me, I'm ageing. The mind has never been what it should have been, and the hair that crowns it is fading, as if I've dusted it with talcum powder.
So, their lives up until the 1980s is a haze (the Blitz walked home in and the war survived), and even after that it's only a little clearer because they were both (again) living in the same area, a ten, fifteen minute drive from each other.
Mil's daughter flown (the first grandchild, a girl, born), one son living at home, and husband retired. Daisy, alone, widowed; a daughter, a son and two grandsons, but still chipper.
Alike and unlike, not two peas in a pod. Both small in height, maybe just or just under 5ft, both bundles of inventive fun, both with sharp flashes of humour. But could you have told they were sisters? It's debatable, that's the point.
It won't be debated here however, for I'm too close to it. They were a pair. Though I knew them separate and together. Am I confusing you? Get used to it, this is how I roll (how modern!)
Perhaps it's time for some more confusion...Mil was not Mil and Daisy was not Daisy. Mil was an M, a different M, and Daisy was an F. Though I know not how either nickname came about (I suspect it had something to do with the cousins of whom you'll hear a little of later). Mil didn't care for Mil, and Daisy, I don't know whether she cared for it or not. Both answered to them; Mil grudgingly, and Daisy, it appeared, willingly. Mil was not Mil to me personally, she was Nan. Daisy was Daisy, or her real name, shortened to end in ie.
Daisy's grandsons were possessive of Daisy; I was possessive of their Mil. We were content to occasionally share, but one was more mine, one was more theirs.
The cousins. Tom and Chad. Or was it Chad and Tom? I can't recall now which was the younger and which the older. I think perhaps there might have been an even younger one too, another grandson, a son from the son whom I'll call...another apple of Daisy's eye, but him I didn't know at all. Of the other two, well, naturally I had a crush on...was it Tom or was it Chad? Ah, be-still my beating heart. There is no place for you in this narrative.
The cousins could tease. Mil let them and joked in return too, playing whatever role came to mind, with whatever prop came to hand, on whatever day, all in good fun; though often when I was there as witness, I did wonder...I don't know how Daisy tamed them; perhaps she didn't have to. I never treated Daisy that way. Daisy was super cool! (That phrase was modern then.) She once took me into town – just me and her - in her Mini Cooper (or was it a VW? No, I'm sure it was a Cooper), the windows wound down on a summer's day as the sound system played 'My Boy Lollipop', laughing and singing all the way. Daisy was as daisy was, a little wild.
Mil and Daisy, alike and unlike, not two peas in a pod.

Picture credit: Twins Grace and Kate Hoare, 1876, John Everett Millias (source: WikiArt).

Written June 2020.

There's No Business Like It

Miss Hanff also revived an interest, a very old interest, in show business. Ethel Merman. There's no business like it.
I need to be clear however from the off that there is a theatrical background, of the backstage and front of house sort, in the family. Wardrobe, scenery, carpentry; ticket sales, programmes and ice creams, that sort of thing. Perhaps even further back some performing. It's a little vague (or I'm just hopeless at recalling it)...I'm no keeper of history, family or otherwise, and this occupation (hazard, you might call it) has now skipped a few generations. All that remains is a love of going to rather than working in, behind the scenes or in front of them.
So what did I do after Miss Hanff? I turned to Angela Carter's Wise Children. Dora and Nora Chance, the main set but only one of numerous sets of twins. Theirs is a complicated history alright. Chance by name, chance by nature. Coincidentally, it was quite by chance I came across Angela Carter's last, perhaps her best, and most comic novel; I found Dora and Nora sitting gossiping, well, Dora was doing all the talking, in a railway station waiting room, and since they were lost I took them on the train – with me to work - and then brought them home again with me at the end of the working day. And here, well, here they are; sitting pretty on a shelf next to Expletives Deleted, with every now and again a one week holiday.
Dora's reminiscences of their growing up and glory days (on and off the stage) put me in mind of my own. The Saturday ballet lessons in St Mary's church hall, though I'm not sure now I was built for it, or even if I enjoyed them. I liked the slippers. We didn't wear tutus; I can't remember what we did wear...leotards I think, shiny and stretchy material, that as you grow older and taller (my height marked every few months on a wall) shows up all manner of lumps and bumps, as if you didn't feel awkward enough already. This duck will be a swan. Leaping across the room diagonally, arms flung, rather than floated out. Grace came later, well, some, anyway. I didn't have a Grandma Chance watching on (guardians or parents were forbidden to stay), but Grandma M, in later years, was, like Grandma Chance, partial to a Fox's glacier mint. Maybe that too (I've just cottoned on) was digestion related, just as today my after-dinner extra peppermint gum neutralises acids.
The end of terms shows I will gloss over. A leotard monkey, a tea-towelled wise man. The country dances on the school field, round a maypole. And the recitals, musical recitals: I and a recorder. I and a guitar. Painful playing. The school choir. Oh Lord. I should have known better. I was not a Thespian. So why try? God knows why!
There were plenty of 'unofficial' plays (with plenty of rehearsals beforehand), too, put on in the garden, with costumes and props, from the dress-up box or magicked up from somewhere. Grandma M (the amateur Charlie Chaplin and actor-manager of the family) encouraged it, and would join in too with an impromptu performance of her own. She'd steal all the laughs, and all the rolling eyes, though she too had never been on the theatre stage (that I know of), but mostly behind or in front of it. But if you're of a large family, as Grandma M was (and orphaned young), you entertain.
So, no, again I repeat, though I felt it in my blood (and sometimes my waters too) I was not born to it. Even my toy theatre (not at all like the theatre Dora and Nora were given by their uncle/father on their seventh birthday) couldn't convince me of that, despite hours of play, of moving cardboard actors around on plastic rods. What thrilled me to the core was the theatre – the big theatre - and being in the audience. One of its anonymous members, and yet not entirely faceless because you always felt singled out. You never imagined the performers couldn't see very far; they were speaking to, looking at, you directly. Of course they were! Starstruck. By all of it, the actors, the music, the props and backdrops, the change in costume.
The anticipation, however, was the best bit: the warming up. The band taking their places in the pit and tuning up, the lights dimming, the curtain rising. After that you'd either be swept up and swept along, or would, on extremely rare occasions, beg to leave (forgo the ice-cream, the bar, and the queue for the ladies loos) rather than suffer through the second half.

Picture credit: The Orchestra Pit, Theatre Royal, circa 1935, Dorrit Black (source: WikiArt).

Written June 2020.