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.