Passage to America

The beautiful sea-cry, 'All's Well!'
heard through a veil,
two syllables in a darkness of a night at sea.
A lantern swung to and fro with the motion of the ship;
through the open slide-door, a glimpse of a grey night sea,
phosphorescent foam flying,
swift as birds, into the wake,
and the horizon rising and falling
as the vessel rolled to the wind.
Below, on the first landing,
lads and lasses danced,
in jigs and reels and hornpipes;
a god made of the fiddler.
In a different quarter, a more forlorn party,
the motion, here, in the ship's nose, violent;
the uproar of the sea overpoweringly loud.
The yellow flicker of the lantern
spun round and round.
The human noises of the sick (sea-sick, dog-sick),
joined into a kind of farmyard chorus.
A man, run wild with terror,
cried with a thrill of agony,
'The ship's going down!'
Repeated, in a whisper,
his voice rising towards a sob.
The emotion of his voice catching.

Picture credit: Woman on ship deck looking out to sea, (also known as girl at ship's rail), 1835, Maurice Prendergast (source: WikiArt).

Inspired by The Amateur Emigrant by Robert Louis Stevenson (from Steerage Scenes).

Written September 2021.

A Passage, A Letter, A Story

A letter placed by the side of another, then perhaps another, and another, nudging each other, to form a word, a single word, leading on to perhaps a whole string of them like charms on a bracelet. A passage, a letter, a story. Mere tangles of words, the string played with over and over; the knots grow tighter, the string plays with another similar, different coloured, ball. Inarticulate, ridiculous, unprintable. Better never to have been written at all. But ah! freedom; the freedom of letters placed side by side. A mere outcry; a wild outburst. A flight; a shout, that echoes, echoes, echoes... nonsense; and again trails off, dot, dot, dot. Silence. How still the self, the voice has become. How still the world...but no! There is noise. A bird discoursing to itself or another; the sound of a train running over the tracks Sutton-here-I-come, Sutton-I-come; the constant hum of an air conditioner, one long exhale. People, animals, objects going about their lives.
The self, paused, once more pipes up. 'But', just as the narrator of An Unwritten Novel also asks, 'when the self speaks to self, who is speaking? - the entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world – a coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors.'
Up and down, up, down...
Yes, the self muses, a coward; and no beauty, except perhaps in lantern-light. A rare light to be sure. Worshipping things, soft living things and hard solid things with its softening light. All sharp angles gone. All marks covered.
The mind, under this dimmed light, no less quick in thought but absent-minded in action. A book placed where an empty cup should have been left, an empty cup where the book should be. A set of pyjamas moved back to where they've just been moved from, then moved again to where they should be; and joining in the doing, therefore, all pleasant and disagreeable thought, that no crack in the paintwork or mark on the wall, even if seen and looked at, could put a full stop to.

Picture credit: Lantern and Flashlight, Dan Witz (source: WikiArt).

Quote from An Unwritten Novel by Virginia Woolf. See Selected Short Stories, Penguin Classics.

Journal entry, September 2021.

Maturity

Maturity, more abstracted, more surreal. As the poet matures, perhaps in years, perhaps experience, perhaps expression, so does the poetry. I think this is true of many a writer – poet or novelist, unless their debut is dazzling. I think this is true of many a person, unless what they see and learn of the world stalls them; keeps them locked in place or makes them retreat.
Where it's written, I prefer the more anguished early years; later it's more hidden, cloaked in metaphors. Youth have that freedom; adults must resist it, not speak of it, and not write openly of it. For, angst should have disappeared, as years were gained, as the adult face emerged, beneath the youthful one.

Picture credit: The Poet, 1911, Pablo Picasso (source: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; Wikipedia).

From journal, September 2021.

Minor

A minor role. A minor song. Minor, not in age but in experience and feeling. A minor woman. A minor human.
A woman, withering, with melancholy eyes. The bloom not quite gone, but beginning to decay. Silver strands; unfading lines. Time, marks her. And marks, too, the mind.
What has life given her? Memory; and childhood imagery. Of sea, as Lorca describes, with 'teeth of foam, lips of sky'. Dreams, with spiders of oblivion, spinning thread. And song, their ancient words still recalled; their melodies hummed.
Life gave, then took. And ceased to give; whilst others continued to live; and grow in ways expected.
The adult, half-crossed out, has no story; only a minor role, a minor song.

Picture credit: Testimony of a Minor, Honore Daumier (source: WikiArt)

See From Book of Poems in Selected Poems by Federico García Lorca (Oxford World's Classics, translation by Martin Sorrell).

Written August 2021.

Framework

The framework on which a novel rests or is supported, its structure perhaps strong in some places and weak in others. The sequencing of events is good, keeps the inquisitive novel-reader hooked, but less so the intelligent, for being devoid of plot there is no plot to thicken. Or the why? is there, but the sequencing is a shambles, leaving both the inquisitive and the intelligent novel-reader confused as to what is happening generally or even who characters are and which of them the story or plot ultimately depends upon or revolves around. Who is flat and who is round? if we wish to critique in E. M. Forster's terms. And yet it could be that the characters themselves, minor or major, are the weakest part of the structure, and fail to act as directed by the writer or in some instances to act at all. The writer has lost control of his cast!
Examples! demand the audience, to which the speaker responds: I speak in general, not of particulars, for how dreary it would be to spend the evening comparing one author with another. Each of you – if you are really readers, or scholars – will know of novel people or passages to which you can refer (and refer others) to as flawed, though you will have to admit there must be some allowance for taste. By which I mean some flaws, if there, can be overlooked, certainly if the writing is good or if the rest of the structure is, for the most part, sound. Novel-readers, inquisitive or intelligent, never agree, you know...
The speaker breaks off to clear his throat and sips from a glass of water. And here too we will leave him, for his lecture, like the novel as it nears its end, shows signs of decay; it will either be too neat and formulaic, culminating in marriage or death, or so messy that one might ask: 'What was that about?' And the writer, in this most trying of circumstances, for her creation is no E. M. Forster, does not wish to observe her creation flounder, as is bound to happen, his left hand is already in his jacket pocket feeling for the crumpled handkerchief to wipe his brow, for it's hot in the hall, under the spotlights, and the audience are not, as he anticipated, sitting in appreciative silence; they are disconcertingly muttering amongst themselves.
And then? No; we shall leave.
Why? Because like some dramas put on the stage or small screen, what should have been strong is weak.

Picture credit:  Who, What, 2006, Alexsandr Borodin (source: WikiArt).

See Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster

Journal entry, August 2021.