Sky and Earth

Words circle protestingly, a page of solid ink. Sky and earth. Meeting. The sky so strong so enormous settling everything, choosing what glories – what weathers! what tints! what beauties! – to bestow on earth. A city of gardens; a noble river; exotic sun-scorched or leafless trees and bursted flowers. Words breathed into the cool night air, floating like clouds, swelling the atmosphere. Chandapore. India.

Picture credit: Indian Home, 1927, A Y Jackson (source: WikiArt)

See the opening to A Passage to India by E. M. Forster. 

From journal, February 2023.

World

An unruly world controlled through the presence of spirits (fairies, ghosts, Weird Sisters) and the power of magic. He/she who has the knowledge, like Dr John Dee, confers authority, can influence politics.

A world governed by suspicion to the point of paranoia (plots to murder). A world turned – should these double agents succeed – upside down. Cities of dreams, places of nightmares.

An expanding unsettling Elizabethan world (a global system) replete with exotic riches: sugar, fine horses, and gold, peddled perhaps by travelling legs following a mental map … Unless the salesman be disguised, a Catholic priest on the run, so a room – in secret – could become a church.

Picture credit: Orbis Terrarum, 1590, Petrus Plancius (source: Wikipedia).

See Shakespeare's Restless World by Neil MacGregor. 

From journal, February 2023.

Cell

A cell, a cave at the foot of a mountain. One or many in mountainous regions of the desert. A singular withdrawal from modernity or a monastic community. St Paul criticised for solitude, St Hilarion criticised for sociability. One seen not at all, one seen by many. Like St Jerome I feel only admiration for these first inspirators (fathers) of faith; a monk's life is so much more attractive than a nun's.

Living in a flat is a little like living in a monastic cell. The body hurt by the slightest cold or heat, the tongue falls silent about one's self, and so though much time is spent in literary activities little literary output is achieved. For no first or second-hand account could ever provide a full description of inner life or daily behaviour. Everything in the end – in speech or print – gets censored, because once set forth, as Horace said, it cannot be recalled or deleted.

Picture credit: St. Jerome in His Study, c.1475, Antonello da Messina (source: WikiArt).

From journal, February 2023.

Time's Nightingale

Many possible worlds, all playing with time. Time's nightingale trapped in a bell jar. One circular, lives lived over, nothing temporary; everything repeated precisely, no variations. Another, time visible everywhere – clock towers, wristwatches, church bells telling the hours with exquisite regularity. Safe; predictable; undoubtable. In yet another time passes but little happens; or its texture sticky, stuck, as are the people in this world, stuck at some point in their lives, of pain or of joy, stuck alone. Or in a place where time stands still, frozen, for eternity. Perhaps a world where there is no time; perhaps a world with no memories. Each dawn the first dawn, each eve the first eve. All without a past; ghosts. Unlike those who live in a world where time flows fitfully, who see their future. All guaranteed success, no risks. Unless obsessed with speed, with not standing still. Unless in a world where time flows backward, with many false starts; or one in which life is lived for just one day, one sunrise, one sunset.

Time a sense, quick or slow, dim or intense, orderly or random. For some infinite, for others uncertain.

Time a quality, it can't be measured. No clocks, no calendars, no definite appointments. Events triggered (and recorded) by something other than time.

Time a visible dimension, births, marriages, deaths.

Stops, starts, signposts. Intervals of action or nothingness. Minutes; decades. Fixed, with clock-like inevitability, A corridor of rooms, one in use, one prepared. Time bouncing back and forth, confusing past, present, future. Time shifting, fleeting dreams, floating clouds. Time fidgets, flutters and hops; jumps and flies; but trapped – stopped – it withers and dies.

Picture credit: Clock, Jacek Yerka (source: WikiaArt).

With acknowledgments to and freely quoting from Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman. 

Written January 2023.