The faint shadow of the morning moon?
Nay, the snow falling on the earth.
The mist of blossoming flowers?
Nay, poetry smiling up the sky.
Yone Noguchi
Sometimes a poem and a photo blend so well it’s serendipitous. I count myself lucky to have found this poem and seen this woodpecker outlined by the pale shadow moon.
It is raining, autumn is in full techni colour, and winter looms. The white sky merges with mist over the sea. Bardsey, the holy isle of the bones of a thousand saints, disappears from view completely leading us to speculate it has magical qualities or that a secretive organisation, ‘them’, dedicated to the preservation of the bones deciding what measures are best needed has reeled it away for cleaning. Sometimes it appears to float like a spaceship, or be twice as large as it is, or as today, abscond entirely. We joke and speculate what it can be this time.
And so another day passes. The forced togetherness affirms and destroys the relationship we thought we had. New rules are set, new habits formed over the long months it has so far been.
We hear of others’ weekends spent visiting, mingling together, or away, or following interesting new pursuits such as book binding, potting, yoga, I wonder if it is us who has fallen through the net, who doesn’t realise that Covid is so over and it is possible to live as ever we lived in the wider world.
Offers of visits, attempts of socially distanced gatherings, even of under six and outdoors are rebuffed. I’m surprised we are not consigned to Facebook friends with lonely birthday messages accruing annually on the page with infrequent photo updates bathed in the colours of the flag of the country where the latest tragedy or assassination attempt took place to show that perhaps we still exist for real.
Maybe, when this latest garden project is satisfyingly finished and planted, when the latest clutch of recipes has been shopped for, cooked and consumed, the next box of wine sent for and shoulder-shruggingly quioffed with a what can you do nonchalance, we will venture out.
The chance of reprieve is lost as once again we slide with relief into lockdown. It is not just us who is avoiding everyone. We are not so antisocial after all.
And then comes another reprieve: the first dose of vaccine.
You can apply to have a loved heirloom repaired. People cry, the craftsmen do a good job, you see their capable heads bent over the object, glasses adjusted and their caring hands tinkering away until all is restored. Mechanisms long broken through enthusiastic overuse or just weakened by age. Infirm, like any old thing or person.
It’s quite mindless and better than most of the reality tv on offer. No one gets chucked off, no one is judgemental, everyone is kind and polite and helpful. One expert can ask another for help if something not in their expertise needs mending.
I want to apply. Not so much to have my darling teddy spruced up or restore an old rocking horse for the grandchildren, or a decrepit old chair, although the chair would be great.
I want all that loving care lavished on me so I can be the best I can be. That utterly deflating phrase we hear a lot of. It kind of takes the oomph out of you. Perhaps because the expertise and care and time and attention lavished on these memories is the amount of time and care and expertise required to bring ourselves up to scratch. Exhausting to be always looking to improve.
Or is it the desire to have someone else put the effort in or just to lavish attention on you. Pamper you.
But, and it’s a big one, a big ask.
What if the repair team could look into a despot’s heart (Putin or Johnson say) and tweak away all the nastiness.
When asked what she owed her parents Bernadine Evaristo said her ‘introduction to Political Activism.’ Her dad was the first black man to sit on Greenwich Council and her mother a teacher and trade union rep.
So I got to thinking.
My mother was also a teacher but not overly political. She was a single parent and we were latchkey kids without even knowing since it was before the terms were current. Her life revolved around the task she had been left with: earning a living and bringing up three girls.
Much of what I owe, I didn’t always appreciate growing up, but Ma’s bright smile, acceptance, fortitude were obvious to the end.
To her I owe:
Unconditional love and the strength and comfort that brings.
A sense of fun and lust for adventure. She was at heart a great traveller and a firm believer in holidays.
A sense of justice, kindness, fair play, honesty, integrity, perseverance.
Appreciation of art, music, education. Love of books and films.
I owe her everything, I suppose.
Having taken the decision to eschew Facebook (WHAT KEPT YOU? you might well ask) and turn again to WordPress and a neglected blog. Among a legion of drafts, many more than published posts, I click on this title: The Joy. The page is totally blank and I wonder what I could have been contemplating so many weeks, months ago and decide to appropriate the title, today of all days, in my stand against the pernicious Facebook on whom I have relied, turned to for publicity since publication of a first book seven years ago. If it has done any good, or served a useful purpose is impossible to tell. The joy I feel at renouncing its middle of the night scrolls in search of sleep I hope will not be short lived. And then a cold voice of reason prods me. What about friends? What about WhatsApp, to which in these Covid times especially, I am slavishly devoted? Facilitated by Facebook: I make allowances for my faiblesse.
The evening sky although not an all singing, all colours sunset, more of a Turner, was beautiful; the hint of brightness on the horizon as if proving there are hearteningly better times to come.
A family was exercising in the circuit of the beach car park (which has been closed to visitors since the outset of the debacle when the whole world and its mother agreed this a better place to self isolate or take daily exercise than any city, until dissuaded). The parents raced in opposing directions at full speed on their bikes and a little girl, no more than three or four, ran a whole lap. Impossible not to cheer her on. She glanced at us undeterred.
I am impressed by two poems currently. One, an ancient prayer and a hymn, a Celtic Blessing that was played at my mother’s funeral, sung by Aled Jones to the tune by Rutter. The prayer, the music and the occasion deeply imprinted until time slowly erodes the memory to the bare bones. The other, probably also a song, new year wishes by Jacques Brel.
Both are love songs. Unconventional, in a way, but surely, to wish anyone the deep peace of the universe with or without the inclusion of Christ is an act of love. So too the fervent wish for at least one bounteous dream to come true.
Deep peace of the running wave to you.
Deep peace of the flowing air to you.
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.
Deep peace of the shining stars to you.
Deep peace of the gentle night to you.
Moon and stars pour their healing light on you.
Deep peace of Christ,
of Christ the light of the world to you.
Deep peace of Christ to you.
New Year wishes by Jacques Brel
I wish you dreams with no end and the furious desire to realise some of them. I wish you to love what should be loved and forget what you need to forget. I wish you passion, I wish you silence, I wish you to hear birds singing and children laughing when you wake up. I wish that you respect other people’s differences because the merits and value of each person are worth discovering. I wish that you resist getting stuck, that you resist being indifferent and that you resist the negativity and righteousness of our time. Finally, I wish that you never renounce discovery, adventure, life, love because life is a magnificent adventure and no reasonable person should renounce it without a courageous battle. I especially wish you to be yourself, to be proud of who you are and happy because happiness is our true destiny.
I’m trying to commit Sea Fever to memory. Mostly for the last line about the long trick being over. The pandemic being the long trick in point. Spike Milligan often intrudes on the Masefield version.
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky. I left my shoes and socks there – I wonder if they’re dry. Of course, vest and pants also works here.
Sea fever seems preferable to cabin fever and while we still have the option of daily exercise and we live by the sea, I must go down to the sea again. Etc
Sea Fever
We flew to and from Mexico recently, maxing out on a stash of films.
One, Official Secrets, an excellent Keira Knightly vehicle, portraying Katherine Gun and her struggle with her conscience, her country and the official secrets act.
It revealed/portrayed the national shame and the the national scandal of Tony Blair and government lying to the public and committing the nation’s young men and
women, to say nothing of innocent Iraqis, to depraved years of illegal war with rendition, Guantanamo Bay (agh don’t) and the dropping of the case because it would reveal the lie.
One of the lawyers advising Katherine Gun was Shami Chakrabarti then head of Liberty, now a baroness. It felt strange to see her fictionalised. I met her at a writing retreat at Gladstone’s library is my claim, before I’d looked at her CV online, before reading On Liberty, before Jeremy Corbin recognised her worth. She was forever at his side in those horrible parliamentary debates. It felt one of those six degrees of separation moments, a blend of coincidence and a minor brush with greatness.
Official Secrets was not funny. It points out the vindictiveness of our government with regard to deportation and legislation that makes challenging official secrets an impossibility – however wrong, illegal, unprincipled those imposing the secrecy, A neat piece of story telling that lost out perhaps in the oscars to Parasite, also thought provoking but darkly funny.
Can’t imagine how Katherine Gun felt about the film.
We are well placed here on the edge of the country with only the sea and distant Ireland to one side and mountains to the other before any marauding virus gets to us. Who knows for sure how it migrates from one person to another? By hand, by mouth, by cruel word or unkind deed, by vibrations in the air we breathe? I’m no scientist. Not any kind of scare monger. My instinct would be to make light. ‘Happy self isolating!’ I say, causing derision from those sorely afflicted. Boris’ gallows humour is perhaps out of place, too.
An agnostic Catholic, my faith is in beauty, a face, nature, music, a poem or a neat turn of phrase, prayer a recourse when others are in need.
Here on the edge we are imbued with beauty. it is no sacrifice to self isolate. Just getting it done, whatever it takes, no hardship as yet.
Murielle's Angel 