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Getting ready to leave the gym (yes the GYM) yesterday morning, I receive a phone call. I look at my mobile; E’s school shows as the caller.
It’s still early, not even 10 am. I think: Has he fallen over? Missed the bus?
Hello, a voice says, this is Mrs F on Reception calling from school.
Yes? I say. Hello?
Good morning! She’s sounding incredibly cheerful. I visualise her face: rather wise looking, endlessly good-natured, nobody’s fool — and hugely efficient. I have a phone here, she starts, and I’m tracking down who it belongs to.
Yes? I still don’t get it.
You’re listed on it as ‘Mum’.
Mum. I feel like I’ve won a prize. I’m his mother. I really am.
Yes, that’s right, I say, that’s me. Bless him.
She laughs.
*
For the curious among you, he’d left it in the library. Where he goes to read the paper every morning before registration. The Independent being his current favourite….
Kitchen-dancing. E-chosen accompaniment while loading the dishwasher Saturday (wacky vid my choice!):
Yet again it’s been a grueling few days. If it weren’t for the fact that all of life is precious, I think I might be under a rock by now. But all of life is. And with the terrible news of a student dying, and the mother of one of M’s friends also dying, both last week, came R’s and my 20th wedding anniversary. We went away for a night, just us, eating good food and ordering a different wine with every course. The weather was blazing, and we slept on the beach.
He also sent me flowers.
*
I’ve been looking for a poem to gather everything into one place. The fact that so much can co-exist, that indeed it must. Love and grief in the same room. Dread and longing, to paraphrase Adrienne Rich. So. An approximation via one of my all-time favourites, by Mary Oliver. Won’t have you rolling in the aisles. But goes partway toward something.
Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Have a guest blogger today: my (oldest) friend Valerie Gregg, now in Lilburn, Georgia, USA. Welcome! She’s seeing things I can’t from here of course, right in the middle of it. Here’s a peek:
Back to present curses, like the state of the American government.
I co-sponsored a bake sale for Barack Obama this weekend with a good friend that is also a reader and writer. Our local county is very Republican and we were harassed and an angry man stopped his car and ripped up one of our Obama signs into a million pieces and tore off in his car. Several other white men drove up to our sale and burned rubber out, presumably in anger?! I felt very threatened and afraid. But we had so many baked goods that local Obama supporters had entrusted us to sell to raise money for his campaign, that we felt we had to persevere. So we went to the Unitarian Church on Sunday (a bastion of pagan liberalism), I told our story and cried, and people bought everything and threw 20 dollar bills at us.
Gotta go. Someone just yelled “Mommy!”
*
Thank you, Valerie. Iron-willed or what?! And a mother. Somehow stands to reason.
Right. Been tagged by Sarah Salway. Uh, to list six random things about myself. Love it. I wonder if the ‘random’ is of the real type (here) or of the slang type used by my nephew, my students, and now my son, as in ‘that’s so random man’.
***
1) I used to have a recurring nightmare when I was young which involved me riding in a tiny toy-like car away from people who were chasing me. All during this ride the world was in tunnel vision, with strange creatures and sometimes very ordinary life lining the sides of the road. Sometimes as I’m falling asleep I still get this tunnel vision, which makes me feel like I’m falling.
2) I absolutely adore frosted brown sugar cinnamon Pop Tarts. Only available in the States. At a push the frosted strawberry ones available in the UK are okay.
3) One of my ideal situations is being driven down a highway with the windows open, road music on, and my bare feet hanging out.
4) I’ve never read Moby Dick. This may only mean something to Americans. But I have read Ulysses. And loved it. Does this mean anything to anyone?
5) I’d like to ride in a hot-air balloon again. A lot. The one and only time I went, I was a secretary in a real estate agency in London, going along for an early morning client-pleasing ride. It was completely thrilling. And silent. And hugely poetic. And I had to keep everything I felt about it to myself.
6) One of the most formative creative pursuits of my life has been translation. At Oberlin College I translated poetry from around 15 different languages (using trans-literations). My very first publication was a translation of a ‘creative non fiction’ essay by Miroslav Holub, Shed Blood, which was later collected into a book (The Dimension of the Present Moment, now out of print). Translation seems to speak directly to the intangible, the bit before words, beyond words…and I find that fascinating. It has made me acutely aware of the creative transformation of coming to the page: you may think you know what you want to write in your head, but the page, the process, changes all of that. The process of translation is like high-intensity editing of your own work: you wait for it to dawn on you, to talk to you in your own language. I love it, and everytime I think of it, I miss it.
***
Now it falls to me to pass the baton, along with the rules:
Link to the person that tagged you - i.e. me.
Post the rules on your blog.
Write six random things about you in a blog post.
Tag six people in your post.
Let each person know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
Let the tagger know your entry is up.
So now I tag… Caroline, George, Danny and Alis.
In my heat of the moment rampage last post, I clean forgot to mention important stuff about Thursday:
1) M had a violin exam that morning. Who knows how it went! We were all a bit perplexed when she came back downstairs saying that the examiner had asked her to play D minor to the 5th. Apparently she paused, then said that she didn’t think she knew that one, she knew E minor to the 5th. Whereupon the examiner shuffled papers and asked her to play what she knew. Good for M for speaking up. But we wonder if he thought she was doing a different grade….Oh well. She played like a trooper anyway.
2) Also spent last Thursday arranging WORD ON THE STREET, a Canterbury City Council and Kent Libraries event connected to the Laureateship. In celebration of the National Year of Reading, and the launch of the 2008 Write Here programme, we are holding open mic (and open air!) readings and performances on the steps of the library (the Beaney!) on the High Street Saturday 29 March, 10-4. There are three reading slots, 10 am, 12 pm, and 1 pm, and so far — hey — a great and varied line-up, FREE OF CHARGE.
10 am: yours truly, Alis Hawkins — and three super students
12 pm: Stewart Ross, Poet-of-the-Year Vicky Wilson, Lyn White — and two super students
1 pm: six members of Save As, a thriving local writing group…(hey guys, where are you on the web?!)
AND — Danny Rhodes says he’ll be lurking. Perhaps in true performance manner, he will have a little baton of work in his back pocket. Pick a slot Danny!
Word on the Street is the first of several ‘well-public’ things the Council and the Laureate (er, me) have arranged in the hopes of encouraging literary activities, and especially of consolidating what already exists in the region. And I have to say that putting this together has been nothing but pleasure: the response has been so positive, so willing. I’m particularly grateful to Alis Hawkins and Stewart Ross — I’ve never met Alis and only spoken to her once online, and she just said ‘yeah, alright’ — and Stewart Ross — known him for years, lives up the road, a busy man…he just said ’sure’ as well. Ian Hocking too was all up for it…but is on his way back from a far-flung place. Thanks anyway Ian! And with a 20% student take up — hey, it’s pretty good!
It’s beginning to feel like there may actually be a writing community hereabouts…
Also on the day: drama and word games by Whippersnapper Theatre Company; Great Beach reads survey; details of a Call for Work (I love this: come one, come all!) for an eventual anthology; and notification of the website www.write-here.net — currently holding…but I’m informed its life is imminent.
*
Phew. And just in case that isn’t enough Thursday for you, Word on the Street (arf arf) is that I’m supposed to be on BBC Radio Kent this afternoon at 2.30. Talking about it all. I think.
Happy holidays all! Hope everyone gets a chance for a breather and some nice food these next two weeks sometime.
And all the best for a peaceful 2008.
AGAIN!
Amongst the emboldened messages lined up like little soldiers yesterday I discovered a gem: another wonderful review. This time from (astute) Caroline Smailes, on what has got to be one of the most enticingly-titled blogs ever: What You Reading Caroline?
Here’s a taste:
A short read-in-one-sitting novel told in two parts, in two lyrical voices. A sparse yet precise piece of fiction that forces the reader to think about invisible words, about all that is left unsaid.
The story centres around the time just before and after Marilyn’s father’s death and is perhaps a study of the assumed within relationships…There is an eeriness, a darkness that comes from the invisible words, from the unspoken.
Crafted, skilfully paced and visual through familiarity…There are unanswered questions that the reader will never have responses to…I loved the layout and feel of this book. A beautiful object that added to the pleasure of the read.
What a treat! She’s also taken the trouble to put the review on amazon, for which I am grateful.
And I’m delighted to see once again some appreciation for the care bluechrome take with their books. Hear, hear! There’s none of this flimsy almost transparent paper, invisible margins, dense text and bendy covers malarky — no sir-ee Bob. If you’re going to do it, do it right. And they do. bluechrome books are a joy to (be)hold.
Yikes! I’m grateful (often) for the lack of paper in my life, but not (often) for the stacks of unopened, emboldened messages in my inbox. Sigh. I am grateful too (very often) for the rich tapestry of my many-threaded life, but not (usually) for the multi-tasking it demands of me.
However. Small potatoes compared to the fruitful, thoughtful week away: plans, writing, pin-drop silence. As predicted, lots and lots of fog, rain and general greyness — hence no lovely photos. And all of our photos from previous years seem to be buried in the bowels of the other computer. Oh dear. But here’s a taste, a photo that at least captures some of how the gorgeous Lake District looks this time of year (photo by Glen Morris):
I ventured out twice in a week (except for village walks). The second time I went to Brantwood (Ruskin’s home, and a wonderful rainy day visit, great to go back after several years), and Jumping Jenny’s, the cafe there (visited, I admit, many times a year! Delicious well-made food, and beautiful views). Despite the persistant and breathtaking-in-itself rain, Coniston Water was as complex and edifying as ever (this shot is taken from The Cumbrian Directory ). The roads were lined with fallen beech leaves that when wet darkened to pure russet.
By 3.30 pm it was nearly dark, but each day just before real darkness fell, 15 minutes of gold suffused everything — even through the clouds and fog. I stepped out the door more than once just to look, thinking there must be sun. But there wasn’t. Like when you’re walking down the street before people draw their curtains: inside you see warm sidelights, home. Only it’s outside, and 15 minutes later someone somewhere realises it’s nighttime, lowers the blinds.
