Top Five and the Shovel List

                                                                 

I have a lovely friend who has been on sabbatical for nearly a year and has been travelling round the world enjoying a plethora of temples, beaches and alcohol of every flavour, soaking up cultural experiences and coming to an understanding of what rather irks him about the human race.  He has documented his experience in a Blog (http://my12monthcareerbreak.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/top-5/)  It is very funny, and has, on more than one occasion, almost caused me to expectorate coffee/tea/red wine all over my living room as a gleeful chortle instinctively escaped. 

The link above takes you directly to a particular Blog post I enjoyed recently, about a game he plays with friends: Top five.  It’s straight forward: come up with the top five things in life that make you happy.  Conversely, to satisfy that acerbic streak we all have, he suggests we come up with a top five “shovel list”, the thinking being that it should be things we would like to see hit with the afore-mentioned garden implement.

This evening, I asked my husband what his “Top Five” would be and here it is:

• A strong cheese (he was eating some Stilton at the time and I did say that his choice could be out with the things he could see from the sofa or the things he was doing at that very moment…)  

• Noticing the small things (sometimes he can go into a room, walk down the street, and see something marvelous that I just didn’t notice… Quite often this phenomenon occurs while we are in the car where he will point out a particularly interesting vehicle when all I want to do is sleep.  I shall point out that usually, this is not when I am driving.)

• 6 Music- the best music station in the BBC’s air-wave vocabulary.  ( I think he has a crush on Lauren Laverne.)

• Dogs with their heads protruding from car windows while the vehicle is in motion, especially if their tongues are lolling in the breeze.  He has often said how intrinsically happy that makes him. 

• Success (not the crazy, driven kind, but the small successes after a long stretch of bad luck. He recently got a new job and said that it was the first time in a long time when he experienced the involuntary need to jump upwards while punching the air.) 

• He said that the wife and kids were a given, but did add that nothing makes him more happy than the welcome our boys give him when he comes in from work.  (Perhaps, I will qualify that by saying, except when one, or both of them, is screaming, having a tantrum, or whinging.)

Shovel List

• Lazy T.V journalism.  Even our trusty BBC are culprits of the use of stock phrases or the use of overly emotive language akin to channels on which there are adverts. 

• People quoting from films they  haven’t seen, like when lines from films become detached from the film they were in, in the first place, like “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” when the person has never seen “Apocalypse Now,” nor do they know what napalm is.  As an add on, he really does not like it when people wear fashion T-shirts with the name of an old, pretty cool band on it that they definitely will not be listening to on a regular basis, nor are they a fan of.  He pities the Ramones whose name and aesthetics have been sold to the consumer as a product.  It’s all about the music, maaan.

• Fern Cotton (‘yoof’ TV presenter) , who embodies the zeitgeisty insincerity we both hope goes out of fashion, and soon.

• This may be a really British thing, I don’t know, but people who write “Happy Birthday Tam (for example)” on old beds-sheets and, in the middle of the night, affix it to a major roundabout in their place of domicile.  My husband sees this as being a real indignity… how does one decide which bedsheet is going to be utilised to facilitate such an outpouring of emotion-the newest, the cleanest?  I doubt it…although I don’t think either of us has ever looked close enough to find out.

• Finally, when nice cheese is wrapped in white, wax paper, but when you open it you discover, to your absolute horror, that the supermarket shrink-wrapped it anyway.  (Yip, he notices the small things, that are in front of him right this minute!)

If I asked our son-the one who can talk-what his top five were he’d say the following:

• Bob the Builder. 

I would say, “What else would you like to put on your top five list?” and he would look puzzled.  

“But, I like Bob the Builder.”  Quick list.  Simple tastes.

 I am musing over my own list.

Grrrrr.  Why oh why?

yeah!!!!!

Saturday Morning fun.

Myself and my oldest child (three today) had a go with some Epic Straws, or as he put it, "What can we do with the worms and the monkey ears?"  We managed to create something symmetrical, but it was a bit awkward to drink with.  Despite such difficulties, with Herculean effort, he managed to sip some of the good stuff.   He then enjoyed (possibly more) pulling the structure apart, causing droplets of Cravendale to ping and splash in all directions, proving that, to a toddler, it's as much fun, if not more fun, to dismantle as to create. 

Due to all the giggles and hilarity, he drank cold milk for the first time and seemed to enjoy it.  Job done!

Will I ever read again?

 

For two weeks I have been back at work after ten months looking after a new baby and a toddler, enjoying and being frustrated with all that entails.  When I walked into school, I was both apprehensive to be back and quite eager to get started, eager to return to a routine I have known for twelve years.  I unpacked my many copies of "Othello", my Beckett hoard, copies of "The Red Room", "Streetcar" and a lovely book of poetry called, “The Book of Luminous Things,” which I thought I might refer to with my Advanced English class, with whom I can indulge my penchant for great poetry inspiring great writing. 

I still went to my book group, once again only having read half of the prescribed text; I signed up to tutor and went to some exercise classes, knowing that it won’t be long before I find juggling it all, almost impossible.  I rearranged my “To Read” books onto a separate shelf and now I’m eying it with a real sense of guilt, or rather, they are eying me with a strong sense of indignation: “Thanks for saving us from Amazon’s dusty warehouse, but when were you thinking of cracking the spines?”  I have four novels by my side on the sofa, all of which are started, but unfinished.  I think I am biting off more than I can chew.  I suppose that this year is not the time to attempt Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time”? 

Online or offline, that is the question...

 

I remember being a young undergraduate of 18 and tutting (silently, from that place that felt superior because it rejected most forms of technology) at other students who had mobile phones and delighted in talking loudly upon them.  “I’ll never be one of those people who’ll own one of those things.  If I’m out, I don’t want to be contactable.”  This was 1996, when we had an “Introduction to the Internet” as a compulsory class at the beginning of first year and directed to one of two major search engines: Yahoo or Alta Vista.  Google was but a fledgling flexing its wings.  We were told to “search” for something… It was painfully slow dial-up and our email accounts looked like Ceefax.  I didn’t even know what to search for. To find journal articles in the library we had to look up enormous reference books and search under keywords.  Research was a difficult process; there was no such thing as Google Scholar.  On the plus side, when I found an obscure article to reference in an essay, I was delighted.  Not everyone on the course could have the same bibliography created by searching the same academic journals on the same websites. 

But, things move on; technology makes things easier, more accessible. My sister game me a brick (mobile phone) when I was in fourth year so that my family could contact me easily.  I still rejected it: it remained plugged in, in my room and was never taken out to become “mobile”.  Perhaps this was more to do with how unbelievably uncool it was; after all, I didn’t go to university in an 80s movie.  I still used my Sony Walkman, which I thought was marvellous as it could slip so easily into my pocket. But, when Brick gave up the ghost and I realised that I quite liked texting as it didn’t engender the commitment of a phone call, I bought a new phone before I went to teacher training college in 2000.  This was the thin edge of a dangerous wedge.  I used it for texting, and for the one thing I thought I would never do: for cancelling plans at the last minute, or for warning friends of my tardiness. Having it meant that plans were never really “fixed”, but rather in constant flux, which is modern life to a tee. We don’t even have to commit to going to a concert we’ve bought tickets for.  

I have a Belgian friend, who lives in Brussels who is 36 and has never owned a mobile phone; he absolutely refuses.  He’s the most reliable person I know.  He never cancels; he always turns up where he has planned and when he has planned.  He has to.  He isn’t on Facebook either, thus he’s never texting and updating his status simultaneously, while pinning on Pinterest, Blogging and buying unnecessary stuff on Ebay while drunk.  Ok, so he’s hard to pin down, to get him to answer his phone and I don’t see pictures he’s been tagged in whilst unawares, but at least he still emanates a sense of mystery which I would click “Like” on if I could.  

My Year With Beckett.

A few months ago, I decided that I would go to a book group with complete strangers.  I wanted to do something that I could do by myself, allowing me a little freedom from family life.  I joined and then couldn’t find time to read anything or go for ages.  Ostensibly, every two weeks, the small group meets in a lovely little café, filled with books, and we discuss…books.  Admittedly, the first week was a bit of a cheat as I had read many of the possible titles in the past, so didn’t actually read anything new; however, this week I am working on reading, “If on a Winter’s Night A Traveller,” as we were given the task of reading any book from the Oulipo group .  I had never heard of this before either, before you feel that you may have to, in your Oulipoean ignorance, retreat to Wikipedia for a briefing.  

I cheated a second time: I didn’t go to the book group alone.  I went with my friend, who is almost double my age, but we are strangely connected; she is hilarious, clever, warm and pithy.  As we sat around the table, there came a hiatus in the conversation and my friend said, “Isn’t it strange that sometimes you read a book at exactly the right time, so that it makes an imprint in your life that it might not have otherwise?” (This is the gist of what she said, paraphrased, missing out how she qualified it once she read the reaction from our fellow book-groupies)   There was silence, perhaps contemplative, but more likely she had said something that over-stretched what complete strangers are willing to discuss upon a first meeting.  It is something which has really stuck with me, however.  

 

I had one project I wanted to work on over the Summer, before I returned to work in August:  I wanted to read and prepare to teach “Waiting for Godot” and “Endgame,” not realising the enormity of what I was taking on, not just in terms of the difficulty and complexity of the material itself, but also how reading Beckett can cause us to question our existence: who are we and why are we here?

I read “Nausea” when I was sixteen/seventeen and I read Camus, as any young chin-stroker is want to do once on that path.    When I read “Nausea” I understood that the protagonist, in trying to understand his place and purpose in the world, realises that there is no purpose, just a disconnectedness from everything.  He questions free-will and how we try to blind ourselves from the purposelessness of existence.  Light stuff.  Not a lot of laughs.  Despite my seeming irreverence, the ideas remained with me. 

 A year later, while visiting my uncle in Paris, he took me to Montparnasse Cemetery, which is the one where Jim Morrison is not buried.  It lies in the shadow of Montparnasse Tower, and is smaller and less sprawling than its Père.  It is where the great literary and intellectual giants are buried: Ionesco, Baudelaire, Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre, Beckett.  On the one hand, it is odd that these cemeteries are tourist destinations ( maps of where the famous and influential are buried are available in all good book stores), but on the other hand, I don’t belittle why people want to visit: I too am intuitively drawn.  Why seek out the local dead?  I couldn’t help but wonder what Sartre might have thought of the German family picnicking beside the grave he shares with Simone de Beauvoir when I visited with my uncle nearly two decades ago.  What were they seeking apart from a decent bench upon which to feast on Bratwurst and bread?   There, I saw the grave of Baudelaire, covered with messages and poems, held in place with small pebbles.  I recall being drawn to the intimacies inscribed on these pieces of paper; it was like coming across an open diary where I wanted to read, but felt like an intruder.  Back then, I didn’t know Beckett and as his grave is so plain and without ostentation, I didn’t visit.  I remember the quiet, leafy, contemplativeness of Montparnasse and the uneasy feeling, being surrounded with thousands of tombs, gives me: death is final, but visiting a headstone makes it seem less so. 

                                                                                         

This Summer, in my quest to understand Beckett, I returned to Montparnasse.  It felt inevitable: I was in Paris for one day, for my wedding anniversary.  Where else would we go?  He’s buried close to Serge Ginsburg, whose grave is strewn with postcards, sketches, metro tickets, unsmoked cigarettes.  As we walked past, a young, very bohemian-looking couple were talking, taking pictures, seeking some alone-time with the man they’d come to visit.  We left them to it in our quest to find Beckett.  Due to an organised grid-system it didn’t take long to track him down.  His grave is a flat, grey, shiny, marble affair with a space for potted flowers at the front.  There were no letters penned by the broken-hearted, no tickets or cigarettes strewn on top.  It seemed apt that the man, who was embarrassed by accolades while alive, should have such an unassuming burial plot.  I stood, looked, read the inscription (he’s buried alongside his wife) and thought about him, about what I’d read so far.  There was no epiphany.  I would have to work harder to get closer to this man, it seemed.  (If this was a short story, I would have laboured the metaphor:  to find Beckett, there was no map, no straight route, only death in all its absurdity…)  

Walking away, we passed by Serge again, and the young couple who we had seen on the way to Beckett.  Surprisingly, he had extracted a trumpet from his back-pack and was preparing to play.  As we headed towards the exit, the poignant, heart-breakingly sad notes followed us, drifting up into the grey sky.  We made a de-tour to Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, on our way out, my husband feeling increasingly uneasy as more tourists flocked by us, holding photocopied maps, ticking off the famous they’d already encountered and making a bee-line for those they had not as yet.  I could no longer hear the notes of the trumpet player. 

Beckett I fear, is not someone anyone can just read for fun (who would, let’s face it).  It is life-changing.  We buried another member of our family today (another aunt, aunt to the cousin who died only months ago) and as it is the third funeral I’ve been to in two years, for that branch of our family, I am still numb.  She was a graduate of English literature: a great wit, a great mind, a great drinker.  I bet she read Beckett and laughed.  “Waiting for Godot” is pretty funny.  

My point is: I am reading Beckett at a time when death has reared his head on too many occasions, when I see symmetries in it, repetitiveness in experiences, and even in Montparnasse, I imagined happening upon Vladimir and Estragon, waiting and waiting.  I think I need to read something lighter, for now.

We salute the semi-colon!

I assessed Advanced Creative Writing for the first time this year and before I commenced this task, I wondered how anyone might ascribe a mark to something so…well… creative, but once I’d started, it became patently clear what we were really looking for: there are those who have control of language and then there are those who do not.  With great pieces of writing, there’s a sense of purposeful shape, carefully crafted, each word exceptionally chosen and placed just so.  I must have read about two hundred pieces and have to say that they ranged from the sublime ( and I mean sublime-I couldn’t believe the insight and imagination of some seventeen year olds) to the down-right awful.  What was made clear to me was that there is no tool in the writer’s toolbox which is superfluous in the quest to find the authorial voice. 

I remember a boy-David-who was seventeen and trying his best to get an A in his Higher English in order to get into Medicine at a prestigious Scottish university.  He asked me a question that I mulled over-and am still mulling over-nearly five years later, enough time for David to have graduated.  He asked me if it was important to know “big words”.  For “big words” read, “Words that I do not currently have in my vocabulary.”  My instinct was to say, “Yes” and explained that language is the only thing we have to make our thoughts, our ideas, concrete, to facilitate communication, which is as true and meaningful as it can be.  The more words we know, the better we can be in expressing those experiences, ideas and so on.  It is something I do believe: perhaps in a near existential way, as we search to acquire enough language to express ourselves, experience can be limitless.  Luckily we never have to come to the end of learning, acquiring, expressing, so we don’t fall into that existential abyss, like the man who reads all the books in the library in order to attain complete knowledge.  I also said that beyond the concrete language that we have at our disposal, we also have metaphor, which makes our expression infinite.  Imagine that our feelings and thoughts are a muddle of intangible threads.  When we feel extremes of emotion, we often say, “Words cannot express how I feel” and the knotted threads are pulled tighter. 

The great writers  of this world have and did experience the same kinds of loss, love, elation, and used metaphor in order to come closer to a true representation of it.  Mostly it was impossible, but in striving to find meaning in experience through metaphor, those tight knots untangled somewhat, or not: the journey tells us so much about the human experience, endurance, hope, bloody-minded stamina.  I think of Yeats who tried to unravel his love to Maud Gonne; Plath who tried to find meaning in her father’s death.  These writers return again and again to the same subjects trying in different ways to find sense, to come to a clear and rational understanding.  Sometimes we don’t know what we think or feel before we write it down, before we place it in the box of language.  There’s a reason “stanza” means “Room” in Italian.  We strive to place ideas in a room and walk into another. 

I read a great article in the New York Times today, which inspired me to sit down and write this.  It was about the semi-colon. (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/semicolons-a-love-story/) It turns out that there's a lot to say about it actually.  The real language Geek inside me read the article with absolute relish; she figuratively rubbed her hands together with delight.  (Note the semi-colon joining the two sentences together?  I couldn't resist trying her out.  It's only right that she be present while I discuss her.  She's not an Oxford comma; I wouldn't talk about her behind her back!)

The writer begins the article by quoting Kurt Vonnegut, who said:  "Do not use semi-colons.  They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing.  All they do is show you've  been to college."  To  me this is Vonnegut defying convention, asserting that to deny rules is somehow to pare away pretension in the literary form.  In other words: leave out the semi-colons to show that you're more interested in substance over style.  It's understandable that the NY Times writer bought this completely, so eager was he to fit into the Vonnegut/Hemingway imaginary dinner party, come cook-out with lots of protein and definitely no vegetables.  To him, all other punctuation marks were acceptable for use, even the colon which is like a non-identical twin to the semi-colon.  It lives on the same key on the keyboard, next door to the ampersand and upstairs to the full-stop and question mark (which shares a room with the slash, thus making me imagine two college buddies: one questioning life and the other constantly drinking too much and having to use the conveniences on a regular basis.)

But, like a good writer should, he came to reject Vonnegut's inverted snobbery about the punctuation mark, finally finding its use incredibly liberating, facilitating expression rather than hindering it.  One comes to wonder if the thinking process changes when we understand the use of punctuation or if punctuation merely fits into thought... "What does it do?" a young David may have inquired.  "It can divide up items in a complex list, or it can be used in place of a full-stop when two sentences are related closely in meaning.  If you link them using a semi-colon, you're showing a relationship between sentences.  That's when things get interesting...."My eyes would sparkle; his would be dulled with a pitiable, "I wish I hadn't asked," look.  Ahh well.   

To me, it is a necessary tool in writing to create "rooms" in a long utterance, which in itself is a house.  Our thoughts- mine included-tend to be elastic, jumping quickly from one idea to the next; they can take the most strange of detours; they can visit many seemingly disparate door-ways en-route; finally, they can take you firmly to the point being made.  Instead of flummoxing a reader, the semi-colon allows a mile-stone to rest upon before continuing the journey to the end of the sentence.  Those mile-stones are markers; they make sure that we're less likely to lose our way and if we do, we don't have to return to the start, just the last mile-stone we remember passing.  

Of course, that's just my opinion.  We're all free to decide which side of the Vonnegut fence we rest on. 

A final thought: students often ask me if punctuation is really important.  Do they REALLY need to use apostrophes correctly?  Can't they just miss them out?  I don't reply.  Instead, I withdraw a handy pile of Poe's short story, "The Tell-Tale Heart" from a box marked, "For Emergencies."  I explain that punctuation in writing is like musical notation.  Imagine all notes were the same without differing values; imagine a score without a time-signature.  Why does a composer need such things at her/his disposal?  Music should be played as it was written to be played, but that does not mean that there isn't room for interpretation.  To me, Poe uses punctuation like a great composer: to create crescendo, diminuendo;  quiet, disquiet; climax, anti-climax; tension, denouement. Without it we would not gasp, our hearts would not race in the same way as we enter the mind of the mad-man as he slowly unravels. 


When someone can write with a real sense of control, I can feel it in my bones: I see with their eyes and can be utterly transported.  That means using all the tricks we can to pull the rabbit from the hat, whether we're seventeen and sitting an exam , or if we are a stalwart in the canon of American fiction.

Thanks to Ali for nominating me for the Versatile Blogger award!  http://alibeecreations.blogspot.com

I have to write (admit) seven random facts about myself. Tricky one...
1)  I am a super-taster.  Despite the fact I thought, when I was a child, that blue cheese smelled like old socks, I now love it! 
2)  I have had a poem and a short story published (on websites...)
3)  I love the poet John Burnside.  I saw him speak at my university and then, many years later, I saw him speak at the Edinburgh Book Festival.  It was like meeting a celebrity.  I got tongue-tied!
4)  I cried when I saw Death of a Salesman.  I was sitting in the front row and may have embarassed the actors...
5)  I can recite To a Mouse and To a Haggis off by heart.  Still working on Tam o'Shanter.
6)  To celebrate Eurovision 1999, myself and a number of pan-European friends, played a drinking game which culminated in us all having to sing a song in our mother tongue.  I sang the Scottish, Caledonia and won the competition, winning a large glass of red wine for my trouble.  We were drunk and misty eyed.  To regain composure, myself, a Finn and an American (yes, not European, but still got to enter the competition because we're all inclusive) went skinny dipping in the Adriatic.  Not too clever when I think back: drunk and swimming in unknown waters.  Even more unnerving was the moment when, as we emerged from the water, slightly less drunk, but pretty naked, we were illuminated by the full-beam headlights of a man who had, presumably been watching us for some time.  He left his vehicle, pursuing us up the beach as we ran, stumbled and tried to put on our soggy clothes with as much decorum as we could muster. 
7) Slept with a sausage.  (Had a house-warming party in Hungary when I shared a flat with the afore-mentioned American girl.  We had a punch bowl... I almost don't have to tell the rest of this tale...  Needless to say, it was messy.  We had to go out, however, as were disturbing out neighbours who were early risers.  We headed out to the pub and the only reason I know what happened, is because I took photographs, which I had developed many weeks later.  It was 1999: digital photography was but a speck of technology on the horizon.  I digress.  We had tequilla, played table-football and then ran home in the snow.  I must have arrived home, needed some food, so took a Hungarian sausage to bed.  I didn't have the energy to eat it, so woke to find it happily uneaten and slightly withered by body-heat in the morning.  My lovely American friend was asleep in a pile of crisps, so she can't assume the position of the innocent.  I blame the fact that there was not such a thing as a take-away kebab shop in Southern Hungary in the late nineties.)

I really do have to stop there, or my explanations will get longer and longer! 

So, now I have to nominate fifteen other bloggers for this award.  I will go in search and will return to this post at a later date!

Mon panache.

I haven't posted in ages. Suffice to say that it has been a busy, strange time.

Over the last few weeks, I have come up with a couple of new designs for my "Nose Stuck in a Book" range of bookmarks. As the most prominent thing about them is the large nose applied to the top of them, it didn't take me long to return again and again to the image of Hercule Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, from Edmond Rostand's play, or the French film I remember watching as a sixteen year old girl, alone and in the dark.

The image of the wonderful Gérard Depardieu as he stood under Roxanne’s balcony is an enduring one for me. Even if now I am more wizened, slightly more cynical and a tad less whimsical, I can still recall how I loved the moment when Cyrano finds he can speak to Roxanne from the heart and she, thinking he is the dashing Christian, falls completely in love. Cyrano speaks on Christian’s behalf, who, although beautiful does not have a poet’s soul. Cyrano, has a large nose, a metaphor for his cripplingly low self-esteem in matters of the heart and society’s focus on outer beauty.

Cyrano’s character is clever, witty, bombastic to the point of verbosity, which, ironically is an outer show of his wit and intellect. It is his emotions that are hidden, except as he stands in the dark, able to enjoy a moment of truth with the woman he loves: “Yes, the feeling which fills me is true love! Fierce and jealous and sad, yet never selfish. I would gladly lay down my own happiness for yours, even if you were never to know it. And even if I end up far away from you and lonely, I will be content just to hear a happy echo of the joy I once brought you! Each glance from you makes me virtuous and brave in new and unknown ways. Do you begin to understand me? Now, after all this time, have you begun to understand? Do you feel my soul climbing up to you through the darkness of this night? Oh, it is too sweet, too incredible, that I should speak this way and that you should listen! Even in moments when my hopes rose so high, I never could have hoped for this much! I could die peacefully right now. My words have had the power to make you tremble! You are trembling, I can feel it! I can feel the quivering of your hand echoing down through the jasmine branches!”

 It is his words she falls for, but Christian’s beauty. They marry in secret before both Cyrano and Christian go to war. Of course, Christian dies and Roxanne mourns him. Due to Cyrano’s initial deception, he cannot then sully Christian’s memory with the truth. Christian dies the romantic hero. It is only later, as Cyrano is dying in Roxanne’s arms, Roxanne having lived in a convent for ten years, she realises that it was Cyrano, the great poet, whom she loved all those years earlier. Ever unpopular , some lackeys dropped a piece of wood in his head, smashing his skull.

 He asks her about the last letter Christian sent to her before he died and she tells him that she keeps it with her always, that it is stained with Christian’s blood and tears. Cyrano, in the dusky light says that he would like to read it; he reads it aloud, even as it grows too dark to see. Roxanne realises that the voice she is hearing is the voice she heard under the balcony all those years before. Cyrano denies it because the blood on the letter is Christian’s. When Cyrano dies, Roxanne loses the man she loves for a second time. Despite being a decorated war hero he dies unfulfilled because he could not emerge from out of the darkness under the balcony.

 I read it in English. I read it in French. I watched the film again and again. Two years ago, I went to Bergerac in France to visit the statue of Cyrano, despite the fact the actual Cyrano never lived there. The statue is pretty, and as it was our wooden anniversary, my husband acquired a wooden Cyrano head with the pervasive “prize turnip” protruding from the centre of his carved face. It was rather lovely to return to those adolescent feelings of romance: to the tragedy of unrequited love. I don’t think I’ve seen the film or read the play in ten years, but sometimes I fear returning to something so of its time in case it becomes tarnished by a new perspective.

These memories returned to me as I crafted Cyrano’s nose and made him a red handkerchief to wear over it, just as he wore under Roxanne’s balcony. Even if no one ever wants to own one for themselves, I enjoyed the nostalgic journey.

Life, death, the universe...

Tracy K. Smith just won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.  She handles such weighty topics as life, death, the universe.  I haven’t read her book, although I will.  I read a review in the New Yorker and came across this:

We are here for what amounts to a few hours,

                                               a day at most.

We feel around making sense of the terrain,

                                               our own new limbs,

Bumping up against a herd of bodies

                                               until one becomes home.

Moments sweep past. The grass bends

                                               then learns again to stand.

It seems so strange to have come across this writer today and this quotation which eloquently describes the fleeting nature of life.  My second cousin died today.  He was 36.  It was an accident: he fell backwards down some stairs.  His wife had to give consent to switch off his life support machine. They had been married just over a year. He’d been on a stag weekend and now he is dead.  The facts are stark laid out in black and white and I write them with a certainty I don’t feel.  How do we make sense of tragedy?  How can I write about it without hyperbole and meaningless emotive language, dragged out from my vocabulary as acceptable words for grief?  

As my mum told me what had happened, my mind took me to a very sharp memory, a mind-picture with an incredible sensory texture: my sister must have been three or four and our cousin must have been no more than ten.  She is on his knee and her blonde hair is plaited tightly in French pleats; she’s wearing a black and white summer dress.  Her arms are thrown around him and she’s aiming for a kiss.  She is smiling a wicked smile, eyes closed and his smile is spontaneous as he clutches her, eyes closed.  They’re sitting on an old reclining garden chair, which is covered in a big, yellow, floral fabric.  I remember how it smelled: like sunshine and musty patience.  It lived in the shed and didn’t get out much in Scotland, but if it did, we’d all fight over it; it was so comfortable.  He’s wearing a V-neck blue jumper and jeans, and he is so, so young, unburdened, happy in the moment.

Their family was so much a part of ours as we grew up, despite our differences in age.  His mum was my mum’s best friend.  She passed away last Summer after having developed cancer of the brain.  It was quick, but so very painful.  She was of ages with my mum and her daughter had a daughter about the time I had my first son.  My second son is asleep tonight wrapped in a blanket she gave us when our first son was born.  I think of her often.  She would come to my parents’ house with her husband (who is such a generous man) every New Year and would sing, “She Moves Through the Fair” with her faint Irish brogue touching each familiar syllable. When she died, I wrote a poem for her because I wanted to capture what I remembered before it was too far away, and also, I wanted to, somehow, give a shape to my grief, if that’s even possible.  I took words and images from, “She Moves Through the Fair” and saw the fair as a metaphor for life, which we visit, as Tracy K Smith so eloquently says, “for what amounts to a few hours.”

“…a joy forever…”

Obsidian eyes, hair pitch, with the sureness of calligraphy ink,

She goes to the fair, feet embraced by the bite of spring dew.

Merchants with myriad wares, watch as she lingers

By a mandolin player picking notes of the folk song;

Her voice, mellifluous, she sings the tune, habitually,

as sure as one year leads in to another.

She moves through the fair enveloped in melody,

Eyes sharp, assured with flaming zeal,

And unravels a hand, as if that hand,

Were proffered with earnestness as vast as the Irish Sea;

This great man makes a star a constellation:

Discord, harmony; spring, summer. 

Close your eyes, you’ll hear that voice again,

Ageless as light.  Her feet make no din as the swan migrates,

Volant in to the wintry mists,

Her footsteps an enduring memory to generations,

A thing of beauty, a joy forever,

That does not pass into nothingness.

I sent this poem to her husband in a card because I couldn’t bring myself to write empty condolences.  Metaphor is the only way to get close to the abstract and to emotion and feeling that defy concrete terms. 

Her husband, who is lost without her, was on that stag do, too.  He was there when my cousin died and I just don’t know how a broken soul can withstand losing two people so suddenly and within a year of each other.  Can the grass really bend and then ”[learn] again to stand”?