The realm of the unseen

Say what you must, but I know this ruin wasn’t heralded. It surfaced sedate paced, and doltish, bovine but not without a comely allure. It snuck up and arranged a handsome manacle around my self, and embezzled me of any good sense.

Nothing less than a dumbstruck fool, i.

If it didn’t involve so much heartache for another, I’d laugh out loud. There is a ludicrous hilarity about such dramas. The absurd, the asinine, the nutty as a fruitcake idea that I might be some sort of threat. What the Other doesn’t know, is that she was right all along. She had the measure of me. i am nothing.  

Snow

A cascade and I marvel at its splendour. It takes my breath away. Like a capricious old friend it visits, never quite prepared I find its arrival startling. I’m caught off guard, and I wonder what it’ll leave in its wake.

An alarming chill the harbinger of its approach, but still I remain oblivious until its fall. As I watch from a distance I notice how it is a season within a season. A blanket coating everything in sight, a cloak swathing every brazen surface, it muffles the noise, and stalls the pace. It quietens the racket and dresses the city wounds. And extraordinarily I feel as though it comes bearing a message.

Footsteps

Recently I was on one of my usual bus routes, when I remembered an old hospital where I did work experience close to two decades before. I knew it was in the area that I was travelling through, but couldn’t for the life of me remember exactly where. What’s more, I couldn’t really recall what it looked like, my memory being so hazy. I figured I’d type the name of the hospital into Google images on my phone and see what came up. So I did, looked at the image on screen, and then looked out of the bus window only to find myself looking directly at it. The hospital, now boarded up, and looking a little bleak, though still retaining it Victorian haughtiness beckoned. I got off the bus at the next stop, and instantly felt like I was in a time warm. I sometimes do this, perhaps it’s quite common behaviour, I don’t know, but I’ll revisit old places, or people, even if it may seem a little peculiar after so much time has lapsed. Perhaps it is my way of exploring personal experience. I don’t really know, but I suspect it has something to do with my fascination with the journey of life, and the people we encounter. I don’t really believe in insignificant meetings, though I realise that I’m not always wholly present, which means sometimes I just don’t see or value the wholeness of the moment.

As I retraced old steps I started to get flashbacks to my time there. I recall my old mentor, a handsome young man. So beautiful to look at it was quite distracting. He had a penchant for collecting cinema postcards. In fact his top drawer was full to the brim with them. I also recall the huge photocopying machine, a contraption that lay in the corridor of the building perpetually getting jammed. I recall standing at its behest for what seemed like hours. I recall sharing an elevator with two kind elderly ladies, who showed an interest in what I was doing and offered me ample encouragement.

I explored the area around the hospital and recalled a place that I would often go for lunch. I wondered if it was still there. As it happens, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was. Smaller than I remember, but busier too, it was bustling with activity, and a throng of people were queuing to go in. I stood outside for a second and admired the décor. It was charming, sort of classic in layout, with pews for chairs, and elevated platforms where people were seated. I wasn’t planning to go in, because I couldn’t really afford it. I was between jobs and feeling the pinch, though to be honest it was, and remains reasonably priced. As I stood there a woman appeared behind me, like myself she too was alone. She struck up conversation, and before I could really muster up real opposition to the idea of going in, had convinced me to join her on a pew for lunch.

Conversation between us flowed. She spoke of her family, and how earlier in the year she’d looked after her sister, who had now passed away, she’d suffered with cancer. We spoke of many things, mostly family, jobs, and how one adapts to living with loved ones who are either ill or elderly. Suffice it to say we were instant friends. 

Portrait

She would have me believe it as devoid of any prepossessing qualities. Agitated and impatient she glowered disapprovingly in my direction. Though in all honesty I couldn’t really see through the tears obscuring my vision. I must have been a sorry sight, clothes saturated through by the rain, sopping wet crumpled tissue in hand. Still it was falling to bits as I tried to mop at my tears, and maintain enough eye contact not to appear completely pitiful. Of course I failed miserably.

I’d relayed to her austere beginnings, meandering turning-points, inevitable crossroads and shuddering ends. Rather like the main thread of a story. As if I had to pick out the most interesting parts of the storyline and have her be entertained. Was it a performance? Only what escaped my notice, was that my story was no plot, and the most interesting elements were those that didn’t get a mention, those that lacked vigour and action, and made up for both with mystery and on the odd occasion, wonderment. Never mind the fact that it wasn’t a performance.

Here’s the thing. I was younger (not an excuse). I’d been put through the emotional wringer several times over. I was the proverbial confused mess followed by occasional mishap after mishap. And that’s okay, because that’s how it goes sometimes. But that thing that I was experiencing just then, in that miasmic unholy mess was a heck of a lot of turbulence, the sort that makes your bones ache, gives you sleepless nights, and wish for the future because you cannot wait to relieve yourself of the present. Ah ha, but before I get carried away here in the affliction of that time, I ought to point out that even from within that catastrophe I was experiencing a rendering wonderment at the thing that was taking place inside of me. Sometimes, when I think back to then, I feel like a fraud because what I portrayed at the time was utter dejection. A satisfying despair that I could really revel in. Though, that’s not to say it didn’t exist. It did. It just wasn’t as all consuming, as ardent, as absolute as I would have had one believe. If I remember correctly, there was also an element of astonishing wonderment, a surge of excitement, and thrilling vitality in those brief moments when the wholeness of the situation registered to me.

I’d agree that it wasn’t tidy, but I wouldn’t say it was devoid of every prepossessing quality.

The mote in my eye

Absurd that it doesn’t occur to me to check. Occasionally I’ll read a litany about gentle guidance, and even whilst doing so I think I’m already there. You know, on the right track, not a bit wayward, and definitely not crooked. I’d laugh if I weren’t in such a sombre mood. May my artifice give way to what is real.

Old habits frisky in nature slip in. Routine, the hoary propensity to do as I’ve always done, and then because it’s just inconsequential, or so I tell myself, I’ll allow it. I guess what I’m beginning to realise is that the inconsequential adds up.

Learning the lesson

Once in a lifetime a little lass heard a whisper and realised an itch, she scratched at it and it unfurled into a beautiful floret. Rapt with its beguiling form she watched as it quivered in the light breeze, still rising tall, parading a scarlet from somewhere deep within itself. Enthralled by its splendour she was but responsive. How could she resist? She wanted it to behold, and her wanting was such that it fattened into a desire so stunningly strong. A ferocious quicksilver she could do little to contain. Little did she know that she’d encountered in that floret the purring of Eros. So brand new to an encounter of this sort, she did what anybody would do and plucked at its stem, clipping it away from its sustenance. She didn’t see the droplet that gathered at the tip, or hear its lament as it was clasped close to her chest. Of course the unsurprising happened. The purr of Eros was such it couldn’t go the new distance. It spattered a bit but then settled on finding a new home, as was its purpose. After a time the floret lost its allure, it wilted, and its petals crimped as though holding on to what remained. The little lass who saw the burgeoning of Eros in other florets, was disappointed. She thought it fickle.

The abiding child

Each day the old steeple spears the dawn pink sky, somewhere inside the echo of a Muezzin’s call, a lover calling upon others to profess to his sweetheart. Might we know ourselves, that we know You? That’s the litany.

Elsewhere a story unfolds, a child cowering inside, bound and gagged, no visible ties, just the kind that shoot up and sprout forth in insidious a fashion. Their origin if traced back, lie in that hinterland that is both unforgettable and unrememberable.  Paralysed or merely unresponsive, it’s difficult to distinguish between the two. Either way, he’s deaf, and blind, truly unseeing, without sight to see what lies within. He has a burgeoning form, bestowed with eyes that see the surrounding, ears that hear, and great towering height. Powerful if not for the terrorised child enclosed in his core. The one that cowers bound and gagged, with no visible ties. The eternal child inside, might he know himself, might he know You?

The New Year

Verily, the bonkers truth of the matter is, I’m rather looking forward to work tomorrow. Also, I’m liking this font, as well as the words ‘Verily’ and ‘Verity’. They’re handsome words. The font gives them the elegance of contour, the swish and flick then add to their allure I find.

Two whole weeks at home, after which I get a tad maudlin. Sadness over having less time to be with friends and family, or perhaps just upset over the fact that I won’t be permitted my morning lie-in any more. Tsk

Work, is a veiled blessing? I could tell you what Kahlil says about it. Why attempt to say it differently when he says it so well?

“You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons,
and to step out of life's procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.
When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?
Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret.
But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written.”

Right, all that aside, I’ll take this opportunity to wish you a good year. May it be joyous and joyful, of colour and shade, may it be life.

Happy New Year.