Listening from within

I have listened to the news on the radio for nigh on forty odd years now. I have watched the news and news analysis on tv intermittently, though sometimes assiduously, for long periods. I have participated in twitter debates, been able to observe and ponder other people's twitter debates and listened to the small number of friends who discuss world affairs.

I am wary of participating and listening and watching any more. All this pooling of thoughts and impressions and ideas give the lie to the truth. Our ideas, impressions and thoughts become homogenised by this daily grind. It produces a palatable ice cream that we taste and savour at our leisure and in our repose.

Remembering the raging argument that my Dad had with my uncle when we all shared a house together when I was growing up. My uncle had The News of the World newspaper delivered once a week and as I began to learn to read, I would look at it. One week my grief could not be contained after seeing pictures of dogs being beaten to death with sticks on the front page. I would cry myself to sleep night after night thinking of them. My Dad was outraged to the point of apoplexy and demanded that my uncle never order it again. I remember this now and the ill feeling it caused, along with the deep feelings of sadness. I think about not knowing about painful things, disasters, wars, cruelty, torture, oppression and the myriad forms of suffering going on as we live each day.

I retreat. I prefer the slow and laborious process of reading. Not newspapers. My circumference of experience has retracted to within my arms' reach. I listen to music again. Even the music in my head is preferable to some external babble. I can sometimes extemporise, internally and externally.

This is a hermit life and perhaps I am hiding from reality. For the time being, I imagine it is reality I am trying to touch. I feel deceived by the homogenous and illusory impression of life portrayed second hand.

I put on my boots, my hat, my gloves and I walk out. It is, inevitably, about to rain.

Impasse

Impasse - Notes


Theres's always a point at which you have to make a choice, or change a situation.

Using the Penseive.

Hurtling through life. Looking backwards briefly at the way you came.

The story arc of my life ; you know, I can see the shape of it reaching out in front of me. It's tree-like.

Light doesn't travel in straight lines in space. It curves along the space time continuum.

William Blake described doors of understanding which can be passed through.

How do we find the keys to these doors ?

A locked door seems like an impasse.

Can keys magically appear ?

                                                         
                                                                   _        



Here is a banal observation :



Change is fundamental to life. Of course. When we make choices, we interact with this phenomenon

and the choices we make can change our lives both subtly and fundamentally.


Instigating change can take a central position in our lives. We can become transfixed with the

potential of it.  It may even take on a pseudo-magical aura for us, for example, when we imagine that

even the clothes we choose to wear somehow determine the outcome of our interactions with people

that day. There may even be an element of truth in this. Our appearance can certainly have a

psychological effect on others and so affect our interactions with each other.  However, when this

observation causes us to invest certain items of clothing or jewellery with magical or "lucky"

properties, we should begin to suspect that our acknowledgement of the influence of our choices and

actions has taken on superstitious overtones.


All this exploration of the effects our actions have on the world begins in childhood and it can be

experienced in a ritualistic/psychological form named "undoing". We learn not to step on the cracks

in the pavement. We touch certain objects a particular number of times. We look for specific signs ;

 curtains closed, lights on or off, someone appearing at a specific place and time. We set ourselves

tasks; jumping down some of the stairs, going up at two or three at a time. We may increase the

difficulty of  these tasks to intensify their effects and become distressed when we find them

impossible to accomplish. And all to prevent, to undo, to ward off, to make a spell.


There is a certain kind of meticulousness and tendency to pay close attention to detail that engenders

the compulsion to perfect this approach to the effects of our actions in our life.


Sometimes, a person who has these tendencies arrives in a situation and they find themselves

narrowing down their spheres of influence so that they may feel they have control over the very dust

that is shed from their skin.

And they may perform



Acts of expiation                                                 as a

Defence mechanism                                           in their

Striving for reparation                                        in their

Desire to undo harm and put objects to right magically.


This type of behaviour has also been described as a kind of

Falling                               to                                            bits.



                                                                   _




The Closed Door.


There were three things that she liked to do most of all; playing with water, burying treasure and

imagining that the house was a hotel in which each room had a different guest staying. She decided

that every guest had to be visited and their needs attended to once a day. The guests had long,

complicated names and these had to be recalled and used in full during the conversation with them.


Playing with dolls was an anathema to her. Nevertheless, the dolls that she possessed had to be

looked after. This she accepted and she would dutifully undress them, give their clothes to her mother

 to be washed, then bathe them in the kitchen sink in turn. All except the rag doll who couldn't be

washed. Time was dirtying her and there was no remedy for this. She had complained about it to her

mother who had carefully sponged the doll's clothes which were sewn distressingly onto the doll's

body and this did improve their appearance somewhat, but there was nothing to be done with its

blackening face or greying yellow wool hair. For this reason, the rag doll was kept, wrapped in tissue

paper so that her body and hair was covered but not her face, in the "fairy cot" that her mother and

father had made so meticulously for her as a Christmas present. It had arrived with a letter from

Father Christmas, stating that he had sent it as a substitute for the Jack-in-a-box she had requested

which could not be found that year. The sporting analogy was not lost on her.


So it was that every time she was taken, by the hand because of the cars, round to play with her friend

Anita who lived in a block of flats near the block of flats that her aunt and uncle lived in, she had to

pretend that she enjoyed playing with the dolls who inhabited Anita's impressive doll's house.

The doll's house was a large, wooden, garishly painted affair which someone had made with love for

Anita. Father Christmas had no doubt delivered it. The family of four dolls who resided there were

stiff limbed wooden creatures with fixed, painted on expressions. The Father doll had a stern

expression, described by the direction of his eyebrows, for his mouth was obscured by a large, bushy

moustache rendered by thick, black lines. The Mother figure could be recognised by her cloth penny

and the mop of yellow wool hair, not dissimilar to rag doll, but fluffier. There were two smaller dolls,

obviously the man and woman's children; one boy with his painted on cap of black hair; the other a

girl with a red Clara Bow mouth and strands of orange wool gathered into a cursory pair of bunches

and tied with cotton.



Anita would prattle on delightedly as they posed and placed the family in various situations. She

made up voices and scenarios for them and bounced them along vigorously to signify when they were

walking. Lost in her own reverie, she didn't mind that her companion only mimicked her actions in a

rather mild, unenthusiastic way and never contributed to their conversations. Alongside her lack of

enthusiasm about animating the wooden marionettes, her playmate was perturbed by the trompe l'ceil

fixtures and fittings in the house, and most especially, the painted door in the top-most room of the

house. Each time she went on these excursions to play with Anita and the house, she would come

 away and wonder and worry about the painted door and how it could be opened.



At home in the front room after these weekly excursions, she would take out the box of chess pieces

and place it in the middle of the board. She often played with the chess set and her father, taken by

her fascination with it, had shown her the way to set out the pieces. He had patiently explained the

rules which described the movements of each piece and she was able to remember the way each piece

was expected to move as they seemed like dance movements, similar to the ones she had learned at

school. She and her father played some simple games in which her father allowed her to make some

straightforward moves, demonstrating that she had remembered these rudiments, after which he

would dispense with all her pieces quite quickly and the game would be over. This didn't upset

her, since winning or losing held no thrill for her. She enjoyed the quiet companionship of

concentrating on the chess pieces with her Dad and then happy to be left alone to play with the pieces

and break all the rules of chess by instigating her own meticulous and complex ones.


Having completed one of her own intricate rituals involving taking first a white piece, then a black

piece, one in each hand, then placing them on specific squares on the board, she would gently sweep

them all away with the box lid until they tumbled off the board onto the coffee table. She had

developed a careful technique for doing this so as to avoid losing any pieces, since the first time she

performed the action she had flung them away with her forearm with such vigour that some of the

pieces had gone flying through the air, hitting various hard objects and making a loud clatter, enough

to summon her beloved nana who scolded her for being careless and noisy.


The ritual complete, the pieces returned to their wooden box and put carefully away under the coffee

table, she would go to the window and look out onto the street to puzzle about the strange fact that if

she put up her hand to her head and compared it to the houses across the street, she was more or less

the same size. Looking down, their own garden was always beautiful and gave her unending pleasure.

There was the gate, painted dark green. She enjoyed swinging on that. There was a sharply cut

diamond shape in the middle of the rectangle of grass and in its centre was a beautiful rose bush with

roses so red her Nana would sing about them. Along the front border, depending on the time of year,

there might be Sweet Williams or Lupins.

Beyond was the road, over which she was only allowed to cross accompanied, so that she could not

imagine herself beyond the gate as an unbroken entity. The circle of her being beyond the gate was

always broken by the intercedent hand, so that, gradually, upon leaving the house, she would feel

forever accompanied by the guiding hand, even when it was invisible. She decided to set out down

road before tea and find the fencing with the finger in it.



And then here, we pause. The trouble with stories is that once they get started, they start to take on a life of their own and run away off from you. She's about to go out in search of something she doesn't understand, but she wants to know it. Since she is a child, she has no understanding of the potential dangers, though we must credit her with an instinct for what might not be considered wise or desirable.by her elders. And it is this instinct that drives her forward.

Dad

Dad was a rock Mum would say, then muddle the metaphor by adding that she worshipped the ground he walked on.

Rock was a good description of him. He was large; six foot two and a half by his own calculation, and heavy, 16 stone and mounting as the years went by.

He was quiet. Read the newspaper or big, thick books at breakfast and the dinner table, only pausing to peer over his glasses, clear his throat and say " I beg your pardon" when addressed.

He would make his opinion felt, however, when he thought it needed to be. For example, he once thumped the table so hard with his fist that it shook when he wanted my brother to get his hair cut.

And he could be quite locquacious when it came to talking to me about physics, the universe and all that. He admired and read books by Fred Hoyle and Isaac Asimov. A lover of science and learning, he bought my brother a gyroscope and showed me how to make a moebus strip. Though not just science ; he took us on day trips to castles, stately homes, up mountains, into areas of outstanding natural beauty, usually without telling us where we were going first, so it always felt like a magical mystery tour.

I have two abiding visual memories of him, well more, but these come to mind most often; the first when he dismounted his motorbike calmly, walked over to the "bloody idiot" who had pulled out on us, causing him to swerve and me to fall off, and planted his fist firmly on the offender's jaw, causing him to fall to the floor as in a cartoon. Not funny, I know, but memorable. The second image is of him standing in the back kitchen doorway, holding his left hand up with his right, blood pouring over the two of them and saying quietly to me " get us a tea towel love" when he'd severed the end of his index finger on his bandsaw. Tea towel placed over the wound, taxi rung for the hospital, he asked me if I'd go and try to find the end of his finger in amongst the wood shavings. When I went in to try to retrieve it, there was the loveliest chess board in the making on the workbench, sadly, no finger tip to be seen.

All this and more from a man who had been born into a poor family at the close of the twenties, whose father died when he was two. We never met one member of his family, not even his mother, though I have two photographs of his brother; one in army uniform in Australia, the other dressed smartly as a batman when he got promoted to look after an officer. The rumour was that my grandmother joined him in Australia and that was the last my Dad saw of them both. A familiar war time story I think.

So my Dad was a also a bit of a dark horse, but a steady, hard-working dependable father to us and an emotional rock to my emotional mother.

And he was a man of so many talents, though driving was not one of them, which may have seemed ironic to some, since he worked at Fords.

 He'd started at Fords, just as they began to build the factory. A "coach builder" by trade, though I'm not sure where he served his apprenticeship. I know his first job was in the export office in the docks at Liverpool, then, after a stint at the council, he ended up working for Hawker Siddeley making aircraft bodies, so that's probably where he served his time. He was obviously clever and rose to be foreman in the press shop, then later foreman of quality control. I know he was highly thought of by his workmates because there was a huge turnout at his retirement do and they were all at pains to tell me how they'd enjoyed working with him. He was often described as a Burl Ives figure, calm, tolerant, fatherly and fair. The men he worked with all had other projects of their own that they worked on when work was slow, usually making things to sell like terrariums, carvings, metal signs etc, anything that could make use of materials and tools available at work and he would turn a blind eye to this as long as they got their proper work done. properly.  For his part, Dad would make, amongst other things, beautiful scale models of wooden carts in the workshop he'd created in our garage at home and get some of his work mates to fashion the tiny metal finishings for them. They were perfect replicas in every detail. I used to marvel at how his big stubby fingers could create such intricate things.

He worked for thirty years or more at Ford's, but he didn't buy a Ford car until very near his retirement . In fact, he didn't buy a proper car until I was ready to learn to drive. He started off with a moped, a step up from his push bike we all thought. Then he got a small Honda motorbike which I used to enjoy riding pillion on most Saturdays over the Runcorn to Widnes bridge, accompanying him as he collected money for the Spastics Society as it was then known; his little side-line which earned him a few shillings in commission. One day, he came home with a massive Triumph motorbike and sidecar and the fun began. We were all very excited about the prospects of travel and even the dog would happily jump in the covered car to go for a spin. We toured the North Wales coast each summer and autumn weekend, only stopping when it got so cold that my dad and whoever drew the short straw to ride pillion couldn't walk properly at the end of the journey. Then came the embarrassing three wheeler Robins - first a van and then a car. I was too young to know how daft these looked and enjoyed the cameraderie of other Reliant owners tooting their horns and waving at you as you rattled and bumped along in them. Only now do I appreciate how humiliating this must have been for my Dad to park in Ford's car park. It took me many years to realise that he just couldn't pass his driving test and since you were allowed to drive the Reliants on a motorbike licence, this was the nearest we were going to get to a car for some time.

I don't recall my Dad ever having a driving lesson, so it wasn't really surprising he couldn't pass his test. By the time he did pass his test, he must have driven hundreds of miles on the motorbikes and in the Reliants because he had taken us all over the country on and in them. The legend goes that the inspector who passed him made him pull over and stop the car mid-test to announce " Mr K. you can obviously drive a car, so can I suggest to you that you take a few deep breaths, calm down and drive me back to the test station because I am going to pass you. " Whereupon, according to this legend, my Dad drove perfectly all the way back.

Having the longed-for licence, the first car my dad ever bought was one he'd always talked about; a Wolseley. Like the motorbike and sidecar, he arrived home with it out of the blue and caused a great commotion. I think he must have had a win on the horses because it was so extravagant and unaffordable for us. He probably just fancied a little taste of luxury for a change and to celebrate passing his test. It was a shame that I was just of an age to learn to drive because this was a big heavy car, difficult to manoevre, however, my uncle was determined I should learn in it and took me out driving every Sunday until I was confident to get to Liverpool and back. It's illustrative of the time (mid seventies) that when I declared I was going to put in for my test, my Dad said he had to change the car because he couldn't afford to insure me. It seems I'd been driving uninsured for months on end.

He traded the beautiful, luxurious Wolsely in for a nasty tin can of an Astra with a gaudy metallic lime green paint job. We were all mortified. Two things ensued : I scraped its side all along a lamp post whilst practising my reversing, leaving a visible residue of lime green paint on the concrete post. Then, I was asked to reverse around the very same corner on my test, so that as I did so, the luminous smear on the lamp post was clearly visible to me and, I was sure, the examiner as I made another inept attempt at it.

Needless to say, I failed my test.

Driving was a dislike my Dad and I shared amongst so many other characteristics and interests. It's him that I have my interest in and understanding of gardening to thank for. He like to raise plants from seed and he gave me a tray of coleus seeds to nurture when I was about 10, telling me they were hard to grow so I had to tend them properly. I can't remember whether I was successful or not, but I do remember marvelling at the tiny plants as they emerged from the soil and thinking how magical it was and it did the intended trick of giving me the gardening bug. I happily pruned, weeded and mowed the front garden according to his instructions, enjoying his praise as well as the effect. He created a beautiful garden in every place he lived. When I bought my first home with my partner, a little terraced house with a raised stone area at the front, he made wooden planters for it, filling them with beautiful flowers so that the grey Yorkshire stone was instantly cheered by the gorgeous array of marigolds, Snap Dragons and lobelia. Our back garden in the house I grew up in was crammed with flowers, shrubs and fruit; blackberries covered the garage wall, alpine strawberries grew amongst the flowers, a quince cascaded over the sand pit and gooseberries lined the path in and amongst the roses.

Even before he got a greenhouse, he would grow tomatoes, filling every window sill downstairs with the stroppy, pungent plants and lining the fruits up along the glass to ripen. When he retired he bought a green house and grew flowers from seed in it which he planted up in hanging baskets and planters then sold from the front of his bungalow. With the help of a friend, he extended his garage and turned it into a workshop for creating anything out of wood; fences, bowls, mushrooms, toys, money boxes, ornate shelves etc. His dove-tail joints were exquisite. Lids to boxes fitted perfectly. The rejects he gave to me usually only failed due to the wood drying unevenly and splitting. His output was phenomenal because he was desperate to supplement his pension since he took early retirement after my mum died which he couldn't really afford to do.

It was a heartbreaking sight to see the boxes of beautifully crafted finished wooden items lined up ready to sell at craft fayres in the hall of his bungalow after he died suddenly in his mid sixties. Clearing out his books, records, photography equipment, tools and all the things he'd made was a painful, but wonderful reminder of how many things he had enjoyed and how much of this enjoyment he had passed on to me and my brother.

I am grateful that he was here to see the birth of my two children, to influence my son in his first six years and to enjoy my daughter for eighteen months. They both share his love of nature and enjoyment of photography, along with a kind of perfectionism that stems from wanting to do things well. My son inherited his serious thoughtfulness, underpinned by a sardonic sense of humour. In my daughter, I can see his patience and stoicism.  I think of my Dad whenever I feel pride in my son and daughter, which is often.

It's an obvious thing to say, but the death of your parents marks a significant change in your psyche. It's something you might dread as a child, believing life would be unbearable without them. As you become an adult, feelings evolve, and mine became very complex. When my mum died, I was in my mid twenties and I was shocked and sad, but not traumatised. I've decided this was partly because she had talked a lot about death in her life and seemed at ease with it, but also because she felt so much a part of me, it was as if I'd absorbed her somehow in a way that meant I felt she was still with me, even after her death. I was also sheilded from feeling alone because of Dad being around. With his death, I was adrift. We don't describe adults who have lost their parents as orphans, we are supposed to grow into independent adults, but if you feel that your parents formed the foundation of your life, possibly even the core of your personality, their death can feel shattering. With his passing, it felt as if the ground gave way under me and I hope it doesn't sound mawkish to say I've had to walk a long way over new terrain to regain my footing.

So rock it seems he was. I conclude that for all the sentimentality in saying so, I have to agree with my mum.

Ridiculous

Going through life ridiculous,
Feeling like a clown on a bike,
All my ungainly limbs
akimbo as we speak.

Facial muscles fail me,
They don't correspond
with my thoughts,
Nor compliment my sentiments.

The words we utter
neither seem to serve .
They run from our mouths
and fall in front of us.

What is it we want ?
Is it accuracy ?
Specificity ? An impressive
appearance of aptitude?

Even our intentions are elusive.
This wanting or lamenting
will lead us nowhere if
we let them run away with us.

Then we'll trip and fall,
And fall again,
Lurching through life
and all its puddles,
Till we come to its full stop.

Abstraction

                                             

Sometimes words lie between us,
ones unsaid,
others which cannot be unsaid.

We learn to speak by watching our mother's mouth,
gazing at her face and listening
to the sounds in the air around us.

Each thing has a label attached,
waiting for it to be uttered
and so become real,

and when we learn to recognise
those things that have been labelled,
as with love
and hate,

we pass through the door
to elements concrete.

I look at titles before content,
glancing only sideways at first
towards the elements on view.
It gives you an idea
to hold on to.

Helen Keller knew the nature of water,
even before her teacher showed her
the sign.
I hope she never lost her sense
of smell or touch
as she got old.
Still, maybe all that naming of the parts
would have formed some solid notion
of the nature of things
inside her head,
and she wouldn't have been cast adrift again,
but been able to grasp the memory of things
and know the compensation
of ideas.

You have to jump off a building
to see things properly.
metaphorically speaking.
Let yourself go and fall free.
The restraint of a page,
or a frame,
will sustain you,
save you from complete obliteration,
so to speak,


but God help you if
you ever decide
to make
a piece
of
sculpture.

Images

Standing amongst pigeons
all about your head and hands,
Mouth wide in laughter,
Eyes screwed with tears,
I saw you suspended in time;
Only a photograph -
but real to me.

Boxing Day morning,
Surrounded by family
yet separate from us all,
You were watching seagulls through the window
and murmuring how low they were flying.

Time hovered,
Then I came to your shell in its pink lined box.
Only a carcass.
Thin veils of bone dissolving;
You'd flown -
away with the seagulls?
(or is that too romantic)

When I was about ten,
Sparrows would nest in the guttering
above the kitchen door.
Each Spring you'd watch some little ones fall;
tiny phantom things, not yet formed,
flattened on the floor.
You'd turn and be sick and not eat your dinner.

(your dinner was always slightly different to ours,
slightly smaller, colder and you sat to eat just as we
were finishing.
Sometimes I find myself taking the darkest tea,
Choosing the least nice part of the meal I've cooked
so that it's all more perfect for others.
I never cook for myself is an old adage).

The morning after was sunny,
Lying in your bed I listened to crows in the garden,
Fluttering images of people dying,
People being born,
People falling,
In love,
Growing up
and going away,
Turning,
Changing,
A circular scenario revolving.

Then later,
Sitting on a hillside,
Watching the wind blow the grass
into waves all below me,
Swirling, rolling, shifting waves when

Out of the blades you walk,
In your rosy dress,
blowing, waving, alive and laughing,
As I remember you.

I watch as
Into the soil you fade,
The very brief glimmer of you
disperses with air,
Passing through particles.
Life breathes, comes into full view,
Then sighs into another space.

I see the gulls softly gathering now,
In the mists across the field,
I squint to glimpse your form amongst them,
And find you there !
Then turn to look and see you everywhere,
In everything.
Mother,
Earth.