Scars

One on each ring finger.

                                                                                             One on the right hand where,

                                                                                             It got trapped in the door jamb aged 4

                                                                                             the day my mother slammed it in anger

                                                                                             but told the nurse at the hospital that

                                                                                             it had been the wind and I wondered

                                                                                             if that was another name for an argument.

                                                                                           
       
This is a long story, but I'll remember it to you because it has many important aspects to it, for me, and perhaps some will resonate with you too.

At least, it may pass the time.


We lived in a sweet little council house, 3 up, 3 down, with a garden back and front made into 2 Paradises by my Dad. I lived there with him, my Mum, brother, Nana and Uncle. Another uncle would come back from time to time when his ship docked in Liverpool. He was an ex merchant sailor turned waiter on cruise liners such as the Cunard Line. To me, the house didn't feel crowded, but tempers ran high from time to time probably through close proximity and insufficient money.

On one of these occasions when my Mum was arguing, I don't know who with, I, aged 5, was hiding in the hall behind the door to the front room, listening. I must have had my fingers along the jamb because, all of a sudden, as my Mother slammed it shut, the ring finger of my right hand was trapped in it. Ouch.

I really don't remember this at all, which is unusual for me because my long term memory for events and places is detailed usually. I suspect the original memory has been replaced by the story of it told and re-told by my Mother who was eternally guilt-ridden about it.

I know that I was taken to the Royal hospital in Liverpool and that Gerry Marsden's grandad sewed the end back on, dressed it and put it in a splint for me.  (The Gerry Marsden who was the singer in Gerry and the Pacemakers who had big hits with Ferry Across the Mersey and You'll Never Walk Alone). Everyone in our house, excluding my Dad, but including me, was very much into pop music and so this was an ameliorating factor that was used to gloss over the horror of the rest of the sorry tale.


When I think about it, the end of the finger throbs a little. The nail is slightly different to the others; its bed has a raised, rounded shape and the free margin extends into a tiny square a little further down the nail bed on one side than all my other nails. It is here that you can see a slight indentation in the flesh where the top of the finger came off.  The rest of the line has become very faint, but if I press the skin above it, it feels strangely empty. Perhaps the nerve endings never quite mended.

I don't really consider it much now, except a little when I might paint my nails or try to file them evenly or in cold weather when it goes a little more numb than the others.

It's healed really well considering.  Especially considering the fact that within a few days back at school someone trod on it as I sat on the floor during story time and I had to return to the hospital to have it re-dressed. I wasn't allowed back to school after that until it was nearly healed. I forget how long that took, but I would have really enjoyed it. Perhaps the happy memory of this time has been overridden by the pain of my anxious Mother fussing over me.  One thing I do remember was how she was so zealous about it healing properly and it not leaving a scar that she took the doctor's advice to lift the newly forming nail up and out of the nail bed with an orange stick each night to the nth degree and it became an ordeal of torture for me, made more surreal and excruciating by my Nana singing "when you're smiling" in the background to drown out my cries, though she probably imagined she was trying to take my mind off it.

Whenever the whole thing was talked about, the argument was never referred to. The accident, as it surely was in any case, was blamed on a sudden gust of wind howling through the house. I liked the wind, I still do, but it did get entangled in my imagination with anger and danger and became a living entity that might perform acts of destruction both inside as well as out. Whenever it blows, it always reverberates inside of me.




On the other hand, same finger,

has a ring ridged around the top where

I ran it into the bandsaw whilst

making a small wooden sculpture

at art college aged 20.

It was a puzzle piece.

I finished it, then threw it away.

I didn't think it would be considered

sculpture.



I got quite frenetic about making this thing. I wanted to create a 3D solution to a maths problem that we had been told about by a trendy maths teacher whilst in my third year at secondary school.

Maths had become my least favourite subject. When a newly qualified, lively, female maths teacher arrived and started to talk about a different kind of maths that didn't obviously involve numbers, I, along with many of the other girls in my all girl class at our all girl grammar school, began to look forward to maths lessons, although I was always a little afraid that it was a bit of a con and maths couldn't really be this fun and interesting.

She did sometimes talk about probability and throwing die, which was complex and did involve numbers, so that salved our guilty consciences, but mostly she talked about interesting problems to do with shapes and one of these was a spacial problem to do with fitting shapes together. It involved finding out how many shapes you could draw if the only rule was that they all had to have one side touching each other. It is apparently 7. I tried many many variations of this theme, some geometric, others more organic. It was a very relaxing puzzle that I toyed with in my spare time and bore surprisingly interesting results.

Later when I opted to study sculpture at Polytechnic, I tried out many approaches to that. One day, the maths puzzle came back to me and once again I became obsessed with it and, since I was involved in making objects, extending the number 7 by creating a 3D shape, a little like a Rubik's cube was a natural progression.

I worked on it in secret because the atmosphere in the sculpture department felt combatitive, both amongst students and students and lecturers. We were always being challenged about anything we produced as if it might not be a good premise or the right approach or a satisfying result. Also, I had found myself amongst an unruly cohort who wouldn't comply with those in charge; a running theme throughout my life. I gravitate towards such people. I want to be one. We were under attack by the management for not producing proper sculpture in a traditional sense.

So, I produced many little maquets of my ideas in secret. It was difficult to find a way of thinking about it in 3D without actually producing an object, so I beavered away in a small storage room, nipping into the woodworking department to knock out rough versions on the bandsaw. They were fairly small. The finished thing was to be at most 18" square. When it came to completing the final piece, I decided to take the guard off the bandsaw which allowed me to use it for more intricate cuts. I was in quite early. I didn't want the technician to see. I worked quickly and was so engrossed that it was only the sudden spurt of blood that drew my attention to what I'd done.

Oh. What to do. I drew my sleeve over my hand. Took the wooden piece and put it in my pocket. Turned to make my retreat but the blood was of course revealing my sin. Lady Macbeth was I.

At some point, I was found out, taken, like a thief, by the wonderful technician who had assisted me so much throughout the year, to the A&E department to sit, dripping blood everywhere, in subdued silence together.

The workshop was closed for a week. I slinked in and out. attempting to make something else, perhaps a string table; the wooden puzzle hidden away with other secret vice objects in the little back cupboard I had annexed for myself to be hidden from prying criticism.


In due time, the technician forgave me and helped me make a large frame just the right size for me to stand in, based on the dimensions of my body. It was a kind of space frame, usually something imagined by an artist when making a drawing of a figure " in space ". Made out of 2"x1" pieces of wood. I painted them white and displayed it as a thing in itself in a joint exhibition with the other mavericks from my year. We covered all our work in sheets and white flour. It gave them a uniform look.

Somewhere in-between, I threw the offending puzzle piece away. It's not surprising really, though, looking back from here, quite annoying. I threw so many of the things I made away.  Partly through not having any fixed abode, but mainly through not valuing it sufficiently. Which was silly really, because I usually put a lot of thought and energy and care and time into them.

I could re-imagine them, but the thought process has moved on now, so I have to just let them go.


The two faint almost matching scars on matching fingers of each hand create a tiny electrical buzz if I press their ends together. Like the completion of an electrical circuit. There's something contained within them that can remind me of something if I care to pay attention. It's on the edge of indefinable.

Tell Me What to Do

Be strong, be firm,

Be sensible, though

the child in your arms is crying.

Set it down and walk

away.

Teach it to stand alone,

though you both feel bereft

and broken when separated.



Feel love but don't express it,

For fear of it's fragility

popping in the air of reality,

or it's magnetism making

everything cling;

all the things it touches

sticking and hanging and dragging along

beside you.

The Pied Piper of hearts.


Also;



Le mot ne doit pas être prononce,

Ne dis pas le mot,

Ne le dites pas,

Le mot non parle.


(amour)


For speaking the name of something

has the potential to

bring it fully into being,

Just sufficiently for it to

die.







There is strength in silence so

they say and you believe

in keeping your trap shut

tight when the weather

howls.

Walk away from the fight,

Try not to keep awake at night,

Keep well and keep going,

On and onwards through

the storm.


Until one day,

you come upon something.




There is your mother lying,

dead in her named coffin,

and though it is not her face

peeping out of the silk counterpane,

(was her body insufficient to be dressed),

nor is it the cartoon shape of the casket

itself

that causes you to catch your breath,

but her name.

Not Mum,  nor Mother,

but the one never called

by anyone else since baptism,

the one now, it seems,

called only once again by God

to come



and you see it

there,

reiterated,

loud in it's glaring clarity;

Her full and formal name

engraved so deeply,

into brass,

upon her lid

nearby waiting,


to cover her from view forever.


And though your thoughts are shattered

by its existence,

and you know there's no sense

in trying to rub it out,

or cover it up,

You won't

disturb her peace by crying out again

or crying outwardly at all now.


For you know no use for superfluous shows of

overflowing emotion.

Not now.





You understand she was due to die,

that we all have

a time and God will take us,

when we're ready, usually before

we expect and after

we know.

That's what you were taught,

Along with other things like





don't talk about your troubles

for life itself is only trouble;

It's hard and then you die,

for some, not all, apparently,

though I suspect it is the same

for everyone.



And :



Don't look at the meat on the plate,

It's normal for people to cut and

carve and burn the flesh of another

living being who cried

for mercy.


That's how we live.



You must:



Cut and eat and chew and swallow

and be grateful that you eat

and do not starve, like children

far away in hot and barren lands

where water dried and disappeared

like tears.


You must understand that:



All your howling and starving and

wasting the food on your plate

and the flesh on your bones won't

save the little children for

they are lost.



In this wasteland of being,

Sometimes we ask:



Tell me again what to do.

I've forgotten how to be.



And the response is always;

Nothing.

Do nothing for

there is only nothing

to be done.




As time goes by

and the nothing grows

into a vast enormous cavern

of longing and loneliness

and despair under the weight of all

the sorrow

until



Until one day,

Instead of wondering what,

what is it I can do,

In the midst of all this nothingness,

I think.


Now.


Give me the pen now,

I think I can write it how

it was,

And how I think it should be

now.

And it's bathos.

Only bathos.

And I know it,

but it's all

I can fill in the void.

Alice and Lyra - A Rambling

She yearned to feel like Alice,

But her destiny was to feel like Lyra.



Fear is the underlying impetus that drives so many people down certain paths. Fear of separation, pain, destitution, loneliness, boredom, age, and probably most of all death. Many more can be added to this list.

How wonderful it would be to treat life like an adventure through Wonderland. After all, the Earth is wonderful.

But being human, being a conscious being, requires us to respond in our lives as a social animal, with corresponding emotional responses linked to our basic underlying fears and longings. The longings seem to arise out of our wish to be free of our fears.

Locked within our bodies, our thinking mostly hidden from others, our outward version of ourselves so often seems undeveloped, incorrect in some way. Thoughts are modified for public consumption. Our visible appearance so often belies how we feel.


William Blake tells us that our understanding unfolds through our direct experience of living. Learning through reading, looking at art, watching films, listening to music, together with our daily interaction with the physical world, people and other living creatures, is how we evolve spiritually.


The doing, the living, our choices, our response to our situation, are all informed by this mix of life experience and our reflection upon it by trying to understand other perceptions of it. If we are blessed with longevity, our understanding gets more chance to evolve.



I am strongly drawn to the characters of Lewis Carroll's Alice and Philip Pullman's Lyra.


I would like to feel as Alice seems to do in her adventures, amazed, surprised and full of wonder at the often disconcerting situations she finds herself in. Here is a child's wonder, but a child who feels safe even in the midst of potential danger. Her attitude towards intimidating or hostile creatures or dangerous situations is to consider them absurd. We are soothed, along with her, by the overwhelming impression that this is all a dream and things will fade and change at any moment, that is the fundamental law of nature, even when ordinary logic or physics seem to have been suspended or warped in some way. Here is the scientist's brain, the artist's imagination, the writer's universe. Anything can happen and we respond to it with curiosity, embracing it's wonder, rather than letting it's strangeness or apparent volatility worry us. This is the ultimate " good trip ", for it is, after all, a psychadelic dream.


Discovering Lyra, I felt I knew her better. Her apparent fearlessness in the face of adversity, her strong sense of right and wrong. The way she led her gang with courage borne out of her will to do the right thing, the way they followed because of her passion and strength. She is good, but not perfect. She is wayward, rebellious, questioning, inquisitive, a tomboy, but enjoys dressing up and is entranced by beauty.

Lyra's deep attachment and love for her daemon defines a feeling inside that is incomprehensible. For my own part, I perceive it as love. Love seems to exist within us independently. We draw from it as if it was a well of water when we love others and even things or ideas, but, like the daemon who is so much a part of all the characters in The Northern Lights trilogy, love is there, within us, by our side, directing us, but also, somehow, interacting with us.

Lyra follows her destiny willingly, though sorrowfully, even to Hell and her final separation from Will, her soul-mate. She has wonderful adventures along the way. She experiences fear, discovers deep love for many others and forges unbreakable bonds with those on the same path. She sacrifices her own happiness for the greater good and for those she loves because she could not be happy otherwise. Who would not recognise this as the story arc of the life of a woman who has found her path. It may be set in another world, full of magic and unfamiliar things, but the way she feels and behaves seems familiar. She is who we aspire to be and her battles are ours. Fear may be lurking, but our destiny drives us through it.

Black is a Colour

On rainy playtime days in school,

amongst the comics and the games

of OXO and make a square from dots,

Consequences

Jig saw puzzles,

and books;

Piles and piles of books,

Were the fat, mottled chunks

of wax crayon alongside the stubs of pencils

and the wide expanse of thin, creamy

coloured slightly shiny paper

waiting to be filled

with the dreams and jokes

of us kids incarcerated in

the noise and smell of the

dirty classroom on a rainy playtime.



I would sort and sift to find

the seven colours of my rainbow,

arcing happy line after happy line

of red, orange, yellow, green, blue,

then purple;

(no indigoes or violets

in this childish box of crayons,

and anyway, I didn't know the

mnemonic at six, or seven,

or whenever time it was that

this memory relates to.)

It is so long ago now, 

I am barely there at all.

My love for drawing rainbows stayed

with me for many years,

along with a love for covering them

with a last layer of the thickest black

wax my hand could muster until

the page was completely

disguised as night,

a deep and tangible black,

with subtle hints of all the other colours hid;

because the black crayons encrusted themselves

with particles of all the other colours they had

all rubbed shoulders with).



After marvelling at the dense and subtle

screen for some time,

I would begin to scratch away the black

with a penny or a pin's head,

slowly with delight revealing the submerged

beauty of the covered rainbow.



Flakes of scraped black wax would gather

and roll and sometimes stick to the arc

of the spectrum so that the ROYGBP

became scattered with tiny black atoms

and I loved their riotous infiltration

just as much as I delighted in

uncovering the jewelled rainbow.



There it was before me;

a bow of colours arching out of

a vast expanse of glittering black,

then returning into its eternity

of possibilities.


Moment of calm

in the classroom of chaos.


Image of peace

emerging.

Returning.

Throughout life.