Nothing new under the sun

All that week it had been raining, never stopping, never drawing breath, the heavens pouring down their torrents, more water than you could imagine. The earth was full of water. The fields were sodden and the drains were overflowing. The sky too was dark, pregnant, threatening, ready to drench us still further in its never ending flood. I sat beside the Rhine, watching the endless flow of water, down, flowing down from the mountains of Switzerland in the heart of Europe, through the flatlands of Germany, through the Netherlands and emerging at last into the waters of the wide grey ocean. There was more water than you can imagine.

In central Europe thousands of homeless, shifting refugees are flooding through the barriers, leaving the wide open arms of the blue-skied Mediterranean for the grey, watery desert of the north. Germany is their preferred destination. 'Mother Merkel' has bidden them all welcome, although the rank and file of the nation seem a little less keen. There will be riots. The air is thick with the menace of growing discontent. Britain is trying to close its doors, keen to do the right thing for its own people and walled in, separated by the deep, grey-green Channel, fenced in by tunnel defences: presenting a coldly indifferent front. The Netherlands, ever practical, are devising new ways of accommodating the hordes, without detriment to their own priorities of social housing, but the mood is turning ugly in the city halls and meeting places of the nation. There are storms over Europe, more of a flood than we can deal with.

Where will they sleep? Where will they hide when the cruel forces of nature are unleashed on innocent men, women and children? On the Hungarian border thoughtful border guards are giving them a practice run - with water cannons and tear gas. They will soon learn the ropes, soon understand what it is to be European. Their Syrian homeland is hostile, evicting them forcibly from their homes, their livelihoods and their families, but their new home is unpredictable, capricious and not always what it seems. Nations are complex entities, with complicated histories; how will they behave? What is their agenda beneath the conflicting attitudes, the posturing, the threats and the desire to appear humanitarian? The pawns on Europe's chess board are at the mercy of its leaders, as kings, queens and bishops battle it out and their victims are caught, helpless, in the cross-fire.

Christmas is coming. We are once again on the relentless treadmill that will carry us nearer, still nearer to the spirit of Christmas and to the season of greed. Will there be room this year? History has a habit of repeating itself. The first Christmas is forgotten by many now but the story lives on. Still in our memory, clinging on by its fingernails, the holocaust whispers its uncomfortable, disquieting remembrances into our almost deaf ears. No room at the inn? No room on our island for fleeing Jews in the thirties, a displaced people, running for their lives. Boatloads of refugees denied access by the authorities of many nations, a shameful neglect of suffering people. And now this. What will we do now? History repeats itself. Is there room now?

 

Art for Art's Sake

The concentration is palpable. As I enter the room and tiptoe in it's like entering an examination hall. The desks are laid out side by side around the edge of the long, narrow room, backs to the window. No chance of distraction then. There is a hushed atmosphere, an almost holy reverence, and I make my way hurriedly to a quiet corner, anxious to avoid making a disturbance.

Gradually my ears attune themselves to what is going on. It's quiet, but by no means silent. A gentle buzz of soft murmuring fills the air, but the most discernible sound is the rhythmic dipping of brushes in water, tapping them gently on the rim of the container before applying small dabs of paint to the paper stretched across the boards. The class is learning to apply paint in layers, building up the image before them. The subject is a small child, on a beach, carrying a bucket and spade, and the mood is traditional, reminding me of a page torn from a child's colouring book. It's a classic seaside scene, blue and yellow with splashes of red for the bucket. It's a 1950's kind of scene. The more skilful of the artists are managing to convey the summer sunshine, with just the right choice of yellow and the shadows on the ground suggesting the direction in which the light is falling and the heat of the summer sun.

My gaze wanders. Easily distracted, I remember how as a child I always chose the window seat wherever possible. Finding lessons easy, I was able to multi-task successfully and my main focus of attention was usually out of doors, watching the netball game in the playground or soaring with the seagulls and wishing I could be free like them. Today my attention is caught by the wide expanses of sand and the line of white foam breaking across the mouth of the estuary before the Dovey empties out into the waters of Cardigan Bay. All that is lacking today is the child with bucket and spade. It's a school day and the children are imprisoned, like me, behind classroom windows and will have to wait until the weekend to get more hands-on experience of the great outdoors.

But it is an odd experience, this mirroring of art and life. Through the yacht club window I am viewing the mirror image of the multiple images on the artists' drawing boards. Fancy expressionism or abstract art are not encouraged in this class. Everything is carefully monitored; even the precise colour shades are prescribed by the tutor to achieve the greatest synchronisation between the image and its various reproductions. Photo-realism is more the recipe dished up by today's art tutor and it is strange to see how uniform are the representations of such a bunch of diverse artists. Creativity, it seems, points the way to a multiplicity of vision but realism seems to necessitate a certain kind of uniformity and a limited vision. The further one travels down the road of expressive creativity the more the paths diverge into a wide spectrum of infinite variety.

Maybe this underlies in part my impression of having walked into an examination room. Here the goals are clear; the challenge is well-defined and the results will be judged against a pre-ordained checklist of techniques and achievements. Originality, flair, expressionism or abstraction are harder to assess and are apt to side-step achievement targets and fall outside the boxes. As usual, the air outside the classroom seems a little easier to breathe. It always has for me.

The Art of Self Knowledge

I read it in a magazine somewhere: "No-one lives up to his ideal." Such an obvious thought, but how true! As I pondered this simple home truth, it hit me right between the eyes. However much you achieve, there is always more in your dream than in the hard facts. Live up to your ideal? No-one does... so why do I expect to? No-one lives up to her ideal either. Not even a woman! Women are pretty smart these days, pretty liberated, pretty powerful sometimes, but even so...

Ideals have rocketed these days. "Come on, you're a woman - don't let the side down!" It's a bit of a pressure at times. These days we're encouraged to dream, to aspire, to reach for the sky, to have it all. Nothing's changed really. All that has happened is that our ideals have gone sky high. "You can be anything - anything you wanna be." That's the theory. Then there's the catch... "if you want it enough." Well, I'm not sure I agree with the bold, somewhat arrogant assertion in the first place, but even if I did, do I want it that badly?

 I have a dream. Of course I do. In my dream I'm a writer, making enough money to get my stuff published: a neat little row of matching volumes side by side on my bookshelf, all with my name on, of course; and a modest little income and sales figures to match. My blog has a readership of thousands and 392 people regularly follow it. I only want enough to bolster my self-image and make it all worth the effort. That's all I need, isn't it?

 I bake too, of course - who doesn't these days? In my farmhouse kitchen (the social hub of the house) I turn out pies and pastries, rustic-looking loaves of granary bread, mouth-watering date flapjacks, gingerbreads and brownies, neatly packaged and carefully labelled and, of course, sold - like hot cakes. The house is daily filled with the tantalising aroma of freshly baked bread and the order book is full.

 There's a garden in my dream. It is stocked with fragrant sweet peas, delphiniums and roses. Honeysuckle and clematis climb the old apple tree and the herbs cluster around the garden door. No substitute for a profusion of fresh herbs. It is a country garden, a cottage garden. This has been part of the dream for years now. I am happy and content in my garden. I till the earth, hoe the weeds meticulously, harvest the vegetables, pick the golden apples from the tree and settle down contentedly beneath it to pen my thoughts and meditate in the sunshine.

My house is calm and uncluttered. The style is minimalist (I wish!), but still warm and inviting - a real home. I don't actually do housework; I have too many dreams and aspirations for that. But it is taken care of and I glow with pride at my string of achievements, both personal and delegated, effortlessly accomplished.

Do I reach my goal? Well, not always, not often, well, never, in fact. "No-one lives up to his ideal." Let that be a comfort. Don't take it personally when perfection escapes you just a tiny bit; no need to shed tears. We are all the same. Be happy. Life is short.

Meandering Along

I'm not really a great one for discipline. I'm not a great fan of meticulous detail. I'm good at starting things and not very good at finishing them. I can play the piano but my sight-reading lets me down. The treble clef is fine; the bass clef starts OK but once the notes fall off the bottom of the stave and there are too many little lines added to their stems I get lost.  I love to express colour on the page but never really applied myself to drawing. "Could do better" found its way onto too many of my school reports. I don't know why. I guess I discovered motivation a little late in life.
 

I am trying to reform. It may be too late now to alter the habits of a lifetime but I try. When the motivation is there it makes all the difference. I have a small keyboard in the living room of our tiny cottage. It tucks in against the wall at the foot of the stairs and threatens to trip me up when I go downstairs to the bathroom in the middle of the night. But I am determined; I will make good. No longer am I guilty of neglecting my practice times as in my youth. I am trying painstakingly to master my sight-reading. Over the years I have come to love jazz; it has an endearing propensity to disobey the rules, although perhaps it is merely that it is directed by an unseen sense of order that I am unfamiliar with. Do I play jazz? No. Jazz is another world for me. My ear is classically trained and I do not understand the rhythms and melody lines of jazz, although I love them. I cannot predict it so I am forced to rely solely on my sight-reading ability. Now I have a book of elementary jazz pieces and I am stumbling through it, but it's tricksy. I am on a steep learning curve. Nevertheless, I am trying to re-educate myself.

As I said, I am not a lover of discipline. Straight, practical lines of thought, the most efficient way to progress from A to B, are not for me. I love to meander. Sitting here on this beautiful April afternoon, on the terrace of the Plas Tan y Bwlch, I am entranced by the wide, exaggerated meanders of the river below me in the Vale of Maentwrog. The view is enhanced by a magnificent spread of crimson Himalayan tree rhododendrons, somewhat curtailed by recent damage, but nevertheless spectacular. Sheep are grazing in the water meadows, the first swallows are pursuing their bat-like flight in the blue heavens and a hawk is mewing persistently overhead. Only the constant stream of traffic on the main road below disturbs the sense of tranquillity and idleness, but it is thankfully hidden from sight behind the terrace parapet. The scene before me is arresting but it is the river's course which touches a chord deep within and with which I feel a deep empathy.

The river, like me, has been subject to discipline in its time. The information leaflet tells me that William Oakeley, whose family owned the Plas and most of the landscape stretched out before me, was responsible in Victorian times for taming this errant river, curbing its indolent spread across the agricultural land of its flood plains and building small embankments on either side to wall it in. The embankments are still in place today. Oakeley, it seems, was an innovative and ambitious landowner. Not content with his early achievements, he is also credited with changing the river Dwyryd's course and creating, as a result, these attractive and deliberate curves as the river ambles across the Vale at a gentle pace. Perhaps all discipline is not so odious after all, but still I feel myself strangely drawn to the unrushed and lackadaisical meanderings of this pretty river; we are two of a kind.

  

Plas Tan y Bwlch, Maentwrog, N. Wales

Day Off!

He was unmistakable really. He was sitting in one of those red leather easy chairs, slumped over a little table. We'd gone into Cadwalader's for a cup of tea after a long walk along the seafront and there he was. The cafe was full to bursting even though the seafront had been quite deserted. "That's where they've all got to then" I said to my husband. "No wonder there was no-one on the beach - they're all in here..."

The cafe staff were rushed off their feet. We sat down hurriedly at the last free table, squashed into a corner next to the shelf where people were helping themselves to plastic spoons and little packets of sugar. Young families were seated at the tables, whilst their small children fussed and fidgeted or ran about, getting under the waitresses' feet. The old gentleman sat in the corner by himself, next to a table of four, all working their way through mugs of hot chocolate, topped with frothy cream, and slices of sickly looking cheesecake. The old man shut his eyes and leaned back in his chair.

He didn't look very well really. He was neat enough, white hair cut evenly round his bald patch, but a bit untidy round the ears, his greyish-white beard neatly trimmed, but definitely looking a bit peaky. I wondered if he was recovering from some kind of cancer treatment or something. He looked whacked. In front of him on the table was a half consumed glass of orange juice... my thoughts wandered to the possibility of a de-tox.

 

Then I rumbled him! A de-tox! Yes, that was it - too many glasses of mulled wine in this festive season. December would be a busy month for him, getting the last of the preparations done. In fact, he'd probably been flat out for months. It was only November 30th today and he was probably just taking a breather before the final push. A little holiday by the seaside... no wonder he had his eyes shut. He was trying to chill out for a bit. No doubt he was trying to escape from all the children that were now rampaging up and down the aisles, waiting for their parents to finish their coffee and cake and come and do something more interesting.

He was wearing grey too - incognito, I guessed - and a change from all that brash red stuff. A nice grey, ribbed sweater helped him to pass unnoticed. As we finished our tea I saw the waiter bend over him and say something, before hurrying off. In a moment or two he was back with a glass of water. Poor man, I expect he wanted to take some tablets for his headache. We got up to go and on the way out I noticed a little pile of beautifully wrapped gifts, in shiny gold and silver paper, stacked up under the Christmas tree near the door. I hadn't noticed that on the way in. Ah! he'd been getting a bit ahead with his deliveries. Good idea! Christmas gets earlier and earlier these days.

Missing you... missing me

I remember him well. Of course I do. How could I ever forget him? When I think of Peter, I remember his family - and ours - together, having fun. I remember afternoons in his garden, playing with the children, watching them take turns on the swing, watching his girls push our daughter round the lawn in a pram, taking them to the park on bikes and tricycles, listening to his jokes and silliness. I remember their three year old daughter, Katy, helping herself to more ice-cream out of the freezer and her father abandoning his customary genial approach to fatherhood and daring her, in his most severe voice, to continue in her naughtiness. Of course she responded to the dare, as children do, by following through and being appropriately punished! But Peter was a master of silliness at its best - a loveable clown - but maybe also at its worst! Peter was special and no-one can replace him.

 

When I remember Cherry I think of her laugh, a light, silvery laugh that carried with it a sense of lightheartedness and such joy. I remember the folk music; I think of the fuschias that she loved and collected in her conservatory; I remember the jewellery she made; I remember her wedding. Growing older and iller, her jewellery making was one of the things that still inspired her to creativity and enabled her to indulge her favourite pastime of giving and making people happy. These were my friends and I shall never see them again. They are both gone and it is still a shock to think that those happy times are over. A part of me is gone too.

 

When people die you miss them. It's true. Everyone knows that. There are l0l reasons why you miss them. Sometimes you see people who remind you of someone you've lost and it starts all over again: the memories, the things you did together, the way they looked, the way they dressed... But I made a strange discovery the other day. When people that you love die a part of you dies too! I didn't know that.

'There are many rooms and many Bernards.' I read that the other day and it made me think. I'm reading The Waves* at the moment, by Virginia Woolf, in which she explores, in a mixture of lyrical prose poetry and musings, the inner thoughts and imagination of six childhood friends as they grow up. The characters come together and separate, merge together, flow into one another and regard each other closely, imagining each other's thoughts and desires. They miss each other when they are no longer there. Bernard is a writer whose whole life is composed of 'making phrases', phrases for every situation, phrases that as a writer he may need to use later. With his stock of phrases, he makes stories - the whole of life is a series of stories - and what he needs more than anything else is someone to listen. So Bernard is a people person. He craves human contact, but for each situation, each room full of people, for each listener, there is another Bernard. When Percival dies, Bernard loses that part of himself that used to relate to his friend. When Percival dies Bernard mourns Percival, but he also mourns the passing of a part of himself.

 

I have just a handful of friends and family who have passed away and left one of those gaping holes. I'm not old enough yet to have that many. But thinking of the times you shared together you remember former days and a former you. That 'you' will never come again. Not quite. Because we're never quite the same person again; the person who made you feel that way and act that way is no longer there. So thank you, friends and family, for making me what I am and for inspiring a tiny part of me that can never be the same again without you!

 

* The Waves, Virginia Woolf. Pub. Vintage, 2004

That Elusive Chemistry...

People are funny. With some you connect; with some you don't. A couple we know from the art club came over recently for a meal. I still have the warm glow they left behind. Funny, friendly, witty and full of interesting chit chat, we made contact with each other to our mutual satisfaction, I think. When I meet them now we've 'gone up a gear'. The friendship is warmer, more vibrant due to the time we spent together over casserole and blackberry and apple crumble. The atmosphere changed, softened somehow, as we sipped white wine and sat comfortably around the dining table together.

 

Last night was different. There was plenty of talk. Not many gaps. No awkward silences. The food was good and we enjoyed a bottle of warm, rich, red wine together around the same table. She talked about herself. She told us stories of her marriage, his death, her home and garden. We swapped tales, although the ball seemed to be more often in her court than ours. I came downstairs this morning to find the room in darkness. Outside it was gloomy, windy and raining again. I set the table for breakfast, thinking of last night's encounter. In the kitchen I discovered the only real remnant of the meeting of minds and hearts - a pile of washing up, thankfully all done and neatly piled up on the drainer. (No space for a dishwasher!)

 

I've been reading lately - or rather re-reading - Martin Buber, Austrian Jewish philosopher/poet - yes, really! His sole written contribution to philosophy (I and Thou) reads like poetry and has fascinated me ever since the days of my 'mature' studenthood back in the '90s. Buber writes about meeting and what he terms 'mis-meeting' (translation from the German). He defines human relationships around two axes - I/Thou and I/It - the first being a direct heart-to-heart/spirit-to-spirit contact where two individuals approach one another on a mutual ground of equality and appreciate one another for who they really are, the second being a necessary but less satisfying form of contact for more functional  purposes. In an I/Thou approach to another being, we form a bond which enables us to interact meaningfully and warmly in a mutual response to one another. In an I/It approach I make contact for reasons of use, information, entertainment or other forms of gratification. I/It is often focussed on the past or future. I/Thou happens in the present. To put my own slant on it, not Buber's, I/It is about me; I/Thou is about us.

 

So as we stumble through life and relationships we find both meetings and mis-meetings, it seems. The same relationship, however good or bad, can lurch from one to the other and back again at any time. That is life. Our own bumbling efforts at relating to people are as hit and miss and often as culpably inadequate as those of others, so how can we complain? However, that warm afterglow of a true meeting of hearts and lives is intoxicating and once experienced is something that spurs one on to search for more such moments. 'All real life is meeting' said Buber and I think he may have been right.