Little flower

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Little flower

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Shadow on a blind; silence

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Shadow on a blind

Silence

I sometimes don't know what to do. I sit and think, what should I do? 

During the day this place is very quiet, at night even more so. I think the silence makes not knowing what to do more stark. Silence like a blank sheet of paper, you the writer with writer's block. 

But actually that`s not right, because the silence is rarely total. 

Sometimes I fail to realise that the silence is not total. That's because I've failed to listen intently, but when I do listen closely I can make out a bird pecking or leaves moving or a distant radio or the buzzing of the fridge, or a woman, far off, beating a carpet.

And even if silence (or almost-silence) might be absence it`s also (almost always) just an interval:  temporary. When the quietness becomes too much and a certain woe grasps me, it's partly because I have forgotten that the silence will pass. It's not death. 

So silence requires discipline to be enjoyed. You have to know it can and will stop, and then you can move around within it without feeling hopeless. Perhaps it's like being in a place and lost but knowing the place is safely limited by walls, even if they can't be seen from where you are.

When I had just moved into my previous place, I sat on the sofa at 10 pm and heard the rumble of buses and a roar of motorbikes delivering pizza: a noise invasion. I thought, Oh God I've made a huge mistake. An especially horrible mistake  given the irony that I'd moved to the new place to get away from construction noise at the flat before.

There followed conversations about whether carpets or curtains could make a difference, might muffle the giant windows which had made the flat so bright and attractive when I had too cursorily inspected it before signing the lease. But it was concluded that the thin windows would require replacing if the noise were to be reduced by any discernible degree.

When the pandemic came, and with it lockdown, there was a magical time of quiet, of falling into a blissful dream. I sat on the sofa, blessed by the unexpected calm about me.  But slowly the traffic noise returned, albeit thankfully without the buses.

 Then I moved to this new place. It's in a funny enclave of cul-de-sacs and unambitious, dog-less houses with large gardens and long crumbling walls. A fringe place. Here and there tower giant, dishevelled pines. You might see one of the residents going for a stroll but it isn't common.

 At times I still find it eerie. I think that, because of this, I must construct, (and perhaps am unconsciously already constructing) another way of thinking, a way of dealing with the perceived absence, those intervals between sounds, and the possession of space.

It seems to me that if I can find an easeful space, requiring nothing, then I will have advanced.

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Read to Edinburgh Creative Writers' Group, 30 March, 2021

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Rowney Victoria pencil eraser

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Rowney "Victoria" pencil eraser

  The colours of the side stripes are glorious harmonious The palette used by Rowney is reassuring. That green is lovely, calm like pine.

It's one of a huge pile of pencil erasers inherited over twenty years ago, and which have followed me through over eight apartments. Now it sits on a desk in northern Florianopolis.

I think of the qualities which I can detect most pleasurably are:

 1. the cool smoothness of the rubber (reassuring)

 2. the scent of the rubber (a little sharp)

 3. the parallelepiped shape (a wonderful word)

 4. the lovely lettering- extended Roman combines with some sort of sans serif

The Use of Rubbers

When I was at school my art teacher, Alexander Hamilton, said, with characteristic sternness, that the use of rubbers was not advisable in drawing.. He argued that a drawing is a record of a visual exploration and a thought process and that rubbers made it impossible to take advantage of these aspects of a drawing. 

Nowadays, when a high level of "finish" is so readily available using photo-shop this idea, of a record of a process, rather than a finished "product" strikes me as even more valuable.

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Grass

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Grass on a path

The grass has been trampled.

 I'm walking down the same path and it's not a perfect day. I sense that heaviness you get before rain. I feel something is not right and indeed might begin to find a cause within me. I might pick up a memory of a personal slight or the strange way a friendship might have soured. These are feelings that can rise, suffocating one so that to be any particular place has no significance.

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A man with his head in an elephant's anus

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A man with his head in an elephant's anus

This drawing is self explanatory.

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The Drive Home

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 The Drive Home

An emotional experience

I wished to write a story to do with my workplace, V.E.M. Engineering (components manufacturers for domestic appliances), but when I began to write the subject receded from me and I was left with nothing after even an hour of trying.

And so, I shall press on with other matters, or, should I say, let other matters press onto me, for I cannot say that I have chosen this that I am, nor the things that move me.

As I was driving home I remembered that I had to stop off at the supermarket, because I had arranged to go to Peggy's later on for supper, and I felt it incumbent upon me to bring something. Peggy cooked well, and her larder was well stocked and her fridge too: she liked cooking and had a developed interest in food. The food itself was not the problem.

The problem I was about to solve by going to the supermarket was this: that I felt guilty about our relationship. I felt guilty because I knew I could never love Peggy and I knew she deserved love. I also knew that she had not been loved in her life because her heart was too open, so that she gave to soon and too easily and was taken for granted.

I pitied her for that. And with my pity came a sense of shame, and to compensate for my shame I thought of bringing her some cheese to go with the meal. As if she would not notice that I did not love her as one who truly loved her would have done.

I smiled as I drove and thought of the cheese. I remembered my father then: his image faded into my mind's eye as I drove. He was there at the dining table, proselytising about Italian cheeses. The British had been duped, he pronounced. They had been deceived into believing that French cheese was superior to Italian cheese. But, he remonstrated loudly, they were wrong. What was French cheese, but an endless variation on Brie, with peppercorns or fruit foolishly thrown in for the sake of novelty? And what was Roquefort compared with Gorgonzola? And what could possibly rival that King of Cheeses, Parmesan?

He was from Piedmont, and I think that the issue was partly a matter of patriotism for him.

As I thought of that I felt the need to weep, so I pulled over to the hard shoulder and wept on that evening home, for my father had died the week before.

When I arrived at Peggy's she asked me if the traffic was bad, because I was seldom late.

I said that it was and did not mention the weeping.

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Read to the Decongested Forum, 2010, and to Writers` Workshop, Detroit, March 31, 2021.

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The Early Christian Architecture of Syria

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The Early Christian Architecture of Syria

A story I heard at a party

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I met a man at a party. He was drunk. He told me a story. It was about his mother-in-law. Perhaps he was pulling my leg?

 He was away on a prolonged research project in Syria, collecting material for a book on the Romanesque churches there. His mother-in-law was lonely so his wife had invited her to stay at their house in Highbury.

Did she mention this to her husband?

Yes, she told him on the phone.

He was staying at The Baron Hotel in Aleppo when she called. The Baron Hotel was a big lump of white stucco from the days when Syria was a French protectorate. There was still a chintz flavour to the drawing room, and you could get a sort of Gin and Tonic there, but besides that, the hotel had fallen into disrepair and, like everything else in Syria, the phones only worked sometimes, so her call took him by surprise.

He told his wife that it was not a bad idea for his mother-in-law to come to stay as his wife was also susceptible to loneliness, and the mother-in-law would go after a couple of weeks before he had even returned. He did not like his mother-in-law and in order to mask this acted with more consideration and kindness towards her than he would if she had appealed to him.

However, when he returned from Damascus, she was still there. The man felt that he had shown his mother-in-law enough consideration and kindness.

The man asked his wife to send her mother back home to Wiltshire, but his wife took pity on her mother and continually procrastinated. She would prepare the sentences she was to say to her mother, repeating them in her head, but the moment was never quite right: her mind became giddy with a confusion of guilt and pity and love.

This situation lasted for several weeks. The man felt uncomfortable in his own house. It was a large house and there was a library where he would hide, burying himself in his research on early Christian Architecture of Asia Minor.

One day he received a phone call. It was an old friend from his student days at Durham.

"Hello Thomas," said the caller.

"Well, Hello! Is that you, Howard?"

They met for drink at a pub off the Angel and later were joined by a couple of others from their Durham days and went off to have a curry together. They got a bit drunk on more beer and brandies at the curry house. They then caught last orders at a pub on Upper Street and, quite toasted, got a taxi down to a little club off Greek Street, where they had some shots of vodka and more beer and became extremely drunk, before bundling into cabs to reach their homes.

Thomas had problems finding his way up the path to his house. He had difficulty putting his key in the lock, and he very nearly tripped on the stoop. But finally he stumbled in all right.

He bent down to pick up Saba the cat that came up to him in the hall, burying his drunken face in its fur. Saba tolerated that for a minute then began gently struggling. He put her down.

He heard the hollow tick of the grandfather clock. He looked at the white porcelain face. : four am.

Then he encountered his mother-in-law in the hall, in her dressing gown, making her way from the living room upstairs. What was she up to?

She looked at him. She wasn`t tall. She shook a little as she walked.

"What are you doing?" he said. The words came out much louder than he expected.

The next part wasn't clear. He supposed that he might have pushed her, then she might have fallen and cracked her head on the baluster.

He went to sleep on the chaise longue in the library.

Jenny found her mother in the morning and was quite upset. Thomas woke on the chaise longue with a raging hangover and a horrible thirst. His tongue was furry and he tasted stale cigarettes in his mouth. He shook his head. He saw a packet of Marlboro on the floor and a single broken cigarette sticking out of it.

The police did not come and the coroner was not suspicious. Thomas was happier as he had not liked having to make small talk with his mother-on-law. The only part he disliked was having to feel sorrowful at the funeral. He drank quite heavily before going to the church but it seemed to him that the relatives believed this was because he was grieving. Jenny was sad for a while but Thomas was supportive and she got over it after six weeks though she was occasionally wistful for months after that.

How did the book on Syria`s Early Christian Architecture go?

Yes, it went well. It was well reviewed in both specialist journals. It was the first in a series of guides. He was now working on "The Early Christian Architecture in Armenia."

Then he spoke about Armenia and the tragic history of its people.

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From 2007

Illustration: acrylic on hardboard, 6.5 x 9 cm, c. 2000

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Read to the American Writer's Union, New York, 25 March, 2021

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