Chasing the Only Meaningful Memory…

A little gift for a friend.  It was supposed to be a poem but it seemed to become a story along the way.

‘WONDERS AWAIT AT THE CARNIVAL!’

How little my five year old heart knew the truth spelled out in red and gold on the lurid banner that bedecked the archway in to the Carnival.

“Clowns!’ thought I, “Toffee apples maybe?  A goldfish if Dad can throw well this time.”  My mind thrilled with all the wonders a five year old could conceive of.  What joys, what treasures?

Later that night I found myself candy floss besmirched, sticky and sated, balloon bobbing along obligingly at my side.  A warning not to wonder off heeded only momentarily before, inevitably, I wondered off.  I wondered between stalls and stands until I found myself at the strangest tent.  Black silk billowed, star spangled and quite unlike the primary coloured plastic tarpaulins of the booths and side shows behind me.  Fearless, as I was then, and balloon in hand curiosity over rode sense.  I stepped inside.

I believe my heart skipped then and never did beat the same way since.  I feel it’s unruly rhythm even now in my chest as I recall that night: silk and incense, the jangle of bangles and charms, the rustle of her skirts and the arch of her brow as she regarded me - a smile tucked at the corner of her perfect mouth.

“My, my! A brave wanderer.”  Her voice was musical.  “The cards told me you’d come, and here you are.”  She dropped a deck of strangely pictured cards to the table in front of her and spread them with her hands.

“Cards?”  I’d wanted to ask, but overwhelmed as she moved to kneel in front of me, her face level to mine, and in posession as I was of only a five year old’s verbosity all that  emerged was a guttural “C-c-c-c…!”

“You’re a little early though sweetheart, give or take 15 years in fact.”  She winked and chuckled to herself.  I didn’t understand.

“C-c-c-c!” I replied.

“And yet, already a beard upon your chin…which must mean you’re man enough already.”

She reached out long ivory fingers and gently stroked the tiny pink candy floss beard that clung determinedly to my chin.  Awestruck and, at five years old, lacking the ability to over-rule my instincts, like a mirror I reached out one small pink hand and curled my finger in the perfect dark ringlets of her beard.   In that moment I knew there never was nor would be anyone more beautiful, more like a vision of perfection than the bearded lady.

“Brave indeed.” she murmured, “and we all know that fortune favours your kind.  So, I have a gift - the most precious I can give.”

Lips to my tiny ear, she breathed in to my mind such secrets, visions and wonders.  Magic that, even now, defies the telling.  I saw it all in my mind’s eye.  I didn’t understand then how much she gave me but I do now, and more each day.

As the stars cleared from my vision, I blinked.  I knew with absolute certainty that I would love her always.  I wanted to reciprocate and so I gave her the most precious gift a five year old could conceive of.  I gave her my balloon, little knowing that attached invisibly and permanently would be my heart.

She tied the balloon carefully to her wrist, smiled sadly and kissed my forehead.  I pressed a pudgy finger to the spot where I fancied I could still feel the warmth.

“I’ll take good care of this, but it’s time to run along little hero.  I hear your parents calling.”

I stroked her beard one last time and skittered out of the tent.  How I wish now that I’d looked back one last time, but Mum had a toffee apple and Dad had a goldfish and I had the attention span of a five year old.

The carnival still comes back, though she never did.  I go every year, although I’m too old for toffee apples and goldfish now, hoping that maybe she’ll return…with a balloon on a string…and my heart tied to it.

trying to decide if I can draw well enough to illustrate a little something.  I think no…little bro thinks yes.

I don’t know if they’re right for the style of story either…too….I dunno.  Maybe need something more stylised.  I think they look a bit odd.

bah.  Here…pictures.

I had a conversation with a student today which reminded me that we all reach pivotal moments in our lives sometimes where at sometime in our future we’re going to look back and recognise that a particular event or moment or person was a force for change.   Sometimes these things are tiny and at the time so cursory as to seem insignificant until we reflect later and sometimes they’re huge and powerful and they sweep everything away but irrespective of if that event is wonderful or traumatic, you’ve got to face the future in the aftermath and work with what you’ve been dealt.   I know I’m at risk of sounding like a cod psychologist come spiritualist but bear with me.

I’ve never been so arrogant as to think that I have nothing left to learn or that I’m fully formed and informed and one of the great things to come out of teaching is that if you go in to it open minded and you present to the kids a genuine interest in what they have to say, you find yourself constantly being enlightened, surprised and impressed by their insight.  It’s easy in the daily grind of teaching to get caught up in a bloody kids mentality.  They’ve forgotten their bloody pen again; they’ve got their bloody trainers on again; bloody kids, don’t know how do play anymore; don’t know anything about the world around us….and so on.   Actually, they’re suprisingly wise.  Probably more so than a lot of adults I know because they come to things with no presumptions in particular or no especially big front to put up.  They just want to know stuff and they want you to listen when they have stuff to say.   The view of adults can be exceptionally narrow and self involved, no matter how much we might proclaim we see the big picture, we’ve already applied the filters that we want to view events through.  Kids don’t necessarily have those filters so they just let things come at them and work their way through it with what they’ve got.   Making sense yet?  No?  Good, good.

So the conversation.  A year ago almost to the day one of my students was involved in a traumatic event in their personal life.  The impact was that they were so incapacitated by it that they suffered not only physical problems but also terrible mental health issues and a lively, confident student became withdrawn and struggled to get through the school day because of the consequences of this.

Today that same student told me that they were glad that they’d survived the year because although it had been the hardest year of their life, it made them realise that if they could face the worst and get through it and continue to move forward with their life to the point where they were back in school completing their exams and looking forward to planning their future, then life could only move one way.  Onwards and upwards.  If you can face down the worst things in your life and survive them and still come out with hope, or some semblance of optimism then there’s nothing you’re unprepared for.  Terrible things happen sometimes but they can give you perspective on the fact there’s a lot of good still to be had and if there are bad things in your life that are holding you back - be it people or doubts or traumas then the only way forward is to address them or remove them or overcome them.   You don’t have to live with them or accept it, even if fighting that situation is going to be a lifelong fight.  Still, you’re moving forward.

Some might suggest that there’s exceptional naivety in that view, and maybe there is to some extent.  Maybe there’s a childish simplicity but actually it made me realise that a child was saying something to me that was applicable to my life.   I’m not going to pretend that our dark days are nothing and everything can be overcome with a cheery smile and this is certainly not my student’s experience but more that they were saying that you’ve got to fight for your own future.  Things wont always go right no matter how ‘good’ a person you are and nothing comes to you just because you deserve it, in fact life is very good at slapping that notion in the face, but you can take that moment of great and terrible change and you can make it have an outcome that will ultimately make you a wiser and stronger person.

I know this might all sound a bit daytime TV and god knows, I’m hardly the cheeriest or most optimistic little fairy at the fluffy love-in and decidedly less than great at applying such maxims to my own life, but I see no harm in a little hope.

Sometimes crap things happen to good people…but that doesn’t mean you have to take it lying down.

“But still. Still bless me anyway. I want more life. I can’t help myself. I do. I’ve lived through such terrible times and there are people who live through much worse. But you see them living anyway. When they’re more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they’re burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children - they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don’t know if that’s just the animal. I don’t know if it’s not braver to die, but I recognize the habit; the addiction to being alive. So we live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that’s it, that’s the best I can do. It’s so much not enough. It’s so inadequate. But still bless me anyway. I want more life. And if he comes back, take him to court. He walked out on us, he oughta pay.”  Prior Walter - Angels in America

“How are you doing?”

“Oh, i’m fine…it’s tough…but…y’know. ”

“That’s good.”   “You’re so brave!” “You’re doing so well!”

“Just doing my best…it’s what he would have wanted.”

…and if I’m opening my mouth and telling you that, you have a 50% chance that I’m telling the truth and a 50% chance that it’s a terrible lie and that I’m dying with the pain of it all on the inside, but that’s how these things go.   Life is hard at the moment and it’s painful and I’ll smile and tell you I’m okay when all I want to do is curl up in the corner and weep until the tears have run dry and sometimes I really am okay.

And yet, I’m not done yet.  Like Prior Walter says, i want more life.  I recognise that there’s a blissful relief in curling up around our grief and holding it closing and yelling with everything we’ve got that we’re in pain and that we want it to stop and that we want everyone to stop and memorialise that pain with us.

I don’t want blissful relief.  I want as much life as I can stand.  I want to see and do and taste everything.  I’m happy to feel highs and lows because they’re real and they’re part of this world and recognising them and acknowledging them and making time for them is part of what makes us human.  The things that make us sad are part of the experience, but they’re not the whole experience and if we tie ourselves to them then life is going to pass us by and all we’ll have is a long bitter experience of regret and sadness.  Life is too short to allow sadness and wrongness to weigh us down and define us.

As much as I want to lie down with my grief, and there’s no shame in that, I also want to bundle myself up in hope.  I want to see the future and know that there is real and positive change.  There are exciting prospects.  There’s a future and that’s not a holding pattern, it’s not a daily grind and slog, I’m not ‘making do’ with the people and the places in my life and I am lucky that so many people in my life want nothing more than to give me a hand up on the slow crawl.  It’s a crawl towards new things.

I might not be whole and fixed yet.  I may never be whole and ‘fixed’ but I’m using every ounce of strength I have to get there.  I really am.  I want more life.

At first, nothing.  And then awareness inches across synapses.  And then blinking wakefulness.  And then breathing, ragged and panicked, draws in only brick dust and blackness.  And then pain blossoms.  Awareness touches on a cut, and a cut, and a cut, and a fracture and a break and brick and wood disrupts bone and flesh which is shattered and torn.

And then…confined, constricted, entombed and airless…the realisation of no way out. 

…and then.

…and then…

Vibrations, sensed by fingertips.

She holds her breath.

She feels.

She understands.

She tries to shout.  She must shout.  Throat is caked with dirt and brick dust and responds only with a mocking rush  of breath.  Nothing more.

She tries again.  Nothing.

She tries again.  Nothing.

She tries again.

Ragged, broken and at first softly, but rising.  “Please!”

Then louder.  “Please!”

Then louder.  “Please!”

Then louder.

Then louder.

Then screaming.  “Please!  Please!  Please!”

Vibrations stop.  Earth shifts.  Hands scrabble.  Pain blooms and fades, rising and falling with the earth.   She weeps and whispers, dirt caked lips calling on saints, on angels, on God, on anyone.  

And then, there was light.

Where do we stand
when the tides roll back,
when the blossom begins to fall
and dance?

When the breath of new life
permeates the air
and there is nothing more to do
but rest in the sunlight
and turn our face
to the new day.

How will you find me?
On  my feet or on my knees?

How do I navigate?
Will I know which way to go,
now that the paths are covered
and the sky is unmarked blue?

And will I thaw in the light of spring?

It’s been a while since a photo post but I have been merrily snapping away in the meantime.  Here’s a few of the last couple of months faves.   As per usual, ignore the lack of skill and just picture the enthusiasm instead!

End of spring term….apropriate sentiment on the board…

And so to staff conference…

First survivial method for staff conference….use supplied name tags to give self silly and misleading name…Hello…my name is Juan Santos Jones.

Second survival method for staff conference…enjoy picturesque surroundings and relax…

So on to the easter holidays.  Obviously they didn’t pan out in the way that I’d expected.  I think that first Sunday is going to be burned on to my mind for a long long time.    I consider myself fortunate to have a fantastic extended family and brilliant friends.  I still strongly believe that it’s the only way I’m getting through each day.

Condolance flowers from my department…very very beautiful…although I have to say…the Lillies nearly killed us all with the pollen, house full of allergies that we were!

Long walks were definitely the order of the day when I was staying at my Mum’s over easter…sometimes alone…sometimes with people…Bury St Edmunds is a wonderfully serene place when you need a little bit of calm in the mids of full tilt insanity. A few of my favourite pics from various strollings (strolls? Strollage? - you know what I mean!)

The rose garden in the Abbey Gardens in Bury is a premium place to sit and think…or sit and not think..whatever the circumstances demand.

Walking in Rushbrooke…
Suffolk at it’s stormy best…(and may I point out…we do have hills…this aint no fenland y’know!)

Communing with the race horses on the estate my Stepdad’s Mum lives on. I think this horse knows that it’s worth a lot more than I am!

Ducklings!!!!!

Sheeplings!!!! I mean, Lambs!!! Okay so I know I’m not first choice in a line up of people who might go squishy over baby animals…but they were cute okay! I was feeling morbid okay! There’s this whole new life and rebirth thing going on…OKAY?!!!! Well okay then.

The Great Churchyard. Yes I know we’ve been there before with my photographs…but I love the place. I hold secret ambitions to flounce through it in a victorian frock being all gothic and dramatic amidst the gravestones. Also it’s very cool and fascinating and pretty. So there.

Obligatory portrait. I went for a bit of a hair chop. Excuse the general exhaustion and dark circles…

This is a mexican egg….no further explaination needed I think.

And finally…more flowers…happy flowers this time though. As I posted a while back, my own little ducklings went free this week. I have seen a tutor group through five years of school and now they’re off, doing their thing - which at the moment, is mostly sitting in exams. They brought me fantastic gifts and a card that had me reaching for the tissues. I already miss them…which is probably a little bit sad, but I don’t care. The flowers were part of their gift extravaganza.

And that’s us…up to date.

(This is the first part of a story I’m working on.  It was inspired by a news story on local news when I was visiting my family up in Suffolk.  To say to much about the story would somewhat give the game away I suppose.  Very VERY much a work in progress…the whole piece doesn’t even have a proper title.   Feedback is always welcome.)

Let me tell you.  Amongst all the other scents I smelled throughout my life; the stench of rotting and death, the blossom of spring, the skin of my first child, yes, even that.  The way you smelled when I first held you close to me.  Never did I ever forget her.  No, not even amidst all the ruin she was bathed in.  The dark and the destruction.  Honeysuckle.  She smelled like Honeysuckle on a warm spring evening. 

That smell!  It makes me giddy even now; let me tell you, to think on it – old fool that I am. So silly, at my age, to turn nostalgic and whimsical.  This I know only too, too well.

And roses! Lips like roses!

Don’t give me that look.  I know what you’re thinking.  Cursing my dotage in your head? Thinking that the old duffer is probably remembering some old love song or matinee idol.

Well she was a love song.  Let me tell you. She was every heartfelt word painfully birthed by every poet who ever lived wrapped up in flesh and moulded.  Skimmed and shaped, teased in to perfection.

Such eyes! Such depth.  One look, let me tell you, one look and I knew every last thing that was written on her heart. I… just…knew.  I knew it all.  With unwavering conviction.  

Did I love your mother?  Of course I did.  Like I love you.  That love was real and true and good and warm and familiar.  It was the love you want to come home to each day; tempered, comforting, constant and reliable.  You come home to it and it folds around you.  Yes, yes.  I loved your mother.  Let me tell you.

But you don’t understand.  You’re not seeing what I’m saying.  And how could you?  Such times we lived in then.  Everything so uncertain.   No warm and familiar, no home, no constant and reliable.  Just then.  The moment, you would call it. Living in the moment.  Oh but it was real, let me tell you.  Never doubt that for one second. Every breath of it was real.

Oh yes.

I can smell her even now. 

Honeysuckle amongst the brick dust and cordite.

I think I found her before I even saw her.   I knew that amidst all that death, something still lived.

I haven’t updated in a few weeks, with good reason.  On the 5th April my Dad passed away.  Suddenly and shockingly, but with no pain or fear.  He’d had a heart attack in December but had been doing well.  Seems that it was just his time, which is cold comfort for those people who are left behind.  It feels so unfair and it’s so very painful but it’s the bitter truth of life. 

My Dad was not the sort of man to dwell on life’s cruelties or complications.  He lived a very full life.  He was well travelled and his living and working in Oman definitely led to one of the most formative experiences in my own life.  He took up pretty much any challenge that was offered to him.  He never stopped learning new things - a late in life love of cooking was his latest obsession, so much so that he’d been invited to take part in ‘Come Dine With Me’ on Channel 4 only recently.  He was one of the few people who could out geek me in history and if I’m honest he played a big part in my love of medieval history.  He also loved films and music and we spent much of our regular Sunday night chats talking about such things and tipping each other off about obscure bands.  It’s definitely where my love of punk came from.

I could fill page upon page with the things I fondly remember: the trips out, the stupid jokes and songs and games we used to pass the time with, the things we got up to rampaging around my Nana and Grandad’s house and the comfortable relationship we came to share as adults.  I miss him.  Every second of every day at the moment.  I’m sad for things we wont get to do together.

I know that my Dad was proud of me and the path through life that I’ve picked out for myself.  He was thrilled by my trip to Israel and he strongly supported my teaching career.  He would want all of us to carry on living our lives to their fullest and having grand aventures.  He was a Humanist and believed very strongly that our actions in this life and the relationships that we build are what matters.  I remember talking to him about Lord of the Rings (another shared geeky passion) on one of many occasions and our favourite bits and we both agreed that this quote held a pretty apt sentiment. 

‘I wish it need not have have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.

‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.’

It echos Dad’s philosophy and for maxims for facing the future, well, I can think of worse. 

I miss you Dad.  I love you, and I will do the best I can with the time I have to make you proud.

I found these amusing/interesting/lovely in various measures…

View from my desk in the department office.  I love that tree, it has such character and it’s usually full of crows and magpies.  The light was just spectacular so I had to take a quick snap.  It’s a pity the new building has completely killed our view of the greenbelt.

Teeny weeny blu tac creations…left by an unknown student for my head of department.  I thought they were just lovely.  I wish someone would leave me a teeny weeny blu tac creation.  I’d treasure it.

Spring decided to come back today after a week off.  Lovely weather, blossom on the trees, unusual feeling in my brain…think it might have been joi de vivre…or maybe indigestion.

hehe.  Poo….and…and….SEX!!!!!!!LOLOLOLOL!!!  (or maybe poo sex.  Which is just….guh.)

I’m juvenile…it made me laugh.  I’m sorry God!