A Safe Landing

‘…the better part of our memories exist outside us, in a blatter of rain, in the smell of an unaired room or the first crackling brushwood fire in a cold grate…’ ~ Proust 

I have a habit of writing my journal at the end of the evening before I go to bed. It allows me to reflect the day’s events and make a small, intricate pattern of arabesque with what I experience during the day. Journal writing is reflective if one does not simply recount things that happened but contemplate what they mean or how they fit into the pattern. We might console ourselves by the fact that there are no editors or critics in journal writing unless one critiques oneself. The negative feeling is often remedied by getting it off from one’s chest onto a receptive blank page of paper.

Proust, who was a night owl, once said that the artists are ‘not the children of broad daylight and small talk but of darkness and silence’.  Proust’s word ‘darkness’ is a metaphor for grappling with the interior or the inner psyche. While I admire his certain confidence to reach to this poetic conclusion, most people whether with or without the artistic disposition I have known in my life have a combination of both luminosity and darkness. It would not be a real life if we are all luminous livings, would it?

So, here we are, in the beginning of March, the daylight seems to be lengthening. Although the weather is not warm enough to go outside without a jacket or a coat, fretful clouds are moving further away from the horizon and they reveal patches of spring blue skies, cerulean blue, a magnetic and spiritual colour of Giotto that attracts both birds and angels. The villagers open their windows to welcome the sun breaking out of the clouds in the morning.

We will soon be changing our clocks to ‘spring forward’. Nature once again takes a deep breath and becomes more serene. It is no longer something one has to fight with or make a quick escape from it. It is something which one just sits and admires from the window. When I see the heraldic colours of irises, snowdrops and crocuses in the woodland, they look so cheerful that I want to throw my arms to embrace the day.

The fishermen are also coming out of hibernation and going back to the sea. If you open a little gap in your bedroom window, you will hear the sound of fisherman’s outboard motor in the morning which reverberates the whole surrounding. 

It reminded me of the line T. S. Eliot wrote about the sound of ticking of the Dresden clock on the mantlepiece in his poem about his maiden aunt, Helen. The dynasties and dictatorships may fall and the political parties may change but the sound of the fisherman boats like ticking of a clock never changes.

The washing line on a sunny day...there is no comparison for dried sheets scented with the sun and fresh sea breeze. 

I saw my fisherman friend yesterday and he said that he was glad to be back to work again. Between sheltering in place during the pandemic, drinking his favourite whiskey (Crawford’s) and consuming my generous supplies of cakes, he said he has lost his six-pack abs. Now, he is back out to the sea with the hope of bringing back his six-pack abs.

I agree with Iris Murdoch when she wrote in her masterpiece novel, The Sea, the Sea: 'One of the secret of happy life is continuous small treats, and if some of these can be inexpensive and quickly procured so much the better.' I love the smell of fresh pancakes – my favourite Sunday breakfast in the kitchen. Pancakes for breakfast, reading, walking and listening to the music are the order of the day. 

Joan Baez sings Will ye go, lassie go? in the kitchen while I make pancakes for breakfast.

Isn't it a pure poetry when Joan sings? ‘I will range through the wilds/And the deep glen sae dreary/And return wi' their spoils/To the bower o' my dearie/Will ye go, lassie, go?’ a traditional Scottish ballad, The Wild Mountain Thyme

Delicious homemade pancakes, my favourite Sunday breakfast

“One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats, and if some of these can be inexpensive and quickly procured so much the better.” ~ Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea

Last week, we celebrated World Book Day. Gordon gave me a thoughtful gift, ‘Great British Literature Map’ and I gave him the new book, ‘The Crichel Boys: Scenes from England’s Last Salon’ by Simon Fenwick. Gordon said that the only difference between the Bloomsbury Group and the Crichel Boys is that the latter (a group of friends, Eddy Sackville-West, Desmond Shawe-Taylor and Eardley Knollys who bought an old rectory, Long Crichel House together to make their sanctuary) do not sleep with one another.

The Crichel Boys: Scenes from England’s Last Salon by Simon Fenwick. My gift to Gordon on World Book Day last week. It's such a gorgeous book and I love the design on the cover. 

Great British Literature Map (This is a gift from Gordon. I love unusual and idiosyncratic maps.)

‘A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.’ ~ Oscar Wilde

I am enjoying the literary map that Gordon gave me on World Book Day. I can spend for hours looking at the names and places. I was brought up by my grandparents who travelled with their old atlases on the back seat of their car. As a child, I found the bright pages of old atlases, similar to the colours of a Battenberg cake, absolutely mesmerising, and it was a wonderful way to pass time when travelling with my grandparents.

There is a free library near the village set up by a very thoughtful member of public. Aren't we lucky to live in a place where the books are free and we care about reading?

Elizabeth Bishop is one of my favourite poets. 

I love the last line, the most profound and poignant, of Miss Bishop's poem, The Map: "Topography displays no favorites; North’s as near as West./More delicate than the historians’ are the map-makers’ colors." 

What a lovely idea to set oneself free travelling through the map of literature and deciding where to find the next literary adventures around these sceptr’d isles. Our epic journeys can take place in our imagination and memory even if our physical movements are restricted and our circles are ever-decreasing. Robert Macfarlane wrote the following in his book, 'The Old Ways' (2012): 

"But there are also the landscapes we bear with us in absentia, these places that live on in memory long after they have withdrawn in actuality, and such places - retreated to most often when we are most remote from them - are among the most important landscape we possess." 

The year of pandemic has taken many things away from us. So, maps are the sources of reliability and the symbols of hope to ensure a safe landing for our future. 

Land lies in water; it is shadowed green.

Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges

showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges

where weeds hang to the simple blue from green.

Or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under,

drawing it unperturbed around itself?

Along the fine tan sandy shelf

is the land tugging at the sea from under? (...)

Topography displays no favorites; North’s as near as West.

More delicate than the historians’ are the map-makers’ colors. 

Elizabeth Bishop, The Map

Is he looking for a safe landing or a free snack?