The strange momentum of the unimportant

The gentle memory I referred to in my last blog, so generously conveyed by my niece, is terribly unimportant.

Unimportant in the sense of not carrying a heavy load. It's a light, a delightful memory.

She loved, as a girl, when she visited the coastline I was living at, at the time, to stand at the edge of the sea's reach, letting the waves pull the sand out from under and behind her feet, sinking deeper and deeper in towards her ankles. The sensation would cause her to giggle exultantly.

Her memory is nothing more than that I stood with her in the same joy, with similarly buried feet, in the same, exulted at-oneness with foamy mother ocean playing the same game, over and over, around our toes and soles and bodied spirits.

The others walked on. She could forget about following them - they'd not worry about her, so long as I kept vigil. So we wallowed freely in pure joy.

She says (and I thank her for allowing me to share this): "I'd been standing in the sand with my feet in, and you were always somebody who understood the physical aspect of a relationship with nature, and I'd be standing with my feet in the sand, and I used to giggle, because every time the water would pull away from me it would bring some more of the water with me, and I would laugh, because I would just stand, and my feet would fall deeper and deeper into the water, and I would love that. And you would always stand with me and, like, feel it with me, and enjoy it with me, and everybody would walk away, and they would keep walking down to the restaurant along the beach, but you would always stand with me."

If you are still reading, it probably means you're transported to unimportant, delightful memories of your own. Memories, perhaps, of physical experiences in nature, with someone you love and feel safe with, who shares the joy you're feeling.

Wallow! It's worth it. Such stuff provides direction for the momentum of lighthearted souls.

Photo by Thabang Mokoena on Unsplash

U/7Lboots on the reddit app tells us the science behind the joy.

Stand up, out of the blue

Eight or nine days ago, one of my lovely nieces messaged me out of that place of mystery we intelligently call 'the blue'.

"I hope you are doing well!" she wrote, adding, "I had been possessed by a memory of you recently."

Naturally, I replied to her questions, but I was not going to let niceties get in the way of the real (true-blue) stuff. 

"I would love to know what memory it is that possessed you," I said.

She then sent me a voiceclip with two stories. The first was one I'd as good as forgotten. I thank her for granting me permission to share it on my blog.

She was in Grade 6 - that would have made her roughly 11 years old at the time. She went to a party, safe and supervised and so on. A boy approached her, spoke disrespectfully - "rudely, very rude". He was "disgusting", and also flashed her.

She hit and kicked him, kicked him.

Back home, she told her parents, everything. 

Her father was upset - with: everything. The boy, her, just everything. Her mother was worried about her impulsiveness, the risk she'd taken by her spontaneous, violent self-defence. It was an unresolved issue in the home, and in her self.

A week later, I visited with my family. We were told the story. Apparently - I remember it, now that she's re-told it all - among all the adults present, I got up and went to her in the playroom, where she was watching tv or playing a video game, and I gave her a thumbs-up.

"You did good," I told her, "you gave that boy exactly what he deserved."

I remember feeling that it was important to let her know I trusted and approved of her body's spontaneous response to the disrespect, which had injured her spirit and person.

She said that I was the only person, until that point, completely to support what she had done. Coming from her aunt, it was clear: "It was okay for me to stand up for myself as a girl."

Photo by Sam Schooler on Unsplash

The second memory is gentler. It belongs in a separate blog, which will arrive in time, out of the blue.

Cache - a poem on mother love, from Unplanned Hour, 2012

Sudden return

The Edge rock ledge

29th September 2018 manuscript version

A friend

The yolk-yellow moon
balloons up slowly
through the lattice
of the old pagoda;

some twitterer's excited -
smacks forth chirps
as if he had a pair of lips -
right here in the budding clusters of Wisteria
you were so happy was recovering.

I miss your nearness much
these days - my memories have left
your illness, rewind
to days of early years -
you strong, your voice still full,
your macho kindnesses
startling my love into wonder
and depths between us
we'd not known.

How to speak fulfilment?
How does the full moon move itself
out of its honey bed
to whiteness
- almost blinding
the discretions of night?

Sadness has no legs. It sits
and listens to the sighings
of wind in oaks and deodars.

Wind cannot blow the moon away,
nor sadness, loyally returning.
A friend it is,
accompaning my yearning.

Protein

Just a fun clip recording a thought that came to me at the first outdoor fire I've made since Norman died.

Elegy for Norman

Elegy in 7 parts

for Norman (3.10.1949 - 23.7.2017)

1. Still watching a movie

This evening a year ago

we danced you to the end 

of love

and over

to a future you articulated

fully conscious, there for all

that was taking place within you,

about you, with and without us.

No script, no score - we improvisors both

couraged our conversation

by effort of will, of yes,

of grace, here we are -

at THIS juncture.

You knew it better than I

- I who was still lost in impossible wishings,

fantasies -

you turned

and put your teeth I'd cleaned

back in

for sleep.

I noticed, but did not heed

the meaning.

You saw the morning

from a different vantage.

But right now a year ago

we are still watching a movie.

2. Only the Poet's Wife

And when you said 

we must go together

as we thought had been ordained

I chose - replied, No,

the Poet's Wife will die with you,

but not the all of me -

I've much to do!

You nodded. Okay, that sounds fair,

you said, completely satisfied.

3. Legacy

The poet's wife is dead.

Her tokens part of your cremation,

her intimacies gone.

Her poems like yours

a legacy of sorts, a gathering

another must complete.

Who is that other?

Not one who with the poet's wife

would ever compete.

4. For fire

There's a freedom

manned by none

- that fragrance of an honesty,

that chopped fresh wood exuberance 

of being sundered to be used

for

fire.

5. Elemental

You don't want to be my darling,

you don't want to be my Love

- now all you want is

breath beyond lungs

stirring trees and oceans

with gleeful megalomania!

6. Clarify

Death did not part

so much as clarify

the parts we be

- you and I.

7. Pregnant

What happy memories I carry

into the future

I'm pregnant with.

Out Of Our Passing Selves

How you made my coffee each morning,
with my pressuring you to let
the very last droplet drain

through
the dregs
in the filter -

I'd watch you,
that you didn't jippo
and that you didn't let it drip

as you scythed the filter
from the cup across the stained mat
to toss the paper into the bin ...

Yet you were one of the deftest
I knew
in your practical gestures -

where was my trust in you
for these petty things?
We'd sit outside over breakfast

you praised each day anew,
how it settled your stomach,
made you feel good.

And we'd talk, track thoughts
in bright, clear dialogue,
our spirits twined

till I got restless, cross even
- 'I'm not like you retired,
I must work!'

And you'd feel guilty like you were hindering me,
while I attended to things
somehow so much less important, yet I'd feel

they were urgent,
more deserving
than the time we had

for one another.
And that made you timid
to approach me for love -

you denied your desire
while I grew tetchy with tension,
overwork, and you'd berate yourself, say,

'It's my fault,'
while I tried to keep the house clean at the same time,
breathless, seeing no outlet for rest ever,

on and on driven
by tasks. How now is it possible
to miss you, to wish you back

into such unpleasant circumstances,
eroded by money worries, physical weakness,
utter absence

of
peace?
I wish it not. You earned your relief. Our human helplessness, our nonsenses, criticisms so marked

are redeemed only ever by
the sun, the coloratura of birds,
the nodding grasses

given to the faintest breeze of feeling
slipping in undeterred -
cool facts

of
life
taking the simplest gatherings

together of us
out and beyond
our passing selves.

First meeting

'twas good to get pics I've never seen from Norman's publisher, Jim Phelps of Echoing Green Press - taking me back to the day I first met Norman in the flesh: 18th October 2009, when he read from Triptych in Fish Hoek and to my joy gobbled the cheese sticks I had brought along.

Norman reads from Triptych 18/10/2009, Fish Hoek

Memory

Today

exactly a year ago

was our first meeting.

Over my hips I'd pulled my smoke-blue skirt;

over my breasts an old, pale pink knit-top

covered by cardigan;

my feet in Tsonga slip-ons -

altogether toned down,

I carried that basket of cheese sticks

you devoured.

I was afraid of my own insignificance,

so I avoided you immediately.

Finally, though, after kissing all the people I knew,

I had to turn

to the presence

of you

behind me.

You took my hand

in both of yours,

as if it were an honour -

oh, you were beautiful!

I looked neither up nor down, but

straight into your face

of lines touched everywhere by light,

and your loose hair a-tumble.

Surprised that you were

short and humble.

Then you gave your reading;

silent Jenny pointed lens;

Jim's wine turned to praise inside his mouth

as he besang your poems;

Izzie - in cow-patterend pants -

went on about life, and the past, and ja,

no, if you get off your motorbike

to actually write down the lines that come into your head -

I admire that, you know:

you must be the genuine thing.

Hugh quested -

'WhyTriptych?'

- while Peter, Paul, Lewis and me

sat round listening.

In front of everyone you bent

down to reach

your toes

- unselfconscious as an old elephant,

I thought (and later wrote) -

We mingled; spoke; I stared

at your shirt with words on it

- yours - Alchemy -

stared rudely through

to sense the leanness

of your middle region;

you said that Horus

- your email name -

is first flash of dawn -

and I wanted to say

so much that I didn't.

Paul and you exchanged books

- Dog Latin for Comeback -

you asked me, too, to sign,

so I scribbled 'Hello!'

beside the Bodhi Books logo

(designed out of the shadows

caught inside a photo) -

a small figure with inky arm and phallus greeting.

I offered you the last

cheese stick you took

saying, 'You're an angel.'

And I thought.,

'Well - at least I can make sticks

to feed a hungry man.'

- Yes. That is how

our story began.

(18th October 2010)

Norman, Paul Mason & me