So you can marvel

Give Your Writing The Edge's Nugget No.26, November 2022 reflects upon the value of work done with the hands. 

Not everyone has hands, not everyone has the use of both. 

Ever since I penned that Nugget, however, Brian Walter's poem Workman #2 has hummed in my brain. It's a perfect demonstration of how a man's mind, heart and body are integrated and fully engaged, as he is "grounded in his purpose, balanced in his humanity."

Workman #2

i.

I have to choose today

- whether to walk the forests

or get on with house repairs,

and soon I find myself out

buying a window frame,

a tad too big, so I must devise

ways to fit the casement to its space:

this cottage window, small

and pretty, for our bathroom.

I like to repair, to set things

to rights. I may turn from words

to maintenance, but am a dreamer,

too, and I wonder at the roads

I will not take today,

the paths I am not getting to pick,

between the right, untrodden,

or the well-worn left.

ii.

I glaze the window,

setting glass into the mullions,

tapping home the glazier's points,

thumbing in the softened putty:

I've been working this repair for days

and now it's almost done,

a new window frame set

and glazed so that one day

upon a time, morning bathed, you

can slip the bathroom window open

and marvel at the fresh outside,

at what metaphors do in spring.

 - by Brian Walter, in What It Is, Ecca Poets, Plettenberg Bay: 2020

The unhurried momentum of these lines speaks so well the non-machine, the un-preprogammed, living action emerging out of a moment's instinctual choice - "soon I find myself out/ buying a window frame"; which leads, then, to the work of blood and flesh - and continuous, self-conscious thought - "I wonder at the roads/ I will not take today".

This dreamer's dreaming does not delay his action, he glazes, sets, taps home, thumbs in - what a lovely roll of verbs to tell the process; even as the poet joys in the jargon and techniques of "mullions," "glazier's points" and "softened putty". Steady, patient, he gets there - "now it's almost done".

The penultimate stanza creates a garden of fairytale charm, allowing the sensual dreamer his in as he imagines his loved one "upon a time, morning bathed" opening the window he has fitted. The word "slip" in the third-last line adds the most delicate degree of mischief, as the poet at work slips himself into the frame, as it were, and walks off with the prize: the window glazed and set, the loved one bathed, it's the marvel at "what metaphors can do in spring" that flowers the finale.

It's the dignity of fulfilling work, creative action saves our souls and makes us smile.

Photo by Fredrik Öhlander on Unsplash

 

 

And they lived happily ever after ... or: Start now

Once upon a time, I took a photo of fresh Cape clawless otter spoor at the Cape of Good Hope.
Upon a subsequent time, I painted an otter on a t-shirt.
(I found otter scat in the garden around that same time.)
Then I started a blog, and called it '... follow your footsteps'.
I obeyed and did follow my path.
It was an adventurous time.
My feet climbed a big book. (Greater Matter)
They stumbled upon another one. (Sweet Nothings)
Now the feet are sore.
They need rest.
They are living happily ever after.

"Without you, this book would not be"

The stretch between writing, publicly reading and launching a book is extensive. It mirrors the very differing states of being pregnant, talking about being pregnant, and actually giving birth.

And then.
Then there is the advertising, the marketing, the work of selling your book. This mirrors breastfeeding, burping, nappy-changing and generally doing all those things that your darling needs, in order to keep thriving.

If you had known exactly what was coming at you, you might not have chosen this route. Well, I should probably rather change that sentence into the first person. I might not have chosen this route.

But I had an ulterior motive: I badly wanted this baby. I wanted a beautiful, fat Heffalump. Did I know she would start walking the moment she was out? No.

Well - it has been a steep learning curve, giving birth to a herbivore: they really do stand on their own legs immediately. I have held for dear life onto her tail, as she has galumphed happily into the world, reminding me that I am merely human, while she ... is of another order altogether.

It's a beautiful thing. My wildest expectations have been exceeded. The Hogsback launch could not have gone better, my reading in Grahamstown was well-received, and next week there will be a launch at Exclusive Books in Cape Town.

However, the dramatic increase in social buzz, organising, online communications, meeting lovely people, autographing with special messages - all this boon has robbed me of sleep and of peace even during the daytime, as my mind sprints through the to-do list and my neglected creative soul sits and sulks.

Busyness has caused me to re-tick the boxes with my basic priorities: SOLITUDE, QUIET, DOMESTIC BLISS, LOVE/ INTIMACY, PERSONAL FREEDOM.

That is all very well. Yet I am responsible for my Heffalump, and I am responsible to the good people listening, reading, buying her.

So I have no choice but to balance the responsibilities, patiently and wisely.

As Walter Benjamin said, the work of art gives birth to the artist, who must reinvent herself.

And Norman? Where are you in all of this? You, whose face is represented now in the homes of all who've got the book, and whose spirit and quirks and moments with me are being perused and pondered?

Why do these questions bring a strange peace into me?

Something has been fulfilled that was waiting. It has all been worth it. Like Strandloop, which you inscribed for me as something that you could not have put together without me, Greater Matter could and would not be without you.

Norman's inscription in my copy of Strandloop

Chalice (a hitherto unpublished poem by Norman Morrissey)

With the days so suddenly summery, hammocking in the cool Green Nook is possible again. And then, by some idle chance I happened upon this moving poem, more crystalline than any photograph could muster for the moment it captures; a poem I don't remember hearing or reading before, utterly humbling for the love my husband felt for me; and archetypal in the pure man-love it conveys towards a chosen woman -

Chalice

To see you rocking in your hammock
in the old place
(that once was a sylvan nook in the formal, dressed-stone

garden I had
before my heart broke
and the wilderness tangled in

like the jungle over a Mayan temple
but now has been
trimmed back into My-Lady's-Bower's sweet symmetries)

was to see an elvish thing
bobbing in a curled leaf
on a gentle stream;

it was to feel my dream of these past years
- you finding a haven
where your own heart's time

can brim over
to make this new home I offer you
with both hands on bended knee

fit chalice
for your heart's
welling abundancies

to
be
drunk from.

- Norman Morrissey

Us in the "sylvan nook". Photo taken by my mom.