My sword

The banking consultant said, “I overheard your request when you were explaining it to my colleague. I saw you were burdened when you came up the stairs. But you still smiled when you greeted.”

He proceeded to tackle my request and, in the process, revealed that other consultants had (presumably unwittingly) blocked progress on the matter for three years, by giving me incorrect information. The consultant frankly expressed dismay and sadness over the fact that I had been given different stories, which effectively translated into loss of not insubstantial sums of money, with the bank benefiting on the side. Possibly the other consultants had not been adequately trained, or, due to innate lack of curiosity or interest, were simply inadequately motivated to assist.

The consultant had a mean wound on his forehead, which I was tempted to ask him about – had he been bitten by a dog? It was healing well, but it must have been a shocking and painful incident. Nothing in his manner, however, showed that the wound meant anything to him at all and it occurred to me that it might be intrusive of me to ask him about its origin, as it evidently did not cause him pain anymore and he had probably forgotten all about it. Indeed, he was giving all his attention to my finance-related instruction.

While he was working to resolve my situation, a little orange and black bug appeared out of nowhere on the camouflage trousers I was wearing. He was agitated, as bugs tend to be: busy feelering his way through a mission that was a mystery to me. I offered him my finger, which he climbed, scurrying up towards my wrist. I looked around.

“Is there a plant somewhere here?” I asked, but saw only non-living materials: comfortable chairs, sleek desks and counters, laptops, windowed cubicles, and numbered lockers in the space.

“Oh,” exclaimed the consultant, as his gaze moved away from the screen and fell upon the little creature exploring my hand, “I’ve never seen one like it!”

“Would you mind,” I queried, “if I run downstairs quickly and release it outside?”

“Not at all,” he replied.

I hurried past other clients, waiting in huge settees, who might have raised eyebrows, imagining that their patience was being tasked by the needs of a little orange and black bug, had they not also been surprised by the unlikely miniature adventure taking place before them. It was mizzling outside and I set the lithe little beetle into one of the trees that lined the village centre’s parking lot. It would be able to quench any thirst it might have, by sipping a watery droplet, and hopefully be able to make a new life for itself here. I jumped back up the stairs two at a time, aware that my body wasn’t quite acting its age, I am a woman nearing sixty, who has to watch her back. I slowed down enough to retain both health and dignity.

The consultant was still waiting for another department to answer his call and so, I, as well as the people seated around, were obliged to wait. The banker’s gentle presence exuded such patient peace that I felt moved to continue working on a poem that had come to me a couple of days before. I opened my notebook and quietly edited the lines. To my joy, they took on a shape I could not have predicted, a beautiful and profound shape I felt extremely pleased with. In that moment I realised that I must dedicate the poem to the banking consultant. It was a strange experience – an experience I have had over and over, without its ever being the same – of doing something I had never done before. I must set aside self-consciousness, all fear of embarrassment or doubt and judgment, and obey the impulse.

I wrote the poem out in full and dedicated it to the name displayed on the consultant’s tag. When he was done on his side, he gave me all the details of my case, explaining that, since it was a Saturday, my instruction would only be processed on Monday. I expressed my gratitude: he had helped me finally to shed a three-year financial burden. Then I told him what I had been busy doing in the meantime.

“You might have heard the expression that the pen is mightier than the sword,” I said, adding, “I am a poet and had been mulling over an unfinished poem. Your kind presence helped me edit it to a state I am very happy with. So I have dedicated it to you.”

I read the poem aloud and gave it to him. It's a few lines describing the shape and colour of a leaf, showing how it resembles a sword's blade and has its 'hilt' attached to the twig that joins it to the whole tree. The consultant's presence allowed me to understand the lines expanding their meaning to include the Tree of Life, upon which the poem is a small, green leaf, reflecting both the power of the word as well as the connectedness between living beings.

My sword

For Bradley Barnado

Sun through leaf:

bright blade

of green. Red at the hilt:

attached to twig, the holy place,

where sap flows from the tree

into your being.

“Thank you so much,” he said emphatically, “that is so beautiful! I will treasure it!”

He folded the piece of paper and added, “I am so glad I met you!”

“I feel the same,” I replied, “your attentiveness and kindness have made my experience in the bank this morning very special.”

“Thank you! Would you mind saying these things to my manager, emailing her?”

“Not at all, what is her email address?”

“Please also speak to her directly?”

He took me down to her cubicle, but she was not there. I promised to wait for her a few minutes and we said good bye.

When the manager arrived, I told her, “This young man is a gem,” and related what had transpired. She was delighted and asked me please to email her my feedback, something I have yet to do. I will certainly include the link to this blogpost.

A banking consultant who has time for a bug to be freed, and to hear a poem he feels privileged to treasure – he is a man of the new earth in deed. And the old earth, I’ve no doubt, agrees. Wounds do heal, mistakes can be corrected, and a mere leaf can tell us more than we might imagine about the Tree of Life.

– Silke Heiss, 3rd December 2023

Lost, or: The chrysocolla and the butcherbird. A blogpost in two chapters.

I've lost.

Lost you: my thinking, feeling reader.

Lost me: your writer, um, your thinker-feeler.

Now what?

Chapter 1

Got in touch with my late husband, desperately. He 'told' me to buy a fancy bottle of wine. A minute or two later, still standing in the supermarket aisle among the wines (before the latest lockdown), a dear, late friend of mine 'told' me to buy another, fairly fancy bottle of wine.

I meekly obeyed both of them. Opened the red on Christmas day and toasted my late husband vocally in the presence of my parents. Has ever a wine had a more soothing, centring, balancing effect on me? Never.

The next day, Family day, I opened the white and toasted my late friend in everyone's presence and, again, the afternoon turned golden.

My obedience to my heart and her loves is simply the right thing.

Need to put that in bold.

My obedience to my heart and her loves is simply the right thing.

But still, I was lost: in the tyranny of daughtering. When my father came into the kitchen the next day, where I was, as usual, cooking, and said, "You are SO kind!" I replied morosely, "Yes. It's awful."

He said he would help if he could, and so he polished the blackened silver cake forks, while my poor, paralysed mother audibly lamented her helplessness.

Unkindly, on the phone to my Beloved later, I ranted beyond reasonable about the curse of being kind. I guess I was balancing (cancelling?) my kind deeds with highly ungracious words revealing pretty septic resentment.

But then.

I confronted the disturbance in my heart, the ungraciousness.

Chapter 2

I'd made my parents a calendar for Christmas, as usual, and for the month of May, which is my birthday month, I used a photo of myself, looking at a bird. Underneath the picture I'd pasted the words: 

 Listen to the song in your heart, whether the sun shines or it snows.

The bird is a butcherbird and although the photo (taken by my Beloved) is stunning, and the quote does speak how I have by and large lived my life, the vicious reputation of the bird bothered me.

However, Google (butcherbird) told me, with exquisite immediacy:

The fearless butcherbird reminds us to protect our territory. If it has shown up, you may be at risk of being undermined or of losing a thing of value.

 

That same day, my mother, ill-advisedly or wisely (which is it?) tippling once again from early on in the afternoon to assuage "the bitter taste in my mouth," said, 

"I keep trying to think of the name of a stone, but can't get away from croissant."
"Chrysoprase!" I said.
Her eyes widened. "Chrysocolla," she retorted. "How did you ... ?"
"It's obvious," I retorted in turn.

The daughter is not that for nothing.

She sent me to fetch her big box of various pieces, designed and cut and polished and smithied by her, and gave me a necklace with a Chrysocolla pendant. The cabochon and every link is fashioned by her. In better times, of course. (was fashioned = simple past: upon a time)

I danced! How it suits everything I am and wear! (am, wear = simple present: true forever)

"I have never seen it," I said.

"I never wore it," she replied, "I made it thinking of you. I wanted to give it to you."

Google (chrysocolla healing and chrysocolla sound) supplied more than enough for me to begin to be able to dissolve the septic resentment and ungraciousness that had been holding my soul hostage.

By means of words.

To myself.

To you.

Truth is not straightforward.

Chapter 3

Please forgive the photo of the pendant, the evening was getting on.

Appendix Note

You can still see the pendant and necklace enough to get a sufficient sense of things.

Butcherbird and me (passing though Hermanus). Photo: my Beloved.

Chrysocolla pendant with handmade silver necklace, by Sigi Heiss. Bad photo: Silke Heiss

 

 

A confession - from depression to gratitude again

To my discredit I did not survive my stay in Somerset West intact. I returned home to Hogsback to suffer an immediate nervous breakdown so acute that I had to pull out of the Summer Songs & Poems gig this past Sunday. Every other minute a traumatic thought or memory would surface, reducing me to sobs. I did not recognise either my art or my books as mine. Weak and incapacitated by a dark film between myself and my surrounds, I was too hollow to pray and too numb to count blessings. My desperate mouthings of  'God be with me' were mechanical and seemed useless.

My son was still with me. Thirsty and hungry, I finally summoned the courage to whatsapp him in his room.
'Please would you make me a cup of tea?'
He knocked and opened my door and informed me that he had not dared disturb me earlier, since "When an adult's door is closed, you don't disturb. I mean, you're my mom, so you knock and can come in, but it doesn't work the other way round."
That made for a new and interesting bit of information.
He made me tea and toast and, with a touching degree of youthful awkwardness (he will be 21 soon), observed that he did not understand what was happening, but -
"Just let it out. I mean, physically you're ok, aren't you?"
"Yes ... I think the Disprin is helping that ominous pain at the back of my head."
"You were so happy to be back."
"I was."
"So what happened?"
"I think being back means I'm allowed to just do nothing."
"Well I do nothing all the time. It's the best."
"Yes."
"So just let it out."
"I am."

He told me that he felt that he was incapable of breaking down. It is true that he is profoundly blessed with psychic health. While concerned for me, he was utterly unfazed by my floods of tears, which I could no longer hide. He spoke with such casual humour that he made me start to laugh, and I grew aware of how deeply grateful I am for his existence.

I began to hear the young Chorister Robin - a character like no other, this season, for his hilarious, exuberant liltings - and the other birds again.

The next day I could already visit my neighbours again with thanks for checking up on the house during my absence; and thank my fellow performers for picking up the tab for me - adding songs at the last minute to fill out the programme, so that most of the audience had not even noticed my absence!

Only yesterday evening did I finally take myself to Norman's Memorial spot and saw that the gardeners had, during my absence, weeded it beautifully, leaving only the flowering weeds to decorate it exactly as Norman and I would have wished. The love they'd put in to welcoming me back radiated out of the cleared circle. The two little Yellowwoods on the circumference had produced further sprouts.

And then, this morning, I finally put pen to paper again to produce a poem I knew was waiting for me to write it, in gratitude to one of the members of the St Patrick's Chapel congregation in Hogsback.

Here it is.

Kindness
Dedicated to my anonymous donor

By deeds we are
that which we are -

words, too, when finely wrought,
can act - do good or harm
in human hearts -
can provide balm,
boost courage,
project

a beam
of purest light

- such as this humble poem
seeks to do -
to stream thanks
and honour
to a donor of mine
for her kindness.

- Silke Heiss, 9th January 2019