Holy expansion

Holy expansion

 

Twice five k's on the beach

from Butterfly Blu to Buffalo Bay

and back again -

no one but you,

a couple of oystercatchers,

one little heron,

mussels on rock,

and the mad tide with its foam.

This is the sea our mother and father

taught us: strip, and run into,

to be bathed and renewed,

always they sought the isolated places

for their essences of bliss.

An excellent religion,

this womb of truth,

the dispassionate aggression

of the waves, attacking one another, joying

in complete trust that they cannot be tamed,

nor hurt themselves.

We'd return from the holidays

humbled and imbued -

they were holy expansions,

preparing us to wash each upcoming, 

difficult day.

- Silke Heiss

 

 

How but in custom and in ceremony?

"... may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
[...]
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?"

These lines, from Yeats' A Prayer for my Daughter have been playing on my mind these days.

The lockdown has banished two customs or ceremonies, two major sources of peace, rhythm and reverence in my personal life - wine at sundown, and solitary walks outdoors.

However, in all other respects, my daily life is far less affected than I would have thought it would be, even considering that I am in a new town, in a new house, with a comparatively new beloved and a blank future.

It has taken time to discover that my life path is in no way diverted by circumstances, however unwelcome or painful or just plain irritating these may be. The main reason for this is because I am still the same.

I grew up on home-cooked food. Just like her mother, my mother made everything from scratch. I have largely continued this custom. We never went out (my father considered it "money down the drain") and we never ate 'junk'.

The Second World War's consequences ingrained a 'waste not want not' practice of daily living into my grandparents, who transferred it to my parents, who transferred it to me.

It's nothing special, really. Millions of women, people all over the globe, will turn soft and spotty bananas into banana loaf, if given half a chance. I find that some grated lemon rind and ground cardamom seeds add a lovely fresh mystery to ordinary banana bread. My wrist works to the sound of the wooden pestle grinding and clacking against the mortar.

The original recipe I use comes from a primary school friend, a loyal soul I am still in contact with. I think of her when I use it. I think of the various people in my life who have purred while eating this bread.

One extra thing I learned - was it from my mother again? - is that if you beat the egg whites stiff first, in a separate bowl, and then add them to the dough at the very end, the mixture is given an extra dose of airiness, which persists into the final, baked bread. I thus follow this habit with much of my baking. It means there is an extra bowl to clean, but it's worth it.

   


 

The roll-back

Four launch/ reading events -
1. Hogsback (The Edge Mountain Retreat), 12/10/19;
2. Grahamstown (Reddits, Cafe D'Vine), 25/10/19;
3. Cape Town: Tokai (The Book Shoppe), 4/11/19;
4. Cape Town: Claremont (Exclusive Books, Cavendish), 5/11/19

Now, at my laptop at my parents' dining room table, I sit opposite my mother, quietly reading in her wheelchair. Her entire left side is paralysed and her body has as good as no independence anymore. She holds her lapidary brochure in her right hand. Flash photos of cut and labelled gems, displayed on royal red backgrounds, gaze at me.

My parents' presence at the Cape launch of Greater Matter at Exclusive Books, Cavendish, Claremont, on Tuesday was one of the most precious gifts to me personally.
"If I could, I would have got up and embraced you," my mother said.

Having had to have been so publicly present, both online and off, for the sake of marketing and selling my book, has felt unnatural, even stressful.

Don't get me wrong. I love reading aloud to people, I love intimate public events, which poetry readings mostly are. I love the microphone, which allows for whisper-soft words to slink into listener's hearts. And I love the fact that readers have bought Greater Matter and are being nourished by it.

But the tide is rolling back now.

I look forward to being in the arms of my beloved. I look forward to composing poems again, applauded by the stars and grasses. Perhaps more people will come towards me, who have felt themselves privately heard, or who are questing for more of the chime they sense hums in my book. 

There'll be further books, further readings, to build and nurture the "good/ By quiet natures understood" (W.B.Yeats, Prayer for my Daughter).

I thank Exclusive Books, Cavendish, and Eva van Belle for the photographs from Tuesday's launch.

Praise is not only sweet

Like honey, genuine praise is not only sweet, but also nourishing and even medicinal.

My mother over the phone yesterday told me she is really enjoying the poems in Greater Matter; indeed, the story they tell is keeping her in suspense.

For many people, it may go without saying that your mother praises you, but that is not an experience I share: my mother was always not only highly exacting, but brutally honest in her responses to the things we - and she herself, too - created. That is why her praise now is both nourishing and medicinal.

Added to this is that, since her stroke, she has a slight reading disability. The poems, since they do not run across the entire page, do not tax her eyes to move more than is comfortable. The daughter in me is eternally grateful, for completely extraneous reasons, now to be a poet!

Greater Matter also received unexpected praise from a recent Air b&b host, who ended up buying the kindle version. Amazon won't allow him to post his review, because his purchases are less than a minimum amount stipulated by them. He has kindly given me permission to post it on the social media:

"Hi Silke. We got the book on kindle. Honest, sweet and raw. Reading a bit every night. A rare find these days. Thanks very much for putting pen to paper and actually publishing these intimate thoughts and experiences. If you never did that, something would have been lacking in my life." - Paul van Jaarsveld, Jeffrey's Bay

If you would like to buy the book, you may email me directly for a mail order, at silkeheiss@gmail.com
Alternately, you can find it on  https://www.amazon.com/Greater-Matter-Journey-Poems-Beyond/dp/0994695071

I put out the third Give Your Writing The Edge Nugget yesterday, containing a beautiful, hitherto unpublished poem by Norman Morrissey, expressing the idea that the things we make are incarnations of our spirit. This thought is truly wind in the sails of my book - a thing, which is from start to finish a gift dedicated to his immortal soul.

Self - A poem for my mother

It's my last day in Somerset West with my parents. I suddenly remembered that I'd been meaning to take my mother in her wheelchair to her mirror, to see whether the stroke-paralysed left side, and her hemianopia, may not benefit from the objective self-recognition, which a mirror asks for.

It was an uplifting moment, which brought not only gladness in us, and relief, for both my father and the carer, from the duty of combing my mother's hair, but, too, this little poem -

Self
for my mother

For the first time
in twenty-one months
she's wheeled before a mirror -

'Looks familiar,' she quips,
touches her lame, left shoulder and knee,
crosses the left-right hemispheres - no problem -

combs her long, white hair,
is glad it doesn't pull
as much as when my dad or the carer do it -

and the very strands spontaneously make a delicate wave
above her brow, as newfound dignity
takes her forward

to the image now
of her lovely old
self.

- Silke Heiss, 3rd January 2019