Weather
The glorious sunshine that I seem to remember that we were
promised for the Easter holidays does not seem to be much in evidence at the
moment. OK, I was able to do a tad of
light sunbathing yesterday, but the weather today is as near to rain as it can
get without actual precipitation.
And with a
true sense of irony, just as I finished typing the word ‘precipitation’ the sun
came out. I swear that the irony of real
life leaves the contrived irony of literature standing! And with that the sun has disappeared again!
As long as
it is dry for my trip to the pool (to get wet, yes, irony again) I will be
happy.
Family
Yesterday saw the Family descend and our routine was jolted
out of place by two young children.
Being a retired teacher (ah, savour those words in the mouth like a fine
wine!) children have become something of a novelty for me and I find myself
observing them like some exotic species of insect.
This time I
particularly noticed their attitudes.
Not, I hasten to add, their ethical standpoints and moral positions, but
rather the physical ones that they adopt naturally.
Milton
wrote of Samson that he was ‘carelessly diffused’ (if I remember rightly)
encapsulating a sort of casual sprawl in a wonderful phrase. I watched the younger brother, Marc, as he
sat at the table and I fail to see how his half crouch lunged squat could have
been in any way comfortable – but he seemed ridiculously at ease in what would
have been excruciatingly uncomfortable for me.
Still, I
remember years ago when in secondary school, in an idle moment of speculation,
I wondered if I was still able to do the ‘crab’ and move around with my arms on
the floor behind my head and my body arched.
The answer was a resounding ‘No!’ and I am glad that I tried to assume
the position slowly and not snap into it, as the only snapping would have been
my spine if I had managed to do it! A
certain pliability is lost with age!
I can now
feel joints in a way that is entirely different from my youth when joints did
not intrude upon my concern. Those happy
days when the body is just one lithe totality rather than, extremely obviously
nowadays for me, composed of jointed parts.
Poems in Holy Week
This writing is obviously displacement activity as a form of
writing exercise to get me into the mood to try and find a topic for the next
poem in the sequence. I am trying a
mixture of casual thought and oblique contemplation to bring the subject matter
to the fore.
I have to
admit that there is no easy way to write and I find the harder I work the more
‘inspiration’ I find. At least my
faithful notebook is always near to catch a fleeting perception. Though I also have to admit that my notebook
is fuller of the blindingly obvious rather than the intriguingly
provocative. But, as I pointedly
observed in a previous blog about ‘Family Wisdom’, ‘anything is better than
nothing’ – and I am constantly surprised by what I am able to mine from
extremely unprepossessing obviousness!
I trust
that the next poem in the sequence will find its way onto http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/
before the end of the day. With any luck
the material produced in my Poetry Group this evening may even be useful for
this project. I live, as always, in
hope!
United Nations Day
2015
The travel arrangements and preparations for this event are
assuming a complexity which makes the actual UNO meetings in New York look
simple in comparison. I have decided to
take a loft and distant approach to these things and concentrate on the
‘looking forward’ aspect of it all.
My most
pressing concern is to ensure that Flesh
Can Be Bright is ready for its publication day. At least I know that my Catalan translator
has started on the task of producing a version of Autumn Trees, which is more than I can say for my Spanish
translator.
It is now
April and I set a deadline for completion of the writing by the end of
May. I have written the poems and,
although I still have to do the editing and the indexes, the introduction and
design, I know that the really hard bits that I have to do are done. How far my grandiose plan for the realisation
of this project survives to publication will be interesting to see. I am fairly determined, but I do have fallback
plans. Lots of them.
Body Art
I have been methodical in my note making for the next essay
(and last) in the OU course. As soon as
this is completed I can concentrate on the End of Module Assessment which is a
mini thesis.
The art I am
studying at the moment is what I think most people would call ‘challenging’ –
and the theoretical justifications even more so!
As befits a
module on modern art, we are now at the ‘cutting edge’ of what can be
considered art and while sometimes I think that it has not progressed much beyond
Duchamp, there are other aspects which demand an intellectual commitment that I
am sometimes not prepared to make.
Still, it
is something which is beyond my comfort zone and therefore it makes me question
my perceptions and who can ask for more than that from a learning experience.
I will soon
have to start putting finger to key and actually write something about what I
understand rather than wondering what the hell to make of it all.
