Blown up and down streets of the village, now standing in a living room carpeted with crinkly brown leaves. I need to sweep and dust again. Because I’m busy reading Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, I blame Artemis goddess of winds for all this. The dogs are jumping around sniffing at tantalising wind-blown odours, pongs and faraway grasses. In the oven halved butternut are roasting and that sweet warm deliciousness fills the kitchen.
Struck by the fierce urge to practise a good choke hold on Charles Saatchi. Shared no doubt by many others who loathe violence against women being minimised. So not a ‘playful tiff’.
I grew up watching my father hit, slap, choke, kick, punch and attack my mother (as well as attacking and abusing us children) when he thought nobody was watching. He always said it was our fault. He always said that it did us good, taught us a lesson. He always said it did no serious harm.
Domestic violence and abuse are used for one purpose and one purpose only: to gain and maintain total control over you. An abuser doesn’t “play fair.” Abusers use fear, guilt, shame, and intimidation to wear you down and keep you under his or her thumb. Your abuser may also threaten you, hurt you, or hurt those around you.
Domestic violence and abuse does not discriminate. It happens among heterosexual couples and in same-sex partnerships. It occurs within all age ranges, ethnic backgrounds, and economic levels. And while women are more commonly victimized, men are also abused—especially verbally and emotionally, although sometimes even physically as well. The bottom line is that abusive behavior is never acceptable, whether it’s coming from a man, a woman, a teenager, or an older adult. You deserve to feel valued, respected, and safe.
Mid-morning. Astringent bitter mouthfuls of black tea. A small dog whining at a closed door. She has lost her ball. Otherwise, a deep unbroken stillness.
A friend says that blogging has a rhythm that is all about moving on from and returning, circling back and reaching out, breaking new ground, coming back home again. There is recovery discourse and a recovering reality that is lifelong, there is a vocation you might call the writing life, there are relationships with lovers, friends, family, place, there is what keeps you rooted in the ground of belonging and then there is what tugs at you to leave. All that stays the same, interminably, all that changes when we least expect it. To find a form that embraces all of this might be the challenge of the long-distance blogger. I stretch my arms out as wide as they will go in order to write a line or two for a public diary.
There are times when writing opens us up within, lets us access the deeper places. I sometimes wonder if that is why we write, rather than the need to communicate, be heard or get published. I write a sentence, almost without thinking about the words falling onto the page and what I have written is not a line of words but a door that swings open into another place, a reality that is not just narrative. An affirmation that might also negate false certainties, all that might be needed to hear the word, no.
A saying of Leonard’s comes into my head in this season of complete inanity and boredom. “Things have gone wrong somehow.” It was the night C. killed herself. We were walking along that silent blue street with the scaffolding. I saw all the violence and unreason crossing in the air: ourselves small; a tumult outside: something terrifying: unreason — shall I make a book out of it? It would be a way of bringing order and speed again into my world.
–Virginia Woolf, diary entry on 25 May, 1932
Out here in the mountains everything is pared down to bone, swept clean and washed empty of all irrelevance. Storms blow over the mountains and rampage down the valley, then blow away to the north so that the trees stand leafless as bleached spines along dirt roads and alongside sheets of shining water. The lines of the mountains are beautiful and fierce, no blurring of cloud. As I walk up the road or sit at the study window I can see blue herons, hadedas, falcons, Egyptian geese, goshawks and even horned owls. Winter is prime hunting season. The local farmers have taken guns and gone up into the mountains search of wild eland, sprinkbok, blesbok, wildebeest. They are too far away — the hunter and the hunted — for the rifle shots to be heard and I am glad of that. Death breaking into silence on a wind-blown plateau.
What I crave—and what I have known, in fugitive instants—is mystery that utterly obliterates reality by utterly inhabiting it, some ultimate insight that is still sight. Heaven is precision.
The Internet unreliable as ever. Goosepimpled with cold despite brisk exercises, s-t-r-e-t-c-h two-three-four, the skies milky and curdled with cloud, wind blasting through every nook and cranny in an old house. Fretting myself sick about finances and work, nothing to do but carry on. And ‘carrying on’ is a way of life by now. Sooner or later, we’ll turn the corner.
So sad to read of the death of much-loved author Iain Banks at 59, a great loss. Listening out for more updates on Nelson Mandela, hospitalised again with a lung infection. Waiting to hear breaking news on the Syrian army assault on Aleppo, more news of the NSA surveillance whistle blower,headlines of global conflicts and crimes and scandals. Not good news, but it is better to be informed than not, better to see those hard realities than cover our eyes and turn away..
Via The Dish, theologian Paul Tillich on that mysterious force or passion or gift we call ‘grace’::
Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: ‘You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!’ If that happens to us, we experience grace.
Nelson Mandela was born on 18 July, 1918, into the Xhosa royal house of Themba in a small village called Mvezu in the Eastern Cape. The former art teacher is optimistic about his recuperating: ‘He is only 94,’she says. ‘He comes from a long-lived family as I do myself.’ The former art teacher is either 79, 85 or 89 years old. It depends on her mood. I hope she is right, but each of us has a time for letting go, in that final sense.
In the early mornings I sit up in bed scribbling fiction in a spiral notebook, pages of jottings in blue ink, sitting writing in the utter deep silence with a mug of coffee steaming beside me and the curtains open to watch the dawn. I have a loose-knit woolen cap to pull down over my ears and and a pinky-brown cashmere scarf wound around my neck, blue-and-white stripey flannel pyjamas. I look idiotic but feel inspired. If my ears are cold, my mind turns to cotton wool.
Poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller was very particular about his writing process. He worked mostly at night and hung red curtains in his study so sunlight never illuminated the room. If he grew tired, Schiller would dip his feet in cold water so that he could stay awake and write. His most peculiar habit, however, involved fruit. He kept a drawer full of rotten apples in his study. The spoiled food created a stench that Schiller’s friend Johann Wolfgang von Goethe found repugnant. However, according to Schiller’s wife, he “could not live or work without” the awful aroma.
So far this winter, I’ve read four volumes of Proust, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and now I’m busy with the Abbe Prevost’s Manon Lescaut, a scandalous romance set in 1731. From my chilly wind-blasted hillside in Africa I participate in online courses, reading groups, writers’ forums. My emails and the exchange of forum posts crackle with ideas, hypotheses, arguments and lively affectionate vitality. Posters are so much more skilled at online communication than they were – than we all were — a decade ago. I sometimes look back on the trading of insults, nastiness, voyeurism and acting out (not to mention stalking and trolling) as if it was an Internet age of collective adolescence. A friend’s teenage daughter tells me ( haughtily) that she and her online friends don’t think of Facebook as ‘cool’ enough or smart enough to merit attention. So tabloid! So full of tone arguments, concern trolls,Unicorn laws and Nice-Guy Syndrome!The same social dynamics we called by different names in my pre-geek generation. No doubt she’s right about the terminally uncool, but even Facebookers might grow up one of these days.
Walking around the village and vineyards in the winter sunshine is bliss. Everything sparkles and glitters after rain: wet black branches on trees, green fields, flooded ditches shining with clear water. The small dogs jump to see so many leopard frogs in the hedges. On the porch I have planted a rare and unknown bromeliad in a tall pot and wait to see what kind of strange beast it might turn out to be. The rain has nourished armfuls of flat-leaf parsley in my herb beds. I whip up parsley-flecked potato mash, scatter gremolata with minced garlic, lemon zest and chopped parsley over casseroles, finely chop parsley into salsas and nutty tabboulehs, greening the heaped bulgar wheat.
So many habits that began as self-soothing routines to ease me through tough times have now become just a way of life and a pleasure in themselves. The calm but focused way I now listen to Stravinsky or Offenbach, that acquired habit of paying attention for periods of time, directing my full attention to what is worth that attention, more than just some gossipy distraction or passing novelty.
A pity then that I still burn the odd pot of rice and lentils while revelling in Homer, but perhaps in time we’ll all get better at multi-tasking as well — or come to rely on the sweetish scent of rotten apples or scorching lentils as an aide-memoire.
Winter blasting in with hail storms and snow. Mountain passes closed, my Internet connection as jittery as the dog when thunder is pounding overhead. A full-grown Great Dane climbing onto my lap when he feels small and puppy-like. Blue herons in bare wheat fields, the calligraphy of poplar branches scribbled against grey skies.
Things I always forget about winter in the long hot summers:
how long it takes for the hot tap to thaw and spit out hot water
damp towels that don’t dry on bathroom rails
making extra mugs of tea just to have a warm mug to hold between chilled fingers
the beauty of mountain peaks powdered white with snow
the smell of wet dog when we all come in after walks under dripping trees
… and the really horrible thing about quitting drinking is, I think, inside my mind I was so divided against myself. Nobody really talks about what happens to you and your level of self-confidence when you tell yourself every fucking day you’re going to drink X, and then you drink 10 times that—or you’re not going to drink at all and you drink anyway. You become very split off against yourself. So there was a part of me that would yell and scream and say, “You stupid bitch, goddamnit, you said you weren’t gonna drink and you drank anyway.” And there was this other part that was like “Fuck those people! Fuck the rules!” you know, blah blah blah…
You assume that when you quit drinking, you’re surrendering to that kind of nasty schoolmarm rule-maker. But for me getting sober has been freedom—freedom from anxiety and freedom from…my head. What has kept me sober is not that strict rule-following schoolmarm. There’s more of a loving presence that you become aware of that is I think everyone’s real, actual self—who we really are.
Blake said, “…we are put on Earth a little space / That we might learn to bear the beams of love.” And I think, quote-unquote, “bearing the beams of love” is where the freedom is, actually. Every drunk is an outlaw, and certainly every artist is. Making amends, to me, is again about freedom. I do that to be free of the past, to not be haunted. That schoolmarm part of me—that hypercritical finger-wagging part of myself that I thought was gonna keep me sober—that was is actually what helped me stay drunk. What keeps you sober is love and connection to something bigger than yourself.
Buried under work, scrabbling for piecemeal work to get enough money in to ward off that slavering wolf at the door.Some marvellous projects amongst the bread-and-butter assignments and stonebreaking stuff, so I take heart. And on Sunday evening I finished the Iliad after six weeks of nightly reading. Celebrated with a Greek supper of lamb casseroled with olives, garlic, tomato and green beans, Arne me fassolakia. No retsina or throwing of plates as in Zorba the Greek but the housemate looked relieved to be spared any more updates on Achilles and chariot races.
So wonderful to be reading the classics like this, along with other enthusiastic students and the Harvard professor who has spent almost 50 years reading and interpreting ancient Greek texts and myths..
Note on Sunday night.
Working on empathy in lament, in the written-down song of grief that is also weeping aloud. In front of me a videotaped discussion between academics on the lament of Thetis in the Iliad, Thetis the sea goddess who sits on the beach cradling the head of her son who lies prone on the ground, unmoving, although he is not dead. He will die in battle and both mother and son know this. There are no secrets between them. Not all the love in the world can save the son, and all the mother can do is to be with him and wait for what must happen, to grieve her loss even while he lives
She is mourning him before he dies, the professor says, and his co-facilitator on the video begins to weep, pushing a bunched up tissue under her spectacles and getting up, apologising for ‘losing it’. Watching her weep for a mother mourning her son who is to die, an unbroken continuum of mourning, a deep heart-broken mourning that has gone on for perhaps five thousand years since this lament was first sung and wept aloud, I too feel my eyes filling with tears, shared grief spilling over, I reach for a tissue and pause the video as I dry my eyes.
Continuum, empathy that is echoed and re-experienced unbroken through civilizations, centuries, generations, the grief of a mother’s loss spilling out everywhere. Grief wild and bitter and unending as the ocean itself, but contained by song. Unending grief but also shared grief, the gift of empathy. Those who will weep with us and wipe our eyes.
*
And almost immediately I could begin The Odyssey that I last read when I was 19. Total immersion in this extraordinary story of homecoming. More specifically, the homecoming of a soldier from war. How hard it is for a warrior to leave behind the experience of war and return home, how few will manage that. Odysseus will lose all his comrades and fellow soldiers on the return journey, and even his ship. He will arrive home alone and dress as a beggar in order to begin integrating back into the world he left behind, to reclaim a life in a society where nobody recognises him. Where he is no longer a hero, where his anguish and madness is not understood, where he must fight again to prove himself among civilians.
This isn’t an old story, we all know that. It is happening here and now, in our midst and I found this terrible if illuminating story of a failed homecoming in the New Yorker, In looking at the tragedy of ‘heroic’ American sniper Chris Kyle and how hard it is to unlearn the lessons of war, Nicholas Schmidle draws on the insights of Jonathan Shay’s moving and powerful work Odysseus in America:Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming.
The irony hidden in Homer’s Odyssey, as Odysseus and the reader have to discover, is that Odysseus isn’t a hero because of the war. He is a hero because of the long and painful homecoming. And his journey moves from the identity of being a soldier or warrior to becoming a sailor, crossing oceans and learning how to navigate wisely, how to read the stars and placate the angry god of the seas. And it is a wonderful soul journey despite all the terror and conflict.
From the poet known as the last of the ancient Greeks, Cavafy’s Ithaca.
How the moods and unhappinesses of others can blow through us like high winds or stormy weather.
These passing flurries offer opportunities to re-examine boundaries — our unrealistic longings to save or rescue others, to infect them with our own infectious gaiety, to remind them of their duty to feel grateful and therefore sort-of happy, to recoil from their anger or judgmentalism, to change them rather than risk being changed by them. Relationships with those closest to us are often a kind of symbiotic porousness, so that we expect the loved others to absorb our feelings, values, morality. When all too often we are in thrall to their vicissitudes of mood or circumstance. The friend saddened by chronic illness, the neighbour filled with bitter complaints, the contagious anxieties of family members.
And it is important that in stressful times we are kind to ourselves, tender and gentle, nurturing. But sidling in alongside that gentle kindness comes self-pity, the habit of seeing ourselves as misunderstood, under-valued, put-upon, overlooked, hardwired for abuse of some kind. So that as we go about daily routines we find ourselves muttering the old phrases of despondency and victimization: This always happens to me. Nobody ever cares about how I feel. Nothing ever works out for me. might as well not be here. It’s unfair. It’s never going to work out. It always ends up this way.
Siren songs we need to put aside, the self-absorbed maladaptive language we learned as helpless or vulnerable small children who saw the world as bleak and all the dice loaded against us. Reality black and white, more shadow than light. Tunnel vision. Because there are always alternatives, other open-ended visions, possibilities, alternative stories. The one-dimensional story is only a small aspect of the truth and distorted by pessimism.
There are many, many stories to choose from, many roads to take, many ways of seeing. We know this and yet we keep forgetting.
A brisk walk always helps — to get outdoors and let the wind blow away cobwebs and dusty corners. I sometimes climb to the summit of a hill from where I can look out over not just the valley below but passes and ravines cutting through mountains, meandering river courses, flood plains and stretches of open unfarmed land, wide empty wilderness. Places where we can remind ourselves how to breathe freely. Take a break from self and others.
Like many others who turned into writers, I disappeared into books when I was very young, disappeared into them like someone running into the woods. What surprised and still surprises me is that there was another side to the forest of stories and the solitude, that I came out that other side and met people there. Writers are solitaries by vocation and necessity. I sometimes think the test is not so much talent, which is not as rare as people think, but purpose or vocation, which manifests in part as the ability to endure a lot of solitude and keep working. Before writers are writers they are readers, living in books, through books, in the lives of others that are also the heads of others, in that act that is so intimate and yet so alone.
