Meadowsweet

What is it about running that makes me feel so emotional? - it happens every time. Maybe it has to do with mornings like today's when the sun is rising, the sky is big and blue, the clouds are freshly washed hung out to dry and the hay meadows are showing whippets of swaying grass so sweet smelling it's almost possible to taste them. Just running past those meadows makes me want to tumble into them, rolling and laughing for pure joy. Like a child, remember that? Ach, childhood is long gone.

So maybe the emotion's there because everything is so clean and beautiful and alive, because on days like this I remember people who won't be running any more. So even if the left knee's getting dodgy, I can still run. Cue a bit of Andrew Marvell. Life is good, we don't have to follow the wraithes just yet, we can live if we choose.

Sisterhood

I am generally suspicious of gendered activites and it would be fair to say that with three men in tow last week's event could not reasonably be described as exclusively feminine but that's how it felt. Women gathered, conspired, to bring another woman home. To bring a woman back from 58 years of exile, back to the warm earth that held her parents, back to a country that accepted her from the moment of her birth to the moment of her return. From the florist to the stonemason to her sisters there was approval for the rightness of what we did. We brought one of theirs back and they were grateful for it. And the tears came and came and came and haven't stopped coming since. It is done and done well. And it seems as though all the living of the last 58 years was ancillary to the first 27 when another life was lived. Curious.

Time

No time for anything - have a picture

Out on a limb

There is a leg, perfect in its strength, proportion and usefulness. That leg is unapologetic, it says, ‘see what a man is’. It walks, it runs, it has muscle, sinew, memory; its structure is transparent, everything about it proclaims its nature. Darkness defines its shape, protects, and connects to its masculinity. Strength leads eye, mind and body to dangerous places. Pleasure and death that leg says, ‘look at me, see what I can do, put me to use, I’ll wrap myself around your soft body, imprint myself on your life’.

More mutability

This is the moment before the moment. Gamblers have a name for it: 'tilt'. That time when the cards are good, there's money in the pot and the wise and sensible player knows how to bid; what to throw, what to keep, how to win. And then?

And then they sabotage themselves. Freud says it's because of our inner divisions, that I know. What I don't know is whether, in this moment before the moment, I will understand the implications of the 'tilt' I am about to make, or even care. It really doesn't matter if I'm 'tilting' at windmills, it really doesn't matter. Rather tilt at the windmill of your own making than that of others'

Ten years or so ago, I held some cards and played them; then - a wise and sensible player - but now? Well now the world is changing, some change invited, some not, some on a global scale, some domestic. Whichever it is, the gods hold up a mirror to us and say, 'Well? what are you going to do now, you little people?'

Tomorrow afternoon a group of decent, intelligent, hardworking people will gather to be told their fate, the day after tomorrow I will decide my own.

There can really only be one track, and one singer...

Time was away

There are big things cooking in the kitchen; a real banquet with birds stuffed into birds, bright rosy apples trapped by roast suckling pigs competing for attention with the stuffed peaock. Not to mention the sauces, sweetmeats and gold covered pastries.

Oh but my diners will face such challenges and indigestion that, frankly, it wouldn't be a gift of food would it? It would be a great big fat, in your face, 'look I've sweated over this so you're bloody well going to eat it and digest it, if it kills you' arrogance.

Whereas, some olives, good strong bread, oozy cheese, maybe warm, ripe tomatoes and sharp/sweet grapes. Oh! and a zingy wine, almost as green as the vines growing overhead. That's a meal that says, 'sit with me, eat with me, let us drink a little wine and pick at the grapes while we talk and laugh at our follies'. That's the one to write.

Time was away and somewhere else,
There were two glasses and two chairs
And two people with one pulse
(Somebody stopped the moving stairs):
Time was away and somewhere else.

...

God or whatever means the Good
Be praised that time can stop like this,
That what the heart has understood
Can verify the body's peace
God or whatever means the Good.

Hmm

'She went back to him and a little more of her died each and every time he hurt her again.' Oh how we sighed over that one. 'Yes, yes' we said, 'that's how it is'. Can't remember where it came from, something big at the time like The Thorn Birds but it wasn't. Garish, gold covered book I think. Anyway, it passed from female hand to female hand and served to reinforce our victimhood. Ah, those were the days, the endless days, the helpless days, believe me.

Something like forty years later reading Saul Bellow's The Victim; does my heart ache for victims? Not sure it does when we could have invested our puerile energies into listening to the Kink's version of those endless Days and written a different narrative for ourselves. Sung here by Kirsty McColl.