Swift as a shadow, short as any dream…

It was the moment first-light shape-shifted – imperceptibly transmuting from astronomical to nautical dawn – and, although my vision had long adapted to the gelid gloom, all I could discern ahead (as if insinuating myself deep into one of Dürer’s Meisterstiche…) were motionless, almost monochroic strata of indecipherable spectral shades: pitch against jet against coal, against ebony, soot and sable. And yet I sensed them, stock- and stand-still. As, assuredly, they sensed me.

When; and the art of existential transience…

For a relatively short time, I sobbed my heart out. But then, being the undoubtedly strange creature that I am – and, yet residing on its periphery, probably reasonably representative of my species… – I do seem to devote rather a lot of effort – as well as lend a disproportionate amount of significance to – mayfly moments such as this. It is as if – recognizing (whilst simultaneously attempting to avoid discussion of) our brittle mortality – we treasure the ephemeral above all else; venerate the transitory beyond rational measure. We see, reflected in such twinklings, I suppose, the entropy that must always prevail (until the only thing remaining is entropy itself); and therefore lend them as much love as we can, until they crumble to the sand by which, when captured in entwined glass globes, we would once (long ago) have measured their brief incidence; before mourning their finiteness. As I did.

All we can do, really, faced with such, is remember. Or, at the very least try to – however imperfectly filtered through our emotions and subjectivity. Surely, otherwise, these junctures lose the import that produced them; and – for a paltry while – that sustained them (and us). And, should our memories – the golden threads which fabricate the texture of our lives; the microscopic building blocks of the richness of our realities: ones we hand down, inadvertently, along with our atoms… – be fortunate, then perhaps they will survive, beyond our crumpled existence, as poor proxies. Thus, many lifetimes hence, those that follow (should they choose) can discern their value, gasp at their truths (again) – rather than simply, reflexively marvel at their endurance, the longevity of the poor surrogates themselves.

¶

I cannot – even were I freakishly nominated as literary ambassador for all humankind – speak, speak to… others’ thoughts (unless similarly committed to posterity: stochastic samples of the privileged and able, perhaps; and, yet, I would hope, as contradictory and wide-ranging as those who selected me… but especially those who did not). All I know is that, pick any part of this blog, and – whether of a walk; a play; a concert; an encounter with the weather, or another soul… – the evidence before you would go a long way to demonstrating that my sole purpose here is in making inefficient attempts at tanning the hide of time, pickling the ineffable, pressing the fading petals of awe between my ever-mounting pages. No better than those proud, possessive Victorians displaying pinned moths by the caseload.

Yes, there are strong hints of their quick beauty; but, once slowed by my dull hand, am I in fact merely robbing the life, the mystery, the essential ‘beingness’ from that which I witnessed? Or should I continue to believe that – in pleasing (only) myself; and providing enough clues with my monochrome words to reconjure the original technicolour majesty, momentarily in (only) my head (should I dare to; care to…) – this is all I should be expected to be able to achieve?

Stumble upon the tens of thousands of still images, archived with a similar objective, and you might begin to suspect that, surreptitiously, I was either stashing them with the aim of posthumous fame; or, more likely, concerned that my raddled brain will increasingly require such prompts. (It would be nothing but vanity to imagine that they hold value to anyone but their creator… – words or pictures.)

¶

And yet I persevere. And always will. Both in cherishing and recording. I feel I have no other option. If I only aim to do so to distract myself, though, then I fail. If all I achieve is to say “I was here”: then, again, there is no purpose. If, however, I write to proclaim my bewilderment at miracles frequently flashing by me – and that I managed to grasp a few of them, momentarily – then perhaps I am on to something. It may not be my “responsibility”, as such. But if I convey just to one other person just one fraction of that I experienced – so that the miracle is extended in time and space – then, maybe, maybe, I have a little justification.

For a short time, I sobbed my heart out. Not, this time, because of what I had seen or heard. But, for the third time in the same number of weeks, because the anticipation of such would lie unfulfilled. Yes, I can watch the DVD of the RSC’s production when it is eventually released; and I can also – as I did, over and over, on Monday evening – listen to the mesmerizing CD of the same performers playing one of the most intimately radiant pieces of music ever composed – instead of hearing it live. But, of course – some of it being down to that adoration of the temporal; most of it due to the ‘happeningness’ I seem to spend half my life waving a tattered butterfly net at… – it’s not the same. (It’s not that the digital domain is sterile – the passions are still utterly crystalline… – just that presence overloads every single one of your senses.)

All those months of drooling expectation; the prolonged crescendo of excitement; the knowledge that something so utterly exhilarating lurks over the horizon… – all dashed. Perhaps it is the anticipation – rather than the event – which renders it so special?

I am convinced that it is a combination of both. I am also convinced that not being able to realize the three-dimensional possibility so readily accrued distresses at least as much as the actualization would have comforted… – and carries with it all the poignancy (if not the force, the tragedy) of a life cut short. At this moment, it certainly feels as momentous – however inordinate I know that to be.

¶

After all, it was just another point in time, a potentiality. And there have been many such that I have chosen simply to pass by. But I selected the ones that would eventually pass me by because they possessed something significant. They were fleeting, rare, coveted creatures that I will now never hold, even temporarily; therefore never stumblingly attempt to memorialize for others (and, in doing so, secure for myself). Scattered amongst the infinite possibilities of my life, they will haunt me: carving yet another notch into the wall of the cell that holds and punishes me (one that is, in my case, simply labelled ‘disability’) – one whose volume seems to decrease, almost imperceptibly (were it not for those sad markers), trapping me tighter with each vanquished wish…. (I could, though, treat them as ‘friendly’ ghosts: letting them help me rationalize, and gain proportion and balance. More straightforward to write than to execute, though…?)

¶

So, I wonder – having tapped single-fingered at my iPhone for the best part of two hours – why do we cherish the transient so greedily? And then why do we – some of us – try to describe it; or at least cement its effects into our emotions? Surely the experience alone should be enough?

And, of course, for most, it is. And yet… we still purchase the CDs; replay the concerts on iPlayer; peruse the reviews; watch the DVDs until we know each line of dialogue, weep and laugh in the same places…. But then, I wonder – an epiphany prompted by an insomniac stroll… – if, “for most”, this is actually what suffices, even excites… – if only a minority of us genuinely crave the imperfections, the risks, the exponentially unwinding possibilities of failure – the spills – that are, of course, driven to insignificance by the thrills. Do the majority actually relish the reproducibility, the repetition, the safeness…?

 

During the hours of darkness – especially two hours after midnight – the village is mine. And, usually, only mine. But it is never the same. And that is as much an enticement as is the pretence of dominion. But, I suspect, many people would find the rich, velvety void of blackness quite scary – never mind lying back on a damp church bench for an hour, surrounded by graves and the rustle of tiny critters.

Very early Tuesday morning, I left home under a trillion pin-pricks of flickering, bright, distant suns: constellations spelled out with clarity and precision; and – beyond the blinding sodium – interspersed with clumps of dust: each speckle an individual. Given long enough, head resting on the arm of one of those benches, the Milky Way also emerges.

As I dragged myself away from the treacle-tenebrosity of Sandpits Road, I saw a canine hind leg skulk around the corner into Main Street. Too large for a fox; and no place for a fox, neither… – there is enough for them in the verdant nature and nurture that surrounds us. But my eyes were temporarily blinded. However, intrigued, I followed: expecting a distant ginger lolloping blur. But, it seems, my depression had momentarily become flesh: for there, a few footsteps away, was a timid black labrador (a shy old friend): dark as the shadows itself. Head hung low, it stood stock-still as I headed for the church; but was gone – home, I hope – when I later returned.

Yet with it came – or so it felt – a change. (And it was then that I remembered that such is our species’ bête noire – not the unpredictable delight I personally revel in.) And when I lowered myself into my customary seat (I can be a creature of habit sometimes…) I realized that my perfect sky had been replaced with an encroaching, enclosing mustard-coloured blur – as if the condensation which had earlier veiled the cars was now obscuring all of Tysoe.

Like the pain that had curtailed my day’s enjoyment, it seemed unlikely to disperse: and so I slouched home, again disappointed. There was nothing new to be discovered tonight; and even the owls had been quieted by this descending, dank wool.

Buddhists believe that “It is only by accepting the truth of impermanence that we can be free.” And the Japanese even have a word for that “impermanence” – wabi‑sabi – although this may be interpreted in many different ways: authenticity; simplicity; naturalness; intimacy; especially an acceptance of imperfection, whether that be of one’s life, an object, or the art we surround ourselves with [pdf]. (It’s probably why I love contemporary jazz so much; or struggle to remember the rare mistakes in a classical performance when there are so many moments of bliss.)

And, so, perhaps I should not really have sobbed my heart out? At the time – so swiftly passed, if not yet forgotten – it felt justified: a cathartic reaction to a spiritual cruelty piled atop never-waning physical ones (which it could, of course, have eased – temporarily). I have learned, over the years, though, to absorb those corporeal pains – they have become part of my material concept of self. Perhaps it is time to start learning, though… – accepting that sometimes the excitement I crave has a necessary bleaker dimension… – how to assimilate the incorporeal ones, too…? Not all unpredictability leads to happiness – although some of it may lead to release.

Let’s think the unthinkable, let’s do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.

– Douglas Adams: Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

Tin or aluminium; not titanium…

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

– Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities

Yesterday (Wednesday) was a birthday of sorts… – not the anniversary of my coming into this world (that’s in a week or so – hint, hint); but of me being given my life back, thoughtfully and carefully, and by a very special human being indeed: who has, with his family, also had to endure some very tough challenges. But, for many reasons – although I am immensely and eternally grateful for that great man’s incredible skill and deep compassion; and have been so every single day for the last ten years – it was not an occasion I had been looking forward to.

The circumstances prompting such dejection include a deterioration of my physical health that those who know me will have seen or suspected. And those with a brain (and, yes, if you peruse the images on this page, you will notice that I also possess one…) will have quickly grasped this decline’s bitter, but inseparable, relationship with the struggle I am currently undergoing with my mental wellbeing. What no‑one could have known – because, despite my suspicions, I was only finally brave enough to put myself through my umpteenth MRI scan a few weeks ago… – is that both of these downturns stem from marked physiological changes all too similar to those I endured in the years before (and which prompted) the complex operation that, a decade ago, vastly improved my quality of being (and continues so to do).

As I said to my current neurologist:

Although the experience was actually quite painless – I was discharged thirty-six hours after admission in a much, much better state than I had entered the hospital: having [reclaimed] the use of my left arm and hand (which was now full of sensation again); regained some movement in my neck; and didn’t walk like a drunken penguin – it is the associated risks I do not like. Nor do I enjoy the thought of this having to be repeated over and over again.

[Technically – for those who may be interested in such things – the procedure was a dual-level anterior cervical discectomy and fusion at C5/6 and C6/7. In other words, I have a metal plate screwed into the front of three of my vertebrae: which holds my head on to my body. (Yes, this makes me Steve Austin! Yippee!) Most of the time, though, I forget all that scaffolding is there. However, without fail, every anniversary, my neck feels more bulky; somehow inflamed and heavy… – even though, of course, nothing has really changed; and the implanted alien structure is truly featherweight.]

All last week, we had an orphaned great tit – several times each day, regular as nature’s clockwork – try to enter the house through the same closed windows. It seemed so determined; and would cling to the frames, pecking at the panes, with all its might: not perturbed even when face-to-face with us scary, ginormous humans. It obviously knew the glass was there (although may well have imagined itself duelling with a mirror-image protagonist); and appeared to suffer no harm, physically, when constantly thwarted. It was also growing rapidly: quickly evolving from fluffy rotundity to sleek, smooth adulthood. I was therefore not overly-concerned for its wellbeing.

I sensed loneliness, though. Unlike the many young blackbirds, thrushes, finches, sparrows, dunnocks, robins and wrens who similarly perch on our back garden fence; cling to the feeders; or scrabble amongst the flowers, shrubs and vegetable patch for insects, worms and snails; this one’s long streams of repeated single tweets evoked no parental response; nor did it, to my knowledge, congregate with the many others of its kind – the flocks of further great, blue and coal tits that often visit (although which are now to be found feasting in the freshly-harvested fields… – hopefully now joined by my absent visitor).

I also perceived – probably because I was feeling it myself… – a great deal of frustration. I know I shouldn’t really anthropomorphize – although where would we be without the wonderful Watership Down and The Wind in the Willows…? – but I felt its pain; and now miss its recurring calls. It had become my daemon; and was, I suppose, a manifestation of what I was – and still am – going through.

Of course – as those few loyal readers of this blog will have anticipated – my response to all of this has precipitated more insomniac wanderings through the benighted village. For instance, early last week, stricken with vertigo, I lay on one of the benches in the churchyard, swaddled in my unseasonal body- and neck-warmers, my legs over the armrest, staring directly upwards: revelling for an hour in the bells’ quarterly chimes, as my eyes grew slowly accustomed to the darkness; praying for Perseids. But it was too soon: and I saw only one such meteor – although that was utterly breathtaking. I was, however, rewarded with the sight of a trillion individually-polished gems: some of them lining up to form the impressionistic backbone of the Milky Way. It was thus hard to drag myself away – even though my body had melded painfully with the rigid woodwork. Unfortunately, the rest of my wanderings, that week, were under gathered clouds: with only rare glimpses of what lay above; of what I sought.

Yet, this Tuesday night, lit by an almost full moon – and with even the Plough struggling to make its presence known against such radiance – I felt truly at peace: my long, accompanying shadow a reminder of the miracles that our planet’s journey through the firmament can produce; rendering the church tower a glowing bastion; the golden hands of its clock easily legible; as were the familiar names etched into the headstones. I could have limped all the way to Kineton: such was the energy I was imbued with.

But yesterday, the (inner) gloom returned: reminding me that troublesome decisions have to be made; that I may have to carry out a pilgrimage to my original saviour; that – just as I find a way of life that is approximately practicable, and completely fulfilling, as well as within the limits of my disability – I may have to put everything on hold once more; or attempt to adapt, yet again, to another step-change in infirmity. I honestly feel as if I am that small bird, endlessly pecking away at the indestructible….

But that’s all in the future. Now, it’s just time to pull my boots on, and head out into the night again: acknowledging that there are far too many people in much, much worse situations. If nothing else, being enveloped by the moon’s cooling light is a great reminder of my position in the universe; and of the beauty that completely surrounds us.

As we tumble into bed…

I am night. I know when the moon rises, overdue, from its Tysoe Hill cradle: slowed by that earthly, all-too-human two-hundred-metre climb. The door closed, I anticipate its deflating, almost-rugby-ball form (one-fifth, by this time, spent soot); its brilliance – already mirrored by the sentinel freshly-steamed, gently-flaking haddock clouds – even its transcendent power to push apart those insubstantial, misty wafers; to flaw them further, exile them to the four corners of the still-light sky: their slow shimmers waving the constellations in and out of perception; whilst the liminal echo of sunset, still, over Oxhill, reinforced by Stratford’s incessant orange insult, outlines the opposing horizon. What I do not foresee – although nearly thirty of our planet’s spans distant – is its affable enormity: how it looms in the dim welkin with ether-expanded warmth. And thus I am saddened, as my companion ascends beyond my reach, that it dwindles, draws back, as if ashamed of its luminous monopoly.

This nocturne is thus anything but starless; and yet it is the sensuous Dylan Thomas and his voluptuous words that spring to the surface of my midsummer mind. Friday has rolled unheeded, by most, into Saturday. Villagers are later home; later to sleep; perchance, correspondingly later to emerge. And, therefore, many houses are yet as vigilant as ravens: their cowled, sometime-curtained eyes regularly gaping wide; occasionally blinkered by the passing of a shifty, shifting profile; or flicked blue by the dream-stopping, probably-no-longer-small-screen dumbness. Curiously, the regular pulse of coloured lamps streams high through the almost-darkness (felt, not heard); and hurtling drivers temporarily blind my bible-black-acquainted vision with their haste: rendering me all the more mole-like. But, as a habituated noctambulist, I am alone, as always: solitary “as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump…” – and the church clock presents its tongue-tied time only at the insistence of those penetrating lunar beams.

Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional salt slow musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row, it is the grass growing on Llareggub Hill, dewfall, starfall, the sleep of birds in Milk Wood.

I am night. Between the gravestones, I hear otherwise-forgotten, undone dreams and stolen songs; witness withered oaths. I am often here; therefore familiar as the cooling breeze. This is a convivial place: I am trusted with cloistered conceits and misremembered musings; repeatedly sworn to the silence I so desire. But a belly-laugh bursts, balloon-like, from a far, open, impertinent pane; and collapses – thankfully – as quickly to oblivion. Such quietude beckons me on, calls me out. I rustle my adieus. Intimate night will return. I promise. There are sighs.

Time passes. Listen. Time passes.

All too soon I am home, key in hand. No longer will feet fall, or boots tread on Tysoe’s welcoming walkways. The frequent foxes will cough only to themselves; the owls laugh at our timidity. I am night. In the swarthiness above, the moon smiles.

And still the light grew and grew…

At the long day’s (and my short dawdle’s) inception – as I gingerly secured the front door: hat on head; walking stick in hand… – the extended witching hour that is Nautical Dawn was not much more than a dab ahead of me (having emerged languidly from its wearisome bedclothes – unlike The Bard Who Had Not Slept… – just before three o’clock: a little under two hours before sunrise). But, by the time my insomnia-induced stroll had propelled me, wraithlike, past St Mary’s Church – precisely as its tenebrose profile proclaimed the half-hour – there was sufficient emerging coolness tempering the blackness above (even in the dying embers of “this contentious storm”) for me to effortlessly mark my steps. And, although Aurora’s shy reflection effectively forewarned me of still-standing plashets (most of which I am on first-name terms with, anyway); her crepuscular modesty, regrettably, failed to safeguard a glut of hoarding gastropods (more suited, perhaps, than any aphoristic duck – or even my Pennine-straddling chromosomes – to such dankness) from instant, crackling, crunching ruin beneath my sturdy boots.

I have – perhaps partly incited by those Northern genes – always delighted in such intemperate weather. Additionally, I find the night – as I have often written on these pages – a cordial and comforting companion (as well as a tabula rasa, inspiring ideas and emotions). Not only does such a conjunction (which, for many, I accept, can be an unnerving, forbidding one) – notably when “I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top” – stimulate me to “gain some perspective” (and provoke an almost animal desire for immersion (or even submersion)); but I further find their combined inscrutable vigour intensely refreshening (intellectually and physiologically): as a partial consequence, no doubt, of their essential unsociableness. (The resulting inconspicuousness and solitariness beseem, shall we say, my intrinsic ‘Mole‑ness’.)

And yet – had any supernatural manifestation (as it does, so memorably, for the Mole and the Rat (and “the slumbering Portly”)) broken on me “like a wave” and caught me up… – I would have willingly made myself visible: greedily possessed by “the liquid run of that glad piping… then the clear imperious summons that marched hand-in-hand with the intoxicating melody…”. However, the Gates of Dawn unfolded with a compelling almost-silence. No creature was roused (nor foolish enough to be). Only the susurration of the drizzle accompanied my meanderings: interwoven with the response of the vivid new-blown trees – whose comforting fullness shrouded and shielded me all along Sandpits Road… – to their ill-deserved pummelling by both the raindrops and the breeze which ushered them.

¶

As I crossed Oxhill Road, approaching Windmill Way – and not for the first time… – I keenly craved Dumbledore’s marvellous Put‑Outer (or perhaps an impulsive infection of ‘street light interference’): such is the thoroughfare’s incommensurately intense irradiation of its environment (completely, immediately, eradicating thirty-minutes-worth of hard-earned, dilating night-vision, as well as any hints of the sunrise I was attempting to chase…).

Then, turning into the shadows of Shipston Road, the northerly squalls misting the side of my face instantly evoked the spectre of an equivalent gloomy trudge – at nightfall, rather than daybreak – two-and-a-half years ago, as the Gladman débâcle erupted:

And, just as the fight “Against the envy of less happier lands” gathered pace: as the deadline loomed for objections to be submitted against the planning proposal for those eighty houses, I realized (nay, was devoured by) the enormity of the task; and, Lear-like, headed out into the dark, the pelting rain, and howling winds, to try and gain some perspective.

     But, in that “night’s storm I such a fellow saw”, hunched up, like me, against the “foul weather”; but, despite the air of foreboding, he uttered a friendly and welcoming “hello”.

¶

That “fellow” – at the time, deliberately left nameless – was the late Adrian Tuffin: one of the most courageous, most considerate souls I have ever met (although he would, I am certain, characterize such bravery and humanity as simply dealing with circumstance and necessity). He was one of the very first people to welcome me to Tysoe (which I shall never forget); and we would habitually cross paths – Adrian always accompanied by “his faithful dog, Jasmine” – as we beat our respective bodily bounds around the village: using such opportunities to discuss our various tribulations (conversations, however, which were always gilded with a great deal of laughter at ourselves and each other); and consistently signing off (when we both realized how much time had so easily passed) with a running joke about heading home for a well-deserved cup of tea.

Indeed, it felt almost aberrant when a walk around the village did not lead to me bumping into him (and I can clearly recall the last time, in Lower Tysoe, on a bitterly cold afternoon). I therefore still, involuntarily, watch out for him on my parochial peregrinations. But it is well over a year since Adrian died; and – on a par with the extinction of our great elms – custom (and poetry) would dictate that we should all be diminished by such a sad departure.

But I believe that he has left behind (nevertheless, far, far too soon…) a much stronger, worthier village than would have otherwise been possible… – a small, blessed corner of Warwickshire that, communally, must be grateful for his valuable legacy. For me – and, I am confident, many others – this is because he embodied and readily exemplified Tysoe’s oft-hidden generous spirit of place. He was the strongest personification we could ever have of Grahame’s great, inspirational “Friend and Helper”. “This time, at last, it is the real, the unmistakable thing, simple – passionate – perfect – ”

“This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me,” whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. “Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!”

– Kenneth Grahame: The Wind in the Willows

Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life…

If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.

– Raymond Inmon

As I closed the wooden garden wicket, gently, carefully, quietly, I heard St Mary’s bell mark midnight: muffled by distance; but transported gently by the dying gusts, veering lethargically from northerly to westerly. And, as the night’s squabbling furore dissipated temporarily, so did the warmth and the earlier cohorts of cloud: and the rump and tail of omnipresent Ursa Major hung – a perfect, italic, pointillé question-mark – above the ghostly tower, exhorting me onwards. No other sound surpassed that of the indelible breeze apart from the uncanny, sporadic creak of wood – of tree or fence, I cannot be certain. The natural world existed only above me, it seemed.

The heavy iron church gate was also closed: but pivoted quiescently. The edifice itself, although anchored centuries-solid into the earth, illuminated only by the graveyard lanterns, appeared evanescent under the crystalline vault of heaven: as if its rheumy form would retreat from my approach, my touch. And yet, I could have plucked any star easily from its tranquil ambit.

Once away from the inconvenient streetlights – and as my pupils relaxed – more and more constellations seeped into my vision: a wonderful reward for patience and seclusion. But, forlornly, I espied none of the meteors I had so coveted.

In contrast, the horizons above Banbury and Stratford glowed with a deceitful dawn: delineating the familiar contours of the Edge Hills and still-straining boughs, finally stripped of all summer decoration.

As I turned for home, the clock marked the third quadrant of the hour with its repeated song; and the ostensible three pearls of Orion’s belt – Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka – slid effortlessly from behind the returning, blurring, ethereal veil: revealing a resplendent warrior poised for battle with his club of solid bronze. The decaying Betelgeuse thus twinkled orange beneath the raised arm: an ancient jewelled fibula more fiery than paired blue fighter Bellatrix. At Orion’s heels, Canis Major snapped half-heartedly – with Sirius, more eager as his gleaming wet nose – at Lepus, the bounding hare. And, at the least obvious corner of the Winter Triangle, the puppy Procyon straggled behind the hunt: lost in the bluster of night.

Home, the storm and dark retreated behind me, as I locked the door. And yet sleep would not come.

It is not easy to walk alone in the country without musing upon something.

– Charles Dickens

It’s just a restless feeling…

Call me Ishmael. Or, more appositely, Ahab, if you will: hunting the legendary – perhaps mythical – White Whale of a good night’s good sleep. Down this Main Street a man must go…

…in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.

As “a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man”, at four o’clock on the first Sunday in June, as the day and the light break, what I remember most is the ubiquity of blackbirds – their insistent clucking and proud, tuneful whistling: attempting to dominate the dawn chorus with their conversations – gingerly skipping a couple of further feet away from me, as I prowl by. But I am more of a nuisance than a threat; and am mostly ignored. Not to be outdone, within reach, a robin – and, somewhere distant, a wren: remarkably powerful for its diminutiveness – puts up a very good sally of intense melodiousness as counterpoint. A great tit, in the tree by the church gate, repeats its two-tone call – a squeaky pivot seesawing in the breeze – as it hops from branch to branch, perch to perch: perhaps to hide, or gain a better vantage? Rooks chatter and natter constantly – occasionally one peeling off from the cohort; and flapping lazily and lonely towards the Edge Hills. Collared doves and wood-pigeons coo insistently; accompanied by the paranoiac clapping and flapping of wings as I near their roosts. Goldfinches twinkle both audibly and visibly in the freshening light; and their cousin chaffinches rapidly rehearse their sweet run-ups. The swifts are too busy breakfasting, and too high – too spaced out – to yet begin their compulsive screaming arguments: reserved for the evening gatherings where a pecking order of sorts is debated; but seemingly never resolved. And, finally, a running obbligato of chirps and cheeps emerges, as Tysoe’s multitudinous dunnocks and sparrows accompany me: scurrying in and out of hedges, on foot and on wing, to escape my possibly predatory gaze.

The only non-avine note – the only unreliable inflection, to my ears – is the steadfast squeak, the irregular measure, of my heavy leather boots; that is, until I stop and sit in the churchyard, and realize that there is an insistent mother-and-child bleating, too: echoing from the sheep below Old Lodge Hill. Before I can assimilate it – incorporate it into my sunrise soundscape – the clock notes the half-hour above my head. For one seductive second, there is silence: seemingly suppressing the birds’ refrain. A moment crystallized.

The sun won’t get out of bed for another eighteen minutes – officially: our hills delay its advent. However, it has been bright enough to walk easily for a while. And the Moon got to its feet four hours ago – it will set just after ten, this particular morning – a large waning gibbous, glowing, deflating, again-hoary balloon: currently almost due south, in Capricorn. How long – when it is 231,219 miles away – would it take to fly me to it, I wonder. (Being of a certain age, high amongst my heroes are Armstrong and Aldrin – but not forgetting the brave Collins, sitting alone in his tin can. So I stare: reliving them, unbelieving, setting boot into chalky, crunchy regolith; marking eternity. Were they aware of the miracle they were making? Is my globe still in my parents’ attic, marked with the Apollo 11 landing-site; alongside my grandad’s binoculars?)

¶

The drama’s done. Why then here does any one step forth?”

– Herman Melville: Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

The clock marks the three-quarter-hour above my head. My quarry is nowhere in sight; but, as I return home, I know my quest will conclude with contentment.

There is an intimation of frost tarnishing the parked cars, glistening in the gleaming air; clarifying my thoughts, clearing my head. My warm breath forms fleeting wafts of fog. It is summer, though; there are no other clouds; and, like me, the rime should not be here. Its Whiteness – like the down quilt I should be wrapped in, instead of my thick, padded, blue jacket – is as vivid as the Whale’s; and just as confounding. But nothing is amiss. All is fair and faultless. All is as it should be in Tysoe… at this time… of this special day.

Sunday morning

Praise the dawning

It’s just a restless feeling

By my side

Early dawning

Sunday morning

It’s just the wasted years

So close behind

Watch out the world’s behind you

There’s always someone around you

Who will call

It’s nothing at all

Sunday morning

And I’m falling

I’ve got a feeling

I don’t want to know

Early dawning

Sunday morning

It’s all the streets you’ve crossed

Not so long ago

Watch out the world’s behind you

There’s always someone around you

Who will call

It’s nothing at all

Sunday morning…

– The Velvet Underground: Sunday Morning

Mercury falling…

The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.

What instruments we have agree

The day of his death was a dark cold day.

– WH Auden: In Memory of W. B. Yeats

For all sorts of reasons – and in a rush of senses – the past week or so has become intensely dispiriting. So, as is my wont, I dragged my disobedient bulk out through the front door for an amble around ‘my’ village: just as the light was losing its fight against the increasing darkness of night.

Yet, there was no need for streetlamps; and, as I wandered, my torch remained, forgotten, deep in my warm fleece pocket: the deepening blue overhead, looking past Oxhill, towards Stratford, still bearing echoes – as the church clock struck ten – of the slow sunset song of clearing, cleansing skies punctuated by tender, murmuring clouds; and Jupiter, glowing majestically over Whatcote, forming an auspicious procession of gleaming gods, through Venus, to Mercury, gradually slipping behind the horizon, as I returned home; the lusty blusters of the day also waning as the barometer rose.

All sorts of thoughts flickered through my head as my boots pulled me onwards: Messenger, by hazard, crashing and burning – fittingly – by Shakespeare basin – a metaphor, perhaps, for my susceptibilities; or the similar trajectory of government (or at least a large portion of its subjects…)? Even vestiges of Arthur Miller scurrying and scrambling across the thickening canvas of my cares – diamonds, shining in the dark, indeed (but not “rough and hard to the touch”) – all such murmurations gradually withdrawing as the evolving atmosphere enfolded me; and not another soul to be seen – just hints composed of ephemeral shadows cast on comforting curtains: the blue flickers of small screens; or perchance hinting at hidden bookworms.

It is hard, centred in such a situation, not to feel a profound belonging in your bones; cherishing the experience, the scene, the place; thinking the world of it; and finally believing (perhaps) that God really is in His heaven… and all may be right with that world – eventually.

It’s dark there, but full of diamonds.

– Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman