More July Blog Finds

http://haroldthing.blogspot.co.uk/ I like the short written pieces from a while ago. No current work, but who knows when he may restart? The writer publishes a poetry magazine I enjoy, 'Obsessed with Pipework'. Where did that name come from?

takemetoafrica I don't know how I stumbled across this one. The writer is on a trip returning to her birth country. A brave step.

shiningegg Lots of links in the text. I like the photos and the art. I look forward to reading back through the archives. Linking to a blog is like buying a book which keeps on getting extra chapters in it.

ambientehotel Try it and see. I got there via a book review

markneary1dotcom1 This blog's real name is 'Love, Belief and Balls'! I signed something on Twitter or somewhere else to back up this family a while ago, so it's very good to see them reunited. Similar to seeing an Amnesty person being released from a hideous jail and popping up on Twitter again on my timeline.

http://zisforzen.com/2012/02/ I added this one because I like the way the writer reflects on her own reactions to things and because she's experimenting with unschooling. She's also into RDI, which I never got beyond the first page on, though it looks very helpful.

http://ethicalfeminism.wordpress.com/ It's time for me to learn more about current feminism. I'm so glad it has come back to the fore after all these years.

http://www.karlremarks.com/ Sending up Middle East politics.

http://thescallopshell.wordpress.com/ Another poetry blog, direct writing, linked to current events, eg The Baby and the Hot Weather.

A 12 year old's view of going to Meeting in the Shetlands

"One thing I like about going to meeting in Shetland is that you go to lots of different people's houses. Sometimes we go to this peerie (small) chapel beside Helen and Tom's but that's not very often.

Best of all is Jenni's house. She lives in a croft house with one room. She has a spinning wheel and a box bed, a braaly (excellent) old cooking stove with lots of doors in it. She has a long wooden seat with sheepskins and her window sills are full of flower pots. You can see the sea very near and you can hear it and hear the wind and sea gulls and goats.

Next best is Whalsay where the Dallys live because we get to go there on two long ferry crossings and you can watch sea-birds and islands and cliffs. You can see all the houses in Symbister from their house and the new Leisure Centre is being built next door. In 1992 we might be able to go swimming because that's when the pool is supposed to be finished."

From 'Quakers in Scotland, an anthology of the thoughts and activities of the religious Society of Friends past and present"
Published by The Religious Society of Friends, Scotland in 1989

I have a small role in the Wallingford Meeting, to rearrange the book display in our little library once a month, to encourage people to take books to borrow. I bet you can see where this is leading. I now find that I borrow some of the books each time I alter the display. Scottish independence was in the news when I changed them around last time.

Finding your own style

This woman decided to do something after the Riots in August 2011. She started to do random acts of kindness for strangers each day, often involving £1 coins or £5 notes. If you start from the beginning you will see that it takes her a while to find her own style! Once she does she has a range of things to do and is able to have the items to hand whatever is going on in her life. Amazing and inspiring.

http://www.366daysofkindness.com/day-197/

I have been staying up far too late, yet again, so I am linking to the page I have got to, number 197. It is a bit obsessive to literally read each page, but that's what I do if I am taken by something.

Do you want to join in with me, starting from Monday 29th, tomorrow, or rather technically today? Why not?

Burials, fresh flowers and leaves

A long silence lies between us and our distant relatives, the Neanderthals, but one discovery surely speaks: a grave lined with pine boughs and flowers. These few bright blossoms and scented branches blow down the millenia and bring a breath of common humanity. No louder message may come: one may interpret as one will. This non-utilitarian act may say that here are creatures feeling loss, knowing respect and choosing a way of response. Liking flowers too! We recognise them not by the shape of their skulls or by their technology, but by their values and sensibilities. Freed from total expediency they were moved by other forces: by impulses we know in ourselves. No clods these Neanderthals, but beings already leavened, insprited.

From the start of chapter 1 of In and Out the Silence
By Elizabeth Brimelow
Published by Quaker Home Service in 1989

Flying Ants Day

There are 2 elements of summer going on in our village today: it is flying ants day and spread manure on the fields day.

Wow, they have some strong manure this time. For the past few days it has been over by the next town, Wallingford, and I'd been feeling smug that we didn't have it round here, then I realised what had happened when I woke up today.

My mother in law saw the flying ants by our back door this morning and decided to kill them all for us. I can't see what the problem is as all they want to do is fly off and mate mid air or something. That really doesn't upset my housekeeping plans. So I have been pouring water over my back door fern and parsley to make sure they don't die after their big dose of pesticide.

I am feeling particularly saintly as I have not caused an argument over this and far worse things are happening in Egypt... Shall I write some letters for Amnesty Egypt?

In other news, we had a lot of rain, which created puddles I haven't seen before, flowing across a road in Wallingford and also filling some pot holes left over from the winter. It's a good thing I know where they all are and it wasn't dark either.

The South of France - Le Midi

My writing group always gives me ideas. This time a door was opened into a chunk of my childhood which smells of Ambre Solaire and the very hot, dry sand at the private beach of St Tropez in the 70's. Wow, the sand was so hot. I'd have to almost dance across it, then it was just as hot on the wooden walkways, also partly covered with sand.

The house of my great aunt and uncle had a 'cave', ie a wine cellar. I was taken down there once. This blog post reminded me of that. It was damp and cool. What a great place to have as a back up if it all got too hot. Somehow the house always had cool places though. It must have been designed for the summers. The floors were tiled and the corridors were always shady and slightly dusty and cobwebby.

There was a garage down the slope which didn't have a car in it, but was for playing ping pong. I didn't fancy that, but it was cool there too.

My great uncle, Oncle Pierre, used to go out with the hose and water the base of the big shrubs all around the house each morning. I wonder whether he did it in the evening too, or am I getting mixed up and he only did it in the evening.

There was a path with trees and more shade down to the pool area. beside the pool there was a modern, stone built guest house with a kitchen/bar for drinks and having lunch with a built in barbeque oven in the wall. Behind there were loos and showers. How amazingly luxurious and civilised this all sounds. Rather James Bond. I stayed in the little guest room once I was 16, old enough not to drown in the night. When I was younger I knew that my grandmother, Raymonde, my great aunt's sister, stayed in that building and it sounded very mysterious. The window was made of thick pieces of glass, all different colours. So being in there was peaceful and beautiful, particularly during the sleeping time after lunch each day, when the day light came through.

The glasses used at table were quite different from in Paris. They were thick and of different colours. The glass was uneven and had bubbles in it. What a thrill! When I was older and spent time with my great aunt in Paris she explained how you wear different clothes in the 'Midi', ie the South of France and couldn't wear them back in Paris. I guess that went for cutlery, glasses etc. The whole life style was a break from the precise requirements of the capital. Village life here is not the same as London...

There was a whole wall of book cases in the main open plan reception room, filled with art books and magazines. For some reason I didn't look at them, maybe they were for adults and too good for children to handle and 'abimer', spoil or ruin. Running up between the bookcases and the wall was a staircase with hard steps, going up to the corridor for the bedrooms.

It is amazing how I can remember all these details. It feels so close, as if I could just walk into these scenes. I have no wish for travel at the moment, nothing could compare to these glimpses of the past anyway. Village life has its own sensations I don't have to travel for, just breathe in as they happen.

Don't be fooled by the light heartedness of this extract

Sarsara mourned for her son quietly, as if a sparrow had died at the sunset hour. We buried her only son in the village cemetery and went back to our daily concerns. Sarsara looked after her son's sheep and started to live in seclusion, protected by an aura of respect. One day Sarsara went out to graze her animals in the direction of the southern pastures on the way to the desert. She loaded her tent and some provisions on her donkey and set off with twenty sheep and three dogs. This trip to the pastures would normally last three days. But Sarsara didn't come back to the village for five years.

From the story 'Sarsara's Tree'
In the collection 'The Iraqi Christ'
By Hassan Blasim
Published in English translation from the Arabic by Comma Press 2013
Translator is Jonathan Wright

There are loads of other sections I could have picked, but as the blurb says on the back: 'At first, you receive Blasim's work with the kind of shocked applause you'd award a fairly transgressive stand-up. You're quite elated. Then you stop reading it at bedtime.' This turns out to be a quote from a blog by M John Harrison, which I have found here.

There are many glimpses of his life in reading and writing strewn about in the stories. I got the earlier collection of his work from the library, but need to buy it for myself now. It is called 'The Madman of Freedom Square', also from Comma Press.

Peering over the cliff edge

'what could one do but watch?
The sea heaved; fulmars
slid by on static wings;
the shark - not ready yet
to re-enter the ocean
travel there, peaceable and dumb -

waited, and was watched;
till it all became
unbearable, whereupon the wind
in its mercy breathed again
and far below the surface
glittered, and broke up.'

From the poem 'Basking Shark'
In the collection 'The Tree House'
By Kathleen Jamie
Published by Picador Poetry in 2004

Pre-war Syria

'Have any of you ever heard an owl at night? Every year we used to go somewhere near the coast, an isolated house where orange trees bordered us on three sides while the sea occupied the fourth. I would take pleasure in the stillness there. Stillness doesn't mean the absence of sounds, not at all, but rather the tranquillity that allows one to perceive quiet, soft and distant sounds. In addition to the sound of the waves crashing a the rocks on the distant shore and the crowing of the rooster before dawn in the outlying village, there are other sounds that leave a perpetual yearning for that tranquil place in the soul, including the sound of water babbling in a small brook or the lowing of a cow or a dog barking in a remote village and, last but not least, the hooting of the owl that feels sated after catching a mouse and ravenously devouring it.

The most beautiful sound in the world is the voice of the muezzin making his calls to prayer from the minaret three kilometres away from my building as the city slumbers in a deep sleep, as all modes of transportation stop moving, as the streets are emptied of people and cars, and as the TV stops broadcasting the Leader's speeches.

But the most beautiful thing is the entire universe is the silence that allows us to hear soft and distant sounds.'

From 'The Silence and The Roar'
By Nihad Sirees
Published first in Arabic in 2004
Now published by Pushkin Press 2013

The Afterword makes the point that the situation in the book now seems like a lucky golden age, hardly the author's intention when he was writing it:

'There is another kind of roar that this author never thought the leader would ever be capable of using; the roar of artillery, tanks and fighter jets that have already opened fire on Syrian cities. The leader is levelling cities and using lethal force against his own people in order to hold on to power. We must ask, alongside the characters in this novel: what kind of Surrealism is this?'

'I always love the moment you appear,
sudden and entire, where just a second
ago was air. There is a charge. Eyes, hair.
Something moves around you. So
it was last night, in the Festival Hall bar:
I looked straight from a woman who sees the world
blue, to you. Where was, where just had been,
no you at all. Then a momentary mirage
and colouration turning to solid; you smile,
most real person in the hall.'

From 'The Best Scarf in London: a Picaresque'
By Katy Evans-Bush
In the collection 'Egg Printing Explained'
Published by Salt in 2011

I also loved

'Thibault's Ribbon' ' His tail fans out along the speckled pebbles, smoothing them as it goes: does it feel the pebbles, or do they feel it?'

and

'Portrait of Ida' 'watching her husband, the painter, paint her.'

Trying to work out what went wrong

And slowly he starts to seem more far
away, he seems to waft, drift
at a distance, once-husband in his grey suit
with the shimmer to its weave - his hands at his sides,
as if on damselfly wings he seems
to be borne through the air past my window. And a breeze
takes him, up and about, he is like
a Chagall bridegroom, without the faith-
fulness, or with a faithfulness which can
change brides once, he is carried, on a current,
like a creature of a slightly other species,
speech unwoken, in him, as yet,
and without the weight to hold him to
the ground. ...

From a poem 'Slowly He Starts'
In the collection 'Stag's Leap'
By Sharon Olds
Published by Cape Poetry in 2012

I have found it incredibly hard to pick a section to write here. Just read the whole collection.

That looks odd

I was surprised by seeing some rain and water on TV. It seemed like something I used to know about in another life. It seemed very liquid and on the ground-ish. Is it just me, or do other people get this weather amnesia?

Musical evening

I was trying to listen to the Prom from my spot on the sofa.

Then I was needed to do things to pizza in the kitchen. I cut a deal which was that I'd do those things in return for a chess game with H in the drawing room. This led to me putting T's Daft Punk record on. There are new big wonderful speakers standing there in the middle of the rug in front of the fireplace. So that meant the Proms plus Feeling Lucky all at once.

Then the church bells started because the ringers practice every Tuesday evening. The icing on the cake was the beeper from the oven in the kitchen.

So there is a snippet from the heatwave of 2013.

Latest blog finds

Poetry

http://www.shakethedust.co.uk/shaker/poetry-changed-me-claire-trevien/

http://carolpeters2013.blogspot.co.uk/

Arctic Sea Ice

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/

Faiths

http://coffeeshoprabbi.com/page/2/

http://stephencherry.wordpress.com/ 

Misc

http://benhewitt.net/

http://alanna-somuchlove.blogspot.co.uk/ 

http://www.full-stop.net/category/blog/

Have fun.

***

I bought some seeds and there's some Arabic on the packet!:

Chard = ساقية = salqiya

I'm now confused by my dictionary which states salq (shorter word) as the one for chard. Given that I took a few moments to remember what 'yes' was earlier, problems like this are off my radar. Just finding words in my huge dictionary is a triumph.

Wish List

I have 3 education wishes.

More books from the Writers Studio Craft Class reading list for me; access to the Tates in London for T; and access to good films for H.

***

The weather is hot today.

. يكون الطقس حار

The temperature is 28 degrees.

. درجة الحرارة ثمانية و عثرين

Artist's Way Collage

The 12 week course I'm on has a midpoint exercise, to collect photos and to create a collage. I have done this twice before.

The 1997 and 2012 versions were very different. The first was an explosion of colours and people, overlapping eachother. The second was a vertical scroll. Each separate picture in that one had one or two smaller pictures hidden underneath them. They were visible if you lifted up each top picture. This was a way of including more images, but also a way of creating groups of images. It was more organised and spaced out, there was some bright colour, but more plainer references to writings and activism.

Now I am starting to do my 3rd one I am sorry I threw away the previous 2. I felt they were cluttering up my house, I didn't feel happy about displaying them on a wall here, they were too personal. Then I didn't feel happy about keeping them stuck in a corner either.

What on earth is this valuing of old stuff by other people or bought in a shop, over the handmade personal creations?

....

We are well beyond the midway point in the course now! My collage this time was in fact simply 4 separate A4 pictures from magazines. They were bold and simple, but stark. This time I will keep them. I found them easy to explain to the others in my group.

***

Today my son and his girlfriend cooked curry.

. اليوم ابني و صديقه طبخوا كاريًا

I'm just guessing at the endings! I looked up the words in my dictionaries and stuck some endings on.

Getting home education into the conversation

I don't have to try, because when a person asks me "Do you work?" I say, "No, I'm home educating my younger son." It's nice that it is such an easy thing to say and that now I can chat a little bit about it before moving on to other topics.

***

I am reading a book.

. أنا أقرأ كتاب

The book is called 'The Silence and The Roar' (written) by Nihad Sirees.

 . ويسمى كتاب الصخب  و الصمت من نهاد سيرس

Hmm, I sense a change

Here is a stunning song, it's hard to drive while listening to this! Why does my heart feel so bad?

When people use the phrase 'the wheel of life' I have an inkling of what that means now. Language is full of meanings which only become clear to me as events happen and I perceive the usefulness of a ready made phrase.

School is no longer part of my life as a mother.

Hooray....I have just learnt the whole Arabic alphabet in order

This has taken me some weeks! I have just learnt the last 5 letters to finish it off. Now all I need to do is keep on writing them all out in order to keep them in my brain. I am so pleased....!!!

Alif, ba, ta, tha, jim, ha, kha, dal, thal, ra, zain, sin, shin, sad, dad, ta, za, ain, ghrain, fa, qaf, kaf, lam, mim, nun, ha, waw, yah. It looks odd going from left to right.

Personal Libraries

I love the books in this house.

I love the spontaneous creation of libraries at Occupy events and at Gezi Park in Istanbul.

I loved the library at the end of our block beside Pimlico Tube Station in London where I grew up.

So...what I'd love to do would be to invite friends over to explore our library one Sunday afternoon. Imagine people sitting in various chairs, all seriously trying out different books and writing down lists of authors to try. After that I'd like to visit other people's book collections to learn from them.

Normally it is considered bad manners to look at the bookshelves rather than chat on a visit, so I'd love to deliberately change that. At my grandparents' homes and my parents' house I have always been able to spend time looking at their stuff, but as an adult it is not welcomed.

The other thing I want to do is rearrange our books now that T has done his last AS exam and is apart from the library at his school. I need to ask him what he will miss about his school and how we can find replacements.

Nothing can truly replace the beautiful library or entire building of St Paul's Girls' School or the college and university libraries at Durham, but everywhere I have lived has had libraries of one sort or another.

Why I have a bad reaction to the concept of 'consent'

People get planning consent from a distant official planning department or give consent to a medical procedure they would rather avoid.

There is a world of difference between consenting to something and saying 'Ooh, yes, that is exactly what I want!!!' with a big grin and happy body language.

So that is what freaks me out when the word 'consent' is used in relation to anything to do with relationships. It rings big, clanging alarm bells.

Silent flames and smoke - The people are ok

I am shocked by how there was no sound as the house on the corner went up in flames. I saw the plumes of white smoke and little tiny firework sounds. Even when the fire engines arrived they didn't have their sirens on. The head fireman must have been using a loud hailer to give instructions, but that was muted somehow. The engines had their motors running, but again this was just a low noise. The flames themselves went right up from the whole roof. They were not the yellow of a candle flame, but the orange, big colour of sheets of flame.

The people were ok. That was the 2nd piece of information each time we exchanged the news, first we'd explain which house it was that was on fire, then ask "What about the people?"

Without a fire brigade it would have spread from house to house downwind. There were lumps of thatch flying over the other houses, carried by the wind. There was a Great Fire in this village in Charles II's time, so our village has form.

It is totally beyond my understanding or imagination to take in the concept of being without a home, or rather with a burnt out one. It is shocking to see how an event deeply affects one household, but the rest of us are left with intact ones. How unequal can life be? I suppose other sudden events strike less visibly, so the differences between our households are less visible, so less known about.

Even now there is a smoky smell near the house, but it is simply the smell of an everyday bonfire. It doesn't smell alarming, not plasticky or frightening. I find that very disturbing. I remember that there was a terrible smell in the Victoria Line platforms at King's Cross underground station in London after that escalator fire all those years ago. It seemed right that it was a different smell, thinking back. It matched the terrible events there.