Three deaths

A few weeks ago there were 3 deaths in a row, one per week. Then there were 3 funerals.

I went to 2 of them. The worst one I avoided.

Instead, I asked a friend to sit with me in the village church during the hour of the funeral. We drank cups of tea, chatted and did some sewing. The sun shone and I was grateful to have a friend to be with and talk about things with. She knew the family a bit, but not well enough to get that "I-must-be-there" feeling.

Actually decisions about going to funerals are very personal and have their own nature. Each one is different I find.

I am up to three exchanges in a conversation / Mother's Day Poem / Emotional

Conversation

Well, 2 in real life.

Masa alkhayr
Masa anur
Kayfalhalik?
Jadida, (This is my new piece of conversation, one word!)(and I misheard it, it should be: sa'ida..)
wa anti/ anta? (I am guessing I could come up with this on a good day)
They then say how happy/rotten they are feeling and I look totally blank!

So that was a good result from going out to a poetry thing on Thursday. I also found out how to pronounce someone's name, from them. So that's bound to be correct. Mind you it's probably the UK pronunciation, which is bound to be different from the Arabic. Those cultural misunderstandings multiply like smiles during a friendly conversation... The further you get, the less you know and the more you put your foot in it.

Mother's Day poem

"poem after the death of dad's girlfriend" vittoria repetto

The woman in question is the father's lover, who is dead. What a beautiful way of expressing his love for his father and describing the massive bonus her presence gave to their lives.

Emotional

I think people get much more emotional as they get older, almost porous.

I went to visit my grieving neighbour. He was happily watching the racing on tv by then, so I was the one who wound up weeping into the flowerbeds as I did some weeding for him. I will probably tell him when I visit next week, then we can both go wobbly together about our different losses. Mine isn't nearly as bad as his, but it's still 'a thing' as T says.

Music

Do You Realise (you have the most beautiful face) - by The Flaming Lips

When I asked T about this he told me they have made the most albums of any band he has known. H just smiled and said "Why thank you" when I mentioned the name of the song!! 

A year has gone past since last Friday

Where to start:

A poem put up on a closed group, hell's bells, do I want to risk that being published?

Cuddling a baby and seeing her intellectual processes

Chatting and laughing in 2 cafes

Fire, welcoming people, knocks and bangs on our front and back door, cards everywhere

No more anxiety about Arabic homework

Builders, bricks, diggers, lorries, little cafe with their own kettle beside the garage

Fixing for the archaeologists to come along asap

Poetry in Oxford, meeting Stephen Watts, asking Adnan Al-Sadegh my 2 best questions

Sitting in the Green room at the Pegasus, reading Arabic with someone who did 2 years at SOAS

Waiting for my 11pm impulse buys from Amazon to be delivered, book heaven

Hearing 'Happy Birthday' played for me by the busker in Wallingford, a work colleague arranged that

Calls with my parents and brother from Scotland, in between their life of parties and walks up hills

Booking a June weekend at Lower Shaw Farm and poetry events in Swindon in May

Languages, marriages and first births

Both of my grandparents' marriages involved 2 languages. English with French and English with Serbo-Croat. How did they deal with things when they were cross and couldn't think straight? It's impossible enough with the same language.

There were religious crosses (!) too, Catholic and Church of England, Serbian Orthodox and Church of England. They were called 'mixed marriages' then.

Both my grandmothers went back to their families to have their first children and have them baptised presumably. Their birth stories weren't encouraging though!

Not even an aspirin for my mother's birth, though there was a midwife sitting there knitting in Fontainebleau, as my French grandmother pointed out to me bitterly. She had her second child in the UK after that experience.

In my Serbian grandmother's case she took the decision to have all the drugs in New York for the next 3 children. So that tells me quite enough about her first birth with my father in Belgrade.

We have started a fabulous poetry group

I can't quite believe that this has been so easy.

We met at my village pub. Sat down with a timer and copies of the poems. We each read the poem out loud. I got such pleasure out of hearing how the others read out the words and phrases in subtly different ways.

We each had 2 minutes to say anything we wanted to about the poem. The we got several more 2 minutes sessions. A co-counselling technique.

I forgot to make sure we share how we were before starting. We did that at the end, but it would have been better to do this first. Since we know each other so well, it is good to be able to offload freely.

It won't be a monthly event now, but a fortnightly one! I have been the good facilitator and printed off the next set of poems in advance.

The SCEEC garden - peace and quiet - session 2

We used both hands to gather up frog spawn and transfer it using a bucket to bigger deeper ponds. The frogs obviously prefer the shallower warmer water of pools which will dry out soon. We saved some patches of spawn from areas which had been puddles during the flooding, but which were now just damp grass.

We did a survey of the land either side of a stream, searching for little foot prints of water vole. That involved a lot of climbing up and down banks, over fences and over dead trees, fun.

We did another survey of the edges of the many ponds to spot the sturdy white eggs of the Great Crested Newt. Because we don't rush, there is time for me to sit there and gaze at the surface of the waters and look at everything close to, waiting for each little pond skater to reveal itself.

The other big task was raking dry sticks left after the guy with the brush cutter, (a loud strimmer), had cut right back into last year's growth, making curving shapes in the tall banks of whatever -it-is.

I really like just being outside and not being asked questions. We had tea in the office towards the end, so I was glad I had brought lots to eat and drink during the work session.

So what paid job can I find which involves being outdoors in the wind, rain and sun, doing simple physical tasks with great people?

Baby Worship - Wriggling and Shifting Against Me

We had a meet up based around the birth of a baby in our group. She is 9 months old now and back in Oxford.

We took turns to hold her, gaze at her, call her sweet names and generally show a side of ourselves only a baby can reveal.

I noticed that she behaved, moved and reacted differently with each of us. How responsive is that?

We plan to meet up again in 2 months to find out how she is then and catch up with each other too.

I miss that side of being a mother so much.

Typing Straight Onto Facebook

I don't know why it is, but I seem to have developed an ability to type a poem in one go. It must be because of the nature of the 52 Facebook group and my comfort with it.

As they are online I print them off so I have my own copy. Remote printing is a great thing! I'll go down to the kitchen now and pick it up off the floor where it will have landed.

The walls are coming down

At last building work has started. The unsafe walls running along the back sections of our property are being taken apart, brick by brick.

The archaeologists will come along as ground is broken to dig out foundations. They will tell the builders what to look out for. Then concrete will be poured. The existing bricks, plus some new ones, will be used to rebuild the walls again to the same design.

This will take 8 weeks or so. So the sounds I can hear now, of tapping and shouts between the men, will continue right until summer starts.

I have been concerned about these unsafe walls for 10 years roughly. I will feel satisfied that I have improved the property significantly by getting this done. They should last 150-200 years.

Will this major work have an inner impact on all our lives?

Beautiful written portrait of a grandmother - thoughts about grandparents - moving abroad

Lina Sergie Attar wrote this piece about her grandmother and family, published on the SyriaDeeply website.

http://beta.syriadeeply.org/op-eds/grandmother-country/#.Usx_P2RdVAR

It reminds me of the way my mother talks about her French grandmother's flat in Paris, 'grandmère's flat'. That's a typical mix of English and French, which is what we do in our family. I never saw it and there are no photos of it, as far as I know.

I will talk about my other grandparents' house at 10 Ovington Square in London. It is a building site still, I think the new people are building downwards. Every time I drive to London I weave my way around the square in my car to go past it one more time. The balcony is unchanged and the number 10 is still there above the door in this Google Street View! I have the right to be nosy as we all used to live there with my grandparents from 1969 to 1971. The house was only sold after 2008.

Moving country is a wierd thing. I hated living abroad because I knew I was such a foreigner and couldn't speak the language properly. No-one got me, I was just anonymous, apart from to my family to whom I was an English cousin who couldn't speak French fast and was reserved/private anyway. No wonder I joined a choir at the Embassy Church and made English friends. I decided I was still very much at university. I didn't want to suffer in order to get into a French social circle I'd never be properly be part of anyway.

When I tried to find myself in Scotland I merely got recognised instantly every time I made phone calls at work as my voice was the only English one in the insurance industry around Glasgow! They would say 'Ah, good morning Sarah' before I had even introduced myself.

I did love Paris and Scotland, just didn't like being so different.

Here's something to stay up very late for - ModPo again - The Beat Poets

"We hope many a ModPo'er will join us for a live interactive webcast on Monday, March 17, at 7:30 PM Philadelphia time. Julia Bloch will be moderator and host; she and several Philadelphia-based poets will talk about the Beats. Discussion will include some of the Beat writings we discuss in ModPo.

All the information you need - including the link to the live video feed - is below. Plan to join us and to call in with your comment or question!

Enrollment for ModPo '14 (starts September 6th) is of course open. We welcome you to join us again! Just go here -https://www.coursera.org/course/modernpoetry - and enroll!

With best wishes from a thawing Philly,

- Al

THE BEAT POETS: A CONVERSATION WITH PHILADELPHIA WRITERS brings together five Philadelphia-based writers to talk about the Beat legacy. We'll consider the significance of the Beats today, from classic figures like Kerouac and Ginsberg to alt-Beats (Baraka, Waldman) to the legacy of Beat poetic elements (babbleflow, the road trip, bohemianism) and beyond.

On Monday, March 17, at 7:30 pm Philadelphia time, join us in-person at the Kelly Writers House for an event that will also be offered as an INTERACTIVE WEBCAST, during which audiences from outside the Arts Café will be invited to join us with their questions and comments!

WATCH the event live athttp://writing.upenn.edu/wh/multimedia/tv/

To JOIN us by phone, or by Twitter:

Call 215-573-9752
Tweet using ‪#‎phillybeats‬ "

Shifting gears

It is a huge switch to drive back from a weekend of being with a large group. We were working together, chatting and eating together. Pruning, planting potatoes, doing things with wheelbarrows...

I found myself just sitting at home, half there and half elsewhere. I was by the phone, so after a bit I collected myself enough to call my parents and speak to them both.

I pay so much attention to their voices, listening for any changes, the slightest hint of something. Does this come from the years of working at Standard Life, hearing endless tales of woe from brokers and clients?

T is still out of the house. Being up here is no help as I need to be by the phone to get the call to go to the station to collect him.

Penelope Creeley

I ran into this essay on Robert Creeley by his wife Penelope Creeley. It is a love song in prose.

http://sibila.com.br/english/robert-and-books-on-creeleys-library/10200

Over the weekend I nearly took out a book of his letters from the London Library, but decided there were too many words in it for me. I got some simple art books instead.

Then a man told the returns desk that he was bringing his mother's books back as she had just died. It was one of those moments when it is ok to look across and acknowledge that I had overheard what he had just said.

I did a card for him at St James' Piccadilly and lit a candle too. No such thing as overkill in those circumstances.

Then I wanted to rest in peace while an orchestra rehearsed. That was when I realised I actually did want to read those letters of Robert Creeley, but I had firmly put him back on the shelf half an hour earlier.

I Know A Man - Robert Creeley

Plus the audio of him reading it - fabulous and disturbing.

3 more blogs - March

http://anthonywilsonpoetry.com/ Personal and reflective blog.

http://www.beyondtreasure.co.uk/ New blog, written by someone I know from a Facebook group on home education.

http://www.writeoutloud.net/ Found via the 52 Facebook group I am thrilled to be part of.

Draft posts

Does anyone else get a kick out of reading those posts which are just too personal to publish, but which sit there in the list with 'draft' beside them? Every so often I do something to them to make them ok to publish, or decide to delete them entirely.

There is always a reason why I wrote them, generally a moment of enthusiasm which would just annoy most other people. If my brother were to spend the evening chatting here every week I'd share it all with him! He gets it and is full of ideas too.

What a love song - just read this, please

http://www.thethepoetry.com/There'll be heartbreak by Tony Morris

The closeness and understanding between the 2 men.
The grief for the female friend.
The time and space made for their interaction.
So, so beautiful.

I hardly ever post something immediately.

Doing the same things - 3 line paragraphs

There is a reason for doing the same things. It is because it is slightly different each time. Just walking up and down stairs, opening and shutting the doors into different rooms is about doing it while I can. Every door makes a different sound. Some things only have a meaning later.

Walking around my parents' house waiting for my father to be ready to go somewhere. Really this meant looking at the tiles on the roof garden, thinking how my brother and I used to play there in the hot summers. We'd use the water hose and flood it! We let the pet rat explore there too.

Let's do a series of 3 line paragraphs:

My mother ran out of energy before lunch on Saturday, so we made the trip up the stairs to their bedroom. I had the privilege of taking off her surgical sandal and of putting the fleece blanket right over her. I pulled it up to her chin and wrapped it around her feet as she asked. Sweet moments.

My father is suffering with a horrible cough. He also flaked out in bed instead of having lunch. Even though they have such fancy food normally, they were grateful for half a banana each, bread and home made jam, plus tea. I hope they liked the spinach and garlic soup I made later.

My brother and I had such a laugh. I asked him for advice and told him more than I should have done. No more the wise older sister! We found a tapas bar and shared sardines and wine. The more we get to know each other the more there is to know.

I finally fall asleep properly after dawn. When my mother knocked on the door and tried to wake me up it was like all those times she'd tried to wake me when I was 19 or so. I was so asleep, but could hear her and felt vaguely guilty for not moving. She said later she'd just been able to see my hair!

Even though I have children and have adored the hopeless task of trying to wake them, I can't quite imagine that my mother also feels this. Yet why else would she, who can barely walk up the stairs, go right to the top of the house to find me, just to see my head while I am semi-conscious and motionless?

I tried making a cheese thing out of yoghurt overnight. They were game to try this and scoffed the lot for breakfast, asking me exactly how I'd made it. We tried to make up a name to give it. We put lots of pepper and pink Himalayan salt on it. I wasn't expecting them to be so enthusiastic.

After I said my goodbyes on the doorstep my mother started to go to the cafe across the road, so I wound up walking her over the road. Then I sat at a table in the sun to reserve it for her. Then when she asked, I gave her a big smile, 'Yes, of course I'd like a cappucino with you!!!' So much for leaving.

We have a new family phrase: 'We have got to get there before the Gloria.' My father said this as they finally climbed into the car to go to church. I like being able to reach around and pull the seat belt out for my mother. She slots it in herself, but at least I have helped a bit.

M4

Driving to London to see my parents:
I love the first day of spring:
Heavenly loud music on the radio:

Feel - Robbie Williams

Hours and hours of dance - 5 Rhythms

Another new step: I am one of the crew for this series of dance workshops near where I live. My CV is going to be a sight to see soon enough! It is reassuring that the practice hasn't changed in the years since I went last.

I love the space and music. I also like the state of unknowing, what will happen next? I don't know. This is contrary to my usual 'I need to be sure everything will be as I expect it to be and do not want to be pushed into anything, by anyone, ever' mode of being.

If the description grabs you, contact Catherine Llewellyn, the teacher, directly.

Motherlode - The Staves

I first heard this live on Radio 2 in the middle of the night, they had written the song that afternoon. The hairs on my body stood on end as I heard it, none of the YouTube recordings are nearly as phenomenal.