From The Downs

creative non-fiction from Sussex, mostly

[southsaxon]

Fear

So. You spend weeks, day by day peering into the pan scrying those wine red veins in the brown dung you’ve excreted. Hoping it doesn’t mean what you fear and wishing, day by day it’ll stop. Until the day comes (tooled with a thin spatula and a small diameter tube) you hope this is not the day it vanishes. So. Do you fear madness more than malignancy?

[southsaxon]

the cat in the window

https://southsaxonblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/16/the-cat-in-the-window/

[southsaxon]

A Sunday In January

https://southsaxonblog.wordpress.com/2019/02/26/a-sunday-in-january/

[southsaxon]

Some Days Are Worse Than Others

I threw off my coat, screwed it up and threw it on the ground. (I wear it sometimes when I’m working online; it makes me look professional). The first spasm of rage had me wanting to dagger spikes into my eyes. I walked out, the rage viciously cold as a preternatural frost. I didn’t say anything.

Outside I saw that someone had locked their bike to mine, a heavy linked chain binding them together. I felt the weight of this other’s chain in my hand, tossing the links from one palm to another. It seemed to amuse me. I didn’t know where to go — or rather — where I was going. The bar, the green, the sea: all were fraught with no answer and my body was weighed down, as though my frozen veins were held in iron. My eyes, I knew, were black and empty, between them some god seemed to be drilling into my brain, in compassion or damnation I couldn’t tell.

A finger post signalled to the Samaritans. I shuffled towards it, slowly (like a drowning man, not wanting to give in to panic). What could I do, what could I say? I pictured some sympathetic young person trained in the language of empathy. But the gates were shut. Relief. I walked on.

In a terraced villa, at a height, an open sash window let on to an elaborate birdcage. The bird’s monotonous chirruping met the lilting trills of goldfinch who skimmed merrily back and forth from an elm to the villa’s roof. Coatless, I was beginning to feel chilly. I went home and pretended to sleep.

[southsaxon]

African Blood

https://southsaxonblog.wordpress.com/2018/04/15/african-blood/

[southsaxon]

A Small Walk

I’d done it many times before, the same walk; got the train, gone to The Mound to get my bearings and set my sights on the goal, Mount Caburn, 480 foot high. But the last time, mid-winter, I’d given up, weary, perhaps bored, falling ill; I’d pulled back at the dew pond (the lowest point) and the pair of bald thorn trees; relieved to be defeated.

This day, a season later, coming onto the rise of Southerham I was confident I’d make it. But why was it all so small? I looked to the sky (cerulean, no less). Larks rose, singing; a handful of meadow pipits poked the ground. Gangs of jackdaws chacked and swooped, white-gold in the sunlight. The Downs were high as ever and as open. But small.

Something had happened and I don’t know what it is. Time, the angle of the earth, death.

At the Caburn, on the wooden bench that overlooks the Ouse I was joined by another: taller, younger, fair with two dogs. We talked for a while; the mind, he explained, wants us to believe it’s something floating above us (he stretched out his arm, making a span above his head) apart from the body, running us; it’s our task to understand that it’s not. He went on with his pie, we talked about the closing of The Trevor Arms. Then I said my goodbyes to him and his dogs, heading back the way I came.

A small walk, that’s all.

[southsaxon]

Things I Like, Number 4

https://southsaxonblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/22/things-i-like-number-4/

[southsaxon]

What The Magpie Knows

How did you choose your parents, Ste? He often called me just that, Ste. He often just drawled out the vowel and left the ve unsounded. Ha! He added a little harrumph for outfoxing me. But he rushed on: I know how I chose mine; I made a mistake, I thought they were bohemians but they were Catholics. This time we both laughed, raised beakers of the same pink resiny stuff, made lurid in the poor fluorescent light of the basement.

You know Finn — he resisted the pun, for once — he’s thin — one of his Tibetan teachers told him that they know how to choose their parents. Ha! A lot of good it did them, some of them. His face was close to mine, opposite: square, just greying around the temples, lively eyes and a narrow mouth that seemed unable to keep up with his intelligence. His sardonic voice brought them back.

We were in the place where we’d tried to steal one of the tables. They’ve got enough of them, he’d said as we made our way down the marble steps into the cigarette smoke and the thick, dense smell of warm olive oil. And the Greeks, in knots of twos and threes, dun-coloured like old woodcock, raising the familiar cacophony that had once sounded like quarrelling. Neither of us remarked that there were only men here.

I’d wanted to go alone, he knew that, but had followed me out of the spiti we shared with the others on the edge of town. Lena was cooking that night; She’ll only make a meal of it, he’d said. Mostly he talked about the day — bloody oranges — but I sensed he wanted to know where I headed when I wandered off by myself.  

We went by way of the poste restante. There was a letter for me, from my mother. First time, usually it was my father who wrote. Nothing from Isabel. Costello didn’t bother to check: I wouldn’t want them to write to me. Less there was money, a lot of it. He couldn’t raise the will to make it sound shocking. In the restaurant, the letter sat there, unopened; I knew what it must say, that my grandmother, my mother’s mother, had died.

There was a surge of half-hearted jeering. We looked up at the tv screen suspended in a low corner, near a grimy pavement light; it showed England battered by gale-blown seas, lashing rain and great snowdrifts. Even the cars were disabled. I might have thought it was smugness from here in the south, but no, the men here, hardened by life in Lakonia mocked any discomfort for far away, great, Anglia.

[southsaxon]

Angels In Sussex

(Notes from a walk). Start at the railway station, Pulborough (the train goes on to London). Here is off The Downs, off the chalk, in a dip, but the Downs stalk along side. The way leads you along suburban metalled and gravelled paths, then red-green sand, wet meadow, sand again.

Copses where the beech trees have grown free of the serfdom of crop and cut, crop and cut. Pines tall and straight like retired officers (whose hearts are in the Highlands, but who look south). A dull regimented wood where the art of murder is declaimed by cages and barrels and the odds and sods of shooting.

Halt at a church. High saddleback tower, three tiers of undecorated Norman windows. A yew is black with age. They say that one of the names on the war memorial (of those who didn’t come back from Flanders) is the same as one who fought with Charlemagne. This is a land of names, houses, manors.

The Big House, Petworth: fuck — the ladies, officious, said I was too late, it’s closed.  At The Angel, Angel Street a local says, in parenthesis,  — oh dear, they are not very — a pause for words —  community-minded. I open Blake at: I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise.

I thought he meant them, the guardian angels of our culture. But the next day I got a phone call — you can come back another time, free. Perhaps he had me in mind, after all.

[southsaxon]

Bitter Shrovetide

They don’t look you in the mouth. Tall enough, broad enough, drunk enough, but no more. Eye to eye. He calls you Joseph; today you can call him Thomas. You thee him; he says you. “How’s thy missus?” A smirk from your pals. A figgy smile back: “You’re looking older, Joseph.” You’d say that’s France, but you can’t; it’s too bitter and you’d rather forget: “And thee still in the bloom of youth, Thomas.” Eye-to-eye over the brim of the mug. Another smirk. “I’ll need some men come harvest time.” “Thou’ll need someone before that.” So it’s settled, Easter, then. But the bitter day is coming when he’ll pass you over, like the others. Then, second thoughts, for charity, give you a broom. But for now, sweetened, the year turns again.

[southsaxon]

Landmarked

I crossed some roads which were dusty and only partly made up. I’d been here before, in dreams or real life; I was not quite sure of where I was but saw I was coming to a dead-end. The narrow streets and terraced houses looked poor and neglected, Victorian or older. The sky a heavy cobalt blue with drifting mites of dirty ochre catching the light. Something told me I couldn't turn back and I waited for the three women to catch up. When they did so we went into one of the houses, through a lane where the earth was trodden hard. Huge men, twice human size, guarded the way in. Their faces were dark and lined and their eyes bulged and, judging from the stains around their backsides they were relieving themselves, shamelessly.

The clumsy thought came: “The women won’t like this.” But the women seemed to find nothing untoward and the giants took no heed of us. I went on, letting the women follow, into the entrance and beyond, then into a man-made cellar; dank, I thought there must be an underground bourn nearby.  Here I recognised a number of Priests, taking their ease, talking to girls, though I knew they were supposed to be celibate.  

I went back and met the three women near the doorway. It was the first time I’d looked at them since we’d started out; the youngest, a child really, was still a way off, idling; the middle one, with loose blue-black hair — the mother — was taking charge. The older one had her hair up in a bee-hive, emphasising her height. She was calm, impassive. The giant men were still there and a stream of people coming in. I tried to ask another man, an imposing, tall man, simply dressed in khaki what was was going on, but he signalled for us to be quiet and pointed to the sky where there was a blood moon low down over the ridge of the building and another moon I only sensed, white, out of sight, behind us.

We headed on, again I thought I’d been here but couldn’t remember. There was a wall made of intricate wooden blocks and slats without any adhesive and a device for water, sophisticated yet very low-tech. I rehearsed some kind of commentary, thinking of the women: “Many of the heathens you see here are actually Priests but they take most of the leading positions.” As I led on the cellar became more natural, a limestone cave, arched, and streaked with iron oxide. From the cellar I came into ash-white tunnels where we had to stoop.  The tunnels became roughly bored out, stale and crypt-like. I wasn’t sure which way to go, but I chose a narrow passage-burrow to my right and up. I was still uneasy where it might lead and what the women might think.

There was a round door like a manhole cover of the same chalky stone cut into the ceiling. I shoved this through and, to my relief found myself overlooking a steep escarpment of bleached limestone, blue-green vegetation and a lustrous blue sky rilled with mare’s tail clouds. Not far off I could feel the sea.

[southsaxon]

There Is No God. But.

The British Museum has lost it’s charm.  

On the way to a funeral I stopped  to live, for a while, with the gods. The first religion you must submit to is security. There’s a via sacra of sorts: a way demarcated by crush barriers. Then into a prefab, metal and PVC gazebo, something like a recapitulated tent from earlier, more bucolic rites. There to be met by the young sacristans of security: “Anything sharp in here, sir?”

Looking around at the other pilgrims I am struck by how normal most of them seem to find it. It’s our one universal religion, security, as ubiquitous now as a girl in a hijab. Few of us remember the old gods and their carefree worship: a day off or a lunchtime stroll through the gate, a skip up the wide steps and under the portico, only the barest of glances from the keepers.

Two words appear: spiritual, represents. We must be somewhere religious.

Near a reclining Buddha, dumped haphazardly knee high, we’re told that Buddhism is to become spiritually one with nature. Another says it’s to overcome spiritual emptiness. We’re in a safe space, like meeting a qualified life coach. Not:  form is emptiness, emptiness no other than form. That all conditioned things — us included — are empty of selfhood and will pass away.

The wine, the blood. The bread, the body. What’s the missing verb? The British Museum has no doubts: represents. Not becomes, not is. But: the eucharist represents the blood and body of Christ. We’re truly in the realm of the victors, the materialist and secular world where religion is made secure. 

And we don’t meet the gods.

I didn’t linger, I didn’t buy the guide; I had a funeral to go to. 

image: The Strong Goddess, lino-print based on archaic Greek vase. She wasn’t there.

[southsaxon]

https://southsaxonblog.wordpress.com/2018/01/18/friday-at-the-bayswater-faith-co-operative/

[southsaxon]

Popping Up

I remember him popping up. 

Popping up on the old Metropolitan Line or at the gym in Latimer Road. Popping up at the pond, Hampstead. The Mixed Pond, it always was, pulling himself out of the water, or more often, it seems, at the far end where willows hang and you might catch the cobalt fire of a kingfisher. We always felt more at ease at a popping up, away from those meetings with the capital letters: Trustees, Managers, Community. The two of us just a mix of shared elements, of the water, air, light.

“I am a superb swimmer,” he’d said once. I must have asked him. Odd thing to ask, now I think of it, but, back then, at the beginning, I used to ask those questions: “Can you swim?” “Do you ride a bike?” “ Have you got a job?” And — “Are you a Buddhist?”

He took a step back, whether as a show of mock unease or to signal a theatrical draw of breath, I couldn’t tell. The room was tiny, perched hopefully, roof-high like a pigeon nest above the vault of Baker Street, hardly big enough for the eight or nine of us to stand,  Then, against the window’s nimbus of evening sky he said: “Yes, yes. I suppose I am.” Deep voice, just the slightest waver to flag emotion. 

So that was it. My first meeting with a Buddhist. He’s dead now. But he still pops up, remember the elements, he seems to say. “Be human.”

[southsaxon]

Morning Pages

My child was unwell overnight. Overnight I tended her. In the morning I asked, Is there anything I can get you? No, she said. Then, Maybe just a notebook and pencil. I found them for her, under her bed. Later, when all was well, I read my Julia Cameron, long overlooked. From Jung she had this: Nothing has a stronger influence on their children than the unlived life of the parent. Another chance, then, from the child to the parent.

[southsaxon]

And No Religion Too

"These are questions I’ve got to ask.” 

Brenda (or Alison) the Special Nurse. The photo on the id card that hung to her waist showed a young woman, early 20s, pretty, open-faced, auburn hair. I wondered how often they had to change it. Her hair was rather darker now, fuller-faced, attractively lined, putting off 40. 

“Have you got a religion?”

“No, not since the weekend.” As though to make a point I added “I left.”

She asked me where I was born. I told her, slurring the sounds parochially. She seemed to get it, first time, depriving me of spelling it out. “Is that where you grew up?” No. I didn’t like to say where I grew up. “That’s OK,” she said. The game was warming up, nicely. I conceded “Nearby. Not far.”

On her list was “What day is it today?” “Wednesday.” We knew that because I’d already told her. I thought the appointment was for Wednesday, that’s what my mind said. But in my diary it was written against Thursday. I’d searched around — I’d told her this — to find the letter. I’d filed it away. Wednesday.

She asked me if I knew the name of the place we were in. “No.” It was a nice ‘no’; matter-of-fact, even. What kind of place: “Is it a factory?” “It’s a clinic.” I’d told her about that, too, how I’d headed off that day, aiming for the usual clinic, but then, as a bit of a joke against myself thought I’d better check what the letter said.

I was good at taking away seven from 100, 93, 86, 79 . . . but quickly ran out of words beginning with P. In the end she gave me my score: 97 out of 100. Memory’s OK, no sign of dementia.  I left content. And Alison (or Brenda) was the first to know: no religion.

[southsaxon]

The Blackbird in Number 14 Wilbury Gardens, Hove, BN3.

It’s the sound. 

The there of it. 

A three-storey villa of cream brick, a gangling privet guarding green wheely bins which chest their city’s logo.  Behind them shelters a brown, long-abandoned Christmas tree. A palm tree stretches up, lithely, boasting the prestige of the south. But the Blackbird claims the top branches of a haggard holly.  It’s singing, without pride or fear.  I stop. I don’t worship and I don’t understand. 

But I know I must stop. 

A neighbour drives past in a Jeep.