is proving to be quite a challenge, partly as there is a
“paradox at the heart of the enterprise, the inevitable tension between the distance required for apprehension — for a perspective to emerge in which events can find their proper place — and the pressured immediacy of vivid narrative.” from The Art of Time in Memoir by Sven Birkets.
It’s telling a story when the trauma, the wound of: Manjula’s death, the circumstances leading up to it, the wider context and my powerlessness to act on what was happening is still very much with me and therefore makes it harsh and tender by turns. It’s necessary but hard, so the telling of the tale doesn’t progress at a speed or in ways that I’d like..
It’s about knowing when to focus-in the lens and when to pull back, with both “experience tasted and experience digested.”
In addition, I’m having to write in proper English with the handicap that I’m from Yorkshire.
Manjula, still with me, gently sighs, as she’s seen it all before.
a good friend, who will remain nameless, to protect the innocent, recently had a chat.
She valued past times, spent together when she felt able to talk through some of the challenges she was facing at the time.
she longed for that stephen and not the one she had now, the mr angry, bitter and guilt driven.
I’m reflecting and trying to manage my new situation, thanks K feedback from friends is always appreciated, it’s so difficult to not see the ‘wood for the tress’ especially when facing trauma.
Manjula wanted to return as a tree to provide support and cover, to help people. To me she already was.
Maria’s brain pickings helped again m, this time, with the tree but do follow the link for more about closeness and our reaching out. It begins with…. “When I am sad, I like to imagine myself becoming a tree. Branches that bend without breaking, fractal with possibility, reaching resolutely toward the light. Roots touching the web of belonging beneath the surface of the world, that majestic mycelial networksuccoring and nurturing and connecting tree to tree — connection so effortless, so imperturbable, so free from the fragility of human relationships.”
Follow the link and a lovely reflection on closeness….
CLOSE
is what we almost always are: close to happiness, close to another, close to leaving, close to tears, close to God, close to losing faith, close to being done, close to saying something, or close to success, and even, with the greatest sense of satisfaction, close to giving the whole thing up.
Our human essence lies not in arrival, but in being almost there, we are creatures who are on the way, our journey a series of impending anticipated arrivals. We live by unconsciously measuring the inverse distances of our proximity: an intimacy calibrated by the vulnerability we feel in giving up our sense of separation.
To go beyond our normal identities and become closer than close is to lose our sense of self in temporary joy, a form of arrival that only opens us to deeper forms of intimacy that blur our fixed, controlling, surface identity.
To consciously become close is a courageous form of unilateral disarmament, a chancing of our arm and our love, a willingness to hazard our affections and an unconscious declaration that we might be equal to the inevitable loss that the vulnerability of being close will bring.
Human beings do not find their essence through fulfillment or eventual arrival but by staying close to the way they like to travel, to the way they hold the conversation between the ground on which they stand and the horizon to which they go. What makes the rainbow beautiful, is not the pot of gold at its end, but the arc of its journey between here and there, between now and then, between where we are now and where we want to go, illustrated above our unconscious heads in primary colour.
We are in effect, always, close; always close to the ultimate secret: that we are more real in our simple wish to find a way than any destination we could reach: the step between not understanding that and understanding that, is as close as we get to happiness.
Manjula would have appreciated the fly past. We had a gathering at the Barge pub in Mysore for our wedding anniversary. Yes, I love Manjula and Mysore. Lean on me babe, forever. We both miss you MAnjula
Tuesday 2nd March the day after our immovable object wedding at the City Corporation.
Visiting the sites of our commemoration held on the fifth
So what’s the plan?
Who is this idiot? Talking about chapters? Drafts, my man, you’ve nearly completed the second draft, with many more to come.
He needs to get a grip.
We’re bonding. Lucie has chosen to lie on my feet immediately underneath the writer’s work station. She’s having liver and consequent digestion issues. Today’s medicine and food might have given her some relief and so I’m in the good books.
Me and MYCycle 