Voceti

Almost eighteen month ago I wrote the following post in a blog called 'Neaby Elsewhere'


To tell you the truth, though I have lived here in Mundane for more than three months; it's only today that I realised just how exotic these days have been. My birthday was two days ago, 58 years of age, I am now irrefutably in my 'late fifties' and I  feel that I have entered a new phase of life for reasons I think will soon become apparent. Gill, who always manages to buy me exactly the right birthday book and understands instinctively whatever my current state of mental disfunction might be, chose  Paul Theroux's 'Tao of Travel', a miscellany of short extracts from a variety of travel writers chosen by the master of the art himself. 

Though I am only part way through the book, a couple of things become immediately apparent. Travel is shown to be more an of attitude of mind rather than a change of place; it is the inner thoughts of  travellers, musings on their journeys' vissictitudes and momentary triumphs that keep you hooked, not any vivid evocation of place or lame attempts at amateur socio-anthropology. Paul Thoreau prefaces the book with a section called 'The Importance of Elsewhere'. The phrase is taken from the title of Larkin's poem which perhaps more than anything else articulates the ambivalent nature of the traveller who can only truly find themselves whilst among strangers.

Lonely in Ireland, since it was not home,
Strangeness made sense. The salt rebuff of speech,
Insisting so on difference, made me welcome:
Once that was recognised, we were in touch

Their draughty streets, end-on to hills, the faint
Archaic smell of dockland, like a stable,
The herring-hawker's cry, dwindling, went
To prove me separate, not unworkable.

Living in England has no such excuse:
These are my customs and establishments
It would be much more serious to refuse.
Here no elsewhere underwrites my existence.

In the half century since the poem's publication, first through the spread of mass media, then over the last decade as the world becomes ever more 'wired' perhaps  'elsewhere' has diminished. Google Earth purports to makes nomads of all of us without the need to move from our seat; Facebook feeds our lives, thoughts and desires into an invisible algorithim then reflects them back repackaged as sales opportunities; at work we juggle face to face meetings with the demands of emails, texts and mobile calls; at home perhaps we glance from the hyper-reality of HD 3D TV or taking five from the vicarious, heroic violence of the latest FPS to click 'like' on a fautous video going viral on the other side of the globe. Where in all of this is our own unique 'road less travelled'?

So here is my contention, if elsewhere has become everywhere, then the disregarded, disconnected mundane may be the new exotic. Linkedin is ten years old today or so the breathless, bright eyed and bushy tailed promo video which fell into my inbox five minutes ago claims. Listen to it, 'Everything is local, everyone is right there. Imagine what we can do together?' What do those sentiments say? Purporting to be an inspirational call to collective endeavour, instead they send a shiver down the spine as you contemplate a world played out for the consumption of remote cyberpals, a world where solitude, privacy and estrangement have been all but eradicated. Blessed be the cheerleaders, for they have inherited the earth.

So, as a traveller I have decided to reject, at least for a while, seeking far-off lands and distant peoples. Instead I am going to haunt the  disregarded streets where I live, walk to  places where I used to drive, without a mobile phone, just me, a camera and the moment. I can do this because my circumstances have changed and I have more time to myself right now than at any  time in my life. Being able to do nothing is whole new world. It feels strange, disturbing, luxurious and indulgent.

In practice what this led to was the creative project that I undertook as part of my MA dissertation. It involved a careful record of a journey down an obscure trunk road and an outburst of quasi-shamanistic utterances in a local country park. The evidence is here for anybody, or nobody to see. 

The text of the poems became invisible, I used them as soundtracks for video mash-ups. So, just for the record, here they all are, words and everything..

Transcription of video readings:

Grin Low Haiku

1

Light seeps through new leaves,

A silvery trickle, words rustle,

silence rains.

2

bright green, Spring explodes -,

each ribbon proclaims,

“There is magic in these woods!”.

3

So what if words go unread -

Birds sing ‘just because’ –

Is that not enough?

4

Not ‘just because’,

birdsong marks a territory,

like this utterance.

5

Birds (soar)  fields  (open)

skies. (clear)  unlike pleasure,

there are no small freedoms.

6

Forever autumn here,

Pray for the fallen,

and those who remain,

bereft.

7

Un-ancient woods -

the duke's green-screen ensured

injustice seemed picturesque.

8

sun-brushed grasses,

a goose-down tussock, leaf-dappled;

love, lie here with me.

9

Lost in winter days -

dark paths, at dusk,

charcoal trees  silhouetted.

10

Unimaginable.

Summer’s gone

Its richness, a squandered plenitude.

    

A38 Sonnets

The golden age of motoring

Pre-easyJet they linked unlikely places –

Bodmin to Mansfield, via Tewkesbury;

meandering through England’s crowded spaces,

mementos of an age unused to hurry.

Perhaps it's all a myth - that RAC’s

roadside patrols saluted passers-by;

content inside their Hillmans, smiling families

sipped tea; lay-bys were litter-free, July

though blustery, always sunny. Now up-graded

to would-be motorways, sat-nav defined,

a two lane stretch comes as a shock. A faded

re-collection flashes though my mind:

A sunset I once glimpsed near Gravelly Hill-

lost highways? - No, but roads to freedom still.

     Ding dong, the fairy dances…

A yer ago t’ day me Daddy died.

Back then ‘ahf the North’s exultin’, “Ding-dong

t’witch's dead.” Soo as ah stood biside

‘is grave, ah foond that foockin’ stewpit song,

wuz janglin’ in me yed.  Find that amusin’?

Ee wuhdnov.  Even‘ ow she kicked the booket

well foxed im - were fer ahl ‘is cursin’, boosin’  

a soft-un, eed act ‘ard like , say –“juice foock it’’.

Am stood ‘utside schulgait, tis dressinoop day -

out ‘ops me bairn, dun-up int fairy frock

wi’’clip- on wings. Ah givs ‘er little spray

i Aldi daffs, an off  t’is’ grave we trot.

She lays dahn boonch,  an snapzer magic twaig

then waeves ‘er tin-foil wond, anduzajaig.

Observed from afar

All present and correct - a small green space

well signed and fully risk assessed:  I park

the car, then walk-off wondering  - in some place,

on fuzzy screens, was  my action marked?

But even unobserved I leave a trace:

a snap-shot of a warning notice;  tree-bark

in close-up; floating with world-weary grace,

a swan in monochrome. The sky grows dark,

and now across the lake the lights come on

in Kingsmill Hospital;  its bland façade

ablaze – a grandiose neon Mondrian.

Inside, a nurse completes a record card;

auxiliaries mop up, then wait to strip the bed.

They chat. A porter comes to take the dead.

One small step

Christmas morning – truly crap without me,

birthdays marked by one desultory kiss.

School-kids are taught bugger-all about me,

I’m commonplace, a thing no one would miss.

No ‘giant leap’ – like fire, the internet

or wheel. I’m ‘one small step’ in man’s ascent.

So why are all the evils that beset

us blamed on me? I’m not some malcontent,

Pandora turned the key!  I’m the place you’re

urged to think outside, yet live within,

your house is me with windows and a door.

Mine’s the last laugh, to your eternal chagrin

I’m the fate that no-one can outfox –

your final resting place – a simple box.

Floods of tears

The fallen warrior, I understand

its stock iconography – from pediment,

to museum, to cenotaph, a band

of brothers bonded by forced sentiment.

It’s just a statue. Why then did my heart

stutter, when I noticed by his ear

a single blood-dark leaf?  Behind the art –

the posture, I sensed a raw feral fear.

Winter – rivers rise; the bland, silvery flood,

storm-shredded sky, the brittle saplings, black,

wind-blasted, howl at the slaughter, the spilled blood.

Forever running towards you up the track,

bare flesh napalm flayed, a naked child –

exposed in terror, mouth gaping, eyes wild.

Anecdote of the cones

What did I expect – ‘a paradise

of pitfalls’ or gradual ‘death of affect’?

A cul-de-sac, the half -forgotten reprise

of dreams I never had. A puddle reflects

the grey, inscrutable sky and one black tree –

I peer in - no me. Perhaps I’ve disappeared.

I’m being scrutinized,  so I must be!

Does surveillance calm everything we’ve feared?

Let’s stick to facts, exec-detached suburbia,

blue bin day; across the drive some fool placed

three traffic cones. The dada prank perturbed our

bourgeois equipoise – the culprits never traced-

we kept the cones, sensing some faux apogee,

like Stevens’ famous jar in Tennessee.

A38M - a fable, c. 5014

The hunter halted, whistling to his hound;

she trotted back, head down, she’d lost the scent.

His boy caught-up, spotting a mossy mound,

the hound and he sat down. His father leant

upon his spear, gesturing towards a crumbling column

that still stood tall above the forest; “Here

once giants lived, so old-ones say.” Their solemn

tale he quietly retold, “They had no fear,

on silver wings they soared above the clouds;

though far apart, they spoke to one another–

made magic pictures talk. But they grew proud

and sullied Gaia, angering Sol, her brother.

From the sky he leapt, to avenge the slight –

the giants burned like twigs in smoldering firelight.

 Aston Hall grotesques

They may be ‘stony-faced’ – but hardly stern,

these monkey-men, this woodwode-shaped grotesque;

Jacks-in-the-green with horns like curled-up fern,

the woman, sensual, a full-lipped arabesque.

Sculpted with skill, and placed above each door

to ward off evil, or denote a border,

they say to guest, or casual visitor:

without - wildwood, within - domestic order.

‘Compleated 1636’ a worn

plaque reads, Built just before the Civil War

divided ancient loyalties, England torn

apart, ten years of bloodshed. No more

a greenwood spread beyond the garden walls,

wilderness has fled, an endless city sprawls.

Ancestral Ground

The victim of an infantile dark age
you sift through shards for clues. Prehistory
reveals an undecipherable page,
its archetypal script – a mystery.

Adrift in strangely convoluted dreams,
abandoned in some dear, familiar place
you sense that nothing now is what it seems,
your precious things all lost without a trace.

Impaled upon a broken blade of stone
the summer solstice sun, bloodied, crimson,
invokes the hopelessness of what is known.
More potent than our mythic risen son
a shaman gibbers in a tongue of fire:
how love was lost, consumed by raw desire.

A letter to Janey

Do you ever imagine us apart?

We would survive, independent, strong,

sad for a while, of course, but in our heart

accepting, oddly, we never did belong.

Easier to write, than say - I fold the note

into my diary. I’ll hide it in a drawer,

and if you find it, claim it just a quote

from some old poet, about his slut, his whore.

I watch outside the window a ragged crow

arise on raucous wings, then disappear

into the twilight. I arise and go

upstairs, right now I need to feel you near,

tiptoe down your spine, sere finger tips,

peck your slender neck with trembling lips.

Amrita fled

“Tomorrow will be seven months, but still

I can’t believe he’s gone.” Amrita fled,

furious, demeaned, uncertain if she’d said

too much, seemed over eager to fulfill

the neighbours need to pity her. In here,

amongst his orchids – Satyrium Nepalense,

Peristylus Duthei – he felt so near;

In each frail floweret, his presence,

a fading scent. A summer shower thrums

incessantly on greenhouse roof. She tries

to summon-up his smile. Instead what comes

to mind, a snapshot, a stranger’s pensive eyes,

her grandma’s words, “a catch…well qualified”

she, just a girl, excited, terrified.

Instinctive sense of artifice

Imagine his mind this neatly planted parkland,
each vista composed consciously, its loveliness
carefully husbanded; across the lawn peacocks strut
with instinctive sense of artifice.

The mansion crumbles, from a dry fountain, worn gods
spout silence; leaves flutter, small birds and tall grasses
shadow plotted pathways; through trees a starry pool
glitters in the sunlight. Wilderness encroaches.

He walks in the high walled garden:
through wrought gates, distant dusk blue hills promise
impossible freedom; but here is his landscape,
amongst unkempt roses trained across the trellis,
and sharp tang of marjoram and honeysuckle,
velvet scented, he paces the ruined terrace.

The A38 Sonnets project never really got beyond a 'pilot project'. Pressure to produce the 20,000 words of academic burbling squeezed the time I had to complete my sojourn down the A38. It remains work in progress, I will, perhaps, one day complete it.