Wondering

Nottingham February 2008

Winter Skies

The clouds blow through the simulacrum of the imagination. 

The loaf sized rocks in the dry-stone wall, like scales of an ancient fish,
 the running spine caught in a barbed wire net
the belly at rest amongst the weeds
green waves rolling away...
neath the white spume...

Andreï Makine - a Truth

"...[the] crucial moment when we believe we have another person's measure... Up to that point all is curiosity, guesswork,  a hankering after confessions.  Hunger for the other person, the lure of their hidden depths. But   secret potential  has been decoded,  along come these words, often pretentious and dogmatic, dissecting, pinpointing, categorizing. It all becomes comprehensible reassuring. Now the routine of a relationship, or a difference, can takeover.  Their body reduced to flesh and blood mechanism, desirable or otherwise.  Their heart to a set of predictable responses.

   At this stage, in fact, a kind of murder occurs, for we kill this being of infinite and inexhaustible  potential that we  encountered. We would rather deal with a verbal construct than a living person..."

Andreï Makine The Woman Who Waited Hodder & Stoughton (2006) pp.3-4

Makine unpeels his narrator's pre-conceptions gently shifting his perceptions...a description of  the moments that shift our minds.  Set against the narrative is the unfurling of the seasons of Siberia, landscaping the two protagonists.

 Read this book.

photo of Siberia by hulilung at http://media.photobucket.com/image/siberia/huliling/Landscapes/SIBERIA.jpg?o=36

To Godrevy Lighthouse

 

"...and the whole bay spread before them and Mrs.Ramsey could not help exclaiming, 'Oh, how beautiful!' For the great plateful of blue water was before her; the hoary Lighthouse, distant, austere, in the midst; and on the right , as far as the eye could see, fading and falling, in soft low pleats, the green sand dunes with the wild flowing grasses on them, which always seemed to be running away into some moon country, uninhabited of men.
   That was the view, she said, stopping, growing greyer-eyed, that her husband loved." 

Virginia Woolf    To The Lighthouse   Penguin 2000 p17

Godrevy Lighthouse from the beach at Gwithian.

Lichen

Atomised moisture
Found in Zennor
bathing
Lichen collared trees.

Bad Weather in Mongolia

The UB Post featured this report in February.  Whilst the extreme weather in China featured in mainstream news programmes no mention of the likelihood of deteriorating conditions in Central Asia were considered or mentioned.

Aid to Herders in Severe Winter Storm Areas

Description of the 1999/2000 winter one of the worst in the Mongolian records

Video:  Icy Winds of Change - Mongolia.  This video features what can happen in a bad Mongolian winter

Sunset

Winter Tree

At last, my first photo on my blog!  Using my mobile phone and taken from an upstairs window at about 9:00am in December. 

I've been told, on good authority, that you can see the whole world from the top of this tree.  What you can definitely see are my sheds, the allotment gardens and the woodland burial area of the local cemetary. 

  John Donne


Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,
Now leaves His well-belov'd imprisonment,
There He hath made Himself to His intent
Weak enough, now into the world to come;
But O, for thee, for Him, hath the inn no room?
Yet lay Him in this stall, and from the Orient,
Stars and wise men will travel to prevent
The effect of Herod's jealous general doom.
Seest thou, my soul, with thy faith's eyes, how He
Which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie?
Was not His pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee?
Kiss Him, and with Him into Egypt go,
With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe.

Advent

Advent 1955

by   John Betjeman

The Advent wind begins to stir
With sea-like sounds in our Scotch fir,
It's dark at breakfast, dark at tea,
And in between we only see
Clouds hurrying across the sky
And rain-wet roads the wind blows dry
And branches bending to the gale
Against great skies all silver pale
The world seems travelling into space,
And travelling at a faster pace
Than in the leisured summer weather
When we and it sit out together,
For now we feel the world spin round
On some momentous journey bound -
Journey to what? to whom? to where?
The Advent bells call out 'Prepare,
Your world is journeying to the birth
Of God made Man for us on earth.'

And how, in fact, do we prepare
The great day that waits us there -
For the twenty-fifth day of December,
The birth of Christ? For some it means
An interchange of hunting scenes
On coloured cards, And I remember
Last year I sent out twenty yards,
Laid end to end, of Christmas cards
To people that I scarcely know -
They'd sent a card to me, and so
I had to send one back. Oh dear!
Is this a form of Christmas cheer?
Or is it, which is less surprising,
My pride gone in for advertising?
The only cards that really count
Are that extremely small amount
From real friends who keep in touch
And are not rich but love us much
Some ways indeed are very odd
By which we hail the birth of God.

We raise the price of things in shops,
We give plain boxes fancy tops
And lines which traders cannot sell
Thus parcell'd go extremely well
We dole out bribes we call a present
To those to whom we must be pleasant
For business reasons. Our defence is
These bribes are charged against expenses
And bring relief in Income Tax
Enough of these unworthy cracks!
'The time draws near the birth of Christ'.
A present that cannot be priced
Given two thousand years ago
Yet if God had not given so
He still would be a distant stranger
And not the Baby in the manger.

Copyright © John Betjeman