Happy
or unfortunate, life’s coincidences.
One
of two girl children born to a nurse trained in the techniques and philosophy
of Sir Truby King, assiduous and purposeful attention watched over my infant
years. It’s a significant thing, being the child of a Trained Nursery
Nurse. All those lectures and notes,
all that systematic method, drawn together and focused with the force of a
heavy woman’s stiletto heel upon parquet, into the life of a casual and
unsuspecting baby.
It
didn’t suit my sister – lively, vivacious, active, curious, truthful – but it
did suit me.
Swaddled,
I was laid down in my pram under the trees; and there I lay, content to watch
the pattern of light and shade. Given a
postcard to entertain me, I was sent to rest on my bed; and there I lay,
looking at it in detail and at length, then watching the sun light filtering
through the pink flannel lining of the white candlewick curtain, listening to
the cooing of pigeons in the boughs of the Scots pine outside the window. Told
to sit nicely in church I watched the interplay of light through stained glass
onto polished pews – the dark amber golden wood, the scars of age, the dancing
random colours. Told to play quietly, I sat on the path and watched the ants
hurrying busily between their small kingdom in the grassy verge and the
sunwarmed concrete with its dust and inconsequential detritus of dead leaf and
bark fragments.
Throughout
my childhood, I watched and listened and thought. At school I gazed through the window at the
distant poplars, watched the dust in the sunbeams or the trickling of rain on
glass. I looked at sunlight and leaves, wooden window sills and painted glazing
bars, doorsteps and hinges, bath taps and flowerpots, happy and absorbed.
Then
I became a mother and everything changed. In that moment I became a responsible
being, my life re-cast, characterized now by unremitting activity. My dormant
volcano of rage, its eruptions triggered only rarely in childhood, leaked
molten lava. Always, always, I felt guilty, tired and inadequate. I progressed
from there to the imperative also to earn a living. In this, too, I was
ill-equipped. There are few occupations
for those primarily fitted to lie on their backs and watch the clouds blown by
the night wind across the field of stars.
Living
simply eases the demand for output and enhances the opportunity to think, to
watch, to listen. So I did that.
But
eventually, in this last decade, it dawned only gradually upon me, I had lost
the ability to see. So preoccupied had I
become with the inescapable necessity to do, to organize, to respond and to
invent ways and means, that my mind had become taken up with looking for – looking at relegated to dilettante decadence. Laziness.
But
I am inching my way back. Sluicing out the guilt of responsibility, looking and
looking and looking until at last things are beginning to reveal themselves to
me again. I don’t have to go far. Just
stay very still and concentrate into the sharpest indigo third-eyed point. Then
I see.
Shaft of sunlight falling across a cushion on an old armchair by the angle
of the chimney breast.
The
colours of the cushion in the light.
The
texture of the embroidered cushion cover.
Sticks and the light and shadow of the white painted wall.
The
clumps of mint and chives growing at the edge of the grass.
The
Victorian brick wall at the back of the log store.
The
apple blossom opening.
The
glory of a first rose.
The
ardent red of new leaves in spring.
The
meandering of the path, a dry river.
Nostalgic rusting metal, silvering wood, of the old garden seat and table in the long
grass.
The
lavender swarming close up the side of the little Russet apple tree and the old
chimney pot where we grow mint, alongside.
The
rich glaze of a pot.
The
juxtaposition of colour, texture, form, in ordinary household objects.
The
masculinity of tweed, leather, metal. Grey blue, worn green, golden brown. Syrupy liquid brown that pours out and
mingles inextricably with sunshine. Glad brown. Warm. Friendly. Comforting.
Ashes.
On Indian stone.
Shabby
things.
Utensils
handled and worn.
Architectural
forms. Cool green and white. Austere
shapes. Dim corridor light.
Moss
and violets growing over and around damp stones.
Violets
at the path’s edge, where earth accumulates at the foot of the wall.
A
foxglove rooted in the crevice where the painted housewall meets the path.
Weeds
sprouting opportunistic, softening the cracks in the concrete, beautifying, returning
what is manmade to the Earth. The silent determination of growth.
Mint shadow.
Air
bricks in this old house, and a small audacious weed.
Tiled
path, decayed.
A
lantern suspended from stairs.
A
discarded brick-pink towel on a sage-green carpet.
The
clean distinctiveness of separate household objects.
Sunlight
on the wall.
On
such feeds my soul like a browsing goat. Chews the cud, yellow slot eyes closing
in the warm sun. This
is what I came here to see. It takes time.
