TV and kerosene
Got a stinker, so I'm making things easy on myself with a few samples of what I'm currently reading.
*
I realized I had forgotten to say goodbye to my mother but, by the time I turned round, she had gone. I waved at the empty space she had left behind and followed the daunting Mrs Berwick into a room where twelve other girls were sitting on squishy sofas and beanbags. I sat cross-legged on the floor, as we used to do in assembly at Kingsclere Primary School.
"What's that pong?" I heard one girl with long hair scooped up in a scrunchie say to another, also with long, tumbling hair.
"I think it's coming from over thar." The other girl pointed towards me.
I sniffed at my clothes and realized that I did smell of Flossy. I tried to tuck myself into as tight a ball as I could, hoping I would disappear. Mrs Berwick looked down her beaky nose and told us all what we could and, mainly, what we couldn't do.
I was sharing a room with two other girls who were much older than me. Everyone was older than me by nearly a year and they all seemed to have been to boarding school before.
"What does your father do?" a girl asked me, as she wound her long blond hair round her index finger.
"My dad's a racehorse trainer," I answered.
There was a snort from one corner, giggles from another. I heard the word "Dad" being uttered with incredulity.
"You mean your father's a stable boy?" the blond girl said.
"No, he's a trainer. He trained Mill Reef." Usually, that was my get-out-of-jail card.
"Huh," said a girl whose father was a colonel in the army. "Mill Reef? Never heard of him. But if you were born in a barnful of horses, that explains why you stink of manure!"
The other girls started laughing hysterically, rolling around on the floor together. I got up and silently left the room.
"I can ride, I can ride," I said to myself.
It was the one thing I knew I could do better than anyone else at this school.
We were straight into lessons the next day, which meant wearing the uniform of green and white striped shirts, green skirt, red or green jumper and green blazer with red stripes. I chose to wear the red jumper as it was new, whereas my green one was second-hand. Everyone else had chosen green. My skirt needed to be rolled over a few times, as it was on the big side.
"You'll grow into it," my mother had promised me.
Mum had refused to buy me the burgundy penny loafers that were on the school uniform list because they were "ridiculously expensive". Instead, I had orthopaedic shoes that would support my arches. I hated them.
Clare Balding's first day at boarding school, from her irresistible memoir My Animals And Other Family (2012). (For non-UK readers, Clare Balding is a TV sports presenter. Initially her specialism was horse racing but she's doing Wimbledon this year.)
*
I stood on Brocken's sovran height, and saw
Woods crowding upon woods, hills over hills
A surging scene, and only limited
By the blue distance. Heavily my way
Downward I dragged through fir groves evermore,
Where bright green moss heaves in sepulchral forms
Speckled with sunshine; and, but seldom heard,
The sweet bird's song became a hollow sound;
And the breeze, murmuring indivisibly,
Preserved its solemn murmur most distinct
From many a note of many a waterfall,
And the brook's chatter; 'mid whose islet stones
The dingy kidling with its tinkling bell
Leaped frolicsome, or old romantic goat
Sat, his white beard slow waving. I moved on
In low and languid mood: for I had found
That outward forms, the loftiest, still receive
Their finer influence from the Life within;
Fair cyphers else: fair, but of import vague
Or unconcerning, where the heart not finds
History or prophecy of friend, or child,
Or gentle maid, our first and early love,
Or father, or the venerable name
Of our adored country! O thou Queen,
Thou delegated Deity of Earth,
O dear, dear England! how my longing eye
Turned westward, shaping in the steady clouds
Thy sands and high white cliffs!
My native Land!
Filled with the thought of thee this heart was proud,
Yea, mine eye swam with tears: that all the view
From sovran Brocken, woods and woody hills,
Floated away, like a departing dream,
Feeble and dim! Stranger, these impulses
Blame thou not lightly; nor will I profane,
With hasty judgment or injurious doubt,
That man's sublimer spirit, who can feel
That God is everywhere! the God who framed
Mankind to be one mighty family,
Himself our Father, and the World our Home.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Lines Written in the Album at Elbingerode, in the Hartz Forest"; the poet feeling the alienating force of a nature that had no personal association for him, but intrigued too.The original draft of the poem (apart, presumably, from the one in the album at the inn) was sent in a letter of 17 May 1799 to Sara Coleridge, who was keeping the home fires burning at Nether Stowey. "Not that they possess a grain of merit as poetry," he wrote (as was his wont). But this poem's thinking about nationalism and internationalism, about our relations with nature in a local context and outside that context, holds my attention.
Like many readers of our time, I'm discovering Coleridge's poetry (other than the half-dozen standards) through Richard Holmes' inspiringly-curated Coleridge: Selected Poems (1996).
I must say that my own experience of coming back on the Calais-Dover ferry is that the fabled white cliffs are at least as dingy as a kidling!
*
She passes right by many dense patches, leaving them to sway in the breeze. "It's our way," she says, "to take only what we need. I've always been told that you never take more than half." Sometimes she doesn't take any at all, but just comes here to check the meadow, to see how the plants are doing. "Our teachings," she says, "are very strong. They wouldn't get handed on if they weren't useful. The most important thing to remember is what my grandmother always said: 'If we use a plant respectfully it will stay with us and flourish. If we ignore it, it will go away. If you don't give it respect it will leave us.'" The plants themselves have shown us this -- Mishkos kenomagwen. As we leave the meadow for the path back through the woods, she twists a handful of timothy into a loose knot upon itself, beside the trail. "This tells other pickers that I've been here," she says, "so that they know not to take any more. This place always gives good sweetgrass since we tend to it right. But other places it's getting hard to find. I'm thinking that they might not be picking right. Some people, they're in a hurry and they pull up the whole plant. Even the roots come up. That's not the way I was taught."
From Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants (2013) by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
*
Grisha, completely forgetting who was boss, hugged the berry commissioner and, squinting at him slyly, mischievously drawled out:
An old tramp helped me escape . . .
And the berry commissioner sang, sighing as though the words had been written for him personally:
I came to life, sensing freedom . . .
Ksiuta came out from behind the wall, rubbing her sleepy eyes, and gently put her finger to her lips. Out of respect for the infant, they stopped singing.
And then Ivan Kuzmich Belomestnykh said, "People should live together the way they know how to sing together. Everything would be all right then. And, people should start talking and not be afraid of their thoughts. For if you're afraid of your thoughts, you won't have any at all.
"Thank you, dear guests, for coming with this precious present -- my grandson. I'm often not kind enough, and there's no point in even talking about education. Forgive me for that. And you forgive me, Ksiuta. People fight against each other, mostly over trifles. If we stop fighting over trifles, then, God willing, there won't be another big war either."
"To peace!" the berry commissioner cried out ecstatically, hugging Belomestnykh. "Hey, Ivan Kuzmich, you and I . . . You and I . . . And all of us . . . I'm staying with you, my native land. Yes, staying! Where else can I go?"
And he offered a large tear in place of the innumerable emotions he couldn't express with words. And then fell asleep in the chair where he sat, his head in the sauerkraut. Grisha and the geologist lay down in the haystack. The night wind, penetrating the cracks, rustled the hay, and it moved, breathing as if alive, trying to share its thoughts with people, but unable. The pole over the well creaked in the wind, its long neck swaying under the tired stars, which continued to shine for all their weariness. And they would have to shine for a long time more, so that people, weighed down by the earth's gravity, could sometimes raise their heads, look at the stars, and think that besides funny things and sad things, besides meanness and kindness, besides life and death on earth there was a universal eternity.
The mushroomer was put in the side room on a creaking iron bed with nickel-plated knobs, and when Ivan Kuzmich lit the way for him with a kerosene lantern, Nikanor Sergeyevich saw, hanging over his bed, an oilcloth with swans. They even flew this far, Nikanor Sergeyevich thought, and laughed sadly. But he slept soundly, dreaming that he and Kuroda were in some extraordinary forest, where giant mushrooms grew taller than a man. They were using a saw to cut the stem of an agaric so gigantic that your arm wouldn't fit around it. They would take it in Grisha's truck to Hiroshima and show all mankind, to make them ashamed of that other, terrifying mushroom, invented by men.
And the infant, probably, didn't dream anything, because he still had no past and, therefore, no memories to give birth to dreams.
From Wild Berries (1981) by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, translated by Antonina W. Bouis.
*
Extracts from two poems near the start of Tim Allen's Very Rare Poems Upon The Earth (128 Improvisations) (Aquifer, 2023). I only recently embarked on this, but I'm already hauling up treasures. (NB The extracts are the second half of "Intrusion", and the first half of "Modification".)
*
Labels: Amy Clampitt, Clare Balding, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Tim Allen, Yevgeny Yevtushenko
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