I am falling in line behind Kimberly and Susie. I want to quote it all back to you, allowing your words to be my thank you note of gratitude . I would also like to welcome you back home from your travels. Here in Vermont the day has been absorbed into the painted sky of sunset. I stare off into the horizon thinking , the ancient landscapes trust you with their stories , and we are fortunate to be listening in .
Hi Lor, hope all well with you and your beautiful Vermont. Isn't it lovely just to let the words go, out into the world to travel where they please and sound how they will :-)
Achingly beautiful writing. I want to quote all of it and then reread each sentence slowly, letting your words press themselves into me like a sculptor’s hands, reshaping, refining my own synapses.
“Each performance is the chance meeting of script and scenery, of players and their variations on a theme. Each performance is only now, and never again.”
Dear David, I am delighted you are returned from ancient limestone wanderings...
Like Kimberly, I too could quote your essay in its entirety, though this is not unusual. Unusually, we have both touched on the subject of language between strangers, you with humble acceptance of improbability, me with the uneducated belief of possibility...
You wrote, " I cannot hope to speak its language. It has no interest in mine. The clints and grykes of a limestone pavement do not wish to be translated. In any case, who could ever transliterate the sensual sway of maidenhair spleenwort? Who would dare to touch harts-tongue fern with words?"
And I wrote, "I asked politely, that the wind change direction, I asked quietly and loudly too, the wind listened, for a while, but the thistles just laughed and fluffed up their heads, they do not understand my language and I am barely a novice in theirs."
I bow to your superior knowledge - Thank you for the lesson... thistledown is so flighty anyway!
Hi Susie. Coo. There's some odd coincidences and overlaps. I am sure that you will learn to converse with the thistles in no time. I am a curmudgeonly old man :-) I have always had a knot in my tongue when meeting people and things - the archetypical painful introvert. I'm glad the world has people like you, who just duck under the language barrier and saunter on down the road.
And how often do we set out, not knowing the destination - or thinking the destination will be the one imagined. And how often it never is...Somehow, the journey is still the most important part of the process. And it always seems to take a side-canyon hike to nowhere! How little we really know! Ask the rocks and the earth and they have more answers. And the birds and the bees know the way, but don't really care about the destination. Can we be a little more care-less about the journey - and still hopeful of a good ending? I think that's the point...
Thank you again for your beautiful writing. It startles and offers me a new way of seeing. I've not been to a limestone landscape like this before, but your words have conjured it for me.
"And then, over gentle a rise, this shocking naked corpse of limestone, recently exhumed from a shallow grave by the bone-grinding dogs of glaciation. Old wounds that somehow never healed." A truly perfect description of the eerieness of a limestone landscape 🖤
You have certainly reassembled a broken spell in your beautifully described journey to the bare bones of the limestone pavement - a journey taken at the slow pace of our ancestors as your narrative so skilfully slips us into this none-time space. Through this strangest of landscapes the men of Rheghed reach out to us. Standing between the flash of a windscreen and a bronze shield dizzied me, ungrounded me. And yet I too have sensed these uncanny presences standing beside me in this ancient land of Brigantia but never, David, never could I capture it in this utterly real, yet spine tingling way. Welcome back !! I will listen to this again and again - and such poetry!
Thank you for this bite of magick. It’s taken me days to get here, but it’s sent my small mind off walking while in real life I sit still in the hospital counting the breaths in the long afternoon.
"Harebells fluttered above any known name of blue." Ah, David. This post made me cry. You have surpassed yourself and I will keep it by me so I can gasp again.
“I have been on the move since morning, searching for straws in the wind. Trying to reassemble the words of a broken spell. Hoping to conjure up the invisible entrance to a place that will accept me.” This longing and seeking, may we each and all find the places that want us to find them, and find ourselves in the seeking.
Ah Candi! Now you've made my day :-) I agonise over the punctuation - how far can I bend the rules (being a man of a certain age the rules is the rules, you understand!) in order to show the intended breathing and rhythm.
This bears multiple rereadings. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been rereading The Mirror and the Light (which also has themes of layered time), but I’m getting resonances between your writing here and Mantel’s.
Hi Anne. You are so generous. '... is that story mine; this land?' Awesome. I couldn't be so bold :-) Actually, I'd have to confess that I haven't read Mantel. I'm such a terribly slow reader and I get lost in other worlds very easily and take months to find may way back to mine. I've always been like that. As a child it took me more than a month to read Narziss and Goldmund and I really, really didn't want to come back from that world. That is why I seem such a selfish Substacker - not engaging often or enough with other people's work. I feel bad about it when everyone is so kind to me. But it takes me days to work into just the funny little pieces I post and it all evaporates in an instant if I get caught by some other voice.
I understand! Your voice is very distinctive and deserves the space. I actually find I'm somewhat the opposite, and reading beautiful prose often primes my pump--it can be tricky to stay the course and not sway too much toward whatever other voice is most present, though.
“Don't look back, he had told the king: yet he too is guilty of retrospection as the light fades, in that hour in winter or summer before they bring in the candles, when earth and sky melt, when the fluttering heart of the bird on the bough calms and slows, and the night-walking animals stir and stretch and rouse, and the eyes of cats shine in the dark, when colour bleeds from sleeve and gown into the darkening air; when the page grows dim and letter forms elide and slip into other conformations, so that as the page is turned the old story slides from sight and a strange and slippery confluence of ink begins to flow. You look back into your past and say, is that story mine; this land? Is that flitting figure mine, that shape easing itself through alleys, evader of the curfew, fugitive from the day? Is that my life, or my neighbour's conflated with mine, or a life I have dreamed and prayed for; is this my essence, twisting into a taper's flame, or have I slipped the limits of myself – slipping into eternity, like honey from a spoon? Have I dreamt myself, undone myself, have I forgotten too well; must I apply to Bishop Stephen, who will tell me how transgression follows me, assures me that my sins seek me out; even as I slide into sleep, my past pads after me, paws on the flagstones, pit-pat: water in a basin of alabaster, cool in the heat of the Florentine afternoon.”
Thanks for reading and encouraging, Jonathan. I see we've both been swimming across the generations lately. Funny how the themes must be out there, lives of their own, swimming around, sometimes close to land, sometimes far away out to sea.
That’s a lovely way to think of it, almost like seasons rolling by. Maybe some these lie in wait, until one is finally old enough or open enough to be pounced upon ;)
I am falling in line behind Kimberly and Susie. I want to quote it all back to you, allowing your words to be my thank you note of gratitude . I would also like to welcome you back home from your travels. Here in Vermont the day has been absorbed into the painted sky of sunset. I stare off into the horizon thinking , the ancient landscapes trust you with their stories , and we are fortunate to be listening in .
Hi Lor, hope all well with you and your beautiful Vermont. Isn't it lovely just to let the words go, out into the world to travel where they please and sound how they will :-)
Achingly beautiful writing. I want to quote all of it and then reread each sentence slowly, letting your words press themselves into me like a sculptor’s hands, reshaping, refining my own synapses.
“Each performance is the chance meeting of script and scenery, of players and their variations on a theme. Each performance is only now, and never again.”
Ach, you are always so kind. It was indeed one of those evenings that tingles the toes :-)
The care in sculpting meaning is inspiring.
Dear David, I am delighted you are returned from ancient limestone wanderings...
Like Kimberly, I too could quote your essay in its entirety, though this is not unusual. Unusually, we have both touched on the subject of language between strangers, you with humble acceptance of improbability, me with the uneducated belief of possibility...
You wrote, " I cannot hope to speak its language. It has no interest in mine. The clints and grykes of a limestone pavement do not wish to be translated. In any case, who could ever transliterate the sensual sway of maidenhair spleenwort? Who would dare to touch harts-tongue fern with words?"
And I wrote, "I asked politely, that the wind change direction, I asked quietly and loudly too, the wind listened, for a while, but the thistles just laughed and fluffed up their heads, they do not understand my language and I am barely a novice in theirs."
I bow to your superior knowledge - Thank you for the lesson... thistledown is so flighty anyway!
Hi Susie. Coo. There's some odd coincidences and overlaps. I am sure that you will learn to converse with the thistles in no time. I am a curmudgeonly old man :-) I have always had a knot in my tongue when meeting people and things - the archetypical painful introvert. I'm glad the world has people like you, who just duck under the language barrier and saunter on down the road.
Wonderful David. And you used one of my favourite, little used, words - mither! Haven’t heard it in years. Lovely.
Hi James. Thanks for reading and encouraging. Hope all your new branches are covered in leaves.
And how often do we set out, not knowing the destination - or thinking the destination will be the one imagined. And how often it never is...Somehow, the journey is still the most important part of the process. And it always seems to take a side-canyon hike to nowhere! How little we really know! Ask the rocks and the earth and they have more answers. And the birds and the bees know the way, but don't really care about the destination. Can we be a little more care-less about the journey - and still hopeful of a good ending? I think that's the point...
Thanks, Marilynn. That's a lovely way to look at it. Side-canyon hikes to nowhere. Dreamy.
Thank you again for your beautiful writing. It startles and offers me a new way of seeing. I've not been to a limestone landscape like this before, but your words have conjured it for me.
"And then, over gentle a rise, this shocking naked corpse of limestone, recently exhumed from a shallow grave by the bone-grinding dogs of glaciation. Old wounds that somehow never healed." A truly perfect description of the eerieness of a limestone landscape 🖤
You have certainly reassembled a broken spell in your beautifully described journey to the bare bones of the limestone pavement - a journey taken at the slow pace of our ancestors as your narrative so skilfully slips us into this none-time space. Through this strangest of landscapes the men of Rheghed reach out to us. Standing between the flash of a windscreen and a bronze shield dizzied me, ungrounded me. And yet I too have sensed these uncanny presences standing beside me in this ancient land of Brigantia but never, David, never could I capture it in this utterly real, yet spine tingling way. Welcome back !! I will listen to this again and again - and such poetry!
Thanks, Vanessa. Glad that the strange evening meeting chimed with your own experiences of these moments :-)
Thank you for this bite of magick. It’s taken me days to get here, but it’s sent my small mind off walking while in real life I sit still in the hospital counting the breaths in the long afternoon.
Hi Heather. I thought I caught a glimpse of you - striding out across the clints and grykes, high above the Lune valley :-)
How utterly perfect! Of course it was my essence you saw, who wanted very much to stride anywhere. Thank you for noticing. 🙏🏻
A beautiful overture indeed. Wonderful writing.
That's very kind of you, Jacob, to take the time to read and encourage.
"Harebells fluttered above any known name of blue." Ah, David. This post made me cry. You have surpassed yourself and I will keep it by me so I can gasp again.
Thank you, Barbara. I'm so glad that the brave little harebells worked some magic for you.
“I have been on the move since morning, searching for straws in the wind. Trying to reassemble the words of a broken spell. Hoping to conjure up the invisible entrance to a place that will accept me.” This longing and seeking, may we each and all find the places that want us to find them, and find ourselves in the seeking.
Dear Carmine, you clever fish. Yes, it is for us to seek and for the places to take us in when they choose.
Such beauty, David. I can almost feel the wave that’s just about to break…🙏🏼
You are very kind, Yamin. Hope that big old wave buoys you up :-)
I thrilled to : “ Time takes one short-sharp in-snatch of breath and holds it.” The punctuation too. Thank you, David.
Ah Candi! Now you've made my day :-) I agonise over the punctuation - how far can I bend the rules (being a man of a certain age the rules is the rules, you understand!) in order to show the intended breathing and rhythm.
This bears multiple rereadings. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been rereading The Mirror and the Light (which also has themes of layered time), but I’m getting resonances between your writing here and Mantel’s.
Hi Anne. You are so generous. '... is that story mine; this land?' Awesome. I couldn't be so bold :-) Actually, I'd have to confess that I haven't read Mantel. I'm such a terribly slow reader and I get lost in other worlds very easily and take months to find may way back to mine. I've always been like that. As a child it took me more than a month to read Narziss and Goldmund and I really, really didn't want to come back from that world. That is why I seem such a selfish Substacker - not engaging often or enough with other people's work. I feel bad about it when everyone is so kind to me. But it takes me days to work into just the funny little pieces I post and it all evaporates in an instant if I get caught by some other voice.
I understand! Your voice is very distinctive and deserves the space. I actually find I'm somewhat the opposite, and reading beautiful prose often primes my pump--it can be tricky to stay the course and not sway too much toward whatever other voice is most present, though.
“Don't look back, he had told the king: yet he too is guilty of retrospection as the light fades, in that hour in winter or summer before they bring in the candles, when earth and sky melt, when the fluttering heart of the bird on the bough calms and slows, and the night-walking animals stir and stretch and rouse, and the eyes of cats shine in the dark, when colour bleeds from sleeve and gown into the darkening air; when the page grows dim and letter forms elide and slip into other conformations, so that as the page is turned the old story slides from sight and a strange and slippery confluence of ink begins to flow. You look back into your past and say, is that story mine; this land? Is that flitting figure mine, that shape easing itself through alleys, evader of the curfew, fugitive from the day? Is that my life, or my neighbour's conflated with mine, or a life I have dreamed and prayed for; is this my essence, twisting into a taper's flame, or have I slipped the limits of myself – slipping into eternity, like honey from a spoon? Have I dreamt myself, undone myself, have I forgotten too well; must I apply to Bishop Stephen, who will tell me how transgression follows me, assures me that my sins seek me out; even as I slide into sleep, my past pads after me, paws on the flagstones, pit-pat: water in a basin of alabaster, cool in the heat of the Florentine afternoon.”
Beautiful David, thanks.
Thanks for reading and encouraging, Jonathan. I see we've both been swimming across the generations lately. Funny how the themes must be out there, lives of their own, swimming around, sometimes close to land, sometimes far away out to sea.
That’s a lovely way to think of it, almost like seasons rolling by. Maybe some these lie in wait, until one is finally old enough or open enough to be pounced upon ;)