Travel

 

“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” – Freya Stark

“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.” – Rudyard Kipling

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveller only who is foreign.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

“No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” – Lin Yutang

Laughter and Love

From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There's nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.

Hillaire Belloc

Live the Questions

I want to ask you, as clearly as I can, to bear with patience all that is unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves, as if they were rooms yet to enter or books written in a foreign language. Don't dig for answers that can't be given you yet: you live them now. For everything must be lived. Live the questions now, perhaps then, someday, you will gradually, without noticing, live into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Worpswede, July 16, 1903

Letters to a Young Poet

Monet Refuses The Operation

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolves
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

Lisel Mueller

Journey of the Magi

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times when we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities dirty and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wineskins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

T.S. Eliot

Lament

 

The only problem
with haiku is that you just
get started and then

— Roger McGough

A Nice Day

 

"Say, Pooh, why aren't you busy?" I said.
"Because it's a nice day," said Pooh.
"But you could be doing something Important," I said.
"I am," said Pooh.
"Oh? Doing what?"
"Listening,"he said.
"Listening to what?"
"To the birds. And that squirrel over there."
"What are they saying?" I asked.
"That it's a nice day," said Pooh.
"But you know that already," I said.
"Yes, but it's always good to hear that somebody else thinks so, too," he said.

From The Tao of Pooh

Neighbours

Old Man in Sorrow, by Vincent van Gogh

You, God, who live next door:
If at times, through the long night, I trouble you
with my urgent knocking—
this is why: I hear you breathe so seldom.
I know you're all alone in that room.
If you should be thirsty, there's no one
to get you a glass of water.
I wait listening, always. Just give me a sign!
I'm right here.
As it happens, the wall between us
is very thin. Why couldn't a cry
from one of us
break it down? It would crumble
easily,
it would barely make a sound.

Rainer Maria Rilke: The Book of Hours I, 6

The Price of Kissing

 

The Kiss, Gustav Klimt


I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let's buy it.

Jalal ad-Dīn Muhammad Rumi as translated by Coleman Barks

Lightning

 

Lovers Walking in the Snow (Crow and Heron)
Suzuki Harunobu (Japanese, 1725–1770)

This is no ordinary friendship.
I attend your banquet as wine attends.
Like lightning, I am an expert at dying.
Like lightning, this beauty has no language.
It makes no difference
whether I win or lose.
You sit with us in a congregation of the dead,
where one handful of dirt says,
I was once a head of hair.
Another, I was a backbone.
You say nothing.
Love comes in, I can deliver you
from yourself in this moment.
Now lover and beloved grow quiet.
My mouth is burning with sweetness.

Jalal ad-Dīn Muhammad Rumi as translated by Coleman Barks

Makers Remembered: An article for Ruby Lane

Several years ago, when we still had the 'bricks & mortar' shop, a man in his mid-70s came in, spent some time looking at a glass jug on a shelf, then brought it to the counter. 'I don't want to buy this', he said, 'I want to tell you that my father made it'.

It was a plain, clear glass water jug, finely blown with a ground pontil and with a factory mark engraved on the base, but, as is normal with commercial glass, no indication as to the identity of the original maker. I asked him how he knew.

'It's his handle', he said. He explained that each glass blower, because of the individuality of their hands and wrists, would make a simple S-shaped handle in a slightly different way. This was confirmed for him by the fact that his father had been employed by the factory that made the jug, around the era in which it had been made.

He, in his turn, had become a glass blower, and had worked for the Caithness glass company while it remained in our town as a working glassworks. I had been there myself to watch the glass workers, and it had been a popular tourist attraction. His daughter, also, was a glassblower, but had been obliged to move to another part of Scotland when the local factory closed.

I found a label and wrote on it the details he gave me about his father. I never saw him again. When I sold the jug, I explained to the new owners how I had obtained the information on the label.

When, at quite an early age, I became a silver collector, I believe that part of the attraction for me was that, in many cases, and especially with older pieces, the precision of the British Hallmarking system meant that I could identify who made the piece, where and when. Most makers confine themselves to their initials, or maybe a logo, but one amazing silversmith made a point of letting you know loud and clear that this was one of his pieces. In large letters he would inscribe it, in Latin, 'Omar Ramsden Me Fecit' – 'Omar Ramsden made me'. If only for his pride in his work,I would love to own one of his pieces.

Some ceramics, also, can be identified as to the decorator. In the case of the specialist artists for the great factories – such as the Stinton dynasty who worked for Worcester- the paintings, which are works of art on a ceramic body, are signed on the picture. In many other cases, however, individual decorators can be identified by initials and other marks they left on the base of the piece.

They did not do this for posterity. Most of them would probably be amazed that people are now interested in their marks. At the time the marks served but one purpose. The decorators were paid for 'piece work'. They were paid a set sum of money for each perfect piece produced, with deductions for any errors. Their mark simply identified their work for purposes of calculating their weekly pay.

Why do we care who made a piece?

Of course in some cases the name of the makers and decorators – such as the Stintons – on their work attracts a premium price for the signature, as well as for the quality of the work itself. Others, such as Omar Ramsden, were very talented and individualistic creators. Though a piece may be described as 'in the style of....', a piece by the original designer often stands out, even if the mark cannot be seen.

Another example of this is the work of Alexander and Euphemia Ritchie of Iona, in Scotland. Their work, mainly metalware, in the Celtic style spawned a wave of followers and imitators down the years, and many genuine craftsmen in their own right, but somehow the work of the Ritchies always stands out from that of their successors.

However, the fact that the name of the actual maker is not known does not, for me, make the status of the piece itself as a memorial to the maker any less. I recognise and appreciate the work of long-gone hands, and respect the maker, whoever he or she might be. For me, while their works remain, at least part of them remains alive.

I have quoted before, and no doubt will quote again many times, the words of D.H. Lawrence:

'Things men have made with wakened hands, and put 
soft life into 
are awake through years with transferred touch, and go 
on glowing 
for long years. 
And for this reason, some old things are lovely 
Warm still with the life of forgotten men who made them.'

To love life…

Cathedral, by Auguste Rodin

There Are Hundreds Of Paths Up The Mountain

There are hundreds of paths up the mountain,
all leading in the same direction,
so it doesn't matter which path you take.
The only one wasting time is the one 
who runs around and around the mountain,
telling everyone that his or her path is wrong.

Hindu teaching

Christopher Smart, "on his cat Jeoffrey" from Jubilate Agno (1762), lns. 695-742

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffrey
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant
quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his
prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees . . .

For having consider'd God and himself he will consider his neighbor.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying . . .

For the English cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his fore-paws of any quadrupede.
For the dexterity of his defense is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is the Lord's poor and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually -- Poor Jeoffrey! poor Jeoffrey! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffrey is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in compleat cat.