Two months have passed since I last posted on The World as a Room. This hiatus was intentional but the length was indeterminate. I felt that I needed a certain amount of space in order to stand back and take stock of various things in my life. In many ways I am still doing this but it feels right to resume this unassuming blog, which I happen to describe as an 'electronic notebook'.
During the last two months I have been reading a lot and exploring ideas/projects that were on the back burner for a time. It's very early days but I feel like some of these threads are coming together in a patient, let-be fashion. And I feel comfortable with this 'no rush' affair because I know that the mind and the heart require time and space to work together on all of this. What will be will be. Perhaps for the very first time in my life I am practicing this philosophy as best as I can. Only time will tell.
So, I've had an opportunity to breathe and to experience wonderful things over these past weeks. I went to see The Tree of Life in July after waiting years for it to arrive on screen. I've long admired Terrence Malick and his vision, and although The Tree of Life is not a perfect film I walked away with its remnance still on my skin. Or perhaps it was under my skin. I thought about the film for days and enjoyed the probing and the second-guessing. I do love how Malick's narratives rely on voice over. I see him very much as a kindred spirit. We may approach our work (and life) very differently, but somewhere in the somehow we belong to the same tribe of people who are perhaps a little too transcendental for most people's liking. But I do love this clan very much and am thankful to belong to it.
Last weekend I went to see Circle Mirror Transformation by Annie Baker (Melbourne Theatre Company) and was overjoyed by it. And I was also thrilled to recognise a modern day Chekhov in our midst. What a wonder it is to watch a soft, gentle and sweet play unfolding. I enjoyed laughing all the way through it, but be warned this play is bittersweet (read: pure magic for my Chekhovian soul). I am looking forward to seeing Baker's other, more recent play, The Aliens very soon.
In terms of the printed page I began with Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (translated by ASL Farquharson). All I will say on the matter is this: 'With your whole will surrender yourself to Clotho to spin your fate into whatever web of things she will' (Book IV, Part 34). Okay, Marcus I will surrender.
These past weeks I have been reacquainting myself also with Russia's most beautiful (and challenging) poets. Osip Mandelstam, Joseph Brodsky, Anna Akhmatova, Maria Tsvetayeva, Boris Pasternak and so on. Rereading their work has been a reawakening. So... all good things.
In addition I've had the privilege to read John Burnside's brand new collection, Black Cat Bone (Jonathan Cape) and I am still making my way through an anthology of Scottish islands poetry, These Islands, We Sing (edited by Kevin MacNeil), which is also brand new (Polygon). Both books are wondrous in themselves and I am thankful for such experiences. What can I say, I'm a huge admirer of Burnside. I love his vision very much. For those uninitiated it is at times a quietly contemplative, otherworldly, mystical and heartfelt vision. Something that is truly original and masterly in its giant intelligence (and eloquence).
I've decided that John Burnside must write most of his poetry in winter because so much of it is contained in snow or near snow. The naked tree or snow-pure field are regular symbols in his work. Burnside's descriptions are marvellous. Here is just some examples: 'plucking at shadows', 'the rainwashed bones', 'a spill of lights' (The Fair Chase) and 'a huddle of wool' (Hearsay). For his poem, Hyena he describes the animal as, 'a giggle in the bushes, / then a shudder'. Just brilliant.
The standout poems of the collection are The Fair Chase, Neoclassical and Pieter Brueghel: Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap, 1565.
From The Fair Chase:
One year, the reservoir froze.
I walked out to the centre of the ice
and gazed down through a maze of gills and weed
to where a god I'd read about in books
-- sweeter than pine, but stone-hard in his tomb --
lay waiting for a gaze to curse with knowledge.
And from Neoclassical:
...and this is the grief
our stories prepared us for,
a ghost in the undergrowth,
hungry for nectar and blood,
and something we ought to have known,
without being told,
slinking towards us
out of the afternoon,
tender and wild
and blind to our fondest desires.
Equally impressive are the island poets of Scotland. I am fond of Edwin Muir, George Mackay Brown, Iain Crichton Smith and Somhairle MacGill-Eain (Sorley MacLean). In regards to the latter it's a very fine thing for the anthology to include his Scottish Gaelic poems with English translations. Who better than MacGill-Eain to talk of the 'island of my heart and wound' (eilean mo chridhe is mo leòin). These Islands, We Sing is rich in Scots and Scottish Gaelic, which is a gift in itself. I'm enjoying my slow ramble through this rich and attractive anthology (I don't know what it is about Polygon, they always produce books that feel lovely to hold and flick through. An eBook could never come close to such grace).
I'll leave you with excerpts of the poem, Peat Cutting from George Mackay Brown:
...And we tore dark squares, thick pages
From the Book of Fire
And we spread them wet on the heather
...And the lord of the bog, the kestrel
Paced round the sun
And at noon we leaned on our tuskars
-- The cold unburied jar
Touched, like a girl, a circle of burning mouths
And the boy found a wild bees' comb
And his mouth was a sudden brightness
And the kestrel fell
And a lark flashed a needle across the west
And we spread a thousand peats
Between one summer star
And the black chaos of fire at the earth's centre.