The Title That Flew Away
Or You Can Do Anything with String
Dear friend,
There were several points when I had a title for today, but - my attention being taken by other things - each one flitted off.
Possibly never to be seen or heard from again.
The days are full like that. Arrivals and departures.
I’m cooking lentils, baking sweet potatoes and drinking hot tea.
We’re covered in more building dust and it’s sunny and hot up on the roof.
Five layers of Edwardian red brick fell from a crumbling chimney stack, breaking one or two tiles and showering the garden with bits of whatever the chimney was made of.
Years since the chimney was a thought in the mind of men skilled with bricks lime and cement. New buildings going up right at the beginning of the twentieth century.
We have one of the chimney pots at ground level now, all chipped and blackened with soot in the gravel. The stories it could tell you. Watching young men leaving front doors for going abroad never to return, or coming back different from when they waved and blew backwards kisses. The ones with love to loose.
And the bombardments. And the peace back when people were weavers here.
I have in mind for it—a fern—but the final decision will not be mine, which is as is right as far as I’m concerned.
The tea is a great help with these epic days.
The kettle coming to boil clicks off, the ocean’s roar merges into a forest stream over slate and pebbles. The sound of the water simmering round the green lentils on the gas ring.
Thankfully my sense of hearing is keen enough to alert me before the lentils boil dry because I do find writing brings you into a space where the lentils and the sweet potatoes are in danger of being burned.
There’s an ever present danger of overdoing things with me, and I think I might have done that with my brother earlier, so I mention it here because I love him and feel awful when he feels bad. Especially if I’ve gone and been careless in some way, which we’re all inclined to do from time to time. There’s the messy human soil of relationship for you.
Feet in the mud.
Head in the skies.
One thing that surprised me though was running to the marshes to find a quiet space to speak to Kevin wasn’t horrendous like I assumed running would be. By breathing the way I’m learning to do in meditation, the usual feeling of pain in my lungs and heart was completely absent. It felt very free. I think these Earth Runner sandals helped make it fun though because it all felt so natural—and I’m not promoting them, just that they really work for me.
Running is becoming a curiosity. Through nature by the looks of it and it looks like breathing as with most activities in a body, plays a key role.
Essentially: learning to breathe, feeling the hurts and the joys, and knowing that although they all pass, we remain and we grow and change and evolve.
I was able to persuade Matt and Florian the roofers to use a triangular awning we have in the shed, to give them some shade up on the roof. The heat and my soft attitude are having an impact.
Florian’s saying to me something my spiritualised ego likes.
He says:
“Yes, but why be so kind? Other customers don’t bring you water and shade and home-cooked biscuits and try to help you!”
“But why suffer when you can make things better?” I hear myself saying, then going on a bit about The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Philippe Noonan under his pen name; Robert Tressell. It makes me think of my old boss Jenny and how she looked after people.
Why are we rushing so much?
“It’s a tough read,” I continue saying and then remember that I finished it while staying with Chiara in the rented cottage of a Tuscan count. I admired how he carried the knowledge that everyone and the hills knew something about his family’s power struggles and intrigues. We slept in his mother’s monogrammed Egyptian cotton sheets, in the cool of the house.
Back in present day London the guys pull the awning out of its box and ask if I have the chord system to tie it up, but I couldn’t find the pieces and I’m wanting to join Chiara, who’s got an appointment to keep, for lunch.
“Wait a minute,” I’m thinking, “we’ve got string.” I go and get it out of the strawwork basket under the kitchen window and run into the garden just in time to pass the ball to Matt as he disappears up into the scaffolding.
“You can do anything with string,” I’m saying - thinking about Lee Evans in MouseHunt.
They rig up what looks like a sail, and I feel better, as our ship catches the breeze and turns toward the mouth of the harbour.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey