The first day of true summer was like the last; the shadows in the sun were there from the start...
'Great summer sun, great summer sun
All loss burns in trophies'
Past the old white buildings in West London, abandoned or unused, art noveua, curved facades and an old Lucozade sign from the 1950s; the sunshine is old here, the streets and small lanes, green thoughts in a green shade, and all you can do is think back to the 70s and the people you once knew who are no longer around...
The arrivals, the departures, too many to think about.
A small cement back yard, forest green wooden rails, moss and weeds growing in the cracks, on the garage's corrugated roof. Little r goes around on a cycle, telling herself a story as she does so, and you think how old this scene is, how many people through the ages have looked out for their daughters, how many stories we weave together: hoops and cycles, curves and arcs and our hands still imagine shapes, we still cling on to those second spaces, knowing the circle is broken. But it's amazing that a small space is enough. Only with time do we notice the fences. You squint against the low light of this late, fading sun. What poetry there is, is here, in this moment. The heart dispenses with the need for words.
8 comments:
a topic about which i read a lot here:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/when-a-bookstore-closes-an-argument-ends?intcid=mod-yml
so i am reading this article and thinking of sharing it here, if you don't know it already.
C says:
Dearest b.
Tried to leave a Comment on your Black Sun Blog but somehow it seemed not to appear. It went as follows:
Ah, b.. so you still listen to Piazzola? it was you who first drew me to him and I've been listening ever since. Almost a year ago, my mother died aged 99. For the final piece of funeral music, to see her out, I chose a Piazzola tango. In her younger days she loved tango - although mostly danced with the G.I.s billeted on the Cornish villages in the build-up to the D-Day landings.(Bad idea: it led to divorce!) I chose the tango entitled 'Oblivion', which seemed apropriate for a confirmed atheist who had inherited her Glasgow Marxist father's conviction that 'religion is the opiate of the people.' But I didn't tell the other funeral attendees the title of the piece: I thought they might think it another example of me being cynical, although I certainly didn't intend it like that.
I get the idea that you're in London now. Sadly, I won't be coming down for some time, given that Tim isn't well - he's being investigated for a probable heart condition so it's doubtful I'll be getting away from home in the next few weeks. Vaseema and Alice are moving into a new home in Hove very soon but, again, I may not be able to go down to see it for a while. All I can say, with Virgil, is :'Sunt lacimae rerum.' Yes, indeed.
Hope you're having a good 'summer' - better where you are than here in the (almost) frozen North? !
C
X
Thanks, R-ko! Will look at it now. I'm afraid that now that I've committed to ending the blog this comment section is that least small space where we can communicate. A bit cramped and limited possibilities but, khair...
:-)
b.
Parts of that were lovely, R, but I'm not sure it if it was free-market societies that created some of the things he writes about. Marquand and Tony Judt write persuasively (in my opinion) of the decline of the public sector, the public spirit ethos. And I think that's what bookstores are in a way: *modern* communal places.
Also, he should really be harder on the 'free-market' system that results in this constant flux, where "all that is solid melts into air". That may well be the human condition in any case, but surely capitalism exacerbates those tendencies?
I've got his book on Winter (really good) and have started his other one on food/the table.
Thanks for sharing the article. Gosh, we're both nearly done with our blogs. What was the name of that Japanese ghost in Ugetsu again?
:-)
b.
"I'm afraid that now that I've committed to ending the blog this comment section is that least small space where we can communicate. A bit cramped and limited possibilities but, khair..."
really?
well, no, there's always this new thing..I think they call it e-mail!
:-)
you can of course always commit to ending this blog, only to start another blog.
(just trying)
best,
fff
That's so sweet of you, fff. Thanks!
:-)
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