“Roots” 1943 by Frida Kahlo, for the Sunday Muse prompt 171: ** They say that fiery flames beget cold ash, the certainty of beliefs passed down petering out into the lukewarm ambivalence of doubt and questioning. These roots are the things that hold us still each tendril like a link tethering us to the ones who went before.
For H, and The Sunday Muse prompt #170: ** She lingers like a ghost in the night, this memory of my mother, framed by a distant light: the stately stillness of her furrowed brow, the slight tilt of her chin catching the light, defiant. The moment when the lone tear hangs - perched impossibly as though straining against the world - comes to me again and again in a vision of the night, its lingering like a thread tethering me in my seasons of incertitude.
by Austin Nicomedez on Unsplash 1 Up until a few years ago, if you asked me if I considered myself a person of faith, I am fairly certain I would have answered in the affirmative. I would have had the receipts too, of faithful observance and community that came with the particular brand I subscribed to, Pentecostalism. Sometime between then and now - and I would say it has really been in the past two years - what I believe has slowly become more fluid, the near iron-clad certitude of those days now replaced by what I can best describe as ambivalence. To riff somewhat on a marital metaphor, it feels like a marriage that has slowly unravelled, ending up in the unwanted woodlands of a divorce of sorts. For what it is worth, it has not been the worst of breakups though; I still retain membership in the church I called home, and continue to contribute to all the good work they do in the community. The songs and thoughts from those days still resonate deeply with me. On the outside therefore, it is not particularly apparent that a deep ambivalence festers. Underneath is where it has been a sea of change, the main symptom being an absence of a desire to partake in the spiritual disciplines of prayer, Bible study and fasting. ...
Photo by Marcel Fagin on Unsplash ** As I write this I am looking out of my window onto the lush greenery of the park across the road in the tiny corner of South Yorkshire in which I am currently ensconced, as different from the edge of the world in which I have spent the last eleven months as it could be. For 45 degree Celsius and 90% plus humidity, I give you a bone-chilling 14 degrees Celsius with more than the odd spattering of rain; a mild Yorkshire summer by all accounts I am told. ...
– I trace the beginnings of my faith journey to Easter of 1992, the enduring image of the day being standing alongside forty or so other people at the front of the bare, minimally decorated Assembly Hall of the College of Education Ekiadolor. I was there because I had been dragged there by my parents; there being an Easter conference put on by the student Christian movement my parents spent a lot of their spare time supporting. Besides my irritation at being taken along — and thus losing the few days of freedom from parental supervision - responding to an altar call along with the others whilst sobbing profusely is the only thing I remember from the events of the weekend. That would not be the last time I would respond - or pray a similar prayer for that matter - but the sense of relief, joy and confidence about the future which followed that day is why I come back to that place as the definitive start of my spiritual journey. The sense of elation lasted for all of three weeks as I recall, but the sense that something happened that day is one I have never truly shaken off. ...
Dinty W. Moore quotes Joan Didon as saying: I write to find out what I am thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means. All of which suggests a certain absence of certitude which only fades when the subject of doubt is engaged through the meandering paths and rabbit holes it leads us through and down. This is what (I hope) this space will be for me, a place where the discordant notes of thoughts often coursing through my mind on faith, life, books and a fair few other things can be engaged, each assay like the blow of a chisel which though insignificant by itself, builds on the past and slowly carves out a thing of exquisite beauty.
Memory is an interesting thing, not least for its triggers, the mechanisms behind what we remember and what we (choose to?) forget and also for how something can simmer beneath the surface in the subconscious layer of the mind, feeding a gnawing sense of restlessness but never being comprehended. The return of the Aria Code podcast for a third season this week was one of those jolts, the exploration of Puccini’s Nessun Dorma, the kick which opened up the door to a rabbit hole of memories. A few years ago now, in a season of young-ish love infatuation, HMT in the ‘Deen became the centre of many a late night taking in opera, walking along Union Street to cars parked in side streets (for the free parking) but not much else besides. In retrospect, it was very much a period of unrequited love that went no where in the end, although my memories of the time suggest otherwise. The things one chooses to remember or forget, I guess? The one upside to all that remembering was delving into the rabbit hole that is YouTube for performances of the Aria, one of the more fascinating ones for me being the soulful rendition by Aretha Franklin at the ‘98 Grammys (which she agreed to do at short notice as Pavarotti was ill). The aria’s closing sentiment (At dawn, I will win! I will win! I will win!) is apt given our time, as the Aria Code episode so aptly demonstrates. ...
\\\* The memories of the days are beginning to disappear into a haze, each one a maelstrom of activity that begins with waking with a dull, lingering sense of dread and ending the same way it began, only with a sense of battle weary tiredness layered on. One day it is Sunday, and then suddenly it seems like it is Tuesday and then Thursday - brings respite - only for it all to begin again; wash-rinse-repeat. The good thing is that somehow it is the beginning of March, and each day that passes quickly brings the arrival of that symbol of the worker’s Faustian pact, a salary, another day closer. In my more sanguine moments, I remind myself that for all my bellyaching, there are far worse things to moan about in the world than work. ...
The bare, Spartan space just outside my window - which I can just see if I crane my neck a little just beyond its normal range - is just that, barely noticeable. At least it was until a few days ago when swivelling in my chair, the profusion of reds and yellows it has become caught my eye. So certain was I that the flowers were new that at an opportune moment, when I could pretend it was a casual question, I asked one of the guys to confirm. It turns out that I was right, the flowers had not always been there. The coming of a certain big man in a couple of days had prompted the ground staff into sprucing up our surroundings. I am thankful for the splash of colours which will remain with us for a bit at least, but what I came away with was the sense that big men everywhere carried weight. It is a truism, as an old teacher liked to say. ...
\\\* The sparks have quite literally been flying, not for reasons of passion but for the more mundane fact that winter and the very low humidity have resulted in fairly significant amounts of static electricity build up on everything. More times than I care to remember over the past few weeks, I have had the sometimes unexpected displeasure of a substantial shock. I am much more careful now, taking the time to touch walls and other non-metallic objects to dissipate some of the build up. S insists that my refusal to moisturise often, and liberally, is a contributor to this - a google search seems to suggest she is right in some way. The jury is still out on that one I think, but I am leaning towards getting a humidifier, if and when I can sort out travel to the city next door. ...