The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain

Tags

ash, beauty, bridge, clouds, consciousness, cottage, dawn, eyes, garden, gazing, gold, grass, grey, hedge, hill, land, leaves, light, memory, Michael J Redford, mist, morning, passing, petunia, quiet, radio, rain, reflection, river, roads, silence, silver, sky, skyline, smell, sound, speech, starlings, stillness, stone, summer, sun, sycamore, the Boats of Vallisneria, trees, valley, village, water, weather, willow, writing

Rain

“The morning will be overcast with frequent showers. They will be heavy at times in the south east but brighter weather will follow later from the west …”

Thus spake the oracle from the radio early one summer morning casting his own black cloud over the hearts of many.   I was a keen cyclist in my teens and at many a weekend my schoolmate and I would grease up our cycles and head for the open road.   Shoreham was our target this particular day but the voice of doom did not quell our enthusiasm.   The weather was kind to us on the way down with the sun occasionally breaking through the gloom above to splash a little watery light on the road ahead and we arrived on the outskirts of the village at around nine o’clock. Passing Samuel Palmer’s old cottage we came upon the bridge and dismounted.   After a strenuous exercise, it is a delight to lean upon a bridge and gaze upon the waters emerging from beneath one’s feet.   The flow catches the eye and lifts it slowly into the distance and the senses relax to the accompaniment of its music.   There weren’t many gnats and midges at that time of day, but those that were about were flying very low indeed.   Certainly there was rain about and it wasn’t very far off either for we could just detect the faint scent of it even above the mass of water at our feet.   Not wishing to miss any of its quiet charm, we walked our bicycles through the village, and as the sky grew heavy above us, my thoughts turned to my companion’s pet tortoise Horace who had been extremely active earlier that morning, this being a sure sign of approaching rain.   We turned down the hill past the Crown Hotel, on past the water mill which was then a tea house (I believe it is now a private dwelling) and out onto the banks of the Darenth.

A damp mist had filtered through the trees on the hill opposite and the grey light had transmuted the upturned leaves of ash and sycamore into flecks of silver that hung without movement in the stillness of the impending downpour.   An old weeping willow, pollarded of its crowning glory, leaned out from the bank across the water and as I peered into its dark reflection a crayfish, startled by the leviathan that reared above it, scuttled beneath the smooth stones. As I gazed, the picture was suddenly distorted.   A raindrop had followed immediately by another and yet another and soon I was no longer able to fathom the depths.   We donned our capes, drew up our knees and huddled against the tree like two diminutive bell tents.   Cozy in our little dry islands, the raindrops drummed upon our capes in anger and hissed at us from the river turning it into a boiling cauldron.   The mist that had settled among the trees on the hill opposite had drifted on making way for a great veil of rain that spanned the skyline in graceful folds – a grey but beautiful replica of the Aurora Borealis.

As the curtain drifted slowly by, the day grew appreciably lighter and the deluge eased to a steady drizzle.   Soon after, the clouds broke a little, and a shaft of pure gold struck the hills, becoming wider at its base as it raced swiftly down the valley.   Then the rain ceased as quickly as it had begun and silence, the ethereal beauty of which is always magnified when the rains are over, tumbled into the valley.   We sat in silence beside the bubbling waters and for several minutes we watched its breathless pursuit of the shaft of gold.

It is within such a quietude that I sit now jotting down these notes.   This morning was a grey but clean smelling morning upon which the hedgerow leaves quivered.   It had been raining all night but had stopped just as dawn broke, leaving behind a miscellany of drips and drops, musical and echoing.   Each blade of grass had its tip bent by a raindrop and the clothes line was a string of pearls waiting to be spilled upon the lawn by the quick grasp of a starling’s feet.   By mid-morning the low cloud had dispersed and great mountains of summer cumulus were heaped about the sky.   It was my intention this morning to tackle one or two gardening chores that had been neglected but due to a tiny and insignificant happening, these have yet to be done.   As I passed the petunia bed, I bent to pick up an old seed packet that had appeared and my sleeve touched a petunia leaf.   Upon this leaf there were three rain drops, and as the leaf was set in motion, the three tiny drops rushed towards one another and merged into one large globule that trembled precariously in the centre of the leaf before rolling off the edge and disappearing into the soil.   This tiny happening caused my mind to leap back across the years to remember once more a particular drop of water out of all the millions that must have fallen that day at Shoreham; a single drop of water that has long since been returned to Poseidon from whence it came. We were walking back through the village when we paused awhile beside a cottage garden to discuss our plans.   The clouds were now few and the sun was strong in the cleansed sky drawing out the sweet scent of purity from the land.   Suddenly, a spark of light leapt from the ground and pierced my eye.   So bright was it that it might well have been of solid substance, for it so dazzled the eye that it quite took the breath from me.   I stooped to discover the origin of this manifestation and there, within the cupped hands of a lupin leaf was a tiny trembling rain drop.   It was a perfect globe clearer than crystal; a gem that would have done justice to the diadem of the most illustrious of monarchs.

So it is that my gardening chores for today have once more been neglected.   A rain drop fell from a leaf and in that single drop a flood of memories, memories I felt I had to record, for – they had been pushed so far below the plane of consciousness, that I was afraid they would never have come to the fore again.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

^{————w}(O)_{rmholes________________________________|—–}

beauty & dawn & rain & silence wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
bridge wormhole: Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896
clouds & passing wormhole: slight sneer
eyes wormhole: mandala offering
garden wormhole: A Corner of the Garden at the Hermitage, 1877
gold & grey & leaves & sun & trees wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields
hedge wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
light & river wormhole: the Bodhisattva set out / for the Seat of Awakening
mist & morning & sound wormhole: 10/30 by William Carlos Williams
quiet wormhole: quietly in my quiet house
radio wormhole: within
reflection wormhole: in turgid reflection
roads & silver wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
sky & speech & writing wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
skyline wormhole: Boulevarde Montmartre, Evening Sun, 1879 // Boulevarde Montmartre at Night, 1879
smell wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
stillness wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pigs
stone wormhole: “And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”
water wormhole: Valentine’s Day 2019

 

Advertisement

LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1921, 5*, bedroom, blue, child, childhood, green, laughing, looking, November, quiet, shadow, Spring, streets, sunlight, weather, William Carlos Williams, windows

                LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM

                Light hearted William twirled
                his November moustaches
                and, half dressed, looked
                from the bedroom window
                upon the spring weather.

                Height-ya! sighed he gaily
                leaning out to see
                up and down the street
                where a heavy sunlight
                lay beyond some blue shadows.

                Into the room he drew
                his head again and laughed
                to himself quietly
                twirling his green moustaches.

 

from Sour Grapes, 1921
… and WCW had a son called … William, who was it about, hmmm … twirl

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

bedroom wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams
blue & green & William Carlos Williams wormhole: BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams
child wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
childhood wormhole: 1964
looking wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams
shadow wormhole: sometimes
spring wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
streets wormhole: space for probing thought
windows wormhole: the moon, the moon

 

PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1917, 6*, age, blue, breathing, colour, compromise, fence, furniture, green, growing, houses, identity, looking, love, measure, poverty, progress, rooftops, society, streets, time, walking, weather, William Carlos Williams, yard

                                PASTORAL

                When I was younger
                it was plain to me
                I must make something of myself.
                Older now
                I walk back streets
                admiring the houses
                of the very poor:
                roof out of line with sides
                the yeards cluttered
                with old chicken wire, ashes,
                furniture gone wrong;
                the fences and outhouses
                built of barrel-staves
                and parts of boxes, all,
                if I am fortunate,
                smeared a bluish green
                that properly weathered
                pleases me best
                of all colors.

                            No one
                will believe this
                of vast import to the nation.

 

from Al Que Quiere!, 1917

and he’s right, of course: the ‘import’ of the nation can only progress when it doesn’t have to concern itself with the right and wrong of wealth distribution – but you can’t have progress without competition, otherwise we all just stay where we are; but honouring competition as inviolable is honouring that which is our basest common denominator, surely inequality is less than we could achieve – to try to rise above the process of evolution, the survival of the fittest, is, rather, to surrender to hubris and daydream which doesn’t put bread on the table; but – however; eventually – man up … but to look, and take in, with love and, without scheme, all behind the, dappling cacophany, with which we, mark our height, where we can breathe, without implication, or compromise, free as a glance, single as an ethic, and twice as, selfless

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

blue wormhole: transferring
breathing wormhole: the turtle and the yoke
compromise wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
green & identity & time & walking wormhole: fifty-eight // and silent prayers
looking wormhole: perspective
love wormhole: all // are // none
rooftops wormhole: glancing up from the text / searching for ground …
society & streets wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
William Carlos Williams wormhole: and that’s where I are

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Making Hay

Tags

1967, blackbird, branches, breeze, chaffinches, clouds, cuckoo, echo, fields, grass, green, hay, June, land, lark, linnets, Michael J Redford, scythe, silence, smell, soil, sun, talking, the Boats of Vallisneria, thrushes, tits, trees, wagtail, weather, work

Making Hay

“You’ll have a nice cut o’ hay here,” said George.   The wizened little old man, long since retired from the land, stood beside me in the gateway of Garden Field.   He has come to remove the debris that had fallen from the trees to prevent damage to the mower.   Like most retired land-workers he is unable to keep the soil of the fields from his boots, and one can find him in every village throughout the British Isles hedging, ditching, clearing odd corners of scrub with scythe and sickle and caring for the vicar’s garden.   To these men, there is an attraction so binding to the land, that to continue working thereon has become essential to their very existence.   It seems they draw the very essence of life direct from the soil, just as the unborn infant draws its life direct from its mother, and if this contact, this life-line is broken, so also is his life.   One has merely to talk with these old men for an hour to sense their affinity with and philosophy of the land, and I am convinced that it would quite literally kill many of them if they were to be taken from it.   An acquaintance once questioned the economics of employing these old ‘jobbers’ and suggested that it was merely a charitable act that enables the old men to feel useful, and I thought of old George ambling around the perimeter of Garden Field picking up dead branches and stones.   In the first instance the old man had given me half an hour of time to attend to other more pressing matters.   Secondly, his action of clearing the land of obstructions was quite possibly instrumental in preventing a broken mower knife or con-rod, and when taking into account the precarious weather conditions under which hay is made in this country, any delay could mean the difference between a field of good hay and a field of bad or maybe even a complete loss, and with good hay sometimes fetching £15 per ton and more, this could result in a considerable saving.   So what price an old man’s labour?

There is a great satisfaction in using a clean cutting tool, be it a pen-knife or a scythe.   Now unfortunately, the less harmonious clatter of a power driven mower has long since dimmed the sweet song of a scythe and men in the hay meadows no longer sway to its rhythm.   Nevertheless, there manifests within me a great sense of well-being each time I see the graceful stems fall into neat swathes as the mower encircles the ever diminishing island of standing green.   The pollen lifts and the wagtail follows close behind feeding upon the moths and gnats that are started into flight upon a day sweet with a green aroma. Soon comes the last sweep of the mower in the centre of the field.   It is an act full of purpose and symbolism that makes me hesitate before felling those last few stems.   It is I think, that the finality of the last cut brings about a sense of completeness, a completeness that is magnified by the silence when the mower has ceased to clatter and the tractor engine is switched off, when the only sound to be heard is the song of a lark out of sight, high above the dust laden air.

The following day, when the June sun has lifted the dew from the fields, the grass can be shaken up to let in the drying breezes, and it is towards the end of a good drying day that the green harvest begins to ‘rustle’ and emanates that exhilarating aroma of ‘making’ hay.   There are many jobs to be done on the farm some of which are dull and monotonous, and I must confess to a tendency of leaving such tasks to the very last minute.   But hay-making is not one of these jobs.   Even at the end of a hot, dry day of turning, tedding and windrowing, I reap a great deal of pleasure from strolling alone between the dry, fluffy rows, inhaling the richness, listening to the linnets, tits and chaffinches close at hand, and the distant echo of the cuckoo in the woods.   Also in the woods the Blackcap, much mistaken for the nightingale, sings sweetly at this hour and is a welcomed guest upon my solitude.   There are many such enchanting moments tucked away at odd intervals throughout the year, sandwiched between the bustle, toil and noise that nowadays fills most of our lives, and too often they pass unnoticed and without appreciation.   The baler is the transgressor that ends these few hours of peace at hay-making.   It is a great red monster that crashes into the calm, scaring the blackbirds and thrushes and littering the fields with bales of green, just as the child litters the nursery floor with his building blocks.

If there is one task on the farm nowadays that demands sweat and aching limbs, it is the pitching, carting and stacking of bales of hay.   No time can be wasted in bringing them home for should the weather change, the feeding value could be washed right out and hay made fit for only bedding.   Under a blazing July sun the throat becomes parched and the palms of the hands become calloused and shiny from gripping the pitch-fork.   Hasty swigs from a brown bottle concealed in the cool shade of a hedge ooze forth seconds later as sweat.   Hay particles stick to the body and gnats and flies buzz and bite. At times (if, for example, in a race against approaching storm clouds), the pace becomes so hectic that the sweat runs and blinds the eyes.   Seeds and pieces of hay fall into the shirt and make their way down to the trouser belt where they stick and prick and scratch each time the body is bent to life another bale.

This work, weather permitting, continues day after day, and to those involved it seems like eternity, but sooner or later the very last bale is heaved upon the trailer, and the last, slow journey home is made with swaying load and creaking ropes.

Last year, Garden Field was put aside for the cows and old George was helping me move the electric fence.   It was almost dinner time when we finished and we sat upon the headland whiling away the minutes in idle conversation.   He had removed his jacket and was picking out the fluff from the corners of a pocket.

“It used to be my brother’s,” he said of the jacket, “he lived in Shropshire but passed on a few weeks back, and as I’m the only one of the family left, I had all his bits and pieces sent here.”   He studied the jacket ruefully.   “Didn’t find no pound notes in it though, just a bit o’ fluff and a few hay seeds,” he said flinging them into the wind.   Now, as I stand staring at the bales stacked under the dutch barn, I find myself wondering how many stems of Shropshire grass there are within, and if left to ripen, how many seeds they would have produced.   I often stand and stare, much to the annoyance of those around me, and think my little thoughts, for little thoughts quite often lead to bigger ones.   This is, in fact, just how this essay came to be written.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

blackbird wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
branches & green wormhole: Sheffield Park Gardens
breeze wormhole: 1964
clouds wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
echo wormhole: with all love released
silence wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
smell wormhole: travelling // arrival
sun wormhole: tremule
talking wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
trees wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – reaping
work wormhole: next unexpected step

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working

Tags

1967, chimney, clouds, corn, cows, dusk, eggs, elm, farming, fence, fields, flood, food distribution, future, gale, gaze, green, grey, harvest, hay, hills, identity, leaf, letter, machines, meadow, meat production, Michael J Redford, milk, morning, oats, poetry, rain, sheep, silence, summer, sun, the Boats of Vallisneria, thought, time, tractors, trees, valley, weather, wheat, wind, windows, work, writing

Chapter 4

Working

A Letter of Two Parts

Dear Pat and John

I thought it high time I dropped another letter from the country into the post.   Looking back over the past summer months seems more like looking back over a bleak and stormy winter.   The weather has of course played havoc with the haymaking and harvesting.   I hear that at one time, medium quality hay was fetching nearly £20 per ton, and taking into account the wide-spread flooding that has occurred, it seems there’ll not be enough oat straw to feed in place of it.   With this drastic shortage of hay and straw, the outlook is black indeed.

Even as I write, the rain is beating alarmingly against the window panes, borne upon a gale that roars like an express up the valley, each gust falling over the next in its haste to wreak havoc on the exposed hills.   As I gaze through the window pane distorted with rivulets and splashes, I perceive a hazy image of grey hills shouldering leaden clouds, and every few minutes the wind rattles the frame and comes sighing down the chimney.   The whole house shudders a little and a log in the hearth slips, sending up a shower of sparks to meet the confusion above.   The fields are in a sorry state.   Most of the corn has been lodged as if trampled by some strident giant, fences have been breached by falling trees and many sheep throughout the country have been drowned in the spreading waters.

There was a period two weeks ago when the tempest eased a little and allowed a little watery sun into our eyes, but this lasted for only seven days, after which the rain set in again and eased up only occasionally for an odd day here and there.   We have managed to stack about half the oats, but the remainder will probably have to be written off.   The wheat would have encountered a similar fate had it not been for the three hired combines.

Now here once again are the winds and the rains.   A dead leaf, too sodden to absorb any more water is whipped across the window and trembles for a brief second on the sill before joining the hosts that cling to the chicken coop wire.   Incidentally, I’d better put this letter to one side for a moment in order to collect the eggs before the half light fades completely.

                                * * * * * * * *

Dear Pat and John,

I’ve had to restart this letter.   Owing to this sudden bright spell we’ve been working like mad trying to catch up on the backlog of harvesting and general repairs.   I started this letter well over two weeks ago but I’m afraid I’ve not had time to finish it until now.   It is remarkable how the view has changed outside my window.   The country scene these past few days has been one of violent human and mechanical activity.

Implements of all shapes, sizes and colours have erupted from their unusual passiveness and are droning, roaring and rattling over the soil.   A combine harvester, like a metal monster from a Wells novel, trundles ponderously across the field, digesting the grain and vomiting the residue in its wake.   Tractors career madly through the lanes, heave with throbbing effort towering loads of sheaves and haul balers which follow on, nodding idiotically like inane sheep.   Men race fervently against time commanding machines, pitching sheaves, building stacks, their pitchforks leaping and flashing under the sun.   Farmers and farm workers alike are conscious of the urgency of the hour, but no clock watching for them, they are eager to see the culmination of a years’ hard work.   To these men, their work is not merely a means of earning a living, it is something far more than this, something far more personal and important to them as individuals.   These men work not so much for their employers but with them, and it is through this combined effort that the tempestuous vagaries of the past year have been overcome.

If a machine breaks down, there is a curse and several pairs of hands are immediately locating the trouble.   They may not be expert mechanics but farm workers are masters of improvisation and no machine is standing idle for long.   It is this knack of ‘making do’ that is the seed of many weird and wonderful machines that have appeared on the agricultural scene, and it would indeed be difficult to find any industry which has produced in such a short period of time a greater range of impossible machines to tackle such improbable tasks.   No doubt to the layman it would appear that with all these modern innovations, the life of the farm worker today is almost as idyllic as the sentimentalised conception of the pseudo-bucolic poets of the seventeenth century:-

                “O happy life, if that their good
                The husbandman but understood.
                Who all the day themselves do please …”

Whenever a new acquaintance asks the nature of my work they are, on being told, shocked into silent disbelief.   Apparently I neither look like a farm labourer nor do I sound like one (how does such a person look and sound), and henceforth I am re-introduced either as a farmer or, by those who are more sensitive towards the truth, as being ‘in farming’, thereby implying that I own vast acres and hunt every Tuesday and Saturday.   A wistful ‘back to the land’ look then enters the eye.   “I’ve always wanted to work on a farm” they sigh.   No doubt there have been insuperable obstacles in ambition’s path for many people, but surely not all, and I have yet to meet the person who doesn’t bemoan his lot in town and gaze longingly at the green hills.   And just as a point of interest, I have yet to meet the person who doesn’t have an uncle somewhere who owns a farm.

Their conception of farming today seems even more idyllic than that of their fathers’.   Machines, they say, have taken the hard work out of farming, all we have to do is sit on a tractor all day and press buttons.   Perhaps they would like to spend a day stacking bales of hay under a sizzling hot roof of a Dutch barn, or perhaps after a sixteen hour day during harvest, [perhaps] they would like to sit up all night with a cow who is having a difficult time calving and work another sixteen hours the following day, and the day after that.   Unless a farmer specialises in a line for which a particular machine or implement has been designed, then it is not economical to purchase that machine.   For example, a man with just one house cow would find it uneconomical to install a completely automatic milking unit, but even where this is justified, as in the case of larger herds, the farmer or herdsman still has to rise at five o’clock on a bitterly cold winter’s morning seven days a week.   The advent of the machine has not necessarily lessened the amount of hard work to be done, it has merely allowed us to do more work in a given amount of time.   In fact, it is because of the machine that the herdsman’s lot today is becoming an increasingly intolerable one.

An old friend of mine once milked twenty five cows night and morning with two machines.   He know his cows and his cows knew him.   Although he did not rush things, he was efficient.   He would stand aside as the cows came into the shed and cast his eye over each one, and as he milked, he ran his hand over their coats and looked at their droppings.   Old Charlie could tell immediately if one of the animals was off colour.   Then his employer retired and a young, progressive farmer moved in.   Fortunately he ask Charlie to stay on as cowman.   Now, Charlie milks sixty cows night and morning with four machines in a well-parlour.   On being asked how he liked the new system, the old cowman sighed.

“Well I dunno.   We gets the milk, that’s fer sure, but ‘tis like working in a factory.   There’s pipes, tubes, valves, taps an’ switches everywhere.   The animals go through the parlour like a dose o’ salts – you’ve ‘ardly got time to wash their bags.   All you can see of ‘em is one side, their guts might be ‘anging out the other fer all I know.”   His addendum, I think, summed up his real grievance.

                “Trouble is – I ‘ent got enough time to get to know me animals.”

What could once be classified as a pleasurable occupation was now, through the advent of the machine, become a tiresome chore, and as mechanisation infiltrates more and more, so true herdsmanship is disappearing.   The reticent paragon of tolerance, that slow, amiable patient being that was once the cowmen, is now being pushed aside to make way for the impatient, ulcer-ridden milker of high speed conveyer-type milk production of today, so much so in fact, that on some larger farms, milkers are already working a shift system to break the seven day a week monotony.

I can foresee in the not so distant future, a herd of a thousand or more cows, zero grazed, moving almost continuously through a system of yards and parlours twice every twenty four hours.   In the parlours, shift work will be in progress with round the clock milking.   The milk will be pumped through to the distribution.   The organisation will manufacture its own concentrates, will employ its own veterinary surgeon, accountant and secretary and will have a resident Ministry Inspector equipped with his own laboratory.   And of course the whole concern will be owned by the big industrialists of the day.   This is not such an improbability as may at first appear for this has already happened to a great degree to some of our poultry farms.   There are now vast empires where eggs are fed into one end of a building and emerge twelve weeks later at the other as pre-packed chickens with their giblets frozen into little polythene bags inside them.   Then there is the abomination of the sweat box and battery systems of meat production.   Agricultural evolution has reached a point where farming, as we know it, is slowly but surely plunging into self-annihilation and dragging down with it the responsibility of moral thought into a morass of turpitude.   We are entering an age of hydroponic systems where an agricultural technocracy permits controlled environment and mass production of living creatures to an extent unparalleled in human history.   It is as if we have forgotten that we are dealing with life itself and not inanimate lumps of putty waiting to be moulded into any shape by the current market.   Yet if the farmers of today do not keep abreast of [the] latest scientific developments, they would find it almost impossible to feed themselves let alone provide food for others.   Even so, despite the fact that agricultural efficiency and production have increased beyond the wildest dreams of great pioneers such as John Lawes and Sir Humphry Davy, people are still dying in their thousands for want of food.   Despite the fact that there is enough food produced throughout the world in any one year to supply mankind with the essentials of life for the next twenty, the bloated belly of the beggar is still a common sight in the greater part of the world.   It is not, therefore, research into agricultural production methods which is urgently needed, but research into the distribution of those products.   It is in this sphere that the great fields of ignorance lay.

But let me rein back awhile for I have digressed too far.   This letter to you was intended to be a portrait of the countryside as I have seen it during the last two months, so now let me gaze upon the pastoral scene beyond my window.   The cows have finished grazing and are lying in the meadow cudding methodically.   The sun falls upon their backs like a warm blanket and a faint breeze fans their faces.

It was nine o’clock last night that the last load was brought home.   Engines were switched off one by one across the fields and, as the evening star faded, Pegasus shimmered the in the warmth of dusk and gazed upon the southern elms.   As the last sheaf was laid upon the stack, the year ended, our year, that is.   George stood, hands on hips.   Harry leaned upon his pitchfork.   Alf and Arthur sat upon the trailer and Jim stood with one foot upon the wheel hub.   In silence they gazed at the stack, each man with his own thoughts, each man reaping his own spiritual harvest.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

^{————w}(O)_{rmholes________________________________|—–}

chimney wormhole: the missing chord // the now-silent seagull
clouds & identity & time & wind wormhole: travelling // arrival
green wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
grey wormhole: for / the first time
hills & valley wormhole: volcanic rock
morning wormhole: forgotten anything
poetry wormhole: Pilot 125 … // … being excursion in the interludes
rain wormhole: when the rain has settled / the dust
silence wormhole: without any buffet at all
sun wormhole: is this it // all the time
thought & writing wormhole: Christmas 2015
trees wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
windows wormhole: river
work wormhole: I am not yet ready

 

forgotten anything

Tags

2014, 3*, blue, car park, holiday, letting go, mala, morning, planning, shirt, sky, sound, travelling, weather

                                                …damn
                                spent the morning
                                packing and planning
                I’ve got my crumpled cotton shirt and mala
                                the sky is skin-burn blue
                                and I’m off on holiday
                waiting in the car park in the middle of the noises of jobs
                                to somewhere two thousand miles away
                                with probably the same weather
                                and I don’t care if we’ve
                                forgotten anything

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

blue wormhole: dream I // dream II
holiday wormhole: walk from Castleton to Hope
letting go wormhole: breathing through hypnagogia
morning wormhole: just
sky wormhole: ‘charcoal grey-slate sky …’
sound wormhole: I turn to wake up
travelling wormhole: tragic and archival

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Agricultural Show

Tags

1967, August, children, farm, field, hats, June, life, Michael J Redford, people, portrait, the Boats of Vallisneria, walking, weather

The Agricultural Show

Walking for pleasure is one thing, walking because you have to is another, but in between the two comes walking round an agricultural show.   This of course, is purely self-imposed and must surely be classed as walking for pleasure, for the majority who attend do so without thought of executing any business.   Yet the final effect at the end of the day is the same as if one had been ordered on a route march across the Sinai Desert.   With swollen feet and aching backs the hosts disperse towards evening and flop lifelessly into their cars, their faces and neck still sizzling from the heat of the day.   Of course some shows are ill-fated with regard to the weather while others have not known a wet day for perhaps a quarter of a century, but on the whole, the shows fare well, the majority being held between the months of June and August.   This however is rather an unfortunate time to hold a show for it is normally a hectic time of the farm, what with mowing, baling and stacking hay.   It is even more unfortunate if a tractor laden with a couple of tons of hay (and it usually is at times like this) breaks down in the middle of a field, for an urgent call to the local agricultural engineers will receive the reply – “I’m sorry sir, but all the mechanics are at the show.”

Although each being in this world is an individual, the milling mass at an agricultural show can be divided into four main groups and if the truth were known there is to me, as much delight in studying the people as in studying the latest advances in agricultural technology.   (Taking this one stage further, I wonder how often it is I who have been the object of study).

I do not however include in these groups competitors for the equestrian events, for they and their retinues are a species apart and one could devote a sizeable volume to them alone.   Neither do I include the wide-eyed children who dart here, there and everywhere, sucking ice creams and soggy hot dogs, climbing onto tractors and falling into milk churns.   The first of the groups is the ‘immaculate’ group.   It is the bowler-deer-stalker hatted group that walks with militant step and serious face and prods at little pieces of paper with its shooting sticks.   The majority of this group have dangling from their lapels little cardboard discs with ‘Official’, ‘Judge’ or ‘Member’ stamped upon it in gold, and includes the ‘upper crust’, the gentleman farmer and the estate owner.   They wear either a bow tie or a club tie or maybe an old boy’s school tie.

The next group is that of the working farmer.   Here the hats have turned into soft, tweedy trilbies or pork pies.   There is a slight roundness of shoulder and the stride is long and loping.   The gait appears clumsy, yet after years of striding ploughed fields and climbing stacks, most farmers are as sure footed as mountain goats.   A young fourteen year old friend of mine is a supreme example of this.   He can skim across a freshly ploughed field like a hare and still keep pace with someone running on the flat.   Pipes and old walking sticks are the armaments of this group and are used to challenge, prod and probe new machinery or inspect the rows of tethered beasts waiting to enter the show ring.   This group is generally of a suspicious nature, non-committal and not easily swayed by the remarkable time, money and labour saving claims of the mountainous pile of literature thrust eagerly into its hands.   At the entrance to the trade stand beams the host.   He laughs very easily and his handshake is somewhat violent.   “Hello there, wonderful to see you again old boy, come in and have a drink.”   They disappear into the dim world of heaving canvass and creaking ropes.

The group that is always well represented at the shows is that of the farm worker.   He arrives in his best suit, polished boots and cap, his face can be likened to a bake potato and his smile is broader and more frequent than those of the other groups.   Unaccustomed to this mode of dress, it is not long before the tie is removed and the shirt front unbuttoned.   Soon the jacket comes off and is stuffed into the shopping bag containing the day’s ‘wittals’.   Some even go so far as to remove the cap, though why they should have the desire to do so on this particular day is beyond me, for judging from the pure white band on the upper part of their foreheads, the cap is never removed from one year’s end to the other.   He is disgusted at prices in the beer tent, but tolerates this as being one of the prices to be paid for a rare day’s outing with the family.   Old acquaintances are renewed more in this group than in the others, for farm workers move around more than farmers.   Friendly insults are bandied about and a sly drink is attempted before the womenfolk can find them and drag them off to the Women’s Institute tent.

The final group belongs to those whose only connection with country life is an occasional weekend outing in the car.   It consists of those who have farmed only in their dreams or whose children have a strong leaning in that direction.   Although their attire is variable, this group can normally be segregated by their complexions.   Even those who have communed with the elements for a fortnight whilst on holiday do not achieve the deeply ingrained weathering of the farm worker’s face.   It is a purely superficial mask through which the white lines of the brow, furrowed from the unaccustomed glare of the sun, can be detected.   Apart from this there is no strong characteristic linking these people together as a group for they all come from different walks of life.   Perhaps they walk a little faster than most and do not linger long in any one place, but no matter how disconnected this group is within itself, it can claim one thing in common with the rest and that is, a keen interest in farming or some aspect of country life.

On passing through the gates of a country or agricultural show, I invariably make for the little kiosk which sells the catalogues and on the map therein, I religiously trace out a route between the various avenues.   This route is designed to take me round to every trade stand, exhibition and demonstration in the shortest distance, retracing my steps as little as possible.   Having completed this task, an outstanding display a little way up the centre avenue catches my eye, so, thrusting the catalogue into my pocket, I decide to see what it’s all about.   My curiosity satisfied, I am attracted to a large group of people huddled around a mysterious object on display a little further down the line.   By the time I have made the front row, all thoughts of adhering to the route so meticulously worked out, have left me.   This happens every time I attend an agricultural show and I invariably end up by walking ten times as far as is necessary.   But so what?   Most of our lives have too great a proportion of it already ordered for us; there is far too much routine.   What matters it if we do cover the same ground twice?   One can always discover some fresh point of interest that had been passed by first time round.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

^{————w}(O)_{rmholes________________________________|—–}

field wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – intemperance
life wormhole: everwhile
people wormhole: embodying
walking wormhole: faintly apricot air?

 

1964

Tags

1964, 2014, Burt Bacharach, childhood, Dionne Warwick, eyes, hats, love, passing, people, society, true nature, weather

                                              1964

                                              … looking at the love
                                              in everyone’s eyes that
                                              they cannot see under their hats
                                and the weather

 

reach out for me, 1964, my darlings

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

1964 & [Burt] Bacharach & Dionne Warwick wormhole: 1964
eyes wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – the soft canticle of the gourds:
love wormhole: the coming of ‘The Boats of Vallisneria’ by Michael J. Redford
passing wormhole: tripping up to / London town
people & tired wormhole: tired
society wormhole: the policies came to nothing

 

mauve

Tags

1981, childhood, death, father, life, mauve, weather, white, wind, windows

 

 

 

                         the mauve wind
                blew against the window
                  as he shot

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

childhood & wind wormhole: first Spring storm
death & life wormhole: a theremin note – poewieview #21
fater wormhole: London Hearts – poewieview #4
mauve wormhole: red ink
white wormhole: tong len / the inauguration of another – timely – butter fly effect / taking and giving
windows wormhole: hinged – From Hell ch. V

 

Black Rook / in Rainy Weather

Tags

2013, anxiety, black, block, library, notebook, open, rain, reading, rook, Sylvia Plath, weather, writing

 

 

 

                                I sat with the date
                                and the open page
                trying to channel an effect through the objects around me
                                pen poised

                                nothing happened
                                but a little anxiety
                I put the book aside and picked up the Collected* instead
                                next one: Black Rook
                                in Rainy Weather

 

* Sylvia Plath: Collected Poems, Faber, ed. Hughes; to get the double serendipity: Black Rook in Rainy Weather

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

anxiety wormhole: un … able
black wormhole: dream 260713
open wormhole: Jackie’s slight smile
rain wormhole: heirloom – break / after heavy shower
reading wormhole: library: start where you are IV // all the distance I have travelled!
[Sylvia] Plath wormhole: [start where you are III] – delve
writing wormhole: the stance of Buscema // qualitatively