while you're ahead…

The weather is on my mind.

Storm Ciara has been battering Great Britain for the past few days and rudely interrupted my so far regular runs, which is really annoying, but I’m not prepared to go out IN THAT!

I will be attending a talk by Stuart Basden, one of the founding members of Extinction Rebellion (XR), on Friday morning at College. (We’ll see how many students will turn up at 9.15 in the morning… that alone is a social experiment I feel)… I’m curious about what he has to say… Let’s face it… do we need to do something about this world of ours? Yes, on so many levels, but do I agree on all of their tactics? No… but I want to hear it from the horse’s mouth rather than filtered by the media.

So, in view of foul, crazy weather and upcoming environmental ‘talks’… I’ll give you a poem/reflection by the amazing Wendell Berry:

A Poem about Hope and Place

It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,

For hope must not depend on feeling good
And there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.
You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality
Of the future, which surely will surprise us,
…And hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction
Any more than by wishing. But stop dithering.
The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?
Tell them at least what you say to yourself.

Because we have not made our lives to fit
Our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,
The streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope
Then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
Of what it is that no other place is, and by
Your caring for it as you care for no other place, this
Place that you belong to though it is not yours,
For it was from the beginning and will be to the end

Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are
Your neighbors in it: the old man, sick and poor,
Who comes like a heron to fish in the creek,
And the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike
Fishes for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing
In the trees in the silence of the fisherman
And the heron, and the trees that keep the land
They stand upon as we too must keep it, or die.

This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power
Or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful
when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy
when they ask for your land and your work.
Answer with knowledge of the others who are here
And how to be here with them. By this knowledge
Make the sense you need to make. By it stand
In the dignity of good sense, whatever may follow.
Speak to your fellow humans as your place
Has taught you to speak, as it has spoken to you.
Speak its dialect as your old compatriots spoke it
Before they had heard a radio. Speak
Publicly what cannot be taught or learned in public.

Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up
From the pages of books and from your own heart.
Be still and listen to the voices that belong
To the streambanks and the trees and the open fields.
There are songs and sayings that belong to this place,
By which it speaks for itself and no other.

Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground
Underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls
Freely upon it after the darkness of the nights
And the darkness of our ignorance and madness.
Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,
Which is the light of imagination. By it you see
The likeness of people in other places to yourself
In your place. It lights invariably the need for care
Toward other people, other creatures, in other places
As you would ask them for care toward your place and you.

No place at last is better than the world. The world
Is no better than its places. Its places at last
Are no better than their people while their people
Continue in them. When the people make
Dark the light within them, the world darkens.

Have you been watching the BBC drama ‘The Trial of Christine Keeler”? What do you think of it?

For me it’s a little bit slow and… well, 6 episodes? mmmhhh… could have been edited to 4, me thinks. Aside from that I absolutely LOVE the setting and clothes… and the hair and make up… the attention to details is superb.

In the episode we watched last night Dr Ward (played really well by James Norton, rumoured to be in the running as the next James Bond… ), kept repeating a poem by Hughes Mearns (I later found out), and I found it really daunting and sad…

See what you think:

Antigonish

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away…

When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door… (slam!)

Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away...