Biding for Spring

Here is a set of themed posts which I have gathered under the heading
"Biding for Spring"

This post is titled ... 'Biding for Spring', or 'Passing Afternoon', or 'Bougainvillea Blooms', or 'Our Endless Numbered Days' ... take your pick ...

I have noticed how colour has emptied itself out of everything. In this period of biding for spring, even the dotted stars of winter jasmine and the purity of the first snowdrops appear to be pale, flushed-out, lacking their sparkle, and somehow distant.

But the Bougainvillea is a flowering plant with radiantly coloured blooms. I'd never heard of them before, until they were mentioned in a song that I listened to recently. The song made me cry. It is called "Passing Afternoon" by "Iron & Wine", from the album "Our Endless Numbered Days"

"... There are times that walk from you, like some passing afternoon
Summer warmed the open window of her honeymoon
And she chose a yard to burn, but the ground remembers her
Wooden spoons, her children stir her Bougainvillea blooms

There are things that drift away, like our endless, numbered days
Autumn blew the quilt right off the perfect bed she made
And she's chosen to believe in the hymns her mother sings
Sunday pulls its children from their piles of fallen leaves

There are sailing ships that pass, all our bodies in the grass
Springtime calls her children 'til she lets them go at last
And she's chosen where to be, though she's lost her wedding ring
Somewhere near her misplaced jar of Bougainvillea seeds

There are things we can't recall, blind as night that finds us all
Winter tucks her children in, her fragile china dolls
But my hands remember hers, rolling 'round the shaded ferns
Naked arms, her secrets still like songs I'd never learned

There are names across the sea, only now I do believe
Sometimes, with the window closed, she'll sit and think of me
But she'll mend his tattered clothes, and they'll kiss as if they know
A baby sleeps in all our bones, so scared to be alone ..."

'Passing Afternoon', by 'Iron & Wine',
from 'Our Endless Numbered Days'

On The Year's Turning

The Day Is Done

365 days are gone, and so the year, is done. Whether we like it or not, time takes us through all of our joys and sorrows. Even a stopped clock tells the correct time twice a day. But for me, I experience time rather like a handless clock that is still ticking. Time continues to pass, and I dearly hope that life will not pass me by. Nick Drake’s words ring so true for me right now:

“When the day is done
Down to earth then sinks the sun
Along with everything that was lost and won
When the day is done.”

from 'Day Is Done' by Nick Drake

On The Threshold Of The Coming Day

Days and years come and go, but we always sit on the brink of a new day. So for the coming days, I sincerely hope that my life will be able to go beyond the psychological threshold that will enable my actions to be of tangible benefit to others. I long to be of ...

“Some hard
Simple
Undeniable
Use

Oh
Like a

Spindle

Or
Oh
Like a

Candle

Or
Oh
Like a

Horseshoe

Or
Oh
Like a

Corkscrew

To be of use

On a horse
Over palms laid
On the threshold
Of the coming day

Coming day
Coming
Day
Come"

from ‘To Be Of Use’ by Smog

And So Goes Out The Year

Sitting on the cusp of a new year prompts time for self-reflection, meditation, communion and contemplation. But once we have done all this naval gazing, I feel we have to try and speak about our feelings with a degree of clearness, simplicity and plainness. And, on the turning point of the year, A. E. Housman does this like no other:

"Now dreary dawns the eastern light,
And fall of eve is drear,
And cold the poor man lies at night,
And so goes out the year.

Little is the luck I've had,
And oh, 'tis comfort small
To think that many another lad
Has had no luck at all."

Poem XXVIII from ‘Last Poems’ by A. E. Housman

Approaching The Year’s Empty Tomb

"I approach the years' empty tomb.
What has time done with itself?
Is the news worth the communicating?
The word's loin cloth can remember little.
A thin, cold wind blows from beyond
the abysm that I gawp into.

But supposing there were bones;
the darkness illuminated like a museum?
In glass cases I have peered at the brittle bundles,
exonerating my conscience with mortality's tears.

But here, true to my name,
I have nothing to hold onto,
an absence so much richer than a presence,
offering instead of the skull's leer
an impalpable possibility
for faith's doubting fingertips to explore"

‘Easter’ by R. S. Thomas

As we approach the end of the year, our expectant waiting continues. I truly hope the coming year will fill all the emptiness in your lives, that the news you encounter is worth the communicating, and that all your shadows are illuminated with inextinguishable Light.

Peace,

Si

I've been thinking for a while that I should fly

“… I’ve been thinking for a while
That I should fly

Tired of walking on my feet
They’re so tired
They’re so tired

The branches are low
And the ground is hard
And the view much nicer from the sky

From up in the sky they’re just people
But from here, they’re
Liars, cheaters and thieves

From up in the sky they’re just people
But from here, they’re
Liars, cheaters and thieves

I’ve been thinking for a while
That I should fly …”

From "I Should Fly” by Vermillion Lies

Hear this extract here

Winter Is Blue

“… Winter is blue
Living is gone
Some are just sleeping
In spring they’ll go on
Our love is dead
Nothing but crying
Love will not find even
One more new morning

Why must I stay here
Rain comes I’m sitting here
Watching love moving
Away into yesterday

Winter is blue
Everything’s leaving
Fires are now burning
And life has [no] reason
I am alone
Waiting for nothing
If my heart freezes
I won’t feel the breaking

Why must I stay here
Rain comes I’m sitting here
Watching love moving
Away into yesterday …”

‘Winter is Blue’ by Vashti Bunyan

This song is a bonus track at the end of the re-issue of Vashti Bunyan’s 1970 album ‘Just Another Diamond Day’ which describes a summer spent travelling by horse and cart to the Isle of Skye.

The wonderfully exuberant short, trivial, twee and inconsequential songs make the days of that summer seem so special, as if it was a time when Vashti felt like she owned the whole world and nothing seemed wrong.

For me, ‘Winter is Blue’ serves as an epilogue to those happy days which, at the time, we thought would never end, but inevitably always do. It illustrates that our days and lives aren’t solely constituted by ‘Diamond Days’. It opens up the heartbreak of the realization that when that one perfect summer comes to an end, it can never be replicated. This is accompanied with a tinge of regret, that perhaps there were missed opportunities when special times could have been enjoyed more fully, but that these chances cannot be retrieved.

The response to this is an emotional exacerbation - that even 'dull freezing' is preferred, hoped and even longed for in order to avoid the acute feeling of the actual heart breaking:

"... If my heart freezes
I won’t feel the breaking ..."


And so what can you do?


"… Winter weather is not my soul
But the biding for spring ...

… Like I’m a southern bird
That stayed north too long

Winter exposes the nest
Then I’m gone …”

from ‘Palimpsest’ by Smog


That's all you can do ... bide for spring …

Glimpsing

On my way to Morris Dance on Boxing Day I drove through Coalbrookdale. The road down the valley (called Jigger’s Bank) is quite precarious with lots of very steep and windy bits – I find it’s best to keep Betsy in 3rd gear and let the engine hold us back. Anyway, you go past the ‘World Heritage Site’ sign, go under the railway bridge and past the 30mph sign. It is then, if I don't force my attention on it, but allow a panel to slide forward by glancing quickly to my right, I can snatch a glimpse, like a fast, shuttered camera frame, of Dale House and the Quaker Burial Ground behind it on the hill. They have become special places for me. Telford Quakers hold a Meeting for Worship at Dale House on the last Sunday of the month from April – October. Whenever I go, which is never as often as I would like, I try to arrive in Coalbrookdale a little earlier so I can go and spend some time sitting on the bench in the Burial Ground.

Last October I carried myself up the hill and the steps to the burial ground. I was a little out of breath. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. I had a mild headache and felt a little light-headed. This was due to me not having had enough to eat for breakfast, although I always try and have a larger-than-usual breakfast before Meeting in an attempt to avoid my stomach embarrassingly ministering in tongues out of the silence. I walked through the gates and found my sanctuary within the high brick walls of the steeply–sloped burial ground, lined with the small headstones of Friends, whose inscriptions are now barely readable. The primroses that I saw in the spring had gone, but the sun still shone. I sat down on the bench and tried to settle, conscious that I only had 5 minutes before I had to leave to go to Meeting. I wondered – “am I at home amongst my silent Friends?” I reached into my trouser pocket for my little red Gideons' Bible, which was given to me at school when I was 11 years old, and that I have recently begun to open, and gazed on 2 short passages Matthew 11: 28-30 and John 14: 27. I found myself humming the tune to ‘Sadie’ by Joanna Newsom. The gently rocking lullaby lilts merged into the words of the song:

"... And all day long we talk about mercy
Lead me to water, Lord, I sure am thirsty
Down in the ditch where I nearly served you
Up in the clouds where he almost heard you

And all that we built
And all that we breathed
And all that we spilt
Or pulled up like weeds
Is piled up in back
And it burns irrevocably
And we spoke up in turns
'Til the silence crept over me ..."

And the silence then crept over me, and the place became becalmed. I stood up, and walked away. I went to Meeting for Worship. I glimpsed a gathered stillness. A Friend ministered about mystical experience. A Friend came in very late, but I was glad that she was with us. A fly buzzed around the room for ages. I felt the acute need to be sat on the bench in the Burial Ground again. If I had stayed true to my spiritual leadings I would have quietly stood up and walked back up there. But instead I imagined I was there – 200 yards away up on the hill, feeling the latent heat of a dilute, watercolour autumnal sun on my ears, my corduroy jacket a little crumpled from sitting down, my thumb gently stroking the slightly dog-eared and feather-thin leaves of my little red Gideons’ bible, my hair, in need of a cut, ruffled by the exhaling wind. A bird singing before winter.