Float therapy
I RECENTLY had major surgery. Being grounded and in a sort of limbo afterwards was a very odd feeling for someone as restless as I am. (I do not think my cherished perception of myself as the most undemanding of patients would cut much ice with my poor wife.)
But those days, after I got out of the post-op stasis, turned out to be a very good time, if not exactly for thinking purposefully, then at least for letting my mind ruminate on, chew over, many random things — though I did suddenly see, without actually thinking about it, how my (possible) next book might be shaped.
Perhaps, in my profession, over time one comes to marginalise the synthesising potential of the mind in favour of the analytical, and a shock — a sort of mental and physical parenthesis, like that forced on me — is needed to straighten things up.
Rhymes and seasons
I HAVE taught literature all my adult life. I have loved, and still love, my subject, and loved seeing lights go on in pupils’ eyes. But one of the drawbacks of long years with a heavy burden of “getting ready to teach” is that, subconsciously, I had slipped away from my own intense delight in books and poetry and drama to wondering, “How am I going to teach, or write about, this?” That had slowly got in the way of the real, passionate engagement that took me down that road in the first place.
Then the unexpected spell in hospital, and the (suddenly difficult) question what books to take. A couple of well-reviewed novels? Neither held me. Kilvert’s Diary? A bit better. . . It spoke, certainly, to my love of the English countryside. At the last minute, I slipped in a battered copy of The Penguin Book of English Verse. And idly, bored with everything else, I picked it up and chanced on Milton’s grand verse, almost narcotic in its richness.
The old, self-forgetful delight suddenly came back with full force. Again I avidly read the chunks of Pope anthologised from poems that I once knew almost by heart. Again I relished the sombre grandeur of Tennyson (a voice I try to hear in my head in his strong Lincolnshire accent), and homed in on where I had seen — for the first time, all those years ago, when every day was summer — what words could do: Donne, and George Herbert, and Henry Vaughan, who spoke to me in my ignorant youth, and did again in my brokenness with all the force of lived experience.
So, I summoned in my Wordsworth, my Hopkins, and Auden, and R. S. Thomas. Someone — Giovanni Boccaccio? — once said: “Theology is the poetry of God.” Sometimes, I wonder whether poetry can occasionally, — and perhaps more often than we think — enable us to glimpse a state where words shall cease, and sight and knowledge are undimmed.
Tastes divine
AT LAST, after days of fasting (unwilling but dutiful at first, and then involuntary): food. It took me a day or so, after surfacing from a state in which not much mattered but sleep, to recover the beginnings of an appetite. The hospital offered a fair choice of food, including macaroni cheese, which I hate. But “They” said it would be a good thing to start with. . . Possibly it was: but it does not improve on my memory of it.
Things got better after that; and then home to fresh veg from the garden — the first tomatoes (Gardener’s Delight and Marmande, this year); the first early apples from the communal orchard of old varieties our village planted; and plums, and rich greengages that grow wild in the hedgerows here (earlier than ever in this hot, dry year). And then my beloved’s wonderful way with fish and olives; and so many other blessings of this life.
The olive tree I bought her for Christmas has set its first olives. It will never give us our own olive oil, of course; but — Deo gratias — with all its sorrows and horrors, it is a wonderful world. The light still shines, undimmed, in the darkness.
Silver linings
WHILE I was in dock, the drought had at last broken. To be sure, a lot more water is needed, and what we have had has come too late to save some of the sadly stressed crops. But, these past few days, there has been a longed-for freshness in the early morning air as Milo the Labrador takes us for our pre-breakfast walk down the Fen; what we call the lawn has greened up; and my neighbour and I are thinking about taking the honey harvest from our bees. So, a general feeling of universal benevolence as we sat this afternoon in the garden with some buns made for us by one of my wife’s patients. . .
But then, breaking the stillness, the roar of approaching engines: we are plagued round here with strangers in four-wheel-drive vehicles with aggressive and destructive Grabber tyres, charging round the byways and droveways as fast as they can, and heaven help anything that gets in their way. Even a bit of rain brings them out, just like slugs. They enjoy slipping and sliding in mud (the more liquid the better), and — best of all — getting stuck, so they can pull each other out. They wreck the lanes for horses and walkers. So much for my new universal benevolence.
One ought not to be so grumpy about other people’s fantasies, I suppose: they have their stories, too. But I do grieve over the ruined droveways, where a much younger me — with the family — used to cut good, rich, fescue hay for the pony who kept a teenage daughter out of mischief.
Gone are the wild flowers; and we now have deep, ankle-breaking ruts hidden by the luxuriant growth of late-summer burdock which the churning up of the ground makes possible. But the purple, nectar-rich flower heads do draw the red-admiral and peacock butterflies; and, to our delight, the humming-bird hawk moth, a rare visitor. Even off-roaders may be a blessing — though sometimes you need to look for it.
Onwards and upwards
THERE have been other visitors in these days of no driving and “no strenuous exercise” (whatever that may be). Thankfully, nobody brought the grapes traditionally deposited by the Bed of Pain, or “Get Well” cards; for I would not know what to do with either, and I am not in bed. But friends have been over, members of our congregation, the chaplain of my college.
My relationships seem to have been subtly changed by their prayers for me in these weeks. There is a new openness. I have never felt more strongly the actual truth in that old phrase of our being brothers and sisters in Christ, who rely on each other. Welcome indeed, these friends — each our godsibb, in Old English, our relative in God — bringing with them the easy, friendly gossip that we have so missed.
But visitors, however welcome, do not stay for ever. As we sat outside over our evening meal, it was suddenly clear that our beloved swifts, whose joyful (surely?) screams fill the summer sky at evening, had left for Africa. Here, they generally arrive about 5 May and leave about 5 August. When they go, you notice the nights beginning to draw in as the year ages — and, yes, that spell hors de combat was also a gentle reminder that “Nature’s copy’s not eterne.” But, as Dag Hammarsjköld wrote, “For all that has been, Thanks; for all that shall be, Yes!”
Dr Charles Moseley is a Life Fellow of Hughes Hall, Cambridge.
charlesmoseley.com