Memories

Bronze Ribbon

Bronze Ribbon

“And time has ticked a ribbon round the stars.” Dylan Thomas, sort of, but a perfect title for this painting that I completed this morning. The acrylic paint is still wet! I brought it downstairs, looked at it in the light from the kitchen window, and the colors had all changed. I angled the painting, then re-angled – it was a chameleon changing color in the shifting light. Then I turned the large ceiling lights on – and this is what I saw.

Exactly the same painting – or is it? When I was studying in Madrid, a long time ago, I visited the Prado every afternoon. Each day I would visit a different room and stay there for the duration of my visit. The tourists who flitted in and out amazed me with the brevity of their visits. A minute or two to see all the paintings by Hieronymous Bosch, for example. I sat in front of just one of them for half an hour – and I could have stayed longer.

When I visited Las Meninas, it stood in a room by itself. It had a full size mirror opposite it, on the far wall. I should add that this was long before it was cleaned and renovated. I looked at it from every possible angle. I drew close and squinted at the lace and wondered at the quality of the brush-strokes. I lay on the ground in front of it. Stood at the side. Watched it change as I changed my position. I discovered art as a living being, not a static moment in time. Imagine me, for a moment, kneeling on the ground, watching the young prince’s horse soar over the top of me, as it would have done, if it had occupied its original spot, angled above a doorway. Change the angle, change the perspective, change the painting, and watch it come alive.

I will never forget my days with Goya. His Disasters of War – wow – such an incredible sequence – took up several afternoons. And the Pinturas Negras – the Black Paintings – they still haunt me, as do the Disasters. Man’s inhumanity to man – not a dead set of etchings but living portraits of an evil that goes on and on. “This I have seen!” “And this!” Indescribable scenes. Words cannot do justice to the depth’s of the feelings generated by such works of art. When will we ever learn? I taught a great variety of students for most of my life and I know all too well that some lessons can never be learned. Like an endless loop on a news tape, people are doomed to repeat them, again and again, and again.

As the BBC Lion said as he finished his supper – “That is the end of the gnus.”
TWTWTW.

How much would you pay to go to the moon?

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How much would you pay to go to the moon?
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How much would you pay to go to the moon?

Exactly the same amount that I would pay to visit the Titanic in a Titan – zilch, nada, rien, nothing. Too risky. Not worth it. Too much carbon emission to damage the world around me. It’s only a thin envelope of air up there – pointless damaging it further. We have problems enough anyway.

And how much would it cost to fund a rescue mission if something went wrong? How much did it cost to search for the Titan for five days? I haven’t forgotten Apollo XIII, even if other people have.

No way, my friends, no way. No common or garden human being in his or her right mind would ever get into something like that. I notice you say ‘to go to the moon’. Is it a two way, return ticket, then? Does the lucky traveler also get to come back? Or is it a one way only trip and a journey of no return?

Don’t bother answering those questions. I am quite happy viewing the moon through my bedroom window. I wouldn’t go, even if you offered me a free ticket. Thanks, but no thanks. Not on my watch! I am not moonstruck!

What major historical events do you remember?

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What major historical events do you remember?
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What major historical events do you remember?

Interesting question, but very problematic. How do I define a “historical event”? What exactly do I mean when I say “I remember”? Max Boyce had a lovely song in which the chorus was “I wuz there.” If everybody who says they saw Llanelli defeat New Zealand in 1973 at Stradey Park had been there, there would have been 300,000 people pressed into a ground that held about 15,000. But, as Max Boyce sings, “I wuz there”. Well, in spirit, anyway, and I have seen the film several times. I also remember watching Jim Laker’s 19 wickets in the 1956 cricket Ashes. I watched that match on B&W TV. Does that count as an historical event that I remember?

How about the Battle of Hastings, 1066? In 1966, I ran in a road relay that led from Bristol to Stamford Bridge, where Harold defeated Harald Hadrada, down the main highway to The Trip to Jerusalem, where we stopped for a pint, down to Hastings, where we re-enacted the battle that saw William the Conqueror take the throne. Several of the runners wore Saxon uniforms, a couple even had long, blonde hair. We re-enacted two battles. Does that mean I remember that historical event?

Let us talk about Stonehenge. I first went there when there were no railings, no fences, and when sheep and cows could safely graze. I remember it well. And I remember creatively re-constructing, with my grandfather, the digging of the post-holes, the raising of the stones, the transportation of them, by ship and log rollers, from the Prescelli Mountains in Wales to their current resting place. As Max Boyce says, in my own mind, I was there. I was there too at the destruction of Maiden Castle. The first book I ever bought, age about six, was Sir Mortimer Wheeler’s autobiography, Still Digging. I can still feel that Roman ballista arrow going through the victim’s backbone. Does that count as a memory, as a presence, as a moment of reality?

The Conquest of Granada, the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, the later expulsion of the Moors, the Adventures of Don Quixote, the mixing of truth and reality, the questioning of authority, the inquiry into the meaning of meaning, my mother’s sister phoning me after 9-11. “What’s all the fuss about, Roger? There were only three planes. We had them every night, over here, during the London Blitz, for two long years.” What impresses itself upon the human consciousness. How do we remember things and why? The Spanish Armada -there were actually three of them -, the Peninsular wars in Spain, the battles of Trafalgar, Vimeiro, Salamanca… Then we can move on to Vimy Ridge, Ypres – Wipers, as my grandfather called it, his days in the trenches, recounted to me, in the kitchen, day after day, in vivid, lived language that still remains with me. And he would sing – “If you want the whole battalion, I know where they are, they’re hanging on the old barbed wire.” Yes, I was there with my grandfather. I remember it well. The Battle of the Atlantic, the Hunt for the Bismarck, the Battle of Britain – I sat in the cockpit of a Spitfire, a long time ago, during the Battle of Britain celebrations, and I climbed into and walked around the interior of a Lancaster.

Memory and the reconstruction of historic events, some we actually lived, and some we just dreamed of, and some we saw at the movies. What is memory – an actual happening or a creative reconstruct? What is the meaning of meaning? And read Bertrand Russell’s book on the subject before you answer that one. As for me, I was there, standing beside Max Boyce, witnessing the game, though, as he says, “a hundred thousand in the ground, and me and Roj outside.”

What are you most proud of in your life?

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What are you most proud of in your life?
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What are you most proud of in your life?

The young lady in the photograph above. We met, at a boarding school dance, in England, when we were both seventeen years old. We have been together ever since. Why am I so proud of her? Let me count the ways.

When she discovered my love of Spain and the Spanish language, she took time out from her own career in order to learn Spanish. When I asked her why she was learning the language, she replied ‘because if I am going to be with you, I want to share your life, and that means loving the things you love.’ We became engaged in Santander, Spain, on her 21st birthday. Then, the following year, when I received an offer to study and teach at the University of Toronto, she promised me that if I called her, she would come out and join me.

I called her as a Thanksgiving Gift from my Canadian family. She packed up her clothes and her career, bought a wedding dress, and travelled to Toronto that December. We got married on Christmas Eve. We had very little money. We didn’t have a wedding photographer. Nor did we have a honeymoon. I guess we never needed one. We had just enough money put by to last us until the end of January. So, First week of the New Year, she set out in search of a job. A qualified Diagnostic Radiographer, she was hired by the Doctor’s Hospital in Toronto, and she financed my graduate studies for the next three years.

Our next adventure was a Canada Council (as it was back then) Doctoral Fellowship that took us back to Spain where I completed the research for my thesis at the local library, with its trove of manuscript documents. We returned to Canada after two years, and took up residence in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where we still live. Her adventurous life led her to a certificate in accountancy, taken via a correspondence course. Then, she presented me with our daughter. We bought an American Cocker Spaniel and she started showing and grooming dogs, becoming Show Secretary of the Fredericton Kennel Club. She trained and groomed two Canadian Champions, an ASCOB (Willy) and a Parti-color (Smudge).

Our daughter decided she wanted to be a gymnast. Parents were requested to ‘get involved’ with the local club and my beloved became a gymnastics judge. She rose in the gym circles and became first provincial judging chairperson and then a nationally qualified judge, officiating at the National Gymnastics Championships and also at the Jeux du Canada Games.

She travelled with me to Oaxaca, Mexico, and fell in love with the Pre-Colombian Mexican Codices that we found there in abundance. She studied them carefully and then taught me all about them. I, in my turn, introduced them to my own students. When I took my first Multi-Media Courses at the University of New Brunswick, she followed them with me. The result was two-fold – our first web page which she built with with HTML, no templates in those early days, followed by our online Quevedo Bibliography. This, about ten years later, morphed into the online searchable data base that she built with the assistance of the technicians at the Digital Library in Harriet Irving Library.

Now, we are growing old together – such sweet sorrow. this Christmas we will celebrate 57 years of marriage. And yes, my beloved is still my most valuable Christmas present – and the person of whom I am most proud. I remember the old Worthington beer advertisement. “Behind every good man, there’s a good woman.” The cartoon shows a lady carrying a bottle of Worthington.

My beloved has stood behind me all my life. She has carried for me, not a bottle of Worthington, but the burden of assisting, helping, encouraging, supporting, carrying the load when it became too heavy for me. She has been a silent partner in so many ways, but one without whom I would be nothing.

Rites of Passage

Rites of Passage

Summer slid silently away. Autumn’s
harvest is upon us. Slowly the mountain ash
is stripped of its fruit, from top to bottom.

Robins flit from branch to branch until
the whole tree shakes with bouncing birds
pouncing on the few remaining berries.

Berries gone now. Leaves will soon follow.
The Farmer’s Almanac forecasts a long, cold
winter, filled with wind, ice, and snow.

All too soon, the deer will appear, ghosting
their silent steps at wood’s edge. They’ll arrive
at dusk and wander all night, just to keep warm.

At dawn, they’ll leave, having exercised their
ancient rites of passage, the routes engraved
in their racial memory since the dawn of time.

When my time is up, I too shall follow them
into the lonely silence of that long, wintry night.
Restless, or at peace, I’ll hope for dawn’s light.

What would you do if you lost all your possessions?

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What would you do if you lost all your possessions?
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What would you do if you lost all your possessions?

When I look at the growing number of refugees across the world, I wonder what would happen if such a disaster fell upon me. Then I look at the forest fires, out in Western Canada, in BC and Alberta, and wonder what we would do, what we would we pack, how would we manage, if the order to evacuate our home came suddenly upon us. When the Bocabec fires burned in New Brunswick, I felt the stress and distress of several of our close friends who were forced to evacuate. Then I thought that, really, it’s not a question of if, but of when. And this was my dream.

            … with my angel … face to face … the one I have carried within me since the day I was born … the black-one … winged like a crow … the one that hovers over me as I lie asleep … the one who wraps me in his feathered wings when I am alone and chilled by the world around me … the one who flaps with me on his back when I can walk no further and who creates the single set of footprints that plod their path through the badlands when I can walk no more …
            … ‘the truth’ my black angel says to me … I say ‘he’ but he is a powerful spirit, not sexed in any way I know it … and yet I think of him as ‘he’ …awesome in the tiny reflection he sometimes allows me to glimpse of his power and glory … for, like Rilke, I could not bear meeting his whole angelic being face to face … as I cannot bear the sun, not by day, and not in eclipse … not even with smoked glass … when earthly values turn upside down and earth takes on a new reality … wild birds and bank swallows roosting at three in the afternoon … and that fierce heat draining from the summer sky … I remember it well … and the dog whimpering as a portion of the angel’s wing erased the sun until an umber midnight ruled … a simple phenomenon, the papers said … the moon coming between the earth and the sun …but magic … pure magic … to we who stood on the shore at Skinner’s Pond and sensed the majesty of the universe … more powerful than anything we could imagine … and the dog … taking no comfort from its human gods … whimpering at our feet …
            … I saw a single feather floating down and knew my angel had placed himself between me and all that glory … to protect me … to save me from myself … and I saw that snowflake of an angel feather bleached from black to white by some small trick of the sunlight … and knowledge filled me … and for a moment I felt the glory … the magnificence … and there are no words for that slow filling up with want and desire as light filters from the sky and the body fills with darkness … and I was so afraid … afraid of myself … of where I had been … of where I was … of what I might return to … of my lost shadow … snipped from my heels …
            … I don’t know how I heard my angel’s words … ‘the time of truth is upon you’ … ‘all you have ever been is behind you now’ … ‘naked you stand here on this shore … like the grains of sand on this beach … your days are numbered by the only one who counts’ … I heard the sound of roosting wings … but I heard and saw nothing more … I felt only midnight’s cold when the chill enters the body and the soul is sore afraid …
            … ‘it is the law’ my angel said … I saw a second feather fall … ‘and the law says man must fail … his spirit must leave its mortal shell and fly back to the light’ … ‘blood will cease to flow … the heart will no longer beat … the spirit must accept and go’ … ‘do not assume… nobody knows what lies in wait’ … ‘blind acceptance … the only way … now …  in this twilight hour …  now when you are blind … only the blind shall receive the gift of sight’ … ‘all you have … your wife … your house … your car … your child … everything you think of as yours I own … and on that day … I will claim it from you and take it for my own … now I can say no more’ …
            … the sea-wind rose with a sigh and one by one night’s shadows fled … the moon’s brief circle sped from the sun … light returned, a drop at a time, sunshine flowing from a heavenly clepsydra filled with light …
            … birds ceased to circle … a stray dog saw a sea-gull and chased it back to sea … and the sun … source of all goodness … was once again a golden coin floating in the sky …
            … on my shoulder a feather perched … a whisper of warmth wrapped its protective cloak around my shoulders … for a moment, just a moment, I knew I was the apple of my angel’s eye … and I hoped and still hope that one day I might meet him again and understand …

Tell us about a time when you felt out of place.

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Tell us about a time when you felt out of place.
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Tell us about a time when you felt out of place.

A harder prompt might have been “Tell us about a time when you felt you really belonged”! On the outside looking in is the story of my life.

On the Outside Looking In …

            I walked home on my own. As usual. I’d hated the church Christmas party with all its trumped-up noise, childish games, and artificial gaiety.
            The priest, formidable yet effeminate in his long black skirted robe, had made us sit in a circle on the floor, legs crossed. He stood inside that circle and placed a bar of chocolate on the wooden boards. Then he walked around the group and whispered a word in each boy’s ear. 
            “You must wait until you hear your secret word,” he explained. “Then one of you, when I speak that word, may claim the chocolate bar,” he stared at us, large, horsey teeth, black hair streaked with grey, eyes golden, fierce, like an eagle’s, beneath bushy eye-brows. “When you hear your secret name, you must grab the chocolate bar. Understood?”
            I had come to the party on my own as both my parents worked. The mums and dads who had brought their offspring to the party leaned forward in keen anticipation. The boys all nodded.
            “Are you ready?” The priest watched us as we nodded and then he shouted “Alligator!”
            Nobody moved.
            “Elephant!” The boys shuffled forward, like inch worms, hands twitching, fingers flexing and grasping.
            “Tiger!” A sigh emerged from multiple mouths. Some of the boys licked their lips.
            “Lion!” One boy moved, but the priest shooed him away. “Sit down. That wasn’t your word.”
            “M-m-mouse!” The boys heaved, a sea-wave about to crest and break.
            “I do love this game,” said the priest to the parents. “And so do the boys, don’t you boys?”
            “Yes, father …” came the chorus.
            “Monkey!” All the boys leapt into springy action. They dived, crawled, leaped to their feet, ran … a surging heap of boyhood writhed on the floor as the chocolate bar was torn apart and the long-awaited fights ensued.
            All the boys moved, except me. I just sat there.
“I said ‘Monkey,’” the priest frowned at me. “That’s your word. When I say ‘Monkey’, you join in with the others and fight for the chocolate.”
            I shook my head.
            “Have some Christmas fun. Join in the game.”
            I again shook my head.
            “Why not?”
            “You’re just mocking us.  I want to go home,” I stood up and walked away. I stopped at the door and turned and saw the priest glaring at me while a mound of boys continued to scrummage on the floor.
            As I walked home, it started to snow. Not the pure white fluffy snow of a pretty Merry Christmas card, but the dodgy, slippery mixture of rain, snow, and ice pellets that turned the steep streets of that little seaside town into an ice rink. I turned up the collar of my coat, bowed my head, and stuffed my hands into my pockets. Two houses before my own, I stopped in front of our neighbor’s house.
The window shone like a beacon in the gathering dark. I drew closer, pressed my nose against that window and looked in. A Christmas tree, decorated with lights, candles, more decorations, a fire burning on the hearth, two cats curled up warm before the fire, presents beneath the tree, stockings hanging from the mantelpiece. For a moment, my heart unfroze and I felt the spirit of Christmas. Then I thought of my own house. Cold and drafty. No lights, no decorations. No fire. The snowball snuggled back into my chest and refused to melt.
            When I got home, our house stood chill and empty. My parents were out at work and the fire had died. Nothing was ready for Christmas. I sat at the kitchen table, took out my colouring book and began to draw. When my mother came home, I showed her my drawing.
            “Very nice,” she said without looking up.
            “But mum, you haven’t really seen it.”
            She blinked and stared at the picture. This time, she saw the Christmas tree and the lights, the cats and the candles, the decorations and the presents. But she never noticed the little boy standing outside the house in the falling sleet, peering in through the window.

What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?

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What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?
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What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?

This dragon is not a dragon, well, it’s not a Welsh Dragon anyway. So, let us change the question – What aspects of your cultural heritage are you least proud of? Now that changes the perspective totally. I guess that I am least proud of the fact that, although born in Wales, I was never allowed to speak Welsh as a child. I speak with an English accent because I was sent to school in England so I wouldn’t even speak English like a person born in Wales. I am not proud of that aspect of my cultural heritage.

But I am proud of one little thing that stems from that Welsh cultural heritage – learning how to speak Welsh in my old age. It’s not easy to do that, here in Canada, but the internet carries many blessings, one of which is the learning of ‘foreign’ languages. Strange that Welsh should be considered a foreign language for somebody born in Wales. Something else not to be proud of, I suppose. Here’s my story.

Here I sit, an old man now, in front of my computer, learning at last my mother tongue, Welsh. I have discovered the beauty of simple words, not so much their meaning as their sound, the way they flow, the poetry of remembered rhythms: Cwmrhydyceirw, the Valley of the Leaping Stag, though legend has it that ceirw was really cwrw, and cwrw is beer, and its real name was the Valley of the Brown Stream Frothing like Beer.

Words have their own music, even if you cannot pronounce them properly: Mae hi’n bwrw glaw nawr yn Abertawe / it’s raining now in Swansea. Mae’r tywydd yn waeth heddiw / the weather’s worse today. Bydd hi’n dwym ddydd Llun / it will be warm on Monday. Place names also have their own magic: Llantrisant, Llandaff, Dinas Powis, Gelligaer, Abertawe, Cas Newydd, Pen-y-bont … Meaning changes when you switch from one language to another:  gwyraig ty / a housewife, gwr ty / a househusband, a concept of equality that has ruled Welsh lives since long before Julius Caesar invaded Albion, coming from Gaul with his legions in 55 BC.

The photographer asks me to smile. He wants me to say ‘cheese’ so I say it in French [fromage], then Spanish [queso], then Italian [formaggio]. “No, no, no,” he shakes his head. “I want to catch the real you. Try again.” So I say it in Welsh [caws]. He checks the memory card in his camera and looks puzzled.

“Your facial expression changes each time you speak a different language,” he tells me. “Please, won’t you just say ‘cheese’ in English? I want the real you.”

French, Spanish, Italian, then Welsh: all different and he wants the real me. Each language carves a new a map into my face.  Am I a clown, then, a comedian, a chameleon to wear so many masks and to slip so easily from one to another? And who am I, this stranded immigrant, marooned on a foreign shore that has finally become my home? Who or what is the real me?

“Cheese!” I say in desperation. “Got it,” he grins. “At last, I have captured the real you.”

What’s your #1 priority tomorrow?

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What’s your #1 priority tomorrow?
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What’s your #1 priority tomorrow?

I have a couple of priorities, of course. I am not sure which is #1. Maybe I’ll ask the readers to tell me which one my top priority should be.

I guess my first priority is to wake up. That is very important at my age. A couple of my friends went to bed and never woke up. So, I guess an important priority, perhaps #1, is to actually wake up.

Having woken up, my next priority is to roll over, sit up, pull back the blankets, and actually attempt to get out of bed. This isn’t always easy. My back sometimes stiffens up overnight. Or else my hips don’t want to function. Then there’s the gammy knee I hurt playing rugby all those years ago. Then there’s the quality of the light – do I need a light on? If I do, I must reach for it without cramping up. Early morning cramp is not a good thing and really complicates the next step.

If I am in the high bed, then lowering legs, touching the floor with toes, and using arms to push up the rest of the way is relatively easy. But if I am in the low bed, I must turn sideways towards my bad knee, place my feet at an angle, and do a one handed pushup in order to find the right balance to get to my feet. That means watching out for slippery carpets. I do not want to fall. Sometimes I call on the aid of my faithful teddy bear and, by half throttling him, I manage to get that extra leverage.

Oh dear, I forgot another priority – condition of ageing bladder. All of the above activities are dependent upon the state of the union. If that is a problem, then I must call for assistance – and I hate doing that.

Next priority – the trip to the bathroom. I wish I hadn’t said ‘trip’, because sometimes I do. The effects of that can be a sudden grasp at something solid, a stubbed toe, a twisted something or other, or, worst of all, another fall. We certainly don’t want that to happen, especially if we are suffering from what Max Boyce [remember him?] once called ‘twisted legs and tails’.

Other priorities follow when we have reached the bathroom. I won’t go into those. Nor will I mention the perils of the return journey, the difficulties of getting dressed, the embarrassment when I fail with the patented sock-pull machine and have to wiggle my socks off, one by one, and then put them on again.

So, here I am, fully dressed, standing at the top of the stairs… one hand on the hand-rail, one hand on my trusty walking-stick, and down I go, hopefully one step at a time.

So: What’s my #1 priority tomorrow? You tell me. Which would you choose? And before you answer, just remember Dylan Thomas’s words ‘for whether we last the night or no, is surely only touch and go’. Touch and go, tip and run – I remember them well. And luckily I remember waking up this morning. I would hate to face the alternative – not waking up.

What brands do you associate with?

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What brands do you associate with?
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What brands do you associate with?

I have been thinking about my parents a great deal recently. Earlier this week it was my my mother’s birthday. She would have been 110 years old. Funny how, as we age, our own minds turn back to the past. So, today’s prompt – What brands do you associate with? – gets an instant answer – none really.

And yet, and yet, there is one. A long, long time ago, my father let me into a big secret: all the shops in our little sea-side town had signs that announced – Jones and Son, or Roberts and Son, or Edwards and Son. “Well, son,” he said, “I have a son, and it’s you. It is time I showed you my little secret.” He took out his pen, unscrewed the cap, and carefully drew an M. Then he drew a W beneath it, taking care that the ends joined neatly. Finally he drew the letter J. It bisected the letters so that the drawing in my painting above was produced: blue-black ink on white paper. “What is it dad?” I asked. “It’s my brand,” he proudly said. “Those are my initials. “I would love to establish something, use this as a brand name, and have ‘and Son‘ written beneath it.”

I didn’t understand. I can’t remember how old I was, but it was in the days when Shorty the Deputy [I pronounced it De-Putty, much to the amusement of my elders] Sherriff ruled the range in my colored comic books. “A brand? Why do you want a brand? Are you going to own a ranch and brand your cattle?” That ended the conversation. The brand was never mentioned again, until, now, but I have never forgotten it.

So, there is one brand with which I associate myself, my father’s brand. I entitled the painting remeMBEr in honour of my father, of his failed dreams, and of the dreams he achieved, including the initials MBE [Member of the British Empire]. The medal itself, together with the letter from King George VI is included among my family treasures. So, there we go – that’s the brand I associate with, my father’s brand.