 |
| Sunday walk to Rokko Farm (3.5km, not a vending machine in sight!) |
Back late to the mountain after a first day's teaching, with Justin sleeping rather fitfully across the room, I lack the energy needed to complete the new piece I was intending to publish today. In its place, prompted perhaps by the news of yet more dramatic shaking around Fukushima—the anthropomorph in me wants to ask Poseidon whether he doesn't think those poor souls up North have suffered enough?—and by the countless moral quagmires of Lybia, Gaza, Yemen, Bahrain and Ivory Coast, I offer a piece originally served up in November 2008, which is mostly a vehicle for a Raph McTell cover. Music and literature will solve none of these problems, but they do provide perspective, and make things a little easier to bear: enjoy!
An interest in life...
This I found yesterday at the beginning of Graham Greene's novel Our Man in Havana, which happened to be sitting on Ayumi's bookshelf at her parent's home, and which I picked up faute de mieux.
—I could give you a medical certificate, said Dr. Hasselbacher.
—Do you never worry about anything?
—I have a secret defence, Mr Wormold, I am interested in life.
—So am I, but...
—You are interested in a person, not in life, and people die or leave us — I'm sorry; I wasn't referring to your wife. But if you are interested in life, it never lets you down. I am interested in the blueness of the cheese. You don't do crosswords, do you, Mr Wormold? I do, and they are like people, one reaches an end. I can finish any crossword within an hour, but I have a discovery concerned with the blueness of cheese that will never come to a conclusion — although of course one dreams that perhaps a time may come...One day I must show you my laboratory.
—I must be going, Hasselbacher.
—You should dream more, Mr Wormold. Reality in our century is not something to be faced.
[The fact that Dr. Hasselbacher's optimism is later ruined by the shallow carelessness of the protagonist Wormold does not detract from the hope the paragraph conveys.]
Summer Lightning
The second item, only tangentially related, is a song by Ralph McTell called Summer Lightning. It was on the B-side of Streets of London—when there still were B-sides—and was McTell's only real hit (in 1974). Unlike Streets, which is quite mawkish, this song has a simplicity and private sincerity to it that makes it more appealing. The important thing is the message.
Here's the text:
Move over here, c'mon sit down beside me,
Come closer now, come and put your arms, put your arms around me,
You've had a bad day too, and I feel the same as you, c'mon sit down.
It's just that when I get mad I end up saying things if I thought about I wouldn't ever say,
And I think that you already know that, though I'll say it anyway, I'll say it anyway...
(repeated)
Don't let the day go down, the two of us still fighting,
It's not a storm at all, no, it's only summer lightning,
And we've still got the night, so there's time to put it right...
...let's go to bed.
Comments