He was a colleague, a teacher like me. He was into the occult, was making drawings for a tarot card deck and was a good friend of David Icke’s. I liked him. He ate apple pie and custard in the office and consumed copious amounts of garlic to ward off colds. He talked about sighting jays. They’re omens, he said. Powerful. Not necessarily bad. Just a warning that something big, important is going to happen. I’ve seen maybe two or three. I saw one again yesterday. Outside my bedroom window. A flash of white, the underwing. Then that lovely almondy-pink plumage of the body. When I saw one in Bath it stayed in the tree above me. This one was looking for something, diving into undergrowth, only to reappear again. We shall see. We shall see. I am more ambivalent these days. Learning to yield, to accept what is. Not going digging, searching, even to the point of walking past Mysteries. We shall see.
Cold. I struggle with it. I remember those months in Norway. Not enough light. The grey. The interminable grey and the cold. This morning the frost glittered on the pavement, the promenade benches. There was no one, no one about, save a young man in a parka, his hood up, smoking. I said good morning but there was nothing, nothing back. I wore three pairs of gloves, two hats, a hoodie and a hood this morning. And my big, impossibly expensive Norwegian coat. I wrote to her once suggesting that she might like to contribute to its cost, by way of a Christmas present. I heard nothing back. The cold and the dark bring on a blueness that penetrates all I do. I accept it. It is my melancholy. I welcome it in. Finding comfort where I can. The smell of bread, of coffee, the little two bar heater in the studio, hot water bottles……there is enough. I think about people without. Without in this cold.
Desert Island Discs with Emma Bridgewater. A jolly person, buoyant, a lover of life. Clearly. She cried when recounting her mother’s suffering and hers. Always leave room for the miraculous, her mother used to say. I like that. It made me smile. Absolutely. Thank you, I will.
45 years. Just finished watching it last night. Beautiful yet excruciatingly sad. So little said. It was all in the face, Charlotte Rampling’s face. And that stark Norfolk flatness, I love it. He doesn’t.
You see there is so much. Amidst all the internal struggle, there is so much. So much to be thankful for and I am. I am. I promise.
