Where the Rivers Meet

Friday 11/12/2020

I might write easily about the town I call home (close and familiar all my life). Here the river Cocker (twelve miles from it’s source at the head of the Buttermere valley) runs into the Derwent, which carries its waters (another nine miles) out to the coast. I’ve grown to see the town’s subtleties as worthy of protection and preservation. The floods that struck the town, in years gone by, took homes from folks, and broke businesses, but (overall, I believe) they didn’t shake the place’s identity.

I may go meta (here) about meetings. I have been hearing, and reading (In Martin Buber’s I and Thou) about the worlds that we connect in, and the ways that we connect; we: natural beings, human beings, and (if you’ll let me have it) spiritual beings. I am taking liberties.

I did not grow up espousing the hills and vales that hemmed me in, nor the bards of the lakes that haunted their clouded tops and low hanging mists. Those poets that garnered popularity, and whose fame endured; they seemed to me to be the antithesis of everything edgy, that (from my tens through to my twenties plus) desperately (and successfully) demanded my attention. They made their own impressions, though (the landforms and their lovers). I might yet make a friend of Coleridge’s inquiring spirit.

The climate here (socially) has never felt as foreign to me, as it does now. Familiar faces are (essentially?) obscured, and (though this country’s people are often recognised as being self-restrained) some of us seem to be overcome by a distant manner that isn’t inherent. Every thing does change, and I imagine (hope, maybe) that every flu and fad floats over and away from something more lasting and substantial. All that said, I am not at all averse to fashion or import, and any strange day (be it haunted or blessed) is rarely not improved by the use…or misuse (I am guilty) of the popular Japanese poetic form (the Haiku).

I often take a quiet moment, at the place (pictured) where the rivers meet.
Sitting there (with myself, with nature, or with spirit) I doubt it would be terribly foolish to try to do the form justice, and pen 17 syllables that breathe out the movement of the moment and the feel of the season.

Clouds covered the whole face of the sun, today, and I stayed a little further inside my own mind than I might usually. The closest I came to inspiration was in reverie of a fond carefree complacency…actually in solemn recognition of its absence from the conversation shared with a family friend that I chanced to meet on the street.

we hover and see

nothing touching lightly but

clouds meeting pavements

I and Thou, Me and Thee

Thursday 10/12/2020

I backed and forthed on WordPress for some time.
I am here now, I believe, in an attempt to relieve…
Is it lonliness?
I don’t believe my world is overpopulated. Our world…may be.
My first post here was (possibly) unintroductory and uninformatory, so
I shall expand upon "I and Thou" and also "Antinomian".

I and Thou

I and Thou seemed to me…
to be a rather less bumpkiny way of saying "me and THEE."

Martin Buber’s work Ich and Du (I and Thou)…(I must confess) is barely familiar.

Usually priced at £17.23, it seemed like an excellent use of one Audible credit.

Bronson Pinchot(!) narrates Walter Kaufmann’s translation of Ich and Du — I and Thou.
In Kaufmann’s prologue (I and You) he clarifies that Thou is…not…very similar to the German Du.

“German lovers say Du to one another,

and so do friends.”

I wonder, then, if Me and thee may have done (as well…for myself)…and also wonder…

whether it is a very strange thing for a kind…friend (friend?) of mine, to be asking…

“…Kay. How art thou?”

anon 🙂

Kaufmann suggests (I am not quoting directly)…that Buber’s work found popularity with a particular brand of anti-sentimental, pseudo-intellectual, overgrown adolescent, that would…

“…talk of Heidegger, usually without having read him.”

Well, I will not talk about Buber, but have so-far enjoyed hearing what Kaufmann has to say about him, and when I’ve come beyond Kaufmann’s prologue, I may even wish to read along.

Now to Antinomian…

Antinomian

adjective

denoting or relating to antinomians or their beliefs.

definition from Oxford Languages

I shouldn’t like to be called an antinomian…

noun

a person who believes that Christians are…

some “definition”

The term antinomianism does have both religious and secular meanings, and could (should?) connote (lawlessness?…or at least…) the rejection of legalistic notions of obedience.

On…another note, I am looking forward to hearing Max Richter’s Voices on BBC Radio 3 at 7:30pm this evening.

VOICES is 56 minutes of music for orchestra, choir, electronics, solo soprano, solo violin and solo piano.  The orchestra is a radically reimagined ensemble called a “negative orchestra”. As the world has been turned upside down, so have the proportions of this orchestra. It is nearly all basses and cellos.

In addition to readings by a narrator, hundreds of readings of the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights in dozens of languages have been sourced from all over the world. These readings are the aural landscape that this music flows through: they are the VOICES of the title.

from https://www.maxrichtermusic.com/albums/voices/

I can’t imagine this world free of diseases, and I can’t imagine this world (or indeed, our universe) free of tyranny.
I do thank…goodness for these creative geniuses that seem to somehow manage to minister their all-embracing imaginations. And I am thankful, too, to whoever did hang that colourful bunting (pictured) at St. Cuthbert’s in Embleton, sharing hope, and sharing hopes for health.

Three Views of a Spire

Wednesday 9/12/2020

There is a painting on my wall. The scene: a green and tan-toned skyline formed from robust ag-ed English trees

trees line walls

walls — seams

seams between pasture and residence

residences unseen

unseen beyond the trees,

and Jutting —

into a mass of (only dark enough to suggest a cooling breeze) clouds — nearly white…ivory page pronouncing from thin…blue…sky…

The Spire — of All Saints: the artist’s inspiration for this painting (I dare say), and for another fine painting of Old Cockerm’th.

That painting’s foundation is the river (wide and low) and

Now the fields that (all that time ago) stretched wide and green

are built (or being built) upon.

---

We look down Kirkgate to the spire for the second time this hump day afternoon.

The van’s engine misfires, or the plugs…fail…to start…to glow. I don’t know.

The red clamp clicks onto its vinegary terminal. The black’n sparks off of a ruddy bolt, and the jump-starter clicks-in heart-shrinkingly, un-affectingly ineffective…ly.

She is a Thursday’s child, lending her time (and her borrowed booster pack) to me. She always has a place to be.

I concede (after repeated re-calibrations) to one…final…try… and I look again, up at that spire, imagining Doctor Frankenstein’s fate-delivering bolt (some power that had), but no such power (for me or mine), until I’m quite alone, unrushed, and

leafing the meager paperwork, I find no further clue to the age or frailty of my bled battery. I scrubbed up most it’s chalky seepage, before,

before the final try, and before mustering grace to say good– bye without betraying (needless) woe.

What is IS, so come on, and tidy round (the papers, paper cups, and greasy rags). Oh just… one…last…go… and (GO) it did.

I drove (recharging) around Bass Lake. I’ve known (this) for some time, I must refrain from asking “…why?”

I hark back to our first meeting (where?)…way back there…(when?)…way back…then.

He prompts (teasingly) “Who?”

I…and Thou

here

(and)

now