Thinking of Japan...

My friend Sonia from http://soniaswonderworld.blogspot.com/ lives in Tokyo, and I've been thinking and thinking of Sonia and her husband and their relatives this morning, after the dreadful disaster of the biggest earthquake Japan has ever suffered and the resulting Tsunami.

Watching the devastation on the television and knowing that there must have been devastating loss of life is just heartbreaking.  Because we now have the internet and worldwide television coverage , it brings the disaster right into our homes...right into our hearts, and our hearts go out to all the people affected and suffering.

And we are reminded that we are all made of the same stuff, that we are all members of this humankind and as such when our neighbours suffer we are each of us changed, a reminder too of how at times like these we are small against the might of Nature.

My Grandmother on my Father's side looked as I remember her, almost exactly like Maggie Smith when she's playing the part of the Dowager Countess of Grantham, in the series, 'Downton Abbey'.
 Nannie had been a teacher and always wore a tweed suit, quite long in the skirt and jacket, worn with a fine lawn-cotton blouse, high buttoned, with a silver brooch or a cameo at the neck.  She was apparently one of the first ladies to graduate in Mathematics, in those days women were newly admitted to less than a handful of universities and even when they won the tripos they could not claim the degree,  but only to have passed the degree examination!  She must have been quite feisty to have managed to persuade her parents to allow her to go on to further education.  Especially as this was around 1890, way before women could vote and girls were expected to marry and be a dutiful wife.  Nannie was the youngest of four girls, her eldest sister Great Aunt Lily also became a teacher and remained a spinster all her life, Lily was allegedly more than a little barmy, serving up cakes she'd stored for months all covered with green-mold to my brother and sister when they were little.   The middle sisters I know very little about, and all three siblings were deceased by the time I was born.  Nannie met my Grandfather when she was in London at University, though quite how they met...I wish I knew. I only know that he was policeman, one of the Peelers, as they were known and as policemen were required to work seven days a week with only 5 days unpaid holiday a year, it's a wonder they managed to meet at all!

There's me in the middle aged about fifteen, my mother on the left and of course Nannie on the right.

And there she is in her hat and gown.

The Times newspaper called it, 'a thing of heart-stopping beauty', it's been a long time since I watched a film that left me still thinking about it the next morning.  'A Single Man' is about love.  About grief and fear and growing older, yet also about being alive in the moment.

How lax we are, how we forget to cherish the little things encountered every day, small moments encapsulated. They seem gilded within and time-stopping just for a fraction, just for a thought, just for that fleeting flash. The hushed silence of falling snowflakes, Spring sunlight upon ivy, a solitary duck flying low calling out, a kaleidoscope of vibrant flowers, the look in another person's eyes. We need to remember...to remind ourselves to catch hold of those treasures, to awaken to them.  Living is so slippery, so ephemeral, things pass us by in the batting of an eyelash, the glimmer of a sunbeam, the fading of a rainbow. This morning I wrote in a notebook I keep, 'Our lives are so transitory, I need to write down those small moments just as they happen - even if I only write one word, or one line.  If I enclose those fleeting seconds here in ink they can't slip away from me.  They're here, held for a while longer, until the book is destroyed.  Yet, even then...should they by chance have made it to another mind they survive and move onwards maybe to help someone else who was in need of a reminder that we should live our lives as if this were our last day, like George the main character in 'A Single Man'.  We need to remember we are only here for this moment.....and this moment..........and this moment. 

In the words of Alan & Marilyn Bergman, written for James Newton Howard's song, 'Places that belong to you.'                              
 "Tomorrow may never come, for all we know."

I Jest.

I can remember now, a visit from a lady who was a Psychic, smilingly she told me, 'You are the Jester.'  I was taken aback at first thinking she meant I was a fool, but she went on to explain that the Jester actually was far from foolish, indeed he held a privileged position.  It was he who made everyone laugh, licensed to play the fool and cleverly made them believe he was a buffoon but who was actually privy to secrets and was the only one who dared utter bad news to the Monarch. Back in Mediaeval times the Jester was chosen for his keen insight and it was believed he was inspired with poetic and prophetic powers.
 Fortunately my moustache and beard aren't as bushy as this - I've already got the red tights and I don't mind wearing bells should the Queen need me, for the wedding! http://www.oceansbridge.com/oil-paintings/product/56641/keyingupthecourtjester1875

Even her shadow has grey

Morning.
Morning sky - pearl-grey, an opal horizon against which bare, black branches lattice, lace-like, like fish-net stockings.

I used to think I was robust, a tomboy you can see it in the photograph.  I was Robin Hood never Maid Marion, Buffalo Bill not Annie Oakley, the Prince not Cinderella.  Now, I can look back and realise I was actually quite fragile, not made of stern-stuff but a broken reed, probably more like Beth than Joe in 'Little Women'. My hero was Katherine Hepburn when in reality it might have been better to have been Virginia Woolf. Unlike Ginny tho' at the last moment something snatched me back from the brink.  Funnily enough my Mum said that after I was born she took me to see her Grandmother by that time very old and wizened.  When she was told my name she apparently said, "Oh..don't call her that, they'll call her Ginny!".

To my knowledge throughout my sixty-one years not one person has ever called me Ginny!
Funny that.

I grew up listening to Rachmaninov.  Late at night this was the wonderful music that would play over and over again in my brother's room. Being my big brother by over eight years I was 'Titch' to him, but he was artistic and handsome and sophisticated to me. His shoes were hand-made leather boots when everyone else wore winkle-pickers, his waistcoat was mustard-yellow and his hands made jewellery.  His trade was Artisan Jeweller he was an alchemist of silver and gold, he painted portraits and was a wizard at mending clocks.
Today... he has reached his seventieth birthday.

We moved from the Big house when I was five, but up until that time I slept in the smallest bedroom, right next to the dark door behind which ran the stairs to the attic. My Mother told me I would regularly wake up during the night, crying that I couldn't breathe, that something was choking me, and funnily enough  I can clearly remember the sense of foreboding I felt when I had to descend the grand staircase when alone. There was a door to a bedroom directly at the top of the stairs, it was my elder sister's room, beyond which was the bathroom I think.  Each time I would reach the spot where I had my back to the rooms, my hand upon the handrail and I'd be overwhelmed by a presage of something black, dark, sinister even, yet I knew I had to descend to get away.  To this day I have a distinct recall of flight. Somehow, some way my childish stepping became fleet, flight even! Yes, in the sense of winged, it felt like a swoop, a glide and I was in the entrance hall at the bottom of the stairs. I can't explain it.

The door to the attic opened outwards on to the landing and then the narrow steps led upwards into the rooms. It's funny I don't remember feeling frightened up there.  There were trunks and old cases full of clothes belonging to my fathers long dead Aunts, the usual trumpery, hats with tattered feathers, broken fans, ancient musty handbags, old shoes.  All Dad's India photographs black and white, sliding about in a small suitcase and all his uniform from the army. It was dark, no window that I remember only a light bulb and the smell of old things and moth-balls and times gone by. There wasn't anything menacing up there,whatever it was, it was only on the staircase and landing.