Rumours of Beauty from However Far Away (From The Book of Wonder, by Lord Dunsany, 1912)

 

The story always begins in the middle. Where it matters most.

No one sees the fallen branches next to a river till they fall in. Till they become driftwood.

Just like the middle of a story when we realize that it is time to become driftwood. To let time find us accepting what we have become. Because we always become what we once were. Driftwood is still a fallen branch.

… In my student dormitory I had a few posters on the walls. One was from Lord Dunsany, the prolific Anglo-Irish writer and poet whose lines had resonance in my days as a young man. The poster I had the opening lines from his poem “Where the Tides ebb and flow” (circa 1910)

The ebb came
And I saw the dead eyes of the houses
And the jealousy of other forgotten things
That storm had not carried thence.

The poster faced my bed and every night those words helped me dream. Of all that my life’s storms had not carried away.

Instead, these memories remained untouched, like the fallen branches next to a river that no one notices.

Till the branches become driftwood. And the river celebrates their journey.

… More than 40 years after these graduate student days, I thought about Lord Dunsany. This time when I came across new lines from him that I had not read before. But this time, his words did not made me rejoice about what life’s storms had not carried away. Rather, they made me think about the story that starts in the middle, when a river carries fallen branches. And makes them driftwood.

Here is the passage I read from his “The Book of Wonder”

“Yet in the blood of man there is a tide, an old sea-current rather, that is somehow akin to the twilight, which brings him rumours of beauty from however far away, as driftwood is found at sea from islands not yet discovered: and this spring-tide or current that visits the blood of man comes from the fabulous quarter of his lineage, from the legendary, the old; it takes him out to the woodlands, out to the hills; he listens to ancient song.”

The ancient song. From lineage. The jealousy of forgotten things that were thought to be forgotten. But they never are.

 PS/ Photo of a humble stream in downtown Prescott following autumnal rain.

September 16, 2022

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2022

Saxum Volutum Non Abducitur Musco

 

 

I was recording random thoughts on my laptop when an old friend from England sent me an email.

“Yet another change we have been allowed to witness – even the Queen of England is mortal” he wrote.

I have known him for many decades. I wrote of another communication with him a decade ago which has been read around the globe (https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2014/09/veronicas-veil_2.html).

“You recall the old saying that rolling stone does not gather moss? You have been a rolling stone and I assume you have been through a lot of change in all the places where you did not g row roots. For us, many have their roots in England and her history, so this is a major event.”

… Here is what I was writing on the screen when his email arrived:

Misfortune or Fortuna?

 

In the shade

Of a pine tree

Next to the sea

I left a note

For me to read

So I sent it to him.

“Your timing is impeccable. My mind was in the past, next to the bluest sea, wondering if it is fortune or misfortune to have been a rolling stone. “

“It is always both of those things” he replied in his usual manner. “You have the ability to not feeling lonely. So, it is a fortune. But do you sometimes wonder about belonging?”

Hmm.

I took my time to respond.

“I do not belong to material things or to trees, oceans and rainbows over mountains. I probably belong to the moment with people. That is what stays with me to be grateful to have had those moments, to learn about ideas, feelings and eventually about myself. Funny, in some ways it is like photography – being in that moment and capturing it as a blessing is always in shades of gray.”

“Ah, your love of B&W photography that goes beyond taking photos. It is a life philosophy, isn’t it?”

… Not gathering moss.

“Tell me” I said “what is moss for you?”

“Well, in its larger meaning it would be belonging. If you move around, willingly or by necessity, you do not belong to any of the places you moved to and from. Yes, you would gather joy, sorrow, and perhaps wisdom from the passages, but you will have had no time to growing roots. Or perhaps simply growing. Does that make you devoted of that joy I have of following my favorite football team for years, having bitter beer, or hearing “God save the King”? Simple things that often can mean a lot and make gathering moss a needed human path to inner comfort.”

And then he added:

“In those lines you were writing when I knocked at your door, what did you write on the note that was destined to you?”

I could not resist:

“If you had not interrupted my train of thought by your email, I was about to discover that myself!”

 

September 8, 2022

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2022