Being still...

I have to remind myself I am not invincible!

Hello dear ones, thank you, once again, for sparing precious moments of your time to be here with me, I hope you know how appreciated and welcome you are.

Urgh, that was a dodgy week… despite both flu and Covid tests being negative I have felt exactly as if they shouldn’t have. The days trembled in fresh crisp air under a glistening sun and I with them. Some battles are lost before they begin… Damn my treacherous body!

And oh how the sun mocked me, shining its brightest wintery warmth in an azure sky while I’ve shivered in layers of wool and woe! Damn its treacherous oblivion!

In my, albeit temporary, unusually still state I have been working on the story I mentioned last week, more precisely I rewrote or edited every word. Evidently, the writing of a story, no matter that it is finished in thought is going to be a slow and frustrating process. Let’s just say, it is becoming. Though when it will finish becoming is a wildly open question!

By Friday I am entirely done-in, it is a relief to just sit in silence on a comfortable chair with no mind at all watching in hope for the forecast snow to begin falling.

It is said that the Inuit have more than one hundred words for snow. It is more likely they simply have more ways to describe snow because living in a land that is so often covered in it, words and names evolve, either way I am intrigued…

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“But sometimes the world disrobes, slips its dress off a shoulder, stops time for a beat. If we look up at that moment, it's not due to any ability of ours to pierce the darkness, it's the world's brief bestowal. The catastrophe of grace.” ― Anne Michaels

‘Try to be still’ wrote

David Knowles

instructing on how to meet a short-eared owl, I have been still this week, more still than I would like—albeit for only one day—and, the owls have been calling. Perhaps not Davids short-eared owls but there they are, the owls, all hidden wisdom on hidden perches. Even in the bright light of day. I feel honoured, I feel small, advice again given by David. I am still.

But, it is a forced stillness, I begrudge its unyielding presence in my aching immobile limbs. Even the remotest signal from the control room is received in a muffled distorted monologue; a siren in distant fog. Cerebellum machinations are overheated, out of control, too much red-hot flame—then, too much ice—to instruct fluidly, to instruct at all, they are incapable of sending either serene or coherent—much needed—soliloquy.

I leave feverish—contagious—breath trailing between bed and chair, wholly believing in death during the many hours of one night.

I dream in this feverish, nebulous state; a multicoloured, cinematic love story of poetry and mysterious animals, half human, half ghost who write words in the night sky through the stars and the planets, they are writing my story. The words appear so clearly, are so realistic I am certain I will find the entire book when I next gaze upon them.

I cast my eyes to the constellations many times in the evenings that follow but not a single word appears. I think it is likely I simply don’t understand the language they have written but I hope to learn.

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Korembi and the whispers of old beech sharing their stories… one morning this week, I don’t remember which, all were golden, all were brief.

I am mocked and flagging still and it is only Wednesday…

Whilst I never ask any favours of the sun, I do believe that had I known of the treachery my body would perform this week amidst the necessity to keep going despite apathetic limbs, I may have asked the sun to hold back its rays until my bones and brain were rewired in the correct manor to profit from its golden presence. Surely it would have felt less like betrayal if body and sky were singing the same songs.

Those faces! “be kind and gentle to the pig”

Early on Thursday, the wind has yet to rise, the sun also. From my own sheep field I hear the sounds of three farms waking; from the highest buildings on the hill the farmer is calling his cows, his wife—less kindly—is calling him. From the château the young tenant farmer lets out the owners dogs and starts his tractor to warm the engine, I know he will be smiling—he has good reason—he has a new and very pretty, twinkly-eyed love. Below me in the valley, one hundred pigs are being fed. A normal beginning to a normal day, it is welcomed, the fog is clearing.

I am once again faced with the work of a revered work colleague—as said previously and not to be forgotten, I revere all teachers—who has succumbed to this particularly virulent flu. She sends me her schedule for the day which is nothing less than terrifying. But, on arrival at the school from the bottom of the stone tower I hear a string of expletives from those that are left unscathed.

“Putain de merde, tu me fait chier!”¹

The printer is broken… again. The technician will not answer his phone and all planned lessons have to be taught ad-lib. Hooray! This I can do, though I try not to smile too hugely!

By the end of the day, all conjugating and geometry forgotten, my temporary class imagine and draw arms—amidst much laughter—on the Venus de Milo to an image I project onto the whiteboard. Continuing part of the educational set curriculum we talk about trees, they learn—in addition, in silent awe—of symbiosis and the conversations that pass between roots, pollen and odour, how counting and studying the rings inside their branches and trunks can tell of their age and climate. And, at the end of they day the sit silently watching a video about the architectural feat of engineering that is construction of Le Pont de Millau. We compare it to Le Pont du Gard which turns into a far too lively discussion on how stone could be lifted to such heights by the romans. In answer to their rowdy questions and disputes I find another video and succeed in ending the day on a calm note.

This is not the case on Friday however.

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It wasn’t a lot, but in the gloom of iron coloured sky I wonder, do snowflakes, once turned to water remember what they once were?

Iktsuarpok (Inuit), meaning anticipation, as in the excitement of an old friend arriving.

Or waiting for snow, which is the feeling I have curling up on a comfortable chair Friday night. I rise from my seat countless times to peer through the window in hope of seeing snow flakes fall. Again, there are none, though the night sky has an ominous yellow tint in the blackness and in acquiescence of the fog of residual malady and exhaustion, sleep finally overwhelms me.

I wake to silence glowing through the shutters, snow flakes are falling, I know without looking that the dawn light is filled with them. Oh but it is disappointing snow, I see drips, dripping from gutters and branches—imalik²—my dream of deep soft white snow covered fields melts as quickly as each soggy flake touches the ground. Every ice star turns immediately to a muddy—aput or masannartuq³—even as I watch—mangokpok⁴—I have just enough time to dress and grab my camera, but within minutes it is gone, the landscape returns to its habitual February colours.

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Sunday morning the wind, which has howled through two days in indecisive direction, tilts back to a calming south east whisper. I feel grateful and in the end, I cannot deny my deep love for blue sky and cloud, for colour.

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Briefly; a wild cat has been continuously prowling, I believe it to be the murderer of my poor hen, it causes me heartache and a dilemma.

I fill each room of my home with sprigs of rosemary and thyme in the vague hope of cleansing contagious air, then take armfuls to school to fill all the classes too.

Les vacances d’hiver⁵ are just four days away if no more colleagues fall prey to ever and continuing circling germs, if they do there are five. I am not certain I can last five though.

I find a bag of pure black lambswool at a thrift store but cannot decide what to knit in the few moments of free time I have.

There are new symphonies playing in all the hedges and trees much earlier in the morning than two weeks ago. They sound like hope and Spring…

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Yours still croakily but moving normally, with love

Susie X

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I have loved this week;

A powerful poem written by

Kate Mapother

chosen by

Jill

for

Adam Nathan

’s Best Words, Best Order.

Best Words, Best Order celebrates brief excerpts of exceptional writing read aloud by their authors, if you would like to nominate a piece of writing to Adam you can find the details of how here.

best words, best order: kate mapother

1. The English; (roughly translated because it depends on who or what you are talking to) “For fuck’s sake, you useless piece of shit!”

2. Imalik - wet snow (falling)

3. aput or masannartuq - slush

4. mangokpok - rain mixed with snow

If you would like to discover more Inuit snow expressions you’ll find them below ; http://www.putlearningfirst.com/language/research/eskimo2.html

5. Winter half-term break.