Voices, size nine.

Daughter Sophie has just had her first book of poetry published: 'Strange Longing for a Monday' and for all those who, unlike me, have the up-to-date version of adobe whatever, it can be viewed at: htp://www.erbacce-press.com/#/sophia-argyris/4543556207

Very thrilling. I’m waiting for my complimentary copy.

No trips to Brittany or Swaledale for me but a very pleasant week-long visit from our Sophs distracted me from making the usual jottings that find their way here. We did things like walking on the beach, visiting the river and sitting about in cafe’s, pastimes that I don’t usually find time for, or simply forget are possible. It was lovely. We even got to visit an archaeological dig which happens once a year after harvest. Over a ten year period the field has yielded several iron-age round houses from different eras, the oldest one was very large and evidently sheltered the beasts as well as the people, the others smaller, probably post-Roman, showing the change in family or social structure that Roman influence brought about. Two coin ‘hordes’ came to light , and evidence of a greater Roman presence in the area than had been expected. The team have recently discovered remains of the elusive Picts who, unlike the earlier inhabitants, built houses without foundations so left very little trace of themselves in the landscape. My camera failed me on that occasion much to my chagrin - or I failed it by not charging the battery soon enough.

Back home and holding the fort behind the counter I began to reread ‘Justine’ by Lawrence Durrell, the first of the Alexandrian Quartet. I can’t remember what effect it had on me the first time through. I was much much younger and disposed to explore novels for style, character and atmosphere, for new departures in technique, for experiments with the novel form - and to find that enough. Nowadays I want a linear story, preferably an unfolding mystery. I find it hard to reconcile myself to reading for a different experience, the unfolding of the characters for instance. Perhaps I am becoming shallow, perhaps I’ve had enough of pretension. Perhaps I’m less interested in people. This time I found it depressed me almost from the first page. Durrell writes so well, so beautifully, his characters walk off the pages, and he describes the city of Alexandria so I can smell the dust and the dirt, feel the lice, and see an old, sick camel hacked to pieces alive.

That was when I stopped reading. I can’t deal with so much reality.

I did note down a few words that I needed to look up and a couple of glorious phrases:

"her phthisic hands' (phthisic = tubercular - not so poetic really, but a wonderful word)

“... dry palpitant air harsh with static.’

‘Her aniline beauty.’ (I’m not at all sure what he intends here but ‘anil’ means indigo in French, from Arabic and Sanskrit. Again, it has a musical sound so maybe it’s unnecessary to question further.)

“... meaningless dead level of things, entering no climate, leading us nowhere... trapped in the gravitational field of Alexandria.’

It’s hard not to be affected by a writer’s style, especially one like Durrell. If I have something I want to write I have to be sure not to be in the middle of reading anything by authors with such a strong stylistic flavour or it overpowers my own weak attempt to find a voice.

I looked for some light relief with Le Carré, read ‘A Most Wanted Man’ which wasn’t exactly a jolly romp but was linear and unfolded as required.

Today it was Saki, and the social witticisms of the 1900’s.

“To be clever in the afternoon argues that one is dining nowhere in the evening.’

“Her frocks were built in Paris but she wore them with an English accent.”

“Miriam takes nines in voices.”

Nines in voices. I know people like that. It really embarrasses me being in a restaurant or on public transport with someone who takes size nines in voices.

Finally, I am thoroughly enjoying the hooha of the Popes visit. He has covered himsef with glory again by likening atheists to the Nazis. A quick sorti to Wikkipedia would have reminded him that Hitler was a Catholic until he died - he was never excommunicated. That Adolph claimed, when it suited him, to be Christian, believed in an ‘Aryan Christ’ and in a statement about the National Government 1933 said: “It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life.” Ratzinger mght also remember that the RC Church in Italy, and other countries, handed Jews over to the Nazis.

I suppose he has to get in a few low blows as his church has such an attrocious record of immorality over the millennia ,and more recently it’s visible failure to follow the words of the man they revere as God about never harming children.

I’m truly sorry for the hurt and the disillusioned, but I do think it’s good that the hypocrisy, so often hiding in self-righteous religious garb, is exposed. It will cut the churches down to size, pull their teeth and along with them the teeth of horrors like Sarah Palin and her chimpanzees' Tea Party in the dangerous hotbed of religious nuttery that is the USA.

Later: Well, I have to add that I spent the last hour watching the Pope take Mass in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow and I was, as always, moved to tears by the ceremony, the singing, and the ages old tradition which has accumulated so much power. Sometimes I can't think why I'm not a fully signed-up member of the oldest church in the world.

Because I am SO strongly against religion but enjoy the emotion I found myself deciding to align with Buddhism which is not a religion in the restrictive, proscriptive, dogmatic sense of that word, is a Way which can guide ones path through life, and which also has centuries old, deeply moving ceremonies full of emotional, transformative power that can temporarily overcome the mind.

Finally I have to admit that my head is stronger than my heart. I always imagined myself to be ruled by my emotions but it isn't the whole story. I can't be convinced by something that is fundamentally unconvincing on a wave of emotional manifestations alone. I've had a few experiences in my life that for many would count as mystical or oceanic, or even spiritual, but they haven't convinced me for one moment that there is a monad at work out there. And maybe that is how it should be. I have the capacity to understand how people get aroused by great events and by the deep, real, emotions shared by thousands, millions, at the same moment, inspired by some event, but not be swayed by it myself except briefly. It's an upsurge of feeling that can be caused by good or evil and has to be tempered by eventual rationality. What the Buddhists might call Equanimity. The crowds at Nurembourg felt the same ecstasy as the Catholic saints.