Sam Selvon II
“Selvon spent some years living as a writer-in-residence at the University of Calgary in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He was largely ignored by the Canadian literary establishment, with his works receiving no reviews during his residency.”
(From Wikipedia)
Thanks a million to Sara for the tip.
Thanks to Sam Selvon for improving my Friday night.
The Lonely Londoners
What a treat at the end, of an otherwise, pain in the hole of a day, took the small male out book shopping and discovered an author who intrigues me: Sam Selvon’s novel The Lonely Londoners. (Penguin Classic) The Lonely Londoners which I’ve just started is written in it’s own dialect with his up the hill and round the garden grammar. Gone are the fences of how words must sit beside each other dictated by an RP grammar. They sit how they wish and will and make me sit up and repeat them. You can hear vocal chords rubbing as you read. Selvon writes about the 1950’s London and people arriving there from the West Indies on the boat train.
***
Today I experienced some sense of what it must be like to be in the army or to be a bullock and I conclude it’s very unpleasant.
“There are some people who are sent to try us,” my ma would say when I was younger and today I would tell her that yes I had a few of them in my ear this week.
***
I have a read a couple of How to Make a Wooden Sign instructions, that were not divinely inspiring. I am curious as to how it will stand and stay upright and thinking of a brick’s assistance. Next I have to consider the proximity the sign will stand to the performance. I am looking forward to talking it all up with wunderbar Lori and am glad to be working with her again after this week’s praiseach.
We laughed so much during our collaboration Big Mamas Ridin’ High for Chaos at Open Space.
Today is Nollaig na mBan. I filled the teapot many times and thought about the labour of women.
We are collectively pining for Kauai. It doesn’t need to be spoken of. We just look at each other, sometimes we assess the present tense aloud and recognize we’ve returned to this present tense and then laugh out a lick of a look-back at our wonderful week. For me the quiet moments stay with me, my trots, the birds, the flowers while my boogie-boarding boys, who were as elevated as Tour de France cyclists over the afternoon waves, give rise to a smile.
I still have to comprehend the entirely original weather patterns witnessed there. Many times I woke in the night to the reassuring sound of the trade winds between the trees and in and out a window. Then there was the on-off switch of the rain and the built in mop up of the humidity.
During our last hour in Hanalei I examined Robin’s garden, she had told me something of the complexity of gardening — an insect or bug that attacked certain plants. I must read up and remind myself what it was since the height of everything suggested a robustness that anything planted would head skyward. I also didn’t see a single bee while there, but was assured they have massive bumble bees.
I have to make a wooden sign that is as high as I am tall by next Friday for a performance art event.
This should be fun. In my history of manufacturing I have only succeeded in a multitude of identical wooden shelves, an omelet of reasonable tongue, some cards, a knitted shawl, and an incredibly ropey arrangement above the kitchen sink, which would be impossible to classify beyond a disaster. And the bedraggled greenhouse, which I must sing a hopeful spring is coming, spring is coming to, in more forelorn noticings.
I forgot to mention what was in the text of Moravia’s novel Boredom as I walked and read it. It was where the male character is describing his mother’s fixation on her plants and gardening. That chapter. And the one that preceded it about how he’s feeling in the world. A contrast — those who know the work may agree.
There was an engaging story in today’s NY Times about the neuroscience of courage. Here is the link, I read it, appropriately, on an airplane.
Two days ago I had the most perfect union between a book, a walk and the landscape. It was late afternoon I was walking the road to Hanalei town to search out a piece of jewellry for my sister and as is my sometime custom was reading slowly as I walked slowly along.
There’s no official pavement on that road so it required something of a navigation through patches of grass. When I glanced up I glanced ahead not behind where the danger of traffic was coming. Ahead of me the day was pre-commencing it’s close up. The sky was so blue, the trees so high up making their statements against said closer to closing than opening sky. I’d read a line from the early part of Alberto Moravia’s novel Boredom and digest it looking up into that sky surrounded by those beautiful hills and lush trees and return to the next line. It was a perfect union between words and gaze and movement somehow.
On my return I couldn’t continue this lovely union for long because the sky was having none of it and a sudden rainstorm began. Bare legged and book at risk I walked tentatively on, but then realized that the Hawaiian version of rain is short, but not to be reckoned with if you’re made of paper or half dressed.
I walked back and ran for shelter underneath the awning of the Catholic Church. I began to read again. Then a bicycle arrived with a young man holding a cup of coffee (a feat biking, coffee and rain, no? bit like walkin and readin). We began to talk and had an interesting conversation about his homeland Mexico and he told me some sombre stories and some not so sombre ones. It was very cinematic with the church, bike, book, coffee and tumbling rain. The rain stopped and in a punctuating gesture he shook my hand warmly, told me his name, which was rather a lovely name and then said something I couldn’t quite catch about how we would talk again, jumped on his bike and disappeared. It was a satisfying conversation since we had solved quite a few of the world’s problems in the space of a short rainstorm.
I ran home to the place we were staying, where my boys informed me we were due for dinner at 6.30pm in the neighbouring town and it was now 6.25pm. We had a lovely dinner with our extended family that included catch of the day and other delights including a cocktail that made my knees wobble at the salad bar.
I have been thwarted in my attempted purchase of a pink ukulele, by people who know about such things and insist that the pink ukulele could not/would not stay in tune !
My quest for Jumpin Jim’s music book is not over yet…. to say nothing of the Elvis ukulele songbook.
* * *
A lovely day.
They are ever more lovelier.
Anini, sea turtles, fish tacos and those Norfolk pine trees which are strangely naked between their branches.
I am becoming more acquainted with the birds, however now I’ve looked up their names I only see the same 2 birds where before, in ignorance, I saw plenty, plenty more…