My Face
Poems and Thoughts from the Anxious Poet
My Face
I often wonder what my face
says as it stares out at the world.
Is it begging a question of the
returning gazes, asking who am I
and where does my face fit?
Is it requiring permission to speak,
waiting for a teacher to open the
floor to my tentative lips as they
try to shape themselves around the
timid lines forming behind my eyes?
What are the secret signals my soul
is sending out? Can I overhear with
these cusp like appendages framing
my face, the message given out
and returned to me with interest?I have been very busy with many things lately. Hence the lack of posts. We have finally moved house and just completed on our old house, an exhausting marathon of lugging, shedding, recycling and re-cherishing . I also had a number of events booked for September and October as I assumed we would have all the house stuff out of the way! Unfortunately that was not to be, and so it all had to be done. The following quote is how I now feel.
“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” -Bilbo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings
An accurate summation of how I have been and how pleased I am that I managed to give a good account of myself at these various outings.
The first was a men’s gathering in Manchester called ‘Men Behaving Vulnerably’. A great day with the Manchester group that is part of the Male Journey , an organisation I have been involved with for many years. I shared with them how I had come back from the USA after attending one of Richard Rohr’s Men’s Rites of Passage and tried to get things going in this country. There seemed such a need, many men seemed to be struggling to reach maturity and lacked the ability to be vulnerable and so grow. During the event a young man of 25 years came up to me and said that he was going to promote the group to his friends and colleagues as he felt that many of his generation were either seduced by the kind of uber-masculinity offered by the Andrew Tates of this world or lost in dissipation. It seems there is still a need.
The next event was a workshop for the Green Christian an online session that sought to grasp the way that St Francis, arguably a few hundred years ahead of the green movement, found healing, solace and God in the natural world. Having led a number of events around Saint Francis and written a cycle of poems in his honour in my Night Sea Journey collection I spoke from great love and some knowledge. It seemed to be well received.
The week after was packed with events - a Poetry Matinee for the Nether Edge Festival, a small and intimate afternoon at which I met some lovely people, including a fellow poet called David Willis.
Reading some of my new poems from the collection I have now called Poetry as Resistance was a risk and an ultimate joy. The first poem Where Do Dreams Come From? was a good preface to the event and I had an stimulating time and there was wonderful cake thanks to Kate Housden who is a co-coordinator of the Festival.
That was Monday, on Thursday I was invited to be the guest writer at an evening called Sounds About Write organised by the Writers Workshop. It comprised of a Q&A with the lovely Rachel Mills on of their associates and then a reading by me all rounded off with an open mike session.
All through this time we had been rehearsing for a headline gig on the Saturday night, again as part of the Nether Edge Festival. When Saturday came around it was windy and incredibly wet. St Andrew’s Church Psalter Lane was a very welcoming haven from the storm and thankfully the fifty odd folk who came thought the same. For the first time we gave an outing to a number of songs we had written and it all seems to go very well. Here are the lyrics of one of our new songs based on a Mural on the side of a famous Sheffield Pub called Fagan’s.
The Snog
McKee captured us
And he called it the snog
On the wall of the pub
Like a dead horse flogged.
Our night-time routine
Deaf Aids out ‘n night teeth in
Our snores are sweet nothings
Sex on every blue moon.
But this is still a romance
with bunions and blood pressure
Yes, this will always be a romance
Each day a reunion whatever the weather.
Tell each story twice
Can’t recall a name
Don’t know whose to blame
Say how much to every price.
Hands held on the sofa,
Happy Valley’s got us gripped,
And we have come so far.
but we’ve forgotten the script.
But this is still a romance
with bunions and blood pressure
Yes, this will always be a romance
Each day a reunion whatever the weather.
Let’s snog again in Fagan’s
Get another round in
Forget that we are aging
And trip the light fantastic.
Brighter than a penny
Is the fire in our chimney
And the cobbles are stoney
The winding of our journey.
And this is still a romance
with bunions and blood pressure
Yes, this will always be a romance
Each day a reunion whatever the weather.
whatever the weather ……
this is still a romance ……
The final event I had committed to, thankfully along with my wife Wilma, was up in Thirsk. On a blustery Saturday morning we made our weary way up to Holy Rood House to present a retreat day entitled Vincent Van Gogh - A Journey of Darkness and Light. Although we were pretty exhausted we were well received by a group of sparky and lively folk and I think we all learned to appreciate the way an artist can transform our vision of the world.
‘My own adventures are confined chiefly to making swift progress toward growing into a little old man - you know, with wrinkles, a tough beard and a number of false teeth, and so on.
But what does all that matter? I have a dirty and difficult trade - painting. If I didn’t have Theo, I should not be able to do justice to my work, but having him for a friend, I’m sure I shall make progress and things will fall into place. As soon as possible I plan to spend some time in the south, where there is even more colour and even more sun.’
Vincent to Willemina van Gogh - 1887
I am glad we put in the work to prepare this as I will be offering a similar day in November at our local spirituality centre. You can Book Here.
All of these descriptions of activity and business, of putting myself out there and engaging in extroversion takes me back to the poem that heads this post. I have always been tentative in the world, uncertain where exactly I fit in. Wondering whether I am getting life right. I think it had to do with the loss of my father when I was 11 years old and the fact my mother struggled so much in my teens to come to terms with life without him. I have spent so much time looking for a mentor or an authority figure. Someone to tell me the way to do it. I recently read this quote and it illuminates a truth I have so struggled to grasp.
I used to have a fantasy that somewhere there was a Big Book of collective wisdom called What To Do When. It contained the prescribed solution to all life’s problems. Whenever you found yourself in a conflict you could just look it up in the book and do what it said, Such a fantasy comes from the father complex. If there were a book like that, I wouldn’t have to think for myself-I’d’just do what was laid down by tradition.
Alas, serious problems have only individual solutions.
From Jungian Psychology Unplugged - My Life as an Elephant by Daryl Sharp
There is though a secret semaphore that can be apprehended in people’s reactions to our presence in the world. I have learnt that it is decoded by the use of what I call these cusp like appendages framing my face. I try, not very successfully, to ask questions, to listen hard to the answers, to be smaller mouthed and larger eared. There are signals my soul, or my deepest self is sending out, even if I am unaware of them. By listening to those I interact with, those I meet and those I love - I can begin to get a clearer, less needy, more honest picture of my self and the place I find I occupy in the world. To trust that is the place I am meant to be and that what is returned to me with interest is what I truly am asking for.
I love all of this especially the sentence: “I try, not very successfully, to ask questions, to listen hard to the answers, to be smaller mouthed and bigger eared.”
Beautiful.
Mighty stuff jaysus what a season of abundance!