Reflections on What I’m Reading
Sometimes, when you’re reading, particular lines leap out at you.
Perhaps because of the year we’ve been having here in Christchurch, with the earthquakes (you can read some of my reports here and poems here); or reflecting on the 10th anniversary of the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York on September 10, 2001, and the legacy of that event a decade later; or just taking two seconds to consider the world around me (famine again in the horn of Africa, kidnappings and murder in Kenya, oil still not contained in the Gulf of Mexico, the spectre of global financial crisis) the following lines have all resonated for me in recent reading:
From Helen Rickerby’s poem Vital Melancholy in her collection My Iron Spine (Headworx, 2008):
Two nights ago
driving the storm road
beside the lake
I realised I was afraid
Now knowing that the world
is frightening
for children because
they don’t understand it
and frightening for grown-ups
because they do
.
I also read Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at The Whistle Stop Cafe recently (saw the movie years ago, but only just read—and also enjoyed—the book!) and was struck by the following lines:
” … He had seen a lot happen at the mission … seen [men] … down on their luck … He had seen men come through that had been rich doctors and lawyers, and one man who had been a state senator … Smokey asked Jimmy what caused men like that to sink so low. “I’d have to say the main reason is that most of them have been disappointed in some way,” Jimmy said, “… and so they get lost and wander around. And, of course, old man whisky plays a role. But in all the years I’ve seen men come in and out, I’d say disappointment is number one on the list.”
.
This quote from Fried Green Tomatoes reminded me of poet and doctor Glenn Colquhoun’s speech on “The Therapeutic Uses of Ache” to the Royal College of General Practitioners in Wellington in 2009, where he observed:
“In fact, apart from a few of the old favourites, I don’t often see much of what I learnt about in medical school at all … Of all the conditions I do see that no one ever taught me about, ache is by far and away the most common. Too often in my practice it has forced me to leave the tar-seal of the textbook. At those times I have returned to what I have learnt from life by living it, mainly from making a hash of it. It is the most reliable source of ache I know … Over time our sorrows accumulate. Ache becomes part of our shape – a weird anatomy. It can be felt, seen, perceived and mapped by those who know its language.“
To read the full address, click here: it’s well worth it and also reminded me all over again what an acute observer Glenn Colquhoun is and how I need to read his collection Playing God again, and maybe even share some of the poems with you of a Tuesday.
.
For me, writing is primarily to tell the stories that are “out there” in the realm of imagination, wanting and waiting to be told in the world. But within and through that come other things: to illuminate the human condition, to explore truths, to understand why we are and how … Literature, whether engaged in as writer or reader, is about connection, the realisation that we are part of a greater whole; and also reflection—holding up a mirror to ourselves, which very often shows us Glenn Colquhoun’s “ache.”
.
And to finish, a quote that has long been a favourite of mine, from that very prolific writer, Aurelius Augustine, aka St Augustine of Hippo:
“Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but … we are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.”
That poem is amazing. I love the last part of it, it’s so profoundly true. The world IS scary for adults because we understand it for children because they don’t.
Vital Melancholy is only one of many very fine poems in My Iron Spine. But yes, this stanza particularly struck me.
Smart man, that Augustine of Hippo.
We live in a world controled by consensual mass delusions. Sometimes these delusions conspire to make us feel powerless, but usually the power to make a change is in our hands, if only we are willing to use it.
Thats my take home for the day.
He has some amazing quotes to his name. I also like:
“An unjust law is no law at all.”
And “Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.”
As applicable in the early 21st century as they were when first written, around 1700 years ago.