Prose and passion

For years, one of my personal mantras was the E.M. Forster quote Only connect!

Recently, I took the trouble to read “Howard’s End”, and learned that other words followed.

Only connect the prose and the passion, Forster wrote, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.

Prose and passion.

At the end of a camino day, it seemed to me that walking provided both.

There was the prose – the sore feet, the roadside rubbish, the sweat, the search for a sleeping-place, the hand laundering, the scent of massed bodies in crowded quarters, the snoring, the self, and the other pilgrims.

Then there was the passion – the postcard vistas, the roadside flowers, the joyous reunion, the spirit soaring, the self and the other pilgrims.

So much passion…

Discovering a via Romana, a Roman road still intact after two millennia, raised above surrounding fields of faded stalks of wheat.

Ducking beneath the branches of low-hanging fig-trees, their fruit a syrupy sugar-hit to push me forward.

Silence.

A snake crossing the path.

Singing without censoring.

History underfoot. Romans, Crusades, Franco’s wars.

Speaking poems aloud in time with footsteps.

Back in Australia, I say the same poems as I take mini-caminos.

I walk into a southern sunrise, striding my via Romana around Port Philip Bay, the smell of fig in my nostrils. A willy wag-tail flits past and I wonder how he got to be in Spain. A gull squawks. Worlds collide. I can’t stop grinning, and the early-morning joggers look at me with suspicion. They don’t know I’m on a road that dates back to Roman times. Out in the Bay, wet-suited swimmers look like dolphins.

What? There are no dolphins on the camino. No ferries to Tasmania either.

I pass schoolgirls in groups. They chatter and laugh, smelling of citrus and spring. One walks alone, her head buried in a book. Another bounces to her i-Pod. More groups, grinning, greeting.

All over the city, all over the world, caminos are walked, and connections are made. Prose and passion abound. And love is the height to which we all aspire.

 

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I carry you/you carry me

 

I think you will know this poem.

That shouldn’t make it any less new or remarkable.

For me, it deepens each time I read it or say it aloud.

It was sent to me on the road by a radiant ex-student.

Radiant is not a word I use lightly.

I carried the poem in my heart and it carried me on its words.

 

Today has been a day when I have felt carried – by friends, family, interviewers and publicists. By love…

And I am grateful.

But e.e. cummings says it best…

 

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

 

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

 

Yes I do.

Thank you Geri. x

 

A housekeeping PS…

I loved my interviews today. Surprised by joy. And tears.

And if you want to see the evolving gallery of my book’s new friends, click on the Facebook icon on the top right. Even if you are not a Facebooker, I’m told you can see. x

My borrowed credo

No-one says it like Mary Oliver. She is my sustenance and my guide.

 

When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

 

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox

 

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

 

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

 

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

 

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

 

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

 

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

 

When it’s over, I want to say all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

 

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

 

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

 

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

 

 


 


For those who have far to travel…
                                            

 

If you could see

the journey whole

you might never

undertake it;

might never dare

the first step

that propels you

from the place

you have known

toward the place

you know not.

 

Call it

one of the mercies

of the road:

that we see it

only by stages

as it opens

before us,

as it comes into

our keeping

step by

single step.

 

There is nothing

for it

but to go

and by our going

take the vows

the pilgrim takes:

 

to be faithful to

the next step;

to rely on more

than the map;

to heed the signposts

of intuition and dream;

to follow the star

that only you

will recognize;

 

to keep an open eye

for the wonders that

attend the path;

to press on

beyond distractions

beyond fatigue

beyond what would

tempt you

from the way.

 

There are vows

that only you

will know;

the secret promises

for your particular path

and the new ones

you will need to make

when the road

is revealed

by turns

you could not

have foreseen.

 

Keep them, break them,

make them again:

each promise becomes

part of the path;

each choice creates

the road

that will take you

to the place

where at last

you will kneel

 

to offer the gift

most needed—

the gift that only you

can give—

before turning to go

home by

another way.

 

Jan L. Richardson, The Painted Prayerbook.

 

That was sent to me recently. A treasured gift. I hope you like it too.

There is nothing for it but to go…

Oh yes.

May it happen for you…

This morning there’s a lot of chat on the airwaves about the upcoming election in Queensland. What it will mean at state level. Nationally. Who might be vanquished. Whose career is on a knife’s edge…

And so it goes.

Results and consequences will come soon enough. For now, the green is thriving and my legs can carry me out along a path in the relative quiet of my thoughts.

I’ll take a poem with me for company. It’s an old friend, invoked many times for many reasons, in all seasons. It will be good for today. Maybe it will serve you, too.

 

            Sometimes

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,

From bad to worse.  Some years, muscadel

Faces down frost; green thrives, the crops don’t fail,

Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

 

A people sometimes will step back from war;

Elect an honest man; decide they care

Enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.

Some men become what they were born for.

 

Sometimes our best efforts do not go

Amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow

That seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

 

Sheenagh Pugh

 

Yes, yes. May it happen for you.

Walking words
Verses overhead in Córdoba

On Monday just gone, I went into the ABC’s radio studios in Melbourne to record for a programme called Poetica. It’s my favourite show on Radio National, and so I was thrilled when they accepted a script from me about the poems that inspired me to make the walk, and the ones that came to me along the road. It was a chance to honour the writers who were my salve, my comfort, my spur and my guides.

I was overcome once again by the way the right words found me when I was in trouble or afraid.

All along the road, they would wing their way to me – poems from all times and places, in all languages. On walls and in bars. In emails from home. From fellow walkers. Even some of my very own, written for me with care and generosity.

So from time to time, I think I will post a poem here. It will be another way of honouring their gifts to me, and something for you to share.

This one came to me early on, and helped me to stare down some very gnarly demons who were insisting I would never make it. That I was not ready, not able, not strong/stable/fluent/brave enough…

The voices may have been right. I probably wasn’t ready.

But if I had waited until I was, I might never have gone.

And this poem helped me to step out.

It’s by Rainer Maria Rilke. Another who loved Spain.

 

A WALK

My eyes already touch the sunny hill,

Going far ahead of the road I have begun.

So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;

It has its inner light, even from a distance­–

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,

into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are,

a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave…

but what we feel is the wind in our face.

 

And I can still feel that wind. I still see those hills…