Circling the rim

So much to write, not because it is ready but because it overflows and will be lost. Warm soda volcanoing erupting on ice, spilling. Ice cream overhangs shading cone-sides, creaking.

Circling the rim, I gather up the following:

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"There are people who don’t believe that art has any purpose in a war-torn world, but I suspect that the same people don’t believe it has any purpose on a peaceful world – except as a luxury item. When I think of Glyndebourne Opera, I think of how they put on a new opera, straight after the Second World War, as a reminder of what civilisation and culture actually mean. We hear a lot about fighting for civilisation and culture – strangely enough from the same people who have no time for art. Maybe one day they will join the dots…

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Oh and listen to the proms and read a few poems. You will be arming your mind instead of arming the world. Me, I am going to do more of everything I love, and do it consciously, not least because time feels short and precious. Or as Mrs Winterson used to say, The Summer is Ended and We Are Not Yet Saved."

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"It’s a beautiful day, and there will be many days like this, I hope you are reading this on a day that shines. I love the sun more and more as I get older. I used to long for rain when I was younger, perhaps because it suited my solitary and romantic inclinations. It is true that I am still solitary and romantic, but I find that a spray can of Factor 30 does not get in the way of my thoughts anymore.

I used to think sunshine was a bit frivolous – now I know it is life.

Changing is good, letting in new sensations, feelings, new ideas, is necessary. I don’t want to slowly calcify, find myself like the inside of a dishwasher pipe – just enough room to let just enough water through. I want to keep the spaces open, and to find a way to make for room for difficult beauty – is beauty ever easy? I have not found it so. I’m not even talking about a person, just openness to everything, and even the small daily things, like going out into the garden, or walking down to the river, are beautiful enough to disturb.

Disturb? Yes, I mean to disturb out of the habit of letting life pass in a blur. Looking, hearing, feeling, is disturbing. But better, I think than a muffled world.

I put up a poem this month that seems to me to be about the essential practicality of the poetic vision. You don’t need to be a poet to have a poetic vision. A poetic vision is prepared to be open, to let things in. The exactness of translation, vision into language, is the job of a poet, but the vision itself is probably the job of all of us.

We are grateful to poets because they put into words what we have felt/are feeling. I can’t say enough how important it is to go on feeling.

This month’s poem makes the poet and his poem a thing of practical application. I have never believed that poetry is disconnected from the real world, or is a pretty adjunct to it.

I believe that poetry is a user’s manual – a way of defining what things matter, and, as Coleridge put it, ‘keeping the heart alive to love and beauty.’

Poetry is there when we need it, and we need it regularly. Simply, it turns ordinary life into a meditation, and it reminds us that meditation – the ability to settle and focus and concentrate our energies, is a necessary part of ordinary life.

The whiz-faster, flick-through, hurry-past, phone-in-one-hand-sandwich-in-the-other-got-no-time-for-anything in life is not life, which is why poetry rebukes it. Poetry is slow enough for breathing and blood flow. It prevents cardiac arrest, calcification, and is even good for the common cold."

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Me, I'm trying to decide what to do this weekend, and I have about 2 hours to use the wisdom above to guide me. We'll see.