13.08.2018

On Saturday I went for a run, after not getting tickets to the proms and feeling a little worried about how the rest of the day would unfold. 'Take it slow, it's a beautiful day,' I told myself, and turned right into the hedge path away from the road.

After going round the playing field and heading back, I noticed -blackberries. Bushes laden with them, and I stopped and picked and ate and (most of them) were so sweet. In my head was the music I'd been listening to in the morning 'Divinely beautiful, you came into my world. You are the lifter of my head, now my heart will follow.'

From Blossoms
(Li Young Lee)

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward 
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into 
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

After a train ride, many tube rides and lots of lifting big suitcases up stairs, I did manage to get a ticket and so at 7, Jacob and I (despite being in 2 separate queues) got into the Royal Albert Hall, and sat on the floor of the gallery (the gods, as Grandma called it) and ate dinner with makeshift spoons, and then listened to the orchestra play the music of West Side Story. I watched the strings players move with the music like water, and remembered Grandma's way of moving her hands to flowing music.

The next day, Jacob and I went for a run and stopped on the way back because - more blackberries. There has been almost too much sweetness in these last few days for me to bear (thankfully I've got to share most of it with him).