different sort of christmassy

In Cambridge, we'd celebrate Bridgemas - a faux-Christmas at the end of November, but with all the trappings. The choir would sing carol services, colleges would have bridgemas formals with all the christmassy foods, people would give bridgemas presents and the christmas lights would go on in the streets. Everything looked like Christmas, and when you broke up for the holidays it felt like a continuation of that excitement.

It's quite different this year in London. Whilst the lights are up in Oxford and Regent street, they aren't in Highgate (except for a rather straggly neon outline of the Nativity on the Archway Methodist Church which I usually don't notice, or feel rather sorry for when I do), and rather than a cessation of work and burrowing down in to bridgemas feels, I've been working on essays and presentations as the school term stretched longer into December.

And yet, in a way I feel like I've connected with Christmas still, though in a different way this year. I've been waking up exhausted, and the first thing I do (after switching off my alarm) is reach for my phone, open up my email and then close my eyes again as I listen to a desiring god devotional. They've been focused on advent, and although listening to them in my half-waking state means many are forgotten, some have stuck - like the one that reminded me that no matter how insignificant I feel he is a Big God who works through the world's seemingly impersonal movements (hello brexit vote, hello Caesar Augustus' census) for the little, individual people he loves. Or one I listened to yesterday (or the day before?) about how Jesus, the long awaited Messiah, coming to earth is a relief and joy, the same 'at last - oh!' of a lost child seeing their mother.

In work too, I've been reminded of the beauty of Christmas. The first millennium Southeast Asian court, invested in Saivism, Vaishnavism, animism and/or Buddhism, might seem the furthest thing from Christianity (so often associated with the West - but 1) Jesus was born in the middle east 2) God has no ethnicity, race, geographical or time boundaries). Yet in the midst of writing an essay on the Saiva Pasupata sect I came across an incredible book by Paul Mus (India from the East), arguing that the early southeast asian people believed in an 'earth god', a god who was 'profoundly impersonal […] a being abstracted from man', and that their worship of stones, lingas, and later anthropomorphic statues as they absorbed and adapted Indic religions were rooted in their desire to 'make perceptible the passage of the amorphous deity to its accessible manifestation'. That basic desire for a God we can understand as a tangible, personal being -- that is in part what Jesus answered when he appeared in the form of a child (And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. - John 1:14).

Yet where the Southeast Asian societies manifested their God in the form of ferocious and powerful deities (think Heruka/Bhairava/Hevajra/Siva/Kali...) Jesus came vulnerable, as a child who was put to death - who would invent a God like that to clothe the notion of a powerful, impersonal God?

I am thankful for these advent reminders in unexpected places. And I am reminded, of course, that on that first Christmas, the people of Israel did not have bright lights, cheery carols and presents to excite them about the birth of their saviour. They just had long-ago prophet's promises, and the need (the need in all of us) for the hope the Messiah would give. We have new promises of the fulfillment of the hope Christ has given, and so without lights or trees or songs I can celebrate the Messiah and wait for the 'at last- oh!' moment when he comes again.

6/12/2018

A while back, I read this quote on a recipe blog: we are human beings, not human doings.

That quote came back to haunt me when I sat down with Naomi in Cambridge, with homemade bread and hummus and salad on the table before us, and she asked me 'And how are you and your heart?' Not in relation to anything else, just purely me. Not 'how are you coping with work?' not 'how is a long distance relationship going?' not 'how is moving to a new city?' which have been the three big changes in my recent life.

Just how are you.

I found it so hard to answer, and told her, honestly, that I'd been viewing myself through the lens of how I was performing/what I was doing. Who I was was so tied to how I was adjusting/loving/learning that it was hard to dig past that crust and get back to my own beating heart.

I suppose it's difficult because who I am is so tied to how I enact myself - the doing does in many ways make me. When I run, for instance, that makes me because the joy (and the pain) makes me more aware of my existence as an embodied, emotional, physical human being. I feel more at home with myself when I am doing. When I read poetry, or write poetry, I feel more myself because often the words express parts of me I didn't have the words for, or verbalise feelings that need an aesthetic and not just documentation. I suppose what links these self-creating doings is that they aren't intended for an end that is productive for some external matrix. I don't run because I'm made to, or because I want to be fit/thin (thank god, because that's a mindset I know I am sometimes dangerously on the brink of and have in the past fallen in to). I don't write because I want to impress people. I do them because I need to do them because they are part of my being.

Of course, a lot of what I do has an intended product for an external matrix - e.g. my course will eventually produce (I hope) a degree that will (I hope) qualify me for a certain kind of career. And that means that sometimes I get lost in the doing, just trying to get everything done so the scholarship board won't be disappointed in me, so people won't be disappointed in me, so I can prove that I'm coping and thriving, forgetting that to thrive means to be in love with life and that's hard when you're going through the motions so quickly you can't even really fathom what life is.

(But things like my degree also has moments of helping me be - like last week when I sat on Jacob's bed reading Jones' article on the 'Hermeneutics of sacred architecture' and my heart actually sped up with excitement and agreement and possibility - he is a genius. Here is a sampling: 'John Dixon, for instance, insists not only that the Sistine Chapel "can be understood only by participating in the act, which is an act of worship," but, more poignantly still, that, in some sense, the chapel (and specifically Michelangelo's ceiling)  "is a Christian liturgical act and can be rightly understood only as it is apprehended in its performance."' yes, yes, YES!!!)

But I felt like I needed to slow down some how, and remember that God is my matrix and that he asks for me to be satisfied in him, satisfied with the gifts and circumstances he has given to me in grace rather than anxious about their outcome or anxious about bettering or overcoming them. Because as his child, in the safety of his love, I can fully, truly be without the fear of disappointment (held by infinite love and grace).

This week, I wrote at the top of my planner 'THIS WEEK I WILL TAKE CARE OF MY INNER CHILD', after being inspired by a talk by Jane Adams at Kettle's Yard, who mentioned how the artist is at heart a child (a really refreshing take on art after a whole term of grappling with really political art, and feeling in some ways tired of it all. Can art just be as well? Does it always have to do and say?) And though it hasn't meant radical change in this week, it has meant a big shift in perspective when I do the quotidian things. 

Knowing that I am a child of God means I treat myself with more kindness, and more expectation. I'm a child infinitely loved by God, so why talk unkindly to myself, or stress myself out unnecessarily, or worry about validation/judgement from others? Simultaneously, I'm a child of a most High God, so why do things half-heartedly, or think ungraciously? When I work, I'm fully present and focused (most of the time - sometimes I do still get distracted and restless). When I'm with people I fully savour their time and conversation. When I'm hungry I eat with the assurance of a child. When I'm tired I rest. Interwoven throughout my day I talk to God as to a father.

Tonight as I cycled home, I realised I just wanted a space to not think. Coming from a long day of grappling with theory, my brain felt physically (and mentally) tired. When I got home, I  lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling, and then said loudly: 'I. AM. SO. TIRED.'

'I JUST WANT TO WATCH VIDEOS AND CRY, AND EAT SOME CHOCOLATE.'

It was a good evening, not forcing myself to do work on little reserves, but instead listening to what I needed as a tired, human being.

(See, sometimes what I say to God isn't profound or structured. It's just honest to God 'this is how I feel'.)

Things I'm loving

1. The Balcony Scene song from Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet. I've been listening to it on repeat since Alex, Sonja and I watched the film on Saturday. Alex and I had gone to watch the RSC production in the Barbican earlier that evening, but the lack of chemistry between the leads meant we needed some more loving in our lives, and so we turned to the electric attraction between Leonardo diCaprio and Claire Danes.

2. This incredible company - Outside In. It is a streetwear brand which addresses the problem of homelessness, recognising that it isn't simply a problem of houselessness but also one of hopelessness and isolation (in some cases). Each product you buy comes with an extra product to give to someone in need, so connections can be made between the consumer and a homeless person.

3. This cookie recipe - another genius way to use chickpea flour (that stuff is incredible). I've been having them with rooibos tea and it feels like a warm hug.

4. This blog which combines two things I love - poetry and good food.

5. Getting to pray with Jacob every night - and knowing that if I'm having a bad day I can ask for prayer from him and he will, in a different city, lift me before God. This morning presentation nerves were a little overwhelming, and even a chickpea cookie and rooibos tea didn't calm it. So I asked for prayer and he reminded me 'God's got you', a good thing to think over on my cycle, and while I listened to the other presentations and when I finally stood up in the last bit of class to do mine. (It was fine!)

Learning helplessness

On Wednesday last week, I listened to the John Piper devotion titled ‘We All Need Help’. It was easy to agree to what he was saying as I microwaved my porridge and ate it in the safety of my room. 

‘Yes, Lord, I need help,’ I mused in my mind, as I helped myself to another spoonful of peanut-butter laced breakfast.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:16)

Every one of us needs help. We are not God. We have needs. We have weaknesses. We have confusion. We have limitations of all kinds. We need help.

But every one of us has something else: We have sins. And therefore, at the bottom of our hearts we know that we do not deserve the help we need. And so, we feel trapped.

[…] Because we have a Great High Priest, the throne of God is a throne of grace. And the help we get at that throne of grace is mercy and grace to help in time of need. Grace to help! Not deserved help — gracious help. That’s why the High Priest, Jesus Christ, shed his own blood.

You are not trapped. Say no to that lie. We need help. We don’t deserve it. But we can have it. You can have it right now and forever. If you will receive and trust in your High Priest, Jesus the Son of God, and draw near to God through him.

Later that day I found myself in the library, losing myself to the anxiety of planning and trying to please all the people I wanted to meet and worrying about how much work was not getting done in the process, as I looked up restaurant locations on google maps and tried to overcome the reality of London’s vastness. Feeling overwhelmed, I sent a message to my bible study group (feeling again guilty for not going because I felt so anxious) and cycled home, giving myself a good talking to on the way.

‘Miriam – you’ve just got to be firm. You can only do so much. Just find a place, choose a time, and if you can meet them you can, if you can’t you can’t.’ 

Jacob gave very good advice that evening before we prayed – for me to pocket bits of time to focus on things like organising people and life, and to put that out of my mind when I did work – to focus with single-minded intention on work when I need to. So, armed with this practical set of strategies, I went into a new day with more confidence. I turned my phone off when I did reading or writing, I told friends that I needed to leave at specific times to do some work, and I fully engaged with people when I was with them (having fully engaged in work previously).

But it was a false sense of security – that lullaby of ‘I can change things and make everything alright’.  

That became so clear on Friday, when I experienced anxiety as I’d never experienced before. After a coffee with Sally, the beginnings of a knot in my stomach began, a blenched tension that didn’t leave but wound itself tighter within me. I tried to hide the tension (such a physical and also mental feeling) when meeting friends, going to a museum, playing board games. On one level – the rational level- I was having a good day. But my body was telling me everything to the contrary – you are in danger, something is wrong, it hurts, you aren’t normal, something is wrong, wrong, wrong. 

               

This was a different experience to Wednesday – there was no practical solution here. Turning off my phone wouldn’t help, being back home wouldn’t help, knowing my work was done and my friends were there didn’t help. Helpless, and so in need of help. What could I do? I prayed, a garbled thing of ‘God I don’t know why I’m feeling what I’m feeling. I hate this feeling. Help me through it. Help me return to myself. Help me.’ And though I didn’t know what exactly I was feeling and why, I knew that God is good, all the time, and I knew that God listens and answers prayer (something that has been proved time and time again to be over this term in answered prayers for people and circumstances that Jacob and I offer up to God when we pray together before bed).

And God answered the prayers I hadn't said when I didn't yet know this was going to happen - Alex was able to pick up her phone and soothe me when I was crying at the station, and that evening Jacob was in London and gave me a hug that reminded me I am loved and cared for and safe.

This week's poem was written on the train home (and edited afterwards), to do something other than freak out.

1. Hemmed in, on edge,

In my head I am prey:

I cannot eat or I will be eaten.

I walk - poised for flight -

crumpling and uncrumpling

a ticket in my pocket

a ticket out of here.

2. Tomorrow I will wake exhausted

and carry this fragile body into a new day.

Wanting to be held

- the soap dish cradles the soap

and water washes over me -

wanting to be held.

3. And before me a vision

opens like a flower

more sense than sight.

The feeling of dust speckled light

- descended -

on a wood worn table

and porridge, like a promise

warm and there.

Surreal Saturday/TRIBE Run free

(For pictures of how blissfully beautiful the actual course was - click here)

I was in my pajamas by 6pm today (although I subsequently got out of them to go and get some sourdough bread) with a good kind of tiredness in my legs from the trail run this morning.

It felt surreal - handing in two essays at midnight night, having fitful dreams of catching buses and taxis and being late, waking up early and taking the tube to Waterloo, seeing Jacob there and then we were on a big red train, eating oatmeal while outside the window the sun hung low in the sky and shone so you could actually look at it for a split second.

We got off the train with lots of other people evidently there for the run too, walked through forest to get to the starting area, registered and then all so quickly we were running.

I'd told myself this was going to be a run, not a race. This past term I've been learning so much about humbly accepting my limits and not letting my own ambition and competitiveness spoil the joy of the moment or the value of the experience. Fearing my own tendency to look at the numbers on my run tracker instead of the world around me, I decided to run without my phone so I would be oblivious to both distance and time during the race. I'm so glad I did, because it was one of the most beautiful courses I've every run. It was mostly in forested areas, over trails covered in autumn leaves (sometimes those leaf-duvets hid boggy bits of mud) At one point we emerged from forest and ran over a dew-covered field which glittered in the sun. There were steep inclines and exhilarating downhill bits. As I ran I couldn't help but think 'thank you God for this run, thank you for the sun, for legs that work, for seasons...' and put in a little prayer request that in heaven I'd be able to run through fields and forests like this (but better).

The weeks poem ended up scribbled in a ten minute interval before calling Jacob for evening prayer:

There was a sea change in the sunrise this morning
a line of grey cloud across otherwise blue sky
and the smell of last night's bonfires fading.
This wooded path has become familiar,
eroded through the process of intimacy.
A quiet optimism previously shadowed by anxiety
follows my footfall.
The night's turbulence is over
it is all going to be okay.

Poem 5 and why I shouldn't drink tea

Last night I drank two cups of tea
and sank into non-sleep.
This is were the night's terrors reside
the body surrenders and you
are left alone
with your mind.

In the interstices behind your eyelids
a thousand thoughts teem.
Maybe - Police siren - what time is it?
I'll get back - How long have I -
felt like this in a while - police siren -
point of it isn't - those earrings -
police siren - When did I last take -
control - take control -
Police siren.

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(That was Tuesday night, after a really enjoyable evening of Thai curry and monopoly with Nic, Nadia and their puppy Hachi.)

(I'm not usually plagued by insomnia, only when I forget my caffeine sensitivity or if I'm too full of excitement or anxiety. But isn't it a terribly real example of just have little control we have even over our embodied self? In so many areas of life success can come through trying, trying harder, trying hardest. But with sleep - trying is failure and only oblivion to the effort means success.)

(I remember seeing that picture in the art gallery of NSW and thinking how magical that sliver of sun was, how the light seemed to actually come from it and dawn over the woman and yet the light also seemed to come from the woman, or at least alight especially on her.)

2 villanelles and a resolution

I remember thinking up a Haiku last year while on a run, something about the sea and the fullness of love. I edited it my head on subsequent runs, using my pace to count syllables 5 - 7 - 5. And then one day I wrote it down and it shined in front of me, a poem, not perfect, but made.

After Wales with Jacob I was determined to write about the experience as a whole, and decided poetry would work. I decided to challenge myself with a villanelle, remembering how I hadn't been utterly satisfied with one I wrote as an exercise for a prac crit class in 2016. The Wales villanelle involved me making lists of words that rhyme with 'Wales' and 'recall'. Eventually it wasn't perfect, but if I am to start on the project I want to start on, I need to settle for less than perfection and practice patience.

I'm going to make it a point this year to write (and read) more poetry. Partly because I want to cultivate a habit and turn the phrases that sometimes drift into my head into cohesive (although not all poems are) creations and also because I am beginning to doubt my ability to finish a novel during term time, when reading about artefacts and theory is taking up most of my reading-time, and I refuse to relinquish my literary identity.

(Also partly because I am inspired by this instagram account and it haikus (for former lovers) which illuminate modern american woman dating life with so much wit and humour.)

Hopefully I'll produce a poem a week. Anyway. Here are two villanelles, two years apart:

Villanelle
2016

It might be as slow as starvation or quick as a landslide
Though I always thought it’d happen by falling up the stairs
There are many ways to die without cyanide.

As a child, it was the distant rumble of brontide,
A flash of lightning that through me tears
It might be as slow as starvation or quick as a landslide

In school I learnt of genocide
A million, million deaths. Not mine, but theirs.
There are many ways to die without cyanide.

In her bedroom, I sit beside
My grandmother, and we say our prayers.
It might be slow as starvation or quick as a landslide.

A million conversations, but this one sticks: ‘Abide
With me. Be my guide. Lead me to the unknown wheres.’
There are many ways to die without cyanide.

There is that odd moment when earth and heaven collide
A peace that passeth all understanding as your world goes up in flares.
It might be as slow as starvation or quick as a landslide.
There are many ways to die without cyanide.

Villanelle 

2018

When I say, 'Remember Wales?'

I do not ask for mere recall.

I mean that love and hope prevail.

Dwell on our God of fine details -

fifty pence fares and blackberries small -

when I say, 'Remember Wales?'

Dwell on our God who doubt curtails -

extinguished by stars and mountains tall -

and trust that love and hope prevail.

If comes a time when love grows stale

let's to those days determined crawl

when I say, 'remember Wales?'

Though on the summit storms assail

I know your hand prevents my fall,

I know our love, our hope, prevails.

When we have walked the final trail

we'll know, God's truth in us unveiled

we'll know, and we'll remember Wales.

In us, God's love and hope prevail.

some beauty from today and yesterday

I am sitting on my bed, satsuma peel on my right hand and general mess on my left, thanking of how beautiful a fruit satsumas are, particularly in the sunlight.

I cycled back from Charmaine's house on my longest cycle through London yet, about an hour from Baron's Court back up to Highgate, but it flew by so quickly, mostly because I was absorbed by how beautiful everything was. I went through Hyde Park and had a brief glimpse into the army and horse building, a looked up as the sun gleamed on the Albert Memorial, I saw the Christmas lights all ready for the celebration season up along Oxford Street, and smelt fresh croissants as I went past the Lidl in Kentish Town. London is built beautifully, but it also has beautiful moments when the traffic isn't packed and people are less frantic (Perhaps because it is a Saturday? Or the frantic people are still in bed, exhausted from yesterday's frantic-ness?)

My mind has been on beauty a lot this morning - I am reading an article by Susan Sontag on Posters, and she talks about how a defining feature is their aestheticisation of information, how in some cases they exist as beautiful (art?) objects in their own right.

Yesterday I went to the Wellcome Collection with Pierre - we spent most of our time in the museum shop, and I asked if he could have three books (and only three) from the shop which he'd choose. He recommended 'The Architecture of Happiness' as one of my three, which after hearing his glowing review I promptly bought of ebay for a quarter of the museum shop price. After reading an excerpt of it I now want to read all things Alain de Botton:

“What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.”
― Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

In Wales Jacob and I tried to think up the things that made a good day - things like prayer, doing something difficult, gratitude, self-reflection, movement of some kind, spending quality time and having quality communication with God and other people... and doing something beautiful. I am feeling very much that I've been fortunate to have lots of beautiful things done to me this morning, like seeing the misty morning air settle on the brick buildings of Mayfair and having such a sweet satsuma. I wonder if peeling a satsuma can be considered a beautiful thing?

Here's a beautiful thing for you - murmuration.

Weekollage

As I cycled over regent's canal on the way to SOAS this morning, I spoke (as you do) to my bike. 'You're doing an amazing job - I'm so glad I have you,' I said, smiling down at her.

Oh yes, she's a her.

It's time to introduce Liv. After the faithful silver bike that carried me to lectures, choir practices and supervisions all three years of Cambridge was laid to rest (un)ceremoniously at the SOAS bike racks (I still need to figure out what to do with him), I bought Liv from a man named Angel. At first I had some reservations - her brake pads needed replacing, she was a little smaller than Old Silver, and her chain wasn't gleaming, although Angel assured me that with some oil that would be fine. But I needed a bike, and Liv was blue and light and cyclable and so I bought her.

On the first ride home her chain came off (entirely my fault, for messing with the gears) and I thought, 'oh no'. But after a liberal spray of WD-40 and a session with the guys at cycle republic, she worked fine. If Liv was a person she'd be a 65 year old lady, with blue highlights in her hair, and a penchant for poetry and walks and fruit crumble. In other words she's a bike after my own heart.

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Aside from Liv, London has become a lot more personable.

I've joined a bible study group in church, which meets every Wednesday night. On the first night, I was loathe to go, having ended a lecture in school at 7.15pm - 15 minutes after the bible study began. I began steering Liv back home, and then felt an inward pull and stopped. 'Alright God,' I thought, 'I feel like maybe you want me to go for the bible study, but I'm tired and the cycle back from there is even longer than the cycle back from here and -- I just want to go home.'

'So if you want me to go,' I continued, 'I'm going to ask for a sign. If the time it takes to get there is less than 20 minutes, I'll go. If it's more, I'm going home.' (When I left school it had been 19 minutes, and I'd cycled a little in the opposite direction so I was hoping geography was on my side.)

Google maps read 18 minutes.

'Right, God - another sign please because that could have been a fluke. I'm going to check facebook and if there's a notification from the church then I'll go.' (There hadn't been any notifications when I last checked facebook before getting on my bike, so the chances, I thought, were low.)

Lo and behold, a notification.

'Okay God, you're a lot more technological than I thought. I'll go.'

And it was just the thing I needed. The people there were honest, welcoming, refreshing and serious about studying God's word. We learnt about realising our own sinfulness and yet also living in joy that Christ freely forgives that, bringing us from exile from his love into his Kingdom and a relationship with God. I realised that although I often confess my own weakness/lack of trust/need for control, I rarely actually perceive myself as 'sinful' in the absolute depravity it is cast as in the Bible. Perhaps because it's always in tension with the assuaging promise that Christ has forgiven sin and made a way for us to access God despite sin, and access the Holy Spirit to combat sin.

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Over the weekend I went back to Cambridge, and it was golden. I'd forgotten how easy it is to see people there. I felt surrounded by community all the time - either close, individual friends like Emily, Naomi, Kerry, Jacob or groups like Choir and the SusSex pistols. I did have moments where I thought 'oh, let me not leave' or where I wished Jacob could hold me forever, but it was more of a wish than a fear of what I'd be for not-having. And that, I think, is a big step.

A Quiet Joy
– Yehuda Amichai (translated by Chana Bloch)

I’m standing in a place where I once loved.
The rain is falling. The rain is my home.
I think words of longing: a landscape
out to the very edge of what’s possible.
I remember you waving your hand
as if wiping mist from the windowpane,
and your face, as if enlarged
from an old blurred photo.
Once I committed a terrible wrong
to myself and others.
But the world is beautifully made for doing good
and for resting, like a park bench.
And late in life I discovered
a quiet joy
like a serious disease that’s discovered too late:
just a little time left now for quiet joy.

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This Wednesday, my lecturer called me 'a woman after [his] own brain' in a spontaneous exclamation reminding me very much of Leo. His lectures are all about the body and Islamic architecture, examining how each becomes a metaphor for the other, and how architecture becomes representative and symbolic and manipulated in the cause of the body politic, and how ideas of purity, taboo, boundary (and their opposites) are figured in buildings, which then become part of the experience of living as an embodied being -- and so the building itself is 'embodied'.

Speaking of body things: I've definitely been having a lot more positive body thoughts lately, which has been all the more wonderful because I haven't been surprised by them - they feel natural and unexceptional as they should be. Partly it's because of a good routine of running in preparation for the 10k, the mornings (or evenings) down the parkland walk and in Hampstead heath are usually fresh and exciting and having a reason beyond my body for running is useful too - now when I run it isn't just me and my legs and the world (which can be either incredibly soothing or a disastrous echo chamber, depending on how my brain is being), it's also 17 November and Jacob and all the people who have donated and the charities.

(Also I'm about £50 away from my target for TRIBE --- if you're reading this and have spare change for a good cause please consider putting it into these anti-trafficking charities!)

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On Wednesday I also received a letter from Alex -- it got terribly soggy on my rainy cycle to school (Project get Miriam a raincoat that actually keeps the rain out begins NOW) but I unfurled its damp pages and read them during a break in the lecture, and felt so glad for her honest words.

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Yesterday I met Rachel Dunn, and felt so joyful. We talked poetry, adjusting to London, the danger of finding identity in productivity, the joy of finding joy in another persons joy, how marriage can be missional and not just a love-club for two, sacrificial love... It was beautiful to talk to someone without feeling the need to go to the 'next thing', to just relish their presence and company. Rachel introduced me to Alice Oswald, after we discovered our taste in poetry is weirdly similar (think T.S. Eliot and Yehuda Amichai), and I've spent the morning poring over her poems instead of reading about pop art.

Full Moon
– Alice Oswald

Good God!
What did I dream last night?
I dreamt I was the moon.
I woke and found myself still asleep.

It was like this: my face misted up from inside
And I came and went at will through a little peephole.
I had no voice, no mouth, nothing to express my trouble,
except my shadows leaning downhill, not quite parallel.

Something needs to be said to describe my moonlight.
Almost frost but softer, almost ash but wholer.
Made almost of water, which has strictly speaking
No feature, but a kind of counter-light, call it insight.

Like in woods, when they jostle their hooded shapes,
Their heads congealed together, having murdered each other,
There are moon-beings, sound-beings, such as deer and half-deer
Passing through there, whose eyes can pierce through things.

I was like that: visible invisible visible invisible.
There's no material as variable as moonlight.
I was climbing, clinging to the underneath of my bones, thinking:
Good God! Who have I been last night?

The first week of London

Last night Jacob and I watched Brooklyn, a movie I watched when I was in Cambridge years ago. I remember the painful identification of the fear and loneliness of homesickness I felt with the film the first time I watched it. This last week I've felt bouts of a similar feeling, but more generalised. I can't confine last weeks feelings only to homesickness, because while I miss people at home that's not the only thing I'm missing. And missing isn't the only feeling either.

This is harder to explain than I thought it would be - we should go back to Wednesday last week.

Wednesday was the first day I went back to Cambridge. I took a train and read Birdsong on a sunny seat and found my way easily to Sidney without looking at Google maps. Within 5 minutes there I'd met 5 people apart from Jacob that I knew. Jacob and I made lunch, and over a faux-argument about whether peas are more bean or more green we found ourselves laughing and then hugging.

And then the laughter was replaced with the intense feeling of longing met and grief found. I was surprised at how much I realised then that I'd been missing him and the conflation of joy at being with him again and sorrow at knowing we only had a few hours before I had to leave again brought sudden tears to my eyes.

When I got back to London that evening I had some trouble with my bicycle and tube regulations, which eventually left me saying a hasty 'thank you' to the tube staff and speed walking my way out of the station, trying not to break until I was standing outside the red walls of Kings Cross station and I let myself cry. It was about 10pm and there were still many people on the streets, and yet I felt like I couldn't ask anyone for help - things seem to move so fast here and people remain within their bubbles of concern. How would I get back to Fiona's, which was so far away and not the 15 minute walk to Medwards in Cambridge, and on far more dangerous streets? London felt like a ocean and I was unmoored. The contrast in familiarity, safety and friendship that I felt and Cambridge and here, and the geographical difference, was so stark and a combination of lots of the things I was feeling in terms of why London had been feeling like a hostile place.

In the days following, I developed an eye infection, discovered my bike was kaput and needed replacing, struggled to talk to people in my course/on the scholarship, and went for a lecture that didn't seem to say anything although it was 2 hours long. I felt so tired - simply doing the basic things like cooking and having a shower and getting to campus seemed to take so much effort. One evening when I called Jacob it all sort of descended on me as I looked up at the ceiling and wondered if I could actually do this year. 'This is so much harder than I thought it would be,' I told him.

But since then I've had good lectures, met really kind and welcoming people in church, found my way back home from school without getting lost, and got a new bike. (She's called Olivia, and if she were a human she's be about 65 years old, with dyed blue hair and a light, gentle voice, full of joy but also comforting) There have been moments of still feeling lost, but with every cycle up the archway hill it gets a little shorter.

On Thursday I saw waiting for Will on a bench on the top of Parliament Hill, when an old man approached me. 'May I sit?' he asked. 'Of course,' I replied.

His name was Lucello, and he told me about his varied and exciting life - his move from Milan to South Africa under the pretence that he was a bricklayer, although he'd never laid a brick in his life. 'After the first day my hands were all torn,' he said. From bricklayer, he became a carpenter, then a window dresser and stand maker, which included moving to England. He spoke for about 30 minutes, and I was happy to listen because in his presence I felt the rare feeling of slowing down, and stopping and being wholly absorbed in a life of adventure and uncertainty that wasn't my own. Knowing from hindsight that all works out in the end, in some way or another 'if you have enough cheek and enough-- enough -- ah you know what I mean?' (he said, trying to get at the sense of confidence and dauntlessness and risk that I think is best summed up in the word ballsy) was comforting, reminding me that - hey, I'm only 22, and I've only been here 2 weeks, and life with unfold itself according to God's good plan. I might not know entirely what I'm doing but I'm going to be ballsy about next week, I'm going to learn without fearing that I'm the least experienced and qualified person in the class, I'm going to talk to people without the fear of being thought odd or the fear of rejection.

A mystery; or my misorientation

The strangest thing happened on an early Thursday run. I ran down the Parkland walk, across the railway bridge and into Finsbury park, wanting to get to about 7km this morning as my long-ish run. Heading away from the railway bridge, I did a loop round some trees in the park, and after a while more decided that it was time to begin returning.

Return is always a time-confounding moment in running, because particularly on routes one is less familiar with, I find that the first half of the run into the unknown usually goes quite slowly (at least perceptually) while the return flies by far faster.

But this time return was even odder. I followed a path, that led round the gentle bend of a lake - 'The Lake', a sign said. After passing a children's playground, I then ran through a garden with pink and red flowers beds in either side of me, and continued straight.

Until, I noticed before me a lake, gently bending, with a sign 'The Lake' beside it. Puzzled, I kept going, and passed a children's playground. I stopped when I got into a garden with pink and red flower beds on either side, and felt shakey and confused. This was the exact same place I'd been running through less than five minutes ago and yet I was sure I hadn't made any drastic loop. I wondered (quite seriously) if somehow I'd stumbled into a time loop, or had some sort of pre-emptive vision. Because how - how??? - in the short time between seeing the lake and seeing the lake again had I possibly gone round it? Particularly as a) it wasn't a small lake, b) I'd left its contour, and c) I was, as far as I could perceive, running straight.

Shaken, and conscious that I needed to get back so I could get to my lecture on time, I asked a man who was walking towards me in an orange sweatshirt pushing a buggy where the railways bridge to the Parkland walk was he turned and pointed behind him to the right, so I thanked him and began running in that direction.

Less than 5 minutes later, I saw coming towards me...a man who in an orange sweatshirt pushing a buggy. The same man.

'What is going on?' I thought, and slowed to a walk. He looked just as puzzled as he caught sight of me.

'Are you lost?' he asked.

'Yes, do you know how to get to the railway bridge?' I asked, the déjà vécu unmistakable, and he pointed before him to his left.

This time I did find the railway bridge, but felt like I wasn't in reality until my feet touched the path of the Parkland walk, a straight path with no bends and no lakes, and no time loops! (that I have yet experienced)

Starting new: let go and know

Late afternoon - to catch the last part of the golden day I decided to walk down the parkland walk to the shops in Crouch End. As I walked, two things became quite clear in my mind:

1) London begins now, and I need to begin putting down new roots despite the knowledge that in a year I am to be uprooted again.

2) Loneliness is something this year might have quite large doses of.

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Choosing between going to London or staying in Cambridge for a master's was a really difficult choice.

London loomed full of possibility - possibility of all sorts.

The possibility that I would learn from some of the best minds in the field of Asian archaeology and art, the possibility that I would meet people full of passion and fun, the possibility that I would grow in confidence about moving in the vast crowd of fast people and rather than getting lost in an ontological crisis I'd feeling my funny old body stepping, stopping, entering and walking and I'd remind myself of who I am.

But London also held the possibility of losing friends, the possibility of showing my ignorance about archaeology and art, the possibility of being uncomfortable, lost, in danger.  It seems like a little thing, but after a skype call with Auntie Heidi and a phone call with Hannah -- realising that to commute to school could take anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour, and that a grocery shop might not be a 10 minute walk away, and that I could possibly be staying somewhere where green fields and a river were not a 10 minute run away -- everything seemed possibly too big for me to handle.

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But words came from Emily, words of wisdom and honesty:

"Now, in your life [...] you'll have a lot of changes to adapt to, and I think it's important that you're able to keep that momentum. I mean, after your education, you're moving back to Singapore – that'll be another change. After your bond you may find your life elsewhere – there's another change.

You'll meet different people in London, learn of different lifestyles. If anything, it's a great adventure.

On staying in Cambridge: I feel as though, if I were in your position, I might feel like I were on borrowed time, that I didn't accomplish all I'd set out to do, that I didn't quite make my mark in the way I'd envisioned, or done or read or said or painted all the things I wanted to. And that's true. Our minds will always have more capacity than our bodies do. And perhaps you may feel that an extra year will allow you to do all that. To further solidify your friendships and memories to make sure they will not, cannot fade. It hurts to even think that they could be undone and you can't bear that. To properly mourn every street corner you dizzily laughed on or every tree whose shade you enjoyed. To let every inch of your soul know and really know.

But every year won't be enough. And that's life I guess.

It's learning to let go and know

You could never have done it even with a million years."

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I'm holding on to the idea that defeat and it's sisters tiredness, loneliness, fear, mediocrity, discomfort and danger can be positives. That God has put me in a place where I will be challenged - what is an adventure without a few dragons? But God also promises to carry me through defeat, not by making me strong but by letting me rest in His strength. 

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. (2 Corinthians 12:9)

So I'm learning to let go and know that I can't do it - I could never have done it, but God can and already has. This space might be a place where I 'boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses', partly because I want to be honest in this space, and I want to write, and I want to learn how to lean on God so that my weaknesses are not things I hide with shame but things I gladly give to God, knowing that he does not see me less because of them but says, 'My child, don't take it all on yourself, let's do this adventure together. My grace is sufficient for the next step, my power will be your stay when your mind reaches ahead of your body, my rest will be the relationship that holds you firm when loneliness seems too large.'

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).

Pebbles, Perfection and swimming in the nude

On the second day of working in the New Hall Art Collection, I was sent to Kettle’s Yard to deliver a package. Kettle’s Yard was the former home of Jim Ede, an art collector and friend of artists, who wove art into his home. And art to him wasn’t confined to the conventional definitions of painting, sculpture, print, drawing etc., but included things like pebbles, shells and selected drawings of his daughters. After delivering the package, I was brought round the house before it opened for the day’s viewings.

I’d been into the house before, and I remember thinking how peaceful it would be, to one day come back in the morning when people were at school or work, and pick up a book, sit in one of his armchairs surrounded by Arthur Wallis ship paintings, and just read. Being there so early that day meant it was largely empty aside from the two Andrews who were setting it up, the curator, and me, and so it felt less like a house for viewing and more like a house for living. The beauty of the house is that it feels private (even when filled with people looking at it) and like it’s breathing, particularly with its airy light colour scheme and minimalist furniture.

On one off the tables, there is a spiral of pebbles. Each was close to spherical, but not quite, just as the spiral is comprised of almost circles. In an essay (unpublished, but a photocopy of it in his handwriting can be found in the house), Ede mused about pebbles and perfection. To find the perfect pebble, he writes, is a once in a century, a once in a continent matter. He then asks: if perfection is so rarely found in nature why do we expect – demand- perfection in art? Why must art be first-rate, or ‘the best and the brightest’ as Matthew Arnold once put it. The detail and particular beauty in the imperfections of nature are miracles, in Ede’s eyes, and no less worthy of being seen as art than the most perfect Michaelangelo. (Although, of course, even Michaelangelo’s David is literally riddled with imperfection.)

Later that evening, I cycled down to the Riverbank Club. As I walked through the leafy footpath to ‘Heaven’s Door’, the first drops of light rain began to fall after a scorching weekend. Not the perfect weather for a swim, but I was there, and the river was inviting. A few people were under a tent, sheltering from the rain, and seeing me pick up my towel they realized I was going for a swim.

‘Can’t swim with your clothes on love!’ One lady joked, and, suddenly conscious of how fully clothed I was in front of their nakedness (the riverbank club is costumes optional) I sort of stammered a ‘Oh, I’m just going to change over there,’ and scurried away to the changing hut.

It is dim and slightly musty in there, and on the wall there are newspaper articles, quotes and a board detailing kingfisher sightings hung up. One of the pieces of paper reads ‘It is entirely good and full of grace to be here’, which I feel describes the riverbank club well – a place where all are welcome, all are worthy, nothing is required of you except to savour the moment. It is (and has been for me) a sort of Eden in Cambridge, a place where I feel good and, particularly in the water, full of grace.
But as I got out of my clothes I wondered, what had made me so bashful in front of those lovely, naked people? Part of me felt rude just being clothed before them, and yet part of me was terrified of the act of unclothing before them. I’ve often looked at the bodies of the people there, sun blushed and bearing the kind marks of age that makes the body so interesting, and felt embarrassed at my young body, smooth and exposed. Like a pebble that has no beautiful imperfections, just a plane of skin. How silly, I thought, when society elevates that sort of beauty, the untrialled and uncut. And yet when I’m wearing clothes in society, bearing a body close to conventional standards of ‘beauty’, I don’t feel confident in it either.

I slipped into the river, and swam towards Grantchester, feeling the cool water on my skin and the occasional river weed across my belly. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Arms, legs, dunk-head-in. Gradually my body became in my mind not an appraisable object but was seal-like, moving me through the water. No wondering if my appearance was worthy of being an art object, if my perfections and imperfections affected my worth. Just a miracle, a girl-seal, swimming naked at 8pm in the drizzle, fearfully and wonderfully made.

02/08/2018

I woke up today from a nightmare that shocked me at how violent my brain could be against - itself? The sort of dream where there's a frightening person threatening you (and unlike usual dreams where you're sort of omniscient and pre-empt what is about to come next, the threat arrives unexpectedly) and you try to scream to get help but you can't and you can't move either.

But like that funny saying 'red sky at night, shepherd's delight' and the night's terror was the beginning of a incredible day. Having worked in the kitchen here for 5 days now, everything has become a process that I feel I know my role in. It's still tiring and frantic in that one hour before we serve up (not helped by the fact that we are a team of 5 where in previous years there have always been six in the catering team) but it's punctuated by a morning prayer, tea breaks that break out in laughter, fun chat, and occasional kitchen singing.

At the beginning of the week I was worried that I wouldn't be able to connect with women of such a different age group and stage in life, but although I'm the age of their children (or possibly grandchildren in a couple of cases) we've grown to really appreciate and have fun with each other.

It's incredible how a shared faith transcends boundaries of age and situation. We're all vastly different, and yet today one woman shared with the rest of us how one of the biggest things she'd noticed about being a Christian was just how liberating it was to have you identity rooted in Christ. How you no longer needed to worry about approval from others or showing and working for your worth, since you have been redeemed and therefore deemed worthy of love and forgiveness and grace by Jesus. And I thought - yes! yes, that's something I'm definitely still learning but which has become so apparent to me in the recent years in Cambridge where to compete against others is futile and you have to examine why you do what you do - is it simply to prove to some arbitrary authority that you can, or a reflection of joy at the gifts God has give you and the context He has blessed you with?

During my afternoon break I took a walk to the Base Camp, had a nice conversation with a policeman (who I asked for directions from) on the way over, got a complimentary coffee and some non-complimentary but very exciting books, and then walked back via the Keswick Market. I stopped by a shop selling muesli (how can I not stop when I see toasted oats and nuts) and spoke with the man selling the muesli. He let me try some, and gave sympathy when he found out our team are cooking 70-90 people three meals a day, and told me about how he'd decided to start this muesli business with a friend after university. I told him my sort-of (day) dream I have of starting a cafe and selling granola, and he laughed and said he'd consider making granola to sell alongside his muesli.

(sorry I've just gone on a ramble about muesli of all things - but it was such a lovely passing conversation)

After the dinner shift I went to the main tent to listen to the talk. It was incredibly inspiring, given by two missionaries in Egypt who work in a poor village, spreading God's word, helping the local people improve their social and living conditions, and providing a service to the special needs children of the village too. At one point, the man speaking choked up as he talked about his wife's work with the special needs children, and I saw just how much he respected her and loved the children, and at the same time how much his heart broke for them and for her as her heart is broken by the difficulty and discrimination they face. He didn't try to restrain the tremble in his voice or the tears in his eyes, but spoke through it before he became composed again and spoke with a bright intensity about why it is all worth it - why they do what they do when it is so hard. And that is simply because Jesus is worth it all, is the ultimate healer of heartbreak and mender of bodies and minds, and his salvation is the greatest treasure they could give to anyone, a treasure that would mean even someone living in the poorest, most decrepit of conditions would be the richest person in the world.

After the talk they called for people who had felt any inclination or calling to work in the mission field to come to the front if they wanted to be prayed for - and as we sang the final song I was moved as I saw so many going forward. Young, old, men, women - to share what has given them joy and peace and life to the full.

I walked back from the evening meeting and though the mist covered most of the fells, in a little break between the clouds I glimpsed a salmon-red sky.

Sydney and the Sabbath

At one point this year I talked to Jacob about something and found out he didn't work on a Sunday, devoting it to God as the Sabbath - the day of rest. Intrigued and inspired (and maybe slightly competitive) I decided to see what it would be like, to give a whole day to God and not getting ahead with my own life. And so it was that Sundays begun being devoted to rest. It's funny, I remember reading about a dull way of spending a Sabbath resting in Laura Ingalls Wilder's series

They must walk slowly and solemnly, looking straight ahead.  They must not joke or laugh, or even smile.  Grandpa and his two brothers walked ahead, and their father and mother walked behind them.

In church, Grandpa and his brothers must sit perfectly still for two long hours and listen to the sermon.  They dared not fidget on the hard bench.  They dared not swing their feet.  They dared not turn their heads to look at the windows or the walls or the ceiling of the church.  They must sit perfectly motionless, and never for one instant take their eyes from the preacher.

When church was over, they walked slowly home.  They might talk on the way, but they must not talk loudly and they must never laugh or smile.  At home they ate a cold dinner which had been cooked the day before.  Then all the long afternoon they must sit in a row on a bench and study their catechism, until at least the sun went down and Sunday was over. (Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods)

But rest is not literal stasis. Rest can be a joyful cartwheel on a winter's morning walk at the white snowy world God has created. Rest can be making a hot bowl of porridge, or a cold bowl of nice cream and granola and eating it with thanks for nourishment and the day and a person you love to share breakfast with. Rest can be laughing till tears come to your eyes at the tipsy antics of choir post evensong.

Even before learning about Jacob's Sabbath, I'd begun thinking about rest. In summer 2017 I went to Sydney to see my dear friend Ellis, and in Sydney she taught me the Australian art of chilling. There were no formal lessons - that, I think, would be antithetical to the spirit of chill in the first place, but she showed me, by contrast and direct calling out, how prone to activity I am. Not simply activity for joy and fulfilment but activity just to fill - an escape from not having anything to do, to be, to distract myself with. Often I had spans of time in Sydney with nothing particularly pressing to do, and instead of trying to find yet another thing, I'd find myself. I remember clearly lying under a bridge, listening to the metallic echo and roar as cars went over head, focusing my entire mind on the single simple thought of gratefulness for shade from the head. On another occasion I walked from Manly to Spit, and felt thankful for silence. At one point the trees became dappled and I stopped and took a photo of myself hiding in the leaves so I could see how much I could camouflage myself. (It is not a photo to put on the world wide interweb, not just because it isn't particularly good but because it wasn't taken for exposure but for exploration.)

I've realised that when you rest your mind has more space to find pathways of its own. It's the sort of contemplative suspension you allow yourself to have in an art gallery, lavishing time over individual paintings, gazing, wondering - and finally creating a certain idea or conclusion. In the Gallery of New South Wales, I stopped in front of this painting for a long time. Because it is abstract, I couldn't accept it as something and then move on in the way one can with realist paintings if in a hurry. No, this is beautiful - but why? Why is it called Joie de Vivre, and what is the joy of life? Is it flowers, a sunset, or the tulle swirl of a dancer's skirt? Perhaps it is just colour, or maybe emotion expressed as colour - exhilaration, love, happiness, the feeling of a kiss - 

Where does joy come from? Why do I deserve joy? What sort of joy is lasting?

'Joie de Vivre' (1958, Mary Webb)

It makes sense that galleries have their roots in churches, then, because of the contemplative mind that both encourage and thrive off. But why do we contain this restful mindset to 'hallowed' walls? This Sabbath attitude of thinking deeply and unhurriedly (in other words, restful but meaningful thought) and taking joy in the process and the conclusion (which is, to me at least, more often than not God) is transformative. If we took it outside the physical walls of a gallery or church and outside the ideological walls of art and religiosity, then it would transform the ordinary and make every breath on Sunday a Sabbath rest.

Amsterdam/Art/Contemplation/Catharsis

On my wall I've written in black marker across a poster of architecture in the Redland High School for Girls these words by Jenny O'dell:

'The artist creates a structure...that holds open a contemplative space against the pressures of familiarity that constantly threaten to close it.'

More accurately, I wrote those words all in capitals:

THE ARTIST CREATES A

STRUCTURE... THAT HOLDS

OPEN A CONTEMPLATIVE SPACE

AGAINST THE PRESSURES

OF FAMILIARITY THAT

CONSTANTLY THREATEN

TO CLOSE IT.

- Jenny O'dell

Today in a brief half hour window between a meeting at the church for A Night of Jubilee and a craft session to make thank-you cards for our supervisors, I lay on my bed and read a few chapters of Autumn by Ali Smith, trying to re-create a reader comment on this blog  about summer: “I love feeling tired on a hot summer evening after a day in the sun, putting on a loose T-shirt and comfy underwear, lying on top of crisp, clean sheets with a fan on at the foot of my bed, reading a delicious book.”

In other words trying to establish a contemplative space, to let words roll over me with their un-punctuated narrative (as I have realised is characteristic of Autumn so far - speech is never distinguished from description or thought by quotation marks, everything exists on the same plane of novel-language). The odd thing is, this posture - lying in bed, reading - is essentially the same as what I'd been doing to revise for exams. When books are your examinable medium, you need to read and reread them in preparation, and I spent hours holding them open, mouthing quotes to myself, trying to remember the names of critics.

But the reading I've been doing after exams is different - more contemplative, resisting the familiar pressures of speed, criticism and necessity that accompany reading for revision. I re-cultivated that habit in Amsterdam, where Alex and I lay on the grass outside the museumplein, reading. Alex read Barthes' essays on wrestling and steak and I read The Festival of Insignificance, a not-good book. (But how wonderful to read a not-good book after reading books that I am compelled to insist are good sometimes for the sake of an essay, even when their sentences cause me grief because they are so complicated)

Museumplein was where we spent most of our time, because the idea of Amsterdam was to go and look at art. So we went through the Van Gogh Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and the Stedelijk museum in two days, each so different, but it was the Stedelijk museum which really got to me in that breath taking, heart wringing way art sometimes does. We walked into an exhibition called Studio Drift, and the first piece that caught my eye was a little light, made of a dandelion.

How odd, I thought, I've seen this before.

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But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. ―  Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

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And in a Proustian madeleine moment, I was transported to a moment in 2015 (or maybe that moment was transported forward) in the Victoria & Albert museum, when Wei Xin, Ellis and I looked at a dandelight. Here it was in front of me, a single dandelight, and then in the next room - miracles upon miracles - it was filled with them.

In another room, there was a tree, with leaves that lit up and glowed in different colours. And the madeleine moment happened again, and suddenly I was alone under that tree in the Armenian Church in 2016, and I'd just finished first year. Grandma was alive, I didn't know Jacob, and I was trying to reconcile myself with myself - who had I become, one year away from home? If I could turn back time, would that moment under that tree be where I'd go? It was a threshold moment, in between travel and stasis, beginnings and endings. But no - I wouldn't lose what I've been given to regain what I've lost. I've been grown so much, blessed beyond measure, felt a trinity of physical, emotional and spiritual sensations that I perhaps imagined in theory but never grasped in reality. Despite the madeleine moment of bringing the past and present together, it also reinforced just how past that time was, that self was. I was different, and I was good. I am different, and that is good.

I realised the untethered feeling I'd been having after exams had ended had been in part because I didn't know who I was without the structure of work/working towards. And the museum reminded me that structure doesn't always have to be structured and progressive - it can be still and gentle, a structure that is contemplative and questioning. Who am I? That 2015 question I still ask in 2018, but it is a relief to realise that I ask it with less need to fix myself to a single answer, but to relish the contemplation (and the ability to contemplate). To admit that to myself broke the hard knot of fear and confusion in me that I'd been carrying around for a little while. I had a little cry over the tree, leaning against the cool white walls of the gallery, and then walked on to see more art.

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At the English dinner on Thursday, Leo asked me how Amsterdam was.

'Oh, it was great - really cathartic.'

'Ah,' he said, and gave me a funny look.

Amsterdam - catharsis - w e e d, oh dear.

'Not like that.'

(Oh for a void to swallow me)

Moments: 6-13 May

Spring has come to Cambridge, proper summery-spring, and so many joyful moments arrived with the sun. Last week:

Sunday

Doing yoga in the park near the house with Jacob, which meant mud-stained knees from cat cows and grass in my face during child's pose. The smell of fresh grass - why isn't that a smell I smell more often?

Having breakfast in the garden with Jacob - overnight oats, peanut butter, cinnamon, strawberries and banana is such as classic and delicious combination. Combined with sun, clear skies and Jacob's blue eyes and there's my perfect morning.

Having lunch with Pierre, Charlotte and Jacob at Kettle's Yard and then watching the Akomfrah installation Auto Da Fe -- and THEN cycling down to Skater's Meadow and lying in swimming costumes in the sun -- and THEN jumping into the Cam, first Harriet, then Jacob, then me. Getting over the first gasping breaths, then swimming to shake off the cold-limb-heaviness. There were a few punts out, and a handy tree to cling on to for a mid swim break. But oh what a delight, to swim in cold water on a hot day, with people fill with the joy of the Lord!

Clinging on the Harriet as she gave me a 'backie' into town, which involved an incredible feat of strength on her part as she cycled without sitting on the seat and with the bike on gear 6 all the way from granchester, with my hanging on for dear life on the back! I think I laughed or smiled almost the whole way, it was surreal. Except for the moments where I said 'ouch' at bumpy bits, or when Harriet and I called out 'ring ring' at crowded parts to compensate for my lack of a bike bell!

Trying to get ice cream with Jacob in the interim between rehearsal and evensong and failing and walking back sans shoes and feeling absolutely a l i v e.

Singing Stanford in A during evensong and being drenched in a shaft of sunlight that pierced through a chapel window during the magnificant. I felt like it was a big warm embrace from God - a sharing in the joy I absolutely could not contain that day.

Ending the day, as I started, with Jacob and joy.

Tuesday 

Sitting in the sun on the wall outside Kings with Jacob by my side and peanut butter ice cream in my hand, feeling like you couldn't add much to the mix to make me any happier.

Going to a swing dancing class with Kerry, and being spun around by a man in a Hawaiian t-shirt who was going to Bulgaria over the weekend just to do more swing dancing. Seeing people dance with each other so naturally across the room, laughing over my own clumsiness and awkwardness as I tried to remember to follow the leader's body-suggestions while also remembering to move my own body to the music and through the steps I'd learnt that evening. I cycled back remembering how in the second term of first year I'd set up a series of challenges for myself, including 'do one new thing every week'. This swing class was certainly a new thing, and so rewarding...

Wednesday

Making not-very-successful dumplings that tasted successful despite their misshapen appearances with Jacob, and eating them out in the garden. Bella warned us of a spider infestation in the garden, which we failed to spot until mid way through something Jacob was saying I spied a tiny spider, only slightly bigger than the head of a pin, hanging from his ear like an earring and stopped him to take it off. (The infestation turned out to be a little colony of these miniscule spiders, set up on the compost bin)

Thursday

A bright, brisk morning on the river, which made me feel so alive. The boat was so much more settled and rowing felt a lot easier, and we went further and faster which was incredibly exciting! It's funny to see the path I often run down from the river, the perspective I never thought I'd have.

Then singing Vaughn Williams' 'Silent Noon' in my singing lesson.

And feeling so incredibly absorbed in Hollywood revision that I burnt the chickpeas I'd left boiling on the hob and set the fire alarm off... (Hollywood is a fascinating subject - I didn't think I'd like it much, but it's incredible and has to do so much with human psychology and what we want/desire and how that changes based on context/history, or how we're told certain desires are acceptable and others aren't... all so interesting...)

Friday

A fruitful day in the UL, punctuated by lunch on the grass outside with Jacob, and a 'bimble' (as she called it) with Alex in which we tried in words tumbling over themselves to catch up on a week of not seeing each other, and admired a particularly impressive tree.

Saturday

Doing sprint intervals with Jacob - so painful, so good. I ran to the rhythm of Grandma's rhyme 'left, left, he had a good job and he left, right, right, it serves him jolly good right, left, left...' and heard Jacob's more complicated version of the same feet-pace-poem. Each circuit was tough, but I imagined in my head Luk Ching's encouraging shouting from AC track days 'Go Miriam!' and thought of Nat's wise words - that I don't have to run, I get to run, what a blessing! - and felt so affirmed, running to Jacob at the finish line, and hearing his encouragement (and also seeing that he shared my pain/tiredness!)

Singing American Boy in a circle with the SusSex Pistols - what a song, what a group of girls, and --- halfway through one sing-through a black Labrador walked into the room and then walked out again, disinterested, which made us all laugh.

Sunday

An interesting new beetroot muesli breakfast adventure with Jacob, and then the construction of a rhubarb cheesecake!

Sunday

Singing 'Oh praise the name of the Lord our God, oh praise His name forever more! For endless days we will sing your praise O Lord, O Lord our God' before a really heartening sermon by a visiting preacher about how 'the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed' - small and often unnoticeable in its growth, and yet it will grow into the biggest tree in the garden. The preacher told us about his family, and how just one man in his family in 1882 had been brought to hear the gospel by his parlour maid when he was just a boy, and he heard and believed, and subsequently passed the faith down through his family, and on and on.

A rowing outing where we almost crashed into a house boat, and heard children in the boat singing at the top of their lungs 'JINGLE BELLS JINGLE BELLS JINGLE ALL THE WAYYYYY'

Evensong (Howells' 'St Pauls service', and Harris' 'Bring Us O Lord God') and then a happy formal including conversations about life museums (if you had a museum of you, what would you put in it?), the better kind of fruit salad dessert and not one but two absolute classic vestry sing-song pieces ('Noble in B Minor', very aptly put forward by Jacob, and Parry's 'I was glad')

24/04/2018

Yesterday was a bit of a heavy day. You know when you come down from a high and feel slightly lost and useless? Post-dissertation me, writing about Partition and bodies and violence, with grey skies outside felt a bit like that. Working was slow, and draining when you realise that articulating trauma has so many rules and restrictions and faults. Part of me wants to applaud writers for even approaching trauma, even though they don't do a just representation of the full extent of trauma. Because how can words do that, when trauma is so physical, so tied to touch, memory and all the senses. And should you replicate trauma or just aim at mediating it? Is the replication of it a violence in itself?

I was particularly struck by an extract from Veena Das, who wrote about her  interactions with women who had witnessed Partition:

"When women’s bodies were made the passive witnesses of the disorder of the Partition in this manner, how did women mourn the loss of self and the world? It is considering this question that we find startling reversals in the transaction between body and language. In the normal process of mourning, grievous harm is inflicted by women on their own bodies, while the acoustic and linguistic codes make the loss public by the mourning laments. When asking women to narrate their experiences of the Partition I found a zone of silence around the event. This silence was achieved either by the use of language that was general and metaphor but that evaded specific descriptions of any events so as to capture the particularity of their experience, or by describing the surrounding events but leaving the actual experience of abduction and rape unstated. It was common to describe the violence of Partition in such terms as rivers of blood flowing and the earth covered with white shrouds right unto the horizon. Sometimes a woman would remember images of fleeing, but as one woman warned me, it was dangerous to remember. These memories were sometimes compared to poison that makes the inside of the woman dissolve, as a solid is dissolved in a powerful liquid. At other times a woman would say that she is like a discarded exercise book, in which the accounts of past relationships were kept—the body, a parchment of losses. At any rate, none of the metaphors used to describe the self that had become the repository of poisonous knowledge emphasized the need to give expression to this hidden knowledge"

I read this alongside Cracking India, and couldn't help but see (as I read later in a brilliant article by Ambreen Hai) just how silenced Ayah's voice is, during and after her abduction. ‘Can the soul be extracted from its living body? Her vacant eyes are bigger than ever’. I suppose from the start of the novel it is more her body that speaks that her mouth since she's presented as a highly physically desirable character, but she's still intensely spirited and controls her body to articulate her power. After her abduction she basically becomes a shell and her body doesn't say anything except I am hurt, I am lost, I am sad. and, most crushingly 'I am not alive'. A parchment of losses indeed. Should I expect the body to say anything differently after so much suffering? But we need those bodies to say 'This is what happened to me, let me tell you what happened so you can't pretend it didn't' --- so that some justice is done, some measure of learning gained and pain is not made meaningless.

On top of all these questions, my heart just ached, in the same way it ached when I saw John Akomfrah's Unfinished Conversation last year, at the violence people do to each other and the injustice that we all perpetuate.

Even practicing handstands in my room didn't help shake the feeling that the world was all wrong.

After I'd planned the essay I cycled down to Focus, hoping for some nice 'God loves you and God keeps you safe' type of reassurance or something. But I got there and we went straight into Romans 9, that tricky passage about God's sovereignty.

'As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. [...] You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” [...] What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?'

It's such a hard passage to think about, especially when I think of the people I love who haven't yet accepted Christ. I've received the mercy of Christ but so many haven't because they haven't accepted it. Which is just in a way but also -- Oh God, what about Tim? What about Ama? What about Zenia? What about Alex? What about...? Countless names come to mind. I realise it is mercy itself that we are living in a time of God's patience as He waits and calls for people to receive the love and grace He freely gives, but I suppose my human stubborn self constantly worries that it won't be enough.

But at the close of the day I went to Jacob's room. I had a window of time sitting on his bed before he got back, where I wrote down some of the things that troubled me. Mid-sentence, the door opened and Jacob came in with the biggest smile on his face which lit me up inside to see his joy.

'Why are you so happy?'

'I'm happy to see you!'

Very smooth, and it made me laugh. We had a little bit of this gorgeous cake which we'd made on Monday, which (as I wrote on the pot I put them in) is only the BEST CHOCOLATE CAKE IN THE WORLD. As I discovered on Monday, there is apparently a difference between cake and pudding (I'd previously thought cake just came under the umbrella term 'pudding', which I thought was a synonym for 'dessert' but  that is apparently not the case) but this is definitely cake, and such good cake that I'd have it for pudding and for every single birthday until I'm diabetic. Afterwards we prayed together, about bad days and good days, present days and future days. I am thankful I have a good God who listens, who is just and who is sovereign and in control. Things like Partition and Romans 9 sometimes shake me and make me wonder 'why?', 'how?', but those very questions that desire justice in me, the molded one, surely reflect the desire for justice in the molder. And the good thing is that he does rule with justice, so that pain is not forgotten or shamed, and so that the story written on his parchment is not one of infinite loss but infinite mercy, love and grace.