a veil of quietness

I thought I’d post up a recent article I wrote about the novel Unless by Carol Shields (probably the author that has had the most influence on my development as a writer over the past few years. My mum found her, quite serendipitously in our local library about eight years ago; often the best things are stumbled upon by accident). 

The article came as part of a series in the arts section of the paper, where different writers wrote about their ‘essential read’ each issue. It’s not so much a review, as a reflection... so have a read, if y'like.

♥ 

Essential Book: Unless by Carol Shields

(From the Strathclyde Telegraph. Edition 6. May 2013)

When I first read Unless – the little-known, but quietly powerful last novel of Canadian author, Carol Shields – I was sixteen and realised, almost straight away, that this wasn’t like most other books I’d come across. It wasn’t just ‘a good story’ or ‘an interesting idea’. It wasn’t simply escapism, or a nice alternative to television-watching. This wasn’t going to be the sort of book that would slip in and out of my life, hardly leaving a trace. No. Before I was even halfway through, I knew that this was one of those rare novels that (to borrow a phrase from Pablo Neruda) would somehow, softly, ‘befriend my existence’.

Unless tells the story of Reta Winters – writer, mother, translator, wife – who finds the rhythm of her life disrupted when her nineteen year-old daughter, Norah, drops out of university without warning, choosing instead to sit cross legged on a street corner wearing a sign that reads: ‘goodness’. Norah’s withdrawal from normal life distresses and perplexes Reta, and the narrative follows her attempts to come to terms with the new shape her life has taken, and her struggles over how to live now.

Muted, reflective, and often lyrical, the novel engages with a number of powerful ideas; the notion of ‘goodness’, for example, comes up repeatedly. ‘I don’t know what that word really means,’ Reta writes in the first chapter, and finding out becomes a preoccupation for her, leading her to question how ‘goodness’ compares to the notion of ‘greatness’, an ideal more commonly sought after in society. As well as an exploration of this word, the novel also meditates on themes such as the life of a writer, the loss of innocence, and women’s place in society, a society which seems determined to treat them as if they are invisible.

While the themes in the novel may sound heavy, the book is never pretentious or ‘preachy’. Instead, Shield’s deceptively light, and often very funny, prose is honest, at times even wise. What I love about Shields’ writing is the subtle way it affirms, without sentimentality, the value of ‘ordinary’ experience. So much of her writing – both here and elsewhere in her fiction – is about ordinary people doing ‘ordinary’ things: going to the library, buying a scarf, taking the train, going out for dinner. All seemingly small activities, and not very ‘literary’ perhaps, but Shields’ treats these subjects with an element of quiet dignity. It is through her focus on ‘the everyday’ that she reveals what is important in her characters’ lives, and here that she touches on truths about what it means to be human.

While Reta openly admits that she is ‘going through a period of great unhappiness and loss’, her voice never rises to the pitch of gushy self-pity, nor drops into cold cynicism. Instead, her tone throughout is muted, hushed, honest, even hopeful. The novel seems to acknowledge the idea that unhappiness is not a ‘thing’ set apart from everyday life; instead, it is something which happens in the midst of it and Reta’s reflections on this, and her continued engagement with the ordinary details of her life that make her such an engaging and authentic character, one with streak of gentle courage.

One word, one thought, I keep coming back to when trying to capture the essence of Unless is: ‘quietness’. It is a quiet novel, one that causes a veil of quietness to fall over you while you are reading. The title itself – ‘unless’ – seems to whisper, to hold its breath. ‘It flies like a moth around the ear,’ Reta writes, reflecting on the word, ‘you hardly hear it, and yet everything depends on its breathy presence’. I have read Unless numerous times now, and each time I come away feeling a sense of renewal. Unlike other novels where, after putting them down, I find myself wishing I was living a different life – one that was a little bit more thrilling, a little bit more wild or romantic – after reading this book, I find myself more attentive, more thoughtful, more curious about the life I am already living. It is a beautiful book, one that deeply resonates; if that isn’t the definition of an essential read then I don’t know what is. 

♥

(Pictures: various snapshots from around my bedroom recently)

passing shadows

As university draws to a close - how strange to write that - deadlines have stepped up a notch. 

So, in the interim period... I thought I’d pop another one of last year’s columns for the Strathclyde Telegraph on here (p.s. This was the very first one I wrote):

♥

Something I’ve Noticed: Peripheral People
(From the Strathclyde Telegraph. Issue 1. October 2011)

I try to live with my eyes wide open – partly because walking about with closed eyes is kind of dangerous, but also I don’t want to miss anything. I am a third year English and Creative Writing student, and I’m looking forward to writing for you over the coming months. What can you expect from this column? A collection of ‘noticings’: anything from overheard conversations, to observations from the bizarre world of public transport. Hello, friend, and happy reading!

I thought I’d start by telling you about the man who walks past my house every day. He is stout with a rather gruff expression, but what’s particularly fascinating about him is his hair: it is striped. A white stripe runs from the back of his head down into his moustache, almost as though someone painted it there. My sister spotted this soon after we moved. ‘It makes him look a bit like a skunk, doesn’t it?’ We all peeked out the window, and - ‘Yes!’ - it really did! Since then, we have always (rather fondly) referred to him as ‘The Skunk’.

I walked past him recently. He was on his phone, and didn’t look up. As I was walking, it suddenly struck me how odd it was. I have seen The Skunk nearly every day for the past thirteen years – I have had conversations about him, I have worried that he’s ill when no one’s seen him for a few days – and yet he probably doesn’t even know I exist. It’s almost surreal to think how he has been going about his life for years, not realising that he has somehow become a part of mine.

It made me wonder how many people’s stories we all stumble into, unaware. Do people on my street notice me running like a maniac – buttons bursting open, scarf unravelling – to catch the bus? They must: I do it often enough. Maybe I have become part of their daily routine. (‘What’s the time, Marge?’ ‘It must be nearly half nine, Phil. That strange girl just ran past.’)

It’s easy, especially in the city, to feel like we’re invisible – to feel insignificant in the midst of a crowd. It can be frightening – mixed in among a-hundred other faces on a train – to feel like we have lost ourselves, like we have become nothing more than passing shadows.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot, though, about all the people who have quietly affected me. I don’t mean friends, or even acquaintances. I mean the peripheral people – people like The Skunk, or the couple in my work who always order white coffees, or the lady I saw once lifting her little boy up to the post-box so he could pop the letters in. 

I’m thinking about people like the boy with the blue t-shirt last week who played the harmonica while crossing the road; he  left music trailing behind him as he went. I'm thinking abut people like the old man on my bus a few months ago who I overhead talking to the lady beside him. He was telling her about his wife – about how she ‘made a great Shepherd’s Pie’, and how she was from the Highlands, and how she was a ‘good lass’ – and he was laughing. And then, his face suddenly fell and he became very quiet. And he whispered in a hoarse voice: ‘I’ve lost her now – I’ve lost her.’ And even though he wasn’t even talking to me, I found myself crying into my scarf.

All these people – they make up the story that is my life. They may not be major characters – I might not know their names, or even remember their faces – but something about them, the essence of them, has stuck with me. Maybe my life wouldn’t be dramatically different without them. But it wouldn’t be the same.

Our lives are constantly overlapping. We might not realise the effect we’re having on other people, but we do have an effect. We don’t pass though life unnoticed; we are connected. 

♥

(Pictures from: Will Freeborn - a Scottish artist. Quite a lot of these pictures are from familiar places)

that's old news.

Something I couldn't help but notice is...

I passed my driving test! I passed it (on the first attempt) ...in November. Quite old news now, I suppose, but it's still exciting. I get little moments while rumbling along the road where I suddenly realise: ‘Huh! I’m actually driving a car.’ (Both wonderful, and slightly terrifying at the same time).

When I was little(r) I'd always just assumed that I’d learn to drive when I 'grew up'. I remember making plans with my sister about all the things we’d do when we could drive (important things like: ‘go to the cinema pretty much all the time’ and ‘go to the swimming pool whenever we feel like it’*). The closer I got to seventeen, though, the harder it was to picture myself actually driving a car. I’ve wrestled with quite debilitating anxiety since I was about eleven – something that I’ve only very recently learned how to manage – and, up until this past year, I just couldn’t visualise myself feeling well enough to drive.

So this is a major achievement in more ways than one! Something which seemed near-impossible even just a year ago has now become a reality. Encouraging to realise that change is possible, that wellness is possible (and that nipping along to Morrisons to get a loaf of bread is also now possible).

Hooray!

(Oh, also. While on the subject of ‘that which once seemed impossible’: I completed and submitted my dissertation last month (my dissertation on that most unfathomable of subjects: the humble sandwich). Now comes the long wait till June for the results.)  

*alas, we’ve not yet done either of these (cinema trips or swimming). I’ve mostly just been driving to work and to pick my brother up from school and whatnot. Being a full-time nurse (her) and in your honours year of university (me) doesn’t really leave much time for doing much else. Plus, I don’t think we factored in the whole ‘we’ll need to pay for the cinema tickets ourselves’ thing! One day soon though!

be still.

Earlier this afternoon, I wandered down the stairs of one of the taller (and uglier) buildings in the university. My mind was churning a lot of things over (...worrying about an essay, tiredness, thinking about someone, formulating a need-to-do list, trying to work out a story plot, feeling a bit wistful and weighed down under the heaviness of my bag...). Ruminating. I guess that's the word for it.

Before leaving the building I took a short detour to visit the bathroom... and was struck into stillness by these words on the cubical door:

Yes. How true! Be calm. Don't worry. Breathe deeper. Have hope. (Wisdom in an unexpected place.)

♥

Hello! I'm still here. The silence on this blog is related to the demand for words elsewhere (...where else but: university!) There are many words to be read, and many to be written. But I'll be back on here soon with more 'noticings' (and some good news.)

yes.

"Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it."

~ from 'Sometimes' by Mary Oliver

I stumbled across those words, quite by accident, and had to pass them on ...because they resonate. And because I love the word (and connotations of) 'astonishment'.

(The pictures are of my writing space the other day: my bed. I do keep trying to tidy all my books away, trying to sort them neatly into bookshelves and arrange them nicely on my bedside cabinet. But they are not very obedient. They have a little habit of sneaking out to come and sit beside me. I do try, but it's hard to stay annoyed at them for too long.)

♥

p.s. listen to: this. (It's a cover of The Sound of Silence by Kina Grannis.) I also stumbled upon this by accident... in a BBC advert of all places. I love her voice.)

gifted.

Hello! The next few weeks I'm going to be studying for my 20th Century Literature exam, but I will endeavour to keep updating on here! So... I thought I'd put up another one of my columns from the Strathclyde Telegraph.  

  

Something I've Noticed: What's in a Name? 
(from the Strathclyde Telegraph. Issue 2. November 2011)

   There's a queue of about twenty people snaking around the shop. They are all waiting for the self-service checkouts. ‘Insert cash or press: Pay with Card.’ ‘Unexpected item in bagging area.’ ‘Notes are dispensed below the scanner.’ A chorus of the same voice grows louder the closer I get to the machines. I abandon this queue and opt for the real-person checkout.

    ‘Do y’need a hand to pack?’ the assistant asks. I shake my head and she scans the items. While I’m rummaging for my purse, she continues her conversation with the assistant at the next till.

    'Oh I know how you feel, Happiness,’ she is saying. ‘Tell me about it.’

    I look over at the other lady. She has tired brown eyes and lets out a long weary-filled sigh. I glance at her nametag and (yes, I heard that right) her name is Happiness. It’s almost ironic as, today at least, she looks positively UN-happy.

    'We’re just too tired, love,’ my assistant tells me, handing over my change. ‘Been working too hard.’ Happiness nods. ‘Receipt okay in the bag?’

    On the bus home, I find that ‘Happiness’ is still floating around my head. It’s an unusual name, but a lovely one. No hidden meanings, it gets straight to the point. It’s almost fairytale-like, like a wish her parents whispered over her when she was sleeping: ‘May happiness follow you all the days of your life.’ I wonder, though, if she finds her name difficult to live up to. I’m sure that she, like everyone else, has bad days – days where she wishes she hadn’t got out of bed, or when people have said words that cast clouds over her eyes; days when the idea of ‘happiness’ couldn’t seem further away. And yet, there it is: it’s her name and a part of who she is.

    The bus rumbles along the motorway. My ears pop as someone shuts a window. I’m remembering one night when I helped to choose a name. My mum was pregnant with my little brother, and my sister and I were sitting with her on the sofa, feet dangling off the end.

   'Luke.' 'Christopher.' 'Ben.'

   We spoke out all the names we liked best. We were trying to imagine a little boy in our house called one of them.

   'Lewis.' 'Matthew.' 'Tom.'

   I wanted to call him Mowgli, mostly because I was just three-and-a-half and I thought it would be hilarious. It wasn’t until he was born, though, that my mum knew his real name. She looked at him and she knew he wasn’t a Michael or a Winnie the Pooh (another of my suggestions). He was Evan. Nothing else would fit.

 

    Beneath the hum of the engine, I catch muffled sounds: a murmur of conversation, the rustle as someone opens a crisp packet. I’m trying to imagine a world without names. It is a cold world: impersonal. I wonder if when people stop thinking about each other in terms of their names, they stop thinking about them as individuals. I read a story once where this happened. It was written by lady who lived through a World War II concentration camp. She described how the camp’s prisoners were stripped bare – stripped not only of their hair and clothes, but also of their names. Names were replaced with numbers, and in the process identities were lost.

    As the bus slows down at my stop, I hop off and start walking towards home. I’m remembering how Madeleine L’Engle, one of my favourite writers, thought that ‘Naming’ was an act connected to loving. Giving someone, or something, a name shows that you think they’re worth something – worth your notice, worth your time, worth your love.

    Our names, I think, are more than simply a collection of symbols and sounds. They have meaning. They are chosen. They are gifts.

 ♥

(Pictures are from various summer birthdays in my family.)

doodles and deafness.

I thought I'd post my latest column for the Strathclyde Telegraph on here. The columns are all around the theme of 'something I've noticed' as well... so it ties in quite nicely with this blog!

I've mixed up the writing with pictures of tea from various cafes ...partly because the article is about a cafe (my work), but mainly because when I see huge blocks of text on a blog, it kind of puts me off. (Probably a shocking confession for someone who is studying literature - i.e. the study of very, very long texts - to make, but hey!). So don't be off-put, friend. Enjoy the pictures and happy reading to you!)

♥

Something I've Noticed: Brian was Here
(from the Strathclyde Telegraph. Issue 6. March 2012)

As I walked to their table, the old man was pulling a pen out of his shirt pocket.

‘Hi there,’ I said. They looked up from their menus. ‘Are you ready to order?’

It seemed like some sort of family event. One by one, they called out their orders – cheese toasties, minestrone soup, ginger beer. The old man at the end didn’t say a word. He had taken out a tiny black notebook and was now scribbling something in it.

I always feel an affinity with fellow notebook-keepers, and couldn’t help wishing I was closer so I could see what he was writing.

‘And a bowl of chips to share,’ said the lady in blue, ‘and I think that’s it.’

I collected together their menus but just before turning to leave, I noticed the old man had stopped scribbling. He was adjusting his glasses, and then he ripped the page from his notebook and slipped it under the sugar bowl.

My curiosity began to hum.

About two hours later, the family paid their bill and bustled out the door. As usual the table was strewn with napkins and dirty dishes but – yes! – there it was! That mysterious piece of paper! It was a little drawing: a long-nosed man peeking over a wall. Underneath were the words: Brian was here.

Customers often leave things behind: seashells, reading glasses, broaches, keys. Someone left a walking stick once; we kept it for weeks, but I don’t think anyone ever came back to claim it. All these forgotten objects – they whisper at stories.

What is the story behind this drawing?

I imagine that it starts with something quite banal, like the old man was just trying to pass the time. I don’t remember seeing him talking much. Maybe his hearing aid was playing up – it was picking up too much background noise and his ears were full of rattling cutlery, and the rumble of hundreds of voices speaking at once, and tinkling piano music, and teaspoons clinking against china. Maybe he had just switched it off, and sat quiet.

Maybe this doodling has become something of a regular occurrence for Brian, if that is his name; maybe it’s a way of coping with this new age of silence. He’s aware that he has become something of a nuisance at family gatherings. No one knows what to do with him. He can’t hear what they’re saying so they avoid sitting beside him because ‘it’s awkward’ – yes, he heard his granddaughter say that at Christmas. He pretended not to, but he heard it. Maybe this doodling is an attempt to reconnect with them again, to try and make them laugh.

Because he slipped it under the sugar bowl, and because he left it there, I almost think he put it there for us, the waitresses. I think he wanted us to find it.

Sometimes, on rainy, wistful days, I’ve wondered what it would be like for a customer to look back and see me clearing their table. They might glance through the window and catch me crumpling their empty sugar packets, catch me stacking their teacups, sweeping away their scone crumbs, wiping away their spilt coffee and sticky fingerprints, catch me wiping and wiping until every last trace of them is gone. I wonder if they would feel a slight tug of – not quite sadness, not as concrete as that – but a creeping impression that they had just witnessed themselves being rubbed out.

I wonder if Brian has felt like this. Maybe that is why he left the picture. He was leaving behind a piece of himself, a remnant. Of course there was the risk that it might get thrown away with the rest of the rubbish. But then, there was also the possibility, the hope, that someone might find it. Someone might find it, and then someone would know, he wanted someone to know: Brian was here.

♥

four noticings.

 

(One.) Light is coming back to the world, winter is nearly over. Most of the pictures scattered about this post were taken on different days, all around one o’clock in the afternoon.

At that time, on clear days, this incandescent light makes the streets glow and turns people into silhouettes.

(Two.) I’ve been coming across a whole host of magnificent words recently. Some of them are new; some of them I’ve already heard of before but something about them has just, all of a sudden, struck me. I love the sounds, the textures, the meanings of words.

Here are a few I’m liking just now: polyphony, solemnity, soliloquy, indicative, visceral, sibilance, dialectic, irrevocable, eschews, omnivorous, lipogram, plosive, expunge and plunge.

(Three.) I came across this the other week and thought it was an interesting idea:

‘You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope is strong as long as you are merely using it to cord up a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it? ... Only real risk tests the reality of a belief.’

~ C.S. Lewis, from A Grief Observed, 1966 (not exactly light reading, but a very honest book).

(Four.) I also noticed this dog with shoes on in Central Station.

♥

I heard your heart sing...

I came across this song yesterday. My sister and I were wandering about in Glasgow for a while before going to see The Artist (silent, black and white, beautiful) ...and I heard it in a shop. I wrote a story over Christmas about a girl with a singing heart... so the words stuck out.



Happy New Year! I hope it is a year to remember (for good reasons, not for bad ‘Oh yeah, that was the year that I broke six ribs, and I did so badly in all my exams that I was personally called by the Dean and told to "get lost", and my parents ran away, and I witnessed that trapeze artist fall to his death which made me lose my appetite so I ate nothing but toast and peanut-butter for four months’ kind of reasons).

I’m hoping this year will be filled with fantastic conversations, and ink-stained fingers, and new experiences, and piles of books read, and plans that have ticks next to them, and enlightening discussions, and trips to interesting places, and better time keeping, and things that challenge me (in a positive ‘growing into the best version of myself’ kind of way) ...and tea (of course).

♥

I'll be your harvester of light.

Three small noticings:

(One.) I came across the word ineffability recently and it has entered my list of favourite words. Ineffable means: ‘cannot be expressed or described in language; too great for words; transcending expression; unspeakable, unutterable, inexpressible’ (according to the Oxford English Dictionary). I like how it speaks of mystery and how it sounds like it has feathers.

(Two.) It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Twinkle lights, Christmas trees, glass jars of cranberry sauce, songs with lines like ‘oh come let us adore Him’ and ‘silent night, holy night’ playing in unlikely places like H&M and Tesco, sparkly party dresses, the anxious wait for Amazon parcels. 

(Three.) I like this song (Winter Song by Ingrid Michaelson and Sara Bareilles). I always feel there is something a little bit sad about Christmas, although I can’t put my finger on what it is. The passing of another year, the bareness of the trees, the people who are alone... this song captures both the sadness and the loveliness of this time of year.

♥

(pictures by Becca Stadtlander)

found.

Sometimes I trick myself into believing that I’m doing something incredibly useful, when actually I’m just avoiding work.

Like just there. I spent an hour organising the University Work folder on my computer. It all started because I was looking for a good definition of 'journalism' that I knew I had in a Word document somewhere, and then I realised how jumbled my folders were. And I realised that this was utterly unacceptable. I realised that I absolutely had to fix them right that very minute or – or - the world would probably end or something.

Of course I couldn’t just tidy up the folders. Oh no, that would be madness. I had to read everything in them too. And that’s how I came across this poem.

I wrote it last year for Creative Writing. We were given the task of choosing a well known character and then dropping them inside an unexpected situation to see how they’d react. I hadn't written much poetry before, but I loved it. Trying to capture the music inside words. The poet teaching the class suggested that I break up the structure of my poem to mirror the character’s thoughts. That’s why it looks so fractured.

♥

Cinderella.

march 2010

I’ve lost my slipper, I say to

no one. And no one listens.

I have lost – I have lost –  

lost –

Rain taps

on the window

like a bird; tap,  tap.

I have lost – I have lost my life.

Where has it gone?        It fell off

  after the wedding cake, and the black

umbrellas, and the       heart   ache.

         I have lost my life. Please nurse,

why has it gone?            It sparkles

at the top of the stair.

But I’m half way down,

and I can’t climb up.

If you   looked      you might see it

still,        a twinkle of light

in my eye.  My story is     not    over

yet. But I have  lost –   lost –

    They    come past, now and then, to check

I’m not dead.   Still breathing? Yes.

Heart beating?

Yes.       Still moving? Yes,            

yes.

But is this   living?

You are   old, Cinderella.

With your          snow white

hair, and your    lacy   thin,

skin.                      

      
You are   wallpaper

 ♥

(Pictures from: here)