Words that sing

The threads that bound our love were tangled like a strangling fishing line,
For we were drawn together and driven apart by our insecurities and fears.
Now all that remains is one pure strand reaching out to your heart from mine

Sailing high and proud like triumphant kites, it was our joy to intertwine
And though we dreamed of soaring united beyond life’s prosaic frontiers,
The threads that bound our love were tangled like a strangling fishing line.

We had barely begun to enjoy the richness of our love’s intoxicating wine,
Before the drink was tainted by arguments where love is reduced to sneers.
Now all that remains is one pure strand reaching out to your heart from mine.

Love cannot flourish when entwined in fear like a tree by a suffocating vine,
And though we tried to be honest, dispensing with insecurity’s masking veneers,
The threads that bound our love were tangled like a strangling fishing line.

Some threads were cruelly ripped away, others faded with the passing of time.
Mine were starved by your cruel silence, yours drowned by my unbearable tears
Now all that remains is one pure strand reaching out to your heart from mine.

So now, I walk on, strong and alone, choosing not to be angry or to pine.
My heart still sends out compassion and love, even if your heart never hears.
The threads that bound our love were tangled like a strangling fishing line;
Now all that remains is one pure strand reaching out to your heart from mine.

…

…

I’ve been wanting to write a villanelle for some time, but it’s such a difficult form that I never seemed to get beyond the first verse. But then this morning I wrote a free verse poem whose subject seemed a suitable candidate for this tangled repetitive form.

It was quite a struggle to fit the repeated refrains into the verses in a way that made sense both in the immediate context and in the overall story of the poem, particularly when allowed to use only two rhymes throughout the entirel poem! There are still a few corners that would benefit from polishing, but I’m still very proud of myself for having produced my first functioning villanelle!

I’d be interested to know what people think about these two different poems based around the same idea and imagery. Does the repetition and convolution of the villanelle form make a better poem, or is the original’s greater freshness more effective?

Sometimes I wonder - “Just how we will meet?”
In the elegantly intimate embrace of tango?
Clumsily colliding on some unfamiliar street?
Or both reaching out for the same plump mango?

Voices finding harmony in spontaneous duet?
Or a very civil handshake in an office’s formality?
Wrestling with each other in a martial artist’s sweat?
Arguing about the state of affairs bizarrely called normality?

Defying fear of strangers on the underground at night?
Or comfy on a friend’s introductory settee?
Surfing in the tangled web of true and false bytes?
But there’s no point guessing where and when it will be!

One day it will seem that our souls were born to merge.
But only by chance will our paths at last converge.

A sonnet inspired by Sunday Scribblings’ prompt to write about a chance encounter. It’s both serious and light-hearted, which is very much the way I’m taking my search for a new partner!

Strand by strand
the tangled threads that
(once upon a dream)
bound us tightly together
were pulled apart.

Like kites we soared
until our confused lines
limited our flight
brought us down
to earth and the sad work
of disentanglement.

Some threads ripped out violently
By our sudden, painful fall.
Some that starved for lack
of even the simplest interaction.
Some simply faded with time.

And so there is no pain any more
for the confused tangle
that once bound my heart
like fishing line in a swan’s throat
is untangled. Gone.

The fears, the little dependencies,
The habits and insecurities
All stripped away.

And all that is left
is the single thread,
straight and pure
(uncorrupted by
any self interest)
of my love for you.

Now when I receive no benefit,
not even interaction,
now alone I can be sure
that no more self interest
is tangled in my love -
and that even among the tangles
that caused us both fear and pain
I truly loved you.

Stretching into the distance
towards the place where you vanished
I don’t know if that simple thread
of my love can reach you
in the distance you fled to.

But down it my heart freely pours
kind wishes and compassion
with no expectation of return.

Thread of life - tangled up, originally uploaded by ♥ up the faraway tree ♥.

I’ve been reading Daniel Gilbert’s book Stumbling on Happiness (for some of the key arguments, see this TED.com video), and thinking about the idea that our level of satisfaction depends on our expectations. 

Gilbert quotes a startling experiment that shows how important our expectations can be. One group of participants was promised a reward (e.g. £3) for their participation, but then told that there was a mistake and they would receive less (say £2). The second group were promised a lower amount (e.g. £1) and received exactly what they were promised. A rational argument would say that those receiving £2 were still better off and so should be happier than those receiving £1. But in practice the first group were more unhappy than the second - because they didn’t receive what they had expected to receive. One group thought themselves £1 better off than nothing, the others felt they were £1 worse off than £3.

It’s one of those ideas that starts to apply itself to all sorts of areas of my life and thinking.

One of the most difficult aspects of my current work situation is that people feel that they were promised more (by my predecessor) than I am able to give them. So unfortunately what I am able to offer, although generous if considered objectively, is deeply unsatisfying to them because it’s less than they were expecting.

It’s also relevant to relationships. Before my last relationship, I was mooching along fairly happily as a single person, having been single for several years. Yes, I wanted a partner, but my life was interesting and fulfilling and overall I was happy. During the relationship I became used to all sorts of things that were better than in my single situation - having my self-image reinforced by compliments and attention, opportunities to discover new things, someone who was always there (by mobile if not in person) when I wanted to talk, and all sorts of other benefits. I didn’t need all those things - I’d got on perfectly happily without them. But their sudden withdrawal was a shock. And while I knew that I could be happy as a single person, it took me some time to get back to that state of mind, because I had expected that the relationship level of comfort would continue. Again, it was harder to cope with the withdrawal of something than it was to cope with its absence.

It also occurs to me that this may be why some religious people view the life of an atheist as necessarily miserable. If you have been promised, and come to believe, that you will meet your loved ones again, it must be difficult and painful to accept the idea that you will not. Whereas if you always felt that death was final, you simply don’t feel the same level of disappointment, because you never expected anything more. (Obviously the belief in heaven can help to make the initial grief easier to bear, and will continue to do so so long as you continue believing that. But if that belief ever falters, dealing with the withdrawal is more painful than it would have been to deal with the initial grief without this apparent consolation.)

My experience of having never believed in heaven is therefore vastly different from the experience of someone who has believed in heaven and has ceased to do so. The de-converted seem to get used to the disappointment, with time (Gilbert also argues strongly that we also tend to strongly underestimate how well we our coping mechanisms help us deal with future calamities). But a religious person who still believes in heaven will, if they try to imagine what it would be like not to believe in heaven, is likely to completely overestimate the misery this would cause a deconvert, let alone a life-long atheist like myself.

Somewhere in the blogosphere I came across someone describing how angry they felt with someone who told a child that there was no Santa Claus, feeling that shattering the child’s illusions was cruel. But I was mystified why they were angry at the person that shattered the illusion - rather than the person who set up the inevitable disappointment by telling that child the original lie that there was a Santa Claus. The experience of living in a world without Santa Claus is completely different depending on whether we were told that a world with Santa Claus was possible.

So what does this mean in practice? It should be reasonably straightforward to avoid making promises that can’t be kept in a work situation, and I’ve definitely had a very clear lesson in why this is so important. It’s harder in relationships - because the nature of a long-term relationship is the hope that it will continue, and the mutual commitment to trying to do so. But still, I think being aware of this will help in future relationships - to know that the horror with which the mind contemplates being single from within a relationship is not a realistic perception of the actual experience of being single.

The mind does work strangely at times - but it does help to get to know its peculiarities!

She tilts her head and looks at him.

With intent.

He, (nervous as a virgin,
late at night, in a borrowed backseat)
wrings his hands like a priest.

But his prayers are in vain.

Langurously munching his back leg
like a post coital cigarette,
she stares at me,

the alien milkiness of her eyes
arrogantly framed
in the voyeuristic ring
of my magnifying glass.

Such debauchery in a
quiet suburban garden!

This was inspired by the friday five at poefusion - to write a poem using the words backseat, ring, priest, garden, magnifying glass.

I was going to post an image to go with it, but decided it reduced the impact of the poem… here is a link to the picture that was in my mind as I wrote it.

A lonely stretch of grey-damp shingle, roofed only by the endless night
Is altared and hallowed by the vestal flame of the guiding harbour lights
Secret and sacred, in each moon’s darkness, slipping sideways from the foam
The ancient mermaids gather to celebrate the endless world they roam.

There they lounge upon the shore, seductive, salt-scaled and single
Voices soft above the sound of the wave-shifted shingle.
Sharing quietly their tales and trophies from their scouring of the deep -
The wildness of the ocean surge, the softness of a man asleep.

Shedding their tails, they proudly arise, and in the guise of an innocent maid
Each shares her deepest nature’s gift with a sailor (who’ll boast of getting laid).
The sacred service duly completed, their hearts yearn for the ocean flows
Where each mermaid wanders, leaving a trail of beauty wherever she goes.

While the waves caress an empty beach, strewn with glinting scales
Where the hard stones lie in sensuous curves, hollowed out by mermaid tails.

…
… 

I came across the phrase “Church of the old mermaids” on Endicott Redux, and thought that it would be an interesting idea for a poem. And then I came across the picture above on Rick Mobb’s blog and decided that it was a poem I had to write.

The days are filled with waiting.
What is inevitable stands in the wings
For the revealing limelight to light the stage.
A time too full of waiting to make any other plan.
Time is intensified.

Each hour is pregnant with potential
But each in turn closes unrealised.
The unused hours pile up into days,
And all that exists is this event that
Still does not exist.

No conversation that is not filled
With this present absence of future presence
Time holds its breath, steps cautiously.
The unknown and certain future is poised
Ready for flight.

For me this is a time of waiting in my work and, to some extent, in my personal life - I have done as much as I can to plan for a future event, and now am in a quiet time before busyness breaks out with a vengeance. Once that is completed, I will return to my own home and pick up the threads of my life.

Meanwhile I have a friend who has just passed the date when she was due to give birth - and this morning I read about another blogger’s wife who is in the same situation. And it made me wonder what it must be like to experience an even more intense period of waiting - to know such an immense change is inevitable, but not when it will come. When all the preparations are done and there is nothing to do but wait. So I wrote this poem.

I suppose I have an interesting relationship with doing the impossible. Because a lot of my life I have been aspiring to an impossible degree of perfection. Which can be a dangerous excuse for not doing anything. Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good.

For me this is at the heart of what I am drawn to and repelled by in religion and new-agey beliefs. Because they promise beautiful impossibility. As far as I can see. Because they hold out perfection but in practice fall so short. Because they claim to be true and yet so often refuse the examination that might really demonstrate whether they were true or false. And I am drawn to the perfection of this impossibility, but unable to rely on it.

So mine is a mysticism of the possible. A wonder at what is clearly real. I read in a comment somewhere in the blogosphere that it is arrogance to close our minds to the wonderful mysteries of what I would call weird, unfounded beliefs. But my mind doesn’t feel closed – it feels open to some incredibly wonderful things that have the added advantage of being real. The tiny details of nature. The inconceivably vast depths of space. These are all possible – they are real – and yet for me they hold more wonder than the impossible domestic miracles that are claimed by so many belief systems.

Nor does having a sceptical mind mean that my heart is closed. On the contrary – I have a very open heart, full of love and caring and compassion. Full of wonder and happiness. Delighted by the myths and legends that are part of our rich human mental landscape. Not because they are true in reality, but because they have a deep metaphorical truth.

For me, the wonderful thing about humanity is not that we are in some way more than physics, chemistry and biology. Not that we have a real, immaterial soul. But because out of physics, and chemistry, and biology, arise emergent properties of meaning and soul and beauty. As simple equations can give rise to infinite complexity. I am awed that this is possible. Inspired by the simple ideas that both explain and don’t explain these emergent properties. When so much is possible within natural laws, why look beyond them to some supernatural un-rule-bound sphere where everything and nothing is possible?

I have wandered a long way from the idea of “doing” the impossible. But perhaps I can bring it home again. I once used to wish fervently for divine powers to heal the hurting world I live in. For a miracle of peace and health and compassion to appear in this world. I used to feel that the only solution to the unbelievable amount of pain and suffering in the world was to go beyond the possible. To become a bodhisattva, working with tireless miracle powers to ease and end all suffering. I despised my own human capacity to help – to such an extent that I became unable to help because I was sinking into despair. Because I thought that only a miracle would be enough.

I don’t think that any more. I believe that just doing the possible has to be enough, because the impossible is (of course) impossible. But I also believe in the miracles of the possible. The amazing power of human beings, working in their small way, with their limited powers and circumscribed insight, to achieve change. Emergent miracles. Emergent healing. It is important to distinguish between what is truly impossible and what just seems impossible. Believing in our own capacity to bring about change makes many obstacles melt away. This is how prayer and positive thinking work their placebo magic. But for me that is all within the realm of the possible. Yes, I believe in the miraculous nature of the possible. The simple. The real. The prosaic and everyday that somehow, without divine intervention or mystical force, give birth to the extraordinary.

Which is consoling, because it encourages me not to be daunted by feeling that I need to do the impossible. But to do what I can, to do what is at hand, and accept that I cannot do more than what is possible. To explore the full and amazing richness of the possible.

Photo - one of several stunning images of the mandelbrot set at Wikipedia commons.

As a distinctly arts-oriented child growing up in a household of physics teachers (my brother also now has a physics degree!), mealtimes could be challenging.

I particularly remember the time when I burnt my tongue on the pineapple on my pizza, which led to an interrogation about why the pineapple burnt my tongue when the ham didn’t (for the curious uninformed, it has to do with the high specific heat capacity of water.) I think my parents must also have expressed sympathy, but I don’t remember that quite so clearly….

This was certainly not the only time that I was asked to think through the physics of everyday life, when I’d probably rather have been writing a novel or playing music. Though I certainly enjoyed doing experiments… like making hydrogen in the sink with my mum (to my dad’s horror when he discovered us in the middle of this potentially explosive activity!), or dying flowers two colours by dipping split stems in different dyes. I loved playing with my microscope and my chemistry set.

As it happened I didn’t study science beyond the age of 18. I was a creative wordsmith, but a careless mathematician and rather incompetent experimenter. I doubt I’d have contributed much to the world as a scientist.

But my upbringing did made me think about the physical world that I live in, and see how it could be understood as the product of simple rules. And it gives a richness to my life that I value. Every time I whizz round a corner on my bike, the exhilaration is enhanced by the dim memory having once worked out, using in a simple diagram of forces, the relationship between the vehicle’s speed, the radius of the curve and the angle of tilt needed to turn without skidding.

I’m not sure I could reconstruct that calculation now - my trigonometry is distinctly rusty with lack of use. But that’s not the point. I know it’s possible. I have a rough feeling for how it works. If I needed to, I could go and look it up. More generally I also learnt a respect for experimentation - for the ideas of repeatability, exclusion of observer bias and significance. (I’m not sure even at my most mathematically skilled I was any good at calculating significance, but at least I understand why it’s important!)

It’s sad that not everyone has the same exposure to this kind of basic science in its most practical and immediate form.  It’s even sadder when people seem to be proud of their ignorance of basic science and maths. As if it’s unreasonably, wilfully difficult, designed to exclude all but eggheads.

I’m not ashamed not to be a scientist. Not everyone can be, after all. I only have one life, and science was never the thing I was best at. But I have a respect and interest in the way the world works, and a basic grasp on some of the excellent tools that humanity has developed for finding out.

As a child I respected science, but was rather scornful about sport. I was fairly incompetent at throwing and catching, and succumbed to the natural human tendency to despise disciplines I’m bad at. Which was a shame, as for many years it blocked me from discovering that actually I could learn to be good at physical skills. While I’m no great athlete, I can enjoy performing at my level and watching others perform at higher levels.

Most people are brought up in a way that reverses these attitudes to sport and science. They’re happy to be an interested, informed spectator of sport, and respect the expert participants. They don’t feel inadequate because they can’t participate on the same level - and they celebrate rather than denigrate the effort and talent required to perform at that level. Their childhood games of five-a-side or ballet classes gave them a feeling for physical activity, which helps them to understand and appreciate what it meant to be an athlete.

It’s never going to be possible to raise a nation of scientists. But it would make a huge difference if we could raise a nation of people whose attitude to science is similar to their attitude to sport - so that even if they’re not experts, they can understand and appreciate expertise. 

For me the key to achieving that is focussing on the practical, simple questions that confront us every day. Giving people the opportunity to find out that investigating the world around them is entirely possible. And often fun as well as satisfying. That science is not something to be learnt but something to be done - an act of investigation, not of accepting on authority. Using the principles of experimentation to investigate everyday issues is a great way to develop confidence that these same principles will also work when applied to more complex and less everyday issues.

And if nothing less, we may have a population less prone to burning their tongues on unexpectedly hot chunks of pineapple….

Winter feels coldest
When everyone else is
Enjoying summer.

They bask, relaxed on
life’s green lawns, full of summer.
Joy warming their bones.

Blanketed, I shrink.
Sipping comforting hot tea
Waiting for the sun.

This is partly a reflection on what it’s like to keep being prompted to write poems about summer in the southern hemisphere’s winter. It’s also partly a reflection on how other people’s happiness looks when we’re going through more difficult times. Each verse is a senryu/haiku, and while they work together I’ve written them so they can also stand alone.

(I wrote another set of haiku contrasting summer and winter quite some time ago - in rather a different mood!)