about trains running late, nuisance parking and the failings of society and state. They carry their own cares, have an eclipsing confidence in their powers and rights to shape this life. As it should be. Leave the arcane laws and ties to the bumbling shufflers, the rheumy-eyed greybeard curators. Resist that urge to start seeing the world as a museum.
that would lay down their lives trying to help you in this life. And risk it all for those you love even more than self. And there are others that don’t value things the same way and would walk away unmoved. And it’s the difference between the beating heart and the lifeless husk. And most times, a meeting of the eyes will tell you all you need to know.
down Cuckoo Lane. There’s an arch bridge to scythe it off. A ghostly spot, it struck me, but that could be the Washington Irving I’m reading this week, storms trapping travellers in baronial halls, the branches of the garden oaks rapping on the casements. If you walk a lonely lane like this, you might hear a twig snap, footfall behind you in the leaf mulch. Or is it your imagined self, a glitch in your neuron folds trying to assert the spectral figure of your own placement in the universe, a flicker in the machine?
but still flashes of beauty in winter’s sunless press. The sports field floodlights gild the trees around the parking lot silver white and gold.
what lies behind a man’s deeds. Brave acts might stem from fear, misunderstandings, the desire to protect a friend or a thousand other things. And those lauded as heroes often say they never thought about what they were doing, they just moved with events, reacted as per their training. Why pick one from the many who fought and suffered, from the deeds unseen or recorded in metal and ribbons but no less heroic? So I’m uneasy about the idea of the simple, lone hero, too much is left unknown. But, when I stand in front of a memorial to a man awarded the VC and Bar, the only recipient from the First World War and one of only three soldiers to earn it in all our nation’s battles, then my doubts drop away. Humble and heroic is that sign. Scholars look on as you hurry to class, there’s much to live up to, twined to those little words.
the colourworks, and the shy moon drifting to the south. I’m nervous in the crowd, everything can lie hidden in a phrase, a glance, a voice too close. Winter’s turn. All the night magic to come, the yearning. We live in a world of oceans and peaks, bear no surprise when some things cut you deep. This is what we are, made to shatter or stand.
we exhume and expunge any peripheral debris from the day’s sights and soundings. We roam lawless and boundless. All slights and imbalances are levelled, rich and poor, there’s no distinction in the dreamworld. And we all emerge into the same reality slap, the mind carried blinking into a new day, testing its fetters.
and there’s magic in all animate things. I had to give up on Nansen and his North Pole quest diary, Farthest North, when he started butchering the dogs. I didn’t have the stomach for it, couldn’t face the slaughter memories and those night sweats Nansen suffered in the years after he’d made his miles-per-dog calculations. He goes on to say that this might be the cost of any great challenge, you have to expose yourself to the horrors and strip everything down to a brute determination. Is it the same in the arts, that you have to shun and neglect the things you love – and that love you – to write something that might earn its ticket into the library of the dead? If that’s the cost of entry it’s not one I’m willing to pay, even if I had the words in me to dig out, that’s clear to me now. But I can live with my failings. And while that’s going on, I’ll try my best to swerve the Nansen horrors and not kill a living thing. Lately I can’t even step on a bug, I rehouse spiders and heave at the sash windows to liberate wasps. I’m with Kerouac in Desolation Angels, blubbing with Buddhist remorse when he kills the mouse that’s made a home in his forest cabin. I remember reading that passage when I was about fifteen and almost dropping the book in my lap; here’s a man who can say it’s wrong to kill a mouse, that’s an insight looking up at me from the page. And there aren’t many insights in Kerouac, more that glorious, gurgling flow of journeys and faces, books he’s reading, letters from friends, lost hopes, new hopes, cafe interiors and rambling chats with Cody. Insights are rare. So when they come along grab hold. And see that magic in living things, even in the ride-by glimpse of a walled rose.
and tried to write stories about the soldiers who’ve fought in them. It’s not easy to write about a metal cocoon, the first thing you want to do when you get inside any tank is to get out of it, unless the bullets are flying. Under fire, you want to be inside the tank. That’s hard to imagine. In the tank, everything’s sharp and unfinished and it hurts when you crash around inside it. And you do. Your face is never far from the massive breech that fills the turret and the other crew and the metal walls. You keep turning, looking for space to push out a leg or rest your arm somewhere and you don’t find it. There’s nothing forgiving or soft in a fighting compartment. It’s a hard metal sleeping bag. The new tanks aren’t noisy, you wear headphones that cancel out the din. But they wrap you in a dead sound, some frequency of white noise to trick the brain, and when the corporal commander speaks you flick your head back in surprise at the clear voice in your head, “down right, down right, happy days”. If you can, you’ll stand up on your seat and lean on the edge of the hatch, head and shoulders out in the air. The tank’s suspension makes the ride weirdly soft, a trundle in a bus. But the helmet won’t fit and the headphones are clamping, the impact jacket around your chest is strapped so tight you can’t breathe right and you’re sweating, salt stinging your eyes. It’s hard to get any sense of how fast you’re moving and how far things are from you. Tanks mess up your senses. And there are other tanks and crews out there on the plain or in the wood, all of them trying to kill you.
It’s not easy to write about tanks or make films about them that ring true but I’ll try Fury. I worry it’ll start off real and then for the finale one lone Sherman will be wiping out hundreds of charging soldiers. I’ve tried to watch any films about tank crews, showing them inside their tanks. It’s a short list: Sahara, Lebanon, The Beast. And I still hope I can sell my book about a Sherman crew, fighting a duel with a Tiger. Like the forecastle mariners riding a storm, tankies invest all their trust and hopes in their machine, willing it to carry them back safe to the people and places they love. That would be a story worth telling, if I could tell it true and well.
and I didn’t have to go to Arizona to get them. The old curmudgeon was almost right, you don’t have to step beyond your garden gate to see the broad sweep of this world and the life that goes on in it. But things that are similar can still be far apart. There’s no facsimile for the hearth-hot Yuma air and a walk on the rolling prairie vastness. Restless and yearning we are, us soft organics.
