@Paul S — forgive any insensitivity, but even the final lines of the poem poignantly describe, to an eerie tee, what you are attempting to describe to us—the world’s cold indifference to a boy falling out of the sky: “the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
This post is so stunningly beautiful, and profound, and funny, and heart breaking, all at once. As your writing tends to be. Which is why I am such a fan ever since I wrote your stunningly brilliant cover story in the Guardian. I'm Buddhist, and we Buddhists love to hang out in graveyards ;-) A great teaching on impermanence. A reminder that, just as you say, our time is fleeting. And a reminder to use this time as best we can
Nihilism is also an extreme story we create. As is the story of god or eternalism. As is the story of legacy. Yet in our dualistic, relative experience, legacy/influence/imprints are what continue, even as we (self) are forgotten.
Blessings, Peace, Paul and All, understanding that as you importantly point out, Clare and Paul, time here is fleeting (and I'll add, a human concept) and so may we all be of benefit in whatever ways possible.
Thank you for continuing to share your journey, Paul.
It is good that you are getting out and about. Graveyards are a fine place to go and ponder on life. They are one of the few public spaces left that are spared the inanities of the modern world. As long as some semblance of decency remains, you are unlikely to encounter a pop-up Vodafone smoothie bar, manned excursively by cunts, rising between the leaning headstones. You can say what you like about the dead, individually or as a collective, but they keep to themselves and they mind their business.
I have been thinking a lot about something that happened a long time, but is fresh in my mind because, in a recent moment of unfettered arsery, I wrote a poem about it. My grandfather received a call from St Peter's church in Thundersley. His parent's gravestone had come loose a storm. They (Henry and Lilian) are buried on a high terrace, partway up a rather steep slope. The stone, having been unseated, had slid a good way down the hill to the flat area of the cemetery where my grandmother's parents are buried, literally five minutes walk away from where they lived (though their bungalow has been demolished and I have never been able to locate the grave).
My Grandfather drove us over to St Peter's one Sunday afternoon – me and my two brothers. The youngest was of no use and was allowed to play among the trees. My Grandfather lashed a rope around the stone, as though he was tying-up a parcel. He ran the other end around the trunk of a tree that grew next to the grave. Ever-so-slowly we hauled the stone back up the slope. I felt a growing sense of kinship with those anonymous figures who hauled enormous quarried boulders miles to Stonehenge and to other assorted Palaeolithic places of worship. After the headstone had been cemented back in place, my Grandfather drove a galvanised stake into the ground behind it.
In December, a couple of years ago, I was at Alton Garden Centre. It occurred to me that St Peter's was only a few miles away, perhaps an hour on foot. I decided that I would take the opportunity to look in on Henry and Lilian. The suburban sprawl of Thundersley can no longer be described as a village, but it still feels like one. There are still roads that are unmade. Along Church Road, which winds its way interminably up one side of the hill, the pavement switches abruptly back and forth from one side to the other, on what is effectively a continuous blind bend where the cars speed past. Behind a garden fence, a horse the colour of a rain cloud shook its head and shoulders furiously at me. Later, while I was attempting to locate a local landmark called the Devil's Steps, I had a dicey encounter with large, aggressive dogs. Both sides of my family hail from Thundersley. A notorious road junction nearby is named after my father's side. We were there a long time, but I no longer feel like I am welcome anymore.
I found the grave almost as soon as I entered the churchyard. The stone was still bolt upright on its low plinth – the stake an inch behind, currently unnecessary. The wardens of church have accepted that very few of the graves are still visited and have allowed the cemetery to enter a managed decline, clearing the rubble of the memorials as they crumble away. I will be the last person in my family to visit Henry and Lilian. There is no-one after me. The story of my family continues elsewhere. For all of the travelling that I did in my early years, in the end I was the one who stayed behind.
Reburial
The dead looked down on us all Summer
perched in the high branches that held them to the sun.
Delighted by their physical form,
they dappled the graveyard with their faint shadows.
Foolish really, to think of them as being underground
when everything is always being drawn upward.
In the Autumn, they rained down around us.
The lower heavens peeling away in the fine drizzle
like the painted detail of a ceiling mural.
The wet scraps gathering as a collage
within the fractured stone borders of the old graves,
swallowing the cloddy rubble of broken memorials.
A reburial of the buried by the buried.
My grandfather tossed a blue rope around a slanted trunk.
My younger brother and I both added our meagre strength to it.
Together we hauled his parent's headstone back up the wet groove
it had scored into the subdued terraces of burials on its slippery descent.
Cemented back in place, it loomed over the near-empty grave.
Our duty performed, we turned our backs on Henry and Lilian
I'm definitely finding atheism harder to sustain the older I get. Not sure I'm cut out for 'raw dogging' my own existence when there's so much to pray for
Thank you, Paul, this is such beautiful writing, a story that once read is always remembered.
The deeply-felt stories and responses below show how intimately it has touched us.
Here in my Italian city, the cemetery is a sprawling citadel imposed on us by Napoleon, with different sections whose open spaces are occupied by the lavish tombs of the rich and whose high walls are crawling with the tomb niches of ordinary people.
When I was a little girl I would go there on a hunt for ancient stories engraved on the tombstones and plaques, sometimes in full sentences. Now, so many decades later, I wish it was an open green space, no matter how ill-kept, where I could linger when I visit my parents, helped by the profound comfort of nature.
Thank you again. I can't wait to read the next piece.
Graveyards are great, especially in different countries. It is peaceful and quiet and interesting to see who is there and how they are buried. In Toronto they used to advertise them to be used like parks.
I'm curious, Paul, if you were to go into "real" nature, how would you feel?
Like Dino I too always read your posts. Always slowly too as feel a need to try to comprehend your life as you write it. I too never know what to say except a profound thank you.
Thanks Paul, as a fellow academic (albeit of Physics) I find you descriptions extremely unique and foreign to any of my experiences, yet there is some familiarity in the general sarcastic approach... As they say "One must imagine Sisyphus happy". I am curious about the pragmatic details of your everyday life too. Do you have a fancy electric chair that you control with your finger? What's the range? Do you feel any psychological adaptation (I've seen people owning everyone at online games while controlling the inputs with their tongue!)? Can't wait to hear more from you. For now, enjoy the tranquility.
This post evokes Auden’s poem, Musée des Beaux Arts, and how suffering is a universal, and it “happens,” while the horse and dog are somewhere too:
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
@Paul S — forgive any insensitivity, but even the final lines of the poem poignantly describe, to an eerie tee, what you are attempting to describe to us—the world’s cold indifference to a boy falling out of the sky: “the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.”
yes, that line did stand out to me
Thank you! I remember this poem. Thank you for giving me a memory of my childhood - and for typing it all out! It’s a beautiful poem.
This post is so stunningly beautiful, and profound, and funny, and heart breaking, all at once. As your writing tends to be. Which is why I am such a fan ever since I wrote your stunningly brilliant cover story in the Guardian. I'm Buddhist, and we Buddhists love to hang out in graveyards ;-) A great teaching on impermanence. A reminder that, just as you say, our time is fleeting. And a reminder to use this time as best we can
Nihilism is also an extreme story we create. As is the story of god or eternalism. As is the story of legacy. Yet in our dualistic, relative experience, legacy/influence/imprints are what continue, even as we (self) are forgotten.
Blessings, Peace, Paul and All, understanding that as you importantly point out, Clare and Paul, time here is fleeting (and I'll add, a human concept) and so may we all be of benefit in whatever ways possible.
Thank you for continuing to share your journey, Paul.
Ellen, your reply here is so staggeringly profound and spot on, that I think I'll need to go and meditate on it. Amazing wisdom, thank you.
Thanks, Clare.
Ps. And I of course meant to say “since I read your…” 😃
I wantvto say this with all respect, that this is such profound and beautifully true writing. It is a gift. Thank you.
It is good that you are getting out and about. Graveyards are a fine place to go and ponder on life. They are one of the few public spaces left that are spared the inanities of the modern world. As long as some semblance of decency remains, you are unlikely to encounter a pop-up Vodafone smoothie bar, manned excursively by cunts, rising between the leaning headstones. You can say what you like about the dead, individually or as a collective, but they keep to themselves and they mind their business.
I have been thinking a lot about something that happened a long time, but is fresh in my mind because, in a recent moment of unfettered arsery, I wrote a poem about it. My grandfather received a call from St Peter's church in Thundersley. His parent's gravestone had come loose a storm. They (Henry and Lilian) are buried on a high terrace, partway up a rather steep slope. The stone, having been unseated, had slid a good way down the hill to the flat area of the cemetery where my grandmother's parents are buried, literally five minutes walk away from where they lived (though their bungalow has been demolished and I have never been able to locate the grave).
My Grandfather drove us over to St Peter's one Sunday afternoon – me and my two brothers. The youngest was of no use and was allowed to play among the trees. My Grandfather lashed a rope around the stone, as though he was tying-up a parcel. He ran the other end around the trunk of a tree that grew next to the grave. Ever-so-slowly we hauled the stone back up the slope. I felt a growing sense of kinship with those anonymous figures who hauled enormous quarried boulders miles to Stonehenge and to other assorted Palaeolithic places of worship. After the headstone had been cemented back in place, my Grandfather drove a galvanised stake into the ground behind it.
In December, a couple of years ago, I was at Alton Garden Centre. It occurred to me that St Peter's was only a few miles away, perhaps an hour on foot. I decided that I would take the opportunity to look in on Henry and Lilian. The suburban sprawl of Thundersley can no longer be described as a village, but it still feels like one. There are still roads that are unmade. Along Church Road, which winds its way interminably up one side of the hill, the pavement switches abruptly back and forth from one side to the other, on what is effectively a continuous blind bend where the cars speed past. Behind a garden fence, a horse the colour of a rain cloud shook its head and shoulders furiously at me. Later, while I was attempting to locate a local landmark called the Devil's Steps, I had a dicey encounter with large, aggressive dogs. Both sides of my family hail from Thundersley. A notorious road junction nearby is named after my father's side. We were there a long time, but I no longer feel like I am welcome anymore.
I found the grave almost as soon as I entered the churchyard. The stone was still bolt upright on its low plinth – the stake an inch behind, currently unnecessary. The wardens of church have accepted that very few of the graves are still visited and have allowed the cemetery to enter a managed decline, clearing the rubble of the memorials as they crumble away. I will be the last person in my family to visit Henry and Lilian. There is no-one after me. The story of my family continues elsewhere. For all of the travelling that I did in my early years, in the end I was the one who stayed behind.
Reburial
The dead looked down on us all Summer
perched in the high branches that held them to the sun.
Delighted by their physical form,
they dappled the graveyard with their faint shadows.
Foolish really, to think of them as being underground
when everything is always being drawn upward.
In the Autumn, they rained down around us.
The lower heavens peeling away in the fine drizzle
like the painted detail of a ceiling mural.
The wet scraps gathering as a collage
within the fractured stone borders of the old graves,
swallowing the cloddy rubble of broken memorials.
A reburial of the buried by the buried.
My grandfather tossed a blue rope around a slanted trunk.
My younger brother and I both added our meagre strength to it.
Together we hauled his parent's headstone back up the wet groove
it had scored into the subdued terraces of burials on its slippery descent.
Cemented back in place, it loomed over the near-empty grave.
Our duty performed, we turned our backs on Henry and Lilian
leaving them to their seasonal rise and fall,
and made our way to my Grandfather's silver car,
the white soles of my trainers trampling
the temporary dead back into the soil.
I always read your posts as soon as they come out, Paul, and I never know what to say. So I'll just say thank you.
Me too, and thank you from me too
Like other people’s art, your writing will survive you. That’s your legacy - and your burden.
I'm definitely finding atheism harder to sustain the older I get. Not sure I'm cut out for 'raw dogging' my own existence when there's so much to pray for
Thank you, Paul, this is such beautiful writing, a story that once read is always remembered.
The deeply-felt stories and responses below show how intimately it has touched us.
Here in my Italian city, the cemetery is a sprawling citadel imposed on us by Napoleon, with different sections whose open spaces are occupied by the lavish tombs of the rich and whose high walls are crawling with the tomb niches of ordinary people.
When I was a little girl I would go there on a hunt for ancient stories engraved on the tombstones and plaques, sometimes in full sentences. Now, so many decades later, I wish it was an open green space, no matter how ill-kept, where I could linger when I visit my parents, helped by the profound comfort of nature.
Thank you again. I can't wait to read the next piece.
Graveyards are great, especially in different countries. It is peaceful and quiet and interesting to see who is there and how they are buried. In Toronto they used to advertise them to be used like parks.
I'm curious, Paul, if you were to go into "real" nature, how would you feel?
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. It reminds me of impermanence in Buddhism — life is fleeting and everything is temporary.
Keep writing, Paul. I’ll always look forward to your next post.
This is so great. But main question that plagues me...how many was too many if 1 million was no bother?
I enjoyed reading your post and dick suck made me laugh.
We are all on 'thin ice', and it's often the small things that matter. I went for a cycle on the weekend and saw an array of wildlife
It was magical.
Keep moving ...
Like Dino I too always read your posts. Always slowly too as feel a need to try to comprehend your life as you write it. I too never know what to say except a profound thank you.
Thanks Paul, as a fellow academic (albeit of Physics) I find you descriptions extremely unique and foreign to any of my experiences, yet there is some familiarity in the general sarcastic approach... As they say "One must imagine Sisyphus happy". I am curious about the pragmatic details of your everyday life too. Do you have a fancy electric chair that you control with your finger? What's the range? Do you feel any psychological adaptation (I've seen people owning everyone at online games while controlling the inputs with their tongue!)? Can't wait to hear more from you. For now, enjoy the tranquility.