FROM TIGER TO RABBIT

Is the year roaring to an end for you? Will it begin with a whimper?

Or are these anthropomorphic ideas of the tiger and the rabbit? Water tiger turns to water rabbit in a day. Or, more accurately, on January 22nd. I will be travelling on that day. I think that bodes well? A return home from faraway adventures. Air borne. Lupus in flight. 

It is two thirty am. I am eating a slice of chocolate cake - fudgy, the kind I love. The house is silent. Luckily, Milo, the Tayabali Tamaruke, is asleep behind a closed bedroom door. Would he have barked if he'd seen me? Or padded comfortably down with his nocturnal mate? He has slept in my bed, on my bed, for many nights this holiday. 

Oh, did I mention I am in Singapore as I type? I remember my first blog post about the big travels I (and Mum and Dad) made in 2010, for my younger brother's wedding. And then again, to visit my year old nephew. Time hasn't flown. It has grown. We have become more of ourselves. Some parts of our lives are weightier. Some parts baffling. I cried tears of loneliness tonight, even though I am surrounded by those I love. The human heart is a mysterious thing. Hence art. Hence poetry. Of which I have written so little, I'm unsure if I still qualify as Poet.

Qualify. That word is my nemesis. What am I qualified for? I recall at my university interview, the Head of the English department asking me why I wanted to do English at university. What's the point? he asked. And he wasn't even challenging me. He seemed to be in need of answers himself. Which annoyed me. I flashed altruistic reasons at him. The purpose of literature, the transformational nature of accurate, good journalism. The need for truth in a world of propaganda and prejudice. The power of persuasion in devious, megalomaniacal hands. I remember the professor's name was John. My youthful nature must have amused him. But now, looking back, I see how one can become tired and worn down by repetition and indifference. 

What am I trying to say? Oh yes. Qualifications. Success. And the stunning necessity of art, beauty and goodness to live alongside and within, and without. I have been blessed all my life to be surrounded by art, in every home. My parents' art in homes around the world. My siblings creating artful homes, which I want to enjoy forever. My eyes have troubled me this trip. New surroundings take a while to adjust to. Once the sun sets, I falter. But a helping hand has almost always been near. Can you qualify as a successful human being if you always need help? Thich Nhat Hanh would say yes. That is interdependence. I will be travelling home on the day Thây passed into continuation. There is significance in that. Perhaps.

I hope your last day of the calendar year 2022 has some joy and peace interwoven. And that our collective unknown 2023 ... well, what can we wish for? More green on earth. More ease after darkness. For our better natures to prevail. And for those who suffer, to have the possibility of play. To play again, someday.

Jólabókaflóðið

It began with runes… and ended with a flood. A flood of books... the Icelandic tradition of giving and exchanging books on Christmas Eve, then curling up in a cosy, fireside reading nook with a cup of hot cocoa.

During World War II, paper was one of the few items not rationed, so books being given as gifts began a tradition that continues to this day. During the Reykjavic Book Fair, a catalogue is sent to every home, from which books are selected. A 2013 study carried out found 50% of Icelanders read eight books a year, and 93% read at least one. My friend Georgios says his New Year's resolution is to read a book a month. In my own reading life, the books on my shelves gather, but my eyes, my energy and my concentration cannot keep up the pace I once considered a natural part of my day. Christopher Norris, pioneer of World Book Day in the UK, has been trying to encourage a national Jólabókaflóðið... 

If you were to give a book tonight, or receive one, which book would you want to curl up with? I have Jessie Burton's Medusa - The Girl Behind The Myth,  I gave Mum a Domêstika course on the Japanese art of kintsugi - how to repair your broken ceramics with gold dust, enhancing their original beauty, which, while not a book, is its practical equivalent, and for Pops, the audiobook of The Virginian by Owen Wister, the original Western... I mean, just look at that cover!

'Course, if you were struggling to think of a book, there's always yours truly's latest, which is now the number one book under an Amazon search for 'lupus' or 'auto-immunity'. In the UK anyway, thanks to the lovely folk who have already bought and reviewed me. So, on that cheery note, a very merry Christmas Eve to you all. I am flat out fatigued with year numero deux of Pandemicness, but am holding steady with Chotu and Perveen on either side of me... 

BY THE SHORE

It takes a long time.

I wander for hours, years, miles

through countries, continents.

Sometimes there is water,

sometimes sand.

I return to these, and finally

make my stand.

I am five. I am seven.

In the water, by the shore;

I hold a twig up, brandished sword.

Later, in the quiet play,

away from salt sea spray

and the camera recording our day,

I find myself alone - 

‘a prettyish sort of wilderness’

as Austen will describe it, later.

Everything, later, to come.

For now, crouched on brackish sand,

barefoot in shorts, planting

and uprooting joy.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2021

(recited at DVerse Poets Open Link night)

It's the new year, I think... although my Christmas tree is still up with all the little mice and the twinkling lights. I am redoing the six week yoga course I did at the end of last year, just so that my body doesn't forget how to move. Bed, which was always the most comfortable spot in the house, is an even more huggable place than ever. Especially in winter, under a cosy duvet, looking out at the bare limbs of our willow. There was a time when Mum was tempted to have it cut because the roots are tearing up the courtyard, but I am so glad no decision was made. It would have been lonely without the willow keeping me company. I attended a poetry and trauma workshop this weekend and after leading us through a visualisation meditation, the writing prompt was to remember a happy place and write about it... this is the memory that returned after much wandering through my mind... 

DUCK SURGERY: A LAST TAIL OF THE YEAR

It wasn’t her tail that broke.

The title was misleading. I’m sorry. It was a broken leg. As clearly stated in her medical record. 

Her name is Emerald. But she was christened Esmeralda in the doorway of her first home. She was born with green boots and bought with love, but sadly her adoptive co-parent turned out to be less than keen.

One day, I walked across the road with my twin nieces and there in the front porch on her way out (little did she know) was the matching duck to my own William (of the blue boots).

My neighbour was thrilled to pack Esmeralda off for a ‘holiday’ and here, in our home, she has stayed. 

Not without incident.

Back to duck surgery.

William lost a boot soon after the arrival of the twins so Emerald is in good company. This is all my fault of course - I ought to be a more responsible duck owner, but it’s Christmas and the New Year is almost upon us and I am just too tired, shattered, exhausted, knackered, whacko blotto, to quote my friend Colette... 

I am hanging on by silver threads and the golden web of imagination. Cob web... I feel old and in need of hibernation. But a new day, a new year, is on its way, and must be attended to. Some energy must be found from somewhere. How? Where?

In friendship. In kindness. In the generosity of spirit and attention.

Are you listening to me?

I am listening.

But do you really hear me?

I am trying.

Samuel Beckett wrote, ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Fail again. Fail better.’ Beckett seems like he was a kind man, with the best of human interest at heart. There is something about growth, new growth, in the old broken parts of us. We break, and we make something... new? Better? Something, anyway,

Neil Gaiman, another kind man, put it like this ... ‘I hope that in the year to come, you make mistakes, because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing the world... So... make new mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life...’

Or ducks with broken legs... or bodies with broken immune systems... on we go, onwards, ever onwards, the old and the new... gathering extraordinary memories. The tale of William and Esmeralda really all began with my beloved friend Mary sending me Jemima Puddle Duck for my birthday in August - a gift of cheer. Mary thought I would appreciate the graceful lines of a duck in pink wellingtons. Well, I did. I do. And so the family grew...

HAPPY NEW YEAR my dearest readers, thank you for the love, concern and the memories. Happy new year to us all xxx

TWO TREES AT CHRISTMAS (A CHRISTMAS WISH)

It’s Christmas time. A time for miracles. A time, I stubbornly insisted, for a real Christmas tree. ‘But the needles,’ my mother said. ‘The mess...’

And even so, she relented.

Just a small one...

Well, actually... in the end we got two. One a nice normal-ish size... she was very fluffy when she came out of her netting as though to say, ‘Here I am! Ta-dah!’ And also a very tiny little fir, you almost have to squint to see her. Except she is a bright green and also had a bit of an air about her, something delightful. Too small of course for the decorations I have laden her with - two serious mice (occasionally sad in a certain light), one smiley mouse and a deer... which arrived from my friend Meme in Australia. A friend who also has a host of 'co-morbidities', like so many of us do... from vasculitis to neuropathy, Crohns to hypothyroidism. Or just the usual... fever, swelling, pain.

We are supposed to thank pain, thank swelling, thank these harbingers, which are the reminders of our body’s needs. If you are in pain, then you are alive, said a friend of mine to me once. He has Parkinson’s and was a fount of hard-earned wisdom. I have always tried to follow his advice. Or at the very least, remember it.

For me, this past year has been very ‘triggering’ as they say. But I think we are all triggered almost continuously? Constant barrage of televised, radio-ised, internet-ised streams of all the desperate stories of our lives across the globe, stories of politicians not really seeming to care, and also stories of people doing wonderfully well with incredible achievements – seemingly superhuman achievements. And some of those extraordinary achievers are people with illness. Take Mary Frey, of The Frey Life channel on YouTube. She has cystic fibrosis and an incredibly inspired following... 

Or Molly Burke, who is a blind YouTuber and also has a hugely inspired following...

And then of course there is Selena Gomez who extended the miracle of her kidney transplant story (donated incredibly enough by her best friend Francia Raisa) by sharing it with the public. I am sure everyone with lupus had friends sending them the viral clips of Selena’s story...

What we rarely hear about are the ordinary folk, you and me, getting by on our own rations of kindness, compassion, courage and fortitude for ourselves and those around us. I believe we need the simple stories to nourish us, to withstand the daily onslaughts of global and internal suffering.

So here we are this Christmas time… and my wish is a simple one. That you feel nourished as this year draws to a close, and that somehow, in some small ways, the miracle finds you and those you love and so spreads on, and on, outwards.

With love,

Shaista 

AUNT ALICE AND THE MARSHMALLOW FLOWERS

Dear Aunt Alice,

Somewhere, in other worldly places, you must surely know that I have inherited your perfect signet ring. Initials AJ carved in pretty curving script. I have been wearing your ring from the moment I received it from your niece Mary, because she thinks I am an aunt worthy enough to be in your mould. I thought of taking it off before a jaunt into London to keep it safe, but decided I wanted to take you with me since I suspect the last time you tripped around London as a young woman was, perhaps, a hundred years ago.

Liverpool Station was freezing cold, but once we were in London proper - Oxford Street proper - I warmed up. No snow to offer you this Christmas, but the lights! An assortment of charities paid towards these giant leaping angel figures. Beautiful for the crush of humans below to behold.

Shopping commenced. I'm not sure you would have approved of my purchases, but they were safe enough - a cosy camel turtle neck sweater, a leather bag and a pair of sunglasses. All on sale! Mind you, the prices, even on sale, would probably shock you. To ease the shock, my sister Angelina ordered cronuts and hot chocolate from a famous bakery called Dominique Ansel. Now this would have impressed you - a marshmallow cut like a crown was dropped into steaming hot chocolate, instantly blooming into a flower...

Later, on Great Marlborough Street, we stood outside Liberty and admired the Tudor Revival frontage. Did you know the timber was built from the ship HMS Hindustan? Or that in 1885, Liberty brought forty two villagers from India to stage a living village of Indian artisans? These handy facts are available from an extraordinary web of information us global villagers dive in and out of 'online'. I wonder what you would have made of Wikipedia? Here is something Wikipedia doesn't know: my father had three of his watercolours exhibited and sold by Liberty in the 1970s. Wikipedia you may have been on the fence about, but my father you would have loved.

I did feel a trifle faint in Liberty - so many people! - so was glad first to plop onto an inviting bed in Anthropologie, and then to mesh our way from Carnaby and Kingly Streets towards a Japanese restaurant, which also served my favourite Korean dishes, and to my delight, a delicious plum wine. For a nineteenth century Englishwoman, I suspect your gastronomic tastes possibly didn't stretch to the Orient, but maybe Mary will surprise me and tell me you loved experimenting with the new!

I got muttered at by a stranger for temporarily blocking the entrance to the tube - did I mention this was the day of the human crush? At these moments I am very much the hokey local from a tiny Cambridge village. By the time our train was hurrying us home, we were shattered and ready to slide, submerge and otherwise disappear into sleep. I hope you enjoyed the day out. Today is the last day of the year 2016. Soon 2017 will be upon us. 2016 has been a truly difficult year, for most of us, not least your beloved Mary. If you possess any magic, wield away. We need some magic. I can only be sure of one thing in the new year - I will continue to be the most loving and creative aunt it is possible to be. Keep your spirit beside me!

With love,
Your new friend-in-auntyhood across the century,
Shaista

Photos courtesy Debra Edward

AND A SUNNY MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU AND YOU AND YOU

And then the end of the year is upon us. I don't know about you but I am not entirely heartbroken to see the end of this difficult year. Under the blazing Singaporean sun, I am letting go one month at a time.

In the concentrated heat, amid koyals and beetles, monkeys leaping in through windows for fresh bananas and the occasional languorous green snake, I eat and unwind my own coiled tense muscles.

In the midst of celebrating Christmas eve, the nephew and I contemplate a tired beetle, struggling to climb aboard a raft...  not dissimilar to me in the final stretch of this year. 

In his last hours, the beetle had two friends trying to build walls of protection around him. 

Later, at Christmas lunch under tropical sun, Raf insisted I eat with the upturned beetle beside me ... oh well, all part of the great merry go round of life. Merry Christmas everyone! 

BEFORE CHRISTMAS TURNED INTO AFTER

The wind is a howlin' tonight and although snow might not greet me tomorrow morning, I wonder how the trees will fare… this year I don't feel properly Christmassy (whatever that ought to feel like when you are no longer a child and the news confronts us with climate change and animal welfare and human rights horrors), and it was only when my beloved friend Mary sent me the poem below, that I felt a little comfort…

       BC:AD

       This was the moment when Before

       Turned into After, and the future's

       Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

       

       This was the moment when nothing

       Happened. Only dull peace

       Sprawled boringly over the earth

       This was the moment when even energetic Romans

       Could find nothing better to do

       Than counting heads in remote provinces

          

       And this was the moment

       When a few farm workers and three

       Members of an obscure Persian sect

        

       Walked haphazard by starlight straight

       Into the kingdom of heaven

                                                      U. A. Fanthorpe

This was the year of the death of a great leader, and in my smaller world, births of a future. Christmas was meant to be about birth and those three members belonged to my people's obscure Persian sect - truly obscure, because nobody ever seems to know the Three Wise Men were Zoroastrians! I like to think of those obscure gentlemen, walking haphazardly, guided only by starlight, (and what else would one want to be guided by?) straight into the kingdom of heaven. Those last two lines? My idea of heaven...

IMAGES FROM THE MAG: The Ice Cutters, 1911, Natalia Goncharova
                                                 Madonna With the Milk Soup, 1510, Gerard David 

WEAVING FOR CAMELOT

There she weaves by night and day…

She has heard a whisper say

A curse is on her if she stay

To look down to Camelot.

She knows not what the curse may be

And so she weaveth steadily…

"I am half-sick of shadows," said

The Lady of Shalott.

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I am half-sick of shadows too… Twenty years this month, since I last spent Christmas in India, where cotton wool replaced the snow on the fir tree outside our bedroom window (we could only ever reach the first layers of branches, so the tree always looked extremely strange and wonderful). This Christmas I don't want to think about commerce and duty, only the memory of the Red Cross choir who would come to sing for each house on our street, and for the candles lit and mangers built in every department of the hospital where my father consulted. Simpler times, authentic times - Santa was fun but not the essence. Jesus was, and so was light and hope...

Image from The Mag: Autumn on the River, 1889, John Singer Sargent