THE WIRE

Plugged in

or plugged out,

no escape.

Even the monastery,

even the future 

of bees -

a stranger 

even cut down 

our trees.

We march to its beat,

www.unfree

© Shaista Tayabali, 2023 (shared at DVerse Open Nights)

What are your thoughts on FOMO? Fear Of Missing Out. It doesn’t feel like a young person’s social media phenomenon. It feels a very real contemplation when we are no longer (just) aware of our own mortality, but also the extinction of our planet and all species. This wire that connects us all, it’s a good thing, I think. But freedom from it… is that even possible anymore? Strangers did really cut down trees at the bottom of our garden one night in the middle of a storm. The next day, the wreckage of living beings, and shredded fences. There was no reason for it, surely, other than improving someone's internet connection? 

But then you type in 'female artist painting the internet' and you find the art of 16 year old Dimitra Milan, and suddenly you are inside a world shared only because of the wire. And I wouldn't miss this for anything. Anything, but those fallen trees.

(For more of Milan's work, here is the original link at Bored Panda and her current work.)

ASTRA ZENECA ONE

This afternoon, I had my first vaccine jab. Twelve weeks to go before vaccine part two. Which means it will be May. Imagine that. Imagine wisteria. I’ve forgotten what May looks and feels like. This has seemed like the longest winter, bookended only by a mizzling spring. It is raining even now, as I type. 

Ever since Brigadier Phil Prosser took charge with military precision and strategy, millions of UK citizens are being vaccinated in a steady stream. I don’t think the scientists envisaged a twelve week gap between doses, but the covid narrative is a long one. This evening I have felt a bit grotty, with a headache and a slight flu like response. My arm feels a little heavy. But my mind was occupied with what my mother would describe as the last thing I ought to be watching: Russell T Davies’ five episode drama ‘It’s A Sin’ - his first determined effort to remember the young boys who faded fast and terrified from the HIV/AIDS pandemic of the eighties.

Watching a period drama, one ought to feel at least as though the subject is familiar and known to us after the passing of decades, but AIDS is still far removed from ordinary conversation. Lupus and HIV patients share many clinical similarities with weakened immune systems, but inhabit opposite ends of the spectrum  in terms of public scrutiny. The lupus patient is left alone, to her own devices and need not fear the cost of living as much. What we possess in abundance is the empathy of knowing what it is to fear one’s own body, obstinately dancing to a dissonant tune. Why does visibility take so long? Thank goodness for the writers and dancers and musicians who make art, make beauty, even when it hurts.

John Lam, Vietnamese-American ballet dancer

GUEST POST : IN THE LAND OF TORIA

While I was in hospital, my friend Victoria sent me photographs of her garden. There are gardens in my hospital, one in particular that I claim as my favourite, but while in a shared ward or private bay, there is no green to be found. Blue and cream aplenty but no living, moving green. So I thought I would share Victoria’s photos with you, with her permission, so you can see what cheered me...

Of course there are other ways to escape while in hospital. My new friend Mary, with the wandering mind, was not in Addenbrooke’s at all... she was in Selby in Yorkshire, and sometimes in the mining and weaving towns of her youth... sometimes she would give me directions to the cemetery nearby and sometimes she accepted that I was not real, I was a visiting spirit to whom mundane things of the mortal world would be of little interest. ‘How long have you been here, like this?’ Mary asked, her hand fluttering, indicating my other worldliness ... ‘Oh, I come and go,’ I answered. We spoke exactly the same language, Mary and I, both of us being of this world and not of this world. It’s all very mysterious, we both agreed.

When I was finally discharged I said goodbye to all my ward mates except Mary. I couldn’t bring myself to utter the finality. Mary had said I would return to her mind from time to time, and I told her I would never forget her. Mary Longbottom of Selby, Yorkshire. So why say goodbye?

(All photographs, except the last, by Victoria Kingsley-Pallant)

MOONLIGHT (a review)

In Moonlight, Black Boys Look Blue. This was the original title for Barry Jenkins' Oscar winning film 'Moonlight'. The film was based on an unpublished, semi-autobiographical play written by Tarell Alvin McCraney. I missed it during the pre-Oscars season buzz, so when I saw it playing for one day only on a random June afternoon, I jumped out of my lethargic skin and dove into the empty cinema. After the film had started I was joined by a group of three strangers, but I pretended it was just me and Chiron. And some popcorn. (It wasn't a popcorn eating type of film, but hey, where else am I gonna eat popcorn?).

Moonlight is a triptych. A piece of art. The sound of the sea begins the film, and a seaside palette of Provence blue and daffodil yellow bathes our eyes at unexpected moments, so you begin to float, suspending fear, anxiety, prejudice. You are 'Little' Chiron, held loosely but safely in the hands of Juan. Mehershala Ali won that Oscar because even though his character mysteriously disappears a third into the film, you feel his ghostly presence throughout. Weaving in and out on classical strings, Cuban and hip hop beats. 

But at the same time that sudden absence also made me tighten up, and I couldn't relax into the lyrical beauty. I wouldn't let myself cry until the film had ended, the credits were rolling and I realised Barry Jenkins had kept us safe throughout. I don't think I've ever talked to a film director in my head before, but I was willing Jenkins not to let me, us, fall through all the cracks we already know exist for Chiron and his kind of invisible blue blackness.

'Moonlight' is as serious as it gets and as loving. The two faces of woman in the film aren't polarised through moral judgement. They are just being themselves - human, fallible, trying. Failing, losing, surviving. Loving. Speaking of love, I think I'll watch anything with Janelle Monae - she has such a fierce, feisty, authentic presence here as in 'Hidden Figures'. And Naomie Harris - from Bond woman to crack addict - a powerhouse performance.

There is a moment at the beginning of the film when little Chiron looks up at Juan - a side along gaze that asks with big eyes, 'Who are you?' Why should I trust you, say those eyes. When Chiron's mother meets Juan for the first time, she looks at him, eyes heavy with suspicion. 'And who is you?' Juan replies: 'I'm nobody'. And finally, towards the end, the second love of Chiron's life, Kevin, asks the same question: 'Who is you?' And with that question, there is a chance for Chiron to not answer: 'I'm nobody'. He is being offered a chance to be somebody. To someone. 

'Who is you?' is the heartbeat of the film, echoed, mirrored. We grow up and into ourselves, and some of us get to be loved by people who ask that question of us, who listen for the answer. Who wait for the answer. Even when it changes. 

MARIE KONDO AND THE SPARKING OF A CERTAIN JOY

for Richard, who misses my blog posts

It seems strange to speak of joy, or write of joy, when all around us joyless events directed by joyless people rip at the fabric of our lives. Every day I look about me and give thanks for clouds in the sky, and not drones, for roses beginning to climb our trellis, and not militia, for my mother loudly shooing away the muntjac and a squirrel I've named Nutkin, rather than... anything else. None of these are small things. They constitute the biggest thing of all - freedom. A word that almost feels sacred now. Almost like superstition. Better not utter it out loud, in case those that lurk in the dark places encroach upon your light. 

And yet of course this is the paradox of a life like mine: if you keep small, and hide away as much as possible, tending to the bird feeder and sorting through your books, you wonder if after all you ought to be trying for the other life, the one with the spotlight and the megaphone, denouncing hatred, fighting for rights, yours and those denied others. Then your body reminds you of its tumultuous nature - scar tissue, antibiotics and a twenty year long fight to stay alive.

Into my small but sweet life, a fellow patient gave me The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. My friend is Italian so the book was actually called Il Magico Potere Del Riordino. It was her personal copy, with notes to herself inscribed in pencil. It has taken me a few years to actually begin the process of tidying up my life in the specifically thorough way offered by Japanese tidying expert Marie Kondo. The KonMari method.

There are two books, actually. The second is called Spark Joy: An Illustrated Guide to the Japanese Art of Tidying, and this one is filled with delightful illustrations. There is a certain order to the process but always the same outcome - to spark joy from the tiniest of your possessions. Gather your belongings into their particular categories. Hold each object in your hands, and consider it. If the time has come to send it on its way, thank it before you despatch it. [The first edition was given to me by my friend Angelica, and the second guide by my sister Angelina. I take my angels where I get them.] 

I find myself telling people truthfully what I am 'up to' - facing that dreaded question of 'What are you doing now? Have you published your book yet?' If only writing a book and publishing it were as natural a pair of siblings as we imagine when first embarking on that book. I have tentatively begun the second - never mind what it's about - but first, I have a date with a woman named Marie, who is leading me towards a certain joy. 

WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE? MISS WINEHOUSE?

Sometimes I am compelled to watch a movie. I will make a concerted effort to trek to the arts picture house, buy a ticket and immerse. Last week, I witnessed Amy - a documentary by Asif Kapadia on the singer Amy Winehouse, whose music ought to have made her an enduring legend, but whose descent into drugs and alcohol annihilated body and soul. After an hour and a half, I wondered when the movie would end. When the credits rolled, I realised I hadn't once been moved. I walked out of the theatre and into crowds, into shops. Twice I was asked about my day and I shared my thoughts on the film. I think Amy would have hated the film. She would be humiliated by this remembrance of the very worst of her laid bare for our delectation. It was ghostly voyeurism. 

Later that night, still unable to shake the fog of depression, I began another documentary, this time on Netflix, one that has had no fanfare or billboard trumpeting. Amy has been advertised everywhere, has 97% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, will no doubt earn nominations and awards - this quiet little film streaming only on Netflix was about a gifted black woman. Nina Simone. Critical and public interest in the story of a black woman vs the story of a white woman in the music industry, then and now, is virtually unchanged. Evidence: the recent Taylor Swift/ Nicki Minaj twitter debacle.

Within the first five minutes of Liz Garbus' What Happened, Miss Simone I was in tears. Nina responds to the question: 'What is free to you?' 'What does freedom mean to me? I'll tell you what freedom is to me. No fear. If I could have that for half of my life. I mean, really. No fear. Like a new way of seeing.' When I was in N2 all those many months of 2009, imprisoned in my hospital cell on feeding tubes, cannulas in my jugular, I came across this quote and wrote about it on my blog. Nina's music and lyrics have formed a constant thread in my life from the first year of this disease taking hold of me, because Nina writes about freedom.

She wasn't free. She was young, gifted and black during the most violent times. She wrote about the horror of the bombing of four black children in a church in Birmingham, Alabama in Mississippi Goddam, the lynchings of black men in Strange Fruit, and had a mental breakdown eventually because how could she dissociate from feeling anger for her people, and yet making the kind of music white people would buy? Nobody loves an angry black woman even if her anger is poetic justice. Everybody loves a damaged white woman: Marilyn Monroe, Vivian Leigh, Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse. Simone was damaged too, of course. A manic depressive with a violence in her that was ultimately contained by a prescription drug that slurred her speech and chemically altered her personality. The price of fame for a dream that wasn't hers. Her dream? To be a classical pianist. First black female classical pianist. 

Meanwhile the chemo dripped into me yesterday. In the last hour, a woman on my right had a fit of bone bruising coughing. I hadn't heard anything like it in a while. So of course I turned to her. The cause of her severe lung destroying bronchial trouble? The same drug sliding into my veins. Be careful, she warned me. Stay vigilant. Pass me some of that No Fear, Nina. I need it, as I've always done. 

KINTSUKUROI

Outside, I hear morning birds and someone begins the onerous task of sweeping dust. Dust in India cannot be swept away. Can be swept from here to there, but mostly it fluffs itself up in the air and lands daintily again by the sweeper's feet, as though to suggest they would both be more comfortable if they could just accept each other for what they are to each other. Dust provides the sweeper with a job. And the sweeper provides dust with excitement, a little flurry, a change of pace and place.

Why is dust? It is not pretty or useful.

Why is illness? It is not pretty or useful.

And yet here I am. Dusty with illness and that ubiquitous meaningless word - pain.

And yet here I am, loved.

I am kintsukuroi, broken pottery joined by gold dust and laquer. Where the break joins, there is no seamless transition. You can see the suffering and the mechanism of healing. A friend of mine sent me an image of such a bowl made more beautiful by its interesting narrative; she hoped to inspire a poem. But the kintsugi philosophy made me want to write more words than a poem might permit. It has made me think of my broken pieces joined not by stitches and scar tissue, but by the gold dust of love and friendship.

I have always been hesitant to return to India since my diagnosis of lupus in 1997 because I didn't want to return ill. But I am ill, and I am here, and both must be joined somehow. I say I am kintsukuroi not because I am made beautiful, but because I hope such beauty can be possible. Are we all broken and scarred in some places? Then are we not all beautiful? I sat outside for a few moments yesterday, and a cluster of sari and bangle clad women gardeners wove a little circle around me. They were off in the distance one moment, and the next were crouching inches from my feet. One lady asked me the time - maybe she really needed to know. Maybe she just wanted to hear me speak, make a connection. We don't speak the same language - I am in the south of India, where the pace of life is very different from Bombay. But the smiles are the same.

The only difference now is the smiles are not for me - two small figures fascinate their passers by. I am just in the shadow of their smiles. But shadows never looked more beautiful.

TOUCHING TIME

Tucked away
inside a wooden cabinet,
I find the Tibetan Book
of Living and Dying.

Books can save your life,
some say
they can even help you
die.

In Stanley Park I stand inside
a dead tree;
a hollowed out by time tree;
a rescued by man,
propped up by iron tree;

I feel nothing.

"You are touching time,"
my mother observes,
but the tree
says nothing
to me.

The Big (Living) Tree, Stanley Park, Vancouver, 1924

I have just returned from a brief visit to my family in Vancouver, to spend time with my grandmother who will be ninety this year and has become too frail to travel to her beloved England. I went with my mother, who is an easy travelling companion. Vancouver's trees are a glory - the scent of cedarwood and pine entwined with blue haze of mountains is a balm, but the Hollow Tree made me sad. It is raining in England now, the wisteria is no longer flowering but the roses are out... I like the living. I liked seeing my grandmother's cheeks still blooming...

FAITH (the other side of the coin)

Renoir

If I were to marry
it would surely
be springtime in England;

The birds would sing sweetly
all morning and
                     evening
The sun would shine brightly
                  but ever so gently;

My feet would step lightly
on a carpet of daisies...

White as the blossom
pure as the dove,
My heart full and golden
with love.

- Shaista Tayabali, 2013

Young Woman Picking The Fruit Of Knowledge, 1892, Mary Cassatt (for magpie tales)

SUCHNESS

Light dances
on the willow tree
Light, that too fleeting
moment of green, heat,
nowness.

Suchness
is this autumn light,
this never leave me
stay light,
Gone before you know it
light;

Eyes. Write. Now. This
perfect
light.

Today is our anniversary. The day the five Tayabali musketeers arrived in a green village of bridges and set our travel-worn feet inside the house with the lantern and the willow. 

November has such a strange feel to it. There is a glorious arrivingness about autumn, and then suddenly, a sense of something missing, or lost, pervades. The fall of darkness surprises me every year. 

And yet, this is the only month whose leaves make their way into my journal, onto my walls, year after year. 

On Monday, instead of starting school as I did that Monday an eternity ago, I shall be gowned up for another glaucoma operation. I am looking forward to it about as much as I did my first day of school in England! It's general anaesthesia this time, possibly because the Blue Eyed Surgeon doesn't want any more song requests...

linked to dverse poets

Vera - a Tempest

It is nearly two am. Another night of a churning mind. Did you know the secret rule to solving insomnia is 'not minding'? Not minding not sleeping, not minding not sleeping... then suddenly, you fall asleep. Tonight, Deepak Chopra, that is not working.
Tonight's is a weighty concern. I am thinking about hair. Women's hair.
And why we care, so very much, about hair. Men care too. More deeply than they reveal. We women, we reveal.

When I tell my father I am off for a haircut, he wishes me happy tears. "Women go to the hairdresser," he theorises, "in order to get depressed." Not true! And yet, and yet. There is something deeply unempowering about having another woman (or man) cut your hair. They take your hair in their hands and with scissors and razors and a vision entirely their own, take away what belongs to you, and you give it, and you pay for your fallen locks, and you walk away. A lesser, smaller self. Until you grow it back - your hair, your self, your smile.
Perhaps other women experience this differently. Perhaps other women walk out of hairdressers bouncing along pavements, freer, sassier, colour coded to match that moment of nowness. That woman has never been me.

Many thousands of miles away, a woman named Vera, is thinking tempestuous thoughts about her own hair. She has just been diagnosed with high grade follicular lymphoma. She will start an aggressive form of chemotherapy soon. Death be damned, to hell with the needles and bruising... "My hair," she moans. "What will become of my hair?"

Grandmother, for so Vera is to me, was a raging beauty in her day...and although that day may long be past in some dry calendars, Vera is still very much that beauty, that wit, that swift lithe dancer of the waltz. She is the sort of woman who dresses for the day. Not in pearls, but in the simplicity of perfectly 'done' hair. Her age is of little matter. She is health embodied. Well, except for the unaccountably large lymph nodes extensively roosting in her body like fat goose eggs.

And those words... Cancer. Chemo. Cytotoxic. Or as one doctor merrily pointed out, "Well, it's your choice. If you don't take the treatment, you'll be dead in six months. Your choice." (I am breathing out steam as I write).

Is there ever really a choice? The choice is life. Always, life. And a woman's hair, for better or worse, reflects her life. Whether or not it is taken from her by force, she pays for its fall.

Even if it leaves, it will return Vera mama, it did return for me. But I don't think she believes me.