VIEW FROM BED

A week ago was an IVIg day. For a year, protocol has required me to have a covid test on the Thursday before the Sunday infusion, but rolling out across most lands today are ‘the end of covid restrictions’. These are words that do not inspire feelings of delight and freedom in the immuno suppressed person. For us, once again, the personal negotiations, with each situation, begin. 

And yet… something has changed, I think. Some deep understanding of fatigue, of the way an invisible source can derail your forward movement, has entered human consciousness. It hasn’t affected man’s desire for war, oil and nuclear arms. But between the two, I think a dialogue has begun. Or, at least, space has been created for dialogue. That’s progress. 

IVIg this month was sandwiched between two Rituximab doses. In the interim, I walk my bundle of cuddly fur and attempt to be fully in the present moment. Aware of wisteria and magnolia at their plumpest. Aware of sunshine and friendly dog related conversations. 

Two pairs of not so tiny hands have arrived from Malaysia and Papa has company shouting and screaming and jumping all over him. Games are being invented fast and furiously and bath time is once again a special English delight…

At the hospital, in between joys of dogs and nieces, I managed to catch up with my friend Daisy, who had a little cry when we wrapped our arms and masked cheeks around each other, and then proceeded to coolly sketch this masterpiece of Zadie Smith. Next commission: Ocean Vuong.

View from the bed, the faux blue chair… cloudy with a chance of sunshine. (How about your view?)

ON ST. PATRICK'S DAY, GRIEF AND JOY OBSERVED

I am surrounded by churches in the village where I live. Samwise and I turned right today, and walked down to the church past the railway line. It's a quick decision, and the sun seemed to be calling us thataway. We made a nifty getaway from his nemesis, a tiny dachshund with war on his mind, and made it to the church. Sitting outside on a bench with two crutches propped beside him, was a man eager for a chin wag. He was John, ex police officer, 57 years in England and still in possession of his County Kerry accent. "I'm Catholic,' he said, 'but I believe there's only one God and I come to this church for the peace.' His mobile phone was lying beside him - he'd been trying to get a hold of his sister to wish her a happy St. Patrick's Day. I asked him to explain the origins of the day, and we both commiserated over the tragedy befalling Ukraine.

Two days ago, I was approaching the other church (Sammy and I had turned left this time), and I saw a man praying his namaz on a prayer mat on the tiny triangle of green outside the church. He had stopped his car, and was observing the evening prayer. I couldn't believe it! At this very church, twenty-nine years ago, my father had been pointedly informed by the choice of words in the sermon that he would only be welcome if he converted from his unwelcome religion. And now, the namaz. I wanted to applaud the man for his... courage? Defiance? Simple observation of prayer? I wasn't sure. So I dawdled with Sammy until the man rolled up his mat, and I waved in a friendly fashion at the companion in his car. They waved back. And onwards we all went. If only it could always be this way.  

Grief, Observed

 

‘The act of living is different all through. Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.’

 

I settle into the graveyard with C.S. Lewis,

observing grief together.

 

All my childhood I was accused

of being too sensitive. 

And make no mistake, 

it is an accusation.

 

No one ever declares it worthy of praise. 

Not in a girl.

For how will she cook and clean and submit easily,

if her mind dissects and discerns?

 

When they say too sensitive,

they mean too knowing. 

 

It’s a Sunday and the church doors are open. 

I walk into the incense. 

Mary greets me, I like to think, 

and Jesus invites me closer. 

 

I approach. And see the candle tree, 

electric lighter awaiting me.

 

Every night we light a divo, my mother and I, 

keeping going the Zoroastrian fire. 

Here, the lights are blood red, not white. 

I place one like a star atop the pyramid wire.

 

I recite, out loud, a gatha and a surah,

binding myself to as many of the prophets 

as will have me. Come now rain! 

Come now thunder!

 

Why do I fear? The fire 

tree protects me. 

© Shaista Tayabali, 2022 (linked to this evening's dVerse Poetry)

To end in hope then, with news of another mother and daughter, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her daughter Gabriella, finally united in freedom, back in England, thanks to the determined, relentless efforts of her husband Richard. A long road ahead, of course, but a little corner of peace begun.

 

WHAT FREEDOM LOOKS LIKE (POST LOCKDOWN 3)

This morning’s strange dreams were interrupted by a phone call. ‘I’m going to make you very happy,’ said my immunology nurse (after commenting on my sleep roused state). I knew what was coming. ‘You can go back to IVIg at the hospital in two weeks.’ 

Hurrah hurrah! This is what freedom might look like for me. I received the official government letter informing me that as a clinically extremely vulnerable patient, I could stop shielding. All the same, they said, please still take precautions. So it didn’t seem like freedom would look any different. But this ... release from weekly thigh infusions to monthly arm infusions - oh this might spark the cocoon to stretch and poke a wee wing out, test the currents of air, and who knows? Take a small merry flight. Where? Who knows? Tops of trees? How high do butterflies fly anyway? 

Meanwhile, my nephew turned TEN... 

Meanwhile, my friend Suramya sent me E. H. Gombrich’s ‘The Story of Art’, and I am up close and personal with Dürer (hare, 1502) and Rembrandt (1637)... 

Meanwhile, I am life drawing with my mother every week, attending classes on Feminism and Plants (Ecological Decline and the Rise of Witchcraft, anyone?) and this weekend, I shall be in France, in Plum Village, with the Zen Buddhist Nuns of Lower Hamlet, practising mindfulness and reconciliation. Ok, maybe not actual France... France/ Vietnam through a zoom window. We take our freedom where we can, right? 

BANAZ: A LOVE STORY

They disappear the girls,
But it's the men who blur, for me.

Whose father, did what, when,
With whose aid, why - I care less

About them. And only about you.
You remain. You and your name

Haunt me, but not as ghostly mystery.
There was nothing insubstantial

About you. In fact, there was so much
That it has spilled over, across time,

Crossed the bridges of your world
And mine, so you live with me now,

Swimming in the river of my thoughts.
I hope you don't mind.

(c) Shaista Tayabali, 2018

They wanted us to forget her. They tried to erase her, in a suitcase, strangled and abandoned, buried. No, evil, you did not succeed. We honour her, still. Her name is on our lips, in our poems, crossing borders on the wind. Banaz Mahmod. In 2012, Deeyah Khan and Andrew Smith documented her story in a film they titled Banaz: A Love Story. She was born 16 December 1985, and killed 24 January, 2006. She was Iraqi Kurdish. She lived in Wimbledon, London. And she fought to save her own life.  
(poem shared via dverse poets)

PICC LINES AND PENGUINS

Evening. The sun has set, I think. The day has faded away, and I haven't really paid attention. The twins left this morning en route to the airport and the next chapter of their life. I, who have been on a rollercoaster month of rocky infections, antibiotics and hospital admissions, feel jet lagged. Woozy with tiredness, I want to sleep for days without hours. But keeping time with the clock, they say, is important.

September is here. I had a birthday. My mother travelled to Vancouver to be with her two brothers at a wedding, and returned.

I had two PICC lines inserted and two PICC lines removed. Today was the removal of the second. My arm doesn't feel free yet. Still weighted with the memory of discomfort, it will take a while for the entry point wound to feel healed.

Other things will happen this month and the next. But until then I am going to crawl away and hibernate. Until then, here is a picture of me in Ellie's penguin hat, sitting, tube-free in the hospital Jubilee Garden...

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. 

JEONG KWAN

There is a nun in South Korea
who walked up the side of a mountain
to Baekyangsa temple, when she was
seventeen, and her mother had just died.

You have come here to live,
said the nun who opened the door,
not asking a question; just telling
a truth that had yet to manifest.

Jeong Kwan unpins her freshly
laundered robes and whispers them
around her shoulders. How old is she?
Only the mountain knows.

But the taengja tree outside her window
is 500 years old. Hardy orange, it still
bears fruit, and Kwan uses the sour juice
in her cooking.

She pickles lotus root three different ways,
then checks on jars of kimchi. She never
uses garlic, onions, scallions, chives, leeks.
Too distracting for a monk.

But soy?
Soy excites her.

Sometimes I agree with the world
that to be a mother is everything. Is the key
and the lock. Jeong Kwan vowed at seventeen
to not burden children with the pain of her death.

There is something in that,
for me.

We can't all choose to opt out
or the world would stop spinning
around humans. Bees might take over. Or
rats. Or better still, dust motes of light. Or dark.

Jeong Kwan unfurls petal after petal
of the lotus flower, soaking the skirt
in water. Later, she will pour the water
into a pot and you will want to gulp the tea

as though you are parched. You are parched
and this is the tea of enlightenment. The tea
that rings the bell of truth. Life can be this
way. An art. A craft. A discipline. A dance.

Three slices of lotus root, pickled
in an heirloom of soy sauce.

(c) Shaista Tayabali, 2017

Jeong Kwan is considered one of the finest chefs of this world by the finest chefs of this world, who are almost exclusively male. Life can be this way. Women can be this way. Happy Women's Day today and every day to all my friends and sisters, my mentors and teachers and heroes. We can be anything. We can do everything. Certainly, we can.

(Poem linked to Dverse Poets for Open Link Night) 

WHAT MATTERS NOW

Sleep has always been a shy, mysterious, elusive sheep for me - rarely does she come when I call.

But lately, sleep is more fractured than ever.

I read in a piece by Mary Karr, poet and memoirist, that during this year's American election, doctors suddenly had a rush of patients ringing in or reporting as emergencies, cases of false tachycardia. My own persistent tachycardia this year may be rooted in more determinedly medical background, but now I wonder if I too am experiencing a world wide case of shared disturbance of the heart.

These are troubled times. More so than ever before? I think not, on our personal levels. But on a global level, I believe we may be experiencing a seismic shift in our comprehension of the state of things. 

A thing I think: human beings are extraordinarily clever at denial. In our bones, we know we must die. But we also know we must live in the face of such irrefutable knowing. To live as though you are not dying is the art and craft we develop innately, from our first squall. 

And yet, here I am, awake in the middle of the night; and yet, here we all are, anxious for what is to come. 

Buddha would say, 'What has come to be', meaning what has come, has come to be, because of all things past leading to this present. Not inevitability as fate, rather a collective gathering of historical human action and consequence has brought us to this pass. 'This is because that is'. We cannot unlink ourselves from each other. Frederick Douglass believed America to be wilfully blind in 1862 ('We have sought to bind the chains of slavery on the limbs of the black man, without thinking that at last we should find the other end of that hateful chain about our own necks.' from his speech 'The Reasons for our Troubles') and wilfully blind she continues to be. 

But here we are, on the eve of a new leadership, which will implicate us all, wide awake, hungry for comfort, with very little comfort to be had. 

Last evening before I fell asleep for a while, I attended a paper on Vietnamese-American writer lê thi diem thúy, author of the acclaimed novel The Gangster We Are All Looking For, and later went to a theatre performance of A Room with a View starring Felicity Kendal. While watching E. M. Forster's novel turned to play, I was making all sorts of connections between modernism and post war immigrant diaspora writings, until Kendal spoke this line: 'Novels aren't silly. Literature can influence things, sometimes.' She was speaking as Charlotte Bartlett, but it was Forster asserting himself, for all time, with that dictum.

It was a clear bell reminding me of the more recent affirmations of Toni Morrison and Atul Gawande, Mary Karr and Junot Diaz - the arts matter now more than ever. Our individual voices, thoughts, small decisions, matter. Resistance looks like protest marches, but true resistance begins with just one person choosing to think or behave in more awareness of themselves and one other. Look a little closer at the fellow human being beside you. Perhaps he is crouched outside the theatre, soaked in his black garments, because it rained while you were inside the warmth of the theatre, and he was outside making his sign (PLEASE HELP), awaiting the richest of the town folk to bring his coin collection up to the figure necessary to enable a night in the hostel. 

Perhaps you saw him and crouched down beside him and emptied your pockets of notes and coins. You put your hand on his shoulder and he said, 'God bless you.' Perhaps you walked by, not seeing him at all, heading to your car, your home, your family. Perhaps you saw and walked quickly past anyway. 

Be sure he saw it all.

Illustration by Nino Novellino via Read What Rosie Wrote

UNMAKING A WAVE

It is silly for the wave
to long to be merged
with the big ocean
and the wide open sea.
She is the ocean.
She is the sea.
       
           Does that mean
           she can never be free
           of their tumults
           and their authority?
           Where, in all of 'their',
           is she?

Best to evaporate

           and nestle, a raindrop,
           on an old oak tree,
           sheltered from storms,
           cupped by leaf love,
           a sweet, refreshing
           mystery.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2016

Today is Thich Nhat Hanh's 90th birthday. I am remembering my week at Plum Village in the Dordogne, when I was part of a wonderful dharma group - here I am tucked under the wing of Sister An Nghiem (Sister Peace), an African-American nun who left Washington's mayoral office to actively work for peace and change. We need to concentrate on our change makers and our peace workers so we can remember the best of who we are. Thây has always been that for us. Happy Continuation Day to our beloved gentle monk!

RAIN, RAIN, I WISH WE HAD REMAINED

Yesterday it poured all day, and long into the night. June's roses have taken quite a beating. Will they recover?

At the hospital my stats were not promising: temperature - 37.7 and pulse - 113. The immunology team decided against my receiving intravenous immunoglobulins. Two weeks of antibiotics were prescribed and I was sent home. Unfortunately, a nurse had already hooked up one of my Ig bottles, which would sadly have to be discarded. I regret the waste of such valuable, life saving medicine. But deeply appreciate the nursing staff's concern in making sure I was the priority. I feel so loved by my team of nurses at the hospital; I am seen. Really seen.

As a patient I have to trust many others with my life. I have to trust that when they say they know more than I do, they really do know more. I have to trust that I matter. As a citizen of a country, we have to trust our lives do matter in the hands of those elected.

The vote to leave Europe was not my choice, but democracy is. I value my right to vote and the right of others to vote as they see fit. But sadly, as google analysts are proving by the discovery that many in the UK don't know what the EU is, let alone what leaving it will constitute, what has come to be has come to be as much out of fear and ignorance as anything else.

When a girl like Malala Yousafzai speaks out about the importance of education for the millions of girls who are unfortunate enough to be kept out of school, she is also speaking up for education itself. So often we, the educated privileged, don't know about our own governments, let alone global policies. Worst of all, how many of us can recite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?  It should be the most important piece of literature any student learns. Imprinted on our minds once we leave school and go beyond into the world of Others. That word that scares so many of us.

Shall we begin to recite together? Here we go... 'All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.' And sisterhood.

It is still raining. But we are together, reading and remembering some of the most beautiful words of our human language. http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

Eleanor Roosevelt, chair of the commission that drew up the text of the Universal Declaration, was considered the driving force behind its adoption in Paris in December 1948.

WRITING IN AND OUT OF THE MARGINS: A GOWN FOR MALALA

On BBC radio, there used to be a programme called A History of the World in 100 Objects: the presenter takes a single object and pursues its history and relevance through time, engaging us in discovery and connection. Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, is currently exploring 600 years of German history looking at objects as small as ducats, as crafted as Riemenschneider's limewood sculptures and as pivotal as the Friedrichstraße station.
Manuscripts like Luther's 1541 Bible examine the creation of an entire language.

In Princeton, New Jersey, Pulitzer prize winning novelist Toni Morrison's lifetime works, manuscripts, drafts and proofs are finally being added to the permanent library collection at Princeton University. As writers, we seem particularly fascinated by the crafting process, the scribbled postscripts, the writing in the margins in the hands of our greats that become invisible in the final work.

On a shelf at home is a copy of Brontë's Jane Eyre that belonged to my aunt Saida. From childhood, until she recently died, my aunt had two best friends called Zia and Pushpa (known throughout their lives as The Girls). Aunty's copy of Jane Eyre, which I first read when I was a girl, has pencil scribblings throughout the pages, but particularly beside the 'juicy' romantic bits. Saida and The Girls passed the book around during class and their comments range from silly to naughty to incomprehensible inside jokes. The experience for me was then, as it is now, deeply satisfying.

I often buy books for friends, but find myself hesitating to write inscriptions. Recently I sent my beloved Mary a copy of Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision - and wrote with such a faint pencil that she almost missed the inscription altogether. I can't understand why I am so loathe to leave any mark in a book. Do you have any ideas? My shelves are full of books I love, and return to, and reach instinctively for even if simply to hold them. Why am I afraid to leave my mark, pencil or otherwise, in the margins? I was here. Is that not something of importance? Do I feel so insignificant in the scheme of things that I may as well leave no mark?

Last week, I left this reductive, diminishing voice at home and walked on to a stage, and became a Master of Arts graduate. I wore the gown with pride, tossing my tasselly hat about (carefully, so as not to dislodge the single bob pin holding it down - I had lent my other bobby pin to a fellow grad whose hat was rocketing about, bobbypinless).

I walked on to the stage, thinking of Malala Yousafzai, who had just won the Nobel Peace Prize, feeling proud that I am an educated woman. Knowing she would be proud of me.

THE GATHERING: A COLLECTION OF IRISH BEAUTIES

Give me peat fires
and candles lit
at the Church of Mercy

Give me soft haze of blue
mountains and sharp edges of ice
on our way to The Connor Pass

Give me Dingle
and Slea Head
and blue butterflies on Inch Strand Beach

Stop at Fermoyle
after kissing the Stone,
then touch the sands of Dun Chaoin

Time is a dandelion
but not the land
She is constant -

Waiting, waiting,
for the gathering
of the poet and her clan.

(Lady of) No Fear in the Year of the Dragon

Yesterday found me at the Arts Picturehouse -watching Aung San Suu Kyi in a brief documentary about her early years as a North Oxford housewife, mother of two young sons, trying to ascertain what her true purpose in life would be. Michael Aris, her husband, was the famous Tibetan scholar, Oxford don, figure of importance. And then suddenly, late one night in 1988, the phone rang. Suu's mother had had a stroke. She returned to Burma alone and never left, could never leave, inherited her father's heroism and became mother (Daw Aung San) to Burma. When Michael died in 1999, the military regime persisted in their refusal to grant him entry. He had not seen his wife for an unbearably long time. He had been walking in her footsteps for years, as carefully and diplomatically as possible - she had been walking, and continues to walk, in the footsteps of the Buddha, who sacrificed being with his family, his son Rahula, for humanity.

Perhaps such grace, such fearlessness, can only come with such sacrifice. When, after ten years, Daw Aung San was re-united with her son Kim in 2010, there was such tenderness in her embrace; she held him lightly as though he were the breeze, or a feather. As though she had never held him at all.

But she had. Of course she had.
How does a warrior survive house arrest over decades? How does a prisoner of conscience smile the way she does? Tease and laugh with her people the way she does? I think it must be because she is living up to her father's memory, and because she knows her sons are safe. I think it is because she is a mother.

In the Quiet Land of Burma, where cries are strangled, one flower blooms for all of us.

May the Year of the Dragon bring something wonderful for mothers everywhere. May your children be protected, may your fears be calmed. May your children recognise and be grateful for your sacrifices.

The Irony of Seeing

I have not been sleeping well lately. Actually, most nights I can't or don't know how to fall asleep at all. Long after dawn breaks, I eventually lose consciousness, but I feel as though I have travelled eons in those first hours. I find it almost impossible to unplug myself from the world of Other People's Stories. There are so many faces in my mind, so many voices, strangers for the most part, but for one essential, often tragic or dramatic moment, imprinted on my soul. Do you feel this way? With news streaming and swirling from around the globe, and networking sites, blogs, books, and articles, opinions have opinions and there is so much to concentrate on all the time. So many to pray for, so many to worry for, so many to be glad for. How does one manage to extricate one's mind from today's visually and verbally intense communication? I cannot retreat to a monastery - I already live in seeming solitude. I cannot bring myself to read less - I already read far less than I ever did. Or at least it seems that way, because then, there were 'only' books. Now... 

And it won't subside. How can it? Why should it? This is global awareness. And it is vital. I have to find a way to stay deeply interconnected, without losing my mind entirely to the sea of human suffering, human thought and voice. 

Perhaps it is winter. Perhaps I have not walked in the garden enough. Perhaps I should follow in father's footsteps, and just walk, walk blindly out into that human sea, knowing the grave responsibilities that surround me, but pretending anyway, that I am free. 

I remember now. Faith.

from Gregory Colbert's Ashes and Snow Project