ARTIST TO ARTIST: CHRIS BOLAND, WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER

ARTIST TO ARTIST: WITH CHRIS BOLAND, CAMBRIDGE WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER

Chris, let us leap, with joy and faith, into the new year, by discussing Romance! These are the very first lines on your website’s home page… ‘I love to document the happiness and romance of wedding days in an elegant and beautiful style.’ Tell me about the beginnings of capturing romance in your life. Did it start with a person you were compelled to photograph? Or a beautiful, stylish camera?!

That’s an excellent and terrifying idea - let’s go for it! I would say there wasn’t a particular romantic relationship or particular person that inspired me to photograph weddings, but I think I found the idea of photography itself quite romantic. In weddings there is the romance of the relationship itself, but also the romance of the occasion and the romance of the more ordinary, less obvious moments. Maybe it’s a romantic perspective you can bring even to the everyday. 

Early on, I didn’t feel any romance towards a camera, but I’ve since bought a few that are quite inspiring. I think photographing with film is quite romantic. It’s slow and less practical and what it gives you is sometimes hard to describe.

I have written a little about this in one of my YouTube videos:

 

 

I love the knowing comments beneath that video - expertise is a beautiful thing. In the next lines, you go on to say that ‘no wedding is ever too far’ for you to travel to. Where is the furthest you have travelled from your Cambridge base? How was it and how did it come about?

I certainly make sure to let people know that I will travel anywhere for a wedding. 'Cambridge and worldwide' is how I think I describe it. That covers most places, right? I really love being in new places with new people and being part of a wedding as a photographer is a wonderful experience. You're suddenly at the heart of something special, despite being in an unfamiliar place. The furthest I’ve been to is Australia. That was for a couple who had family over there and also closer to home here. They had two ceremonies and they asked me to photograph them both. It was a bit of a surprise as I was just starting out, but it was wonderful to see a little bit of the country. On the wedding day itself, it wasn’t a greatly different experience from being in England. A wedding in Bangalore was for a friend of mine who was the bride and that was much more of a new experience culturally. That was different and wonderful because of it. 

Where did you grow up and were cameras and photography part of those growing up years?

I was born in Cambridge and lived nearby in St Ives for the first five years of my life - then there were five years in Surrey, then back living here ever since. Photography wasn't a big part of growing up - although I have good memories of my grandparents projecting photographic slides of holiday and family photos to us in their living room. My grandfather was a photographer for a time. I also remember us projecting the 8mm films my dad took while he was in the navy. So photography was definitely around, but it didn't lead directly to me loving photography. Music was always my big love and I found photography through that. In my early twenties, I used to write a music review page for the local newspaper and whenever I reviewed a show they always wanted pictures. So they would arrange photopasses for me at the concerts and very quickly I fell in love with and was addicted to photographing music concerts. I remember the first show I photographed for the paper was Mercury Rev at the Cambridge Junction. They started with the beautiful and dramatic The Dark Is Rising and I spent the next ten minutes or so in an absolute daze getting through five rolls of film. I didn't really know what I was doing - but that's how you start.

You mention another word to describe your style: ‘documentary’. Tell us more about this aspect of your photography. Are you a documentarian in any other field? What did you study at college or university?

I think documentary photography refers to just letting the day and events happen rather than constantly staging scenes for the purpose of photos. I think with wedding photography that’s a good place to start, but it’s not a strict rule. I think I get on better with couples who like the idea of documentary photography -  it’s a more relaxed approach to capturing the day. It also ties in with the idea of seeing romance and beauty in ordinary things. 

Posed ‘perfection’ often lacks something and it’s better to capture a real moment. However, sometimes making photos and posing a little is fun and actually part of the day. So with weddings that line blurs and I'm happy with that.

I guess the little videos I make on YouTube are documentary in their nature too. They are mostly slideshows of my photos with my thoughts narrated over the top. They document visits to different cities and different events. I’m currently writing one about a wedding I photographed in Spain last year.

And to answer your question about what I studied - it was psychology and politics. They are two subjects I chose because I was intrigued by them and I thought I’d enjoy the course. I love the pictures Pete Souza took documenting Barack Obama's time as president - I’d absolutely love to do something like that.

 

I know you say your intention is not to create Hollywood style films, but may I beg to differ? The wedding videos you have posted to your website are absolutely worthy of, if not better than, most Hollywood or British rom-coms - I was completely drawn in and wanted to know more about not only the couples, but various other family members and friends! Had I known you were a videographer too, I would definitely have asked you to film Dad’s 80th birthday rather than simply photograph it. When did you start doing both? 

Firstly, thank you. It has been quite recently that I have become interested in filming. Well, the past couple of years or so and one of those was a very quiet pandemic wedding season!  It’s really interesting that you note the contrast between the way I describe the films and how they actually look. There is a tension there. My instinct at the moment is that they are more slick than I would like. I’m really still trying to find my style, but I would like them to be even more filmic in their look and more intimate. I have an idea of them being the most beautiful home movies possible. Like they were filmed by a close friend of the couple with 16mm film. That’s my idea at least. 

I can only begin to imagine how happy the couples are with your videography - the only home movie we have is a VHS video from when I was ten years old, but it has my grandfather in it, and so he comes alive anytime we watch it. It's so precious. Weddings aside, you are also the man on the scene during Cambridge’s various literary events. You have photographed a host of the artistic and scientific elite. Would you share how this came about? And perhaps some anecdotes of these famous faces being captured by you?

Many years ago a friend put me in touch with the organisers of a local literary festival and I photographed that for many years up until just a couple of years ago. I enjoyed it quite a lot - especially when I got to photograph an author I liked. More recently I have photographed events at the Cambridge Union Society and there have been some fantastic people to photograph there. They’ll sit talking or listening on these big chairs in the union chamber and it’s like an hour-long portrait session for me. I'm not sure I have any great anecdotes unfortunately - I mostly just recall the impression you'd get from spending a short time in the company of different people. Some people are guarded (both literally and metaphorically), but I'm one for appreciating and remembering friendliness and openness. I remember Iain Banks was so warm and Dame Prue Leith queued for ages to get a book signed when I'm sure she could have just met the author in the green room. And the playwright Michael Frayn said I looked like a spy - which was a compliment, obviously.

There is clearly so much love and passion in the work you do, so is this where you feel settled? Or do you have some future plans? Something you would like to expand into or include?

While I enjoy photographing and filming weddings, I would love to do more portrait photography. It would be great to do some work for magazines to go with editorial pieces or interviews.

I have had an idea to do a series of interviews where I take a person's portrait and interview them while I do it. It's just an idea and thinking about it now - I'm not sure if it's an especially good idea. People don't look great while they are talking and actually encouraging that might not make for great photos. It's still an idea in the back of my head though - you never know, it could work.

Pretty sure you could make it work, Chris. I think that a docu-style collaboration between words and images sounds ideal. I would think that, as a writer and daughter of a portrait artist! Speaking of which, thank you again for the photographs you captured of our family at a time when we could all be together. This really is an art, and if not timeless, time-bending. Good luck, my friend, and thank you for the interview!

Chris can be found at his website: www.chrisboland.com

MY MOTHER'S PALETTE

 

It begins with my mother. Food always begins 

with my mother. It tires me when people ask if I can 

cook a curry. As if all we eat is curry. As if 

a country the size of a continent, could ever, only, 

feed itself on curry.

 

I began to chafe at that word, long ago. 

When it boxed my mother in. When there was never 

room to explain she is Parsi. Zoroastrian. 

A portraitist, arranging food on a plate, the way 

she carves paint onto canvas. 

 

Her palette is sometimes pastel, sometimes oil, 

a mix of ochre, mustard, turmeric or rai, 

coriander for greens: peas, lime, okra, French beans; 

purple aubergines. Eggs for any day,

any possible way.

 

Her grandmother, and mine,

both believed in butter. Their girlhoods

were for sali: salty potato matchsticks; 

sev mamra: puffy rice popping; and ice

cream cones, for cool Sunday mornings.

 

Now, on special occasions, or just for love, hours 

of building biryani, sifting, sieving daal, and preparing 

every roti. Pomfret, if she can find it, lightly fried 

with salt and pepper. And on the side, cachumber.

Cachuber? (Here the rare parental disagreement.)

 

Every birthday, garlanded, with a carefully burned 

palace of semolina, milk, sugar, petals, raisins. 

She calls it rava, or ravo, depending.

 

A small tribe, the Parsis, in a vast civilisation; 

in a country swooning in flavour, they make their 

meals as moreish as my father's people did. 

The Bedouin desert tribes still thrum within 

the meat that hangs off girded steel.

 

You have to garment your fingers to really taste 

your food, and share a single thali

without disturbing the portions.

 

When I was a boy, he begins, but the memory 

is too much for a cold November day in England. 

I remember, he tries again, his fingers curling, 

savouring mutton as it melts, paya, haleem,

falooda with chiku, thick buffalo cream.

 

It is May when he speaks, gulmohar season. 

In the heat, scarlet tiger claws watch the drip 

of mango run down his chin – King Alphonso, 

the best – and bursting her stays, sitaphal – 

Custard Apple Queen.

 

Quinoa is recommended to the girl with the wolf 

disease: mashed avocado, maca, kale, apple 

cider vinegar. Cacao helps to sweeten spinach, 

chia, goji, but even as I juice and blend, my heart 

belongs elsewhere, on someone else's palate.

 

In her conservatory, she tends to bougainvillea 

and hibiscus, coaxing Indus valley plants 

to befriend their European compatriots. 

And up from her kitchen, magic weaves 

her spell. Food never tastes so well

as when my mother makes it.

Shaista Tayabali 

food prompt, at dverse poets 

 

Images via Parsi News, The Bedouin Blog, Persian Food Tours

INTERVIEW WITH DR. JANE WILSON-HOWARTH

Jane Wilson-Howarth's first book was published in 1990 - 'Lemurs of the Lost World: exploring the forests and crocodile caves of Madagascar' - and she has published several other books, across genres, since. This quote from her own biography gives you an insight into Jane: while other girls were experimenting with makeup and exploring the impact on the boys of rolling up the waistbands of their skirts to show more leg, I was nerdily nose-down in our garden pond, learning about reproductive behaviour in minuscule cyclops and water-fleas. After graduating with a zoology degree from Plymouth, Jane travelled to Nepal, for the first time. Travel gave me a particular loathing of leeches and parasites, as well as an indignation about inequality of access to health care. Ultimately this pushed me towards becoming medically qualified. I have worked as a GP (family physician) in Cambridgeshire for 15 years and have worked in other medical roles overseas for about 13 years.

I was honoured to be interviewed by my friend and fellow author for her blog. 

Author to Author
 

I first met poet and author Shaista Tayabali when I was invited to speak at a readers group in Cambridgeshire many years ago and we made a connection that has continued. I have been following her inspiring blog since I became aware of it and her patient perspectives have often given me pause for thought in my own medical practise. She has just launched her own memoir and generously agreed to answer some questions about it.

 
Shaista Tayabali, do please tell us a little about your new book and who your target audience is.
 

As with any book, a writer’s first audience is herself. In my case, I had returned home from my diagnosis in 1997, googled ‘writers with lupus’ and ‘books written by famous writers with lupus’, searching for something literary, poetic. Over the years, I would check again and again, and nothing of the sort I yearned for, existed. A Kahlil Gibran-ish translation of my life! It dawned on me that I would need to write the book myself, for myself. As I worked through draft after draft, three audiences became clear: the lupus patient, the non-lupus patient and the medic. If I had to pick one in particular, it would be the medic. I was aiming to be on par with Paul Kalanithi, Atul Gawande, Siddharth Mukherji, Oliver Sacks. In other words, I was tired of being the fodder for best-selling doctor-writers!!

 

You have written, ‘I don't write for catharsis. I write to tell the truth of my life.’ What do you mean by this?
 

Throughout the writing of this book, people always assumed that my book was intended to ‘help’ lupus patients. ‘This book will really help people like you’ – it was an understandable comment but was neither the genesis nor the ongoing pulling force. I write in the vein of so many women before me, and still writing – like Susan Sontag, Alice Walker, Deborah Levy – but also David Sedaris, Marian Keyes, Samantha Irby – memoirists, essayists – writing for the love of language, through trauma, via poetry or humour. Yes, there is something of transformation in using language as a survival mechanism, but catharsis suggests the thing itself is extinguished. It isn’t. The thing I am writing about – my life – goes on. Thankfully!

 

Do you keep a diary, Shaista? Is it important for writers to do so?
 

I don’t keep a diary in the way of David Sedaris, for example – who is religious about it – but I have always kept poetry journals, in which I also periodically record moments in prose. When I started my blog in 2009, that became a diary of sorts. There are gaps in everything – I am not a disciplined, routine based person, but I am always, and always writing – lots of letters, emails. I had the most beloved friend, Mary, who was 60 years older than me. She was a profoundly energetic letter (and later email) writer until the very end – she influenced me endlessly, just by being herself. I think writers find a way to write.

 

How long did it take to complete the book and have it in a form you were willing to share with people beyond your family and friends?
 

Well, I started the first line on January 1st, 2013 and published it on December 3rd, 2021! I began it during my Masters in Creative Writing Fiction. I had a novel nicely begun, which my fellow classmates were enthusiastic about, and I swerved. I decided to focus on memoir instead, for my dissertation. So that meant the first draft of my book was not only read but marked. My younger brother was my first reader/critic – and he advised cutting the first quarter, which focused on our life in India – and my older brother was my last proper reader/critic – and he took a similar axe to the draft he read! Along the way, I’d send the book out, and it kept getting rejected by agents. Which would make me go back to it with more scalpels. Until, finally, at the start of this year, I knew it was as right as I could make it.

 

Reading your work, it feels like becoming a poet / writer is your raison d’être …  Do you think people still make judgements about the quality of your writing according to whether you are ‘properly’ published or not? After all, plenty of rubbish is published by celebrities who can’t write and plenty of excellent work is self-published.
 

‘A hundred percent!’ to quote the young ones… I write it in my early chapter – I was always being asked if I was published, by people who openly said they didn’t even read. Nothing has changed in terms of the legitimacy lent by traditional publishing. The gatekeepers say they aren’t gatekeepers, but they are. And several agents were honest about why they were rejecting me – that it had nothing to do with my writing, and everything to do with the subject matter of my book being unsaleable. My poetry has consistently been rejected too – hence my self-publication via my blog and first collection. It’s tiring to be honest, Jane. Super tiring. Because – and is this arrogant? – I know I can write! (Clive James always thought I was arrogant, but he approved of the arrogance, really – he just wished I’d look up to him more!)

Hear, hear, Shaista! It seems to be that a little arrogance in the correct quarters is what folks need to suceed – in all walks of life. Perhaps calling it self-confidence rather than arrogance would sit easier with you!

 

I am a bit of a stickler for ‘correct’ writing and am always pulled up short when I notice a typo or punctuation error in a book produced by conventional publishers. It is hard to pick up typos yet there was not one in your book! Congratulations. How did you manage that? How many readers helped by checking through it?
 

Ha ha! That’s funny, because my younger brother wrote the same thing to me after he finished reading the book. He said he was thinking this throughout his reading. And he says the same thing with my handwritten poetry in my journals. ‘How do you never make a mistake?!’ I do make mistakes, but to answer your question: no readers helped with checking or proof-reading. Only me, over and over and over and over again!! As you know from our own personal connection, I have been editing things for other people for years – since my university days, and probably even at school and sixth form. My consultant calls me his Korrectorin!

 

I was slightly shocked at your observations about the way people imply that even if you have a life-altering illness, doing nothing is still considered unacceptable verging on the sinful. Do you think having a strong work ethic is a good or a bad thing?
 

I think those are two very different concepts you are holding there – and it has been interesting to watch the world wrestle with both during this pandemic. People expect to get better when they are ill. They are irritated by anything that stops forward movement. Progress, when you have auto-immunity and chronic illness, looks very different. Progress can be a tiny turn in the late evening, after a horribly stuck day. I have never actually ‘done nothing’ on the inside. I am always busy living, inside. It’s just not very interesting on the outside. I don’t think the ill lack a strong work ethic. And I think placing the words ‘strong work ethic’ beside ‘good’ and ‘bad’ already implies a favourable judgment towards ‘good’? I do work very hard, inside.

 

You wrote, Shaista, ‘A friend visited and did not like to see the tears in my eyes, the tiredness. I am a river of sadness,’ I sighed.
‘Well you can’t be,’ he said, sternly. ‘There’s no such thing. Rivers move and change and take things away with them and pick things up, like flowers and happiness. Write me a happy poem!’
How do you manage to marshal positivity when you are facing so many challenges?
 

When I was little, my grandfather told me that my smile made him happy, that me being cheerful made his day better. He was very frail at the time, and I loved him very much. Once feminism really took root alongside serious illness, I took time to examine this business of smiling. Who was I smiling for? Why was I smiling? I stopped for a while. And discovered, slowly, that being cheerful, or perhaps bringing cheer, is an essential part of who I am, regardless of the patriarchy. I don’t think in terms of positive and negative, which, as a former Chemistry student, only remind me of electrons! I know I make a difference with my cheer – it has a visible and palpable effect on the person I am with and on me as well. Living with Dad, who lost his sight almost twenty years ago, also provides a daily exercise in marshalling cheer – cheer is light, translated.

 

I was interested that you feel doctors critically judge what symptoms are physical in origin and which due to psychological effects or diagnoses. Do you consider this classification of disease into either physical or mental important?
 

I was sent to a psychiatrist when I was much younger, and I argued my way out as though I were in court. I had no desire to have anyone decide for me what my mind meant. I may have benefitted from that particular doctor, who turned out to be a lovely man, but I knew I wanted my mind for myself. ‘Women with illness’ is a landscape unto itself – we have huge football fields worth of restoration to be done. I was a teenage girl when I entered the NHS and I was treated with incredibly abrasive language. My resultant tears were constantly perplexing, and frustrating to the doctors. As though being diagnosed with a life-threatening disease ought to have no emotional or psychological impact. Mental impact from physical disease is inevitable, just as mental illness plays havoc on the body, eventually, if not immediately. If the two aren’t woven together, your patient falls apart. But modern medicine’s classifications and separated departments don’t allow for a braiding of mind and body. Individual doctors make or break us, according to their levels of compassionate intelligence.

 

If I mention I had a child who died, many people react as if they need sympathy because of hearing this sad fact. When you mention your father is blind or your life is dominated by illness, people also seem to be in need of comfort. It is so odd, isn't it! Do you have a way of dealing with such responses?
 

Yes, it’s the conundrum we are constantly faced with: ‘what to say, what not to say’, when you haven’t shared the same human experience. After twenty years, I can usually see a response coming, and employ ninja techniques of getting out of or around the other person’s needs and/or awkwardness. I know my father’s pride, for example, so I simply conjure up a humorous anecdote, one that will spin the conversation onto lighter ground. I am very fortunate that I live with two people who don’t expect anything from me. They hope, but don’t expect. And they are always simpatico. So this makes me able to be generous with others! People who have sympathy for me, rather than expecting sympathy from me, are the ones who become true friends.

 

You mentioned that one of your consultants shared an anecdote about another of his patients. Quite rightly he didn’t identify the patient but you felt it wasn’t the consultant’s right to share the story, even if the patient wasn’t identifiable and he intended the tale to help you? When is it acceptable to share others’ stories? What was it that you didn’t like? Was it that you feared he might betray patient confidentiality regarding you?
 

You are referring to a very specific anecdote in the book, during my three-month admission, my most gruelling admission. When the consultant, a man I had only just met during this admission, casually discussed me wearing diapers, because another of his female patients, around my age, had found herself in the unfortunate circumstance of having to resort to them, I found nothing helpful about his offering. It brought me no comfort. As it was, my symptoms cleared up as my inflammatory markers calmed down. His comment was not necessary. I hadn’t asked for practical, sanitary advice. I was just reporting the day’s symptoms during his very brief ward round. His sharing of her circumstance presumed a certain future for me, and that only led to my despair after he left.

You say, ‘Quite rightly he didn’t identify the other patient’ – but here is another situation: as a newly diagnosed teenager, I was desperate for the Rheumatology department to put me in touch with a single other patient. I had never heard of lupus, and I was so lonely, so unhappy. I asked on multiple occasions if my consultant could at least share something concrete about another of his patients, so that I might feel less alone. He never did.

Later, I offered myself to the department, as a point of contact for any newly diagnosed patient – but I was never taken up on it. The confidentiality boundaries that doctors have are not necessarily the ones that we need or appreciate. It’s very complex, isn’t it?   

 

You say, ‘Just as the triggers for depression are correct and present every day, so are triggers for joy.’ Can you share any tips for accessing what is joyous in life?

Well, I can certainly share what is joyous in mine! I am blessed with wonderful friends, who live scattered across the globe. On the occasions when we meet, I draw sustenance from them, but then, in our long absences, I continue to draw on their proffered help, spiritually. On a low, tearful day, I call to mind any one of my family and friends, doctor friends too, and either imagine conversations with them, or sit down to write a letter. In the writing, I am in dialogue, and my friend, far away, busy in their life, is unconsciously bringing me support, energy and ultimately, joy. I say ‘unconsciously’, but when, as a true friend, you offer yourself, ‘I am here for you’, I really take you up on it! Even when you don’t know. I carry the strength and spirit of those who love me, everywhere I go. That’s how I survive hospital and seeming isolation. Bookending my days and nights are my beloved parents. And of course – the children, who are my endless resource of joy – they live in the now, and demand I only be myself, which is easy enough for me, with them. 

I would imagine that your blog helps others. Do you know who reads your blog and do you have any heart-warming stories of those you have connected with through it? Do please share a link to it.

One interesting thing about my blog readership, and this perhaps also applies to my book, is that I don’t have an obvious lupus patient following. My readers tend to be writers, artists, poet-thinkers. I do know many of my readers because they have written personally to me, and I have made some extraordinary friends. Many of them found me first – I still can’t believe that I was found by Sherry, who lives in Tofino, Canada or Jeanne-ming, who lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand, or Maggie May in California, or Ruth in Michigan or Terresa in Utah… Sherry and I nearly met a few years ago, when I was supposed to visit my family in Vancouver but I ended up in hospital with an infection the day before the flight. I have met only Terresa and Jeanne-ming in person – and they were wonderful moments. Terresa and I walked the Cambridge cobblestones – I took her to The Haunted Bookshop, off King’s Parade… Ming is a soulmate for sure. We finally met up in Malaysia, the in between place for us – and it was like a coming home. She is an artist of the most unique sort and sent me a piece of art that I absolutely treasure. I came home from an eight-hour monoclonal antibody therapy infusion to find the parcel. I wrote about my soulmate artist friend in my blog, Lupus in Flight: click here to read more radiant joy.

 

What global issues are you most passionate about? Do injustices get to you?
 

The safety of women. The rights of our bodies. Our voices. The protection of children, their rights, their voices. Injustice is a living, breathing force every minute of someone’s life, somewhere. When you are very ill, and especially in physical pain, it is unbearable to think that you are a part of the same species who inflict torture upon a body before them. How? I don’t want to know, really. All I know is that at my darkest point, when my eyes were failing me, operations were frequent, a corneal ulcer grew, and all I could think was I belong in the same world as those who commit genocide – the Holocaust and the Rwandan massacre. How do we move beyond that? We are all made of the same stuff. It’s ghastly to think that. And yet… there is light. A friend rang just at my lowest, darkest. He is a man of faith, so his perspective was Christian – Jesus is an embodiment of who we also can be… the news doesn’t allow us to hold on to the necessary threads of light for very long, but we had Desmond Tutu, we have Malala.

 

Do you have another work in progress?
 

I have so many books cooking in my head – but specifically my next poetry collection is almost ready, and the novel I began has waited patiently for eight years…

 

Thanks so much for sharing so much, so succinctly, Shaista Tayabali. Would you also let us have any social media links please?

 

I think my blog is really my best social media link: Lupus in Flight but I am also on Instagram @shaistatayabali. The memoir is out in paperback and for kindle; here's the link on the UK amazon site: lupus on amazon

THE TIME MACHINE

 

I wish I could go back,

into the future,

and meet my Dad

when he was little, says Raf.

 

You can, I say, when you’re older.

Meaning transcendental meditation.

 

Oh, somebody made a time machine?

Excited now. Hopeful.

No, but you can do it

with your mind. You can do

 

anything with your mind, I say, 

having learned this the slow way.

 

Not like Raf, who is learning

gifts with speed – 

his seven-year-old self

unrecognizable from mine.

 

And my brother, meeting him –

a father, in a different time. 

Shaista Tayabali, 2018

I wrote this poem when Raf was seven, and we were milling about the tiny Indonesian eco island of Nikoi, thinking about big things like time travel. I haven't travelled since that summer, and most of us haven't travelled for two years now... so as we embark upon Year Three of The Pandemic, I thought this would be a hopeful poem to share. The photograph below is in 'Lupus, You Odd Unnatural Thing', in black and white. I asked Raf's permission to use it in my book. 'Of course,' he said. 'Why are you even asking me?' But I was trying to be respectful - after all, a baby then, a ten year old now, will one day be a grown man... maybe even 'a father, in a different time.'

photographs taken by I. Tayabali

poem participating in DVerse Poets community Open Link Night...

HAPPY NEW YEAR, IN HOPEFULNESS

The last day of the year falling on a Friday means that the church bells are in full song this evening. The fireworks have yet to descend (ascend?) and the dogs of the world have yet to howl piteously at the seemingly endless wide awake activities of their families. Milo, the cockapoo pup, who belongs to my younger brother, a perfect sorrowful example - my niece rang half an hour before the new year, Singapore time, to inform me of this. ‘I’m trying to stay awake!’ she said, sounding almost as piteous as Milo. Staying awake till midnight is a tough gig when you’re eight years old, however easy your ten year old brother makes it look.

I miss my four little mice, but somehow we have all created such meaningful and layered memories over time that I don’t feel the loss. Despite being in and out of hospital, and my veins getting a bit grumbly, gratitude has so far been the calling card for me. I suspect WhatsApp has much to do with that!

Being the English teacher of two Vietnamese nuns across the sea, has also enabled me to stay connected to the deeper practice of Buddhist mindfulness and the more ascetic aspect of our human selves. Joyful, nonetheless, but more careful of what and how we consume. How much we consume. And yet the nuns are also grateful for us, laypeople, who make their lives possible by offering support of that very material kind - so electricity, plumbing, food and medicine are paid for. It’s all a balance, in the end. And so long as we are able to balance each other, we will continue. It’s the only way we can nourish each other. 

Speaking of balance and nourishment, thank you for buying my book, for writing reviews, for writing to me… as the year ends, I sit by a lit candle and pray that I have energy enough for more books, for more travel (again someday) and more love. Happy New Year to us all, everywhere!

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... 

HOW TO RECONCILE

I write my experience in sand this time,
wanting it forgotten - not like last time,
every day recorded in verse and flower, 
a memory scripture to treasure.

Older now, none the wiser now,

just swimming in the current of me,

a current of one, in the ocean of all - 

more scared now, knowing how far the fall.

In some ways, it is all the same.

Gold dust on white blossom, still plump,

and yet, already, the slow drift

to green grass, to soft earth, to winter down.

The nuns have so much to remember,

like nurses, saving lives. They need the bell

even more than we do, us, temporary retreatants,

fleeing our worlds, escaping to theirs.

Breathing in, I am breathing with my father's back.

Breathing out, I breathe with my father's lungs.

I invited my father to join, but he declined,

knowing I would bring him in, anyway.

It's harder for some. No light or ease,

but the bells toll on, anyway. 

The birds are here, the birds are there -

my cup of tea grows cold, again.

Mother breathing in with me,

mother breathing out with me.

I want both things at once.

To choose is to lose. Something. Sometimes.

Can anything stay a secret?

And still we try so hard to hide.

Suddenly, the flood gates open. 

Everyone cries. 

The gold is gone now. Soon,

Sister Tea Cake will sound the bell

for final goodbyes. Everyone cries.

Sometimes.

Present moment, wonderful moment.

Thây is still alive. Smile.

Be still and heal.

Reconcile.

@Shaista Tayabali, 2021

shared with Dverse Poets Pub
Written during Reconciliation Retreat,
Lower Hamlet, Plum Village

Here is a wonderful and very recent TED talk by Sister True Dedication, which you might enjoy...

LUPUS, YOU ODD UNNATURAL THING

Twelve years after starting this blog, I have a book to offer you. The title is a line from one of the poems I wrote during that interminable hospital stay in 2009, those extraordinary three months in which I found my voice. It plays on a central theme of my life, not just the book, which is this: is it normal and natural to be ill, or is it unnatural, abnormal? How can one love one's given life for all that it is, if we are trying desperately to divest ourselves of a thing that arrived, with shadowy wings and teeth, but then settled over long years into some sort of companionable foe?  

Here is my cover, companionable foe et al! I do hope you will buy the book and let me know what you think after or while you read it. You can purchase it from any country on Amazon by searching for my name or the book’s name or, if you’re in the UK, click this link.

Over the past seven years, from its nascent beginnings as a dissertation for my Masters, I used another, sweeter image to inspire me - a children's illustration by the artist Maia Chavez Larkin - one which I have often used as a header for this blog. And then suddenly, it didn't seem right. Perhaps I was hoping that a taming would become possible. That I would develop a sort of commanding presence over the growling, snarling beast - but after several bouts of sepsis, including a birthday episode only a few months ago, I knew I had almost fallen into the old trap of underestimating auto-immunity. 

My book covers thirty years worth of navigating this odd, unnatural thing in the midst of a lucky, beautiful life, so when I happened upon the bold red and black, teeth and tail, hood and vulnerable back, I knew instantly that I had found my book's cover. The artist is Silja Goëtz, a German illustrator based in Madrid. You can find more of her work at her website here. But, in gratitude to Maia, I also incorporated the original sad but hopeful stomp through the snow…