Sermon and hymn a dreary fanfare Sunday’s arrived
SUNDAY dawns and with it the inevitable downbeat mood. Hymns and prayers on Radio 4 only worsen matters. Why do they all sound so dreary? Do other people feel this sense of emptiness on the Sabbath? Is it a consequence of having no fixed faith?
Why do the sermons of most vicars and priests sound strained and artificial? Could it be that the first item I hear on the Radio 4 news is about the inexorable progress of Trump?
Who can stop the calculating chancer, the egotistical charlatan? Do the good people of the USA (or at least a sizeable number of them) seriously believe he is anything more than a bellicose empty vessel?
Why does his small puckered mouth remind me of a monkey’s anus? Do they both perform the same function?
The world is at its worst on a Sunday morning. I butter a slice of toast and the crunch is among the few pleasurable experiences. I think of people who indulge and enjoy a late rising on a Sunday. They snuggle into their duvets and turn over for that extra hour. Why can I not do that?
Why does some malignant force push me out? Is it FOMO, the fear of missing out? Is it a misguided sense of guilt that I am not pulling my weight. (Incidentally I have not weighed myself in 30 years.)
Waking time has no link to the particular day of the week. I am always fully awake and out the bed by 7am. Some desperate instinct pushes me from the pit and will hear no arguments. It’s not as if anyone would miss me if I just stayed curled up in this warm womb a bit longer. (I could probably find a few more ‘bed’ metaphors, but will desist).
Did I read that Marcel Proust wrote most of his 12-part mammoth novel ‘In Search of Lost Times’ while in his bed? Staying long in bed is usually considered fairly indulgent, but in Proust’s case, as he also managed to knock off more than one million words, he’s not really up to the charge of slothful behaviour.
I have read the opening book of Proust, but shamefully have still to tackle the remaining 11. And I know only one person who has.
His name is Philip Bomford. He was the literature officer for the then Northern Arts and spent a whole year commuting daily from Hexham to Newcastle and return by train in the company of Mr Proust (or at least Mr Proust’s writing).
At the other literary extreme, I much delight in the small poetry form of the haiku, with its roots back in ancient Japan. Traditionally, haiku were 17 syllables in three lines of five-seven-five, but nowadays the form is more flexible while still retaining the spirit of lucidity via brevity.
Can I give you examples? Try this brace of haiku from our recent IRON Press book, ‘Two Haiku Poets’.
The first is by Annie Bachini: ‘with each hat coin/the beatboxer/touches his heart’.
The second comes from Helen Buckingham: ‘Earthrise/not ours/to see.’ Like most haiku, these have a strong visual content, and there lingers a distinct image.
Haiku are best read in groups of maybe 12 at a time. Each haiku takes about five seconds. Most haiku books are small – maybe A6 page size or some even down to A7 – and they slip easily into an average-sized pocket, to be removed while waiting at a bus stop or in a queue for an icecream.
Matters in this column seem to have taken a literary turn of late: haiku this week and last week, the poet WH Auden. Auden had a particular love for the North Pennines and held a vivid memory of dropping a stone down an old lead mine shaft in the small village of Rookhope.
The long silence of the stone’s descent followed by a distant splash haunted Auden for the rest of his life and he is said to have had a detailed geological maps of the area pinned up on his study wall.
■ Planet Corona – The First One Hundred Columns, IRON Press, £8.
■ pmortimer@xlnmail.com
Some desperate instinct pushes me from the pit and will hear no arguments