Hope gives you wings

 

 

"They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for."
(Tom Bodett)

 

 

What is Hope?

As a word, we scatter it like seed throughout our everyday conversations; we hope it won't rain, we hope to get there by two, we hope England will beat Slovenia, we hope you feel better, hope to hear from you soon. Yet this benign four letter word, so handy and familiar, has such huge connotations.

Hope is a word of wonderment, desire and longing, chance and miracles. A little word of really epic, Biblical proportions. It fuels our dreams, it holds Love's hand; life partners with Trust, they sit like a gentle mantle around the broad shoulders of Faith itself.

Heady stuff, this Hope. I've always loved Emily Dickinson's poem " Hope Is The Thing With Feathers": my association of Hope with angels, flight and rescue I suppose. Like many, I feel comforted when a white feather flutters towards me; a message of goodwill and encouragement from the heavens. Although in this part of Brighton, perhaps I should be more wary of flying feathers and the well-being of my feathered friends, Jonathan Seagull and his somewhat hooligan companions.

In a week when one of my neighbours has tried to do something unspeakable to Jonathan, the bird's hope and faith in general and in me in particular feels humbling. He was back in the comparative safety of my garden within an hour of the shameful incident,  around my feet and within spitting distance of the cat. I hope my neighbour realises that Jonathan is indeed a fine specimen of a species protected by the law; I hope Jonathan doesn't rely on that intelligence.

Hope is indeed the birds chirping in my garden each dawn and dusk, possibly recognising that the strange dweller of a place bedecked with lanterns, chimes and Buddhas is probably good for a digestive biscuit or two. Hope is my own persistent watering of what a friend described as a marooned twiglet until it became a fuchsia once more. Most essentially, Hope is that fuchsia.

Mankind is all hopefulness. We have built our society on Hope. Victor Hugo noted that our future is made up of today's hopes. And indeed we live our lives in the hope of becoming someone's memory.

Hope really does "spring eternal". Like Faith, it is naturally occurring; as essential to the spirit as nourishment is to the human body. Yet it's evolution can't be tamed or mapped by our sciences; we cant reproduce it in a test-tube. The unsung, extra-sensory gift; it's the Desert Island Discs luxury that we all have as standard/

A few years ago, I toyed with the idea of a bright tattoo. I wondered about a Celtic cross on my upper arm, but my sister's reminder that I've inherited sturdy Celtic limbs chastened me that I might resemble a merchant seaman. The only other design I was taken by was a pair of angel-wings between my shoulder blades. To me, they signified optimism and nurturing, being both protected and protective. Finally, friends convinced me I could hold on to my dreams without looking like a reject from The Only Way Is The A27.

Far away from the angels, I often hear folk hoping for darker things than a football score or a lottery win. They "hope" that others will get what they deserve, or come undone; terminal illness is often a preferred option. Can something as unsullied and beautiful as Hope really become hitched to a curse?

Hope is universal. Like Freedom, it is not divisible; you cannot have it at someone else's expense. I'm certain that Slovenians were praying just as fervently for an extra goal against England a few days ago; Hope cheers on both sides of what is, truthfully, only ever a Beautiful Game, favouring only skill and recognising fortune.

I'm equally sure that my seagull-hating neighbours hope I will pack up and move and take my feathered friends, chimes and lanterns with me. By return, I hope they'll leave me and Jonathan in peace. Hope is not partisan. And war, where Hope flourishes as battlefield flowers and kindles homefires - how can Hope ever be available to our enemies? The neutrality of Hope should be comforting: Hope didn't want conflict in the first place.

If I can find some inexpensive, vegetarian-friendly angel-wings in Brighton, I hope to wear them to our Pride festival this summer. Meanwhile, the white quill feather I found on my doorstep at the weekend is now propped in one of my garden pots. I've checked that it isn't one of Jonathan's. He's already given it a beady eye. I hope he doesn't mind.

 

 

 

 

"Hope Is The Thing With Feathers"

(Emily Dickinson) 

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

 

 

 

"Faith goes up the stairs that love has built and looks out the windows which hope has opened."
(Charles H. Spurgeon)

 

"The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveller than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination."
(Marion Zimmer Bradley)

 

"Hope is a waking dream."
(Aristotle) 

 

 )

"Not About Angels"  Birdy

Back.

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered."

(Nelson Mandela)

 

(Photos: Gigi, album)

 

"Hi Honey, I'm home!"

 Just when you thought it was safe to meander along Blogger again, something stirs down by the pier at Gigi-on-Sea. I haven't blogged for the longest time: not since late February; more like a writer's barricade than just a block.

I certainly hadn't intended to stop writing on "The Water is Wide". Having been quite ill at the beginning of the year, I was fortunate enough to be able to return to Australia for most of March, my birthday month. I knew I wouldn't be writing while I was away from home, but came back bristling with stories, songs and smiles. Sadly, my telecommunications back in Brighton were not bristling with anything much throughout April and May; a personal supply of BT engineers crawling around your living room looking for your WIFI hotspot really isn't as exciting as it might sound.

By June, I decided that maybe my little blog had retired into a natural decline and should be left to pass gently in it's sleep. While the blog slept deeper, this year has rushed ahead of many of us as we try to keep track of work, bills and other people. My sister has started her Christmas shopping for goodness' sake, although my brother-in-law would probably say that it takes her mind off real estate.

Since February, I've still not learnt to play my ukulele but have also acquired a bodhran. I've been adopted by a second seagull, introduced by Jonathan but clearly not schooled by him. Where Jonathan is large and a bit brash and bombastic, Junior is smaller, louder and possibly psychotic. Jonathan is a Frequent Flyer to Gigi-on-Sea; Junior more of a stalker, hanging on the garden fence from dawn till dusk and knocking on the window of any room he spies me in. Ginger the cat was already stressed by Jonathan but now looks as though he might just call The Cats' Protection League.

Ginger has been very poorly this month after lacerating his tongue probably eating out of a rusty tin-can somewhere. In true Drama Cat style, he reacted badly to being confined to convalesce indoors by jumping out of a first floor window. Having shocked the pair of us, he's made a rapid and even remarkable recovery, largely to stop me pureeing his food and Becoming Emotional with him.

In the past couple of months, I've realised that I've made a few false friends in Brighton and elsewhere. Yet I've also rediscovered friends from old long since, for all the good reasons that originally bound me to them. Since February, friends have married, separated, reproduced, found religion, discovered themselves (although one went to Birmingham to do this which sounds unlikely). One friend has landed a great position without looking or applying for it; a couple have lost steady jobs, their sense of humour or even the plot.
My effervescent friend Leigh sadly lost his long battle with the bottle but inspired half a town to turn out to walk behind his coffin.

In recent weeks, I've known people lose their partners and parents while yet another has given birth ten years after being told she would never conceive; similar to my mother's experience when I cam along. Apart from being a boy, obviously.
Then in March, I met Hollie, much loved baby born to Kelli, my much missed friend who returned to her Australian homeland a few years ago. I immediately felt like Hollie's long-lost Auntie G, and after some whooping and grinning at Brisbane airport it felt like I had just met up with Kel again after work for a jar.

The late poet and mystic John O'Donohue realised that the truest and most natural friendships are always an act of recognition, an ancient knowledge. I believe this most tangible form of deja vu, which soothes the heart and moves the spirit, applies to places and animals as well as people. Sometimes encountering strangers or travelling to new places feels less like a departure or discovery than an almost foetal homing. It's a feeling I experienced when I first set foot in Sydney many years ago, when I first came to view my little house in Brighton with it's dampness and dismal wallpaper; when I first created my template for "The Water is Wide".

There are stories everywhere. There is history and hope in every stone, twig and droplet. I believe that baby Hollie has been born with all the words she will ever need, waiting within. Her stories were already written when her mum met her dad. More than any photo albums, letters and mementos, my sister and I am what endures of my own mother and father; we carry their stories within our own. What is left up to us is the unfolding. It really is the way we tell 'em. I've often wondered if my parents would be reading this blog if they were alive. The truest answer is that they've helped to write it.
For someone seen as "the quiet one" in the family, I've always had much to say for myself, occasionally for others too. When I was about eight, my headmistress Sister Sebastian chastised me for attempting to read a more "adult" book in preference to Enid Blyton. The book was actually Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and I was a tiny convent schoolgirl, so I can fully appreciate her concerns.
"Why are you reading a different book to the one we've given you?"
"I know all the words in that book already Sister."
"Is that so? And why do you feel you need to know so many other words right now?"
"Then I can write my own book Sister."
"Is that so? Do you know the word precocious, Gisele?"
"Pre-what Sister?"
"It means The Little Girl Who Wants All The Words."
"Yes, that's me Sister!"
I soon realised this was the wrong answer.
My convent schooldays seem to play an increasing part in my stories, all these years later. I know my sister worries that my blog is a bit too Catholic, too wordy and quite eccentric. My brother-in-law worries that the blog is too personal and that identity fraud is rife. Would anyone want to steal a Catholic, socialist, vegetarian, sentimental, quizzical persona with a penchant for bright colours and dangly earrings? Good luck with that....
My friend Leigh was hugely supportive of me writing although he found my posts too long for his butterfly attention span; this from the man who's funeral cortege in May stretched the length of a high street.
Every story is a journey, no matter how short or long. A couple of weeks ago, I received an anonymous message on Blogger: "I came to look for Gigi-on-Sea and there was nobody home. Where did you go?" The wonders of Down Under aside, I never went away from my own story. I will probably never write that book and I may never feel I have all the words. But the little convent schoolgirl in me is delighted that if you Google "Gigi-on-Sea", this humble blog is currently the first hit that pops up. You probably weren't expecting that, Sister Sebastian...
It's good to be back x

 

"Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when I first considered going."

(Amelia Earhart)

"One"  Ed Sheeran

 
"All my friends have gone to find
another place to let their hearts collide;
just promise me you'll always be
a friend;
because you are the only one"