Resolution and Remembrance

"Auld Lang Syne". Mairie Campbell (version) 

 

 

"Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves - regret for the past and fear of the future."
(Fulton Outsole)

"I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done."
(Lucille Ball)

"At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent."
(Barbara Bush)

"Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne;
We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
for the sake of auld lang syne."

(Robert Burns - adapted)

 

My mother said that there were always four things you could never get back in life; the harsh word after it was spoken, the stone after it was thrown, the occasion after it was missed, the time after it was lost. We set our lives to the ticking of clocks and the buzzing of alarms, dashing from one scrawled page entry to another. We tie ourselves into appointments and routines to make the most of the time we may have, then mourn the lack of time we've left ourselves simply To Be.

At New Year, we celebrate the opportunity to do all the things we've been meaning to do but  never found the time for. We immediately make lists, physically or mentally, and commit a whole new calendar to appointments and events. Yet we also encourage ourselves to look to times past; to reminisce and mourn. Memories, remembrance; this is how we mortals hold on to people, animals, places and events. It's how we hold on to ourselves in the passage of time.

I wasn't unduly surprised when a friend told me that the blog and I had missed New Year, even before the twelve days of Christmas 2014 were over. We pin our hopes and dreams on the big clock striking midnight; we link arms with inebriated strangers to call to mind sadly missed loved ones and opportunities. Then the first day of January stumbles into the second day, slips into the third and beyond... The truth is that this will be a "new" year until we embark on the next one, God willing. It's a fair assumption, based on personal experience, that the majority of resolutions earnestly embarked on ten days ago will be abandoned within weeks. Is it any less commendable if we restart the diet, finish the painting, join the gym or begin the Mandarin conversation course in May?

Mankind has not equipped itself well so far this new year: the news stories attest to revenge and aggression rather than remembrance and resolution. In the blink of an eye, the squeeze of a trigger, those who were so recently clearing away over-priced wrapping paper and cheap tinsel and vowing to give up smoking after that last packet are gone. Whoever they are, whatever they have done, their names may indeed be brought to mind for those who remain to link arms at midnight at the end of this year. And so it continues; until, one day, it stops.

All our days are numbered; the longest life may still be too short if it's heavy on regrets. I have learned at least one lesson in recent years; that time can scar as well as heal when it's mishandled. This year, I've resisted the urge to comfort myself with a list of resolutions that may become a testament of regrets. Instead, I've decided that, whatever I achieve or fail to do, getting through this year must be sweeter if I try to move forward with Grace, Grit and Gratitude in equal measure.

Instead of New Year's resolutions, I've included here some little guidelines to living well, applicable regardless of how old the year is, or indeed how old we are. I've also included a favourite version of "Auld Lang Syne", even though New Year's Eve really is old-long-since; possibly not that surprising, considering my Robbie Burns crush. Burns didn't intend to restrict his iconic anthem to one day of the year. Across the globe, it's sung on birthdays and anniversaries, at funerals and reunions. I often find myself humming it in my local Poundland (they're used to me). Which is just grand, because resolution and remembrance, like friendship and kindness, are for life, not just New Year x

 

 

;

 

 

 ("One Day Like This"  Elbow, with the BBC Concert Orchestra and choir Chantage)

 

"Drinking in the morning sun,
Blinking in the morning sun;
Shaking off a heavy one,
 Heavy like a loaded gun.
What made me behave that way,
Using words I never say?
I can only think it must be love:
Oh anyway, it's looking like a beautiful day.

 So throw those curtains wide;

One day like this a year will see me right."
(Garvey, Jupp, Potter, Potter and Turner)

 

The dimming of a day

Many thanks to my lovely friend Frances for the modern parable attached here. At the dimming of a day fraught with petty irritations and draining board disasters, this found me a decent reason to cry. 

Our lives are made up of so many little joys and sadnesses; meaningless dots to others who may not take the time to join them up as they chase other invisible patterns. Inevitably, the dots become fewer for us all; one tiny, random act of kindness can give meaning to someone's bigger picture. It may even help get you round your own page.

I've been listening to Mary Black's cover of "The Dimming of the Day" a lot recently as my own old house splutters more leaks, creaks and cracks; it seems to sit very gently here.

The Cab Ride - 

an awesome reminder of why we're here. 

"I arrived at the address and honked the horn. After waiting a few minutes I walked to the door and knocked.
'Just a minute', answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor.
After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her nineties stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it; like somebody out of a 1940's movie. By her side was a small nylon suitcase.
The apartment looked as if no-one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knick-knacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

'Would you please carry my bag out to the car?' she said.
I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the old lady.
She took my arm and we walked out slowly toward the cab. She kept thanking me for my kindness.
'It's nothing,' I told her,
'I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother to be treated'.
'Oh, you're a good boy' she said.
When we got in the cab, she gave me an address and then asked: 'Could you drive through downtown?'
'It's not the shortest way,' I answered quickly.
'Oh, I don't mind,' she said, 'I'm in no hurry. I'm on my way to a hospice.'
I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening.
'I don't have any family left,' she continued softly, 'I know I don't have very long.'
I quietly reached over and switched the meter off.
For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived, when they were newlyweds.
She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she danced when she was a girl. Sometimes, she'd ask me to slow down at a particular building or corner, and then stared into the darkness, saying nothing.
As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said: 'I'm tired. Let's go now.'
We drove in silence to the address she had given me.
It was a low building, a small convalescent home. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They must have been expecting her.
I took the one small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.
'How much do I owe you?' she asked, reaching into her purse.
'Nothing.'
'You have to make a living,' she said.
'There are other passengers,' I responded.
Almost without thinking, I bent to give her a hug. She held onto me tightly.
'You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,' she said, 'Thank you.'
I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dimming light. Behind me, a door shut. 

It was the sound of the closing of a life.
I didn't pick up any more passengers that shift. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk.
What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?
I don't think that I have done anything more important in my life.
We're conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware; beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one. 

People may not remember exactly what it was you did or what you said - but they will always remember how you made them feel." 

"The Dimming of the Day" Mary Black 

"Old long since" - The eve of a new year

"God said: “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky, to separate day from night. Let them mark the fixed times, the days and the years, and serve as luminaries in the dome of the sky, to shed light upon the earth.” And so it happened: God made the two great lights, the greater one to govern the day, and the lesser one to govern the night; and he made the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky, to shed light upon the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. God saw how good it was. Evening came, and morning followed."

(The Book of Genesis 1:14)

I shall be working this New Year's Eve, until around 11pm - I'm grateful for it and would rather be earning than not, whatever the time of day or year! But I'm mindful of the significance of this evening, and tomorrow's dawn. I won't be one of the very hardy Brighton eccentrics who traditionally take to the sea in the January wind and rain on New Year's morning. But I am enough of a Brighton eccentric to want to walk down to the pier and along the pebble beach in wellies by myself tomorrow morning; it's one of the practical pleasures that drew me to this city in the first place.

Beyond that, I've resolved this year not to make New Year resolutions as such: I'd rather concentrate on what I need to do to enable what I want to happen in my life. Oscar Wilde said that resolutions at New Year are: "simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.” I've learnt a lot about myself and the people around me over the past year; some of it, I've even liked. I'm hoping to grow to be more accepting of the things I don't readily like or even acknowledge. At the end of any day, not everyone will or should like me; but then only I have to be comfortable in my skin as I settle down with my cup of Redbush and an unseemly large piece of treacle tart. For someone who's spent most of her adult life dreading criticism about their clothes, this is progress. 
I realise that since starting this blog in February, I've surfaced as a kind of hybrid of Anne of Green Gables and Mrs Doyle found reading The Guardian on a long train journey. Luckily, I'm partial to all of these ingredients. It may not have been quite what I was expecting, or indeed everybody's cup of Redbush, but I believe it could have been a lot worse.

"May the nourishment of the earth be yours,

May the clarity of light be yours,

May the fluency of the ocean be yours, 

May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow wind

 

Work these words of

 love around you,

An invisible cloak 

To mind your life." 

(From "Beannacht - A New Year's Blessing", by the late, wonderful John O'Donohue)

"We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day."

(Edith Lovejoy Pierce)

"The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul."

(G.K. Chesterton)

"Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right."

(Oprah Winfrey)

"New Year’s Day… now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual."

(Mark Twain) 

"For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice."

(T.S. Elliot)

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."

(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"No one ever regarded the first of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam." 

(Charles Lamb)

As a longtime fan of Robbie Burns, I love "Auld Lang Syne". He wrote the poem and set it to a traditional folk tune in 1788, yet it endures today across the English speaking world; at funerals and memorials, graduations and farewells and of course on New Year's Eve. The Scots title translated into English is simply "Old Long Since"; days gone by.
I care not a jot that it's been done to near death by any performer with half a tonsil, nor that Burns probably plagiarised a couple of 16th century folk songs to construct it: it is remembrance and rekindling in all simplicity. Included below is probably my favourite version, sung as Burns would have wanted to hear it.

"And surely you’ll buy your pint cup

and surely I’ll buy mine! 

And we'll take a cup o' kindness yet, 

for auld lang syne. 

And there’s a hand my trusty friend 

and give us a hand o’ thine! 

And we’ll take a cup o' kindness yet, 

for auld lang syne."

"Auld Lang Syne"  Paolo Nutini

                                                                                                                                                                      

Personally, I wish you all everything that you would wish for yourselves, but also every blessing and good thing that you may not know you yet require. May you wake tomorrow knowing your own name and those of your truest friends. If  you cannot give a name to God, may you be at peace with those who do, whatever that name may be. Be as good as you can be on any day, believing that both you and the world can be better still tomorrow. I hope your journey this past year has brought you closer to yourself and shown you that you can allow yourself and others a little more kindness in the next one.                                                                                                     Slainte, Namaste and God Bless X                                

The smile is wide

Yesterday morning, my bouncy and efficient postman asked me why I wasn't smiling "so big" as usual, as he handed me not one but two letters from the bank, as the rain battered my porch. In fact, it probably hurt somewhat to smile due to my suddenly broken molar: not yet registered with a dentist here, the search for someone to sort me an emergency filing on the NHS is not proving fruitful, Later yesterday, my friend Lin told me that the wee blog had reached 12,000 page views and I smiled so wide that it felt like my jaw had dislocated. 12,000 page visits may not seem like much in the scheme of blogs, but I didn't really know that anyone other than a couple of friends might ever read this; some of my friends have found the blog "too Catholic" or even "too personal", which has made me bristle that this is my blog after all.
An anonymous social commentator said blogging is the unedited version of oneself; and I'm frequently told by some who care about me that I'm often too open and too "unedited".  I always counter that it seems important to me that folk are presented with the real deal, warts (and molars) and all, without any pretence: where some might see obligatory boundaries, I see unnecessary barriers. I've always had a big mouth and often feel I have to "say something" in situations where it would be more comfortable for me and everyone else if I kept quiet; my Mum and Dad both suffered from an excess of opinion and a banging sense of injustice. But blogs frequently and naturally become a catalogue of the minutiae of the blogger's life, and I know this has happened with "The Water is Wide".  
I admit that having to re-invent myself professionally and redefine myself personally after the loss of people, places and familiar things inspired me to witter and write this blog; I also found I had an exhausting amount of time on my hands, on my own in a new home. A few months on, I have far less downtime, but I feel I may still carry on with the wee blog. Maybe blogging is yet another form of vanity; and I can't deny that I've found a great deal of support in recapturing lost opportunities to show how much I appreciate my parents and things dear to me. Much as I'm aware that some people may find that mawkish, particularly some who've stumbled here looking for Brighton tea-shops or folk music discographies, I hope that someone somewhere will take a look at this blog and rekindle or re-cherish their own memories and stories. All we can ever truly be are our own stories, continually updated and re-worked. This blog is my story: I would encourage anyone to tell theirs.
There are many lovely versions of the folk song that lends it's name to this blog and I want to share as many as possible of them. Included here is a rousing version by long-standing Celtic folk and rock band Runrig. Also included is one of my favourite poems by W.B. Yeats, "A Crazed Girl", which feels very apt for me and my blog, particularly when accompanied by my poorly molar.

"A Crazed Girl"

"That crazed girl improvising her music.

Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,

Her soul in division from itself, 

Climbing, falling she knew not where, 

Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship, 

Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare 

A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing 

Heroically lost, heroically found.

No matter what disaster occurred 

She stood in desperate music wound, 

Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph 

Where the bales and the baskets lay

No common intelligible sound 

But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea.' "

(W.B. Yeats)

"The Water is Wide"  Runrig

Photo, Gigi album

http://associationofcatholicwomenbloggers.blogspot.com

www.brightonbloggers.com

http://stblogsparish.com/sbpd/