...
Digging
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.
Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbed
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaftAgainst the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rotted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.
My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened upTo drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy neat the curt cuts of an edgeThrough living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.I'll dig with it.
Seamus Heaney
... could also have been the title of the previous post.
Means, there was no need of mocking about poor Mr. Phelps. On the other hand I thought, his joyless face in the perhaps greatest moments in his swimming career would give a nice contrast to my (our) joyful faces about such jerkwater muscular efforts like weeding between the cracks of a courtyard and planting a row of strawberries.
Anyway, utterly determined to not throw the title above into the vortex of oblivion, I take it for this post, and I am quite optimistic finally you will agree that it makes some sense.
Alright then.
At about seven we went upstairs, took a shower, prepared a lasagne and a little salad, enjoyed both together with a glass of red, talked about this and that, and around midnight, when Mrs. J. had gone to make herself bed-fine - 'sich bettfein machen' is an uncommon German idiom :) - I went on balcony to feed my lungs-worm.
What a sky. I could not remember to ever have seen so many stars with naked ... alright, spectacled eyes. Amazing. Beautiful. Really a bit excited I felt.
And so, when, after she had shared my delight for two or three minutes, Mrs. J. felt drawn to the warmth of the feathers, I switched off all lights, even the candles - yes, yes, the candles I 'switched off' by using a match to dip the wicks into the wax - and sat down on balcony staring into the past, which is our planet's future.
Ah, yes! It must be fascinating to live such a night inmidst a desert.
Ha ha, even in such wonderful seconds human beings tend to think of that it could be better - somehow, somewhere. :)
Well, at 1 a.m. the street-lights went off, I put my Aran on, tiptoed downstairs through the cellar into the garden, took a chair, carried it to the middle of the lawn (which is in fact a meadow) sat down, and watched what I got offered in my open-air planetarium. Ahh ...
... and ... I started to think of what - in a way - has already been subject of the previous post: those little 'things' around us that we'd often take for granted without appreciating them.
Why? Why would I? Due to education? Experience? Teaching myself? Or is it just a gift? Perhaps. Perhaps a 'mixture' of all.
All these stars up there. And down here, this tiny cosmos existing of apple-, plum-, hazelnut- and cherry-trees, red-currant, black-currant, Josta - a cross-breeding (Jo for Johannisbeere = currant, sta for Stachelbeere = gooseberry), ... ah ha ha - would take too long to list all. Did I write tiny cosmos? :)
All these stars up there. Chaos?
All the chaos-corners in this cosmos down here.
And still - it's (also) this chaos that I love. A contradiction that I'd call myself an aesthete? What is beauty? What's perfect?
The imperfectness ... sometimes ... let me feel: This is a perfect place.
A place that is mirroring the chaos in my head ... my heart? :)
Only those having chaos in their heart will be able to give birth to ... Oh dear, Nietzsche, is this true? Am I pregnant with a dancing star?
:) Has to be. All my faults, all my mistakes. Do I regret? Yes. And no, as without all my strange 'decisions' I had (very probably) not made all those experiences which - looking back - let me become what now I am.
Time to deliver the 'baby'. Otherwise I might not have enough time to enjoy watching it dancing.
What will my star look like? This "something" that I do love without having seen it, yet, of which I do not even know that it exists / will exist; that does exist / will exist, though, because I feel it.
Don't know why, suddendly I remembered this photo of Asteroid Eros.
courtesy NASA/Reuters
The potatoes! According to the forecast this Sunday would be the last of a two days lasting rainless summer-period.
Thus, time to put my head on the pillow.
Mind you, I had better 'little things' to dream of than ... (digging) potatoes. :)
