It's Sunday and I am turning to memories and trivia to dispell this disquieting winter's eve. My friend Nathan and I have this endearing little habit--at least we think so--of texting each other Paul Simon's lyrics at odd moments. We were at this seriously old cemetery with the oldest tree in the United Kingdom, a yew tree, which has the disappointing habit of dying back to its roots and growing again, smaller and more spindly as the centuries roll by, so that we got to see a not all that impressive looking gnarly tree with a lovely huge ring of stones showing its ancient girth. Essentially, we had to take the tree's past on faith, and I count on trees being something you can actually put your hands on--I'm like a Tree Thomas.
Anyway, in this very old cemetery were all these old gravestones and there was one that said simply, Asleep in Jesus. This was really and truly puzzling to my friends, who aren't Christian and thus aren't used to our platitudes, and the grammar worried them too--why wasn't in asleep in Jesus' something? Jesus' arms, for example. And Nathan suddenly declared that he wanted his tombstone to say, Asleep in Paul Simon. I am telling this story simply because it makes me laugh. The story goes on and has druidic stones in a field and bulldozers chained to trees in a forest and a terrifying slither down a ravine in an enormous ball of leaves, but I'll stop at Paul Simon. Anyway, this is our favorite stanza at the moment:
A man walks down the street,
It's a street in a strange world--
maybe it's the Third World,
maybe it's his first time around.
He doesn't speak the language,
he holds no currency,
he is a foreign man,
he is surrounded by the sound, the sound
of cattle in the marketplace,
scatterlings and orphanages.
He looks around, around,
he sees angels in the architecture,
Spinning in infinity,
he says, hey, hallelujah...
It's a good thing to be able to say hey, hallelujah on a winter's night. I'm posting some pictures of narrow-boating with my uncle and aunt and cousin and husband and wee Lisa, my namesake, back in sunny July. Narrow-boating is just the most wondrous activity in the history of England--it's an epic adventure for the lazy and slow moving. With physics and navigation and landscape and boats! I was utterly enchanted, except for the frightening bits where my uncle got me to steer and I desperately clung to the tiller trying not to run us all aground. My cousin's husband Matt became the master steersman and we soon were able to whisk ourselves through the tiny narrow arched bridges with nary a screech nor scrape (this was not the case at the beginning of the day, ahem...) and I got obsessed with opening and closing the locks. Like really obsessed. At one point, my uncle pointed out that I didn't have to actually Run to open the locks, but I explained that this was somehow just part of the pleasure of it all, running-and-cranking-and-locking-and-pushing-open these mossy iron doors... I just couldn't believe that I, with a tool and my shoulder and feet braced against the gates, could get our boat to rise or fall 12 feet (while I danced madly about with excitement on the side of the canal) and then open her way to the river above or below... Basically, I Became Ratty, mad about all things with boats and river. It was just the most enchanting Wind in the Willows sort of activity. You could stop anywhere and have coffee on your gas burner or eat sandwiches. You could get out and run along the towpaths while the boat putted along behind you, bonding with the cows and the birds... Clearly, I have a little much energy for the whole slow moving aspect of this holiday, as the family pointed out--a common 'bumper sticker' on the other narrowboats--for we are talking about a world entire on these canals--read 'if you can see your wake, you're going too fast.' Anyway, here are some pictures of this wakeless world and other English holiday shots.
children's expedition by a pool, which reminded me of my own childhood
guy with flask and dog and walking stick, sitting on old Roman market square (this isn't narration so much as description, is it?)
See, I closed them in there and am making all that water pour out the gate below, the boat descends, the river behind is where we came from--I am Lock Master...
And this would be why I refused to steer the boat through most of the bridges.... Wee bit tight, no?
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