Sunday Morning Coming Down
I spent most of today convinced it was Saturday. I’m not sure now if that’s a good or a bad thing, that the days are free floating, untethered to the usual rythms of life. I’ve sort of lived that way for a while–it’s a long time since I routinely wore a watch, for example, but this is, as they say, the new normal. At its best that engenders a certain zen-like quality, but the back of my mind is always on why this is happening.
A couple of weeks ago I was writing here about an anxiety that doesn’t go away. My sense is that it has dimished somewhat, but not entirely. I’m sleeping better in the sense of longer, but not deeper, and it’s still broken. I’ve found myself napping in the afternoon more. I’m not sure if this is increased tiredness per se or some other, more basic circadian rhythm asserting itself.
Something is changing, that’s for sure. I said yesterday that a 1000 word wee story came right out of my head and onto paper. That was the first for a while. Today, I finally figured out how I might sort out the writing I mentioned previously that is stuck in a corner. Whether it’s how I finally sort it out is unclear yet, but working out a potential resolution is a release of its own.
That seems like a good excuse to post a bit of the work in progress. This section, 50,000 words or so in an alternate 17th century Scotland, is complete as a rough draft pending a general revision in a few months time:
Somewhere in the haar-muffled morning a dog barked. Despite the fur lining of my cloak, despite the woollen clothes beneath, the early-April chill drifting down from the gentle slopes of the Lamyrmoore to the south worked its way to my back and legs. I wished for a better hood to wrap the curls of my hair about my cheeks, and for warmer breeches. I rode home under a bright moon, taking ancient tracks across the marshes and bogs.
I patted the neck of the horse I’d collected by the wharf, steadying its nerves, urging it forward. It was just a red-lyart nag but biddable and sure footed; I’d get the price of it and the tack back in a town with ease, likely with a small profit.
This land never failed to gnaw at me, to leave me unsettled. I’d gained a reputation for assurance in my dealings in Flanders or Spain or Portugal or wherever else business led me; I’d even passed through London relatively unscathed when many hadn’t. But the Lothians air was my air, its chill was my chill; it awoke parts of me I kept hidden in Bruges or Veere or Hamburg. To return was to revert.
A letter instructed me to return to Scotland and attend to unspecified, but pressing, family affairs. It was in plain, with no ciphers or hidden writing or cunning folds, and I had excellent reason to believe it genuine. As usual, my interests in the Low Countries wouldn’t allow my absence at short notice and, given the circumstances of my leaving, returning to my family wasn’t to be embarked upon without reflection and preparation.
The nag whinnied. Corpses of moles and stoats stretched along a dry-stane wall, looking for all the world like sacrifices to the new day, and who can say they weren’t? Ahead, old father Ash stood tall in the mist, his form uncertain. From endless days of boyhood came the triumph of the afternoon I finally climbed into its lower branches, then tumbled down again, scraped and grazed and bruised.
‘Serves you right,’ the Beldame said. ‘Treat the Ash with due respect or he might never let you go.’
I’d laughed, but it was never wise to ignore her and always after I took care to pay my respect to Ash trees whenever I met them. Some mornings, here, now, in the moments between sleep and waking, I wonder if he ever did let me go, if I ever got back to the ground.
A pair of smug, bloated corbies croaked in time with the creaking of the tow beneath the bough on which they perched. The hanging body shifted in the still morning. That smell, the rot, never failed to turn my stomach. My silver pomander was fresh-filled in Bruges and retained some potency, but still the stench insinuated itself through resin and rosewater, ambergris and musk and into my gut.
***
DG autograph.
No cycle today–another precautionary rest for my knee, though I’ve had no reaction from Friday. I did have a decent walk though, along my usual route but this time with the agreeable benefit of staying upright.
Music tonight is an old favourite of mine, Bobby Timmons’ 1958 jazz piano standard shifted to acoustic guitar by Davy Graham for his groundbreaking album Folk, Blues And Beyond, my original 1965 copy of which is scratched and battered but also autographed by Davy.
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