Son of a Book

For those that have been following this blog, I mentioned my son and the fact that I had given the name of my first novel as his second name. Even better, he went on to give that name to his son. So whatever happens to my novel, the name will live on.

That's the good news. The rest is not history because it is not yet finished and thus far it has been turned down by one publisher. Nevertheless the name is great and I live in hope. Meanwhile here's an outline of the novel that I wrote about 40 years ago:


Outline of the novel:

MALEO

This work is concerned with the present state of the individual. Maleo, a young fortunate man, cannot except the future. To him the future is unlikely to exist. His reasons for this belief are simple. Power of his thoughts and actions have outstripped his natural 'religious' being.

In Maleo's room the pattern on the wallpaper assumes another guise, that of Maleo's all-powerful consciousness. Maleo sits and awaits his demise. A death carried out by himself although he is unable to stop it - the power of his consciousness being such that it is able to carry on without him. He tries to avoid his death by continuing the inane practice of the present man. Minute attention to all things in order that they can be explained. Series of objects to be overcome before we have lived. As the momentum gathers strength and he is quite ready to accept death, Maleo collapses. A moth seen so minutely that it becomes a source of terror, causes him to faint.

Whilst in a state of collapse he dreams or senses certain fables, myths and well-known scenes pertaining to Love, Creation, Normality and Death. From this he continues in unconsciousness to dream through stories of simple-life and earthly pleasures. The last part of his collapse deals with the powers of death persuading him to give up hope and find release in death. At this point the main connecting points of normal life have been quasi-experienced. When he regains consciousness all previous happenings are forgotten. He moves with pain, as does a new-born baby beginning to grow. Maleo examines most of the objects in the room, but, unlike the first part, his analysis is fairly normal. Now, in the restrained state, he is just about able to except the prospect of leaving his room.

The final part deals with his first meeting with a shop-keeper, and the anti-climax when he is smartly rebuffed. However, as the dictatorial power of his consciousness is now completely exhausted, he is able to accept this failure without any overt feelings. We assume he can continue existing.


You can see why I didn't read it as a bedtime story. Nevertheless a name worth remembering (it is a megapode bird, inhabiting Sulawesi, that goes around building mounds). And one day, perhaps I'll finish the story and he will come through it victorious as he, they, are doing in real life.

Talking of real, I'll return to what happened next, in my next episode.

Things ain't what they used to be!

Before I reached the stage of marriage and a more settled life I had been through a few years of difficulty. Suffice to say there appeared to be no way out of this abyss, so a solution was suggested that was 'prescribed' in those days. It sort of worked out although it was hell getting through it. Coincidentally, I was working at the time at an ad agency that had, as its client, the pharmaceutical company that brought this about, so I was able to check out the efficacy of the treatment being prescribed.

 

I am being cagey about this, you 'll understand why in a minute. What took place was a one-off, I never had the need again. Naturally I wrote a poem about it, which I share with you:

 

 

God my head collapsed to bones

with LSD

Life was more terrible

with LSD

Mother and Father screamed at me

with LSD

Tears and wet bed

with LSD

Hundreds of dragons devouring each other

with LSD

My mind expanding to the heavens

with LSD

People after me to eat my carcass

with LSD

I wanted to leave humanity and be alone

with LSD

All crushed and powdered me

with LSD

The world seemed more restless

without LSD

My mind more muddled and tortured

without LSD

I could see the world more clearly

and horribly in my perspective when

I asked for more LSD.

 

But now, with that behind me, life was taking a different turn. More prolific in terms of the writing I was producing, but as an outpouring rather than fully crafted work (that came later). Work got more serious too (and more lucrative). I was at a cross roads and everything was coming at me pretty fast. In the next few entries on this blog I will play catch-as-catch-can with a whole host of influences over a 20 year period.

 

 

Paperback writer

 

So, there I am, in the mid sixties, early twenties, married. Are you following this?

 

Perhaps I should explain the circumstances: working in an ad agency, lowly paid, my wife also working (in a bank) but not for long (because our first baby is due, almost immediately after we get married). I still have connections with my bohemian/writer friends, but not quite so often. Conventionality is taking over.

 

We live in a rented flat in Islington in London. The flat is large and on the ground floor, the landlady is old, frightened and living on the top floor - we get on like a house on fire! I try to live a dual existence: normality in the day, writing at night. I say goodnight to my dear wife at a normal goodnight time and then retreat to the lounge where there is an old wooden desk at which I assign my thoughts, my feelings, my poems in the dead of night. Until I stagger to bed in  the middle of the night and then get up in the morning, trying to be ready to do another day's work. Those nights in the oily dark with just a desk light to keep me company were character building. Most new wives would have complained like hell, but not mine.  NO you are talking here about a woman who bought me the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary for my twenty first birthday, who was prepared to indulge my every whim. I have already said that she was my White Goddess and as this story unfolds you will see the majesty of her being in what I was, and still am, able to do.

 

As a further taster, and as progression within my poetic life, here is a poem that was published in The Hillingdon Writer (Hillingdon is a small suburb, just outside London) as the 'poem that leads the way.'

 

 

Of the lame-foot shepherd

he prayed:

across his mountains

through the streams and rocks

where many times he lay and rested

the sheep roamed without master.

 

Through decades

hours, lines, winds, fallen thorns

clear eyes to see the mist;

ability to catch his sheep.

 

He thought of the boy

and how he had lost the sheep

Go, said the shepherd

You cannot know the hills.

 

How am I to judge

whether the rock is mine

or I the rock - lame-foot?

 

 

That was in the Winter of 65. Little did I know that this was the beginning of a nomadic existence, and still Pound was to rear his godly head. There is much to come, but each episode must be a point of the cross, for me and thee.

 

Be patient; I am living out my life and each cupboard is a landing on the spiral of life.

My White Goddess

So let me take you to be a guest at our wedding. The wedding where my poet/friend read the poem that I prepared for the occasion. But, first, let me introduce you to: The White Goddess. That muse that Robert Graves gave us to in his book of the same name. That muse that is the Mother of All Living, the ancient power of fright and lust - the female spider or the queen-bee. Or, in poetry, the reader over your shoulder. In other words an alter ego, another being, a spirit that is above you. And, believing all that, as I do, let me give you our wedding poem, the one that I wrote, but the one I believe she ordained. It is beautiful, it is mysterious, it is the space that occupies the sheet of water that is:

Nyanza:

when the hand of a plant
feeds on water edge,
lifting dark lotus leaves
feeling the weight upon soft
embryon and pitless eyes -
scarred skin breathes.

Each leaf becomes a plant
where it feeds and moves
across the root of being:
from the strength of stem
to the soul of veins.

Waves penetrate the depth
of green flesh and water,
sent on the drift of birth
from stream and fertile life.

II

Down into the hollow angels
the feeling limbs delve
and contain a struggle
from island's fossiled sea:

broken stems no fortitude
but the rising lotus leaves
over eye that forms the surface
its points of shining beauty.

Arc spreads its span
upon root and downward seed
to feed the living denizen
embellish green upon green.

III

Growth the line continued
black marches of singularity
where break of pattern
envisage loss to death.

Erase the weight of water
day rides upon that hand
as light touches movement
within the calyx of man:

open corolla to take sun
upon the pistil and stamen
where feeling is bled free
to sustain the pith within.

IV

How many worn creatures
evaporate the air, unable
to condense platitude and
envisage spanse omnipotence?

Crimson heads now are still
quiet upon the waterless rock
where face they see a shine
and union becomes their shrine;

but NO Nyanza becomes once more
the sheet of waiting water
containing all the virile life
so soon to adopt a golden lake
and all the earth around the sea
a singularity for moments shared.


And so we began a life together that has survived and will survive to, and beyond, this day. Perhaps, because, the invitation to the wedding said:

Join the blood with the seed
mark the skin with new water
enrich two souls as of one;
wherein the truth will lie.