North by North-East

Over the Hills

Bolton Castle 
where Mary, Queen of Scots, was held prisoner in 1568

Ambrose Bierce, in his Devil's Dictionary, defines Belladonna (n) thus: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English, a deadly poison.  A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.....

Which has nowt to do with owt, for the moment, but I may return to this later.....

Let me track back a bit.  We were recently having a good time in Swaledale:

A goat - [No idea why, Ed.]

And in Swaledale I wondered lovely as a clown [Stoppit, Ed.], quoting Robert Frost to no-one:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

Mending Wall

(I'll come back to this) and I passed by the hamlet (I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw. Hamlet, II.ii.312–13)  [Get on with it!  Ed.] of Muker.....  

'Nuff said.

So I retraced some steps and revisited Wensleydale.....Gromit, that's it! Cheese! We'll go somewhere where there's cheese! [Gromit is confused; looks at "Cheese Holidays" magazine] Now, where were we? Places you find cheese. Lancashire, Cheddar, Wensleydale, Philadelphia, Tesco's...

Yes, but it isn't only cheese!

Wood anemones and Common Dog Violets

I pause at Aysgarth.  Another time I was here in the rain, and, apart from my (late) friend Lindsay, there was no one else, just rushing brown waters.  Today the sun shines, there is less water, but there is space.  I relish the sound of water falling, the Ure driving down 30 metres in a kilometre, step by step, upper, middle and lower falls giving easy pleasure to visitors who, like me, have a little time and no reason to be elsewhere.....

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

Leisure

William Henry Davies

Now you may find this a leap too far, but Jimi Hendrix comes to my mind.  

Waterfall

Nothing can harm me at all

My worries seem so very small

With my waterfall

I can see

My rainbow calling me

Through the misty breeze

Of my waterfall

Some people say

Daydreaming's for all the

Lazy minded fools

With nothin' else to do

So let them laugh, laugh at me

So just as long as I have you

To see me through

I've got nothing to lose

Long as I have you

Waterfall

Don't ever change your ways

Fall with me for a million days

Oh, my waterfall

May This Be Love

Jimi Hendrix

1967

[Not necessarily Nobel winning poetry but when coloured by the Experience it becomes beautifully fluid:  https://youtu.be/T4MBwvZWOQE]

Onward.....

Whoops!  

Anyway.  One has to keep on keeping on....  So I walk amongst the fields and barns of upper Wensleydale from Askrigg (whose white towered church, dedicated to St Oswald, has stood there since 1180), and my thoughts are transfigured by the upland air, the folding shoulders of the hills and the confused pleasure of being alone in the world.

Then to Hardraw, to check in again with JMW Turner and review the highest single drop waterfall in England, though a little rain would add some force.... 

Then, heading north, but barely a crow's tone from where Amanda and I lived under Ingleborough way back when, up the Mallerstang Valley (England's last wilderness - David Bellamy) following the River Eden, where freight trains hark back to times of industrial power:

And Red Scar and Mallerstang Edge rise to the East, bare and craggy, like the lives of farmers (and their sheep) hereabouts:

Then, it's over the hills again. Through Teesdale, then up, skirting Warcop Fell training ground, where I am reminded, by the red flag, of the 1966 World Cup and the excitement of Geoff Hurst and extra time (watched by 32.3 million people) in the Warcop Camp NAAFI (not all in the NAAFI) before we were driven in a three-tonner (rehearsing Hymns Ancient and Modern - amongst other songs) up onto the high moors to bivvy amongst the coughing cattle.  

Like Roman soldiers....

But I find comfort in Stanhope, with kind friends David and Sarah, whose hospitality smoothes away the emptiness of the stony hills.  We walk by the Wear and watch a pair of Dippers bobbing and splashing and frolicking in mutual affection:

And then, high across the Derwent, low across the Tyne and here is Chesters, a cavalry fort known then as Cilurnum, dating from around 124 AD, home, at that time, to around 500 men and horses.  Details from then on are unclear, though we know that the 2nd Asturians occupied (and rebuilt) the barracks around 180 AD.

{It may be of interest at this point that Ambrose Bierce defined a Barrack (n) as: A house in which soldiers enjoy a portion of that of which it is their business to deprive others.}

Anyway, onwards and upwards, over another hill, and here we are above Housesteads Roman Fort, walking the wall that Emperor Hadrian designed (AD 122: 60 miles long, four metres high, garrisoned by some 10,000 soldiers) to stop Mexicans [Some mistake? Ed.] and fentanyl [Surely you mean Woad? Ed.] from being drug into the Empire by wayward Scots and others......

It is impressive. It is imperial.  It is imperative. It is rough. [It is ruined, Ed.]  It is long and cold and windy and very up and down along the Whin Sill (I know: I have walked at least half of it).....

And it is a wonder not only that it exists, but that, in a world without mobile phones, TV, laptops, air fryers and takeaway pizzas anyone survived in these draughty roofless, unplumbed hovels.....

Over the heather the wet wind blows,

I've lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.

The rain comes pattering out of the sky,

I'm a Wall soldier, I don't know why.

Roman Wall Blues

W H Auden

And so, to flip back to my opening quotation, just think that at least some of these guys would have been wondering why the only Belladonna they could avail themselves of was bitterly poisonous.  They were a very long way from home.....

Still, it does give teachers the excuse to get out of the classroom......

{I know:  I've been there....}

I look up Wall in Bierce's Devil's Dictionary, but the only reference is to Wall Street, n: A symbol of sin for every devil to rebuke.  That Wall Street is a den of thieves is a belief that serves every unsuccessful thief in place of a hope in heaven.....

Well, it's apt I suppose.....  (I wonder whether the yellow infanta has read any of this?)

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall.....

Robert Frost

Mending Wall

Before I turn south I pass another stone building, seemingly part ancient castle, part pill box.  This is Crindledykes Limekiln, one of three hundred in Northumberland that were active in the nineteenth century.  Another reminder of things that are over the hill.....

It's cold and windy up here, and I begin my return to warmer climes, pausing at Corbridge to view yet more Roman remains, then through Slaley Forest, onto Blanchland Moor, idly thinking of Hamlet and Hitchcock, as one does, glad that I am not being chased by a crop duster.  I stop the car at the top of a rocky outcrop.... 

....and find myself leaning down through yellowing grass over the waxy orange cliff of President Trump's forehead, sculpted into the mass of Mount Crushmoor, and I grasp the outstretched hand of Eve Marie Saint, and, then I ......

.... find myself staying  with more old friends, the superb wildlife sculptor Simon Griffiths and Heather and family, in Castleside, County Durham.  How I got there I haven't a clue, nor can I say where Eve went, but that's partly the point of North by Northwest, (Cary Grant didn't know what was going on either, and Hitchcock liked that - and anyway it's my prerogative to make some things up.....)

I am but mad north-north-east....

But the truth is it was great to catch up with friends who put up with me, and to roam over the hills and far away in the north of this land.  

Thank you all.... Keep looking up.....

Simon Griffiths, Wildlife Sculptor

https://www.simongriffithssculpture.co.uk/

And thus, after another convivial overnight, I drive the long way back down into the Mezzogiorno, returning, like a faithful puffin to its burrow, like an Easter bunny scampering to its warren.....

[Just sign off, Ed.]

That high sound in the air

Is nothing but the draught in cold chimneys

Drawing taut the note of longing

As I listen northwards.

Lament

David Craig

 

North

Under the Bridge

                                       The stream

Runs softly yet drowns the Past,

The dark-lit stream has drowned the Future and the Past.

Edward Thomas

The Bridge 

I am in 'The North,' which means a handful of things...... Geographically it's up the hill, leaning toward where the lines of longitude converge.  Psychologically it's where the crowds in your head thin out and you begin to hear your own thoughts.  Historically it is where I was at home some time ago.  

But the waters have flooded under the bridge and washed most of that away.

And so, with my bro, we spend a sunny morning near Wakefield in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park [founded in 1977 by Sir Peter Murray CBE and since 2022 led by Clare Lilley, YSP is the largest sculpture park of its kind in Europe. It is the only place in Europe to see Barbara Hepworth’s The Family of Man in its entirety, alongside a significant collection of sculpture, including bronzes by Henry Moore, important pieces by Roger Hiorns, Studio Morison and Hemali Bhuta, and site-related works by Katrina Palmer, Andy Goldsworthy, Alfredo Jaar, David Nash, Sean Scully and James Turrell....]

And, by virtue of an overactive emotional imagination, I am back in Hannover, with the Nanas:

Niki de Saint Phalle: Buddha, 2000

And then, on the hill exposed to the wind,  I am back at Ely Cathedral, with my friends Simon and Connie, last summer, when we were all alive.... 

Sean Henry: Seated Figure 2016 

(3m x 1.6m x 1.9m Painted bronze)

And then again I am transported back to Hertfordshire, at Perry Green, Much Hadham, with Amanda, at Henry Moore Studios & Gardens (Seventy acres of Hertfordshire sky above seventy acres of studios, workshops and art at the artist’s former home and sculpture gardens).  Amanda loved to place her hands on those vast, smooth bronze shapes......

Henry Moore, Reclining Figure: Arch Leg (1969 - 70)

Though there is always someone photo-bombing.....

Henry Moore, Large Two Forms (1966 - 69)

And then there is this piece I photographed some time ago in London, at the Tate Modern, I think.  As with most sculptures I am innocent as to their significance.  But I like the colours of this one.  

Then what else?

Apparently, this iconic LOVE image is now recognised as one of the key images of 20th century art.....  The slanted 'O' and the square format was, in Indiana's view, the most dynamic way to use four letters.

{I can think of other dynamic ways to use four letters, but that may not be helpful.}  

Suffice it to say, perhaps, that I have always loved love...... [So what's new?  Ed]

Robert Indiana, Love (Red Blue Green) 1966 - 98

And so, like weasels and rabbits, I move on.  To Reeth, in Swaledale.  To meet up with a friend (by arrangement).  We haven't seen each other for the worst part of a half century, but it is as if time was immaterial, despite a little wear and tear of ageing (on my part at least), perhaps.  

Recognition doesn't enter into it, it is almost as though there was no past, that it has been drowned by the dark-lit stream.  The bridge has shadowed all those waters.

We walk and talk in the sunshine, by the sparkling river.  It is spring - the season of renewal - and for a moment the lambs aren't sure where to look.  

Then they scamper off to their maas while a curlew veers haphazardly over a disused barn, as confused as me:

Daffodils do their brief best to cheer the world, while the trees are just unfurling their sap-fused buds to the sky:

Then the magic fades to shadows on the hill, where the spoil from the old lead mines has become a part of the landscape:

The writing is on the road.  Don't rush.  Take the corner carefully.  Easy now:

And then my friend disappears again.  Another half century until the next time.  But I know nothing is forever, though memories may brim over and flood across the stones, in and out of the streams under the bridge.

Darkness falls on Reeth, and local lads enjoy their own company outside The Buck:

I drink the soft night air, the stars sprinkling my glass with light years of shattered diamonds. But the world seems inside out, or upside down:

And all that is left, for now, are the embers of a dying fire, the ashes of the past piling on the heartstones (sic):

But, I protest, it's all grate!

Single File Please!

And I wander back to my room, singing my favourite song to myself:

I've been down this road before

I remember every tree

Every single blade of grass

Holds a special place for me

And I remember every town

And every hotel room

And every song I ever sang

On a guitar out of tune

I remember everything

Things I can't forget

The way you turned and smiled on me

On the night that we first met

And I remember every night

Your ocean eyes of blue

How I miss you in the morning light

Like roses miss the dew

I've been down this road before

Alone as I can be

Careful not to let my past

Go sneaking up on me

Got no future in my happiness

Though, regrets are very few

Sometimes a little tenderness

Was the best that I could do

I remember everything

Things I can't forget

Swimming pools of butterflies

That slipped right through the net

And I remember every night

Your ocean eyes of blue

How I miss you in the morning light

Like roses miss the dew

How I miss you in the morning light

Like roses miss the dew

I Remember Everything

John Prine and Pat McLaughlin

Paris encore

 The Writing's on the Wall

I was 22 when I took this picture in a poky little zinc, just by the Bouquinistes on the Rive Gauche of the Seine. I had a Zenith 35mm camera and I perched it on the bar and shot the unsuspecting woman as she chatted with another.

Just the other day, only 52 years later, I had a small glass of white wine in the same bar  with the same tables and mirrors.....  However, sadly, it was a different woman, which blurred my vision.....

Funny how time confuses us. As Paul Verlaine wrote:

Je fais souvent ce rêve étrange et pénétrant

D'une femme inconnue, et que j'aime, et qui m'aime

Et qui n'est, chaque fois, ni tout à fait la même

Ni tout à fait une autre, et m'aime et me comprend.

Mon rêve familier

Verlaine died in this building in 1896.  25 years later Ernest Hemingway came here.

39, rue Descartes

Although Papa H only worked here, he lived with Hadley just nearby:

74, rue du Cardinal Lemoine

While, just round the corner, was James Joyce:

71, rue du Cardinal Lemoine

Valery Larbaud supervised the translation of Ulysses into French.

Prenez donc tout de moi : le sens de ces poèmes,

Non ce qu'on lit, mais ce qui paraît au travers malgré moi:

Le Don de Soi-Même

I can see these guys, now, sipping vin blanc (electricity - JJ) in a bar like this:

Although legend has it that Joyce (not to mention Hemingway) enjoyed more than a glass or two in various bars:

While a few blocks away Sylvia Beach had started a bookshop, Shakespeare & Co, and published Joyce's masterwork.

12, rue de l'Odeon

While a little further off, near the Jardins du Luxembourg, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas were the talk of the town, with their literary and artistic parties:

27, rue de Fleurus

Which a little later on would have included Pablo Picasso who wasn't to be left out (and nor were Matisse, Gauguin or Ezra Pound):

7, rue des Grands Augustins

Yes, the writing is on the wall, all over the Left Blank (sic), and the bodies are piled high.  Balzac (Who he?  Ed.) died in 1850.  More recently, Oscar Wilde lost his duel with his wallpaper (One of us has got to go):

13, rue des Beaux Arts

Those inter-war years must have been something?  William Faulkner was at 42 rue de Vaugirard in 1925; George Orwell stayed at 6 rue Pot de Fer in 1928;  Henry Miller was on the fifth floor of 36 rue Bonaparte in 1930.  Joyce lived at 19 different addresses between 1920 and 1939, and Hemingway certainly lived in a number of apartments, and drank nearly everywhere, causing mayhem and getting F Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda very drunk at times, and all the while Josephine Baker was performing in Paris (and drinking at La Coupole in Montparnasse - possibly with my Great Grandmother and Anna Pavlova).  Samuel Beckett lived much of his life in Paris from 1928 until his death in 1989, and worked closely with Joyce on Finnegan's Wake.

Then, after the Second World War, it was the turn of the Beat Generation, some of whom (though not Jack Kerouac) stayed here:

There are plaques all over the city, and streets and squares named after some of these writers and artists.  They all tell stories, and, for me, the  interest is in being where these people were, seeing some of the buildings they would have known.

Place du Panthéon, 75005 Paris France

It's an emotional thing, I guess, not historical, nor in any way exact (there wouldn't have been so many cars in the 1920s, nor would there have been so many tourists, like me, wandering about.)

I have written about Paris before and, should you be interested, you can see my earlier piece, Paris: City of Light, at https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2014/07/paris-city-of-light.html

and in that piece I had pictures from some of the high spots, including the towers of Notre Dame.  I had actually come to the city on this occasion with the express intention of seeing the 'new' Notre Dame, but found it impossible to get tickets.  According to the official website between 10 and 15 thousand tickets are issued two days in advance of admission, but, try as I might, not one came my way.  So I went down there to see if there was any chance of getting in, but the queues were so enormous I gave up - it would have been more like Paris Gard du Nord (or Euston) station at rush hour than a cathedral (and it is still a building site).....

And so I meander about the city streets.  The fashionable cafes and restaurants are full, and, as a solo traveller, there is no joy in even asking for a table.....

I am not the only one, of course.  Others manage on their own:

Though how exactly on your own you are depends on your speed dial, I suppose:

One tablet, however, hits me hard.  Not something from La Belle Epoque, but a reminder of how things have changed:

Georges Wolinski was an 80 year old cartoonist and comics writer, who was killed in cold blood, with eleven others, at about 11.30 am on January 7th 2015 in the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo by two men claiming membership of Al Qaeda.  

It is hard to try and connect the mass of humanity, from all sorts of cultures and nationalities, who squeeze into Notre Dame de Paris, with those who use religion as a basis for brutal assassinations.  It is hard to square the hordes of tourists with the inequalities of the world - though where I fit into that paradox is also hard to explain. 

La belle époque appartient maintenant au passé.  

It is evening.  I stroll up to Montmartre, where the crowds are happy.  Windmills still exist, though not as Van Gogh would have seen them.

The old places are still old, but somehow they seem like stage sets:

I have un Ricard in a bar, and write in my diary.  The waiter asks if I am writing my memoir.  I reply that I am writing his.....  Neither of us knows the whole story.

Out in the street, I reach out to touch a cat's nose.  Memories of Meadow.  But l'accordioniste slaps me away.  He is right, of course, but neither of us knows the full story.....

It is busy on the steps of the Basilica of Sacré Cœur de Montmartre.  Youthful spirits curl in the wreathing air, the city a mosaic carpet stretching away below:

And when I turn to look back, the basilica seems to crown the  crowd:

But back in my room the view is somehow more complex.  I have to travel away, and I think of my home.  Greatness is not everything.  I am conflicted, always wanting something else. 

 

I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young man

James Joyce

So take everything from me: the meaning of these poems,

Not what one reads, but what appears through them despite myself:

The Gift of Oneself

Valery Larbaud

*****

[Dedicated to the memory of Lindsay Webster, À la recherche du temps perdu]

*****