I have no collocation of words to adequately express the sadness felt, the feelings emanating from memories of days decades ago when a fifteen year old boy was so enthused as some new piece of scientific understanding became, for him, uncovered. For his life was only such questions, answered: a boy alone in such a world of dreams and interests as were his existence, then, when there was no horizon beyond the hours, the many longful delight-filled hours, spent in libraries, laboratories, cycling or just walking – head full of dreams – along, beyond, those tree-lined Walks in a town edged on that special level-land where he The Dreamer dwelt, explored, for three whole learning years, and more.
No world, then, beyond, to spoil such self-contained enclosure, such happiness; no people hurt; no stories to weave, deceiving, to keep some rôle alive. Only the toil of sunny days in Summer when fruit picked meant books bought, weekend cycle tours alone, and when the walk in those friendly fenland fields was only a means to imagine world upon world beyond in a star-filled Cosmos more real than any person passed. No world, beyond – as when only the cloud, observed, had meaning and one would with an enthusiasm far beyond words have to, just had to, seek out an understanding of the patterns so formed by clouds in Earthly-sky, satisfied only when one had in one’s hands a book replete with photographs, descriptions, of such formations as had made one to wonder, then in the moment of that awe. No world beyond the lanes cycled where each new watery place found was a cosmos so wonderfully contained within itself, and only the profuse life observed, felt, had meaning while warm daylight, and the flask of Oolong tea, lasted.
Was this, then, innocence? That numinous, gentle, youthful, perfection of life when one’s feelings, desires, dreams, living, combined to form a human being awkward with and among others, day-dreaming and shy yet replete with both imagination and hope, and who possessed no harm within, no thought of such suffering and harm as blighted the world beyond and which world would creepingly come to charm away the decades of his life, those lives waiting, nascent, and still in him unfeelingly unborn; he whose whole life then was only that around him in the immediacy of such moments felt, thought, observed through eyes only his own.
Now, I am become again the tears of such a gentle youthful yearning – as if I am that boy before abstract ideals, causal abstractions, spoiled me, betook me slitheringly as they did to other worlds where lived that life of passion, of that pain, that ecstasy, that sorrow, that joy, that interfering idealism, that love subsuming, that hubris – those lives – now I in these moments of a supine aged remembering sometimes, so often, so wistfully wish had never ever so occurred, existed.
For I was lost, to myself, for so many decades. So many: and yet they, those decades – of so much suffering caused – seem to have somehow drawn forth from within some understanding, some little understanding, some new species of understanding never dreamt of, then, in those gentle years of youth.
But was it worth it? Worth this new understanding, born from such pathei-mathos as has made me, now, who and what I am: old, gray? Born from such suffering I suffered and most certainly inflicted upon so many others? Worth it – but for whom? For me? Perhaps; but for those who suffered because of me – almost certainly not. For some, the few, who might learn something from my own errors and experience recounted in such scribblings as this? Possibly. But to be honest – I do not really know if it was worth it, worth such suffering, caused; perhaps I, sadly, shall never know. And perhaps, rightly, I should never, ever, know.
So, now, all I can do is to so poignantly recall those times – those so few later times – when the boy I was broke forth again within the decades of those adult years; broke forth to be free to bring again the warm Sun of such Summers, such dreams, as made me – bade me – in such adult years give love without words, expectations, limit or hopes, so that I was again, thankfully again, the gentle being of such times past to thus become – if only in moments – he the adult who could bring forth perchance some poem, some letter, to capture, if only a little and so poorly with words, such beauty and numinosity as can dwell, sometimes, within us: within we error-prone, fragile, sad, happy, joyful, grieving, and so often arrogant, suffering-causing, human beings.
So many memories, to bring
The moment of sublime knowing
As clouds part above the Bay
And the heat of Summer dries the spots of rain
Still falling:
I am, here, now, where dark clouds of thunder
Have given way to blue
Such that the tide, turning,
Begins to break my vow of distance
Down.A women, there, whose dog, disobeying,
Splashes sea with sand until new interest
Takes him where
This bearded man of greying hair
No longer reeks
With sadness.
Instead:
The smile of joy when Sun of Summer
Presents again this Paradise of Earth
For I am only tears, falling
David Myatt
2455360.713
