Wolf at the Door

Today found the wolf grinning at strangers.
Probably as unsettling for the 'grinees'* as it was for the grinner. Smiling is something he does a lot, so as not to frighten people; grinning of course can go either way.

Having dropped his son at the rather excellent Exchange gallery in Penzance and while chatting to a couple of the delightful art folk who help run it, the wolf hears that there is a shortage of volunteers due to a sickie being thrown. Presuming it was to aid in the progress of the kinetic workshop his cub is enrolled in, he offers to help. After a few 'are you sure' volleys between the three parties concerned, and for whose benefit the wolf is not entirely sure, he is led to the reception desk, given a dead walkie talkie and told to welcome people to the gallery.

Settling behind the desk and fastening a 'welcoming' grin to the front of his skull, the bemused wolf considers his position. Presumably having walked in through the door, the punters clearly want to come in to the gallery. How exactly would having an unwashed (he had just completed his morning run and now hadn't had a chance to shower) heavily tattooed werewolf grimace at them enhance their experience of the delights on offer?

There is a folder marked FOH on the side of the desk which he picks up. He works out it must mean 'front of house' and is soon deeply immersed in the world of the volunteer grinner. He is fascinated by the utterly useless and pervasive HSE detail and particularly the advice given to dealing with potential trouble makers. This is looking up. There is a panic button. Maybe there will be assaults on the gallery by rabid Stuckists, or murderous and bereted watercolourists, distraught at the lack of hanging space given to sensitive studies of badgers, or pallid seascapes or of orchids captured in charcoal by sandal wearing 'alternatives'. Bring it on. The wolf has worked doors and is no stranger to the powerful metaphysical and philosophical significance of the door (having had a conversation on the way to the gallery with his cub, pointing out the doorway is never merely a gap in a barrier, it is always a transition from one social space to another) and the powerful emotions that they can generate.

Sadly there is none of this. The people who choose to walk through the door for the few hours the wolf has been given responsibility for are exactly the people you would expect to. Several of his friends walk by the gallery, all (one doing a double take and realising it can't possibly be the wolf), continue by. Those that do enter are what it is probably deeply un-PC to call middle class. So be it. They are.

He is cheered later though, by a conversation with one of the art pixies who ignites when she talks about her role in engaging children and (and local people) with the gallery - with Art really, although she doesn't say this. People who love what they do fascinate the wolf, those doing something he enjoys even more so. She is, in the wolf's opinion, luckier than she knows. His son is is arting his socks off in the room next door and here is someone employed specifically to make sure that he does. And that is an excellent use of a civilisation's resources, in the wolf's opinion.

Museums and galleries, commercial or otherwise are to the wolf one of the things that make civilisation worth it's salt, right up there with a professional army, V8s, democracy, free speech and the NHS. The display and exposition of others views and insights, past and contemporary have been a comfort and inspiration for the wolf over the years, and he is always disappointed that more people just don't get it. It doesn't matter whether you like what you see or not; if you don't like what you see then you are immediately challenged by it - which is in the wolf's opinion A Good Thing. An art gallery is not a massage parlour or a spa; it should be a blood soaked arena, or a lover's bed. Fighting or loving, you should respond to what you experience there with passion and with honesty above all else, always.

Later, another of the art folk is very concerned that the wolf may be getting bored with his duty, which is touching but misplaced. He loves the beautiful space he is sitting in, is being supplied with excellent coffee, is drunk on power (he has a badge!) and is watching people. What's to be bored about?
She gives him a cake as she does not realise this, which is a kind thing to do.
The wolf wishes it were a sausage roll, but accepts that Art can be challenging.
And bites it.




*copyright Martin Amis, London Fields. Sort of.

More Than You Think

The wolf was lucky enough to find himself alone on a certain beach early this (Sunday) morning.

Two hours of heaven before the arrival of anyone else, listening to the timeless roar and hiss of the waves; alone, but with a precious memory or two, leavening the solitude with a smile.

Climbing the narrow path up the cliff after having exposed his epidermis to enough radiation damage to make the wearing of white speedos almost inevitable this season, the wolf found himself walking behind a mother and her very young son, deep in conversation. His ears swivelled towards them...

"Mum, do you know what people taste like?"
"No I don't"
"I do"
"Well I don't want to know how you know. And anyway, eating people is wrong"

Well, the wolf can think of circumstances where it is ok (in a metaphoric sense), but yes, not until everyone involved is above the age of consent. What intrigued the wolf about this particular conversation however was that the boy was (obviously) not being metaphorical, and even more intriguing, his eyebrows did not meet in the middle.
Hmmm, maybe there are more werewolves out there than he had realised...

A Cup of Hot Water

Met with a friend the other day, someone I don't see much from year to year, but am very fond of. She lives in Bristol now but used to live in the hideous hippy hole of Totnes. A beautiful town reeking of incense and smugness. Some good bookshops though I have to admit. She was on her way back to Bristol after visiting friends down here, but we managed to meet for a coffee, or a cup of hot water in her case. Sure there's a reason for that, but too polite to ask. Cheap though.

She too is a parent and most of the time we talked about our children and how the choices we had made affected them, something that's been on my mind a lot as you may have noticed. My friend's children are older, teens, all different and all very strong personalities. I think she has done a fabulous of bringing them up, so was moved to find she has her doubts and concerns the same as I do, her move to Bristol being one of them. Of all the cities in the UK, Bristol is one of the few I could ever see myself in if I had to, a city in a beautiful area and on a human scale, so I understand why she chose it - especially after Totnes. Her children seem to have embraced it on the whole, but there is still a little residual anxiety I think. Not sure I could have made a move like that, and not sure why.

My choice has always been to live here, earning far less than I could have elsewhere maybe but giving my son a safe and beautiful environment to explore and grow into; to give him some kind of anchor, a home port, he could trace his life from. Failing to give him a family is a great shame to me, and I hope that the locus of a sense of place will ameliorate that, at least to an extent. I don't know. I had the opposite, a strong and loving family but no sense of home, of roots in the way many of my friends here do. Like I have said before, people are home to me, not places.

The slum clearances of the early 60's meant that I like many others was inserted into a strange New! planned environment, one without any past, which I am sure changed us, made us different from those who did. I think those of us who grew up in the New Towns had a true existential genesis; coming from somewhere(s) that no longer existed, atomised into nuclear family sized units. We grew raw and rough, becoming what we actually were, untouched by community and tradition. For good or ill, as many have pointed out since. It also gave me license to roam, to drift if I'm honest, with no pull of homesickness, or sense of place, of a true hearth, to tug me back to safety and conformity like the Mole in the Wind of the Willows (a darker and weirder book than most realise, read it again). Positive or negative? Don't know.

But what next? The wolf's son will grow and move away, will I still need or want to stay here? I fell in love with this land a long time ago and wonder now how I will look at it when I am truly alone, no partner, no son. Will it still be home? I think it might. When I first fell for it, I had no family, friends or lover, no reason, no plan, no hope, to draw or hold me here; it was no dream of mine, no imagined destination. It was a real and instant love, unexpected, almost unwanted, and visceral. True.

But now I wonder, after having had and lost so many during my life here, lost to the sea, to others, to time; who will I be when my duty to my son is no longer tied to his location and only to him?
Where should I be?

Epiphany

A sleepless night found me walking along the promenade watching the sun rise this morning. Something I used to see a lot at sea, and also in past lives labouring or shift-working. Rarely now.

Never, ever tired of it. It placed me on a rocky water-covered sphere, spinning its film of life around a nuclear furnace (thanks Bran), falling through the void; lifting the night and my heart however heavy, and for a time at least, making me connect with the celestial realm in its glorious, endless procession through the universe.

I will always remember this dawn as apart from all other's though, graced as it was by a sudden spear point of wild geese, flying out from the west toward the sun, their rasping calls fracturing the silence, making my heart shudder in my chest. Placing me for an instant in the Now, and in the Eternal simultaneously. Magic. Sun magic.
Sol Invictus.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-Mary Oliver

For All Tomorrows Parties

It was my beloved son's birthday on Friday and for a slew of reasons it wasn't really that much fun. Skint, bad venue, stuff to sort with the ex, and the consequent mood of the two grown-ups there didn't help. So I decided to have another when he was back with me on the Monday, a chance also to celebrate the resolution of a long standing problem resolved on that miserable Friday.

That was a whole lot more fun, as three of his favourite people turned up, his mate from over the road and my best friend and her son, both dancing fools and, in the case of the mother, someone who can ignite children like fireworks. Much more like it, I thought, big present, party poppers and bombs, cake, cake, pizza, cake, balloons, LOUD music and pointless skidding on shiny floors. He, we, had a great time, felt like a big family for an hour or two there, something he's always wanted, and me too, I guess. I felt sad too though, because we are a small broken family in reality, and I kind of feel that was his last kids birthday party, a lost chance to have given him what he wanted, and another of the growing list of lasts to remember. And to hold fast to.

Afterwards, with the boy in bed sleeping (or reading under the covers with the sneaky-light my sister gave him i hope) I had the glitter festooned front room and the dying fire to myself. Looking at the mantelpiece I counted 7 birthday cards. All beautiful, funny, loving; all from people who genuinely loved him (mostly family), but not as many as in previous years. Easy to workout why. For one, the ex and me couldn't afford the 10 boy event parties we would normally have, loads of people in that particular boat this year, but it's more than that. He has lost friends, and has made very few at his new school.

Because my son is not in the least sporty, no football no rugby, not even surfing or skateboards, nor interested in brands or TV, he has always struggled to make many friends. His interests are wide and varied but not 'normal'. No problem with that, neither are mine. Because of all that, it took him a long time to find the good friends he had at his old school, but sadly none of them of them went to his new one. Even worse I guess, as in all Big Schools the fiercely conforming nature of kids is amplified and encouraged by the usual hegemony of team sports as THE school achievement, and reinforced by the burgeoning presence of Americanised 'scene' groupings. The desperate need for kids of that age to identify with a group (particularly among girls I think), media driven via shit like High School Musical, magazines and teen films, splinters the school into fractions whose main purpose is to exclude, rather than include.

Maybe it was always so, as a young wolf I felt much the same, but the pressures on conforming and the number of groups were far less, and the mobility more fluid. They were more about personality types which could change, than about looks, stance and clothing. Looking back, even the lesser pressures I felt caused me to turn inward, and I spent some very lonely and unhappy years being bullied and keeping it from my parents, because they wanted me to be happy and I didn't want to worry them. Then, suddenly, in my last years at Big School, the werewolf genes kicked in, and I grew hair and muscle and sharp teeth, and started collecting scalps, big time.

Satisfying but ultimately wasteful. I'm smart, me, and I should have used that to get out and up, instead of wasting my time on revenge for the time I was forced into the wary emotional stasis of being the outsider. Took me a long time to grow into myself, rather than the opposite of what I had been forced into becoming at school, longer than I want it take my son. That's if there was problem of course. No real reason to think my spastic, stuttering vector of a life would be necessarily visited on my son.

So the next day We had a long chat about the new living arrangements, school and friends and hope and fears, and how it was all going so far.
Which is when I heard the words I dreaded.
"Dad, they call me names..."