Saturday 31 December 2011
an ever rolling stream
Hey ho! the wind and the rain ..
.. I say the words and once more I am back in Miss Carpenter’s class of St Mary’s (Church of England) Elementary School in the borough of St Marylebone where we lived.
The words are Shakespeare’s. In a book we read. A simplified version. Suitable for young schoolchildren. Nevertheless. Simplified or not. Young or not. The words remain with me. Were they (are they?) part of Feste’s Song? And had we come to the end of Twelfth Night? This morning I find myself not much concerned with the name of the play. I am back in my old school.
The colour is green. Over against the window wall, the pipes. Hot water heating for a winter’s day. (A Winter’s Tale?) Overhead the gas lights. Four tubular arms painted green. On a revolving metal bracket. To make access easier for turning on and shutting off. As the dusk drew in before the schoolday ended on winter afternoons. It might even have been foggy outside.
Did I experience a temporary sideslip into the reality of the past? Or was it the magical words of the playwright which made a connection for me? and did I then reconstruct the classroom? the feel of the wooden desks we sat at? This time it was a distant image. Pale. and wan.
It was a good school. The right kind of schooling at the right time of life. Easy to move on from, as I did when they took me away to Mercers’. and that was a different air to breath. and the warm comforting gentle glow of the gaslights was replaced by the harsh clarifying penetrating incision of electric lighting from the high bulbs in the ceiling. every corner was exposed. there were no shadows with their suggestions, their mysteries ..
francis cameron, oxford, 31 december 2011
Thursday 29 December 2011
a welltrodden path
francis cameron, oxford, 29 december 2011
Wednesday 28 December 2011
Tuesday 27 December 2011
afterimage
111227 tuesday 27 december 2011
The afterimage remains. As powerfully as it did after that first weekend with Oakleaf. When the traders and all else had packed up and left. The long central line of afterimage and afterclamour remained. Today is quiet in the house. I sit solitary. But I am not alone. The chair is empty. The afterimage remains. And I am content. Deep within.
francis cameron, oxford, 27 december 2011
Monday 26 December 2011
Sunday 25 December 2011
Saturday 24 December 2011
Thursday 22 December 2011
gradus at the solstice
thursday 22 december 2011
10 a.m. Time to stop. pause. regroup
This is the time of the winter solstice. The time when, for us of the northern latitudes, the sun appears to be at its greatest distance from us. Each day for the next halfyear the sun will rise a little earlier and set a little later. Now is a good time to pause and reflect.
I have a great desire to complete my Book of Gradus, the book of my spiritual journey, by the time of the spring equinox, that fleeting moment when day and night are equally balanced.
I began writing when the month of lammas was still upon us, ebbing away. I was overtaken by more pressing demands. The Book of Gradus lost its priority. My obligations were focussed elsewhere. I wrote now and again in the intervals between the acts. When I signed off yesterday I was partway to unpicking the tangled skein of my life swirling round in the whirlpool of life and London in the 1950s. As it was in the beginning would never be the same again. When I signed off yesterday my wordcount showed 12,174. Not bad for starters. But beginning to drift.
Time to stop. to pause. regroup. Yes! Time to step back. to survey the Gradus so far. to point to the coded threads of the web so woven.
francis cameron, oxford
Tuesday 20 December 2011
771220 lisboa
tuesday 20 december 1977
LISBOA
1320. lisboa in the rain. no more attractive than any other city in the rain. take the luggage to the station. have a coffee. decide to ride on a tram. a 24 gives a circular ride with a different view of lisboa then ends at largo do carmo. recognition. the ruined carmelite church. the archaeological museum. the outdoor display pleasant even in the drizzle. the interior musty to discomfort. probably the worst museum I have ever visited. the old chapels used as display salons but the exhibits exhibited in crowded cases with inadequate identification. pigeon droppings accumulating on case tops to a measureable depth. skulls from peru. the hair still in position. two mummified corpses. the legs still bound in foetal position. the case labels eaten away by vermin. a room of books. crowded. overcrowded into cases. a handsome table for savants to enclose. flint. microliths. arrow heads. pottery. as though set out but with an interrupted process. holy sculptures. a sarcophagus or two. some roman inscriptions.
.. change and decay in all around I see ..
outside. the next building guarded by a sentry with drawn sword.
lunch compensates for the mustiness of the museum. a typical portuguese dish. ‘hand of little cow’. turns out to be a sort of calves foot stew. with beans. very rich. very filling.
francis cameron, temporary vagabond
19 december 1977
monday 19 december 1977
LISBOA
the train journey was quite an adventure. my amsterdam to bruxelles ended at bruxelles with a change to a local line to reach bruxelles central. the only station that really felt like a central. bruxelles had a nice comfortable sort of feeling to it. lively. but not crowded. the grande place with its magisterial houses bespeaking great substance. a natural setting for a high christmas tree and a crib.
the royal library. friendly helpful staff. all I wanted save one manuscript that was on exhibition. and even then a photograph of the vital page in an exhibition catalogue. and that catalogue to be sent to my australian address with an account payable on receipt. not in advance. and a delightful three pages that should be worth transcribing and translating. with illustrations of musical instruments.
later that night, as I waited at bruxelles nord for a connection, there was a mishap to a train from amsterdam causing a delay of some forty minutes.
bruxelles to paris. a good comfortable compartment. at the third attempt very reasonable sleep. except during a long halt when the heating faded to almost nothing.
the metro from nord to austerlitz. take it easy with the luggage. no hurry. plenty of time. but no correspondances with long tunnels to negotiate.
breakfast at austerlitz and already crowds around the sudexpress for lisboa.
a crowded train. but ample space for first class passengers. departure on time at 9 a.m.
and so without incident until a fairly long, and unexpected, pause outside hendaye.
irun. crowded. overcrowded. the customs passage almost unhindered but the platforms jammed to capacity. only second class accommodation on the espressa to lisboa. but a first class section of the sudexpress due sometime. no one could say when. it was eventually about an hour-and-a-half late. and crowded. with second class ticket-holders being dunned for excess fares due for the first class seats they were occupying.
dinner in a dining car out of somerset maugham with film set by orson welles. charming inlaid woodwork. obsolete bell pushes. only two tiny globes functioning in six ceiling light shades. excellent service. and a five course cubierto for 450 pesetas.
a minimum of frontier formalities. but two rubber stamp endorsements in the passport to evoke future memories.
a journey which got longer and longer despite interludes such as breakfast in the delectable dining car.
an extended halt at pampilhosa (which I now cannot find on a map).
eventual arrival at lisboa round about 3 o’clock local time and five-and-a-half hours late.
lisboa showery but decorated for christmas. back to a land where the prices are not ruinous to the temporary vagabond. the indulgence of a very comfortable hotel room to recover from two nights on the rails.
shopping. sightseeing. the old, once visigothic, quarter of the town. cristo rei a ferry ride away.
friendly helpful people.
a warm bath
relaxed tiredness
francis cameron, temporary vagabond
Saturday 17 December 2011
771217 paris lisboa
saturday 17 december 1977
from PARIS to LISBOA by train
1020. in brilliant sunshine down through the hoar frosts of France
1140. POITIERS. houses built into tall striated black cliffs
1220. yesterday in Bruxelles I noticed a thermometer showing 10˚ Celsius
1415. autumn seems to have lingered in the south. light brown leaves still strew the base of trees. here and there great clusters of orange brown leaves on otherwise grey assemblage of branches. but a closer look saw more and more bare branches. bare trees. silver birches. ready for winter. sleeping through a southern winter of clear pale sunshine.
francis cameron, temporary vagabond
Friday 16 December 2011
771216 bruxelles
friday 16 december 1977
BRUXELLES. I enjoy the warm embrace of the scholarly apparatus here for my use in the Bibliothèque Royale. This is a brief visit. I am here to make notes, construct an aide-memoire for future detailed study. No more than that today for the great rail roads of Europe beckon. Seductively. Put them aside for now. Consult the very informative catalogue with its spreads from those who have been here before. Pick out five manuscripts. See what they actually contain.
BR 10127-44. a composite. writings from scriptoria of the 8th and 9th centuries. the language is latin. the penmanships pre-carolingian minuscule from four different monastic houses. a treatise on canon law. how to compute the liturgical calendar. rules for holy week. an incomplete gelasian sacramentary.
BR 10078-95. another composite. scientific and musical texts. in carolingian minuscule. from the 11th century. Jerome de musica. Gerbert de constructione spherae. Sigebert sententia de ratione tonorum. Hucbald de musica, de institutione harmonica. and others. This is a nicely written miscellany. titles and initials in red. the bodies in brown. examples of individual ways to capture sounds for recognition by the eye.
BR 2750-65. a fat volume. bound in boards. a composite of different hands from the 10th and 11th centuries. I am drawn to the tonary of Regino de Prum though the vitae of gregory the great, jerome, st severin and st maur also attract for their thought patterns.
BR 4499-503. a tiny thin book. oblong. with grey covers. from the 12th century. treatises on geometry. Augustine de quantitate animae. 41v to 43 rect: de ratione proportionis minoris semitonis. Gerbert ratio sphere.
BR 14650-59. like a foolscap bible! latin sermons and lives of the saints. staffless neumes on the verso of folio 60. antiphons and responds for dusk and dawn. parchments handwritten round about 1000 and 1100.
francis cameron, temporary vagabond
Thursday 15 December 2011
771215
thursday 15 december 1977
KÖLN. twelve noon and the angelus is said publicly in Köln cathedral while outside a small group of singers (two men, two women – one of whom plays a guitar) and a woman evangelist demonstrate their belief to those who are willing to stand and listen. the Dom. very tall. very slender. some pleasant coloured glass in the windows. an array of well-disciplined school children. a vast reliquary behind the high altar. sculptures poised on the columns of nave and chancel. I’m glad I stopped here. at last.
Hofbahnhof. not my favourite. no waiting room. nowhere to sit except on the open platforms. and today they are cold and cheerless.
thursday 15 december 2011
.. and now as I write I recall the day in 1980 when Lizzy and I climbed the spiral of 509 stone steps to the viewing platform at the top of the tower and looked out over the vastness of the city ..
The Hohe Domkirche St. Peter und Maria is, as every schoolboy knows, the home of some of the relics of the Three Kings of Orient who brought gifts to the babe in Bethlehem – except, as is perfectly clear to anyone who really reads and studies the Bible : the story is a work of early medieval imagination which in our time continues to create a mystical tableau carried down from Yesod to Malkuth.
francis cameron, oxford
Wednesday 14 December 2011
Monday 12 December 2011
Wednesday 7 December 2011
raw and cooked
the raw and the cooked
In a couple of months’ time, our nonFiction readers will choose a book on Food. Ah, says I, I’ll make a bid for The Raw and the Cooked : classic from the pen of Claude Levi-Strauss.
It’s not going to work! It’s long out of print and our bookseller host seems to imply our choices should come from their shelves. Domage! Amazon has one or two copies – at a price attractive only to collectors of rare books. et in saecula saeculorum.
At this point I’ll come clean. Levi-Strauss’s book is not really about food. So why would I suggest it? It’s because I was thinking about the place of symbols in our everyday life. How the ‘music’ I learned as a little boy was dependent more upon seeing than listening. A page of printed symbols was placed in front of me and I learned to ‘read’ music. Later in life I was fed the idea that this kind of music – the kind that’s read from a page of symbols - was the only ‘real’ music. Other kinds of music – the tunes I heard sung by my schoolmates and the ‘dance music’ I heard on the wireless – these were all of an inferior breed and not worthy of serious study.
Oh dear!
Allowing my mind to meander, I find myself considering the Renaissance distinction between witchcraft and the magic of occultism. The former, by and large, imbibed by imitating those already proficient. The later requiring study of an academic level.
There we are : the raw and the cooked. The former, naturally occurring – like picking berries off a bush. The latter requiring books of instruction and a collection of apparatus - pots pans blades and flame.
This ‘either or’ process was rather high in academic fashion when I first read Levi-Strauss. Computing then was young enough for all of us to be aware of ones and zeros. 1 to indicate that an electrical current was making a connection. 0 to indicate the absence of flow. Today I find it all too readily in the ‘us and them’ attitude. We are the patricians, the cultured ones. They are the descaminados, the mob, those without culture. sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper?
francis cameron, oxford, 7 december 2011
