Friday 2 October 2015

Hiraeth

For audio click here
This was an exercise for my new course. 
Happiness comes at times when it is quiet and sleep approaches. As I drift off I see the white wilderness; a place I yearn for but which I have never seen or been. I don’t even know if it is a real place, or just a figment of my imagination; a dreamscape to which I long to escape.  Then when the sun rises and the first childish voice arouse me from my slumber the vision is gone. It’s snatched from my mind; fragments remain, random jigsaw pieces, enough to know there is a picture but not to see clearly what the picture is. Each day is tinged with something but what? Homesickness?  A longing? A grief? A yearning for the place in my dreams? How can I be homesick when this is the only home I’ve ever known? How can I yearn for a place that might just be a construct?  I walk along the ledge in my enclosure and then walk back, wishing I could take my coat off and sling it over the railings when the sun drives me to despair. I pace back and forth, forth and back, the same journey, the same steps. Racking my brains trying to piece together the scraps of the lost dream, trying to turn the unnatural into the natural. So many distractions; I hear children chatter excitedly, if I’ve heard the word Ledni Medvēd (polar bear) once, I must have heard it a thousand times, Cameras click, phones, ring, my stomach rumbles. All attention grabbers, determined to ensure the pieces remain scattered. 
I hear the grown-ups worrying about my state of mind.
‘Look he’s pacing like a businessman on the phone.’
‘Or like an expectant father waiting for news.’
‘Do you think he’s gone mad, driven to distraction by captivity?’
Charming, it’s not nice when people question your sanity. If you want to help, just leave me alone so I can think. But they don’t of course, from dawn to dusk, they point and stare and repeat ledni medvēd over and over.
Then the sun sets, the visitors drift away full of fizz and sweets and ‘education’, My mental jigsaw is nearly complete. I settle down to dream my dreams of a  home I’ve never seen.




7 comments:

  1. The discription of the animal in a cage, the atmosphere of uneasiness and longing for freedom has reminded me of a poem we discussed at university in our English literature classes, god, over 20 years ago but for some reason it got stuck in my head forever. So let me comapre your work to Ted Hughes', Sir (although I have bo idea whether you will like such comparison or not)

    The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun.
    The parrots shriek as if they were on fire, or strut
    Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut.
    Fatigued with indolence, tiger and lion

    Lie still as the sun. The boa-constrictor’s coil
    Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty, or
    Stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw.
    It might be painted on a nursery wall.

    But who runs like the rest past these arrives
    At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerized,
    As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged
    Through prison darkness after the drills of his eyes

    On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom—
    The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,
    By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear—
    He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him

    More than to the visionary his cell:
    His stride is wildernesses of freedom:
    The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
    Over the cage floor the horizons come.

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    Replies
    1. That is amazing, in my class on Wednesday we discussed a Ted Hughes Poem the thought fox. We had to produce a piece that echoed the idea of a spark of inspiration through the analogy of an animal, so you comparing me to Hughes is coincidence and very welcome.
      THE THOUGHT-FOX

      I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
      Something else is alive
      Beside the clock’s loneliness
      And this blank page where my fingers move.

      Through the window I see no star:
      Something more near
      Though deeper within darkness
      Is entering the loneliness:

      Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
      A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
      Two eyes serve a movement, that now
      And again now, and now, and now

      Sets neat prints into the snow
      Between trees, and warily a lame
      Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
      Of a body that is bold to come
      Across clearings, an eye,
      A widening deepening greenness,
      Brilliantly, concentratedly,
      Coming about its own business
      Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
      It enters the dark hole of the head.
      The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
      The page is printed.

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  2. what a coincidence... i might really seem to be controlling your movements

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  3. BTW I like the word Hiraeth. never seen it before. just been looking for some example how to pronounce it

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  4. Great story :-)

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  5. Petra Goláňová3 October 2015 at 07:51

    'It’s snatched from my mind; fragments remain, random jigsaw pieces, enough to know there is a picture but not to see clearly what the picture is. ...
     Each day is tinged with something but what? Homesickness?  A longing? A grief? A yearning for the place in my dreams? ...
    I hear the grown ups worrying about my state of mind.‘Look he’s pacing like a businessman on the phone.’‘Or like a expectant father waiting for news.’‘Do you think he’s gone mad, driven to distraction by captivity?’...
     I settle down to dream my dreams of a  home I’ve never seen.'

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  6. this is when I learnt the word hiraeth:-D Thanks for that. love this word

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