Moscow, 9.10-11.1992: Firebirds and Psychic Fragility

*7:40 A.M. Today I fly to Moscow. Sitting now at Joe Moore’s, having just talked to Steve. Steve says he talked to Betsy S. last evening, who told him Simon D. says he resists (with all the old boys) the values statement at Belmont Abbey College because it will mean accepting pro-choice people, gays, and women in the church.

I take all this with me to Russia. I can take only myself, and it’s all inside me. But in another sense—as if I’m on the edge of a cliff where I just begin to glimpse a vast plain below—this trip seems somehow to be a trip in which the battle at Belmont Abbey College, my own inner battle to find a place for myself and renewed spirituality, will find something new and revelatory in Russia.

Very badly put. Maybe I just sense that excitement of the blank page which one feels at the beginning of any trip. And the struggle at Belmont Abbey College is so intense that I just want it to be different, and so seize at the opportunity to fantasize on a trip. More later . . . . Joe just got up.

5 P.M. Sitting in JFK waiting for the flight to Helsinki. An arduous orientation session-cum-lunch since 11 A.M. I now feel gray inside, and the weather’s gray and drippy outside. Airports are limbo—a place neither here nor there, and like St. Teresa’s night in an inn, uncomfortable. But what else? That lassitude of spirit, I suppose, that T.S. Eliot saw all us hollow men having. Where else could we be but limbo?

My fellow passengers? A few seem nice, others already flagellate my nerves. Among the latter, an Episcopalian chaplain from New Orleans who I now realize was Steve’s bête noire at Notre Dame Seminary, and intensely Republican. She’s loud, crass, and sin above all sins, looks around as I talk to her as if there’s someone much more imposing to speak to. Among the former, a woman named S. and something Polish . . . who seems gentle, sensitive, is from southwest Georgia, and has curiously washed-out blue eyes—more faded than one expects in a woman her age, which must be only late 30s . . . .

And so on, dear travelogue, but I just recall I’ve not called Steve.

6:40 P.M., 12:40 A.M., Helsinki time. Just took off from JFK. Listening to some classical piece on the headphone set, partly to block out two incessant talkers. My bad luck to get a seat immediately behind the bête noire, Jean M. That last good nerve badly frayed as I listen to her babble endlessly. She’s just explained why she is still Mrs. M., though divorced from her doctor husband. And behind is a Greek Orthodox priest who also talks non-stop. He introduced himself to us today at length—15 minutes—and then his poor wife, who’s not coming along, sat mousily and said nothing, until he told us her name was S.

But I don’t want to write this nonsense. What I want to write about is what I know not at all, what Isaiah called dark and perverse above all things, and of which and of whose struggles Faulkner said all great literature comes.

If I could draw a picture, though, of my heart now, it would be a plain, arid, featureless, desiccated, the sand long ago having covered antique glories, the sun having consumed all verdure.

My heart, my heart. All that sings in my head on this journey now is my heart. So curiously full on the one hand that I’m often close to tears, but so depleted of love and significance, on the other, that I feel a stranger to myself.

What will this trip bring me? Can I be a wandering starets for these two weeks? O intolerably fancy! What I want is plain, not embroidered at all: just to be me, plain me, and let my heart pour out whatever has been so long dammed up inside it. I await a sign, I suppose, a portent, a message or messenger, a direction from on high.

Why here, now? I don’t know. But why else go on this trip, on any trip? That poem I wanted to write several years ago about the firebird, and couldn’t. Maybe now’s the time to write it—and before writing it, to let it rise up within me. That’s what I hope and pray this trip’s about, the firebird in the black night, flaming and scattering its brilliant feathers all around.

6 A.M., 10.10, Helsinki time. Nearing Helsinki, breakfast being served, but that surreality one always has when one has not slept, on a plane, and meal follows meal in quick succession. Some animal instinct says, Eat! Eat! What is it? Something that wants to dull the tooth that gnaws within, in E. Dickinson’s fine phrase.

A wonderful line in an Osip Mandestam poem: “Speech is the drowned woman rising without words.”

And: “O indigence at the root of our lives, how poor is the language of happiness!”

7:30 A.M. We touched down in Helsinki. Clear outside, 2 degrees C—the air, what one feels of it in passing through the deplaning ramp, crisp, cold, clean—invigorating after the stifling closeness of the plane.

In the airport, Finns drinking ½-liter glasses of beer, toasting. There seemed no ventilation at all, and tout le monde smokes, apparently, so I felt more stifled in the wearisome hour we all stood on our feet, tired and subdued, waiting for the Moscow plane.

The airport looks Scandinavian—modern, all glass and clean wood, mock-parquet tiled floors. Little kiosks selling candies, gifts, and Finnish delicacies, most of which looked like cheeses. This shop also had carved wooden spoons and egg-cups, rather plain and unprepossessing.

Now 8:30 exactly, and we’re aboard our plane. Should take off soon. I am tired, indeed, though carrying on. Life is indeed that unpleasant night in a bad inn of which Teresa of Avila spoke, though a bad airplane’s a far more apt modern symbol.

11:05 A.M. Touched down in Moscow. A beautiful (but dead?) lake as we came into the city, lots of trees (birch? poplar?) turning yellow, dark firs, and rich-looking dark earth, damp, flat, clothed with little farms and dachas. Surprisingly un-urban at first glance.

3:15 P.M. At the hotel. A fellow traveler, R.Z., filled out his customs claim form in pencil (!), and so the customs folk would not stamp his claim, and we had to wait and wait. A sweet man, but as a result not of this world.

Then to the hotel on a very hot and stuffy bus. Along the way, gray, wet, various signs in English—Sony, Garden Supermarket. Interesting young Russian men, masculine without being swaggery. Soldiers who are mere boys.

The hotel, Hotel Ukraine, is shabby, a bit dirty, and the food unspeakably bad—zakuskies of a tough, fat smoked fish, a very fat and bad-tasting sausage, tired tomatoes and peppers, followed by a thin soup with a few vegetables and curds of sour cream floating in it, and a few pieces of fat, gristly pork. Then cold fried potatoes—4 slices, about 6 cold peas, and a piece of beefsteak fried in rancid fat. The ice cream was not bad, I’ll grant, but the rest horrible. And we were offered beer, for which we later learned that we must pay $2.00.

Now to rest before our 5 P.M. visit to an Orthodox church.

8 P.M. Back from the church, the Epiphany Church, which was glorious. We went to vespers, part of it at least. From the minute I walked in, I began to weep—the wonderful choir and wonderful chant, the candles and icons, and above all, the people, from babushkas to sincere and angelic looking young teens.

I wish I could describe the scenes one sees from the bus en route to the church. The day is gray, wet, and cold, and that adds to the dreariness. But all’s dingy and half-way developed, as if some master plan to build the brave new world simply ran out of steam halfway. Shop windows all look drab, not a hint of color, and the windows are grimy. To the extent one sees inside (for it was darkening as we drove by them), the lights are often bare fluorescent bulbs, and the contents of shops are meager.

But people, people everywhere, milling on the streets talking, in stopped cars and outside stopped cars, talking in squares and on sidewalks, talking. I asked Jim W., our group leader, if this had been the case when he was here in the 60s, and he said not at all—then, people never congregated, just scurried to their destination.

All this gives the impression of a vast disorderly and suffering nation, but one also in process of seizing its destiny in an exciting new way.

The young especially attract me, because they don’t yet seem blasé and hostile. I don’t mean to idealize them, and these are very much surface impressions, but I do sense that they’re more integrated into society—and thus into its vision for the future—than is the case with us.

All the more, then, how struck I was by the young I saw at the church, engrossed in the liturgy, bowing and crossing themselves. People who seek heaven’s doors open in icons and who hear its choirs sing in the liturgy cannot build a totally bad society.

And back, and supper: more zakuskies—slices of ham almost all fat, slices of some cold forcemeat balls, tomato slices. The entrée was fried forcemeat balls—koftes, do they call them? And some greasy shoestring potatoes and sliced raw cabbage. This followed by ice cream again, and éclairs. Naught to die for.

And so to bed.

*The travel journal that begins with this entry demands a brief gloss. As the opening paragraph suggests, I embarked on this trip amidst intense stress at my job. At the time, I was teaching at (and heading the theology department of) Belmont Abbey College. The president who had hired me had mandated that the college create a statement of its core values, and had placed me in the unenviable position of leading the committee to craft that values statement.

Because I was new to the school (in my second year there), because it was tightly controlled by an old boys’ network who considered me an intrusive outsider, because the monks who own the college are a troubled community with a turbulent history and close ties to some of the nastiest right-wing Catholic organizations around, I was in a very hot seat leading the values-statement committee.

Above all, I was in the hot seat because the college had hired my life partner Steve at the same time it hired me. We were in the position in which any gay couple found themselves in Catholic institutions at the time (and still often find themselves)—walking a very thin don’t ask, don’t tell line. A recipe for intense psychic suffering . . . .

Anyone in such a position is subject to sub rosa taunts and outright attacks, which one can’t answer publicly without doing what is impossible (or was then) in Catholic institutions: outing oneself.

All of this laid the ground for psychic fragility, as I traveled. The purpose of this trip was to meet with representatives of faith communities in Russia, now that the iron curtain had fallen. An aunt of mine had just died, leaving money to a cousin who generously shared her inheritance with all of her cousins. The amount I had gotten out of the blue was precisely the amount asked by the group sponsoring this trip, and which had invited me to participate.

So I went, knowing I was being pulled apart by the struggles at my workplace and not in a psychic space to travel with ease, and yet feeling that this opportunity was somehow a calling—to what, to be what, to do what, I wasn’t sure: just a calling.

The trip proved disastrous in some ways. Unbeknownst to me when I signed up for the trip, a woman whom Steve had taught at his previous job at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans was to be on the trip. She had tried to make Steve’s life miserable (again, as a closeted gay man living in a long-term relationship with another gay man) when he taught there.

And she had succeeded. After having taught at the seminary for some 7 years as its first lay theologian, Steve had come up for tenure two years prior to this. The faculty and students voted for him to receive tenure. The rector, who was subsequently made a bishop and is now a rising star of the American hierarchy, unilaterally denied Steve the tenure for which he had been approved, giving as his sole reason that the seminary could not afford to pay Steve’s salary any longer. The salary had been, from the start of his working there, $15,000—no raises. After Steve was booted from the place, the seminary hired two priests to replace him, and a year after that, another married lay theologian, who was given housing within the seminary with his wife and child.

It was clear, in other words, that the refusal to tenure Steve had everything to do with his being gay.

Perhaps because of her animosity towards Steve, the former student appeared to have regarded my presence on the trip to Russia as a singular opportunity to transfer her nasty hounding of Steve to me. She made the trip miserable for me, unutterably miserable, constantly throwing ugly barbs my way, for all the group to hear, barbs that had everything to do with the fact that I was gay and unable or unwilling to talk about that.

And what could I do about what she chose to do? On these guided tours, one is stuck. If I had opened my mouth and engaged in back-barbs, I would probably have been targeted. I chose to shut my mouth and endure, and I frayed, and finally fell apart, leaving the group early.

But I did capture some impressions before leaving, and such as they are, I offer them here, in this travel narrative . . . .

Gatwick, 15.5.06: Up to Downe and Purgatory at Gatwick

Gatwick airport. Since Papa Ratzi has officially abolished limbo (hasn’t he?), I suppose it’s purgatory we’re in. These hotels at airports are particularly purgatorial—with a minimum of comfort disguised by a maximum of flash.

The Hilton was no exception. Though all brochures repeated insistently that we were paying for the privilege to access pay t.v., the feature would not work on our t.v.

We called the desk and got put into a squirrel cage of customer-service reps, an ascending hierarchy of technicians, and, finally, “the” electrician.

He told us the problem was irresolvable from his end, since it originated in how we had been booked into the computer system of the hotel. Which means it was resolvable—by one Karen, whom he called from our room and informed of the problem, and who was clearly unwilling to address it.

He suggested to her that she shift us to another room. It was clear that she wasn’t willing to do that. She finally and reluctantly provided him with a room number and he went and checked to see if the t.v. was fully operational.

It was, and we moved, Karen promising to send up new room keys. When they hadn’t materialized within half an hour, Steve went down to get them, finding a shift change was in progress and all was chaotic.

The reason all of this mattered was that we arrived about noon, were advised to turn in our rental car, and had nothing to do but pack for today’s flight, perambulate the less than scintillating airport, and rest. The rooms themselves were hideous: little boxes with worn carpets and smelly bathrooms. Heat was on to its maximum. We turned it to the minimum. Still stuffy.

After we had our stroll, returned to the room. T.v. problem had reappeared. Called for Karen. No Karen available. Ellen, a German woman, was the new Karen.

Came to room. Fiddled with t.v. No, sorry, it’s not working. How may I compensate you? Meal vouchers? No, sorry, I’ll give you vouchers for two drinks.

Beds were horrible, worst of the trip, with poly-cotton sheets. I spent a tossing-turning night dreaming of a disparate cast of strangely assorted characters—Jim G., Kathleen F., etc.

Now we find our flight delayed and our attempt to go and sit in our boarding lounge was soundly rebuffed by the airport or Delta official who is the gatekeeper, though we arrived at the time we were told to. And now we see from the flight board our flight’s delayed 45 more minutes—which means in airline lingo 3 hours, I suspect.

Yesterday: picked up the paintings we had bought from C.B. Betsy S. She informed us that the parish network had already told her of our brass-rubbing expedition the day before. Met us at her gate, spaniel in arms, tweed clad, apologizing for (well, no warning about) the dog’s tendency to jump on strangers.

We received the paintings and headed off. Bit of dog talk at the gate. She asked what kind of dog we had, thereby indicating that either she or the parish network recognized that we were a couple.

We told her that we had a corgi with an unfortunate tendency to nip. She said she’d had a similar one, also female, and it was the only one of her dogs she had frankly not been unhappy to see go. It met, she said, a tragic end—which she left unspecified.

Of anyone we’ve met on this trip, it’s clear to me that C.B. S and her husband are nearest to gentry—the kind of county families who once formed the backbone of the gentry across the nation, though I have no idea at all whether they’re an old Kentish family or simply people of status (and, clearly, education) who have settled at Old Romney.

Then on to Downe. Steve wanted us to stop, too, at Detling, but because the only information I have on that place is that some of the Epes lived there in the 1500s, I suggested we forego it.

So on to Downe. Though it’s very close to London, it’s deeply rural and village-like, accessible only by a narrow wooded lane that was lined by high banks of bluebells. On the drippy gray day—only the second such we’ve had in our entire trip—the color was gorgeous.

One climbs to Downe; one goes up to Downe. When we arrived, light on in the church, to which we walked through a fresh-mown graveyard wet with the recent rain.

Inside, a man who turned out to be a parson, a visiting priest, we gathered: we thought the parish has no resident pastor. Also an elderly woman Joyce, who must be churchwarden.

Had we come a moment sooner, services would have been on. A moment later, Joyce would have locked up.

She showed us around, obviously proud of the church’s treasures, and indirectly lecturing us on its history—the connection to Darwin, an Italian glassblower Elizabeth brought in to teach the English his art: Giacomo Verrazzano?

She was delightful, a true Kentish woman, sharp-nosed, short, buxom, plain-spoken. She said some of the Darwin records she’s locked away, and is not eager to let researchers know the church has—that Kentish secretiveness and distrust of “foreigners.”

She kindly brought a Manning crest—shield, she called it—out of the safe. One can still see the tomb of the John Manning on which it was affixed in the chancel floor.

We photographed the shield and the brass of that tomb and of an Edward Manning who was page to Charles II, which is in the nave. It was clear Joyce was reluctant to let us do a rubbing. It was her church, and we were going to abide by her rules.

New Romney, 14.5.06: Speedwell and Prussian Airs

Trip drawing to a close. We spent yesterday doing a rubbing of the Ips effigies and inscriptions in the Old Romney church, then on to New Romney where we spent the night at the Romney Bay Hotel beside the sea.

Brass rubbing successful. Steve stood in one of the infamous pink pews to reach it. I assisted by holding paper straight.

As we worked, the churchwarden came in—churchwarden purissima. She was a short gray-haired lady with lovely blue eyes, sharp nose, rather florid complexion, buxomy without being stout: in other words, a replicas of thousands of other Kentishwomen.

She came into the pew, straw basket of daisies from her garden in hand, and stood right beside us, chirping away in that inimitable manner of elderly Englishwomen of a certain type and class. She told us the gallery and pews are Georgian, as are the plaques, from a period when the church must have received a donation.

It’s the historic poverty of the Marshes that has kept the church relatively untouched, she noted: e.g., the ancient primitive wood vaulting on the ceiling has never been covered, as in so many other English country churches.

I begin to realize that because this was once the seacoast—Old Romney was a port—the land is still marshy. This is what gives it that special character of being still on the oceanfront—sandy soil, sedgy plants, the cast of light and aqueous marine sky. But it also makes the church sink: hence its heavy buttresses, which Steve noticed immediately.

As we talked, her assistance came in, basket on arm—more daisies and a rose-colore clematis. More twittering and chirping. They dusted and arranged flowers and the warden then left, wishing us a good day.

Then in came a couple from Baden-Baden seeking directions to St. Mary of the Marsh church. We talked in German, they, too, coming into the pew with us. It was a series of unanticipated rencontres intimes.

I had remembered a map somewhere showing all the churches in the Romney Marsh and went to the tables with pamphlets and postcards to seek it out as Steve headed to the care for the OS map of the area.

The warden’s assistant came to help me—browner and mousier than the warden, but equally demure, with just a touch of Kentish cross-grainedness about her. She showed me a post card that had all the churches depicted on it, and I gave the kleine Karte to the couple. Steve showed them in plodding, helpful German detail precisely how to reach the church.

Assistant and I continue to talk. I admire the flowers, asking about the purple one that comes up in our garden as a weed. If I was pointing to the same plant as the one was have, its folk name in England is honesty, and its foliage is dried in winter to add a touch of silver to arrangements.

I think we call it dame’s rocket, and it definitely dies back in our hot summers. She also told me the name of the small blue flower that grows at the bottom of hedgerows, and I should have written it down, since it has gone clean out of my head. A common name from English novels and nature books, but I now can’t recall it—an occurrence more and more common.

Then on to store our luggage at New Romney and shop. We drove to Hythe, touted as a shopping mecca, but I found it frankly tawdry.

The approach to it is horrible—a high wall blocking the sea vista on one side, and a dismal coteries of trailer parks—yes, in England—ice cream and chip stands interspersed with carpet outlets—on the other. It was an English version of Daytona Beach, and seems to attract the same ilk—I suspect the same class of Cockney folks who historically came from London’s east end to pick hops and berries in Kent in summer. The folks about whom that novelist—is it Beryl Bainbridge? H.E. Bates?—has written so inimitably.

Perhaps my impression of Hythe is colored by the fact that we were called poofs by a boy shopping with his grandma, as we passed them in the street. They laughed behind our backs, never a happy experience.

We encountered them later in a thrift ship and I realized they must be Gypsies—or perhaps Spanish. She had a long plait of gray hair down her back, sharp nose, brown face, and hooded eyes. I wanted to go up to them and say something smart, but thought better of it. Gypsies have the capability to curse back volubly and expertly. I do wonder if he realizes at any level that his antennae for poofs—and predilection for rummaging for knick-knacks with granny—might point towards his own future.

I need to learn to leave such retributive tutelage to the One Who Weaves the Web. And it’s time for breakfast—but I must not fail to make a note late of last night’s supper.

+ + + + +

Speedwell. I think that’s the name she told me for that wildflower. Which means it’s a form of veronica? And I don’t think dame’s rocket and honesty can be the same flower. Isn’t dame’s rocket related to mustard, while honesty is the lunaria plant, the money plant?

And the dinner last night: four courses. It began with sea bass, fresh caught that day, served with onions cooked with fennel on a bed of rice and celeriac, with a thyme sauce around.

Continued to guinea fowl, served with small roasted potatoes on a bed of tomatoes, onion and perhaps more potatoes mashed. After that, crème brulée with rhubarb in a spun-sugar-and-butter basket: sprigs of red currants, gooseberries, strawberries, and blueberries, and a garnish of mint (a sprig of fennel with the fish and of parsley with the fowl).

Cheese, crackers, and walnuts followed, and we drank an Italian pinot grigio with it all.

The ambience was . . . strange. Almost all young couples being very formal and la-de-dah, but none even acknowledging anyone else. I believe the ones across from us were South African—she a sullen horse-faced blonde and he a red-haired churl who ate alternately slouched back on his tailbone or elbows propped on the table.

One couple who sat on a sofa beside us (oh, yes, drinks beforehand in a drawing room) were French. She announced as they were led to their places that she shouldn’t sit near anyone since she talks so much. At one point, she said things had better be good, because he had paid so much and promised her a good time.

The strangest couple of all were a very la-de-dah pair already in the drawing room when we sat down. She flashed a smile in which her teeth but not her eyes participated.

I believe I heard her say at one point during dinner—an announcement to the whole room—that she was Prussian. Not German, mind you: Prussian. They both spoke with those clipped vowels and staccato tempo of Brits imitating the upper crust, but who inevitably sound as if they are imitating a BBC murder mystery cast instead.

It was all extraordinary, a scene not even Evelyn Waugh could have invented. All took place in the conservatory of the old house, with candle light. I watched for the Hound of the Baskervilles to spring across Romney Marsh at any moment and reduce us to the pulp we deserved to be, such airs we were affecting.

Tenterden, Kent, 13.5.06: Cornish Pasties and Fifty Springs

Jan Morris says that the Welsh word “cwm,” for a deep dell, is pronounced “coom,” just as “combe” is pronounced in Somerset. Welsh influence in the West Country dialect? Or perhaps Cornish. Isn’t it from the same Brythonic roots as Welsh?

Thinking last night of those Cornish pasties we enjoyed with Chuck in Canterbury, in a lane leading towards the cathedral from the High Street. That moment—the sitting, the cool air when it was torrid inside, the savory lunch—is imprinted, jewel-like, on my memory. Steve’s mint and lamb pasty was good, but I must say, I enjoyed my traditional one.

+ + + + +

Housman, “Shropshire Lad”: “To look at things in bloom fifty springs are little room.” Indeed. The eye does not tire of looking, the ear of hearing, or the hand of touching.

Tenterden, Kent, 12.5.06: Hobbits' Lanes and Painted Pews

Writing now from Tenterden in Kent—sleepy little country inn. It’s crawling with the kind of Brits who are perhaps afraid to venture any closer to France than the chunnel, who stay on the English side of the channel and drive across for a quick foray. Middle-class pretending to be posh. Most are old, going down with the ship, dressing for dinner, murmuring torpidly over the unexciting food after a round of taste-numbing drinks.

A horrible ugly—in all senses of the word—woman who sat directly behind Steve last night made some comment in a loud voice about keeping “the” Americans away. The remark was directed to the whole room—but conspicuously not to us.

+ + + + +

A rich day, and I grow weary of writing in this journal. Drove to Old Romney. St. Clement’s church there is phenomenal—the original stone altar preserved, a rare thing for England. When the Cromwellians demanded that all stone altars be removed, it was used (hidden) as a stepping stone for the porch, which is on the north side of the church, though south is usual. 

The church is low and simple inside. Crude wood vaulting. Painted pews—pink and white, the gated kind. I like them. They give the church an almost Baroque feel.

Must be controversial. A long defense of them on a curious funeral-home-fan-shaped device at the back of the church, pointing out they’re made of plain deal wood and wouldn’t be beautiful if unpainted.

Walls have Georgian sayings, bible verses of the memento-mori ilk, painted on plaques. Similar plaques either side of the altar have the creed and ten commandments.

Low porch; ribbed ceiling, simple and austere, with old unadorned wood ribbing. Outside, a beautiful churchyard surrounded on all sides by sheep pastures, from which (the churchyard, that is) the wildflowers pressed on this page come.

The brass for John Ips and wife Margaret has been removed from its place on the floor of the main aisle in front of the rood (as John Ips’ will requests his burial location to be) to the south all of the church. A guide to the church notes that the Epps family is well-represented in Kent, especially the Romney area, and has descendants in Virginia.

The area around Romney fascinating, reminiscent of the Low Countries. Flat; ditches in pastures, full of water. Sky everywhere. At one point, an amazing cast of light between gray, green, and yellow.

It’s like a world in miniature, far more manicured than Somerset or Shropshire, as if hobbits live down each laneway.

A brochure in the church advertised the studio of C.B. (Betsy) S. at M.C. near the church. We walked there, since a sign said the road was unsuitable for vehicles (though it was clearly driven on).

In front of the cottage (which was two-storied and far from cottagey) a very elderly man on a bench. Fine, warm, sunny day. We exchanged pleasantries about the weather and sheep. He was in coat and tie with the hems of his pants frayed in back from walking on them.

He asked what I was seeking. I said M.C. Blank look. I repeated it. Blank again.

Then something clicked and he said he’d been posted as sentry. His wife, the artist, was in New Romney. She’d be back shortly. Why didn’t we have a look around.

He took us into the house, a warren of damp, low-ceilinged rooms with shabby wonderful old furniture and old books—first editions of the Waverley novels and Gaskell’s life of Charlotte Bronte (to my chagrin, Steve peeked).

Room after room of paintings, mostly pastoral scenes from the area and still lifes and one droll picture of her King Charles spaniel, bug-eyed and wall-eyed. I chose one of the Romney church with a storm on the horizon and a field of sheep, and one of a field of flax for Philip and Penny.

Mr. S. doddered (quite literally) outside, looking for “them” and saying how stupid he was. He kept coming in to say, “They shan’t be a moment,” and “Perhaps I can sell you the paintings,” and then,“Won’t you sit in my room and read the papers?”

This was a door marked private and we hadn’t entered it. It was a perfect little world—more shabby furniture, more old leather-bound volumes, blotting paper, a writing pad with letter opener affixed to it by a strap, a tray with all the accoutrements needed for writing.

And then came Betsy S. and we transacted business after much to-ing and fro-ing about her upcoming exhibit. Apparently she’s not "open" till then, though the church brochure clearly says, Open every day 10-2, incl. Sundays. Which must mean something entirely different to the English . . . . (And they were truly lovely people.)

And speaking of the English, I must get something off my chest, dear reader. Have you noticed (I certainly have) that, while they’re hesitant to show almost any emotion, they have absolutely no problem demonstrating displeasure or disdain? A look I saw on the face of a woman in Chard as we approached on the sidewalk would have curdled milk.

Chard is, I’ve decided, as Geo. Washington said of Charlotte, a piddling little place. Some of the surliest people I’ve seen in England, and many ill-favored . . . .

And after Old Romney, a drive to New Romney to make arrangements for our stay there tomorrow night. Bought fish and chips and ate them by the seashore, which was misted over with haze from the warm, humid day.

And then an afternoon of shopping in Ashford, which was obliterated in the war, and is a surrealistic conglomeration of shopping malls in outré architectural styles and international centers.

+ + + + +

Jan Morris, Wales (NY: Penguin, 2000): “The climate of Wales is anything but preservative in a physical sense, but it is marvelously retentive metaphysically, and the mana of such old Welsh sites, their sense of life and movement, magically survives the ages” (51-2). 

“Another detectably Celtic trait is a certain sense of the dream of things, a conviction that some state of being exists, invisible but sensible, outside our own windows” (58).

“The holiest Welsh place is Dewisland, Pebidiog, a stony protrusion from the coast of Pembrokeshire which was once a spiritual hub of the whole Celtic world. Not only does the countryside there seem holy by its very nature, so ascetic but so exciting, all bare rock and heather headland falling to the wild Atlantic sea, but its associations too are intensely sanctified” (83).

“Visitors sensitive to numen, though, will hardly notice these things [i.e., the architectural details of St. David’s cathedral] but something more ethereal, a tremulous combination of light, hush and muted colour” (84).

“It was all part of a wider magic, hud in Welsh, which is really a key to life and matter itself—the sense that the divine resides in everything around us. This has powerfully affected the Welsh view of creation at least since the days of the Druids” (91).

Chard, Somerset, 11.5.06: Angels Unawares and Hairy Men on Motorcycles

Lessons for pilgrims: in the Tree of Life, our roots are forever intertwined. Last night, Steve and I turned on t.v. It was a BBC cooking show, two large hairy men who explore places on motorcycle.

They were in Chiapas, which is where Steve was headed when he met me. A reminder that what may have seemed a diversion on his pilgrimage became our shared pilgrimage.

Every pilgrimage illuminates for us the pilgrimage we’re on in our lives. All the lessons we learn on any one pilgrimage stand us in good stead on our life pilgrimage. To wit:

Grace comes from unexpected quarters and pops up in unexpected places. Who’d have thought, as we set out for T., that we’d meet M. and I., and discover we have so much in common—retired teachers, years spent caring for declining parents, a shared interest in the history of their house?

The agent of grace—the angel unawares—may look very different from what we imagine an angel to be. On any pilgrimage, there are graced moments when we meet extraordinarily kind and helpful people—some of them ones we’d not approach, just judging from their exterior.

Only to discover that in the Tree of Life, our roots are intertwined: we have something in common with them, no matter how distant or alien they seem . . . .

And we must be prepared to discover that we ourselves may, on pilgrimage, become conveyors of grace to others, unexpectedly. That is perhaps for me the hardest lesson for all.

Chard, Somerset, 10.5.06: Somerset Stone and Signposts

I’m not sure what to write this evening. Since St. David’s, pilgrimage mode is past, and I feel less diligent, more inclined to play and relax.

Still, I feel, somehow, that this pilgrimage has yielded Lessons for Pilgrims. At some point when I’m more focused, I need to write these out and connect them to stories from the trip.

But for now, today: shopping and a haircut in Chard. As we brought back our bags, Betty Jones, the hotel proprietress, said archly, “Shopping in Chard? People rarely come here to shop.”

English understatement. There’s little of worth to buy. We made groceries, mostly—some ploughman’s rolls, extra-sharp local cheddar, smoked salmon, sliced turkey, olives seasoned with thyme and rosemary, cherry tomatoes, and a Mouton Cadet (oh, watercress, too). We’re enjoying all of this now as night falls.

Then a jaunt into the countryside to Poundisford, which turns out to be not a village at all, but Poundisford Park and Lodge, both dating ca. 1550 and built on land leased from the bishop of Winchester by William Hill and his father Roger Hill. There’s also a Poundisford Farm.

But the two grand houses are behind a high wall with trees next to it, and we could see nothing—though I did find two books with pictures interior and exterior and text.

The drive beautiful—long sloping hills with crops and sheep, interspersed with wooded areas. The laneways have huge old oaks along them, never in allées, but here and there, standing alone in majesty. Did they mark something? They lend mystery to the roadside.

Lilacs in full bloom here, white, lavender, purple, overhanging signposts and making the way hard to read. The old stone of the region in houses, barns, walls, not as honey-colored as in the Cotswolds, but gold and warm—beautiful. I think Betty Jones called it Somerset stone.

Pitminster parish church lovely, well-cared for, not lost in time as the one in Stottesdon. On either side of the altar lords and ladies in effigy, tombs of a Coles/Colles family. One has been spoiled by being painted, garish colors.

Lunch at the Queen’s Arms in Pitminster. Lovely inside. A young couple have recently bought it, removed the carpet to expose the old wood floors, wide-planked. The walls are sponged in a soft yellow.

Steve had a smoked salmon sandwich and I a local cheddar with chutney and salad. But tooth killing me, so that every bite was anguish.

And then back to rest, read, loaf, and I’m loving it.

+ + + + +

Ellis Peters, Ellis Peters’ Shropshire (Guernsey: Sutton Publ. Co., 1999): “All the best secrets of Shropshire seem to be approached only by these high-hedged, narrow lanes, calculated to discourage wheeled traffic. Only drivers with nerves of steel take to these kindly, but they find the most delightful places by way of reward” (29-30).

Salopians are a hybrid breed (79). Celts, Romans, Saxons, Welsh . . . .

“The devil is always the intruder, the stranger, the one who is different” (82).

“The most rural parts of Shropshire are a web of perilous little roads, all of which lead to the most entrancing places, but none of which provides room for more than one modest car, or any crossing-places, so that if two vehicles meet nose to nose one of them must back probably a considerable way” (107).

“Have you ever noticed how, if you set out on a definite quest, at the next meeting or parting of ways there are three to choose from, and either no signpost at all, or one that fails to mention the place you are seeking?” (107)