Thursday, June 21, 2012

When I wore a younger man's clothes

There's an old man sitting next to me
Makin' love to his tonic and gin
He says, Son can you play me a memory
I'm not really sure how it goes
But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete
When I wore a younger man's clothes


The roots of a personal aesthetic are often pretty obscure – the mind in its alluvial process gradually burying its secrets – until as in my case, walking into the supermarket, my caravan, the first place I made my own, appeared in all its silvery glory in my mind's eye. I'd never forgotten it, or how it was destroyed, but it took me a long time, fifty-odd years, to know why it was reduced to sticks - the mind in all its obtuseness revealing a fossil when least expected.


It stood, my gypsy caravan, on some land my grandfather had – an old allotment, I think, with unused greenhouses whitewashed against the sun, and in the beds, mounds of pinks overrun with meadow grass – stood silvery, all paint and decoration gone, backing onto a hawthorn hedge under which grew foxgloves and ferns.


Looking back it was stupid, to keep muscle magazines in the caravan, but my bedroom was no longer a viable option after the long and loud berating I'd received from my grandmother. I cannot but think of "And when did you last see your father?" each time I remember that charming occasion.

A solitary child, watchful and guarded, as many of us become when we begin to realize the difference that doesn't lift but certainly separates, the caravan had, over a couple of years, become my home-from-home - a real refuge, or so I thought. I hadn't furnished it – I was thirteen and pocket money was pretty scarce – but I had built a primitive fireplace from a defunct rockery. I loved to sit in the sun on the steps or, on a rainy day, on the floor, back against the wall facing the open door.

That day, the day I was reduced to having but one home and an unquiet one at that, I walked through the gate and found my caravan – and it remains, my caravan – had been wrenched and hammered into a pile of sticks. It took me a lifetime to understand the hatred of difference personified in that vandalism.

Of course, my muscle magazines had been found again and this time by people who spread the knowledge around the whole estate, most of whom were waiting for me on the other side of the stream, watching as they sent their champion down the banks to beat me up. He did not go unbloodied but I lost the only physical fight I've ever had, and what I remember more than the pain of my face was the pleasure that people who were my neighbors and, until that moment, trustworthy ones at that, took in my shame. What I also remember is the way nothing was said when I got home, either by me or by my grandparents.

I never went back. Yet in some ways I go back all the time for the appeal of silvery wood, the filtered light of whitewashed, even dirty, glass, the scent of pinks and the reek of creosote, minnows in clear flowing water, the frothy beauty of hawthorn and elderberry blossoms, the magnificence of foxgloves, birdsong, bluebells and buttercups, have accompanied me in my own journey west, if only now in my memory, in my own Calistoga wagon, and are the essence of both my aesthetic and my desire for refuge.

Do not imagine that my caravan was in any way as luxuriously decorated as the one you see here. Smaller than my present hall closet, it had bare boards for walls and floor, but two small square windows at either end, two more flanking the door, a set of shelves built-in above a tiny cupboard on top of which I kept an old, cracked ceramic vase (Art Nouveau, as I now know) that was as ugly as sin but somehow lightened the austerity of all that bare wood.

"Everything is designed to gleam and glitter in the soft lamplight. All the drawers and cupboard doors have carved crystal knobs; mirrors are set into walls around the shelves; china hangs and sways on hooks behind glass cupboard doors. The steel stove has its own gleaming fender.

"In this space, a miracle of compactness, there is a dining table, with a cupboard and plate rack above; a  wardrobe and red velvet bench seats all with storage cupboards below. There is a painted corner cupboard, shelves for bottles and glasses and a chest of drawers with a mahogany top for ornaments"*

This showman's caravan, no larger than seven feet wide and eighteen feet long, built by Orton and Spooner for a showground owner was top-of-the-line in 1900, as ornately decorated any house of the period and possibly cost as much. Though nowadays it would be considered by many to be claustrophobia-inducing, this "miracle of compactness" prefigures the modern-day Small House Movement.

I mention that my own hall closet is larger than this showman's caravan, not with any sense of pride, for it is neither a miracle of compactness nor a prodigy of sufficiency.  Rather, it is full of stuff that one somehow wants to need more than truly needs – living proof that the more space there is, the more alluvia there will be to fill it.


*Quotation from Grand Tourer written by Leslie Geddes-Brown to accompany photographs by Fritz von der Schulenberg for The World of Interiors, December 1989.

Title of post and beginning quotation from Billy Joel's Piano Man.

22 comments:

  1. Blue, despite the sadness in the story, I am so glad you rose from those broken sticks a stronger person.

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    1. The Devoted Classicist, thank you. So many years ago and so defining. I was lucky for there are those kids who do not make it. In many ways this was my "it gets better" moment.

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  2. I'm speechless. This is, perhaps, the most beautiful of so many thoughtful posts. You have woven together nature's gifts, art, pain, fortitude and a personal philosophy into a tapestry of a life. I like to believe that every day brings at least one small gift...and this was today's.

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    1. smilla4blogs, thank you. You bring me to tears and raise me to gratitude.

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  3. Congratulations in all respects. This was not easy to do and you wisely didn't make it look easy to do. An impressive, and a lasting conservation of an extremely powerful experience.

    I am expressly not looking for acknowledgment of this comment or the usual gentlemanly reciprocities.

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    1. Carter Nicholas, thank you. Nonetheless, I acknowledge and am grateful for what you write.

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  4. I read this post yesterday and thought about my fear of walking home from school as a kid. Then I closed my laptop and took a deep breath. Reading it again this morning, I am reminded of Poulenc and his opera Dialogue of the Carmelites which sears with sweet music. Please keep writing. It's more than good.

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  5. Daniel James Shigo, thank you. We all go through this in some way or another and sometimes I think despite the fact that life is easier for our tribe here in the west it is the confused as hell, downcast kids who are being targeted.

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  6. It is fascinating what we take with us on our journey and what we leave behind. And equally fascinating are the ways the discarded, forgotten come back to us with the ugliness scraped off and the beauty allowed to shine through. I think aging is a form of candlelight vision, where we can travel through time and see our past in a different light.

    As Alice Walker's mother told her when they were walking through the garden in fall with some tomatoes still good for the plucking, "Take what you can use and let the rest rot."

    p.s. I am fairly confident that childhood bully lacks your intelligence, your wisdom or your grace.

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    1. home before dark, as you are wont to do, you added to both the discourse and the imagery - "aging is a form of candlelight vision" - and I'm grateful for it. It is as if pools of light, soft light at that, illuminate memories shifting with significance. Random? I think not.

      Thank you.

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  7. Well, thank youso much for that really lovely and obviously (witness the responses) evocative posting.

    I learned of your blog via Dominique Browning's link on "Slow Love Life", and your writings been nothing but a pure pleasure since I began reading it.

    It is odd and wistfully/wryly amusing to recall the way most of us established our individual refuges during childhood. In my case (and I come from a VERY vocal family of extroverts), I was about 8 or so when I "discovered" the old, 19th century mill, which was a twenty minute-or-so hike through the woods behind our place in East Tennessee. It was an enormous, 3-story, wooden structure that sat beside Ten-Mile Creek (one of those waterways that's more than a "creek", but something slightly less than a river).

    I took a couple of the dogs and went there every Saturday and, during the Summers, practically everyday. The owner was an old man (with an even more ancient mother) who lived in the big farmhouse across the road. they allowed me free rein of the mill. I generally wnet to the top floor and read, after I'd spent a few hours collecting crawfish, minows, turtles, and snakes for my "zoo" back at my family's house (do I need to emphasize that most of my zoo's occupants had relatively short tenures and, thus, had to be replaced every week or so?).

    I don't think my parents or grandmother ever knew I went to the mill. I don't recall intentionally witholding the information, but I know I thought of it (and the owners) as "mine".

    In a similar vein, but more amusingly?....

    One of my longtime friends is the daughter (now fifty-something) of a former head-justice of the Virginia Supreme Court. Her mother is/was an enterprisingly frenetic socialite (think Ruth Draper's "the Italian Lesson"). Her four older siblings are all fiercely intelligent, wildly vocal and(frankly) competitive sorts. All in all, mild-mannered-her was fairly overwhelmed by her own family, as she grew up at Oak Lawn (google the house).

    She's still a lovely, if quiet woman these days (also a Literature professor). She tells of being very young and, on a regular basis, feeling simply OVERWHELMED by the non-stop verbal-sparring among her parents and much-older siblings.

    At age five or so, she'd simply retreat to the large closet under the front-entrance stairs. Eventually, her mother or the maid would notice that she was missing, spend half an hour looking for her....and they'd find her in that big, old closet. Upon being asked what in the world she was DOING there, my friend would announce "I'm in my ORIFICE".

    I find that very amusing....aparently, her mother had no idea what the little girl meant, until they realized that she was, at age five, well aware that, when Judge-Daddy said he was going into his office, you weren't supposed to even knock on the door.

    To their credit, they allowed my friend to have her "orifice" as her own sacntuary. According to her, she kept using it even when she was in high-skool and simply needed to get some homework done in that bustling, very loud household of competitive extroverts.

    Thanks again for the wonderful posting,

    david terry
    www.davidterryart.com

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    1. David Terry, thank you for the best read of the day - and the first read over my early morning cup of coffee that brought a smile to my face. Being overwhelmed by the proximity of other people's personalities is a feeling I know well. I cannot go into company without spending a day at least thereafter licking my wounds, as it were, in my "orifice." Thank you.

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  8. I read each line with increasing horror as I realised where you were going with this, culminating in the "nothing was said" which says so much, actually.

    But then you turned this around into the most beautifully composed and honestly written story, no bitterness attached at all. Reflection instead. And poignancy. Extraordinary writing, even by your own lofty standards.

    And perhaps the appeal of a caravan is always as a refuge, even if it is a holiday - still a refuge away from our everyday lives.

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    1. Glamour Drops, my apologies for the late reply. If you read the following post you'll see I've been out of town - not really an excuse for tardiness, I know, but ...

      I still hanker after a country place looking over water and surrounded by trees but it is not something I'll find in Georgia if I want to be free of noise from boats, etc.

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  9. Oh Blue, I'm so glad you are retired now and can devote more time to your blog. That was beautiful indeed. I just want to give you a big kiss and hug you. Maybe when you come back....

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    1. lindaraxa, thank you. I'm taking Italian lessons two mornings a week and seem to spend the rest of the week either at the doctor's or the dentist's. Such is retirement!

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  10. My own muscle magazines, hidden between the mattresses, were found by Mildred, the thin, sad woman who worked for us (naive adolescent that I was, it never occurred to me that mattresses were regularly turned. They were deposited on the hall table next to my parents. The lecture, aside from moral implications, was also one about consideration for the help. Remaining naive, i hid the next stash in the same place, and history repeated itself---I still rarely learn from my mistakes)

    My early teen years were spent avoiding violence at the hands of my more sociopathic peers---a walk from school to the store was fraught with danger---a universal experience for so many of us. Of course, I got bigger, stronger, more confident, and all faded---but we share these experiences and moments---though rarely write about them as well as you have here.

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    1. The Down East Dilettante, thank you and my apologies for the late reply. It's probable that all of us have similar stories and we certainly know from the news that the bigots are still active. We survived but a lot of the kids nowadays do not.

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  11. What a story ...

    Nothing like a refuge, though.

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    1. Linnea, thank you. You're right, there's nothing like a refuge.

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  12. Oh dear Blue, here I am coming at this many days later. So beautifully written, as I would expect. "The smell of creosote" got me, bringing as it does like so many smells the intimacy of youthful, (or any days), but especially at (boarding) school from before 8 years old, and how one develops the armoury to deal with arrows and darts thrown. I still have maddening habits, ("they think"), to cope. But I'm now old enough and wise enough not to care, and think people should enjoy my eccentricities!

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    1. columnist, thank you. I apologize for the late reply. We developed armor and armories but I wish, as I say to the Dilattante above, that the younger ones today had the same chance go do that - social media is creating hell for some of the younger members of the tribe.

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