Sunday, March 14, 2010

Ingredients and Umbrellas

umbrellas...

I don't know how to cook but I am content that other people do and continue to cook, at times feeding me and improving in their techniques and expertise whilst I experiment with bonfire building methods, listening and trying on sunglasses in petrol stations.

Germaine Greer was on the radio talking like some old friend about how her father had returned home after the war: broken, drinking heavily and silent. "We never had a decent conversation" she said, " he remained silent in order to protect us from what he had seen and done, like many men who return from war". Germaine went on of course to discuss her feminist writings, failed marriage and various other things she had experienced. I was however not listening to any of that, I was hanging onto and mulling over "broken, drinking heavily and silent". Words that seemed in a vague and yet precise way to be some recipe for the make up of my own long gone father (mentioned in this old post), who went to war and paid the price for the next 30 years of his life. Sometimes I think I am gathering together the elements of some wonderful recipe of understanding, as these ingredients appear, change and come together. Then I remember that I cannot cook and cannot be bothered to cook. I am trying to feed and entertain ghosts, ghosts best left silent and hungry.


...and ingredients

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