Back to school

True to form, I am beginning to unwind just as the school holidays draw to a close. Always predictable and on target - it takes 10 days to really relax. When asked what I did in the holidays, I am seldom able to really recall. This recall thing is either drug related (all prescription of course) or an age factor (yes, yes I am approaching 50). So what has really moved me?
An art exhibition. The Rita Angus exhibition at Te Papa was awesome. I have little genuine appreciation for art, never having really been able to create much with pen or brush. This work moved me - ok I did not show the tears but it was profound in this sense - this was the deepest creativity of a woman ahead of her time. What can I say - a glimpse into the soul (looking into her eyes) and also looking through her eyes - the lens of shape and form, curious colours and wonderful vistas.
Enough of that. The exhibition is over and so was her life some decades back. Yet she lives and speaks. Abel too still speaks - the victim of a horrible fratricide. Millions of dead still speak - but how bad we are at listening. Will I still speak? Are people really listening while I live? When I cease to speak?
What else moved me this week? Brahms' German Requiem. I have always loved the fourth movement. The whole thing is not a good requiem in the Catholic sense - it is not for the dead but a Blessing for those who mourn. So on 9th November I will hear it in Wellington - commemorating the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938. A Remembrance concert - including Boris Pigovat's Holocaust Requiem - he will be here from Israel for the concert.
O gosh, I am too easily moved. I have been for almost two years - finding myself weeping at the contradictions, the deep griefs, the dreadful capacity of powerful people who miss the point despite the greatness of their dreams.
Well there is this movie you could watch. Guess the poet:

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Not for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

Perhaps I am trying to put my arms around the griefs of the the ages. The task is just a little too big for me.

Yes it is "In My Craft Or Sullen Art". See the movie "The Edge of Love" - the actor playing the poet is Matthew Rhys. See the movie.

So what of back to school? Would that more would try to put their arms round the griefs of the ages. The cheerful energy and reckless abandon with which the young men face their dreams and avoid their tasks is both liberating and scary. This last stretch takes us through to Advent and - hopefully - a fresh celebration of the coming of the Light of Christ into the dreary fears of this choked world. The markets tumble - yet poor and desperate alike live day or hour to hour for simple gifts of love and food to nourish - and here we sit sharing words of colour and question - words travelling through the cyber-routes that criss-cross such pain and horror on this hectic globe.

Whatever you go back to each day - may you embrace the griefs and dance the joys.