Private, unseen places

I probably spend on average 7 hours a night next to this little table but last evening I realised I don't see it anymore.  I noticed the dust and the cobwebs first of all and then I noticed what was really there.

A bog standard lamp that i think I nicked from my parents years ago, a portrait of Bernie painted by Françoise Walch from a photo taken by her daughter one summer by the lake.  

The little head (Buddha?) came from a flea market in Paris.  I picked it up and remembered that I'd rolled a tiny peice of paper inside his hollow head.  I unfurled it and read 'your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as the untamed mind.  But once mastered, no one can help you as much, not even your father or your mother'.  It was scribbled in my untamed hand and attributed to Buddha (Dhamma Pada).  I rolled it up and slipped it back into the head.  I looked at the face and remembered that I'd loved it all those years ago in Paris because it reminded me of Leila.  I realised that I hadn't succeeded too well in putting the words of Buddha into practice and I could do better.  I no longer have a father and I'm currently teaching my mother to read a clock, like she did with me when I was a child. 

The clock was beside my grandfather's bed from time immemorial.  He never had any trouble reading it.  His body was broken but his mind wasn't.  It took me back to primary school music lessons in a portocabin at the shady end of the playground, standing round the piano singing My grandfather's clock was too tall for the shelf.....'  and trying not to cry when we got to the bit when 'it stopped, short never to be heard again when the old man  died;'.   I also cried when we sang Belafonte"s Jamaica farewell which Bobby sang to me at bed time, followed by the story of his first time in Kingston Town when he understood that the tipple there should was rum,  not red wine which tasted of vinegar and which he tipped down the hotel sink, staining the porcelaine red for eternity.  Then I remembered being in that same portocabin and noticed that Lindsay was covered in spots.  We both decided (correctly) that it was chickenpox and I made her breathe her germs in my general direction so I would be sick at the same time as her.  The next day she was absent. A couple of days I was too, just until the end of the summer term.  My ma made me do maths every morning and every afternoon we spent down by the river.

Mu's three month old eyes peep round the clock.

I unclipped the quote on the lamp and re-read it.  It took me back to Whitman's book shop on the edge of the Seine, where I'd kill time waiting for the St Michel restaurants to open, where you could get snails, a steak and chips and a slice of apple tart for 100 francs.

I'm glad I took another look beyond the dust