It all started with a Glastonbury-like feeling in a local paddock in the space between 1987 and 1988.
I was a small girl who if given my own head would use it and quietly - and sometimes not so quietly - wander.
Some four or five years later Glissando and Teetaatumtee came for a Christmas and New Year visit [1992-93].
Teetaatumtee liked the outdoors very much and he liked me and I liked him and we had fond memories and appreciated one another's Being and Presence more than Presents.
It is like the spirit of the Oh very young song by Yusuf Islam in the 1970s.
Glissando was a musician and a very quiet man who liked the semirural settings which were characteristic of our milieu and our world very much.
Like many children and teenagers in my orbit, Teetaatumtee appreciated the lattice treehouse that was in my garden from 1990 to 2000 - he liked the inside and the windows and the desk and the dolls' house that had been made.
Glissando appreciated quiet time and undemanding company with my mother who when we had known each other most actively was an advocate-activist-secretary.
They appreciated the contemplation.
Last Friday was the anniversary of martial law in Poland.
When I looked for "Walęsa" in my notebooks I remembered that Jean-Michael Jarre had a concert from 2005. It was in the Lenin Shipyard or perhaps the Conrad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mzJ5OdFbW8
There is a very fine poem by Apollo Korzeniowski which he wrote to his brother-in-law:
Ready is your boat, and in the outspread sails,
Blows the wind, lighthearted,
Some of us life may deceive,
You will choose the right way.
May cowards tremble at lofty waves,
To you they bring good fortune!
You know the hidden reefs
And are familiar with the tempest!
Your eager boat, with eagle’s wings,
Will make a rapid passage,
And, steered with reason, governed by strength,
Will reach the shores of fame!
But, resting on your journey,
In the golden lands of fortune,
Remember, o remember, with a sigh,
Those who perished in the tempest!
I read it in Gustaf Morf's The Polish heritage of Joseph Conrad.
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