The wherefore of something this foggy day

Pondering what I am doing here

There are times when I wonder what it was I once wrote about so regularly on this here humble blog, as inspiration or inclination now fails me for long stretches at a time. It is perhaps at least partly true that the more you write the more you then have to write about, so then the longer you stop, the less there seems to be to say. In pondering this and in wanting to keep the art of writing alive I returned to the title of this blog: “something this foggy day”, a line from Christina Rossetti’s poem Later Life: A Double Sonnet of Sonnets, which is followed by the line (all this used to be in my blog header) “a something which is neither of this fog nor of today”. It is the idea that ties together almost all the themes of this blog - that “something” that comes to us and lifts us out of this time and this day and the fog we find ourselves in, die Sehnsucht that grips us and feels like a homesickness, but also feels like a longing for a far country we have never visited, the beauty that enraptures, the goodness that speaks to us of grander ways of living and truth that exists beyond, the thin places where heaven and earth seem to come close, the glimmers of light beyond … all of them in some ways ‘signals of transcendence’, to steal the title from Os Guinness.

So, I thought going forward I would simply continue as I begun and post of little moments of transcendence, whatever they happen to be - small beauties and wonders, books and music that lift me out of here and now, insights that point above and beyond. There are times in life when one has to look harder to see them. At the moment I find myself living alone in a somewhat characterless unit, catching a bus and taking an elevator to my desk behind office partitions, living a life I never dreamed or imagined would be mine, which I confess I find at times disappointing and soul-destroying. But then I guess the whole point of a signal of transcendence is that it raises one’s gaze beyond where they currently are, which becomes almost irrelevant, so I will keep my senses open.

So, I recently took a deep dive into the books of Claire Keegan. I am not sure how I managed to miss this author from some years until recently actually, but her name was mentioned in podcast about writing, so I took note. I didn’t find her works in any second hand stores, which is often a good way to test whether one will like an author or not as modern fiction is a risk, so I added them to a Christmas list, and received Foster and Small Things Like These. These are only short works, so for a short time on Christmas Day and Boxing Day I was completely transported out of the fog and taken beyond myself as I read. Without wanting to spoil the story, I loved this portion from Small Things Like These, where it is taking a courageous action to assist another human in their suffering, that is the something this foggy day:

As they carried on along and met more people Furlong did and did not know, he found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping on another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror?

How light and tall he almost felt walking along with this girl at his side and some fresh, new, unrecognisable joy in his heart. Was it possible that the best bit of him was shining forth, and surfacing? Some part of him, whatever it could be called - was there any name for it? - was going wild, he knew. The fact was that he would pay for it but never once in his whole and unremarkable life had he known a happiness akin to this …

You would not regret reading this book, which is on all the lists I have since seen of the greatest books (so far) of this century. I should sound a warning though, that while the two books above are stunningly beautiful and heart-enlarging, the stories in Antarctica I found to be quite deeply disturbing. Each of them read to me as a cautionary tale of the potential consequences of doing a wrong thing. So Late in the Day was less disturbing, also less beautiful than the others, but worth reading for what it showed of the human condition. The Forester’s Daughter was similar. I am yet to read Walk the Blue Fields, and am looking forward to that.

*These foggy pictures were taken on a fantastic six-day walk I did last year along the Overland Track in Tasmania, where there were definitely ‘somethings’. I will share more photos.