Memory: Loss

 A short walk along the Norfolk Coast.....

Well.... Here goes.... Back down memory lane for a moment.....

Amanda with Henry Moore's Large Figure in a Shelter.

Last year, in January, shortly before Amanda died, I walked from our home in Snettisham, via Amanda in her care home, then along the Norfolk Coast Path to Wells-next-the-sea (a total of 32 miles in two days). This raised £4,568.96 + £739.00 Gift Aid for The National Brain Appeal....

{....and should you wish to know more about that, please see: https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2024/01/fundraising-for-national-brain-appeal.html}

Amanda at Wells-next-the-sea in 2004

Amanda died, however, on February 1st last year, and so, starting on the anniversary this year, I aim to complete the Coast Path from Wells to Great Yarmouth, a distance of approximately 60 miles.  I hope to reach Weybourne on the first day....

Then on to Mundesley for the second night, Ingham for the third, and, if the stars align and god wills it, I shall stumble into Great Yarmouth on the fourth day.

It is going to be quite tough, I think, partly because the weather forecast isn't great, and partly because, having just topped 74 years, my knees aren't quite as good as they were, and I have recently been diagnosed with wear and tear in my meniscuses..... [Any old iscuse.... Ed]

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold - W B Yeats

However, driven on by my memories of loss, I am eager to raise money for The National Brain Appeal, which provides much-needed funds to support The National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery and the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology {– together known as Queen Square (London). This is one of the world’s leading centres for the diagnosis, treatment and care of patients with neurological and neuromuscular conditions. These include stroke, multiple sclerosis, brain cancer, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, and dementia.}  

Queen Square supported Amanda and me throughout the twelve or so years of her dementia, and, given that there are 14.7 million people affected by neurological conditions in the UK, that 600,000 people are diagnosed with a neurological condition each year and that currently at least 850,000 people act as carers for those affected, I believe the NBA is a really worthwhile cause.

But, sadly, we have moved on, and as Gertrude reminds her son:

..... all that lives must die,

Passing through nature to eternity.

William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2

We have to deal with our memories, and our losses.  Life is not, despite what some will have you believe, a competition, so we must not fall into the trap of being sore losers (nor seek pardon).  Years ago I resolved never to make New Year Resolutions, but, if I were to make one now, it might be to make the most of the infinitely expanded present.....

*****

Should you wish to contribute to the National Brain Appeal, sponsoring my walk, please follow this link:

https://www.justgiving.com/page/richard-gibbs-1735565578129

*****

Come, see

real flowers

of this painful world.

BASHO

Looking back....

Janus, the spirit of comings and goings.....

In these dark northern days, shortness of sky, lack of light, prevalence of precipitation..... abundance of alliteration....

We are in the jaws of Janus: Arches/doorways/beginnings/endings.....

I have been reviewing pictures of the past. And, with the utmost respect to Janus's duplicitous features, I look back with both affection and trepidation. I love the past, but I fear it too. I cannot live there. The shades pursue me.

But it can be a wonderful world, while I must also look to the future....

Without prejudice, and without politics, I have chosen pictures here that reflect my love for Italy, and the life that, for well over twenty years, I spent in that complex and benighted land.

Of course there is no right way, nor wrong way, to portray a country that did not exist c150 years ago,  but whose geography has bound it together through the years, and whose notional history has fried itself into the collective minds of those who don't, like me, have the right to comment....

My personal relationship with Italy is inevitably (though not exclusively) linked to the delightful woman (Amanda) who for more than forty years put up with me....  Who danced in the Via dei Fori Imperiale and anywhere there was music; who shared everything and everywhere.....  Mussolini could not have deterred her.  We loved it all....  

For many years we lived on the shores of Lake Bracciano:

In the village of Trevignano Romano:

But initially, I lived in Trastevere, close by Santa Maria:

And the city of Rome, my home for years, is manageable, so long as you take it in your stride:

Or stand back a little:

Or look at it askance:

Or admire its viscera:

I love the ingenuity of this world.  Here a Muse rests her immortal chin on her knuckle within a now defunct power station. How many centuries separate past and present is not the issue.  The extraordinary continuum is what takes my breath away....

And then, not far away, a relatively forgotten stone recalls the horrors that hardly a lifetime ago deprived Rome of all dignity or humanity.  The history of Rome is, like so many other histories, full of infamy, stained with blood and pain. Ignominy is so often the middle name of rulers.....

A memorial to a now contested incident - though it represents a period when many uncontested executions were certainly carried out......

But, burying my head in the mud, I love Italy.  So much of my life unravelled within the highs and lows of this beautiful part of the world.  So many nights playing hoopla in Trajan's Forum:

So many nights wandering home through dark streets near dawn, pretending to be Marcello Mastroianni, or blowing imaginary kisses to Anna Magnani.....

But Italy is not Rome.  Look at Pisa, by day:

Or by night:

Admire the profile of Monte Amiata under restless skies:

Or spend an evening as the full moon rises over San Gimignano:

Relax by, and swim in the effervescent waters of Lago di Vico:

Or savour the salt, swim with the fish, dine on spaghetti alle vongole at Santa Severa:

Don't let's worry about the monsters:

Think about the joys of the Nile - or anywhere....

Sing along with Verdi:

Tap your feet to the local band:

Have an aperitivo overlooking the Campo in Siena:

Or a small carafe of wine:

Or, if the mood takes you, a jug of something local (Grazie, Antonio):

Share an al fresco lunch with friends (Grazie, Gino):

Pay your respects to the Etruscans:

Check out the heart of Lucca:

Or the arts of Subiaco:

Breathe the sun going down over the sea:

Or scent the darkness over Tuscan hills, an evening confusion of rosemary with fig, helichrysum italicum with ginestra..... while a wood fire toasts fegatelli on the grill.  Oh.....

I watch the nuns of Santa Brigida fade, giggling, into the night in Farfa:

I sleep in the bed where Verdi was born:

I don the clothes of a cloistered monk to dead-head my roses:

I park where I like:

I will take confession (if that is what you wish...)

And I will give you a ride on my shiny shoed horse, if you will inform on your best friend:

And I will show you the tomb where America buried Italy, if you will follow me:

Yes.  Look at me looking at myself, but not knowing what I see (Grazie, Caravaggio).....

Italy has always been an enigma, and will continue to be a prickly pear, a fruit with beauty enclosed in a difficult skin.  Persist and you will be rewarded.  Shy back and you will miss the joy.

All relationships have their highlights and their shadows.  Here Amanda poses in the doorway of a pizzeria that, having been a stable and then a garage, was moulded into a successful bar in the Suburra by friends who accepted me into a short-lived partnership, which could have changed our lives.....  [Another story?  Ed]

Ah.  yes.  All those years ago.....  And this is Lago di Bracciano, by which we lived, and where Amanda rests now, swimming, smiling in her sleep at all this nostalgia:

We are in January, remembering the Roman god who looked both ways, back and forward.  It is our destiny to be consumed by our past and to fret about our future, but Janus teaches us to be calm and to take it in our stride.  His expressions are neither fraught nor discomfited.  Ahead and behind are essentially the same - just two aspects that combine to make one whole.

Dance on my little one: