rightness

to do the right thing —
just this incredibly strong
urge — like an instinct
— towards rightness — what is it?
how come it does so much harm?

There is a clear route of association, from having seen the film The Danish Girl last night, to this idea in the poem, of a person’s inbuilt sense of rightness — although it wasn’t conscious at all in the process of writing. But the Eddie Redmayne character (Lili Elbe) is made up almost entirely of this passionate urge towards rightness (i.e. to her, being a woman feels completely right). I got to it though, this morning, by thinking about fidelity. I had two dreams last night, in both of which Liz was my faithful companion. In one, we were digging up the roots of a tree together. In the other, we were part of a foursome with another couple. I noticed, thinking about how much I passionately desire to be with Liz and to stay with Liz, that it was all bound up with a generalised desire to please the beneficent forces of the universe (whatever they are). Actually, fidelity is much more irrational than that sounds. It goes to the deepest gut level which I don’t understand. But so in fact does the urge towards rightness. There’s no doubt at all, for me, as to how illusory the idea of ‘right’ is. It ends up wrong so often, it’s almost the invariable rule. But I don’t propose to try to justify that statement here.

Lloegyr

how shall I ever
conquer my own arrogance?
— by remembering
to honour the Welsh hills — whose
gentleness answers the dawn

There are too many allusions here, making it very meaningful for me personally and probably of negligible merit for anyone else. This is an occupational hazard both for poets and for dream-interpreters. The starting point was last night’s dream of a satellite view of North London, showing numerous areas of natural open space — not so much parks as in reality, as heathland, hills and moors. These hills had Welsh names, even though this was London. I also dreamed of a church where the dead body of my paternal grandfather was being displayed for his funeral. The corpse had quite an attractive, gentle smile on its face and I felt a flood of positive emotion. My grandfather’s name was Arthur, which connects, as it happens, with the title of the poem. Lloegyr is the original Welsh name for Roman Britain from which came the name for King Arthur’s Britain (Logres). As a child I was an avid reader of the books of Roger Lancelyn Green, whose retelling of the Arthurian legends makes great play of the name Logres as indicating some kind of semi-holy realm, not just the geographical land of Britain. The symbolic importance for me of the Welsh hills refers back to a dream I had in the early nineties when I was homeless and entertaining fantasies of settling down in a relationship with a transgender person (male to female) whom I’d met. In my dream, she was an artist, painting watercolours of the Welsh hills, and this visual image filled me with an incredibly poignant yearning. I have never forgotten it as a symbol of unattainable happiness just out of reach, but nevertheless existing as a promise.

pencil scribblings #7

Remembering and honouring and preserving the Christian rituals/beliefs I was taught in childhood — is incredibly important. But hang on a minute. If these beliefs are no longer alive and vivid and literal, surely they must resemble museum exhibits. Do I have some kind of inner museum of my own past, which I visit and view with a detachedness which is vaguely disquieting, because there is a lack of connection between the exhibits and the present moment? I think the answer is probably yes. And it goes deeper, because it applies to a good many more aspects of my past than just my Christianity.

So welcome to my ‘museum’ then. Let me roll out an exhibit for you now. Many of my exhibits are dreams, which I still remember from decades ago. I want to display now a dream — about museums — which I had on the morning of 14th May 1985.

In the dream, I saw the French novelist Stendhal (real name Henri Beyle) exhibited in a glass case. He had female genitals which were displayed for all to see. He was alive in the sense of existing in some kind of afterlife, and aware of the indignity of it all, but seemed philosophical about it. Awake, it was obvious to me that his physical transgender status in the dream was symbolic of a psychological disposition while he had been alive, towards women, whereby he both studied them and loved them. Women were so supremely important in his life that now, after death, he had become one himself. So his fate — his being here in this museum — had a kind of dignity about it despite everything. Attached to the glass case was a label which bore the Russian word meaning ‘science’: НАУКА

About twelve months earlier, I had read a biography of Stendhal by Joanna Richardson. I had not at that stage read any of his novels. I’d also begun toying with the idea that I might be a reincarnation of Stendhal. This was partly because our respective attitudes towards women were so similar. For example, we both made a big deal of unrequited love, refusing to surrender the loved one spiritually, even though physically there was no possibility of consummation. It was also because of a couple of biographical coincidences. Like me, he had a sister named Pauline. He was born on 23rd January and died on 23rd March. I was born on 23rd March and my sister was born on 23rd July. There were also some parallels with his hating his father, as I did mine (at least during my teenage years), and a certain emotional dependency on his maternal grandfather.

The label НАУКА in the dream, deserves a few words of explanation but it is difficult to know how to begin to convey the depth of felt irony attached to the idea ‘science’ for me, both in the dream and in waking life. There was definitely some kind of notion in the dream, that science was being mocked or at least taken down a peg or two. I felt, in the dream, that I was in a future world, far in the future, when ‘science’ itself would be viewed as a quaint museum exhibit. I regard this with my waking mind as entirely plausible, not to say likely. The explosion of science in the last couple hundred years is a fleeting phenomenon viewed on the timescale of centuries. Science tends to have an inflated view of its own importance, to put it mildly.

I read an interesting article yesterday about the relation between science and the humanities, by Iain McGilchrist. Actually it is not just interesting. It’s brilliant.

contrasexual

in some sense, I am
a woman discovering
her masculine side

Some quite scary feelings in my dream last night. Intense sexual desire mixed with a sense of the immanence of the supernatural — as though my mental state were some kind of swirling vortex of supernatural forces. I guess since physically I am a man, any sense in which I am a woman must be non-physical; and maybe anything non-physical is potentially a gateway to the supernatural. Contrasexuality is a term I first came across in an academic paper about the Jungian theory of anima and animus (respectively, the feminine side of a man and the masculine side of a woman). Wouldn’t that be a great label to embrace, for example on those endless equal opportunities monitoring forms: Would you describe yourself as (1) heterosexual (2) gay (3) bisexual (4) transgender (5) rather not say…..? So just write contrasexual and leave them to work out what it means.