Every January, besides visiting their local gymnasium, some people see a travel agent, being resolved to spend “whatever it takes” to go somewhere this year. Because if we don’t resolve, then somehow another year slips by.
At my regular class for “Free Fall Friday” writing, (At the Alexandra Centre Writers Society) I wrote two pieces of another place and time. As I have noted before, each Free Fall piece starts with a prompt, and then we all write madly, with a timer, while soaring down the rabbit hole of our imagination.
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. -L.P. Hartley, writer (30 Dec 1895-1972)
Prompt- two edge sword
I was at the British museum—and there they were! From that black and white photograph in my old 1930’s text book—those same swords, side by side. The text caption for the rapier had said, “for thrusting.” Although my brother Gordon later told me that some of them had three edges, hence the phrase, “his sharp three edged wit.”
Is there anything better for a grown up boy than the British Museum? World famous, and deservedly so. Taking up valuable real estate, in the heart of Central London, but bringing in lots of tourist dollars, that more than make up for the cost. Oh, but what sort of boring adult thinks of cost? How can you measure the torch of imagination, that beacon of science and history?
Here I saw with a video and artifacts, the five components of a clock, or pocket watch, or wrist watch. It took the Swiss years to be able to make their gravity operated cuckoo clock, complete with a sound effect that did not require any electricity or chips.
Here I saw the craftsmanship and imagination of humble humans long dead who wanted to go just a little beyond utilitarianism in their clay pots and baskets. Their lives were hard, and on the margins, yet they found time to pay the cost of adding beauty to their lives. I just stood and marvelled, because my pots would have looked like mere pots.
They had, our ancestors, the same I.Q. as us. Hence their clay pipes, lead pipes and vast array of aqueducts bringing life giving water for miles. As an adult I was to realize that their mixed bathing, in their grand bathhouses, was not from having a more immodest culture but from their lack of money for bathing suits and separate facilities. Like the Japanese of the 20th century, until they got democracy and good capitalism.
Our ancestors, down the centuries, found different answers to their quest for security and the rule of law, whether the castles of feudalism or the forums of the ancient Greek republics. The museum has a model of the acropolis, on it’s high hill, showing the high regard the Greeks gave to freedom of assembly and freedom of speech.
The Gods were there. In statues and frescoes, in the etchings of the pyramids—they have sarcophagi on the fourth floor. I manfully resisted calling, “Where are you, Scooby Do?”
Prompt- hole in the wall
Only in America would you have a phrase like “hole in the wall.” Not for other, more rural, less poetic places. But here. In the land of urban skyscraper there would be little fading shops at ground level, and in one hole in the wall place would be your fortune teller, your philatelist, or your Olde Curiosity Shop.
Only in America, out towards places like the grand canyon, would there be an escarpment with a secret notch known only to folks who go swapping horses on the back trails leading to the hole-in-the-wall gang.
Can you see them? Spirited young boys never meaning no harm, chewing straw at the back of a darkened ranch, talking in low voices as the hospitable owner gave them fresh mounts—that’s “them” as in young outlaws, who like any young men, never like to travel alone—and walking their horses off clip clop under the desert stars, brilliant and remote. Smell of dust and sage, and warm collitas as young men ponder the pompetis of love.
Riding while tired becomes a way of life, worth it to be out on the lone prairie while a glorious palette of morning sky out rivals the colors of the painted desert. A bumble bee breezes by on the way to Apache wells. Owls return to their little cacti holes. Gophers start to poke their noses out of their family holes. Saddles creak. Horses snort. The first eagle is almost ready to fly. Colors fade into memory. Turn in your saddle to memorize your back trail, note the landmarks, and try to retain the memory of God’s glorious firmament. Something to tell the rancher’s daughter of the adventurous life of an outlaw.
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Sean Crawford as comments travel through time and space,
On Mountain Standard Time,
January 2021
