Hello, Old Friend

Friday Fireside #6 | Curlew or curfew. You choose.

The Subsiding of the Waters of the Deluge by Thomas Cole (1829)

Hello, old friend.

I write this alone. But in writing, you are never alone. As long as you, kind stranger, read on. Read on.

We were two years trapped in our homes. Now the plague's not done, but we've done time. Locked-up and locked-down, locked-out of time.

Isolation. From the Latin, insulatus, to make into an island. We were islands then.

Quarantine. From the medieval Italian, quarantena, the forty days of isolation a ship must wait, to keep the Black Death from our shore.

Forty days and forty nights.

Did Noah, all at sea, look to a dark sky and whisper: how long now?

And when the dove circled the ark, was the old man happy, or was the old man sad?

Spring's plague brought summer curfew. Autumn storm and winter war. Hearts grew heavy with anger and with grief. How long now?

After the storm, I walk out to assess the damage. A clearing in the woods, where last night an old tree stood. Sunlight spills from above and across the storm-torn gap, a bird flies against the sun.

Down on the beach, the tide's heading out. Noah's there somewhere, looking for signs. How long now?

And across the waves, here they come.

A scattering of V shapes, low above the water. Vagrant visitors. Long moon-sipped bills. The curlews come.

Migrants, refugees. From a frozen Europe to our rough isle. Looking for supper in the sands and feathered company.

I'm not supper and I'm no company, so they ignore me. Flock and call. And I realise I haven't seen anything so wild these last two years.

The ancient Romans read the future in the patterns of birds in the sky. Augury, they called it. Taking the auspices. From the Latin auspicium, one who looks at birds.

I watch the curlews. Auspicious or inauspicious. I ask them, how long now?

They choose not to answer. And the more I watch and the more I listen, I see they have nothing to do with me.

They've come from a wild sea and a wild place, somewhere beyond and beneath and before these virulent times.

There's comfort there, at least.

And now my hands are tendrils, my feet are roots. I am feathers and flight. I am question and story. I am curlew too.

And below me, the world goes on as before.

Ali Smith’s Companion Piece with a page from Anna Koska’s From Coast & Cove

“A story is always a question”

I wrote this piece last year after reading Ali Smith’s Companion Piece. The novel follows on from her Seasonal Quartet, documenting British life between 2016 and 2021. This book dealt with the pandemic, among many other things, at the end of a tumultuous half-decade that began with the Brexit vote in June 2016.

These events have begun to fade. And in fact, the details of Companion Piece are already a little hazy in my mind. What I do have is this 400-word sketch that I posted on Instagram. It is my companion from that time.

I’m sharing this with you for a few reasons.

For those unfamiliar with my writing on Instagram, it may give an idea of what I have been doing over there. I have a hard time explaining what this writing is. It’s not a book review. It’s not a diary. For want of a better word, I call these pieces book tangents.

On reflection, my approach has been to treat every book I read as a writing prompt. As an open-ended question. I disassemble some of the language and images from the story, connect it to the thoughts and feelings flowing through me as I read it, and construct something small and true.

I do this for myself. It is a writing exercise like any other. And a record-keeping. But it has been heartening to find others also enjoy reading and listening to them. I would like to inspire others to read creatively and play with how we respond to and record the experience of reading.

There is another reason for including this piece today. I want these letters, and

Footnotes and Tangents

to be the home of all my writing. On Instagram, I have very little control over my content. For too long I have been eking out an existence in captions on a platform designed around photo-sharing and advertising. It feels good to be leaving that behind.

So from time to time in these letters, I’ll dust off something I want to keep and bring it here. Find a shelf, near a window, where the old words can catch a new light.

Yours,

Simon

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In case you missed it…

Here’s the most recent War and Peace post:

Here’s my most recent Friday newsletter on my guided audiobook:

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Simon Haisell

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Footnotes and Tangents

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