VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, [6], 7, 8, 9, 10 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 13:16:10 04/09/09 Thu
Author: celtgirl
Subject: His Lordship is in residence for a wee bit>>>
In reply to: Shanarama 's message, "Knock, knock......" on 23:54:45 04/07/09 Tue

copyright 2009 Cindy Brandner

(fr. the journals of James Kirkpatrick- this is something I work on, on and off, and this entry comes shortly after he first meets Pamela, that summer in the Vineyard- imagine this is written in an elegant, but hasty hand in a thick leatherbound journal, something so battered that it looks like it traveled all Europe with a medieval monk...)

July, 1961


‘She is oddly beautiful, a most arresting child- I barely understand my own emotions around her, only that in this child I have found a friend, such as I never hoped to find again in my life. Her mind is far beyond her years, and she’s conversant on poetry, prose, cabbages and kings. Last night she quoted Patrick Kavanaugh at me, as we came through the gate into the field, saying;

And then I came to the haggard gate
And I knew as I entered that I had come
Through fields that were no part of earthly estate.

“Doesn’t that just give you the most delicious shiver?” she asked me. “I feel it sometimes in this field, as if I’ve stepped out of time and place, and I expect to see strange creatures in the brush that are nothing to do with this world.”

She was right, there is something about that particular field, a sort of magic that isn’t entirely wholesome and therefore a tad more exciting. She seems to anticipate my thoughts often, and will finish sentences with an eagerness, that tells me hers is a mind that has been starved of the sort of company it needs to flourish properly. And so, I do what small things I can, bring her books of poetry and the ancient classics, she has picked up enough Latin and Greek already to make her way slowly through short passages of Ovid and Virgil. I am learning to love them again through her thoughts and interpretations. She halted no more than five lines into the first eclogue yesterday and fixing me with that terribly honest and rather stern green gaze of hers, asked if I, like the narrator was ‘exiled from home’. I found myself saying ‘yes’ before I could think to halt my tongue.

In truth, I am exiled at present, not through choice, but rather through circumstance. I could go home if I chose, but what waits for me there, except further proof of my own shortcomings and failures? I know come autumn there will be no more avoiding ‘home’ and I will return, for good or ill, to resume my ‘real life’. For now though I linger with this strange and lovely child, telling myself I do it for her good, yet knowing it is she that is so very necessary to me just now.

When our lesson was done, she seemed preoccupied and looked at me suddenly, very seriously, those green eyes like a rake on one’s soul and said-

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

Just that and no more, and that light, slightly grubby hand resting on my own, as if it had been formed there, and was as natural as the sun setting in the evening. It is worrying that I need not express my thoughts, and the streaks of melancholy that come across me from time to time, and she understands, and has no compunction about calling me out on it.

And that, I suppose, is what I get for teaching the child about Roman philosophers.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.