It’s tempting with a digital camera to think that a picture is worth a thousand words, so you can just snap something and stick it in a blog, as if it had the power to capture the feeling which made you take the picture. But the camera’s just a soulless eye that delivers aspects of a scene without the accompanying birdsong and fresh morning air. Perhaps you have the empathy to pick up a snapshotter’s feeling, especially from pictures of babies, children, flowers or any other prized possession. Not me, I admit this shortcoming. So I offer some hundreds of words, leaving you to decide which is the most telling.
I certainly won’t expect the accompanying snapshots to explain why I include “hanging out clothes” on my profile’s list of interests. I emerge to the backyard’s glimpse of morning sunshine, with a basket of damp washing and another of pegs. The air is fresh and there is a cosmic hush—an underlying silence beneath every noise. Perhaps some magpies are quarrelling, or doves cooing, seagulls screaming, a lone blackbird on a chimney-pot improvising a melody; or above the chimneys a red kite mewing softly as it rides a thermal. I hear the distant clattering of pots from a kitchen, a snatch of conversation or a song on a radio. Right here as I hang the washing out, there’s the clacking of plastic pegs, the swish of my feet on the grass. Each of these emphasises the pervasive background hush, expectant, silent, a message to unravel.
The sunlight catches things you can’t see on a photo—threads of gossamer from spiders busy since dawn; a flash of amber where resin has oozed out from a knot in the wooden fence; the faint beating of wasp and bumble-bee wings; an awareness of all the living things—plants, mosses, worms, woodlice, flies; probably rats hiding somewhere amongst the neighbouring backyard sheds and spilled-out garbage of tenants who rent cheap rooms. You can even see vapour rising from the damp sheets, in the form of a faint haze against the background of blue sky. Of course I am not aware of all these things at once. I’ve plucked a bouquet of sense-impressions from the uncounted times I’ve hung out washing in the two years I’ve lived here.
There are also the children’s cries from the playground just beyond this backyard; children of every age, teenagers after dark, drunkards in the morning, sometimes a drug addict or two—I’m guessing from their faces, can see it in certain young women. People say beware of used needles, but I’ve only seen one. The Council take care to have the playground cleaned daily, at first light.
I love my backyard, this tiny piece of land where I am king and I reign with my Queen: all the more because it flourishes in these surroundings, in this factory town in the valley, that I shall call Wye Vale, to preserve its anonymity against the intrusion of search engines. I feel towards it that fierce love expressed in John of Gaunt’s dying speech, speaking of England:
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war . . .
So I was pretty shocked to look out of the window and see my backyard bombed by an unseen enemy. A child was throwing debris over the fence from the playground. Indignantly I thought, “What next? A ground invasion?” Scarily, a few seconds later two boys, yelling in the thrill of child-business, raced through a gap in the fence, a few houses to the left of mine. I stuck my head out the window and shouted angrily, like a farmer to mischievous young trespassers or possible poachers. They regarded me in astonishment, and tried to explain that they came from that house in the first place, had gone to the playground and were now coming back.
So I, not they, was the aggressor, invading their space, their own paradise; and I saw how the mere symbolism of missiles and ground invasion had whipped up a fear in me, as if it were the Cuban missile crisis of 1962; only I never cared about that at the time.
An online friend refers to my “desire to remain undelivered”—to remain attached to the things of this world, rather than seek mystical union with the Infinite. Yes, this is my choice, to not heed Jesus who urges me to “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven . . . where thieves do not break through nor steal”; but heed Robert Herrick instead, when he advises “the Virgins, to make much of Time”; to
GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
I have wasted enough of life already, let me live now, drain it to the dregs, walk whilst I have legs, feel whilst I have a body to feel with.
a wayfarer’s notes 
I tend to take a lot of photos, primarily as an aid to memory, as I can re-experience some of the sensations evoked by the people, the place, the event or the moment captured. My mind can fill in a lot of detail which, without the picture to prompt it, would have been lost.
But I also like to try to create beauty. Occasionally a photograph strikes me as beautiful or interesting in some way in its own right, not because of what it represents to me. Then I might frame and hang it, use it on the blog or share it with friends by email.
These are distinct roles that may be played by photographs, even by the same photograph, and should not be confused.
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Well said.
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My Mother passed away over the summer. I spent a week with her during her last days. I took no photos, but those days will be with me as long as I live.
The doctors could do nothing for her. She was all at once brave, weak, angry, sad and reconciled with her circumstances.
Confronting the mortality of a loved one gave me a great deal to reflect on. Not the first time I have experienced it, but the most recent is always ways most heavy.
I visited with many people I had not seen in many years. Our interactions were more intimate and more meaningful than they had been in some time.
My Mother lived life fully, she involved herself in peoples lives. Much more so than I could ever hope to. Just not my way. I am intimate with a small group of people with whom I interact on a regular basis. But I have never been as successful as she was a retaining those connections.
Not sure why this post reminds me of this, but as has been the case with many of your posts Vincent, I am compelled to convey something in response.
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I rather like the sunflowers leaning over the washing; it is as if the stamens are sniffing the smell of the washing medium used, assessing the freshness of the laundry.
The pegs look similar to some of mine. I did an unscientific survey a few years ago on the styles and varieties of pegs, just because, I became aware of a proliferation of designs, not all suitable for practical purposes.
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Clean playground… that's something we will never get here in malaysia…
oh… before you know it, you will be going for a DSLR already. that's where the real snapping begins.
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Lovely pics!
We do hang our clothes the same way in Slovenia. I think to show us how the magpies sing, you should do a video of your surroundings. That would be very insightful.
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I look at these simple photos, and can imagine being in your back yard, experiencing the same simple awe and wonder of Creation as in my own back yard. You are right, though… all the cameras and photos in the world cannot convey such a thing.
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Beautifully said, Vincent, and I agree completely with your preference for the fullness of words as opposed to a world edited and stilled by photos.
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Hayden, I was sure you would understand!
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Tim, precisely. One's back yard is one's unique world. We'll never get to heaven (referring to the split-second, present-moment heaven, not the future-life one) by criticizing someone else's, but only by finding the infinite in our own.
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MKL, then I want to visit Slovenia! Not to look at its lines of washing but to see a land of traditional ways (or perhaps 30 years behind UK in modernisation). Am I right?
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Zewt, I remember the particular kinds of dirt in Malaysia with a certain nostalgia – the open drains, the kampung ayer, the shacks built by squatters from Philippines . . .
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Zacl, yes, such a variety of clothes pegs and some break too easily. Do you remember the old kind – a split stick bound at one end with metal, I think a strip cut from a tin can and fixed with a nail? I see one vividly before me. I think they were made by gypsies and sold door to door. They were as sturdy as any.
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Charles, my thoughts are with you, going through this transition, confronting these memories, adjusting to your mother's death, the shock and inwardness of it.
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Vincent Vincent Vincent.
30 years behind in modernisation?
Some parts are more modern than UK!
Ha! We're ranked 25th on the list of countries by GDP per capita (according to World bank 2008), we have ADSL connection almost in every village, we have the Euro, we have everything. We're just a small nation, 2 million people.
Do some researches on Slovenia. I'm not saying everything's perfect here, still have some regions poorer than others. But to say like 30 years behind UK is a bit over the top. 😉
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MKL, MKL etc.
Well I do apologize. When I worked in Dublin in 1985 it reminded me of England as it was in 1960, and I loved it.
Anyhow I wasn't really talking about technology so much as something vaguer – let's call it “traditional”.
Which is what I like best about England.
You've spoken up well for your country, but I'm not so interested in going there now!
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Hey Vincent,
My blog practises freedom of speech unless it is sedition. There is no need to delete your thoughts 🙂
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Sorry Zewt, I deleted it because I didn't want to distract from the general direction of the comments, which were focusing on the mugging tale in your post. And I had second thoughts about publishing a private tale from my own past!
Glad you found me here to talk about it. I may delete this comment and yours from here, some time in the future, for similar reasons!
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“let me live now, drain it to the dregs, walk whilst I have legs, feel whilst I have a body to feel with.”
Is that not verily a heavenly treasure of which no thief can rob you?
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Those sunflowers are quite arresting. I was thinking as I saw them, seemingly so happy and bright, that normally sunflowers in England must be some rather forlorn plants.
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Patrick, I think sunflowers in England are sometimes forlorn plants, perhaps because they are planted by children or those fixated on the giant varieties of sunflowers who plant them in isolation. Mine were from a free seedpacket that came with a newspaper, and had to be tied with string to keep their stems semi-vertical. I think they are happy because they live in a free-range, unregimented garden.
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Gentleeye, I won't tempt fate by predicting what a thief may or may not be able to rob. I love the imperishable which dwells in the perishable, of which there is no shortage. However I don't even try to put equal value on all that's perishable. Loving anyone or anything in this world makes us vulnerable. Who in their right mind would have it any different?
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Many years ago my father grew sunflowers in the garden to help feed all the mice, gerbils, hamsters, rabbits and guinea pigs we children kept. I remember them as bright, not at all forlorn.
Down on the farm here (in Southern Spain) the neighbouring farmer has a field of sunflowers to be eaten by the wild rabbits, to encourage them to stay and breed (the better to sell the hunting rights). It's very hot and dry down here, and although they do grow high, they certainly look forlorn.
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You remind me that I have revisited a field of sunflowers, especially as it became more and more forlorn over the months; and blogged about it here, here, here and here.
As some of the posts doubtless mention, sunflowers are grown in Buckinghamshire to provide winter provender for pheasants, which can then be shot by bankers and suchlike at weekends in the season. Other crops grown for the same purpose, and not harvested, just left for the birds to find, include maize, millet and haricot beans.
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