To Autumn

‘Seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness’...

From John Keats, 'To Autumn'

This time of year, September, has always had an aspect of melancholy for me. It was early September when my first husband died of cancer. Though that was many, many years ago, the anniversary date evokes sorrowful recollections. I think of Steve’s final days, and how intense they were, of my panic following his loss. I wonder if I’ve learned anything in the many years since, whether I’m better equipped now than I was then to deal with my pain and that of others. Sometimes I feel I’ve matured, and can withstand life’s blows. Other days, I’m intensely fearful, fretting over possible catastrophes and desperately wanting to be reassured. I’m like a child begging her mother to assure her all will be alright. My mom couldn’t do it back then, and there’s really no one who can do it now.

These days are full of ongoing fragmentation, a continuous rearrangement of what felt like some kind of order. I detest nostalgia, longing for the old days. I don’t miss what went before. What I miss is a sense of the world being coherent, moving towards better times. Shattered, that’s all shattered. The climate is no longer moving towards disaster; catastrophe has arrived. Floods, fire, ice caps melting, deadly heat and attendant drought, Pakistanis dying in their waters, and villagers dying of their thirst. Right wing autocrats and hate mongers like Putin in Russia and Bolsonaro in Brazil, Republican Party senators in the US; anti-immigrant Tories in the UK; Sweden electing far-right ideologues. The list goes on. My knowledge, if not my understanding, of world disorder grows.

I don’t miss what went before. What I miss is a sense of the world being coherent, moving towards better times.

The war on Ukraine continues, no clear end in sight. At first, I read everything, scrabbled around frantically looking for ways to help. Over time--it’s been six months and counting--I turned away. I listlessly peruse the latest news, watching the endless posturing and the mounting deaths.

Here in the UK, the Queen’s timely death has unleashed even more possibilities for disorder. While much of the intense public grieving is surely genuine, some of it arises from despair over how bad things are on this little island. It’s a country run by people who seem to think the UK is still a world power rather than an insignificant little island. As an American, I’m amused and horrified at how the UK still has delusions of grandeur. Cutting itself off from Europe via Brexit was an insane act of self-harm. Dire predictions of shortages of food and fuel are made even more frightening by rising inflation and a government whose heart--and purse--is open to those who least need succor.

While much of the intense public grieving is surely genuine, some of it arises from despair over how bad things are on this little island.

What does it matter what I think and feel? How do I parse my insignificance? As I age, I’m slightly more comfortable with how truly miniscule my existence is--but only slightly. I rage still, not just against the dying of the light, but against the disorder which is unlikely to abate during my lifetime. There’s a perverse part of me that thinks, ‘since I’m going to die, why shouldn’t the world go with me?’ It’s a hideous form of self aggrandizement, a loathsome desire not to miss anything significant.

Meanwhile, as despairing as I often am, there’s still a sense of renewal that comes with the beginning of an autumnal new year. I’m glad to be swirling around in the continual confusion of this time in history. I make my little noises. I revel in that most human trait: the abstractions I create to make meaning of it all. Like these words.

Conversations: Continuations and New Dialogue

In June of this year, Emerging Voices presented a three part series on Zoom: Examining Palestine/Israel. The focus was on the history of the two peoples over the centuries; factors that led to the creation of Israel as a contemporary nation-state; and obstacles to a just resolution of the ongoing strife. Below is one excerpt from one discussion.

Watch a full video of sessions one and three.

This series will continue in late October. We’ll present two Zoom sessions with Palestinian policymakers and peace activists. We’re now in the process of lining up our speakers, and will announce dates of the events and details of the presenters as soon as arrangements are finalized.

We invite you to join us for these two sessions. Each hour and a quarter encourages participation from all present. Send us an email at editors@emergingvoices.co.uk to receive direct notification of panelists, dates and times. Better yet, sign up to our Subscriber list, which keeps you up to date on what’s on offer.

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Rembrandt’s An Old Woman Reading, 1655

Coming up in November, we begin a new series of podcasts: Conversations with Old Women. The aim is to call attention to the thinking of old women who engage with their life and its surroundings, and who have much to say about what it means to be old. We’ve deliberately chosen the O word--Old--over such synonyms as elderly, mature, senior. For too many of us, being old is to be counted out, dismissed, treated as creatures not quite worthy of attention and respect. At best, we’re seen as kind of cute, our energy remarked upon as something extraordinary and worthy of a chuckle or two. At worst, we’re mocked and made to disappear into a place far away from any sphere of energy and vitality. Often we join in this deprecation, turning against ourselves in an effort to avoid insult. ‘Oh’, we might say, ‘pay no attention to me. I’m past it.’ But old women are not past it, and we are weary of the ageism which surrounds us and which we often internalize. Enough. Listen to us speak about matters of life and death, the lessons we’ve learned and are still learning, the sorrows we’ve endured and the regrets we’ve moved beyond and how we deal with the inevitability of death.

Our first podcast will air in early November. If you’re not on our (free, not shared with anyone) Subscriber list, please sign up now.

I Died in Hell. They Called it Passchendaele

From a poem by Siegfried Sassoon

SQUIRE nagged and bullied till I went to fight, …. I died in hell— (They called it Passchendaele). My wound was slight, And I was hobbling back; and then a shell Burst slick upon the duck-boards: so I fell Into the bottomless mud, and lost the light…

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Earlier in May, I went to Passcheldaele with my friend Marlena Blommaert. Passchendaele is a small, insignificant village in Flanders. It’s become symbolic over the past hundred years as the ultimate expression of meaningless, industrialised slaughter. In the summer of 1917, the Allies gained five miles of ground in three months and six days. Upwards of 500,000 men were killed or wounded, maimed, gassed, drowned.

Marlena wrote: the day is beautiful and the sun warm when we arrive. With our heads turned to spring, carelessness and outings, we walk to the memorial centre. We pass a loudspeaker where the names of the victims and their ages are recited in an endless loop. A more effective way to confront the horrors of a war that raged a century ago is hard to imagine. My children are the ages of the dead. It’s their names I hear. The lump in my throat cannot be swallowed.

Nearly 12,000 white tombstones, sometimes with a name and sometimes only the designation “A Soldier of the Great War”. White gravestones side by side emphasise the order and neatness of peace atop battlefields where the chaos and madness of war reigned for years.

The cemetery is surrounded by a wall inscribed with the names of tens of thousands of missing British and Commonwealth soldiers. Men without a grave. Eternally missing.

We left the memorial, shaking off thoughts of war. After all, war belongs in the past. But we know that is not true. More war, more death and destruction. Syria, Ukraine, Somalia, Ethiopia/Eritrea, Palestine, Afghanistan, Yemen, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Columbia, DR Congo, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Mozambique, Myanmar, Niger, Nigeria, South Sudan, Tunisia…

From Sasson again :On Passing the New Menin Gate

Who will remember, passing through this Gate,

the unheroic dead who fed the guns?

Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate,-

Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?

…Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime

Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

Compiled by Rose Levinson; photos by David Jeffrey and Marlena Blommaert May, 2022

You can find out more about the Battle of Passchendaele here.