Oct 18
I have been re-reading Janet Frame's three- part autobiography: "To the Is-land", "An Angel at my Table" and "The Envoy from Mirror City
Here she is speaking of her earliest memories, including one that is "something that could not have happened". She captures the strangeness of those first few remembered things - seen and felt so vividly, but not understood. There is no context to put them in.
Then she writes of her most vivid memory of that time: "I remember a grey day when I stood by the gate and listened to the wind. I had my first conscious feeling of an outside sadness, or it seemed to come from outside, from the sound of the wind moaning in the wires. I looked up and down the white dusty road and saw no-one. The wind was blowing from place to place past us, and I was there, in between, listening. I felt a burden of sadness and loneliness as if something had happened or begun and I knew about it. I don't think I had yet thought of myself as a person looking out at the world; until then, I felt I was the world. In listening to the wind and its sad song, I knew I was listening to a sadness that no relation to me, which belonged to the world."
The sadness that belonged to the world. I used to feel that walking through the beautiful Derbyshire Dales of my childhood. Why was there a sadness about everything? What had happened?
Audrey and I were out on the preaching work this morning, trying to get people to see what the Inspired Scriptures tell us about this sadness and what Jehovah, the Creator, is doing to restore the Paradise we lost. We did magazine route calls and return visits as the map today had too much walking for Audrey. And I took her to the bank.
I re-met a lovely Asian lady - I think perhaps Filippino - haven't been able to ask, as on both occasions I seem to have got her out of the shower. But she took last months magazines - which had an article about what the Bible has to say about who really rules the world - she has taken this months - and would like me to drop by with November's.
Here she is speaking of her earliest memories, including one that is "something that could not have happened". She captures the strangeness of those first few remembered things - seen and felt so vividly, but not understood. There is no context to put them in.
Then she writes of her most vivid memory of that time: "I remember a grey day when I stood by the gate and listened to the wind. I had my first conscious feeling of an outside sadness, or it seemed to come from outside, from the sound of the wind moaning in the wires. I looked up and down the white dusty road and saw no-one. The wind was blowing from place to place past us, and I was there, in between, listening. I felt a burden of sadness and loneliness as if something had happened or begun and I knew about it. I don't think I had yet thought of myself as a person looking out at the world; until then, I felt I was the world. In listening to the wind and its sad song, I knew I was listening to a sadness that no relation to me, which belonged to the world."
The sadness that belonged to the world. I used to feel that walking through the beautiful Derbyshire Dales of my childhood. Why was there a sadness about everything? What had happened?
Audrey and I were out on the preaching work this morning, trying to get people to see what the Inspired Scriptures tell us about this sadness and what Jehovah, the Creator, is doing to restore the Paradise we lost. We did magazine route calls and return visits as the map today had too much walking for Audrey. And I took her to the bank.
I re-met a lovely Asian lady - I think perhaps Filippino - haven't been able to ask, as on both occasions I seem to have got her out of the shower. But she took last months magazines - which had an article about what the Bible has to say about who really rules the world - she has taken this months - and would like me to drop by with November's.
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