Before I begin, is anyone listening?

Gregor Addison

Before I begin, is anybody listening?

Before my father died, I’d tell him about each walk
up Applefields to the old asylum. I’d hear him
listening as I told him how, in summer, here I was reading
about winter. The pandemic outlived The Seasons.
I walked in hope of solving it. It helps if it can be defined.
It couldn’t, but I kept on walking. Every day,
even through the rain, I followed upon the day before.
I don’t know if you know Muttonhole or Windy Edge,
or that Seggielea Road is a raised beach? In December,
he died. And because there was nothing to do,
I walked up Applefields, like one person speaking, knowing
that no-one is listening. Sometimes my lips move.
Sometimes, you’ll hear me speak to myself in passing.

He speaks to himself in passing

I set myself free in forms my hands take
over keys. I tap letters. Look for chords.
Thread wool between index and thumb.
Count syllables. Beats. Stitches. Time.

I slip thoughts. Punctuate the isolation
with sun and moon. Try new voicings.
I act as wool-winder. The letters say,
the needles say, the keys say – tic-toc
tic-toc
tic
toc

Applefields

At Applefields I spoke to the woman from Brazil
simply in passing, comparing deaths
and distances that comfort found impossible to span.
How frail my voice sounded, how different
to the classroom confidence, to the careful tone
adopted for students. I’d barely told her
of the deaths, the long year of loneliness and loss,
when I noticed the hurt in my words.

We spoke of the weather then, how warm it was
for March and how faith takes nothing
and turns it into something that we can talk about
without our hearts breaking the delivery.

Commentary

Applefields. The name is a translation of Gartnavel. Some placenames in Glasgow are Gaelic and there are some which might be older – Cumbric names, dating from the time when the area around the Transport Museum and, on the opposite bank of the Clyde, Govan Church, were at the centre of the Kingdom of Strathclyde. If you stand behind the Royal Asylum, at a certain point, you can look over Hyndland towards Thornwood and Partick. The slope at Applefields looks west towards Jordanhill and if you stand there and look to your right, in the distance beyond the monolith of Anniesland Court you can see Dungoyne in the distance and the Campsies. Turning back towards Jordanhill, you can see the Kilpatrick Hills. When the Royal Asylum was built at Gartnavel in 1843 there were farms and fields, small mining cottages like Red Town.

When Covid hit and lockdown began, I was walking along Glasgow’s Whittinghame Drive. It was a Monday, and I should have been at work but had phoned to say I wouldn’t be in, since I no longer felt safe. I’m on immunosuppressants and from what I was learning of Covid from the news, I was becoming more and more uneasy about being in a college with hundreds of other people. I spent the following year or so alone. Every day, I’d go out and walk. I can’t remember how I came to be at Applefields. Perhaps I had a hospital appointment and decided to walk in, since I was too fearful to take the bus. Anyway, I spent more and more time there. I walked. I don’t know why I walked. But it seemed to help. Perhaps it was a confirmation of being – just putting one foot in front of the other.

Insert yourself into the day. Then, the following day – the same. We walk to avoid the alternative. Many years ago, my mother introduced me to the books of R. D. Laing. I familiarised myself with his concepts of ‘engulfment’ and ‘implosion.’ What was the other? Becoming stone. The Medusa-effect, where the gaze of others kills what is alive in us. Or else some aspect of life limits our being and shuts us up in stone. That stone in the grounds at Applefields – you know the one – it has Let there be light again carved into it, along with a sun-face emerging from cloud; I find it comforting that both sun and cloud are present at the same time, since light and dark often occupy our lives at the same time. We wear both masks simultaneously. A half-turn this way, a half-turn that way. Half a turn can make all the difference. Stretch your legs, for as long as they’ll stretch. In his book on the Japanese poet Santōka, Sumita Oyama wrote: ‘When you walk, just walk; this is the way.’  Often, on my walks, I take a book. And I’d sit in the secret garden with Holub’s poems or Frame’s book on the asylum, or sit on the slope with Brecht or Thomson’s The Seasons, or – more recently – with Bashō and Santōka.

I take great pleasure in reading. It is a relief to be able to read. For some years ago I had a mental crisis and was unable to think without strain, without a great effort to concentrate my mind enough to find words, or to focus outside of myself. I was overcome with anxiety. At this time, I taught myself to knit. I did crosswords. So, when finally, I found my way back to myself I had a greater appreciation for the gift of reading and making sense of words and just being present in words. I no longer felt they needed me. I wasn’t important to them. After all, they’ll be around long after I’ve gone. I read them in the same mood that I walked – thankful of having the ability to do so. Then, as I continued my recovery, my father died, then my partner’s father.          Throughout all of this I kept walking to Applefields. It exists as a part of me. I have created my own mental landscape there. Is that Von Ledebour over there, chatting with Nikolai Vavilov under the apple tree? Have they stories of Almaty to tell – the Apple City. The modern apple has its ancestors in the mountains of Kazakhstan. Walk around the streets off Crow Road, or look into the back gardens up Whittinghame Drive, and you’ll see many varieties of apple trees.

Sometimes, I’d take out a notebook and write something down. I always carry a notebook and a fountain pen. Currently, I favour an Esterbrook No2-L with an oblique nib. I bought it with money my father put in an envelope for me for the Christmas of 2020, though he died some days before. It dates to 1936, one year after he was born. It inks my hands in a pleasing way. Words don’t always matter. I do not feel a great attachment to my poetry. It is transient and comes to me from I know not where and where it goes is of little interest to me. It is an act that holds my attention for a while and then, quickly, my attention moves on to something else. I am very bad at keeping track of anything I’ve written. Much of it gets lost. I don’t think I inhabit words with any permanence. I skim over the surface of things, perhaps looking for somewhere to land. As I began reading through the archive of the asylum, I felt that my own Applefields was in danger of flitting away. I know that there has been great suffering in that building. I know that for many that suffering continued outside of the building. To those people I want to say, I’m sorry your lives were not easier. I think of that often, walking to Applefields between the sun and the clouds.