falling

Running in circles in a Preseli field,

I was holding on tight while you pedalled the bike,

Not letting go; until I finally did let go,

And you became Icarus, six years old and flying down the hill,

Finally out of sight round the green lane’s corner.

The whole afternoon held its breath. A gorse pod popped.

And there you were again, waving like a loon.

All this was ours. At night we named the stars,

Tracing Orion’s belt over Dinas Head

As the mice rustled in the hedge.

There was still magic back then,

When you first found out the world’s unfair,

But the hurt could be kissed better.

These April nights, sometimes the clouds part,

And the old familiar shapes appear,

Orion, the Pleiades glow, Cassiopeia;

And there’s the comet that I hoped to see,

Faint there over Filton, soluble aspirin of a star,

Too dim by far to warn of bloody war,

Foretell the fall of emperors.

But bloody wars there are, and emperors do fall.

And for some hurts there is no remedy.

Tonight, I look beyond the stars and see more stars,

And, further, even more, until the sky is deep enough

To fall into for ever.

But we have shared the stars, and just for now

I tell myself that that’s enough, and wonder if it’s true.

Cynddylan on a tractor

Cynddylan on a tractor, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.

Ah, you should see Cynddylan on a tractor.
Gone the old look that yoked him to the soil,
He's a new man now, part of the machine,
His nerves of metal and his blood oil.
The clutch curses, but the gears obey
His least bidding, and lo, he's away
Out of the farmyard, scattering hens.
Riding to work now as a great man should,
He is the knight at arms breaking the fields'
Mirror of silence, emptying the wood
Of foxes and squirrels and bright jays.
The sun comes over the tall trees
Kindling all the hedges, but not for him
Who runs his engine on a different fuel.
And all the birds are singing, bills wide in vain,
As Cynddylan passes proudly up the lane

RS Thomas

This card was one of a series of poem postcards that Oriel Cardiff produced in the 70s(or was it 80s) -sadly, seemingly unobtainable now. Damn.

It was the centenary of RS Thomas' birth yesterday. I first met his poetry in Penguin Modern Poets 1, in the school library, and learned Welsh Landscape by heart.  Heard him read at Lower Machen church, not far from where I used to live in South Wales, where the 'mouldering quarries and mines' were all around; it was a memorable evening. Then in 2000, reading his obituary in the Telegraph, in the crew mess of the Dover ferry I was unhappily working on at the time, and feeling even more lonely.

Still, the poetry is still there. The Bright Field is one of my favourites, because it's twined itself into my own life.

badger

badger, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.

This day last year we were walking in Dartmoor and swimming in a stream. Today was far too cold for that sort of thing, so I painted this picture instead. Nothing like finishing a painting to cheer you up. Which, after a gloomy weekend, is a Good Thing.

Here's a Palm Sunday joke, from Giraldus Cambrensis. At least, I suspect that it was a joke, but he used it as an example of the poor standard of Latin among the clergy in Wales. You never can tell with Gerald.

Item exemplum de presbytero qui locum ilium Evangelii : "Si quis vobis aliquid dixerit, dicite quia Dominus habet his opus" de lectoris herba exposuit in hunc modum: "Dicite quia Dominus habet herbam illam quae vocatur hisopus."

monkey hangers

 Have you ever worked in a bar? It's an opportunity to see behind the polite mask of the people you serve; the pushy ones who jump the queue, the ones who treat you with contempt because you're a menial. It is a small insight into how thin can be the veneer of civilisation.

Coming out as transsexual gives you a much better opportunity to see this. For so many people, transsexuals are creatures fabulous as unicorns or camelopards, or as monkeys stranded on the shores of Hartlepool. And because they don't know how they are supposed to behave, they can behave very badly indeed.

It's not that they intend to be bad; it's just that some people fear what they don't know. Of course, the people of Hartlepool are rightly annoyed if you call them 'monkey hangers'. They will tell you that the monkey in question actually got on really well with the locals, all except for the village idiot, who was convinced that the monkey was a french spy, and sold the story to Richard Littlejohn, who denounced it in the Daily Mail. And then the monkey was constantly followed around by newspaper hacks looking for evidence of frenchness about it, until it despaired and jumped into the sea and drowned.

 But that was long ago.

Just, maybe not that long.

So, coming out as trans. People who already knew you will adjust with various degrees of acceptance; "Oh, that figures..." "Oh.... hmmmmm...." "Oh.... I think we can still be friends..."

Some will feel betrayed at the revelation of such a big thing, and go stomping off.

And so on. As for people who didn't know you before, their response to you depends on how well you 'pass'. As I'm talking about my experience in the early days of transitioning, then you can assume correctly that I didn't 'pass' entirely, if at all.

Some people just behave naturally, and good people they are too.

Some try just too hard. "Of course I see you as a woman." "Oh! I met a transsexual woman at a wedding in Bognor; she was really nice; do you know her?"

And then there's the monkey hangers. The blokes who sit in corners muttering darkly, making snide or offensive comments, misgendering you, sticking up little notices with obscene 'jokes' on.

I had a lot of that. It was relentless on the ship I worked on, for two years, from 2002 to 2004. I kept going because I had earned my right to work in that place, and I wasn't going to be beaten by them. But it was hard going.

I do recall the strong sense of betrayal I felt, in January 2004, when I read Julie Bindel's 'Gender Benders Beware' in the Guardian.  Because I expected stupidity and nastiness from my colleagues; but it was a rude shock to find it in a newspaper that I'd previously held in high regard. Although that article was an attack on transsexual identities as a whole (and Kimberley Nixon in particular) I did feel personally injured, not least because it came at a bad time and I was feeling very lonely.

After I'd been assaulted, I finally left P&O, and spent two years prosecuting a case against them. Those were very difficult times, and sometimes the struggle felt almost too hard to continue. I did think of suicide. The two things that kept me going were my daughter, and my determination that the people who had wronged me should not get away with it.

I was lucky. I got through it, and won. Which didn't stop the press from trying their best to put their traditional spin on the story, when it finally broke. But by then, I was on the attack. So I was not as damaged by their nastiness and prurience as I might have been some years before.

But it is still an awful feeling, to see yourself written about in an ignorant and prejudiced way, in a national newspaper. And to know that you have no voice of your own in the world, and no effective means of redress.

Remember Lucy Meadows. 

chocolate tea pot

pcc, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.

So the Press Complaints Commission has decided that Julie Burchill's  'Lobstergate' article was OK. No surprise there then; as the PCC stumbles slowly towards the dustbin of history, at least it is consistent in its uselessness. Missing you already, guys. Must find a special circle for you in the Venn diagram...

 

a lovely day out

DSC_1671, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.

Why were we at Severn Beach with our brollies,
Splashing so much and so much?
Folk must’ve thought we were off our trollies,
Battered by westerly gales, by golly,
That blotted out bridges and such.
Oh, why were we at Severn Beach with our brollies,
Splashing so much and so much?

more map reading

DSC_1668, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.

I picked up the prints of Map Reading For Beginners from Niche yesterday. This one is being framed up for somebody. And there are some in my Etsy shop too. At the moment this is my favourite picture. Well, favourite out of the pictures I've done. Crikey. Just been looking through pictures by SR Badmin and Evelyn Dunbar and going 'gosh, that's good'.... so much art, so little time...