Time passing.
Weeks at David’s house. We live deep in time, deep in life. And it’s like we’ve found some secret valley of time. Some secret plateau. Some opening of time in time. Some secret flowering.
The days are taller somehow. Their roof is higher.
Food – great round oatcakes, slabs of Lancashire cheese, thick ham, each sliver resting on its own sheet of paper. There’s a kitchen full of leftovers: chicken in sauce, pork in pilau rice, salmon cooked in milk.
David coming in with bags of food: pillow bread from the Arab delicatessen, dolmades and olives from the Greek one; black loaves of Polish bread; German Pumpernickel. And sometimes he sends me out to the supermarket with forty pounds: bring back something magnificent.
Buy-in feasts. Fish ‘n’ chips on Saturday night. Kleftako, from Kyria Tinas. Takeaways from the Nehmet Kadah. And when money comes, the whole house go out to dine. Michelangelo’s on the high street – a whole fish each. Out to Renos’s for meze plates that keep coming all night.
We do not eat alone. We do not live alone. We’re not deserted. We have a place to return to. A place to arrive. We’re greeted – welcomed. We hear our own voices. We tell of our days to one another. We listen to each other’s petty concerns, small adventures.
Ceremonies of the day, that ground the day. That let the day revolve. Out to Al’s café in the morning, just as the offies open, just as the alkies step out into the day. And then walking our great round of Chorlton, waiting for the macchiatos to hit. Our Chorlton orbit. Our circuit, that keeps the world in its place.
And then returning, in the early afternoon. Then up to our rooms, to work, supposedly. Simone in her room, Ismail in his, I in mine. To stare into air. To thumb through books.
Then outside in the late afternoon, to sit in the walled garden. To take tea in the walled garden, whilst David naps stretched out on his sofa …
Life is not nothing. There’s a substance to life. A reality. There’s a thickness to life …
All the things of our world – particular things, real things, caught up in our living. This cutlery. This candlestick. These plates. This calendar. This coffee pot. These utensils. This cupboard. These soup bowls. These dried flowers. Humble things. Not particularly special things. But that are here, around us. That have washed up at our feet. That we use, clean, put away, bring out again.
We’ve become connoisseurs – sybarites – drinking orange pekoe tea out of China cups. Drinking bottled beer, craft beer.
We looking through recipe books. We bake. Make biscuits.
Delectation. Tastes. Rice with steamed chestnuts. Eggs mottled after being boiled Chinese-style for four hours. Red pepper for fish and chips.
The scent of incense, with which the priest blesses our rooms. Belgian chocolates. Leffe beer. Feta cheese, on the barbecue.
The smell of coming spring in the garden. Flowers – pollen – whatever. Wildflowers in the garden amidst the foot long grass.
Lengthening days. Blue skies, sometimes. Sun on our faces. Birdsong in the city.
Something’s opening to us. Life’s opening. We’re part of a larger life. We’re part of the creation.
And getting to know all those who visit, who drop by, those on short and long orbits around David’s house. Visits. An unbearable hermit comes to visit, to stay a few days. Different monks and sets of priests. Father Daniol, from Wales. Two nut-brown Copts. And scholarly visitors: a translator, to consult on her new rendering of the Upanishads. A disappointed Hegel scholar in dispute with the university. And old friends: a former nun and her Down’s syndrome son.
And events: a mock interview for a lad who’s applying to Oxford (we got dressed up all posh). A Ukranian Catholic priest who lodges for a while, to learn English. An alcoholic Texan who wants to be away from temptation, and lives on three litre bottles of coke and roast chicken.
New places set at the table – for unexpected guests. For all-comers. This is a place people gather. Like a watering hole. People come. Drop by.
A conversation here, a guest asleep on the couch there. A player of computer games here, earnest church discussions there. Guests who say nothing, but who want to be at the edge of conversation, just to hear. To draw on the intellectual energy, on non-stupidity, on non-triviality ...
And all invited to sit around the common table. All invited to partake of our collective meal. All to enjoy the good things of life, and together. In celebration. In thankfulness. All to know there is no futility. Nothing’s wasted. That our days on earth are not a shadow. That the world isn’t evil after all ...
This is life on David’s island.
Virtues of the house: discretion. Non-gossip. Non-prying. Rules: never knocking on each other’s bedroom doors – always phoning.
David and his co-editors, working on the Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Eastern Christianity. Working on a proposal for a Penguin Classics edition of Eastern Mystical Writings. David, translating works of Indian philosophy for his website.
The rest of us taking smoking breaks in the coach house, by the headless saint. Playing incompetent games of football in the long grass. Sitting on the mattresses in the basement, looking through piles and piles of David’s books.
This is somewhere the Man can’t destroy (isn’t it?) This is somewhere far from technocratic reach. This is an idyll (isn’t it?) A pocket of time – a loop. We’re safe here. We can play, for a while. Immense violence, happening offstage. Trouble rages elsewhere. But it’s calm here. It’s peaceful here.
Maybe the Man isn’t everywhere. Maybe the chaos he unleashes won’t find us here. Maybe his faux salvation won’t include us, won’t scoop us up.
Why does time have to go forward? Why do things have to come to an end? Couldn’t we just be lost here, in time’s rock pool?
But all good things are vulnerable. All good things are held out into the Nothing. The vulnerability of the house. Will it endure? Will the garden walls stand? Will the front door hold? Will the maniacs smash the windows? Climb through?
And the friends of the house – will they live? Will they be overrun in their own houses? Will they be stabbed in the streets when it all comes down – when the supply chains break, when hyperinflation hits?
There are ways to live in the world – that’s what we’ve learnt. There are traditions of hospitality, still alive. Of life-making. Of the arts of life. Perhaps we should travel to find them. If they’re lost in the West, we might find them in the East. If they’re lost in the global North, we might find it in the global South. Larger life. Warmer life. Where the currents of life still flow.
We’ll spend the last days at David’s house, learning how to live. We’ll live deep in life at David’s house.