Marcus Slingsby
Vanity’s Sanctuary
‘A critic’s perception of perfection is indeed short and flawed with his own ambition and envy’, wrote my father in one of his many notebooks. Another talks of horses, rocking and running: ‘Carved it may be in shiny mahogany, the eyes almost staring, a gold embossed saddle and swinging stirrups, it is far from perfect, (argh, for a child maybe…) A carved nose bag is necessary with carved strands of hay and no matter how rare, carved rocking horse shit should be there too! Yet the tired hands of the master craftsman pale in comparison to the reel and turn of brumbies.’
My father travelled a lot. His notebooks are still. On my apartment table, the candle light illuminates only the spaces between his words, the rest a void of thoughts I have trouble understanding, even with the help of childhood.
I blow the candles out one by one, the streetlights are beyond me and the spaces again embrace what I don’t see, yet I don’t attempt to stand. The chair was his, the table too. The hands I rest my face in I suppose are also half his. Thoughts are whole I’m finding.
He was always writing or typing on an old typewriter though it was not his job. A hobby he said, as was reading, both uninteresting when BMX’s and football were about.
His books (I know that was his dream, you don’t have to be told your father’s dream, you see it as clearly as he does), were notebooks. The bookcase on the other hand was full of other peoples realized dreams, yet if you looked carefully, random spines were black with purple stitching, and always thin—poetry! Nothing scares a dyslexic child more.
The metallic click of the date-change wakes me. His watch, an old ICW Pilot bought half a life time ago. It always had my name on it—literally. For a moment I’m mesmerized by the mechanism which he knew would always outlast his human condition. One of my first memories is of him taking his watch off and showing me the workings through the sapphire glass back. He said the watch makers had hands my size.
Have you ever caught a stranger in a mirror that turns into a relative, then turns into you? It’s a trick that’s happened twice and the relative is always the same. The light needs to be dim for a mirror (is too truthful) or bright if the reflection is dark (and deceitful.)
I leave the table and his notebooks, this is late for me, and head to the hall and for the third time the illusion locks the door. Briefly in the curtained street light before the sideways glance becomes focused; my mother—happy to be haggard, the very essence of Englishness, my wife has been known to say.
Do you also ever dream you’re awake? Yet not awake in a dream—it’s far too clear and clever and confusing; a false insomnia that seems to stick the very last view you had to the back of your retinas for your soul to watch relentlessly the whole night. Yet with a death you ironically dream of life!
I wake, again. The notebook is still on the table though the spaces between the words are no longer there. In their place a small voice reads with reason, extracting theory and theme, the two areas of a cold poem which only the author comprehends. I lean in, the voice is of Yorkshire descent. ‘They are just thoughts I write down’, it says. ‘Poetry scares potential poets: it’s like TNT, a tiny word or collection thrown too soon will take off the very hand that throws it. Yet later, aimed with precision it can blow minds’
Like most he was introduced too soon—the hand of a dead poet, the shake of school. You always remember your first formal handshake, and are intimidated by it for years to come, until you realize introductions are only for beginners.
My father once went to a creative writing class held by a strange creature of a man over which lots could be written but nothing is. I remember him coming back from his first night, it was unusual he was away at that time. We all waited up and heard that he’d been taught by a magician, and that only a pen, not a wand, could cast a spell.
He said he’d enjoyed it but that the fascination came not from the lesson but from the master. He told me directly, ‘He taught your grandfather you know’
I did not!
‘Yes, your grandfather and him were the same age but that is where the resemblance ended. Your grandfather seemed to think he’d seen the world and studied numerous lives in those short years granted him. His face and especially his eyes gave the impression of that impossibility. They became friends but only for the duration of the course, and then he was gone.’
‘You have an ability to tell wonderful tales in spaces and at the end of full stops,’ he had once told your grandfather.
The classroom I enter is old with huge windows and a high ceiling, but the view is of other peoples’ curtainless lives, not a cold sports field with yet colder hills in the distance.
As I find a wooden desk to sit at, I wonder if it’s for the sunlight that the windows are so large yet coupled always with a consequence for gawping. It’s evening outside, the light’s low, the pace end-of-day slow in the windows I stare while waiting. It’s my first lesson, as it is for everyone here tonight, all people with ideas and ages that span life, yet I still recognize the teacher when he eventually arrives from my father’s (and his father’s) past. The beard is still trying to grow and it might even be the same bowler he’s wearing! And definitely the same leather briefcase full of future grades and his own ideas no doubt. A fine suit sits well on his small frame and his brogues seem to skim this unchallenging surface. Another thirty years sit well on him, though he’d be a better judge of that than me.
Do they learn to cough at teacher training college? With a rustle we all look up. On the board he’s already chalked ‘Creative Writing Workshop’, and beneath it his name. We begin and soon all our ideas will be out in the open shivering with the fear of criticism and then ridiculed at home for the attempt…
Introductions and achievements aside, some longer than others, yet the latter always in need of this course, we receive our first assignment.
The teacher back behind his desk for support tells us—‘Though this classroom is brimming with ideas, ’ (with its high ceilings, I’m not so sure.) ‘I need to formulate an idea of You. The best fiction is always based on truth. Write a short piece. About yourself. Told by another. Create a daughter young or a mother no longer dead, or a brother unwed. Or a son…’ AQ