Tribe...

...for Knots in the String.

I returned to the coast after Christmas shopping and a ballet class. I soaked up the summer day, the summer week, 24 degrees, gentle sea-breezes and the waves shushing back and forth. I read somewhere a week or so ago, that waves are the ocean breathing in and out and I fell in love with the idea. I felt the warmth of that breath over my sore right ankle, sore right knee, sore glutes. Revived, I am.

I hadn’t seen my ballet friends for 2 weeks and it was a bit like coming home We groan as we plié, tendu, fondu and everything in between, sharing the pain. Those of us with sore bits do class anyway, even though we’re waiting for diagnoses, treatments, whatever. Move it or lose it!

In its own way, class is a kind of therapy – just smiling, if nothing else. Discomfort not with-standing, we leave lighter and brighter than when we arrived. And isn’t that the most important thing about finding one’s tribe? A rightness?

Do we unconsciously seek a tribe as we make our way through life? Or does a tribe find us. These existential questions hum through my head this week as I cook for the Silly Season and sew pocket hearts for Christmas for children in hospital.

I wonder if finding one’s tribe is perhaps what most of us seek all our lives, even if we’re introverts. At the very least, we want to communicate with folk of like mind.

I’ve been in and out of a few tribes. Some have had a lasting impact – in some cases not at all for the better and I’ve learned about the negatives of human nature – how some folk have an inability to accept others for what they are, or an inability to be there and be kind. I walked out of a Christmas lunch once because the tribe at that time was being racist.

In general however, my tribal experience has been for the better. A little bit rubs off with each one – that sense of ease, wouldn’t you say? Perhaps we gain a kind of confidence if we belong to a tribe, a knowledge that if something went wrong, the tribe would have one’s back. 

One of the curious things I’ve noticed about writing for Substack is that like minds are congregating. I have this image in my head of a mass of folk diving out of a plane and by some aerodynamic force, they move closer and merge into a large, cohesive group. We share beliefs, things we enjoy, experiences that resonate, pulling us together in an almost supernatural way. Of course, it’s all virtual, but I think I proved last week with the Masked Ball, that it’s possible for virtual tribes to last long and well.

My Time:

1. We and the Terrier are coming to terms with his rapid onset blindness (SARD). Over the last two weeks, his sense of smell and hearing has sharpened, his memory as well.

He obviously recalls standing under the summer cherry-plum from times past, waiting until starlings alighted to grab fruit, hunting at its best, and so he wanders around the garden until he sees that shape of the tree and just barks at any vague movement, starling or not.

We’ve taken to putting his harness on and trailing a puppy lead behind because we have a big garden filled with shrubs and a couple of times he’s gone into bushes, got stuck and hasn’t been able to see enough to extract himself without scratches and scrapes. I can reach for the lead through twiggy branches to help.

We’ve learned to speak even more to him to let him know we’re near, so as not to startle. That he must jump over this ditch, that log. He follows the wave line along the shore and is learning it’s best to be on my right side, because he can see me peripherally through his left eye. He has adapted in that way that dogs have – waking up to a new day with no regrets. He mostly seems content although today he was a little snappy. But then we all get snappy under duress, so why shouldn’t he? He is definitely sleeping more, as though age has suddenly crept up on him – perhaps he feels the extra mental effort.

Brave boy! We are indubitably his tribe.

2. Time last Sunday, with part of my gardening tribe, dropping off cuttings and admiring delicious white and orange poppies and a perfect grouping of white hippeastrums with a finely etched red border to the petals.

Books:

Finished The Storyteller of Casablanca by Fiona Valpy on Kindle. It’s a very smooth blending of two timelines (WWII and 2010) with a twist of an ending, worth the read.

Just finished listening to Lancelot by Giles Kristian. Little short of brilliant and especially as it’s read by Phillip Stevens. Kristian’s Author’s Note was of interest – whilst writing other novels, Lancelot would not lie down and disappear, despite that Kristian was writing a series about the 17^th century and the English Civil War at the time. So he squeezed it into his writing schedule. Thank heaven because Lancelot is a true ballad.

Even this novel is a story about finding one’s tribe – was it on the Mount with Nimuë’s people, or with Arthur’s warlords and their horses? Or perhaps as a woodland dweller with a young son. But never with Guinevere…

I’ve just started listening to The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark. This is the first Spark I’ve read, and I chose this title, partly because the setting was Jerusalem and the gate separating Jordan from Israel. I thought in the light of the current situation, even a book written in 1965 would illustrate tensions and attitudes. It certainly illuminates the issue of tribal differences.

Spark writes with crisp irony and observation, and I rather like this review from Kirkus: ‘Sometimes it's as chimerical as a Dead Sea scroll…’

The narrator however, is not my cup of tea, and I suspect I might have to fold on this and find a print edition to read on.

Watching:

Le Weekend – a brilliant little film that rubs like sandpaper to reveal a deep grain. People of a certain age will enjoy it. Jim Broadbent is wonderful. Paris is its usual elegant self and the incidental music a pleasure.

More of All Creatures Great and Small. Still in love with it and Yorkshire.

Some Christmas stuff on Netflix – totally harmless and saccharine and puts one in a faux- Christmas spirit.

A B grade film, The Lost City, with Sandra Bullock (who seemed to have been plugged into direct-drive Botox for the whole movie), Channing Tatum whom I had never heard of till this movie. And lo, in a cameo, Brad Pitt. He made the film for the miniscule time he was in it and had me laughing delightedly!

***

And so we stagger up the stairs from the studios, our Seniors’ ballet tribe, thrilled at what we saw in the video of our performances the other week, groaning with each step, sucking water from our bottles, looking forward to next week when we are lunching for Christmas after our last class until the new year.

My ballet shoes are in their bag – one more session for the year and looking at them, I think they’ll last.

Meanwhile, we’re wondering if our ballet teacher might plan something off the wall for the last week of term. A dance like Tomas Karlborg?

@staatsballettberlinBallet master Tomas Karlborg taking the lead during #worldballetday #ballet #staatsballettberlin #balletdancer #ballettok #balletclass #balletchallenge #ballerina #Dance

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Or perhaps Hugh Grant…

I wonder – would we all be up for it?

***

Song for this week?