Monday 12 November 2012

Is this going anywhere?


Breakfast was slow. It often is, we are not morning people, and if neither of us has an early appointment, we dawdle. The opposite side of the valley was barely visible in the grey drizzle, I’d sent Millie out into the garden and she was back, lying under the kitchen table. Since her advent I have to get up an hour earlier (yes, that’s dedication for you). This gives me an extra dose of reading free magazines and newspaper supplements over my tea and muesli before Beloved shuffles in.

“Morning, lovely people”. The dog is always included in the greeting; Beloved gives my shoulder a squeeze or sometimes a quick kiss on the top of my head as he goes past me to his end of the kitchen table. He sits with his back to the window, giving me the view of the garden, like a true gentleman.

“Morning darling, did you sleep well?” The dog doesn’t answer, she thumps her tail instead. “Yes, thank you”, or “No, bloody awful”, depending on the night before. “And you?"

For a while we are silent, I continue to leaf through the pages of my magazine. It’s not often that an article grabs my attention. Why am I reading this rubbish? By the time I’ll have closed the thing I’ll have forgotten every word I read. I look up to see Beloved’s head low over his breakfast, eyes vacantly staring into the middle distance. He feels my gaze on him.

“For a moment I was wondering whether you were awake or asleep”.

“I wonder that myself, sometimes”, he says, thoughtfully. “My old friend Johnny Denman frequently said 'Life is but a waking dream’, which is something that a man called Gurdjieff apparently said. “I don’t think Johnny knew anything else about him. He must have read it somewhere.”

Beloved has my attention, this is better than the stupid magazine. ‘Gurdjieff’? I’ve heard the name.”

“Yes, me too. I’ve probably read something by him. Wasn’t he some Eastern European mystic in the 20s or 30s? There were quite a few of them around during the early 20th century. I read a lot of stuff as a boy that I didn’t understand. Mysticism, theosophy, spirituality."

Not to be outdone, I dredge up a name from the long distant past. “Wasn’t there a Mme Blavatsky? I seem to remember having read of her as an esotericist? This sort of stuff was resurrected during the flower-power 60s and 70s, I recall.”

We try to unearth a few snippets of information from memory, without success. We could give up and start the day. As I rise to put my bowl and cup away, I idly speculate that it would be more productive to have the sort of conversation that goes somewhere. At least I’d get some blogging fodder that way.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Beloved says, “you could say what my old friend Arnold Newnham used to say. He had a lovely turn of phrase.”

“Oh yes, what’s that?”

‘People open their mouths to emit sound’.


41 comments:

  1. Douglas Adams said that humans talk because if they don't their jaws would sieze up, or possibly because if they stop talking their brains start working.

    Personally - i talk to myself all the time as i find that airing thoughts helps you to unravel them and make sense of the world

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  2. Do conversations - especially with someone we love - need to "go" somewhere? It is nice to simply enjoy each other's company, and being able to touch any subject that comes to mind, however mundane or trivial it may appear.
    And I know what you mean about the magazine supplements; I read such stuff, too, and believe it or not, sometimes I even remember an article months later when something similar comes up in conversation or at the pub quiz :-D

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  3. It made for a very nice post, Friko, that breakfast conversation. I enjoyed sitting there with you, listening in. You've certainly got a way with the written word. Thank you. :-)

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  4. How nice to start your day off with a conversation. We all get into morning routines (even the animals) and sometimes forget to include the other person. You are right, that newspaper or magazine that takes up our attention is usually forgettable, but the people sitting across the table from us are what's important.

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  5. haha....sometimes we do...sometimes to hear our own...sometimes to hear the other...this was a fun bit of conversation...some interesting names too...

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  6. Love this post. I always was a morning person, but I somehow have lost the status and now I struggle to get up. We are very uncommunicative first thing in the morning beyond how did you sleep!! Keep well Diane

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  7. Talleyrand said that people had been given the gift of speech in iorder to conceal their thoughts.

    Our last house in France had been the property of Mlle. Marie-Madeleine Davy, a scholar and mystic who was extremely interested in the work of Gurdjieff and his followers.

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  8. How well you have captured a certain breakfast hour, allowing us into your kitchen.

    Many thanks. xo

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  9. What a lovely peek into your morning. I am coming to realize that often the less said the better although you wouldn't know it from my blog posts. :)

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  10. This is pretty heavy stuff for early morning conversation! You both are very awake. Hubby usually asks what the outside temp is and then turns on CNN. !!!

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  11. Ha! we prefer not to talk to each other for at least an hour after getting. and breakfast is about two hours after rising. coffee first while I read blogs or other news articles, breakfast second, then get to work on whatever is scheduled for the day. Long quiet mornings is how we do it.

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  12. Well for two people who aren't morning people, you seem to have had a remarkably good breakfast conversation my our standards, Friko. DH and I tend to avoid conversation until I've finished mt morning tea and porridge, by which time by few remaining brain cells are probably just about awake.

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    1. And from those spelling mistakes it looks as though my two typing fingers still haven't woken up!

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  13. What an interesting morning conversation. In the morning, lately, I have had political conversations with my husband but now the the elections have passed it’s going to ease. I have “Meeting with Remarkable Men” by Gurdjieff and maybe another book and I bought, at a library sale, “The Secret Doctrine” by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky – which is supposed to be on the evolution of the universe but, so far, I have resisted reading it.

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  14. Frico, what a pleasant morning, a pleasant conversation about anything, enough food for breakfast and enough coffee, good dog who can listen and not get tired. It's a good life.

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  15. I loved this intimate glimpse into your morning conversation with your dear Beloved. In many ways, your morning are much like ours. There are some notable exceptions. My beloved gets up first with the dog. He is done nearly with the newspapers by the time I get up. I ask him what is new in the world. He says, "nothing." I ask if there is anything worth reading in the newspapers. Usually, there isn't, but I read them anyway. We need to step it up in have a more esoteric conversation. I think we are "just opening our mouths to emit sounds."

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  16. Hi Friko - well all I can say is thankfully Vagabonde for all their wanderings .. knows a thing or two .. if those two people had raised their heads at my breakfast table I'd have gone back to bed ... but excellent the brain works and both Gurdjieff and Blavatsky are real .. readable. Thankfully I've resisted the advertising material .. but perhaps I need to get out more ..

    Great fun post - and I too can visualise the morning hour ... wonderful that Millie is as happy as a sand-boy - whatever that is .. happy anyway .. cheers Hilary

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  17. I do goldfish impressions for the first hour or so ... a goldfish that's never read anything at all . Should Husband appear before nine , he knows that it's useless to address any remark to me about anything , intellectual or otherwise .

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  18. Ah, conversation. Does it have to "go somewhere"? I mean, if you're trying to replace a stove or find your way to a restaurant, I suppose focus is good. But a meander can be lovely, a little conversational gunkholing, poking about to see what might be just around this bend or that. Too often people seem to consider conversation a battle of wits or knowledge, when it's just as lovely as a mutual exploration.

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  19. Haha! This is so much like a scene from a play with you as the main characters. How brilliant!
    As for remembering those two types you mentioned, not likely from my end. Until today I was never consciously introduced to their ways of thinking. I thank search engines for serving up tie bits about them this morning. Seems we can all live in so many spaces intellectually.

    After some learning about some German culture, I opted for more from the shores along the Sea of Arabia, another world.
    Omar Shariff types had my attention and so did the Beattles when they ventured towards the eastern music.
    Between us are oceans of ideas and at times they are great fun to discuss. But as hinted to by you these days our memories a really no longer sharp. Here's a glimpse at our morning.
    Music from Buddy's iPad sends sound waves from his Spice Girls album that he listens to while sipping his black coffee in his room. It happens daily for now till he chooses a different one.
    In our room sitting side by side and upright cup in hand on our bed:
    Me: "Do you recall Ravi Shankhar's most popular sitar raga that I love?." And I drift into a daydream of seeing him at his sitar.
    Hubby: "If you wish to discuss music let's talk Adel's rendition of Laughing Song in last night's performance." And then there's a slurping sound.
    I leave my dream thinking we had been to see Die Fledermaus quite recently but not last night! Surely not.
    Sounds of Spice Girls continue. I recall the slurp.
    Me: 'How's the coffee?"
    Hubby: " Just the way I like it. You always make it the best."
    AHhh yes I love the flattery. The day has begun on a high note.

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  20. That sounds my kind of morning. We tend to dawdle over breakfast too unless we have to go out.

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  21. That was a lovely brekkie convo though there are a few words I will have to look up in the dictionary haha. I get to face the courtyard too though we're hardly ever at the dining able anymore and it's just a place to put unread magazines, mail and keys. Millie sounds very much at home already :D

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  22. I can see you all there in your kitchen cocoon deciding whether it's quiet you want or conversation. Though I "came of age" in the 60’s, I don't think I'm remembering much that I was doing back then!

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  23. A wonderful vignette, enjoyable to share. The tail's thump, the easy warmth between two sensible, secure people. I can relate and aspire at once, as you have a year or two on my, dear Friko.

    My two bits: P.D. Ouspensky!


    Aloha from Honolulu
    Comfort Spiral

    ~ > < } } ( ° >

    > < 3 3 3 ( ' >

    ><}}(°> ~
    ~ ~ ~ <°)333><( ~ ~ ~

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  24. Oh, conversation need not be linear or edifying to be enjoyable. I could hear the clink of spoon on cereal bowl, and the sound of your setting down your teacup, and the rattle and shuffle of paper. This is all very comforting to me. The spoken words are, nevertheless, far beyond the early morning conversation in this house.

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  25. My grandfather was a Theosophist. He willed me his books, one of which was Blavatski's The Secret Doctrine. I believe they were all Rosicrucians, a group I have always found fascinating. Always good to start the morning with a little philosophy. They say if you keep your mind sharp the rest of the body will follow.

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  26. Beloved's old friend Arnold Newnham was right. People do indeed open their mouths to emit sound. Silence is bliss.

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  27. niets beter dan de tafel gesprekken daar word meestal heel wat afgehandelt.

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  28. What a charming scene -- so mellow and loving. Our house is quite different -- apart from the dawdling! I'm the early riser and usually have two hours to myself -- which I treasure. However, how that our grandson is living with us, that scenario is quite different. I still get an hour or so to myself and then it's back to getting a child off to school...

    Gurdjieff brings back memories of my 'sixty's days' and one particular fellow who carried around his book, which he constantly quoted. I remember none of the quotes -- just the name and the personality!

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  29. I know several people like that....mindless speaking I call it. Ha
    Hugs
    SueAnn

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  30. But you've given us a marvelous vignette and some names to look up - hardly a trifling post :)

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  31. Oh such dedication. I have to confess it is David who gets up first (at :30 AM) to tend to our old dog Peaches (age 17 going on 18). David doesn't say too much to me except to update me on Peaches and his other girl, Clare. Johnny sleeps in my room and comes downstairs when I do.

    As for conversation, David has one each morning with Mohammed, the fellow who delivers his newspaper. Meanwhile I am reading my book of the moment. Dianne

    PS, you got some blogging fodder here after all it seems and inspired me too. Good job. Dianne

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  32. What a wonderful post, Friko! I felt that I was right there with you and your family for a lovely, languid breakfast!

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  33. I'm prejudiced (there, I admit it), but for me, life's too short for the likes of Mme Blavatsky. Every photo I've ever seen of her suggests that she was hardly a bundle of laughs; mysticism and secret wisdom don't appear to have cured her bunions, or whatever was making her look so miserable.

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  34. Well, I can't help it, but (and a propos of the exchange over on Mark's site, to which I've added a bit), this puts me in mind of John Cage (Mr. Marmite, some might say--and we do have one of each of those in our house, suspect you might guess who is pro and whp is con . . .). Anyway, here's one of Cage's many quotables: "I have nothing to say/ and I am saying it/ and that is poetry/ as I need it." ("Lecture on Nothing" (1949)) Though I have to say the quote from Newnham beats this one by miles!

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  35. Arnold is profound ;)
    Meanwhile, there's nothing like some good tail thumping for a morning greeting!

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  36. Half of what I write is restating the other half, the long way around. Wait a minute. The math didn't add up.

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  37. I suspect that Beloved could do well with his own blog. Sounds like a perfectly lovely morning to me.

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  38. There you are Friko. You made a blog out of your morning conversation. I liked the quote at the end. Very true. Someone once said to me "If you have nothing to say, say nothing." Probably sound advice - Dave

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  39. I think life goes through many cycles....sometimes there is an abundance to share...and sometimes there is hardly anything.

    PS...unless I'm missing something...nothing has changed in following.

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  40. Dear Friko, I'm still grinning from the laughter that erupted from my mouth at that last line. Thank you! And thank "Beloved." Peace.

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