51. Ebb and flow – ReadWriteFlow

Seasons, senses & self

How quickly hope and despondency can ebb and flow in a single hour, he said to his friend Dinesh as they stood on the bank of the Rea with their backs to Sustrans Route 5. Leaden skies had dampened bright forecast like a comfortless weighted blanket.

Dinesh didn’t listen. He was watching his newly launched paper boat (expertly crafted from the centrefold of yesterday’s Sunday glossy) ride the weir and bob on – up and down… up and down… Folded celebrity faces slowly absorb the stream.

Nearby, a moorhen dives for a snack. Or was it a coot?

Sudden sun.

Seasons, senses & self 51/365:
Nudging you to... write? reflect? walk? notice? flow?

The sequence of sounds in ‘Dinesh didn’t listen’ pleases me. Learning by heart (or trying to write) poems which use half-rhyme, alliteration, assonance, subtle rhythms, and paying close attention to the sound, can change the way your write prose.

On ebb and flow: Rumi’s lines describing each of us as a ‘guest house’ for various emotions (best known in Coleman Barks’ paraphrase) have been translated literally by Reynold Nicholson:

Every day, too, at every moment a thought comes, like an honoured guest, into your bosom. O soul, regard each thought as a person, since each person derives his worth from thought and spirit. If the thought of sorrow is waylaying joy, it is making preparations for joy. It violently sweeps your house clear of all else, so that new joy from the source of good may enter in. It scatters the yellow leaves from the bough of the heart, so that incessant green leaves may grow. It uproots the old joy, in order that new delight may march in from the Beyond. Sorrow pulls up the crooked rotten root, to disclose the root that is veiled from sight. Whatsoever sorrow may cause to be shed from the heart or may take away, assuredly it will bring better in exchange.

Source: The Mathnawi (I’ve slightly adapted Nicholson here, for readability.)

Why not compare the two versions, and write your own?

Moorhen or coot? “Both birds have ‘frontal shields’, which essentially means that their beaks extend up their foreheads. The shields and beaks of moorhens are bright red except for a yellow tip at the bottom. The shields and beaks of coots are white or pale pink in colour – in fact, this is where the phrase ‘bald as a coot’ comes from.”