Escape
Toy cupboards and tunnels
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.Leonard Cohen
I resigned today. It felt like an escape; liberating and a bit frightening. It has been coming for a long time.
I have been a teacher for thirty-seven years. Kids liked me: I told stories, sang songs and made them laugh. Someone once described me as a charismatic teacher, although I don’t think it was intended to be wholly complimentary. I taught with who I was.
Lately though, things have come unstuck.
I woke slowly the other morning, looking at an image inside my eyelids. It was a toy cupboard. The image stayed with me as dreams do. I still saw it as I finished my first coffee of the day.
When I was a child the cupboard was mine. A nineteen-twenties dresser base: two doors, two drawers and D-shaped brass handles. Too useful to throw away, it was moved to the landing for my toys. I never played there, it was too lonely and the lino too cold for bare knees. Taking toys out was done with eager haste, and putting them away meant opening the doors and throwing them back inside.
As the coffee began its work I began to realize the significance of the image.
I have spent my life throwing things in the cupboard: difficult things, boring things, things to do…later. In time they withered, or were pulled out at the last minute, before it was too late. Recently, several large and difficult things have happened. Believing there was no more to be done about them, they were shoved inside. But in the darkness one of them grew larger and more difficult. I felt growing unease about the amount in there.
Then one day a pupil leaving my class turned, smiled widely and thanked me. I smiled back, mechanically — another class were coming in— there was no time to feel…
I reached for the handle, the doors swung open and toys began falling out onto the floor.
Soon there was no room left on the landing to move my feet, or I’d risk falling down the stairs.
I went to see my doctor.
And, after a time shivering on the lino, I started to see that I must make space.
So I began: standing things up, grouping like with like, finding boxes for small stuff.
The doors still stand open and I’m not shutting them again until I find ways to change the habit of a lifetime. I have a few ideas:
…Difficult things I cannot change stay out of the cupboard - until I can be sure I’ll remember to bring them out and tend them occasionally.
…The difficult thing I could change, I changed today.
…Create things and allow the daylight in as I reach for toys — Singing, friendship, writing.
…Make lists.
…And most of all, to be aware of reaching for the door handle. I could do with a few of Huxley’s mynah birds, that sat in the trees on Pala, his Island, calling ‘Attention!’ and ‘Here and Now!’
And look! Here’s one that hatched earlier - not word-perfect, but flying.
Tunnel Vision
I wandered where the tunnel led
Ignoring dark and dripping walls
Pursuing light that shone ahead
And now … I see I’ve been a fool
Needs must make time to stand and stare
At walls my foolishness has made
And deconstruct them, if I dare
Remove the bricks that I have laid
But even should the tunnel stand
What masonry I disembed
Breaks through into the world beyond
And lights the path where I must tread
