IS THIS THE WORLDS SHORTEST STORY?

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight friends,

Dear diary (blog),

'I awoke'.

On this note I bid you farewell dear friends. For now.

Until we meet again through the page, I hope this finds you in good health and a happiness

Warmly yours

RJ Wardle

WHY? WHAT? HOW?

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight friends,

Dear diary (blog),

 
When in the study of science, 'the art of no definitive answers', it appears something of a repetitive strain injury to continuously ask the question why?  What does this mean/tell us? How does this enhance our understanding(s) - of the given discipline within the wider spectrum of sciences - of which there are many.

   When in the study of poetry, individual poets from our seemingly embedded cannon of English Literary magnets, novelists, playwrights and others, it again appears something of  a repetitive strain injury amongst both scholars and keenly interested parties (myself included) to ask the very same questions as scientists and other interested parties (myself included) as noted above:

• why?  
• What does this mean/tells us? 
• How does this enhance our understanding(s)

   I turn these questions over to your good selves dear readers, to ponder on for a little moment.

..............passing of time representative of your moment.................................................

   So, any thoughts?

 Good, well I shall continue in the fashion to which I hope you have by now become accustomed to from this pen, (laptop strokes on its keyboard). This is to write, in blindly oblivious to the outside worlds views thanks to not as yet having been able to gage your views - I only hope in my most passionate of humble wishes it inspires, challenges and is of some small interest and use to you - in this bold and forthright transplant operation of my thoughts to this screen.

   Fear not the blank page!

   It will be filled!

   William Shakespeare of Stratford-Upon-Avon circa. 1564. Is by all far and wide reaching postal, sorry, colossal, analysis by people such as myself, PHD students, Doctors of literature - Dr. Funny applicable term I know. Maybe they can assist my current transplantation? - as a transcending and 'universally applicable genius.

 Theatre goers and even those as yet disaffected, unaffected, by this great bards genius are aware if not also in love, with his words if not the dead man himself. (Myself included) 

'...this great bards genius.' REACTIONARY STATEMENT. Last seen being the sole view of the author and not representative of anyone other than this pen (laptop strokes on its keyboard).

• why?  
• What does this mean/tells us? 
• How does this enhance our understanding(s)

  

  In order to answer each of these three questions with the depth and breadth of research required may indeed consume this already consumed customer of Shakespeare's works, an inevitable lifetimes time. 

 I turn these questions over to your good selves dear readers, to ponder on for a little moment


...........passing of time representative of your moment........................................

  Are we all on track? No. Ok we can wait.

.......... passing of time representative of your moment (Part 2) ......................

  Ok, So perhaps Shakespeare is considered as afore mentioned - you do not of course have to agree - because his subject choices are so generic they are applicable across the ages.

 Relationships. 

Would be just one key subject choice of note. 

What do I mean?

Well, in my view (I can of course only write what I think and feel. All words unless otherwise cited are that of this pens and not representative of anyone other than this pen unless cited) whether we be viewing - as his plays are written to be played not read - a tragedy such as Macbeth, a history play such as Richard III or a comedy such as As You Like It, one key denominator is Shakespeare's complex and psychologically engaging multi-layered characters. As a result of these we are treated to an all consuming multitude of relationships, breakdowns, loves, losses, doting, rebuking, indeed all if not more of the very same relationship trials and tribulations we can all resonate with. 

All. If overused please pass by without affection.

   So if this be the case, why do we consider something so engendered and ritualistic as relationships and there applicability to us all as a starting point in the exploration in search of 'the truth' of the meaning behind the bards plays, sonnets, literary works?

What is he trying to tell us? 

I laugh out loud at this. In my minds eye Shakespeare is tutting and chortling over a manuscript as he ponders over what, in 2014, people would try to define as his art of no definitive answers. His words. Purely and deliciously inter-interpretable. 

And so he continues to chortle and laugh in my mind. 

Thanks for that!

 Whilst this is to me quite funny, in a childish sort of way, let it not detract from the sincerity of his achievements and my devoted enjoyment of this great man of words, words. 

  Could it be, that because we all have relationships, in all forms, we can, across the borders of time, geographical location in our great globe and access to Shakespeare's works, all be affected by the complexities of relationships for the better or for the worse? And by progression as a result of this resonance, we can all find an affinity with Shakespeare?

On this note I bid you farewell dear friends. For now.

Until we meet again through the page, I hope this finds you in good health and a happiness

Warmly yours

RJ Wardle

UNIVERSALITY OF TIME

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight friends,

Dear diary (blog),

The universality of time is indeed cyclical and continuous. It affects us all no matter where inthis beautifully lushes globe we currently reside.This update, whilst brief will, I believe, and I hope you can see this too, encapsulate both the fragility, the beauty and the power of life.

Said in 'the bards' - William Shakespeare - own words:

Prospero:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstancial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are sich stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Shakespeare, W. The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148-158

On this note I bid you farewell dear friends. For now.

Until we meet again through the page, I hope this finds you in good health and a happiness,

Warmly yours

Peace Friends X

RJ Wardle

AILEEN MAY WARDLE - 1922-2014

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight friends,

Dear diary (blog),

Time.

   What is time?  I mean, what is time really all about?

It cannot truly be quantified, at least not in my jaded view. By this I mean we cannot get time back. Each moment passes us by and is lost to us. So what is time?

Time to get ready for work. Time to see friends, time to visit places of interest, time to meet a partner and grow a family, and then we look back and we think. My, where did all that time go? Didn't that go quickly.

  You may sense some underlying sense of frustration in this months update. You would, dear reader, not be mistaken.

 It was this last month that we lost our dearly loved Grandma, mother to my father, wife to granddad Sidney (deceased in the latter part of the 1990's), sister to Phyllis (deceased some ten years previous) and Pam, aunty to several cousins, and life-long friend to a one Win Windybanks of Dorset. England. So, yes, I am not ashamed to write it is with some sense of frustration and longing for a time lost to us that my quil falls upon this tea-stained parchment paper. Otherwise known - in this day and age - as tapping away on this laptop. My how the times change.

   As a young boy I remember with clear twenty-twenty vision the sights, smells, ambience and adventures we all shared. Grandma's famed roast dinners, with proper, thick gravy. Her chuckle and warm smile as I would enter her living room having dressed-up and done my hair like a one Elvis Presley - she did not know, or rather, I thought she did not know, that I had also used her hair-spray - Granddad singing old war tunes to us and regaling me with tales of adventure as we all strolled out together for miles through local woods.

Sleep overs at my grandparents were a magical mystery tour all of its own. Possibly of no real interest to anyone other than myself, but still, hey, each to their own.

So, time. As much as all of my heart and mind yearns to get this time back, to revisit that age - the 1980's & 1990's specifically - their home, the home where my dad grew-up, the home where my grandparents lived most of their married life together, the home I first new as Grandma and Granddad's home, this time is lost. Gone. Vamoosh.  Sad but true. So, as I sit here, deep in thought, I have two choices as I see it. I can live for a time that is lost, and believe me readers I have spent far too much time doing this and I can wholeheartedly dissuade you from trying it. It is a lost cause. Or, I can do as I am doing, that which my Grandma would wish for me to do. And I can live. Relish each special moment of time, cherish the opportunities that present themselves and go out and create my own luck, my own opportunities and rejoice in the luxury of life. Not to be confused with the luxuries of life. I mean the luxury simply of living and breathing. A whole world is out there and as a sprightly young thirty something I can wholeheartedly write to you in my grandma and granddad's memory I shall go forth in to this world carrying the warmth of that time with me, no one can take this away, and attempt to live a life that is stimulating, helpful to the many not the few and brings me some mild sense of contentment and happiness.

   In-keeping with a previous update 'It's All A Bit of a Knot' I am not sent to depress literature, I am merely using this months update as a tool to convey to you some small semblance of what life has thrown at us these past moments of time since the last update.

  Please do not confuse the seriousness of the content in this for anything other than what it is. A literary note to oneself as a public record of the emotions associated with the loss of Aileen May Wardle at 11:30 pm GMT on Tuesday 29th July 2014 aged 92.

What will be will be.

On this note I bid you farewell dear friends. For now.

Until we meet again through the page, I hope this finds you in good health and a happiness,

Warmly yours

Peace Friends X

RJ Wardle

A UNITY IN TIME, A HEARTACHE AND A PLEASURE ALL-IN-ONE

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight friends,

Dear diary (blog)

   Where or where do I begin?

  So much has happened over these last weeks.

I have attended a large family wedding somewhere not too dissimilar to Downton Abbey, passed through to a final year of study and read some amazingly insightful books, including one which has truly taken me. A unity in time, a heartache and a pleasure all-in-one. Caitlin Davies' The Ghost of Lily Painter.
         
                                          

   A story centred around the lives lived during the course of a little over a hundred years in one house in London just off the Holloway Road. During this gripping page turner of a story we the reader are treated to a lesson in  local and national history. One resident during the first part of the twentieth century kept a journal allowing the reader to feel like they are a part of this moment in time. The journal starts on January 28th 1901, right at the time our dear old Vic - Queen Victoria - died. Dear old Vic died on the 22nd January 1901 sending the country into a state in mourning. The keeper of this journal, a Police Inspector, notes :

"It is a way to record day-to-day events, in what I trust will be a manner much interesting for posterity."

   Davies utilises the literary technique of this journal and the surrounding characters related to it, namely the inspector, his wife and their lodgers, as a truly fascinating tool providing a harmony between their time and the time of 2009 when the modern-day protagonist, Annie Sweet, moves in to this house and finds herself unravelling the history within the place she has bought.

   Using a history centre Annie finds information to strengthen her knowledge of her house and to ascertain who Lily Painter was. This is achieved by her use of a microfiche  machine. In realising that perhaps the past is not so far removed from her present it was with a real sense of pleasure and also, I might add, a personal attachment to this particular thread of plot, I followed Annie's, Lily's and Molly's lives in search of a shared goal.

   What particularly took me with Davies' work is the way she interlinks with, as far as I know, a factually accurate retelling of life in this part of London at this time whilst showing and telling the reader of the developments that have come to this street and area of London in the intervening years. Told through the eyes of several rounded and engagingly presented characters relevantly characterised in each time.

   Davies introduces 'modern-day' life in this area thus:

"Holloway Road, a London Street if ever there was one, a litter blown artery into the City, a road clogged with trucks and buses where every tenth vehicle is a police car or an ambulance..."

   For me at least as the reader of this story this description coupled with that which I have shown from the journal, encapsulate the overarching unity of time this story so brilliantly captures. To be of interest to the many not the few.

   The Holloway Empire, where once a one Lily Painter, a young aspiring music hall star who used to live at this house performed at, which then becomes the Odeon Cinema, the place our protagonists of the early Twenty First Century, Annie Sweet and daughter Molly go to watch movies. Molly, like Lily, has aspirations to be on the stage, and so, in Davis' consummate adept and technically in-tune use of plot-lines and language, weaves a narrative that is not only historically accurate and revelatory, but teaches the reader, or is that guides the reader? to an understanding of the harmony between the past with the present and no doubt, the future.

   Once I had finished this book, I did in all honesty have a lump in my throat. It is something of a rarity that I can write a book has captured me to the point I feel a deep and raw sadness. To close the characters and lives they lead back into themselves within the closed pages of a book makes me truly sad!

I can think instantly of just two in the last six months that make me feel like this.

Caitlin Davies, The Ghost of Lily Painter - of course - and Sebastian Faulks Birdsong

  This written it is also with a slightly self-congratulatory nod of appreciation, I as can you, have the luxury of re-reading.

On this note I bid you farewell dear friends. For now.

Until we meet again through the page, I hope this finds you in good health and a happiness,

Warmly yours

Peace Friends X

RJ Wardle

IT IS ALL A BIT OF A KNOT.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight friends,

Whilst it never fails to humble me, this time of year, this particular year, 2014,utterly combusts me.

  Having recently commemorated the 70th anniversary of the D-Day Landings, on Normandy beaches, in France during World War Two, we are in the month of June, which marks the centenary of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination. June 28th 1914, marking the beginning of World War One. Although Britain did not declare war until the 4th August of 1914.

  A book I recently fell into is Robert Harris' An Officer and a Spy. Composed as a fictional retelling of 'the most infamous miscarriage of Justice in History,' that of the conviction of Jewish officer, Alfred Dreyfus, for treason in France 1895. This acted as the precursor to the disharmony, subsequently catapulting Europe in to a World War by afore mentioned assassination of 'The Duke.'
   Now, I hesitate to linger on this as it sounds far too much like politics and religion, nothing wrong with this but there are other vehicles for it. This written it is an almighty clanger of miscarriage if ever there was a clanger. Clanger, not to be confused with hanger, you know, for coats et cetera. Or maybe shirts, skirts and jackets? I write this currently diving out of the way of yet another author sent from afar to depress literature, so said he of Blake. Written in the margins of a tattered old - 'traditional' - book. Suffice as to write An Officer and a Spy is in my view, well worth a read. Or re-read. Or re-read the read you have read. It is up to you.

  So, where do we find ourselves in this sort of vacuum between commemorations? Rejoicing and cherishing life. That's where.

  As if by some unjust rod plucked from my bleeding heart (depressing literature again are we?) I find myself feeling something other than sad. I find myself equal. In spirit and in action. I do hesitate to go further along the lines of the word spirit, so we shall simply call it a spirit-level. You know, like a builder would use to level a wall. Or a floor. Again I pause for thought over deploying the word plethora. Plethora is apparently a word used most widely by students to show their understanding of the English language. With all it's multitudes of plethoras' of possibilities. I am indeed also a student, as such I respectfully decline from using the word plethora. If seen please feel free to report the word Plethora to trading standards. Or some other such body of precision.  For more visual imagery of the word plethora read ART FOR ARTS SAKE?... please click here:  http://robertjameswardle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/art-for-arts-sake-surely-not-thats-no.html

   Another word I fell upon, many many summers ago, is ramifications. The complex consequences of actions. Or there about.

This word, is a continuously useful word and as such I shall deploy it now.

I hope very much the ramifications of a novel I am continuing with, and a script I am co-writing, both come to fruition bringing pleasure and stimulation of emotion to the many not the few.

On this note I bid you farewell dear friends. For now.

Until we meet again through the page, I hope this finds you in good health and a happiness,

Warmly yours

Peace Friends X

RJ Wardle

ART FOR ARTS SAKE? SURELY NOT! THAT'S A NO VOTE FROM ME.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight friends,

   Art for art's sake is not an expression I find any resonance with. For me art is, or at least can be, found pretty much anywhere I look. It is for me at least a source of constant expression and comfort. My art is my words. Quality always subjective.

   ART: The angle of a chair, displayed/hung in traditional 'art galleries,' watching a squirrel skip playfully down from a tree in nearby St James' Park -London Uk - art is then interpretation. Surely?

   Often I hear people saying beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, beauty is only skin deep, art is purely subjective. Well, I can take the points these statements make without having to agree can't I?

  We live in a very culturally diverse city, us London folk, although dear friends, please do not forget, I am a proud Yorkshire man, raised and schooled in a field near York. So traditionally I am indeed, a countryman. Although currently skipping about in London.

   Subjectivity is also applicable to most things, not just art. My reality is different to your's and your's is no doubt even slightly different to your neighbours. Does this make art?

Does reality constitute the label of art?

What's with all the questions this month dear man? I hear you sighing, whilst instantly raising your blood pressure as you have no doubt just noted I initiated this sentence with yet another question.

Damn fool.

That was you thinking not me writing by the way.

  Subjective, personal opinion and perspective only, here is the raw emotion afore mentioned with reference to art being purely subjective.
 
   Are you feeling the same as me, your neighbour, or even the same as you felt a second ago?

   Quite possibly not.

   Adding to these emotions comes the plethora of 'outside influences' upon our lives. How, or maybe this is just me, life seems circular. That is to write, history repeats itself, trends resurface, what was widely accepted as a 'shocking' piece of art or an inappropriate 'art-form,' can, by afore mentioned outside influences, resurface hundreds of years later to become widely acknowledged as 'amazing - ground-breaking - revolutionary.'

   The way in which I view the world here in London changes minute by minute, borough by borough, more often than not, from street to street, I find myself skipping through multiple arts and multiple realities.Does this mean that reality constitutes art? Well, if anyone who has taken a brief moment to read this, for which you are eternally thanked, has ever been to Shoreditch -LondonUk - you will have cause to resonate with my question. At least I hope you will.

   An eclectic haberdashery, haberdashery, is this a word? Ok enough questions, of art, multiple realities and multiple persona's. In my as yet somewhat limited experiences of life in London, Shoreditch is for me a place of relaxation, breeding creative stimulations. And no dear friends, creative stimulations are not found in a pub. Well, not always. Merely being on the east side streets of Shoreditch one encounters all walks of life, in all styles of expression, wearing all manner of era's clothing with mismatching shoes and haircuts to boot.

Art then. In my subjective perspective opinion, is everywhere, in everything, we just have to open our minds to embrace it.

This IS NOT me. Ashamedly afraid to write.

Until we meet again through the page, I hope this finds you in good health and a happiness,

Warmly Yours

Peace Friends X

RJ Wardle