Postcard 008 - The Bronte sisters, by the Bronte Brother

The Bronte Sisters by Patrick Branwell Bronte
Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Bronte Sisters, sent to [E].

This card because Yorkshire (although not quite her patch, I don't think), and because Yorkshire Tea is the good and proper cup of tea, and because I was thinking of her recently.

She makes faery furniture while we video chat and knows that there is magic in the world.  There is delicacy in her, and joy, and deep, deep care. She is a person I felt I knew already when I met her, because with some people it is just easy, to feel comfortable, and know where the space for conversation lies.

I have seen her angry, and hold respect for the intensity of that.  I have seen her in grief, and know that that must sit until it becomes part of the landscape of a life; claimed by moss, and wind, and changing skies.  I ask her opinion because I value it, and she knows lots of things that I don't.

A fragment of my dream the other night escaped with me, or pulled me back, to the waking world.  I've been having slight hypnogogic and hynopompic hallucinations the last day or so, which is new; the dark behind my phone starting to move and make patterns, telling me it's time to put the thing away and sleep, or something appearing in front of me when I'm not quite ready to be awake yet.  This morning it was a face appearing from behind the bedroom curtain, the same face that had appeared at the pontoon that the boat we were sailing down a canal docked at, where I was laid back and couldn't lift myself up.  A man with a glow stick offered a helpful hand, I woke to a sliver of bright sunshine in my eyes, and the face still there.  I realised I was still dreaming, and closed my eyes, but upon opening them again he hadn't shifted.  I willed him away by waking properly.

This seemed like the sort of thing I would tell you, and I'm not entirely sure why, or what I think you'd say.

I got up early, and walked into town for the first time in two months, and was back at the house by 9.  The combination of boarded up pubs, and empty shopfronts that were empty before March makes for eerie viewing.  There is a lot of scaffolding about, and so many closed signs, and interesting bits of graffiti. A banner hoisted on a bridge above the M8 declares that "Glasgow Endures." The bright morning sun made the stone white and steel glass of the Clydeside somewhat oppressive, and I turned into the park on the way back for some green.  I was contemplating the deep enforced rest and the connection with a slower life that comes with being in a world that's largely staying at home.  The weekend was making bread and cheese and dandelion honey.  The May is out.