Storytelling Starters ~ The puzzle of time
A young friend of mine was still a teenager when he said to me once, ‘When you tell me a story, the room goes all still.’ How time passes! He’s nearly 40 now.
But I know what he means. When Helen East was at Waterstone’s in Piccadilly telling her London Tales last week (her book of these is published by The History Press), there was a palpable sense during the storytelling of moving into a different place and time.
A welcome gift?
So what’s to be done when time feels harassed, weighed down by anxieties and things that have to be done? When that’s so – as this week for me – I try and remember Mink, that hero figure in North American Indian legend who brought the sun to the people. Later, according to another story of him – and I see that I told it in this blog four years ago on November 19th, 2011 – Mink also brought time to the land. But after he stole that clock from the white settlers’ house, there was a big downside to the new possession. From then on, time became something that had to be managed. The story warns that we have to be mindful. Without care, time can dominate.
A welcome gift?
A wonderful counterbalance comes in those old Welsh folktales where someone sits under a tree to listen to the sound of birds singing and, wholly enchanted, becomes oblivious of time going by.
Robyn Meredydd is one such fellow in Carmarthenshire lore. It’s a lovely summer’s day, the sycamore tree is in full leaf and the bird is singing so sweetly. But when Robyn eventually comes to himself, the tree is withered and dead, his farmhouse when he reaches it is covered in ivy and the old man who comes to the door turns out to be his own nephew who confesses that when he was a child, he’d once heard about an uncle called Robyn who had disappeared.
Time is a puzzle. Yet it seems to me that any of it that’s spent listening to the singing of birds is refreshingly worth it – one of life’s inestimable pleasures. It restores a sense of calm and the confidence to think that, after all, life’s problems can be managed. Certainly it’s a whole lot better than, last night, the sound of the foxes screeching the night away out in the back.
P.S. I hope you’ll agree that, in their way, both my photos this week are symbols of time.
Tags: Helen East, London Tales, Robyn Meredydd, time
May 5th, 2015 at 10:39 pm
O Mary, how timely is this piece! I am reading it in a Heathrow hotel, having come to meet my half-sister who lives in Australia. She has flown for 13 hours from Singapore (and for 8 hours from Brisbane before that) and her poor body is sooooo confused by the time zones she has gone through. We think we can organise time, but it won’t be tamed!
I went back through your blog archive to find the story of Mink and Time and I’m pretty sure that Mink would have plenty of sympathy for my poor mixed up sister.
May 7th, 2015 at 1:01 pm
O Fiona, yes I’m sure Mink would have sympathised with your sister’s feeling quite time-zoned out. But I hope you both had a fantastic time together. And it was lovely of you to write.