LETTERS FROM THE GLOBAL PROVINCE
Out of the Muck: Over a Wall, Global Province Letter, 24 May 2018
BLOW, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh ho! sing, heigh ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then heigh ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly
—William Shakespeare
The Orbit of MacLeod. We never quite know where our friend Maxwell MacLeod has been, is roosting now, or is headed next. He is a man of provenance, so he may take after his forbears and row his way round the Hebrides. A journalist and story teller, his cart may take him to London or the Middle East. Right at the moment he is in Muck, the smallest of the Small Isles, in Scotland. We gather it is a pleasant getaway where nobody will trouble you, since the population count is around 36 or so. A good place, 'tis, to think about things.
So it's a hideaway for men and birds where one can contemplate the verities and hunger for truth. Scotland has turned out a philosopher or two, and we are sure some worthy has hatched an empiricism or two here. We don't know whether David Hume ever trod along the two miles of Muck, but we are sure he would have been better for it. MacLeod, a romantic imp, has used Muck to fight muck. From there he has sent out fusillades that he hopes will overcome some of the sordidness and pain that peoples this world. Do read below his current call to goodness:
Subject: Praying again for the peace of Jerusalem. Talking over a wall. A letter from Muck
I am sitting typing this in a small cottage on the tiny island of Muck, my task today being to try and get two Palestinian nurses out of the current horror of the Middle East.
The stark contrast between the two situations here on Muck and over there in Gaza somehow raises the volume of your sensitivity and it's hard to hold it all together and not weep, particularly when you are in a place of such breath taking beauty. Yesterday I took an hours break to heather walk in the golden sunshine beside an emerald sea and counted ten species of birds, many of them half crazy with the lusts of Spring. What was it that Tennyson wrote (actually first published in 1842 yesterday) In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the Robin's breast...and I thought inevitably of the crimson that was doubtless spreading over many a fresh faced laddies breast as he was eviscerated by an Israeli sniper for the sin of throwing stones over a fence. Over two and a half thousand killed or wounded yesterday alone. How strange to think of an intervening God mastering both the beauty of Muck in May and the filthy muck of largely unwarranted slaughter amongst the lust crazed youths of Gaza. As I walked I thought heard the final cries of those daft kids echoed in the haunting mating calls of the eiderduck and had to stop and get a grip.
Back at the lap top my task was to try and ensure that two nurses that I have been working for two years to try and get out of that situation, one a Muslim and the other a Christian so that they might spend June being educated in a number of Scottish facilities.
Lest this all seems self serving pish let me assure you that my role in all of this is hardly very self sacrificial. I look after a flat for a philanthropist in Edinburgh, which the nurses are borrowing. I have hardly been dodging rubber bullets and my main role in June will be to buy the pretty nurses the odd pizza and perhaps take them to see the zoo, so I make no claim for glory.
The name of the project is Talking over the wall. Let me explain why. Some months ago one of the senior nurses responsible for the students who will come in June came over to check things out and the airline lost her luggage, Standing at the airline's desk trying to get things sorted out she fell in with another off the flight who had also lost his bags and they nearly fell into each others arms with empathy as they tried to convince the staff that it would be really helpful if they could be of a bit more of a help. Like now.
Then the full horror of their situation became apparent. The amusing man was a wretched Jewish Israeli whilst the distraught nurse was a wretched Palestinian. Sworn adversaries, And they had mistakenly become friends. How embarrassing for them both.
Eventually the luggage issue was sorted out and a parting remark made by the suddenly flustered man. "How do we make our peoples friends?" Our nurse's reply named the project.
"Well it's hard talking over a wall."
And so today I sit here on Muck trying to ensure that the two nurses get their visas sorted, trust me working trying to make things like that happen for Palestinians would turn a saint to drink. I'm no saint, or indeed drinker, but have already drunk half a bottle of Malt after two days of exasperation. Some five years ago I wrote a piece, a disgusting piece, that infuriated many. I was delighted at their fury. It concerned the fact that in the times when I have been witnessing horrific situations in places like Gaza that I notice that a common occurrence is that people shit themselves as they run. It wasn't a particularly well written piece and the subject was repulsive, but for some reason it struck a note and was posted on by many, particularly in Gaza. May I quote the end on this awful day, because the song remains the same;
"There will be many more deaths, limbs will be coarsely ripped from limbs, disease will flourish, tears will flow in great harrowing gasps from Mothers, and none from Generals.
If I shut my eyes I can imagine the sweet smell of shit, the default perfume of war.
Holy Mary Mother of God pray for us now at the hour of these deaths.
And pray for the peace of JerusalemMaxwell MacLeod <maxwellmacleod@yahoo.co.uk>, 15 may 2018 12:24.45 EST
P.S. MacLeod reminds us of the ambiguity in Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall."
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.
—Robert Frost, 1874–963
P.P.S. Whither, we ask, will MacLeod run off to, to celebrate his victory with the two nurses, putting the pain and gore of this world to one side for a few moments. In Manhattan, of course, he would go to the renowned Joe's Pizza where we once held a ballooned birthday party and then had a white pimpmobile take us and our friends all about Gotham. Now London is another matter: the Brits are always amiss in their food, unless they import a French chef as did the Duke of Newcastle in the 18th century. We would suggest something cooked up by the esteemed Israeli chef Ottolenghi and his Palestinian food partner Sami Tamimi, a crossing of nationalities that makes good things happen.
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