Three Beauties

Mar 12, 2023

1. Snow

Last week it snowed in southwest England. As I snuggled under two duvets watching the large flakes falling rapidly, I started writing a poem in my mind.

How can I hide in warmth inside

When one of the three beauties waits?

At the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery (which turned out to be the museum with the vardo and mummy that I mentioned in The Window in My Mind), I had seen a print in the Japanese porcelain exhibit of a girl holding a rabbit made of snow. The placard explained that it represented one of the three beauties—snow, flowers, and the moon. Beautiful because they were transient.

I wanted to see the Mendip Hills covered with snow, so I took the bus to Wells. As the bus left the city, I added a few more lines.

She, the cold white one, stays outside,

Pins the flowers, rides the grey gates.

When I am writing, I don’t know where it will take me. I wrote a few more lines as the snowy hills came into view, then crossed them out. This poem was not about snow. It was about the effect that the snow was having on a very particular man, a man that I could feel was thinking about me.

When she falls, I stumble—transformed

Beneath her white cloak of beauty.

My rough dark edges are reformed,

Off balance, when she is with me.

But he quickly regains his composure, draws himself up, and continues walking as the snow falls.

She weakly clings to my coat sleeve.

I could easily shake her off.

But why be cruel? She will leave,

Greeting her sister Moon aloft,

Melting in the moonlight, gone again.

Am I loved or just a snowman?

Most of this sonnet was written on the bus, looking out at the white hills and peering into the small stands of snow-lined trees interspersed with stone walls and sheep that looked like yellow custard against the snowy backdrop.

2. Bread at the Market

When we arrived in Wells, there was no snow on the ground. It was freezing, but the grass was green and wet. The market booths had not been put up on account of “severe weather,” but a few traders had their own stalls.

The man selling bread looked so cold that I thought about buying everything on the table so that he could go home. I figured it would be a week’s rent for me (and maybe for him). But how would I get all the bread and buns back on the bus? Perhaps his regular customers would be disappointed to find he had gone. In the end, I bought a round loaf of brown bread and some Chelsea buns.

Chelsea buns. Fitzbillies, Cambridge, England.

3. Sliding Door Moments

To escape the cold, I went to the Wells & Mendip Museum exhibition called “The Art of Transitional Spaces” (March 7 to March 25, 2023). I never made it past the first room.

While looking at a painting called Pathways II, I could hear the artist Freddie Bird behind me. He was talking to a man about ley lines, energy, and sacred geometry.

“We journey, taking in remote waterfalls, gorges, coastal paths, and ancient woodlands. These spaces then form themselves into another, imagined place. This is the basis of the Pathways series. That life is a journey, often requiring us to make connections, bridging between peoples and places on our journeying to become the fulfilled best version of ourselves. This process starts by first immersing yourself in nature and venturing out.”

Freddie broke off, quite abruptly it seemed to me, and apologized for not paying attention to me. Not that I was expecting to be noticed. The other man walked into the next room.

“Many people express regret about paths they have not taken when they see my work,” he said.

“I am not like that. I have always been on the right path. Like now, for instance, this is my fifth trip to Wells since I arrived in late January because I know there is something I am supposed to find here. So, I will keep returning every Wednesday until I find it.”

Freddie said that it was a “Sliding Door Moment.” The allusion was lost on me because I had not seen the 1998 film. He explained that it was like when two people who are supposed to meet pass each other in a revolving door and fail to connect. Then he called the other man back into the room and told him what I had said.

“Woden’s Day,” said the other man. “Wells has many levels. There is the surface level, the historical level, the spiritual level, and another level beneath that, which I haven’t yet worked out.”

“You just made things more difficult for me. So, the thing that I am looking for might not be on the surface level.” It was beginning to sound a bit like a quest in a computer game.

“You both like to read, right?” asked Freddie. Then he gave both of us magnetic bookmarks. It was the center section of the Pathways II picture.

“Now you two have a connection.”