SCARLETSHADE -- Betsy Clark

BETSY RUBY CLARK

AUTUMN AND THE WORSHIP OF PAN

It was the season I am not particularly loving. I do not like it. It was autumn in London. Autumn is the blessed season between the harshness of winter and the idle summer. It is a trustful season for certain people. I fail to see why. You want to glean some grains of information concerning the season I am not friendly with. To me autumn is not to understand. I do not want to waste time to understand something I do not like. Yet it is adventurous. I have the privilege of tasting it. London's autumn and the unenviable notoriety. The sun was missing. I was journeying to the past to a secluded corner of Hyde Park. Autumn turned the world into piles of gray. A pardonable exasperation indeed in my mind.

However autumn is a mystery that baffles everybody. There is a sombre, almost savage wildness about autumn. It is hidden beneath civility. You are right, there is a sudden pleasure buried, we are capable to such an extent of unearthing pleasures from mother nature. However improbable I begin to understand autumn as I understand myself.

The musician is my soulmate. He does not know it yet. The romancer in him has died with the last green leaf yet he will rebirth. I admire his piano touch. He gives the sharp edge to the music and I fly with the stars as I hear him plays. Do you know the feeling as the one we love makes music? He is Pan incarnated. I believe in perpetual spring for I believe in him. An elation, to my thirst he gives the potion. Tears run down my cheeks for him. I want to put autumn behind. I will rise with summer and I pray, may it be I with him in my arms.

WITH MY KIND

My friend, let us call her Glenda to spare her unnecessary ill-feeling, is made of a stern character that marks women like Margaret Thatcher, this is not, one must allow the self to concede, in the least engaging. We grew up together for her mother was my parents' friends, we lived a few miles away from each other, when my mother paid a visit to the house I would be told to play with Glenda. Now we live further from each other in the city, and still be friends. Other friends that I have are childhood friends, friends from the workplace, and pen-friends on the internet, most of whom are colleagues in my profession.

I did not give the matter a wrangling thought within myself. One day not long ago I went to visit a friend in another city and there was a question, while we conversed, "How do you manage to stay Glenda's friend as she is unpopular, and is always in a perilous relationship with everybody else?"

I started to answer yet my mind refused me. To be frank, Glenda has brought our friendship into an unpleasing state many times, and the relationship was in jeopardy. It is indeed strange that I could not remember the way we employed to return the friendship to normal. My incapability to understand the matter disturbed me greatly. I devoted thoughts about it, and engaged my other friends in conversations pertaining to the idea of friendship. Another matter came into the surface, when Kathy suggested I am a generous person at heart and there is no other explanation for my ability to become many people's friends, with their respective characters and variants. Then Nina put forth a remark, it was "the triumph of diplomacy", as a joke, for I am a Libra. I thought about this and although it pleases me to find positive views of myself in the eyes of my friends, nevertheless the "Glenda problem" haunted me. I wished for nothing but to bring her into a wider circle, and I have done what I could to ease the image of the "Dragon Lady", as vicious acquaintances have described her. She had let me down. Why did I keep trying?

I have an answer, yet this is startling. The prowess to maintain friendship is intangible, as well as the love and tenderness that are not always visible, and I am by no means an authoritative voice in the matter, but I seem to gather that I keep my loyalty to Glenda for she is a woman.

I feel my spirit soaring by the thought. I have been in a great many friendly acquaintance with males, my colleagues and people that I meet outside work, yet I am more relax and finding splendid connections with women. (For a reference I must state that I am not gay). What I mean is, women understand each other better than we understand men, and while men are more often having connections with the opposite sex for business and pleasure, the connection between (among) women themselves are for pure companionship where there is no ill-will, and unlike the casual friendship between a man and a woman, friendship between (among) women is more lasting. In my opinion men cannot truly be women's friends in the term of equality, he is apt to subordinate, and the subjugation is often subtly achieved. "Between a man and a woman there could be eros or enmity, but friendship is not possible."

I have another friend, her name (not the real name) is Lucille. She has many friends and most are males. I do not think that she is not in the least aware, that her male friends are in reality her suitors. I know a few of them and from our conversations when we talk of Lucille the men were opening themselves with the hope that I would relay their amorous love to her. That way now and then she lost a friend for she did not want to get involved in a love affair with them. I doubt if she did not think of the problem by herself, yet she is continuing the dangerous liaisons. The motive is crucial in friendship. A friendship between a man and a woman is not possible for there is the chemical between sexes. On the other hand friendship between two women or two men (in normal fashion) is benefitting both sides.

I understand Glenda for she is a woman. She has been most insecure, she saw her friends and sisters get married and have wonderful lives with their families, she lives by herself in an apartment and seldom invite people, the risk of loneliness and bitterness is understandably great. I do not believe in marriage myself. But I understand women's feeling and thought of the matter, like Glenda who wants to get married but she is also hesitating for her career. Men do not understand the doubt, it takes a woman to know it and thus to be her friend. I am not empty-handed either, from Glenda I have learned the meaning of loneliness and the need to have a man to be coveted as her possession to better life. Men in Glenda's life did not understand the withdrawal of favour. Most often they thought she was pitching for battle. In reality she was hesitating and having second thoughts, as her career is very important to her and she knows it must come in the second place if she is to get married. It is a tough choice for women and men do not seem to understand it, for they are freer than us.

Married women and women who are in love need their female friends. There are a great many things they could not talk to men about. Men are seldom sensitive, and abuse in the light of matrimonial life is seldom acknowledged. They cannot talk of the matter with the husband or boyfriend.

To be honest I am more comfortable among women, for I do not have to be in constant alert and afraid of the risk of a quarrel.

ADVERTISEMENT OF MYSELF: SWAN FOR RENT

This has always existed, everywhere, in some form or other.
Each is brought to heel, there are those superb optimists who maintain
That everything is for sale, the world is a market place.
I cannot sell myself, I shall need myself still,
But I can rent myself, a swan at the lake
I am not quite charming, I am not a princess
But I proudly believe, I am though cannot dance nor sing
Innocent until proved guilty.
I shall emerge like a Phoenix to you sir, if you please
If this engenders animosity,
You may take the swan back, and I shall return your money.

GYPSIES' EDEN

A magic barge appeared in the form of a world and in it was the night like a lady wearing a black veil. A blind and unappreciative world failed to see the light.

But there were gypsies who had travelled around the world, the epithets of the streets, abandoned laughter, and picturesque sorrow, were known to them like to no one else.

Their glory was the knowledge and appreciation of which others have neglected, it was their Paradise.

TREASURE INLAND

A king's life is not always a happy one but I think I prefer it to that of a monk.

It is too much subdued.

Yet every person needs a time alone. It is here that she could enjoy solitude and the pursuit of her hobbies; here she feels that she could achieve one of her ambitions, which is to separate the person at work and the one who is at play.

It is here that she could avoid feeling a twinge of conscience; for every person needs to leave her conscience unstirred in a while.

It is a treasure inside oneself, and here she does not have to chase away boredom nor long for a charming companion. She is satisfied and gay within herself from day to day.

POLITE SOCIETY

People with no authority agreed that something should be done, but no one with any authority at all gave assurances that the plans would be devised to revive the polite society. In view of the shortage of manners in society nowadays, there are people who have been imploring us to 'upgrade', namely, teaching ourselves and our children the concrete good manners in speech and actions, once the pride of society. I do not know if this is at all possible. I agree that people have been losing respect toward the older generation, teachers and other bodies that used to be our guiding light in the past. Youngsters without shame refuse to negotiate and merely walk out. The old lady who sits on the edge of a chair, holding a tapestry handbag primly on her lap, and gives us advices is no more. Yet we know that the times have changed. The attempts to revive the polite society may not end in a torrent of applause anymore, as people seem to hate their fellows more.

WITHOUT FEAR OF PUBLIC SCRUTINY

She had bright auburn hair the colour of the bay pony which pulled the knife-grinding cart of his grandfather's, a smiling voice, and eyes which jumped with light, like sun on water, but could also cloud with tears. He does not know that, his mere opportunity to know was a photograph. But his heart leapt with joy whenever he had thought of her. She was his Queen, his Grace Darling, his Lady of the Lake. All the heroines of all the soppy poems through which the school children have stumbled and giggled their way.

They have met on the internet, they have never met in flesh. Yet it is wrong to assume that love is incapable of blooming there, as mightily as anywhere else, and to him there is no difference if they had met at the heart of London.

I am a believer in unions of the souls. I perceive it as a sacred sanctum, in which the souls in question are making no differentiation where they have first locked eyes.

Although I have a relationship in the 'ordinary way', and I have met my sweetheart in a book fair, this is by no means restricting my view of the love on the internet. I believe that it is also a love like the one that I received the blessing for.

I have several friends with whom I have never met. Loni, Nina, Gregory, Freddie Mboma, and many others, are away from me at the moment. But I love them as if they are living in London. It makes no difference to me, and I hope that they are of the same predisposition.

Since friendship, and true friendship also (I have known the four friends for more than one year) is possible on the internet, I believe that love is also possible.

Souls are nobler than flesh.

The union of souls are nobler than the mere meeting of the flesh.

To Jasmine, whom I do not have the opportunity to know, yet she has been on my mind, I would like to say: my dear friend, you are blessed with a heart that views love in a wide horizon. You should have no fear of public scrutiny.

In this life, many people are unhappy since they live with spouses that they do not love. When you find another man, I am certain that you will be happier, for you have learned.

THE PALAVER

AUTHENTIC PETER PAN

NEVER SAY GOODBYE

ALICE, IN CHAINS, COMES FOR TEA