Beloved vagabonds and life.

"Beloved Vagabond" was a book I loved, I don't remember the name of the author or very much about the contents, only that the main character the Vagabond was always travelling, like a nomad and slept where he could, earned money where he could, playing music and doing tricks and was loved by all, he also met some fascinating characters on his journeyings. 

I did love all that in my teens, and even decided to become a Beloved Vagabond myself, was it not for the constant bother of being attracted by the opposite sex that took over all else in the everydayness of existence. How dominated we are by the worryings of such, it seemed a relief to be married at 22 years, and not have to look around for the same, now, I felt one could develop the other sides of ones psyche.

At the Art College there came a woman who at 80 years was as full of creative energy as any of us young things, she would charge in to the pottery and set up a frame of metal, at least 4ft long, slap on great chunks of clay and create a bird with a gargoyle-like head that left us all gasping and envious. There we were pernicketing at our little bits of clay and she could do it bigger and better than us in a few minutes. 

This woman said, "First, never get married, then don't start travelling until you are 60 yrs.old then go all over the world, everyone you meet will want to help you", and she had done this. She was on the border between Burma and China, or some such place when in the middle of the night a great strapping young man entered her chamber, urgently he said " You must leave here immediately as its far too dangerous to be in this place for the night" she heeded him and got dressed gathered the small amount of luggage she had and went with this total stranger, he helped her over the border to a safer place and then having been thanked by her, he left. 

So one can imagine with such tales to tell we were all agog and in total admiration of this energetic 80 yr.old her wavy grey long hair held up in a loose bun and jogging shoes on her feet (In 1960). She was a kind of Beloved Vagabond who by chance chose to visit our college for a year to do some potting, mostly sculptures and small beautiful butter mould tiles. 

    I have a one track mind, but the walls of the track are so beautiful that if I leave it my mind, my subconscious, my feelings, my very feet lead me back to its haven of wonder. 

I glance out at bang, bang, bang of pop music blaring out of passing fast car's windows wide open; at the seriously concerned village gossips talking interminably about the latest drama in the news; the TV spelling it all out in words and pictures, splurging the bloody details across the screen to impress us, to make us suffer too; the professors discussing who shall come out with the next academic idea where nearly every idea has already been flogged to death and back again; the man who wants more out of life, drugged in one way or another, smoke or hash, sucking the very core of his own addiction into his mind and body to pollute all natures natural expressions and end up exhausted flesh. 

The ambitious artists who know-it-all, even did when they were fresh out of art school,"that colour is best there" - not even thinking - not crossing their minds that they are speaking to an artist too, one who is a colour specialist but they don't take the trouble to find out; the old ladies sitting, maybe not knowing it, in a row, their heads nodding at the flies and the net curtains, the crocheted doilies and the pot plants; the lonely bachelor who has never dared, all his life to speak directly to a girl, his upstairs room left exactly as his parents had it before they died. 

This I wrote at 30 and later embellished. Ann