The arrow is drawn to a hair’s breadth from the cheek. Fingertips purple, feet anchored, one elbow raised, the other locked. Eyes on the target. Calculated. Still. 

Release

The hurried walk out the back door and around the house is in the interest of time, not nostalgia for leaving. We are a few minutes behind schedule and anticipate traffic to the airport.

Misgivings about this journey—who do I think I am?—are left in the dust of the fleche in motion. 

I travel hurt, with a gammy knee and a swollen hand (it happened the day before; never mind how). 

When I arrive at little Cardiff airport, the sign shunts travellers like so: EU passengers this way, Non-EU that way. I choose non-EU along with several young East Asians, international students, like me. The Customs woman raises her voice to the student in front of me. To me she says, quietly: You do know that as a Canadian you could pass through the gate, pointing at the EU line. She nods like I’m not a foreigner. First experience of Canadian privilege. 

There is no taxi line. I’m limping and my hand is bound up. Tamim, a young Afghani mechanical engineer—the driver of the only taxi there—kindly kindly kindly adds me to his fare, after asking the Germans in the back seat if it’s okay. He loads my bags in the boot before they can answer. I go to open the driver’s door, and we all laugh. Hmmm, I’m in the UK! Tamim pledges to reduce our costs by ten pounds. None of us knows what that means. He is driving an electric car. I nod off, occasionally jerking awake at a rounding curve with signs written in Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg. I luxuriate that they are loud and clear, not in English.  

After we let off the Germans, Tamin and I chat in Arabic. He wants to take me all the way to Cheltenham, but we figure out the train is much cheaper. Our brief companionship is like a pillow on hard ground.

At the train station

Ach. Celtic comes over the loudspeaker. I tune in, hearing lilts and gutturals and syntax. It sounds like proper Anglo Saxon, but what do I know? I ask a woman with a lanyard if this train stops at Cheltenham, even though every indication on the overhead screen says it does. My accent registers on her kind face.

Again, I have a strange feeling of privilege.  

On the commuter train, I see no place for large bags. Although I block the aisle, passengers take me in stride. I sit opposite a football player. His daughter lives in Quebec. He’s learned French and we converse the whole way.  

Cheltenham

I walk to my apartment not too far away, dragging the bags, compression bands on knee and hand. My landlord, with his three dogs, meets me halfway, so kind. He takes the big case, but soon asks why the wheels stick. 

I nap into a deep black hole…and then I get out to the shops. 

Clothes are put away. Food is in the fridge. The tiny apartment is like a trailer: just the essentials, everything in its place. The sun streams through it in the late afternoon. The light warms and graces it (but this is England and the sun is short-lived). 

I sleep well.

I’ve walked up a Cotswold Mountain. I’m going to see my son soon. I’ve met folks. I’ve gone to two cathedrals. I‘ve seen a doctor for this knee.

And I’ve started classes. My reason for being here. An MA in Creative and Critical Writing.

Writing in an academic setting isn’t like writing perched over the lake.

The arrow quivers, dips and disappears into the fog.

I have a vague idea for a new novel—historical fiction—and mostly think of nothing but it. 

Archery is like life: as bow is to arrow, so is effort to action. Effort-Action-Failure. Effort-Action-Success. Effort-action…

The road to wisdom?

Well, it’s plain and simple to express

Err and err and err again

But less and less and less 

                            Piet Hien

❤️ I do think about R. And F, J, G, MA, M, C, G, S, J, and A and those of you who reached out last minute, encouraging.