Sunday, June 16, 2013
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Ghana
and Synchronicity
Perhaps you know about Jungian notions of
synchronicity but if so – bear with me a moment as I explain. If events occur
that seem more than mere coincidence then they are synchronous. I begin this
way as a preamble to three such experiences, occurring at different points in
my life which came together in some kind of otherworldy fashion and point to
the extraordinary.
The first of these connective events took place some
forty years ago. A close friend at the time, Vic Clarke (publicly known as
Lindsay Clarke, the writer) and another writer and myself met once a week to
discuss our latest outpourings. Vic published a novel called Sunday Whiteman
which was loosely based upon his experience as a teacher in a village in Ghana.
Some ten years later I was living in a
terraced house in Norwich and came across an old lady who had been a teacher in
Ghana, also writing a book while there, called Ashanti Boy. I wrote a poem after her death
which I am including at the end of this blog.
Then, some twenty years on, my son
Joseph was invited to play keyboards with the reformed Osibesa, a Ghanaian
Afro-pop band that was very big internationally in the 60s. He went over to
Accra and spent time with them playing at weddings and funerals (!) before a
tour of the UK also involving a few days at the Edinburgh Festival.
Some fifteen years later I
communicated via chance circumstances with a woman in Accra, the business
partner of Dawn French in a clothing venture – fashion for the larger woman. We
met up – and became married.
The point is, prior to my meeting with Vic, I knew
nothing about Africa. I am sure the idea of going there was beyond any desire
or fantasy. India (where I was born) filled that particular niche in my psyche.
Now I have lived in Accra for four years, sharing it with France. But it’s a
strong case for synchronicity, don’t you think? I was drawn to Ghana whether I wanted to be or not though the pull did not become a conscious force until the very end.
Here’s the poem:
Nocky
She
carried, deep within her, an unwritten past in Africa
and
held it smouldering in a bricked kiln of stern pride
through
whose vents the Norfolk winds whistled up the shapes of things gone by
in
sudden snurts of flame.
Halfway
through her second book, Nockv died,
Africa
gripped by a final writer’s block.
She'd
walked this grey brick Norwich street beneath the gathering charge of swallows
pulling
shopping, her grey hair awry, like any other of our heavy ankled folk
stumping
out of life.
Yet
behind her slightly batty eyes no dementia hid or interminable
list
of trivia; but Africa dipped in pen and pressed
against
each page, dark and bleeding still,
Africa
behind the still net curtains and heavy-bolted blankness of her house,
Africa
silent in the eyes of her cat
stiffly
waiting at the window.
So
when the police broke in with their neat removal of a backdoor pane
to
find her fallen open like a dried flower,
the
curtains shook and the cat stretched and Africa was at last let out
in
time to seek a home-going on the black dispatch of
attendant
swallows' backs.
More
writing at www.chronometerpublications.me
including 3 free novellas to download.
My
wife’s company with Dawn is: www.sixteen47.com
The
book of mine I’d like you to read, in particular is at www.azimuthtrilogy.com
Labels: #Ghana and #synchronicity #Jung
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