Crystal Clear

A long, long time ago I was dragged along to a Crystal Healing Workshop. In Cambridge. (Where else?) It was run by two women - long skirts, bangles, hennaed hair - named Amber and Topaz. (I am not making this up.) They spoke in very breathy, gentle voices as though a breeze was threading through a thicket of bamboo; the slender, elongated leaves rustling ever so slightly. (Crystal Healing Workshops do odd things to your analogies.)

Amber and Topaz informed me and the Americans - there were a lot of very serious Americans at this workshop - that the colour blue is a healing colour. But I expect you knew that? Blue skies, blue seas, blue eyes, blue Smarties ...

Tune into the colour blue, said Amber (or Topaz). Stand up, walk about the room, make small circular movements with your hands at hip height. Breathe.

I was having trouble breathing. I was standing in a corner of the room, facing a wall, avoiding eye contact with any of the serious Americans. I was trying to control my shoulders. (They were somewhere up near my ears.) An American with very black hair and halitosis asked if I was having an asthma attack.

Have you ever been in a situation where you really ought not to laugh and it's awfully difficult not to? I once saw a young man stuff his whole fist in his mouth in an attempt not to laugh at a very serious poetry reading. He failed.

After we'd tuned into the colour blue*, Topaz produced a whacking great lump of rock from her embroidered shoulderbag. The stone was black and misshapen, like a clinker raked from the ashes of a fire.

This crystal, said Topaz shimmying the stone in her hand like an ex-Miss Great Britain flogging fake diamonds on a cable T.V. shopping channel, is revered by Native American Indians. Isn't it, Amber?

Yes, said Amber. It is.

It is revered, continued Topaz, because of its amazing ability to assist and improve memory.

What's it called? asked Amber.

I'm afraid I don't remember, said Topaz.

At which point I fled the room in a less than decorous fashion.

* This post does not contain a subliminal political message; I've banged on about politics a fair bit of late and it doesn't do to bore. I'd just like help in identifying the lump of black rock - on the off-chance it will improve my memory. Not that anyone needs reminding about Margaret Thatcher ...

Invisible Mending

In the kitchen, my daughter is speaking French;
dough rises in yeasty bubbles;
somewhere a TV burbles.

I have yards of blue cloth stretched
across my knees; a patch of sailor’s sky
on a cold, grey day. My fingers are searching
for holes; moth-damage, cigarette burns, tears;
a slashed hem from a sharp heel.

The women in this house mend invisibly.
We steam the damaged fabric flat;
unpick pockets, unbind a seam;
fray edges with a fingernail,
tease loose the hidden strands of silk.

I thread my needles, dart them like a shoal
of silver fish, weaving warp and weft;
tacking, slipping, backing, stitching.

Soon the wounds are closed; bare ripples
in blue sea. I press the dress, fold its arms
across the bodice in a starched caress,
gather up the skirts in sheets

of tissue, brown paper, string.

When the man knocks, my daughter is waiting.

The parcel swings lazily from her fingers.

'Ma mère dit, "Prennez mieux soin de vos vêtements." '

She giggles, tries to curtsy, closes the door loudly.