Art Deco Child
Musing over re-incarnation
At times I feel re-incarnated.
Images come to my mind’s eye
when I hear Glenn Miller music.
Smoky dance-halls, lines of girls,
uniforms and growing up. . . fast.
Hark-back memories.
Easy times in Art Deco cities.
Climbing Clarice Cliff trees
resplendent in primary colours.
Candy-box houses filled with windows
stained with angular patterns.
Streets populated with Airflow cars
driven by double-breasted suits
with turn-ups and razor-sharp creases.
The company of bob-cut ladies.
Travelling on trains
pulled by idealized locos
puffing cotton wool smoke.
And I wonder why these memories
feel cut-off in a sudden. . . .
and why the drone of a high-flying B-29
brought irrational fear when I was five-years old.
© Guaj 2022
Views: 1024
I’ve just started watching Babylon Berlin, and this poem took me straight into the streets of Berlin. It’s strange the connections we make and store, and how they wake at the whisper of the hypnotist’s voice, which is, essentially, our voice, but which to protect ourselves we project outside of ourselves..
Great poem, G.
I have never been to Berlin, but I feel its atmosphere, probably thanks to documentaries and old films. I once had (not ‘had’!) a German colleague who looked eerily like Marlene Dietrich. She absolutely hated looking like her because she attracted so much attention and not always nice comments. And to make thing harder, she was a very shy and decent person. However, to me and I think most of my colleagues she personified the lost time of pre-Nazi Berlin.
I don’t know this series I don’t have ITV here. Is it on Netflix?
G, it’s on Sky. I’m sure that we all have doppelgangers; once I was taken for a presenter on channel 4, and I went along with that so I could get into film premieres and rub shoulders with the A-listers. Didn’t last long though.
If it’s on Sky it might come on cable here sometime. Also on Netflix perhaps. I’ll take a look.
Thanks Trevor.
I think you are right about people feeling they belong in another era. Maybe it’s part of getting old. However, some elements of past culture make us feel we have lost something important while others are best left in the past. I can’t say I believe in reincarnation but there have been time when unexpected memories seem very real.
a good poem
Thanks Nic. xx
OMG. I felt this poem! I also have memories of the last war. I see the black and white pictures of the old fashioned street lamps and something in me ‘knows’ I was here then. Some trains of thought say we re-incarnate with the same players time and again to work out karmic debts. For instance, my son is convinced he was a German officer and I have had experiences in the dream world to confirm that. Your mother in one life may be your brother or sister in another but we share each stage with a number of players… Read more »
Thank you very much, Alison!! Certainly looks like it hit your spot 🙂 I keep a very open mind on reincarnation but I have the feeling if there is such a thing, I was probably a young American soldier/airman who died in the war. Another weird thing I remember from very early age are dreams I had about being in a warm place surrounded by red and orange light and a there was gurgling sound. I had them regularly until I was five or six then they stopped. I know it sounds crazy but I often wonder if I was… Read more »
By the way, I copied this comment as I went along because of the time and effort involved. As before, it suddenly disappeared but thankfully, I was able to paste my comment again, even although I had added and amended some of it. This is a major problem.