Q: When is a Dearth not a Dearth ?

A: When it is a chronic, not an acute, insufficiency.

Of Men, that is. The male of the species. The necessary opposite of female. Chronic, not acute. As in: always, not just recently. The essential opposite of the female; in daily life and in the psyche. So, the insufficiency has had to be filled by alternative masculine input. Masculine input that I could relate to, however impersonal was their way of relating to life; through music, words, the visual arts.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Poet

I discovered T. E. Lawrence ( Click for T E Lawrence Society ) long before I came to Dorset, where he hid. His friends the composers Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst, used to visit his Dorset cottage deep in the woods and would sit of an evening, listening to recorded music, as I am doing now. He is buried at Moreton in Dorset and someone, anonymously, leaves a posy of flowers on his grave for his May birthday. His effigy in his Arab robes lies quietly, stately, in Wareham church.

T. E. Lawrence (Augustus John - Tate Gallery)

My neighbour died last week. He was a male constant in my daily life, hammering away in his shed, muttering to his dog, grunting to his wife. Talking, like some men do down here*, in incomplete sentences; beginning in the middle, leaving the ending unsaid. Expecting the hearer to know dutifully what was his bidding; answering everything with "eh ?" so it had to be repeated, to give him time to formulate a reply to his/the cleverer quicker female.

(*Down here being Dorset; 'up North' they (men) have their own local variations.)

Nonetheless, he was benign. Until the frontal brain tumour, un-benign, began to take effect on his sense of right and wrong. He it was who banged on my front door one dark and quiet night at 11.10 pm, when I blogged it ( Click for Don't Panic Sally ! ) because I was frightened, because I didn't know who or why, when I dismissed the possibility of it being a neighbour and called the police. Sat in the dark blogging and waiting for my pounding heart to be slowed by beta-blockers and common sense. Was re-shaken remembering the neighbouring farmer who, I found out on holiday on Crete, was serially violent; remembered the childhood fear from father.

Why me? Why bang on my door? Because I am a woman living alone, so therefore without a man to keep her in check. So seen, by some, to be an affront to all that is right and proper in the order of things in this rural idyll. (I was rocking with some 70s rock on the telly.) Coming south to live in Dorset twenty years ago was like stepping back in time by thirty years (1985 - 30 = 1955) - and no, not to Thomas Hardy's storytime either. ( Click for Thomas Hardy Society ) I was never milk-maid material, but recognised that the place where he placed his stories, here in the Blackmore Vale, was where I found myself.

Thomas Hardy and friend at his home Max Gate, Dorchester

(personal.centenary.edu)

Another neighbouring man didn't have to look far when his wife died some years ago; there I was across the road, visible from his window, single. Obvious choice really, for him. Every time I came out of my door, it was to see him. Every time I did some work in my front garden, it was to see him. Every time I went to a village event, it was to see him. It took some carefully planned avoidance and seriously bad rudeness from me direct to his face to get through to him that, No Actually, the last thing I wanted in my life was the boring, selfish, patronising husband that my dear friend over the road had to put up with, before she died.

I am a child of the 50s, now in my fifties in the 21st century. When I was a child men were men and worked in the coal mine. It took me until about my fourth birthday to stop being afraid of growing up, because I didn't want to go down the mine, to realise that I was a different being and would grow up into being a wo/man not a man. My brain has always been too washed with testosterone, or something, that made me think too much and argue and fight, with words, and generally not fit in, thankfully, which is what got me out and away to London when all my northern friends were becoming couples and settling down, instead of thinking and reading and following, even finding, careers.

The female hormones eventually did get a look in, possibly aided by the new-fangled Pill that became readily available, if you answered the doc's questions in the right way and made up a 'hearts and flowers' story about a proper boyfriend with a proper job saving up for a proper marriage ceremony; all hearts and flowers.

So a few glorious years living in London, working with and socialising with clever, intelligent, capable men and women. Discovered sexual attraction and uncovered a desire for home-making (which I still enjoy) and baby-making (now thankfully too too old). I settled into being the sort that fitted in and had a good life and a nice wedding and produced a wonderful offspring. Then the Pill had to go because it was making me spotty and neurotic, so hubby had the snip and suddenly my hormonal balance tipped ever so slightly back to being me again, with a thinking demanding questioning brain in gear and at full tilt I wanted to go places, meet people, be someone, do things, and he didn't want me to. This picture then split

Life as a single working mother was hard financially and culturally, but time passed and I had more Me time and a few lovely encounters and one very restorative relationship but he died. Inbetweentimes I retrained, had a bad fall, and ended up with two good men in my life, both of whom I had to pay money for; the osteopath and my Jungian training analyst.

Carl Gustav Jung

And for quite some time they were the two men I most appreciated in my life. Over many years the osteopath unravelled all the old injuries and took on the imbalance and generally dizzyness in my physical body and the analyst did the same over seven years with me and my psyche. They both were in stable relationships and that was a good foundation for the professional understanding that enabled the friendship between us.

But that was when I first noticed the Dearth.

It is not deliberate on my part, I am open to new friendships and potential for relationship, but I guess the answer to 'Why the Dearth?' lies somewhere in all the above, and the fact found in another neighbour's new relationship: when he came out of mourning for a feisty rotund wife, he found himself a thin quiet blond who has the appearance of being half his age. Men !

The Dearth in my life continues. Until that imbalance rights itself, here is another favourite Dorset man, a man of letters and many languages, sometimes called the Dorset Dialect poet. ( Click for William Barnes Society ) I salute him for his love of all things Dorset every time I see him.

William Barnes - Poet - watching the people go by on Dorchester High Street

(Edwin Roscoe Mullins)