The Horses & the Charioteer
Excerpts from the second book of an autobiographical trilogy
By
Philippa Burrell
© Philippa BurrellIf you prefer you can download the complete story (Microsoft Word Format)
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Tel: 44 (0)1246 201609"One of the finest autobiographies of the century" – Colin Wilson
The chariot is the Body
The horses the Senses
The reins the Mind
The charioteer the Intelligence
Plato and the UpanishadsChapter 1 - Escape from my conditioning
Before that tremulous night in Bhopal, I had decided that when we left India, we would return to Canada, a young free open country, and make a new life there. In England, old, unmoving and oppressive, I had only known loneliness and discouragement, in between the storms.
This plan seemed imprinted on my mind when the film-show of my life, appearing on a screen, lifted me off my feet and flung me into a fire, barely conscious of my existence and, unable to alter it, we changed boats at Liverpool and sailed on to Quebec.
I could cut out this senseless journey and take up the story at the point of the lover's sweet return to England where I ended the first book so neatly. But life is never neat, least of all my own, and I am going on with this ragged tale for the one remarkable story it contains - my mother's encounter with a hungry bear. We stayed several weeks in Ottawa where, conscious now of my task, I began work on a long dramatic poem. With her finer painting powers lost, my mother accepted a commission to paint posters for the Canadian Pacific Railways and we set off for the Rockies - all expenses paid.
With a guide and ponies carrying our luggage, her paints and food supplies and sleeping in mountain cabins, we climbed for several days to Lake Maligne where spring had not yet come and snow was still lying about.
We lived in the warden's cabin until a cabin-cum-tent was erected which became our living quarters and my mother's studio. I slept and worked in a small tent set among the trees, for quiet, some fifty yards away.
In spite of the cold, my mother began work at once, rising at dawn to catch the wonderful effects and sitting by the lakeside or rowing out into the middle. When I was not working, I caught the trout in the streams which were our only fresh food. Everything else came out of tins and packets.
For many weeks we lived in this idyllic way and then the sun grew hot, spring came and with it the awakening life.
One morning, when my mother was back from the lake and sitting on her bed touching up her sketch, she heard a sound outside and the next moment the canvas door was ripped open and a large brown bear walked in. He was hungry after hibernation and smelt food and came to get it. She knew that the brown bear does not kill deliberately like the grizzly but that his pat is nearly as lethal. Fearing that a noise would bring me from my tent, she picked up her easel and clicking the three spiked legs, advanced silently, looking into his eyes..
He stopped, then retreated down the steps and she flung the breakfast bacon into a tin. When he lumbered back a minute later she faced him again and he retreated again, coming and going for nearly an hour.
That night the warden slept outside her tent with a gun and an impregnable food cupboard was built and nailed to a nearby tree. After he had broken into the assistant warden's tent and ripped open a bag of flour, they shot him.
The great beast, risen from long sleep, looked thin and mangy lying dead. And it was his land, all the rights were on his side. We were intruders and his murderers.
He broke the steps of the tent and my mother fell and hurt her back and a small seaplane was sent to take us out. In the meantime, my work stopped, the fire cooled and then went out, the fine creative power drained away, the ecstasy dissolved around me and I dropped from that bright mastering reality, deflated and half dead.
Chapter one - points of continuation.
I had escaped from my prison of false thinking, hearing and seeing - of false desires and false living and now I had to free my mother, still holding onto everything, ready to go on struggling for commissions,, take on all the old strains and repeat the tragic pattern.
Returned to England and stepped ashore rejoicing. It was 1932 and I was 24.
Bought West Wratting Mill as a working home but when my demon returned, ran away to Paris.
Returned for the Cambridge Bye-Election.
Sell cakes in Cambridge market to get money to restore the mill.
TheWest Wratting Theatre Camp. My first play, 'The Wind & the Mill' produced.
My mother turns to flower painting.
She goes to Venice to sketch and I work as a waitress until the boat leaves for Leningrad.