Musings of Per Grinsom

Contents

Per                                         1

The Cat                                   4

Barbarians                               12

Poetry                                    15

Tolerance                                19

The City                                 23

Busy-ness                               28

Dreamers                                34

The Child                                38

Trust                                     47

The Young Man                       51

Sunset                                  56

Righteousness                        59

Charmers                               63

Ourselves                              71

The Sea                                75

Music of the Spheres               80
 

Per

Per. Pronounced ‘Pear’, with an airy feel to it. And Grinsom, the ‘i’ at your discretion short, as in ‘in’, or, following a rolling Scandinavian ‘r’, long, as in ‘eel’. For the meaning—to grin, to laugh, to mock—is contained in either. And there, pronunciation looked after, you have him:  Per Grinsom.
Per first came to my attention when I invented him. I invented him as a tongue-in-cheek jibe, a half-meant barb lobbed at the smugness and pretentiousness I believed I saw in parts of the community round and about me.
It came about in this way.  I owned, for a brief span of time, a small gift shop. The once elegant premises which I had rented for this purpose had suffered neglect and abuse at the hands of previous tenants, and it was only after much hard work that its condition had been improved to my satisfaction.   Except for one stubborn smirch on the entranceway wall.   Cleaning, painting, nothing would remove the stain, so I resolved to cover it up.

With a grin in my mind I penned a line which spoke subtly of hypocrisy, and with a broader grin wrote that it was a quote taken from the ‘Musings of Per Grinsom’.  Per Laugh-some.  Per Laughable.  And I posted this elegant affectation to cover the mark on the wall.
That the segment of the community toward which
this jibe was directed did not patronize my shop was of no matter; it was my small private joke. And other people came in to browse and shop. Many, I noticed with some surprise, stopped to read, even linger over, Per’s words.  As time went on several customers asked where they might purchase a copy of ‘Musings of Per Grinsom’.  I prevaricated.  Some even claimed that they had read ‘Musings’ and had enjoyed the book tremendously.  I was silent.

Comments and questions persisted, until it was gradually borne in upon me that Per himself had begun to exist. And that his ‘Musings’ also existed, needing merely to be written down.  These notions took root, began to grow, firmly becoming part of my consciousness. Slowly, little by little.   And slowly, little by little, I—no, we—wrote the ‘Musings’ down.  I say we, because I know I did not write them on my own, but very much in collaboration with this being named Per Grinsom.

This invented being who had become so much more than he had started out to be.  And who firmly remains so. He is a wanderer, vagabond, rover, will-o’-the-wisp; coming and going without warning.  He has a beard, I think, and longish brown hair.  He is gentle, warm-hearted, pensive, wistful, and there is often a glint of humour in his eye. When he is here, I am enriched. When he is absent, I hold to whatever I can of the memory of him. So,  though  he  has  no  corporeal  reality,  these ‘Musings’ are his. May they warm you, entertain you, give you pause for thought.

The Cat

The house where I once lived was possessed of a roofed porch which ran the whole length of the back of the house. ‘Verandah’ would perhaps describe it better. It was just under three metres in width and some ten metres long, floored by brown-painted tongue-in-groove planking, railed by black-painted wrought iron.  Steps led down from it to the back yard, which soon gave way to a large closely- wooded area. Immediately across from these steps was my kitchen door, in which was framed the only window along that entire wall.
This verandah was one of my favourite places to sit,