A little girl finds a twenty on the sidewalk and scoops it up in delight. Was it lying there or did her dad drop it? It's mine now, she crows, and her dad smiles at me as I walk by. I think, she will never forget that moment.***
Last night, in a brownstone garden yards away a little girl played, sword play with a red plastic lightsaber, dancing, skipping, jumping, swooping, play acting by herself in her yard. A man and a woman came outside, her parents I guess, and the man danced with the girl and picked her up and lifted her over his head and spun her around and held her at her waist and spun and danced with her some more - how nice, for a little girl to receive attention as that from a loving father.
They seemed to resent that we were born at a different point in the narrative, that we couldn't fathom their story or fully enter their pain.
From letter #413, E.D. to Thomas Wentworth Higginson
I thought being a Poem one's self precluded the writing Poems, but perceive the Mistake.***
Notes from yesterday late afternoon:
Sitting in the southfacing window of my friends' Brooklyn apartment. We're well into September but I'm wearing (for decency's sake) the one skirt outfit I own - a sleeveless deep-pink top, and a chiffony midlength skirt, limeade and sprite background scattered with pink hibiscus. Honestly, this outfit isn't even really my style, yet I feel pretty in it, and it does say - summer day.***
I am feeling Prisoner of Chillonish up here. I've unlocked the window gate and the warm sun feels good on my arm. My hair is pinned up - so I'm not Rapunzel - and readers sit on my nose as my pen scrapes along the page. I drink rosé from a glass brought from home, the same glass from which I drink ice water in the day and night, and OJ at breakfast.
The Arnolfini cedars are both actually taller than the brownstones.
How tall will they get?
The backyards, some of them, look so Staten Islandy here - above ground pools filled with water, empty of people -
I wish you were here. As much as I like to express myself in words sometimes I would like to express myself otherwise.
From Master letter #3, Emily Dickinson, summer 1861:
'Chillon' is not funny.***
I stepped away from the window to refresh my glass, and when I returned there was a young squirrel at the very top of the fire escape - four floors up - come to visit, trying to befriend me. Fortunately the screen was closed because if it hadn't been I think the squirrel would have hopped right in. I talked to it - uncannily the way Sarah Crewe, in Francis Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess had befriended Melchisedec, the rat in the attic - and took a couple of photos (which I won't be able to download until I'm back home this weekend). It's as close up as I've ever been to a squirrel, I think. It was really very cute and beseeching, amazing tiny long fingerlike paws, bright round eyes, wiggling nose, bushy variegated tail, trying its best to be cute as could be so I might give it a treat (which of course I didn't - my friends don't need a pet squirrel on their return). I hung out talking to it for a few minutes but eventually enough was enough. I closed the window and drew the curtains to.
Good night, Melchisedec.
***
From Francis Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess, Chapter 9, "Melchisedec"
The truth was that, as the days had gone on and, with the aid of scraps brought up from the kitchen, her curious friendship had developed, she had gradually forgotten that the timid creature she was becoming familiar with was a mere rat.
At first Ermengarde was too much alarmed to do anything but huddle in a heap upon the bed and tuck up her feet, but the sight of Sara's composed little countenance and the story of Melchisedec's first appearance began at last to rouse her curiosity, and she leaned forward over the edge of the bed and watched Sara go and kneel down by the hole in the skirting board.
"He—he won't run out quickly and jump on the bed, will he?" she said.
"No," answered Sara. "He's as polite as we are. He is just like a person. Now watch!"
She began to make a low, whistling sound—so low and coaxing that it could only have been heard in entire stillness. She did it several times, looking entirely absorbed in it. Ermengarde thought she looked as if she were working a spell. And at last, evidently in response to it, a gray-whiskered, bright-eyed head peeped out of the hole. Sara had some crumbs in her hand. She dropped them, and Melchisedec came quietly forth and ate them. A piece of larger size than the rest he took and carried in the most businesslike manner back to his home.
"You see," said Sara, "that is for his wife and children. He is very nice. He only eats the little bits. After he goes back I can always hear his family squeaking for joy. There are three kinds of squeaks. One kind is the children's, and one is Mrs. Melchisedec's, and one is Melchisedec's own."
Ermengarde began to laugh.
"Oh, Sara!" she said. "You ARE queer—but you are nice."
"I know I am queer," admitted Sara, cheerfully; "and I TRY to be nice." She rubbed her forehead with her little brown paw, and a puzzled, tender look came into her face. "Papa always laughed at me," she said; "but I liked it. He thought I was queer, but he liked me to make up things. I—I can't help making up things. If I didn't, I don't believe I could live." She paused and glanced around the attic. "I'm sure I couldn't live here," she added in a low voice.
Ermengarde was interested, as she always was. "When you talk about things," she said, "they seem as if they grew real. You talk about Melchisedec as if he was a person."
"He IS a person," said Sara. "He gets hungry and frightened, just as we do; and he is married and has children. How do we know he doesn't think things, just as we do? His eyes look as if he was a person. That was why I gave him a name."
She sat down on the floor in her favorite attitude, holding her knees.
"Besides," she said, "he is a Bastille rat sent to be my friend. I can always get a bit of bread the cook has thrown away, and it is quite enough to support him."
"Is it the Bastille yet?" asked Ermengarde, eagerly. "Do you always pretend it is the Bastille?"
"Nearly always," answered Sara. "Sometimes I try to pretend it is another kind of place; but the Bastille is generally easiest—particularly when it is cold."
No comments:
Post a Comment