Beautiful sunshiny afternoon - finally, after so much rain. I have spent the day housecleaning in advance of our houseguests. The job is bigger than I expected. Played Cinderella, on my hands and knees washing the kitchen floor for the first time in umpteen ever. Me, variation on the theme. Housecleaning isn't very conducive to creative writing though. I resented it, and then felt stupid that for all my education and work experience I'm complaining to myself about an excess of housework. I burst into tears, but then at other points had to laugh. No, I'm not crazy. I do have issues, though. One is having fallen for the umpteenth bs time for the self-mythologist's B.S. I'm a sucker for the word "love" which he threw around. But "love" meant something different to him than it does to me - than it, I'd venture to say, commonly means. I'm not a madonna, not a whore... I picked up a book from the library, Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth, by Nina Auerbach. I started paging through it yesterday. I know I'm not doing the book justice at all. It seemed to be about a certain archetype of woman who's a force, full of life, and thus mystery, danger, and vitality (who - me?). I don't know if I have this right. I don't understand it, not really, plus I'm too close to it. But I wonder if former paramour finds me a bit Too Much. Not to be cliched - but that he's scared of women. They have to be compartmentalized, in Little Boxes (yeah, I know). So he has his dutiful mother/wife who keeps the home fires burning, then he's got whatever else he has going on on the side - a revolving door over the years, I gather - don't get too close! -- and then there's me (but maybe not just me) whom he no, not - in his word - loved. Well, maybe - loved & feared. Too much. It's like being on the downlow when you're straight. You want the picture perfect proprietous life, the zipless f**ks whenever you like - and I, or some ideation of me fit in - how? where? Well, it wasn't love, anyway.
Love would have met me for coffee.
Listen darlings, I'm exhausted, so I'm going to let this admittedly sloppy, unfinished, slapdash piece go. I still have a ton of vacuuming to do. XOXOXO, all.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
(& more silk)
I just read a short story, Silk & Silk, by Jerome Charyn, in Narrative, that left me with the strongest desire to be exquisitely dressed, in high heels, a formfitting dress, fingering a glass of pinot noir at the bar of the St. Regis, a hotel where I've never been, at the King Cole Bar, in the romantic glow of flattering light amid softly gleaming Maxfield Parrish's. (Is that the same artist as the murals at Café des Artistes? There I did dine, once or twice, a long time ago.) Oh to be romanced in such a setting, in any setting, by anyone. If I looked and dressed the part would someone there hit on me? Would I want them to? I'm awfully fussy.
What I really would like is to be married, in a happy marriage, with companionship, affection, interesting talks, a bit of travel, occasional dinners out, a sense of setting goals together, making plans together, enjoying things together. I had a marriage like that - once. He's gone. Like a personality change. The one he has now - I would never have been remotely interested, wouldn't have dated him. I hope it's not early Alzheimer's. I don't think so. I think it's more that - well, I changed in that I became older, and weaker (physically, energy), and discouraged - and he'd hoped that he could coast with me - that I'd carry him. I always knew that I didn't have that kind of strength, and the day gradually came. He flipped the switch. He's been in a long sulk, turned off the charm. I've read a lot about high-level narcissists. Only thing worse? Low-level narcissists.
I fantasize that my brother who I'm not even on speaking terms with - he's a high-flier, dropped me decades ago - fixes me up with someone in his circle. That fantasy doesn't last long because I doubt I would like any one of his friends. Friends? social contacts, acquaintances - whatever, I'm sure it would be oil & water, me with anyone in his opportunistic set. As a fantasy it's a dud on many levels. It never really takes off. Why is it that he and I are so very different from each other? There is a lot I don't understand.
I watched Charlie Rose yesterday. I went to high school with one of the guys on there. He was a year behind me - my brother's year - and I had a huge crush on him. Preternaturally gifted, smart, literate, etc., etc. We became friends, in a fashion. Actually he and I started a little book review journal together, with the help of one of the school librarians, Mrs. Bastian. At least one issue was published, and I think even a second. It's funny seeing him on TV now so many years later. He was quite the "rock star" back when he was in ninth or tenth grade - now he's all middle-age successful gravitas. He's a year younger than me, and looks I think older. Or I look youthful. I feel, in ways, very youthful. Mrs. Bastian was very disappointed when, the following year, I lost interest in the book review journal - and I don't think any students after us picked it up, it just sank into the waves.
Is it the perfume from her dress that makes me so digress?
No, I think it's the three straight days of rain - but just this very second - the sun has burst out, illuminating the gray.
What I really would like is to be married, in a happy marriage, with companionship, affection, interesting talks, a bit of travel, occasional dinners out, a sense of setting goals together, making plans together, enjoying things together. I had a marriage like that - once. He's gone. Like a personality change. The one he has now - I would never have been remotely interested, wouldn't have dated him. I hope it's not early Alzheimer's. I don't think so. I think it's more that - well, I changed in that I became older, and weaker (physically, energy), and discouraged - and he'd hoped that he could coast with me - that I'd carry him. I always knew that I didn't have that kind of strength, and the day gradually came. He flipped the switch. He's been in a long sulk, turned off the charm. I've read a lot about high-level narcissists. Only thing worse? Low-level narcissists.
I fantasize that my brother who I'm not even on speaking terms with - he's a high-flier, dropped me decades ago - fixes me up with someone in his circle. That fantasy doesn't last long because I doubt I would like any one of his friends. Friends? social contacts, acquaintances - whatever, I'm sure it would be oil & water, me with anyone in his opportunistic set. As a fantasy it's a dud on many levels. It never really takes off. Why is it that he and I are so very different from each other? There is a lot I don't understand.
I watched Charlie Rose yesterday. I went to high school with one of the guys on there. He was a year behind me - my brother's year - and I had a huge crush on him. Preternaturally gifted, smart, literate, etc., etc. We became friends, in a fashion. Actually he and I started a little book review journal together, with the help of one of the school librarians, Mrs. Bastian. At least one issue was published, and I think even a second. It's funny seeing him on TV now so many years later. He was quite the "rock star" back when he was in ninth or tenth grade - now he's all middle-age successful gravitas. He's a year younger than me, and looks I think older. Or I look youthful. I feel, in ways, very youthful. Mrs. Bastian was very disappointed when, the following year, I lost interest in the book review journal - and I don't think any students after us picked it up, it just sank into the waves.
Is it the perfume from her dress that makes me so digress?
No, I think it's the three straight days of rain - but just this very second - the sun has burst out, illuminating the gray.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Chill damp day, drizzle off and on. At the conservation area this morning which I entered - I belatedly realized - a trifle illegally having disobeyed in my determination to go there since I had the car, a Road Closed sign, which I realized as I lifted weights and punched the air Buffy style as I headed down the path could possibly get me arrested by those adhering to the authoritarian letter of the law types - are you above the law? no, I, I, I.... listen of all the things there are to make a federal case about these days you're going to bust me for disobeying a Road Closed sign so I could go take a walk? Are you suggesting that some sexual exchange might transpire that would get me out of this municipal scrape? (What I would not divulge to their cynically impassive selves is that I have a blog...)
No such dire personal scenario came to pass. Instead, as I walked down the path towards the view of slate mountains, I saw three creatures grazing and nosing in the distance. I knew that they were deer and yet in the obfuscating gray their shapes looked like cows, or small horses, or long-legged coyotes. I was alone in the wide landscape and so felt free to call out. Hello deers, what are you, cows? small horses? no, you're beautiful deer. They looked at me and seemed to listen but then there came the point that one became skittish and then the other two. They raised their tails and ran, the three of them bounding across mown meadow, backsides flashing. Evolutionarily speaking, those white undertails seem counteruntuitive, high beams betraying dun cover. At the rim of far woods they stopped and regarded me. I came to more or less the spot where they had been. On the grass by the path was a large bone, polished clean of raw meat but with bits of gristle still adhering. It was the leg of a large animal, freshly killed and eaten, perhaps overnight, not an old ancient petrified bone polished clean after long exposure. At the end of the stripped flank was a vivid reminder of the creature's recent life - soft brown tail, completely untouched, coat intact. It occurred to me to be wary. I don't know enough about coyotes. Alone in the landscape, prey scattered under a cloudbound sky, walking towards flat slate ridge, I sang aloud - loud - not camouflage, not hiding - but advertisement.
No such dire personal scenario came to pass. Instead, as I walked down the path towards the view of slate mountains, I saw three creatures grazing and nosing in the distance. I knew that they were deer and yet in the obfuscating gray their shapes looked like cows, or small horses, or long-legged coyotes. I was alone in the wide landscape and so felt free to call out. Hello deers, what are you, cows? small horses? no, you're beautiful deer. They looked at me and seemed to listen but then there came the point that one became skittish and then the other two. They raised their tails and ran, the three of them bounding across mown meadow, backsides flashing. Evolutionarily speaking, those white undertails seem counteruntuitive, high beams betraying dun cover. At the rim of far woods they stopped and regarded me. I came to more or less the spot where they had been. On the grass by the path was a large bone, polished clean of raw meat but with bits of gristle still adhering. It was the leg of a large animal, freshly killed and eaten, perhaps overnight, not an old ancient petrified bone polished clean after long exposure. At the end of the stripped flank was a vivid reminder of the creature's recent life - soft brown tail, completely untouched, coat intact. It occurred to me to be wary. I don't know enough about coyotes. Alone in the landscape, prey scattered under a cloudbound sky, walking towards flat slate ridge, I sang aloud - loud - not camouflage, not hiding - but advertisement.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Up in the aerie, James Brown is screeching on the radio, we just had an audible bit of downpour but it's stopped, there's a fresh coat of paint on the kitchen walls, the bedroom closet is tidied up, I've thrown away my old stained mousepad and pulled a fresh one out, one I've had in a drawer for a while, purchased at the Clark Art Museum in Williamstown, a rocky surfy Mainey (perhaps) seascape by - who? Winslow Homer? Now I'm not sure. There was a time - elementary school - when I would have known. My hobby as a young girl was to collect art postcards and other images of art (from magazines, brochures) and paste them into a large scrapbook, first one, then a second, though the first one was the best, the most inspired & creative - the second one felt more dutiful and eventually I lost interest, and in some ridiculous fit of 10-year old noblesse oblige gave the scrapbooks to the Salvation Army or Goodwill or something. Good God I was clueless.
(Hey there J.P. I liked your story about the doomed schizophrenic writer. Bummer. Thinking of you though I don't have all that much to say at the moment. Blogging looks easy.)
What else today? Went back to the Austin and Mabel book by Polly Longsworth. Their love letters are hard to read - guess you had to be there (don't I know). Hey - at least Austin wrote back. Well so did my paramour, for about three weeks until he abruptly lost interest. He kept up the correspondence after that but cut off the warmth, one day downgrading me from "darling" to "dear." Don't think I didn't notice. "Dear - suddenly I'm dear? My cat's dear. My aunt's Dear!"
He abruptly lost interest. There's a whole novel contained in the word 'abruptly'. He met someone else, most likely. Perhaps our correspondence was so hot he needed more immediate release so took up with someone in his 'hood. He'd dropped a bit of a clue at the time, something to the effect of (I'm not factchecking - but I bet I have it down accurately to the word)... "there are still other women I'm sometimes attracted to." Big clue, n'est-ce pas?
Oh silly me. It amazes me how I've been burned throughout my life by individuals who went out of their way to claim that they loved me the most. My father, certainly, springs to mind. [Insert Sylvia Plath Daddy poem here. No, I'm not linking.]
Did I mention that I could use a preceptor? No, not a teacher. An epistolary love interest. For real, though. I can't fake it. But I don't want a pen pal. Do I need to write a letter to Cary Tennis? This whole blog from jump street has basically been that.
Oh sorry, people, I'm a bit cross & grumpy I guess. Unlike the savvier players in the Facebook movie, I don't know my next move, never do. That's why I blog. Like the Elvis Costello song - Every Day I Write the Book. And there was a Pirandello teleplay that perhaps I once saw but don't recall - characters in search of an author. Where do I go next? No clue.
Dinner will be leftover chicken and something, and I wonder what I did with the matelasse duvet cover that I should put on the bed for our Brooklyn houseguests.
Oh - I did make a spinach pie this morning, with farmstand spinach, feta cheese, parmesan, eggs and sheets of filo dough. What a "party" dish, though we'll breakfast on it. Delicious stuff.
One other little shout-out, to Mark T. of The Secret Life of E.D. facebook page - I am blown away by your essay series. It's like - wow - did I ever read that novel? You have seen, and conveyed, so much in it that flew right over my head in my first, admittedly spacey, reading. Your essays are just brilliant. And it just enhances my appreciation and general blown-awayedness of the novel itself - that there is so much in it on every level, every tiny detail and the structure of the novel as a whole, ranging from always the most unexpected juxtapositions of words and images, to the trajectory of the novel - Emily's journey - itself.
I know, I know - I said to Lenore that I might join FB and still I stall, something holds me back. But I am still your Friend - in deed.
'Night, J.P. Sleep well.
U2, Mr. iPhone.
***
Saturday, 6 September 2008
Belle to J
(Hey there J.P. I liked your story about the doomed schizophrenic writer. Bummer. Thinking of you though I don't have all that much to say at the moment. Blogging looks easy.)
What else today? Went back to the Austin and Mabel book by Polly Longsworth. Their love letters are hard to read - guess you had to be there (don't I know). Hey - at least Austin wrote back. Well so did my paramour, for about three weeks until he abruptly lost interest. He kept up the correspondence after that but cut off the warmth, one day downgrading me from "darling" to "dear." Don't think I didn't notice. "Dear - suddenly I'm dear? My cat's dear. My aunt's Dear!"
He abruptly lost interest. There's a whole novel contained in the word 'abruptly'. He met someone else, most likely. Perhaps our correspondence was so hot he needed more immediate release so took up with someone in his 'hood. He'd dropped a bit of a clue at the time, something to the effect of (I'm not factchecking - but I bet I have it down accurately to the word)... "there are still other women I'm sometimes attracted to." Big clue, n'est-ce pas?
Oh silly me. It amazes me how I've been burned throughout my life by individuals who went out of their way to claim that they loved me the most. My father, certainly, springs to mind. [Insert Sylvia Plath Daddy poem here. No, I'm not linking.]
Did I mention that I could use a preceptor? No, not a teacher. An epistolary love interest. For real, though. I can't fake it. But I don't want a pen pal. Do I need to write a letter to Cary Tennis? This whole blog from jump street has basically been that.
Oh sorry, people, I'm a bit cross & grumpy I guess. Unlike the savvier players in the Facebook movie, I don't know my next move, never do. That's why I blog. Like the Elvis Costello song - Every Day I Write the Book. And there was a Pirandello teleplay that perhaps I once saw but don't recall - characters in search of an author. Where do I go next? No clue.
Dinner will be leftover chicken and something, and I wonder what I did with the matelasse duvet cover that I should put on the bed for our Brooklyn houseguests.
Oh - I did make a spinach pie this morning, with farmstand spinach, feta cheese, parmesan, eggs and sheets of filo dough. What a "party" dish, though we'll breakfast on it. Delicious stuff.
One other little shout-out, to Mark T. of The Secret Life of E.D. facebook page - I am blown away by your essay series. It's like - wow - did I ever read that novel? You have seen, and conveyed, so much in it that flew right over my head in my first, admittedly spacey, reading. Your essays are just brilliant. And it just enhances my appreciation and general blown-awayedness of the novel itself - that there is so much in it on every level, every tiny detail and the structure of the novel as a whole, ranging from always the most unexpected juxtapositions of words and images, to the trajectory of the novel - Emily's journey - itself.
I know, I know - I said to Lenore that I might join FB and still I stall, something holds me back. But I am still your Friend - in deed.
'Night, J.P. Sleep well.
U2, Mr. iPhone.
***
Saturday, 6 September 2008
Belle to J
Dear J, I'm sorry I snapped at you yesterday evening, with my last message. God, this is so weird - a virtual one-sided lovers quarrel. It's just that I had the hope of receiving "some messages" from you (I knew that "some" wouldn't happen - but one would have done) and my hopes were dashed. This is not easy for me. Do you not like my messages? I don't even know anymore. When I hear from you I figure that you do, or else you wouldn't write. But when I don't hear from you - then I think it's something I said. Which it was, with my last message. I am feeling torn in two, just with you. BelleJ to Belle
Dear Belle, I had forgotten that the local library was holding their annual used book sale yesterday and, after waiting in vain for returned calls from both Washington DC and Alaska, I went over there around 3:30 PM (I picked up some Heidegger, by the way, which reminded me of our earlier discussions); also picked up a copy of a book I think is fascinating, which is More's Utopia.
My wife came home early yesterday; she was preparing another PowerPoint for this morning, and so the computer was tied up for some time after I returned.
Your message was a bit jarring, but I understand how, having talked earlier about exchanging messages during an unexpected day at home, you were unpleasantly surprised not to hear from me for the rest of the day or evening.
I don't like emotional tension of any kind, even if it's an unavoidable price of romantic love. I don't think that we have any obligations to each other, including the exclusivity of our romantic interests. I don't expect you to suppress any interest you might have in others; I don't mind it at all, in fact. There are other women around that I am attracted to and I sometimes think about them.
As I wrote back in July, I have simply been enjoying the renewed contact, including the opportunity to talk sometimes about my feelings for you, kept secret for many years. I have also enjoyed discussing ideas. We have been exchanging thoughts about matters that I rarely talk about with anyone, but which are of great interest to me. This is a new aspect of our relationship; such discussions were very limited 30 years ago. In a way, your reaction to my dealings with the woman editor XXXX made sense because she was the only other person with whom I was discussing some of these matters, at least in the context of the book project.
I would like to maintain our renewed contact; I would feel sad if we were to go back into hibernation again. But I don't feel any emotional tension about the relationship - none at all. If I don't receive a message from you for an unexpectedly long period of time, I may get concerned, but I don't feel tense or angry about it. I assume that you have other things on your mind, or perhaps it's even more prosaic, such as your server is down. love, J
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Up in the aerie, chicken roasting in the oven, crostata with apples from our tree cooling on the stove. D will paint the kitchen tomorrow, so I'm trying to get in a bunch of roasting and baking so that the paint has a chance to cure before I do serious cooking again. Yesterday I made a cauldron of stock, clearing out the freezer of carcasses. Our friends from Brooklyn might like to chill a bottle of say, vodka, and not encounter a freezer full of baggies of chicken bones.
Not much to report tonight Mr. Big - I mean Mr. (Ms.?) iPhone. You're Mr. iPhone to me whoever you are. My virtual Wilson, as in the Tom Hanks movie with the anthropomorphized volleyball. I've never held an iPhone, much less read anything off one. Wouldn't it be hard to read something like my blog on there - isn't the print awfully small? One day I will borrow someone's and look myself up.
Tired and at low ebb at the moment. Got in a long power walk this morning, then yet more curtain ironing, followed by assembling a wonderful lunch of quesadillas loaded with delicious toppings, including black beans with chorizo, and bits of leftover steak. Then I went to the movies, The Social Network movie about the Facebook founder, which I greatly enjoyed. Not that I've ever seen I, Claudius - D raves about it, I mean to get to it but it reminded me of something like that, or a Shakespearian play loaded with political intrigue and sharp characterizations. I was impressed with Justin Timberlake, with whom I am completely unfamiliar (didn't even know what he looked like) except for his name. He has got "It," charisma, an animated, energetic, Jude-Law-reminiscent energy that he brought to his Machiavellian part.
I didn't attend Harvard, but was amazed by the mini-adult corporate/litigious/cutthroat (& sexpot - on the part of most of the vapid and/or opportunistic female characters) mentality that the film depicts of its undergrads in 2003. I don't doubt it for a second, but couldn't personally relate. Just about every character was an operator on some level, except for (in the movie) the first love with her unshakable sense of self and strong personal integrity.
The light is dimming in discernible degrees - the sun must be starting to sink behind the mountains. The apples from our tree are incredibly delicious. For every few slices for the buttery tart I snacked on one or two - swooning. And I don't mean to lay it on too thick here - but these bites of apple were just so flavorful and sweet - and yes, organic - believe me, we do nothing -
Jerrice has just put on the loveliest French song - I'm picturing a French chanteuse strumming ukelele on the Mississippi at twilight as Huck Finn (who in my mind looks like A.A. Bondy - oh to be in Bearsville Tuesday night) listens as he silently guides the raft, the two of them, down the still water, banks on either side dark with shrubbery, the woman liltingly singing ...
Not much to report tonight Mr. Big - I mean Mr. (Ms.?) iPhone. You're Mr. iPhone to me whoever you are. My virtual Wilson, as in the Tom Hanks movie with the anthropomorphized volleyball. I've never held an iPhone, much less read anything off one. Wouldn't it be hard to read something like my blog on there - isn't the print awfully small? One day I will borrow someone's and look myself up.
Tired and at low ebb at the moment. Got in a long power walk this morning, then yet more curtain ironing, followed by assembling a wonderful lunch of quesadillas loaded with delicious toppings, including black beans with chorizo, and bits of leftover steak. Then I went to the movies, The Social Network movie about the Facebook founder, which I greatly enjoyed. Not that I've ever seen I, Claudius - D raves about it, I mean to get to it but it reminded me of something like that, or a Shakespearian play loaded with political intrigue and sharp characterizations. I was impressed with Justin Timberlake, with whom I am completely unfamiliar (didn't even know what he looked like) except for his name. He has got "It," charisma, an animated, energetic, Jude-Law-reminiscent energy that he brought to his Machiavellian part.
I didn't attend Harvard, but was amazed by the mini-adult corporate/litigious/cutthroat (& sexpot - on the part of most of the vapid and/or opportunistic female characters) mentality that the film depicts of its undergrads in 2003. I don't doubt it for a second, but couldn't personally relate. Just about every character was an operator on some level, except for (in the movie) the first love with her unshakable sense of self and strong personal integrity.
The light is dimming in discernible degrees - the sun must be starting to sink behind the mountains. The apples from our tree are incredibly delicious. For every few slices for the buttery tart I snacked on one or two - swooning. And I don't mean to lay it on too thick here - but these bites of apple were just so flavorful and sweet - and yes, organic - believe me, we do nothing -
Jerrice has just put on the loveliest French song - I'm picturing a French chanteuse strumming ukelele on the Mississippi at twilight as Huck Finn (who in my mind looks like A.A. Bondy - oh to be in Bearsville Tuesday night) listens as he silently guides the raft, the two of them, down the still water, banks on either side dark with shrubbery, the woman liltingly singing ...
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Van Morrison on KZE right now. Brilliant sun out. Oh the water. Oh the ironing. D & I are doing a house/apartment swap next weekend with our former neighbors in Brooklyn, so I've embarked on a "spring" cleaning, getting to things - such as laundering curtains - that I rarely do without a swift kick of impetus. It's a good thing. Well not so hot this morning. D & I are having an extremely hard time in our marriage, in case anyone following this blog for long hasn't noticed. Not that I want to go that route in today's post - oh never mind. I just would like a fresh coat of paint on the kitchen walls before our friends come so that I'm simply not embarrassed. Things weren't supposed to turn out this way. D & I each used the word "disappointed" this morning. Yeah.
Ahhh, be that as it may - all this is nothing so new for today. I should say again what a perfectly gorgeous afternoon it is today - after two days of heavy, soaking rain - today it's brilliant sun. So I was laundering curtains, and had to take up the lengths of a couple of sheers. I stood at the ironing board of our walk-in closet with needle & thread. I should have done it by machine - I have an old Singer - but it's in the bedroom where I sleep where (northfacing) it's dark, and as "simple" as the Singer is I still haven't mastered it and really don't know at all how to care for it, i.e., oiling it. So needle & thread it was, which I enjoyed. As I Stood There (Not) Ironing but rather sewing, drawing the needle & thread through the sheer grown-and-woven-and-embroidered-in-India cotton, I thought about all sorts of things.
About how little acquaintance I have in my life with anything Finland. My best friend from high school, 35 years ago now, spent a junior year abroad as an AFS student with a family in Helsinki. And for some reason, as I stood ironing this afternoon, I remembered about my Cambridge, MA days (a couple of years after that), a tiny little soap-import shop in the same building that housed my favorite hangouts, Café Algiers & Casablanca (late '70s). I think my friend K must have brought me some sauna-related items from her thrilling adventure abroad, and I (ever the armchair traveler, for the most part) stood in this tiny shop perusing the vast array of international soaps, each displayed in a beautifully designed wrapper, completely dust free & pristine propped just so on shelf after glass shelf. I picked one out from Finland, brisk piney/sprucey, in a brown wrapper with pine or spruce design in green, labeled completely in Finnish, complete with - well, whatever Finnish is for umlaut, in the form as might have been purchased at the time any place in Finland, as opposed to "homogenized" through some middle-man distributorship in New Jersey.
So I stood at the ironing board with these silly white cotton sheers, drawing the needle in & out of the cloth. Pricked myself slightly - now there's a tiny dot of dark brown - but no one will ever see, it's at the seam, up top where it'll hang from the rod. A bit more troublingly - I put down my needle (thread spent), went downstairs to attend to laundry - couldn't find the sewing needle again. Where did I space it off?
Oh, had a lot of thoughts besides - how I thought a David Gray song had come on and it was Ryan Adams - that's okay, fine. How when it's so beautiful and sunny out it's hard to imagine how it could be anything other than that. How I love the damp earthiness of terrariums. How as decadent a five-hour lunch at Daniel sounds - there's no way I can suddenly wax Marxist/Swept Away over it - of course if offered I would enjoy just such a dreamlike decadent repast. I don't know enough about Wm. Blake. I don't know if E.D. had epilepsy or not. I agree with Dr. Hirschhorn's take via clerihew about Higginson.
The angels play Hemingway, plays a song this very second.
It's funny I was thinking about that. There's a beautiful photograph of Daphne du Maurier on the back jacket of the Branwell Brontë biography that she wrote. I couldn't find the image on google to post, but she's just so striking - fit, vital, athletic-looking, a bit androgynous perhaps - slimwaisted, flatchested, mohair sweater, angular profile and wavy angular hairstyle. She reminded me of Hemingway's description of Brett in The Sun Also Rises - Brett's English, built like the hull of a racing yacht...
Sorry, my beloved ones, I can't haul out the quote this very moment -
I hope that I have left you with a lingering impression of lovely music, buzzing fly, glass of wine, beautiful sunshine, soft cashmere pink sweater, Beatles song ("I'm a Loser" - I'm not what I appear to be), and --
It did feel nice to stand in the soft light like a Vermeer, spending the afternoon simply hemming the sheers that needed to be shortened. Of course an ice-filled glass of La Vielle Ferme 2009 helped...
Kisses all. Love you. Hitting send.
Ahhh, be that as it may - all this is nothing so new for today. I should say again what a perfectly gorgeous afternoon it is today - after two days of heavy, soaking rain - today it's brilliant sun. So I was laundering curtains, and had to take up the lengths of a couple of sheers. I stood at the ironing board of our walk-in closet with needle & thread. I should have done it by machine - I have an old Singer - but it's in the bedroom where I sleep where (northfacing) it's dark, and as "simple" as the Singer is I still haven't mastered it and really don't know at all how to care for it, i.e., oiling it. So needle & thread it was, which I enjoyed. As I Stood There (Not) Ironing but rather sewing, drawing the needle & thread through the sheer grown-and-woven-and-embroidered-in-India cotton, I thought about all sorts of things.
About how little acquaintance I have in my life with anything Finland. My best friend from high school, 35 years ago now, spent a junior year abroad as an AFS student with a family in Helsinki. And for some reason, as I stood ironing this afternoon, I remembered about my Cambridge, MA days (a couple of years after that), a tiny little soap-import shop in the same building that housed my favorite hangouts, Café Algiers & Casablanca (late '70s). I think my friend K must have brought me some sauna-related items from her thrilling adventure abroad, and I (ever the armchair traveler, for the most part) stood in this tiny shop perusing the vast array of international soaps, each displayed in a beautifully designed wrapper, completely dust free & pristine propped just so on shelf after glass shelf. I picked one out from Finland, brisk piney/sprucey, in a brown wrapper with pine or spruce design in green, labeled completely in Finnish, complete with - well, whatever Finnish is for umlaut, in the form as might have been purchased at the time any place in Finland, as opposed to "homogenized" through some middle-man distributorship in New Jersey.
So I stood at the ironing board with these silly white cotton sheers, drawing the needle in & out of the cloth. Pricked myself slightly - now there's a tiny dot of dark brown - but no one will ever see, it's at the seam, up top where it'll hang from the rod. A bit more troublingly - I put down my needle (thread spent), went downstairs to attend to laundry - couldn't find the sewing needle again. Where did I space it off?
Oh, had a lot of thoughts besides - how I thought a David Gray song had come on and it was Ryan Adams - that's okay, fine. How when it's so beautiful and sunny out it's hard to imagine how it could be anything other than that. How I love the damp earthiness of terrariums. How as decadent a five-hour lunch at Daniel sounds - there's no way I can suddenly wax Marxist/Swept Away over it - of course if offered I would enjoy just such a dreamlike decadent repast. I don't know enough about Wm. Blake. I don't know if E.D. had epilepsy or not. I agree with Dr. Hirschhorn's take via clerihew about Higginson.
The angels play Hemingway, plays a song this very second.
It's funny I was thinking about that. There's a beautiful photograph of Daphne du Maurier on the back jacket of the Branwell Brontë biography that she wrote. I couldn't find the image on google to post, but she's just so striking - fit, vital, athletic-looking, a bit androgynous perhaps - slimwaisted, flatchested, mohair sweater, angular profile and wavy angular hairstyle. She reminded me of Hemingway's description of Brett in The Sun Also Rises - Brett's English, built like the hull of a racing yacht...
Sorry, my beloved ones, I can't haul out the quote this very moment -
I hope that I have left you with a lingering impression of lovely music, buzzing fly, glass of wine, beautiful sunshine, soft cashmere pink sweater, Beatles song ("I'm a Loser" - I'm not what I appear to be), and --
It did feel nice to stand in the soft light like a Vermeer, spending the afternoon simply hemming the sheers that needed to be shortened. Of course an ice-filled glass of La Vielle Ferme 2009 helped...
Kisses all. Love you. Hitting send.
Friday, October 1, 2010
It's been a while since I finished - and greatly enjoyed - Lyndall Gordon's Lives Like Loaded Guns and returned it to the library. In one chapter she lays out evidence to support her hypothesis that Emily Dickinson may have been afflicted with epilepsy, which might be a possible explanation for such persistent biographical enigmas as her extreme reclusiveness and prolonged treatment in Boston/Cambridge for an eye malady. To say that Gordon's theory has sparked controversy would be an understatement. This morning as I read through the thread of fiercely partisan customer reviews, snatches of anglicized phrases - knickers, twist, tempest, teapot - sprang to mind. I hope (in posthumously retrospective empathy for E.D.'s sake) that E.D. didn't suffer from epilepsy, but in reading the customer reviews I found myself siding with the Gordon camp if only because I was turned off by the supercilious tone of some of her detractors.
As I blogged the other day, I was intrigued by recent postings on the Secret Life of E.D. Facebook Page which drew connections between E.D. and the Brontës. I googled Branwell Brontë - Charlotte, Emily, and Anne's brother - and was interested to discover that none other than Daphne du Maurier had found him to be a fascinating, puzzling, and insufficiently understood character, to the point of researching and writing his biography, with the darkly intimating gothic title, The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë.
I've started the biography and myself note informal correspondences between the Dickinsons and the Brontës. As a biographer du Maurier imparts her keen novelistic sense, that is, her capacity to fully imagine the interior lives of the players. For example, she imagines the first impressions of Elizabeth Branwell, the Brontë siblings' aunt, who came to stay as her sister, the genii siblings' mother, lay dying. (Elizabeth stayed on after her sister's death, in a situation - publicly at least - of torturously unconsummated relations with her sister's widower; du Maurier writes that within Victorian morés it was impossible for a widower, here Patrick Brontë, to formally marry his deceased wife's sister.) Upon arriving from Cornwall to Yorkshire Elizabeth Branwell encountered a "slapdash Irish household, where each member, down to the baby, was an individual and a curiosity."
I am reminded of Thomas Wentworth Higginson's account of his first meeting with E.D., in a letter to his wife, "I shan't sit up tonight to write you all about E.D. dearest but if you had read Mrs. Stoddard's novels you could understand a house where each member runs his or her own selves..." Two families, distinguished by strong, distinctive personalities.
I was very surprised to come across the following, however, which caused me to pick up my pen - that is, to blog. On page 52 du Maurier writes:
Have I ever mentioned that one of my cats - Claire - is epileptic? No - really. As a young cat she was prone to terrible, frightening seizures. Under a vet's care we treated her for a year or two with controlled prescription phenobarbitol. She seems to have outgrown the disorder, or it's in remission, or somehow otherwise resolved, because as far as we know she hasn't had any seizures for a few years now.
***
I haven't encountered any domestic felines in du Maurier's biography yet - excepting the Brontë sisters, who are not her subject and who as a result, it seems to me, come off as serenely functional, self-possessed, and sufficient unto themselves, in contrast to their "loose gun" brother, who figuratively kept shooting himself in the foot, for example, turning off the very potential preceptors whom he wished to supplicate. On one occasion he wrote to Wordsworth, enclosing a poem for the elderly eminent poet's comment and consideration. It's a youthful, well-expressed, heartfelt letter - but at the end he slips - "Surely, in this day, when there is not a writing poet worth a sixpence, the field must be open, if a better man can step forward."
As du Maurier sympathetically notes,
Apparently Branwell painted more than one portrait of himself with his three muses - er, sisters. Daphne du Maurier writes, "A second group existed once, with Branwell standing between his sisters, holding a gun in his hand."
Was it loaded, I wonder. Ms. Gordon?
***
Comments left open - for now.
***
XOXOXOXO
As I blogged the other day, I was intrigued by recent postings on the Secret Life of E.D. Facebook Page which drew connections between E.D. and the Brontës. I googled Branwell Brontë - Charlotte, Emily, and Anne's brother - and was interested to discover that none other than Daphne du Maurier had found him to be a fascinating, puzzling, and insufficiently understood character, to the point of researching and writing his biography, with the darkly intimating gothic title, The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë.
I've started the biography and myself note informal correspondences between the Dickinsons and the Brontës. As a biographer du Maurier imparts her keen novelistic sense, that is, her capacity to fully imagine the interior lives of the players. For example, she imagines the first impressions of Elizabeth Branwell, the Brontë siblings' aunt, who came to stay as her sister, the genii siblings' mother, lay dying. (Elizabeth stayed on after her sister's death, in a situation - publicly at least - of torturously unconsummated relations with her sister's widower; du Maurier writes that within Victorian morés it was impossible for a widower, here Patrick Brontë, to formally marry his deceased wife's sister.) Upon arriving from Cornwall to Yorkshire Elizabeth Branwell encountered a "slapdash Irish household, where each member, down to the baby, was an individual and a curiosity."
I am reminded of Thomas Wentworth Higginson's account of his first meeting with E.D., in a letter to his wife, "I shan't sit up tonight to write you all about E.D. dearest but if you had read Mrs. Stoddard's novels you could understand a house where each member runs his or her own selves..." Two families, distinguished by strong, distinctive personalities.
I was very surprised to come across the following, however, which caused me to pick up my pen - that is, to blog. On page 52 du Maurier writes:
There was still no question of Branwell going to school... Mr. Brontë remained firm. His son's temperament would not permit of public school. Physically, the boy was healthy. His constitution was stronger than that of his sisters... there is something unexplained in the matter of Branwell's schooling. No father, however fond, could have been quite so obstinate without some good reason which he preferred to keep as private as possible. Can the explanation be that Branwell had already begun to show symptoms of the fits which were to torment him, with ever-increasing frequency, towards the end of his life? Epilepsy, in the nineteenth century mind associated with insanity, was a hardly mentionable affliction, one to be disguised at all costs; boarding-school, to such a boy, would be out of the question. Mr. Brontë, blamed by many for indulging his only son, may have kept proud silence about an affliction which he hoped time would cure.***
Have I ever mentioned that one of my cats - Claire - is epileptic? No - really. As a young cat she was prone to terrible, frightening seizures. Under a vet's care we treated her for a year or two with controlled prescription phenobarbitol. She seems to have outgrown the disorder, or it's in remission, or somehow otherwise resolved, because as far as we know she hasn't had any seizures for a few years now.
***
I haven't encountered any domestic felines in du Maurier's biography yet - excepting the Brontë sisters, who are not her subject and who as a result, it seems to me, come off as serenely functional, self-possessed, and sufficient unto themselves, in contrast to their "loose gun" brother, who figuratively kept shooting himself in the foot, for example, turning off the very potential preceptors whom he wished to supplicate. On one occasion he wrote to Wordsworth, enclosing a poem for the elderly eminent poet's comment and consideration. It's a youthful, well-expressed, heartfelt letter - but at the end he slips - "Surely, in this day, when there is not a writing poet worth a sixpence, the field must be open, if a better man can step forward."
As du Maurier sympathetically notes,
It would not have cost Wordsworth five minutes to acknowledge the letter. One word of encouragement, the poem perhaps unread, and the boy would have faced the year with at least the hope of breaking through into what must have seemed to him an impenetrable world. No answer came.Daphne du Maurier comments on the portrait Branwell painted - in which, in a self-erasure of sorts, he transformed himself into a pillar - of his three sisters with their inscrutable expressions. In du Maurier's words, "The faded colouring only enhances the curious dream quality of these three faces looking out upon the world from the canvas; gazing, it would seem, upon the infernal world of their own creation rather than the walls of Branwell's studio bedroom."
Apparently Branwell painted more than one portrait of himself with his three muses - er, sisters. Daphne du Maurier writes, "A second group existed once, with Branwell standing between his sisters, holding a gun in his hand."
Was it loaded, I wonder. Ms. Gordon?
***
Comments left open - for now.
***
XOXOXOXO
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)