Reading Seneca this morning, I had the feeling of being with a shrewd friend who was laughing at me! And I had to laugh along, because there was a lot of truth in what he said.
“We commonly give the impression that the reasons for our having gone into political retirement are our disgust with public life and our dissatisfaction with some uncongenial and unrewarding post. Yet every now and then ambition rears its head again in the retreat into which we were really driven by our apprehensions and our waning interest; for our ambition did not cease because it had been rooted out, but merely because it had tired–or become piqued, perhaps, at its lack of success.” Letter LVI, p. 111-112, in Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, ed. Robin Campbell (Penguin ed., 1969.
HA! just see all those books on my bibliography about Buddhism, alternative economies, compassion, and “letting go” etc., as contrasted with the exuberant posting when I made a sale on Etsy! We are all the same.
Sadly, the West Seattle “Classic Novels (and Movies)” book club lost momentum after our first meeting in March 2020 on Emma, due to the covid-19 lockdown during the months of April–July 2020. I didn’t make a quiz, because I had no idea if people would still be willing, outdoors, to join me in August 2020 for a discussion of David Copperfield. (They did! and our discussion ranks among my peak life experiences.)
Instead of a trivia quiz for David Copperfield, I offer some favorite bits from the novel that I copied down just for fun.
1. The wisdom of the child: a capacity of being pleased
“This may be fancy, though I think the memory of most of us can go farther back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect, may with greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood.” –pp. 24-25, Penguin Classics edition of David Copperfield
2. Childhood idyll: David’s bedroom in the little house of Mr. Pegotty, on the seashore
“It was the completest and most desirable bedroom ever seen—in the stern of the vessel; with a little window, where the rudder used to go through; a little looking-glass, just the right height for me, nailed against the wall, and framed with oyster shells; a little bed, which there was just room enough to get into; and a nosegay of seaweed in a blue mug on the table. The walls were whitewashed as white as mild, and the patchwork counterpane made my eyes quite ache with its brightness.” (p. 42)
[Ed. note: the bright patchwork may have been something like my first quilt, circa 1974, below]
“On the very first evening after our arrival, Mr. Barkis appeared in an exceedingly vacant and awkward condition, and with a bundle of oranges tied up in a handkerchief. As he made no allusion of any kind to this property, he was supposed to have left it behind him by accident… After that occasion he appeared every evening at exactly the same hour, and always with a little bundle, to which he never alluded, and which he regularly put behind the door, and left there. These offerings of affection were of a most various and eccentric description. Among them I remember a double set pig’s trotters, a huge pin-cushion, half of bushel of apples, a pair of jet earrings, some Spanish onions, a box of dominoes, a canary bird and cage, and a leg of pickled pork.
Mr. Barkis’s wooing, as I remember it, was altogether of a peculiar kind. He very seldom said anything, .. contenting himself now and then asking her if she was pretty comfortable; and I remember that sometimes, after he was gone, Pegotty would throw her apron over her face, and laugh for half-an-hour.” (pp. 154-155).
4. Mr. Dick, on the dissemination of knowledge
Loved the introduction of Mr. Dick, in the part where David has re-found his Aunt Betsey (and is waiting to know what will be done with him). Mr. Dick is the eccentric and very pleasant man who lives upstairs at Aunt Betsey’s house.
When little David visits Mr. Dick in his room, and finds him working on a manuscript about King Charles I, he notes a kite in the corner. As Mr. Dick explains, “I made it. We’ll go and fly it, you and I.” Then the narrator shows the detail: “it was covered with manuscript, very closely and laboriously written; but so plainly, that as I looked along the lines, I thought I saw some allusion to King Charles the First’s head again, in one or two places. ‘There’s plenty of string,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘and when it flies high, it takes the facts a long way. That’s my manner of diffusing ’em. I don’t know where they may come down. It’s according to circumstances, and the wind, and so forth; but I take my chance of that.’ His face was so mild and pleasant, and had something so reverend in it, though it was hale and hearty, that I was not sure but that he was having good-humored jest with me. So I laughed, and he laughed, and we parted the best friends possible.” (p. 213, Penguin edition).
[Ed. note: As author of a few scholarly tomes whose utility has never been exactly clear, though they certainly provide interesting thoughts from obscure and famous sources, and share beautiful images from rare books. During my time in academe, they provided the all-important “cultural capital” to retain employment as a professor. Yet I can think of no better way to disseminate facts than to throw them to the winds! * see the comment and next steps below]
5.Aunt Betsey’s marriage advice: not bad for a grumpy frumpy wayward woman!
“I have been a grumpy, frumpy, wayward sort of a woman, a good many years. I am still, and shall always be. But you and I have done one another some good, Trot,–at all events, you have done me good, my dear; and division must not come between us, at this time of day.”
“Division between us!” cried I.
“Child, child,” said my aunt, smoothing her dress, “how soon it might come between us, or how unhappy I might make our Little Blossom, if I meddled in anything, a prophet couldn’t say. I want our pet to like me, and be as gay as a butterfly. Remember your own home, in that second marriage; and never do both me and her the injury you have hinted at!”
I comprehended at once, that my aunt was right; and I comprehended the full extent of her generous feeling towards my dear wife.
“These are early days, Trot,” she pursued, “and Rome was not built in a day, nor in a year. You have chosen freely for yourself,” a cloud passed over her face for a moment, I thought, “and you have chosen a very pretty and very affectionate creature. It will be your duty, and it will be your pleasure too—of course, I know that; I am not delivering a lecture—to estimate her (as you chose her) by the qualities she has, and not by the qualities she may not have. The latter you must develop in her, if you can. And if you cannot, child,” here my aunt rubbed her nose, “you must just accustom yourself to do without ‘em. But remember, my dear, your future is between you two. No one can assist you; you are to work it out for yourselves. This is marriage, Trot; and Heaven bless you both, in it, for a pair of babes in the wood as you are!” (p. 645)
Happy holiday, reader. Not my favorite day, I’ll admit. This year has produced a perfect metaphor: my uneatable homemade gingerbread men. It’s a tradition. My mom made them for us kids, and I do it too. This year, after a fruitless search for a nice gingerbread mix, like I usually use, I pulled out Mom’s old Joy of Cooking. I was feeling good about continuing the tradition with the authentic, original recipe.
They’re terrible! Really awful! Disgustingly dry. I’ve never had such a tasteless cookie: thick, dry, and with a strong taste of flour. (Even the frosting doesn’t help.)
So if you are not having a super-duper fun Christmas today, just know you’re not alone.
Moral of the story: traditions can cook up some really awful results!
let it be this one: When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi.
It received all the accolades our society can give a book.*
As for me, I listened to the book while working on “Respect” quilt no. 4. I’m doing the tie-quilting now, a slow laborious task conducive to peaceful reflection. In listening to the words of When Breath Becomes Air, I felt like I was sitting next to a dear wise friend who, just like me, was searching in literature–ancient and less so–for guidance on living a good life. A life that means something in the big scheme of things, at least such as a human can do. Paul Kalanithi loved English literature deeply and studied Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot and cites their beautiful words throughout this book. He also cites authors I’ve never heard anyone cite, but who are dear to me, like Osler, a famed doctor whose book (pub. 1919) I discovered during 2016-18, while mentally preparing myself to depart from the university, the only identity I’d ever known.
If you seek wisdom about how to live life with integrity, in poetic and philosophical prose, if you wonder how to face death, and don’t mind receiving technical knowledge about how lung cancer makes its way through the human body (useful, but not really a genre I’d seek out), read Paul Kalanithi’s book, When Breath Becomes Air.
Or listen to it, as I did. I think I’ll do so again some day. I bought the book too; it will likely arrive in a couple weeks. I look forward to the book arriving here in my home. When I see it, I will feel reassured, knowing he is there and I can visit his mind again, for times when I feel sad or alone or meaningless. He died at age 37, and I’m still here in my sixth decade. Pretty lucky.
In the meantime, I went back to Osler this morning and found this quote, my farewell for now to you, dear reader. Remember Osler was writing in 1919:
“Let us not be discouraged. … If survived, a terrible infection, such as confluent small-pox, seems to benefit the general health. Perhaps such an attack through which we have passed may benefit the body cosmic. … Plato concludes that ‘States are as the men are, they grow out of human characters’ (Rep. VIII), and then, as the dream-republic approached completion, he realized that after all the true State is within, of which each one of us is the founder, and patterned on an ideal the existence of which matters not a whit. Is not the need of this individual reconstruction the Greek message to modern democracy? and with it is blended the note of individual service to the community.”**
* It was a New York Times bestseller, spending 68 weeks on the non-fiction bestseller list at publication in 2016. Matt McCarthy of USA Today gave it 4 out of 4 stars and said, “It’s a story so remarkable, so stunning, and so affecting that I had to take dozens of breaks just to compose myself enough to get through it.” Nick Romeo of The Boston Globe wrote that it, “possesses the gravity and wisdom of an ancient Greek tragedy.” Melissa Maerz of Entertainment Weekly stated that the book was “so original—and so devastating. . . . Its only fault is that the book, like his life, ends much too early.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Breath_Becomes_Air
** Sir William Osler, “Old Humanities and New Science,” pp. 96-97. see “Favorite Books” on this blog.
If today’s newspaper were a living creature, it would come wrapped in a terrifying miasma of toxic effects. “Hot Zones Shift, Leaving No Hope for a Speedy End,” moans one headline, “Mystery Illness Linked to Virus Sickens Young,” screams another, and rounding out page one is an in-depth bleeding wound: “Trials of a Pennsylvania Street as Contagion and Fear Sped In.” Yet deep inside the guts of the paper, on page C5, is a heart beating wildly, “spellbound by desire and imagination.” Brought to us from an American poet named Wayne Koestenbaum, who I immediately imagined being friends with–he would be a prickly, intense, hilarious kind of friend, I think.
I seized upon the review of Wayne Koestenbaum’s new book, Figure It Out, the way a shipwreck victim might pull herself into a lifeboat, with relief and delight to be on familiar ground again, among the living. I love the whole article, and send out thanks to Parul Sehgal for such a fine interpretation of what must be a hard book to read. But it is the first paragraph that really got me:
“Here’s Something Strange: as babies learn to speak, they don’t merely imitate adult speech. They often produce phonemes—units of sound—not found in any known language: complex vowels, consonants and clicks. The linguist Roman Jakobson called this stage of language acquisition ‘tongue delirium’.”
TONGUE DELIRIUM! WHAT A DELIGHTFUL THOUGHT!
He goes on to discuss what that means when an adult tries to recapture it in writing, because that is Wayne Koestenbaum’s gift, noting Lewis Carroll among others.
“AHA,” I thought, thinking of my Alice in Wonderland quilts, and the happy moments spent with that book. There’s where we go next. So many choices!
There is the delightful song of the Mock Turtle, for example, which begins, “’Will you walk a little faster?’ said a whiting to a snail, / There’s a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my tail. / See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance! / They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance? / Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?’”*
Or there is the impotent rage of the Red Queen, when Alice replies that she does not know the identity of the cards on the ground: “’How should I know?’ said Alice, surprised at her own courage. ‘It’s no business of mine.’ The Queen turned crimson with fury, and, after glaring at her for a moment like a wild beast, began screaming, ‘Off with her head! Off with—’ ‘Nonsense!’ said Alice, very loudly and decidedly, and the Queen was silent.”
The Mad Hatter’s song is very pleasant, sing it with me now: “’Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! / How I wonder what you’re at!’”
Let us all ponder deeply the Cheshire Cat. As Alice says, “I’ve often seen a cat without a grin, but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!’”
Of course, no foray into frivolous thoughts is complete without a few lines, at least from “Jabberwocky,” (from Through the Looking-Glass): “‘Twas brillig and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: / All mimsy were the borogroves, / And the mome raths outgrabe./ Beware the Jabberwocky, my son! / The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! / Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun / The frumious Bandersnatch!”
And lastly, “The Walrus and the Carpenter” must be read aloud RIGHT NOW!, so it can stick in your head all day long:
The Walrus and the Carpenter / Walked on a mile or so, / And when they rested on a rock / Conveniently low: / And all the little Oysters stood / And waited in a row. / “The time has come,” the Walrus said, / “To talk of many things: / Of shoes–and ships–and sealing wax–/ Of cabbages–and kings–/ And why the sea is boiling hot–/ And whether pigs have wings…”
(this right before he and the Carpenter ate them all with bread and butter. LOL)
I don’t know about you, but I feel refreshed! Those funny words created the effect of a “bain de mots” (word-bath, just as mingling with a group is known as prendre un bain de foule). A departure from grim headlines takes us back to a part of our brain that also needs companionship… the universe of unknown, imaginary, frivolous thoughts. Why not go there today?
(P.s. you just did).
___
Fyi, yesterday’s face masks:
*Lewis Carroll, song of the Mock Turtle, p. 102; the Queen’s rage, p. 82; the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, p. 73; the Cheshire Cat, p. 67; “Jabberwocky,” p. 148; “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” p. 185. From The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, ed. Martin Gardner, illus. John Tenniel (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000).
I woke up with a start at 4:30am and have felt off-kilter ever since.
It seems that it must have been the tree branch, which fell off our neighbor’s tree last night and landed right outside our kitchen window that made the huge THUNK I heard. It sounded like a distant bomb going off.
Staring out at the windblown snow during this morning’s meditation brought more sad thoughts to mind, of death and weakness. The trees react vividly to the wind blowing their branches and, if we could watch ourselves from without, we’d probably say the same thing about ourselves. Sometimes I feel like a cedar, other times like an oak.
The cedar tree bounces and sways with every fiber of its being: from bottom to top the whole tree bows and flutters nervously. The maples and oaks more stiffly sway, hold their arms up to the sky despite the wind; but their tiny red and green budlets break off and fall down.
This weather reminds me of LaFontaine’s fable, “The Wolf and the Lamb.” A harsh little story! My own version, “April, the Cruelest Month,” inspired by life in South Bend, awaits below.
The sounds of tires slushing on the street below make me feel excited, like it’s Christmas time, then bewildered when I see robins hopping in the garden. How easily our minds are fooled and confused about what is, versus what is “supposed to be”!
A proverb in closing:
En avril ne te découvre pas d’un fil. Au mois de mai, fais ce qui te plaît.
(trans. “In April, don’t take off a thread. In the month of May, do whatever comes into your head.”)!!
Hang in there! Only 4 weeks til May!
These pages are from Hey LaFontaine! Are You Ready for South Bend? (ten fables illustrated in a hand-made book, 2016).
Today I’m in a weird kind of limbo. The cleaners come for whole-house cleaning in about 20 minutes, so why should I clean or even make beds? I could prepare for class, but I’m already prepared. I want to do my Morning Routine, but it takes 60 minutes.
So a quick blog post about the five-day challenge.
Day One of Meditation in front of mirror challenge
3/8/18, 8:46 am
Location: my study, 3rd floor of our house in South Bend, Indiana
Mirror: an ornate white-framed heavy old-fashioned mirror that came with the house. I’ve had it covered up for years with a fascinating print of a woman from an art exhibit I saw in the Marais. I never liked to have a mirror in my back, so it was a relief to cover it.
But today, and with the house showing coming up, I’ve now uncovered it. And here I am there I was and there she is. Pronoun confusion!
Rule: I will take a picture each morning to chronicle this challenge. Here are today’s self-portraits:
I just finished that 30 minute meditation in front of a mirror. Quick thoughts:
At first, I was irritated by having to look at that lady in the mirror, thinking, “I meditate to get away from Mind,” and finding the human appearance too engaging, if you know what I mean. As I calmed down, I noticed how beautiful I am and I started laughing. I realized, “Why did I doubt that it would show? It shows,” and laughing some more.
Later I became so comfortable with that lady that I decided to take her photo. It was hard to angle the phone and I didn’t want her to know I was taking her photo so I could only do it when she looked away. Which was hard, for some reason.
Then I remembered that thing they call a sefie—aha! So easy! And she’s pretty cute! Old-ish but still got it. When the phone beeped 30 minutes, I was surprised. In the meantime, I’d done a bunch of stretches and of course my heels were touching the whole time so my hip bones feel really fluid and comfortable. Maybe my friend is trying to tell me that I’m just as narcissistic as everybody else! it would appear so, even though I’m not on facebook etc.
I liked that person in the mirror. Overall, she was nice and quiet, easy to be with. She looks like fun.
I guess I’ll see her again tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Walking down the hill to the river with Honey Girl tonight, I got that weird feeling of déjà vu; a flashback suddenly took me to another me, another present, walking the dog around these same streets in winter 2015-16.
Like many thoughts that come from nowhere, this one was elicited by a sound. It was the sound of a red-winged blackbird, sitting in the river grasses and singing at twilight. (You can listen to one singing here.)
Back in winter 2015, I was thinking about red-winged blackbirds a lot. I was thinking about black a lot and thinking about death a lot too: my mom had died in early spring that year. When spring came around in 2016, the blackbird’s call took my breath away. I had forgotten all about spring. It made me laugh and cry for sheer happiness to feel alive again, to hope and try again.
The bird belongs to a story I wrote and illustrated to present at a conference on wild children (les enfants sauvages) in Paris in December 2015. The story concluded a post-colonial analysis of the jeune fille sauvage de Champagne who I first studied years ago for a book called The Wild Girl, Natural Man, and the Monster (2002). Instead of seeing her through the prism of European artists, through woodcuts and crude engravings that depicted her in insulting primitive stereotypes, this time I depicted her as a healthy young girl running through these woods in pursuit of bluebells, chipmunks and daisies. I saw her as an Amerindian growing up in this region near Lake Michigan.
Although the archives record the quiet death of an outsider to Paris, in my little story-book, Native Daughter, Marie-Angélique gets the last laugh. She does not die with despair, like Europeans–she lives on! First she becomes a black alley cat, and then a red-winged blackbird. The book ends with the reader hearing that incredibly sweet trill that I just heard tonight.
I was lonely and wistful then, and felt some kind of grudge toward the French who “took” Marie-Angélique from her home, “showed” her for entertainment, and “graced” her with a pension to live–and doomed her to a lonely life. I tucked my emotions neatly into Native Daughter and decorated it with collages cut from books on Indians, guidebooks to Midwestern plants and birds, and commentaries on Parisian society. One copy ultimately ended up in the hands of the conference organizer: a scarily famous French writer… who has since become a dear friend.
***
Like me, the setting sun was sentimental tonight—the lower horizon was ocher and cinnamon layered with tangerine and blood orange, ending on top in a bit of peachy froth, or that pinky-orange foam on the top of an Orange Julius, against an eggshell blue sky and a half moon. (Not exactly like the hills of Tennessee, seen here, but you get the orangey feeling!)
Speaking of which, Rich served a blood orange and red onion salad with dinner tonight! (the oranges and onions were sliced thin, and had just a trace of extra virgin olive oil and sea salt. It was sweet, tangy, soft and crunchy).
***
You cannot know how surprised I am to see the words I just wrote. After all those years of striving and judging and aching with academic isolation, angst, and frustration, I feel the weight is finally lifting. I don’t care if my writing seems silly. If you don’t like it, click out!
Life feels good again, like it used to in childhood. Alan Watts’ Wisdom of Insecurity describes the feeling like this:
“When you realize that you live in, indeed that you are this moment now, and no other, that apart from this there is no past and no future, you must relax and taste to the full, whether it be pleasure or pain. At once it becomes obvious why this universe exists … Obviously, it all exists for this moment.
[…]
How long have the planets been circling the sun? Are they getting anywhere, and do they go faster and faster to arrive? How often has the spring returned to the earth? Does it come faster and fancier each year, to be sure to be better than last spring, and to hurry on its way to the spring that shall outspring all springs?
The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music, it is fulfilled in each moment of its course.” (Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity, 115-16)
***
BTW: Can anybody tell me where does the spring “return” from? And where does winter “go”? Those metaphors are bizarrely misleading! Not to mention that the two seasons overlap. Just go outside if you live in the northern hemisphere and walk around right now: you’ll see what I mean. Winter is clearly here. And so is spring. Change is in the air again… but then, it was all along. As was the present. Which is now the past.
***
Advice: Sunsets are free entertainment. Walk up to a hill, walk down to a beach, or gaze over the valley to the West. Stand there and watch one, some time this week. Enjoy every moment.
On our way back from the forest, in the cold windy night tonight, Honey Girl and I walked right under a sign that holds wisdom for the holiday season, I think.
It says, “Yield ahead.”
What a good idea. Why disagree? It’s all temporary anyway.
Next time you feel like saying, “If ___________________ (person you dislike) says (or posts/tweets) that stupid joke again about my ___________________________ (marital status / weight / graduation date / job / joblessness / choice of pet / bra size, Viagra, etc.), I’m going to scream!” stop yourself. Give yourself a little smile, knowing that you are above such things. Your mind is aware. You are calm, and easily keep your distance from trivia.
Remember that in the big scheme of things, mean words and rude behavior are nothing more than negative energy. They burp briefly into existence and contaminate the atmosphere if allowed to multiply, but they fade quickly if no one pays attention to them.
Leave behind the culture of complaint. Yield and forgive, now and then. You might find that you like it. The world would be a more peaceful place if we could all remember to yield, now and then.
Daily Joy with Honey Girl 