Masters of the trivial

by chuckofish

The Things

When I walk in my house I see pictures,
bought long ago, framed and hanging
— de Kooning, Arp, Laurencin, Henry Moore —
that I’ve cherished and stared at for years,
yet my eyes keep returning to the masters
of the trivial — a white stone perfectly round,
tiny lead models of baseball players, a cowbell,
a broken great-grandmother’s rocker,
a dead dog’s toy — valueless, unforgettable
detritus that my children will throw away
as I did my mother’s souvenirs of trips
with my dead father. Kodaks of kittens,
and bundles of cards from her mother Kate.

by Donald Hall

Trivial, we all know, means “of little value or importance.” Yes, it is true, most of my things are of no monetary value. But trivial in any other sense is in the eye of the beholder. To each his own, I say. I love my trivial pursuits.

The OM and I watched a great movie the other night–Kes (1969), an English film directed by  Kenneth Loach and based on the novel A Kestral for a Knave by Barry Hines. It is ranked seventh in the British Film Institute’s Top Ten (British) Films.

The story is about Billy Casper, a neglected working-class 15-year-old who finds solace and meaning training a kestrel, and it packs quite a punch. It is not an easy film to watch–so dreary and sad and sometimes it’s like watching a movie in a foreign language, so hard to understand are the Yorkshire accents–but it is well worth the effort. A wonderful film. The boy is perfect. We had DVR’d it on TCM, but you can rent it on Amazon Prime.

The world is more than we know.

“He knew then what it was that Liz had given him; the thing that he would have to go back and find if ever he got home to England; it was the caring about little things–the faith in ordinary life; the simplicity that made you break up a bit of bread into a paper bag, walk down to the beach and throw it to the gulls. It was this respect for triviality which he had never been allowed to possess; whether it was bread of the seagulls or love.”
― John le Carré, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold