dual personalities

Here it is Friday again. It was a fine, rainy week but spring is definitely in the air, the birdies are tweeting like crazy, and shoots are beginning to poke through the winter detritus. Our son James is coming home for the weekend (yay!). Other than going to church on Easter and then having brunch we have no plans. All of this got me thinking about past Easters, egg hunts, ham dinners and Easter dresses (I only remember one Easter bonnet). Our Easters were always pretty basic. 

The older I get, the more I appreciate simplicity. I’ve never been one for elaborate rituals — there’s the whiff of the pagan about them. Those doughty Puritans were onto something in their 1645 “Westminster Directory for the Public Worship of God” where they wrote, “There is no day commanded in Scripture to be kept holy under the gospel but the Lord’s Day, which is the Christian Sabbath. Festival days, vulgarly called Holy-days, having no warrant in the Word of God, are not to be continued.” Okay, maybe it’s a little extreme, but the instinct is right. We need to focus on what’s important.

Let’s take art as an example. So much religious art is full of chubby cherubim and half-naked people being overly dramatic — kind of like a modern superhero movie (see almost any Italian Renaissance religious painting). The paintings that capture the mystery are more subtle and luminous like this one by Mikhail Nesterov of the Angel sitting outside Christ’s tomb.

Here’s another good one: the Raising of Lazarus by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1896).

His Daniel in the Lion’s Den (1914) is also great. I love the blue light and lions prowling around oblivious to Daniel.

Whenever the brouhaha of modern life gets me down, I go back to the basics – good art, good music and the Bible (and other wonderful writing).

Have a lovely Easter!

Well, Daughter #1 here, to talk about our recent road trip. Upon returning from our wonderful sojourn to Oklahoma and Texas, my mother and I watched “True Stories” the Talking Heads rock n’ roll musical. Here’s a Washington Post article from 1986 about the movie that I think kind of misses the point.

Anyway, David Byrne spends a lot of time driving in the movie. And his driving is nothing like the driving now. Enjoy this 1987 scene from “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles,” where Michael McKean chastises John Candy for driving 78 miles per hour.

And then feast your eyes on this sign in Oklahoma.

Sidenote, as the driver, driving very fast, I was unable to take pictures of signs etc on the roadside that I would traditionally take and thus relied on my mother’s not-so-quick-draw-camera skills. It took almost five days of practice and repeated drills, but she did eventually capture this sign just before our arrival in Tulsa.

Okay back to the narrative. Please notice that the speed limit is 75. The minimum speed is 60! 60! And note that Oklahoma has a strict no tolerance policy for slow drivers on their interstates. Also keep in mind that Oklahoma is where the wind comes sweeping down the plains. It’s windy! We’re talking real white knuckle driving. About 50 miles after crossing the state line, the speed limit INCREASED to a mere 80 miles per hour. At that point we joked that I’d get pulled over and the officer would say, “Do you have any idea how SLOWLY you were going?”

And Texas. Whoee. They have express lanes for people who can afford to pay more to drive on the highway. They have rich person lanes! Naturally, Google directed us to those. I can’t wait for the bill to arrive in the mail. And all of it is under construction. If I had a dollar for all of the “shoulder closed” signs we passed. Well, I could afford those express lanes!

If this doesn’t give you heart palpitations, I don’t know what will.

I will say that the other drivers in Texas traffic seemed nice and were agreeable about letting a car with out of state plates in when they were clearly in the wrong lane and needed to get over IMMEDIATELY. Having driven in Denver traffic last Fall when we accidentally timed our arrival to the start of the Denver Broncos game, I can say that that is not true for drivers in all states.

In Oklahoma, one Mercedes driver clearly thought I was driving too slowly in the left lane and flashed his lights at me to move the hell over (my interpretation). Joke was on him though, once he got passed me, there wasn’t really any place to go. And shortly thereafter, an unmarked (they’re all unmarked in OK) highway patrol car sped by and pulled over the Mercedes. I’ll admit, I felt a smidge of joy.

All of this is to say, that having handled the navigation system directing me through Fort Worth’s morning rush hour over to Dallas to head up to Tulsa, I truly feel that I am woman, hear me roar.

But I’ll admit I was real glad to get back to this scenic and slow Missouri driving this weekend. I listened to Talking Heads all the way back to Jefferson City.

I had a lovely week. We had one sunny day when the temperature hit 65, work was surprisingly serene, and I found the perfect TV show to watch on Amazon: Strathblair, a light 1992-93 BBC drama about hill farmers in Scotland. It takes place in the 1950s when a young couple become tenants of a run-down farm on the estate (Strathblair) of the local laird. Plenty of hard work, mild marital squabbles and farm crises follow. The scenery is enough to sooth any troubled soul.

There are no ‘bad guys’ and the conflicts are mild and of the everyday variety, but we do meet irascible neighbors with hearts of gold, the upstanding local gentry, and even the occasional traveler (gypsies to you and me). The accents can be pretty thick to American ears, so you might want to turn on the subtitles. Animals — especially sheep — feature and everyone wears plenty of tweed. They even use sheep crooks!

We also learn a thing or two about farming. What has impressed me most about the series (assuming that it is accurate) is how incredibly hard everyone works. People of all ages are outside in all kinds of weather, working from dawn until dusk, and they never complain. Although the show is very upbeat, the work is incredibly hard. It made me think of this sad Mark Knopfler song, Hill Farmer Blues. 

I lead an easy life and it’s good to remember that.

Unfortunately, Strathblair only lasted two seasons, for a total of twenty episodes. With only three episodes left to watch, I started looking at something else to fill the void and discovered Winter and Rough Weather on Kindle for $2.99.* The plot seems very similar to Strathblair, so it should be just what I’m looking for.

Dorothy Stevenson, whose father was a cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson, was a prolific and hugely successful writer for more than forty years from the 1920s to the 1970s. She wrote when people regularly shared such sentiments as, “The best way to plant happiness is to do at least one thing every day to make one person happier, and to do it for God. That shouldn’t be difficult. we can all do that.” Why have I never heard of her before? As often as I complain about our computer age, it does have its perks, the availability of old books being one of them.

Life is good! Have a great weekend and a blessed Palm Sunday.

*[Incidentally, I do not own a Kindle device. I have the laptop app and read on my nice big laptop screen. I could also use my phone but that doesn’t appeal to me very much.]

Daughter #2 here with a bit of a hodge podge of a post, but what I hope is the best kind of hodge podge.

Do you like poetry? I have found that I especially like to read poetry in the spring — there are so many good verses about this particular time of year, when everything is blooming (including, perhaps, our winter-worn selves). Anyway, I’ve come across many good bits of poems lately, in part because I’ve been spending time in the sun room where we have a bookshelf full of poetry collections. Nothing like casually grabbing the Rilke during naptime to make you feel like a mom who still has deep thoughts.

Spring has come again. The earth
is like a child who knows poems by heart;
Many, so many! … For the work
of such long learning, she wins the prize.

Her teacher was demanding. We’d grown fond
of the white in the old man’s beard.
Now when we ask what the green and blue are:
she can tell us, she knows, she knows!

Earth, lucky earth, on holiday, play
with the children now. We want to catch you,
happy earth. And the luckiest will.

What her teacher taught her! So many things,
and what’s imprinted in the roots and on the long
difficult stems: she sings it, she sings!

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Sonnets to Orpheus (translated by Edward Snow)

DN shared this poem with me:

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.

Louise Glück, “The Wild Iris”

Maybe it’s still snowy where you are.

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth’s immeasureable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

Philip Larkin, “First Sight”

Or maybe all of this budding and blooming and dew on green grass is too much for you. Maybe you are in more of a Edna St. Vincent Millay mood:

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough. You can longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing.
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Spring”

Yeesh!

I prefer Margaret Wise Brown’s crocus vibes.

And not in keeping with the theme, but another bit I read recently, and which obviously resonated:

You are my one, and I have not another,
Sleep soft, my darling, my trouble and treasure;
Sleep warm and soft in the arms of your mother,
Dreaming of pretty things, dreaming of pleasure.

Christina Rosetti

*From Walt Whitman’s “O me! O Life!”

Several weeks ago, I (still daughter #2 here) read a New Yorker interview with Min Jin Lee, linked previously by my mom. Many moments stood out to me; I was particularly impressed by Lee’s years of commitment to research and self-training in writing. She did not just think, “Anyone can write a novel!” I appreciated that she noted the good fortune of winding up in a $200 workshop taught by a not-quite-famous Jhumpa Lahiri while also admitting that plenty of those workshops are not so rigorous. Her point, I think, is about making the most out of both versions of study. (Of course, the interviewer had asked a condescending question about “dreamers” in such workshops.) And I really cringed when reading her anecdote about getting into a week-long workshop that required a hefty tuition fee, only to realize that everyone there was sponsored by a university. Someone makes a snide comment about “housewives” who pay their own way. Having spent years processing travel reimbursements for creative writers, I could picture this scene a little too vividly.

I decided to read Min Jin Lee’s first novel, Free Food for Millionaires (2007), because I thought the plot sounded more approachable: it centers on Casey, a Korean-American girl from Queens who has just graduated from Princeton and returned to New York City without a clear plan. Over the course of several years, Casey’s career trajectory zig zags and her relationships evolve. We follow some of her loved ones on their own evolutions, and learn a lot about the different ways that different kinds of Americans pursue love and money.

I thought the best part of the novel was the fullness of the characters. Casey cares deeply about her sister and her friends, and vice versa — even across chasms wrought by conflict, the novel’s women, in particular, are loyal to one another.

She wanted to give Ella something, and insight was a kind of gift. But Casey wanted to tell her something good, something true.

“You’re an incredibly kind person–you make me feel loved. Like I’m all right. Like”–Casey took a breath–“I’m forgiven.” The thought had taken her by surprise. “No one else does that.”

But bad things happen to everyone, and the sheer amount of forgiveness needed was exhausting by the end. You keep wondering if there will be justice served, and if the characters deserve this or that outcome. In the end, Lee suggests, no one deserves anything — certainly not wealth, or even a life without pain — and seeking fairness is a losing battle. A legitimate argument, to be sure, but a difficult one to endure as a reader, at times.

There is plenty more to say — this novel didn’t waste a single moment, and it isn’t exactly short! But there is only so much one can discuss in a blog post. I’ll end here with another quote, a description of Casey, a character I really loved in spite of all her flaws and poor choices:

Casey believed that she could draw a person to her. It was the simplest thing in the world for her because she did it by doing one thing perfectly: She paid attention, the kind of attention that almost didn’t exist anymore. This was her gift. So few people did this for each other. Giving someone your attention–with the greatest amount of care she could could muster in whatever allotted time period–was far more precious than any kind of commodity.”

Hi from daughter #2 (and Katie). I am happy to report that my mother, sister, and father made it to Oklahoma. We will hear from them on the blog this Wednesday and I will be feverishly awaiting text updates in the meantime! For now, a few updates for Katie, who is 22 months old and enjoying the springtime vibes.

These days, it is equally fun to head out on adventure or lay low at home in our windowed back room.

We recently picked up a reproduction side table at our favorite antique store in Baltimore. Katie checked out the leaves to make sure they were in good shape. We all approve of another piece of brown furniture in the living room. (Thanks to mamu for the birthday gift!)

Katie loves: reusable sticker scenes, cheerios and cheddar bunnies, and her hair detangler bottle. Mommy loves: having a play room.

We have also been really going for it at the playground. I am always amazed when Katie displays some new skill (specifically “large motor skills,” as they call them at her daycare) seemingly out of nowhere, as she can be somewhat timid in this realm. But she nimbly ascended this climbing wall over and over the other morning! Color me impressed.

Toddlerhood has certainly brought louder shrieks, more random meltdowns, and pickier eating. But Katie has also grown very expressive in her affection — blowing me kisses, patting my arm, hugging my knees and clutching my neck, etc. etc. How lucky am I to be the recipient of all that love? She is a sweet pea, through and through!