dual personalities

Tag: quotes

July 12, 2016

Cherish your moodiness

by chuckofish

"Melancholy Promenade" by Diego Rivera, 1904

“Melancholy Promenade” by Diego Rivera, 1904

Now I yearn for one of those old, meandering, dry, uninhabited roads, which lead away from towns, which lead away from temptation, which conduct to the outside of earth, over its uppermost crust; where you may forget in what country you are travelling; where no farmer can complain that you are treading down his grass, no gentleman who has recently constructed a seat in the country that you are trespassing; on which you can go off half-cock and wave adieu to the village; along which you may travel like a pilgrim, going nowhither; where travellers are not too often to be met; where my spirit is free; where the walls and fences are not cared for, where your head is more in heaven than your feet on earth; which have long reaches where you can see the approaching traveller half a mile off and be prepared for him; not so luxuriant a soil as to attract men; some root and stump fences which do not need attention; where travellers have no occasion to stop, but pass along and leave you to your thoughts; where it makes no odds which way you face, whether you are going or coming; whether it is morning or evening, mid-noon or midnight; where earth is cheap enough by being public; where you can walk and think with least obstruction, there being nothing to measure progress by; where you can pace when your breast is full, and cherish your moodiness; where you are not in false relations with men, are not dining nor conversing with them; by which you may go to the uttermost parts of the earth.

–H.D. Thoreau, A Writer’s Journal

It is the birthday of Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), so let’s celebrate by reading the longest sentence ever (see above) and having some alone-time in the out-of-doors.

Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh

Peder Monsted

Peder Mork Monsted

The Tree, 1861 John Milne Donald

“The Tree” by John Milne Donald, 1861

Cheers to Henry David Thoreau! Enjoy your Tuesday.

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July 4, 2016

Some prouder pageantry

by chuckofish

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A toast to our brother, whose birthday we celebrate today! I’m sure he will be celebrating Thoreau-style.

The stillness was intense and almost conscious, as if it were a natural Sabbath, and we fancied that the morning was the evening of a celestial day. The air was so elastic and crystalline that it had the same effect on the landscape that a glass has on a picture, to give it an ideal remoteness and perfection. The landscape was clothed in a mild and quiet light, in which the woods and fences checkered and partitioned it with new regularity, and rough and uneven fields stretched away with lawn-like smoothness to the horizon, and the clouds, finely distinct and picturesque, seemed a fit drapery to hang over fairy-land. The world seemed decked for some holiday or prouder pageantry, with silken streamers flying, and the course of our lives to wind on before us like a green lane into a country maze, at the season when fruit-trees are in blossom.

Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as objects in the desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon. Character always secures for itself this advantage, and is thus distinct and unrelated to near or trivial objects, whether things or persons.

–from “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers” by Henry David Thoreau

3 Comments
June 30, 2016

Remember thy servant

by chuckofish

The other evening I attended the memorial service of a dear friend who died a few weeks ago, aged eighty.  Barb was the exact opposite of me–extremely extroverted and effervescent, always on the go, always pitching in. She was like Auntie Mame–you know, “Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!” She was not starving.

Barb was the person who got me to venture across the street to Ivy-Selkirk’s Auction House and started me on the road to estate sale-ing. She never understood timidity. She was a Just Do It person. We disagreed about many things, but unlike a lot of people these days, we respected each other’s opinions. We agreed, after all, on the important things.

After years of Catholic school and child-rearing and being told what she could and couldn’t do, Barb finally threw up her hands and turned her back on the RC Church. She became an Episcopalian at age 55 and she never looked back. She became a pillar of her new church and it was packed for her funeral.

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The church she attended in the city is a self-styled “progressive” one and so there were liberties taken with the service–four speakers in the middle–but it was still very nice and even (surprisingly) Rite I. The readers, all adult grandchildren, were pretty terrible, but the scriptures were well chosen. The speakers–two friends and two children–were wonderful. They made everyone laugh, remembering Barb. The minister, young and wet behind the ears, was straight out of central casting–the guy to call when you need a nerdly, balding, beanpole cleric. I would not hold his looks against him, but his voice was high and thin and he raced through communion. He made me appreciate our rector and long for Arthur Shields.

It was a long service, but it was a celebration of Barb’s life, so why shouldn’t it be? Her friends and family will truly miss her. And we will remember her.

“Remember the wonderful works that he has done,” goes David’s song–remember what he has done in the lives of each of us; and beyond that remember what he has done in the life of the world; remember above all what he has done in Christ-remember those moments in our own lives when with only the dullest understanding but with the sharpest longing we have glimpsed that Christ’s kind of life is the only life that matters and that all other kinds of life are riddled with death; remember those moments in our lives when Christ came to us in countless disguises through people who one way or another strengthened us, comforted us, healed us, judged us, by the power of Christ alive within them. All that is the past. All that is what there is to remember. And because that is the past, because we remember, we have this high and holy hope: that what he has done, he will continue to do, that what he has begun in us and our world, he will in unimaginable ways bring to fullness and fruition.

Into paradise may the angels lead thee, Barb, and at thy coming may the martyrs receive thee, and bring thee into the holy city Jerusalem.

(The quote, of course, is Frederick Buechner.)

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June 28, 2016

“Chair’d in the adamant of Time”*

by chuckofish

Childe_Hassam_Flags_on_the_Waldorf_Amon_Carter_Museum

I feel so sorry for anyone who misses the experience of history, the horizons of history. We think little of those who, given the chance to travel, go nowhere. We deprecate provincialism. But it is possible to be as provincial in time as it is in space. Because you were born into this particular era doesn’t mean it has to be the limit of your experience. Move about in time, go places. Why restrict your circle of acquaintances to only those who occupy the same stage we call the present?”

–David McCullough, “Recommended Itinerary” in Brave Companions

I concur.

As we approach Independence Day on July 4, why not read some history?

*Walt Whitman, “America”; the painting is by Childe Hassam.

5 Comments
June 22, 2016

The shape of my life

by chuckofish

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The shape of my life today starts with a family. I have a husband, five children and a home just beyond the suburbs of New York. I have also a craft, writing, and therefore work I want to pursue. The shape of my life is, of course, determined by many other things; my background and childhood, my mind and its education, my conscience and its pressures, my heart and its desires. I want to give and take from my children and husband, to share with friends and community, to carry out my obligations to man and to the world, as a woman, as an artist, as a citizen.

But I want first of all — in fact, as an end to these other desires — to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can. I want, in fact — to borrow from the languages of the saints — to live “in grace” as much of the time as possible. I am not using this term in a strictly theological sense. By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony. I am seeking perhaps what Socrates asked for in the prayer from Phaedrus when he said, “May the outward and the inward man be at one.” I would like to achieve a state of inner spiritual grace from which I could function and give as I was meant to in the eye of God.

–Anne Morrow Lindbergh, A Gift From the Sea

Today is the birthday of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, a very wise woman. She was also an American author, aviator, the wife of aviator Charles Lindbergh, and a graduate of Smith College.

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She was in fact celebrating her 50th reunion the year I graduated.  She gave a speech that year at Smith, “The Journey Not the Arrival,” which I don’t remember hearing–but I can’t believe I didn’t–which was later published. It is long out of print, but I am going to keep my eye peeled for that one!

Here is an interesting article with pictures by Jill Krementz taken around the time of her 50th reunion in 1978.

*The painting is by Dorothea Sharp

8 Comments
June 13, 2016

“Not all those who wander are lost”*

by chuckofish

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The OM and I are back home after our little flyover trip to KC. More tomorrow. Stay tuned!

*J.R.R. Tolkien

2 Comments
June 2, 2016

Tonight I long for rest

by chuckofish

Arthur_Hacker-Fire_Fancies__1865

Here’s a great poem, “The Day is Done,” from the forgotten Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Read the whole thing.

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me
That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time,

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life’s endless toil and endeavor;
And tonight I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have a power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And comes like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882

The painting is “Fire Fancies” by Arthur Hacker, 1865

2 Comments
May 23, 2016

“I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)” *

by chuckofish

I’m back from my long weekend celebrating my niece’s wedding. It was fun being with my brother and his family.

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Chris with his son Foster

My dual personality was there with one of her sons.

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There was a lot of music.IMG_1896

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…and plenty of cousin time…

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Foster and the boy

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Cousins, including Ellen, the bride

Good times.

*e.e. cummings

5 Comments
May 16, 2016

“O Lord, how manifold are your works!” *

by chuckofish

Happy Pentecost! How was your weekend?

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We went to the last lacrosse game of the season on Friday after work and enjoyed sitting outside on a beautiful day, watching the game and the people around us. We never talked to the boy but the OM took a few pictures of him across the field with his giant lens.

On Saturday I went to several estate sales, including one in the lovely home of the brother of a former president of the U.S. His wife died a few months ago and I suppose he is down-sizing–you know, the kids took what they wanted and they were getting rid of the rest. The house was lovely and unpretentious, full of familiar things (books and LPs and monogrammed towels) and comfortable in an old school, slightly shabby way–just my style. They even had one of these–our family totem:

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(I didn’t buy his, because I have already given one to each of my children.) I did buy an old child’s chair, which had been chewed by a family dog, and a BCP.

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A good morning’s outing to be sure.

I finished Nightwoods by Charles Frazier and I highly recommend it. Good characters, tightly paced–well done. I am now reading Hope Leslie written by Catharine Maria Sedgwick in 1827, encouraged by daughter #2 who has read all of Sedgwick’s oeuvre for her dissertation. I am pleasantly surprised to report that Sedgwick is a regular Jane Austen, writing with a wry humor about “early times in Massachusetts.” Indeed the action takes place in the early seventeenth century and explores the “tumultuous relations between Puritans and Pequots.” I love this scene, described in a letter, where the fourteen-year old son pokes fun at an Anglican newcomer during a storm:

But Dame Grafton was beside herself. At one moment she fancied we should be the prey of the wild beast, and at the next, that she heard the alarm yell of the savages. Everell brought her, her prayer-book, and affecting a well-beseeming gravity, he begged her to look out the prayer for distressed women, in imminent danger of being scalped by North American Indians. The poor lady, distracted with terror, seized the book, and turned over leaf after leaf. Everell meanwhile affecting to aid her search. In vain I shook my head, reprovingly, at the boy–in vain I assured Mistress Grafton that I trusted we were in no danger; she was beyond the influence of reason; nothing allayed her fears, till chancing to catch a glance of Everell’s eye, she detected the lurking laughter, and rapping him soundly over the ears with her book, she left the room greatly enraged.

Now that is funny. “The prayer for distressed women, in imminent danger of being scalped by North American Indians.” I already like this Catherine Maria Sedgwick a lot.

The rest of the weekend was spent pleasantly puttering around, working in the yard, eating the donuts that my friend from Atlanta brought to me at work on Friday (he was in town for the air show)–note they are the “right” donuts–

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and going to a garden party in support of the Shakespeare Festival St. Louis.

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It was held at our friend’s 1867 house high up overlooking the mighty Mississippi…

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There was even a bassett hunt.

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Not bad for a stay-at-home introvert!

*Psalm 104

4 Comments
May 13, 2016

Weekend plans

by chuckofish

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We have had a rainy, stormy week, but the forecast for the weekend is good. I plan to take it easy and prepare for next weekend when I am going to my niece’s wedding in Pennsylvania.

“I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt the door.”

–J.D. Salinger, A Boy in France: Saturday Evening Post CCXVII, March 31, 1945

Sounds like a plan to me.

(The painting is by Thomas Hart Benton)

6 Comments