Every Chocolate Flake

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Highland Wedding at Blair Atholl, 1780
by Scottish painter and illustrator of historical subjects,
David Allan, 1744 - 96
[learn more about this painting and the ceilidh dance]
This Fortnight's chain of connections began ten days ago when my friend Tammy came across a back - to - school quotation on my book blog:

"It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions
about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming
an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able
to be caught up into the world of thought -- that is to be educated."
Edith Hamilton
Tammy wrote to tell me that she had recently re-bought for herself copy of Hamilton's book [where I first learned about Echo & Narcissus] that so many of us loved back in high school:

She went on the say that "All the back to school vibes, plus a few stories relayed to me of summer travel and study abroad have brought to the surface my own memories of Scotland, where I studied for a year about a million years ago. I had to write about it. . . . Yes, I wrote this weekend, for some reason the words decided to burst forth as I drove my car and then tried desperately to catch them, remember them for my keyboard. . . . You will get some of the UK references, and even when you don't, I think you will get the sense of joy in being able to just go LEARN."

[click to hear samples on amazon]
strip the willow

I keep going back
to Scotland
which I can only always describe
if people know and care to ask
as Magic

Here’s how you get there:

First,
Journey many hours in the air
then more on a train
where people speak your language
and if you listen hard
you can almost understand

Ride your train through towns
with ancient names
that bloom on your tongue
as you try to roll Glaswegian R’s

Pass sheep inside a stacked stone fence
sometimes a dog running herd
or a shepherd with a staff
and Scottish temper
hurling the staff at fast cars who spook the flock

Other men on this trip nod and tip their hats
like Texas cowboys at the VFW,
wanting nothing but to help you
find your way

The air smells of peat and hops
but you won’t know that yet

You arrive in the dark and sleep late
waking up to a gardener whistling
“Cracklin’ Rosie”
happy tune to welcome
a bright new day

Your clean your teeth
with water so icy it must be pure
and take breakfast
with a lovely girl,
your first Louise

You call home at a decent hour
from a plexiglass phone booth
repeating the numbers twice
distracted by the purring Irish accent
in the booth next door
assuring your parent-loves that you are safe and happy
and you are

You are here to LIVE
to dig in, drink deep
soak up every scrap of knowledge from class
and country and Meadowlark
(even the pub name sounds pretty)

What will happen next?

You cross a small bridge
with other students travelling
one single path to class,
swans swim on the loch below
a castle shimmers beyond
seriously

You search their faces
want to know them, their accent and fashion
and you open yourself like a daisy
bringing all you can to the surface
to be shared straight away
so you can meet them, eat them all

You ride horses with Norwegians
study marketing with the French,
opera with the English,
and share coffee with the professor
who turns out to have a different idea
of cultural exchange
well, that’s experience, too

You walk in the drizzle
noticing patterns,
join the old women limping their way
to worship in an old stone kirk
kneel to strolling Westies
who pause a moment before trotting
back to their master

You take a job on Thursdays
noticing rhythms,
serving single malt to blokes
who take squinting measure of their glass
and American-you
discussing their politics and futbol
and once, the mystical power to heal

Finally convinced of successful outreach
you let in some other Yanks
just a few
who prove as interesting and layered
as Mumford & Sons
modern gospel
yearning, jubilant
triumphant horns over bluegrass over bass;
their family stories and characters
draw you in,
warm your belly
and inspire

They teach you the accent and fashion
of your home country
that magnificent, arrogant one
that you alternately hold tight and apologize for

And some teach you by learning with you
jumping in to Strip the Willow
whirling ceilidh dance of
laughter in a big wide barn
celebration of freedom and joy and youth

Tall and rangy Montana
gathers you up like hay
gives you a greater sense of yourself
of your power and insecurity
the way a mirror reflects the beauty and the flaws

A person can do this
just like a place

So in Scotland, you meet
music from voices past
ideas of future film
words
all of which you somehow already know;
a boy climbs through your window with the moon
stretches his long limbs over yours and
helps you weave a blanket of duvet, wool, and sky

Now
When I remember who I am sometimes
it’s that girl in Scotland
that long-walk every day girl who sought out the wonder,
the soul behind the eyes
who was blessed to have beginner’s mind
come easily

I still see all the shades of mist
and I’m never ever certain of any one thing, for sure
except for love and magic

In Scotland
there were vignettes of simple, stunning beauty
all the time
I climbed Dumyat and
took communion with a lab,
found the heather
and tasted every chocolate Flake;
I knew ‘rapture from an orange
and ecstasy from a blade of grass’*
and it never went away

Why does it happen when it happens?
How’d I get a gift like that?

Is it a specific place we must find,
a person we must know, or
the ripening of our own body inside our skin?
all those things, or none of them
and a commitment to saying yes

I heard bagpipes in the distance
and was completed,
or transformed,
or maybe just returned with gentle magic
to myself.

tammy l. knox sandel, 8/17/13

* Leo Buscaglia, who is (also) not Scottish


Part memoir, part travelogue, part reflection. The magical year that Tammy describes in "strip the willow" reminds me so much of the summer that I was in Oxford (1979), with the exception, as I confessed to Tammy, that my coming of age sojourn included no dance partners or cowboys or amorous scholars of any nationality. Always a slow starter, I was just a little too dull and backward for an off - shore romance. Sweetly, Tammy offered a more generous reinterpretation of my girlish dullness: "No! Of course you were never a dull girl. . . . You just weren't there long enough." Ah - ha! Maybe that was it!

Romance notwithstanding, Tammy's poem brought back all the exhilaration of that summer abroad -- the currency and the accents; the planes, trains and tour buses; the dorms, dining halls, and quadrangles; the china shops and bookstores; the occasional crabby strangers, more than offset by the unexpected friendliness; the cathedrals and literary landmarks.

Another connection that intensified my reading of "strip the willow" was that only a couple of days before reading it, I had re - connected for the first time in ten years or so with my friend Kathy whom I met on that first trip to England back in 1979. We shared many adventures, including getting lost more than once -- as you can see in this old photo (disregard stray marks of red ink). "Folly Lane" -- the name on that road sign pretty much says it all! But we survived and learned as much from each misstep as we did from each successful outing. As Tammy says in her poem, it's all experience! Right?

Even Tammy's reference to "every chocolate Flake" spoke to my heart. I was not in 1979 a fan of the Flake, though I have since become one, as it is a favorite of my English relatives, including my husband and sons. Back then, however, what Kathy and I loved to buy at the British Rail newsstands were Twix Bars and Mini Babybel cheeses, two novelty snacks not widely available in the United States at the time. Somehow I knew exactly what Tammy meant about the memory of a chocolate treat that comes to symbolize everything new and unique and untried about "a specific place we must find." Or perhaps a place that we have actually found; or an old, exciting time when there was just so much to learn!

Tammy's poem led to a day spent thinking about Flakes and Twix; old friends, new friends, children of friends, and young womanhood. At the close of that day, I was looking in the pantry for some chocolate chips to add to a batch of zucchini bread ('tis the season), and -- to perfectly round out a series of connections and coincidences -- what did I discover and use instead? A package of very crumbly (even more so than usual) Flake Bars, no doubt left over from Gerry's parents' last visit.

Believe it or not, Tammy is not the first author I know to have incorporated a reference to Flakes in her writing! In Gladys Reunited: A Personal American Journey, Sandi Toksvig -- herself a master of the literary coincidence -- describes bringing a friend in the United States a package of Flakes from England:

I had brought her a gift of Cadbury's Flake -- a chocolate bar
that crumbles the minute you unwrap it. She was thrilled.
'We don't have it here. Your mom actually turned me on to them.
The first time, I said, "It comes like this?" It's a mess.
You have to work at them. Great when you're cooking.'

(109; see also
"Birds of Pray" and "Opal: In Love with the World")
Turns out I'm not the only one who uses Flakes when baking! I like it that Sandi's friend had the same idea; and she's right -- they do make a mess and you have to "work at them." Yet, Tammy's advice is undoubtedly the best of all: forget the mess, go for the experience, learn all you can, jump in to "strip the willow" and taste "every chocolate Flake." Just say Yes!

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, September 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts: "Two Gazed Into a Pool:
Echo & Narcissus"
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading: "Girls of Summer"
www.kittislist.blogspot.com