At the Heart of the Creche

MANGER SCENE, ACCUSTOMED . . .
NO WAIT! UNACCUSTOMED . . .
YET ODDLY CEREMONIOUS!

"And Batman said,
'Peace, good will toward all. Except Joker.' "
[Click to see many more funny nativities]

"On the bar beside the television set there was a creche, with three painted plaster Wise Men, one on an elephant, the others on camels. The first Wise Man was missing his head. Inside the stable a stunted Joseph and Mary adored an enormous Christ Child which was more than half as big as the elephant. Sarah wondered how the Mary could possibly have squeezed out this colossus; it made her uncomfortable to think about it. Beside the creche was a Santa Claus haloed with flashing lights, and beside that a radio in the shape of Fred Flintstone, which was paying American popular songs, all of them ancient." (152)

from "The Resplendent Quetzal"
in Dancing Girls and Other Stories
by Margaret Atwood (b 1939)
Canadian activist, novelist, poet
This unlikely Nativity Scene establishes the tone for Atwood's troubling story of Mother and Child. The main character, Sarah, is the pained and haughty Madonna, a figure tortured by birth on the one hand, yet smugly content on the other, and emotionally distant from her husband Edward. The "resplendent quetzal" of the title is a bird found in Mexican cloud forests that Sarah would like to see during the vacation that she and Edward are taking. She has been thumbing through his handbook, The Birds of Mexico: "Quetzal Bird meant Feather Bird . . . A jewel, a precious feather."

Sarah is sadly reminded of her recent pregnancy and stillborn child when she spies the absurdly unlikely Nativity grouping in one of the tasteless restaurants that Edward insists will supply them with a bit of "local colour." Here the confrontation between the sacred and the secular becomes almost shockingly, ludicrously complicated. In this pastiche, the religious landscape is populated by at least as many secular representatives as sacred ones. The boundaries between the two worlds have been all but erased, with abstract mythologized figures and cartoon characters worshipping side by side at the very heart of the creche.

Sarah clearly sees herself as the too - small Mary and finds it uncomfortable just thinking about the enormous baby doll. The way in which she was drained emotionally by her pregnancy and the way in which she felt neglected by Edward are the memories that make eating dinner in the squalid restaurant "even more depressing than it should have been, especially the creche. It was painful . . ." (152).

The Big Boy!

Atwood's juxtaposition of the stunted Mary and the enormous Christ Child is reminiscent of the portrayal in Marilyn French's novel The Women's Room of a tiny Barbie doll acting as mother to a huge baby doll. Much like Sarah, the character Adele struggles with issues of inadequacy and proportion. A tired wife and mother, Adele overhears her daughter Linda playing dolls. The child takes on first the voice of the mother doll, then the voice of the whining baby doll. The scenario Linda creates with her dolls is a parody in miniature of Adele's own life, and of course the dialogue of Linda's drama is drawn from her own conversations with her mother and those she has overheard. The symbolism is obvious -- that the mother feels overwhelmed by the children, whose energy and presence seems to loom so much larger than her own:

"Linda was squatting on the floor, playing with her doll.

'Now you're a bad girl, a bad, bad girl,' she was saying as she slapped the doll on its bottom several times. 'You go straight in your room and don't come out! And don't wake up the baby!' her little voice said angrily. She put the baby doll on its feet and marched it toward the couch.

'Mmmmmm,' she whined, 'I didn't mean it, Mommy,' she said in a tiny high voice.

'You did so and you're bad!' she said in her Mommy voice, and threw the baby doll down on the floor on its face. The baby doll was eighteen inches long; the Mommy doll was small, less than a foot tall. She put an apron on Barbie, and said in a calm, happy voice: 'I wonder what I should make for Daddy's supper tonight. I know, I'll make a chocolate cake with raisins, and bacon.' Then she paraded the Barbie doll around in a circle, humming all the while. 'Hello, dear,' she said in an artificial voice. 'How was your day today? Guess what I've made? Chocolate cake with raisins!' There was a silence, in which presumably the father answered. 'Oh yes, it's been one of those days. After you eat, I want you to go in and spank that baby, she was so bad today! Isn't this chocolate cake delicious?' " (135)

from The Women's Room
by Marilyn French (1929 - 2009)
American feminist and author

See also: Margaret Atwood & Marilyn French
@ The Quotidian Kit

~ CONTINUED NEXT TIME ~

Batman makes another appearance ~ this time as Joseph!

Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, January 14th ~ At the Heart of the Well

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ All ~Hallowed~ Nativities
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

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

Celine & Florine

THE STETTIES, ACCUSTOMED CEREMONIOUS

The Amazing Stettheimer Sisters ~ 2017 Exhibition
Portrait of Myself
Portrait of My Sister Carrie W. Stettheimer
Portrait of My Sister, Ettie Stettheimer
All three paintings by Florine Stettheimer ~ 1923

Florine, 1871–1944
Caroline (Carrie) 1869 – 1944
Henrietta (Ettie / aka Henri Waste) 1875 – 1955

Victoria Reis: "Stettheimer’s portrait of her younger sister Ettie places her in a dark, starlit setting in front of a combination burning bush-Christmas tree, perhaps to signify the family’s cultural assimilation as Jews who celebrated Christmas. Like Florine, the subject also appears to be floating in space, lounging on a red fainting couch. An ornament on the tree, a red book inscribed with the name “Ettie,” represents Ettie’s role as the author and intellectual of the family."

Stettheimer's Christmas painting is the perfect accompaniment to this poem -- by my friend ~ Celine -- that I came across when looking through an old Christmas scrapbook from grad school days:

Presents

Presents wrapped in paper --
presents tied with bows!
Outward signs can help us
signal deeper things we know.

Can any gift be greater
than the persons in this place,
each given to the others
for beauty, joy, and grace?

But

will we stop today to stare
at each and every face?
Will we take the time to care,
or just hurry on and race

to open

presents wrapped in paper --
presents tied with bows?

Outward signs can help us
signal gifts we could forget

we know.

Merry Christmas and Blessings

Always ~ Sister Celine Carrigan
December 13, 1983

**************

Thanks also to my friend Katie,
who recently sent me a passage from Rilke’s
Book of Hours that echoes the message of Celine's poem
that a true present cannot be contained within a gift box:

"I don’t want to think a place for you.
Speak to me from everywhere.
Your gospel can be comprehended
without looking for its source.
When I go toward you it is with my whole life."

**************

And this from Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening:
How I Learned the Unexpected Joy
of a Green Thumb and an Open Heart
by Carol Wall (1951 - 2014)

“It occurred to me that friendship itself could be a kind of church.”

**************

And, finally, this blessing from G. K. Chesterton, which
captures the creative and varied life of "The Stetties":

“You say grace before meals. All right.
But I say grace before the concert and the opera,
and grace before the play and pantomime,
and grace before I open a book,
and grace before sketching, painting, swimming,
fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing
and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”
[See also Michaelmas & Martinmas]

**************

The Stettheimer sisters ~ "The Stetties" ~ with their mother
by Florine Stettheimer

Family Portrait I, 1915

Family Portrait II, 1933

Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, December 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

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

Where's Kafka?

WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
THE KAFKA MUSEUM ~ WITH CROW & GINGERBREAD

I am certainly not the first American tourist to wander around Prague searching for signs of Kafka, and many have done a much better job of it than I. Some manifestations of the great "K" were not so hard to find:

Mirrored Head of Franz Kafka

Kafka Riding an Empty Suit

Reader in an Armchair

Others were more elusive. Despite the omnipresence of Kafka in Prague, a couple of times I felt like K., standing before the closed door of the law. Like the Man Before the Law, I was right in front of my goal, yet unable to pass through the barrier -- in this case, the barrier of my own tourist - blindness. As K. can attest, the object of your quest might be right before your eyes yet still impossible to perceive.

For example, in search of Kafka's birthplace,
I carefully photographed this corner . . .

. . . before successfully locating, merely
one block away, this wall - mounted plaque,
that marks the location of Kafka's birth.
I had been standing directly beneath it,
but had neglected to look up!

Similarly, after tracing Kafka's route to school
across the Old Town Square, from the ornately decorated
House at the Minute ~ Dům U Minuty

. . . to the Masna Street Elementary School,
I stood right in front of the green front door,
looking across to the other side of the street.
But the aspect did not seem right, not as I had expected. . . .
Oh! because the school building was directly behind me!

Then there was that moment, wandering around the Municipal House (Obecní Dům), past the American Bar and the concert hall, when I peered into some kind of staging area filled with flat tables and standing metal bars. "Interesting art installation," I said to Gerry, thinking "how avant - garde," until he offered a moment of clarification: "That's the coat check!"

“The right perception of any matter
and a misunderstanding of the same matter
do not wholly exclude each other.”
Franz Kafka ~ The Trial
(271, Muir / Butler translation; 258 online edition)

Previous Fortnightly Post
Finding Kafka In Prague

Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, December 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Visions of Kafka
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

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

Kafka Museum &
Pernikovy Panacek Gingerbread Shop

Finding Kafka in Prague

KAFKA'S PRAGUE
WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"Kafka has become the ubiquitous icon [of Prague]. His melancholy portrait is inescapable, adorning T-shirts, coffee mugs, posters, shopping bags, puppets and above all, graffiti. . . .

"Franz Kafka’s world was the world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, long before the horrors his writing seemed to anticipate had occurred. But in his personal habits, he would have fitted well into the style of the next turn of the century and the modern-day Prague that holds him in iconic esteem."

Marilyn Bender

Kafka Museum

******************
The setting of Kafka's novel, The Castle, could be a symbolic labyrinth of the mind; some remote haunted fortification known to Kafka or imagined; the actual and omnipresent Prague Castle (Pražský hrad); or, less precisely but more accurately, it could be the entire Castle District (Hradčany), which -- if you make your way up the hill -- you will find to be remarkably similar to the "village" described by Kafka in the early pages of the novel:

" . . . up on the hill everything soared light and free into the air, or at least so it appeared from below.

"On the whole this distant prospect of the Castle satisfied K.'s expectations. It was neither an old stronghold nor a new mansion but a rambling pile consisting of innumerable small buildings closely packed together and of one or two stories; if K. had not known that it was a castle he might have taken it for a little town. There was only one tower as far as he could see . . . Swarms of crows were circling round it. . . .

"With his eyes fixed on the Castle, K. went on farther, thinking of nothing else at all. But on approaching it, he was disappointed in the Castle; it was after all only a wretched - looking town, a huddle of village houses, whose sole merit, if any, lay in being built of stone; but the plaster had long since flaked off and the stone seemed to be crumbling away. K. had a fleeting recollection of his native town. It was hardly inferior to this so-called Castle, and if it was merely a question of enjoying the view, it was a pity to have come so far; K. would have done better to revisit his native town, which he had not seen for such a long time." (pp 11 - 12)

from The Castle
by Franz Kafka (1883 – 1924)
[previous posts on this blog]

**************

In the Old Town (Staré Město) as well as the Castle District, I was lost so often it was ludicrous! Admittedly, I am not the most spatially oriented person, but even with the best sense of direction in the world, wandering around Prague is truly like being inside the pages of The Castle, searching for the elusive Klamm, back and forth, around and through endless mysterious passageways. Yet, one way or another, we always arrived at our desired, designated destination. One foot in front of the other. As Kafka writes in the Eight / Blue Octavo Notebooks, "The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler."

Of the many maps we tried, this was my favorite.
Kafka Square is at the intersection of Kaprova & Maiselova
(at back of of the "Astronomical Clock" arrow):

Next Fortnightly Post ~ More Searching For Kafka!
Thursday, November 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts ~ Still Small Snow
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading ~ Books That Affect Us Like a Disaster
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

All - American Souls

OUIJA BOARD ~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
AND JUST A LITTLE EERIE!

The Ouija Board was never a big thing with me and my friends, though we were all mystified by it and surely pulled one out every now and then at a slumber party or on a Halloween night. With the Samhain Triumvirate upon us -- Halloween, All Saints & All Souls -- what better time to contemplate a message from Beyond. What will it bring? Healing? Threat? Warning? That's what songwriter Andrew Robert Palmer deliberates in the following lyrics, bringing to mind an entire cycle of high holy days and patriotic holidays:

American Souls

Well, I'm waiting for the light to come on
and I'm praying it ain't really there
Oh, I'm closing my eyes and hoping the monsters are gone
I'm running up the basement stairs

We were playing with the ouija board
it was late, a voice said, "hey, can I play?"
When we asked the evil spirits who they were coming for,
it just spelled out "U...S...A."

Well, sweet baby Jesus, when are you coming home?
When will this world be saved?
Will there be room in heaven for our American Souls
When flowers grow on our graves?

Hush now child don't you worry no more
even evil demons have their end
I can't say it ain't really there, so I won't anymore
but It's safe to say the sun will come out again

Have faith and pray the sun will come out again
Have faith and pray for a brand new day
the sun will come out again

Music & lyrics by Andrew Robert Palmer
released May 1, 2019
posted with author's permission
all rights reserved

Note from Andrew: "Wanted to end this whole thing off on a hopeful note, even though life can seem as spooky-scary as being in your basement in the dark when no one's home. I don't mean to sound trite or glib, but I reckon sometimes, the best you can do is keep going and hope it all gets better. But you know ...also do stuff to help it get better...don't just hang around and do nothing. cool? cool."

To The Lake!
Little House
Rockford Rock
Northside Blues Confusion
American Souls
Speaking of "trite or glib" -- but not really -- I somehow went from humming Andrew Palmer's "American Souls" to recalling another all - American tribute from the classic musical Stop the World -- I Want to Get Off, written in 1961 by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley. The lyrics vary occasionally from production to production and from songbook to songbook, so if I have not chosen your favorites, please feel free to amend!

What remains constant in each rendition is the spectacle of a citizen shallowly embracing the more ridiculous elements of patriotism and popular culture without bothering to remember the current President or understand the Constitution -- how timely! Thus even the cutesy comic relief of a show tune harbors the same sinister concern lurking in Palmer's "American Souls." Entertaining yet worrisome:

All - American

I'm an all - American sweetheart
From an all - American town
I'm from all - American Main Street USA
I eat all - American popcorn
I chew all - American gum
Which is why I talk this all - American way

I watch all - American movies
half the all - American night
On my all - American television screen
And like all American females
I've an all - American dream
To become an all - American movie queen

[Reid, Murdoch & Co. Building]
I get all - American goosebumps
When I hear the Stars & Stripes
I'm an an all American niece of Uncle Sam
And I think that Mr. Eisenhower is altogether swell
-- Oh really? When? Oops --
I think Mr. Kennedy is absolutely swell
What a lucky all - American girl I am!

I consider myself very fortunate to be a citizen
of the United States of America
and furthermore, I support the Fifth Amendment,
whatever it is . . .

All - American Tevas!
What a lucky all - American girl I am!

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, November 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

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

Serendipity and/or Synchronicity

A COUNTRY ROAD, A HAPPENSTANCE
WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Synchronicity ~ Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)
Wallpaper at quotefancy

Synchronicity I

With one breath, with one flow
You will know
Synchronicity

A sleep trance, a dream dance,
A shared romance,
Synchronicity

A connecting principle,
Linked to the invisible
Almost imperceptible
Something inexpressible.
Science insusceptible
Logic so inflexible
Causally connectible
Yet nothing is invincible.

If we share this nightmare
Then we can dream
Spiritus mundi.

If you act, as you think,
The missing link,
Synchronicity.

We know you, they know me
Extrasensory
Synchronicity.

A star fall, a phone call,
It joins all,
Synchronicity.

It's so deep, it's so wide
Your inside
Synchronicity.

Effect without a cause
Sub-atomic laws, scientific pause
Synchronicity

Sung by The Police
Words & music by Sting

********************

Serendipity ~ Horace Walpole (1717 - 1797)
Poster at AZ Quotes

Lawrence Block: "Serendipity. Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you've found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for."

Erin McKean: "Serendipity is when you find things you weren't looking for because finding what you are looking for is so damned difficult."

********************
I recently had a lovely fall visit with my sister Diane during which we resumed our discussion of the "s" words for all the good coincidences: synchronicity -- when events occur simultaneously and "appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection"; and serendipity -- when events occur and develop "by chance in a happy or beneficial way." I still remember learning the meaning of serendipity, when it appeared as a vocabulary word on a 10th grade typing test! I was the slowest typist in the class, but at least I learned the vocabulary!

Remember that romantic line sung by Rita Coolidge (music by John Barry; lyrics by Tim Rice): Funny how it always goes with love, when you don´t look, you find? Well, that's kind of how it is with serendipity, except that instead of not looking, you are searching for one thing but end up finding another that is even more valuable or agreeable than the original item you were seeking.

And then there's synchronicity. After my sister departed, I sent her a note to let her know how much I was missing her, and to wish her well on the remainder of her travels. She texted back:

"Sweet you. I got your message when we stopped on our way home. We were at a ❤️Love's Travel Stop❤️ at the time. Awwww, right? Earlier we had stopped at Walmart and our cashier's name was "Kitty." What did you call that? Something about the universe synching? Today it did! 😊"

Di calls this my "Doll House Back Porch”

Also 2018 & 2016

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Monday, October 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

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

With or Without an Epitaph

AN ANCIENT CITY
WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Palaces of Nimroud Restored, 1851
by James Fergusson (1808 –1886)

From the 1853 collection of scholar and excavator
Sir Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894)

Where to find Nimrud on the map:
20 miles south of Mosul / Nineveh

Not shown on map:
Jerwan is 25 miles north of Mosul / Nineveh
Why these three ancient cities: Jerwan, Nimroud, and Nineveh?

First of all, let me say that if you are sitting down to read the poems of contemporary American, Jim Barnes, you had better have a World Atlas handy, because you are going to need it! In a good way! The geological and emotional strata of these poems run deep and wide. Five college towns in Ohio -- can you trace the route across the State? Small hometowns in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, with names unknown to many (well known to me). Cafes, museums, ruins, villas -- all over Europe! You must envision where they are, where the poet has been and takes you now, where you may one day go on your own steam. E.g., The Fertile Crescent:

At Jerwan

Stretching south toward Nineveh
the fertile lands Sennacherib
surveyed have now neither grain nor gold
for the hand holding compass and fold.

Long before the droning night came
down for the spoils and the wind with blame
for the deadly absence and the fall,
frowning figures left their places

on the crumbling marble monuments
and sank into the dry river bed
where the hot hand that fell still means
to fall on the holy heads of gods.

No gardens hanging from the banks,
no stone aqueducts now standing
lone, level, or otherwise.

Far from
Ishtar and Nineveh only this:
dust, thirst, desert despair,
the dream of Sennacherib gone wrong.

by Jim Barnes (b 1933)
in Sundown Explains Nothing, 2019

Artist’s Depiction of the Jerwan Aqueduct
Sennacherib (750 - 681 BC) ruled Assyria from 705 BC to 681 BC, and beautified the capital city of Nineveh with aqueducts, canals, hanging gardens, temples, and a “palace without a rival.” Yet, as Barnes points out, all that magnificence has been replaced by "lone, level" sands, eerily distant. The reader is reminded of proud fictional (or maybe not) Ozymandias, king of kings:

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822)

My son Ben, on vacation in London, also took a moment to remind me of Ozymandias, sending me this photograph of the tomb of eccentric 17th-century medical quack Lionel Lockyer. Ben added his own clever caption . . .

"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."

. . . and the following commentary:

"On the other hand we've all heard of Ozymandias,
so maybe he was on to something?"

Or at least Shelley was!"

[True, it is not all that unusual to hear
the name of Ozymandias twice in one week
-- and at least twice before on this blog!]
Back in the day, Lockyer (c.1600 – 1672) successfully marketed a miracle pill that apparently cleansed the entire digestive system by causing simultaneous vomiting and diarrhea. Though it sounds exceedingly unpleasant, his product had a huge following during his lifetime; and upon the occasion of his death, he took the opportunity to write as his epitaph one final advertisement for his "Pilulae Radiis Solis Extractae" (extract of sunlight!), more commonly referred to as "Lockyer's Pill":

Here Lockyer: lies interr'd enough: his name
Speakes one hath few competitors in fame:
A name soe Great, soe Generall't may scorne
Inscriptions whch doe vulgar tombs adorne.
A diminution 'tis to write in verse
His eulogies which most men's mouths rehearse.
His virtues & his PILLS are soe well known...
That envy can't confine them under stone.
But they'll survive his dust and not expire
Till all things else at th'universall fire.
This verse is lost, his PILL Embalmes him safe
To future times without an Epitaph

Lockyer thought for sure his pills would outlast his faux sonnet. Ozymandias and Sennacherib envisioned generation after generation surveying their mighty works. Yet in each case, the future went its own way, choosing a different fate for the would - be heroes, leaving behind a "dream . . . gone wrong."

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Monday, October 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Lausanne
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

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

When Women Wore Names

A NAME THAT IS ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

I know thee by name. . . .
Exodus 33:17

Fear not . . . I have called thee by thy name. . .
Isaiah 43:1

JONI

KITTI

For more Cartouche Hieroglyphs: Alphabet ~ Generator
A few months ago, my friend Joni
shared this photograph with the caption:
"Ran the sun up to this 'Warrior Song'
by The Red Shadow Singers
and received my new name Running Redbud
Love my shirt feeling grateful ❤️"

Listening to the old Anishinabe Thunderbird Warrior Song reminded me of a favorite essay from teaching days when one of the recurring themes on my syllabus was "you deserve to be called by your name." It took me all summer to track down a copy, but here is an excerpt, just in time for Joni's birthday:

The Names of Women
Louise Erdrich

"Ikwe is the word for woman in the language of the Anishinabe, my mother’s people, whose descendants, mixed with and married to French trappers and farmers, are the Michifs of the Turtle Mountain reservation in North Dakota. Every Anishinabe Ikwe, every mixed-blood descendant like me, who can trace her way back a generation or two, is the daughter of a mystery. The history of the woodland Anishinabe – decimated by disease, fighting Plains Indian tribes to the west and squeezed by European settlers to the east–is much like most other Native American stories, a confusion of loss, a tale of absences, of a culture that was blown apart and changed so radically in such a short time that only the names survive.

"And yet, those names.

"The names of the first women whose existence is recorded on the rolls of the Turtle Mountain Reservation, in 1892, reveal as much as we can ever recapture of their personalities, complex natures and relationships. These names tell stories, or half stories, if only we listen closely.

"There once were women named Standing Strong, Fish Bones, Different Thunder. There once was a girl called Yellow Straps. Imagine what it was like to pick berries with Sky Coming Down, to walk through a storm with Lightning Proof. Surely, she was struck and lived, but what about the person next to her? People always avoided Steps Over Truth, when they wanted a straight answer, and I Hear, when they wanted to keep a secret. Glittering put coal on her face and watched for enemies at night. The woman named Standing Across could see things moving far across the lake. The old ladies gossiped about Playing Around, but no one dared say anything to her face. Ice was good at gambling. Shining One Side loved to sit and talk to Opposite the Sky. They both knew Sounding Feather, Exhausted Wind and Green Cloud, daughter of Seeing Iron. Center of the Sky was a widow. Rabbit, Prairie Chicken and Daylight were all little girls. She Tramp could make great distance in a day of walking. Cross Lightning had a powerful smile. When Setting Wind and Gentle Woman Standing sang together the whole tribe listened. Stop the Day got her name when at her shout the afternoon went still. Log was strong, Cloud Touching Bottom weak and consumptive. Mirage married Wind. Everyone loved Musical Cloud, but children hid from Dressed in Stone. Lying Down Grass had such a gentle voice and touch, but no one dared to cross She Black of Heart.

"We can imagine something of these women from their names. . . ."

Yet, despite their power and beauty, these elegant and naturally descriptive names were slowly, surely, and sadly, overwritten throughout the 20th Century by Christianized, Anglicized and Frenchified replacements: "She Knows the Bear became Marie. Sloping Cloud was christened Jeanne. Taking Care of the Day and Yellow Day Woman turned into Catherines. Identities are altogether lost."

Erdrich explains what happened in her family of origin: "The daughters of my own ancestors, Kwayzancheewin – Acts Like a Boy and Striped Earth Woman – go unrecorded, and no hint or reflection of their individual natures comes to light through the scattershot records of those times, although they must have been genetically tough in order to survive: there were epidemics of typhoid, flu, measles and other diseases that winnowed the tribe each winter. They had to have grown up sensible, hard-working, undeviating in their attention to their tasks. They had to have been lucky. . . . all the mothers going back into the shadows, when women wore names that told us who they were" (emphasis added).

Happy Birthday to Running Redbud!

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, September 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

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

The Common Air that Bathes the Globe

A BURST OF VIVD PINK NEAR THE DRIVEWAY
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Thanks to my brother - in - law Tom Burrows
for his beautiful photograph of this late summer blossom!

*********************

With Labor Day Weekend upon us,
who better than our
200 - year - old
American Superhero Walt Whitman
to help us celebrate
"the social and economic achievements of American workers."

As my friend Len once observed:
"Every reminder of Whitman is bracing!"
Whitman is so vast and inclusive, so enthusiastic about life in these United States, that nearly any passage or poem would be appropriate for the occasion of Labor Day. Time after time, he provides comprehensive lists of jobs, professions, States, claiming his identity as "Southerner . . . Northerner . . . Yankee . . . Kentuckian . . . Hoosier . . . Kanadian":

I am . . . A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest,
A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons,
Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion,
A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker,
Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.

I resist any thing better than my own diversity,
Breathe the air but leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

*********************
These are really the thoughts of all . . . in all ages and lands,
they are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.

This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This the common air that bathes the globe.

*********************
This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger,
It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous, I make appointments with all,
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
The heavy-lipp'd slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.

This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor of hair,
This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning,
This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face,
This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again.

Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have,
and the mica on the side of a rock has.

Do you take it I would astonish?
Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering through the woods?
Do I astonish more than they?

This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

*********************
No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them,
No more modest than immodest.

Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

Whoever degrades another degrades me,
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.

Through me the afflatus surging and surging,
through me the cur- rent and index.

I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy,
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have
their counterpart of on the same terms.

Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves,
Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars . . .

Song of Myself, 16, 17, 19, 24
in Leaves of Grass

*********************

"I wear my hat as I please indoors or out."

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
photographed on New Year's Eve 1886
by George Collins Cox (1851–1903)
photo restored in 1979 by Adam Cuerden

*********************
"When quoting Whitman," Len advised, "be sure to stand up and read it aloud for the full effect (and for the benefit of others in your vicinity!)."

Len's advice reminded me of a long ago teacher evaluation that I received at Notre Dame, when a student had listed under my "weaknesses": "Likes to read aloud." Haha! But true!

As Len then pointed out, "If people only knew the hilarious comments students often provide on course evaluations, they would want these anthologized. But then the teachers would be tempted to read these aloud."

Whitman was ever one to proclaim, but also one to whisper:

"This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you . . .

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you."

*********************

Additional examples of Whitman's bracing words:
~ Quotidian ~ Book List ~ Fortnightly ~

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

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

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

Given Life by an Intimate Sun

Ponta Delgada, Azores
WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Sea of Portugal

Oh salt laden sea, how much of your salt
belongs to the tears of Portugal!
By crossing your waters, how many mothers wept,
how many sons and daughters prayed in vain!
How many would be brides denied
for you to be ours, oh sea!

Was it all worth it -- the price that was paid?
All is worth doing, if one is great of soul.
Beyond the Cape of Bojador, for those who dare to sail,
all pain must be renounced, all suffering cast off.
Perils and unfathomable depths to the sea gave God,
for the sky above is mirrored within.

Fernando Pessoa
My preceding Fortnightly concluded with a preview of Pessoa's work, and a promise of more Portuguese poetry to come. Once again dipping into the anthology, I have chosen a selection of poems from the three youngest poets, all of whom lived and wrote, intensely and somewhat sadly, in the early 20th Century: Pessoa (1888 – 1935), his friend and colleague Mario de Sa-Carneiro (1890 – 1916), and Florabela Espanca (1894 - 1930). As you can see from the dates, their lives were not long. Pessoa was plagued by ill health and alcoholism; Sa-Carneiro and Espanca died of suicide.

A little more sunshine -- and I would be an ember.
A little more blue -- and I would take flight.
But I lacked that impulse to get there . . . "
from the poem "Almost"
~ Mario de Sa-Carneiro ~

Fernando Pessoa (with glasses),
Florbela Espanca (mid / left),
Mario de Sa-Carneiro (above her, wearing hat)
The most optimistic of this group is Fernando Pessoa, whose ode to the machine is worthy of Dawn or Doom or Walt Whitman. He grants technology a role in the creation of his poetry and looks to the future as well as the past:

Ode Triumphant

Under the powerful light of the industrial lamps
I possess a fever and through gritted teeth I write.
I write, overcome, drunk with all this beauty,
A beauty entirely unknown to the ancients.

Oh wheels, oh gears, grrrrind eternally!
Mighty spasms constricted by machines enraged!
A thunderous rage both within and without,
pervading all my nerves detached,
all my taste buds, all I feel with!
My lips are dry, oh noise so loud and so modern,
as you I hear with such close intensity,
and my head burns from singing you with excess
in pronouncement of all that I feel,
with an exuberance to match yours, oh machines!

In "Lisbon Revisited (1926)" Pessoa writes of both sea and city, and existential angst:

Nothing connects me to nothing . . .
Once more I see you,
city of my youth so tragically lost . . .
And once more I see you,
my heart at a distance, my soul much less so.
Once more I see you -- Lisbon, my city . . .
Once more I see you,
but alas, myself, I do not!
The magical mirror in which my image reflected, cracked,
and in each fateful shard remains a fragment of me --
a fragment of you and me!

The theme of nothingness appears throughout Pessoa's work, as he wonders about the elusive meaning of life. He wrongly foresees a negated fate for his poetry, though this strain of gloom did not prevent him from writing prolifically and with a great sense of affirmation, under a complicated system of pseudonyms. The following two examples come under the name of Ricardo Reis:

Nothing remains of nothing. We are nothing.
With a little sun and air, we hold back, delay
the stifling darkness that weighs heavy
on the moistened land.
We are all death deferred, and we multiply.

Laws created, statues viewed, odes concluded --
everything has its graves, and if we, who are given life
by an intimate sun,
too must rest, why not everything else?
We tell tales upon tales -- we are nothing.

**********************

Yes, I know that
I'll forever be a nobody.
I know very well that
a single work I shall not complete.
And more so that
I'll never know me.
Yes, but now,
whilst this time lasts,
this moonlight, these arms,
this peace that we feel,
permit me to believe
that which I may never be.

The tragic poet, Florabela Espanca (8 December 1894 – 8 December 1930) predicts, again incorrectly, that her work may share a similar fate:

Vanity

I dream that I'm the Golden Girl of poets,
She who says it all and knows it all,
who finds pure and perfect inspiration,
who gathers the boundless into a single line!

I dream that in just one of my lines is a brightness
enough to fll the whole world! Delighting
even those whose hearts are sore and broken!
Even those with profound and yearning souls!

I dream that I am Somebody here in this world --
She of the vast and profound wisdom,
at whose feet the Earth bows!

And when I'm dreaming skyward at my highest,
and soaring at my loftiest up above,
I wake from my dream -- And I'm nothing!

It is typical of Espanca's sonnets to initially fill the reader with hope, until the introduction of despair in the last few lines. In "To A Young Girl," for example, we join in the poet's encouragement of the young girl to embrace life in every aspect -- yes, do this; yes do that! But "dig yourself a grave"? No, don't do that!

To A Young Girl
For Nice

Open your eyes and face your life! Your fate
has to come true! Fling your horizons wide!
Raise bridges up across the boggy mires
with your precious, young woman's hands.

Along the fascinating highway of your life
keep walking on ahead, on over the mountains!
Bite into fruits as you laugh! Drink from the springs!
Kiss everyone your good luck brings your way!

Wave a hello to the farthest-distant star,
use your own hands to dig yourself a grave,
and then, with a grin, lie down in it!

Then may the earth's hands lovingly
bring up into the light out of your body's grace,
slender and new, the stalk of a flower!

Struggling against both physical and mental illness, it was difficult for Espanca to choose the joyous life that she describes in the opening of nearly every poem. If only she had been able to see that she herself was the "Enchanted Princess of Dreamland," that she, like her contemporary Pessoa, had been "given life by an intimate sun." Well, maybe she did.

What You Are

You're the One every little thing gets down,
rubs wrong and embitters, everything humiliates you;
you're the One Heartache called her daughter,
the One deserving nothing from man or God.

You're the One whom the bright sun darkens,
who doesn't even know what road she's traveling on,
the one without a single gleaming, wondrous love
to dazzle you, and give you light and warmth!

A Dead Sea with no tides or wide waves,
made up entirely of bitter tears,
groveling on the ground like beggar-women do!

You're a year when spring never came --
Ah! If only you could be like other girls,
O Enchanted Princess of Dreamland!

Thanks again to these two enchanted wanderers
for their photos of Portugal and for the book of poetry!h

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, August 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

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