Complication and Plenitude

LONGING FOR FALL
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Dandelion Clock
William John Hennessy (1839 - 1917)

Dandelions . . . or Michaelmas Daisies?
And, in keeping with the observation of Michaelmas
on September 29th, I like to read the following as
"Late September" . . .

"Late August brought with it a longing for fall. By the end of the month the grass was brown, singed by days of heat and no rain. Mirella's impatiens, usually a bright pink and red mound on either side of the back doorstep, were small and lack luster. The air smelled strangely of basalt and car exhaust, and of marine life flung up on the beaches by the tide and cooked by the sun. . . . With so much wanting came all the promise and damage of the world" (295, 298)
*****************
" 'Listen to me, Howard. You and Mirella are adults. The lives of adults are complicated and generally somehow bad.'

" 'Thanks,' said Howard, surprised to find this observation reassuring. . . . somehow in the end everything in his life would still happen to him. (191)

"Mirella wondered if what she herself had been forgetting all this time, for years and years, was that none of this would last very long, that all of this, the terrible desirable, exhausting plenitude of her life -- the children, Howard, this house, her job -- all of her worries and failures and abilities and cares, all of it mattered so dearly, but so briefly, and that it was all in a way nearly over, even the part of her life that were still to come." (301)

from A Perfect Arrangement
by Suzanne Berne
[see also Longly, Nanny, 2003, Houses]

Also by Hennessy . . . It's complicated . . .

The Pride of Dijon 1879
William John Hennessy (1839 - 1917)

Just when I think I may have finished my review of paintings that we enjoyed every day on the walls of our old Victorian house, I seem to recall a few more favorites. The two above by Hennessy were in our dining room; and the two below were in the kitchen. I don't know how we managed to fit them all in, but somehow we were always finding space in our ever - expanding design scheme of complication and plenitude!

Flower Pots 1887
Paul Cezanne (1839 - 1906)

Hollyhocks, 1911
Frederick Carl Frieseke (1874 - 1939)

Next Time: More Ladies in White Dresses
Previously: To See A Fine Picture
Going Barefoot
Kitchen Art
Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, October 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.blogsppot.com

Kitchen Art

READING AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE
SOLITARY OR NOT
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

At Breakfast 1898
Lauritz Andersen Ring (1854 – 1933)

A few ~ more small prints lost in the diaspora.
I loved seeing these scattered around my kitchen:
contemplative coffee hours, shared teatimes,
and elegant household interiors.

The Morning Paper

Read one newspaper daily (the morning edition
is the best
for by evening you know that you at least
have lived through another day)
and let the disasters, the unbelievable
yet approved decisions
soak in.

I don't need to name the countries,
ours among them.

What keeps us from falling down, our faces
to the ground; ashamed, ashamed?

Mary Oliver (1935 - 2019)
from her book A Thousand Mornings

The Breakfast, 1911
William McGregor Paxton (1869 - 1941)

Every Morning

I read the papers,
I unfold them and examine them in the sunlight.
The way the red mortars, in photographs,
arc down into the neighborhoods
like stars, the way death
combs everything into a gray rubble before
the camera moves on. What
dark part of my soul
shivers: you don’t want to know more
about this. And then: you don’t know anything
unless you do. How the sleepers
wake and run to the cellars,
how the children scream, their tongues
trying to swim away—
how the morning itself appears
like a slow white rose
while the figures climb over the bubbled thresholds,
move among the smashed cars, the streets
where the clanging ambulances won’t
stop all day—death and death, messy death—
death as history, death as a habit—
how sometimes the camera pauses while a family
counts itself, and all of them are alive,
their mouths dry caves of wordlessness
in the smudged moons of their faces,
a craziness we have so far no name for—
all this I read in the papers,
in the sunlight,
I read with my cold, sharp eyes.

by Mary Oliver

Additional Favorites ~ All By Paxton

Tea Leaves, 1909

The House Maid, 1910
~ Previously on Kitti's List ~

The New Necklace, 1910

Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, 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.blogsppot.com