No Bigger Than a Peanut

MATRYOSHKAS
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Unicef Photograph ~ Odesa, Ukraine
"Boxes within boxes, dolls within dolls, worlds within worlds.
Everything was connected. Everything in the whole world."
(463)
What a good turn of events it was for me to receive a copy of Kate Atkinson's novel -- One Good Turn: A Jolly Murder Mystery -- as a souvenir of Edinburgh from Gerry's Cousin Jonny. I had watched a few seasons of Case Histories, the British crime drama set and filmed in Edinburgh; but this was my first time sitting down to actually read one of the Jackson Brodie mysteries upon which the series is based. One Good Turn turns out to be the kind of thriller that you start reading on one day and finish the next, with only a few brief hours of sleep in between.

In addition to the primary investigation, numerous distracting and entertaining subplots captured my attention: the Edinburgh Festival playing around the clock, a dear old cat named Jellybean, sadly, in failing health, and -- most intriguing of all -- a set of nesting Russian dolls whose presence in the text provide a constant reminder of hidden worlds and secrets.

Introductory Montage & Theme Song: Case Histories & One Good Turn
When the character Martin Canning, a successful author of crime novels, becomes involved in a real crime, he peers into the travel bag of the mysterious man whose life he has inadvertently saved:

"He had seen inside the bag and there was nothing that revealed anything about Paul Bradley, just a black plastic box, a mystery within a mystery. Perhaps the box would contain another box, and inside that box another box, and so on, like the Russian dolls. Like his own Russian dolls, the prelude to his brief courtship and consummation with the girl from the matryoshka stall."
(One Good Turn 155 - 56)

I myself have long been a student and a collector of matryoshki, and once upon a time totally immersed myself in Susan Stewart's cultural study On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. With ultra - simplicity, Stewart (scholar and poet) captures the mystery of the matryoshka in three simple words: "within within within," a phrase to open your mind and send a quick shiver down your spine. I felt those same goosebumps when Atkinson describes Martin's trip to St. Petersburg:

" . . . there were dolls, thousands of dolls, legion upon legion of matryoshka, not just the ones you could see but also the ones you couldn't -- dolls within dolls, endlessly replicating and diminishing, like an infinite series of mirrors . . . Martin had never given matryoshka much thought before but here in St. Petersburg their ranks seemed omnipresent and unavoidable . . . big ones, small ones, tall ones and squat ones . . . dolls in the shape of cats, dogs, frogs, there were American presidents and Soviet leaders, there were five - doll sets and fifty - doll sets, there were cosmonauts and clowns, there were crudely made dolls and ones that had been exquisitely painted by real artists. By the time he left the hotel shop Martin felt dizzy, his eyes swimming with endless reflections of dolls' faces . . . ." (One Good Turn 232 - 34, emphasis added)

"You can think of the universe as a set of wooden Russian matryoshka dolls, with each doll having a smaller one inside of it. The entire visible universe is the outermost doll, and nested inside it are galaxies, solar systems, stars, planets -- right down to the smallest doll, which is you. But inside of you is an even smaller doll that somehow has the biggest doll inside of it. When you figure out this riddle, you will have discovered the key to your ascension!"
~ Elizabeth Clare Prophet

This ethereal, eerie, enmeshed elegance is what Stewart calls the "profound interiorty" of the doll / dollhouse (61); and philosopher John O'Donohue refers to as "the infinity of our interiority."

Martin is mesmerized by both the "profund interiority" of the colorful stacking matryoshi and the charming salesgirl at the matryoshka stall. When he ventures out once again in search of souvenirs, the salesgirl Irinia "started picking up different dolls, opening them up, cracking them all like eggs" (OGT 236). Like eggs! I love that! After all, there are similarities between the two! Everyone knows that an egg -- especially an Easter Egg -- can contain a surprise!

As a keepsake, Martin chooses "an expensive fifteen - doll set . . . attractive things, their fat - bellied stomachs painted with 'winter scenes' from Pushkin. Works of art really, too good for his mother, and he decided he would keep them for himself. 'Very beautiful,' " On the way home, he thinks of the nested dolls he has just purchased, tucked away, out of sight, in "the thin plastic carrier bag that contained his newspaper - wrapped dolls, snugly inside each other now" -- minatures within miniatures within miniatures. It crosses Martin's mind that in picking out the Pushkin set he had devoted "more contemplation than either the task or the dolls merited" (OGT 236 - 237).

Curiously though, his thought process aligns with Susan Stewart's theory of the miniature and the gigantic, especially when it comes to "tourist art," tchotchkes that don't cost much money and serve little purpose: "Use value is transformed into display value . . . Those qualities of the object which link it most closely to its function in native context are emptied and replaced by both display value and the symbolic system of the consumer." Of course, one might rightly observe that nesting dolls don't really serve a purpose; but, as Stewart explains, "Even the most basic use of the toy object -- to be played with -- is not often found in the world of the dollhouse" or in the world of "tourist art":

The miniature comes into the chain of signification at a remove: there is no original miniature; there is only the thing in "itself," which has already been erased, which has disappeared . . . the miniature typifies the structure of memory, of childhood . . . from its petite sincerity arises an "authentic" subject . . . . (Stewart 62, 149, 171 - 72, emphasis added)

For a fleeting second, Martin thinks about a nice set of nesting dolls for his mother but rejects this impulse, resolving instead to buy "something ordinary . . . because she deserved nothing better than ordinary -- a little peasant set, aprons and headscarves." Then he reconsiders even this downmarket gift, knowing that whatever he picks will end up neglected "amongst her other cheap knick - knacks." Instead of the peasant dolls, he moves down yet another rung on the souvenir ladder, purchasing at last "a fridge magnet for his mother, a little varnished wooden matryoshka" -- the merest echo of the real thing. In keeping with Stewart's observation of tourist art, this lone wooden trinket cannot even perform the sole function of the matryoshka -- to be nested within a set.

A few years later, back in Edinburgh, Martin's housecleaner Sophia admires his Pushkin matryoshki:

"He had a set of Russian dolls, matryoshka, the expensive kind. . . . The writer's dolls were lined up on the windowsill [display value!], she dusted them every week. Sometimes she put them inside each other, playing with them like she had done with her own set when she was a child. She used to think they were eating each other [!]. Her matryoshka had been cheap, crudely painted in primary colours, but the dolls that belonged to the writer were beautiful, painted by a real artist with scenes from Pushkin -- so many many artists in Russia with no jobs now, painting boxes and dolls and eggs, anything for tourists. The writer had a fifteen - doll set! How she would have loved that when she was a girl." (OGT 220 - 21)

Imagine Sophia's shock to enter Martin's well - kept house for a routine cleaning, only to find the dolls "scattered everywhere, little skittles knocked flying. She picked one up without thinking and put it in the pocket of her jacket, feeling the smooth, round, satisfying shape of it" (OGT 222)

Perhaps drawn to its "petite sincerity," both Sophia and, later in the day, Jackson take the opportunity to pocket a miniature matryoshka, as a kind of talisman to sustain them through the stressful criminal investigtion process that lies before them. Coincidentally, the word keeps coming up throughout Jackson's day (as my sisters and I have discussed previously). When investigating a suspicious "Import - Export" business, he comes across a "wall of boxes, all stencilled with one mysterious word, 'Matryoshka.'" When he stops by the Edinburgh Festival, he notices a circus act entitled " 'Matryoshka' . . . The word of the day," he tells himself.

Jackson . . . spotted something on the carpet, a tiny painted wooden doll, no bigger than a peanut. He picked it up and peered at it . . . 'What is that?' he asked, holding the little doll up for her inspection.

Louise: "It's from one of those Russian doll sets,' she said, 'the ones that nest inside each other. Matri - something."

Jackson: "Matryoshka?"

Louise: "Yes."

Jackson: "This one doesn't open."

Louise: "That's because it's the last one. The baby."

Jackson pocketed the doll. . . .

He felt the peanut - baby doll in his jacket pocket. The layers of the onion. Chinese boxes, Chinese whispers. Russian whispers. Secrets within secrets. Dolls within dolls. (320, 342 - 43, 363)

****************
dialogue from One Good Turn (2006)
by Kate Atkinson (b 1951),
scholarly, spell - binding British novelist
****************
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, April 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ See related essay: Russian Straw Dolls
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

Continued Connections

TOWN & GOWN BISTRO
A PUB WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"Making your way in the world today
takes everything you got
Taking a break from all your worries
sure would help a lot.
Wouldn't you like to get away? . . .
Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name
And they're always glad you came
You want to be where you can see
The troubles are all the same
You want to be where everybody knows your name . . .
You want to go where people know
The people are all the same
You want to go where everybody knows your name. . . "

~ Song from Cheers ~

****************
At some level, isn't that what we all want -- to be known? It's what Hafiz calls "that great pull to connect," to be in synch, to harmonize, to be part and parcel of the universe. Think of the photographer in The Memory Keeper's Daughter, placing one photograph beside another, hoping to find that "the entire world is contained within each living person. . . . he yearned to capture on film: these rare moments where the world seemed unified, coherent, everything contained in a single fleeting image" (similar project).

I know I've posted this poem before, but it [Red]bears repeating:

With That Moon Language

Admit something:

Everyone you see,
you say to them,
“Love me.” [Choose Me!]

Of course you do not do this out loud,
otherwise someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this,
this great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives
with a full moon in each eye
that is always saying,

with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye
in this world
is dying to hear?

Hafiz (1325 – 1389)
14th - Century Beloved Persian poet and lyrical genius

****************
Writing six centuries after Hafiz, the Irish poet, priest, and philosopher John O'Donohue (1956 - 2008) looks at "this great pull" in a different, unsettling way. Yes, of course, we all want to feel connected, but is that always such a good thing? In Anam Cara: A Book of Celctic Wisdom, O'Donohue analyzes our craving for connection. Like Hafiz, O'Donohue asks us to search our souls and "Admit something":

We assume too readily that we share one world with other people. It is true at the objective level that we inhabit the same physical space as other humans; the sky is, after all, the one visual constant that unites everyone’s perception of being in the world. Yet this outer world offers no access to the inner world of an individual. At a deeper level, each person is the custodian of a completely private, individual world. Sometimes our beliefs, opinions, and thoughts are ultimately ways of consoling [does he mean "deceiving"] ourselves that we are not alone with the burden of a unique, inner world. It suits us to pretend that we all belong to the one world, but we are more alone than we realize.

I feel somewhat dismayed yet intrigued by Donohue's suspicion that we are fundamentally disparate beings, despite our yearning for connection. Do I deceive myself that connection and coincidence govern our mutual existence? Possibly. Do I write essays and blog posts not so much in celebration of our similar outlooks but to console myself over a mutual failure to "connect, only connect" (see also: Commonplace Book, King & Queen, Handful of Dust, Heroine of Sensibility)? I hope not. Still, O'Donohue's words are haunting.

The Cheers song says we want to see that "troubles are all the same" and be where "people are all the same," but maybe, as O'Donohue suggests, we are incorrect in our assumption that this could ever be our reality. Perhaps such a place exists only on television or deep in our romantic imaginings. Yet, after ten years of blogging on this topic, beginning with my E. M. Forster - inspired Mission Statement, the connections keep on coming! They appear of their own accord, neither imaginary nor forced, woven daily through the Great Conversation. Only recently, after having all three read the same novel -- Jodi Picoult's Small Great Things [more on this later] -- my sisters and I were discussing our shared perceptions of literary coincidence:

Kit: Do you ever notice that sometimes when you read a book or see a movie or learn a new word -- all of a sudden it's everywhere!

Peg: I know what you mean about universe coincidences. I’ve sometimes wondered how this is possible because it seems to happen on such random topics.

Kit: Precisely!

Di: I love when things like that happen! Sometimes Tom and I will be talking, and one of us says something, then the person on TV will say it. Like the universe is singing together.

[Or as another friend put it: this infinite symphony of existence.]

How appropriate that they should both pick a musical metaphor to describe this phenomenon of universal synchronicity!

I am particularly fond of literary connections that fall into the category of "connections about connections." Take, for example, One Good Turn, a delightfully dense British mystery in which the endearing private dectective Jackson Brodie becomes obsessed with puzzling out the distinction between a connection and a coincidence:

Jackson: There's a connection between the two girls, there has to be. . . .

Louise: "Could just be a coincidence."

Jackson: "You're playing devil's advocate. And I don't believe in coincidence . . . A coincidence is just an explanation waiting to happen." (343 - 44)

Jackson: "You say coincidence . . . I say connection. A baffling, impenetrably complex connection, but nonetheless a connection. . . . he could see something that made sense. A tangible connection, not just a coincidence." (369, 374)

Louise: Jackson had been . . . Making his bloody 'connections' everywhere. (435)

Jackson: "You say connection, I say connection." (448)

****************
dialogue from One Good Turn (2006)
by Kate Atkinson (b 1951),
scholarly, spell - binding British novelist
****************
. . . and lastly . . .

"Boxes within boxes, dolls within dolls, worlds within worlds.
Everything was connected. Everything in the whole world."
(463)

This closing thought on interiority & connection . . .
TO BE CONTINUED . . .
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, April 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 ~ Open Your Mind!
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Cyber Monday

A THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY,
WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Gorgeous hand - crafted card from
my multi - talented sister - in - law Tina
A week ago, I had one of those life - affirming Monday - morning coincidences. You know. The kind that makes you believe in the whole Universe at once . . . that amazes and surprises and suggests a pattern. I was looking at my pre - Thanksgiving "to do" list and decided that even more importantly than grocery shopping and housecleaning, I should finally look up the poem that had been recommended to me several months ago when I was having lunch with a few friends. I googled what I had scribbled on a post - it and discovered this truly transporting poem:

What To Remember When Waking
~by David Whyte (Dec 30, 2013)

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?

At first, I was feeling bad that it had taken me over three months to finally follow - up on this reading suggestion; but then, when I thought about what a perfect poem it was for a Monday morning, and what a perfect poem for Thanksgiving week, it seemed that the delay was meant to be and the poem had come into my life at exactly the right moment.

I knew I should write a note that instant to thank all my lunch companions -- since I couldn't remember which one had recommended the poem back in August. But first I went to run some errands -- and who should I run into but one of those very friends, in the greeting card aisle at CVS! I told her the whole story about the poem, but she was unfamiliar with the author and said she couldn't take credit for the suggestion but would, of course, love to see it. So, as soon as I got home, I sent an email of thanksgiving, including the poem, to the entire group.

As an added bonus coincidence, another friend wrote a week later (yesterday, to be exact) with the perfect message to conclude this anecdote:

"For some reason I’m only seeing this tonight. This is a lovely poem to choose as my Cyber Monday gift for those special to me this season. No deep discounts; just deep gratitude for all my loved ones."

What a beautiful sentiment! And yet another timely coincidence that her viewing was delayed -- as mine had been -- until the very day that she needed to discover this poem!

I particularly love this line for Thanksgiving:

"You are not a troubled guest on this earth . . .
you were invited . . . "
Whyte writes similarly, in his Letter From the House: Autumn/Winter 2017 - 2018:

We are invited into the great sense of the now to understand that we are a living conversation between what we thought was the past and what we could only imagine as the future. We are creatures made to live in all three tenses at once, to hold past, present and future together . . ."

And how about this line for any morning, such as the Monday before Thanksgiving or the Monday after Thanksgiving, when you wake up with a "to - do" list that is already out of control before you even open your eyes:

" . . . there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live. . . . "
Thankfully, Whyte reminds us that relinquishing all -- or at least some -- of our big plans might allow us to intuit the even bigger and better plan that the world has in store for us on any given day.

" . . . a small opening into the new day . . . "

Previously from Tina

My friend Katie also recommended John O'Donohue's interview, "The Inner Landscape of Beauty." Some favorite passages:

Well, I think it makes a huge difference, when you wake in the morning and come out of your house, whether you believe you are walking into dead geographical location, which is used to get to a destination, or whether you are emerging out into a landscape that is just as much, if not more, alive as you, but in a totally different form, and if you go towards it with an open heart and a real, watchful reverence, that you will be absolutely amazed at what it will reveal to you.

But I do think, though, that it’s not just a matter of the outer presence of the landscape. I mean the dawn goes up, and the twilight comes, even in the most roughest inner-city place. And I think that connecting to the elemental can be a way of coming into rhythm with the universe. And I do think that there is a way in which the outer presence, even through memory or imagination, can be brought inward as a sustaining thing.

. . . the world is always larger and more intense and stranger than our best thought will ever reach. And that’s the mystery of poetry. Poetry tries to draw alongside the mystery as it’s emerging and somehow bring it into presence and into birth.

. . . everyone is involved, whether they like it or not, in the construction of their world. So it’s never as given as it actually looks. You are always shaping it and building it. And I feel that from that perspective, that each of us is an artist.

. . . every night when we sleep, we dream. And a dream is a sophisticated, imaginative text full of figures and drama that we send to ourselves.

. . . there is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there is still a sureness in you, where there’s a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you.

And the trouble is, though, for so many of us, is that we have to be in trouble before we remember what’s essential.

. . . there is an evacuation of interiority going on in our times . . . there is very little time or attention given to what you could almost call learning the art of inwardness, or a pedagogy of interiority.

[See also "The Wire Brush of Doubt"]

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

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