First Snow In Indiana

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

~ Garage Lights ~
Waiting for Gerry's return from the Indianapolis Airport
When it snowed two weeks ago, on Halloween, I could have sworn it was the first time in my life that I've ever seen snow in October. Having lived in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and Indiana -- well, those are not the States where one sees snow in October, not even on the last day!

Snow on Halloween? In Indiana?
When half the backyard is still green? Well, I never!

Then along came yesterday's snow, on my sister Peggy's birthday, and even that seemed too early. Have I ever seen snow on her birthday before? I don't think so! I don't care if it is the second week of November, that's just too soon! I decided to check out the Indiana Climate Archives, which informed me that there had indeed been "measurable" snowfall in Indiana on October 18, 1989. What?! I actually lived in Indiana on that day, but I have no memory of such! Oh, if only I'd been recording weather lore in my journal back then. But alas. Well, this time, I took plenty of pictures:

I love my friend Dana Hall's description of this eerie, early snow:
"Exciting but a little surreal and scary, right?"
The pumpkins are an added bonus!

Several friends noted how much we might have enjoyed this snow back when we were seven years old! But at fifty - seven, it's a mixed blessing. On their Christmas Portrait, the Carpenters provide a light - hearted reminiscence:

Oh the first snowfall of the winter
Was a day that we all waited for . . .

Oh the first snowfall of the winter
What a joy for a boy to behold . . .

It's the good old sentimental season . . .
When a man becomes a boy once again . . .

Music by Joseph F. "Sonny" Burke (1914 - 80)
Lyrics by Paul Francis Webster (1907 - 84)

With Veterans Day so recently past, my thoughts turned to the snowy battle scene depicted by poet Richard Wilbur in "First Snow in Alsace." The World War II night guard in Wilbur's poem "becomes a boy once again," in more somber circumstances than the Carpenter tune describes, but with equal joy. He boasts warmly that "He was the first to see the snow." Seen through through "the new air white and fine," even the war - torn surroundings have been magically transformed by the first snow that falls indiscriminately, innocently, neutrally.

In fact, it hasn't been all that long ago since the young soldier was a child himself, playing in the snow. His daydreams of youthful winters take him -- not fifty years -- but a mere "Ten first - snows back in thought":

First Snow in Alsace
The snow came down last night like moths
Burned on the moon; it fell till dawn,
Covered the town with simple cloths.

Absolute snow lies rumpled on
What shellbursts scattered and deranged,
Entangled railings, crevassed lawn.

As if it did not know they'd changed,
Snow smoothly clasps the roofs of homes
Fear-gutted, trustless and estranged.

The ration stacks are milky domes;
Across the ammunition pile
The snow has climbed in sparkling combs.

You think: beyond the town a mile
Or two, this snowfall fills the eyes
Of soldiers dead a little while.

Persons and persons in disguise,
Walking the new air white and fine,
Trade glances quick with shared surprise.

At children's windows, heaped, benign,
As always, winter shines the most,
And frost makes marvelous designs.

The night guard coming from his post,
Ten first-snows back in thought, walks slow
And warms him with a boyish boast:

He was the first to see the snow.

Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)

Addional Connections
1. Here is another poem that takes the reader on an absolutely beautiful walk in newly fallen snow. Whereas Wilbur is crossing Alsace, "Walking the new air white and fine," Wylie walks elegantly "In a soundless space . . . through the still town / In a windless space":

Velvet Shoes
Let us walk in the white snow
In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet and slow,
At a tranquil pace,
Under veils of white lace.

I shall go shod in silk,
And you in wool,
White as white cow's milk,
More beautiful
Than the breast of a gull.

We shall walk through the still town
In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
Upon silver fleece,
Upon softer than these.

We shall walk in velvet shoes:
Wherever we go
Silence will fall like dews
On white silence below.
We shall walk in the snow.

Elinor Morton Wylie (1885 - 1928)

2. In "The Arrested Artistry of Elinor Wylie," editor John G. Rodwan, Jr. observes that Wylie's poetry has been compared to that of Richard Wilbur and that she was devoted to the life and work of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

3. Speaking of Shelley, I don't know if this poem about the mutability of art and love was one of Wylie's favorites, but it's one of mine. It lacks the hope of Wilbur's "First Snow in Alsace," but shares a similar sense of human frailty, endurance, and irrevocable loss, complete with seasonal imagery of falling leaves, and cold wind:

When the Lamp is Shattered
When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead-
When the cloud is scattered,
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.

As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart's echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute-
No song but sad dirges,
Like the wind through a ruined cell,
Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman's knell.

When hearts have once mingled,
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possessed.
O Love! who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home, and your bier?

Its passions will rock thee,
As the storms rock the ravens on high;
Bright reason will mock thee,
Like the sun from a wintry sky.
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822)
[see also "Ozymandias" & "Ode to the West Wind"]

4. Another blogger makes a connection between "When the Lamp is Shattered" and Wilbur's haunting Christmas hymn "A Stable Lamp is Lighted".
[See also "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World"]

5.StoryPeople always gets it right! Thanks Brian Andreas!

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, November 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

Divine Homesickness: If Only In My Dreams

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED CEREMONIOUS

"THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME, THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME"

********************
"When we are constantly focused on externals,
we are not centered, that is, we are not aligned
internally -- body, mind and soul.
Without that alignment,
we have a case of Divine Homesickness.
We feel empty and lost, always trying
to find our way Home . . . always
looking for something 'out there' to fill us up.
And nothing out there can."

from
The Little Book of Peace of Mind
by Susan Jeffers
Similarly, Anne Lamott writes that "all of the interesting characters I've ever worked with -- including myself -- have had at their center a feeling of otherness, of homesickness" (Bird By Bird, 200). From Jeffers, Lamott, and the following two passages, by Buechner and Rushdie, we can construct a poetics of divine homesickness, one that resonates strongly with me because I am from Missouri, I am from Kansas, not just metaphorically but actually.

The Child In Us
We weren't born yesterday. We are from Missouri. But we are also from somewhere else. We are from Oz, from Looking-Glass Land, from Narnia, and from Middle Earth. If with part of ourselves we are men and women of the world and share the sad unbeliefs of the world, with a deeper part still, the part where our best dreams come from, it is as if we were indeed born yesterday, or almost yesterday, because we are also all of us children still.

No matter how forgotten and neglected, there is a child in all of us who is not just willing to believe in the possibility that maybe fairy tales are true after all but who is to some degree in touch with that truth. You pull the shade on the snow falling, white on white, and the child comes to life for a moment. There is a fragrance in the air, a certain passage of a song, an old photograph falling out from the pages of a book, the sound of somebody's voice in the hall, that makes your heart leap and fills your eyes with tears.

Who can say when or how it will be that something easters up out of the dimness to remind us of a time before we were born and after we will die? The child in us lives in a world where nothing is too familiar or unpromising to open up into a world where a path unwinds before our feet into a deep wood, and when that happens, neither the world we live in nor the world that lives in us can ever entirely be home again, any more than it was home for Dorothy in the end either, because in the Oz books that follow The Wizard she keeps coming back again and again to Oz because Oz, not Kansas, is where her heart is, and the wizard turns out to be not a humbug, but the greatest of all wizards after all.
from Listening to Your Life,"The Child in Us * May 6"
by Frederick Buechner
Buechner analyzes the myth of Oz more thoroughly in Chapter 4 of his book, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale. Likewise, author, Salman Rushdie employs the Oz metaphor when describing the impossibility of a backward quest for childhood innocence.

Out of Kansas
"So Oz finally became home; the imagined world became the actual world, as it does for us all, because the truth is that once we have left our childhood places and started out to make up our lives, armed only with what we have and are, we understand that the real secret of the ruby slippers is not that 'there's no place like home', but rather that there is no longer any such place as home: except, of course, for the home we make, or the homes that are made for us, in Oz: which is anywhere, and everywhere, except the place from which we began" (see more).
from Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002,
Essay #1: "Out of Kansas"
by Salman Rushdie
I still love to hear Karen Carpenter sing "I'll Be Home For Christmas, If Only In My Dreams," but I feel differently about this song than I used to. I used to think it was about people who weren't able to travel "home for the holidays" to be with everyone else. Now I'm more inclined to think it's about people who have to travel or have traveled, when all they really want is the privacy of their own home. There they are surrounded by all their loved ones, but what they crave is to be home alone -- if only in their dreams.

Not to be all bah - humbug about it, but now whenever I hear lyrics like "I'll Be Home for Christmas" or "There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays" or "There's No Christmas Like Home Christmas," my response is Precisely! Home. H - O - M - E. Not someone else's home. Not someplace that used to be home. Your own home. Where your heart is. As John Denver sings:

"Home is where the heart is,
and Christmas lives there too."SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, 14 January 2012

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

Outside Looking In