Bright Blue October

A SKY WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

See the black walnuts up there in the blue October sky, pacing themselves -- as Frost suggests the leaves should do -- to fall on my driveway in Indiana: a bushel one day, a peck the next; on another day maybe just a couple dozen, then an infinity nestled in the flowerbeds along the drive. I only pick them up as an offering to the recycling gods on yard - waste day; however, as wise Robert Frost observes in another poem, a crop's a crop!

In this beguiling invocation to October, he reminds us how enchanting October can be and helps us prepare our hearts for the season:

October
O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

by Robert Frost (American, 1874 - 1963)

Don't believe what they tell you about
the sun never shining in the British Isles:
October Sky in Crosby, England!

Frost depicts the grape harvest and the autumnal tones of amethyst. And of course there are the many colors that always come to mind at the mention of falling leaves: brown, orange, red, yellow; or, more poetically, russet, bittersweet, scarlet, and goldenrod. Yet even though we are mid - way through October, looking out at my yard today, I see mostly green and blue. The leaves have not yet heard the call to change, and the sky is precisely as described in this lovely poem by Helen Hunt Jackson:

October’s Bright Blue Weather
O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October’s bright blue weather;

When loud the bumblebee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,
And goldenrod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;

When gentians roll their fingers tight
To save them for the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burrs
Without a sound of warning;

When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbine twining;

When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields still green and fair,
Late aftermaths are growing;

When springs run low, and on the brooks,
In idle golden freighting,
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush
Of woods, for winter waiting;

When comrades seek sweet country haunts,
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers, hour by hour,
October’s bright blue weather.

O sun and skies and flowers of June,
Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year
October’s bright blue weather.

by Helen Hunt Jackson (American, 1830-1885)

Hunt's charming conclusion is shared by Ada,
who struggles with the same favortism in Cold Mountain :

"Ada had tried to love all the year equally . . .
Nevertheless, she could not get over loving autumn best . . . "
Charles Frazier (American novelist, b. 1950)

What else can I say? Neither can I!

Bright Blue and Green October

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

Bamboo Trees in the South of England

Apples, Walnuts, Leaves

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

STILLEBEN MIT FRUCHTSCHALE
AT THE HANNOVER LANDESMUSEUM
BY PRAGUE ARTIST EMIL ORLIK (1870 - 1937)

*************************
Fairies and Elves Pick Apples
by English Illustrator Arthur Rackham, 1867 - 1939
An autumnal sense of resignation permeates the following poem by Robert Frost. I like the way that he is "done with apple - picking now" not because the job is entirely finished -- since, in fact, it's not: "there's a barrel that I didn't fill" and "may be two or three / Apples I didn't pick" -- but because he has just had enough; he's "overtired." Even though there may be a few odds and ends not yet tied up, the time for this particular enterprise has come to an end: "Essence of winter sleep is on the night."

Day after day of harvesting has worn a pattern of exhaustion into every waking and sleeping hour: "Magnified apples appear and disappear . . . My instep arch . . . keeps the ache . . . keeps the pressure of a ladder-round." Sometimes a task can wear a body down. A month or so ago, he was eager for such an abundant crop and could not bear the thought of even an ounce of waste; but enough is enough!

You might remember that the narrator in "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening," has "promises to keep, / And miles to go" before he sleeps. The narrator of "After Apple - Picking," however, has gone the distance and is craving, at last, some untroubled sleep. He refers in the last few lines to a hibernation, perhaps, or the long metaphorical sleep of death, "Or just some human sleep."

After Apple - Picking
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

Robert Frost , 1874 - 1963
Four-time Pulitzer Prize winning well - loved American poet

The narrator of another Frost poem brings a similar sense of mission to his chore. Gathering up "bags full of leaves," he makes "a great noise / Of rustling all day," but what does he have to show for it? Still, as with those apples considered imperfect for whatever reason, "a crop is a crop":

Gathering Leaves
Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.

But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?

Robert Frost
(see also my earlier post )

Walnut trees at the end of our driveway, not our favorite,
yet I'm proud to say I've picked up thousands!
A crop's a crop, right?
(I'm also thinking green tomatoes here!)
Contemporary poet, Larry Levis, writes of yet another harvest, not apples, not leaves, but walnuts. As a crop, they may be less valuable than apples but more useful than dry leaves, if you have the patience to find a use for them. I wonder, in the poem, is it a black walnut tree, dropping an endless supply of the troublesome rough green nuts? Are the disenchanted lovers staining their fingers as they fill basket after basket?

Sadly, in this poem, the walnuts carry the connotation of fruitlessness. The weary act of gathering them represents the sad continuation of an exhausted romance, so dire that the couple is not even motivated to deal with the hopelessness of the situation. Such deliberation would require too much effort; instead, they proceed listlessly with no hope of change, only the dull promise of a future as bleak as the present:

We'll go on as always harvesting walnuts

on our hands and knees,
and die voicelessly
as a sedan full of cigar smoke
sinking under a bridge.
We'll turn slowly, flowers
in the mouths of drowned cattle
In a dawn of burned fields,
the sun disappoints you,
and the blight you begin to remember
is me.
Like an Alp overlooking a corpse
I explain nothing.

Larry Levis, 1946 - 1996
Award - winning American professor and poet

I'm done with apple - picking now.

We'll go on as always,
harvesting walnuts on our hands and knees.
For as long as I've known the work of Frost and Levis, these two phrases have rung together in my mind, connected by their tone of resignation. The apple - picker is resolved to call it quits, accepting the finality of a season that has run its course. But for the walnut - gatherers -- no resolution; just a repeating decimal of bleak indecision. Why are their hearts so heavy? Not entirely clear; not all is explained.

If you can, do try to harvest your crops, whatever they may be, with a happy heart.

The Large Walnut Tree at L'Hermitage, 1875
by French Impressionist Camille Pissarro, 1830 - 1903
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, October 28, 2011

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

Talk to Me

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUSGERRY'S HOBBY: GARDENING
No doubt in the last year or so, you've been subjected to way too many get - to - know you quizzes on e-mail and facebook.* They can be silly, but also mildly entertaining. Talking and listening to them, is probably a better way to get to know folks, but occasionally the quizzes are informative, especially if you care to learn various odd facts about your friends and acquaintances . . . such as:

What was your childhood ambition?
To sing on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour.

Do you like your handwriting?
When I can read it.

What is your favorite Crayola Crayon?
Burnt Sienna.

Would you bungee jump?
Are you kidding?

What is your favorite sport?
Is reading a sport?

Chocolate or vanilla?
Duh! Chocolate.

Red or pink?
Red.

Summer or winter?
Summer for swimming; Autumn (THE BEST!)for Halloween;
Winter for Christmas; Spring just for a change.

That kind of thing . . .

I particularly appreciated the rather more innovative quiz that turned Hobbies into a two part question: Stated Hobby (Writing cards & letters) and Secret Hobby (Rewriting history). I also really liked one of the items that my cousin Alicia included in her list of hobbies: "Thinking."

I've always claimed to be the kind of person who doesn't mind standing in line or waiting at the airport -- AS LONG AS I HAVE A BOOK TO READ. Without a book, I would go crazy crazy crazy and start scrambling around desperately for any available reading material: an old map in the glove box, an orthodontia brochure, the nutritional information on a candy wrapper. However, after seeing my cousin's answer, I became a different person. Of course, the best plan is to never leave home without at least two books. I recommend "two," because what if you finish the first one and need another? But if for some reason, I end up stuck somewhere without one, I just say to myself, "Well, it's too bad you can't read right now, but -- look on the bright side -- you can think." Lucky me, getting to spend some time unexpectedly on one of my favorite hobbies!

My friend Milly also gave a perspective - changing answer to the hobby question. She claimed "Talking" as one of her hobbies. Naturally, talking has always been one of my favorite (time - wasting?) activities. After reading Milly's quiz, however, I perceived it anew -- as a hobby! Not time down the drain but a creative endeavor, an artistic pursuit, a cultivated skill. Personally fulfilling, but also leading to knowledge and experience, leisurely but also life - enhancing.

The poets agree:

Antoine de Saint-Exupery (French author and aviator, b. 1900 - lost in flight 1944) gives us the mystical Little Prince who wants a friend and learns to listen. He comes to see that it's the time he has spent listening to his rose, even when she is sullen, that makes her so important in his life (The Little Prince 24).

Walt Whitman (great American humanist, transcendentalist, and free verse poet, 1819 - 92) confides, "This hour I tell things in confidence, / I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you ("Song of Myself," 38).

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (American author and aviator, 1906 - 2001) is intense and single-minded: " . . . it is not possible to talk wholeheartedly to more than one person at a time. You can't really talk with a person unless you surrender to them, for the moment (all other talk is futile). You can't surrender to more than one person a moment" (Bring Me a Unicorn, 147).

Dame Rebecca West (prolific British writer, 1892 - 1983) describes a similar certain truth: "There was a definite process by which one made people into friends, and it involved talking and listening to them for hours at a time."

Georgia O'Keeffe (American painter of flowers and scenes of the Southwest, 1887 - 1986) agrees that friendship is all about time: "Nobody sees a flower, really -- it is so small -- we haven't time, and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time."

Robert Frost (four-time Pulitzer Prize winning well - loved American poet, 1874 - 1963) has an earnest narrator explain his decision in this wise poem, one of my long - time favorites:

A Time to Talk
by Robert Frost

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

In connection to the above bits of poetry and prose, the following insistent contemporary lyrics keep echoing through my head:

Here Comes the Rain Again
by Eurythmics: Annie Lennox and David Stewart

Here comes the rain again
Falling on my head like a memory
Falling on my head like a new emotion
I want to walk in the open wind
I want to talk like lovers do
I want to dive into your ocean
Is it raining with you

So baby talk to me
Like lovers do
Walk with me
Like lovers do
Talk to me
Like lovers do

Here comes the rain again
Raining in my head like a tragedy . . .

So baby talk -- talk talk talk talk -- to me . . .

I know this song is entitled "Here Comes the Rain Again," but what's the most important line? Talk to me!

Here I am in 1973, talking and listening to my friend Joni
. . . for hours at a time!

*If you're not all quizzed out already, here are a few more:

Quarantine Quiz Shows

Class of '75

Challenges: Special K & Ten Favs

Possible ~ Plausible ~ Improbable

"Christmas Quiz"

"You're Out Walking"

"Take This Quiz!"

"Monday: Pop Quiz"

[Talk to Me]

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, September 14, 2010

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