Lammas ~ Lughnasa

THE CROSS - QUARTER DAYS,
WHEN ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

August 1st is the cross-quarter holiday halfway between the Summer Solstice and the Autumnal Equinox, called Lughnasa (from the ancient Irish god Lugh) or Lammas Day (from the Anglo-Saxon term hlaf [meaning loaf] - mas. Sometimes called The Feast of the First Corn, it is the first harvest festival of the year -- the cutting of the first corn, the first wheat, the "first fruits." One time - honored custom was to celebrate Lughnasa not necessarily on the 1st day of August, but on the evening of the nearest full moon. Another was to extend the celebration from August 1st through September 1st, giving us not merely Lammas but Lammastide, and making this Fortnightly post the perfect occasion for observing the midway point of the season.

Although some Americans may be familiar with -- fans even -- of the Meryl Streep movie: Dancing at Lughnasa, for the most part this holiday goes unobserved in the United States. It simply doesn't draw the kind of attention to itself that the other cross - quarter days do: Groundhog Day (halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Vernal Equinox); May Day (halfway between the Vernal Equinox and the Summer Solstice); Halloween / All Saints Day / Dia de los Muertos (halfway between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice).

In England, back in 1981 anyway,
Lammastide retained enough currency
to feature on a postage stamp,
along with several other folk celebrations:

Thanks to my friend Steven for reminding me that Shakespeare's tragic heroine Juliet (like Harry Potter and his creator J. K. Rowling) was born on July 31st -- Lammas - Eve. We learn this fun fact from Juliet's devoted Nurse, as she recollects Juliet's toddler - hood:

"On Lammas - Eve at night shall she be fourteen.
That shall she. Marry, I remember it well. . . ."
Romeo & Juliet, I, iii, 23 - 24

Color illustration of Juliet and Her Nurse
by British artist ~ Gertrude Demain Hammond (1862 - 1952)
for an 1878 illustrated edition of Charles and Mary Lamb's
Tales from Shakspeare
I like to think that Carole King had Lughnasa in mind when she wrote these lovely lyrics about the seamless transition from July to August, along with the subtlest hint that before long, Summer will soon give way to Fall:

The First Day in August

On the first day in August
I want to wake up by your side
After sleeping with you
On the last night in July
In the morning
We'll catch the sun rising
And we'll chase it from the mountains
To the bottom of the sea

When the day is over
And the night air comes to chill us
You'll build a fire
And we'll watch the flames dancing

You'll fall asleep
With your arm around my shoulder
And nothing will come between us
On the first night in August
The first day in August

Noon, Rest from Work (1890)
Vincent Van Gogh (1853 - 1890)
~ after Millet ~
[see also Harvest & Sheep]

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

A Dream of Christmas

WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Christmas Cross Stitch
by my friend Cate DeLong

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

I love thee . . . with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints.

from sonnet 43
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

************
Three years ago, when I quoted from Salman Rushdie's "Out of Kansas," in my Christmas essay on "Divine Homesickness," I knew that I wanted to return to this passage someday and look at it in greater depth. Coincidentally, Rushdie's essay comes to mind just in time for yet another Christmas essay. Rushdie's theme is The Wizard of Oz, and I don't think anyone really considers either the book or the movie to be a Christmas story; however, the literature of Christmas and the tale of Dorothy's quest share an important motif -- the journey home, where the heart is.

[Another coincidence worth noting: L. Frank Baum's Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, soon to be adapted for the stage by my friend Steven La Vigne, who writes, "Have you read it? It's just lovely, and will provide a lot of opportunity for puppets."]

As for Rushdie, without even intending to write about The Spirit of Christmas, he manages to invoke its antithesis with his description of the fraudulent Wizard as a "humbug." Even worse, the fall from innocence to experience renders us "humbugs" ourselves, despite our best intentions to remain true to our "childhood's faith" and our "lost saints," who may well include Professor Marvel, The Wizard of Oz, Father Christmas, and Good Saint Nick:

“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 our own 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 such a place as home: except, of course, for the homes we make, or the homes that are made for us, in Oz, which is anywhere and everywhere, except the place from which we began.

"In the place from which I began, after all, I watched the film from the child's - Dorothy's point of view. I experienced, with her, the frustration of being brushed aside by Uncle Henry and Auntie Em, busy with their dull grown-up counting. Like all adults, they couldn't focus on what was really important to Dorothy: namely, the threat to Toto. I ran away with Dorothy and then ran back. Even the shock of discovering that the Wizard was a humbug was a shock I felt as a child, a shock to the child's faith in adults. Perhaps, too, I felt something deeper, something I couldn't articulate; perhaps some half-formed suspicion about grown-ups was being confirmed.

"Now, as I look at the movie again, I have become the fallible adult. Now I am a member of the tribe of imperfect parents who cannot listen to their children's voices. I, who no longer have a father, have become a father instead, and now it is my fate to be unable to satisfy the longings of a child. This is the last and most terrible lesson of the film: that there is one final, unexpected rite of passage. In the end, ceasing to be children, we all become magicians without magic, exposed conjurers, with only our simply humanity to get us through.

We are the humbugs now.”

from Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002,
Essay #1: "Out of Kansas"
by Salman Rushdie
[see also Goodreads]

Sharing Rushdie's sense of loss and cynicism, Greg Lake recalls the ultimate test of his childhood's faith in this haunting carol:

I Believe in Father Christmas

They said there'll be snow at Christmas
They said there'll be peace on earth
But instead it just kept on raining
A veil of tears for the Virgin Birth
I remember one Christmas morning
A winter's light and a distant choir
And the peal of a bell and that Christmas tree smell
And their eyes full of tinsel and fire

They sold me a dream of Christmas
They sold me a silent night
And they told me a fairy story
'til I believed in the Israelite
And I believed in father Christmas
And I looked at the sky with excited eyes
'til I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn
And I saw him and through his disguise

I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave new year
All anguish pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear
They said there'll be snow at christmas
They said there'll be peace on earth
Hallelujah Noel be it heaven or hell
The Christmas you get you deserve

by Greg Lake

Lake's song, Rushdie's essay, and Barrett Browning's sonnet all remind me of the convincing theory that the house you consider "home" is the one you lived in when you believed in Santa Claus. In his holiday reminiscence, my brother Bruce writes:

"Of all the places we lived, Neosho still draws me like nowhere else. . . . When we were kids, Christmas didn't start till Thanksgiving, but from Thanksgiving to Christmas, it was all Christmas, all the time. There were TV specials almost every night -- or so it seemed. I"m just thinking of those titles, wondering if they were the ones you remember from when we were kids. It's a Wonderful Life. A Charlie Brown Christmas. When Linus recites the birth narrative from Luke 2, that's just classic. It grabs my heart every single time I hear it.

"Has it changed so much since we were kids, or do we just remember it selectively? Sometimes I think I remember it the way I wanted it to be, and miss the fantasy more than I miss the reality. But I miss us kids putting up the tree . . . each taking a turn to put an ornament on. Do you remember that? I miss cocoa made on the stove from a Hershey's square tin, rather than from a Swiss Miss envelope in the microwave. I miss putting on the Christmas albums and listening too them all during Christmas vacation. Ah, but time waits for no one, right?"

I also appreciated the recollections of my grade school friend Brent Green: "I would say proudly and without hesitation that Neosho was one of the most egalitarian towns in which I have ever lived. I did not appreciate it at the time (from 1961 to 1975), but it was a great place to grow up! The schools were good. Neighbors and playmates were great!"

It's true that despite the fact that we moved away in 1967 and have never once been back inside, this has always been and remains to this day my family's favorite house. I often wish we had never moved away. This picture from 2012 is not quite as I remember, but the changes are all for the good: an entire wrap around porch and an expanded second story, including two gables over the side door. One loss: it would appear that the huge pine tree, which we planted in 1965 as a tiny Christmas tree, may have been removed in the midst of all the renovation. The last time I drove past, in 2002, I kept looking at eye - level, but I finally realized that it was way above my head. Turns out it had just kept growing and growing into a giant Norwegian Spruce, taller than any of us had every imagined:

704 Baxter Street ~ Where We Believed!

Photograph by Mitzi Smith

PS
A beautiful song for restoring your childhood's faith:
"There's Still My Joy"
by The Indigo Girls
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, December 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT,
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
currently featuring
"The Girl Who Just Loved Christmas"

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST, currently featuring
"The Girl Who Just Loved Christmas"

See Previous Post ~ December 2011
"Home is where the heart is, and Christmas lives there too."

Snow Was General

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The New Year has begun with a great series of connections and coincidences! To begin with, as nearly a foot of snow fell outside and the Polar Vortex delivered sub - zero temperatures, I spent the Twelfth Day of Christmas rereading "The Dead" -- the final story in the sequence of fifteen stories that comprise James Joyce's Dubliners -- in preparation for rewatching the movie version, which I always like to view with my family on Twelfth Night or Epiphany, in the same way that I always like to rewatch V for Vendetta on Guy Fawkes' Night.

I first saw the film The Dead shortly after it came out, at the Miami Joyce Birthday Conference (2 February 1988). For years we owned the video but donated it to the library when we moved, intending to update to a DVD But no! For some unknown and disappointing reason, the movie disappeared from circulation -- unavailable to buy on amazon or to rent from netflix. Until very recently:

I've read a few complaints about the way Anjelica Huston has been weirdly air - brushed on the cover of this re - release and given the rose in her hand, but I can overlook these minor details because the movie narration is exactly true to the James Joyce short story and Dublin looks so lovely! More serious is the fact that eight minutes of the original film have been omitted, but until such time that the complete version is restored, I think you'll find this one very satisfying!

I asked some of my fellow modernists what they thought about the movie, and naturally the resulting facebook thread was full of interesting observations:

Ned: "Heartbreaking!"

Steven: "That's a perfect movie for 12th Night!"

Barbara: "I once rented this and made my kids watch it with me after our traditional annual St. Patrick's Day dinner. I love that film."

Curtis: "Lighting of stairway scene is not as described in the story. Otherwise, a faithful adaptation."

Kathie: "I'm not a fan, though that is most likely my failing rather than the film's. I know most whose opinions I respect (including yours!) are quite enthusiastic; it's probably that I just don't have a very nuanced or sophisticated film sensibility. The one time I watched it, I thought it made the text seem stuffy and boring--a text I find quite the opposite, at the risk of understatement. For that reason, I've never given it a second chance."

Len: "Yes, I do remember first seeing this film at the Joyce conference. I think this is one of the most successful film adaptations of a literary work. In part, this is because it is a full-length film based on a short story, in contrast to the impossible attempts to fit a novel into a film (including mini-series of Middlemarch, Bleak House, or any other work that comes to mind). I agree with Kathie's comments about this film, despite its attempts at fidelity. I am happy seeing films that are not adaptations or are based on works I have not read and do not plan to read. It is impossible for films to convey style, point-of-view, interior thought, etc."

I have to agree that it's rare for a film to improve upon an already great text, though a well - done movie can bring surprising visual or musical value to the reading experience. I appreciate this sense of embellishment in "The Dead" during Aunt Julia's sad, sweet rendition of "Arrayed for the Bridal."

In the story, Joyce writes that "Gabriel recognized the prelude. It was that of an old song of Aunt Julia's -- "Arrayed for the Bridal". Her voice, strong and clear in tone, attacked with great spirit the runs which embellish the air and though she sang very rapidly she did not miss even the smallest of the grace notes. To follow the voice, without looking at the singer's face, was to feel and share the excitement of swift and secure flight. Gabriel applauded loudly with all the others at the close of the song." Joyce devotes only those few sentences to the performance, and then it is on to the applause and the embarrassingly profuse praise of dear Freddy Malins.

In the film, John Huston portrays the scene a bit differently. Rather than "strong and clear in tone," Aunt Julia's voice wavers and we gather that it has heard better days. Huston replaces "great spirit" with faded dignity, and "swift and secure flight" with endurance and perseverance. In the text, the song title alone serves to convey the irony that a funeral -- not a wedding -- is surely the next life passage for which Aunt Julia will be arrayed (as Gabriel morbidly envisions in both book and film). What the film brings to bear, in addition to the title, are the lyrics and duration of the song. The viewing audience suffers just a bit as we patiently await the painful conclusion of Aunt Julia's tune; and our hearts break a bit as the camera roams from room to room, lighting on the homely heirlooms and mementos of bygone childhoods and long - dead relatives.

Arrayed for the Bridal
Arrayed for the bridal, in beauty behold her
A white wreath entwineth a forehead more fair;
I envy the zephyrs that softly enfold her,
And play with the locks of her beautiful hair.
May life to her prove full of sunshine and love.
Who would not love her?
Sweet star of the morning, shining so bright
Earth’s circle adorning, fair creature of light!

Composed by Bellini
Lyrics by George Linley

[And also the poem "Donal Og"
recited by the character Mr. Grace]
Of course, I know what Kathie and Len are talking about. In most cases, the best movie is the one inside my head! Or occasionally, the one right outside the window; for indeed snow was falling that night in Indiana much as it had for the Dubliners, a century or more ago:

"A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the news­pa­pers were right: snow was gen­eral all over Ire­land. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, fur­ther west­wards, softly falling into the dark muti­nous Shan­non waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely church­yard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and head­stones, on the spears of the lit­tle gate, on the bar­ren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the uni­verse and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the liv­ing and the dead."

from "The Dead"
by James Joyce
about the publication of Dubliners
Our discussion of the movie versus the story drew to a close late on January 5th; and on the 6th, I awoke to find the following pictures posted on my facebook page, from totally unrelated sources. Now, that's what I call a good literary coincidence!

1. This one from BookBrowse Books,
which illustrates the very point that both Kathie and Len
were making the day before:



2. This one from my sister - in - law Tina,
who wrote: "Happy Nollaig na mBan (Women's Little Christmas)!
Let's embrace this tradition!"

I hadn't heard of this particular Epiphany celebration before, but I think it explains why I like watching The Dead on 6 January -- it's their "Nollaig na mBan" party, with the exception that in Joyce's story, the "Three Graces," i.e., Aunt Julia, Aunt Kate, and Cousin Mary Jane are doing all the work, rather than the required "Women's Little Christmas" reversal of the gentlemen waiting hand and foot all day on the ladies. Still, I feel a strong connection! Can you see it:

Dinner Party Scene from The Dead
Custom & Ceremony

Additional fun and informative blog posts on the topic:
Nollaig na mBan faoi mhaise dhaoibh!
Nollaig Bheag na mBan
An Irish Tradition
Victoria Amador writes, "Let's do this this coming summer--
and get out the dress-up box!"
P.S. As I add a few finishing touches to this post, late on Thursday the 16th, the snow is, once again, general all over Indiana.

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, January 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ "Snow Was General"
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

Two Poems for Bastille Day

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Acqua Claudia, built between 38 - 52 AD

"All right . . . all right . . . but apart from better sanitation
and medicine and education and irrigation and public health
and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order . . .
what have the Romans done for us?"

"Brought peace!"

From Monty Python's Life of Brian

********************The Fall of Rome
(for Cyril Connolly)

The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.

Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.

Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.

Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.

Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

1947
W. H. Auden

"Altogether elsewhere . . . "

Four Preludes
On Playthings of the Wind

1
The woman named Tomorrow
sits with a hairpin in her teeth
and takes her time
and does her hair the way she wants it
and fastens at last the last braid and coil
and puts the hairpin where it belongs
and turns and drawls: Well, what of it?
My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone.
What of it? Let the dead be dead.

2
The doors were cedar
and the panel strips of gold
and the girls were golden girls
and the panels read and the girls chanted:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us every was.
The doors are twisted on broken hinges.
Sheets of rain swish through on the wind
where golden girls ran and the panels read:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.

Rainy Day at the Colosseum
3
It has happened before.
Strong men put up a city and got
a nation together,
And paid singers to sing and women
to warble: We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation,
nothing like us ever was.

And while the singers sang
and the strong men listened
and paid the singers well
and felt good about it all,
there were rats and lizards who listened
... and the only listeners left now
... are ... the rats .. and the lizards.

And there are black crows
crying, "Caw, caw,"
bringing mud and sticks
building a nest over the words carved
on the doors where the panels were cedar
and the strips on the panels were gold
and the golden girls came singing:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.

The only singers now are crows crying, "Caw, caw,"
And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways.
And the only listeners now are ... the rats ... and the lizards.

~ "the orange dot marks the trail" ~
4
The feet of the rats
scribble on the doorsills;
the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints
chatter the pedigrees of the rats
and babble of the blood
and gabble of the breed
of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers
of the rats.

And the wind shifts
and the dust on a doorsill shifts
and even the writing of the rat footprints
tells us nothing, nothing at all
about the greatest city, the greatest nation
where the strong men listened
and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was.

1926
Carl Sandburg

Via Scala
All photos of Rome and environs taken by Ben McCartney
~ Summer 2012 ~
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, July 28th

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

Currently featuring photographs from Paris
by Steven La Vigne

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