Advancing & Receding

VIBRANT HORIZON, ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Red Sky ~ or ~ Red Sea?
Advancing ~ or ~ Receding?
Painting by Leonard Orr

An literary exploration of the intriguing concept
of a perpetual redistribution of human emotion:

"We seem to have learned of the horizon
the art of perpetual retreating and reference."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
from "Experience" ~ 1844

"It was the tragic part of happiness;
one's right was always made of
the wrong of some one else."
~ Henry James ~
Portrait of a Lady (Chapter 35, 357) ~ 1888


"The tears of the world are a constant quantity.
For each one who begins to weep
somewhere else another stops.
The same is true of the laugh."
~ Samuel Beckett ~
from Waiting for Godot ~ 1953
See also:
Seen Through Tears & To Cry Or Not To Cry

"Every moment of one's existence
one is growing into more or retreating into less.
One is always living a little more or dying a little bit."
~ Norman Mailer ~
from Advertisements for Myself ~ 1959

"As in the fusion with Mercer, everyone ascended together or, when the cycle had come to an end, fell together into the trough of the tomb world. Oddly, it resembled a sort of biological insurance, but double-edged. As long as some creature experienced joy, then the condition for all other creatures included a fragment of joy. However, if any living being suffered, then for all the rest the shadow could not be entirely cast off. A herd animal such as man would acquire a higher survival factor through this..."

~ Philip K. Dick ~
from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? ~ 1968

"So how do we seize the past? As it recedes, does it come into focus? Some think so. We know more, we discover extra documents, we use infra - red light to pierce erasures in the correspondence, and we are free of contemporary prejudice; so we understand better. Is that it? I wonder. . . .

“The past is a distant, receding coastline, and we are all in the same boat. Along the stern rail there is a line of telescopes; each brings the shore into focus at a given distance. If the boat is becalmed, one of the telescopes will be in continual use; it will seem to tell the whole, the unchanging truth. But this is an illusion; and as the boat sets off again, we return to our normal activity: scurrying from one telescope to another, seeing the sharpness fade in one, waiting for the blur to clear in another. And when the blur does clear, we imagine that we have made it do so all by ourselves.

"Does the world progress? Or does it merely shuttle back and forth like a ferry?" (100, 101, 105)

~ Julian Barnes ~
Flaubert's Parrot ~ 1984


"Their happiness is not her unhappiness. Unless it is.
What if there is only an equal ratio of happiness to
unhappiness in the world at any given time?"
~ Gabrielle Zevin ~
The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry ~ 2014


"But life is not a zero - sum game.
There isn't a limited quantity of success or happiness,
meaning that if one person achieves something,
the rest of us take an automatic step backward."
~ Natalie Hanes ~ "Introduction" ~ 2015
to Extracts from The Second Sex
by Simone de Beauvoir ~ 1949

“It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.

"You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.” (48 - 49)

~ Mitch Albom ~
from The Five People You Meet in Heaven ~ 2003


"It's the universe showing us that we're all connected
and feel the love, happiness, and pain oif one another
-- we just have to be ready to listen."
~ Peggy Carriker Rosenbluth ~ 2014


"One fire burns out another's burning.
One pain is lessened by another's anguish.
Tut man, one fire burns out another’s burning.
One pain is lessened by another’s anguish.
Turn giddy, and be helped by backward turning.
One desperate grief cures with another’s languish.
Take thou some new infection to thy eye,
And the rank poison of the old will die."
~ Shakespeare ~
Romeo & Juliet ~ 1597
Quoted by Peter Abernathy in Westworld ~ 2016

Green Bird ~ and / or ~ Green Fish?
Sky ~ and / or ~ Sea?
Painting by Leonard Orr

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

Thanks Len for multiple appearances on my blogs!
Previously Posted Paintings & Poetry:

Fortnightly
Capturing the Ginkgo Light
Like An Ant
I Will Show You Modernism In A Handful of Dust
The Ides of Whatever
Advancing & Receding
2020 ~ The Essential Sincerity of Falsehood

Quotidian
End of Summer Sounds
Golden Paintings by Leonard Orr
Excellent Images
Happy Birthday Dylan Thomas
The same war continues . . .
The Magpie Waiting for his Beautiful Partner
An Ant and a Grain of Sand
Bursting Into Light
Sun ~ Flower ~ Moon
Days of Optimism
Life Without Poetry
What To Do
Star - Spanlged But Unsingable
That Lost Time & Place

Book List
Lovely As A Tree
Evening ~ Timing ~ Floating: Poetry by Leonard Orr

Poems: "Past Tense, Future Tense" ~ "Yiddish for Travellers"
"The Loop" ~ "Desperate Times" ~ "Optimist" ~
"Sun and Wheatfields" & "Russian Olives" ~ "Monet's The Magpie"
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, August 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Pie Safe
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

All Felled

"THEY PAVED PARADISE...WITH A PINK HOTEL"
AND PURPLE CARS
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS, OR NOT ~

Painting by Leonard Orr
~ acrylic on canvas ~
Pick your own "excellent titles; you cannot be wrong."

"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot . . .

They took all the trees, and put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them
No, no, no
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot . . ."

from the song "Big Yellow Taxi"
written, composed, and originally recorded in 1970
by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell (b 1943)
With Joni Mitchell's song running through my head, I scrolled through the paintings of Leonard Orr until I found the perfect match - up. Thanks to Len -- professor, poet, artist, friend -- for sharing his vivid visions, allowing his audience an infinite range of interpretation, and allowing me the freedeom to title these paintings with completely unexpected new readings. In the abstract painting above, I saw the parking lot, filled with cars and pink boutiques and a couple of tree museums. In the paintings below, I found leaves, leaping and growing green, and a shadowy blue river bank.

Thanks for this post also go to Matt O'Neill -- former Dubliner, current chef, poet, friend -- for pointing out to me that of all the authors mentioned on my blogs, Gerard Manley Hopkins is sadly under-represented. I am grateful to Matt for this accurate editorial observation -- time to rectify! Now is the time to branch out beyond the often anthologized "Margaret are you grieving" and "Send my roots rain."

Matt said "Binsey Poplars" was his favorite. Years ago, he had memorized it and never forgotten the trees:
" . . . That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank."
Upon reading the poem, I saw an immediate connection to "Big Yellow Taxi." Like Mitchell, Hopkins is protesting the removal of the trees in the name of industrial progress: in 1879 for the railway; in 1970 for a parking lot. Separated by a century, both writers despair for the Earth. Mitchell mourns the loss of "paradise," what Hopkins calls the "sweet especial rural scene."

The poet's favorite poplar trees (aka "aspens") have all been chopped down, the entire grove: "All felled . . . Not spared, not one." And worse yet, "After-comers cannot guess the beauty been." Those who pass by today, if they were not previously familiar with the Binsey poplars, will not even be able to imagine what they are missing. In Mitchell's song, the one forlorn consolation is that for a small fee you can catch a glimpse of former times at the "tree museum."

Binsey Poplars

felled 1879

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew —
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889)

A few closing connections from . . .
1. Matthew O'Neill's poetic cookbook, The Seasons at Walden Inn:
Signature Recipes from an Elegant Country Inn (1997)

Seasons at Walden

The seasons, like a lilting carousel of
ponies winding 'round the Walden Inn,
are turning through life's carnival
of changlessness and change.

Spring is wobbly with hope, its
ride a bit uneven, like someone
shook out a bag of butterflies
found sleepig somewhere
deep in Winter's wrinkled husk. . . .

March
brings to mind Ireland and St. Patrick's Day. It is the bridge betweenthe last protestations of a dying winter and a Spring spilling out on wobbly Kelly green legs. . . .

and

2. Leonard Orr's first volume of poetry, Why We Have Evening (2010):

Spring Planting

It is time for preparing the garden again,
time to fix the fence and sprinklers, add compost,
remove all the fall and winter debris.
More aesthetic than practical, I select vegetables
by their physical appearance, by their sexual resonance. . . .

Raking and smoothing the rich soil
my mind soon drifts toward earthy matters.
If I could escape discovery, I would lie down on the bed,
flat on my back, slowly place my arms toe-ward and then
darg them in bold curves through the fertile ground.
Then jumping off, I'd sneak away and watch
as later you would find the imprinted dirt archangel.
I will have you in mind when I plant the tomatoes
with their soft, smooth skin, their blusing color,
their compelling and lingering taste, their modesty.

How blatant should I make my raised bed, since
even young people, wlaking by on the sidewalk,
might see through the many holes and gaps in the cedar fence
yellow-neck squash flirting with the Brussels sprouts,
Japanese eggplant, thick fingers intertwined with vines?

Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, April 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ "Limelight"
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

Like an Ant

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon
by Sir Edward John Poynter (1836 - 1919)

"Learn how to live
a joyful and constructive life in this world,
like ants. . . . The secret of a meaningful life
is not in the long-gone throne of Solomon and the like."
Sa'eb Tabrizi (1601 - 77)
Sa'eb's reference to Solomon's "long-gone throne" reminds me of the statue of Ozymandias:
" . . . Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies . . .
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my words ye Mighty and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822)
The kingdoms of Solomon and Ozymandias did not endure, their vast achievements dwarfed by an ant and a grain of sand. Padgett Powell, author of The Interrogative Mood presents a series of existential questions concerning this same dilemma of time, size and perspective. His inquiries suggest that we may have placed ourselves too high above the ant, especially when it comes to grasping the secrets of the universe:

"Is the human individual more important
than the individual ant, and if so by a factor,
what would you say, of what?" (10)

"Will you sing with me now: Oh let us be heroes,
let us have emotions pure or not pure be men
or not men, let us buzz and rumble the hill and
dale of daily insignificance just as confidently,
just as threateningly, just as humbly in its
cute red velour as does the velvet ant?" (34)

"Is it really tenable that a person has a a soul,
whether he has a cell phone or not,
and a grasshopper does not?" (160)

[See my book blog for more insightful questions from
The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell (b 1952)]

I like the way the lines of this painting by Leonard Orr
can be seen to resemble the elaborate architecture
of an underground ant colony!
Plaster cast reconstruction of an ant nest,
as illustrated in Wikipedia

I turned to Orr's paintings, confident that I would find something to illustrate ant - ness (as in, ant colony, ant hill, ant nest, ant industriousness, and so forth). Len generously responded: "If my painting manages to convey antness (the quidditas of ant, as Stephen Dedalus perhaps said), I am pleased."

"Although not immediately obvious,
there are quite a few people hiding here it seems."
~ facebook comment to Leonard Orr from Andrea Livingston ~

I decided on this painting, in part because of the accompanying commentary. Livingston's remark fits right in with the question of how different, really, are humans from ants. When I mentioned that I also wanted to include the passage about termites from Samuel Beckett's novel Watt, Len was one step ahead of me:

"For the only way one can speak of nothing
is to speak of it as though it were something,
just as the only way one can speak of God is to
speak of him as though he were a man,
which to be sure he was, in a sense, for a time,
and as the only way one can speak of man,
even our anthropologists have realized that,
is to speak of him as though he were a termite." (77)

Samuel Beckett (1906 - 89)
In the following poems, it is the family dog whose superior comprehension of the meaning of life edges out any knowledge that we mere humans might possess:

from Her Grave
Does the hummingbird think he himself invented his crimson throat?
He is wiser than that, I think. . . .

Do the cranes crying out in the high clouds
think it is all their own music?

A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house, but you
do not therefore own her as yo do not own the rain, or the
trees, or the laws which pertain to them.

Does the bear wandering in the autumn up the side of the hill
think all by herself she has imagined the refuge and the refreshment
of her long slumber?

A dog can never tell you what she knows from the
smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know
almost nothing.

Mary Oliver (b 1935)
from New and Selected Poems (14 - 16)


Trickle Up?
Does human evolution have a future?
Even our dog is troubled by the limited
significance of our presence. He whines
at the door wanting to get out.

Ernest Sandeen (1908 - 1997)
from the Collected Poems (278)

Does the bear wandering in the autumn up the side of the hill
think all by herself she has imagined the refuge and the refreshment
of her long slumber?
~ Mary Oliver ~

Beautiful watercolor evocation
of autumn and bear - ness
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, December 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Thanks David Kimbrel ~
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

Capturing the Ginkgo Light

" . . . GOLDEN AND GREEN
LEAVES LITTER THE LAWN TODAY THAT YESTERDAY
HAD SPREAD ALOFT THEIR FLUTTERING FANS OF LIGHT."
~~ HOWARD NEMEROV ~~
Golden paintings, here and above, by Leonard Orr

Artist Leonard Orr says:
"None of my paintings are titled;
most can also be hung in any orientation
(there is no top or bottom, left or right;
I paint turning the painting again and again,
holding it up in the air and tilting the canvases
to let the wet paint flow in different directions;
I have ruined many clothes!)."
Looking at these paintings, I sense the ethereal light of the delicately ribbed, fan-like ginkgo leaf, that changes so suddenly from green to gold. Not only are the colors perfectly autumnal (as in "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness"), but the background textures, so much like a palimpsest, remind me of ancient Chinese calligraphy, fitting right in with the Oriental heritage and folklore of the ginkgo tree. Did the trees thrive naturally or were they planted and preserved for many centuries by Chinese monks who later introduced them to Japan?

I have long been an admirer of the Ginkgo biloba [i.e., bi-lobed], this unique species of tree with no living relatives and leaves like no other. Way back in the Spring of 1972, I pasted ginkgo leaves (found on the Lindenwood campus in St. Charles, Missouri) into the pages of my 9th grade leaf collection.

a page from my scrapbook
38 - year - old ginkgo leaf
page from Goethe's scrapbook
195 - year - old ginkgo leaf
The great Goethe also admired the ginkgo, and preserved yet today in the Goethe Museum in Düsseldorf are the above leaves that he himself dried and attached to his love poem "Ginkgo biloba" in 1815. Of the unusual bi - lobed leaves, Goethe has written:

This leaf from a tree in the East . . .

Does it represent One living creature
Which has divided itself?
Or are these Two, which have decided,
That they should be as One?

Wolfgang Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)
Prolific German writer, poet, scientist, botanist, and philosopher

When living in Philadelphia, many years after my leaf collection, I encountered ginkgos at every turn: there were the stately, historical ginkgos on the grounds of Bartram's Garden, Woodlands Cemetery, and University City New School; the middle-aged ginkgos lining Lancaster Avenue; and the younger generation, visible from every window on the south side of our house.

Two Proud Ginkgos on Beaumont Avenue, Philadelphia
Not long ago I mentioned an old childhood classic, The Witch Family on my book blog. This little novel ~~ also an October favorite for Halloween ~~ contains the following descriptive ginkgo passage, which I can appreciate even more, now that I have lived in a tall brick city house, just like Amy's:

"Amy's house was a high red brick one. In front of it there was a tall and graceful ginkgo tree whose roots made the worn red bricks of the sidewalk bulge and whose branches fanned the sky. The ginkgo tree has little leaves shaped like fans that Amy and Clarissa liked to press and give to their dolls. The fruit of this tree is orange, but it is not good for eating. It has an odd fragrance that grownups do not like but that children do not mind, for it makes them think of fall and Halloween" (14, The Witch Family, Eleanor Estes).

Poet Eve Merriam also pays tribute to the urban ginkgo, in "Willow and Ginkgo," her poem of comparison and contrast:

"The ginkgo forces its way through gray concrete;
Like a city child, it grows up in the street.
Thrust against the metal sky,
Somehow it survives and even thrives.
My eyes feast upon the willow,
But my heart goes to the ginkgo."

by Eve Merriam (1916 - 1992)
American Poet
Winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize, 1946

City Children
(Ben at the wheel / Sam, back seat driver)
Fallen Ginkgo Fruit [seeds, actually]
Photo from Wikimedia Commons
As little Amy observes, the large fleshy seed is indeed malodorous and not well-liked, certainly not something that you want to inadvertently squash and carry into the house on the bottom of your shoe! However, if you can live and let live, the plump, pungent little nuisance has its own peculiar charm and is not all that hard to abide. A common Chinese name for the ginkgo tree elevates the fruity seed to an object of beauty, translating poetically into English as Silver Apricot. How lovely!

In his mystical sonnet, "The Consent," American poet Howard Nemerov writes in wonderment of the quickly turning Ginkgos:

. . . on a single night
Not even near to freezing, the ginkgo trees
That stand along the walk drop all their leaves
In one consent, and neither to rain nor to wind
But as though to time alone: the golden and green
Leaves litter the lawn today, that yesterday
Had spread aloft their fluttering fans of light.

by Howard Nemerov (1920 - 1991)
American Poet
1978 Pulitzer Prize Winner

Another tribute to the tenacity and longevity of the ginkgo is Arthur Sze's seven - part, evocative poem about existence and endurance, "The Ginkgo Light." Inspired by the half dozen noble ginkgo trees to survive the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Sze writes:

A 1300-year-old lotus seed germinates; a ginkgo
issues fan-shaped leaves; each hour teems. . . .

love has no near or far

. . . a temple in Hiroshima . . .
disintegrates, while it's ginkgo

buds after the blast. . . .

As light skews across our faces, we are
momentarily blinded, and, directionless,

have every which way to go. . . .

and while we listen to our exhale, inhale,
ephemera become more enduring than concrete.

Ginkgos flare out. . . .

One brisk morning,
we snap to layers of overlapping

fanned leaves scattered on the sidewalk . . .
finger a scar on wrist, scar on abdomen.

by Arthur Sze, Chinese American poet (b. 1950)
from his book The Ginkgo Light


Goethe, Estes, Merriam, Nemerov, Sze -- what do all these writers have in common? Their hearts go out to the ginkgo, the tree of the ages; and so do ours. No wonder paleobotanist Albert Seward once said that the ginkgo "appeals to the historic soul: we see it as an emblem of changelessness, a heritage from worlds too remote for our human intelligence to grasp, a tree which has in its keeping the secrets of the immeasurable past" (British botanist and geologist, 1863 - 1941).

Additional links for more information on this fascinating tree:

Ginkgo biloba

Ginkgo history

FYI: The standard spelling appears to be GINKGO (with the "k" before the final "g"); but most dictionaries allow -- in fact practically encourage! -- use of the alternative GINGKO (with the second "g" before the "k"). You pick! See dictionary.com

Archived posts for further reading:
29 November 2009: Ginkgo Biloba
3 December 2009: Willow and Ginkgo

And there's always
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts

Next Fortnightly Post Topic:
Basil:Ocimum basilicum
Coming Thursday, October 28, 2010
See you then!

The Ides of Whatever

A TIME WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
Posting a day late in honor of the time - honored
historic and historical Ides of March.

I came across this mysteriously annotated sugar packet when cleaning out my backpack the other day. How can I explain it? I searched my mind but drew a blank. It seems that once again I've written a note to myself yet completely forgotten what it was that I intended to remember. I can only assume that at some point in my travels, a stray thought crossed my mind -- something about "The Present" -- and, having a pen in hand but no paper, I jotted down a note to myself on the nearest portable surface -- thank goodness for the ubiquity of sugar packets!

It wouldn't be the first time! A friend of mine at Notre Dame asked me once how I could write down so little, and I assured her that I would retain what I needed to know. She couldn't believe that sometimes I didn't even have a notebook, and she liked to say that if I suddenly needed to write something down, I would just reach back and tear the label from my tee - shirt and jot down a word or two for future reference. I never really did that, but I liked that story!

Alas, despite my best intentions, I am unable to interpret the sugar packet message, sent by my very own self from the past into the future, never to be understood in the present. I am not alone, however; Joan Didion's journal entry -- "dinner with E, depressed" -- suffers the same indecipherable fate:

Who is E?
Was this "E" depressed,
or was I depressed?
Maybe one day my sugar packet message will reveal itself to me. Was I thinking of a gift for someone -- a present to purchase, wrap, send, or bring to a party? Was it perhaps a self - actualizing reminder to stay focused on the time at hand, to live in the present moment. One thing I know for sure, I will never solve this riddle by staring at the sugar packet, so I think it is about time to move on to some prose and poetry about time.

"Lets look to the past only as it gives us pleasure.
And look to the future only as it gives us hope."
from Death Comes to Pemberley (2011)
by P. D. James (1920 - 2014)

Jane Austen version:
"Think only of the past as its
remembrance gives you pleasure."
So often we are impatient for time to pass. Years ago, in a book from childhood, I read a story that warned against such impatience. I have lost all the details -- title, author, plot; yet one scene has stayed with me, though I can no longer recall the names of the characters: the grandchildren are piled into a one - horse open sleigh, riding over the river and through the wood with their grandfather. Excited for their destination, they start wishing they were already there, but the grandfather warns: "You must never wish the time away!" How often that line has come back to me!

Even so, we sometimes wish for the time to fly. The Here and Now can drive us a little crazy -- making us tense, so to speak! It might be that you are not really into the Ides of March, or the Ides of He Who Must Not Be Named, or the Ides of Whatever. Maybe March just isn't your favorite month, as was certainly the case for one of my favorite Philadelphia columnists Karen Heller (now of the Washington Post). In her humorous essay "Nine days to go," she gloomily describes the final days of February:

You must not fight February but embrace it like the cold, wet, aging testy, mangy, drooling gray mutt that it is. February is here to make us appreciate May . . . How can you love May when you haven't Februaryed in grand style? And so we wallow and we wait knowing that only this month could deliver a comeback, a punchline, a headache as nasty and wicked and ugly as February.
March. ~ from the Philadelphia Inquirer, mid 1990s

Poet Leonard Orr shares the negative sentiment, suggesting "daychotomies" or "weekectomies" to get through the offending times, going so far as to eliminate entirely The Month That Must Not Be Named. Even the title offers some alternatives to the Present Tense:

Past Tense, Future Tense
My naive calendar has so much sadness now
I could not stand it. Little did I know,
little did I know. I snipped away the foul days.
I completely excised whatever was that
month after February, its name I will not mention.
If it comes up accidentally, I drown it out
with whirling greigers and stamping feet. April
turned out far better, though individual days
when we could not be together, these I carefully
snipped away, performing daychotomies,
weekectomies, and sutured the ragged sad edges
together, wetting the wounds as needed
with my abundant fluids, all my excess. I expanded
those few times we were together, those dates
receiving hour - augmentations; I botoxed my tongue,
the tips of my fingers, to seal inside me those
recollections of you, the spectacular aerie,
the tiny bits of time, ticking, always ticking.
May and the first days of June, little did I know,
little did I know, so wonderful and blissful,
joyful in my last days, my running out of sand,
and now these blanks of time, soggy, unprinted
months with no days, no light, no passionate glowing.
(emphasis added)

~ Leonard Orr ~
from his collection Why We Have Evening
P.S.
Political Post Script for
The Ides of Trump

My postcard messasges:
1. Stop Gerrymandering
2. Protect Planned Parenthood & Roe v. Wade
3. Don't Build the Wall
4. Remember the traditional motto of our country:
E Pluribus Unum
5. Honor the Statue of Liberty:
"Give me your tired your poor . . . the homeless . . .
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, March 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

Dolls in Literature

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

I like the American Express ad, where Tina Fey says that her "Most interesting souvenir" is "an Amish baby doll with no face." I wonder where she purchased hers? I found this pair at Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, and my neighbor John Woodin photographed them for my book jacket:

"Why shouldn't we, so generally addicted to the gigantic,
at last have some small works of art,
some short poems, short pieces of music
[. . .] some intimate, low-voiced, and delicate things
in our mostly huge and roaring, glaring world?"
~ Elizabeth Bishop ~

"For our very humanity is in our urge
to make magic with images [& miniatures]."
~ Erica Jong ~
A few months ago, I had the good fortune to reconnect on facebook with one of my former professors, Dr. Herman P. Wilson. Back in the 70s, I was enrolled in several of Herman's classes, such as History of the English Language and Structural English Grammar, as well as some graduate reading seminars in Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, and D. H. Lawrence.

Upon learning what I had been doing since my days as his student, Herman did me the great honor of going out of his way to purchase my book and read it from cover to cover, a feat -- let me tell you! -- undertaken by very few. He was then kind enough to send me his response, as follows:

Hello, Kitti--

Throughout all my teaching career, as I've watched some of my students working on graduate degrees, I've always wanted those students to "go beyond me." I wanted them to pursue studies of writers / materials about which I have little or no knowledge.

You have fulfilled my desires. For that reason I am grateful for the opportunity to read your work. The "doll" as a literary topic had never occurred to me. I like to explore such new topics as I see references to them. So you have given me both personal and professional pleasure.

You have produced a scholarly study, for which you have done extensive research to support the theories and ideas which you develop. I'll take a guess: is the work your PhD dissertation? Had I been on your PhD faculty, had you invited me to be one of your readers and explained your research plans, I would have responded, "Yes, I'll be happy to be one of your readers, but you will need to educate me as we work together on your research. I have limited knowledge of your topic." You have provided me some education on the "doll" in literature. I now have beginner's knowledge of your subject matter.

I've worked with many of your sources--Swift, Hawthorne, Lawrence, Hoffman, Mansfield, Yeats, Atwood, French, Hardy, and Atwood. I'm aware of and have limited knowledge of the "psychiatric, psychological, theoretical linguistic" writers--Rank, Freud, Eco, and Lacan. You have enhanced my knowledge of both familiar and non-familiar writers.

Your prose is well written, with ideas carefully supported, and has a pleasant mixture of serious academic topics and delightful human interest stories of the "doll" in our world and in literature. A beautiful bit of irony: yesterday I went to the grocery store. While waiting for my driver, I noticed a woman, holding one hand of a little girl, whose other hand clutched a little doll to her childish breast. Simple? Yes, but that scene made me think of you and the work I was reading.

Thank you for a new, pleasant, delightful experience. I remember you as a careful writer; my reading of your work has strengthened that memory.

Peace, joy, and happiness ~

Herman

Needless to say, I was overwhelmed by the generosity of Herman's praise and the time he invested both in reading my entire book and in writing to share his thoughts. I will let his letter to me and my reply serve as today's blog post:

Dear Herman,

Thank you so much for reading my book! You have given me by far the kindest words, the highest praise, the most encouragement that I have ever received on that project, along with the support of my dissertation advisor, Dr. Leonard Orr. I was lucky to have him on my side; and you are so right -- if you and I had still been at the same institution, you too surely would have been on my committee and seen me through the long process!

At the first "guidelines for dissertations" meeting I attended at Notre Dame (Fall 1984), a rather uncheerful professor discouraged everyone in the room from attempting a "theme" study, such as "ships in literature" -- yes, that was the example he gave -- I have never forgotten! So I kept quiet about my "dolls in literature" idea, even though I had been longing to write a book on that topic, and slowly but surely amassing good examples, ever since reading The Women's Room back in 1978: Marilyn French's revealing image of the little Barbie serving as mother to the giant Baby doll had never left my mind.

I felt sure that doll imagery was powerful and important, but I began to doubt myself and fear that it was perhaps not a weighty enough topic for a dissertation, so I put the idea on hold and began casting about for a "single author" focus -- maybe Virginia Woolf? But nothing felt right and the time for submitting my proposal was drawing near (by now it was 1988).

Then, in a totally unrelated conversation, Leonard was describing his ideas for an article on animation, and I mentioned that one day -- in the distant future, after my dissertation -- I was going to write a book on dolls. He was astonished that I had never told him this before, for he had already been my advisor for several years. He asked me why I was struggling with research that didn't speak to my heart when all along I knew exactly what I wanted to do? I said, well, I thought maybe it wasn't important enough or academic enough, so I was hiding it under a bushel. He said, Nonsense! and loaned me Susan Stewart's amazing theoretical study, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection and Jane Gallop's fascinating collection of autobiographical criticism, Thinking Through the Body .

Although I wanted to focus primarily on "the miniature," Stewart's inclusion of "the gigantic" reminded me of a long essay that I had written several years before on Victor Frankenstein's urge to create in his own image. At the time, it had been well received by a couple of my professors; so I pulled this old paper out of my "saved" file and it became a chapter in my dissertation.

I had also written a shorter paper called "Gulliver in the Dollhouse" for an 18th Century class that I took at Notre Dame. I received only a "B" on that paper because the professor felt that the idea needed a "larger theoretical context." Well, perfect! I now had that "larger context" -- so the Gulliver paper became another chapter. I had studied Yeats' poem ("The Dolls") in Irish Literature, and the D. H. Lawrence story ("The Captain's Doll") undoubtedly came from one of your classes, Herman. So I had a solid rough draft almost instantly, thanks to all those earlier inspiring courses and paper topics.

I finished the dissertation in 1990 and then in 1998 did the editing (not too much really) to repackage it as a book. Thanks for listening to this saga, Herman. And most of all, thanks for reading my study of the doll with so much patience, for responding to it so thoroughly, and for always encouraging me in the seriousness of my work.

Yours,

Kitti

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

PREVIOUS POSTS IN REFERENCE TO
THE MINIATURE & THE GIGANTIC:

The Mystery of the Matryoshka: Within Within Within

Fun Fall Food!

The Miniature & the Gigantic

Memoirs to Read in the Summertime

My LIST: "Dolls in Literature"

And lastly, the voice of a skeptic in this recent article
concerning the value (or not) of dissertations.

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, September 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

I Will Show You Modernism In A Handful of Dust

WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Painting by Leonard Orr ~ Handful of Dust in the Wind
Mimi Allin writes:
"land sky heaped feathered leading discouraging
porcupined lit bloated muffled"
This Fortnightly's connections are all about the Ache of Modernism, the sudden tortured awareness of the unlived life, the life which dared nothing -- or not enough. As Carolyn Heilbrun writes of D. H. Lawrence (1885 - 1930): " . . . he understood that the mortal risk was not, or was no longer, death; it had become the possibility that life, the lived life, might be evaded." Historical discontinuity, alienation, asocial individualism, existentialism, melancholy -- these were the issues at hand. Horror to horror. Dust to dust.

Unlike the Romantic movement, which can be dated from a specific event -- the publication in 1798 of the Lyrical Ballads, Modernism begins less deliberately (unless you ask Virginia Woolf; more on this next time). There is not an initial document, such as the "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads," which sets forth the tenets of Modernism and heralds a movement to which writers may rally. Instead, one must look in the works themselves to locate the key concepts shaping the tone of the canon. In chronological order, here are a few of my favorites:

Joseph Conrad / Heart of Darkness (1902):
"He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision, —
he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath —
'The horror! The horror!'" [emphasis added]

Henry James / "The Beast in the Jungle" (1903):
"So he saw it, as we say, in pale horror, while the pieces fitted and fitted. . . . It was the truth, vivid and monstrous, that all the while he had waited the wait was itself his portion. This the companion of his vigil had at a given moment made out, and she had then offered him the chance to baffle his doom. One’s doom, however, was never baffled . . . The escape would have been to love her . . . This horror of waking-- this was knowledge, knowledge under the breath of which the very tears in his eyes seemed to freeze." [emphasis added]

E. M. Forster / Howards End (1910):
"Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.” [emphasis added]

T.S. Eliot / The Wasteland (1922):
" . . . I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you:
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. [emphasis added]

Jessamyn West / The Friendly Persuasion (1945):
"He, a live man, to die. He extended his hand, recalling its cunning, marveling at the way stiff, unpliable bones could be so cushioned and strung together as to be capable of music, of grafting a tree, of lifting a foal from it's mother's torn flesh -- and that hand to be dust. And the enemy present . . . He saw objects two ways, now, both as more beautiful and more pitiable: those which would stay, endure beyond men, stones, trees, the moving air, had new beauty, that of their own endurance and of his leaving; but men and women were more pitiable . . . Man's a sizeable hulk reared - up on his wagon seat and pulled about the earth by horses; dead, no more'n a spoonful of dust, not enough, spread thin, to take a small - sized horse track" (147 - 150). [emphasis added]

Jack Schaefer / Shane (1949 novel / 1953 film):
In the iconic closing scene, Shane bids farewell and rides off into the valley, ignoring young Joey's desperate cries of "Shane, come back!"

In his memoir 700 Sundays, Billy Crystal writes of the equally iconic moment in his childhood when none other than the legendary Billie Holiday (who was friends with his father) took him to see Shane at the movie theater. As the movie draws to a close and Shane rides off into the sunset, "Miss Billie whispered in my ear, 'He ain't never coming back'" (48).

Alan Sillitoe / "The Fishing Boat Picture" (1959):
"Then optimism rides out of the darkness like a knight in armour. If you loved her... (of course I bloody-well did)... then you both did the only thing possible if it was to be remembered as love. Now didn't you? Knight in armour goes back into blackness. Yes, I cry, but neither of us did anything about it, and that's the trouble." [emphasis added]

Iris Murdoch / The Black Prince (1973):
"The whole room breathed the flat horror of genuine mortality, dull and spiritless and final . . . (38)
"You understand nothing of -- the horror -- no wonder you can write real books -- you don't see -- the horror -- (224, emphasis added)
"The evening was overcast . . . I could smell dust, as if the quiet tedious streets all around me had dissolved into endless dunes of dust. I thought about this morning and how we had seemed to have all the time in the world. And now there seemed to be no more time. I also thought that if only I had had the wit . . . (285)
I awoke to a grey awful spotty early morning light which made the unfamiliar room present in a ghastly way. The furniture was humped shapelessly about me . . . Everything seemed to be covered with soiled dust sheets. . . . I experienced horror, then memory." (341)

William Stafford / "A Ritual To Read To Each Other"
(1977, or somewhat earlier):

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep. [emphasis added]

Kansas / "Dust in the Wind" (1977)
Click to listen:
I close my eyes
Only for a moment and the moment's gone
All my dreams
Pass before my eyes with curiosity
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind

Same old song
Just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do
Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind

Now don't hang on
Nothin' lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away
And all your money won't another minute buy

Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
Dust in the wind
Everything is dust in the wind

Dust Bowl

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, July 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

The Essential Sincerity of Falsehood

TRUE ~ FALSE
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

As heaven and earth are not afraid,
and never suffer loss or harm,
Even so, my spirit, be not afraid. . . .

As truth and falsehood have no fear,
nor ever suffer loss or harm,
Even so, my spirit, be not afraid.

~ paintings by Leonard Orr ~
~ poetry from the Atharva Veda * ~


"For there is no lie that contains no part of truth."
Tennessee Williams 1911 – 1983
from "The Summer Belvedere" **

Over the past few years, I have attempted to define modernism (In A Handful of Dust) to sketch a profile of the Heroine of Sensibility, and to trace the concept of human emotion as a constant quantity, perpetually Advancing & Receding -- all by analyzing the primary texts of modern literature. In this post I apply the same strategy to a related theme: the endless tension between truth and falsehood, virtue and vice. Does one advance as the other recedes, or do they always co-exist, two sides of the same moon or the same medal? The following passages -- from fiction, poetry, and prose -- reveal the views of several modern authors:

“I was made to look at the convention that lurks in all truth and on the essential sincerity of falsehood. He appealed to all sides at once — to the side turned perpetually to the light of day, and to that side of us which, like the other hemisphere of the moon, exists stealthily in perpetual darkness, with only a fearful ashy light falling at times on the edge.”Joseph Conrad (1857 – 1924)
from Lord Jim (emphasis added)

"No themes are so human as those that reflect for us, out of the confusion of life, the close connection of bliss and bale, of the things that help with the things that hurt, so dangling before us forever that bright hard medal, of so strange an alloy, one face of which is somebody's right and ease and the other somebody's pain and wrong."Henry James (1843 – 1916)
from the "Preface" to What Maisie Knew

"The speaking subject is not, however, identical with the subjectivity of the author as an actual historical person; it corresponds, rather, to a very limited and special aspect of the author's total subjectivity; it is, so to speak, that 'part' of the author which specifies or determines verbal meaning. This distinction is quite apparent in the case of a lie. When I wish to deceive, my secret awareness that I am lying is irrelevant to the verbal meaning of my utterance. The only correct construction of my lie is, paradoxically, to view it as being a true statement, since this is the only correct construction of my 'verbal intention.' Indeed, it is only when my listener has understood my meaning (presented as true) that he can judge it to be a lie. Since I adopted a truth - telling stance, the verbal meaning of my utterance would be precisely the same, whether I was deliberately lying or suffering from the erroneous conviction that my statement was true."E. D. Hirsh, Jr. (b 1928)
from his essay "Objective Interpretation" (1114 - 1115)

"Nothing is simple.
Every wrong done has a certain justice in it,
and every good deed has dregs of evil."
H. G. Wells (1866 – 1946)
from Tono - Bungay, 226


"There is so much truth in all different sides of things."
Ivy Compton - Burnett (1884 – 1969)
from Manservant and Maidservant (133)


"To Sir Edgar it confirmed his view that in the Divine Order
every vice - even Clun's arrogance - had its virtuous purpose."
Angus Wilson (1913 – 1991)
from Anglo - Saxon Attitudes (324)


"The negative trait that you might dislike in a loved one is
quite probably the flip - side of a positive trait that you admire."
Summarized from the work of Harriet Lerner (b 1944)
see Dance of Anger & Dance of Intimacy

The Essential Stupidity of Courage?

Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, June 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.blogspot.com

As truth and falsehood have no fear

*A Charm Against Fear

As heaven and earth are not afraid,
and never suffer loss or harm,
Even so, my spirit, be not afraid.

As day and night are not afraid,
nor ever suffer loss or harm,
Even so, my spirit, be not afraid.

As sun and moon are not afraid,
nor ever suffer loss or harm,
Even so my spirit, be not afraid.

As truth and falsehood have no fear,
nor ever suffer loss or harm,
Even so, my spirit, be not afraid.

As what has been and what shall be fear not,
nor ever suffer loss or harm,
Even so, my spirit, be not afraid.

Book 2, Hymn XV, from the Atharva Veda
composed 1200 BC ~ 1000 BC

For there is no lie that contains no part of truth.

**The Summer Belvedere
I
Such icy wounds the city people bear
beneath brown coats enveloping withered members!
I don't want to know of mutilations

nor witness the long-drawn evening debarkation
of warm and liquid cargoes in torn wrappings
the ships of mercy carry back from war.

We live on cliffs above such moaning waters!

Our eyeballs are starred by the vision of burning cities,
our eardrums shattered by cannon.
A blast of the dying,
a thunder of people who cannot catch their breath

is caught in the mortar and molded into the walls.

And I, obsessed with a dread of things corroded,
of rasping faucets, of channels that labor to flow
have no desire to know of morbid tissues,
of cells that begin prodigiously to flower.

There is an hour in which disease will be known
as more than occasion for some dim relative's sorrow.
But still the watcher within my soundless country
assures the pendulum duties of the heart
and asks no reason but keeps a faithful watch

as I keep mine from the height of the belvedere!

And though no eyrie is sacred to wind entirely,
a wall of twigs can build a kind of summer.

II
I asked my kindest friend to guard my sleep.

I said to him, Give me the motionless thicket of summer,
the velvety cul-de-sac, and quiet the drummer.

I said to him, Brush my forehead with a feather,
not with an eagle's feather, nor with a sparrow's,
but with the shadowy feather of an owl.

I said to him, Come to me dressed in a cloak and a cowl,
and bearing a candle whose flame is very still.

Our belvedere looks over a bramble hill.

I said to him, Give me the cool white kernel of summer,
the windless terminal of it, and calm the drummer!

I said to him, Tell the drummer
the rebels have crossed the river and no one is here
but John with the broken drumstick and half-wit Peg
who shot spitballs at the moon from the belvedere.

Tell the feverish drummer no man is here.
But what if he doesn't believe me?
Give him proof!
For there is no lie that contains no part of truth.

And then, with the sort of courage that comes with fever,
the body becoming sticks that blossom with flame,
the flame for a while obscuring what it consumes,
I twisted and craned to peer in the loftier room--

I saw the visitor there, and him I knew
as my waiting ghost.

The belvedere was blue.

III
I said to my kindest friend, The time has come
to hold what is agitated and make it still.

I said to him, Fold your hands upon the drum.

Permit no kind of sudden or sharp disturbance
but move about you constantly, keeping the guard
with fingers whose touch is narcotic, brushing the walls
to quiet the shuddering in them,
drawing your sleeves across the hostile mirrors
and cupping your palms to breathe upon the glass.

After a while anxiety will pass.

The time has come, I said, for purification.

Rub out the lewd inscriptions on the walls,
remove the prisoners' names and maledictions,
for lack of faith has left impurities here,

and whisper faith to the summer belvedere.

Draw back the kites of hysteria from the sky,
those struggling fish draw back from their breathless pool,
and whisper assurances cool
to the watchful corners, and whisper sleep and sleep
along the treads of the stairs, and up the stairwell,

clear to the belvedere, yes, clear up there, where giggling John
stood up in his onionskin of adolescence
to shoot spitballs at the moon from the captain's walk.

And then, at the last, he said, What shall I do?
The sweetest of treasons, I told him. Lean toward my listening ear
and whisper the long word to me,
the longest of all words to me,
the word that divides the sky from the belvedere.

by Tennessee Williams (1911 - 1983)
American Playwright
Twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Twice awarded the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award