Every Chocolate Flake

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Highland Wedding at Blair Atholl, 1780
by Scottish painter and illustrator of historical subjects,
David Allan, 1744 - 96
[learn more about this painting and the ceilidh dance]
This Fortnight's chain of connections began ten days ago when my friend Tammy came across a back - to - school quotation on my book blog:

"It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions
about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming
an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able
to be caught up into the world of thought -- that is to be educated."
Edith Hamilton
Tammy wrote to tell me that she had recently re-bought for herself copy of Hamilton's book [where I first learned about Echo & Narcissus] that so many of us loved back in high school:

She went on the say that "All the back to school vibes, plus a few stories relayed to me of summer travel and study abroad have brought to the surface my own memories of Scotland, where I studied for a year about a million years ago. I had to write about it. . . . Yes, I wrote this weekend, for some reason the words decided to burst forth as I drove my car and then tried desperately to catch them, remember them for my keyboard. . . . You will get some of the UK references, and even when you don't, I think you will get the sense of joy in being able to just go LEARN."

[click to hear samples on amazon]
strip the willow

I keep going back
to Scotland
which I can only always describe
if people know and care to ask
as Magic

Here’s how you get there:

First,
Journey many hours in the air
then more on a train
where people speak your language
and if you listen hard
you can almost understand

Ride your train through towns
with ancient names
that bloom on your tongue
as you try to roll Glaswegian R’s

Pass sheep inside a stacked stone fence
sometimes a dog running herd
or a shepherd with a staff
and Scottish temper
hurling the staff at fast cars who spook the flock

Other men on this trip nod and tip their hats
like Texas cowboys at the VFW,
wanting nothing but to help you
find your way

The air smells of peat and hops
but you won’t know that yet

You arrive in the dark and sleep late
waking up to a gardener whistling
“Cracklin’ Rosie”
happy tune to welcome
a bright new day

Your clean your teeth
with water so icy it must be pure
and take breakfast
with a lovely girl,
your first Louise

You call home at a decent hour
from a plexiglass phone booth
repeating the numbers twice
distracted by the purring Irish accent
in the booth next door
assuring your parent-loves that you are safe and happy
and you are

You are here to LIVE
to dig in, drink deep
soak up every scrap of knowledge from class
and country and Meadowlark
(even the pub name sounds pretty)

What will happen next?

You cross a small bridge
with other students travelling
one single path to class,
swans swim on the loch below
a castle shimmers beyond
seriously

You search their faces
want to know them, their accent and fashion
and you open yourself like a daisy
bringing all you can to the surface
to be shared straight away
so you can meet them, eat them all

You ride horses with Norwegians
study marketing with the French,
opera with the English,
and share coffee with the professor
who turns out to have a different idea
of cultural exchange
well, that’s experience, too

You walk in the drizzle
noticing patterns,
join the old women limping their way
to worship in an old stone kirk
kneel to strolling Westies
who pause a moment before trotting
back to their master

You take a job on Thursdays
noticing rhythms,
serving single malt to blokes
who take squinting measure of their glass
and American-you
discussing their politics and futbol
and once, the mystical power to heal

Finally convinced of successful outreach
you let in some other Yanks
just a few
who prove as interesting and layered
as Mumford & Sons
modern gospel
yearning, jubilant
triumphant horns over bluegrass over bass;
their family stories and characters
draw you in,
warm your belly
and inspire

They teach you the accent and fashion
of your home country
that magnificent, arrogant one
that you alternately hold tight and apologize for

And some teach you by learning with you
jumping in to Strip the Willow
whirling ceilidh dance of
laughter in a big wide barn
celebration of freedom and joy and youth

Tall and rangy Montana
gathers you up like hay
gives you a greater sense of yourself
of your power and insecurity
the way a mirror reflects the beauty and the flaws

A person can do this
just like a place

So in Scotland, you meet
music from voices past
ideas of future film
words
all of which you somehow already know;
a boy climbs through your window with the moon
stretches his long limbs over yours and
helps you weave a blanket of duvet, wool, and sky

Now
When I remember who I am sometimes
it’s that girl in Scotland
that long-walk every day girl who sought out the wonder,
the soul behind the eyes
who was blessed to have beginner’s mind
come easily

I still see all the shades of mist
and I’m never ever certain of any one thing, for sure
except for love and magic

In Scotland
there were vignettes of simple, stunning beauty
all the time
I climbed Dumyat and
took communion with a lab,
found the heather
and tasted every chocolate Flake;
I knew ‘rapture from an orange
and ecstasy from a blade of grass’*
and it never went away

Why does it happen when it happens?
How’d I get a gift like that?

Is it a specific place we must find,
a person we must know, or
the ripening of our own body inside our skin?
all those things, or none of them
and a commitment to saying yes

I heard bagpipes in the distance
and was completed,
or transformed,
or maybe just returned with gentle magic
to myself.

tammy l. knox sandel, 8/17/13

* Leo Buscaglia, who is (also) not Scottish


Part memoir, part travelogue, part reflection. The magical year that Tammy describes in "strip the willow" reminds me so much of the summer that I was in Oxford (1979), with the exception, as I confessed to Tammy, that my coming of age sojourn included no dance partners or cowboys or amorous scholars of any nationality. Always a slow starter, I was just a little too dull and backward for an off - shore romance. Sweetly, Tammy offered a more generous reinterpretation of my girlish dullness: "No! Of course you were never a dull girl. . . . You just weren't there long enough." Ah - ha! Maybe that was it!

Romance notwithstanding, Tammy's poem brought back all the exhilaration of that summer abroad -- the currency and the accents; the planes, trains and tour buses; the dorms, dining halls, and quadrangles; the china shops and bookstores; the occasional crabby strangers, more than offset by the unexpected friendliness; the cathedrals and literary landmarks.

Another connection that intensified my reading of "strip the willow" was that only a couple of days before reading it, I had re - connected for the first time in ten years or so with my friend Kathryn whom I met on that first trip to England back in 1979. We shared many adventures, including getting lost more than once -- as you can see in this old photo (disregard stray marks of red ink). "Folly Lane" -- the name on that road sign pretty much says it all! But we survived and learned as much from each misstep as we did from each successful outing. As Tammy says in her poem, it's all experience! Right?

Even Tammy's reference to "every chocolate Flake" spoke to my heart. I was not in 1979 a fan of the Flake, though I have since become one, as it is a favorite of my English relatives, including my husband and sons. Back then, however, what Kathryn and I loved to buy at the British Rail newsstands were Twix Bars and Mini Babybel cheeses, two novelty snacks not widely available in the United States at the time. Somehow I knew exactly what Tammy meant about the memory of a chocolate treat that comes to symbolize everything new and unique and untried about "a specific place we must find." Or perhaps a place that we have actually found; or an old, exciting time when there was just so much to learn!

Tammy's poem led to a day spent thinking about Flakes and Twix; old friends, new friends, children of friends, and young womanhood. At the close of that day, I was looking in the pantry for some chocolate chips to add to a batch of zucchini bread ('tis the season), and -- to perfectly round out a series of connections and coincidences -- what did I discover and use instead? A package of very crumbly (even more so than usual) Flake Bars, no doubt left over from Gerry's parents' last visit.

Believe it or not, Tammy is not the first author I know to have incorporated a reference to Flakes in her writing! In Gladys Reunited: A Personal American Journey, Sandi Toksvig -- herself a master of the literary coincidence -- describes bringing a friend in the United States a package of Flakes from England:

I had brought her a gift of Cadbury's Flake -- a chocolate bar
that crumbles the minute you unwrap it. She was thrilled.
'We don't have it here. Your mom actually turned me on to them.
The first time, I said, "It comes like this?" It's a mess.
You have to work at them. Great when you're cooking.'

(109; see also
"Birds of Pray" and "Opal: In Love with the World")
Turns out I'm not the only one who uses Flakes when baking! I like it that Sandi's friend had the same idea; and she's right -- they do make a mess and you have to "work at them." Yet, Tammy's advice is undoubtedly the best of all: forget the mess, go for the experience, learn all you can, jump in to "strip the willow" and taste "every chocolate Flake." Just say Yes!

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, September 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts: "Two Gazed Into a Pool:
Echo & Narcissus"
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

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

At Least Eleven

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"The Long Road Home"
Painting by my talented cousin and mixed media artist
Pam Carriker
who lives art at the speed of life and vice versa!
Thanks Pam!
I can't say I was ever a huge fan of The Divine Secrets of the Ya - Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells, but I always smile in sympathy when recalling Sidda's trip home (at age thirty - something) to introduce her fiance to her mother. As they pull into the driveway and her mother comes out, Sidda "tried not to feel five years old. She tried to feel at least eleven" (336).

Nearly fifteen years have passed since I first read those words back in 1999, yet they are still ringing true! How accurately that phrase -- "at least eleven" -- captures my own experience of trying to feel (and act) like an adult when the family gathers and it suddenly becomes so difficult to feel twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, even sixty. Just ask my oldest brother Dave or my younger sister Di, who heard me quoting the phrase more than once this past weekend.

Family Reunion
with my sister Di (left) and cousin Alicia (center)

Girls Together ~ Women Together
When my oldest brother referred to himself as "a sixty year old man just trying to stand up and say enough," I couldn't help thinking of my favorite story -- "The Third and Final Continent" -- in Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize winning collection Interpreter of Maladies. In this story, a young, twenty - something, male student from India comes to work at MIT and rents an upstairs room in the home of a very elderly woman. After a few days, the landlady's daughter, also elderly, comes by to check that everything is okay for the new renter.

Here's what happens:

On Sunday there was a knock on my door. An elderly woman introduced herself: she was Mrs. Croft's daughter, Helen. She walked into the room and looked at each of the walls as if for signs of change, glancing at the shirts that hung in the closet, the neckties draped over the doorknob, the box of cornflakes on the chest of drawers, the dirty bowl and spoon in the basin. She was short and thickwaisted, with cropped silver hair and bright pink lipstick. She wore a sleeveless summer dress, a necklace of white plastic beads, and spectacles on a chain that hung like a swing against her chest. The backs of her legs were mapped with dark-blue veins, and her upper arms sagged like the flesh of a roasted eggplant. She told me she lived in Arlington, a town farther up Massachusetts Avenue. "I come once a week to bring Mother groceries. Has she sent you packing yet?"

"It is very well, Madam."

"Some of the boys run screaming. But I think she likes you. You're the first boarder she's ever referred to as a gentleman.

"She looked at me, noticing my bare feet. (I still felt strange wearing shoes indoors, and always removed them before entering my room.) "Are you new to Boston?"

"New to America, Madam."

"From?" She raised her eyebrows.

"I am from Calcutta, India."

"Is that right? We had a Brazilian fellow, about a year ago. You'll find Cambridge a very international city."

I nodded, and began to wonder how long our conversation would last. But at that moment we heard Mrs. Croft's electrifying voice rising up the stairs.

"You are to come downstairs immediately!"

"What is it?" Helen cried back.

"Immediately!"

I put on my shoes. Helen sighed.

I followed Helen down the staircase. She seemed to be in no hurry, and complained at one point that she had a bad knee. "Have you been walking without your cane?" Helen called out. "You know you're not supposed to walk without that cane." She paused, resting her hand on the bannister, and looked back at me. "She slips sometimes."

For the first time Mrs. Croft seemed vulnerable. I pictured her on the floor in front of the bench, flat on her back, staring at the ceiling, her feet pointing in opposite directions. But when we reached the bottom of the staircase she was sitting there as usual, her hands folded together in her lap. Two grocery bags were at her feet. She did not slap the bench, or ask us to sit down. She glared.

"What is it, Mother?"

"It's improper!"

"What's improper?"

"It is improper for a lady and gentleman who are not married to one another to hold a private conversation without a chaperone!"

Helen said she was sixty-eight years old, old enough to be my mother, but Mrs. Croft insisted that Helen and I speak to each other downstairs, in the parlor. She added that it was also improper for a lady of Helen's station to reveal her age, and to wear a dress so high above the ankle.

"For your information, Mother, it's 1969. What would you do if you actually left the house one day and saw a girl in a miniskirt?"

Mrs. Croft sniffed. "I'd have her arrested."

Helen shook her head . . .

***********************************
Even after sixty - eight years, poor Helen is still struggling to feel "at least eleven" in the presence of her mother. I don't want that to be my fate; and I understand exactly what my brother meant when he wrote that sixty years old is old enough!
~ Additional Connections ~
1. My dear friend Cate provided me with this excellent mantra to carry in my heart and in my head when traveling to see the family (or anyone else for that matter):No appointments; no disapppointments.
C. K. Ramaswamy Gounder, 1914 - 2002
aka, Swami Satchidananda Saraswati
2. Words of Wisdom from Brian Andreas at StoryPeople:

Why do they treat us like children? they said
& I said why do you treat them like adults?
& their eyes opened wide
& they began to laugh & talk all at once
& suddenly everything looked possible again.
Sign up for Story of the Day
3. Favorite dialogue from The Office:

Michael: This is where I belong.
This is my home,
and home is where the hardest.
Oscar: Home is where the heart is.
Michael: Heart is. That makes a lot more sense.
Actually, as is so often the case, I think Michael might have had it right the first time; for indeed, so / too many times, "Home is where the hardest."

Home for Christmas Card from Pam

4. As I wrote earlier in the summer about my "Ancestors":

"We have all rejected our beginnings and
become something our parents could not have foreseen."
from the novel Fifth Business (248)
by Robertson Davies
5. Apparently, even the gods must struggle at times to feel "at least eleven":

I wonder now about Demeter and Persephone. Maybe Persephone was glad to run off with the king of death to his underground realm, maybe it was the only way she could break away from her mother, maybe Demeter was a bad parent the way Lear was a bad parent, denying nature, including the nature of children to leave their parents. Maybe Persephone thought Hades was the infinitely cool older man who held the knowledge she sought, maybe she loved the darkness, the six months of winter, the sharp taste of pomegranates, the freedom from her mother, maybe she knew that to be truly alive death had to be part of the picture just as winter must. It was as the queen of hell that she became an adult and came into power. Hades’s realm is called the underworld, and so are the urban realms of everything outside the law. And as in Hopi creation myths, where humans and other beings emerge from underground, so it’s from the underground that culture emerges in this civilization.
from A Field Guide to Getting Lost
by Rebecca Solnit
The Return of Persephone, 1891
(Hermes helping Persephone to return to her mother
Demeter after Zeus forced Hades to return Persepone.)

by English artist, Frederic Leighton, 1830 - 1896
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, 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: "Girls of Summer"
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Winnow the Dreams

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Sun and Wind on the Roof, 1915
John French Sloan, 1871 - 1951

“Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven."
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.

Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.

Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.

The soul shrinks

From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessed day,
And cries,

“Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven."

Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world's hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,

"Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult balance."

by Richard Wilbur

Click to hear poet Richard Wilbur read this amazing poem
and explain how he was inspired by the idea of the floating laundry.

Another painting by artisit John French Sloan ~ also inspired by laundry!
Red Kimono on the Roof, 1912

See also:
1. additional perspectives on Wilbur's poem
2. interesting blog post on "Love Calls Us"
3. clever little analysis for beginners

And a few more connections:
1. Contemporary poet, Barbara Kunz Loots describes the tension between possibility and duty with elegant simplicity. For her the "infinite possibilities" are "delicate grain" and the "infinite duties" are "the plain bread of day."

Waking
How hard it is to winnow the dreams from waking,
To watch the gold illusion drift away
And turning to the delicate grain of morning
Grind it into the plain bread of day.
by Barbara Kunz Loots
2. Last week on facebook, epigrammatist and collage artist Michael Lipsey captured the same idea in this fetching visual. Is it a beaver, as in "busy as a beaver" (infinite duty)? Or is it a groundhog, as in if I don't like what I see, I'm not coming out! Maybe it is not the bright sunshine so much as the it is the sheen of infinite possibility that causes the groundhog to shrink from its shadow and run away, overwhelmed. Perhaps love does not call the groundhog to the things of this world.

"There's an in between time when you wake up,
hanging onto the dream, but beginning to remember
things you need to do today." ~ Michael Lispsy
When I read Lipsey's caption concerning the "in between time," I couldn't help thinking of what Loots says about watching "the gold illusion drift away," as the dreamer sifts the wheat from the chaff; and of the "astounded soul" in Wilbur's poem, hanging "bodiless and simple," waiting to rejoin the waking body for another round of mundane errands. At first "the soul shrinks from all that it is about to remember" -- the repetition, the banality, the laundry. But after a few moments of semi - wakeful debate, "the soul descends . . . in bitter love" to accept the reality of the day at hand. Similarly, we rise up "in bitter love" to embrace each day, despite a thousand misgivings. The voice in both poems is resigned yet optimistic: the grain is delicate, the laundry is sacred, the day redeems itself.

3. I am reminded of the E. B. White "To - Do - List" fridge magnet:
"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy.
If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem.
But I arise in the morning torn between
a desire to improve the world
and a desire to enjoy the world.
This makes it hard to plan the day."
White vacillates between enjoyment and accomplishment, as do the sunstruck groundhog (though maybe not the industrious beaver), the reluctant dreamer, and the astounded soul. The vacillation makes it "hard to plan the day" -- but not impossible. One way or another, even if only by "habit" (Wilbur's pun), we accept the challenge of the sun, yawn, rise, go forth day after day, keeping our "difficult balance." I especially like the way that Wilbur's conlcusion can actually be found in his title: "love call us to the things of this world."

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

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

Ancestors

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Paternal Grandparents

~ Recent Family History ~
a poem
by Ernest Sandeen (1908 - 1997)
Looking out at us from their photographs,
mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles,
now dead for forty - five years or more,
don't recognize us, can't even imagine us.
And we are helpless to penetrate the safety
of their innocence . . .
from Collected Poems (237)

Maternal Grandparents

" . . . we start [that which] we will not live to see,
just as our ancestors could not live to see us.
And yet they, who passed away long ago, still exist in us,
as predisposition, as burden upon our fate, as murmuring blood,
and as gesture that rises up from the depths of time."
by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)
from Letters to a Young Poet (62)
I've never forgotten a dream that I had one night when I was in my early twenties. My mother's parents seemed to be right beside my bed, sitting in rocking chairs, sipping tea (or was it Sanka?) from china cups. In reality, my grandfather was still alive at the time, though my grandmother had died fifteen years earlier. It was not a dreamy or dreamlike dream; it was more of a visitation, consisting of a single scenario and one line of dialogue: my grandmother saying to me, "You are very American aren't you?" What could that mean? They were just as American as I, born in America, as were their parents, who had immigrated several generations before. We were not new to the Country, so my American - ness should come as no surprise to them.

Upon waking, I interpreted the dream as their way of granting me permission to forge ahead into a future which, as Rilke says, they would not live to see, reassuring me that my way of being in the world was going to be different than theirs had been . . . and that this was okay with them. Over the years, I have not remembered many dreams, but this one remains as vivid to me as the night my grandparents came to acknowledge that beyond a certain point, they could no longer imagine me, yet I would always have their blessing and their unconditional love.

"We have all rejected our beginnings
and become something our parents could not have foreseen."
by Robertson Davies (1913 - 1995)
from Fifth Business (248)

I love seeing my my maternal grandmother
in these outfits, obviously some of her favorites,
that she chose for having her photograph taken.
Such stylish footwear and that extravagant hat!


Her older brother, known for his photography, had promised her a photo session, and she was hoping to model something elegant, but he had a radical idea: if she wanted another picture taken, she could pose in his baseball uniform. Not her idea of finery, but she reluctantly agreed -- the first and last time in her life to don a pair of trousers. Perhaps he convinced her by insisting that "A hundred years from now, this photo will be a family treasure, cherished by your grand-daughter!" If so, how right he would have been!

On the back, my grandmother has written:
"Rovilla in ball suit"

In another treasured photo,
here is my paternal grandmother, also defying convention.
On the back, my Aunt Sue has written:
"Our Momma in slacks.
This is the only time I ever saw her in slacks."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bristow Ancestors
Click to see slideshow & hear music by Gerry McCartney
~ Also On YouTube ~

Gerry's Paternal Great - Grandparents and Great - Aunts

We tried to recreate their unusual pose . . .

and thought it would be even more fun
to replace the newspaper . . .

with a 21st Century equivalent.

Something our parents could not have foreseen!

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

Peace Concluded 1856
by John Everett Millais

I love the uncanny similarity between the above photograph
of Gerry's great - grandparents and this painting,
depicting a wounded British officer reading the Times
newspaper report of the end of the Crimean War.

When the Iris Blows Blue

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Irises
painted by Vincent Van Gogh (1853 - 1890)

"How well he has understood the exquisite nature of flowers!"
French art critic Octave Mirbeau (1848 - 1917)
The irises were lovely this year. Every spring, when they bloom, I think of Rukeyser's poem "Iris": "blue below blue . . . blue before blue . . . blue behind blue." As the opening line reveals, this is really a poem for May, but I think that it is equally suited to mid - June. For one thing, the irises often continue well past the middle of the May. For another, today is Flag Day, and I can still remember from childhood that my grandmothers always called these stately waving flowers by their popular common name: flags.

Iris
1
Middle of May, when the iris blows,
blue below blue, the bearded patriarch-
face on the green flute body of a boy
Poseidon     torso of Eros
blue
sky below sea
day over daybreak violet behind twilight
the May iris
midnight on midday

2
Something is over and under this deep blue.
Over and under this movement, etwas
before and after, alguna cosa
blue before blue
is it  
           perhaps    
                             death?
That might be the wrong word

The iris stands in the light.

3
Death is here, death is guarded by swords.
No. By shapes of swords
flicker of green leaves
under all the speaking and crying
shadowing the words the eyes     here they all die
raging withering       blue evening
my sister death the iris
stands clear in light

4
In the water - cave
ferocious needles of teeth
the green morays
in blue water     rays
a maleficence     ribbon of green     the flat look of
eyes staring     fatal mouth staring
the rippling potent force
curving into any hole
death finding his way.

5
Depth of petals, May iris
transparent     infinitely deep they are
petal - thin      with light behind them
and you, death,
and you
behind them
blue behind blue
What I cannot say 
in adequate music
something being born
transparency     blue of
light standing on light
this stalk of
(among mortal petals - and - leaves)
light

Muriel Rukeyser
American Poet (1913 - 1980)

Iris the Rainbow Goddess
photograph from Vatican City ~ by TheCityGoddess

The iris plant takes its name from the Greek word for rainbow ~ iris ~ and the closely related eiris, meaning messenger. The elegant, delicate flowers are also named after Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow. As daughter of a marine god and a cloud-nymph, Iris is a goddess of both sea and sky. To read more about her roles as personification of the rainbow and messenger of the Olympian Gods, take a look at these beautiful explanatory sites: Owl's Daughter and Theoi.

Rukeyser's poetry is rich in Biblical and classical allusion; in "Iris" she draws on the Greek gods to make an unexpected connection. She sees the tall flag - like flowers with their sword - like leaves not only as rainbows and messengers, but also as a unique combination of Poseidon, God of the the Sea, and Eros, the God of Love. The iris blossom is an aged Poseidon, "the bearded patriarch," while the lithe stalk and narrow leaves remind her of a youthful Eros, "green flute body of a boy." Together they form the flower we love. Eros is an airborne god, and Poseidon rules the sea. Taken together, these two elements, air and water -- like Iris herself -- combine with light to create that phenomenon we love -- the rainbow.

While some still refer to the multi - colored irises as "flags," others call them "swords," as Rukeyser does in this poem: " . . . death is guarded by swords. / No. By shapes of swords / flicker of green leaves." Poseidon and Eros each possess a sword of sorts, Poseidon controling the calm and storm of the sea with his trident; Eros controling the calm and storm of human hearts with his golden - or (for those less lucky in love) leaden - tipped arrows.

Iris as flower, flag, sword. Iris as rainbow, goddess, messenger. Iris as air, water, and sky. Both Muriel Rukeyser and Louise Gluck (in the following poem) honor the complexity of this remarkable plant. In both poems, the flowers are respected as messengers from the afterlife, traveling back from the otherworld, offering new perspectives on mortality and light.

Irises ~ Van Gogh
The Wild Iris
At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.

Louise Gluck
American Poet (b 1943)

Related Post: "This Life Flies"

on THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
(my blog of shorter almost daily posts)

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, June 28thP.S.
More Louise Gluck:
Penelope, Who Really Cried

More Muriel Rukeyser:
La Cucaracha
Icarus, Who Really Fell
Lot's Wife, Who Gave Her Life For a Single Glance
All the Little Animals
Another Good Poem by Muriel Rukeyser
The Wrong Answer