The Mind of God

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?
-- every, every minute?"
This is the question Emily Webb asks in Thornton Wilder's play, Our Town, when she comes back from the underworld to visit Grover's Corners and sees that all the living people are too busy about the minutiae of the day even to make eye contact with the loved ones right around them.

I chose Emily's question as the header for my life-is-just-so-daily blog, The Quotidian Kit, because it so accurately captures the sense of dailyness that I want to convey in those every-other-day-or-so entries. (Please visit: www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com)

My friends and I fell in love with Our Town when it was produced by our highschool drama club in 1973, and my twin brother Bruce played the part of George Gibbs. One of our favorite scenes occurs at the end of Act I, when Rebecca (George's little sister, played by my friend Joni), reads out the mind-boggling address that she saw on an envelope:

Jane Crofut
The Crofut Farm
Grover's Corners
Sutton County
New Hampshire
United States of America
Continent of North America
Western Hemisphere
The Earth
The Solar System
The Universe
The Mind of God

Suddenly in awe of our own cosmic identity, we spent a lot of time recopying this long address, inserting our own names and addresses, and passing our versions around to each other in geometry class. (Sorry, Mr. Anderson!) Not that any mysteries, either universal or local, were revealed; but it sort of felt that way.

In the recent novel, Octavian Nothing (see my commentary below, August 14, 2009), I encountered a hauntingly reminiscent passage, equally cosmic but rather more sinister. The young scholar Octavian is somewhat intimidated by his tutor who has him stand against the wall in a very dark room on a dark summer night:

The silence of the house was enormous.

He stood me with my back to the wall, one inch from the paneling. He stood next to me. We faced the same way. . . .

For a long while, we stared straight forwards, side by side,
in the empty room. . . .

"Do you feel it child?" he asked. "The wall is gone. Space is gone from behind us."

I could feel nothing.

He said, "All that is there now is the eye of God." He shivered. "The pupil is black, and as large as a world." (60 - 61)


The Eye of God. I wonder if that line should come before or after The Mind of God in the address sequence? It certainly shifts the reader's focus from the known to the unknown. I'm reminded again of Emily's descent to the afterlife, when she sees simultaneously the Dead, now her companions, as well as her own funeral, taking place back on Earth:

Live people don't understand , do they?

No, dear -- not very much.

They're sort of shut up in little boxes, aren't they? I feel as though I knew them last a thousand years ago . . . (ellipses in original)


Similarly, in Madeleine L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time, the kindly Beasts look down from their planet and wonder about human beings:

How strange it is that they can't tell us what they themselves seem to know . . . And on their earth, as they call it, they never communicate with other planets. They revolve about all alone in space. . . . Aren't they lonely? (191)


So here we are, in our little boxes, unable to communicate very well; revolving about on our Mostly Harmless, Swiftly Tilting planet; transfixed by the black pupil of the Eye of God, large as the World, the Solar System, the Universe. Known, perhaps, even in our loneliness, to the Mind of God.

Mosaics at Crosby Station
Liverpool
Merseyside
England
Great Britain
The United Kingdom
The British Isles
The Western Hemisphere,
The Earth, The Solar System
The Universe
The Mind of God

Birds of Pray

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Above: These 3 buildings at the Pier Head on the Mersey River are called the "Three Graces" of Liverpool. Look closely (above & left)for the mythical Liver Birds atop the Liver Building. As legend goes, these symbolic birds once haunted the local shoreline, guarding the waterfront and awaiting the safe return of seafarers.

(Pronunciation quirk: "Liver" rhymes with "diver" -- not with "giver" as in "Liverpool")



OCTAVIAN, GLADYS & JONATHAN
Not until recently would I have identified the image of a one - legged seagull as a recurring motif in literature, but a surprising reading coincidence has caused me to think otherwise.

Not long ago, I was reading volume one of M. T. Anderson's historical fiction, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation. Octavian has been brought from Africa as a child, in the 1700s, to participate in an elaborate American educational experiment, funded from England by an eccentric benefactor. When this Lord Cheldthorpe dies, his nephew, the new "Lord Cheldthorpe of the New Creation," as he insists on being called, travels to America to visit the College of Lucidity.

Upon his arrival, he reveals his ignorance of the natural world with an urgent question for his hosts. Speaking of himself in third person, he elaborates: "One had, a kind of pet aboard the ship, a one-legged seagull. One was charmed by its sense of balance when the ship rocked. Would there be a way that one could attract it to this house? It specifically?"

Rather than treating Cheldthorpe's request as ridiculous, the polite and beholden American scientists attempt to let the Lord down easy, speculating, "Were we to . . . spread garbage upon the roof, we would likely attract quite a number of . . . seagulls . . . but there is no guarantee . . . My Lord . . . that one should be your especial friend" (ellipses in original, 80).

The seagull comes to represent those who must suffer from Cheldthorpe's cruelty and his arrogant belief that the world revolves around him. His treatment of the gull prefigures the patronizing harshness in store for his unwitting subjects: "We tried to knock it over by throwing lead-shot and failed. . . . The bird was nimble. . . . Could one attract it to one's side, one could keep it upon one's shoulder, and call it Hector, and it would be a fine, fine thing" (my ellipses, 80 - 81).

"Indeed, My Lord," concludes the host. "My very thought. . . . Perhaps you might give me some time to consider a solution?" (80 - 81). In fact, the issue never arises again, and I probably wouldn't have given it much more thought if I had not soon encountered a similar image in Gladys Reunited: A Personal American Journey. In this memoir, British / Danish writer Sandi Toksvig describes her travels across the United States, as she catches up with old friends that she knew years before when attending school in America.

She starts on the East Coast and finds herself at last in California, standing on the deck of the Queen Mary, reminiscing of the trips she took on it years before, back and forth across the Atlantic with her parents. As she recalls fondly, though sadly, a final conversation she shared with her father, she spies a seagull who seems to embody both her grief and her determination. But this is not just any seagull:

"Then, on the farthest railing I saw a one-legged gull standing watching me. What could happen, I wondered, to a gull that might cause it to lose a foot? Did it affect take-offs and landings? What did the other gulls think? Was the one-legged fellow an object of gull ridicule? Did all gulls really come from California?" (299)

A seagull with one leg? I had to stop and think a minute. Oh yes, Octavian Nothing and crazy Lord Cheldthorpe a week or so before. Two one-legged seagulls in two weeks? And in two books so widely differing from each other. What's the odds?

Of course the quintessential seagull, that "one-in-a-million bird" who taught us the meaning of life back in 1970 is Jonathan Livingston Seagull. For those who read it years ago, you don't have to actually remember JLS; if you read it once, it is embedded forever in the fiber of your being, whether you know it or not! In a good way! One leg? Broken wing? Jonathan knows how to overcome all such earthly stumbling blocks, how to achieve freedom and perfection:
"Overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think we might see other once or twice?" (61, 87).

Summer Afternoon, Summer Afternoon

WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUSNEIGHBORHOOD POOL
"Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language." ~ Henry James

And those most be nineteen of the most beautiful words that Henry James ever wrote.

If you ask me, what is one of the most beautiful things to do on a sunny summer afternoon? Why, go to the pool, of course! A hidden gem of our neighborhood, the pool is nestled in a small valley at the foot of a big hill. Lucky for me, it's only a few blocks from my house, close enough to bike. On a hot July day, nothing feels better than floating lazily or doing a leisurely backstroke while gazing above at a big blue bowl of sky and all around at a big green basket of grass.

Peace and the "Sounds of Silence." That's what the pool provides for The Graduate-- Benjamin Braddock / Dustin Hoffman. The desultory pace of his summer is measured in the movie by a succession of swimming scenarios. While he sits on the bottom of the pool in his scuba gear, his head is filled with the echo of his own breathing. Avoiding the reality of "plastics," he rests listlessly in the sun on his air mattress, "drifting, just drifting," to the strains of Simon & Garfunkle. I can't sit underwater like Benjamin, but when I swim laps I can go inside my head, think about what I'd like to read and write, and hear nothing but the sound of rhythmic breathing until the whistle blows.

No summer day feels complete without those laps. Some days I have the pool to myself; other times it's a perfect microcosm of the entire community: little kids, big kids, young adults, old adults, experts, amateurs, and many beginners -- of all ages; some who swim fast, others who take it slow; some treading, some diving; some taking lessons, some working out with serious purpose and some just having a good time! It can occasionally feel like a big old human soup pot, on the very hottest, busiest days, but I try to work around that slightly stewed sensation and keep my focus. Despite the heat, with just a month of summer afternoons left, we have to enjoy every one!

"Lap swim -- lap swim."

To me those are two of the most beautiful words on any summer afternoon between Memorial Day and Labor Day!

" . . . there is no end, believe me! to the inventions of summer, to the happiness your body is willing to bear." --Mary Oliver

Neighborhood Kiddies: Molly, Ben, Emily, 1991

Neighborhood Cheers: My Swimming Buddies, 1992

If you have to choose between straight hair & swimming, don't fight the curl: CHOOSE SWIMMING!

Hominy, Horseradish, and Buffalo Bill

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
Summer Squash and Black Currants

Here I am with my Grandpa Lindsey,
ready to ride the train to Kansas City
to visit his sister, my Great Aunt Mabel

These were the old days, when you could actually go places on trains in this country, and we -- just the two of us-- were taking a day trip from Grandpa's little town in Kansas up to see his older sister in Kansas City. Even though we would not be spending the night, I insisted on taking my little suitcase, just barely visible in the corner of the photograph. To this day, I can tell you exactly what was in there: my little white Easter gloves (remember when we wore those?) and a six - pack of Butterfinger candy bars!

Without knowing this photograph or the story behind it, my dear friend Lisa sent me the following birthday card a few years ago:

When I read the caption -- "in their purses were candy bars" -- I knew it was true! You can see why I was reminded of myself at age 9, holding hands with my grand-dad at the train station.

Our Train Schedule
See -- my grandfather has written: "Mabel's Phone"

******************************
In 1976, seven years before he died, my Grandpa Paul Lindsey, wrote an autobiographical essay entitled “A Look at Caney, Kansas: What I Saw From the Wagon Seat as a Child.” He begins with a description of his mother’s perseverance:

“My mother, like all those dear old souls who settled this country, could have lived on a rock. I mean, you could not have starved them. They believed they were citizens of a free country and were determined to live and stay free.

“My mother started a good-sized patch of horseradish and prepared to make hominy. She established a line of customers, including several hotels and boarding houses. By the time I was five, she would take me along to hold the team—old Dolly and Lucy—while she delivered hominy and horseradish, ready to serve, at twenty-five cents per quart.”

The Lindsey farm wagons were a familiar sight on Caney streets, marketing—in addition to Sally’s farm fresh hominy and horseradish—water from the bubbling hillside springs, melons and sweet potatoes grown in the loose sandy soil, and potted plants or bouquets of flowers in season. As my grandfather grew older, the area covered by the delivery trips widened to include nearby towns and cities. On one of these trips, he and his father were privileged to eat lunch at the private table of Buffalo Bill Cody when the Lindseys delivered sweet potatoes to the exhibition’s commissary while the Wild West Show was performing in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

When I was little, how I loved to hear my grandfather tell this story! In vivid detail, he would recall how Buffalo Bill regaled the assembled diners with tales of adventure and wore on his finger a diamond “the size of egg.” Even now, whenever I see an image of Buffalo Bill on a postage stamp or on my cowgirl dress -- or read the ironic "Portrait" by e.e. cummings -- I am reminded of my Grandpa Lindsey’s brush with greatness and that incredible diamond ring!

Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a water-smooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

(poem by e. e. cummings)

Time to Write a Letter

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Little House on the Prairie Historic Site
Indpenedence, Kansas

Samuel Gordon Lindsey
My grandfather's brother, in 1913; age 20.
In 1887 my great-grandparents headed west from Ohio to settle a homestead in Nebraska. By 1893, they had erected not a one-room but, proudly, a two-room home on the prairie, where my great-grandmother Sarah Elisabeth Hartman Lindsey (aka Sally / Sallie) sat one summer day writing a long letter to her niece, enchantingly named Eyrie Winegarden. What I especially like is that Sally explains how the babies are napping while she writes. So many times when my children were small, my own letters began: “The boys are now asleep, so I have a moment to answer your letter.”

Some things never change! Sally begins:

Dear Eyrie

I am (nearly) alone this afternoon, with my babies Beatrice and Gordon both asleep. Jimmie went 5 miles away to see a sick horse this morning, taking Wayne with him. Mabel and Jim are at Sunday School 3 ½ miles distant since dinner. And I have a quiet time in which to write. You know, Eyrie, few of the homesteaders have another room where they can go and read or write undisturbed.

Sally goes on to describe a summer of severe drought, punctuated by a few severe thunderstorms. During one of these storms, her husband Jimmie was struck by lightning. While he was recuperating, some old friends

who used to live in J’s native town in Ohio, came eight miles to see him. They are well-to-do people spending a few months here for their health. They brought him some oranges, a can of peaches, and Gordon a new dress. After Wayne had eaten of the peaches, his papa was telling him we would move east where fruit grows and then we could have some. I was out, and when I came in, Wayne said, “And Mama don't you think they grow on trees”! It has only been a year since he learned there was such a thing as a tree. He scarcely ever sees one, they usually die in the first year.

In fact, Wayne, who was four at the time, did grow up to see many trees; and indeed, the Lindseys did move east, eventually settling in Kansas in 1895—the year that my grandfather, Paul Jones Lindsey, was born in a covered wagon as the family was traveling in search of their permanent home. It is sad and strange for me to think that my great-grandmother long outlived the two babies who lay napping that day while she wrote to Eyrie. Samuel Gordon Lindsey (after whom my own little Sam is named) died in France, 31 July 1918, at the Battle of the Aisne-Marne. And Edna Beatrice Lindsey Smith died in 1922, aged 31; though so young, she was already the mother of six.

Thinking of them all -- Sally, Eyrie, Beatrice, her children -- brings to mind the following tender-hearted poem that I have loved since girlhood:

THOUGHTS OF A MODERN MAIDEN

Throb of my heart, throb of my heart,
How did you get here, where did you start?

Ages ago in some lowly thing,
Pulsating since with unceasing spring?

Through countless lifetimes, from mother to young,
Heart throb, heart throb, a rhythm has sung.

Once in a queen, twice in a slave,
Wife of prince, wife of a knave.

Mother to daughter, down through the years,
Some heirs to gladness, some heirs to tears.

Defended by vassal, seized by a lord,
Sentenced to death but saved by a word.

Women of virtue, women of shame,
Women of desert, women of slum,

Down to my grandmere, sweet and demure,
Down to my mother, patient and pure.

Why was I forged as a link in this chain?
What of the past shall I break or maintain?

Heart throb, heart throb, wonder past knowing,
Where did you come from, where are you going?

by Edith M. Roberts

Roberts's poem can be found in the well - loved
anthology from my formative years:
The American Album of Poetry
compiled by American radio personality
Ted Malone, 1908 - 1989

Child Beheads Mannequin

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Neighborhood Mural, West Philadelphia

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

"Sometimes a mannequin's blue summer dress
can make the window like a dream . . . "
(iphoto created by Karen Shen)
Yearning for an off-beat summer movie? Watch Francis Ford's Coppola's dreamy, magical, musical One From The Heart. Teri Garr portrays a heroine who works after hours, wistfully dressing the storefront mannequins to the pensive strains of "Old Boyfriends" (below). What is it about those mannequins? So odd, so beckoning.

I was lured by the mannequins long ago, on a shopping trip to the town square in Neosho, Missouri (where our family lived from 1962 - 67). Many of the stores were quaint and old-fashioned, including clothing stores with wooden floors and display windows that were wide open into the store interior and could be reached from inside the store simply by walking up a few wooden steps, kind of like walking up on to a stage.

One Saturday morning, I had wandered away from my parents and siblings (not exactly sure who else was along that day, or even what we were shopping for), irresistibly intrigued by the sight of some child-sized mannequins up in that tempting front window. I had never before seen--or at least had never been so close to--a mannequin that was exactly my size! I glanced over my shoulder at my parents, and, on the hunch that they wouldn't miss me for a little while, gingerly mounted those few steps, and in an instant became part of the window display!

I was not what you would call an audacious child, but I just had to investigate those little creatures and could not keep my hands off of them. Destruction was the furthest thing from my mind when I reached out to touch the child mannequin's hair. Imagine my mortification (or the 7 - 8 yr old's equivalent of mortification) when my innocent pat resulted in the head rolling right off the mannequin's shoulders and landing on the floor with a plunk!

I stood there paralyzed, in shock over what I had just done, and pretty certain that my life must be near its end. Now I was REALLY glancing over my shoulder; but, even though luck was with me and my parents were not yet paying attention to what I was doing, I could not fathom how to get out of this fearful situation. My cheeks were burning (mostly in apprehension of what kind of trouble I was going to be in) and I was on the verge of crying--but not yet.

At precisely that miraculous moment, some shoppers happened to stroll past on the sidewalk right outside the window! Now children are notoriously bad at guessing the age of adults, but I remember this kindly elderly couple (a man and a woman) as seeming older than my parents yet younger than my grandparents. What they thought at the sight that met their eyes I can only guess, but they clearly read my distress and with great gentleness motioned to me to kneel down, pick up the head, and place it back atop the mannequin. I've often wondered how that head was fastened on, but I just can't remember. Somehow, though, I managed to balance it in place and high-tail it back down the steps as those sweet, patient strangers waved me off the stage and mutely promised that they would keep my secret.

As guilty as you please and flooded with relief that apparently no one had witnessed my mischief, I skedaddled across the store quick as a wink. I sidled right up to my unsuspecting parents and loitered there just as if I had never wandered off at all. I can't really guess how long my escapade had taken, but it's one of those occasions that seemed like an eternity to me, despite the fact the others apparently hadn't missed me at all. Could it really be true that I was going to get off this easy?

As for my omniscient parents, they had no idea, not until I broke the news to them many years later, sometime when I was in highschool or college and the whole family was sitting around recounting anecdotes from the good old days. I asked if they had been aware of my guest appearance in the window glass. Maybe those people on the sidewalk were friends of theirs who had later told them about the beheading? But no, it was all news to them! Luckily I had waited to make my confession until the statute of limitations for childhood misdemeanors was up!

Sadly, even now none of us have any idea who those Good Samaritans were; but what a lucky girl I was that they walked by when they did! How I'd love to go back in time and stand as an adult on the sidewalk, looking in on that astonished little child who had climbed right into the storefront window to see what life was like among the mannequins.

Here are the song lyrics:

Old Boyfriends
from the soundtrack, One From the Heart
written by Tom Waits, sung by Crystal Gale

Old boyfriends

Lost in the pocket
of your overcoat
Like burned out light bulbs
on a Ferris Wheel

Old boyfriends

You remember the kinds
of cars they drove
Parking in an orange grove
He fell in love, you see
With someone that I used to be

Though I very seldom think of him
Nevertheless
sometimes a mannequin's
Blue summer dress
can make the window like a dream

Ah, but now those dreams
belong to someone else
Now they talk in their sleep
In a drawer where I keep all my

Old boyfriends

Remember when you
were burning for them
Why do you keep turning them into

Old boyfriends

They look you up
when they're in town
To see if they can still
burn you down
He fell in love, you see
With someone that I used to be

Though I very seldom think of him
Nevertheless
sometimes a mannequin's
Blue summer dress
can make the window like a dream

Ah, but now those dreams
belong to someone else
Now they talk in their sleep
In a drawer where I keep all my

Old boyfriends

Turn up every time it rains
Fall out of the pages
in a magazine

Old boyfriends

Girls fill up the bars
every spring
Dark places
for remembering

Old boyfriends
All my old boyfriends*
Old boyfriends

*All my old boyfriends?
No not all, only some of them.
And my old boyfriends' old girlfriends?
No, none of them.
I have to draw the line.
I know, I know, you're probably wondering
just how shallow and juvenile can I be?
Well, I'm sorry to say that the answer is
pretty darn juvenile.
All that highschool crap --
does anyone every really get over it?