Everyone Loves Stories -- Even Jesus, Even God

A SCHOOLHOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

My son Sam with his 5th grade classmates, twins, Michael & Geoffrey
St. Peter's School ~ Philadelphia ~ 2004

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

“There is something deeply built into us that needs story itself.
Story is a source of nurture . . .
we cannot become really true human beings
for ourselves and for each other without story.”
Vincent Harding (b 1931)
Civil Rights Veteran
{Thanks to Jan Donley for first posting this quotation}
Tell me a story! Tell me about the day I was born. Tell me about that time. Once upon a time. In the beginning. Long ago and faraway. Long ago, in someone else's story. Be the hero of your own story. The Never-ending Story. Just So Stories. So many stories, so little time, so much time -- sprawling and interminable (see Buechner, below). I like Harding's assertion (above) that we need these stories to be "really true human beings" and Myerson's conclusion (below) that we "just want to connect." In fact, that's one of the founding premises of this blog:
Only connect!

Out of the vast number of stories about stories, I've picked Harding, Myerson, Buechner, and Myerhoff for this short post. These authors share the observation that our humanizing stories are never disconnected. The narratives may sprawl across time and space, but only say the word, write the letter, make the call, turn on the searchlights, sit in the chair, and tell the story!

Julie Myerson (b 1960)
Home: The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Our House
"These letters and phone messages are peculiarly and unexpectedly touching. I realize that actually they're a part of what I'm trying to explore: the fact that all of us badly want to be part of a story, to be the Right Person, the One someone's looking for. Don't we all, at the end of the day, just want to connect our lives with the lives of others and experience that satisfying symmetry of time and place that comes from being notified, written to, called to account" (78 - 79; for more on Myerson's book, see "Our Island Home" on my Book List).

by Jessie Willcox Smith
Frederick Buechner (b 1926)
Listening to Your Life: "The Truth of Our Stories"
"In the long run the stories all overlap and mingle like searchlights in the dark. the stories Jesus tells are part of the story Jesus is, and the other way round. . . . And my story and your story are all part of each other too if only because we have sung together and prayed together and seen each other's faces so that we are at least a footnote at the bottom of each other's stories.

"In other words all our stories are in the end one story, one vast story about being human, being together, being here. Does the story point beyond itself? Does it mean something? What is the truth of this interminable, sprawling story we all of us are? Or is it as absurd to ask about the truth of it as it is to ask about the truth of the wind howling through a crack under the door?" (305)

Storytelling
Barbara Myerhoff (1935 - 1985)
"The Story of the Forest"
"There is a Hasidic story, repeated to me by Shmuel [a member of the Israel Levin Senior Center, the subject of much of Myerhoff's work] before he died, that sums up my feelings about nine years of work with the...Center people....

"When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews, it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted. Later, when his disciple...had occasion...to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest and say 'Master of the Universe, listen! I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayer.' Again the miracle would be accomplished.

"Still later, Rabbi Moshe-Lieb of Sasov, in order to save his people once more, would go into the forest and say: 'I do not know how to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient.' It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished.

"Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome misfortune. Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God: 'I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is to tell the story, and this must be sufficient.'

"And it was sufficient." *

Why? Because God Loves Stories!

{Thanks to Melinda Stolz for sharing this story with me.}

*Myerhoff's Notes:
1. Quote from Mark Leviton, "Numbering Their Days," University of Southern California Chronicle Oct. 1980, 26.

2. This story of the forest is also told in Elie Wiesel,
Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters,
trans. Marion Wiesel (New York: The Bibliophile Library, c1972).

"If you have a story that seems worth telling, and you think you can tell it worthily, then the thing for you to do is tell it, regardless of whether it has to do with sex, sailors, or mounted policemen." ~~ Dashiell Hammett ~~

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

To Live Even One Day

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

On the Esopus, Meadow Groves, ca. 1857–58

&

Cows in the Meadow, 1878

both paintings by Scottish - American Artist
William M. Hart, 1823 - 1894

There are so many things to say about Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's elegant interior novel of one day -- plus flashbacks -- in the life of Clarissa Parry Dalloway. Is it my favorite novel? I always hesitate to choose only one, but it just might be, especially after I earned the nickname of "Clarissa / Mrs. Dalloway" a couple of different times:

1. Once by an old grad school friend who said: "Maybe you're not the life of the party in a class clown kind of way, but you are CLARISSA DALLOWAY" (this was after we had taken one of those personality profiles that placed me higher than I thought was accurate on the "social butterfly / loves company" scale).

2. And again by a friend who alluded to Mrs. Dalloway when she wrote to congratulate me upon being included in an historical house tour: "Congratulations! Glad you had a good house tour, Clarissa. Sounds like a lot of work, but you love doing it and wouldn't consider not. You go, super mom, super Mrs. Dalloway. Did everyone behave with proper respect, or were they touching your stuff and leaving their BIG GULP cups all over the place? Did you have to dress up like a house slave, or were you allowed to be Mrs. O'Hara? (Remember the "Designing Women" episode when Julia's house is on a tour?) Perhaps you wore an elegant Ann Taylor dress and cooly answered questions regarding the age of the fireplace. Or, in true British fashion, retired to your private quarters during the tour (pronounced too-ah). By the way, I have yet to read that book so I hope my Mrs. Dalloway hostess attribution is a good one!" I assured her that am always honored to be compared to Mrs. Dalloway and that, yes, her reference made perfect sense!

I vividly recall walking into the theatre (Ritz at the Bourse, Philadelphia, 1997) right in the middle of a preview for Mrs. Dalloway. Without any prior knowledge of this upcoming film or verbal hints (voice over or text on the screen), I knew, the instant I saw the depiction of London streets and houses and Vanessa Redgrave in her gorgeous Virginia Woolf dress and hat: "It's Mrs. Dalloway!" In that sudden "moment of being," I was transported to the last page of the novel when Peter Walsh looks across the room and says, "It is Clarissa."

So where do you start? How do you solve a problem like Clarissa? "Down, down into the midst of ordinary things . . . the supreme mystery . . . was simply this: here was one room; there another. Did religion solve that? Or love?" (193, emphasis added).

Mrs. Dalloway (Vanessa Redgrave) on the balcony,
glancing across the street into her neighbor's room


I'll begin with a letter I received from my sister Peggy last summer. I was excited when she told me she was reading Mrs. Dalloway. I hoped that she would love it as much as I do, and I gave her permission to go ahead and watch the movie version even if she hadn't finished the novel yet. I know some may disapprove, and I surely wouldn't recommend that in all cases, but this excellent movie is so consistent, so true to the novel word for word, and so beautiful, that I made an exception!

Soon after Peg finished the novel, she wrote: I've been meaning to write for several days now to tell you two of my favorite lines:

"She was for the party!"
[Response from me: What a great party quote! I have always loved Peter Walsh's comment, but after Peg's note, I began to think that "She was for the party!" is an even better encapsulation of the essence of Clarissa.]

and [returning to Peg's letter] Clarissa's description of Sir Harry:

"'Dear Sir Harry!' she said, going up to the fine fellow who had produced more bad pictures than any other two Academicians in the whole of St. John's Wood (they were always of cattle, standing in sunset pools absorbing moisture, or signifying, for he had a certain range of gesture, by the raising of one foreleg and the toss of the antlers, 'the Approach of the Stranger' --all his activities, dining out, racing, were founded on cattle standing absorbing moisture in sunset pools)" (266).

I just love the thought of such a banal subject as cows standing around in ponds at sunset "absorbing moisture." Still makes me smile.

Cows Watering

Seems that Woolf may have had artist William M. Hart in mind
when she created the character of Sir Harry.
I told Peg at the time that her observation about the cow painting was perfect for my Quotidian blog because she expresses so well the thought that the cows are quotidian! Sir Harry keeps us grounded -- maybe in a boring way, but also in a good way!

Peg went on to say: I've watched both of the movies, Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours. I liked them both, and they did play well with the book, but I have to say that The Hours was a sad movie. Brenda let me borrow her copy which had commentary by the various actors, writers, and producer(s) which explained some parts of the movie that I had difficulty understanding, but they didn't make it any less sad. The book had it's sad parts, but the movie seemed to be just one sad tale after another with no real joy. I think they needed Sir Harry and his paintings to lighten the movie a little.

My response: Remember Clarissa's thought right at the beginning of Woolf's novel: "she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day" (11). That's the one line that has stayed with me more than any other from the first time I ever read Mrs. Dalloway.

Perhaps it is also very very sad to live even one day. Clarissa conveys as much when she hears about the death of Septimus Warren Smith, and makes the startled observation: "Oh . . . in the middle of my party, here's death" (279). Maybe that explains the deep sadness of The Hours -- it concentrates more on death than on the party. [See also the conclusion of my post "American . . . Gothic," for a little twist on the idea of "death in the middle of the party, a successful allusion, I hope.]

I was thrilled with the movie of Mrs. Dalloway but skeptical to learn that Michael Cunningham's contemporary (1998) novel The Hours was woven around Mrs. Dalloway. I was filled with misgiving at first: how dare anyone touch Woolf's masterpiece! I love Mrs. Dalloway so much, I wasn't sure that I wanted to see it experimented with. However, it turns out that Cunningham's re - perception of Woolf's novel is equally and amazingly beautiful. I became a true believer in no time; after only a few pages, I was mesmerized by Cunningham's finely crafted novel and the way in which it honors Woolf. You may remember that Virginia Woolf's first title idea for Mrs. Dalloway was The Hours, thus Cunningham's choice of title. What he has done is use Virginia Woolf as a character in his novel, plus a contemporary New Yorker named Clarissa Vaughan, and a 1940's housewife, Laura Brown, who is reading Mrs. Dalloway just a few years after Woolf's suicide. The Hours is really a hymn -- can't think of a better way to say it -- to Virginia Woolf and Mrs. Dalloway.

Just as I found the movie of Mrs. Dalloway more beautifully done and true to the novel than I would have ever imagined possible, so too was the subsequent movie of The Hours, starring Meryl Streep and Ed Harris. It's hard, impossible really, for me to imagine what reading or seeing The Hours would mean if I were unfamiliar with Mrs. Dalloway. Possibly Michael Cunningham is such a genius that the reader can still love his story without the literary background of Woolf and her contemporaries. I can't say for sure since there's no way for me to go back and read The Hours without knowledge of Mrs. Dalloway. Of course, each book / movie stands alone as a complete creative expression; so I guess you could read or see them in any order: Mrs. Dalloway, book and movie; then The Hours, book and movie. Or maybe both books, then both movies. You pick! How can you go wrong?

Vanessa Redgrave as Clarissa Dalloway


Meryl Streep as Clarissa Vaughan


Several years back (2004), Gerry, Ben, and Sam allowed me to orchestrate a Christmas Day Film Festival, to include Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours. Both movies are so perfectly rendered and aligned with the books that the boys could follow every single nuance -- they were not too young for it. I hope one day they'll read the novels; but, if not, they've got those stories and a bit of Virginia's prose inside their heads now, one way or another.

Which is to say, if you absolutely can't find time to read Mrs. Dalloway, then go ahead and watch the film and consider yourself ready to view The Hours. Both books and both movies are now and forever on my list of all-time favorites; and I would happily recommend all four to anyone in search of a literary project for the summer. Anticipating the fact that you might miss a few allusions along the way, here are some to look for:

1. In addition to the Mrs. Dalloway parallels, Cunningham also includes an extended allusion to Doris Lessing's story "To Room Nineteen." Laura Brown's quest for personal space is taken straight from Lessing, with Laura even checking into Room 19 when she goes to the hotel to contemplate suicide and read Mrs. Dalloway for the afternoon.

2. Yet another passage in The Hours calls to mind the artist Lily Briscoe in Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse. [See my post on Mrs. Ramsay: "A Little Strip of Time," 12 May 2012]

In Woolf's novel, while seated at Mrs. Ramsay's famous dinner table, Lily Briscoe's mind wanders away from the conversation as she thinks of her painting: "She remembered all of a sudden as if she had found a treasure, that she had her work. In a flash she saw her picture, and thought, Yes, I shall put the tree further in the middle; then I shall avoid that awkward space. That's what I shall do. That's what has been puzzling me. She took up the salt cellar and put it down again on a flower in the pattern in the table-cloth, so as to remind herself to move the tree . . . There's the sprig on the table-cloth; there's my painting; I must move the tree to the middle; that matters -- nothing else . . . her spirits rose so high at the thought of painting tomorrow that she laughed out loud . . . she would move the tree rather more toward the middle" (To the Lighthouse, 128, 130, 140, 154). Not until the last page of the novel does the idea for the final stroke occur to Lily, when she takes out the old rolled up painting and finally finishes it at long last.

Likewise, Cunningham's character in The Hours daydreams of the creative process while arranging the silverware: "As Laura set the plates and forks on the table--as they ring softly on the starched white cloth--it seems she has succeeded suddenly, at the last minute, the way a painter might brush a final line of color onto a painting and save it from incoherence; the way a writer might set down the line that brings to light the submerged patterns and symmetry in the drama. It has to do, somehow, with setting plates and forks on a white cloth. It is as unmistakable as it is unexpected" (The Hours, 207).

And then there's Clarissa Dalloway, who

"was going that very night to kindle and illuminate;

to give her party. . . .

All was for the party."
(6, 56)
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, June 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

Sunset With Cows
by Scottish - American Artist ~ William M. Hart, 1823 - 1894

Poems for Memorial Day

WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Memorial Day Service ~ Caney, Kansas ~ 2010
Headstone For My Parents
in Sunnyside Cemetery ~ Caney, Kansas

#1: Memorial Day

On this day every year
our dead afflict us with
a kind of solemn astonishment
at how close to us they remain.

The dates on their headstones
reveal that even in their graves
they grow older year by year
just as we do. They are all still with us.
We are all going in the same direction.

#2: In this once country graveyard

In this once country graveyard
now caught in the tentacles
of a noisily expanding city,
we can feel more intimately than ever
the heavy demands made upon us
by the dead. Here they stand
idling, day and night in the din
of traffic, as mute as time
itself, as still as stone.

They require nothing less
of us than our lives.

#3: How Time Is Kept

In the flurry of our beating hearts
there is never time enough for what we dream of.
Our intimate dead, however, lie calm of face
as if to say, no need for hurry.
They idle in such a wealth of stillness
it can never be wholly spent.

Yet they are close, deep in our one affair.
Don't disturb us, they say, we are busy
at the leisure of not breathing. It takes all our time,
it takes more time than being alive.

All three poems from
the Collected Poems
of Ernest Sandeen (1908 - 1997)
Notre Dame Professor and Poet

In Barbara Kingsolver's sad but magical novel Animal Dreams, the narrator, Codi Noline, joins the people of Grace, Arizona, for "the town's biggest holiday, the Day of All Souls." They walk together to the cemetery to weed and tend the family graves, decorate with marigolds, and enjoy the traditional skull-shaped candies with the children:

"It was the bittersweet Mexican holiday, the Day of the Dead, democratic follow-up to the Catholic celebration of All Hallows. Some people had business with the saints on November 1, and so went to mass, but on November 2, everybody had business at the graveyard." (158 - 59)

Whenever November 2nd and May 30th roll around, I always wish I lived nearer to the cemeteries where most of my loved ones and ancestors are buried so that I too could pay a visit and decorate the graves in the time - honored fashion. When I was growing up, months and months might pass between visits to our grandparents, but we never missed Thanksgiving or Memorial Day weekend.

No matter what the weather, on Memorial Day we spent a good part of the day at the cemetery, attending various ceremonies and speeches in honor of the Veterans and the War Dead; placing wreathes and potted plants; sometimes even planting flowers that would bloom throughout the summer. Nobody really says "Decoration Day" anymore, but that's what I remember calling it when I was small -- because we decorated! If I was lucky enough to spend a week or two of summer vacation with my grandparents, we spent the evenings one of two ways -- sitting on the porch or taking a walk to Sunnyside Cemetery. Those were happy times for me, tagging along, picking stray flowers, and listening to the old stories about those at rest there.

At Thanksgiving, when the cemetery was bare and empty -- no parades, podiums or bands; very few visitors, very few flowers -- even then we didn't miss the opportunity to wander from grave to grave, paying our respects. I guess that was our Midwestern way of observing All Souls -- just three or four weeks late.

These days, I live only a few blocks from the nearest local cemetery and can spend a reflective hour there anytime, thinking of the old days, reading the names of strangers, but it's not quite the same. As Codi says:

"More than anything else I wished I belonged to one of these living, celebrated families, lush as plants, with bones in the ground for roots. I wanted pollen on my cheeks and one of those calcium ancestors to decorate as my own" (165).
~ Reposted from The Quotidian Kit ~

Sunnyside Cemetery on Thanksgiving Day 2007
Caney, Kansas
A Grace for Memorial Day
"Let no wars impede our thanking
God above for this our bread
That our song may end the battles,
Let us feed on that instead."

by Beverly Coyle
from the story "O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing"
in The Kneeling Bus, 95
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, June 14thth

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

Life -- A Little Strip of Time

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

MONK'S HOUSE ~ HOME OF LEONARD & VIRGINIA WOOLF

VIRGINIA WOOLF'S LIVING ROOM
For Mother's Day, I thought I would write about one of the most steadfast mothers in modern British fiction, Mrs. Ramsay from Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse. Virginia Woolf had no children, but Mrs. Ramsay has eight; and Woolf intuitively fills Mrs. Ramsay's head and the first half of the novel with touching motherly insights. Except for the youngest son James, the Ramsay children are rarely mentioned in literary criticism of To the Lighthouse. James, of course, figures prominently at the center of the conflict that opens the novel: will he or will he not be taken to the lighthouse the next day?

But what of James' siblings and Mrs. Ramsay's feelings for them: Andrew, Prue, Jasper, Rose, Roger, Nancy, and Cam? Sitting out on the yard, visiting with her guests and surrounded by her children, Mrs. Ramsay is the image of earthliness, providing spiritual and artistic inspiration to others. Her ability to inspire is rooted in her role as a living, earthly mother, caring for her children, experiencing conflict with them and for them, providing for them at present, and hoping they may find a solid happiness that will stand against the unknowable future of temporal existence. Monitoring the behavior of her brood, Mrs. Ramsay wonders at the early development of their capacity for strife and prejudice: "They were so critical, her children" (17).

One of the guests, Mr. Bankes, relates his singular method of distinguishing the children one from another: "As for being sure which was which, or in what order they came, that was beyond him. He called them privately after the Kings and Queens of England; Cam the Wicked, James the Ruthless, Andrew the Just, Prue the Fair -- for Prue would have beauty, he thought, how could she help it? -- and Andrew brains" (37). Mr. Ramsay, himself, makes the following assessment of his role as father: "The father of eight children -- he reminded himself. And he would have been a beast and a cur to wish a single thing altered. Andrew would be a better man than he had been. Prue would be a beauty, her mother said. They would stem the flood a bit. That was a good bit of work on the whole -- his eight children" (106).

From Mrs. Ramsay's point of view comes the one list in the book to mention every child. She presents a brief but full bodied portrait of each, thinking of James and Cam first with especial longing, for they are her babies:

"Oh but she never wanted James to grow a day older! Or Cam either. These two she would have liked to keep for ever just as they were, demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into long - legged monsters. Nothing made up for the loss. . . . why should they grow up and lose all that? . . . She would have liked always to have had a baby. She was happiest carrying one in her arms. . . . Prue, a perfect angel with the others, and sometimes now, at night especially, she took one's breath away with her beauty. Andrew -- even her husband admitted that his gift for mathematics was extraordinary. And Nancy and Roger, they were both wild creatures. . . . As for Rose, her mouth was too big, but she had a wonderful gift with her hands. . . . She did not like it that Jasper should shoot birds; but it was only a stage; they all went through stages. Why she asked, pressing her chin on James's head, should they grow up so fast? . . . And, touching his hair with her lips, she thought, he will never be so happy again. . . . They were happier now than they would ever be again. A tenpenny tea set made Cam happy for days." (89 - 90)

She sees the mortality of her children; and despite the promise she sees in each one, she senses the fleeting quality of their happiness and their childhood. She questions the temporariness and the temporality of their existence, but she does not consider immortality, only their earthly happiness. She does not want them ever to grow away from the state of "radical innocence" that Yeats refers to in his poem "A Prayer for My Daughter":

Prayer For My Daughter
Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.

William Butler Yeats, 1865 - 1939
Irish poet and dramatist
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1923

[See previous posts:
September 14, 2009
November 28, 2010]

Mrs. Ramsay's wish for her children is as fervent as Yeats' but not as hopeful. She wishes for a prolongation of childhood rather than a recovery of innocence. She has no faith in reparation for loss nor in any power which will guarantee happiness to her children in the face of unkindness and upheaval. Instead she wishes that neither she nor they would ever lose the days of their innocence. When she says, "Nothing made up for the loss," she thinks of her own loss as the mother of little dependent children. But knowing how they will slip away, she resigns herself, thinking of Mr. Ramsay's accusation that she is "pessimistic" and has a "gloomy view of life" (91). Though her view of life and time passing angers her husband, the nostalgia she anticipates and her clear sense of loss and finality ("She thought life -- and a little strip of time presented itself to her eyes," 91) is not unfounded. It is, in fact, confirmed by the detached narrator of the middle section of the novel who impartially and in merest passing records the deaths of Prue in childbirth, Andrew at war, and Mrs. Ramsay herself in the night.

Prue's early death, though, is quite the opposite of the future envisioned for her by her mother. For despite Mrs. Ramsay's private certainty that "there was no treachery too base for the world to commit" (98), she holds out hope and endurance to her children:

" . . . she must admit that she felt this thing that she called life terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a chance. There were the eternal problems: suffering; death; the poor. There was always a woman dying of cancer even here. And yet she said to all these children, You shall go through it all. To eight people she said relentlessly that." (92)

Tablescape by Katy Bunder

At the dinner party, Mrs. Ramsay notices that Prue is "just beginning, just moving, just descending" into the adult world (164) and protectively wills that Prue shall have a happy future. In her concern for Prue's contentment, Mrs. Ramsay mirrors another of the desires expressed in Yeats' "Prayer," his hope that his daughter will be blessed with a loving mate and a happy home, grounded on the stability and affirmation of tradition. She expresses her appreciation of a place "where all's accustomed." She knows the significance of being "rooted in one dear perpetual place."

Mrs. Ramsay joys in her children ("For one's children so often gave one's own perceptions a little thrust forward," 122); and she is sensitive to their aches and pains, especially their emotional woes. Her heart breaks at the thought of James' disappointment when the excursion to the lighthouse is cancelled. The novel is punctuated by her motherly concern for James's frustrated expedition and a desire to somehow make up to him what cannot be made up.

She is sympathetic also with her creative daughter, Rose, seeing that in some ways they are so alike. In the scene preceding the famous dinner party, Mrs. Ramsay is seen at her most intimate and relaxed with the two children, Rose and Jasper, who visit her room before dinner, ministering to her as she looks to them to inspire her perceptions. She is happy, teasing and indulging them as they help her decide what necklace to wear to dinner.

She urges them to hurry with the jewels, " 'choose, dearests, choose.' " She is not loathe to be associated with their choices. She is patient, knowing that Rose has "some hidden reason of her own for attaching great importance to this choosing what her mother was to wear. . . . And Rose would grow up; and Rose would suffer, she supposed with these deep feelings. . . . Choose me a shawl, she said, for that would please Rose, who was bound to suffer so." She identifies closely with Rose and realizes that her feelings for Rose are for herself as well. When exploring her own bewilderment over Rose's little ceremony of choosing the jewels, she thinks, "Like all feelings felt for oneself . . . it made one sad" (122 - 23).

Mrs. Ramsay is intuitive and creative, exhibiting love and care and motherly concern in numerous instances throughout the first section of the novel. She is filled with anxiety on her children's behalf, but also with pride. Fearing that the children are about to erupt in laughter over some private joke at dinner, she says to them -- by way of maintaining order and altering the dinner table dynamic: " 'Light the candles' " (145). Standing down the length of the table and illuminating an elaborate centerpiece designed by Rose, the tall candles number eight, just as Mrs. Ramsay's children do.
Happy Mother's Day!
Tablescape by Tina McCartney

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Monday, May 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

My friend Jill sent me the little wreath of roses a couple of years ago, and I put it inside this larger Easter wreath to make a summery candleholder.

Except Thou Bless Me

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

JACOB'S LADDER ~ BY MARC CHAGALL
"And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth,
and the top of it reached to heaven:
and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it."
Genesis 28:12
Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, 1963
by Marc Chagall, 1887 - 1985
And Jacob said to the angel,
"I will not let thee go, except thou bless me."
Genesis 32:26
Art
In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt--a wind to freeze;
Sad patience--joyous energies;
Humility--yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity--reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel--Art.

Herman Melville, 1819 - 1891
American novelist, essayist, poet

I first became aware of Melville's mystical wrestling poem in the most interesting way: I saw it inscribed -- painted as a border -- around a prophetic looking, circular ceiling mural in the lobby of an apartment highrise in Chicago. I was in that vestibule a few times many years ago but am now not even entirely sure what building it was. How I would love to see it again! The question is, do I have the courage to approach the door-keeper and say, "Excuse me, I don't live here or know anyone who lives here, but could I please step inside and glance at your ceiling?!" A few friends have suggested that such a request might not be ill - received. Audacity -- reverence. Right? But where to start? I've actually thought of asking a realtor to help me, since agents probably have access to such buildings that are otherwise closed to the general public.

Could it be one of these?

Melville's poem and the following essay by Isak Dinesen are both inspired by the same reference from the Book of Genesis. Biblical scholar, Jonathan Kirsch says that "The same curious phenomenon of God as changeling is found throughout the Hebrew Bible: Is it God, or an angel, or merely a mortal man who wrestles with Jacob by night and is defeated by Jacob at sunrise" (53). This is about all that Kirsch has to say about Jacob's confrontation with the Angel; I was hoping he would explicate this particular story further, as he does with so many others in his fascinating book, The Harlot By the Side of the Road: Forbidden Tales of the Bible. Perhaps he does so in one of his other books that I have not yet looked at.

Hopefully, I will find time to read more soon, for Kirsch has a way of retelling a story so that you cannot forget it, even if you want to! And I could not agree more when he says that "the King James Version is a fundamental work of Western literature . . . Some modern translators are much more forthcoming about the 'forbidden' elements of the Bible than the KJV . . . Still, the newer Bible translations that have replaced the stately old KJV have not matched its grandeur and resonance of language. The new translations are more accurate in their scholarship, more forthcoming in their exploration of history, linguistics,and theology, but something has been sacrificed in the process" (330 - 31).

Isak Dinesen applies Jacob's concept of blessing in a thoughtful and thought - provoking way. In this brief and poignant excerpt from Out of Africa, blessing is bestowed not only by gods and angels, but by the sky, the weather, the house, the good times and the bad, the friends and the memories. Dinesen insists that all of these must bless her before they go away:

"I Will Not Let Thee Go Except Thou Bless Me"
When in Africa in March the long rains begin after four months of hot, dry weather, the richness of growth and the freshness and fragrance everywhere are overwhelming.

But the farmer holds back his heart and dares not trust to the generosity of nature, he listens, dreading to hear a decrease in the roar of the failing rain. The water that the earth is now drinking in must bring the farm, with all the vegetable, animal and human life on it, through four rainless months to come.

It is a lovely sight when the roads of the farm have all been turned into streams of running water, and the farmer wades through the mud with a singing heart, out to the flowering and dripping coffee-fields. But it happens in the middle of the rainy season that in the evening the stars show themselves through the thinning clouds; then he stands outside his house and stares up, as if hanging on to the sky to milk down more rain. He cries to the sky: "Give me enough and more than enough. My heart is bared to thee now, and I will not let thee go except thou bless me. . . .

Sometimes a cool, colourless day in the months after the rainy season calls back the time of the drought. In those days the Kikuyu used to graze their cows around my house, and a boy amongst them who had a flute, from time to time played a short tune on it. When I have heard this tune again, it has recalled in one single moment all our anguish and despair of the past. It has got the salt taste of tears in it. But at the same time I found in the tune, unexpectedly surprisingly, a vigour, a curious sweetness, a song. Had those hard times really had all these in them? There was youth in us then, a wild hope. . . . we were all of us merged into a unity . . . That bad time blessed us and went away.

The friends of the farm came to the house, and went away again. They were not the kind of people who stay for a long time in the same place. They were not the kind of people either who grow old, they died and never came back. But they had sat contented by the fire, and when the house, closing round them, said: "I will not let you go except you bless me," they laughed and blessed it, and it let them go. . . .
My life, I will not let you go except you bless me,
but then I will let you go." (285 - 87)

from Out of Africa
by Isak Dinesen, 1815 - 1962
Danish writer (in English), plantation owner (in Kenya)

***********************************Jacob's Battle with the Angel, 1893
by Maurice Denis, 1870 - 1843
For more on this topic,
see "The Story I Wrestle With"
by Alissa Goudswaard

And this anonymous quotation:"The outcome of this first test, then, is a sense of bitter thinking. Wounded in its first upsurge, in its very essence, the heart bleeds and appears torn for ever. And yet you live and you have to love in order to continue living; you love with apprehension, with defiance, and little by little, looking around you, you realize that life is not as sad as you had judged it to be. A steadier heart accepts the obstacles, the sorrows, the disgusts even; sure of itself, it anticipates them, fights them, and sometimes changes them into blessings. Having learned resignation, it enjoys the happy days more fully, expects them with greater ardor, prolongs them with greater care. Finally it reaches the point of telling itself . . . Allow your heart to beat, allow yourself to be loved, allow fate to take its course. There are lovely days on this earth." (emphasis added)

That bad time blessed us and went away.
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Surface Dwellers

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUSMy Rooms at the Beau Rivage, 1918
by Henri Matisse, 1869 - 1954

"I have often asked myself the reason for the sadness
In a world where tears are just a lullaby . . . "
~ Carole King ~
The following poem has been in my notebook of favorites for thirty years now, since my Arkansas days, back when Bill Clinton was governor. I like the combination of grief and evolutionary biology, the mystery of salt water without and within, the existential quest for meaning -- "Not that we know what we're doing here." Yet, despite our sad lack of comprehension -- "We try to do what's right":

Living on the Surface
The dolphin
walked upon the land a little while
and crawled back to the sea
saying something thereby
about all that we live with.

Some of us
have followed him from time to time.
Most of us stay.
Not that we know what we're doing here.

We do it anyway
lugging a small part of the sea around.
It leaks out our eyes.

We swim inside ourselves
but we walk on the land.

What's wrong, we say, what's wrong?

Think how sadness soaks into
the beds we lie on.

Jesus, we've only just got here.
We try to do what's right
but what do we know?

by American poet Miller Williams (1930 - 2015)
Professor of English and Foreign Languages
and Director of the University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville

Naturalist Annie Dillard draws a similar conclusion in her essay "Teaching a Stone to Talk":

“The mountains are great stone bells; they clang together like nuns. Who shushed the stars? There are a thousand million galaxies easily seen in the Palomar reflector; collisions between and among them do, of course, occur. But these collisions are very long and silent slides. Billions of stars sift among each other untouched, too distant even to be moved, heedless as always, hushed. The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out. But God knows I have tried” (89, emphasis added).

When I read "The Death of the Everglades" in Looking for America by nuclear historian Richard Rhodes, I was immediately reminded of Williams' poem. Rhodes writes that "Florida with its imperceptible seaweed tilt is deceptive, a beach itself dropping slowly into the water, a ramp on which the smallest creature may generation by generation crawl out onto the land. We came from the sea by degrees teaching our flesh to wrap the sea inside it. It courses through us every day of our lives . . . We never returned. The fish left the sea and returned, most of them. . . . The shark, with his bitter blood, never left the sea. He is old and well adapted" (56). Not like us: "we've only just got here."

With characteristic philosophic whimsy, StoryPeople artist and writer Brian Andreas captures the same sentiments. Why does the sea seem so familiar? Because all of our days we carry it around inside of us, like a story we used to know:

Place by the SeaHe kept a piece of algae behind his ear to remind him of his roots. A million years ago every place was a little place by the sea, he would say & my mind would go blank & I would swim through the day without a care in the world & it all seemed so familiar that I knew I would go back someday to my own little place by the sea.
Hidden OceanShe held her grief behind her eyes like an ocean & when she leaned forward into the day it spilled onto the floor & she wiped at it quickly
with her foot & pretended no one had seen.

WhalesI remember when the whales had wings, she said. Whatever happened?
I said. It got to be too noisy with all the airplanes & other stuff, so they flew into the ocean & never came back. Some days, she added, I think about going too.

As Williams points out, the dolphin did try living on the surface for awhile before he settled on the sea, and "Some of us / have followed him from time to time." But for the most part, we struggle along, living on the surface, trying to do what's right.

I am not as familiar with this next poem, which Miller Williams wrote for Bill Clinton, as I am with "Living on the Surface," but I include it here for historical context. I know that Williams has been friends with Clinton since the early 70's when Clinton was also teaching at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

Following Robert Frost, who read "The Gift Outright" for John F. Kennedy in 1961, and fellow Arkansan Maya Angelou, who recited a poem for President Clinton in 1993, Williams was the third poet to recite his work at a presidential inauguration. Elizabeth Alexander, reading at the 2009 Inauguration of Barrack Obama was the fourth.

1997 Inaugural Poem by Miller Williams:

Of History and Hope
We have memorized America,
how it was born and who we have been and where.
In ceremonies and silence we say the words,
telling the stories, singing the old songs.
We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.
The great and all the anonymous dead are there.
We know the sound of all the sounds we brought.
The rich taste of it is on our tongues.
But where are we going to be, and why, and who?
The disenfranchised dead want to know.
We mean to be the people we meant to be,
to keep on going where we meant to go.
But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how
except in the minds of those who will call it Now?
The children. The children. And how does our garden grow?
With waving hands -- oh, rarely in a row --
and flowering faces. And brambles, that we can no longer allow.
Who were many people coming together
cannot become one people falling apart.
Who dreamed for every child an even chance
cannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not.
Whose law was never so much of the hand as the head
cannot let chaos make its way to the heart.
Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to child
cannot let ignorance spread itself like rot.
We know what we have done and what we have said,
and how we have grown, degree by slow degree,
believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become --
just and compassionate, equal, able, and free.
All this in the hands of children, eyes already set
on a land we never can visit -- it isn't there yet --
but looking through their eyes, we can see
what our long gift to them may come to be.
If we can truly remember, they will not forget.

[© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company]

And one last connection:
try listening to this beautiful cover of
"Gentle on my Mind,"
sung by the daughter of Miller Williams,
country rock singer and songwriter,
Lucinda Williams.

Rooms by the Sea, 1951by Edward Hopper, 1882–1967
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, April 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
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my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com