The Place I Needed to Go

LEAP DAY
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS,
SPIRITUALLY SIGNIFICANT

from Expecting Adam
by Martha Beck
"I did, at long last, realize that it didn't really matter
what anyone else's opinion of my decision might be.
What mattered was that I had made a choice that felt as though,
in the end, it would bring me to the place I needed to go."
[emphasis added]

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

Since the opportunities for celebrating Leap Day
are relatively rare and complicated, it would be
a shame to let the quadrennial chance pass by unobserved.
Thus, in the magical spirit of this expansive day of contemplation,
here is a selection of soul - searching, consciousness - expanding
mantras and connections. But first, a little joke:

Source: me.me

Thanks to my teleki - nieces and teleki - nephews
for all the good vibes & Empowering Tchotchkes!

Kinetic Carlie:

Chantel:

Corbin:
“If you want to be a good Hero, you
have to learn how to be a good Human."

Hans & Jerrod:

Jessi:

Aaron: On Patriotism & Feminism

More Autumn Fun

Dan:

Sara:

Anna:
No matter how serious the issues,
the nieces & nephews
never lose their sense of humor!

Amanda, Brittany & Kiyah:

Previous Leap Year Posts
Fortnightly: 2012 & 2016
Quotidian: 2016
And John Mulaney on SNL

Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, March 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Leap Day Nephews & Nieces
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

Dreaming of Snow

THE ARRIVAL OF SNOW:
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

My Aunt Sue shared the drawing because it reminded her of my house, so I searched through my various snow / Christmas photos, trying to find a close match. I settled on the one below, because of the pine boughs hanging on the porch railings and the neutral tones of the background sky (once before on a Fortnightly post).

December 22, 2009

On this cloudy day . . . Snow added its cubits to the stature of the roof, the trees, the picnic tables spread as if with that hidden fabric called 'the silence cloth' by housewives who keep it under the finer damask one, to absorb the clatter of dishes and silver. Snow softened the bare limbs of the bushes.

Under its roof of ice, the river sent up bubbles: the telegraphed laments of the fish.

A single twig was now a thing of great beauty: a wand, a power, a glory. A sign.

~ from Things Invisible to See, 94
~ by Nancy Willard (1936 - 2017)

A couple of weeks ago (February 1), I heard an intriguing anecdote about someone who begins every New Year by rereading the novel Things Invisible to See. The title was new to me, but not the author: that name rang a bell, so I took a look through my files and anthologies. There it was, a beautiful, dreamy snow poem. Interestingly, the image of snow as tablecloth (emphasis added) appears in both the novel and the poem:

The Snow Arrives After Long Silence

The snow arrives after long silence
from its high home where nothing leaves
tracks or stains or keeps time.
The sky it fell from, pale as oatmeal,
bears up like sheep before shearing.

The cat at my window watches
amazed. So many feathers and no bird!
All day the snow sets its table
with clean linen, putting its house
in order. The hungry deer walk

on the risen loaves of snow.
You can follow the broken hearts
their hooves punch in its crust.
Night after night the big plows rumble
and bale it like dirty laundry

and haul it to the Hudson.
Now I scan the sky for snow,
and the cool cheek it offers me,
and its body, thinned into petals,
and the still caves where it sleeps.

by Nancy Willard

When I googled "The Snow Arrives After Long Silence" to see what I could learn about this poem, I was rewarded with the perfect wintry coincidence. I discovered a snowy reverie by novelist Alison McGhee, who mentions Willard's poem on her
poetry blog . McGhee is the author of one of my favorite novels, Shadow Baby, about twin girls, Clara and Daphne Winter, born in an Upstate New York blizzard.

Two great novels for a snowy winter weekend:
Shadow Baby & Things Invisible to See

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

Another Favorite Card
This one is from my friend Steven,
"because it sort of resembles your house!"

Dreams of a White Christmas
brought to you by:
Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870): "During Charles Dickens’ childhood there was an unusually high number of white Christmas[es]. 6 out of 9 of his childhood Christmases were white." When he grew up and became a writer, these snowy Christmases were the ones that he described and recorded for posterity.

Irving Berlin (1888 - 1989): "No one dreamed of a ‘White Christmas’ before this song."

Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953): "One Christmas was so much like the other, in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve, or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six." ~ from A Child's Christmas in Wales

Numerous 19th & 20th C lyricists and composers, many of whom include visions of snow in their depictions of the first Christmas, an old - fashioned Christmas, or an ideal Christmas.

Children Skating by Percy Tarrant (1855 - 1934)
~ father of the artist Margaret Tarrant (1888 - 1959) ~

See also: "An Eternal February Day"
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, February 29th ~ LEAP DAY!

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ "Waiting for the Big Snow"
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

Do You Hear What I Hear?

A BLACK HOLE IN SPACE
WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"Despite the hour, the Kremlin shimmered with electric light from every window, as if its newest denizens were still too drunk with power to sleep. But if the lights of the Kremlin shimmered brightly, like all earthly lights before them they were diminished in their beauty by the majesty of the constellations overhead.

"Craning his neck, the count tried to identify the few that he had learned in his youth: Perseus, Orion, the Great Bear, each flawless and eternal. To what end, he wondered, had the Divine created the stars in heaven to fill a person with feelings of inspiration one day and insignificance the next?” (p.125, emphasis added)

From A Gentleman in Moscow
By American novelist Amor Towles (b 1964)

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

The Collision of Two Black Holes ~ Watch!
Four years ago, in February 2016, came the news that physicists had detected "ripples in the fabric of space and time called gravitational waves," the result of two massive black holes colliding, over a billion years ago.

Einstein’s right again: Scientists detect ripples in gravity
by Seth Borenstein ~ February 11, 2016

from the article: "It was just a tiny, almost imperceptible 'chirp,' but it simultaneously opened humanity’s ears to the music of the cosmos and proved Einstein right again.

In what is being hailed as one of the biggest eureka moments in the history of physics, scientists . . . have finally detected gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space and time that Einstein predicted a century ago.

. . . Because the evidence of gravitational waves is captured in audio form, the finding means astronomers will now be able to hear the soundtrack of the universe and listen as violent collisions reshape the cosmos.

It will be like going from silent movies to talkies, they said."

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

“It is by far the most powerful explosion humans
have ever detected except for the big bang."

~ Kip Thorne, gravitational theorist ~

Thorne said that when he heard about the wave
“it was just sort of a sigh of happiness.”
[emphasis added]

************************
Three years after the "chirp" of the gravitational wave, came another historic moment. In April 2019, scientists around the world were rewarded, after two years of collaborative research, with direct pictures of two black holes.

Here is the first photo of a black hole.
by Nsikan Akpan ~ April 10, 2019

from the article: "Black holes are the architects of stars. Black holes 'are sinkholes in spacetime,' said Sera Markoff, a member of the Event Horizon Telescope science council. 'They’re helping mold the shape of galaxies and clusters of galaxies.'

". . . Black holes have captivated scientists for two centuries. Despite decades of indirect evidence supporting their existence, black holes have never been captured by camera — until now. Aside from helping to resolve Einstein’s theories, this first image of black hole may reveal how the universe started and how it might end."

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

Another way of perceiving gravitational waves:

Photo by Joe McNally
In this time-exposure shot of one of
LIGO’s interferometer arms in Livingston, Louisiana,
the red lights symbolize gravitational waves,
producing "a tiny, almost imperceptible 'chirp'"

The combination of red and blue light in the gravitation wave brings to mind my favorite feature at the Indianapolis Airport: the ceiling light installation on the covered pedestrian walkway that joins the parking garage to the main terminal:

Title: Connections [Click to watch!]
Artists: Cameron McNall and Damon Seeley
From: Electroland ~ Los Angeles, California
Installation: 2008 ~ Category: Permanent
Materials: Interactive lights with sound; 140 feet by 28 feet
Location: Pedestrian Bridge ~ Indianapolis Airport

As described on the IND website, in the light installation entitled Connections, "Cameron McNall and Damon Seeley have composed orchestrated patterns of color punctuated with blips, dings and other digital sounds actively 'responding' to human movement . . .

"The artistic duo leading the L.A. based firm Electroland, was enticed by the human dynamics and traffic moving throughout the walking bridge at all times. McNall and Seeley set out to create what they call animated art – a combination of light, sound and proprietary movement-tracking technology. When someone enters the pedestrian bridge at Indianapolis International Airport (IND), a path of lights overhead follows that person's steps; once another person enters from the opposite end, the lights form a pattern spanning the distance between the two, serving as a visual cue of their 'connection' by virtue of inhabiting the same space at the same time." [emphasis added]

************************
In conjunction -- coincidence and connection! -- with the gravitational audio and the black hole visuals, I came across a couple of other posts concerning our aural perception of the universe and the music of the spheres. Coincidentally, despite their celestial nature, these narratives seem connected to our daily worries and methods for managing anxiety and sensory overload.

Life Beyond the Mind
by Eckhart Tolle ~ April 8, 2019

"How can we define ourselves
beyond our continuous mental noise?"

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

Kundalini Yoga: The God Syllable "AUM"
by Joseph Campbell ~ April 12, 2019
also available on amazon

"What is the sound that is not made
by any two things striking together?
It is AUM.
It is the sound of the energy of the universe
of which all things are manifestations."

The three letters of AUM represent the three vibrations inherent in creation:
the energy to create, the energy to preserve, the energy to dissolve.

************************
Echoing the words of Count Rostov above -- "inspiration one day and insignificance the next" -- one dear reader has observed that this chain of connections, from gravitational waves to black holes, from Eckhart Tolle to Joseph Campbell, is a great reminder of "both how small we are (as personalities) and also how big we are as an expression of this infinite symphony of existence."

Music of the Spheres
Pachelbel Canon in D Major ~ Fantastic Version
The Voyager Golden Records

May the Fourth Be With You! ~ 2013

Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, February 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ "Chirps, Blips, Dings"
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

At the Heart of the Well

THE SACRED WELL AT CHICHEN ITZA
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Ancient Mayan Sacrifice
by archaeological painter, Herbert M. Herget (1885 - 1950)
for National Geographic Magazine (1936)
Artist's impression of Cenote [say-NO-tay] Sacrifice
~ not necessarily historically accurate ~

~ At The Mouth of the Well of Magic Water ~

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

Picking up where we left off last time with
Margaret Atwood's story "The Resplendent Quetzel":
The story's focal point is an ancient sacrificial well, a pre - Columbian ruin whose imposing presence governs the private thoughts of both Edward and Sarah. Edward, for example, imagines "picking Sarah up and hurling her over the edge, down into the sacrificial well. Anything to shatter that imperturbable expression, bland and pale and plump and smug, like a Flemish Madonna's. . . . But it wouldn't work: as she fell she would glance at him, not with fear but with maternal irritation" (148).

Sitting in the shade near the well, Sarah hears a tour guide explain that "archaeologists have dived down into the well. They have dredged up more than fifty skeletons, and they have found that some of them were not virgins at all but men. Also, most of them were children. So as you can see, that is the end of the popular legend" (156). Before arriving at the village, Sarah had imagined that the well would be "smaller, more like a wishing well" (144), three coins in the fountain and all that. But, no, it is more impressive than she expected, much deeper, historically significant, part swamp yet part sacred orifice, repulsive yet mysterious. The mood of the vacation -- the myth - shattering well, the Mexican village, the shabby restaurant, the motley Nativity display, the misplaced baby doll -- has inspired Sarah to proceed with a purification ritual of her own.

Much to the reader's surprise, she withdraws from her purse the plaster Christ Child that, the narrator now reveals, she had stolen from the creche the night before. Even Sarah is surprised at herself: "It was inconceivable to her that she had done such a thing, but there it was, she really had. She hadn't planned it beforehand. . . . She'd just suddenly reached out her hand, past the Wise Men and through the door of the stable, picked the child up and put it into her purse" (156). Sarah's act of petty theft is motivated by an instinctive urge to categorize the doll as a miniature, inanimate replication of humanity. She lifts the doll from the manger in an impulsive moment of vision, and it becomes a participant in the drama of human existence.

Remembering how enormous the doll had looked in the sacred yet vulgar setting of the Nativity, she now perceives it differently: "Separated from the dwarfish Virgin and Joseph, it didn't look quite so absurd". She "placed the baby on the rock beside her . . . stood up . . . picked up the child and walked slowly towards the well, until she was standing at the very brink." The narrative shifts abruptly to Edward's perspective. He sees Sarah standing "at the well's edge, her arms raised above her head." He fears that she is preparing to jump in, "but she merely drew back her right arm and threw something into the well" (158).

The reader knows, as Edward does not, that the hurtled object is the Baby Jesus, sent to release them all -- father, mother, and stillborn child -- from the limbo in which they hang. As the tour guide explained previously, the early Mayans did not perform this ritual out of cruelty, nor does Sarah. She has sent the inanimate surrogate of her own child as a messenger to the liquid gods who live in the watery paradise at the bottom of the ancient well. Perhaps Edward and Sarah's quest for the Resplendent Quetzal -- the Holy Grail, the jewel, the precious feather -- has not been in vain.

Will all be well for Sarah? Not clear. She has looked into the abyss of abjection, the frighteningly deep sacrificial well, the land of oblivion. The story does not end optimistically, but somehow the unlikely grouping in the Mexican bar -- the headless Wise Man, the St. Nicholas night - light, and the whimsical Fred Flintstone -- have enabled her to confront the haunting memories of disappointment and loss. Mary and Joseph may be well out of their depth with their elephant - sized baby, yet the sight of this disproportionate Holy Family has shifted Sarah's sense of perspective.
***********************

"On the bar beside the television set there was a creche, with three painted plaster Wise Men, one on an elephant, the others on camels. The first Wise Man was missing his head. Inside the stable a stunted Joseph and Mary adored an enormous Christ Child which was more than half as big as the elephant. Sarah wondered how the Mary could possibly have squeezed out this colossus; it made her uncomfortable to think about it. Beside the creche was a Santa Claus haloed with flashing lights, and beside that a radio in the shape of Fred Flintstone, which was paying American popular songs, all of them ancient." (152)

from "The Resplendent Quetzel"
in Dancing Girls and Other Stories
by Margaret Atwood (b 1939)
Canadian activist, novelist, poet

Previous Fortnightly Post
At the Heart of the Creche

Frosty and Abominable Bring Gifts for Colbert

[Click to see many more funny nativities]
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, January 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ All ~Hallowed~ Nativities
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

At the Heart of the Creche

MANGER SCENE, ACCUSTOMED . . .
NO WAIT! UNACCUSTOMED . . .
YET ODDLY CEREMONIOUS!

"And Batman said,
'Peace, good will toward all. Except Joker.' "
[Click to see many more funny nativities]

"On the bar beside the television set there was a creche, with three painted plaster Wise Men, one on an elephant, the others on camels. The first Wise Man was missing his head. Inside the stable a stunted Joseph and Mary adored an enormous Christ Child which was more than half as big as the elephant. Sarah wondered how the Mary could possibly have squeezed out this colossus; it made her uncomfortable to think about it. Beside the creche was a Santa Claus haloed with flashing lights, and beside that a radio in the shape of Fred Flintstone, which was paying American popular songs, all of them ancient." (152)

from "The Resplendent Quetzal"
in Dancing Girls and Other Stories
by Margaret Atwood (b 1939)
Canadian activist, novelist, poet
This unlikely Nativity Scene establishes the tone for Atwood's troubling story of Mother and Child. The main character, Sarah, is the pained and haughty Madonna, a figure tortured by birth on the one hand, yet smugly content on the other, and emotionally distant from her husband Edward. The "resplendent quetzal" of the title is a bird found in Mexican cloud forests that Sarah would like to see during the vacation that she and Edward are taking. She has been thumbing through his handbook, The Birds of Mexico: "Quetzal Bird meant Feather Bird . . . A jewel, a precious feather."

Sarah is sadly reminded of her recent pregnancy and stillborn child when she spies the absurdly unlikely Nativity grouping in one of the tasteless restaurants that Edward insists will supply them with a bit of "local colour." Here the confrontation between the sacred and the secular becomes almost shockingly, ludicrously complicated. In this pastiche, the religious landscape is populated by at least as many secular representatives as sacred ones. The boundaries between the two worlds have been all but erased, with abstract mythologized figures and cartoon characters worshipping side by side at the very heart of the creche.

Sarah clearly sees herself as the too - small Mary and finds it uncomfortable just thinking about the enormous baby doll. The way in which she was drained emotionally by her pregnancy and the way in which she felt neglected by Edward are the memories that make eating dinner in the squalid restaurant "even more depressing than it should have been, especially the creche. It was painful . . ." (152).

The Big Boy!

Atwood's juxtaposition of the stunted Mary and the enormous Christ Child is reminiscent of the portrayal in Marilyn French's novel The Women's Room of a tiny Barbie doll acting as mother to a huge baby doll. Much like Sarah, the character Adele struggles with issues of inadequacy and proportion. A tired wife and mother, Adele overhears her daughter Linda playing dolls. The child takes on first the voice of the mother doll, then the voice of the whining baby doll. The scenario Linda creates with her dolls is a parody in miniature of Adele's own life, and of course the dialogue of Linda's drama is drawn from her own conversations with her mother and those she has overheard. The symbolism is obvious -- that the mother feels overwhelmed by the children, whose energy and presence seems to loom so much larger than her own:

"Linda was squatting on the floor, playing with her doll.

'Now you're a bad girl, a bad, bad girl,' she was saying as she slapped the doll on its bottom several times. 'You go straight in your room and don't come out! And don't wake up the baby!' her little voice said angrily. She put the baby doll on its feet and marched it toward the couch.

'Mmmmmm,' she whined, 'I didn't mean it, Mommy,' she said in a tiny high voice.

'You did so and you're bad!' she said in her Mommy voice, and threw the baby doll down on the floor on its face. The baby doll was eighteen inches long; the Mommy doll was small, less than a foot tall. She put an apron on Barbie, and said in a calm, happy voice: 'I wonder what I should make for Daddy's supper tonight. I know, I'll make a chocolate cake with raisins, and bacon.' Then she paraded the Barbie doll around in a circle, humming all the while. 'Hello, dear,' she said in an artificial voice. 'How was your day today? Guess what I've made? Chocolate cake with raisins!' There was a silence, in which presumably the father answered. 'Oh yes, it's been one of those days. After you eat, I want you to go in and spank that baby, she was so bad today! Isn't this chocolate cake delicious?' " (135)

from The Women's Room
by Marilyn French (1929 - 2009)
American feminist and author

See also: Margaret Atwood & Marilyn French
@ The Quotidian Kit

~ CONTINUED NEXT TIME ~

Batman makes another appearance ~ this time as Joseph!

Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, January 14th ~ At the Heart of the Well

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ All ~Hallowed~ Nativities
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

Celine & Florine

THE STETTIES, ACCUSTOMED CEREMONIOUS

The Amazing Stettheimer Sisters ~ 2017 Exhibition
Portrait of Myself
Portrait of My Sister Carrie W. Stettheimer
Portrait of My Sister, Ettie Stettheimer
All three paintings by Florine Stettheimer ~ 1923

Florine, 1871–1944
Caroline (Carrie) 1869 – 1944
Henrietta (Ettie / aka Henri Waste) 1875 – 1955

Victoria Reis: "Stettheimer’s portrait of her younger sister Ettie places her in a dark, starlit setting in front of a combination burning bush-Christmas tree, perhaps to signify the family’s cultural assimilation as Jews who celebrated Christmas. Like Florine, the subject also appears to be floating in space, lounging on a red fainting couch. An ornament on the tree, a red book inscribed with the name “Ettie,” represents Ettie’s role as the author and intellectual of the family."

Stettheimer's Christmas painting is the perfect accompaniment to this poem -- by my friend ~ Celine -- that I came across when looking through an old Christmas scrapbook from grad school days:

Presents

Presents wrapped in paper --
presents tied with bows!
Outward signs can help us
signal deeper things we know.

Can any gift be greater
than the persons in this place,
each given to the others
for beauty, joy, and grace?

But

will we stop today to stare
at each and every face?
Will we take the time to care,
or just hurry on and race

to open

presents wrapped in paper --
presents tied with bows?

Outward signs can help us
signal gifts we could forget

we know.

Merry Christmas and Blessings

Always ~ Sister Celine Carrigan
December 13, 1983

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

Thanks also to my friend Katie,
who recently sent me a passage from Rilke’s
Book of Hours that echoes the message of Celine's poem
that a true present cannot be contained within a gift box:

"I don’t want to think a place for you.
Speak to me from everywhere.
Your gospel can be comprehended
without looking for its source.
When I go toward you it is with my whole life."

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

And this from Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening:
How I Learned the Unexpected Joy
of a Green Thumb and an Open Heart
by Carol Wall (1951 - 2014)

“It occurred to me that friendship itself could be a kind of church.”

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

And, finally, this blessing from G. K. Chesterton, which
captures the creative and varied life of "The Stetties":

“You say grace before meals. All right.
But I say grace before the concert and the opera,
and grace before the play and pantomime,
and grace before I open a book,
and grace before sketching, painting, swimming,
fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing
and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”
[See also Michaelmas & Martinmas]

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

The Stettheimer sisters ~ "The Stetties" ~ with their mother
by Florine Stettheimer

Family Portrait I, 1915

Family Portrait II, 1933

Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, December 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