Talk to Me

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUSGERRY'S HOBBY: GARDENING
No doubt in the last year or so, you've been subjected to way too many get - to - know you quizzes on e-mail and facebook.* They can be silly, but also mildly entertaining. Talking and listening to them, is probably a better way to get to know folks, but occasionally the quizzes are informative, especially if you care to learn various odd facts about your friends and acquaintances . . . such as:

What was your childhood ambition?
To sing on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour.

Do you like your handwriting?
When I can read it.

What is your favorite Crayola Crayon?
Burnt Sienna.

Would you bungee jump?
Are you kidding?

What is your favorite sport?
Is reading a sport?

Chocolate or vanilla?
Duh! Chocolate.

Red or pink?
Red.

Summer or winter?
Summer for swimming; Autumn (THE BEST!)for Halloween;
Winter for Christmas; Spring just for a change.

That kind of thing . . .

I particularly appreciated the rather more innovative quiz that turned Hobbies into a two part question: Stated Hobby (Writing cards & letters) and Secret Hobby (Rewriting history). I also really liked one of the items that my cousin Alicia included in her list of hobbies: "Thinking."

I've always claimed to be the kind of person who doesn't mind standing in line or waiting at the airport -- AS LONG AS I HAVE A BOOK TO READ. Without a book, I would go crazy crazy crazy and start scrambling around desperately for any available reading material: an old map in the glove box, an orthodontia brochure, the nutritional information on a candy wrapper. However, after seeing my cousin's answer, I became a different person. Of course, the best plan is to never leave home without at least two books. I recommend "two," because what if you finish the first one and need another? But if for some reason, I end up stuck somewhere without one, I just say to myself, "Well, it's too bad you can't read right now, but -- look on the bright side -- you can think." Lucky me, getting to spend some time unexpectedly on one of my favorite hobbies!

My friend Milly also gave a perspective - changing answer to the hobby question. She claimed "Talking" as one of her hobbies. Naturally, talking has always been one of my favorite (time - wasting?) activities. After reading Milly's quiz, however, I perceived it anew -- as a hobby! Not time down the drain but a creative endeavor, an artistic pursuit, a cultivated skill. Personally fulfilling, but also leading to knowledge and experience, leisurely but also life - enhancing.

The poets agree:

Antoine de Saint-Exupery (French author and aviator, b. 1900 - lost in flight 1944) gives us the mystical Little Prince who wants a friend and learns to listen. He comes to see that it's the time he has spent listening to his rose, even when she is sullen, that makes her so important in his life (The Little Prince 24).

Walt Whitman (great American humanist, transcendentalist, and free verse poet, 1819 - 92) confides, "This hour I tell things in confidence, / I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you ("Song of Myself," 38).

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (American author and aviator, 1906 - 2001) is intense and single-minded: " . . . it is not possible to talk wholeheartedly to more than one person at a time. You can't really talk with a person unless you surrender to them, for the moment (all other talk is futile). You can't surrender to more than one person a moment" (Bring Me a Unicorn, 147).

Dame Rebecca West (prolific British writer, 1892 - 1983) describes a similar certain truth: "There was a definite process by which one made people into friends, and it involved talking and listening to them for hours at a time."

Georgia O'Keeffe (American painter of flowers and scenes of the Southwest, 1887 - 1986) agrees that friendship is all about time: "Nobody sees a flower, really -- it is so small -- we haven't time, and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time."

Robert Frost (four-time Pulitzer Prize winning well - loved American poet, 1874 - 1963) has an earnest narrator explain his decision in this wise poem, one of my long - time favorites:

A Time to Talk
by Robert Frost

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

In connection to the above bits of poetry and prose, the following insistent contemporary lyrics keep echoing through my head:

Here Comes the Rain Again
by Eurythmics: Annie Lennox and David Stewart

Here comes the rain again
Falling on my head like a memory
Falling on my head like a new emotion
I want to walk in the open wind
I want to talk like lovers do
I want to dive into your ocean
Is it raining with you

So baby talk to me
Like lovers do
Walk with me
Like lovers do
Talk to me
Like lovers do

Here comes the rain again
Raining in my head like a tragedy . . .

So baby talk -- talk talk talk talk -- to me . . .

I know this song is entitled "Here Comes the Rain Again," but what's the most important line? Talk to me!

Here I am in 1973, talking and listening to my friend Joni
. . . for hours at a time!

*If you're not all quizzed out already, here are a few more:

Quarantine Quiz Shows

Class of '75

Challenges: Special K & Ten Favs

Possible ~ Plausible ~ Improbable

"Christmas Quiz"

"You're Out Walking"

"Take This Quiz!"

"Monday: Pop Quiz"

[Talk to Me]

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, September 14, 2010

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

Opal: In Love With The World

INDIANA WIND FARM: ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"The sky sings in blue tones . . .
The clouds go slow across the sky.
No one seems to be in a hurry.
Even the wind walks slow.
I think the wind is dreaming too.
This is a dream day."

~ Opal Whiteley ~

******************
"The sky sings in blue . . . The earth sings in greens"
Morning is glad on the hills.
The sky sings in blue tones.
Little blue fleurs
are early blooming now.
I do so like blue.
It is glad everywhere.
When I grow up
I am going to write a book
about the glad of blues.
The earth sings in greens. . . .

The clouds go slow across the sky.
No one seems to be in a hurry.
Even the wind walks slow.
I think the wind is dreaming too.
This is a dream day.

~Opal Whiteley
from her childhood diary (92, 151)


















I came to know of the enchanting, mysterious Opal Whiteley (1897 - 1992) a year or so ago when, thanks to the miracle of google, I began following the career of my talented second cousin, Robert Lindsey Nassif, who wrote the script, music, and lyrics for a play (click to watch) based on the childhood experiences of this remarkable woman. Upon learning of Rob's successful musical, I ordered copies of the book and soundtrack and have taken great delight in reading, listening, and learning more about the heroine, American naturalist Opal Whitely. I look forward to the day when I get to see a performance of the play, Opal: A New Musical Adventure (winner of the Richard Rodgers Award). In the meantime, based on my reading, I feel sure that if you ever liked Our Town or The Fantasticks or A Midsummer Night's Dream, then you will be entranced, even gladdened by this play.

Angel Mother did say,
"Make earth glad, little one--
that is the way to keep
the glad song ever in your heart.
It must not go out."

~Opal Whiteley
from her childhood diary (85)
Opal spent her youth immersed in the natural world, much like her nature-loving predecessors, Edith Holden (1871 - 1920; Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady) and Beatrix Potter (1866 - 1943). Her intense communion with the natural landscape, from sweeping vistas to the tiniest insect, brings to mind the writings of Emily Dickinson, Emerson, Thoreau, Annie Dillard. Opal's musings and journal entries describe the out of doors with such vividness, so much trust and so little fear that you feel you could follow her down any woodland path, as in fact many children did during her days as a teacher of geology and natural history.















One of her earliest projects was to create a hand-illustrated textbook, The Fairyland Around Us, based on her popular nature talks; but it was her childhood diary, published in 1920 as The Story of Opal: The Journal of an Understanding Heart, that led to her fame. Both the authenticity of the diary and the circumstances surrounding Whiteley's birth were disputed during her lifetime, and continue to be so even today. Robert Nassif was Opal's friend and confidant in the last few years of her life, and he finds no difficulty in believing that she was an orphan of noble birth and that she did indeed write the diary as a child.

I appreciate his observation that it's best to take the diary at face value -- as the beautiful, perplexing story of an inquisitive little girl's fascination with language; her creative understanding of our connection to Mother Nature; and her amazing grasp of an astonishing array of flora and fauna. Nassif says, "I have no investment in whether or not the diary is true. [It] has no bearing whatsoever on the value of my play. I do not deal with [the issue] in the play; in fact, The New York Times gave me some credit for wisely avoiding that issue. I deal with the diary . . . on a personal level. . . . If the diary were to turn out to be a hoax, I would only admire the author all the more. What an astonishing accomplishment! . . . It doesn't matter to me. It's a phenomenal work of literature. I love Francoise, and so of course I care that she cares, but I am sophisticated enough to be objective, and it doesn't matter to me if her story is true or false. It was true for her, that's all that matters" (254, 260; all ellipses and brackets in original, as quoted in Opal: A Life of Enchantment, Mystery, and Madness by Kathrine Beck).

A few more connections and coincidences:

SIXPENCE HOUSE:My friend Cate and I have a favorite book by Paul Collins: Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books. The town of the title is Hay-on-Wye, and the two of us often fantasize about the trip we will take there someday. So imagine how excited I was to tell Cate about the fate of Opal's vast book collection (I know -- you've already guessed it!): "The rest of the collection was sold in a lot to legendary bookseller Richard Booth, and it ended up in the bookish village of Hay-on-Wye on the Welsh border" (242, Opal: A Life of Enchantment, Beck).

BRIT-SPEAK, AMERI-SPEAK: Like me, Robert's sister is married to a Brit, and I had a lot of fun reading her husband's humorous book about life in the Midwest as seen through British eyes. A Brit Among the Hawkeyes, by Richard, Lord Acton, includes an essay "To Live Again in Music: The Riddle of Opal Whiteley," in which he describes his attendance at two poignant events in February 1992: Opal's funeral mass in London; and the New York premiere of Robert's play Opal: A New Musical Adventure."

LAWN CHAIR MAN: The Flight of the Lawnchair Man is another Robert Nassif Lindsey musical; and no sooner had I purchased and listened to the soundtrack than my mother-in-law mailed me a stack of Telegraph clippings from England. She knows that I'm a fan of Chain of Curiosity * expert Sandi Toksvig, and in this particular batch of "Sandies," as we call them, there just happened to be one about the eccentric (and not really well) Larry Walters, also known as Lawnchair Larry or the Lawn Chair Pilot, who was determined to launch himself skyward in a garden chair attached to a few dozen helium balloons. Nassif's fictional plot is inspired by the attempts of several balloon pilots, including the bizarre flying adventures of Lawnchair Larry.

(* Sandi's chains of curiosity are similar to what I mean on this blog by "Connection and Coincidence"!)

ANIMALS ARE PEOPLE TOO: Like St. Francis of Assisi and Beatrix Potter, Opal Whiteley was devoted to animals. All of her pets were grandly named: Elizabeth Barrett Browning was the cow; Peter Paul Rubens was the pig. Opal wrote in her diary:

So many little people live in the woods.
I do have conversations with them.

When the cornflowers
grow in the fields
I do pick them up,
and make a chain of flowers
for Shakespeare's neck.
Then I do talk to him
about the one he was named for.
He is such a beautiful grey horse
and his ways are ways of gentleness.
Too, he does have likings
like the likings I have
for the blue hills beyond the fields.

Today there was greyness everywhere--
grey clouds in the sky
and grey shadows
above the canyon.
And all the voices were grey
And Felix Mendelssohn* was grey
and down the road I did meet a grey horse--
and his greyness was like the greyness
of William Shakespeare.

[*Mendelssohn was her pet mouse;
another mouse was named Mozart]

Euripedes [pet lamb]
did follow after me.
He does follow me manywheres I do go.
I looked for fleurs that I had longs to see.
I lay my ear close to the ground
where the grasses grew close together.
I did listen.
There were voices from out the earth
and the things of their saying
were the gladness of growing. . . .
All the grasses growing there . . .
from the tips of their green arms
to their toe roots in the ground.

~Opal Whiteley
from her childhood diary
(4, 20, 59, 116)

CHICKENSHED: Opal liked to be called "Francoise" and referred to as "Princess." I can't help thinking of her whenever I listen to the inspiring, all-embracing song by the British theatre company Chickenshed that appears on the "Diana Princes of Wales Tribute" CD. It seems an equally fitting tribute to the Princess Francoise Marie de Bourbon-Orleans. As I have learned from Robert Nassif's dedication to preserving and presenting the story of Opal's life, Opal was in love with the world, even when the world was not entirely on her side. Thank you Opal! Thank you Rob!

I AM IN LOVE WITH THE WORLD
I am in love with the world
With its fires and its seas and its pain
I am in love with the world
As it spins round my soul again

CHORUS
I fell in love with the world
When it gave me a place to be
You cannot fall out of love
With your world shining through
Let your world fall in love with you

You think you're lost to the world
With your life lived in shadows of fear
Days lost without you too long
No-one close no-one kind no-one near

You try to hide when your world dies inside
Never fade away
Dreams turn to stars so you don't
Lose the end of your day
Let your world fall in love with you
With you

I felt your feelings before
And the world tried to pull me through
Through all its time and its space
It is speaking to you

Words and Music by Collins / Morrall

Young Opal Whiteley: In Love With The World!
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, August 28, 2010

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,
including all the titles by and about
Opal Whiteley mentioned in this post
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

The Little Door

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Carriage House in University City, West Philadelphia
Here is the Little Door
Lift up the latch; O lift!
We need not wander more,
but enter with our gift . . . "
~ Chesterton

"Strive to enter through
the narrow door:
for many, I tell you,
will try to enter
and will not be able."
~ Luke 13: 22

[L: The Cutest Playhouse
in all of Philadelphia!]


There are numerous symbolic doors in literature: opening, closing, revolving, inviting, forbidding, remaining locked forever. As I read on a poster once, "There are as many doors as there are desires." Here are four of the most meaningful doors that I have come across in my reading:

1. In Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird,
a door representing one's own humanity:

"We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise, you'll just be rearranging furniture in the rooms you've already been in. Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door shut. But the writer's job is to see what's behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words -- not just any words but if we can, into rhythm and blues.

"You can't do this without discovering your own true voice, and you can't find your true voice and peer behind the door and report honestly and clearly to us if your parents are reading over your shoulder. They are probably the ones who told you not to open that door in the first place. . . .

"'Why, though?' my students ask, staring at me intently. 'Why are we supposed to open all these doors? Why are we supposed to tell the truth in our own voice?'

. . . And it's wonderful to watch someone finally open that forbidden door that has kept him or her away. What gets exposed is not people's baseness but their humanity. It turns out that the truth, or reality, is our home" (198 - 200).

2. In Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnet "Bluebeard,"
a door representing privacy:

This door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed…. Here is no treasure hid,
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain
For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,
But only what you see…. Look yet again—
An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.
Yet this alone out of my life I kept
Unto myself, lest any know me quite;
And you did so profane me when you crept
Unto the threshold of this room to-night
That I must never more behold your face.
This now is yours. I seek another place.

Lamott's words give me courage when my self - editor starts taking over. Her metaphor reminds the writer that keeping a lock on the door does not guarantee safety. Any more than opening it wide insures disaster. In fact, opening up may well put you in less danger, not more. So go ahead and grant yourself the freedom of self - acceptance. However, as Millay warns, just don't go bashing down doors that aren't yours to open. That's not the path to authenticity or humanity.

3. In Franz Kafka's parable, "Before the Law,"
a door representing the Law:

"Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. . . . the law should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but . . . he decides that it would be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside. The gatekeeper gives him a stool and allows him to sit down at the side in front of the gate. There he sits for waiting for days and years."

Nearing the end of his life, the man asks the gatekeeper, "so how is that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?” And the gatekeeper answers: “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.” Can it be true? Following the parable, a discussion of its meaning takes place between K and a priest. The priest points out that perhaps the Door Before the Law can never be shut, and he reminds K that when the man "sits down on the stool by the side the door and stays there for the rest of his life, he does it of his own free will."

Of course my sympathy always lies with the Man Before the Law, never with the bossy, small-minded gatekeeper. Yet I can't shake my mixed feelings about the man's predicament. Yes, the Law can be contrary; we all know that. But how can he allow himself to sit so quietly, never growing impatient at the waiting, the impotence, the lack of useful information? Why doesn't his reach exceed his grasp? It should.

4. In E. B. White's essay, "The Door,"
a door representing (in)sanity:

"First they would teach you the prayers and the Psalms, and that would be the right door(the one with the circle) and the long sweet words with the holy sound, and that would be the one to jump at to get where the food was. Then one day you jumped and it didn't give way, so that all you got was the bump on the nose, and the first bewilderment, the first young bewilderment. . . .

"You wouldn't want me, standing here, to tell you, would you, about my friend the poet (deceased) who said, 'My heart has followed all my days something I cannot name'? (It had the circle on it.) And like many poets, although few so beloved, he is gone. It killed him, the jumping. First, of course, there were the preliminary bouts, the convulsions, and the calm and the willingness.

"I remember the door with the picture of the girl on it (only it was spring), her arms outstretched in loveliness, her dress (it was the one with the circle on it) uncaught, beginning the slow, clear, blinding cascade-and I guess we would all like to try that door again, for it seemed like the way and for a while it was the way, the door would open and you would go through winged and exalted (like any rat) and the food would be there, the way the Professor had it arranged, everything O.K., and you had chosen the right door for the world was young. The time they changed that door on me, my nose bled for a hundred hours--how do you like that, Madam? Or would you prefer to show me further through this so strange house, or you could take my name and send it to me, for although my heart has followed all my days something I cannot name, I am tired of the jumping and I do not know which way to go, Madam, and I am not even sure that I am not tired beyond the endurance of man (rat, if you will) and have taken leave of sanity. What are you following these days, old friend, after your recovery from the last bump? What is the name, or is it something you cannot name?"

If you have a moment, to read the entire essay, you'll find an eerily broken-hearted description of the disjunction between perception and reality. I have kept it in my folder of favorites for many years, something to reread periodically as I follow my own heart's quest for something I cannot name. As radio / telvision personality Clifton Fadiman summed it up, "E. B. White [better known as the author of Charlotte's Web] never again wrote anything like 'The Door.' Nobody has done so."

To conclude, I'll tag on a couple of German vocabulary words whose connection you will appreciate: the first, weltschmerz, particularly in relation to E. B. White's essay of pain and distortion; the second, torschlusspanik, to Kafka's Man Before the Law whose doomed life illustrates the very concept:

weltschmerz (VELT-shmerts) noun meaning world-pain or world weariness; pessimism, apathy, or sadness felt at the difference between physical reality and the ideal state.

torschlusspanik (TOR - schluss - panic) noun describing the door-shutting panic experienced at the thought that a door between oneself and life's opportunities is closing forever.

DON'T FORGET TO
CHECK BACK FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, August 14, 2010

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

How to Keep on Hoping

"Girl With Red Balloon: There is Always Hope"
By contemporary British graffiti artist, Banksy.]

" . . . in a time lacking in truth and certainty and filled with anguish and despair, no woman should be shamefaced in attempting to give back to the world, through her work, a portion of its lost heart."
~Louise Bogan, 1897 - 1970
Poet Laureate of the United States, 1945-46
When my heart is aching for the world's lost heart, I turn to novels, essays, and poetry. If you are feeling sick at heart, one writer you can count on to repair some of the damage is Barbara Kingsolver. Never shamefaced, Kingsolver is a consistent advocate of common sense and social justice. Embedded within the narrative of her novel, Animal Dreams, are a number of letters written to the main character, Codi Noline, from her sister Hallie who has involved herself with life - risking work in Nicaragua. Codi, conflicted and searching for meaning in her life back home, wonders how it is that her sister is "not afraid of loving and losing," how she retains her composure and determination, always moving forward with certainty. Hallie writes back:

"What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in and out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?' . . .the very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. That's about it. Right now I'm living in that hope, running down its hallway and touching the walls on both sides" (Animal Dreams, 224, 299).

Hallie's metaphor of being on the road and knowing how to drive reminds me of the E. L. Doctorow passage that Anne Lamott quotes in Bird by Bird: " 'writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you are going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you" (Bird by Bird, 18). Life can work that way too.

Even more compelling than the driving metaphor is Hallie's description of running down the hallway of hope, touching the walls on both sides. I can almost remember that sensation from childhood, the rush that came from stretching my arms out to touch both sides of a narrow corridor at the same time. Likewise, I recall the intoxicating sensation of running outside, trailing my fingers along the borders on either side of an overgrown path or between two rows of tall vegetables in the garden. The current summer movie, The Last Airbender includes a similar scene, filmed from overhead so that the audience can see Aang, the little Child Avatar running between two hedgerows, arms outstretched, fingertips spread wide.

Hallie's simple hope for the world -- elementary kindness -- resembles the wisdom of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: "Please -- a little less love, and a little more common decency" (from the Prologue of his novel Slapstick). I guess calling it common decency is just an ironic play on words, since experience teaches us that it is one of the most uncommon sentiments available, despite being so necessary to peace and order. All we have to do is glance around -- international strife, national crisis, local incivility, anywhere at all -- to see how right Matthew Arnold was when he wrote in 1864 that "the general practice of the world" reposes not on common decency or common sense but on very inadequate ideas:

"The mass of mankind will never have any ardent zeal for seeing things as they are; very inadequate ideas will always satisfy them. On these inadequate ideas reposes, and must repose, the general practice of the world. That is as much as saying that whoever sets himself to see things as they are will find himself one of a very small circle; but it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all. The rush and roar of practical life will always have a dizzying and attracting effect upon the most collected spectator, and tend to draw him into its vortex . . . But it is only by remaining collected, and refusing to lend himself to the point of view of the practical man, that the critic can do the practical man any service; and it is only by the greatest sincerity in pursuing his own course, and by at last convincing even the practical man of his sincerity, that he can escape misunderstandings which perpetually threaten him" (Matthew Arnold, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time").

It's helpful to remind ourselves that the world often seems crazy and inadequate because -- guess what? -- it is crazy and inadequate at certain times, in certain places. Speaking of inadequate ideas, too bad Arnold has to sound so classist and masculine, but what can we do at this point, aside from overlooking his gender exclusivity: "mankind," "himself," and so on? Perhaps he knew not what he did. It does seem that he's trying to say the same thing as Louise Bogan (above) about giving the world back its lost heart, about upgrading to "adequate," about leaving everything that we touch somehow better than the way we found it. We have to keep trying to do that, to stay collected and sincere, to stay within that small circle of seeing things as they are if at all possible, to keep running down the hallway touching the walls on both sides.

So how to keep hoping? How to figure out what to hope for? How to keep from selling out to the general churlishness?

Send answers soon!

Art Appreciation Sketch: Perspective Down the Hallway

DON'T FORGET TO
CHECK BACK FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, July 28, 2010

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

Butterfly Collection

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

My only sketch, profile of heaven is a large blue sky,
larger than the biggest I have seen in June --
and in it are my friends -- all of them -- every one them."
~ Emily Dickinson ~
[small original acrylic painted by friend Dot Menard, in 1977]
"Hey, Summertime!" What is it about butterflies? We can't seem to resist chasing, catching, collecting, displaying, even planting flowers especially to attract them. A number of butterfly images still linger in my mind from childhood, particularly the mid - 60s Coca Cola song and television ad in which a carefree girl swings on a rope way out over the edge of a creek:

"Birds and bees and all the flowers and trees,
Fishes on the line,
Girls and guys and yellow butterflies
Saying 'Hello summertime.'
Ice-cold Coke on the back of my throat
Saying "Hello summertime.
Hey summertime, hey summertime
You and me and summertime
It's the Real Thing." (emphasis added)

Okay, that was television, but there are recollections from books as well, such as the magical luna moths that appear in both Then There Were Five (follow-up to The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright) and A Girl of the Limberlost (Hoosier classic by Gene Stratton-Porter). More recently, Up From Jericho Tel (by award winning novelist E. L. Konigsburg) contains not only a ceremonial burial for a stricken luna moth -- "Fly. Fluttter. Falter. Fall" -- but also the secret password: "Papillon!"

And speaking of Papillon! who could forget this little poem:

"Non. That means no.
Oui. That means yes.
And papillon. That means butterfly.
Oui, non, Papillon -- a very pretty rhyme."

from The Witch Family
by Eleanor Estes (1906 - 1988)
American Children's Author
Newbery Medalist & Honor Recipient

(In addition to the butterfly poem, The Witch Family also features the amazingly literate bumblebee: Malachi the Spelling Bee, a very impressive character indeed!)

A few years later into my collection came Butterflies Are Free, a 1972 film (based on a 1969 play of the same title by American playwright Leonard Gershe, 1922 - 2002). The movie stars Goldie Hawn as Jill, and Edward Albert (son of Eddie from Green Acres fame) as Don. I didn't go to many movies back in those days, but this one I did see at the cinema in 1973. I also saw the play performed live at a St. Louis dinner theatre in 1975, with Angela Cartwright (from Make Room for Daddy & Lost in Space) cast as the female lead. Goldie Hawn, so charming, would be a hard act for anyone, even Angela, to follow, but still I remember both versions favorably.

The title derives from Jill's favorite quotation: "I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies." When she claims that these words are from Mark Twain, Don politely points out that, in fact, Skimpole is not a Twain character but a Dickens character, from the novel Bleak House. Silly Jill; she's such an airhead!

Running through my mind along with the Coca Cola song is the tune that Don sings to Jill (music & lyrics by American musical theatre composer Stephen Schwartz, b. 1948):

"I knew the day you met me
I could love you if you let me
Though you touched my check
And said how easy you'd forget me
You said Butterflies Are Free
And so are we."



















Additional items in my Butterfly Collection include
1. the fanciful pictures above and below
by author and illustrator Cooper Edens, known for his whimsical artistry (see Green Tiger Press / Laughing Elephant)

2. this 1969 favorite from John Denver:

Catch Another Butterfly
Do you remember days not so very long ago
When the world was run by people twice your size?
And the days were full of laughter
And the nights were full of stars
And when you grew tired you could close your eyes

Yes the stars were there for wishing
And the wind was there for kites
And the morning sun was there for rise and shine
And even if the sniffles kept you
Home from school in bed
You couldn't hardly stay there after nine

And I wonder if the smell of morning's faded
What happened to the robin's song
That sparkled in the sky?
Where's all the water gone
That tumbled down a stream?
Will I ever catch another butterfly?

Do you remember campouts right in your own backyard?
Wondering how airplanes could fly
And the hours spent just playin'
With a funny rock you found
With crystal specks as blue as all the sky

And I wonder if the smell of morning's faded
What happened to the robin's song
That sparkled in the sky?
Where's all the water gone
That tumbled down a stream?
Will I ever catch another butterfly?

Now I watch my son, he's playin' with his toys
He's happy, I give him all I can
But I can't help feelin'
Just a little tingly inside
When I hear him say he wants to be a man

And I wonder if the smell of morning's faded
What happened to the robin's song
That sparkled in the sky?
Where's all the water gone
That tumbled down a stream?
Will I ever catch another butterfly?
Will I ever catch another butterfly?

lyrics & music by John Denver (1943 – 1997)
born Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr.
American singer - songwriter
Poet Laureate of Colorado, 1977



















3. this #5 hit from 1966:

Elusive Butterfly
You might wake up some mornin'
To the sound of something moving past your window in the wind
And if you're quick enough to rise
You'll catch a fleeting glimpse of someone's fading shadow
Out on the new horizon
You may see the floating motion of a distant pair of wings
And if the sleep has left your ears
You might hear footsteps running through an open meadow

Don't be concerned, it will not harm you
It's only me pursuing somethin' I'm not sure of
Across my dreams with nets of wonder
I chase the bright elusive butterfly of love

You might have heard my footsteps
Echo softly in the distance through the canyons of your mind
I might have even called your name
As I ran searching after something to believe in
You might have seen me runnin'
Through the long-abandoned ruins of the dreams you left behind
If you remember something there
That glided past you followed close by heavy breathin'

Don't be concerned, it will not harm you
It's only me pursuing somethin' I'm not sure of
Across my dreams with nets of wonder
I chase the bright elusive butterfly of love

lyrics & music by Bob Lind (b. 1942)
born Robert Neale Lind
American singer - songwriter

4. and to conclude, another brief
poem by Emily Dickinson:

The Butterfly upon the Sky,
That doesn't know its Name
And hasn't any tax to pay
And hasn't any Home
Is just as high as you and I,
And higher, I believe,
So soar away and never sigh
And that's the way to grieve --

*************************
5. Oui, non, Papillon!


COME BACK FOR
Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, July 14, 2010

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my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

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my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Wise Fool

"Who is it that can tell me who I am?" ~King Lear

Favorite Museum:
The Lady Lever Art Gallery
Port Sunlight, Merseyside, England
Gerry and Ben at the Lady Lever, Ten Years Ago
The names alone are enough to take one's breath away: Cordelia's Portion, Lady Lever, Port Sunlight! Port Sunlight is one of the most charming towns in all of England, a nearly perfect early twentieth century model village. Its premier feature is the jewel - like Lady Lever Gallery, which contains an amazingly extensive collection of pre-Raphaelite paintings, including Ford Madox Brown's tableau of the tragedy of King Lear, entitled: Cordelia's Portion. When touring the gallery, I like to save this painting until last and stand before it in awe for awhile, marveling at the understated intensity of Lear's sadly fractured family and needlessly divided kingdom.

Favorite Painting:
Cordelia's Portion (c. 1866)
by Ford Madox Brown (1821 - 1893)
English painter of moral and historical subjects
loosely connected to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
To the left are the malevolent sisters, Goneril & Regan, staring each other down; and kneeling at their feet, the Dukes of Cornwall & Albany, Lear's corrupt sons-in-law. To the right, are the fickle Duke of Burgandy; dear Cordelia, Pure of Heart, whose "love's more richer than her tongue," and the loyal King of France. In the center is King Lear, dejected, misguided; and at his feet, the Map of the Kingdom, divided. In this painting, the Fool is only a minor character. You can see his blue hood if you look closely behind the dark - haired sister.

However, in numerous other depictions of Lear's tragic demise, the Fool is a major player. Likewise, the Fool is central to the action of Shakespeare's play. Referring to himself as "Lear's shadow," Lear's Fool is a character of wisdom, loyalty, and comprehension, who grasps the mixed motivations of all the other characters. In this next painting, the artist dramatically captures the Fool's ability to mirror Lear’s flawed judgment:

King Lear and the Fool in the Storm (c. 1851)
by William Dyce (1806 - 1864)
distinguished Scottish artist
advocate of public art education
No study of the Fool would be complete without the following poem that my father shared with me when I was in high school. I wish I knew more of the story behind his giving it to me: when did he first learn it, did someone pass it on to him or where did he come across it -- in a book or a magazine or a class? My only reference now is the typed copy that has been stored in one of my high school notebooks since graduation. In turn, I passed this poem on to my son Ben during his junior high years at St. Peter's School, Philadelphia, where the students were required to memorize and recite a poem every month. Ben and Sam became quite adept at managing increasingly long works, and I often urged them to choose from among my old favorites. Ben won first place for this one:

THE FOOL'S PRAYER

The royal feast was done, the king
Sought some new sport to banish care,
And to his jester cried: "Sir Fool,
Kneel now, and make for us a prayer!"

The jester doffed his cap and bells,
And stood the mocking court before;
They could not see the bitter smile
Behind the painted grin he wore.

He bowed his head, and bent his knee
Upon the monarch's silken stool.
His pleading voice arose: "O, Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!

"No pity, Lord could change the heart
From red with wrong to white as wool,
The rod must heal the sin: but, Lord,
Be merciful to me a fool!

"Tis not by guilt the onward sweep
Of truth and right, O, Lord we stay;
Tis by our follies that so long
We hold the earth from heaven away.

"These clumsy feet, still in the mire,
Go crushing blossoms without end'
These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust
Among the heartstrings of a friend.

"The ill-timed truth we might have kept --
Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung?
The word we had not sense to say --
Who knows how grandly it had rung?

"Our faults no tenderness should ask,
The chastening stripes must cleanse them all;
But for our blunders -- oh, in shame
Before the eyes of heaven we fall.

"Earth bears no balsam for mistakes
Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool
That did his will; but Thou O, Lord,
Be merciful to me a fool!"

The room was hushed; in silence rose
The king, and sought his gardens cool,
And walked apart, and murmured low,
"Be merciful to me, a fool!"

by Edward Rowland Sill, 1841 - 1887
American Poet

Court Jester, by Dan Rosenbluth
"They could not see the bitter smile
Behind the painted grin he wore."

For more on the significance of foolishness,
see my recent blog post on the Quotidian Kit:
"What Shall He Tell That Son":

"Tell him to be a fool every so often
and to have no shame over having been a fool
yet learning something out of every folly
hoping to repeat none of the cheap follies
thus arriving at intimate understanding
of a world numbering many fools."

~Carl Sandburg

COME BACK FOR
Next Fortnightly Post
Monday, June 28, 2010

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