Bruges ~ Frozen in Time

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Meebrug in Bruges Covered With Snow
by Flori Van Acker, 1858 - 1940

Everywhere I go, I find a poet has been there before me.
~ Sigmund Freud ~
After watching the movie In Bruges a couple of years ago, Gerry and I became fixated on the idea of visiting this medieval city. We watched the film a few more times for its wit and character development, and for the mesmerizing scenes of Bruges in snowy December. Yes, it's true, I had to avert my eyes during the more violent subplots; but the town center, parks, side streets, and canals all appeared so enchanting that we decided to travel there as a 25th Wedding Anniversary* trip and see for ouselves the city frozen in time for half a millennium.

Freud was right, many poets had preceded us. Here are two:

1.
The Belfry of Bruges
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
found in The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems, 1845

In the market-place of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown;
Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the town.

As the summer morn was breaking, on that lofty tower I stood,
And the world threw off the darkness, like the weeds of widowhood.

Thick with towns and hamlets studded, and with streams and vapors gray,
Like a shield embossed with silver, round and vast the landscape lay.

At my feet the city slumbered. From its chimneys, here and there,
Wreaths of snow-white smoke, ascending, vanished, ghost-like, into air.

Not a sound rose from the city at that early morning hour,
But I heard a heart of iron beating in the ancient tower.

From their nests beneath the rafters sang the swallows wild and high;
And the world, beneath me sleeping, seemed more distant than the sky.

Then most musical and solemn, bringing back the olden times,
With their strange, unearthly changes rang the melancholy chimes,

Like the psalms from some old cloister, when the nuns sing in the choir;
And the great bell tolled among them, like the chanting of a friar.

Visions of the days departed, shadowy phantoms filled my brain;
They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again;

All the Foresters of Flanders,--mighty Baldwin Bras de Fer,
Lyderick du Bucq and Cressy Philip, Guy de Dampierre.

I beheld the pageants splendid that adorned those days of old;
Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who bore the Fleece of Gold

Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep-laden argosies;
Ministers from twenty nations; more than royal pomp and ease.

I beheld proud Maximilian, kneeling humbly on the ground;
I beheld the gentle Mary, hunting with her hawk and hound;

And her lighted bridal-chamber, where a duke slept with the queen,
And the armed guard around them, and the sword unsheathed between.

I beheld the Flemish weavers, with Namur and Juliers bold,
Marching homeward from the bloody battle of the Spurs of Gold;

Saw the light at Minnewater, saw the White Hoods moving west,
Saw great Artevelde victorious scale the Golden Dragon's nest.

And again the whiskered Spaniard all the land with terror smote;
And again the wild alarum sounded from the tocsin's throat;

Till the bell of Ghent responded o'er lagoon and dike of sand,
"I am Roland! I am Roland! there is victory in the land!"

Then the sound of drums aroused me. The awakened city's roar
Chased the phantoms I had summoned back into their graves once more.

Hours had passed away like minutes; and, before I was aware,
Lo! the shadow of the belfry crossed the sun-illumined square.

2.
On Leaving Bruges
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The city's steeple-towers remove away,
Each singly; as each vain infatuate Faith
Leaves God in heaven, and passes. A mere breath
Each soon appears, so far. Yet that which lay
The first is now scarce further or more grey
Than the last is. Now all are wholly gone.
The sunless sky has not once had the sun
Since the first weak beginning of the day.

The air falls back as the wind finishes,
And the clouds stagnate. On the water's face
The current breathes along, but is not stirred.
There is no branch that thrills with any bird.
Winter is to possess the earth a space,
And have its will upon the extreme seas.

CLICK TO SEE MORE PHOTOS

PS
Kitti & Gerry ~ 25 / 26 Years

Incognito ~ In Bruges

* Gerry and I had to complicate things, having our civil wedding on 3 February 1989, and our religious ceremony seven months later on 2 September 1989. We try to celebrate both dates in some small way each year, usually tying Anniversary #1 in with Valentine's Day and Anniversary #2 in with Labor Day. Coincidentally, our belated 25th Anniversary #2 trip to Bruges, that we started planning in September 2014, fell on the eve of our 26th Anniversary #1. So Happy Both to Us!

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

Time for a Night Walk

WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"Past three o'clock,
And a cold frosty morning,
Past three o'clock;
Good morrow, masters all!"

~ chant of the medieval musical night watchmen ~
~ also called The Waits ~

**********
Connections for the week:
~ three poems about staying up past 3 A.M. ~
1. I recently came across this poem on facebook and found it the perfect herald for the New Year. Whereas "Wait" opened the season as an Advent poem, this one provides not only a sense of closure to the festivities but hope for new beginnings:

Night Walk
The all-night convenience store’s empty
and no one is behind the counter.
You open and shut the glass door a few times
causing a bell to go off,
but no one appears. You only came
to buy a pack of cigarettes, maybe
a copy of yesterday’s newspaper —
finally you take one and leave
thirty-five cents in its place.
It is freezing, but it is a good thing
to step outside again:
you can feel less alone in the night,
with lights on here and there
between the dark buildings and trees.
Your own among them, somewhere.
There must be thousands of people
in this city who are dying
to welcome you into their small bolted rooms,
to sit you down and tell you
what has happened to their lives.
And the night smells like snow.
Walking home for a moment
you almost believe you could start again.
And an intense love rushes to your heart,
and hope. It’s unendurable, unendurable.

by Franz Wright, in God's Silence: Poems

2. The newly discovered "Night Walk," brings to mind this older favorite from Donald Justice, a poem to remind us of highschool and college, of pre - dawn risings and midnight drives across the Midwest:

Poem to be Read at 3 A.M.
Excepting the diner
On the outskirts
The town of Ladora
At 3 A.M.
Was dark but
For my headlights
And up in
One second-story room
A single light
Where someone
Was sick or
Perhaps reading
As I drove past
At seventy
Not thinking
This poem
Is for whoever
Had the light on

by Donald Justice, in New and Selected Poems

3. Going back to even earlier days is this poem from childhood that invariably echoes through my mind whenever I stay up very late, which seems to be more and more often these days. I might be glancing up at the moon, wondering at an unusual nighttime noise, closing the basement door on the cats before tiptoeing uptairs, switching off the Christmas tree or, better yet, deciding to leave it lit for the last few hours before dawn -- and I'll suddenly think of the furnace man. Despite the fact that I was born way beyond the time of furnace men, and even though all I have to do is look out my window to know that I'm not the only one awake (because the traffic never really stops -- where are those drivers going at 3 A.M.?), I still like the thought that maybe no one is awake except for "God, the furnace man and me":

The Furnace Man
God has a house three streets away,
And every Sunday, rain or shine,
My nurse goes there her prayers to say:
She's told me of the candles fine
That burning all night long they keep
Because God never goes to sleep,
Then there's a steeple of bells;
All through the dark the time it tells,
I like to hear it in the night
And think about those candles bright --
I wonder if God stays awake
For kindness, like the furnace man
Who comes before it's day, to make
Our house as pleasant as he can --
I like to watch the sky grow blue
And think perhaps, the whole world through
No one's awake but just us three --
God, and the furnace man and me.

by Amelia J. Burr, in The American Album of Poetry

Click here to read some
previously posted poems
with a similar message.

And to read more
about the Old English Carol
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, January 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, currently featuring
"The Girl Who Just Loved Christmas"

Ruby Slippers and Red Shoes

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Last time, I was writing about the Wizard of Oz; this time it's Ruby Slippers! Coincidence? Or merely inadvertent Connection? Whichever it may be, I ordered these little red shoes from the Lillian Vernon Catalog back in the earliest days of my Christmas tree ornament collecting. They have always been among my favorites, so much so that I would often leave them out all year, hanging in a special spot. Oddly enough, when I moved from Indiana to Philadelphia in 1993, I totally forgot that instead of putting them away after the holidays I had hung them on a little hook above the guest room mirror. They had already been in my life for a decade, yet despite my attachment to them, I managed to overlook them amidst the chaos and stress of packing and moving.

Luckily, the new owners were kind enough to package them up and mail them to our new address. Every year as I take them out and hang them on the tree, I am reminded of their surprising reappearance in my life -- before I had ever even realized that they were missing -- and of the kindness of strangers who took the time to realize their sentimental value and send them back into my life. There's no place like home, right? Or as Emmylou Harris sings: "Wear your ruby shoes when you’re far away / so you’ll always stay home in your heart."

Gerry and I began the Christmas Season early this year, attending the French Quarter tree lighting and St. Louis Cathedral Choral Concert in New Orleans, on November 20th. Even better, guess where we ate:

Thus, I've had it in my mind ever since that day -- way back before Thanksgiving! -- to write about "The Christmas Shoes" on my December blog. I knew for sure it was the right choice when I went to church on Christmas Eve, only to hear the priest say that the one song that was really getting to him this season was "The Christmas Shoes." Holy Connection and Coincidence! Weren't both the CD and the DVD propped right beside my laptop, waiting for my attention? Yes! I went straight home, listened carefully to the song a few times and then watched the movie on New Year's Day.

I couldn't help thinking of the picture books that I have loved since childhood: Snipp, Snapp, Snurr and the Red Shoes. Though the mother is not sick, and it happens to be her birthday rather than Christmas, the three brothers -- just like the boy in "The Christmas Shoes" -- do all they can to obtain red shoes as a surprise for her. Another book in the series, Snipp, Snapp, Snurr and The Yellow Sled combines similar themes: it is once again Mother's birthday, the triplets are once again completing chores and saving money for a major purchase -- the yellow sled for themselves. However, like the "Christmas Shoes" narrator, they realize, even as the cashier is ringing up the sale, that it is better to give than to receive.

It is a popular assessment to accuse this contemporary song of being sappy and sentimental, but oh well! After all, it's an emotional season, and you just never know what holiday song, old (e.g. Scarlet Ribbons -- yet another Christmas Miracle!) or new, might speak to your heart:

The Christmas Shoes

It was almost Christmas time
There I stood in another line
Tryin' to buy that last gift or two
Not really in the Christmas mood

Standing right in front of me was
A little boy waiting anxiously
Pacing 'round like little boys do
And in his hands he held a pair of shoes

And his clothes were worn and old
He was dirty from head to toe
And when it came his time to pay
I couldn't believe what I heard him say

Sir, I want to buy these shoes for my mama, please
It's Christmas eve and these shoes are just her size
Could you hurry, sir, Daddy says there's not much time
You see she's been sick for quite a while
And I know these shoes would make her smile
And I want her to look beautiful, if Mama meets Jesus tonight

He counted pennies for what seemed like years
Then the cashier said, "Son, there's not enough here"
He searched his pockets frantically
Then he turned and he looked at me

He said, "Mama made Christmas good at our house
Though most years she just did without
Tell me sir, what am I going to do
Somehow I've got to buy her these Christmas shoes"

So I laid the money down, I just had to help him out
And I'll never forget the look on his face when he said
"Mama's gonna look so great"

Sir, I want to buy these shoes for my mama, please
It's Christmas eve and these shoes are just her size
Could you hurry, sir, Daddy says there's not much time
You see she's been sick for quite a while
And I know these shoes would make her smile
And I want her to look beautiful, if Mama meets Jesus tonight

I knew I'd caught a glimpse of heaven's love
As he thanked me and ran out
I knew that God had sent that little boy
To remind me what Christmas is all about

Sir, I want to buy these shoes for my mama, please
It's Christmas eve and these shoes are just her size
Could you hurry, sir, Daddy says there's not much time
You see she's been sick for quite a while
And I know these shoes would make her smile
And I want her to look beautiful, if Mama meets Jesus tonight

I want her to look beautiful
If Mama meets Jesus tonight

by Eddie Carswell & Leonard Ahlstrom of NewSong

Book, written by by Donna VanLiere
Movie, starring Rob Lowe
Song, also performed by John McNicholl
[Click to hear a few other versions.]

My Red Christmas Shoes
Thanks Vickie Amador!

. . . and also a fun game for the family
from Auntie Wickie!

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, January 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ "Christmas Sermons"
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST, currently featuring
"The Girl Who Just Loved Christmas"

Thanks Natasha!

A Dream of Christmas

WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Christmas Cross Stitch
by my friend Cate DeLong

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

I love thee . . . with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints.

from sonnet 43
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

************
Three years ago, when I quoted from Salman Rushdie's "Out of Kansas," in my Christmas essay on "Divine Homesickness," I knew that I wanted to return to this passage someday and look at it in greater depth. Coincidentally, Rushdie's essay comes to mind just in time for yet another Christmas essay. Rushdie's theme is The Wizard of Oz, and I don't think anyone really considers either the book or the movie to be a Christmas story; however, the literature of Christmas and the tale of Dorothy's quest share an important motif -- the journey home, where the heart is.

[Another coincidence worth noting: L. Frank Baum's Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, soon to be adapted for the stage by my friend Steven La Vigne, who writes, "Have you read it? It's just lovely, and will provide a lot of opportunity for puppets."]

As for Rushdie, without even intending to write about The Spirit of Christmas, he manages to invoke its antithesis with his description of the fraudulent Wizard as a "humbug." Even worse, the fall from innocence to experience renders us "humbugs" ourselves, despite our best intentions to remain true to our "childhood's faith" and our "lost saints," who may well include Professor Marvel, The Wizard of Oz, Father Christmas, and Good Saint Nick:

“So Oz finally became home; the imagined world became the actual world, as it does for us all, because the truth is that once we have left our childhood places and started out to make our own lives, armed only with what we have and are, we understand that the real secret of the ruby slippers is not that "there's no place like home," but rather that there is no longer such a place as home: except, of course, for the homes we make, or the homes that are made for us, in Oz, which is anywhere and everywhere, except the place from which we began.

"In the place from which I began, after all, I watched the film from the child's - Dorothy's point of view. I experienced, with her, the frustration of being brushed aside by Uncle Henry and Auntie Em, busy with their dull grown-up counting. Like all adults, they couldn't focus on what was really important to Dorothy: namely, the threat to Toto. I ran away with Dorothy and then ran back. Even the shock of discovering that the Wizard was a humbug was a shock I felt as a child, a shock to the child's faith in adults. Perhaps, too, I felt something deeper, something I couldn't articulate; perhaps some half-formed suspicion about grown-ups was being confirmed.

"Now, as I look at the movie again, I have become the fallible adult. Now I am a member of the tribe of imperfect parents who cannot listen to their children's voices. I, who no longer have a father, have become a father instead, and now it is my fate to be unable to satisfy the longings of a child. This is the last and most terrible lesson of the film: that there is one final, unexpected rite of passage. In the end, ceasing to be children, we all become magicians without magic, exposed conjurers, with only our simply humanity to get us through.

We are the humbugs now.”

from Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002,
Essay #1: "Out of Kansas"
by Salman Rushdie
[see also Goodreads]

Sharing Rushdie's sense of loss and cynicism, Greg Lake recalls the ultimate test of his childhood's faith in this haunting carol:

I Believe in Father Christmas

They said there'll be snow at Christmas
They said there'll be peace on earth
But instead it just kept on raining
A veil of tears for the Virgin Birth
I remember one Christmas morning
A winter's light and a distant choir
And the peal of a bell and that Christmas tree smell
And their eyes full of tinsel and fire

They sold me a dream of Christmas
They sold me a silent night
And they told me a fairy story
'til I believed in the Israelite
And I believed in father Christmas
And I looked at the sky with excited eyes
'til I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn
And I saw him and through his disguise

I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave new year
All anguish pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear
They said there'll be snow at christmas
They said there'll be peace on earth
Hallelujah Noel be it heaven or hell
The Christmas you get you deserve

by Greg Lake

Lake's song, Rushdie's essay, and Barrett Browning's sonnet all remind me of the convincing theory that the house you consider "home" is the one you lived in when you believed in Santa Claus. In his holiday reminiscence, my brother Bruce writes:

"Of all the places we lived, Neosho still draws me like nowhere else. . . . When we were kids, Christmas didn't start till Thanksgiving, but from Thanksgiving to Christmas, it was all Christmas, all the time. There were TV specials almost every night -- or so it seemed. I"m just thinking of those titles, wondering if they were the ones you remember from when we were kids. It's a Wonderful Life. A Charlie Brown Christmas. When Linus recites the birth narrative from Luke 2, that's just classic. It grabs my heart every single time I hear it.

"Has it changed so much since we were kids, or do we just remember it selectively? Sometimes I think I remember it the way I wanted it to be, and miss the fantasy more than I miss the reality. But I miss us kids putting up the tree . . . each taking a turn to put an ornament on. Do you remember that? I miss cocoa made on the stove from a Hershey's square tin, rather than from a Swiss Miss envelope in the microwave. I miss putting on the Christmas albums and listening too them all during Christmas vacation. Ah, but time waits for no one, right?"

I also appreciated the recollections of my grade school friend Brent Green: "I would say proudly and without hesitation that Neosho was one of the most egalitarian towns in which I have ever lived. I did not appreciate it at the time (from 1961 to 1975), but it was a great place to grow up! The schools were good. Neighbors and playmates were great!"

It's true that despite the fact that we moved away in 1967 and have never once been back inside, this has always been and remains to this day my family's favorite house. I often wish we had never moved away. This picture from 2012 is not quite as I remember, but the changes are all for the good: an entire wrap around porch and an expanded second story, including two gables over the side door. One loss: it would appear that the huge pine tree, which we planted in 1965 as a tiny Christmas tree, may have been removed in the midst of all the renovation. The last time I drove past, in 2002, I kept looking at eye - level, but I finally realized that it was way above my head. Turns out it had just kept growing and growing into a giant Norwegian Spruce, taller than any of us had every imagined:

704 Baxter Street ~ Where We Believed!

Photograph by Mitzi Smith

PS
A beautiful song for restoring your childhood's faith:
"There's Still My Joy"
by The Indigo Girls
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, December 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT,
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
currently featuring
"The Girl Who Just Loved Christmas"

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST, currently featuring
"The Girl Who Just Loved Christmas"

See Previous Post ~ December 2011
"Home is where the heart is, and Christmas lives there too."

An Interstellar Thanksgiving

WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Ancient Space Travel
" . . . the vast expanse of interstellar space . . . "
Our family's day - after - Thanksgiving activity was going to see the new movie Interstellar, then coming home to expand our knowledge of interstellar space with a few episodes of Neil deGrasse Tyson's Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey:

"Deeper Deeper Deeper Still"
"Hiding in the Light"
"A Sky Full of Ghosts."

I thought of that old favorite by Walt Whitman and wondered if only he had heard de Grasse Tyson or Carl Sagan, he might have been mesmerized rather than unaccountably "tired and sick":

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams,
to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer,
where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

~ from "By the Roadside" (Book XX) in Leaves of Grass

Coincidentally, although we didn't think of this before going to see it, Interstellar fit right in with a couple of things that we had watched earlier in the week: the movie About Time, with its somewhat under - utilized subplot of traveling back in time to re-direct the course of personal events; and Bob's Burgers, particularly the episode in which Bob gets stuck in the crawl space and communicates with his family from behind the wall.

November Moon & Millennium Sundial
On the John T. Myers Pedestrian Bridge
between Lafayette & West Lafayette, Indiana

Later in the day, with thoughts turning toward Christmas, I made an additional connection -- not stars and perfect silence, but stars and a sky full of "the sweetest music":

A Spaceman Came Traveling
[Click to listen]
A spaceman came traveling on his ship from afar,
'Twas light years of time since his mission did start,
And over a village he halted his craft,
And it hung in the sky like a star, just like a star.

He followed a light and came down to a shed,
Where a mother and a child were lying there on a bed,
A bright light of silver shone round his head,
And he had the face of an angel, and they were afraid.

Then the stranger spoke, he said, "Do not fear,
I come from a planet a long way from here,
And I bring a message for mankind to hear,"
And suddenly the sweetest music filled the air --

And it went la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la . . .
Peace and goodwill to all men, and love for the child.

La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la . . .
Peace and goodwill to all men, and love for the child.

This lovely music went trembling through the ground,
And many were wakened on hearing that sound,
And travelers on the road, the village they found,
By the light of that ship in the sky, which shone all round.

And just before dawn at the paling of the sky,
The stranger returned and said, "Now I must fly,
When two thousand years of your time has gone by,
This song will begin once again, to a baby's cry."

And it went la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la . . .
Peace and goodwill to all men, and love for the child.

Oh the whole world is waiting, waiting to hear that song again,
There are thousands standing on the edge of the world,
And a star is moving somewhere, the time is nearly here,
This song will begin once again, to a baby's cry.

~ Chris De Burgh

This mystical song always arouses my curiosity. The spaceman halts his craft, that seems to become the Star of Bethlehem; yet he himself "followed a light" -- the light from his own ship which others are following? Or a different light? He seems to become the Christmas Angel who says "Do not fear" and brings glad tidings; but what is the source for the "lovely music" filling the air and "trembling through the ground"? More angels? Or the Spaceman?

He flies away, bidding farewell to the mother and child and other assembled Earthlings, promising the song again and "a baby's cry" in two thousand years' time. Does this mean a new baby Messiah? The Spaceman doesn't promise his own return, though the song's haunting conclusion suggests it. Is the Spaceman the baby, all grown up (like Jesus or Mad Max or Dad / Joseph Cooper / Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar)?

So that bright star might be some kind of complicated spaceship from the past or the future; but equally appealing is the possibility described in The Littles Angel. The star could be a treasure box containing the smallest items -- two white stones, three blue eggs, a butterfly orange and a black, a feather -- insignificant in every way aside from the fact that they are dear to our hearts. The little time traveler leaves Eternity for a short visit to Earth, where only mere seconds have elapsed since his departure. But days have passed in the afterlife, and he misses his wooden treasure chest:

"All these things I love best I have kept in this old chest.
Sorted and counted hundreds of nights,
they all have have given me a thousand delights.
Who can say how much they are worth?
They are the miracles of the Earth."
[click to hear Johnny Whitaker sing: @ 57:15]

Story by Charles Tazewell, Illustrated by Sergio Leone
More space time continuum holiday viewing:
Ghost of Star Trek Christmas ~ Primer ~ Ink

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

First Snow In Indiana

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

~ Garage Lights ~
Waiting for Gerry's return from the Indianapolis Airport
When it snowed two weeks ago, on Halloween, I could have sworn it was the first time in my life that I've ever seen snow in October. Having lived in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and Indiana -- well, those are not the States where one sees snow in October, not even on the last day!

Snow on Halloween? In Indiana?
When half the backyard is still green? Well, I never!

Then along came yesterday's snow, on my sister Peggy's birthday, and even that seemed too early. Have I ever seen snow on her birthday before? I don't think so! I don't care if it is the second week of November, that's just too soon! I decided to check out the Indiana Climate Archives, which informed me that there had indeed been "measurable" snowfall in Indiana on October 18, 1989. What?! I actually lived in Indiana on that day, but I have no memory of such! Oh, if only I'd been recording weather lore in my journal back then. But alas. Well, this time, I took plenty of pictures:

I love my friend Dana Hall's description of this eerie, early snow:
"Exciting but a little surreal and scary, right?"
The pumpkins are an added bonus!

Several friends noted how much we might have enjoyed this snow back when we were seven years old! But at fifty - seven, it's a mixed blessing. On their Christmas Portrait, the Carpenters provide a light - hearted reminiscence:

Oh the first snowfall of the winter
Was a day that we all waited for . . .

Oh the first snowfall of the winter
What a joy for a boy to behold . . .

It's the good old sentimental season . . .
When a man becomes a boy once again . . .

Music by Joseph F. "Sonny" Burke (1914 - 80)
Lyrics by Paul Francis Webster (1907 - 84)

With Veterans Day so recently past, my thoughts turned to the snowy battle scene depicted by poet Richard Wilbur in "First Snow in Alsace." The World War II night guard in Wilbur's poem "becomes a boy once again," in more somber circumstances than the Carpenter tune describes, but with equal joy. He boasts warmly that "He was the first to see the snow." Seen through through "the new air white and fine," even the war - torn surroundings have been magically transformed by the first snow that falls indiscriminately, innocently, neutrally.

In fact, it hasn't been all that long ago since the young soldier was a child himself, playing in the snow. His daydreams of youthful winters take him -- not fifty years -- but a mere "Ten first - snows back in thought":

First Snow in Alsace
The snow came down last night like moths
Burned on the moon; it fell till dawn,
Covered the town with simple cloths.

Absolute snow lies rumpled on
What shellbursts scattered and deranged,
Entangled railings, crevassed lawn.

As if it did not know they'd changed,
Snow smoothly clasps the roofs of homes
Fear-gutted, trustless and estranged.

The ration stacks are milky domes;
Across the ammunition pile
The snow has climbed in sparkling combs.

You think: beyond the town a mile
Or two, this snowfall fills the eyes
Of soldiers dead a little while.

Persons and persons in disguise,
Walking the new air white and fine,
Trade glances quick with shared surprise.

At children's windows, heaped, benign,
As always, winter shines the most,
And frost makes marvelous designs.

The night guard coming from his post,
Ten first-snows back in thought, walks slow
And warms him with a boyish boast:

He was the first to see the snow.

Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)

Addional Connections
1. Here is another poem that takes the reader on an absolutely beautiful walk in newly fallen snow. Whereas Wilbur is crossing Alsace, "Walking the new air white and fine," Wylie walks elegantly "In a soundless space . . . through the still town / In a windless space":

Velvet Shoes
Let us walk in the white snow
In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet and slow,
At a tranquil pace,
Under veils of white lace.

I shall go shod in silk,
And you in wool,
White as white cow's milk,
More beautiful
Than the breast of a gull.

We shall walk through the still town
In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
Upon silver fleece,
Upon softer than these.

We shall walk in velvet shoes:
Wherever we go
Silence will fall like dews
On white silence below.
We shall walk in the snow.

Elinor Morton Wylie (1885 - 1928)

2. In "The Arrested Artistry of Elinor Wylie," editor John G. Rodwan, Jr. observes that Wylie's poetry has been compared to that of Richard Wilbur and that she was devoted to the life and work of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

3. I don't know if this poem about the mutability of art and love was one of Wylie's favorites, but it's one of mine. It lacks the hope of Wilbur's "First Snow in Alsace," but shares a similar sense of human frailty, endurance, and irrevocable loss, complete with seasonal imagery of falling leaves, and cold wind:

When the Lamp is Shattered
When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead-
When the cloud is scattered,
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.

As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart's echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute-
No song but sad dirges,
Like the wind through a ruined cell,
Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman's knell.

When hearts have once mingled,
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possessed.
O Love! who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home, and your bier?

Its passions will rock thee,
As the storms rock the ravens on high;
Bright reason will mock thee,
Like the sun from a wintry sky.
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822)
[see also "Ozymandias" & "Ode to the West Wind"]

4. Another blogger makes a connection between "When the Lamp is Shattered" and Wilbur's haunting Christmas hymn "A Stable Lamp is Lighted".
[See also "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World"]

5.StoryPeople always gets it right! Thanks Brian Andreas!

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, November 28th

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my shorter, almost daily blog posts
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