Someone Who Likes You

WE ALL NEED FRIENDS ON HALLOWEEN!
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

"A friend is someone who likes you."
~ Joan Walsh Anglund ~
(1926 - 2021)
[Please! Credit where credit is due!]

Favorite Halloween Pictures
~ here & above ~
From This Is Halloween

Even amongst friends,
we are alone inside our heads:
"We assume too readily that we share one world with other people. It is true at the objective level that we inhabit the same physical space as other humans; the sky is, after all, the one visual constant that unites everyone’s perception of being in the world. Yet this outer world offers no access to the inner world of an individual. At a deeper level, each person is the custodian of a completely private, individual world. Sometimes our beliefs, opinions, and thoughts are ultimately ways of consoling [does he mean "deceiving"] ourselves that we are not alone with the burden of a unique, inner world. It suits us to pretend that we all belong to the one world, but we are more alone than we realize.

"This aloneness is not simply the result of our being different from each other; it derives more from the fact that each of us is housed in a different body. The idea of human life being housed in a body is fascinating. For instance, when people come to visit your home, they come bodily. They bring all of their inner worlds, experiences, and memories into your house through the vehicle of their bodies. While they are visiting you, their lives are not elsewhere; they are totally there with you, before you, reaching out toward you. When the visit is over, their bodies stand up, walk out, and carry this hidden world away."

by John O'Donohue
from Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, p 40
See also: Doubt ~ Dolls ~ Miniature
And: Cyber ~ Connections ~ Peanut

Yet, despite the limitations of friendship, it can transcend the boundaries of time and space:
"Friendship transcends disappearance: an enduring friendship goes on after death, the exchange only transmuted by absence, the relationship advancing and maturing in a silent internal conversational way even after one half of the bond has passed on.

"But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend of sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.”

by David Whyte
from Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
See also: Cyber Monday & Small Opening

Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, November 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.blogsppot.com

Previous Favorites

Trick or Treat! ~ 2020

Love These Silhouettes!

Soul Cakes ~ 2016

From Doris & Denis ~ 2021

More Good Ones:
For the Love of Fall and Halloween

Only Collect a Few (Imprints #3)

SAND & CONCRETE
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Thanks to my friend Jan Donley
for this gift from the sea.

Excerpts from Gift from the Sea (1955)
by Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906 – 2001)

“One never knows what chance treasures . . . may turn up, on the smooth white sand of the conscious mind . . . The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach — waiting for a gift from the sea” (16 - 17).

“I shall ask into my shell only those friends with whom I can be completely honest. I find I am shedding hypocrisy in human relationships. What a rest that will be! The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere" (32).

“The one-and-only moments are justified. The return to them, even if temporarily, is valid. The moment over the marmalade and muffins is valid; the moment feeding the child at the breast is valid; the moment racing with him at the beach is valid. Finding shells together, polishing chestnuts, sharing one’s treasures: all these moments of together-aloneness are valid, but not permanent” (73).

“One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can only collect a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few. One moon shell is more impressive than three. There is only one moon in the sky” (114).

March 2016 ~ Amelia Island

*******************
I have long been a fan of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, especially Bring Me A Unicorn but not until a recent re-reading of Gift from the Sea, did I fully appreciate how ahead of her time she was on issues such as environmentalism, de-cluttering, mindfulness, and self - care. For all her gentlness, only a person with a built in shit detector could pinpoint the awesome truth that "The most exhausting thing in life . . . is being insincere." We have all felt it; but, on our behalf, Lindbergh declares it.

Likewise, she declares for personal time and space: "remaining whole in the midst of the distractions of life," "practicing the art of solitude," "being inwardly attentive." These contemplative disciplines -- "even day - dreaming" -- she says, are so rare as to be revolutionary (29, 41, 42, 48, 56 - 57). And this was decades before Facebook and social media started gnawing away at our attention spans.

The ever - elusive work - life balance is prominent on Lindbergh's agenda: "The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls. . . this constant tangle of household chores, errands, and fragments of human relationships . . . endless distractions, always at hand -- unnecessary errands, compulsive duties, social niceties . . . to little purpose" (29, 47 - 48). Using the imagery of seashells, Lindbergh offers suggestions for maintaing a creative identity alongside the whorling omnipresence of housekeeping and childcare and making one's way in the world.

As staunchly as Virginia Woolf (51, 54), Lindbergh advocates for a room of one's own. Or, if not a room, at least an hour to oneself:

“It is a difficult lesson to learn today -- to leave one's friends and family and deliberately practice the art of solitude for an hour or a day or a week. . . .

The world today does not understand, in either man or woman, the need to be alone.

How inexplicable it seems. Anything else will be accepted as a better excuse. If one sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement or a shopping expedition, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange. . . . Actually these are among the most important times in one's life -- when one is alone” (42, 49 - 50).

These gifts of introspection came to Lindbergh at the beach. Yet, never fear, such gifts are also widely available on dry land, even upon mundane concrete . . .
August 2017 ~ North Carolina

June 2020 ~ Indiana

April 2021 ~ Indiana

August 2021 ~ South Carolina

"I couldn't even walk head up . . . for fear
of missing something precious at my feet." (114)

Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, October 28th

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

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST ~ "More Gifts From the Sea"
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

The Leaves Conferred (Imprints #2)

AUTUMN LEAVES ON THE SIDEWALK
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~ PRAGUE 2019

"If you go looking, you will find sidewalk squares to measure.
You will find steep concrete steps leading to stoops and into houses.
They are everywhere. . . .

. . . home is fragile and varied and elusive.
Just the word 'home' can bring a smile or a tear.

I suppose I write and draw in an attempt to locate home,
some center point that grounds me."

~ Jan Donley ~
[See also: Safe Home & Picture of Home]

Bright Soul ~ Edinburgh, 2018

**************
I didn't realize, until my last post, how many leaves and sidewalk imprints I had collected over the years! Searching through my files, I realized that it was going to take more than one post to make all the connections. I think it all began when my friend Jan sent this mesmerizing picture, nearly a decade ago:

I responded with this one,
taken in Dallas on New Year's Eve 2012:

My son Ben was with me that day, walking around Dallas,
in the pouring rain, and he thought it would be funny
to take a picture of me taking a picture of a wet leaf:

Additional wintry variations on the theme include snowy leaves --

Instead of looking down at the sidewalk,
this one is taken from a different perspective:
looking up, from inside, at the glass ceiling of my sunroom!
First, the leaf fell against the skylight; then, the snow fell!

-- and some unexpected Jack ~ Frost
on the floor of the garage!
[See also: facebook & brainpickings]

This icy manifestation from Jan
New Year's Day ~ 2017

And later that year in Astana, Kazakhstan
First Signs of Autumn ~ 2017

I have been a collector of leaves from way back!
Let us leave it (yes, pun intended!) to Emily Dickinson
to explain why we love them so:

To my quick ear the Leaves — conferred —
The Bushes — they were Bells —
I could not find a Privacy
From Nature's sentinels —

In Cave if I presumed to hide
The Walls — begun to tell —
Creation seemed a mighty Crack —
To make me visible —

The Leaves like Women interchange
Exclusive Confidence –
Somewhat of nods and somewhat
Portentous inference.

The Parties in both cases
Enjoining secrecy –
Inviolable compact
To notoriety. [additonal ~ posts]

both poems by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)

From my saved files but not sure from when, where, whom?
Possibly shared by my friend Terry Menard,
back in the earlier days of facebook.
Sure do wish I could recall!
[Note to self: take better notes!]

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

Thanks to my friend, artist Susan Blubaugh
for sharing the following:

"So here are my 'imprints.' The first is a big leaf maple
on the hill across from my house.

The second is an oak leaf impression from leaves
that I picked up in Rome at the Borghese Palace.
Mary Firestone at Artists’ Own
incorporated the impression in a ceramic dish."

Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, October 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ "Imprints"
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.blogsppot.com

Shadowy Sidewalk Imprints (#1)

A CRACK IN THE SIDEWALK
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"The day she quit poetry
the sidewalk insisted
on revealing its magic
shadowy imprints of fallen leaves

dancing frozen in concrete
people trampling
over autumn snapshots trapped in gray
but she knew it was a sidewalk
herself a pedestrian
She had quit poetry. . ."

~ from The Day She Quit Poetry
by Michael Kuchma (1979 - 2008)

Another timely coincidence (aren't they all?): for the past few years, I have been collecting photographs of leaves in concrete, planning to pull them all together into a blog post. Then along comes this sad and beautiful poem, "The Day She Quit Poetry." The imprints are not consistently clear, yet I sense that they capture the poet's impression of magical leaves frozen in concrete. And of course, it is autumn now, or nearly so, the perfect tme to relish the imagery of Michael Kuchma and Shel Silverstein.

Where the Sidewalk Ends

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

by Shel Silverstein (1930 - 1999)

Oak leaf on concrete
January 30, 2020 [Pictures: 2019-08-30]

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

Shadowy Sidewalk Imprints by Julie
September 15, 2020 [Pictures: 2020-0501]

Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, September 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ "Imprints"
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.blogsppot.com

To Cry or Not to Cry

THE ANGEL OF GRIEF
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Angel of Grief Weeping Over the Dismantled Altar of Life ~ 1901

Photos (above & below) taken ~ April 2014
Artistic blog post ~ February 2015
Angel vandalized ~ August 2015

For those of you watching The Chair, I thought I would follow the lead of David Duchovny and recycle one of my old Samuel Beckett papers. For several semesters, back in the mid 1980s, I immersed myself in Beckett's drama and fiction, looking particularly at the theme of weeping. Two weeks ago, even before watching The Chair -- how prescient of me! -- I pulled out my ancient tears and crying manuscript in order to share a few paragraphs on my blog about the physical and mental need for crying, as illustrated by the dilemma of Beckett's characters (Seen Through Tears).

A Look at Tears & Crying
in the Work of Samuel Beckett (1906 - 1989)
~ Part II ~
Here's a further installment, in which the sound of murmured cries becomes a distinct motif. As Sandra Oh / Professor Ji-Yoon Kim observes, "this Beckett scholarship must be over thirty years old; it reads like something from the 1980s." One thing remains true no matter when you read Beckett: tears are a constant. Crying need not be reserved for death or birth; rather, tears bind the birth to death continuum and accentuate the circular progression of the human condition. There are numerous other times during the course of life when crying provides the appropriate form of communication. For some people and some Beckett characters, crying seems to be the appropriate response to just about everything.

In The Unnamable for example, the main character cries, as he himself says, "unceasingly." He can move barely at all, but talks -- and cries -- continually. The murmured cries which the narrator hears in the distance when he concludes that he "must go on" are not easily forgotten by the reader. The sound of crying, sometimes distanct and unidentified, sometimes the narrator's own, is heard throughout the novel. Early in the story, before the narrator's physical deterioration is too far advanced, he uses the physical impact of his tears to locate himself spatially and kinaesthetically. He understands crying as a physiological phenomenon that enables him to "know" something concrete about himself:

"I, of whom I know nothing, I know my eyes are open, because of the tears that pour from the umceasingly. . . . Then there is the way of flowing of my tears which flow all over my face, and even down along the neck, in a way it seems to me they could not do if the face were bowed, or lifted up. . . . I feel my tears coursing over my chest, my sides, and all down my back. Ah yes, I am truly bathed in tears."(The Unnamable, 304 - 05)

From Time to Time
Human beings, in order to maintain their human sensibility, should be moved to tears -- if not at regular intervals -- at least from time to time:

"The tears stream down my cheeks from my unblinking eyes. What makes me weep so? From time to time. There is nothing saddening here. Perhaps it is liquefied brain." (292)

"After so long a silence a little cry, stifled outright. What kind of creature uttered it and, if it is the same, still does, from time to time? Impossible to say. Not a human one in any case, there are no human creatures here, or if there are they have done with crying." (296)

"And from my sleeping mouth the lies would pour, about me. No, not sleeping, listening, in tears." (310)

"But the eye . . . it's to see with . . . it's to weep with. . . . Tears gush from it practically without ceasing, why is not known . . . perhaps it's . . . at having to see, from time to time, some sight of other . . . perhaps he weeps in order not to see, though it seems difficult to credit him with an initiative or this complexity. The rascal he's getting humanized." (359 - 60)

". . . talking without ceasing, thirstier than ever, seeking as usual, blathering away, wondering what it's all about, seeking what it can be you are seeking, exclaiming, Ah yes, sighing. No no, crying." (385)

~ all passages from The Unnamable, emphasis added

The Unnamable narrator strives to be honest with himself and with the reader about the connection between crying and humanness. He does not attempt to disguise his need to cry nor the actual tears that he sheds. He says that he is given to crying for the sake of his health if nothing else. And he aptly illustrates that he needs such an outlet for the sorrow and frustration he experiences. Tears keep him -- and Mrs. Rooney -- in touch with their own humanity, in whatever condition they may find it, and with the thriving and faltering human activity around them.

Even though Becket subjects his protagonists to excruciatingly inhuman extremes, they, in their ability -- indeed their willingness -- to embrace the extremes of human emotional communication, lift themselves above despair. Their tears also facilitate perception of, and regulate interaction with, a state of humanity outside the intensely suffering personal Self. Weeping is for them a healing, fulfilling necessary experience which, despite the sadness it inherently connotes, is ultimately postitive and affirmative.

Previously ~ Advancing & Receding

Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, September 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.blogsppot.com

Seen Through Tears

LIFE IS LIKE AN ONION,
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

“Life is like an onion; you peel it off one layer at a time, 
and sometimes you weep.” ― Carl Sandburg 

❤️

Section 5:
"The facts of this world seen clearly
are seen through tears;
why tell me then
there is something wrong with my eyes?"

from "Notes Towards a Poem that Can Never Be Written"
a poem in 6 sections, for Carolyn Forché
by Margaret Atwood

❤️

hidden ocean
"She held her grief behind her eyes like an ocean
& when she leaned forward into the day
it spilled onto the floor
& she wiped at it quickly with her foot
& pretended no one had seen."

from StoryPeople by Brian Andreas

❤️

“Crying does not indicate that you are weak.
Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive.”

from Charlotte Brontë by Jane Eyre

❤️

“Tears are the medium of our most primal language in moments as unrelenting as death, as basic as hunger, and as complex as rites of passage. They are the evidence of our inner life overflowing its boundaries, spilling over into consciousness. Tears spontaneously release us to the possibility of realignment, reunion, catharsis, intractable resistance short-circuited… It’s as though each one of our tears carries a microcosm of the collective human experience, like one drop of an ocean.”

from "The Topography of Tears: A Stunning Aerial Tour of the Landscape of Human Emotion Through an Optical Microscope"

by Maria Popova

❤️

"If you don't cry sometimes,
you'll end up crying all the time."

from The Thursday Murder Club
by Richard Osman

❤️

"Home they brought her warrior dead:
She nor swoon'd nor utter'd cry:
All her maidens, watching, said,
'She must weep or she will die.'"

from "The Princess" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

❤️

A Look at Tears & Crying
in the Work of Samuel Beckett (1906 - 1989)
~ Part I ~

"What kind of a country is this
where a woman can't weep her heart out
on the highways and byways
without being tormented by retired billbrokers!"

~ by Samuel Beckett from "All That Fall" ~
In the work of Samuel Backett, ranging from his earliest fiction to drama and later fiction, we find a world in which people can indeed weep their hearts out, a world in which the ability to cry is a quality that keeps human beings in touch with their own humanity and aware of the humanity of others. In Beckett's world, crying is a means of communication. Sometimes it is a necessary addition to words; other times it replaces them. In the next couple of blog posts, I will take a look at the theme of crying that runs consistently through Beckett's art.

Tears and crying offer an alternative to linguistic expression and a supplement to a language which is, by its very nature, insufficiently expressive. To allow characters to cry and to describe their tearful experiences in painstaking detail is a stylistic choice made by Beckett, not only out of an obligation to express the inexpressible, but also in at attempt to provide a mimetic realization of a world in which people actually do weep in reaction to the disorientation, the rage, the suffering, and the disconcerting frustrations they experience.

For those who cry, for Beckett's characters, crying is neither a linguistic act nor a stylistic choice. Rather it is an involuntary expression of emotion. Of course, one can choose to cry for the production of an effect, but such is not usually the case -- in life or in the modern fiction of Beckett, where crying is a sincere, uncontrived emotional and physiological reaction to distress.

In "All That Fall," a character named Mrs. Rooney argues for the right to publicly display emotion. Why must we be denied -- or deny ourselves -- the option of a good cry? Mrs. Rooney seeks to defy the human tendency to deny that we are or have been crying. Typically, we would rather claim "it's the onions," or "it's my allergies" or "I have been sleeping." We would rather wear dark glasses than let others see our puffy eyes. But not Mrs. Rooney. She says that crying is a natural and necessary activity that should not be denied to any individual because tears are a "vent" which promotes "good health."

In the play, Mrs. Rooney is suddenly overcome with sadness as she walks to the station to meet her husband. She thinks of her daughter, Minnie, who died in infancy, and imagines that, had she lived, she would now be in her forties, nearly beyond child-bearing, approaching menopause. Mrs. Rooney grieves not only her deceased child, but also the imagined aging of her adult daughter, and the lost opportunity for grandchildren. She desires only to vent her emotions rather than suppressing them at the expense of her health, but she is annoyed by the solicitous Mr. Tyler, who wants to take her arm and comfort her. Sobbing, she asks him, "Have you no respect for misery? . . . What kind of a country is this where a woman can't weep her heart out on the highways and byways without being tormented by retired billbrokers!" No sooner has Mr. Tyler taken himself off than Mr. Slocum comes along asking, "Is anything wrong, Mrs. Rooney? You are all bent double. Have you pain in the stomach?" Following his remark is Beckett's stage direction: "[Silence. Mrs. Rooney laughs wildly. Finally.]"

This final wild laugh signifies her despair that she will ever be allowed to vent her grief properly, considering all the artificial restraints placed on her and all the well - meaning but ill - directed attempts to solace her. The solace that Mrs. Rooney needs can be achieved only through weeping, not through stifling her cries or having them stifled. She prefers to express her emotions unabashedly, on the highways and byways or wherever sadness overtakes her. She laughs wildly in realization that she must relegate her emotional responses to privacy and solitude if she is not to be repeatedly misunderstood.

Next Fortnightly Post: ~ To Cry or Not to Cry ~
Saturday, August 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.blogsppot.com

Red Colander Harvest
Green Tomatoes ~ Fall 2019

Multi-Colored Veggies ~ Fall 2017

Apples ~ August 2013

Onions (at top) ~ Summer 2020