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Liminality

An almost parting shot:

Although I still live in this house, in a very real sense it is no longer mine. I met with my realtor yesterday. Today and tomorrow, furniture will begin to disappear. Some will move to my new house, but other pieces are being donated and they begin their journey to new homes and new families. The planters in the front of the house will be moved to my new house later this week. My new curtains will come down and the wall of family photos that line the stairwell, the bridge between public space and creative space, will also disappear into the land of waiting.

I am a person who lives somewhere, and yet nowhere. A person walking through the lands of not-yet.

And so here I am, neither here nor there. And yet, yesterday evening the emotional process of letting go was finally complete, and my brain was calm. I sat down with my needlepoint for the first time in a long time. The last few months have not been creatively bare, in fact it has been a time of ideas flashing like lightening, of wild ideas and crazy insights, but it has not been a time of focused creative work. In fact, I don't know how much time I will have for needlepoint or embroidery, or sewing, and I certainly can't create mess at this point, and yet suddenly the barriers have fallen. Let the exploration begin.

February 28, 2017
Similar Flowers, Two Gardens

My gardens are in bloom, so far with fairly similar blossoms. The Lenten Roses at the new house are more established and lush.

But the later-blooming, and less common varieties of hellebore that I planted at the old house are also blooming this year, for the first time, and I traipsed out in the rain to capture a picture of one for you, although alas it is somewhat blurry.

I am happy that the new house has an established garden, and that it seems to be heavily planted with plants I love.

At the moment that means it is surrounded with daffodils and hellebores and camellias. The camellias at the new house are blooming now; the camellias at the old house are done for the season.

There are daffodils at both houses, but I only managed photos at the one (current) house. different varieties at each, which only adds to the enjoyment.

February 23, 2017
Catching Up

There is a danger in juggling too many thoughts, in holding onto attention loosely. In such random jostlings and momentary fragmentations tragedies have occurred. More often, however, our failures are minimal and we are simply inconvenienced. It was through a similar misallocation of mental resources that I found myself at McKay's bookstore Monday afternoon puzzling over the cacophonous hubbub of children, young and young at heart, who yearned to be outside in the sun but instead found themselves trapped (myself included) in long lines and interminable waits. Only as I pulled out of the parking lot did I remember that it was a holiday. The prize: coming home with slim volumes by Alice Munro and Richard Yates.

As it seems that my days have been as scattered as my thoughts, an endless cycle of never-enough, and my own mental perigrinations are not likely to settle down unless I give them an outlet, you shall have just that: random mutterings in lieu of a post.

1.   I have mostly caught up on sleep. In fact I slept 12 hours Saturday, perhaps to my regret as I was groggy and unfocused most of the day, a good part of which was spent curled up between Tikka and Moises, reading 32 Yolks: From My Mothers Table to Working the Line by Eric Ripert.   The book was engagingly enough written to draw me in and it seems honest and forthright. You see in the young Eric, in his character as a young child, but also in how he deals with his experiences growing up, his stubbornness, his drive to push through pain and loneliness, his need to excel, all the qualities that will make him a top chef. The book is quite clear about what is needed to succeed in the restaurant business, what is behind the perfect meals diners expect. It was an easy read and good for a day when I was really only running on half power.

2. My state of overwhelming exhaustion may have been kicked into overdrive by attending the symphony Friday night, a decision I in no way regret as it was a truly wonderful performance and my heart soared with the music. The orchestra was led by the incredibly talented and dynamic guest conductor, Mei Ann Chen, who won the hearts of the audience with her energy, her sparkling personality, and, not least, the beauty of the music itself. The concert ended with a stunning performance of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite.   The Beethoven was pretty good too, at least on the orchestra's part, which is high praise from me as I distinctly did not like the way Beethoven was performed under the former music director. My problem with the Beethoven, the Piano Concerto #1, was actually with the pianist. Lise de la Salle is obviously very skilled, with enormous technique and a very powerful sound.   And yet there were sections where her rather outsized sense of interpretation struck a discordant note in my enjoyment of the piece. I don't actually mind hearing a familiar piece in a new way, especially when that new way of listening opens new vistas of understanding.   Perhaps I am just growing older and more set in my ways, a bit curmudgeonly concerning beloved music, or perhaps my disgruntlement was just an echo of my underlying exhaustion, but I felt that her interpretation grated, and I was often more annoyed than enlightened. Perhaps if I were again in my 20s I would hear it differently, but alas it is not to be so.

I must admit however that Lise de la Salle gave a magnificent rendition of a Schumann song as her encore. She played with a fiery intensity that captured the imagination, making me yearn to hear more. I look forward to hearing her again, perhaps to following her career, and I would happily hear her play Schumann again. Schumann, perhaps, would never be the same.

3.   I am in the midst of another round of sorting and tossing, a refinement of sorts, in both preparation for moving in a couple of months, but also for putting my current house on the market. One such small burst of activity revolved around shelving books, and removing a few tomes that no longer held interest. Two books that came down off the shelf were by John Reed, Insurgent Mexico, and Ten Days that Shook the World. I reread both. I remember how the first book, the first book I read by Reed, perhaps when I was 19, captured my imagination. I had never read anything quite like it and I was both thrilled and shocked by some of its revelations. Reading it again now, I can remember those feelings, albeit fleetingly. Read is definitely biased, but there is a humanity to his descriptions of his time with the campesinos, and he captures pathos, and stunning naiveté born out of desperation. But he skims over the flaws and abuses of his heroes deftly, while going into excruciating detail of the crimes of the people in power. He does the same in Ten Days but although the prose may be more mature here, it has also lost its humanity. The text is dry, the revolutionary zeal more blindly integrated. In Russia, Reed is consorting with the leaders of the revolution, not the common man, and there is less humanity, less questioning of the human condition, only acceptance of the rightness of the cause at hand. The latter book held my interest less than the former. It was in the bag of books that prompted that foray into McKay's mentioned in the opening paragraph. Munro will make me happier. Insurgent Mexico currently remains on the shelf, and yet its position is tenuous. As I read and reconnect with those books that are my true joys, it may yet find itself traveling onward toward a new home.

February 21, 2017
Bursting Forth

Yesterday afternoon I kept dozing off. It was safe, I was happily ensconced at the salon for a manicure and pedicure, and was probably the most relaxed I've been in over a week. I actually came home and took a nap before busying myself again. Can't say that I was energetic though, I had barely enough energy to spiralize some zucchini into zoodles. Which was good because it meant I at least had something to eat.

Zoodles with olive oil and garlic, seared scallops. Perhaps the garlic is darker than I intended, and the scallops lighter, but delicious none the less.

You see, I've not been sleeping very well at all. I stay up too late (because I can't sleep) and wake up too early, and although the circles under my eyes grow deeper and darker, sleep eludes me. I've been simultaneously excited and terrified, extremely focused and yet distracted, feeling like I am standing on the edge, but on the edge of what? The precipice? Shangri-La? Likely neither of those. I just have to open the door and walk through.

I am closing on a new house this morning, hence all the stress and excitement. Why the particular sense of terror mingled with all that excitement? I only suppose that it is that same sense of striking out on my own, of letting go, perhaps mingled with a tinge of fear. I alternate between being long past ready to move, although I don't yet have my current house on the market and I don't have a moving date, and a deeply unsettling need to hunker down and stay even though I know in my bones that it is not the right thing to do. Sometimes the familiar is all too appealing.

Besides, in a truly rational sense, it is not like I am really doing anything I haven't done before. Its not my first house. George wasn't even really all that involved in the last house purchase, even though he was here for emotional support, at least in his physical presence and its link to the shared history and relationship. Intellectually, and often emotionally, however he was not always there, and how I struggled with that loss at the time, with the responsibility I did not want to claim. I had managed everything for a long time. Despite all that, despite decades of experience in life and houses, it is like everything is new, and what lies beyond the door frame is shadowed in fog.

The first Iris Histroides popped its head up this week. One brave, lonely blossom surrounded by bare ground. She made me smile. She still make me smile. She looks so delicate and fragile, yet I know she will survive whatever Mother Nature throws her way, even frosts and snow. I should take heart in that. Spring comes regardless. All you have to do is walk through the door.

February 16, 2017
Neighbors

I got my first real sense of Knoxville nearly 10 1/2 years ago. I had been here before, I came to get my step daughter settled when she moved here for grad school, we had visited, there had been a wedding, but it was then, in September of 2006 that I really began to get a feel for the place and its citizens. My grandson had just been born and I was here to help out. Mostly I was in the house, cooking, cleaning, being helpful however I could. But each day I would go out: out for groceries, out to pick up something or another, to buy yarn, to explore, whatever. Each day I went out, and each day I met someone new.

That wasn't really my plan, I wasn't planning on meeting people. I wasn't planning on moving here, but apparently it came naturally, I suppose in the same way breathing comes naturally. I remember the day I stopped at a packing/shipping store way out west, somewhere past Cedar Bluff, which at that time was terra incognita to me. I don't remember why I was there, what I was looking for, but I remember talking to the young proprietor, his baby playing on the floor behind him at the counter, his wife helping someone else. I remember chatting with him about his baby, about his store, about how excited and tired and proud he was.  This store was his dream. He had worked at a shipping store in high school, and how, out of college and newly married, he and his wife had looked for a place to make their life. They found a church, a house, a storefront nearby they could afford on a busy road. He spoke of how tired they were, what with a new house, a baby, now 16 months old, a new store. They couldn't afford employees yet, so this was their life: store, house, church. But they were making ends meet and doing a little better each month. I remember he told me how blessed he felt, and how he wanted his son to know that home, work, faith, these things defined who you were. Of course, watching his baby playing contentedly on the little matt behind the desk made me think of my grandson, of his future.

I haven't been back, I don't even remember where that store was, not exactly. But I do remember them. In those brief moments that family became a part of my life.

But why these memories? Why now?

This weekend I was a delegate to the Diocesan conference for the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee.   There was a speaker, Alan Roxburgh, and we had been asked to read his book, Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World. This was all typical, and some years I wonder why we have to both read the book and listen to the speaker because often the message is the same. I'm not saying it was that different this time, but, on the morning of the second day Mr. Roxburgh said something that has resonated in my head ever since, something that has brought a few itinerant memories to the fore. The speaker was talking about a church he had been working with and he mentioned that one of the parishioners, when asked about his neighbors, replied that he knew the six families on his street that attended his church.

I was taken aback. I know all my neighbors. We may not be close friends, but I know their names, and their grandchildren's names, something about what they like and dislike, where they are from. I would recognize them on the street or in a different city, I would be able to ask them about their lives. As I thought about it I realized that I have always known all my neighbors, at least in my adult life. It never occurred to me that people did not know their neighbors, although truthfully I never thought about it. I just assumed that this was typical,  and I was stunned by the realization that it is not.

I asked my friend, who was there as well, another delegate, and she said that perhaps more people didn't know their neighbors than did. Once again, I thought, evidence that I live in a bubble. And I was puzzled, although in retrospect I don't know why. I don't think my parents knew our neighbors when I was growing up. My mother doesn't know most of her neighbors now; she probably wouldn't know any if my brother didn't live next door.

When I was young I envied my mother her ability to just start up a conversation with anyone she met, another person in line, for example. I am often in my head, and not really interested in starting conversations. I am slow to get to know people. I don't really feel the need to go out and "meet people". But I don't ignore people either. I suppose I have more of a talent for connection than I had realized, or accepted in myself, but it is not because I am either outgoing or willing to strike up conversations with strangers. More likely I just have a talent for listening and paying attention; the conversations flow naturally out of that natural instinct. As I grew older, I realized I may be reserved, that it may take me a while to form deep bonds, but I do connect with the people around me on multiple levels.

Somewhere along the line I began to recognize that although my mom can talk to almost anyone, she is not good at long term friendships, that these conversations are mostly ephemeral, and that she has trouble maintaining relationships.  I feared that I both lacked the ability to connect and that I would end up being as isolated as she is now. I see that I was looking at the picture through the wrong lens.

I suppose I am not as shy and asocial as I thought, although I still wouldn't say I was outgoing. Sometimes I am supposed to be talking to people in some official capacity and I don't, and I occasionally berate myself for this, for occasionally being too detached. But perhaps I shouldn't. I need the space at times. I was supposed to go to a group get-together last night, I had told someone at the convention that I would go, but in the end I didn't. I was still recovering my inner equilibrium after all the input, all the voices, from the convention. Mostly I see that, as usual I concentrate more on what I am not, and give short shrift to who I am.  It seems it is possible that my detachment is not necessarily destructive, but protective, and that I am still listening, still caring, and that this balance between detachment and caring is also a part of the breath of life.

It is true that I do stand back and observe a lot. Sometimes I am just wandering somewhere in my own inner zone and I don't want to be disturbed. This is often true when I am out running errands, but occasionally at events as well.  More often I am just enjoying the flow, the eddy of conversations and connections, like hearing a symphony and watching the music dance before you across the room.  And yet connections seem to find me and I routinely talk to people in stores or at cash registers. I routinely talk to my neighbors when I see them, and probably more than talking, I just listen. I didn't meet everyone right away, it took me a couple of years to get a sense of all 38 households in my neighborhood.

I think that sense of connection is important. Isn't that what we all want, to feel connected? We yearn for it, and yet we have built a society that seems more intent on isolation, on separate spheres for work, play, belief. And yet who better to be connected to than the people who surround us every day? It isn't really about whether we go to the same church or believe the same things, but just that we are there, occupying the same territory, in contact with each other, together. Aren't we all yearning for community? Community is all around us and we just aren't paying attention.

I remember meeting a young couple once, at Ashe's Liquor Store. This was during that same 2006 visit, when I was a new grandma. They were students, recently married, on a very tight budget. They had decided they wanted to learn about wine and had figured out they could squeeze out $15 a week and they were being thoughtful and methodical about their process. As we chatted, their enthusiasm was infectious. They weren't my neighbors and yet they were, just as much my neighbor as the lady who rings up my order at Lowes; the 91 year old down the street who walks 5 miles every day; the young man who lived above me in my first neighborhood, who would beat his wife when he had one too many beers; the Bosnian refugees who struggled to get by and watched in amazement as their small girls became American before their very eyes; the man who loves to write letters to the paper; the woman who discovered a love of acting late in life; the couple stretched to their limits trying to give their children a life they never had; the Sunday school teacher, the civil war scholar; the elderly widow who struggles with how she will manage when her HOA dues go up more than her Social Security; the people who have too much; the people who wonder how they will keep up; the woman who is terrified of dogs but will spend hours nursing the smallest, sickliest plant back to life.

I'm going to miss my neighbors when I move, but I will have new neighbors, a new community. I realize even as I think about my neighbors, that all my communities are blurring together in my head, as they did in the paragraph above, over three decades of neighbors, all of whom have given me an incredible gift of their presence, all of whom have enriched my life.

February 14, 2017
Ch..ch..changes…

There is something I haven't told you.

Change is afoot. It began in Arkansas. No, that is not quite accurate because it began before I went to Arkansas, but I only became aware of the shift in Arkansas. It seems so long ago now, but of course it is not, merely 2 months. Two months that seem in some ways like a whirlwind and in others like a lifetime.

My last day in Fayetteville was drizzly and gray. I had hoped to visit at least one of the state parks we had camped at when I was a child. But of course it was December and the parks were closed. Instead I walked around Lake Fayetteville, a little over 4 miles of paved trail around the lake, but I took detours, wandered at will, and walked slightly over 5 miles, returning to my car chilled and happy.

It is amazing to me how going someplace else, someplace outside of your normal purview, brings you closer to yourself. One stretches sides of oneself that get neglected in the routines of everyday life, and although it sounds completely banal to say so, the everyday and the extraordinary almost become transposed in an odd way that brings us closer to ourselves. Strange that, the way that the place where we feel most at home, most secure, and I am a homebody if anything, is sometimes so secure that we lose some essential part of ourselves.

So there I was, walking in the cold, mid-40's drizzle, on a Sunday afternoon in early December. I was a visitor to Northwest Arkansas. I knew no one, although I would smile and chat with the few other walkers and bicyclists I would pass, and some part of me felt perfectly comfortable and safe. Ostensibly, in a very real way, I was not. I was a middle aged single woman on a wooded path in a mostly deserted space, a woman not from the area, whom no one knew, and no one knew where I was. I have not forgotten this aspect of existence, and it is always present. But if we think of it we become paralyzed. Although I don't believe I had ever been to Lake Fayetteville before, I had spent time in this area as a child. The geology, the flora, the sense of the place was familiar to me and it felt like home. Truthfully it felt like an echo of home, an imagining, because I haven't been in Northwest Arkansas in 43 or 44 years. The people, the towns, the environment has changed; it is no longer the place I knew even though echoes of that place still exist.

As I thought about Arkansas, as I thought about how I'd love to go back and hike the trails I hiked as a child, explore the familiar places, I began to question myself. Why is it, I wondered, do I feel more secure in a land of memory, in a land of fleeting familiarity, familiarity that is in fact an illusion, than in the place I currently live. I don't go hiking in the Smokies, although I often think about doing so, and they are much closer to home. Honestly I am no safer in Arkansas than at home, perhaps less safe. What is it about memory, about personal history, about the illusion of knowing something that lulls us into false security? And of course this got me thinking about home. Why is it that we are willing to cling to something that we know is not right, just because it is familiar, rather than risk change? I am just as prone to this as anyone else.

It was at this moment that I realized that I was ready to let go. The house I live in is, in its own way, a chain, tying me to the past. It was never intended to be a permanent space, we knew we might only be here temporarily. Miriam's words echo in my mind, from before we moved: "It is only a three-year grant" she said, as well as my response "Three years is a lifetime for your father." How prescient those words proved to be. Not quite two years later he was gone. But I wasn't ready. I needed time. Last summer I was still not ready. The thought of moving made me sick, even though there was a house on the market I thought I potentially liked. Then I painted the house, rearranged the furniture yet again, ostensibly getting it ready in advance, but also looking forward to enjoying this newly revitalized space for another year or so. My intention was to begin looking for a new place in January 2018, a time that fit into my neatly organized plan: I would make a decision about moving five years after George's death. But as I walked around Lake Fayetteville, I realized I was ready to let go, ready to move on.

When I returned home I was chatting with a friend, and I mentioned this realization, this acceptance that I was ready to move forward to the next stage, that I have in fact built my own life and the only thing truly keeping me from fully occupying it required a very physical letting go of the old life. I have changed this house; made it more mine, but the house itself was never "my" house, it was a place that fit a specific need, the needs of a dying George. It was always a house of letting go and moving on, and now it is time to do just that. I won't lose the past; it is a part of me always. Our pasts are always wedded to who we are, but we don't have to be chained by them. And so I will be moving. I honestly don't know when yet. But in the past few years I have built a life, my life, and now it is time to step into it fully.

February 9, 2017
Putterings

Somehow I missed posting on Tuesday. But it was a day filled with small joys.

The picture hangers came early and we moved pictures around. This large photo ended up above the mantel. I spent the remainder of the morning playing around, moving lamps and various vases and vessels, figuring out what would go where.

In the afternoon I worked in the yard. We are still in the early stages of spring, or is it the wishful stages of spring? But the hellebores are looking even more lush and beautiful than they were a few weeks ago.

And I have the beginnings of small buds on these tiny Hilda Niblett azaleas. My forsythia is budding heavily but is not quite in bloom yet. There are forsythia blossoms all over Knoxville, but the shady side of my hilltop is a week or two behind those parts of town closer to the river, increasing the anticipation and prolonging the pleasure.

February 8, 2017
January Books Part 2

Although I did not actually feel like I was reading obsessively in January, it seems that I did read a lot of books. Partially this is simply because I have been more diligent about getting books from the library instead of buying them, and I am loathe to return a book unread. There are times when I grow frustrated at the random way books appear, but the simple truth is that as much as I intend to be intentional with my reading, I rarely am. More often than not, what I read happens to be whatever I happen to pick up, which ultimately means the library stack does provide a sort of impetus for reading as opposed to allowing myself to wallow in other mindless pursuits. Of course this doesn't solve the problem that once my nose is in a book, the world could fall away before I would notice.

I also have gone to the salt spa fairly regularly, and this gives me a series of 45 minute increments in which I tend to read. Many of these books are fairly easy reading, 1 1/2 to 3 hours, if you are, like me, a fairly fast reader. The curse of being a fast reader is that it usually takes me longer to come to terms with my thoughts on a book than it takes to actually read it, and one of the reasons I like books more than movies, aside from the whole bit about spurring imagination and all that, is that a great majority of movies are made from books that take more or less 2 to 3 hours to read, and reading is far more entertaining than 2 hours at a movie.

There I've said it. Forgive me.

Anyway, above are the books I read in the second half of January. Notice there are more books than in the first half of January, but as I said above most of them were easy reads. Out of this grouping, I am tickled that my favorite books were the shortest, namely Gratitude by Oliver Sacks, at about 45 pages and 15 to 20 minutes of reading time, and the longest, American Ulysses, at 659 pages, which I dawdled over for two weeks. American Ulysses was not a library book, and although I originally requested Gratitude from the library, I have since purchased a copy at our local second hand bookstore, to be added to my small collection of books on dying and grief.

But, onto the books:

The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride was simultaneously easier to read than the author's first novel and more difficult. The text was more coherent, closer to the way we perceive our own random thoughts, and so there was a more immediate connection with the reader, but the cost was too high in that the prose lost that poetic sense of flow that was so evident in McBride's first novel, difficult as the language and the story itself was for the reader. In The Lesser Bohemians, McBride's prose did capture that flush of intensity one feels when falling in love, but ultimately this not sufficient for carrying a novel. Perhaps it is just me, but alas, I fear that an extended preoccupation with the emotional whirlwind of first love is only fascinating to those who a caught up in its nets.

In The Woods by Tana French. I read Tana French's most recent novel las fall, and although I enjoyed it, it was not one of my favorite novels. I wished, and still wish, having now read the first novel in the Dublin Murder Squad series, that I had read these previous novels first. The novel was full of twists and I love the way the author managed he overlapping of the procedural and psychological elements of the story, as well as that sense that the reader was caught up in the unravelling of case and detective simultaneously. Much more difficult than it sounds. I will read more, and will probably eventually reread the most recent novel.

Commonwealth is probably the best book I have read by Anne Patchett since Bel Canto. In fact, this novel is perhaps more clearly realized, but I continue to prefer the former. It is an excellent novel about families, love, betrayal, and the things that both bind us together and wrench us apart. (Often they are the same things.) I liked the way the author focused on specific events or moments, not necessarily told in chronological order, as I do increasingly feel that this is what is important in how we live and are shaped by our lives. It is not the day-to-day, but moments that have repercussions beyond what was imagined, that shape us. One poignant moment in this novel that continues to stick in my memory: the story about how the children would conspire to leave Albie, the youngest behind. They drugged him. I never did anything that drastic, but it reminds me of the way we felt as children toward my youngest brother on occasion, how the older children were held accountable, and the story of the time my parents left my youngest brother behind. It is a story in which I am complicit, but it did not end up the way one might expect. And it strikes me that this is twice in this month that I have thought of that story, and twice I have said I will perhaps tell it at a later date. and yes, perhaps someday I will.

What is Populism by Jan Werner Muller is a short, well-written and intelligent tract. And I believe the author makes very important points that can be related to the current situation in our country and culture. I say this regardless of where one stands on the issues. This is not a political blog, and I have my thoughts and reasons, which I may or may not someday elucidate. Let us just say that we each have our gifts, and our place in the world, but that does not mean we should shut the door.

The Night Bird by Brian Freeman. I must admit that I haven't read "kindle first" books very frequently of late and this is a book that I purchased for free through this program. It was the perfect book for reading on airplane, or for a visit to my mom: gripping enough, fast paced enough, but ultimately forgettable psychological thriller, distracting but not requiring extensive thought.

Selection Day by Aravind Adiga. I had been looking forward to this book, and I was on the waiting list for some time. I suppose this is one of the problems with library books. If I buy a book for my kindle and don't read it right away there is no sense of anticipation involved, but if I request a book, and I have to wait for weeks or months, the build up to reading becomes monumental. As usual with Adiga, the novel was about more than it appears to be about. A novel about cricket in Mumbai is actually about India and Mumbai, about fathers and sons, about class, culture, competition, ambition and obsession. But in the end I felt the author's control unraveled. Although ti shows with great clarity the cost of poverty and ambition, especially selfish ambition without consideration of the costs, it lacked the hard driving anger and punch of some of Adiga's previous novels.

I have already told you that Gratitude by Oliver Sacks was one of my favorite books, and that it is short. It is basically a compilation of essays that appeared in the New York Times after the author knew he was dying. The essays are calm and beautifully written. The book is both very simple book and yet complex, as peace is complex to those of us who don't yet understand it.

American Ulysses by Ronald C. White was my other favorite book of the month. I mentioned it previously here. It is a fabulous biography of a man I have long admired, probably since I first read Grant's Memoirs in my twenties, and which I need to read again. Perhaps I am simply biased, recognizing a fellow introvert, a man of intelligence and thought, who was often misunderstood in early life. There was more than one point in this book where I broke down in tears.

The financial lives of the poets by Jess Walter. More or less reviewed here.

Browsings by Michael Dirda, For the most part I enjoy Dirda's essays, which is odd because I really don't agree with his taste in books. But I suppose that is one of the talents of we humans, that we can recognize and accept joy in others, even others with whom we disagree. Remember this. I read the book over the course of two sessions in the salt spa (1 1/2 hours) and they were entertaining enough and thought provoking enough to cause me to question my own peccadillos. Enough of that.

Peacock and Vine by A.S. Byatt. I truly enjoy Byatt's novels, and yet I was disappointed in this book. I suppose I thought that it seemed like a happy marriage, a writer whose work I admire writing about two artists whom I also admire. And yet it did not live up to its potential. The book was interesting, but it seemed filled with rote rehashing of facts, and was perhaps more Byatt than either Morris or Fortuny. Alas, I felt the Byatt revealed in this tract seemed mired in clay. Perhaps it is just me.

February 4, 2017
Two Books, Two Paintings, Elusive Connections

I finished reading Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle last night. I had never read it before. Although the book was written in the 1940s and is set in England in the 1930s, there are aspects of the story, aspects of Cassandra's telling of the story, that, although not quite timeless, seem to exist outside of time. Cassandra's thoughts, the way she tells the story, are unique to themselves, and they are simultaneously modern and at the same time seemingly incomprehensible to modern readers. It is a story of place, of people, a story of first love, of bad decisions and good decisions, and how we are shaped by our circumstances to a large part, but again only partially. It is a story of capturing not only a place, but one's voice, and discovering who one might be.

This morning, as I think about the novel, I am also thinking about the exhibit of the work of Jered Sprecher that opened last week at the Knoxville Museum of Art. The paintings have been much on my mind. I was fortunate enough to attend an opening reception, and I've been back to see the works twice. With each visit I see differently. In fact, the work resonates at some frequency in my brain such that as I move through my days and thoughts, new connections are made and fleeting images from Sprecher's work flash through my thoughts and I am compelled backward (to the exhibit) and forward as well. Which is, of course, exactly what art should do, in whatever medium.

This morning I am thinking about a series of paintings from the exhibit, a set of six that were created, and displayed, as a group, a small exhibit within the larger exhibit. I did not take any photos of these pictures, and have not found them online. No matter, flat photographs show nothing of the depth of technique or the layerings of meanings. The photo above is from the Knoxville Mercury, which did an article on Sprecher and the exhibition, and the paintings I am referring to are visible only in part, on the sides of this photo. This actually works for me, for my purpose here, because one of the aspects of this grouping of paintings that struck me is the layering of images, of places and things, combined with a sense of time both occluded and revealed. You can see the lines going across the paintings, described as being inspired by the lines of a printer across the page, and fading ink. This sense of modern versus ancient, of what is hidden and what is revealed, in fact a sense that the hiding and the revealing are transient and elusive are captured in these paintings.

This morning this idea of what is revealed and what is hidden is refreshed in my head by Cassandra's own journey in the novel, by what she sees and writes, and what is revealed, often much later, only through the process of writing, of introspection, of interaction and relationship, and the sudden moment where one cries "Oh!". Revealed and yet elusive.

I am also reminded of a book I read last week, Jess Walter's The Financial Lives of the Poets, which is interesting in its sense of capturing a time and a place, but less successful in terms of that sense of being able to transcending its own time and specific circumstances. It is a novel that captures very well that sense of panic and hopelessness of its period, of the post 2008 housing crisis, job crisis, that sense of desperate hanging on. It is a novel of bad decisions, drawn in sharp relief, and eventual redemption. The main characters could in many ways be everyman or everywoman, young people filled with hopes and dreams, trying to fulfill their own dreams of what they can be, but making decisions based primarily on the yearnings within themselves looking for fulfillment, working past each other out of their own need rather than together with a sense of relationship and common purpose. Cassandra and Rose make equally poor decisions in I Capture the Castle, but they manage to grow up and redeem themselves more quickly whereas Matt and Lisa's lives break into many pieces before they begin to find some sense of comfort in each other, and the book only ends with that hint of redemption, of finding, but without guaranteed resolution.

As I was reading Walter's book last week, I was reminded of the painting above, also by Sprecher, titled Bloom. This was the first echo that drove me back to the museum, the way a memory of this painting popped into my head, although I think it did not carry great weight in my imagination that first evening. Birth, rebirth, flight, memory, the breaking apart and the joining together, the movement of air, our own fractured view of reality — circling back upon itself to birth, rebirth, redemption. We cling to the moment of beauty, as if that can save us. Instead we drown. The blossom, in all its fragility, is also the source of a new birth, a new seed, and its own death. Over and over again, like the beating of wings.

top photo courtesy of Knoxville Mercury, here.

bottom photo courtesy of Gallery 16, here.

February 2, 2017
Breath and Blossoms

The Hellebores are out and blooming. Earlier in the week I was able to sit outside and admire them, able to pretend that spring was truly just around the corner. By Friday there was a turnabout, reminding one more of Mother Goose: "The North Wind doth blow, and we shall have snow". It did flurry most of Friday morning, with no lasting effect. It is possible I might have wished otherwise, that I may have found a blanket of white charming, in which case I might have run out to take a prettier picture. My fellow Knoxvillians may be happier with the security of browns and the safety of dry roads.

Of course the hellebores are not the only signs that spring will in fact spring-forth. There are buds on the forsythia and a medley of green shoots are forcing their heads up through the dirt, with promise of various spring bulbs to follow. They add a lovely counterpoint to the fading pink blossoms cast off from the camellias, which are nearing the end of their blooming season after nearly two months of abundant frivolity.

And I too am feeling brighter, and nearly ready to leap forward. Upon the recommendation of a friend I booked an appointment at a Salt Spa, and have had two treatments. After the first, I was able to breathe more deeply than I had had been possible since sometime in mid December, and although I still have a remnant of my cough it is in retreat. Two treatments and my sinuses remain clearer, my breathing easier, and not surprisingly my thoughts perhaps more coherent. It may be coincidence, but I am inclined to say the treatments help. Besides, as I rationalized before beginning, how could scheduled meditative time be a bad thing, even if there were no other benefit. Given that I had been unable to breathe easily enough to meditate before attending the spa, I am happy for the win.

January 28, 2017