The Top Layer

Where I Lived ~ 1962 - 1967
Corner of Hickory Avenue & Baxter Street Road ~ Neosho, Missouri
Photographed by Rebecca Sprigg ~ my childhood friend and neighbor
[for more on my childhood home see
"Dream Road" & "The Days Were Long"]
"Our moments have blotted out theirs.
Maybe this is a necessary element of domestic living --
maybe it's the only way we can co - exist comfortably
with each other's past lives, each other's ghosts. . . .
it's not really our house at all is it . . .
It's like we're just the top layer.
And one day there'll be another layer right on top of us, squashing us down. . . . There are whole pieces of the past that lie just around the last corner,
closer perhaps then we'd like to think.
We may choose to forget this, but the house doesn't.
The house has seen it, done it, felt it all before."

from
Home: The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Our House
(23, 16, 46)
by Julie Myerson
A few weeks ago (scroll down / or click "Our Island Home"), while writing a bit about Myerson's fascinating book, I was reminded of a couple of books that we used to check out from the Kingsessing Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia back when Ben and Sam were little: Since 1920 (1992) by Alexandra Wallner (b 1946) and Our House: The Stories of Levittown (1995) by Pam Conrad (1947 - 1996) . Like Myerson, these two authors,and describe historical quests, similar for the under layers of history beneath their current dwellings.

Wallner, writer, home renovator and researcher, is "fascinated by the history and romance connected with old houses." Her book illustrates the changing street scape of a fictional village, starting in 1920 with a farmhouse and a barn raising on a private country road. Next come a a blacksmith shop, a bakery, and electricity; followed by more houses and paved side streets, a grocery store, and business after business . . . replaced, sadly, over the years by "Going Out of Business" signs and fire damage, leaving the old houses abandoned and dilapidated . . . until, at last, two decades of neglect are displaced by home renovation, public parks, and new families!

Conrad also blends fact and fiction, capturing "the families, the memories, the hard times, the good times," as children from the 1940s thru the 1990s narrate their experiences of growing up in the houses of Levittown, New York. Conrad's book is illustrated by Brian Selznick (of recent Hugo Cabret fame) and also includes a classic aerial photograph of Levittown in 1947, entitled "Moving Day."

In conclusion, Conrad observes that
"no matter where you are right now . . . right in the spot where your are standing, there used to be someone else, that at some other point in time, someone stood where you are standing, thinking their own thoughts. And someday in the future someone will stand there and wonder about you, wonder if there was ever anybody else.

Keep in mind that you are making memories.

Consider that something you take for granted today may be the one thing you might pine for someday, and there might not be any more of it left, but you'll remember its sweetness. Remember the curve of the sun in your bedroom window late in the day. . .

Make sure you notice if the trees meet in an arch over your street . . . Take note of those people who are so familiar to you, and consider memorizing them for a time when they are gone.

And know that if anyone ever says to you, 'What will you always remember about this place?' you will know just exactly which story it is that you would tell them. . . .

'I believe in neighborhood . . . A place where families own their homes, where they work, play, make mistakes and celebrate their lives. I think it must have been wonderful to be a child in Levittown. . . . I had never lived in Levittown when I began this book, but now, surely, I have lived there in my heart' " (64 - 67).

[Pam Conrad's observations ring especially true and sad,
knowing that she died of cancer the very next year at age 48. RIP.]

Our Island Home

The Book of Common Prayer:
"At your command all things came to be:
the vast expanse of interstellar space,
galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses,
and this fragile earth, our island home" (370).

As in Home . . .

by British author / critic Julie Myerson

And Island . . .

by British / Jamaican author Andrea Levy
American author Bill Bryson also has a book entitled [Notes From a] Small Island, which opens with his typical drollery:

"There are certain idiosyncratic
notions that you quietly come to accept
when you live for a long time in Britain.
One is . . . the idea that Britain is a big place."
(see my previous post)
It's all a matter of perspective! Andrea Levy's novel of World War II (also a movie) moves back and forth between small Britain and even smaller Jamaica. Jamaican character, Gilbert Joseph has volunteered for the RAF, traveled to England, and discovered it to be rife with racism and geographical ignorance. Ironically, even when he meets two kind African American soldiers stationed in Yorkshire, they have no idea of Jamaica's location or connection to England or how it is that Gilbert wears a British uniform:

"I hope I don't cause offense
if I tell you that to my eye you don't look British."

"I am from Jamaica."

"Jamaica, England?"

Had no one outside the Caribbean ever heard of Jamaica?
I did not yell or cry out in pain, although I should have.
"No, Jamaica is in the Caribbean," I told them.
But this made no impression on their look of puzzlement.
"The West Indies?" I tried.

"Well, you could have landed from a twinkling star . . . ."
Gilbert continues with his explanation until the Black Americans, themselves from Florida, finally come to the conclusion that "This island, Jamaica, is in the Caribbean Sea" and "the British have all their black folks living on an island. You a long way from home just like us" (155 - 57).

British character Queenie Bligh offers this perspective of life on the sceptered isle: "But overseas? Where overseas? How far! We live on an island, for God's sake, everywhere is blinking overseas" (288). Queenie makes her living during the war by running a boarding house in London, where her lodgers include Gilbert and a number of other Jamaicans. Queenie's shabby yet stately Victorian property at 21 Nevern Street may be fictional, but it sure sounds real!

Shortly after my friend Katy gave me a copy of Small Island to read, my sister - in - law Tina gave me a copy of Julie Myerson's intriguing book Home: The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Our House. What perfect timing! These two books, one fiction, one non-fiction paired up perfectly. Katy & Tina, thanks for loaning me these books!

I was fascinated to realize that Myerson's Victorian terrace house at 34 Lillieshall Road was rented by a number of Jamaican families between 1959 and 1975 -- slightly later than the events in Levy's novel, but still close enough in time and place that I couldn't resist mapquesting to see what I could learn. These books didn't come with maps (I love books that do!) but they should have!

A = 21 Nevern Street / B = 34 Lillieshall Road
~~ just under five miles apart ~~

[click here & on map to enlarge for reading]
Throughout the course of tracking down every occupant, owner or tenant, going back to 1873, Myerson encounters at least as much despair as joy. She writes of being "highly conscious that I'm wading through the tragic, personal lives of total strangers" (230). And what of the first owners, when the house had no sad past to contend with? Myerson imagines even the earliest mistress of the house wondering, "Could this house be haunted? . . . oppressed with a weight she can't justify or fathom. It's a new house . . . there can be no ghosts. It can only be the future that she senses, then, the grief and sadness that's stored up to come, the events that will unfurl and happen. It's the weight of the future she feels pressing down on her" (380).

For Myerson it became a painstaking, all - consuming, pre - google quest for information and images. She confesses that "a part of me became convinced that if I researched these stories hard enough, I could somehow summon these people back to life, however briefly -- and that they'd somehow be here again in this house" (377).

But no, these non - fictional characters are of the past, not subject to manipulation, and much of their sorrow remains unfathomed: "The house won't tell, can't tell . . . does the house even want to tell?" Myserson concludes that "real people aren't like authors -- they're not in it to spin tales or fake it. They already believe in the story -- because it's true" (377, 439).

Inspired by Myerson's book, I want to continuing pursuing the historical generations of my own houses. I already know a number of scattered facts and legends about each one -- 814, 309, 443 -- but there's undoubtedly much much more to be revealed! (Also, see below / scroll down for a view of my grandparents' painted house.)



Related Song by Janis Ian:
"Memories Within the Walls & Tapestries"

Favorite Quotations (& additional blog post) from
Home: The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Our House

In search of lost time: "Maybe it was just the sense of the strong, clean lines of the present bending for a moment, going shaky and blurred. Whatever it was, for a few uneasy seconds I felt surrounded -- not by people perhaps, so much as by moments, lost moments. Forgotten days and nights, lost hours, old minutes that had ticked away and would not come again. . . . We inhabit spaces and we know we aren't the first to do so . . . Their clutter, their smells, their noises, and their way of doing things is long gone. . . . If it wasn't, the sense of claustrophobia would overwhelm us. We'd be stifled by years of emotional history every time we passed through a doorway of climbed the stairs" (5, 15, 23).

Remembrance of things past: "Our moments have blotted out theirs. Maybe this is a necessary element of domestic living -- maybe it's the only way we can co - exist comfortably with each other's past lives, each other's ghosts. . . . it's not really our house at all is it . . . It's like we're just the top layer. And one day there'll be another layer right on top of us, squashing us down. . . . There are whole pieces of the past that lie just around the last corner, closer perhaps then we'd like to think. We may choose to forget this, but the house doesn't. The house has seen it, done it, felt it all before." (23, 16, 46). [See also my post above: "The Top Layer"]

One vast story: "These letters and phone messages are peculiarly and unexpectedly touching. I realize that actually they're a part of what I'm trying to explore: the fact that all of us badly want to be part of a story, to be the Right Person, the One someone's looking for. Don't we all, at the end of the day, just want to connect our lives with the lives of others and experience that satisfying symmetry of time and place that comes from being notified, written to, called to account" (78 - 79; for more on the significance of story, see "Everyone Loves Stories" on The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker).

Those who've gone before: "Maybe buildings can draw people back to them. Maybe all the buildings we ever go in, our ancestors have been in before us and we just don't know it because we never find out those things" (98.)

Lillieshall Road Today

********************
Favorite Quotations from Small Island

About books: "My favourite task was to hand out the books at the beginning of term. Those children all had new books, whose turning pages wafted a fragrance of sun on sweet wood; a scent of knowledge" (44).

Vacationing in Yorkshire: "We were billeted four to a chalet at the training camp in Filey in the county of Yorkshire. Pure imagination was needed to see how in peacetime English families could actually enjoy a holiday at this woebegone place. . . . I huddled round the hot pipes . . . . We blocked up the door of this little holiday home with spare clothes, sealed up the gaps in the windows with old newspaper. . . . Could this misery be a portrait of an English holiday?" (135).

Twilight: "In twilight you can trust nothing your eyes see because your mind believes this half-light to be a dream. . . . Is that a tall man in a black cloak or a tumbling wall? See that phantom, could that be a tree? Did a rabbit run or did I blink my eye?" (156).

The bombing of London: "For a good few seconds all three of us stared at each other. We'd heard it [the air - raid siren] before, taken no notice of it. But that was before the war, which was only a few minutes ago. Now it was the war, so there was every chance that we were going to die. . . . But surely I'd been walking among houses? A woman had called out from a window, 'Herman, get in here,' and I'd thought How common. The boy running past me had made a face as he went by. And a tabby cat was stretched on a step. Too everyday to remember but surely there people walking, looking at watches to see if they were late for a train, arm in arm, carrying bags? There was an old man reading a paper and a pub on the corner with a sign that swayed. Where had they gone? Now it was all jagged hills of wreckage, crumbling, twisting, creaking, smoking under far too much sky. There was only this bleak landscape left" (264, 305, emphasis added).

Demolished houses: "A house had its front sliced off as sure as if it had been opened on a hinge. A doll's house with all the rooms on show. The little staircase zigzagging in the cramped hall. The bedroom with a bed sliding, the sheet dangling. flapping a white flag. A wardrobe open with the clothes tripping out from the inside to flutter away. Empty armchairs siting cosy by the fire. The kettle on in the kitchen with two wellington boots by the stove . . . " (304 - 05).

Alzheimer's / Shell Shock: " . . . my teacher at Bolsbrooke Elementary School, taught us all in English grammar that an apostrophe is a mark to show where something is missing. And that was how I'd always seen Bernard's father, Arthur: a human apostrophe. He was there only to show us that something precious had gone astray." (288)

Prejudice: "In five, no, in six places, the job I had gone for vanish with one look upon my face. Another, I wait, letter in my hand, while everyone in this office go about their business as if I am not there. I can feel them watching me close . . . but cannot catch even a peeping twinkle of an eye. Until a man come in agitated. "What're you doing here?' he say to me. 'We don't want you. There's no job for you here. I'm going to get in touch with that labour exchange, tell them not to send any more of you people. We can't use your sort. Go on, get out.'

"The girl at another office look on me with such horror -- man . . . Was I to look upon that expression every day? Come, soon I would believe that there was indeed something wrong with me" (313).

Nevern Street Today

Thanks Dave!

"I am not solitary whilst I read and write,
though nobody is with me."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
~ from his essay "Nature" ~

Where our grandparents lived, 1940s - 70s;
back in those days it was painted a dignified moss green.
When visiting the old town last Spring,
we found it painted in this vivid hue!

That big front attic room where the upstairs windows are --
that's where I read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time --
Memorial Day Weekend, 1974
A few ideas for Spring Break or Summer Beach reading:

My spring break reading included a couple of very enjoyable, non-conventional, non - criminal John Grisham novels that my oldest brother David picked out for me. Playing for Pizza is an American / Italian football novel. In addition to detailed play by play narratives of the game, it is also filled with mouth - watering descriptions of gourmet dining that will have you planning your next vacation to Italy if at all possible.

A Painted House is a novel of American history and local color, set in 1950s Arkansas. I read it through the filter of my brother's observation that it made him think of our grandparents. Dave wrote:

It is not typical Grisham fare and is a very moving and thinking kind of book. I came away impressed and also with a lot of thoughts of G'Pa and G'Ma Carriker. I felt a strange sort of disconnect while reading this novel. My mind was lost in the book and its characters while at the same time I was also feeling as though I was a part of it and the characters are people I have known but can't quite place.
I too shared Dave's reaction. The funny thing was, I had to keep reminding myself that the story was taking place not in the years when our parents were children, but in the same years when my brother was little, and just before I was born! Somehow in the novel it all seems so long ago, the farming, the dirt roads, the overalls, the old-time carnival rides.

After reading, I wrote back to Dave and told him that this is the kind of book I'd like to see turned into a movie. Oh, guess what? That's already been done: A Painted House.

Now I shall pass a copy of the book on to my twin brother Bruce and my youngest brother Aaron; I know they'll love it for the running subplot about the St. Louis baseball Cardinals!

When I talked to Bruce about the novel, I asked him how it was the little boy has come to be such a fan of the Cardinals, and he explained:

"When that story was set...in the post-WWII South...the Cardinals and St. Louis Browns were the only major league teams west of the Mississippi or south of the Mason-Dixon Line (except for the Washington Senators). If you drew a line from Savannah, Georgia thru Fargo, ND to the Canadian border, the Cardinals were the closest major league team for anyone living south or west of that line.

"They were carried on KMOX radio, which had the strongest signal of any station in the country at the time. If conditions were right, KMOX could be heard as far away as Scotland, South Africa, and the Artcic Circle. ( I can get it in PA some evenings...no, not on the Web.)

"As a result, the Cardinals had a radio following in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, the Dakotas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. If you lived in one of those states, and you were a baseball fan, odds were good you were a Cardinals' fan.

Even today, with teams in Georgia, Colorado, three teams in Texas, and the Royals in western Missouri, the Cardinals' regular broadcast affiliates include stations in Mississippi, Illinois, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, as well as Missouri."

Thanks Bruce & Dave!

Also
The Kneeling Bus, by Beverly Coyle: some say novel; I say short stories. Connected? Yes, a collection of 1950s Florida vignettes. Unified? Not really, but consistently narrated by the middle daughter who makes a few memorable mother - daughter observations:

Mom believed in good hair, simple lines, light make-up; but the endless variations, the waste of time in playing with them, filled her with doubt. For her, sin was a measure of one's silliness, and people's extravagances shocked her more than their reputed lusts, though her own husband [a Methodist minister] would not have known what in the world she was talking about. None of this was in Dad's theology." (133 - 34)

And . . .
Mother: "It's all going to be too confusing for me."

Daughter: "Not if you change that little habit of yours."

Mother: "What habit?" She dreaded habits very much.

Daughter: "Insisting something is confusing that is actually simple to grasp and, conversely, taking rather difficult concepts and making them simple. It reminds me of flirtatiousness in coeds."

Mom blinked. "Half the time I don't know what you're talking about." (173)

The Kneeling Bus
is also mentioned in my post: "How Ironic!"

Also of interest: Rebecca Solnit's extended essay, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, which carries a recurring theme of "The Blue of Distance."

See my posts: "That Old Blue Willow" and "Always Far Away"

Altering Events

Chasing Daylight, Forgiveness, and Presence
These three very thoughtful books came my way last year (2011), each inspirational and thought - provoking in its own way, each pointing the way to Here and Now.

For the past year or so, I have been compiling a list of occasions from as far back as I can remember when, for want of a better description, "time stood still." Therefore, I particularly appreciated the coincidence of Kelly's observation that in his Perfect Moments "time came close to standing still." Kelly sought to fill the remainder of his life with these moments, knowing that death was near. For me, it's more of a nostalgic exercise, looking back, trying to pinpoint the closest, realest moments. Miller's brief study of forgiveness boils life down to its essence: "healing, the only worthwhile work in the world." And Angelou reminds us that

" . . . years of
Sleepless nights and months of uneasy
Days will be rolled into
An altering event called the
'Good old days.' And you will not
Be able to visit them even with an invitation
Since that is so you must face your presence"
These books are about altering events, perfect moments, presence, forgiveness and courage. And all three are succinct. A good return for a small investment of time.

Chasing Daylight:
How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life
by Eugene O'Kelly"There were no fireworks involved in our conversation. No amazing chocolate cake or vistas overlooking the Grand Canyon. Yet it felt like a Perfect Moment nonetheless. . . .

"In a Perfect Moment, time came close to standing still. A Perfect Moment could be an intense five - minute phone conversation. It could be a leisurely, four - hour meal with good wine and great conversation. It could conceivably go on and on and on because it wasn't the bounded moment you created; it was the proper atmosphere in which it could blossom.

"The more I experienced Perfect Moments, the more I entertained the possibility of a Perfect Day, which was merely Perfect Moments strung together. In a perfect world, a Perfect Moment could last the duration of a waking day, maybe longer. Maybe the rest of one's life. I marveled at how many Perfect Moments I was having now. I was getting better at it. It was beautiful." (113, 115 - 16)

A Little Book of Forgiveness:
Challenges and Meditations for
Anyone with Something to Forgive
by D. Patrick Miller"Can we begin to imagine a politics of forgiveness? We've had the politics of one - upmanship, deception, and belligerence for so long that we may mistake this way of doing things for "human nature." If we believe that we must fight against our own nature to change our politics, then peace, justice, and human equality become romantic ideals that can never be practically achieved -- although they can always be used as excuses for more war and sacrifice, to keep the enormous wheels of global misery grinding along.

"The extent to which we think 'world peace' is possible is exactly the extent to which we think our own minds can someday be peaceful through and through. If we cannot understand why distant waring nations fight over territories, national pride, or religious beliefs, then we need look for insight no further than our fight for a parking space, the struggle to procure a prestigious position over our competitors, or the aggressive ministry to convert one more soul to our church.

"But human nature encompasses more than our destructive habits; it also has within it the potential for surrender. If we think of surrender as raising the white flag before our enemies, nothing within us will change. The surrender that matters is giving up the belief that we have any enemies. It doesn't matter whether humanity achieves that surrender tomorrow or a hundred years from now; simply remembering to make the attempt whenever possible is what will eventually undo the world as we know it.

"How could our politics begin to express forgiveness? Imagine politicians debating publicly in order to learn from each other and educate the public, striving to outdo each other only on the attempt to make sure all parties have been fairly heard. Imagine the media hesitating in its rush to judgment of people and events -- hesitating in order to place their reporting in the context of the most profound questions of human consciousness and moral evolution. Imagine our country's diplomatic envoys arguing for peace in international conferences by admitting our warring history and tendencies first.

"Are these radical departures from politics - as - usual really beyond human nature? Not if they are within our imagining -- and if we can couple our imagination with an intense desire to end the human habit of alienation."

Letter to My Daughter
by Maya Angelou"Of all your attributes, youth,
Beauty, wit, kindness, mercy,
Courage is your greatest
Achievement,
For you, without it, can practice no other
Virtue with consistency."
*******************

For additional passages from Angelou's book:
"Dagmar's Birthday"
&
"A Noble Country"

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

Beyond Her Family . . . In The World

~~~~~

Lucinda thinks to herself:

"But beyond her family, in some vague place in the world,
she had always hoped there would be
people who would like her,
who would want to have her 'round." (173)

~~~~~
Taking a look back at 2011, I finished off the year's reading with a couple of good strong girl novels, recommended by friends recalling childhood favorites that I had somehow missed along the way.

Roller Skates (1936)
by Ruth Sawyer "East Side West Side
All about the town . . . [she]
Tripped the light fantastic
On the sidewalks of New York!"
This dear old song goes hand in hand with the spirit of Sawyer's novel! In addition to roller skating all around 1930s New York City, ten - year - old Lucinda is also a literary prodigy, well - versed in Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy, Lewis Carroll, William Cullen Bryant, Swedenborg, and Beethoven!

Some lovely seasonal passages that I must remember to share in the coming year:

"Fall weather was the best weather for making friends. You met everybody coming or going; met them alive and eager and made friendly by the gently keen September air. . . . There was a flooding of sunshine, but the air had a knife's edge to it; you could feel winter on its way" (32, 71).

Like me, Lucinda is a girl who just loves Christmas: "Lucinda had the gift for festival. She spread out Christmas to last from Saint Nicholas Eve until Twelfth Night; and burned the greens on the hearth with a choked feeling of utter desolation" (103).

Baby Island (1937)
by Carol Ryrie Brink
Stranded [like Gilligan's Island] and resourceful [like Little House on the Prairie], twelve - year - old Mary and her sister, ten - year - old Jean, think of everything when it comes to taking care of the babies! By the same author as brave, adventurous Caddie Woodlawn (1935).

The above novels feature real - life girls, facing real - life conflicts; if, instead, you are in the mood for the fantastic, try time - traveling with Peter and Mollie, to the sometimes scary world of make believe:

The Magical Adventures of the Wishing - Chair (1950)
by Enid Blyton
~~~~~~~~~~

. . . and a few "grown - up" stories . . .
Borrowed Finery by Paula Cox
A poor little rich girl memoir; repeating decimal of disgraceful parenting; some great lines:

"Could you escape from a divorce the way you could from a marriage? Was it possible to get a divorce from a divorce?" (18)

" . . . one of those blue American days full of buoyancy and promise that seemed to occur only when I was small." (19)

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
Far-fetched, odd and sad; some elegant imagery:

"He paused before Kay's tulips, focusing in close, thinking how much they really did resemble the delicate tissue of lungs and how interesting it would be to frame shots of both and stand them next to each other, exploring this idea he had that the body was, in some mysterious way, a perfect mirror of the world. . . . This was what he yearned to capture on film: these rare moments where the world seemed unified, coherent, everything contained in a single fleeting image. . . .

Cultivated tulip – Floriade 2005, Canberra
Sometimes I think the entire world is contained within each living person. That mystery and the mystery of perception -- I care about that. So I understand what you mean about music. . . . It was true that he'd once sought unity, as if the underlying correspondences between tulips and lungs, veins and trees, flesh and earth, might reveal a pattern he could understand. But they had not. . . . He had given it up, art and craft, the intricate and exhausting task of trying to transform the world into something else, to turn the body into the world and the world into the body" (149, 157, 201 - 02, 319; see also).

Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers
A touristy Venetian walkabout.

Tobit
Interestingly, this is not the first novel I've read that revolves around the central imagery of Tobit and the Angel; there's also Stella Benson's novel, published in the U.S. in 1930 as The Far-Away Bride, and as Tobit Transplanted in Britain in 1931.

[Hey, check it out: I'm in Wikipedia!]
~~~~~~~~~~

And two further titles from authors mentioned
earlier on this blog, in books from 2006:
Ariel: Grace Tiffany's compelling retelling of Shakespeare's Tempest.

Superfreakonomics: Levitt and Dubner, as before, somewhat eye - opening, somewhat annoying.

Italo Calvino

Girl Reading by Picasso
For Valentine's Day . . .

what could be more perfect than this passage from

If on a winter's night a traveler

by Italo Calvino
"Tomorrow, Reader and Other Reader, if you are together, if you lie down in the same bed like a settled couple, each will turn on the lamp at the side of the bed and sink into his or her book; two parallel readings will accompany the approach of sleep; first you, then you will turn out the light; returning from separated universes, you will find each other fleetingly in the darkness, where all separations are erased, before divergent dreams draw you again, one to one side, and one to the other. But do not wax ironic on this prospect of conjugal harmony: what happier image of a couple could you set against it?" (156 - 57; see also my Fortnightly post: "Love You Can't Imagine")

So Many Books, So Little Time
Come to think of it, could any book blog be truly complete without at least a reference to the profound opening chapter of If on a winter's night a traveler, in which Calvino describes the dilemma of entering the bookstore? No, I don't think so. In fact, I often think that it should be read as an opening ceremony before each new book that we begin reading. Thus I present it to you here in its entirety (with emphasis added). Lengthy, yes, but compelling:

Chapter 1
You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want to watch TV!" Raise your voice--they won't hear you otherwise--"I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe they haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: "I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything; just hope they'll leave you alone.

Find the most comfortable position: seated, stretched out, curled up, or lying flat. Flat on your back, on your side, on your stomach. In an easy chair, on the sofa, in the rocker, the deck chair, on the hassock. In the hammock, if you have a hammock. On top of your bed, of course, or in the bed. You can even stand on your hands, head down, in the yoga position. With the book upside down, naturally.

Of course, the ideal position for reading is something you can never find. In the old days they used to read standing up, at a lectern. People were accustomed to standing on their feet, without moving. They rested like that when they were tired of horseback riding. Nobody ever thought of reading on horseback; and yet now, the idea of sitting in the saddle, the book propped against the horse's mane, or maybe tied to the horse's ear with a special harness, seems attractive to you. With your feet in the stirrups, you should feel quite comfortable for reading; having your feet up is the first condition for enjoying a read.

Well, what are you waiting for? Stretch your legs, go ahead and put your feet on a cushion. on two cushions, on the arms of the sofa, on the wings of the chair, on the coffee table, on the desk, on the piano, on the globe. Take your shoes off first. If you want to , put your feet up; if not, put them back. Now don't stand there with your shoes in one hand and the book in the other.

Adjust the light so you won't strain your eyes. Do it now, because once you're absorbed in reading there will b no budging you. Make sure the page isn't in shadow, a clotting of black letters on a gray background, uniform as a pack of mice; but be careful that the light cast on it isn't too strong, doesn't glare on the cruel white of the paper, gnawing at the shadows of the letters as in a southern noonday. Try to foresee now everything that might make you interrupt your reading. Cigarettes within reach, if you smoke, and the ashtray. Anything else? Do you have to pee? All right, you know best.

It's not that you expect anything in particular from this particular book. You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. but not you. you know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst. This is the conclusion you have reached, in your personal life and also in general matters, even international affairs. What about books? Well, precisely because you have denied it in every other field, you believe you may still grant yourself legitimately this youthful pleasure of expectation in a carefully circumscribed area like the field of books, where you can be lucky or unlucky, but the risk of disappointment isn't serious.

So, then, you noticed in a newspaper that If on a winter's night a traveler had appeared, the new book by Italo Calvino, who hadn't published for several years. You went to the bookshop and bought the volume. Good for you.

In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out:

the Books You've Been Planning To Read For Ages,
the Books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success,
the Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At The Moment,
the Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case,
the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer,
the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves,
the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified.

Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time To Reread and the Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.

With a zigzag dash you shake them off and leap straight into the citadel of the New Books Whose Author Or Subject Appeals To You. Even inside this stronghold you can make some breaches in the ranks of the defenders, dividing them into New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Not New (for you or in general) and New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Completely Unknown (at least to you), and defining the attraction they have for you on the basis of your desires and needs for the new and the not new (for the new you seek in the not new and for the not new you seek in the new).

All this simply means that, having rapidly glanced over the titles of the volumes displayed in the bookshop, you have turned toward a stack of If on a winter's night a traveler fresh off the press, you have grasped a copy, and you have carried it to the cashier so that your right to own it can be established.

You cast another bewildered look at the books around you (or, rather: it was the books that looked at you, with the bewildered gaze of dogs who, from their cages in the city pound, see a former companion go off on the leash of his master, come to rescue him), and out you went.

You derive a special pleasure from a just-published book, and it isn't only a book you are taking with you but its novelty as well, which could also be merely that of an object fresh from the factory, the youthful bloom of new books, which lasts until the dust jacked begins to yellow, until a veil of smog settles on the top edge, until the binding becomes dog-eared, in the rapid autumn of libraries.

No, you hope always to encounter true newness, which , having been new once, will continue to be so. Having read the freshly published book, you will take possession of this newness at the first moment, without having to pursue it, to chase it. Will it happen this time? You never can tell. Let's see how it begins.

Perhaps you started leafing through the book already in the shop. Or were you unable to, because it was wrapped in its cocoon of cellophane? Now you are on the bus, standing in the crowd, hanging from a strap by your arm, and you begin undoing the package with your free hand, making movements something like a monkey, a monkey who wants to peel a banana and at the same time cling to the bough. Watch out, you're elbowing your neighbors; apologize, at least.

Or perhaps the bookseller didn't wrap the volume; he gave it to you in a bag. This simplifies matters. You are at the wheel of your car, waiting at a traffic light, you take the book out of the bag, rip off the transparent wrapping, start reading the first lines. A storm of honking breaks over you; the light is green, you're blocking traffic.

You are at your desk, you have set the book among your business papers as if by chance; at a certain moment you shift a file and you find the book before your eyes, you open it absently, you rest your elbows on the desk, you rest your temples against your hands, curled into fists, you seem to be concentrating on an examination of the papers and instead you are exploring the first pages of the novel. Gradually you settle back in the chair, you raise the book to the level of your nose, you title the chair, poised on its rear legs, you pull out a side drawer of the desk to prop your feet on it; the position of the during reading is of maximum importance, you stretch your legs out on the top of the desk, on the files to be expedited.

But doesn't this seem to show a lack of respect? Of respect, that is, not for your job (nobody claims to pass judgment on your professional capacities: we assume that your duties are a normal element in the system of unproductive activities that occupies suck a large part of the national and international economy), but for the book. Worse still if you belong--willingly or unwillingly--to the number of those for whom working means really working, performing, whether deliberately or without premeditation, something necessary or at least not useless for others as well as for oneself; then the book you have brought with you to your place of employment like a kind of amulet or talisman exposes you to intermittent temptations, a few seconds at a time subtracted from the principal object of your attention, whether it is the perforations of electronic cards, the burners of a kitchen stove, the controls of a bulldozer, a patient stretched out on the operating table with his guts exposed.

In other words, it's better for you to restrain you impatience and wait to open the book at home. Now. Yes, you are in your room, calm; you open the book to page one, no, to the last page, first you want to see how long it is. It's not too long, fortunately. Long novels written today are perhaps a contradiction: the dimension of time has been shattered, we cannot love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes off along its own trajectory and immediately disappears. We can rediscover the continuity of time only in the novels of that period when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded, a period that lasted no more than a hundred years.

You turn the book over in your hands, you scan the sentences on the back of the jacket, generic phrases that don't say a great deal. So much the better, there is no message that indiscreetly outshouts the message that the book itself must communicate directly, that you must extract from the book, however much or little it may be. Of course, this circling of the book, too, this reading around it before reading inside it, is a part of the pleasure in a new book, but like all preliminary pleasures, it has its optimal duration if you want it to serve as a thrust toward the more substantial pleasure of the consummation of the act, namely the reading of the book.

So here you are now, ready to attack the first lines of the first page. you prepare to recognize the unmistakable tone of the author. No. you don't recognize it at all. But now that you think about it, who ever said this author had an unmistakable tone? On the contrary, he is known as an author who changes greatly from one book to the next. And in these very changes you recognize him as himself. Here, however, he seems to have absolutely no connection with all the rest he has written, at least as far as you can recall. Are you disappointed? Let's see. Perhaps at first you feel a bit lost, as when a person appears who, from the name, you identified with a certain face, and you try to make the features you are seeing tally with those you had in mind, and it won't work. but then you go on and you realize that the book is readable nevertheless, independently of what you expected of the author, it's the book in itself that arouses your curiosity; in fact, on sober reflection, you prefer it this way, confronting something and not quite knowing yet what it is. (3 - 9, emphasis added)

Reading Couple by Renoir

Mona's Clothes

My Mother's Clothes: An Album of Memories -- a unique photo - essay in which Jeannette Montgomery Barron captures her mother's personality through a series of stylized photographs, with just the merest of annotations. Although the text is spare, by the end of the book, the reader / viewer has absorbed pretty much the entire life story of Barron's mother, Eleanor Morgan Montgomery Atuk (1922 - 2007).

I purchased a copy of this book just out of curiosity, about six months ago, and all of a sudden it seemed like the perfect gift for several of my closest friends -- Beata, who had just been to Poland to sort out a lifetime of treasured outfits with her mother; Vickie, who adores style and fashion research; and especially Katy, who had so generously shared with me many items from her late mother's collection of shoes and blazers.

While thumbing through the pages of My Mother's Clothes before wrapping Katy's Christmas presents, I had one of those inspirational Eureka Moments -- "Hey, I could do that!" Of course, I still felt that Barron's book was the right present for Katy, but even better would be a series of photographs -- taken by me! -- featuring the beautiful clothes and shoes that I had inherited from her mom.

Energized by the successful effect of Barron's project, I couldn't wait to begin my own! I went to work immediately, racing around creating fashion vignettes in every room of the house. With the help of Vistaprint, I compiled my results into a stunning (if I do say so myself!) calendar so that Katy too will have an "album of memories" in honor of her mother, Mona O'Malley.

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

MARCH

APRIL

MAY

JUNE

JULY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER
It also dawned on me that I should order some additional copies of the keepsake calender for a few others who would appreciate the concept. I was intrigued by my friend Megan's observation, upon receiving her copy, that

. . . although the photographs were "personless . . . they seemed soooo personal."

Yes! Exactly what I (and I believe Barron also) had hoped to achieve!
Thanks Megan!

Another Sartorial Scenario ~ Gerry's Summer Jackets
My sister - in - law Tina,
modeling one of Mona's classic holiday sweaters!

Uncle Al & Auntie Tee ~ Halloween 2011