The Beginning of Happiness

Virginia Woolf, 1912
portrayed while knitting
by her sister Vanessa Bell

"It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later, to realize that it was happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk, the anticipation of dinner and a book. The dinner is by now forgotten; Lessing has been long overshadowed by other writers; and even the sex, once she and Richard reached that point, was ardent but awkward, unsatisfying, ore kindly than passionate. What lives undimmed in Clarissa's ind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond as mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the tie, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other." (p 98)

from The Hours
by Michael Cunningham, b 1952

Conversation Piece, 1912
by Vanessa Bell (1879–1961)

Mother - daughter dialogue
from the movie script:

Julia: I bumped into Louis Waters.

Clarissa: Oh, you did? Where?

Julia: In the street.
They're all here, aren't they? All the ghosts.
All the ghosts are assembling for the party!
He is so weird.
Oh, what? You can't see that?
You can't see that Louis Waters is weird?

Clarissa: I can see that he's sad.

Julia: Mom, all your friends are sad.
You've been crying. What's happening?

Clarissa: Earlier today I looked around this room
and thought: I'm giving a party.
All I wanna do is give a party!

Julia: And?

Clarissa: I know why he does it.
He does it deliberately.

Julia: Oh, is this Richard!

Clarissa: Of course. He did it this morning.
He gives me that look.

Julia: What look?

Clarissa: To say: your life is trivial. You are so trivial.
Just daily stuff, you know, schedules and parties, and details.
That's what he means. That is what he's saying.

Julia: Mom, it only matters if you think it's true.
Well? Do you? Tell me.

Clarissa: When I am with him, I feel: "Yes, I am living!"
And when I am not with him,
yes, everything does seem sort of silly.

I don't mean with you, right? God!
Never with you. Just all the rest of it.

Julia: Sally?

Clarissa: The rest of it. False comfort.

Julia: Because?

Clarissa: If you say to me, "When were you happiest?"

Julia: Mom!

Clarissa:"Tell me the moment you were happiest."

Julia: I know! I know, it was years ago.

Clarissa: Yeah.

Julia: All you're saying is: you were once young.

Clarissa: I remember one morning, getting up at dawn,
there was such a sense of possibility!
You know? That feeling?
And -- and I remember thinking to myself:

"So this is the beginning of happiness.
This is where it starts!
And, of course, there'll always be more."

Never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning.
It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Down, down into the midst of ordinary things."

"Let us not take it for granted that life exists
more fully in what is commonly thought big
than in what is commonly thought small."

~ Virginia Woolf ~

Theo of Golden

A nice thing to do with this book:
buy an extra copy, wrap it in a golden bow,
and give it as a birthday present.

A few favorite passages
from Theo of Golden
by Allen Levi

This one just made me laugh:
29: "The sidewalk tables at the pubs and restaurants along Broadway were all occupied, and foot traffic was robust, made up predominantly of college students and other adherents to the idea that weekends begin on Thursday."

The significance of a picture frame:
128: "How is it, Theo wondered, that a piece of paper -- a letter, a photo, a ticket stub, a sketch, a painting - is suddenly transformed by placing it in four bits of wood beneath a pane of glass? What does it mean that we place permanent boundaries around transient moments? What does it say of humankind that we take such trouble to freeze specific memories, that we devote such energy to capturing and preserving the 'minute particulars' of our lives?"

The signficance of the bicycle:
146 / 166: "William Saroyan said 'the bicycle is the noblest invention of man.' And in 'Resuce the Perishing,' that story, the little boy did not want a new bicycle. He liked the one he had. It cost him $27.50 of his own money. Well, I don't want a new bicycle either . . . I like mine perfectly fine. . . ."

250: "They [brothers Tom and Douglas in Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine] ride all over Green Town on their bikes. And they think Leo Huffman invented the bicycle, so they ask him to invent a Happiness Machine too."

Additional references to
Saroyan's "bicycle stories"
reminded me of
Flann O'Brien & H. G. Wells
For Ellen, as for so many of us:
146: ". . . books were her language, her neighborhood, her connection to reality."

Including: 148: Eudora Welty, "Why I Live at the P.O."
150: Carson McCullers
250: Harper Lee
254: James Hurt, "The Scarlet Ibis" -- I remember Ben & Sam reading this one in high school
256: Faulkner (Blue Jay)

The magic of majoring in English:
171: "After high school, I went away to college and got an English degree, so I could be a teacher. I read this essay one time about an English teacher, Whenever somebody asked him about his job, he would say he taught a course in magic. That made sense to me. Still does. He taught his students that words and books are like magic."

One big river
179: "Might it be that the water from the river of his childhood had found its way to this one, that the cyclical life of rainfall -- sky to earth to sky again, over and over -- had brought the elixir of the Iberian wine country to this place? That the river of gold in Portugal had come, through cloudburst and current, to this river of gray in Golden? And had soe of Golden's flow found its way to the hillsides of Theo's childhood? Was there, after all, only one big river that flowed across the earth?"

254: Additional memories of the River Marne

Theo's boyhood memory of seeing a fisherman pause
from his work on the boat to take up his paintbrush:
181: "Any fisherman knows that this is the best time to be fishing. But artists know this is the enchanted hour, when the sunlght is most magical. It's hard to know sometimes. Fish or pai, right? FIsh or paint? Well, I tell you, this time of year, I'm afraid I have no choice. I always make time for this."

The lasting impact of serving in Vietnam and
seeing the Memorial Wall for the first time
186: "It's amazing how a flat piece of stone can change your life, but that damn thing brought stuff up in me I'd been holding in for a long time. I'm still not sure why I went to see it, and I'm not sure I should have, but it probably did me some good."

Many more references to art and literature
51: Shakespeare & Co

161: "The biblically literate among them might have expected a finger to start writing on the wall at any moment: Mene, mene tekel, upharsin."
Previous connections on the Quotidian Kit
Blue Jay & Ginkgo & Picture Framing

Another blogger's
favorite Theo quotes

&

My random notes to self

1.
Is the mystery woman Mrs. Ponder?
(mentioned 2x: the photograph on Mr. Ponder's desk
and the painting in Asher's studio)

2.
Review Theo's visit to Asher's studio
and compare to concluding series of letters

3.
142: missing time
not sure about this one . . .
it's bad enough to misunderstand your own notes,
but particularly when it is a note about something
that's missing, expecially "missing time"!

Perhaps upon rereading, I can figure it out!

The Midnight Blogpost

The Moon on New Year's Eve

If you're looking for something to read
when the clock strikes twelve, how about this novel
concerning the quirks and tweaks and funny tricks of time:

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
At least 4 friends (Gene, Katy, Kerry, Laura), all on separate occasions, recommended this novel; plus, it was a clue on Jeopardy! so I knew it was going to be a good one. I admit that I was not consistently enamoured of Nora and the multiverse, but I was perpetually enthralled by the manner in which it brought to mind so many other things that I deeply love, such as

1. This poem by Ernest Sandeen

My Two Lives

The life I could have lived,
that other, better one,
is also mine. Who else
can claim it?
Each morning, stooping down,
I know that I am not worthy
to tie my own shoelaces.

Ernest Sandeen, 1908 - 1997
Notre Dame Professor and Poet

2. This poem by H. D.

Never More Will the Wind
Never more will the wind
cherish you again,
never more will the rain.
Never more
shall we find you bright
in the snow and the wind.
The snow is melted,
the snow is gone,
and you are flown:
Like a bird out of our hand,
like a light out of our heart,
you are gone.

by H.D. (aka Hilda Doolittle, 1886 – 1961)

3. The dreamy (also nightmarish) poetic novel:
Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman

4. The dreamy (also nightmarish) historical novel:
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

5. The Mirror of Erised -- Desire reversed -- in the Harry Potter novels -- where Harry glimpses a chance for the desire of his heart: communication beyond the grave.

6. A few movies come immediately to mind:
Coherence, Sliding Doors, It's a Wonderful Life
-- and doubtless there are many, many more.

7. Who couldn't use a do-over, right?

In each of these narratives, the characters are able to visualize a world in which they make better choices, maximize their options, achieve better outcomes; and try, try, try again for a more palatable existence.

And that's what The Midnight Library is all about:

"Every life contains many millions of decisions. Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations. These books are portals to all the lives you coud be living. . . . You have as many lives as you have possibilities. There are lives where you make different choices. And those choices lead to different outcomes. If you had done just one thing differently, you would have a different life story. And they all exist in the Midnight Library. They are all as real as this life.” (p. 31)

One of my favorite features is "The Book of Regrets." Although Nora is only 35 years old, her "Book of Regrets" is already so heavy that she can barely pick it up (p. 34). However, it gets lighter and lighter as she realizes that no matter what alternative life she may have chosen, it would not have been perfect (pp. 155, 266). In fact, those other lives may not have worked out well at all, so she can relinquish her regret -- based only upon imagination and lack of knowledge -- for not having chosen them. Similar to the Parable of the Cross is her discovery "that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact place you escaped from. That the prison wasn't the place, but the perspective.” (284)

Nora also learns some hard realities:

1. " . . . death is the opposite of possibility." (p. 69)

2. " . . . you can choose choices but not outcomes." (p. 83)

3. " [her] father . . . had been a difficult man. . . .
Nora had felt that simply to be in his presence
was to commit some kind of invisible crime." (p. 87)

4. “'You’re overthinking it.’
‘I have anxiety.
I have no other type of thinking available.'” (p. 109)

5. "'You might need to stop worrying
about other people's approval . . .
you don't need a permission slip to be your--'" (p. 193)

6."Nora wanted to live in a world
where no cruelty existed, but the only worlds she had
available to her were worlds with humans in them." (p. 197)

7."'It seems impossible to live with hurting people.'
'Well, in fairness, dying hurts people too.'"
At the core of the novel (truly, the exact half - way point!), Matt Haig presents his core message, in a short chapter entitled "Expectation":

“Nora had always had a problem accepting herself. From as far back as she could remember, she'd had the sense that she wasn't enough. Her parents who both had their own insecurities, had encouraged that idea.

She imagined, now, what it would be like to accept herself completely. Every mistake she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she hadn't reached or pain she had felt. Every lust or longing she had suppressed.

She imagined accepting it all. The way she accepted nature. The way she accepted a glacier or a puffin or the breach of a whale.

She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying her best.
And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free."
(p. 143)

The Full Moon After Yule

Are the library and librarian for real, or just a whirlwind vision, a frantic exploration of the dusty shelves before the clock strikes midnight?

"There is a chance that just before you die you'll get a chance to live again. You can have things you didn't have before. You can choose the life you want. . . . this whole library is part of you. Do you understand? You don't exist because of the library; the library exists because of you." It turns out that all Nora needs is "the book of her future . . . in this one that future was unwritten." The book of regrets can be left behind: "That is the last book you need. That will be ash by now. That will have been the first book to burn." (pp. 225, 265, 270 266)

The novel concludes optimistically:

She had to try harder. She had to want the life she always thought she didn’t. Because just as this library was a part of her, so too were all the other lives. She might not have felt everything she had felt in those lives, but she had the capability. She might have missed those particular opportunities that led her to become an Olympic swimmer, or a traveller, or a vineyard owner, or a rock star, or a planet-saving glaciologist, or a Cambridge graduate, or a mother, or the million other things, but she was still in some way all those people. They were all her. She could have been all those amazing things, and that wasn’t depressing, as she had once thought. Not at all. It was inspiring. Because now she saw the kinds of things she could do when she put herself to work. And that, actually, the life she had been living had its own logic to it. . . . What sometimes feels like a trap is actually just a trick of the mind. She didn’t need a vineyard or a Californian sunset to be happy. She didn’t even need a large house and the perfect family. She just needed potential. And she was nothing if not potential. She wondered why she had never seen it before.” (p 269)

Related reading for 2026:
The Personal Librarian (suggested by Igor)
by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray.

Maybe after that, I'll look for something else
with the word Library or Librarian in the title!

Or perhaps the word Book
as in The Last Bookaneer by Matthew Pearl
recommended by Gene;

or the personification of text
as in Inkheart by Cornelia Funke,
from Katie

See previous book blogs:
January 2025: bookstore = cathedral
"If you are in a cathedral,
you are quiet because you are in a cathedral,
not because other people are there.
It's the same with a library." (185)

Chernobyl:
"He seemed like he would be able
to sit in a field near Chernobyl and
marvel at the the beautiful scenery." (204)
April 2016 & May 2016

& The Quotidian Kit:
Children in the Leaves & Straw

Some other lives for me:
stick with childhood swimming and piano
end bad relationships sooner
stay single longer
major in accounting
go to art school
accept offer to model for art class
go to Hallmark or Ideals

Emily Dickinson, Writer

Emily Dickinson
drawings above & below
by Barbara Cooney

Quotations from I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died
an Emily Dickinson mystery by Amanda Flower
320: "If you are a writer, a true writer, you can always write if only but a little. You thrive on it. You need it, and it needs you."

247: "Being paid for your work doen't necessarily make you a writer. Being able to contribute to the world in any manner of the written word, on the other hand, does."
"Fame is a bee.
It has a song—
It has a sting—
Ah, too, it has a wing."
In the novel, Emily murmurs these words to herself as she discovers a bumblebee nestled in an indoor flower arrangement and gently places the cut stem outdoors to spare the bee's life:

"The bumble deserves this flower because he gave me much inspiration tonight. Anyone who can inspire a poem deserves a flower to have and keep. . . . The blossom will be withered in the morning, but for this night he will sleep in bliss." (182)

In addition to deep thoughts of writerly introspection and references to many poems, Amanda Flower has filled her novel I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died with light-hearted speculation -- was Emily Dickinson a sleuth, investigating local crime; did she have a loyal made and confidante such as Willa; did she ever meet Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 1850s?

A young gardener working for Emily purchases a ceramic American goldfinch ornament as a present for his fiance in Ireland: "to give her a bit of hope to hold on to" (171). Throughout the novel (179, 324), the repeated motif of the figurine merges with Dickinson's iconic line: "Hope is the thing with feathers".

Repeated lantern imagery (268, 270, 317) reminded me of this questing metaphor:
"I am out with lanterns, looking for myself."

~ Emily Dickinson ~
[from an 1855 letter to her friend Elizabeth Holland]

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

Click to see:
a beautiful slide show
of the Dickinson Homestead

Happy 195th Birthday
December 10, 1830 ~ May 15, 1886

"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?"

letter from Emily Dickinson to T. W. Higginson
August 16, 1870

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

Previous Emily Dickinson mystery by Jane Langton

Previous posts: KL ~ FN ~ QK

Skeleton Flowers

"Late October showers
bring delicate skeleton flowers.
A ghostly sight
on Halloween night,
they softly glow for hours."

by Calef Brown
from Polkabats and Octopus Slacks

A super fun, totally unique storybook
for Halloween and all year long!
You've gotta love a book whose first
two stories feature Kansas City & Route 66!

Polka Bats for Halloween!
Also check out Hallowilloween!

Additional
Halloween Favorites (2024)

And in years previous
The Witch Family ~ by Eleanor Estes
More posts: FN ~ QK ~ KL

Not to be confused with
Little Witch ~ by Anna Elizabeth Bennett

Redheaded Readers

Little Red Haired Girl
[on facebook]


Paintings above and below
by Italian Impressionist
Federico Zandomeneghi (1841 – 1917)


The Good Book, 1897

♥♥♥

Young Girls Reading
(aka The Two Sisters), 1889
by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
[also on FN & on facebook] ♥♥♥

Woman Seated on a Red Settee
by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864 – 1901) ♥♥♥ Red Heads in the Family

My Sister Diane

My Grandson Dean

Eternal Sunshine & Da Vinci Code

In the movie Operation Mincemeat,
the nearly true - to - life Winston Churchill
makes the fictionalized observation:
“I applaud the fantastic.
It has many advantages over the mundane.”

I love the way this cat, radiating
Eternal Sunshine has chosen to live
smack- dab in the middle of the fantastic!

"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd".

from "Eloisa to Abelard"
by Alexander Pope -- or Pope Alexander
[as so sweetly blundered by Kirsten Dunst]

In a movie full of insights,
this mild exchange provides strong caution
against erasing bad memories:

Kirsten Dunst / Mary:
Q: How did I look?

Mark Ruffalo / Stan:
A: You looked happy.


After re-watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
I was inspired to review my favorite lines from Dan Brown

~ The Da Vinci Code ~

Chapter 62, p 266:
“In my experience," Teabing said,
"men go to far greater lengths to avoid
what they fear than to obtain what they desire.
I sense a desperation in this assault on the Priory.”

~ Angels & Demons ~

Chapter 37, page 137:
Remember! she told herself. Remember the solution to this test!

Remembrance was a Buddhist philospher's trick. Rather than asking her mind to search for a solution to a potentially impossible challenge, Vittoria asked her mind simply to remember it. The presupposition that one once knew the answer created the mindset that the answer must exist . . . thus eliminating the crippling conception of hopelessness. Vittoria often used the process to solve scientific quandaries . . . those that most people thought had no solution.

Chapter 45, page 173 - 174:
Vittoria sensed she was starting to come unhinged, an alien distress she recalled only faintly from childhood, the orphanage years, frustration with no tools to handle it. You have tools, she told herself, you always have tools.

“Terrorism,” the professor had lectured, “has a singular goal. What is it?”

“Killing innocent people?” a student ventured.

“Incorrect. Death is only a by product of terrorism.”

“A show of strength?”

“No. A weaker persuasion does not exist.”

“To cause terror?”

“Concisely put. Quite simply, the goal of terrorism is to create terror and fear. Fear undermines faith in the establishment. It weakens the enemy from within . . . causing unrest in the masses. Write this down. Terrorism is not an expression of rage. Terrorism is a political weapon. Remove a government’s façade of infallibility, and you remove its people’s faith.”

Loss of faith . . . ”

Is that what this was all about?

[All italics and ellipses in original]