The River Simply Manifest

Summer evening on the Wabash,
taken from the window at McGraw's
"Then Glory had seen the place as if it were the kind of memory a woman might wish for her child, and it was exactly that, the river broad and shallow, the intricacies of its bed making rivulets of the slow water, bloom on the larger little islands and butterflies everywhere. And the trees meeting high above it, shading it, making the bottom earthily apparent wherever there was calm. They all loved the river, in all generations. . . . the river was simply manifest, a truth too seldom acknowledged. When she had been on her own, sometimes she had thought of it."
from Home, (283 - 84)
by Marilynne Robinson

P.S.
Happy Lughnasa ~ Feast of the First Corn
Midway Point between
the Summer Solstice & The Autumnal Equinox

Thanks to my friend Victoria Amador
for this beautiful photo from Wisconsin.

To Victoria & Steven ~ the first fruits are upon us!
Indeed a blessed conclusion to your Midwestern Summer --
and now begins your Sojourn Abroad
(I just had to capitalize those words, German style)!
Wishing you a lovely Lughnasa!
Dance wherever you may be -- land, air or sea!

Memories Within the Walls

New Post for June on
Kitti's Book List
"Our Island Home"

While reading Julie Myerson's thoroughly researched treasure hunt of a book -- Home: The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Our House -- I was reminded several times of Rumi's description (not sure which poem) of finding the precious streams of gold and red that flow beneath the floorboards of our own inhabited homes; and also of Janis Ian's plaintive song:

Memories
Tomorrow is the birthday of a lady dressed in blue
She don't have much to look forward to and nor do you
We live alone, though we sleep in the same old bed together
This is the home we built before we lost forever
There are memories within the walls and tapestries
There are memories - sitting alone at the station
waiting for a train that never comes
The nights are cold, the days just fade away
Tomorrow never comes
Nothing to say but yesterdays
Do you remember my name?
I don't remember you
We live alone, though we live in the same old home, with the same old truth
There are memories within the walls and tapestries
Memories - sitting alone at the station waiting for a train that never comes
[emphasis added]

Music & lyrics by Janis Ian
from her album, Night Rains

I think it's those "streams of gold and red" and "memories within the walls and tapestries" that Myerson is thinking of when she observes that "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" (46). The house has not forgotten!

Myerson's little daughter wonders if perhaps every building we've ever entered can remember our presence, and maybe the buildings that our ancestors have been in draw us 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
[here & above]
More "memories within the walls and tapestries"
from Small Island by Andrea Levy:
"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).

"Haunted Dollhouse" by Laura Lipton
For more on Small Island and Home,
see these posts on my book blog:
"Our Island Home" & "The Top Layer" & "SSR"