Picture of Home

A Picture of Home: Framed Plant Art
at the Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Garden
If there is any other occasion besides Christmas that can fill one's heart with "divine homesickness," I'm guessing that it's Mother's Day. In the following short story, my friend Jan has captured the sensation so well that it brings the tears to my eyes:

Washington Street
You are eight years old and already lonely. You measure your walk home from school by sidewalk squares. Your feet have memorized the path. You are walking to the house on Washington Street where the steps to the porch are steep. Your mother greets you at the door, her face as familiar as wind.

Now, years later, you look at a photograph of her from that time; her brown eyes smile, her dark hair pulled back from her luminous face. You marvel at her beauty, showing the photograph to friends—anyone who will look: “See. See my mother. This is what she looked like then” — as if she is someone different, someone you don’t remember, someone you never saw before.

In the house on Washington Street, that same mother — the one in the photograph — does the dishes by hand. It is 1964. She gives you a towel. “Here. You dry.”

In her 80’s now, her hair gone gray, her shoulders stooped, her loneliness beats in rhythm with your own. You hear her voice over the miles, and you listen to her stories — endless stories of what ifs. You ask, “Do you remember the house on Washington Street?” And she answers, “Of course I do.”

If you go looking, you will find sidewalk squares to measure. You will find steep concrete steps leading to stoops and into houses. They are everywhere. But something about that house on Washington Street calls you, reminds you of something you just cannot name. You see it in her eyes when you look at the photo. You want someone to tell you the story of that house and her in it. You were there, yet you need someone to tell the story.

You stare a long time at the photo. Her beauty startles you.

by Jan Donley (b. 1956)
American artist, novelist, playwright, poet, teacher

Mosaic Floor in the Bellagio Conservatory, Las Vegas

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

Previous Jan Donley Posts on my blogs:
Lucky Rock
Lost & Found
9 / 11 Retrospective [also on Quotidian Kit]
Dagmar's Birthday [also on Quotidian Kit]
Everyone Loves Stories
There on the Edge of Autumn [also on Quotidian Kit]
"I Seen the Little Lamp" [also on Quotidian Kit]
The House You're Standing In . . . [also on Quotidian Kit]
The Inner World of the Dream Character

Scales
Sleight of Hand
The Little Door
Savor September!
Happy Birthday Coyote!
Copyright
Color Just Invented

Quotidian: Think Small

quo⋅tid⋅i⋅an
1. daily: a quotidian report.
2. usual or customary; everyday: quotidian needs.
3. ordinary; commonplace
4. paintings of no more than quotidian artistry.
5. something recurring daily.
6. everyday, mundane, routine, unremarkable, workaday

My goal here, similar to my other blogs (www.kitticarriker.blogspot.com & www.kittislist.blogspot.com), will be to draw connections between daily life and literature of all genres (my favorite novels, haiku, sonnets, song lyrics, contemporary poetry, self - help, and so forth), always looking for the intersection of the quotidian and the artistic, complete with visuals, intertwining the two threads until a pattern emerges from the chaos. As Virginia Woolf said, "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."

To Track the Quotidian

The little things? The little moments?
They aren't little.
Jon Kabat-Zinn

The Large Interior
Jean Brusselmans, 1884 - 1953
Of the many paintings that Gerry and I saw in various museums about Bruges, here is one of my favorites. I was torn whether to post it here on my Quotidian page or save it for my Fortnightly page, where I always try to feature, in one way or another, "a house where all's accustomed, ceremonious." Indeed, Brusselmans has depicted just such a house, filled with order and harmony; yet he also captures the dailyness of the woman's routine, her collections and her knick - knacks -- not to mention the book in her lap -- perfect for my book blog!

Also by Brusselmans: Village Scene

Over the weekend, Gerry and I watched the 2014 film Boyhood. We viewed it somewhat less generously than the critics, placing it, after some consideration, in the "good not great" category. What we did find fascinating, however, was Mary Jo Murphy's review, comparing Boyhood to the British Up Series, of which we are great fans! As I read Murphy's comparison, the word quotidian jumped off the page at me. How accurate and applicable her description is to my Quotidian Kit:

Both skip life’s “big moments” to track the quotidian, on the understanding that this is where life unspools, where the particular translates so nearly to the universal, which is the irresistible appeal of such living documents. So no births, deaths, first kisses, exams, graduations,* illnesses or accidents. Just human beings forming inexorably before our eyes on screen. [emphasis added]

The "Up" Documentaries as Precursors to "Boyhood"
NY Times ~ 6 Feb 2015
Mary Jo Murphy

Or, as we find in the poetry of Rilke:" . . . the delight that grips us when our awareness of ordinary things seems to be raised to a higher intensity of awareness." ~Mark S. Burrows

*Actually, in Boyhood, there is a graduation.

The Quotidian Skin of Daily Life

Alleyway Art ~ Lafayette, Indiana

Every now and then, I come across such an excellent reminder of why, twelve years ago, I chose to name this blog "The Quotidian Kit" [see quotes, right - hand column -> -> ->]. Most recently, I was struck by a series of observations during my reading of 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium. In the "Foreword," the editors comment at great length on "the mundane details that constitute a single life":

"Like so many of the best contemporary poems, a number of works included here awaken us to a sanctity or beauty that pulses beneath the quotidian skin of daily life . . . the idiosyncractic struggles and delights of ordinary people . . .

. . . profound meaning resides not in a moment of transcendence but in the un - romanticized rigors of daily life. . . .

. . . For so many contemporary poets mine for meaning in the mundane -- in the small particulars -- when we might expect them to cast their gaze on larger transcendent truths. Contemporary poets are not fooled by the seeming absence of light in the everday. They uncover and call our attention to the lower realm's inherent luminescence. . . .

. . . the best place to find the Infinite is in the finite, and the best place to find the universal is in the particular." (xi - xiii, emphasis added)

Larger Context ~ "Your Face Here"
Quotidian ~ Life

Original "Woman in Gold" ~ completed 1907
by Gustav Klimt (1862 - 1918)

RE Lafayette Murals,
see also:

My blog
Mae's blog
Tin Can Telephone
Wabash

The Quotidian Life Is Not Always Easy

Depression Glass novelty pieces from my grandmother’s house.
See how the little amber bowl is a cauldron?!
My grandma always kept toothpicks in the yellow one.
And I always begged to drink milk or water from the green one
 — there were 2 of them, with matching saucers.

One-of-a-kind handmade Halloween card
from my talented sister-in-law Tina McF.

"I would hope that my readers feel a sense of awe at the quality of human endurance, at the endurance of love in the face of a variety of difficulties; that the quotidian life is not always easy, and is something worthy of respect. I would also hope that readers receive a larger understanding, or a different undertanding, of what it means to be human, than they might have had before. We suffer from being quick to judge, quick to make excuses for ourselves and others, and I would like the reader to feel that we are all, more or less, in a similar state as we love and disappoint one another, and that we try, most of us, as best we can, and that to fail and succeed is what we do." (281 - 82)

Elizabeth Strout (b 1956)
comments on her novel Olive Kitteridge

*********

For more about the quotidian in Olive Kitteridge
and several other novels,*

see my current post:

"Spinning the Web"

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

*********
*Things Invisible to See ~ Nancy Willard
The Guest Book ~ Sarah Blake
Eleanor Oliphant ~ Gail Honeyman
Olive Kitteridge ~ Elizabeth Strout
Black Girl / White Girl ~ Joyce Carol Oates
Ordinary Grace ~ William Kent Krueger

Sedem Stems from Gerry's Garden
Not ready to give up Halloween just yet!

And looking ahead to Spring . . .

What's the Big Idea?

The big ideas huddle in the jar together.
You spread them over the black bread of day after day
and swallow them. ~Quinton Duval
If you are a newcomer to "The Quotidian Kit," what I hope you will discover about this blog is how well it embodies the quotations above. When Emily asks, "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? -- every, every minute?" I want the answer to be "Yes, Kitti Carriker does!"


I picked the above photo, taken in Chicago by my friend Dagmar, because the city looks to me like a big, rounded jar where big ideas might huddle, along with the miniaturized images of me and my friends. I like to think of my blog as "the plain brown bread of day after day," and if I can, I'm going to pull some of the big ideas out of that existentialist jar and spread them on the bread for you to savor. I want these entries to prove the truth of Virginia Woolf's observation that indeed life does exist fully in what is common, in what is small, and "in what is commonly thought small."

So, every other day or so, I post my observations, large and small, ideas that crop up in the course of any given day. In addition, I occasionally feature blogs run by friends, various cross references and links that you may find of interest, announcements of community events, news about my family, favorite poems -- old and new, seasonal pictures and quotations, and photos of my adorable cats (sorry, can't resist!).

(Thanks to my nephew Hans for this one!)
In the right-hand column (-> over there -> and continue strolling down) you can see a permanent list of the many inspiring one - liners and memorable quotations that I have collected over the years. I hope you will find a few there that will stick in your mind as they have stuck in mine.

On "The Quotidian," I also take the opportunity to print excerpts from my two lengthier blogs, in order to keep you informed of what is going on there. You can reach either of these sites by clicking on the big "CARRIKER" signs that you see to the right ( <- over and scroll up).

1. "The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker": my literary blog of connection and coincidence. If you scroll down to Monday's post, "Joy Luck," you'll see that it announces the most recent Fortnightly entry (these appear every couple of weeks, thus "fortnightly," i.e., every fourteen days -- on the 14th of the month & then again on the 28th).

Click Here to find out more about "The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker."

2. "Kitti's List" : my book blog, a running log, with commentary of my past and current reading. The titles are organized primarily by the date of reading but also somewhat thematically.

If you are interested in reading previous "Quotidian" posts, you may continue scrolling down, reading backward in time until you eventually reach "older posts," where you can click for even more. Or you can go the "Blog Archive" in the left - hand column. Click on the black arrows for a list of months, then click on the name of each month for that month's posts. You will find many, starting in June 2009.

Please read, enjoy, follow & comment! Thanks!

Edge of Autumn

"The sun shone down from the western sky
and pieces of light through the branches
made stripes along the shaded ground. . . .
there on the edge of autumn looking out toward winter."

All of the connections on my new
Fortnightly Blog Post:
"There on the Edge of Autumn"
are drawn from the writing and photography of my friend Jan Donley. References to Jan's work have appeared several times on both the Fortnightly and the Quotidian right from the very beginning. Previously:

Lucky Rock
Lost & Found
9 / 11 Retrospective [also on Quotidian Kit]
Dagmar's Birthday [also on Quotidian Kit]
Everyone Loves Stories

Scales
Sleight of Hand
The Little Door
Savor September!
Happy Birthday Coyote!
"I am a leaf!"

Smarter & Fancier

Thanks to my friend Cate for capturing
this screen print to go along with my blog!
She understands my mission and knows what I'm about!

It's true -- you really can get smarter
(and fancier!) from reading my blog posts --
every few days, fortnightly, monthly!

If you don't believe me, how about these testimonials
from some of my highly intelligent readers:
Back in my second year of blogging, my sweet little darling niece
Anna sent this inspiring reponse:

Hi Aunt Kit! I was getting ready to go to sleep, when I stopped by your facebook page and clicked on the link to your blog to check out your newest entry -- and of course ended up reading the past three months worth. I love your style of writing. It's so calming, relaxing, intelligent, and home-y. Sort of like a really great bedtime story. Speaking of which, I really should be heading that way. Thanks for writing!
Love you, xoxo♥
September 8, 2010 at 11:34pm

And from my lovely cousin Maggie:

Kitti Cuz, I got lost in your blog this Sat morning. It is SO amazing, so much to take in! You are so entertaining and wise!!!!
I love you, cuz!
August 13, 2011

More recently, my loyal reader and oft - quoted friend
Burnetta wrote on my behalf:

My friend Kitti has kept a blog going for a long time now. They always touch something deep within me. I hope that you will take time to read this one. I can feel memory creeping up on me at odd times, in the line of a grocery store, driving by a landmark, the smell of an autumn fire. Memories are still a real part of my life and make it richer. As my memory stumbles at times for 'facts', my tactile and sensory memories seem stronger. Memories remind us of who we are at the core.
Downfall or Saving Grace?

Literary commentary means so much,
coming from our creative family friend
Renee:

R: I just wanted to say how much I love your blog especially the poetry. I just shared your late friend Celine's poem "Spring." Truly meaningful writing. I just followed you on the blog list. Please don't ever stop sending these out.

K: Thanks Renee! You just made my day! Cyberspace really is FULL OF DEAR FRIENDS! (Not just a black hole as I sometimes fear.) All is well here.

R: I am happy to know that but I really mean it. You have put me back in touch with poetry and Emily Bronte.

K: I know you do; I never doubted. Thanks for being a true friend, over the years and over the miles.

R: I have realized as I get older, that real friends (people you have shared large segments of your life with) are always friends. No matter how little you see them. I try to only have friends on FB. You know what I mean -- not just FB friends. Emily Bronte, I am coming back to you.❤

R: I appreciate yr discussion of Virginia W. She is a woman who should never pass into oblivion. I enjoy yr blog immensely. Thank you.

And from one of the keenest intellectuals
I've had the joy to meet through blogging,
Brigit always has some encouraging words:

B: You're a cultural force of nature!
K: Thanks Brigit -- just one of the many services I offer!
B: Keep the great content coming!
April 21, 2015

B: For anyone who who enjoys poetry, wisdom, culture and just general loveliness, you can't do better than my friend Kitti Carriker's blog. She's a scholar, teacher, traveler and general student of life.

K: Brigit, thanks so much for your kind words. Your praise was so high that I felt I might have actually been a little lazy this time, so I gave the post some fine tuning to make sure it lived up to your compliments. Thanks for inspiring me to keep at it!

B: Kitti Carriker is a ninja. This blog is really a public service and should be read far and wide.
Bright Blue October ~ Oct 19 2017

B: You always have the best pictures, poems and commentary -- long live Kitti Carriker!
Winter Solstice 2017

B: Your posts shine a clear light in all this darkness. Thank you and keep up the good work.
Moonset

Thanks everybody -- for all the kind words!

Anthony W
Shout out to Kitti Carriker, a great valuer of poetry
January 10, 2018

Barbara S
You have the heart of a poet and the eye of an artist💙
Panera Still Life

Gabrielle S
‎Oh so beautiful! Thank you Kitti! Your blog is wonderful.
This post made my morning.
Every comment and everything about this post is AWESOME!
September 8, 2009

Joni
Kitti honestly without you in my life there would be no poetry.
January 2011 / 2018

Nancy S
You have an incredible way of linking history to your personal life!
I love your links!
Norman Rockwell's Birthday

Tim T
Thanks, Kitti for your unending eloquent endeavor;
it is a reading pleasure I enjoy!
October 26, 2014

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

Barbara T
This is amazing. I learn so much from you
and marvel at the beauty of the paintings, photographs,
memorabilia and WORDS that you share. Thank you.
May 2018

Charlotte V
I'm somewhat in awe of how you chronicle your life.
I honestly just have a shitty memory for details.
It's occasionally problematic . . .
May 9, 2012 / 2018


P.S.
DAILY or QUOTIDIAN?
or Hey, has anybody seen my Self - Confidence?
Back when I started this blog, a little voice of Anxiety / Imposter Syndrome made fun of my title, reading over my shoulder and sneering: "Quotidian?" As if I were a self-important academic showoff. Sticking up for myself, I said, "Don't laugh at my diction!" Imposter Response: "I will laugh." I'm over that, right? The real question is why such criticisms go straight to the heart of my self - esteem, but they do.

Outwardly, I stood by my word choice, deeming it rather elegant and straightforward -- smarter and fancier, shall we say! Yet, inwardly, there is always the second-guessing. I felt so mortified, like all of a sudden -- oh my gosh do I look pretentious and stupid and pathetic in the eyes of the world and all (if there are any) of my readers? I had to keep assuring myself that it was okay; that I was not an idiot; that "quotidian" is a perfectly good word that has been in both my written and spoken vocabulary for lo these many years.
2025
More on:
The Story Only You Can Tell

Color Just Invented

Taken from my deck, last December 2012

Journal entry from Jan Donley, two years ago:
winter / 7 December 11
Winter is funny, the way it happens gradually—just like aging—it startles you one day. The texture of the air changes. Shadows appear where before there was light. And when the snows come, the branches sag closer and closer to the frozen ground. The trees go gray, the sky goes gray, even the dirt, the walkways, the streets—all gray. And when a cardinal or a blue jay appears, you feel such deep joy, as if color were just invented.



Previous Jan Donley Posts on my blogs:
Lucky Rock
Lost & Found
9 / 11 Retrospective [also on Quotidian Kit]
Dagmar's Birthday [also on Quotidian Kit]
Everyone Loves Stories
There On the Edge of Autumn

Scales
Sleight of Hand
The Little Door
Savor September!
Happy Birthday Coyote!

AND MOST RECENTLY:
The House You're Standing In . . . or Holding in the Palm of Your Hand
Whatnots

Cows Absorbing Moisture

Cows in the Autumn Catskills, 1865
by Scottish - American Artist ~ William M. Hart, 1823 - 1894

Current Post On
The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
"To Live Even One Day"
There are so many things to say about Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's elegant interior novel of one day -- plus flashbacks -- in the life of Clarissa Parry Dalloway. I decided to start with one of my sister Peg's favorite passages:

" 'Dear Sir Harry!' she [Clarissa] said, going up to the fine fellow who had produced more bad pictures than any other two Academicians in the whole of St. John's Wood (they were always of cattle, standing in sunset pools absorbing moisture, or signifying, for he had a certain range of gesture, by the raising of one foreleg and the toss of the antlers, 'the Approach of the Stranger' --all his activities, dining out, racing, were founded on cattle standing absorbing moisture in sunset pools)" (266).

Peg wrote: "I just love the thought of such a banal subject as cows standing around in ponds at sunset 'absorbing moisture.' Still makes me smile."

Cows WateringSeems that Woolf may have had artist William M. Hart in mind
when she created the character of Sir Harry.
I told Peg at the time that her observation about the cow painting was perfect for my Quotidian blog because she expresses so well the thought that the cows are quotidian! Sir Harry keeps us grounded -- maybe in a boring way, but also in a good way!

A week or so after my Fortnightly post about Mrs. Dalloway, Sir Harry, and the cow paintings, Peg had one of those "connection and coincidence" moments that my blogs are all about! Synchronicity!

She wrote to say: "I opened The Frederick [MD] News-Post this morning [Friday, 22 June] and on the front page they had Sir Harry's cows (see below). I couldn't believe the pictures when I first saw it after the discussions I've had this week with you about Mrs. Dalloway. Don't the cows in this picture perfectly exemplify cattle standing in sunset pools absorbing moisture?"


YES THEY DO!

For more on William M. Hart and Virginia Woolf
see my essay "To Live Even One Day"
on The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker

Quinton Duval

Take a moment to scan the above header and the QUOTIDIAN column to the right, and you will see that this blog is inspired by three governing epigrams:

Thornton Wilder's "every, every minute"
Virginia Woolf's "what is commonly thought small"
Quinton Duval's "black bread of day after day."

[Click here for further explication and explanation
of why I chose these passages: "What's the Big Idea?"]

The Quotidian Kit has been up and running for a year now, and I have yet to share with you the entire text of Duval's poem. Time to rectify that omission:

Day After Day

Each of us, alone on the way,
picks up the grip of his life
and goes.

Mama says the stars took us home,
all the porch lights up there
at night around the body of the moon.
Black stars that are invisible
are there too.

The coffee cools down. The car changes
gears in the garage and
the pen sleeps with the paper
on the white tablecloth.

When it is like this, you go
out and cut the roses back.
Clip until the thorns turn into the bush.

The car knows to stay in neutral
a little longer.
The big ideas huddle
in the jar together. You spread them
over the black bread of day after day
and swallow them.

Quinton Duval, November 6, 1948 - May 10, 2010
American poet and teacher

I have loved this poem since my first semester of college at Northeast Missouri State University (aka Truman). I discovered it in a literary magazine The Chariton Review (Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 1975) that I was assigned to read in Creative Writing. Don't ask me how I ended up in that class, the only Freshman, with a roomful of Juniors & Seniors. My guess -- some casual admissions officer put my name on the roster after seeing "Creative Writing" on my high school transcript. But of course this class was much more advanced than that, more like a writers' workshop. It was daunting but I stuck with it. I'm not so sure that I wrote anything substantial, too young really, but I do remember everything we read, many unforgettable stories and poems.

As the above dates indicate, Mr. Duval died only a few weeks ago, though I did not realize this until I googled his name just this morning to see what else of interest I might learn about the author of one of my favorite poems. You may recall that I had a similar experience last spring (2009) when I googled the name of a former professor, Jim Thomas, only to learn of his death the week before. Funny how that happens, just a little tap on your shoulder from the Universe.

There were a number of good poets at Northeast during my time there: Jim Barnes, Andrew Grossbardt, Jim Thomas. Lucky for me, I was able to take classes with each of them.

P.S.
Jim Barnes wrote the following for Andy, who died young:

Autobiography, Chapter 19: For Andrew Grossbardt, In Memoriam

Heading East Out of Rock Springs
for Andrew Grossbardt, long gone

The Closest, Realest Face

"The big ideas huddle
in the jar together. You spread them
over the black bread of day after day
and swallow them."
Yesterday, I was writing about Quinton Duval and his poem "Day After Day," -- see also, quotations to the right -> -> ->

Not only has this poem been one of my favorites for the past thirty-five years, and served as an inspiration for "The Quotidian Kit," but it also brings to mind one of my favorite novels, My Ántonia, Willa Cather's early twentieth-century classic which features one of closest, realest faces in all of American literature: Ántonia Shimerda.

Ántonia embodies both "the big ideas" and "the black bread of day after day." When her childhood friend, Jim Burden, comes to visit, he observes that "All the strong things of her heart came out in her body . . . She was a rich mine of life" (353).

Proudly, Ántonia introduces her family to Jim and shows him around her flourishing fields and orchards, explaining to him the working of her farm and the feeding of her many children. As the little ones excitedly show Jim the preserves in the cellar -- strawberries, cherries, crabapples, spiced plums -- Ántonia describes the baking of the bread: " 'You wouldn't believe, Jim what it takes to feed them all! . . . You ought to see the bread we bake on Wednesdays and Saturdays. . . . We have our own wheat ground for flour' "(337 - 38).

Jim admires Ántonia's tireless persistence, the "planting and tending and harvesting at last," i.e., the black bread. At the same time, he also recognizes the the big ideas that inform her life: "She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by instinct as universal and true. I had not been mistaken . . . she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things" (353).

Common things, quotidian, day after day . . . See what I mean?

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

"You Americans are always looking for something
outside yourselves to warm you up,
and it is no way to do. In old countries,
where not very much can happen to us, we know that,
-- and we learn to make the most of little things."

Willa Cather
from One of Ours
(28, emphasis in original)

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

A few more "big ideas"
and favorite lines from My Ántonia:

Earlier in the novel, Jim visits Ántonia after a five-year separation (from age 18 - 23). He is gratified that "She wanted to know about my friends, and my way of living, and my dearest hopes. . . . 'Do you know, Antonia, since I have been away, I think of you more often than of anyone else in this part of the world. . . . The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times, when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me.' "

" 'And I guess everybody thinks about old times, even the happiest people,' " responds Ántonia. (320-21)

"I had to look hard to see her face, which I meant always to carry with me; the closest, realest face, under all the shadows of women's faces, at the very bottom of my memory.

'I'll come back,' I said earnestly . . .

'Perhaps you will. . . . But even if you don't, you're here' " (322-223).

Many more chapters and another twenty years go by before Jim comes back to his home town: "Perhaps it was cowardice that kept me away so long. . . . Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again" (327 - 28).

"Before I could sit down in the chair she offered me, the miracle happened; one of those quiet moments that clutch the heart, and take more courage than the noisy excited passages in life. Ántonia came in and stood before me . . . We stood looking at each other. The eyes that peered anxiously at me were -- simply Ántonia's eyes. I had seen no others like them since I looked into them last, though I had looked at so many thousands of human faces. As I confronted her, the changes grew less apparent, her identity stronger" (331).

All passages above from the novel My Ántonia
by Willa Sibert Cather, 7 December 1873 – 24 April 1947,
eminent American author from Nebraska, best known for her depictions of frontier life on the Great Plains in novels such as
O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark.

In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, inspired by reading the wartime letters of her cousin G.P. Cather,
the first officer from Nebraska to be killed in World War I.

Willa Cather's Birthplace & Early Childhood Home
Gore, Virginia
Willa Cather's Later Childhood Home
Red Cloud, Nebraska"There are only two or three human stories,
and they go on repeating themselves
as fiercely as if they had never happened before;
like the larks in this country, that have been singing
the same five notes over for thousands of years."
O Pioneers! (Part II, Ch. 4, p 44)

You see, there are all those early memories;
one cannot get another set; but one has those.
Shadows on the Rock (p 85)

both by Willa Cather

Ordinary Objects, Ordinary Time

Clay Sculpture
featured in the
St. Louis Post Dispatch, mid - 1970's

Back in highschool, maybe even junior high, I cut this clipping of a crayon sculpture out the "everyday" section of the Post - Dispatch. I kept it safely in a folder of "favorites" until about halfway through college when I took it out and glued it onto the cover of one of my notebooks -- as seen above.

I have treasured it all these years without even knowing the name of the artist or the exhibit / museum it was in. I guess I should have saved the article that went with the picture!

***************************************
I've always liked the way that this little patch of the year between Christmas and Lent is called Ordinary Time. One ordinary day after the next descends upon us, as the fun times recede first into the recent, then into the distant past. We mark the time. The light changes. What will happen next?

My most recent Fortnightly Blog, January: Forward Vision, Backward Glance is about our ever - changing perspective of what is ordinary, as is the featured blog of my friend Ann de Forest -- the timely and time - conscious Obsolescing: watching technologies as they wane.

If you haven't had a chance yet, why not take a moment now to check out Ann's January response and to look at one of my favorite essays from the "Obsolescing" archives, The Kindly Mirrors of Future Times, which includes this passage from Vladimir Nabokov, so applicable to the goal of my Quotidian blogposts:

"I think that here lies the sense of literary creation: to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern and appreciate in far-off times when every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite and festive in its own right: the times when a man who might put on the most ordinary jacket of today will be dressed up for an elegant masquerade."

[Vladimir Nabokov, “A Guide to Berlin”
(first published, in Russian, in 1925;
later translated by Nabokov and his son Dimitri
and included in the 1976 collection,
Details of a Sunset and Other Stories.]
I particularly like Ann's concluding observation: "As a writer, I’m particularly intrigued by what Nabokov seems to be asserting about the writer’s (or any artist’s) task – to be present and alert to the current commonplace, to record it in specific detail, and thus preserve it for a future audience’s enraptured rediscovery."

Her response to Nabokov speaks to my heart as a beautifully succinct summation of the quotations (up above & to the right -> -> ->) that I have chosen to govern the Quotidian Kit:

realizing every minute (Wilder)
spreading the big ideas over the daily bread (Duval)
looking for the beautiful in the small (Kant)
finding significance in the commonplace (Woolf).

NEW FORTNIGHTLY BLOG POST TOMORROW!
~ VALENTINE'S DAY ~
"Cold Morning Poems by Naomi Shihab"

Recent Reads

"gathering up bits of the world
& setting them out in an order
that her children can understand"
StoryPeople by Brian Andreas
Even though my kids are grown now, this is what I continue to strive for day after day on my blogs -- "gathering up bits of the world & setting them out in an order" -- if not for children, for adults, and for myself to understand.

Quotidian: "realize life while [you] live it -- every, every minute."

Fortnightly: "hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words." ~Goethe

Book List: "put [your] faith in books . . . "

On all three blog sites, as I've said before, my goal is to draw connections between daily life and literature of all genres (my favorite novels, haiku, sonnets, song lyrics, contemporary poetry, and so forth), always looking for the intersection of the quotidian and the artistic, complete with visuals, intertwining the two threads until a pattern emerges from the chaos.

New Posts @ Kitti's Book List

March 31 ~ Makin' a list, checkin’ it twice . . .

Fiction:
The Truth According to Us
by Annie Barrows

&

The Goldfinch
by Donna Tartt

April 6 ~ Always Skeptical Never Cynical

Non - fiction:
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
by Matthew Desmond (2017)

&

Teaching in the Terrordome:
Two Years in West Baltimore with Teach for America
by Heather Kirn Lanier (2012)

Mary Oliver: Rest in Wonder

In Memoriam ~ Mary Oliver
10 September 1935 ~ 17 January 2019
Award - winning American poet and naturalist

1. The first Mary Oliver poem I ever read,
during a phase of uncertainty:

from The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do . . .

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save. [emphasis added]

On my blog: November 25, 2009, June 7, 2011,
and January 25, 2016

2. Next came this one, a gift from
my introspective friend Celine:

from The Roses

. . . there is no end,
believe me! to the inventions of summer,
to the happiness your body
is willing to bear.

On my blog: July 28, 2009 & July 12, 2010

3. Observing the Autumnal Equinox:

from Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends

into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.

On my blog: September 23, 2011 & March 10, 2014
& September 22 2025

4. Celebrating the miraculous arrival
and inevitable departure of Spring:

from Peonies

The Peonies
This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart . . .

Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing forever?

On my blog: May 7, 2012 & May 23, 2015

5. Mary Oliver's "one wild and precious life":

from The Summer Day

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything have to die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life? [emphasis added]

On my blog: July 8, 2012 & July 12, 2025

6. Searching for the Quotidian:

from Whelks, Goldfinches, Poppies, Winter,
Hummingbird Pauses at the Trumpet Vine,
October

All my life
I have been restless --
I have felt there is something
more wonderful than gloss --
than wholeness --
than staying at home.

I have not been sure what it is.

*****

every year
the hatchlings wake . . .

and love the world.
Is it necessary to say anymore?
Have you heard them singing in the wind,
above the final fields?
Have you ever been so happy in your life?

*****

of course
loss is the great lesson.

But also I say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness
and that happiness,
when it's done right,
is a kind of holiness.

*****

in this world I am as rich
as I need to be.

*****

Look! for most of the world
is waiting
or remembering --
most of the world is time
when we're not here,

*****

Look, I want to love this world
as though it's the last chance I'm ever going to get
to be alive
and know it.

On my blog: October 24, 2012

7. Acknowledging our humble place in the Animal Kingdom:

from Her Grave

A dog can never tell you what she knows from the
smells of the world, but you know, watching her,
that you know
almost nothing.

On my blog: November 28, 2012 & November 29, 2012

8. Mary Oliver paid all species of fauna and flora their due:

from The Sunflowers

Don't be afraid
to ask them questions!
. . . the long work
of turning their lives
into a celebration
is not easy.

On my blog: August 21, 2013

9. From among so many treasures,
this brief poem remains my favorite.
Yes, this is the entire poem:

The Uses of Sorrow

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

On my blog: March 21, 2015 & March 29, 2015

10. Vocation and avocation:

from Messenger

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird . . .

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished. [emphasis added]

On my blog: April 28, 2016 & May 3, 2016

11. Not only did Mary Oliver the world,
but it also loved her back:

from The Fist

Instead: such patience!
Such willingness

to let us continue!
To hear,
little by little,
the voices -

only, so far, in
pockets of the world -
suggesting the possibilities
of peace?

On my blog: May 24, 2016

12. Writing of her little puppy,
but just as true for my little sons:

from "Percy (Seven)"

Ah, this is the thing that comes to each of us.
The child grows up.
And, according to our own ideas, is practically asunder.

I understand it.
I struggle to celebrate.
I say, with a stiff upper lip familiar to many:

Just look at that curlyhaired child now,
he’s his own man.

On my blog: June 2, 2016

13. And lastly, a poem for the winter, about snow, about saving
yourself and putting "your own life in proportion." In is entirety:

Logan International

In the city called Wait,
also known as the airport,
you might think about your life --
there is not much else to do.
For one thing,
there is too much luggage,
and you're truly lugging it --
you and, it seems, everyone.

What is it, that you need so badly?
Think about this.

Earlier, in another city,
you're on the tarmac, a lost hour.
You're going to miss your connection, and you know it,
and you do.
You're headed for five hours of nothing.
And how long can you think about your own life?

What I did, to save myself,
was to look for children, the very young ones
who couldn't even know where they were going, or why.
Some of them were fussing, of course.
Many of them were beautifully Hispanic.

The storm was still busy outside, and snow falling
anywhere, any time, is a wonder.
But even more wonderful, and maybe the only thing
to put your own life in proportion,
were the babies, the little ones, hot and tired,
but still
gurgling, chuckling, as they looked --
wherever they were going, or not yet going,
in their weary parents' arms (no!
their lucky parents' arms) --
upon this broken world. [emphasis added]

On my blog: May 28, 2016

PS.
“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
from the poem "Sometimes"
in the collection Red Bird

Rest in Peace Mary Oliver,
Rest in Wonder, Rest in Astonishment!

14. Morning Glory

15. The Ordinary Daily Presentations & Mindful

16. The Peonies Have Their Day

17. Grasshopper ~ Praying Mantis

18. Black River of Loss

Look Before You Leap Day

An Extra Day . . .
An Extra Evening Walk Around the Block

February 29

An extra day—

Like the painting’s fifth cow,
who looks out directly,
straight toward you,
from inside her black and white spots.

An extra day—
Accidental, surely:
the made calendar stumbling over the real
as a drunk trips over a threshold
too low to see.

An extra day—
With a second cup of black coffee.
A friendly but businesslike phone call.
A mailed-back package.
Some extra work, but not too much—
just one day’s worth, exactly.

An extra day—

Not unlike the space
between a door and its frame
when one room is lit and another is not,
and one changes into the other
as a woman exchanges a scarf.

An extra day—

Extraordinarily like any other.
And still
there is some generosity to it,
like a letter re-readable after its writer has died. (2012)

Jane Hirshfield (born 1953)
American poet and translator
Also perfect for the Autumnal Equinox

Ten Lords a Leap - Yearing

Previous Leap Day Posts

Quotidian:
2020 ~ 2016 ~ 2012

Fortnightly:
2012 ~ 2016 ~ 2020

Ostara & Beltane

Happy May Day!
Not forgetting Walpurgisnacht
@ Master & Margarita / Bulgakov

Also by this artist: Fall Favorites

More from the amazing, magical Keli Clark
Vernal Equinox ~ 2024 ~ Solar Eclipse

All previous Quotidian & Fortnightly
May Day Posts
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
~~~
2016
2017
2018
2019

2020
& Fortnightly

2021

2022
& Fortnightly

2023
& from Tawney

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

A Chicken in the Pan

Carnival Blue “Hen-on-Nest” Dish
by Indiana Glass Company

You can find a couple of poems by Barbara Crooker on my blogs: most recently "Monopoly 1955" on the Fortnightly (see "Literary Board Games") and "Ordinary Life" on a Quotidian post from way back in 2011 (see "The Moon"). I wanted to re-post them here together, because both poems feature the mouth-watering imagery of chicken cooking on the stove, the homiest of meals.

As food writer / novelist Laurie Colwin (1944 - 1992) once described her own "legendary roasted chicken":

"Roast Chicken . . . is almost everyone's favoirte dish. I have never seen a menu outside of a vegetarian restaurant that does not list some variety or other of it. In the old days I used to slip herbs and savory things like porcini mushrooms under the skin and baste the chicken constantly, but I have gradually come to know that none of these things is necessary. . . . There is nothing like roast chicken. It is helpful and agreeable, the perfect dish no matter what the circumstances. Elegant or homey, a dish for a dinner party or a family supper, it will not let you down" (72, 167).

from her cookbook / memoir More Home Cooking See also "Feasts and Seasons" and "Homebody Somebody"]

Colwin lets you know how to prepare the chicken, focusing more on TLC than on technique; and Barbara Crooker's poems capture the same tender loving care and deliciousness. It's all there -- taste, touch, sight, smell; perhaps even the sound of that "roiling" bubble. Crooker describes simmering chicken dinners that could be based on Colwin's recipes: humble yet elegant; affordable yet pricelessly bonding the family at dinnertime:

Ordinary Life
This was a day when nothing happened,
the children went off to school
without a murmur, remembering
their books, lunches, gloves.
All morning, the baby and I built block stacks
in the squares of light on the floor.
And lunch blended into naptime,
I cleaned out kitchen cupboards,
one of those jobs that never gets done,
then sat in a circle of sunlight
and drank ginger tea,
watched the birds at the feeder
jostle over lunch's little scraps.
A pheasant strutted from the hedgerow,
preened and flashed his jeweled head.
Now a chicken roasts in the pan,
and the children return,
the murmur of their stories dappling the air.
I peel carrots and potatoes without paring my thumb.
We listen together for your wheels on the drive.
Grace before bread.
And at the table, actual conversation,
no bickering or pokes.
And then, the drift into homework.
The baby goes to his cars, drives them
along the sofa's ridges and hills.
Leaning by the counter, we steal a long slow kiss,
tasting of coffee and cream.
The chicken's diminished to skin & skeleton,
the moon to a comma, a sliver of white,
but this has been a day of grace
in the dead of winter,
the hard cold knuckle of the year,
a day that unwrapped itself
like an unexpected gift,
and the stars turn on,
order themselves
into the winter night.
[emphasis added]

Monopoly 1955
We start by fanning out the money, colored
like Necco wafers: pink, yellow, mint, gold.
From the first roll of the dice, differences widen:
the royal blues of Boardwalk and Park Place
look down their noses at the grapey immigrants
from Baltic and Mediterranean Avenues.
My grandparents coming from Italy in steerage
measured their gold in olive oil, not bank notes
and deeds. The man in the top hat and tuxedo
always holds the good cards. The rest of us
hope we can pay the Electric Company.
We know there is no such thing as Free Parking,
and Bank Errors are never in our favor.
In the background, Johnny Mathis croons
Chances Are from the cracked vinyl radio.
We played for hours, in those years
before television, on the Formica table,
while my mother coaxed a chicken,
cooking all day on the back burner, to multiply
itself into many meals. The fat rose to the surface,
a roiling ocean of molten gold.
[emphasis added]

both poems by Barbara Crooker (b 1945)

Supper at Emmaus ~ Caravaggio ~ 1601

See: A Chicken in Every Pot
"I want there to be no peasant in my realm so poor
that he will not have a chicken in his pot every Sunday."
~ Henry IV of France ~