March: Out Like a Violet

And just like that -- the year is 1/4 over!

A few first - quarter posts from my
Fortnightly Blog:

1. The Worthy Butterfly
&
2. The Courtier and the Judge

And my
Book Blog:

1. Small Sweet Tangible Things
&
2. In Art As It Is In Heaven

Eclipse of the Heart

I was happy with my full moon pics this month
but didn't have much luck with the eclipse.
Best pics I got were moonrise

and right before the decline

Here in Virginia, I watched the moon completely disappear between 1 - 2:40am -- not even to a dark red "blood moon" but entirely blacked out and gone. Around that time, a stray white cat ran through our backyard! Was it the moon, on the run, personified / animated as a feline? Perhaps so, because I stayed up til 4am, but never did the moon return.

Most likely, the cloud cover had grown too dense. Yet, despite this logical explanation, I felt at the one with the skywatchers of ancient times who wondered with every waning moon if its light would ever be see again.

Far away in Missouri, my friend Jay got some great shots. His photography is far superior to mine, but our viewing experiences were similar: "Fun Blood Moon, not cold at all, that was nice, after totality some clouds moved in and blurred the Moon, went to bed about 3am."

Sometimes, instead of searching the sky,
you have to turn inside to the moon of your heart.
And sometimes . . .

Seeing the moon
is not enough
For anything
except to make
me wonder if
you have seen it too

Check out my niece Sara's insights on working through
the emotional eclipses that are bound to come our way.
Here are a couple of her recent posts and my responses:
Comparison
Sara, here's a quotation I think you'll like:" 'Oh, bosh! Should have. Could have. Would have. What an odious trio. . . . I made a promise to ignore those gloomy villains. I suggest you do the same' " (from the novel "Deception's Daughter," by Cordelia Frances Biddle, p 108). I think "gloomy villain" fits right in with calling "comparison...the thief of joy." I think my most dangerous and time-wasting comparisons are making up alternative histories in my head -- shoulda, coulda, woulda. I shoulda done this; I shoulda done that; why didn't I? If only I had. I can go on for hours comparing the make - believe me to the real me and judging myself harshly for not being my alternative fictional self who never makes a stupid mistake. Sigh . . .

900 Days Sober
Thanks for this essay Sara! So easy to fall into that trap of of listing your failures instead of your successes. Every now and then, I have to remind myself that I completed a PhD in Modern British Fiction. Oh yeah, that's right. And a bunch of other things. Now why is it so hard to feel positive about that? Somehow we got mis-programmed to think "bad daughter, bad mother, bad cat - mom, bad friend, bad student" -- but it's not true! It's the anxiety speaking, and we have to shout it down. Thanks for helping us to accomplish that monumental task! It is a perpetual struggle.

Additional thoughts for the day
from my thoughtful nieces.

Giving James Baldwin the last word . . .

[author of The Fire Next Time]

Wonder Beyond Dreams

~ Happy Birthday Cousin Gregg ~

~ More on facebook ~
~ More photos by Gregg & Kim

Thanks to my Cousin - in - law Gregg Ree
for sharing the photographs (above and below)
and these soul-soothing poems that he wrote
back in the 1970s:

An evening reverie . . .

Restless Night
The night is our keeper
Waiting so long for the dawn
We wonder beyond our dreams memories
To the place where time stands still
Never looking back
We feel the power to go on

A wedding blessing . . .

Just Beginning
Together, Living, Loving
Time spent in need of each other.
Life alone can only bring a sour heart.
Today is Your Day!
But who knows what tomorrow will bring.
Live your lives together today,
As though it were the last day,
And your love shall have no end

Up Again, Old Heart!

~ Happy First Day of Spring! ~

Late Vernal Equinox Sunrise
through the southern magnolia in my front yard

A Series of Blessings
for a Day of New Beginnings

Back in grad school days, I had each of the following
passages written out on an index card and taped up
inside my library carrel for focus and inspiration:
Emerson: "We dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and these things make no impression, are forgotten next week; but in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations, which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him. Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart! — it seems to say, — there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power." *

Coleridge: "The Imagination, then, I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary Imagination I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM."

Juvenal: "Whatever woman do -- their longing, their fears, their angers, their pleasures, their delights,their comings and goings -- these form the medley of my little book."

Wordsworth: "Imagination, which, in truth, Is but another name for absolute power."

~ Half light ~ half dark ~

P.S.
Southern Magnolia / Winter Solstice

P.P.S.
* A get well wish from Ralph Waldo Emerson,
also from the essay "Experience":
"Life itself is a bubble and a skepticism, and a sleep within a sleep. Grant it, and as much more as they will,--but thou, God's darling! heed thy private dream: thou wilt not be missed in the scorning and skepticism: there are enough of them: stay there in thy closet, and toil, until the rest are agreed what to do about it. Thy sickness, they say, and thy puny habit, require that thou do this or avoid that, but know that thy life is a flitting state, a tent for a night, and do thou, sick or well, finish that stint. Thou art sick, but shalt not be worse, and the universe, which holds thee dear, shall be the better."
More excellent
advice from Emerson:
QK ~ FN ~ KL

A Day for Blessings

~ Happy St. Patrick's Day ~

Three Sisters in the Garden
by Jen Norton

A Blessing for the Day

"To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of who they used to be.
The people they're too exhausted to be any longer. The people
they don't recognize inside themselves anymore. The people
they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into.
We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back
when it burns out, to become speedily found when they are
lost.

"But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people
they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each
version and to honor what emerges along the way.
Sometimes, it will be an even more luminescent flame.
Sometimes, it will be a flicker that
disappears and temporarily
floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness."

by 🖋Heide Priebe

Upon reading this meditation, I immediately thought of my sibs and how we keep on growing and changing and loving each other, even as we become old people!

I was also reminded of these great lyrics by Tom Waits:

Old boyfriends

They look you up
when they're in town
To see if they can still
burn you down
He fell in love, you see
With someone that I used to be . . .

Sung by Crystal Gale

Glass Heart by Siobhan Allen

Taking Death Seriously

Key West Sunset ~ February 2025
Originally called "Cayo Hueso," meaning "Bone Island"
in reference to piles of bones & human remains
dicovered by settlers in the early 1800s.

1. Willa Cather (1873 - 1947) : "She hadn't any of the sentimentality that comes from a fear of dying. She talked about death as she spoke of a hard winter or a rainy March, or any of the sadnesses of nature."
The Professor's House, 256

2. Thomas Pynchon (b 1937): "At the heart of the story, most crucial and worrisome, is the defective way in which my narrator, almost but not quite me, deals with the subject of death. When we speak of 'seriousness' in fiction ultimately we are talking about an attitude toward death - how characters may act in its presence, for example, or how they handle it when it isn't so immediate. Everybody knows this, but the subject is hardly ever brought up with younger writers, possibly because given to anyone at the apprentice age, such advice is widely felt to be effort wasted. (I suspect one of the reasons that fantasy and science fiction appeal so much to younger readers is that, when the space and time have been altered to allow characters to travel easily anywhere through the continuum and thus escape physical dangers and timepiece inevitabilities, mortality is so seldom an issue.)"
Introduction to
Slow Learner: Early Stories
p 5, emphasis added

3.Terry Pratchett (1948 – 2015): "No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life is only the core of their actual existence."
from his novel Reaper Man

Ripples Left Behind
Thanks to my friend Lynn Z. who said:
"Nice way to hold people close even after they’re gone
~ be the ripple."

4. Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886):

I stepped from plank to plank
So slow and cautiously;
The stars about my head I felt,
About my feet the sea.

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch,—
This gave me that precarious gait
Some call experience. (#875)


For further thoughts on
taking death seriously,
see my recent post

Vanity Fair:
Laughing at Death
[Also Smiling]

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

P.S.

I used to love "Prufrock" so much -- "There will be time, there will be time." But now we see that indeed there may NOT be time! So hurry, hurry, hurry to take it all in. In younger days, if I hadn't heard from someone in awhile, I would tell myself, "Oh settle down, they're just busy." But these days: no! You're right to worry; you're not being pararnoid; they may be dead. That's no longer being morbid, just realistic.

P.P.S.

"I am dead:
Thou livest;
. . . draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story."

~Hamlet, V, ii

2nd Week of Lent: Ashes to Ashes

Calendar caption from my friend Megan: "The robin's egg!
A good find but a sad outcome for that baby chick!

George Saunders: " . . . nobody knows why death happens.
It's not bad. But it's not great. . . .
What are we to make of death?
How are we to live in a world where death is king?"
~from The Braindead Megaphone, 181, 182

Thanks to my literary friend Kathleen O'Gorman
for sharing this diaglogue,
perfect for All Souls, Día de Los Muertos,
Memorial Day, Ash Wednesday:
ESTRAGON: All the dead voices.
VLADIMIR: They make a noise like wings.
ESTRAGON: Like leaves.
VLADIMIR: Like sand.
ESTRAGON: Like leaves.

Silence.

VLADIMIR: They all speak at once.
ESTRAGON: Each one to itself.

Silence.

VLADIMIR: Rather they whisper.
ESTRAGON: They rustle.
VLADIMIR: They murmur.
ESTRAGON: They rustle.

Silence.

VLADIMIR: What do they say?
ESTRAGON: They talk about their lives.
VLADIMIR: To have lived is not enough for them.
ESTRAGON: They have to talk about it.
VLADIMIR: To be dead is not enough for them.
ESTRAGON: It is not sufficient.

Silence.

VLADIMIR: They make a noise like feathers.
ESTRAGON: Like leaves.
VLADIMIR: Likes ashes.
ESTRAGON: Like leaves.

from Waiting for Godot (Act 2, lines 98-118, emphasis added)
by Samuel Beckett (1906 - 1989)
*******************

Quoted before ~ but here it is ~ again,
because Vladimir and Estragon are true to one another:

“Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

~ by Matthew Arnold ~
~from the poem “Dover Beach” ~

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

More Lenten Readings
from two of my constants,
shedding a brilliant light on the darkling plain:

Ashes
from Duo Dickinson's series for the season:
Connection in Isolation

&

Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber

Letting Go For Lent

Putting Things Away

But you can leave the bowl out!
It's a Bowl for All Seasons

Taking Down the Tree

Looks like Aidan is diving into the tree!
He's actually getting a closer look with his special glasses!

Rosemary for Remembrance

For all Feasts & Seasons

Tossing out the Dried Basil

As my friend Ed said,
"I think you leave the rushes on the floor
until Rogation Day." Haha!

As for putting things away, I knew that Candlemas / Groundhog Day would be too soon; so I changed my goal to Superbowl Sunday. After all, if the football season can last until mid-February, so can the Christmas Tree Season! The big day came and went, yet the tree remained! Then the snow came! I told Gerry that as long as we keep getting snow, I'm keeping the Christmas tree up another week. He said, "the tree staying up is causing the snow!" Could it be? Some kind of reverse weather magic!

Then came Mardi Gras -- upcoming frivolity but also impending reality. Although I am convinced that even the angels love it when we leave our trees up, I knew it was time. At last, on Ash Wednesday, with Gerry's help and and emotional support, I took down the tree and put away every Christmas decoration. As in previous years -- giving up Christmas was my Lenten sacrifice. Over and done with.

It is now Lent --
time to let go of something.
You decide what.

Something fun to read / watch:

Near the end of Bad Monkey, the main character Andrew Yancy / Vince Vaughn has a reckoning with death during which he hears the voices of all his friends and colleagues who have urged him, within the complicated course of the narrative, to "let it go!" Although it goes against his tenacious nature, he quickly comes to accept that "letting go" is what he must do in order to save his own life -- a very serious take-away from an otherwise lighthearted story.

Mardi Gras: A Day's Miching

Vibrant, vivid Mardi Gras Banner
-- best party favor ever!
Thanks Cathy McK!

A Mardi Gras letter to my favorite professor:

The other day, I randomly picked up an old reading journal from Spring Semester 1982 and came across a few entries that I thought you might enjoy, or at least find somewhat droll, such as this note jotted down in late January: " . . . felt bad for Prof Orr -- seems no one is reading Swann's Way." Aside from me, of course.

But then just a few days later -- in fact, Feb 2, James Joyce's birthday (duly noted at the top of the page), things take a turn for the worse: "To school just in time to get to class. Prof Orr started The Trial after just a few moments on Proust. I haven't started The Trial and was embarrassed at being able to contribute nothing." Oops!

There's a follow - up entry explaining that a classmate and I stopped by your office to "talk about Proust and other things," and also to "put a note on Orr's name plate: Leonard O. In honor of The Trial and Joseph K." Grad school hijinks I guess!

Later in the month, I fall behind again: "Made the mistake of going to 20th C without having read The Master & Margarita."

Entries for the next few days say only, "Reading M & M."

Then I have another lapse: "To school in the nick of time, but decided against going to 20th Centry Lit."

What was wrong with me? I never realized until looking back on this notebook what a terrible student I was. You were a very patient professor to forgive my many lapses!

It is mystifying to think that there was ever a time in my life when I didn't know The Trial and The Master & Margarita by heart, but clearly that's the case. The question now: to shred this notebook, or to put it back on the shelf?

I found another journal entry that made me laugh and I thought you might enjoy.

On Tuesday, February 23, 1982, I note that it was unusually warm weather (80F) for Mardi Gras. Inspired / misguided by the good weather, I stay home from school, skip both of my classes (Continental Lit with you & English Bible with Lyna Lee Montgomery) and spend the morning "baking Mardi Gras Bread."

As I said in the previous note (above / below) I am shocked, shocked to realize what a haphazard student I was that semester!

Anyway, later in the afternoon, my journal tells me, I jump on my bike and cycle to campus as quickly as possible to go teach my class. Despite letting my professors down by skipping the classes I was taking, I apparently never let my students down by skipping the sections I was teaching.

Here's the part I thought you would like: As luck would have it, "After class, ran inadvertently into Prof Orr and explained my absence -- kind of embarrassing." I don't mention giving a fake excuse, so maybe I just told you the truth, that I felt compelled to do some baking and hide a tiny inedible doll inside a Mardi Gras Cake (well, kind of related to my dissertation topic).

I do mention that the next day the temperature dropped back down to 40F. Time to face reality. So much for my "day's miching," right?

A word to the wise from
Matthew Yglesias
on keeping up with the Great Books!

Daffodil Day

For these pics and more,
see my 2025 Calendar
A Rebirth of Wonder

Seems like in previous years, snowdrops
have featured as the flowerlet of March First,
at the expense of overlooking leeks and daffodils!

Not only is it Martisor Day in Romania,
it is also St. David's Day in Wales!

Previous March First Posts

2010: Kiss Me & Kiss Today & Dear March

2011: My Vegetable Love

2012: Love However Brief

2013: Beyond Ideas

2014: The First [Mild] Day of March

2015: Wind from a Leaf

2016: Reading the Obituaries

2017: Piano Bar

2018: The Sweetheart Tree

2019: Flora or Fish?

2020: The Once and Future Guenever

2021: Felix Anno Novo

2022: March Begins: The Heart's Desire

2023: Happy Martisor Day!

2024: Present ~ Past ~ Future

2025: TGIF & Daffodil Day