Mrs. Ramsay

New Post for the 14th on

The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker

"Life -- A Little Strip of Time"
Tablescape by Katy Bunder

For Mother's Day, I thought I would write about one of the most steadfast mothers in modern British fiction, Mrs. Ramsay from Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse. Virginia Woolf had no children, but Mrs. Ramsay has eight; and Woolf intuitively fills Mrs. Ramsay's head and the first half of the novel with touching motherly insights.

Mrs. Ramsay is intuitive and creative, exhibiting love and care and motherly concern. She is filled with anxiety on her children's behalf, but also with pride. Fearing that the children are about to erupt in laughter over some private joke at dinner, she says to them -- by way of maintaining order and altering the dinner table dynamic: " 'Light the candles' " (145). Standing down the length of the table and illuminating an elaborate centerpiece designed by Rose, the tall candles number eight, just as Mrs. Ramsay's children do.
Happy Mother's Day!
Tablescape by Tina McCartney

Happy Graduation, Ben!

An Exciting Weekend Coming Up:

College Graduation & Senior Recital

And since I hadn't started keeping a blog back when Ben graduated from highschool, here are some ghosts of events past:

High School Graduation, 4 years ago

Summer Organ Recital, August 2008

High School Valedictorian Speech
by William Benedict McCartney
24 May 2008
Four years of high school have come and gone, and, seeing as for the last time in at least ten years, we are all together, I felt it appropriate to introduce one final piece of legislation.

A Resolution of Thanks:

Whereas, Mr. Ohlhaut, who came to a new school at the same time I did and stayed in my schedule every year, either as teacher or professional consultant; Mr. Spencer, who inspired and facilitated the most obsessive studying I've ever done for two two hour tests; Mr. Smith, whose influence on me as a teacher and coach was enough that I formatted my final words as a piece of congress legislation; Mr. Overley who witnessed my senioritis in a way that only a teacher who had me the first semester of freshman year, the second semester of senior year, and the football season every year in between could, and all the teachers and faculty members of West Lafayette High School were exemplary, and

Whereas Michael Bennett, my organ teacher, who ensured that when I didn't feel like doing homework I could do something else guilt free, maintains to this day a close friend and superb teacher, and

Whereas all my peers pushed, stimulated, motivated, and supported me, and

Whereas my friends have ensured that I have become a better human being, and in so doing become some of the people closest to my heart, you know who you are, and

Whereas my grandma, who made sure I didn't strain my eyes; my grandpa, who ensured I aimed straight and true in school and on the football field; Sam, who's pretty much a pain I'm most of the time proud to call my brother, and my mom and dad, who fed, watered, drove, put up with, listened to, and encouraged me every single impossible step of the way were the best family I could have hoped for

Be it resolved by the graduating class of 2008 here assembled that without the help, guidance, encouragement, and support of many, many people we could not have made it, so successfully, this far.

Be it further resolved that, as amazing has high school was, man, are we ready to get out of here. Thank you all for a four great years.

We'll Eat You Up -- We Love You So!

A Touching Obituary,
especially the little boy who eats up what he loves!
My favorite line in Where the Wild Things Are has always been when the Wild Things cry out upon Max's departure, "Oh please don't go -- we'll eat you up -- we love you so!"

I grew to understand my love for it even more when reading Joseph Campbell's Myths to Live By, I came across an archetypal explanation for the human impulse to love and devour:

" . . . an ancient Zoroastrian legend of the first parents of the human race, where they are pictured as having sprung from the earth in the from of a single reed, so closely joined that they could not have been told apart. However, in time they separated; and again in them they united and there were born to them two children, whom they loved so tenderly and irresistible that they ate them up. The mother ate one; the father ate the other; and god, to protect the human race, then reduced the force of man's capacity for love by some ninety-nine per cent" (153 - 54).

So if it seems that we human beings are stinted in our capacity for love, now we know that, ironically, it's because our tendency to love each other is so overwhelming that it must be reigned in by the gods.

Maybe this also explains why we can't resist calling our children things like, "Honey Bun" and "Sweetie Pie" -- or to name a couple of favorites in our family: "Pie - Cake" and "Kielbasa." These endearments persisted until our younger son Sam finally objected: "Don't Call Me the Food Names!" A line that we quote to this day with great enjoyment -- not that we have ever stopped calling the children by the food names! Old habits die hard, particularly those with a sound theoretical basis!

Maurice Sendak,
thanks for sending the Wild Things to eat us up!
We love them so!
We'll miss you so!

Cartoon by Dan Wasserman
P.S. Another example:

"Eliza picked Isobel up from the counter and started nibbling her ear. Why, Vinny wondered, was Eliza always trying to eat bits of her children? What a tasty little morsel, Eliza murmured in Isobel's ear while Vinny patted butter aggressively, imagining it was Eliza's head. If Eliza wasn't careful, Vinny thought, she'd look around one day and discover that she'd eaten them all up."

from the novel Human Croquet (109)

"How's my treasure? . . . He's edible, don't you think?" (p 78)

from the novel When Will There Be Good News?

both by Kate Atkinson, b. 1951
English novelist

Peonies

The Peonies
This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open--
pools of lace,
white and pink--
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities--
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly
and there it is again --
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
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?

by Mary Oliver (b 1935)
Contemporary American Poet
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1984
This poem found in New and Selected Poems

Update ~ 23 May 2013
Yellow Peonies at the Botany Garden
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Special Effects

Happy Cinco de Mayo

Fun - to - Wear Cinco de Mayo Sweater!

For details, see photo essay "Mona's Clothes"
On my book blog, Kitti's List

Jacob's Ladder

My current Fortnightly Blog Post revolves around the theme of Jacob wrestling with the Angel. As I was inserting Marc Chagall's painting on this subject, I saw that he had also painted the equally popular theme of Jacob's Ladder at least half a dozen times. Which one to include was an easy choice:

the one with a house in it!
Still, I couldn't leave the others without a second look. It's easy to spend an hour comparing and contrasting the various renditions:

See my post

"Except Thou Bless Me"

on THE FORTNIGHTLY KITTI CARRIKER
my fortnightly literary blog [every 14th & 28th]
of connection and coincidence

Happy May Day

"If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation
shall lure back to their birthright, the merry May-day gods of old;
and livingly enthrone them again in the now egotistical sky;
on the now unhaunted hill; then be sure,
exalted to Jove’s high seat, the great Sperm Whale shall lord it."
~ Herman Melville ~

The Dancers, 1905
also known as
Eternal Summer, Wiesbaden
by Maurice Denis, 1870 - 1843
also by Denis
Jacob's Battle with the Angel, 1893
For more on Jacob and the Angel,
and Herman Melville
see my recent post

"Except Thou Bless Me"

on THE FORTNIGHTLY KITTI CARRIKER
my fortnightly literary blog [every 14th & 28th]
of connection and coincidence

Except Thou Bless Be

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, 1963
by Marc Chagall, 1887 - 1985
And Jacob said to the angel,
"I will not let thee go, except thou bless me."
Genesis 32:26
Art
In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt--a wind to freeze;
Sad patience--joyous energies;
Humility--yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity--reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel--Art.

Herman Melville, 1819 - 1891
American novelist, essayist, poet

I first came across this mystical wrestling poem in the most interesting way: I saw it inscribed around a circular ceiling mural in the lobby of an apartment highrise in Chicago. I was in that vestibule a few times many years ago but am now not even entirely sure what building it was. How I would love to see it again! The question is, do I have the courage to approach the door-keeper and say, "Excuse me, I don't live here or know anyone who lives here, but could I please step inside and glance at your ceiling?!" A few friends have suggested that such a request might not be ill - received. Audacity -- reverence. Right? But where to start? I've actually thought of asking a realtor to help me, since agents probably have access to such buildings that are otherwise closed to the general public.

Could it be one of these?

For Melville's poem and more on Jacob and the Angel,
see my new post

"Except Thou Bless Me"

on THE FORTNIGHTLY KITTI CARRIKER
my fortnightly literary blog [every 14th & 28th]
of connection and coincidence

Arbor Day Trees

Every creature is better alive than dead,
men and moose and pine trees,
and he who understands it aright
will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862
American author and naturalist
Unusual Tree Formation in our Favorite Pine Forest
*****************

Amazingly Beautiful Trees
on the grounds of Sudley House
Liverpool, England

By the Sea

"The sea pronounces something,
over and over, in a hoarse whisper;
I cannot quite make it out.
But God knows I have tried”
~ Annie Dillard ~
My Rooms at the Beau Rivage, 1918
by Henri Matisse, 1869 - 1954
[To learn more, see Artsy]
Place by the Sea"He kept a piece of algae behind his ear to remind him of his roots. A million years ago every place was a little place by the sea, he would say & my mind would go blank & I would swim through the day without a care in the world & it all seemed so familiar that I knew I would go back someday to my own little place by the sea."
~ Brian Andreas ~
For these passages & more, see
"Surface Dwellers"
on THE FORTNIGHTLY KITTI CARRIKER
my fortnightly literary blog [every 14th & 28th]
of connection and coincidence

Happy 448th to William Shakespeare!

A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1939 ~ by Marc Chagall
A happy memory from my Senior year in highschool was celebrating Shakespeare's 411th birthday with my good friends Etta and Marilyn. We checked out the book Dining With William Shakespeare from the library. We baked Cornish Pasties and Shrewsbury Cakes. We drove downtown (St. Louis) to see a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream by The New Shakespeare Company of San Francisco (on tour). We spent hours making these buttons for everyone in our Shakespeare class to wear:

Since that festive occasion when we went all out, I have tried to honor Shakespeare's birthday in my heart and keep it in at least some small way every year.

Today, I share with you the words of another great English poet, John Dryden:

Shakespeare [1564 - 1616] . . . was the man who of all Modern, and perhaps Ancient Poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the Images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. . . . he was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of Books to read Nature; he look'd inwards, and found her there. . . . he is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him: no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of the Poets, "As cypresses usually do among supple trees."

The consideration of this made Mr. Hales of Eaton say, That there was no subject of which any Poet ever writ, but he would produce it much better treated of in Shakespeare; and however others are now generally prefer'd before him, yet the Age wherein he liv'd, which had contemporaries with him, Fletcher and Johnson never equall'd them to him in their esteem: And in the last Kings Court, when Ben's reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him the greater part of the Courtiers, set our Shakespeare far above him.

. . . If I would compare him [Ben Jonson] with Shakespeare, I must acknowledge him the more correct Poet, but Shakespeare the greater wit. Shakespeare was the Homer, or Father of our Dramatick Poets; Johnson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love Shakespeare.

by John Dryden (1631 - 1700)
English Poet and Literary Critic

from his Essay of Dramatick Poesie, 1668
as edited by Jack Lynch

Thanks to my brother Dave for the cool button!

And to conclude:
Maybe not "the most unkindest cut of all,"
but a taunt, a jest from my brother Bruce:

Dear Bill,
For your birthday,
I relinquish to you the right to use
any of my material and claim it as your own.
With warmest personal regards,
Sir Francis Bacon

Rejoinder:

Dear Frank,
If in the years to come,
they should ascribe my works to you,
well, no hard feelings!
Yours by the pen,
Will

Green Effective Earth Day*

from Atalanta in Calydon
[Click to hear a longer section read aloud]

And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.
For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
(1837 - 1909)

Speaking of spring rain ("shoures soote") and flowers begotten ("engendred is the flour"), could Swinburne have been thinking of Chaucer when he wrote the above stanza? Click here to read the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Perhaps back in high school or college, you had to memorize the opening lines in Middle English or a modern translation. Here's an easier idea ~ my minimalist version:

April showers: Sweet! Radical!
Relief from March
Flowers, vines, veins, wine
Zephyr: Breath of Life
Celestial Ram
Melodic lark
Follow the West Wind;
Follow Your Heart!

*See the poem
"Permanently"
by Kenneth Koch

How Music Began

Summer 2005: Striking the Rustic Wooden Pipes

Spring Break 2012: Still fun after all these years!

Formby Pinewoods
Victoria Road, Liverpool, Merseyside, EnglandA Great Place to Hang Out!

Camera, Memory Keeper, Time Machine

Back in 1994, sizing up the success of yet another visit to the photo studio, I said, "Well, it looks like Ben could have used a hair cut and Sam seems a little worried." Without skipping a beat, Little Ben spoke up (in reference to the camera):

"Sam thinks it's a big gun!"

Maybe he meant to say, "a time machine."
Last month on my book blog, I was looking at The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards. The title derives from a scene early in the novel when David, the memory keeper, says to his wife Norah:

"But you're so sad . . . don't be sad. I didn't forget, Norah. Not our anniversary, not our daughter. Not anything."

"Oh, David," she said. "I left your present in the car," She thought of the camera, its precise dials and levers. The Memory Keeper, it said on the box, in white italic letters; this, she realized was why she'd bought it -- so he'd capture every moment, so he'd never forget. (88)

When I read those words, I was reminded of a Newsweek essay by Anna Quindlen -- entitled "The Time Machine" -- that she wrote around Christmastime 2006. She is reminiscing about various childhood presents -- in particular an enormous, longed - for dollhouse -- and how the memory of what those toys signified at the time can linger for years after the objects themselves have been broken or lost or given away.

Then she shoots ahead to the more recent past of her own children opening their surprises; and, even more recently, to the memory of herself re-watching their holiday videos and witnessing a moment that she did not even realize she had captured on film at the time. She says, "It was only recently, many years after the event, that I discovered that little boy giving me the time- machine tip, a ghost of Christmas past."

On the tape, her son "looks into the lens and says as though he is imparting a great secret, 'Do you know what a camera is? It's a time machine.'" She wonders what stray distraction prevented her from catching that remark the first time around, but never mind! "Thank God the VCR offered me a second chance."

In this essay, Quindlen also takes issue with that annoying bit of advice: "Don't sweat the small stuff, and its all small stuff." I couldn't agree more when she argues, "That's absurd. Lots of small stuff is really big. . . . The essence of the season lies in figuring out what small stuff is passing minutiae and what is enduring memory. Come to think of it, that may well be the essence of everything" -- a conclusion that is perfectly in keeping with a blog about the Quotidian!

P.S.
~ August 2020 ~

"All those photographs broke Jackson's heart. Holiday snaps, birthdays and Christmases, all the highlights of family life. Jackson found photographs unsettling enough at the best of times. There was a lie at the heart of the camera, it implied the past was tangible when the very opposite was the true."

from Started Early, Took My Dog
by Kate Atkinson

Living on the Surface

Rooms by the Sea, 1951
By Edward Hopper (American, 1882–1967
The following poem has been in my notebook of favorites for thirty years now, since my Arkansas days, back when Bill Clinton was governor. I like the combination of grief and evolutionary biology, the mystery of salt water without and within, the existential quest for meaning -- "Not that we know what we're doing here." Yet, despite our sad lack of comprehension -- "We try to do what's right":

Living on the Surface
The dolphin
walked upon the land a little while
and crawled back to the sea
saying something thereby
about all that we live with.

Some of us
have followed him from time to time.
Most of us stay.
Not that we know what we're doing here.

We do it anyway
lugging a small part of the sea around.
It leaks out our eyes.

We swim inside ourselves
but we walk on the land.

What's wrong, we say, what's wrong?

Think how sadness soaks into
the beds we lie on.

Jesus, we've only just got here.
We try to do what's right
but what do we know?

by American poet Miller Williams
Professor of English and Foreign Languages
and Director of the University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville

For this poem & more, see: "Surface Dwellers"
on THE FORTNIGHTLY KITTI CARRIKER
my fortnightly literary blog [every 14th & 28th]
of connection and coincidence

The Atoms of Our Hearts

When I recently downloaded a tulip photo from wikipedia
onto my book blog, my husband Gerry said,
"You should take your own photographs of our own tulips!"
So I gave it a try! My results:


I like the way, in the following passages,
we humans share our bodies with the world,
our atoms with the sun,
and our time with the galaxies!
from The Memory Keeper's Daughter
by Kim Edwards" . . . the body was, in some mysterious way, a perfect mirror of the world. . . . Sometimes I think the entire world is contained within each living person. . . . as if the underlying correspondences between tulips and lungs, veins and trees, flesh and earth, might reveal a pattern he could understand. . . . the intricate and exhausting task of trying to transform . . . the body into the world and the world into the body" (149, 201 - 02, 319).


from The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
by Paul Zindel"For one thing, the effect of gamma rays on man-in-the-moon marigolds has made me curious about the sun and the stars, for the universe itself must be like a world of great atoms . . . but most important, I suppose my experiment has made me feel important--every atom in me, in everybody, has come from the sun--from places beyond our dreams. The atoms of our hands, the atoms of our hearts" (101-02).


A Blip on the Magnified
Computer Picture
On your way to the barbershop
you're almost blown off your feet
when it occurs to you that you're
using some of the very same time
needed to keep the galaxies
spinning through the light - years.

from the Collected Poems
of Ernest Sandeen

Life's Calm Secret

You see, I want a lot.
Perhaps I want everything:
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing
and are raised to the rank of prince
by the slippery ease of their light judgments.

But what you love to see are faces
that so work and feel thirst.

You love most of all those who need you
as they need a crowbar or a hoe.

You have not grown old, and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.

by Rainer Maria Rilke

from the Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Robert Bly

Happy Easter!

Sam (above) and Ben (below) singing with the
St. Peter's Choir at Bath Abbey
Summer 2003


See Photo Album . . .
Plus, a few more photos of St. Peter's, Philadelphia . . .

New Features

Two new features:

to the right ->->->
the option to follow this blog by e - mail

<-<-<- to the left (scroll down) a series of passages from:
A Little Book of Forgiveness:
Challenges and Meditations for
Anyone with Something to Forgive
by D. Patrick Miller

See also: "Altering Events" on my book blog, Kitti's List

and: "A Politics of Forgiveness" on my facebook page

The Magic of the Moon & the ABCs

"We spell away the overhanging night"
The Cool Web
Children are dumb to say how the day is hot,
How hot the scent is of the summer rose;
How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,
How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by.

But we have speech, to chill the angry day,
And speech, to dull the rose's cruel scent.
We spell away the overhanging night,
We spell away the soldiers and the fright.

There's a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear;
We grow sea - green at last and coldly die
in brininess and volubility.

But if we let our tongues lose self - possession,
Throwing off language and its watery clasp
Before our death, instead of when death comes,
Facing the wide glare of the children's day,
Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,
We shall go mad no doubt and die that way.

by Robert Graves, 1895 - 1985
English poet, novelist, scholar, translator, writer of antiquity
This poem and more can be found on my
CURRENT FORTNIGHTLY BLOG POST
~ The Syntax of Love ~
The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker:
A Fortnightly [every 14th & 28th] Literary Blog of
Connection & Coincidence; Custom & Ceremony