November is an elegaic month: lost leaves, more often than not, lost lives. Today my mother phoned while I was cooking dinner, and I immediately heard the "bad news breaking" implication of her calm tone. My uncle has been in the hospital, and though he's not in any intense or immediate danger, I have been dreading the bad news voice. Haven't really wanted to hear the phone ring at all. While there was some news about the scheduling and specifics of his upcoming surgery, the call was made primarily to inform me that my step-grandmother had passed away.
She had the best of conceivable ends, her daughter by her side, members of her church's chorus in attendance and singing. It's reported that she went with a smile.
I always try to imagine the encroaching darkness of winter as a blanket, see this time of year in a positive light. There's a comfort in some endings, be it the end of the day, a year, or a life. Still, November, with its chill and damp... so hard to trust, so difficult to relax. For all that I love the ride, it's not great, being a mailboat away from the family. At least it's not Iowa.
To the New Blog
Me.
Bog Narcissa
The Awful Seduction
"I realized not just that I was at peace but that I was at the center of the world, that if I just hung around and waited a bit, everything worth happening would happen right here on this island."
-Charles Pratt
-Charles Pratt
Emily Wrote and I Agree:
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
At Last the Secret is Out
At last the secret is out,as it always must come in the end,
The delicious story is ripe to tell to the intimate friend;
Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire; still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.
Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links,
Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks,
Under the fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh
There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.
For the clear voice suddenly singing, high up in the convent wall,
The scent of the elder bushes, the sporting prints in the hall,
The croquet matches in the summer, the handshake, the cough, the kiss,
There is always a wicked secret a private reason for this.
-W.H. Auden
When I have Fears
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charact'ry
Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain;
When I behold in the night's starred face
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!- then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
-John Keats
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charact'ry
Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain;
When I behold in the night's starred face
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!- then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
-John Keats
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