Category Archives: Literature

Labor Day may have come and gone, but technically it’s still summer, and at 93 degrees it certainly feels like. While I’ve put away my white pants for the season, summer lingers on in poetry and pool romps. Here’s a poem by one of my favorite writers, Mary Oliver, extolling the continuation of the sunny days:

LITTLE SUMMER POEM TOUCHING THE SUBJECT OF FAITH

 

Every summer

I listen and look

under the sun’s brass and even

into the moonlight, but I can’t hear

anything, I can’t see anything —

not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,

nor the leaves

deepening their damp pleats,

nor the tassels making,

nor the shucks, nor the cobs.

And still,

every day,

the leafy fields

grow taller and thicker —

green gowns lofting up in the night,

showered with silk.

And so, every summer,

I fail as a witness, seeing nothing —

I am deaf too

to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet —

all of it

happening

beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.

Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.

Let the wind turn in the trees,

and the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.

How could I look at anything in this world

and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?

What should I fear?

One morning

in the leafy green ocean

the honeycomb of the corn’s beautiful body

is sure to be there.

~ Mary Oliver

Every once in a great while, a book comes along that makes you slow down and savor each page, forcing you to devour it as quickly as you don’t want it to end. The great literary conundrum – when you enjoy something so much you rush through it because you can’t stop, but at the same time you do everything in your power to prolong the pleasure, earmarking pages and underlining passages and revisiting favorite parts before it’s even over. Such was the power of ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee – a classic that had somehow escaped my vision in the course of four decades. I just finished it, and what a wonderful read it was. In many ways, I’m glad I waited. This sort of jewel might have been wasted in my youth. Instead, I am still moved by its last few chapters, and it’s been haunting me since I finished it. The best books do that. They stay with you long after you’ve read them, inhabiting a place inside the soul that enriches and emboldens – a place that you don’t let everyone see, because it means too much, and too many people might sully it. Instead, you hold it close and secret and safe, and you hope the world doesn’t rock you too much to dislodge it.

“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.”

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”

“A steaming summer night was no different from a winter morning.”

John Irving is one of my favorite authors. He consistently delivers spellbinding prose, and every novel he crafts manages to conjure the aching resilience and hope of the human spirit with wildly varying settings and characters. The one constant is a gentle examination of the brutalities we inflict on one another, and the notion that no matter how impossible it may seem, we always have the capacity to change, to become someone new, someone better.

While I’ll probably always favor ‘A Prayer for Owen Meany’ over everything else (you never forget your first time), I was also quite enamored of ‘In One Person’. Perhaps upon perusing the following quotes, you may be tempted to give it a try. I’d certainly encourage it.

“You shouldn’t guess about someone’s past; if you don’t see any evidence of it, a person’s past remains unknown to you.” ~ John Irving

“That moment when you are tired of being treated like a child – tired of adolescence, too – that suddenly opening but quickly closing passage, when you irreversibly want to grow up, is a dangerous time. In a future novel (an early one), I would write: “Ambition robs you of your childhood. The moment you want to become an adult – in any way – something in your childhood dies.” ~ John Irving

“You can’t force children to become something they’re not. You can’t simply tell a boy not to play with dolls.” ~ John Irving

“What’s the point of having a love of your life, if he’s not always with you?” ~ John Irving

I have told you that I was reluctant to describe him as an artist pure and simple, and indeed that he declined this title with a modesty touched with aristocratic reserve. I might perhaps call him a dandy, and I should have several good reasons for that; for the word ‘dandy’ implies a quintessence of character and a subtle understanding of the entire moral mechanism of this world; with another part of his nature, however, the dandy aspires to insensitivity…

The dandy is blasé, or pretends to be so, for reasons of policy and caste. He is a master of that only too difficult art – sensitive spirits will understand – of being sincere without being absurd.

To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world – such are a few of the slightest pleasures of those independent, passionate, impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito. The lover of life makes the whole world his family, just like the lover of the fair sex who builds up his family from all the beautiful women that he has ever found, or that are – or are not – to be found; or the lover of pictures who lives in a magical society of dreams painted on canvas. Thus the lover of universal life enters into the crowd as though it were an immense reservoir of electrical energy. Or we might liken him to a mirror as vast as the crowd itself; or to a kaleidoscope gifted with consciousness, responding to each one of its movements and reproducing the multiplicity of life and the flickering grace of all the elements of life…

And the external world is reborn upon his paper, natural and more than natural, beautiful and more than beautiful, strange and endowed with an impulsive life like the soul of its creator. The phantasmagoria has been distilled from nature. All the raw materials with which the memory has loaded itself are put in order, ranged and harmonized, and undergo that forced idealization which is the result of a childlike perceptiveness – that is to say, a perceptiveness acute and magical by reason of its innocence!

~ Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life

Charles Baudelaire wrote a great many wonderful essays, of which ‘The Painter of Modern Life‘ is one. In the opening portion on ‘Beauty, Fashion and Happiness’ he makes a play for my own heart. I have forgotten which literature course listed this as part of its required reading, but I’m grateful it did. Hopefully I don’t betray my old-man curmudgeon status by stating that this speaks to a generation that likely won’t listen, but needs to hear it.

“The past is interesting not only by reason of the beauty which could be distilled from it by those artists for whom it was the present, but also precisely because it is the past, for its historical value. It is the same with the present. The pleasure which we derive from the representation of the present is due not only to the beauty with which it can be invested, but also to its essential quality of being present.” ~ Charles Baudelaire

Is there a place in this fast-paced selfie-obsessed world for such thoughtful reflection on our social condition, or is all that simply lost in the speed of everything today? I’d like to believe that such nuances, and such subtlety, are still able to be gleaned and understood, that some of us are capable of holding our focus and attention to have a succinct conversation and experience, uninterrupted and not chopped up by other distractions. Enough with the multi-tasking and light-speed-shifting social plate tectonics.

“The idea of beauty which man creates for himself imprints itself on his whole attire, crumples or stiffens his dress, rounds off or squares his gesture, and in the long run even ends by subtly penetrating the very features of his face. Man ends by looking like his ideal self. These engravings can be translated either into beauty or ugliness; in one direction, they become caricatures, in the other antique statues.” ~ Charles Baudelaire

What will last? What aspects of beauty are we preserving? What will survive the test of time, and what will fall by the wayside? When we look back at all these selfies years from now, assuming that we even do, what is it that we will see and remember? Will any of it linger beyond this fleeting second? I’m not convinced much of it will. You need to do something different, something daring. You need to make your mark and make it stick. Otherwise you’ll get swept away, lost and indistinguishable in the massive wave of self-promotion that social media has crafted and fostered. In a sense, social media is fashion. Baudelaire would, I’d guess, be quite taken with Instagram and Twitter.

The selfie is the modern-day artistic statue, erected with far less permanence, yet far greater reach.

I also want to believe, given that I’m writing this in a blog (the modern-day printing press, the current means of presenting work to the world), that even in this raw and rough method of transmission, there is the possibility for something beautiful, for something meaningful, for something that might last. A lot of sifting may be required, some searching and weeding through all the fluff, but in some select posts I have to believe there is something more.

“Beauty is made up of an eternal, invariable element, whose quantity it is excessively difficult to determine, and of a relative, circumstantial element, which will be, if you like, whether severally or all at once, the age, its fashions, its morals, its emotions. Without this second element, which might be described as the amusing, enticing, appetizing icing on the divine cake, the first element would be beyond our powers of digestion or appreciation, neither adapted nor suitable to human nature. I defy anyone to point to a single scrap of beauty which does not contain these two elements.” ~ Charles Baudelaire

And so I seek to find such beauty, to bring it to light, to give it a chance to embed itself within the continuum of human history. It’s getting more and more difficult to make something that sticks, and in my heart of hearts I think I may have failed thus far – but that’s the very thing that keeps this site going. There is the possibility of beauty, the potential for greatness. It’s just out of reach, but on my best days I’ve tasted it, I’ve felt it, and I know I’ve come close.

“…even in those centuries which seem to us the most monstrous and the maddest, the immortal thirst for beauty has always found its satisfaction.” ~ Charles Baudelaire

A friend was perusing some of my books the other evening, and she happened upon ‘The Short History of a Prince” by Jane Hamilton. Perhaps better-known for her book ‘A Map of the World’ I have always found more of an affinity to ‘The Short History of a Prince.’ You’ll have to read it for yourself to understand why – or just read a few of my favorite quotes from it:

His was an ordinary tragedy, he knew. he had been happy as a child and had not realized it. But happiness was spent so quickly, he thought, and identifying it, feeling it, trying to hang on to it, made him nervous. maybe it was better to be ignorant of bliss, unselfconscious, and later have the sense to recognize its traces. ~ Jane Hamilton 

You have to live wildly, every now and then, so you can sleep at night, and have interesting material for your dreams. Don’t you? I figure it’s for the dream life that we have to really live. ~ Jane Hamilton

You might be expecting a wish list for the holiday season, and I’d be lying if I said another one wasn’t on the way, but it turns out that my most favorite things in the world aren’t colognes or messenger bags or shoes, but far simpler: words. Here are a few of my favorite strings of them:

You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. ~ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n. ~ Milton, Paradise Lost

“When the times are a crucible, when the air is full of crisis,” she said, “those who are most themselves are the victims.” ~ Gregory Maguire

Another thing they knew and shared and believed was that no one could really help anyone else, that sadness is solitude, but you could love someone, without reservation or fanfare, just love them, without expecting anything in return and, sometimes, it would be enough. ~ Whitney Otto

There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful. ~ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“People who claim that they’re evil are usually no worse than the rest of us.” He sighed. “It’s people who claim, that they’re good, or anyway better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.” ~ Gregory Maguire

It was about wanting something that you have idealized to the point that, when you have it, you are still longing for it. Something can be yours and not yours in the same breath. ~ Whitney Otto

The Poet Visits the Museum of Fine Arts

by Mary Oliver

For a long time

I was not even

in this world, yet

every summer

every rose

opened in perfect sweetness

and lived

in gracious repose,

in its own exotic fragrance,

in its huge willingness to give

something, from its small self,

to the entirety of the world.

I think of them, thousands upon thousands,

in many lands,

whenever summer came to them,

rising

out of the patience,

to leaf and bud and look up

into the blue sky

or, with thanks,

While the inside of The Mount is magnificent, the majesty of the outside slightly dwarfs it. With its tiered terraces leading down to the formal gardens, and the view of a lake, I can imagine being perfectly content here, if a little lonely. Beauty only goes so far in alleviating that kind of loneliness. But to visit, it’s exquisite, and I imagine grand weeks were spent here between Wharton and her friends.

I can say this since I don’t operate the lawnmowers: though grand, it is certainly not imposing in scale. Expansive yes, and I can’t imagine a single person, or even two, could properly manage such grounds, yet it still feels cozy and intimate, its formal structure not in the least bit cold or constrained. With larger spaces like this, such formality works to organize the vastness of what’s at hand, each section becoming like a little room, connected by corridors of trees and shrubs. It creates secret nooks for stolen kisses, quiet corners for hushed conversations, and hidden opportunities for adoring lovers.

The gardens are just at the end of their summer glory, but the Japanese anemones keep it all fresh, and most of the annuals are still putting on a splendid show. Crowds of cleome, clouds of hydrangea, and a full phalanx of phlox soften the stiff angles of the layout. A long twin row of carefully-manicured trees forms the border of the main walkway, a leafy promenade that called for something much more fanciful than my shorts and sneakers.

A fountain of fish and the accompanying cadence of falling water lend a soothing and cooling aspect in spite of the mid-day sun that beats down relentlessly. It reminds me of how important a water feature is to the garden, and how we may have to implement one next year. There are ways to incorporate ideas from a garden this grand into one decidedly less-so.

A woodland walk leads into the forest to the right of this sculptural focal point, a seamless segue into the wilder environs of the grounds, and a chance to be shaded and hidden. If there hadn’t been so many bugs I would have allowed the forest to close more completely behind me.

This corner of the premises offers the most striking view of the house, perched upon its namesake, resplendent in the early afternoon sunlight and framed by ancient pine trees. The soft splashing of the fountain and the calls of a few birds are all that break the tenuous silence – though silence here seems to carry more substance, more lasting power than other places.

The fountain in the West garden (seen below) mirrors the one in the East garden (above), though in a more informal manner – its grouping of rocks more aligned with the shadier, wilder aspect of this part of the land, the circular shape softer and gentler than the rigid angles of the East.

An enormous wall of climbing hydrangeas must have been quite the sight in full bloom – for now just the white begonias and hostas are sharing their subtle blossoms. This garden is more hidden, sunken down slightly lower than the rest of the grounds, tucked deeper into the hillside. Its plants are fit for the shade, less showy with their flowers, more focused on the verdant surfaces of its leaves.

I like the quieter feel of this area. It’s the perfect place to finish up our tour of The Mount. As we walk back towards the house, a large tour group is just traversing the promenade. Our little pocket of stillness and quiet has come to its close, the morning of my birthday easing into the afternoon as we make our way back to New York.

Sometimes there is no more intimate glimpse into a person than in seeing their home. It’s where the inner-sanctums of our lives take place, when the unguarded moments of solitude or intimately-shared living occur. It’s almost painfully revealing, particularly when the person in residence is not present.

Whenever I find myself in a friend’s home, either waiting for their arrival, or hanging out until their return, I feel like I’ve been given a privileged peek at what they hold most dear. I usually read too much into it – wondering at the choice of a pillow (that they probably got as a gift) or the placement of a bookshelf (that probably came with the house).

I know if someone scrutinized my home that way I’d be saddled with all sorts of unfair attributes. (The slate entryway was not my idea, and that shoddy, torn, on-its-last-legs leather sofa is all Andy, all the way.) So I realize the insanity of placing so much stock in the surroundings, but part of me feels it is an accurate representation of who someone is at their most unguarded.

You can also tell a lot about a person by the books one reads. A lot, yes, but certainly not everything, especially with a library as big as the one seen here. No doubt Ms. Wharton read a great deal, but she surely didn’t read everything here. Some books belonged to her husband, some to friends, and some were probably just shelf-filler to balance an empty row out. The mere fact that she held a library in such high-esteem says more than her choice of books.

Simply being in the same space that someone once occupied can give little clues as to what they were like, or at least give an idea of what they might have seen, or how the light may have moved them. Those are the intimate details I crave about the people I love and admire. To see where someone whose words so moved me actually lived and worked and wrote can be as telling as any biography, or autobiography for that matter.

Because sometimes what is unsaid and unwritten is more meaningful and impactful than what we choose to reveal.

But I have sometimes thought that a woman’s nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes. ~ Edith Wharton

The master bedroom suite was divided into these two rooms, which Ms. Wharton occupied on her own, for the most part. Though the furniture is not original, it gives an idea of what it might have looked like. The light, and the windows, were as she would have experienced them, and that’s what matters. She would have looked out over the same expanse of green, the same trees in the distance, and the same lake. A similar sky would have appeared countless times, and the exact same sun would have shone as it did on this day, traveling the same trajectory across the floor, molding the same shadows.