February blues...

Serenity and security often seem to go hand in hand, and when they don't, or when both are markedly absent from my life,  I get to feeling that pale delicate shade of blue.  When I sink into this melancholic frame of mind, I do my best to bail the water of out my little sinking boat, so to speak.  Things that help are:
-A good Victorian novel.  They are the best, and this is because they still have that sense that the world can be put in order, somehow.  Rules still exist, and post-modernism has not entered into our world view yet.
- Tidying the bedroom, with fresh sheets and extra pillows, and warm blankets.
- Lighting candles.
- Warm fuzzy socks.
- A big cup of chamomile tea every day.

I am just now reading "The House of the Seven Gables" by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  I have really not read many of the early American novels.  Somehow, too,  I have managed to avoid reading Moby Dick, although I am not too comfortable with that confession.   It was just not ever on any of my lit class lists.  Tsk.  Anyhow, I wait to see how this house fares.

Speaking of serenity -  my bedroom's buddha:

I want to be as serene as this reclining buddha:

Dreaming of a vision like this one.

...
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.” 

by William Wordsworth

The white tulip in January

Having an anniversary in the dark of winter is, of course, a great reason for flowers in January.  Tulips, and more tulips, for me.  Most people probably think of tulips as spring flowers, but for me, they are the flowers of the new year.

They almost seem to sway and dance.

Tea time... thinking of Wallace Stevens

 Teatime for one...  I only just found this poem the other day, and loved the title.  What could tea possibly be like at the palaz of Hoon?  What had this unusual title to do with the poem itself?

I find myself puzzling over the meaning of this poem.

In a way, the narrator seems to be transported, almost into a sort of wondering ecstasy, being both in the world, and outside of it.  He says the outside world does not affect his inner world, and yet, could he have this inner life without the one outside being what it is?  It is the last line that makes one wonder.  Is his inner world a true and mysterious place, but so strange he cannot recognize himself?  Hasn't anyone ever felt that way about the outside world too, especially at twilight/in the "loneliest air"?


Tea at the Palaz of Hoon
 Not less because in purple I descended
 The western day through what you called
 The loneliest air, not less was I myself.
 What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
 What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
 What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?
 Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
 And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
 I was myself the compass of that sea:
 I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
 Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
 And there I found myself more truly and more strange.
 
by Wallace Stevens



What is also thought-provoking is how the narrator, though dressed up in the finery of twilight, thinks it makes him no more or no less what he is: "not less was I myself".  Are we supposed to be more than ourselves? Can we be?

Another way that I read this poem is to think about how we we become so busy with our self-important lives that the amazing beauty of our world fades into the background and turns into minutiae. We need to look outwards. And yet,  perhaps a rich internal world can be just as amazing and beautiful.  Maybe that can be very strange indeed.
I imagine a tea at the palaz as something very European, Spanish or Italian, but I live in the north, and my "tea room"  is more cosy, with views of lacy trees, befriended by ice fog.  And I too, find myself, more truly, and more strange.

 My Sunday teatime is a quiet time for me today, but I am not as centered as I would like to be. Still, I make the most of my little moments.  I have this vintage bubble glass tea set that I like to get out and use every now and then.  It reminds me of childhood and grandparents I barely knew.  It was made for a specific time and place; is it "out of time" now?  Tea time as time travel.  I travel, I create, but am well aware of my mortality.


  

Can feathered hats create spells?

"The Animal Spell"

Someone once told me that animals are people under spells, and if you fall in love with them the spell will be lifted. I recently fell in love with a black trumpeter swan. I watched her ruffle her neck feathers for hours, watched her peck bugs from her breast. I was sure she would make a beautiful bride, but she was always a black trumpeter swan. I once brushed a horse's hair for 3 straight years until it crumpled into death. The truth is there is no such thing as spells. The world is always as it is, and always as it seems. And love is just our own kind voice that we whisper into our own blood.

  by Zachary Schomburg

Perhaps he could have a woman who wears a hat adorned with black swan feathers.  Her voice could  whisper to him and the feathers might gently move with her breath.  We do fall under love's spell sometimes, even if, dear Schomburg, we deceive ourselves.

It would be quite easy to imagine that these hats could turn back into birds, don't you think?

I  think of this as the Queen Mum's hat.  Or as a hat one might wear on a warm spring day, with a light breeze blowing.  An Easter hat.  It's soft and wispy, a little bit of blue sky.

A sweet church hat.  Very pretty.  Also for trips to the city, perhaps.  It's meant to be seen on a city street.

Now this is a hat one might wear to an art gallery.  A hat with presence.

Now here is a subdued hat.  It is the perfect hat for a luncheon.  Does anyone still say "luncheon"? Maybe when the objects disappear, so do the events that called for them. Or is it the other way around?

Here is a bird who might have inspired the above hat.  The Indian head-dresses of old use feathers in the most majestic sense, but how many other cultures have made use of feathers for decorative purposes?

The imperialists took the bison and almost made it extinct.  Where are all those buffalo robes? How many bison heads still hang on the walls of European manors and chateaus?  And our once plentiful beaver - all those furs too - where are all those furs now?  Think of it.  All that labour, that fur economy that kickstarted a colonial empire.  

Birds, now, who would have thought that birds too would be harvested?  I would love to see a movie set in the late Victorian era, or the Edwardian, (which era had the largest variety of hats, I wonder) that used these gorgeously plumed hats as a primary object in its period setting. The plot would be secondary.  I want to see the ladies out and about, perambulating in parks, taking tea with a friend or two, going to a charity event, or even going to a millinery shop to purchase another hat.  Is anyone interested in writing the screenplay for this?

Or it could be about a female explorer who falls into a possessive, obsessive love with all the birds she sees, and so she must have a taxidermist and a milliner as her companions as she travels. Who will she finally choose as a mate?  Perhaps it could be a scientific romance, or a steam punk fantasy.

                                                 (These are created by Nashimiron.)



The Mad Hatter:  There is a place. Like no place on Earth. A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger! Some say to survive it: You need to be as mad as a hatter.
The Mad Hatter:   Which luckily I am. 
(From the Alice in Wonderland movie, 2010)

Why I love my sunroom, and TV dinners

Today it has been snowing non-stop.  A real snow day.  Hades demands his Persephone now.  No dillydallying. An abrupt grab.
So I have been sitting in my sunroom, painted a nice cheerful  yellow, and with its own heating system providing some coziness on what looks like a full-fledged winter's day in October.  Now, the other place we had provided us with a screened porch- blessed relief from mosquitos and horseflies.  But this home gives me warmth and much more light and a cozy place to sit all winter long.  Which I love, even when winter provides only its dark light.
Now, there should be two yellow and brown chairs, but I am fond of my old slate-blue armchair, and so it remains for now.  It is still a good place to sit and read and drink a cup of tea.  (I have just finished a collection of stories by Edward P. Jones, called All Aunt Hagar's Children. Which I may blog about later.)
My blue chair would probably look better in my living room.  But the living room seems to have enough furniture, although I think it still needs a little bit of wow factor.  I just don't know.... it has a serene feel to it right now.

For supper tonight, nothing elaborate.  TV dinners.  Now, most people may equate the TV dinner with the meal of a lonely only.  Not so me.  Why, a TV dinner is an amazing meal.  The perfectly planned out meal, in perfect proportion, complete with a dessert.  There is something so satisfying in that.  Thank you to the home economic scientists, for developing such an amazing concept.  I always like to imagine that somewhere in the future, space travellers eat their  homely TV dinners.  That, and they are sipping their favourite Starbucks coffees whenever they want.

 The kitchen where the TV dinners are heated up.  Modern civilization. 

Owlish Evenings...

I  keep reading this poem, and I like it the more I read it.  To able to soar, to fly - that is the superpower I would choose.  To glide about at night, with the moon and stars for light, on a nice warm breeze. I remember a book I read as a child, but I can't remember the title. It was about a young boy who had a bottle of pearlized ointment, and when he rubbed it on his shoulders, he grew wings and flew about and had adventures.  I wish I could find that book again.
The light fades quickly now, and it makes the evenings seem more mysterious.  Twilight -  "Laugh heart again in the gray light of twilight". (Yeats)

 

If the Owl Calls Again

  by John Haines
at dusk from the island in the river, and it's not too cold, I'll wait for the moon to rise, then take wing and glide to meet him. We will not speak, but hooded against the frost soar above the alder flats, searching with tawny eyes. And then we'll sit in the shadowy spruce and pick the bones of careless mice, while the long moon drifts toward Asia and the river mutters in its icy bed. And when the morning climbs the limbs we'll part without a sound, fulfilled, floating homeward as the cold world awakens.

The Wistful Garden ...

In my lately abandoned garden, the little garden ornaments wait for me to gather them inside, safe from the cold winter, although I wonder what they might look like if they stayed outside for the coldest season. They do look like they should remain where they are, but I know the damage winter inflicts.

 My "statuary" is nothing grand or indestructible, but they do just fine. See for yourself.

 

This pensive cherub is tucked in by the Henry Hudson rosebush and mock orange shrubs.

This little fellow cuddles his rabbit beneath the Golden Elder.

 Two companions share a secret.

Well, St. Francis does stay outside.  He is  too heavy to move.  Besides, the chickadees like him, and perch in the Polestar  rose bushes surrounding him.

And here is the kind of  secret that the two cherubs might be sharing (although it could be something quite different):

“There are many different stories to tell. It's never the same. Every day weather blows in and out, alters the surface. Sometimes it is stripped down to a single essential truth, the thing that is always believed, no matter what. The seeds from which the garden has grown.”
― From Helen Humphrey's The Lost Garden

What could this single essential truth be?  That the garden also has four seasons, each with its own particular beauty?  That even if a garden is abandoned, it is still a garden?   That the person who plants the garden is sending a message about herself to the world, even if  she doesn't know exactly what she means to say?