A Month in the Country
I took a personal day Friday, after having a minor (and well-earned) meltdown at the office Thursday afternoon.
What can I say but I have a, um, delicate equilibrium. And my work-life balance as of late has been a little out of whack.
The ramping up of the fall semester coincides with the winding down of the garden. The change of seasons can be hard — the hopes that spring eternal at winter's end ripen in summer, but what we can't gather in our arms rots on the vine by autumn — shriveled fruit, the smell of decay (still sweet, not at all unpleasant).
Every autumn reminds us: we have to choose among our hopes. We can't have them all.
In some ways it was an extraordinary summer (yes, I know we've still got a whole work week before autumn arrives in earnest) — with all that went on in the gardens, my move, and meeting a really lovely lad about six weeks ago with whom I'm utterly (and solely) smitten.
But Time is hard, and all mileage — over smooth or rocky roads — takes its toll.
So I was lucky this weekend provided a pause in the action. Boo was off in Chicago, the gardens were quiet and calm, and while the new apartment is still half-empty (or is it half-full?) and I'm not yet used to where the light switches are it already feels like home, somehow.
So I spent a good part of the weekend shuffling about the rooms (rooms, plural!), following the sunlight from one to another, usually with a book and a shot of espresso from my Bialetti (tossed my old Mr. Coffee out in the move - don't miss it).
I had unpacked the balance of my books and yesterday tucked into J.L. Carr's little gem, A Month in the Country. There was not, I am convinced, a better book to have read on the last Sunday of summer.
A good book is an oracle. Whether we know it or not, we come to it with questions and it answers in riddles. It's strange how the novel, the perfect recipe for a one-way conversation, can in the hands of a virtuoso story-teller not only speak to us, but listen as well.
A Month in the Country is like that. An ode to reverie brimming over with such warm and familiar humanity that, like catching up with an old friend, every bittersweet memory the narrator shares elicits one of our own.
The story of a shell-shocked and stammering young man fresh from the Great War who's been commissioned to uncover a medieval mural in a rural parish church took me back to my own bittersweet year teaching English in a little village in Eastern Europe a full fifteen years ago now.
The walk from the train station. Gypsy kids kickboxing on the corner. There were still people who drove horse-drawn carts through town. Two or three times a week I had a group of sad-eyed seamstresses, all with the most heart-breakingly tragic teeth. Some of the girls were striking in the feral way of peasant stock that frankly suits young men better — and there were plenty of those too. Too big for their desks, uncomfortable in ill-fitting clothes — they only really made any kind of sense out of them.
"We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours forever—the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on the belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass."
Not to worry. You've got all winter for that.
What can I say but I have a, um, delicate equilibrium. And my work-life balance as of late has been a little out of whack.
_______________________________________________
Every autumn reminds us:
we have to choose among our hopes.
_______________________________________________
Every autumn reminds us:
we have to choose among our hopes.
_______________________________________________
The ramping up of the fall semester coincides with the winding down of the garden. The change of seasons can be hard — the hopes that spring eternal at winter's end ripen in summer, but what we can't gather in our arms rots on the vine by autumn — shriveled fruit, the smell of decay (still sweet, not at all unpleasant).
Every autumn reminds us: we have to choose among our hopes. We can't have them all.
In some ways it was an extraordinary summer (yes, I know we've still got a whole work week before autumn arrives in earnest) — with all that went on in the gardens, my move, and meeting a really lovely lad about six weeks ago with whom I'm utterly (and solely) smitten.
But Time is hard, and all mileage — over smooth or rocky roads — takes its toll.
So I was lucky this weekend provided a pause in the action. Boo was off in Chicago, the gardens were quiet and calm, and while the new apartment is still half-empty (or is it half-full?) and I'm not yet used to where the light switches are it already feels like home, somehow.
So I spent a good part of the weekend shuffling about the rooms (rooms, plural!), following the sunlight from one to another, usually with a book and a shot of espresso from my Bialetti (tossed my old Mr. Coffee out in the move - don't miss it).
I had unpacked the balance of my books and yesterday tucked into J.L. Carr's little gem, A Month in the Country. There was not, I am convinced, a better book to have read on the last Sunday of summer.
A good book is an oracle. Whether we know it or not, we come to it with questions and it answers in riddles. It's strange how the novel, the perfect recipe for a one-way conversation, can in the hands of a virtuoso story-teller not only speak to us, but listen as well.
A Month in the Country is like that. An ode to reverie brimming over with such warm and familiar humanity that, like catching up with an old friend, every bittersweet memory the narrator shares elicits one of our own.
The story of a shell-shocked and stammering young man fresh from the Great War who's been commissioned to uncover a medieval mural in a rural parish church took me back to my own bittersweet year teaching English in a little village in Eastern Europe a full fifteen years ago now.
The walk from the train station. Gypsy kids kickboxing on the corner. There were still people who drove horse-drawn carts through town. Two or three times a week I had a group of sad-eyed seamstresses, all with the most heart-breakingly tragic teeth. Some of the girls were striking in the feral way of peasant stock that frankly suits young men better — and there were plenty of those too. Too big for their desks, uncomfortable in ill-fitting clothes — they only really made any kind of sense out of them.
"We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours forever—the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on the belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass."
Not to worry. You've got all winter for that.
Whenever a read something that stays with me, I am reminded of Rita Doves observation: "Poetry is like a bouillon cube. You carry it around, and it nourishes you." I suppose you can substitute music, literature, religion--any way we try try to interpret our lives--and those words ring true.
Reply to this
Love this.
Reply to this