Lunaea Weatherstone's Blogue

The things that are for me

In honor of the summertime return of So You Think You Can Dance, I dipped into one of my favorite books about dance, Rumer Godden's A Candle for St. Jude. (You can see more about this book on a little Godden fan site I made, A House with Four Rooms.) The heroine, aged Russian ballerina Madame Anna Holbein, lives through the days surrounding a jubilee performance of her small ballet company, her memories vivid and intense as she looks back over the past fifty years and more. As always with books I love, I find something new each time I re-read. When I first read St. Jude as a teenager, I related to the ardent and ambitious young dancers in the company. Now, of course, I sympathize with the wandering thoughts and still-ardent emotions of Madame. I love this passage where she dreamily tells (in her Russian accent) of the things she loves:

"I love so many things . . . universal things that are for everybody and things that are for me, personally. . . I olways feel, for instance, that red and white roses together are for me. Don't ask me why. They are for me. Yes, red and white roses, and then, the Gulf Stream. . . We in England ought to love the Gulf Stream. It keeps us from being frozen, quite. And I love spires and may trees, and views, some views; and houses, some houses; I love mahogany and the spell of spices; particularly I love the smell of spices, and food, the taste of that salmon at lunch, out of season, not? And poems. I love that poem about the deer by...by?...We had wine at lunch and that is why I think of him (and tomorrow we shall lunch on poached eggs and coffee, not? That is life)...Drrrinkwater, that is his name. I love his poem. I love so much, everything; this minute. . ." 

Setting the book aside, I mused on the things I love, the things that are for me, personally. When I was younger, I used to make long lists in my journals of the things I loved, as I tried to clarify who I was and who I was becoming. As I move toward my crone time, I find myself (like Madame) doing it again. Like her, I love houses, and the smell of spices. Wisteria and tangerines and wind chimes and clean cotton sheets. Candlelight is for me, and the scent of ocean fog is for me. Glass beads in subtle shimmering colors. Elizabethan lute music. Edward Gorey and Madeleine L'Engle and old books bound in gilded leather. Glitter and moonlight.

It's strangely satisfying to make lists like this, like stocking the soul's pantry with the staple items needed to make sure I am always able to feed myself. Especially when I get caught in mundane busy-ness and tasks that don't seem to be made from soul-pantry ingredients, it's good to add another item or two to the list, just to ground and center myself in the me-ness of me. Badgers. Geodes. Fairy houses. "I am what I am, each moment, forever," says Madame. Here is the poem that the wine reminded her of:

Shy in their herding dwell the fallow deer.

They are spirits of wild sense. Nobody near

Comes upon their pastures. There a life they live,

Of sufficient beauty, phantom, fugitive,

Treading as in jungles free leopards do,

Printless as evelight, instant as dew.

The great kine are patient, and home-coming sheep

Know our bidding. The fallow deer keep

Delicate and far their counsels wild,

Never to be folded reconciled

To the spoiling hand as the poor flocks are;

Lightfoot, and swift, and unfamiliar,

These you may not hinder, unconfined

Beautiful flocks of the mind.

What are the things that are for you, personally? What spirits of wild sense run in your mind and heart? 

Literary summer vacation

Well, it's that time of year again -- time to plan where I will be spending my literary vacation. The nice thing about literary vacations is they are journeys in time as well as space. Last summer I spent my holidays with Bohemians and the Bloomsbury crowd and the summer before I was in Egypt with Amelia Peabody Emerson. This summer has started off with a wonderful biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (the subject, more or less, of the far less wonderful film The Duchess, which did NOT do her justice in any way). Today is Georgiana's 252nd birthday. Happy birthday, your Grace! Georgiana was a superstar in her day, celebrated for her beauty, charm, and (especially) political influence, yet privately tortured by destructive relationships and personal losses, insecurities, and often despair. She had much in common with her descendant, Princess Diana. Reading her biography (alongside that of her equally fascinating sister Harriet Spencer) gave me much to think about regarding the roles of women in society and how they wax and wane. In Georgiana's 18th century England, women had remarkable freedom compared to what the following century would offer them.

Anyway, back to my summertime book trek. I'm going to spend a few more weeks in 18th century England and France, reading biographies of Louis XIV and Madame de Pompadour that I've had hanging around here for a couple of years. Both are by Nancy Mitford, so following that lead, I'm going to time-travel forward and spend the rest of my literary vacation in the world of Mitfordiana: a couple of volumes of letters by Nancy Mitford, re-reading her delicious The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, and other assorted books by and about the six fascinating Mitford sisters, the youngest of whom, Deborah, is the present Dowager Duchess of Devonshire! So it all goes full circle and should keep me busy for a while. I'll be sure to send postcards along the way!

What's on your summer literary itinerary? 

Going grey

When I was 12, I saw the movie Camelot for the first time. And the second time. And the ninth time. There was a paperback edition of The Once and Future King that came out as a movie tie-in in 1967, with the film's poster on the front, so of course I bought it, and my life was forever changed. Arthurian lore became my mythology for that year and for years to come. Whatever other versions I've read and studied, T.H. White's magnificent book is the one I'd want on my desert island. There is much that I understand and am moved by now, at 53, that I didn't begin to fathom at 12. But one passage influenced me from the beginning and has more and more beauty for me as I get older.

It's toward the end of the book. Lancelot and Guenever have been lovers for many years and are now old (or as we would say now, "older"). The chapter begins:

Guenever waited for Lancelot in the candle-light of her splendid bedroom, brushing her grey hair. She looked singularly lovely, not like a film star, but like a woman who had grown a soul.

Lancelot comes in and asks if he can brush her hair for her.

He took the brush and began sweeping it through the silver avalanche with fingers which were deft from practice, while the Queen closed her eyes. After a time, he spoke. "It is like... I don't know what. Not like silk. It is more like pouring water, only there is something cloudy about it too. The clouds are made of water, aren't they? Is it a pale mist, or a winter sea, or a waterfall, or a hayrick in the frost? Yes, it is a hayrick, deep and soft and full of scent."

"It is a nuisance," she said.

"It is the sea," he said solemnly, "in which I was born."

Even at 12, I longed for that silver avalanche. Now, finally, I've been letting my grey hair come in. I never colored my hair to try to retain the appearance of youth, but because I didn't have enough grey to LOOK grey, just enough to look mousey. "Mouse" wasn't one of the poetic images that came into Lancelot's mind as he ran his hands through the moonlit strands of Guenever's hair. But now I'm seeing enough grey to give it a chance, so I'm gritting my teeth and striving for patience as all the remaining red and purple and who-knows-what grows out or is cut off. It's not going to be the snowy white I admire so much in other women, I can see that already. My grey hair is steel-dark and only shines silver in the sun. I may add colors again at some point, but right now, I just want to see what Crone Lunaea might look like. I want to be more attuned to that stormy winter sea, in which I was born. I want to look into my mirror by candle-light and see a woman who has grown a soul.