Title : Post-Weekend Stock-Taking, List-Making . . . and A Poem for you. . .
link : Post-Weekend Stock-Taking, List-Making . . . and A Poem for you. . .
Post-Weekend Stock-Taking, List-Making . . . and A Poem for you. . .
On the list of What I Did This Weekend That Wore Me Out While Bringing Me Joy . . .
(and keeping in mind that all of this followed a meltdown on Friday and a Blue Day of Tears. . . those days happen, for me at least, and perhaps for you as well. . . )
-- Explored a Neighbourhood I've been wanting to get to for months. On the way there, stopped at Crate and Barrel to pick up some much-needed glassware (I love the classic stacking Duralex Picardie tempered glasses that bring a bit of France with every sip)
-- Found credible replacements for two favourite sweaters my husband has worn right into the mending pile. . . A black, fine merino, slim-fit cardigan, and a black, fine merino, long-sleeve pullover with a placket/golf-shirt neck. . . (The one the latter is replacing was made of cotton, bought in Le Bon Marché in Paris perhaps eight to ten years ago. Believe me, he needed a new one!)
--Found a new-to-me Independent Bookstore that's been in the neighbourhood we were exploring since the year we were married. . . . That was reason enough to choose a few books, and I did. . . Lovely books, I'll share later, perhaps, on my book blog. . .
Then, after lunch at a Chinese restaurant in that neighbourhood, home for a nap so I'd be ready for our Night at the Opera -- which I described briefly over at Instagram where I posted a sketch I drew during the intermission.. . .
That was just Saturday.
Yesterday, I
--baked the two loaves of bread I'd made on Friday
--cycled a glorious two-hour route in the most delectable fall sunshine with my guy. The last twenty or thirty minutes were a bit too much, to be honest, but overall, an excursion well worth the ensuing fatigue.
-- And, of course, I napped afterward, which helped. . .
-- made two apple pies to follow the cabbage rolls made by the guy I married back when a certain bookstore was apparently being established. . . (yes, that would be Pater, the one and only guy I've ever married ;-)
--And enjoyed serving said cabbage rolls and said apple pies to the two local daughters' families. Of the three grandchildren, the Three, who's recovering from a nasty bug, wanted his ice cream perfectly aligned lengthwise atop his slice of pie (there might have been tears until his dad accomplished this placement); the Almost-Six wanted her ice cream served with the most miniscule bit of pie you've ever seen -- pretty much just La Mode rather than Apple Pie À La Mode -- if the style indicated by La Mode meant Vanilla Ice Cream Only; and the Almost-Ten? Ah, she's a connoisseur, and a huge fan of Nana's apple pie. She'll eat ice cream with it, occasionally -- for the first piece, perhaps -- but often prefers just the pie. Of which she had three pieces, last night. . . .
Oh My! Now that I've written it all down, I feel I might need another Nap, but it's barely 8 a.m. here. . .
So first, let me tell you about the journal pages I'm sharing today.
I can't track down when or where a reader or "follower" drew my attention to Gerard Manley Hopkins' beautiful but rather brutally honest poem "Spring and Fall," but wherever that happened, it prompted me to copy the poem out by hand. For some reason I can't quite understand, I used a page of my watercolour journal to do so, and I chose a page in the second half of the book, even though I'd only used about a third of the pages at the time.
And then, by sheer serendipity this year, working my way through the journal after having abandoned it for many months in favour of others, I came to this page of handwritten poetry about leaves falling just as they were falling outside my windows, falling all over the city, falling from shades of green through to the scarlets and crimsons and burgundies and rusts and ochres and golds. . . to the dried tawny scatterings the sparrows scratch hopefully through each morning out on our terrace. . . .
So on the page on the left, above, I glued a few small leaves I'd collected and dried, and I doodled a bit around them with watercolour before sketching a small maple leaf to join them.
On the page on the right, another maple, this one drawn and painted with my paintbrush only (i.e. no pencil or pen line first) -- an exercise I'd been encouraged to try at the watercolour drop-ins I attended.
And then the poem itself, which is beautiful and challenging and deeply poignant, and which I've probably read -- silently, to myself, and aloud, either to myself or to my husband -- ten or fifteen times since re-discovering it written in my journal. I'll transcribe it for you now, shall I?
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves like the things of men, you
with your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no, nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Read more about the poem here, if you're interested. And even listen to me read it, here (a new effort for me, embarked on with considerable trepidation!! Does anyone love hearing their own voice? Christopher Plummer, I suppose. . . ), . . . Its message is not, admittedly, a cheery one, but at least it wraps difficult truths in intriguing rhythms and assonance and alliteration and compelling enjambments and satisfying rhymes, and the central conceit is thought-provoking.
How has your week begun? You know I welcome any comments on any of the witterings offered above. Happy Monday!
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