Sharing the Harvest

 

“You are as prone to love, as the sun is to shine.” ~ Thomas Traherne, Centuries ~

A moment of peace has begun as soon as one is being allowed to slip away from turbulence and clamour of discord into the depth of the country. What a relief it is to know that one is now so far away from the echoes of life and tinklings of the world. 

How nice it is to be released from all the trappings that held one in place! Finally, I am coming home as a lost soul. I shall not have to think about that grey and stony place at least for a few days. How nice it is to be wonder-struck again like a child who is under the spell of a wonderful story!

 

The desire to flee from the hustle of life washes over all of us. A retreat to my home in the country is just what I need and what I most yearn for. I know that my eyes and heart will be wide open to the beauty in everyday life again. I shall recite the favourite lines from a poem to calm me: "Peace is here and in every season/a quiet beauty.../amid these green and wordless patterns, -/indefinite texture of blade and leaf". Anne Spencer ~ (1882-1975) ~  

I shall shut myself up in my little sanctuary with books, art, music and friends.  When it comes to the time to go back out into the world, I am hopeful that I will be clear-sighted and soothed by the memories that it has been so beautiful.       

I brought back home some refreshing eucalyptus scent for the rooms in the house. While I was on the bus, I remembered the main character in the novel, Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively. Her name is Claudia and she is transported by the smell of eucalyptus leaves in post-war Cairo. 

She is reawakened by ‘wonder that nothing is ever lost, that everything can be retrieved, that a lifetime is not linear but instant. That, inside the head, everything happens at once’.    

In Penelope Lively's novel, Moon Tiger, Claudia is transported by the smell of eucalyptus leaves in post-war Cairo. She (Claudia) is reawakened by ‘wonder that nothing is ever lost, that everything can be retrieved, that a lifetime is not linear but instant. That, inside the head, everything happens at once’. Moon Tiger, Penelope Lively. ~ This novel won the 1987 Booker Prize.    

 

Philomena - I shall always find peaceful moments in her presence.

Tomorrow, I hope that the first thing that would greet me when I wake up will be the glorious sun. I shall feel raised up and blessed by the sight of its radiance. Does it not sound hopeful?

I am looking forward to my harvest dinner with my friends who recently retired. There will be a double celebration of both retirement and harvest. 

Before they come, I will fill every corner of the house with autumn decorations to honour the season so that there is no room for a chill of disappointment.

I listen to soothing piano music of Danny Wright while I decorate...

...and Blossom Dearie's album, Winchester in Apple Blossom Time, is one of my all time favourites for listening at this time of the year.

After decorating for our annual harvest dinner, I am going to sit down and enjoy the company of Henry James in the library. 

A prolonged dose of Henry James and a meditative reading of his prose is just what I need as a solace for my soul. His exquisite prose, a kind of stubborn refusal to come to the point with a short sentence, is a refreshing change from the world of soundbites.           

 

‘The weather changed, the stubborn storm yielded, and the autumn sunshine, baffled for many days, but now hot and almost vindictive, came into its own again and, with an almost audible paean, a suffusion of bright sound that was one with the bright colour, took large possession. Venice glowed and plashed and called and chimed again; the air was like a clap of hands, and the scattered pinks, yellows, blues, sea-greens, were like a hanging-out of vivid stuffs, a laying down of fine carpets.”

~ Henry James, The Wings of the Dove, 1903 ~

 

Autumn Memories

 

Autumn returns to us. It is the season of departure. The geese begin to migrate above the sky. All the tourists who came to this seaside village for taking the waters and refreshing sea air, unimpressed by the sober background, have disappeared overnight.

 

The flowers that had brought me into daily contact with the grandeur of nature said goodbye for a while.

According to the metaphysical poet, George Herbert (1593-1633) who peered at life through the lens of metaphors, the flowers have gone underground “to see their mother-root…where they together,/ all hard weather,/Dead to the world, keep house unknown.”

 

The slant of October sunlight does not have loftiness or nobility against a grey sky. It is a maturing sun that puts us into a state of silence and reverie like a retired Colonel. 

When I was a child, I knew a neighbour who was a retired Colonel and read his newspaper in silence. His granddaughter was my favourite playmate. 

I remember the way he mournfully stared at his cup, antique China, exquisitely etched in gold pattern, while he waited for his tea in the morning room. The rooms were decorated with red paisley pattern wallpaper.

 

During my visit to the retired Colonel’s house, I would observe the intricate details of the wallpaper with beautifully intertwining gilt flowers, arches and swirls of arabesques, each more beautiful than the last.

 

Ruskin talked about his childhood in his extraordinary autobiography, ‘Praeterita’ (1885) when he became mesmerised by the patterns in the carpet in his home, Brunswick Square in Bloomsbury and he was happy to spend hours looking at it. For Ruskin, a lifetime of learning to see began with a carpet.

The atmosphere of the retired Colonel’s house was like a Quaker meeting house. As a precocious child, I was incredibly talkative when I played with his granddaughter. One day, he paused from reading his papers and looked at me through his black-rimmed spectacles with his severe expression and said: “Speak only when it can improve the silence.”

 

I shall never forget his words. But at that time, I was young and not clever enough to understand what he meant. I thought how absurd the retired Colonel was and I made a solemn promise to myself that I will not be like that when I am old. It takes some time to arrive at the stage of maturity. But now I love his wise expression so much. 

Autumn Discovery

 

Autumn is never monotonous in this part of the world where I live. It can be extremely volatile. One has to go along with the weather by accepting and adapting to its variations.

There were calm days with warm sunshine, highlighting all the hues of autumn’s gold with a delicate brush and enveloping the countryside with the air of crispness. Gordon and I drove out into the countryside for we were also lured by the golden light.

 

On one fine day, we followed the zigzag roads into the glen and lost the satellite signal on the car’s SATNAV. We were most definitely lost and we did not know how to get out from the long and winding country lanes. 

And this was how we came across this beautiful church, gracefully nestled among the mature trees and woodlands, called St. Palladius Church in the heart of Drumtochty Glen.  

 

I asked Gordon to stop the car because I felt such a rush of appreciation when I saw this magnificent church that I simply must take a closer look. There was no sign of other visitors on that day. The birds were singing and the whole surrounding was so quiet and peaceful. 

As I kept looking, I noticed that peaceful solitude of this place slowed down my racing heart. 

I decided that this must be a resting place for afflicted souls after they have been consoled and hushed like babies under the blanket. This place says to them, “There now. From now on, there shall be no more nightmares.”

 

As always, my imagination carried me away. But the truth was that there were people shortly before we arrived. It appeared that there was a wedding ceremony inside this church on that morning. 

Inside the church, it was still warm and there was a lingering smell of perfume and candles. There were rose petals and confetti everywhere on the carpet and on the seats lining the aisles.

I went to the altar to say a short prayer. Oh Lord, what a world it is. It is full of beauty here. Peter said: 'Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you' (Peter 5:7-9). I pray that I shall never lose heart as I shall always find safety and compassion in You.  

The news of suffering in various parts of the world did make me feel a little forlorn recently. I wish I had all the answers to solve the problems in the world. But no advice is better than a bland one. 

Oh, if only one can come here, even if it is for a temporary measure, to shut out the parts of the present one does not like, so that one is reminded by the beauty that lights us up and return to the world afterwards feeling refreshed, reoriented and a much better sense of what we need to do.   

 

"Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you" (Peter 5:7-9)

Isn’t it often the case when we are confronted by the oppressive forces, we have to dim our own lights to survive? But the poet, Mary Oliver reminds us in one of her poems that we come into the world ‘to be filled with light, and to shine’. 

The oppressive people and their senseless destruction cannot go on forever. When it is all over, we can all look forward to the radiant days. There will be a day when we look into our moist uplifted eyes, there will be nothing but iridescent golden light like Dante’s vision of paradise.

 

“Black water breaking into reality.”   

 

Near the end of October, we had a terrible, deadly storm which lasted for nearly two weeks. It brought strong winds and heavy rain and substantial flooding which caused widespread disruption and a risk to life in some areas. I did not go out for three weeks. I enjoyed being shut inside in a cocoon like environment.

 

I looked at the gale-force winds and waves crashing over the harbour, and the sea was almost black. It was immensely frightening like a bad dream. It reminded me of the line from Wallace Stevens’ poem: “Black water breaking into reality.” 

A sudden realisation breaking in...I have been haunted by the dark, muddy water that washes up on the shores of life from time to time. Life is not always a temple of pure happiness. Et in Arcadia ego (Death can be found even in Arcadia).      

I looked at the gale-force winds and waves crashing over the harbour, and the sea was almost black. It was immensely frightening like a bad dream. It reminded me of the line from Wallace Stevens’ poem: “Black water breaking into reality.” 

The wind blew in the empty place.

The winter wind blew in an empty place—

There was that difference between the and an,

The difference between himself and no man.

No man that heard a wind in an empty place.

It was time to be himself again, to see

If the place, in spite of its witheredness, was still

Within the difference. He felt curious

Whether the water was black and lashed about

Or whether the ice still covered the lake.

[...] 

 If, When he looked, the water ran up the air or grew white

Against the edge of the ice, the abstraction would

Be broken and winter would be broken and done.

And being would be being himself again.

Being, becoming seeing and feeling and self.

Black water breaking into reality.

 

Extracts From Addresses to the Academy of Fine Ideas ~ Wallace Stevens ~

 

Autumn has given me a chance to share the harvest – not only food and drinks but also collected memories with my dear friends. Perhaps, the legacy of autumn is sharing and listening to each other. I am grateful for letting me ponder things without needing an answer. The older I get, there are more questions than there are answers.

Rilke wrote in his Letters to a Young Poet: ‘I want to beg you…to be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue…And the point is, to live everything. 

Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.’

 

So, I decided to live the questions now. 

Hopefully, by living all the questions, they will be wiped off from my little slate so that it will have more room for gratitude and love. 

Thank you, autumn.