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evergreen

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[The Artist] Took This Portrait of Herself By Means of an Ingeniously Devised Mechanism.

—original caption below an image of photographer Margaret Watkins

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Restored over the past four years, Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin in the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari can only be described as light made manifest. Painted in 1515–1518, it is Venice’s largest altarpiece, spanning twenty-one cedar planks. Oscar Wilde called it “certainly the best picture in Italy,” even as others balked at its dramatic scale. In perfect harmony with the surrounding architecture, one can see the panel silhouetted even from the first step inside the church. It proceeds to grow and grow until the viewer is dwarfed before Titian’s ascending Mary, hovering in the clouds with arms upstretched, heavenward. Angels jostle at her side, putti, as the disciples marvel below, speechless. Sunshine streams through adjacent windows, creating the goldest gold I have ever seen. Supersaturated, dazzling, it evades documentation.

***

Emily Dickinson writes of the “noiseless noise of the Orchard”—the perfection of utter paradox.

“Then there’s a noiseless noise in the Orchard – that I let persons hear – You told me in one letter, you could not come to see me, ‘now,’ and I made no answer, not because I had none, but did not think myself the price that you should come so far”

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Travel Journal, October 9, 2022, St Giles Cathedral: “Absence makes no sound for it is every sound… Unfathomable loss cannot help but be fathomed—even the acknowledgement of the lack of measure is a measure. A stream bursts because it has no other language.”

***

The center of the painting is shaded red in anticipation. Wings fade. The sun is fractured light. In front of Chagall’s Fall of Icarus (1975), I wondered aloud which is the greater tragedy: to fall with the townspeople watching—to be mourned, to die within a community that can grieve but ultimately do nothing—or to perish utterly alone, falling into the sea on failing wings. You do not speak. When I step backwards to gain a better view, tripping over your shoe, you catch me.

***

“In the shadow / of an unattainable heaven, / burdened by a memory / of perfect orchards trimmed by unseen hands. / Maybe being winged means being wounded / by infinity, blessed by the ordeal of freedom.” —Li-Young Lee, “Tethered”

***

Walking home, an egg carton rests in the crook of my arm. There was an absence once, once and for a long while. I didn’t crave the taste of eggs again until after sitting on that apartment floor, feasting. We played music all evening after months spent miles apart. Another dear friend, another apartment: eggs served scrambled. Quietude of shared sleep. I felt like a child then, tucked in together with a tenderness that asks nothing, this web of trust we bind and build. There was rain and then no rain. Blackberries, almond butter, elderflower. I pray for safe passage; I carry what I can.

***

“Late in my life / in the numb elegance of this city, / I made a decision— / or the decision / shining in the soft, brutal darkness / took hold of me— / to live. / Often I am peaceful / I never imagined that.” —Joan Larkin

***

The girl from the bookshop assessed me briefly, furrowing her brow, “So, are you one of those poets who hates everything, or are you a romance poet?” The chasm of an impossible binary.

Travel Journal, July 31, 2022, Nice Cathedral: “There are many paths but only one reality. I need to get over my own inadequacy. I need to get out of my own way and stop fretting. All I can speak are the words given, all I can do is act with the greatest love. If I am thought a fool, then I am thought a fool. It doesn’t mean I am one for a moment.”

***

In Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, Franny, on the verge of an existential crisis, writes in a letter, “I think I’m beginning to look down on all poets except Sappho. I’ve been reading her like mad, and no vulgar remarks, please… ‘Delicate Adonis is dying, Cytherea, what shall we do? Beat your breasts, maidens, and rend your tunics.’ Isn’t that marvellous? She keeps doing that, too” (5).

If Sappho were not left behind in fragments, would she be loved more or less?

“Leave Crete and sweep to this blest temple / Where apple-orchard’s elegance / Is yours, and smouldering altars, ample / Frankincense”

“as the sweetapple reddens on a high branch / high on the highest branch and the applepickers forgot – / no, not forgot: were unable to reach”

***

December’s snow departed. It deliquesced, vanishing with the alacrity of a dream.

It winked. It conspired, with and against me. It transported.

***

Sitting in the cold kitchen, I am eating cranberries. The bag kindly suggests, “Stir into yoghurt or sprinkle over cereal,” but I do neither. Outside the window, a crow perches in a tree autumn-bare like an exoskeleton. The bird tilts its head, observing me closely through the portal of the window. We quietly take turns eating small red berries—first them, then me. Commensality. A word remembered from college. The act of eating together, a form of communion.

***

I sink into the field, watching the sky turn opaque lavender. There is only a sliver of moon aglow, more beautiful for being spare. Dappled snow hides cradled in treeshadow. The inevitable voice: “You can tread this ground over and over, but the landscape has changed.”

***

“The anchorite wanted most to know what the bear felt like upon first awakening from his hibernation. When Mary asked him to elaborate, he replied, ‘That is precisely the question I have in mind: is it an elaborate moment for the bear, or is it essentially spare?’” —Mary Ruefle

***

I think of Anna Akhmatova every winter: “I taught myself to live simply and wisely, / to look at the sky and pray to God, / and to wander long before evening / to tire my useless sorrows.” During her lifetime, she was labelled “half-nun, half-harlot” by those who wanted her dead. Her images rebel with a crisp finality: “Wild honey smells like freedom, / dust – like a ray of sun […] / Honeysuckle smells like water, / and an apple – like love. / But finally we’ve understood / that blood just smells like blood.”

***

In Italian, a word for happiness is spensierato. It is almost a synonym for carefree, meaning something like “without thought” (pensare – to think).

My friend says this is why poetry cannot help but be sad; it is full of thoughts.

***

I am meant to be reading about ecology in nineteenth century France but am instead looking out the window, transfixed by melting icicles dangling from the roof’s edge. They make diminishment beautiful, forms passing into a crystalline nothingness. Am I more sensitive to the tug of the past than others or simply less strong? When I drive, I think of the book we discussed in TechnoTexts, evening gatherings at the top of the art building, in a room populated with a sagging couch and Orthodox icons: Basso’s Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache. Each hill and river defined by its given name, each landscape shrouded in stories overlapping, of peril and devotion. I am here now as I am here five years ago and fifteen years ago, and these selves are narrating all at once—this noiseless noise.

***

“but something sustained me, / and when you greeted me, / I was paid fully / for the long search / and the meagre lamp; / there was no ecstasy, vision, trance, / no years between, / only an end to the whole adventure, / it stops here; / there is no striving for strange ships, / Adamic delights; / I have tasted the apple.” —H.D., Hermetic Definition, 26

***

In the story of Tabitha, I find most arresting the image of the widows gathered, weeping, in the upper room, clutching the garments Tabitha had made. Look, she made the world beautiful for us, they seem to say. Though she is gone, look at the work of her hands (Acts 9:39).

***

The human condition: why long for orchards that perish and never the evergreen?

Why be fated to crave that which can only leave?

***

I sit with my friend on a bench in Les Arènes de Lutèce as teenagers shout and play soccer below us amid the Roman ruins. She pauses in her story, “I’m sorry,” she says in English, thinking through the order of events. “I’m lost in chronology.”

bildungsroman

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Transmuted. I am simplifying its weight. I am subtraction; I am a sum. Mary Oliver’s words come to me as I gather up the rippling landscape of sheets, hem in hand: “I don’t want to lose a single thread / from the intricate brocade of this happiness. / I want to remember everything.”

***

The old man, Alan, sits beside me on the beach. I’m disturbing your reading, he says. A statement, not quite an apology. I close the Fitzgerald novel and place it beside me, It’s alright; I’ve read it before. He looks at me as if afresh. Your face is thin… Vous êtes très élégante. You look a bit like my mother. She had long fingers. She played piano, you know.

***

When a journey has charted its route, then comes the moment of clarity: I was singing my goodbye every step of the way. A petulant thistle scratches my ankle each time I hang laundry in the garden to dry, an ever-misstep. These patterns reek of constellations, mistakes yet fluttering like benedictions. Alison Brackenbury writes, “Geraniums / crumpled, brilliant, soaring out of water, / all sprigs which I have sliced off by mistake / in careless gardening, Now they thrive for days, / things done in error, the odd corners / of our lives, which flower and flower.” This is an ode to freshly baked buns and loaves, plum windfall, the pleading meow outside the door. This is a tender farewell. Here and no other, I awakened to light streaming through gauzy curtains while, outside, branches (their shadows) danced.

***

“You changed me, you should remember me. / I remember I had gone out / to walk in the garden. As before into / the streets of the city, into / the bedroom of that first apartment. / And yes, I was alone; / how could I not be?” -Louise Glück, “Seizure”

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I dreamt again for the first time in ages, color after nights of blank darkness, a yawning abyss of rest in which to sink like a stone. The you that wasn’t really you, just a figment, you, they, looked into my eyes and asked softly, desiring nothing, Are you okay? The day that followed, I glimpsed the fox again, perhaps the same one that once startled me in the garden, peering intently through my kitchen window at night. It paused before crossing the road in the August dusk, waiting just long enough for me to catch sight. Summer had fled without reproach, and I was draped in my wool coat. When I beheld my friend again earlier that afternoon for the first time since January, we ran a little into each other’s arms. It was like that, I think. Immodest joy. We had weathered barrenness, the bleak winter. Look at us! she said. We made it.

***

“All the new thinking is about loss. / In this it resembles all the old thinking… / Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances… / There are moments when the body is as numinous / as words, days that are the good flesh continuing. / Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, / saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.” -Robert Hass, “Meditation at Lagunitas”

***

In the dead of night, before the royal coffin journeyed from Balmoral to Holyrood, a small mourning procession disturbed my sleep: a black car and kilted soldiers, trailed by policemen on horses—hooves ringing out over cobblestones. I lay abed, insomniac, thinking in fragments of Plath, “Love is a shadow. / How you lie and cry after it / Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse. / All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously, / till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf, / Echoing, echoing.” Always this poem, an elm expanding its roots.

***

“I / enter, without retreat or help from history, / the days of no day, my earth / of no earth, I re-enter / the city in which I love you. / And I never believed that the multitude / of dreams and many words were vain.” -Li-Young Lee, “The City in Which I Love You”

***

How many raindrops ’til rainfall? Passerby barrel past, chins tucked in upturned collars. How many brisk and misty days until summer surrenders to autumn? O, fickle gradient of seasons. Such obscurification from the thing itself—an image of an image of an image. Robert Hass penned an explanation to Czesław Miłosz on the poetic difference between o! and oh!—one being an invocation, a declaration of wonder or fierce longing, and the other a thought cut short in a moment of consuming surprise.

***
“In a dream, rain ran past me. / Half-shouting, half stumbling. Tripping over its dress of rain. / Beauty always seems to rush straight through me. On its way to someplace else… / In a dream, I walk across a plain carrying books filled with flowers. / People in books carry tulips and secrets and handwritten letters to each other. / Maybe my life is trying to tell me something. These days, / I want to wander. But the past still needs me.” -Hua Xi, “The Past Still Needs Me”

***

The night before leaving the coast, I hardly slept. Scrubbing and cleaning and packing away memories, followed by tossing and turning with dreams of overflow, too many possessions. I do not want this many things to name me, a small lopsided kingdom. In that kitchen, a friend said she believed love was the center of everything. In those months, I grew accustomed to seagull chatter, corpulent spiders, and the rickety dresser. I read Dickinson’s envelope poems and knitted hats. Students would go skateboarding down North Street in the wee hours or singing merrily offkey. My world turned there, found its axis in a hospitable solitude.

A year ago, when the man of kindness dropped off the last of my things, he enveloped me in a warm hug at the threshold before he turned to go. I think you will be very happy here, he said.

***

“I grew up with horses and poems / when that was the time for that… / Women have houses now, and children. / I live alone in a kind of luxury. / I wake when I feel like it, / read what Rilke wrote to Tsvetaeva, / At night I watch the apartments / whose windows are still lit / after midnight. I fell in love. / I believed people. And even now / I love the yellow light shining / down on the dirty brick wall.” -Linda Gregg, “Staying After”

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The German word Bildungsroman means “novel of education” or “novel of formation.” A common variation of the Bildungsroman is the Künstlerroman, a novel dealing with the formative years of an artist. There are four traditional stages found within a Bildungsroman: loss, journey, conflict and personal growth, and maturity. The Bildungsroman traditionally ends on a positive note, though its action may be tempered by resignation and nostalgia.

celandine green

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“It’s all with me,” I think. Nothing of necessity has been left behind, despite the phantom fear of loss. Four trains later, Cambridge. Squinting into the sun against my hand, the act creates a tilting plane; devoted light, travelling far, flows around and through.

***

“Life has suddenly become overcrowded. Too many people I can care for are swarming in and filling up my chest. Too many things I want to do are rushing headlong into my new life for reasons unknown to me. All of a sudden my new life is like a field overgrown with strange flowers and exotic grasses or the shimmering, starry sky of my unbridled imagination…” -Qiu Miaojin, Last Words from Montmartre, 30

***

The child tilts forward too fully, face pressed to the daffodil without restraint. His mother laughs and laughs, and I chuckle too, mere passerby to the scene. A robin perches along the path, assessing me from its twig, and I want to reach out, could almost bridge the distance, but I know the gesture would rupture the magic and I would lose its intelligent gaze. I would miss what it might dare to call to within myself. I feel such a well of love towards such things, towards the small woman with the cane in the gallery. She enters and her phone begins to ring, a tinkling music box melody. When she answers, her voice is surprisingly strong and merry, and I glance up from Woolf’s On Being Ill. The division of body and mind, illness as opening a place of interiority. “You’ve caught me at a very good place,” the woman says.

***

“Spring, summer, autumn, winter: / each season brings / its particular birds, whom I feed with crumbs. / …I am alone, I write nothing, / I thank / the gods for this great breadth / of empty light.” -Denise Levertov, “The Poet’s Late Autumn”

***

Regardless of season, the river keeps rushing, and my life decidedly means both everything and nothing. It is the greatest mystery and boundless act of hope. There was ice here before, in that other life. Winter. I remember a tender breaking, the musicality and abstraction of pools divided into fractals. Upon them lies no reflection, no finite substantiation.

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“God hid himself so that the world could be seen / if he’d made himself known there would only be him / and who in his presence would notice the ant / […] love that is invisible / hides nothing” -Jan Twardowski, “The World”

***

In the atrium filling with shadows, I set down my teacup with a clatter.

Jià 嫁, meaning: to marry out of one’s home.

Gei 给, meaning: to give, given.

Qǔ 娶, meaning: to take a bride.

In Mandarin, men take a bride; women are given, poured out, no longer belonging, a farewell.

“After the ceremony, the bride’s family empties a pail of water as the couple departs,” she explains.

“Why? Is that a form of purification ritual?”

“No, no. It’s a very bittersweet moment. The water from the pail can never return.”

***

There is something even about bitterness that is sweet to me now. Is that what growing up means? To begin to savor all, praising a thing precisely for its absence, realizing what it is not and that this opposite has already been yours in a myriad of ways. The juxtaposition had its joys too, its shortcomings. After years of shunning espresso, now I make the pilgrimage to my local café and order a flat white or a latte and sit, expectant. Last time, the barista, mug in hand, winked at me across the room rather than shouting my name, and I smiled. It was not even the promise of something; it was the assurance of being seen.

***

“This earth, our only / This four-cornered honeycomb / Flooded with nectar and tombed / Foolishly, as bees drown / Tipsy on the sweetness of our little apocalypse / She spoke the Lord’s words without looking / Sound of sandpaper and butter over heat / Sound of butterflies landing / Sound of sweet pea and peony” -Sarah Beth Spraggins, “Crescent”

***

National COVID Memorial Wall, London: Along the Thames, the painted scarlet hearts stretch onward for blocks amid wilted bouquets, tealights, and Sharpie scrawlings: Always in our hearts. Darling. Loved and missed forever. Mum. I’m sorry you died alone. I miss you every day. Grandad. Rest in peace. An extraordinary man. In loving memory. No matter what. Remember them. A year after its creation, so many hearts are empty; so many are full.

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“Near the wall of a house painted / to look like stone, / I saw visions of God. / […] Love is not the last room: there are others / after it, the whole length of the corridor / that has no end.” -Yehuda Amichai, “Near the Wall of a House”

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There is a softness I know / and another I might be— / this is an endless parting.

***

In the crisp evening, shivering beneath my coat, a book nestled beneath my arm, the thought arrived. I was unprepared. I had been waiting, mesmerized by illuminated windows.

I’m going to write a novel.

***

By the river, your fingertips rest upon my shoulder, and I am so thankful. To be here. A friend.

dewdrop architecture

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It is the weather for dreaming, for forsaking obligation,

for hiking one’s skirt above the knees, for basking in the sun.

Give me my girlhood again, freckles and scarred knee, with calloused bare feet and eyes bright.

I’ve read the dictionary through, and, all things considered, I would rather be a rainstorm.

***

“And when they fly an airplane, they use something called a gyroscope,” the old man explains to the little boy. The canal is blinding in the sun, and two women are paddling a kayak, chatting about a garden party. I walk without a sense of destination, passing sunbathers in parks and small dogs. It is enough to exist on an unsullied afternoon, to drift in spite of self. The houseboats bob gently, and church steeples rise above the fronds at the water’s edge. Seated under the bridge, a group of men are speaking an unfamiliar language as they eat their lunch, and I rest in the words I cannot understand, in the sweetness of language as muffled melody, free from connotation. And the Word was good, the reversal of polarity guiding me homeward.

Precession – a change in the direction of the axis of a rotating object, as seen in gyroscopes

***

We stumble over the term, squinting in the sun. Désindustrialisation. Cognates, but the cadence is different between our languages. “Deindustrialization,” I say to her, noting the crisp rise and fall. Then, j’essaie in French, syllable by syllable. The ending is familiar, but, somewhere in the middle, the word becomes unwieldy in my mouth. The mind falters. We are like children then, laughing and puckering our lips and slowly pondering the unsayable.

***

When I desire to unlock my front door with the glacial key, I must unpack everything else first—the lanyard perpetually moored in the bottom of my tote bag. Rummaging, then removing: water bottle, books, wallet, laptop. These relics sit in scattered array on the ground as I fumble for a glimpse of Monet’s waterlilies, plumbing the depths of receipts and tissues. My Eiffel Tower charm is gone; it fell off weeks ago. And isn’t it always the same? Before entering every new thing, I have to remove the old, feel its heft, examine what is left and why. Who was I then? Who am I now? What do I want? What am I carrying? I know how to twist the skeleton key now, the proper flick of the wrist. A trick that took me ages. Can you tell me if there is any other way?

***

Tell me what you know of rot. The phrase births from nowhere and haunts me for days, demanding tribute. I am scribbling on the back of an envelope in the hushed library. My feet pounding on the pavement. I am sprinkling sugar over sickly fruit. Plath’s wedding ring is up for auction, and, in the case of unlimited funds, I would buy the letter she wrote Ted on her typewriter: “A clear miraculous guileless blue day with heather-colored asters, shining chestnuts breaking from green pods (I wait till after dark to collect these) and rooks clacking like bright scraped metal; I find myself walking straight, talking incessantly to you and myself… I have very simply never felt this way before, and what I and we must do is fight and live with these floods of strange feeling; my whole life, being, breathing, thinking, sleeping, and eating, has somehow, in the course of these last months, become indissolubly welded to you… I love you like fury.”

***

I shelter beneath the canopy of giant prehistoric plants, maneuvering carefully to avoid the barbs and thorns that snatch. I am chlorophyll-stained with light in the dress with the mended sleeve. “You’re green,” he says suddenly with a laugh, looking up from the camera. An unearthly emerald halo filters through the leaves, and I sneeze for the rest of the afternoon, baptized in pollen. Seek me in gilded gardens, vines unfurling like hidden ink in candlelight.

nouvelles fleurs

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nettle (n.) – in floriography, signifying pain

Its scientific name, Urtica dioica, comes from the Latin word uro, which means “to burn.”

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Without another word, the woman at the farmer’s market sliced the block of nettle soap and pressed a portion into my palm. She refused to take my coins. A gift.

***

“There is a willow grows aslant the brook / That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; / Therewith fantastic garlands did she make / Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples.” –Hamlet, Act IV, Scene VII

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Pressing in my quietude, in my waiting, in my waking, glimmers of You.

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“Everything will be forgotten / And either I am too alone / or I am not / alone enough / to make each moment / holy / […] And I have heard God’s silence like the sun / and sought to change.” -Franz Wright, God’s Silence, 88

***

It is twilight, and the heron is a fixed sliver of loneliness, poised to strike. A breathless observer, I stand, palms pressed against rough stones, and wait, gazing down at the sea as he lets the tide swell around his feet. We are in contest with one another, wooing stillness, and in my heart the knowledge crystallizes that there is so much that goes on, that will go on, without us.

***

“I hate everything I’ve done… the desire for glorification after death seems to me an unreasonable ambition. Mine is limited to wanting to capture something that passes; oh, just something, the least of things!” -Berthe Morisot

***

“Mum-my! Mum-my!” The little girl shouts in bifurcated syllables, running across the courtyard with her younger sister. They shriek and giggle and toddle across the grass. That was on the sunniest day, when I wandered into the quad and sat with my book, waiting patiently to be revived like a wilted flower. And I watched them, whirling like a pinwheel or a gust through prairie grass, and glanced back at the page before me, an essay on Morisot’s self-portraiture, how she was never not engaged in the act of looking. Her paintings and her daughter, her great loves, her creations, never able to be extricated from one another. Julie’s sketched form, dappled in sunlight, and these girls just above the printed horizon, settling down to a springtime picnic.

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Margaret – meaning “pearl” or “cluster of blossoms”

***

The woman stays for a long time, alone. I serve her a scone, tea, and two caramel shortbreads. Her reading glasses are broken, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “Are you a Christian?” she asks, her face tilting upwards. I smile and nod, “Yes, I am.” She begins to beam, “Look at God go.”

When I slipped off my new shoes that night, my feet were covered in blood. I couldn’t help but think of Santiago and stigmata in The Old Man and the Sea. I’ve always wondered what delineates stigmata from other regions and variations of pain. Is it divinely inflicted? Is it accepted without relief? Can wounds be holy or only what lies beyond? Dickinson’s “Heavenly Hurt, it gives us – / We can find no scar, / But internal difference – / Where the Meanings, are.”

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It is thought that over 80% of stigmatics have been women, including St. Catherine of Siena.

In botany, stigma is the part of a pistil that receives pollen during pollination.

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“lushly clinging / and growing / around the / house twittering / darkening / everything / I will come to you memory shining” -Franz Wright, God’s Silence, 78

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“What might have been and what has been / Point to one end, which is always present. / Footfalls echo in the memory / Down the passage which we did not take / Towards the door we never opened / Into the rose-garden.” -T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets, 13

***

Wandering down the street I had traversed hundreds of times, with thoughts clouded by worry and absence, I looked up suddenly and noticed all the trees were budding green—had budded, would blossom.

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“Walking home, for a moment / you almost believe you could start again. / And an intense love rushes to your heart, / and hope. It’s unendurable, unendurable.” -Franz Wright, God’s Silence, 5

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He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.” -Ezekiel 37:2-3 (NIV)

***

The radiant poem etched in my mind for days: “I longed for spring’s thousand tender greens, / and the white-throated sparrow’s call / that borders on rudeness. Do you know— / since you went away / all I can do / is wait for you to come back to me.” -Jane Kenyon, “The Clearing”

***

She turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” -John 20:14-17 (ESV)

He says to her: noli me tangere—touch me not, do not hinder me, cease holding on.

sea garden

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“The Lord God is a sun and shield… He will withhold no good thing.” -Psalm 84:11

Yesterday: one of those afternoons with glimmers of satisfaction, reflections of abundance that dazzle worn eyes, like those dancing upon a trout-filled river. Bustling home from the library, with books by H.D. and Rilke tucked under my arm. The bundle of daffodils (on sale) I simply could not resist, existing in scattered vases now. Brighten, rejoice, usher in. The cashier paused when she spotted them, cradling their radiance in her hands, and leaned forward to sniff–her tired expression easing into delight. We said so little but knew so much in that fleeting instant of tender human recognition. “Daffodils are my mother’s favorite,” I explained. “They’re mine too,” she answered, passing the blossoms to me for safekeeping. Shine, now, shine.

Scrolling, searching for olive oil cake recipes. With apples? Lemon? Matcha? I settle on one with crushed raspberries and orange zest. My second knitted hat: now complete, in a mustard yellow only Van Gogh has taught me to love. There was just enough yarn. I kept praying it would be so, calculating with every stitch. Please be enough or it will have all been for nothing. Ever afraid of the undoing, of fraying ends unmet. It was enough. What more can I say? It was enough.

Kindness in every face. Free vegan cookies from the man who always takes my coffee order: an oat milk chai with a dash of cinnamon. Talking with a friend about the places that shape us, about letting go. She remarks that she is in a phase of life where she has two paths for her next step, each leading to an entirely different life. She could be content with each, but they remain wholly different. Therein, she would be different. I nod and listen, understanding her ache more than I can express. Somehow, it all comes back to Plath and the fig tree, always.

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was… amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was… a pack of lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” -Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

A bowl full of clementines, a bowl full of pears. My friend’s cactus, Bert, awaiting her return from England. The precarious pile of books by my bed: Impressionism, Fashion, & Modernity; Women Artists: The Linda Nochlin Reader; Letters to a Young Poet; Memorial; Every Riven Thing. These are moments I’ll never get back, and I wish I could fully live them. Sometimes I do. Someone said the other day that we are all trapped in “survival mode,” experiencing collective trauma, and we cannot begin healing until the trauma is over. After all, a wound cannot close with the knife still inside. Like Danez Smith, I pray ruin ends here. Let this be the healing / & if not let it be.

“Right when I first saw you, I knew you were a writer.” “Really?”

lift my eyes

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It is getting harder and harder to get out of bed.

“Why?” I think. Then, “To go where? To see whom?” Lockdown. Again.

This afternoon, I rolled out of the warm covers, exchanged pajama pants for jeans, and bundled up, shuffling down to West Sands. Along the way, I pass my favorite coffee shop, which was supposed to reopen today. Its interior remains dim, with a new paper sign saying they will hopefully be back in February. I think of all the shattered plans, and there are many.

The streets are sparse, and the beach is even emptier. A family climbs a nearby boulder, one element of the worn barrier against the sea. I walk along the edge, in the wrong shoes for exploring, and sit, cradled by a curvature in the rocks—not sheltered from the wind exactly but blocked from the view of passerby. Thus situated, I resignedly observe the tide come in slow, and the few silhouettes on the beach pass and pass, trudging despite unamiable forces of wind and sand. The wind is fierce but not at its fiercest, and I close my eyes, willing it to whistle through my skull, to rush through, so sharp and frigid and pure, zephyring out my crammed notions and questions and fears. The ocean seems as expansive as misery, and just as grey, and I want to cry; I want it so badly that it makes it nearly impossible to occur—wretched paradox. “God, where are you?” I ask, and only the waves answer. I rest in the reverberation, feeling heavy and prematurely wizened while seagulls cruise and glide in front of me, alighting in squadrons within shallow tidal pools. Fleetingly, I long to be a bird.

A sudden inner thought, like a cloud bursting with rain: “I will remember the works of the Lord in the land of the living.” [Later, I realized that my brain or heart or a combination of the two had merged Psalm 27 and 77—”I will remember the works of the Lord” (77) and “I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (27)—both of which I’ve read recently.] Then, I lifted my eyes, noticing distant hills I had never before spotted on prior beach walks due to obscuring mist from the waves. Beyond Tentsmuir Forest, snowy hilltops arise—arresting and majestic. Glancing behind me, perhaps to see what else I may have missed, I turn from the shade of my chilly perch just in time to see the sun peek triumphantly above the clouds, in a blinding halo. Words form in my heart from a quiet elsewhere: “Step into the light.” Despite the gravity of the moment, my thoughts flit to the numbness creeping into my hands, and I know I cannot stay. As I step into the sun, the small black bird keeping me company tries to follow.

“We hope for magic; mystery endures.” -Mary Oliver

***

A note based on recent observations: In many ways, this is not a time of easy answers, only multiplying questions. Everyone is going through a degree of torture right now, and denying that fact is blind, foolish, and insensitive. As we enter 2021, we have all lost someone or something. I am deeply thankful that this world is not my home and that I am able to live established in the knowledge I do not walk alone. I can lay my worries and mourning at the feet of a Savior who has intimately known this pain already and rejoice that the extremities of hurt or despair we feel can never compare to the boundless joy that is coming.

While these times are “unprecedented” to us, they are known by God.

Chatsworth House: A Rendezvous with Mr. Darcy

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For those of you who know me well, you know that one of my absolute favorite films is the 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley. Now, before anyone starts an uproar, I also enjoy the 1995 BBC mini-series. However, considering its total length of nearly 6 hours, I often find myself gravitating to the newer rendition instead with its dazzling cinematography and enchanting score (which I often listen to whilst studying). For those unawares, Chatsworth House was used for filming the scenes at Pemberley, Mr. Darcy’s estate, in the 2005 film.

Everything about the estate is extravagant, even from the start. Lush. Decadent. Gilded. Its simultaneous magnitude and emphasis on minute intricate detail is altogether breathtaking. Chatsworth belongs to the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire and has been passed down through 16 generations of the Cavendish family. The history of Chatsworth began with Elizabeth Talbot, known as the Countess of Shrewsbury or Bess of Hardwick. A native of Derbyshire, she married four times and became the second most powerful woman in Elizabethan England (after the Queen, of course). It was in partnership with her second husband, Sir William Cavendish, that she bought Chatsworth in 1549.

Visitors at Chatsworth today can view magnificent works of art that span 4,000 years — ancient Roman and Egyptian sculptures, masterpieces by Rembrandt, and work by modern artists, including Lucian Freud, Edmund de Waal, and David Nash. The statue seen above (which you may remember from the 2005 film) is “A Veiled Vestal Virgin” by Raffaelle Monti — ordered by the sixth Duke of Devonshire after a visit to the artist’s studio in Milan, Italy. Other treasures include an extensive geological collection and the library’s early copy of Audubon’s The Birds of America and a prayer book that once belonged to Henry VII and then Margaret Tudor. (The library also possesses many volumes of poetry, perhaps partially due to the influence of Georgiana, the fifth Duchess of Devonshire, who dabbled as a poet herself. She is portrayed by Keira Knightley in the 2008 film The Duchess, which was also filmed at Chatsworth.)

The gardens and grounds of Chatsworth are no less exceptional than the interior of the manor, featuring a Victorian rock garden, a labyrinthine yew maze (which I proudly navigated in record time), a waterfall, and acres of other wonders. There are over five miles of walking trails and impressive gravity-fed waterworks abound, such as the 300-year-old Cascade seen above on the left. There is a prominent focus on sustainability that can be especially seen in features such as the Kitchen Garden, which supplies fruit, vegetables, and herbs for the manor house and has done so for years. 20 gardeners total are necessary to keep the estate pristine.

The greenhouses at Chatsworth are acclaimed throughout Britain. However, some grander elements have been lost. During and after the World War I (1914-18), there was not enough coal to heat the conservatories and, therefore, many plants, especially of tropical varieties, died. Because of the expense of restoring, maintaining, and heating, the property’s renowned Great Conservatory built by Joseph Paxton, the largest glass building in England of its time, was demolished in 1920. Still, horticulture is very much alive at Chatsworth. When we visited, the RHS Chatsworth Flower Show was in full swing, which is quite the affair. We declined visiting its separate encampment of vast white tents (think The Great British Baking Show multiplied by five), begonias, and ferns as admission is separate and ranges upwards of £34.00 per person. Tickets are now on sale for the next flower show, June 5-9, 2019, if you’re interested.

Visiting Chatsworth House was one of my favorite memories from my trip to the UK! As I strolled around the gardens and it began to softly rain, I couldn’t help but think about the appeal of moving to some little cottage in Bakewell and being able to pop over to Chatsworth for picnics in the summer or their cozy Christmas market in the winter. As you exit the manor through the gift shop (oh, how clever), you come face-to-face with a bust of Matthew Macfayden (the anointed Mr. Darcy of 2005) — a lingering prop from the film. A cheeky sign underneath reads, “Please do not kiss.” Or perhaps it isn’t so cheeky; maybe, in the past, this has been a real issue. Of that I cannot be sure, dear readers. Regardless, when I saw the likeness, I could not help but recall the iconic scene shot in Chatsworth’s sculpture gallery:

“Do you not think him a handsome man, miss?” “Yes. Yes, I dare say he is.”

Stratford-upon-Avon: A Shakespeare Lover’s Dream

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Yes, I have Sonnet 116 (and a few others) memorized.

Yes, I have read Othello three times and Hamlet four times.

Yes, I wrote a 20 page research paper on the feminist interpretation of Ophelia.

Yes, I would identify myself as a Shakespeare enthusiast.

With that being said, Stratford-upon-Avon was a bit of a giddy dream. Even if you aren’t well-acquainted with the Bard, it’s still a lovely, flourishing town worth visiting in Warwickshire, England. However, if you do plan on undertaking the full Shakespearean experience, which I heartily recommend, then a Full Story ticket is most definitely the best option for you. These are cheaper if purchased online in advance and, if you are a college student like me, then you receive a special “concessions” rate: £18.90 for entry into all five of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s historical sites. (Note: We did not visit Mary Arden’s Farm.)

Shakespeare’s Birthplace

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It’s fascinating to think that a wee William Shakespeare once toddled around in this abode’s humble kitchen and likely played outside right here. John Shakespeare and his wife, Mary Arden, lived in this cottage and raised eight children (of which, William was the third to be born). In 1568, John became the Mayor of Stratford, which was the highest elective office in the town and perfectly suited for owning this, the largest house on Henley Street. Because of his father’s lucrative position, young William was able to attend the local grammar school. For a brief time in the 1600s, part of this property was leased as an inn: The Swan & Maidenhead. Now, the home is protected by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and visited daily by eager tourists from all around the world. Surrounding the cottage itself is a garden full of herbs and flowers with literary significance in Shakespeare’s works. For example, fennel from Hamlet and lavender from The Winter’s Tale. Nearby, a devoted thespian recites Shakespearean monologues from heart. When we stopped to listen, he recited from scenes in Othello and Henry V. A gift shop beckons next door as well as a small Shakespeare museum with a copy of his First Folio.

New Place

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New Place was Shakespeare’s family home from 1597 until he died in the house in 1616. Alas, the residence was tragically demolished in 1759 by Reverend Francis Gastrell in a fit of spite (who also infamously chopped down a mulberry tree planted by the Bard), so a garden is all that remains — assembled in loving memory of what was once present. Shakespeare bought New Place with funds he had earned as an established playwright, and it is believed that he wrote several of his later plays there, including The Tempest. Flagstones are scattered throughout the garden, containing snippets of all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets. There are also markers indicating the original blueprint of New Place and where each room would have been.

Anne Hathaway’s Cottage

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Anne Hathaway’s cottage was truly my favorite spot in Stratford-upon-Avon — a tranquil rural oasis tucked away on the fringes of the town. When we arrived, the place was charmingly decorated for a vintage garden party straight out of the 1950s — complete with a Victrola phonograph playing some lilting swing tunes and gals decked out in overalls and scarlet kerchiefs à la Rosie the Riveter. Built in 1493, this home belonged to the Hathaway family, successful sheep farmers, for generations. Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s future wife, was born here in 1556. It is also here that, during their courtship, they would reportedly huddle by the fireplace (seen in the center below) and converse with hushed tones, banter, and laughter. The grounds are extensive and stunning, even including an orchard. However, we were prevented from exploring fully as the site was closing down for the day. Unperturbed, we fled to the cute tea house across the road and ordered a (non-alcoholic) ginger beer or two.

Hall’s Croft

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Shakespeare’s daughter, Susanna, lived here with her prominent physician husband, John Hall. The home actually served as a school in the 1800s and was not purchased by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust until 1949 and not opened to the public until restorations had been completed in 1951. There are beautiful gardens to the rear of the residence, containing medicinal herbs that John Hall would have utilized in his practice. While some physicians of the time relied on astronomy or blood-letting, he valued holistic treatments made from plants, herbs, and geological minerals.

From the City to the Garden

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Chipping Campden

Chipping Campden is a bustling, quaint town in the British Cotswolds, complete with a traditional British High Street. We stayed at the most enchanting little cottage while visiting (found here). It was my favorite accommodation during my entire time in England — pristine, serene, and unbelievably cozy! The windows of the cottage cranked outwards, so I would open some whenever there was a drizzle of rain, plop onto a bed or chair, and read to the soothing sound of falling drops. There are so many cute shops in Chipping Campden, including Draycott Books, Stuart House Antiques, and — my favorite — Campden Coffee Co. (Warning: getting food to-go or as “takeaway” does not exist here.) By an act of complete chance, we happened to be staying in Chipping Campden during the 2018 Cotswold Olimpick Games, with shin-kicking and torch-bearing mobs included, which resulted in quite a ruckus in the evenings. Oops.

Snowshill

Our dear British driver and tour guide, Jim Gladwin, drove us to the small, picturesque village of Snowshill. It is said that, when snow falls in the region, it always falls here first. Snowshill is renowned for its unspoiled beauty and ancient architecture; Snowshill Manor, home to the expansive antiquity collection of the eccentric Sir Charles Wade and where Virginia Woolf once stayed as a guest; and Bridget Jones’s Diary, which it was a filming location for. There’s also a lovely lavender field (pictured above) at Hill Barn Farm in Snowshill!

Broadway

Broadway is one of the chicest areas of the Cotswolds. We only passed through briefly, but I wish I could have had more time to explore the Tea Set, the Bakehouse, and Cotswold Chocolate Co. (A scenic hike to nearby Broadway Tower would be a must to counteract all of those sweet treats.) Options for vegan and vegetarian meals were notably available here, at establishments such as Russell’s, contrasting with much of the traditional pub culture found elsewhere throughout the British countryside.

The Slaughters & Bourton-on-the-Water

Upper and Lower Slaughter share a fascinating (deceptively terrifying) name, which derives from the old English ‘Slohtre‘ — meaning ‘muddy place.’ Upper Slaughter is a ‘sainted village,’ meaning that it lost no inhabitants in the First World War. The River Eye runs through the the two villages, which have remained utterly unchanged for more than a century; no building work has taken place since 1906. In contrast to the bustle of Bourton-on-the-Water, the only attraction in the Slaughters is a restored nineteenth century flour mill — which now has a tea room and ice cream parlor for visitors. Bourton-on-the-Water is always positively overflowing with gawking tourists, so we did not linger long. However, simply driving about its winding streets, which often bridge over the river running through the town, was lovely.

Swinbrook & Burford

For Downton Abbey fans, The Swan Inn of Swinbrook may look familiar as this is where *spoiler alert* Sybil and Tom elope in Season 2. There are also some astonishingly beautiful churches in this area of the countryside, such as St. Mary’s Church (left), where the Mitford sisters are buried, and Burford Church (right).

Bampton

Bampton is affectionately known as “Downton Village” because many pivotal scenes of Downtown Abbey were filmed here! St. Mary’s Church (heralded as St. Michael and All Angels in the show) was used for filming various weddings (or not-quite-weddings *cough* Edith *cough*), funerals, and christenings in the series, and the nearby Churchgate House, also pictured above, served as Isobel Crawley’s home. The Bampton Community Archive was used to film the series’  World War I hospital scenes and now houses a Downton Abbey-themed gift shop.

Poulton & Cirencester

There is nothing really to say about Poulton; unbeknownst to us before arriving at our cottage, there is only a pub, The Falcon Inn, and a small store to be found there. However, it must be said that The Falcon Inn has incredible pizza served outside on Thursday evenings in the summer. Cirencester has far more to offer the eager traveller: the stunning Abbey Grounds (that once belonged to St Mary’s Abbey, dissolved by Henry VIII in 1539), the parish church of St. John the Baptist, the Wool Market (home to the vintage shop, Ava & Ida, where I bought the most darling green hat), Roman ruins, and The Bear Inn (where I arguably had the best pasta I have ever eaten in my life).

Bakewell

Bakewell was the first place in my England travels where my soul at last went, “Ah! Now this is a place I could call home.” I revered and adored the daily scenic hike into town along a softly murmuring brook (upon which ducklings would often play) from the beautiful cottage where we stayed (here). Seriously, imagine all of the pages of poetry that I could fill if I lived here and simply wandered around on a whim! Highlights of Bakewell include The Rutland Arms Hotel, where Jane Austen stayed and worked on her manuscript of Pride and Prejudice, and the adorable gluten-friendly tea room Because I Like It. For both the gluten-free and the unafraid, please do not refrain from sampling a signature Bakewell Tart while here! Hiking opportunities in Peak District National Park abound and Chatsworth, the site of Pemberley in Pride & Prejudice (2005), and Haddon Hall, the site of Thornfield in Jane Eyre (2011), are both only a short drive away.

P.S. A blog post solely focusing on Chatsworth is in the works. Yes, it was that good.