A Work in Progress

Christmas at Stillmeadow

Stillmeadow has been a delightful place to spend time each month over the course of this year.  Gladys Tabor is a charming storyteller, and despite the decades that have passed since the original publication of Stillmeadow Calendar, it is amazing how fresh and relevant her observations are.  It seems only fitting that she and Stillmeadow should get center stage this holiday.  The beauty of reading is being transported to another time and place and moments of happier circumstances!

"Christmas Eve is an important occasion for me.  We sit around the fireplace talking about the past and the future.  The tree glows softly in the light of the candles on the trestle table.  Our voices join in the singing of carols, and in this uneasy world I find faith anew.  Music, I think, is the basic art.  It speaks to all in a language of its own.  Nobody has to translate it; it requires only listening to.  The words of the carols are beautiful, but even without them the message is clear.  The power of love, the true significance of good will, shine forth with greater meaning at this holy time."

******

"When everybody has gone to bed, I sit a few moments in the now-quiet house, watching the embers fade into ash, thinking how fortunate Stillmeadow is to have small feet still pattering around on the old oak floors."  (Maybe I can count the patter of kitty paws, right?).

******

"Holiday breakfasts at Stillmeadow are traditionally festive.  I abandon my usual soft-boiled egg for pancakes with golden maple syrup and crisp, tiny sausages.  Or creamed finnan haddie, which was Jill's favorite dish and which her son fixes for us now.  Ot corned beef hash, for a change." (I think I will be having tamales with my housemates).

******

"On a moonlit night in December, as the earth turns toward another year, I sit quietly and begin to make a new set of resolutions.  My first is to be better organized."

"What the new year may bring, we cannot know, but I pray God's blessing may fall on us as softly as apple blossoms fall in spring.  And then I put out the guttering candles on the trestle table and go to bed, feeling that tomorrow will be another adventure in living!"

April in Stillmeadow

It's funny how spot on this book is with the seasons even if I am from a different geographical region.  Still, Midwest or East Coast, we both share four (reasonably) distinct seasons.  I say reasonably, since it seems that my favorite seasons--fall and spring--are really the shortest, when I wish they were the longest (I would be happy to have temperate weather year-round however--does such a place even exist?).  So, much like Stillmeadow we are straddling two seasons.  We are just at the start of May and here I am still wearing my winter coat (but then I am weirdly cold sensitive having to wait for public transportation in the cool, dark of morning I opt for warmth over stylishness).

I could just about substitute Omaha for Stillmeadow.

"The look of April at Stillmeadow is a tentative questioning look.  For spring is beginning and yet winter has not absolutely gone.  I note in my journal that the past five years have brought cold weather, rains (today here!), and even blizzards!  But there are days--oh, tender daffodil days!"

We have had some warm, pleasant and very springlike days, but then it turns cold again and the only hint of it being spring are the trees that are full of blooms and hearing birdsong every morning once again.  Gladys pretty much has been following a similar format each chapter.  She writes about nature and how the seasons are subtly and not so subtly changing.  She writes about family and friends and neighbors and there is always some bit of wisdom.  She shares recipes and meals and I wonder if she will have and write about a garden.

So here is the bit of wisdom she shared which stuck out to me, and I made a little notation by.  She writes about her friend Jill's son and his son, both of whom learned to swim.

"Tall man, small boy, and the pattern repeats itself.  It made me think, as I watched Jamie in his father's lap,that perhaps the real secret of success in life is faith that we cannot sink!  When we are faced with a problem, if we believe we can solve it, we are likely to.  So, as you embark on a new course, why not assume you cannot fail because you just happen to be one of those who cannot sink!"

While she does share another recipe it was her writing about peanut butter she put out for birds that I most enjoyed.  She was advised not to put out plain peanut butter because it sticks to the roof of their mouths.  No longer--she made a change and any PB that went out "was mixed with seeds, crumbs or something to keep the stickiness out."  Imagine those poor birds with PB glued beaks!  I like to add jelly to my PB sandwiches, that seems to help, or opt for crunchy over plain!

As always, my monthly visit to Stillmeadow is a pleasure.

March in Stilmeadow

Have I mentioned (many times I suspect) how delightful Gladys Tabor is and especially this book!  I save the chapters as they are something I look forward to and read very quickly.  She wrote a lot of books and I need to read more of them even as I save this for my monthly "dips".

She seems to touch on a variety of topics, not necessarily nature-related but there is a lot of that, particularly in a month like March when the seasons are changing (and sometimes it feels like it is happening daily  You can see above how she opens the chapter, but I rally liked this.

"This month brings a patchwork of weather.  One day sleet laces down and fresh icicles hang from the old well house at Stillmeadow.  The next day sparkles with sunshine.  The house vibrates as the wind roars down the hills."

Oh, yes.  One day was 70F last week and two days later raining with snow mixed in and a bitter cold wind.   And yes, last week the worm moon made an appearance.

"The Indian name for the March moon was the full worm moon, which doesn't sound poetic but does suggest life stirring again in the earth.  April rains bring the worms up toward the surface and without the worms the soil would not be friable."

So, as she says, bring on the worms!  Interestingly, though, she shares a number of recipes.  She segues into them by mentioning how at this time of year she goes through her pantry to check out her spices and herbs, chucking the ones that have lost their aroma and flavor.  And then comes out the last of the winter veggies and pork chops and chicken.  And she cooks and shares her recipes and they are pretty basic and whoever had this book before me found them to be useful.  See second photo above!  I wondered what all those marks were, and after reading the chapter and looking more closely I see someone found this book more than just entertaining.  Note the paperclip and splatters of mystery juices . . .

I like the idea of other readers having enjoyed a book I am now enjoying, but this is the first time I have had such obvious evidence of it!

Ready for April!

February in Stillmeadow

Since I am reading this serially--one chapter a month (conveniently there are chapters one for each month of the year), I both want to race to the next chapter and wait and prolong the experience.  I so very much enjoy her writing, and maybe it is the nature of how this is presented almost as a diary, I feel like I am chatting with a friend.  Gladys Tabor has such a charming way of moving from topic to topic.  She moves from one thing to the next and they might not necessarily be related, but it flows perfectly--just as it is to chat with a good friend with whom you are catching up with on all the news since you last spoke.

There are lots of interesting things I could tell you about--like those buttermilk pancakes she begins the chapter with and syrup-making, but I will just share a few excerpts that I particularly liked, and I think you'll understand why they really stuck out.

"I have been sorting books, this being a February job.  I make a firm resolve annually to keep poetry in one part of the bookshelves, country books in another, classics on a low level for easy reaching, reference books very near my desk, fiction by itself.  The way it ends is that I have two of my beloved Beverley Nichols books [I wonder which two were her favorites?] right in with Emily Dickinson and Wuthering Heights.  As an organizer I was a washout.  Should Keats's Letters be with Katherine Mansfield or along with Keats's poetry and The Making of a Poet?  And where does James Thurber go?  I do a lot of happy random reading while I am at this job;  otherwise the results are just more confusion."

***

I find myself doing this right now, too!

"Finally, I went outside to see if I could detect a hint of spring in the air, even at night.  It was very still: the smoke from the chimney stood straight up in the air.  The moon shed cold silver on the meadow, I remembered that Hal Borland had told me that the Indians called it the hunger moon.  Looking up at it, I thought how fitting the name was, for I hungered for spring, and wide-open roads, and an unfrozen windshield."

I had to look up "hunger moon" in the Farmer's Almanac and apparently it is also known as the Full Snow Moon.  "The heaviest snows fall in February."  Yeah, apparently that must be what we are experiencing right now as a matter of fact . . .

***

And more wisdom that gives me much to think about.  This excerpt is in response to her grandson--when she asked what he was doing--sitting quietly with his stuffed bear and cat--"jus' loving".  

" . . . busyness doesn't seem to be connected with wealth or poverty, city or country.  I haven't in years known anyone who had real leisure.  I should define leisure, for I do not mean just giving up ad sinking into lethargy; I mean time to think, to read, to hear music, to walk in snowy woods, to drop in on a loved friend for no reason at all but to see her.  I should, perhaps, call it constructive leisure.  I do notice that often illness is connected with what we call so lightly 'overdoing'."

If I have not yet tempted you, too, to go in search of this book, or some other writing by Gladys Tabor, I'll try again in March!  Maybe rather than portioning off my time with her writing, I should pick up another book by her that I own?

January in Stillmeadow

Over the weekend I finally got around to reading the first of my twelve serial reads installments of Gladys Taber's Stillmeadow Calendar.  As the book is divided into monthly chapters covering the months of the year it is a perfect book to dip into each month.  I want to read each chapter in one sitting and 'January' was read sipping a hot tea in cafe--a cozy afternoon spent in the presence of a charming and cozy book, and I had to stop myself from reading on.

The book was published in 1967 and I suspect that the chapters were loosely written to reflect her experiences over the course of the year or maybe even over many Januaries as experienced at Stillmeadow.  Taber was first and foremost a writer so while she writes in diary format I think she is simply evoking time and place.  You definitely get the sense of the rhythms of the year and the seasons as they occurred, so I wonder if it is also more a composite of her life at Stillmeadow.  Although Taber had been married and writes about her children and grandchildren she and a good friend (called Jill in this book) bought Stillmeadow together and I hope to learn more about their friendship.  Jill is briefly mentioned as having spent the new year together with Gladys, but it was to be their last before Jill passed away.

I'm sure each chapter will offer inspiration to write about it in some particular way each month, but I think this time out I will just share a few quotes that I jotted down in my own journal--a few sentiments that are especially pleasing and noteworthy to me and will set the tone for the rest of the book and maybe for the rest of 2019.

"There is, I have found, at least one good or lovely thing in every single day.  Everyone has sorrow, endures difficult times, but loveliness abides if we look for it."

***

"When I go out with the cockers and Holly (her dogs--a couple of which were Cocker Spaniels), I sometimes look to see how many branches came down in the last ice storm.  Winter does her own pruning.  And I think that, as the new year begins, I might well do some pruning in my own life, keeping essentials, the real values, and letting go the part of my life that is no longer contributing to the growing time of my spirit."

***

"Life is  not, for most of us, a pageant of splendor buy is made up of many small things, rather like an old-fashioned piecework quilt.  No two people have the same, but we all have our own, whether it is listening to Beethoven's Fifth with a beloved friend or seeing a neighbor at the back door with a basket of white dahlias.  Or after a long, hard day having the family say, 'That was a good supper'."

Reading her writing is truly a delight.  Stillmeadow sounds pretty amazing and I think it will be lovely to hear about the seasons in New England.  January is a time of beginnings and this was a perfect little mini read.  So many wise things to think about at the start of each new year--I am already looking forward to February.

At the Source: Gillian Clarke on Poetry

One of my semi-reading-failures this year has been to read a book in monthly installments and then written about it over the course of the year.  I have come across some really fantastic books that lend themselves well to this sort of reading project.  There has been Roger Deakin and Anna Pavord.  Both books are written in perfect 'bite-size' chapters with essays and observations presented in a monthly format.  This year's book At the Source by Gillian Clarke is another perfect read for this kind of serial reading project.  It was a gift from my friend Cath with whom I have been (at least had been until I dropped the ball) reading along.  Somewhere along the line, early summer I think, I fell behind and now am just trying to finish reading the remaining chapters. It is presented in journal format by month with additional essays at the beginning of the book. 

Clarke is a Welsh poet and her writing is, unsurprisingly, very eloquent.  She is also a careful observer and reminds me of Roger Deakin at times.  To be honest I am not sure I will remember many details, little bits here and there only, but the act of reading her writing is a pleasure in itself.  I have all sorts of pencil markings so when I go back and dip into various chapters I can easily see the things that caught my eye.  There is just so much--it's such a lush sort of book, and even reading it very slowly (which her writing sort of demands) I mostly just let it all wash over me as i go.  It's like looking at paintings or sculpture in a museum--you can soak some of it in but when you leave you are mostly just left with impressions and images.   

So, at this point, I won't write about each chapter but as I was catching up on my reading I came across a section of wonderful bookishness.  I wish I could just share every bit with you here and now, but let me pick out a few especially tasty morsels.  Since she is a poet she writes a lot about her own work and that of others.  What she says is so spot on when it comes to reading in general.  And she makes me want to read and love poetry, which someday I hope to achieve (just like I have come to love short stories).  Here are a few snippets on poetry or reading or novels that I think every reader (of any type of literature) will appreciate.

"Good poetry is layered with secrets, observant, true, the best so simple it can stop your heart."

Then she goes on to name a few poets in particular--Yeats, Emily Dickinson, R.S. Thomas, Hughes and other living poets.  Must check some of these poets out--I know some of Emily's work, but in general I am woefully underread when it comes to poetry.

Do those of you who read poetry agree . . . she was at a literary conference and talking with other passionate poetry fans notes that "we rarely read a novel more than once, but the poetry-lovers all read favorite poems over and over, searching for the secret of their power, finding something new at every reading, yet never fathoming the mystery."  Even though I am not a poetry reader I can somehow see what she is saying.  The power of words to create strong images or a story maybe, and how the meaning might change depending on what the reader brings to the poems or interprets the words. 

And this is wonderful:

"Reading a novel and reading a poem are completely different ways of reading.  There is no comparison.  One drives you on, page after page.  The other stops you dead, stops your breath as if you saw the burning bush.  One is a journey, the other is a spell."

But this doesn't mean she doesn't appreciate good novels, too.  And I can easily concur with here here:

"When the novel is finished I close the book, and if it's any good it unfolds in my mind for hours, days, weeks, forever if it is a tryly great novel, by Tolstoy, Dickens, George Eliot."

And this actually gave me shivers--she was talking about an especially stunning poem and how she reacts to it:

"It's a spell, a magic trick, a key to your heart made by a man who doesn't even know you."

But it's so true.  A really good piece of writing is like a work of art.  It speaks to you across time and distance.  It is really quite a gift, and to think that someone somewhere had the ability to shake you up in some way, to give you a good memory, something you can take with you outside that particular moment and carry with you in your heart and mind.

This is what I love about good books (and good poems!).  It's for this moment (and they don't come as often as I would like) that I read!

At the Source: Cardiff

If I didn't already like Gillian Clarke's At the Source, her essay "Cardiff" would (and did, really) totally sell me on the book.  I love essays.  Why don't I read them more often and more regularly?  Maybe I need to do something about that.  But first "Cardiff".  If the rest of At the Source has something of a nature slant to it, the essays that make up the first part of the book (the rest is diary-like entries for each month of the year) focus more on home and history.  And of course they are written with her elegant (she is a poet) prose that makes you see, feel and imagine her world. 

"Cardiff" is about her family, their history--her history, and her childhood.  I can't begin to give you a summary that would capture her eloquence.  She segues from image to image seamlessly moving around in time and space and you can see it all in your mind.  But let me share with you a few random impressions of what I read. 

Ga is the name she uses for her grandmother.  A word I'd never heard--a family/childhood word or a Welsh word?  Her father worked for the BBC.

"My father's coat was whiskery tweed and felt like the fur of the black bear in the tobacconist shop near the Prince of Wales Theatre, where before dirty films and bingo, they showed Snow White, or The Wizard of Oz, or Lassie Come Home."

On an outing with her father as a child in the "city of tall stories"--even then there were bluebells.

"In the museum the Blue Lady's dress is so blue it is a lake of bluebells in Porthkerry woods.  So blue that she's the sea off Pembrokeshire.  Because of her, blue is my favorite colour."

Clarke's father worked for the BBC. Her mother was glamorous.  This was during the war years.  She and her family lived in a house in Cyncoed, a house she returned to later, where she lived at "crucial periods in [her] life".  It is a house she can never leave behind and she wrote about.  From her poem-sequence 'Cofiant' ('Biography'):

Houses we've lived in
inhabit us
and history's restless
in the rooms of the mind.

Isn't that lovely?  I like how it's not just the person who inhabits the house, but how it leaves its mark on the dweller.  Enviably (for me) it was a house from which she could always see the sea.

Beautiful and poetic imagery:

"Stories layered with stories, all laid down in the mind to become part of being."

Books surely must have been part of what inspired some of those stories (books and the view from her window and the experiences of a freedom of childhood--a true freedom children no longer have--to go about on their own from dawn to dusk--exploring the world around them).

Asterisked this:

"Libraries had always been full of objects of desire.  To a bookworm, there is nothing so bleak as reaching the last word of the last page of a book an hour before bedtime, and nothing more thrilling than the Saturday morning find in the library, a new novel by a favourite writer, or something vaguely illicit, and hours of secret reading ahead.  It was almost a vice.  From early childhood I'd read all night, unable to stop turning pages.  In school I read under the blankets by torchlight.  Home for the holidays, sent to make the guests' beds in the roomy old house in Plymouth Road, I'd be caught out reading the books on bedside tables."

As a youth she was in love with the idea of university, "and relished [her] new life.  She went away to school when young but later going to school in Cardiff was suddenly glamorous.  She recalls walking to college every day and walking along the "rose-red road of Edward VII Avenue" under the huge elms that touched overhead.  And then seeing them suffer with Dutch Elm Disease. 

"I saw them felled.  It was like watching a great cathedral fall."

She worked in the university's library.  Sounds she associates with that still associates with books, with reading and falling in love with the idea of studying English Literature (from her years working in the library): a tramp snoring over a book he wasn't reading, pigeons cooing on the window ledges.

I associate the smell of freshly cut grass on hot humid days with summers of my youth.  I smell the smell and am instantly and vividly transported back in time. 

So "Cardiff" is about memory, too. 

Here's a memory to end my post and one I think we will all be able to relate to:

"Learning for learning's sake would, we were told, give us the world.  This seems amazing to me now.  I don't think many students feel the romance of university that we did.  We knew we were privileged and were grateful for it.  I was no scholar, but I loved English, language excited me, and reading gave me other worlds."

Yes, thank goodness for books!

At the Source: March, April & Cardiff

I didn't mean to fall behind in my reading of Gillian Clarke's At the Source, but I hope to get back on track this month.  It's a book I like to read without lots of distractions, and I haven't had lots of those sorts of reading opportunities of late.  Yesterday afternoon I had a quiet hour or two and I devoted my time to catching up (or nearly so) by reading Clarke's March and April entries and her very wonderful essay titled "Cardiff".  That alone is worth the price of the book!

Her monthly diary entries are actually fairly short.  They remind me a little of last year's The Curious Gardener, though I feel slightly more in my comfort zone with Gillian Clarke than I did with Anna Pavord.  Don't get me wrong, I loved the Pavord, but I am not a gardener (the closest I come is an 'armchair gardener' and then my knowledge is pretty limited).  Clarke's observations are more general and they touch upon a number of subjects--writing, nature, Wales, and more autobiographical writing, too. 

March is titled "Breaking Waters".  It's what you expect and maybe not exactly so.  Snow, rain, rivers and even birth.  Yes, literally breaking waters.  I like to follow her train of thought.  She begins with the thrush and songbirds in general:

"We must live with nature if we are to live at all.  Then, one evening this month a thrush sang again in the beech brake at the end of Cae Blaen Cwrt.  There is no evening song like it.  The thrush sings in rhyming couplet, the poet among birds, as Browning knew: 'That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over'."

And then the blackbird:

"I love the blackbird.  It sings all day, everywhere, pausing only at nightfall.  At dawn it is the first and clearest song.  It does not stop for rain.  Indeed it seems to love the rain, as if each drop eased the song more fluidly, fluently from its throat."

See how she nicely segues from bird to bird to water?  I love birdsong, too.  It is the first sign that winter surely must be coming to an end when I am on my morning walk to the bus--still dark, still cold but I can hear them--birds singing to each other (and maybe to me--in their own way).  And now?  Light and soon warmth and a veritable symphony of birdsong.

The spring thaw and then the spring solstice and she moves on to those breaking waters--in the form of Britain's longest river, the Severn.  The Severn flows east through the mountains of Wales and then down along the English border gaining in power from the rivers it joins up with.  At the tides are at their peak during the spring solstice.

"To watch a heave of water travelling so fast!  To ride it between fields, past cathedrals.  What a water-beast!  What a muscular old mud-dragon of brown water!  The physics of tide and moon, of the turning planet, the geography of mountain and river plain, the particular geology, the deepest of horseshoe bends and the right funnel shape for the tides to back up, the push and shove, the give  have made it a wonder of nature.  Even thinking about it is thrilling."

She does convey that in her wonderful description.  She paints quite a picture and I can even hear the whoosh of the water.  Not just a gurgle, I think, but a force--water rushing!  If March is all about water, April is about warmth.  When Gillian Clarke writes you don't just see it mentally, but you feel it and smell it too.  It's vivid.  2007.  Dry March days turn into a heatwave in April.  Making it unbearable not only for people, but those birthing animals, too. 

"In the weather's present tense April heat feels like forever and ever.  We enjoy the thoughtless happiness that warmth and sunlight bring, caught too by the warning it carries.  This is not normal.  Nothing can be depended on any more, not the winds of March, nor April showers.  The climate is unweaving the poetry."

Isn't that last line great?  Those hot winds from Africa are famous, bringing that heat along and warming things up.  If too much water takes its toll on nature, so, too, does the wind.  It wears the stone away and takes away the topsoil leaving behind a fine layer of rust-red dust, Saharan in origin.  

Clarke meanders in an entirely pleasant way from topic to topic, returning to one she began in March and moving on to something new and particular to April.  The year she was keeping this diary was an especially "superb bluebell year".  I've never seen a bluebell wood, have you?  I hadn't even seen one or thought what it might be like.  I want to walk in a wood that might date back to 1600!  Clarke is fortunate enough to have one on her own land.

"Early winter rain and cool spring sunlight through leafless oak trees brought one of the finest flowerings ever.  The fact that they were ours, and while we were in charge no one would ever, ever plough them up, made theirs the bluest blue in the world, the almost violet of the dress in Renoir's La Parisienne in the National Museum in Cardiff, lapis lazuli blue, rarest of pigments.  And the smell!  We walked the coconut-scented gorse track to where the yellow gorse to the left gave out and the blue floor of the wood was spread before us, the scent changing from spice to floral.  We were dizzy with breathing it.  Ours!"

She worries that this native bluebell sitting so near the Atlantic, surely the bluest and most intense of all the world will be lost to climate change.  I appreciate her fear and wonder if I will ever get to see it myself.

I think I will save her essay, "Cardiff" for my next post as this one will otherwise get entirely too unwieldy.  It is my favorite bit of the book so far, and so much about it to appreciate and tell you about.  Lots of quotable bits so I will have to pick and choose carefully.  Until then, imagine those bluebell woods!  I'll be back in a day or two!

I wonder what May's chapter will bring?  A peek ahead and I see we return once again to the blackbird . . .

February: At the Source

Just under the gun.  My reading was enjoyable but my writing about this month's installment of At the Source might be a little perfunctory--am just going to share a very few highlights.  I've been under the weather for the last week or so and dragging, if that is any excuse.  February always flies by and even though it is a mere two days shorter than most other months, all of a sudden it just seems like March arrives.  Whoosh, if you know what I mean.

So.  Gillian Clarke.  She's a poet and you can tell, because she is to in tune with language and words and meanings.  She is also a reader and so is a reader's writer (isn't every writer a reader's writer?  Maybe so, but she writes in a way that tantalizes and I can appreciate that).  February's journal entry is titled "Land".  This is how it starts . . .

"On the cusp between winter and spring.  Mostly it's still indoor weather when I'm glad of bookish days.  The afternoons are gaining light, a minute at a time, but there's no shine to the garden."

Yes, that is how it has been for me as well.  March is coming in like a lion since it is bitterly cold and snowing lightly with the promise of more, and in a higher intensity on Monday night into Tuesday.  I keep fantasizing over my morning walk without layers of clothes, ear muffs, gloves, wool scarf.  But while my morning walk is in the dark still, I can (on a sunny day) return home before the sun has set and left me in the dark once more.  It is, however slowly in coming, giving me just a little hope that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

This is how Clarke plays with words.  "Wellbeing.  Being well.  A well of being."  An artist friend said to Clarke--"You know hoe lovely it is when you're sitting by a window in a big chair and it's raining, and you have a book and you think, 'How lucky I am!  How lucky!'  That's a 'found' poem.  I may struggle with poetry, but that is a poem even I can understand and appreciate.

"Those with a talent for sudden, inexplicable joy will know exactly what Sandra meant.  It describes being alive, having choice and chance and the gift of pleasure.  It's about the solitary but not lonely individual relishing the simple fact of being, the pleasures of body and mind.  Sight, sound and touch are explicit in that scene, ans taste and smell are implicit since the rain, the window, the chair imply a familiar room, its privacy, possession and pleasures, perhaps a fresh brew of coffee, the smell of rain, a street outside, and a city."

I do like that.  If Clarke continues to return again and again to the pleasures of solitude and privacy--she and I and this book are going to get on very well indeed.

Did you know the Welsh word, glas, means both blue and green?  And why not since this is a country where there are so many subtle gradations of the color in hill country.  "The many tones of green of the close fields shift through blues and violets as the land rolls into the distance."

Clarke was reading Colm Toibin's The Master at the time she was writing her journal.  I am going to pull my copy of the shelf.  Henry James, who the book is about, has always struck me as one very formidable man.  But if this is what he is like, and granted it is Toibin's rendering of him thus, I think I can understand and relate to James better than I think.

"He (Toibin about James) is wonderful on the pleasures of interiors, and of solitude."

"He shows how James turned away always at the last moment from emotional commitment, preferring the pleasures of solitude.  Toibin conjures the lovely interiors of apartments, villas, houses in New England and Europe, and in James's beloved Lamb house in Rye, where even the walled garden is a room."

* * * * *

"There's a side to all writers that loves nothing better than a book, a big chair, window."

There's a side to readers that loves that, too.

January: At the Source

I've not yet told you about my serial read for 2015, have I?  My friend Cath sent me a copy of Gillian Clarke's At the Source: A Writer's Year and immediately when I opened the package I knew it was the book I would read in monthly installments.  I had never heard of Clarke before, perhaps because she is a poet, and poetry is a gaping hole in my reading history/experience thus far.  I will someday rectify that (there was a time, too, when I wouldn't have dreamed of reading short stories either, and now look at me).  Sometime this year I will find and read a copy of Clarke's poems.  It's only fitting, right?

Cath and I will be reading the book in tandem and chat about it along the way.  It is made up of six brief essays and a monthly journal, which as you might imagine (since Clarke is a poet) is gorgeously written.  It looks as though it will be a series of ruminations and reflections of her life in Wales, the dilapidated longhouse she and her husband bought and take up residence in when she accepted the post as Poet in Residence at the University of Lampeter, and most importantly on nature.

I'm not quite sure how I will write about the book.  The journal entries actually come after the series of essays, but maybe that doesn't matter (as I am starting with the monthly entries).  You see the hare on the cover?  I think he is going to be a recurring motif throughout the book so I will try and see what I pick up along the way.  Maybe it is best to begin with a few of my own reflections and share a few of my favorite passages.  I took a few notes as I was reading, so a few thoughts on 'January'. . .

The drama of extreme weather is "both fearful and thrilling"--how fitting that 2015 began for me with extreme cold, too.  Subzero temperatures during my break and return to work was what greeted me at the beginning of the year.  It was so cold I had to buy little handwarmers to stowe away in my gloves to keep my fingers from going numb (have you seen them?  you take them out of their plastic sleeve, shake them and let them heat up--genius).

Clarke is living in Wales, which I imagine to be lush and green and exceedingly cold in winter.  In the 1970s she bought an old longhouse which was in a ruinous state and moved in with her husband and children.  This is really how I imagine Wales:

"We spent our holidays walking the land, fetching water from the spring and collecting wood by day, and reading by oil-lamp light and a big open fire in the evenings."

I like this--talking about her children:

"They lived through books, as I did as a child, playing out their imagined stories in a place where poverty was not difficult to imagine. "

Despite the condition of the longhouse she buys, she decides to move in and live there--a braver soul than me.

"Solitude in a primitive house in winter"--how serendipitous that on the day I read this January journal entry I also came across a book by Doris Grumbach called Fifty Days of Solitude in my library.  It is another book of reminiscences on those days alone in Maine when she lived without speaking to anyone.  Which leads me to another favorite author, May Sarton, and her journals.

Clarke measures her own life against the previous owner of the longhouse who lived there in the 1930s.  She wanted to know how Marged lived.  Did she?

"No, but I thought of her a lot, and constantly imagined her life as I measured it against my own.  I learned about silence, independence, solving my own problems, not being afraid of the dark, sleeping alone miles from a neighbor with only a dog for company."

I'm hoping she goes into much more detail about this experience as I want to know about these things as well and apply them to my own life.  Solitude is a subject never far from my mind.  I am very good at appreciating solitude, but loneliness is still sometimes a problem I feel burdened by.

I love this bit and find it true as well:

"Each day sunrise and sunset inch apart by minutes.  Long, light evenings seem normal, short days like sickness.  In the darkest days you can't believe in light."

Ever so slowly the days seem to be lengthening, which for me is like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

The first essay, "A Local Habitation and a Name" is just as it sounds, all about her new home--the history, the grounds and views and landscape surrounding it.  Those Welsh names--so full of consonants!  And so intriguing to learn about that longhouse.  Two centuries old and built from stones in the field.  Imagine!  Hard for me living somewhere so 'new' in comparison.  It seems almost romantic to think of this place she lives as being smuggler's country.  The chance of ghosts?  And she is living alone?

Well, these thoughts of mine are all a bit random, so I hope I can gather my thoughts a little better next month.  This is going to be a treat to read, something new and different and refreshing.  And February is just around the corner.  That much closer to spring!