November 5, 2024
In Virginia we're moving into Brown November after the glories of October leaves and brilliant blue skies. With the muting of color and the time change, I want to turn inward and seek hygge. If I let myself, I can become rather melancholy because winter is least of the seasons in my opinion, and it seems so long until spring.
However, I have begun to try to see life in cycles rather than a linear course. Once one starts to look for cycles, they are everywhere - from the long cycle of the life of a star to the fleeting cycle of a heartbeat and the blood moving through our bodies. We are renewed in large and small ways over various time cycles, and we cannot stay at one point along the trajectory.
I'm reminded of my very favorite musical "Into the Woods". In it, Stephen Sondheim provides the answers to all of life's questions. In the second act, the Baker's Wife has a "moment" with a prince in the woods but talks herself back into sense and goes back to her real life, yet she is changed forever for the experience.
"Just a moment
One peculiar passing moment—
Must it all be either less or more
Either plain or grand?
Is it always "or"?
Is it never "and"?
That's what woods are for
For those moments in the woods
Oh, if life were made of moments
Even now and then a bad one—!
But if life were only moments
Then you'd never know you had one
Let the moment go
Don't forget it for a moment, though
Just remembering you've had an "and"
When you're back to "or"
Makes the "or" mean more
Than it did before..."
If we only ever had Octobers, the wonder would wane. The joy, like so many things in life, comes from knowing it is ephemeral and from holding onto that glow deep within ourselves - remembering that we've had an "and" when we're back to "or" really does make the "or" mean more than it did before.
Hear a Little Song
Two of my favorite artists performed together this week in London. Anna Lapwood, Associate Artist at the Royal Albert Hall and organ soloist, accompanied Lindsey Stirling, violinist and songwriter, on a medley of the Phantom of the Opera.
Read a Good Poem
Mary Oliver may be my favorite poet. This week, her poem "North Country" speaks to me. It's about spring, but it's also about cycles. Speaking of a thrush returning home, she says:
"...But don't worry, he
arrives, year after year, humble and obedient
and gorgeous. You listen and you know
you could live a better life than you do, be
softer, kinder. And maybe this year you will
be able to do it..."
See a Fine Picture
The Morgan Library & Museum in New York recently opened an exhibition on the life and work of Belle da Costa Greene, its first director, and the first black woman to curate a major library.
(Read) A Few Reasonable Words
In my writers' book club we're reading Dreyer's English by Benjamin Dreyer, the retired managing editor and copy chief of Random House. For a style manual, it's hilarious. He goes beyond style, however, to comment on the ways in which we hold tightly to convention even when it no longer makes sense. See also a book I just started on audio, Words on the Move by John McWhorter. For those who know my great reverence for "proper" English, McWhorter's book is stretching me.
As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, “…one ought every day at least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
Credits: Into the Woods, Original Broadway Cast Recording, 1988.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Book V, Chapter 1
Mary Oliver, "North Country", Devotions. Penguin Random House, New York. 2017.
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