THINK Times Three

04 Wednesday Jan 2012

Posted by Janell in Good Reads, Life at Home, Writing

Tags

Books, Diane Keaton, Evening, Madeleine L'Engle, Susan Minot, Then Again, Thinking, Writing

Not think, but THINK.

Three authors, three books, in three times two days of reading:

THEN AGAIN by Diane Keaton
EVENING by Susan Minot
Madeleine L’Engle {Herself}, Reflections on a Writing Life.

How can a memoir, a novel, and a book of compilations on the writing life, intended to instruct and inspire — as different as they could be by the look of their covers — be so united in their thinking?

What am I to make of this? Had the repetition of THINK come months apart in reading rather than days, I wouldn’t bother connecting dots between them. Yet, it’s hard not to — it’s hard not to read between the lines when one book follows another that follows another in quick succession — when all elevate the importance of thinking.

I read Diane first.

“Mom loved adages, quotes, slogans. There were always little reminders pasted on the kitchen wall. For example, the word THINK. I found THINK thumbtacked on a bulletin board in her darkroom. I saw it Scotch-taped on a pencil box she’d collaged. I even found a pamphlet titled THINK on her bedside table. Mom liked to THINK. In a notebook she wrote, I’m reading Tom Robbins’s book Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. The passage about marriage ties in with women’s struggle for accomplishment. I’m writing this down for future THINKING…”

The importance of thinking to Keaton’s mother grew with her diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. Just as Minot’s character, Ann Lord, magnifies the disjointed THINKing of the dying, while lying bedridden during her last days of cancer.

“The world shifted as if a piece of paper had been flipped and she was now living on its other side. Things turned transparent, the man one married, the house one lived in, the bracelet one wore, they all became equal to each other, equal motes of dust drifting by. Strange things were happening something has already happened. For two days a leaf the size of a ham hung in the air one foot from her face. She grew sensitive to the different shades of white on the ceiling. Her sense was not always right. The position of her arm had something to do with inviting people to dinner. She needed to move the pillow so a boat could dock there. She knew it wasn’t logical and wondered if the drugs were obscuring things then it seemed as if the drugs were making it easier to read the true meaning.” [page 23]

I find Minot’s prose beautiful and the slippery loose thinking of the dying mother believable — that steady stream of consciousness with drip, drip, drips of lucid thoughts — since it reminds of my own weird thinking when lying in bed ill, when one is too sick to do anything but lie and think. But in truth, too sick to think too.

Then there’s that third voice, that of L’Engle {Herself}. In introducing her work of compilations on the writing life, Carole F. Chase tells of L’Engle’s workshop teaching days at Wheaton College in the seventies, and of L’Engle’s favorite first assignment:

“Pick a biblical character and then write a midrash about him or her. These are the rules: You may think as long as you like, but you may write for only half an hour. Tomorrow you will share these stories with each other.”

And this second one, that followed:

“Write about one of the happiest times in your life. Think all you want, but you may only write for half an hour. Bring what your write to class tomorrow.”

No need for Chase to tell the story of L’Engle’s third assignment.

And perhaps, no need for me to pick up a fourth book anytime soon?

I think. Think. THINK.

Still Life

01 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by Janell in Life at Home, Soul Care, Writing

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Blogging, Evening, Everyday Life, Soul Care, True Self, Writing

“And if she did not remember these things who would? After she was gone there would be no one who knew the whole of her life. She did not even know the whole of it! Perhaps she should have written some of it down…but really what would have been the point in that? Everything passed, she would too. This perspective offered her an unexpected clarity she nearly enjoyed, but even with the new clarity, the world offered no more explanation for itself than it ever had.”

– Evening, by Susan Minot

I woke up thinking about last night’s mad dash to post a few October stills while October still had breath in its body. As if this blog was my very own Pinterest board to remember life with a few little links.

Then as one thought always leads to another, I began thinking about all those October moments — no less important — that passed without an attempt to preserve the moment. No written words. No images, published or otherwise, at least in my possession. Like,

last Sunday’s final Moveable Feast for the year, a rare event where every family member sat in attendance,
a cute almost 10 month-old Reese Caroline dressed up like a little lamb for her first Halloween, so unhappy in her costume you’d think she was being led to … (no I can’t say it…),
the beauty coming forth in the east garden, once a forgotten side yard used to grow weeds and hold leftover stone,
the nine Nellie Stevens hollies planted on Saturday — doesn’t this sound like it belongs as a stanza in the Twelve Days of Christmas?, and
my new kitchen finally finished… except that I’ve decided to repaint it all again.

And the list lives on into infinity.

And then I look up to see the morning light casting this lovely November image on the wall — the very one that became header for this post. Perhaps, I think, it’s a gift for All Saint’s Day to remind me that what we see is not all that’s there?

I reach for my camera to capture it. To find, with no surprise whatsoever, that it wasn’t at all what I saw, it wasn’t at ALL what I experienced. Not by half. Because what I observed was so much better and richer than what I’m able to preserve.

I post a few words and images knowing, even as I write, it’s not necessarily the best of everyday life or even the best of me. But sometimes, yes sometimes — perhaps when the light is just right, and maybe’s it when I’m most aware of the play of the light and shadows, that a few words are born into the blog that mimic life in the moment enough to breathe shallowly upon the page.

A still image begins to sway and dance so that it’s a trick and treat to the eye. Mere slats from my window blinds cast shadows on the wall which mysteriously transform into a musical staff; the shadow of curled ironed work of the floor lamp looks like a treble clef; and something — I’m not sure what — maybe leaves on the tree outside my window? — begin to jump up and down the lines looking like musical notes dancing upon staff lines.

The shadow and light become a symphony like this.

And I think: Can life get better than this? If life is like THIS every moment of every day, then there’s no such thing as an everyday life — at least, as. everyday is commonly thought of — COMMON. PLAIN JANE. VANILLA. Dare I say….BORING?

And because of this mind set, and our own lack of attention — for surely I’m not alone in attention deficits — is it any wonder we can’t know the whole of our lives?