California, before the war. Or just after. Imagine dusty roads, a grove of orange trees, and quiet. No air-conditioners, no super highways, no frenzy. When it was hot, one moved slowly, poured a glass water from a ceramic pitcher and sat down to drink it. The silence! The stillness. Could it have been that beautiful? Yes. I believe so. We've all read some passage or another about it, if we can bear it---bear to know what's been lost to speed and More of Everything.
M.F.K. Fisher's impressions, for one. I read her letters a few years ago and the little house in St Helena left an impression on me---We're going up to Inverness with Norah and her boys---cold, near the waves---I miss the sea... she wrote. But when I returned to her letters last night, they didn't have the same poignancy as when I first read them. When I first read them, they saved my life. How did I come upon her letters in Uganda that year? I don't remember. But I read them, every word, lying in bed in the afternoon in the upstairs bedroom. That is a dream now. The doors opened to a little balcony---the heat and the bright light--- and beyond the balcony, jungle. It was Kampala, but this particular view looked like jungle. In the garden below---almost too sticky and snake-y to go into into, but delightful to have----the frangipani shed perfect yellow and white flowers, and there were teak trees the rosemary bushes and what were those pink frilly ones? Next door there was a tremendous Ficus tree----30 or 40 feet high, a canopy of coolness. It was amazing to me---a New England girl---to see a Ficus so magnificent. Then, one night, we came home late and went to sleep, and when we woke there was a most peculiar light in our bedroom. Had I slept all day? No, the air was still sweet with morning dew. I went to the balcony and looked out and it was gone: it took several moments to register its loss. The tree was gone.
Last night, a door of the armoire was slightly ajar and the mirror on the door held a reflection of the room that I hadn't thought of before. A new perspective, no matter how minor, is always good. I thought: wow, that is the window of my room, and there are curtains and outside the window a whole city, and here is my son and we're sitting on the bed. And then the moment was over, never to return, and then we went to sleep.
Art ("children's shoes, my grandmother's maybe") by Margaret. Words, inspired by art, by Emilie.
