Sunday, November 29, 2009

Blue Sky, Blue Marsh, Blue Atlantic

Oh it's such a perfect day,
I'm glad I spent it with you ....
            -- Lou Reed

Today so far: Chore done (took trash to landfill).  Nourishment taken:  Egg, sausage & cheese sandwich on a Portuguese sweet roll, & coffee, at Sweet Escapes in Truro.  Spiritual enrichment: Long walk with Mark, Kathy, & Jodie. 







Friday, November 27, 2009

Nightmare on Gull Haven Lane


I woke at four a.m. from the most overwhelmingly frightening nightmare of my life.  It contained the usual motifs of a nightmare ... being lost, being late, trying to find the place where I worked only to realize that I was in a town two hours away ... and so on and so forth, one horrible scenario hurriedly morphing into another equally horrible scenario.

What was most frightening though was that when I finally got myself awake I could not sort myself out.  I thought I must be having a stroke or something.  I could not make anything make sense.  There was no one home but me and two cats; Mark and the dog were still in Falmouth where we'd had Thanksgiving Dinner.  Now, post-nightmare, the name Mark floated into my mind but I could not quite place him ... I have lived with Mark for something like twenty-six years ... but now he seemed like a vagueness from some long gone past, so far back that I could not even begin to define him.  Further, I was unable to realize for a good ten minutes where I was, where I lived, what I did for a living, where I was born.  Nothing made sense!  Finally, even in the dark, the patchwork-patterned quilt* under which I sleep started to seem familiar.  From that recognition I moved on and finally recalled a girl named Abby.  I have loved Abby for a long time.  She lives just seven miles up the road from my nightmare.  I know her to be pitiful at sleeping and so thought she most likely would be awake; I wondered if I should telephone her, identify myself as best I could, and ask if she could fill in some blanks for me ... "Abby?  This is George.  Do you remember me?  Could you tell me where I live?"

Still I feared that this might be the one out of a thousand nights that Abby was actually enjoying a sound sleep.

Then, after some fifteen or twenty minutes of horror at not being able to thoroughly identify myself, I was able, finally, piece by piece, like a jigsaw puzzle, to regain my usual identity.  I realized that I was in a house in the Wellfleet woods; I realized that I have a small black pickup truck parked outside; I realized that I had until eight o'clock to drive that truck five miles to my job ... piece by piece, one fact following upon another fact, I managed to re-build myself.

Still there was worry.  I wondered if I had not -- overnight as it were -- had not become, from my nightmare, or from my stroke, had not become such a drastically changed person that I would be unrecognized by my co-workers.  When I walked into Park Headquarters in what was now about three hours away would someone say "Good morning, George" which would help me be sure that I really am who I am thinking I am, or would someone approach me as if I were a stranger and say, "Good morning, sir!  May I help you?"  I didn't know how you can be sure you are who you think you are.

Finally, and it had now become about five o'clock in the morning, I was able to pick up a book: Garden, Ashes by a man named Danilo Kis.  He (1935-1989) was Yugoslavian; his parents were not Yugoslavian but each had immigrated there from their own different birth countries.  I did not have much hope that the book could rivet me from my confused state.  I had read up to page 121; it had been beautiful prose throughout but I had begun to wonder when the novel was going to live up to the extremely high recommendation it had been given by the late Susan Sontag, who is one of my favorite writers and intellectuals.

But the story, as if meant to save me from myself, absolutely exploded on page 122 ... or perhaps I should say it imploded and I, mesmerized and levitating, was drawn smack dab into the mid-twentieth-century fashions of Vienna.  This book, in that instant, achieved greatness for me; I now recognized where it had all along been coming.

Further, again as if the novel was written to address this very night of my life, as if it had been pre-ordained to refer to the very circumstance of the nightmare I had just had such trouble shaking off,  I read on page 157, "I was in a state of such shock following these nightmares that my mother understood they were not something I could easily describe."

(I have the last chapter to read yet, and will post a blog about it when I'm finished.)

***

When I walked into the building where I work I was recognized.  I was soon presenting Sandy, the personnel clerk, a brief description of the horrible night I had just lived through.

"Oh," she said knowingly, "you were in a food-induced coma."

It is true that I was a glutton at Thanksgiving dinner, but I said to Sandy that I had never heard of such a thing as a food-induced coma, and expressed a gentle doubt that such an aberration was defined.  "Oh, yes, there most certainly is such a thing," she asserted.

I guess you can learn something new everyday.

Maybe.

For lunch today I had an apple.  For dinner this evening I'm having a quarter of Mark's sister Nina's wonderful apple pie, heated, and drenched with half-and-half.

Maybe two apples a day will keep the psychiatrist away.

*In Montreal a few years back I saw a fabulous movie, based on the music of The Beatles, called "Across the Universe".  I had no doubt that it would win an Academy Award, but I don't think it was even nominated, and it seemed to just disappear without hardly anyone I know having heard of it, let alone having seen it.  But what is my point?  Oh, yes, there was on a bed in one of the scenes the very same patchwork patterned quilt I sleep beneath. 

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Robert Sanford Luckenbill - Born Nov 21, 1910

Marseille, France - Aug 29, 1945

Uncle Bob was the second born of my mother's four brothers. He enlisted in the Army at Indianapolis on July 19, 1943, and served in Europe in Work War II; later he signed up again and served in the Korean Conflict. In civilian life Bob was a linotype operator by trade; I remember it being said that with his skills he could go anywhere in the country and easily find work.
***
At 21, he married a woman named Helen Wilson; they had three children: Robert, Jr.; Beverly (Throgmorten); and Barbara (Gutierrez). Uncle Bob and his family eventually settled in Casa Grande, Arizona. He died in 1971 and is buried in Mountain View cemetery in Casa Grande.
***
One of his grandsons, Ben Gutierrez, was young when his grandfather died but remembers going with his mother to visit his grandparents almost daily. Already ill with respiratory problems, Bob would be in his pajamas, smoking Pall Malls, and doing crossword puzzles. "I would love to go there," Ben says, "because on his doorknob he would hang rubber bands and I would take them and shoot them all over with a rubber-band gun made from a stick and a spring-style clothes pin."
***
On the other hand, Ben didn't appreciate that his grandfather liked to playfully pick him up and hold him upside down -- having three older brothers and four older sisters Ben figured he got more than his share of rough-housing from them.
***
Ben's grandfather would also tease him about his ears: "Boy, I sure hope you grow into those ears someday!" This sort of teasing was typical of any of the Luckenbill brothers.
***
In Casa Grande, retired and not well, Bob enjoyed walking the couple of blocks to the VFW where he liked to swap stories with fellow veterans.
***
He died young, not yet sixty-one years old.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

In Memoriam - Marcel Proust 1871 - 1922

Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise; Paris; 1991

My favorite writer died on this day in 1922.  Pavane pour une infante defunte by Ravel was performed at his funeral.  It is close to seven minutes of mournful beauty on the CD I own.  I play it each November 18th.  Then I go to bed with one of the volumes of In Search of Lost Time, open it at random, and read until I fall asleep.  I go to bed early most every day nowadays.





Sunday, November 15, 2009

What Larkin Thought of Hughes

This picture shows the kind of day it is ... Gull Pond misted, Gull Pond fogged.  But a happy day, even a warm day ... this morning Mark and I saw Rodney, and then we three saw Abby.  I would ask no more of any day.

Then I found myself wondering what Philip Larkin (pictured left), one of my favorite poets, thought of Ted Hughes (pictured right), the poet and husband of my favorite poet, Sylvia Plath.  When the library opened at two p.m. I went there and, grateful for an index, skimmed through Philip Larkin's collected letters.


In a June, 1967, letter to Kingsley Amis, Larkin wrote of Hughes: "No, of course Ted's no good at all, not at all.   Not a single solitary bit of good.  I think his ex-wife, late wife, was extraordinary, though not necessarily likable.  Old Ted isn't even extraordinary."

To a Robert Conquest, Larkin wrote in June of 1975: "At Ilkley literature festival a woman shrieked and vomited during a Ted Hughes reading.  I must say I've never felt like shrieking.  We had the old crow [Hughes] over at Hull [University, where Larkin was Head Librarian], looking like a Christmas present from Easter Island.  He's all right when not reading."

Then, to a Winifred Bradshaw, Larkin wrote in August of 1979:  "Ted Hughes is coming here to read in the autumn: tickets 1 pound 50, for 4 pounds 50 you can go to a reception and 'meet Ted Hughes' ... [I] feel like walking up & down outside with a placard reading 'Meet P.L. for 3 pounds 95.'  I really must arrange to be away that evening."

Finally, in another letter to Robert Conquest, written in December of 1984, after Hughes had been appointed Poet Laureate (it had been offered to Larkin but he declined): "I think he'll do the job all right except for writing anything readable.  Personally I find him a boring old monolith, and again pretty self-interested, but those as wants him will have to put up with that."

I think Philip Larkin didn't care for Ted Hughes.

I'd gladly pay way more than 3 pounds 95  to meet P.L. ... if only time could reverse itself to when he was still among us.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

A Mailman in Ireland

Photo by Abby Orton

The mail carrier on his bicycle in Athboy, Ireland, 1999, is drawing directions for Abby and me.  I see I'm wearing Birkenstocks, and that reminds me of a years-ago episode in the restaurant up in Vermont.  One of the waitresses had met a man a few days earlier, but his advances were sleazy.  She hastily rejected him.  A few nights later she spied him walking up and down the sidewalk in front of the restaurant; she ran to the kitchen, saying she was scared of him; she had heard he carries a gun.

As she cringed in a corner of the kitchen I said, "If he comes in just tell him you don't want to be bothered by him ever again, especially at your job.  I'll protect you."

"How can you protect me?" she asked.  "You're wearing Birkenstocks!"

Monday, November 9, 2009

Uncle Albert's Birthday

Albert Junior Luckenbill - 11/9/1913 - 1/3/1988
"A blue shirt is a blue shirt."

Uncle Albert was a truck driver, and served in the Army in Panama during World War II; upon his return from that post the Army assigned him to a job delivering the bodies of soldiers killed in action to their homes around the country.  Married a woman named Geneva; they had two daughters, Jill and Lana.  This picture was taken circa 1956.  Albert was a good man and, like his three brothers, a fun uncle.

His grandson, David, for whom Albert was a caregiver and father-figure, writes: "Some of the things I remember are that Grandpa was a very strict and routine man.  He was always up and out the door by 5:00 a.m.  He would spend a lot of time at the local coffee shop in North Manchester talking with a group of vets that would meet there every morning.  Sometimes he would let me go with him, but only if I could be ready in time.  'Don't be late or you stay home,' he would say.  He would also attend church every Sunday even though Monday through Saturday his language would embarrass a truck driver.  He always spoke his mind whether you wanted to hear it or not.  Some of the other things I remember are that he loved to fix things.  We kids never had a shortage of toys.  He would find toys thrown out and bring them home to be fixed.  He always kept his hair short and wore denim blue button-up shirts.  I asked him one time why he would always wear the same style of shirts.  He replied in his usual loud voice, 'Why should I waste time in deciding what to wear? ... a blue shirt is a blue shirt, grab one and go!'"


Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Recent Discovery: Barbara Pym

This short novel is altogether perfect! I'd heard the name Barbara Pym for decades but had no idea what sort of books she wrote. Then Philip Larkin, whose collected letters I read recently, wrote of her that she was "vivacious and funny and observant," and that she wrote "ordinary sane novels about ordinary sane people doing ordinary sane things ...." To a publisher, urging that the novel pictured above be accepted for publication, he wrote, "In all her writing I find a continual perceptive attention to detail which is a joy, and a steady background of rueful yet courageous acceptance of things ..." I knew that Philip Larkin, one of my favorite poets, as well as one of my favorite curmudgeons, wouldn't lead me to anything but excellence.

I would add that her approach to surprises is delightfully subtle!

I loved Quartet in Autumn so much that in our small town library I smiled at a shelf when I counted twelve additional Barbara Pym novels on it. I'm all set for a while. Plus I think the shelf smiled back at me.

(Morning After Postscript: Last night, reading Barbara Pym's diaries, part of a miscellany of her writings titled A Very Private Eye, I learned that she was, as she put it, besotted by Denton Welch; he is also one of my favorite writers. It figures.)

[It figures is italicized because, having come awake at 2:30 and being unsuccessful at returning to sleep, I had lots of time to read more Pym and to think about words. At about 4:30 I became awash in the charm of "it figures" -- the term is arithmetical, or it is philosophical, or it is casual, or it is as precise as a puzzle.]

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Happy Birthday to My Nephew Jeffrey

Happy birthday to Jeffrey Fitzgerald, born on this day in 1958!  On back of this picture my mother, who was babysitting him, wrote: "Supposed to go to sleep, but he didn't."