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EnglishIvy of Zenith
Jun. 13th, 2017 10:03 pmThe Sparrowhawk went to work early today, and I got up at the same time he did--6 am. Too early! I forced myself to go out for a walk before it got too hot. It was already humid, and the sky was overcast with a hint of yellow in the grey. That color, to me, always portends sultry weather. Birds chirping, and green frogs croaking on the margins of the pond--a sound like someone plunk-ing a slack guitar string--were the sounds of my walk.
As I may have mentioned, we live near some land that belongs to the Dominican nuns. It used to be a convent and girls' school, but is now administrative offices and an elder care residence. Also on the property are a nursing rehab and what looks like a very nice daycare center. There's a little portion of woods, with a creek running through it, and some philanthropist has been building a meditation path punctuated by statues of scenes from the life of St. Francis. I have kind of a love-hate relationship with St. Francis, because on the one hand he seems to have been a remarkable and kind person, but on the other hand, he's part of the mythology of the wonderfulness of suffering, which I just can't get my head around. Receiving the Stigmata was supposed to be the Best Thing Evar, but when I pass the statue where he's supposedly in ecstasy at having his hands and feet pierced by the Wounds of Christ, I always mutter, "Oh, you poor man." Today I gently cleaned the cobwebs off the statue. A busy spider had been turning the ecstasy of St. Francis into a trap for flies!
When my father was dying, I always used to walk through there on my way to the coffee shop, and ask St. Francis to look out for him. It was my impression that my father liked St. Francis, which I thought not because he confided this to me, but only because he sent me at least half a dozen copies of The Little Flowers of St. Francis, a devotional story of the saint's life. That was something he used to do: find a book that he thought somebody would like, and then send it to them repeatedly, whenever he found a copy at a book sale. Some other books I received multiple copies of were The Wind in the Willows, The Book of the Eskimo by Peter Freuchen, and a guide to wild mushroom identification. Although, every time he sent me another mushroom guide, he cautioned me never to actually eat any of them!
There were other topics that he seemed to consider suitable to me, on which he would send me anything that turned up: The Wonderful World of Horses and other volumes of horse pictures (perhaps his belated apology for refusing to let me go anywhere near horses when I was young and loved horses with a mad passion). Books about stained glass and illuminated manuscripts. The novels of James Fenimore Cooper. Forty year old travel guides to Rome, Vienna, and Greece. Books about mythology. I kept as many of them as I could. I had to let go of a shelf or two of books about the history of the Habsburgs. I am really not sure how he got the idea that I was interested in the Hapsburgs. I wish I were a person who had read all those books, but I just couldn't. Also the complete works of Holderlin and Heine and other German poets, in the original German, some in Fraktur, in print so small it could have been engraved on a grain of rice. I wish I could have read them, but it was just never going to happen.
I kept the Rilke, in those funny little editions with the art deco-ish covers that he probably bought when he was a student in Switzerland, some lines cryptically underlined in his own hand, in black ink. Warum ein Engel? Ach es kam die Nacht. Perhaps St. Francis would understand this. It gives me a little glimpse of how my father apparently saw me: someone who loved the Water Rat and Natty Bumppo, was thrilled by arctic exploration, liked horses, ancient cities, tales of the gods, and medieval arts, and who could read Rilke. I hope this gave him some satisfaction.
As I may have mentioned, we live near some land that belongs to the Dominican nuns. It used to be a convent and girls' school, but is now administrative offices and an elder care residence. Also on the property are a nursing rehab and what looks like a very nice daycare center. There's a little portion of woods, with a creek running through it, and some philanthropist has been building a meditation path punctuated by statues of scenes from the life of St. Francis. I have kind of a love-hate relationship with St. Francis, because on the one hand he seems to have been a remarkable and kind person, but on the other hand, he's part of the mythology of the wonderfulness of suffering, which I just can't get my head around. Receiving the Stigmata was supposed to be the Best Thing Evar, but when I pass the statue where he's supposedly in ecstasy at having his hands and feet pierced by the Wounds of Christ, I always mutter, "Oh, you poor man." Today I gently cleaned the cobwebs off the statue. A busy spider had been turning the ecstasy of St. Francis into a trap for flies!
When my father was dying, I always used to walk through there on my way to the coffee shop, and ask St. Francis to look out for him. It was my impression that my father liked St. Francis, which I thought not because he confided this to me, but only because he sent me at least half a dozen copies of The Little Flowers of St. Francis, a devotional story of the saint's life. That was something he used to do: find a book that he thought somebody would like, and then send it to them repeatedly, whenever he found a copy at a book sale. Some other books I received multiple copies of were The Wind in the Willows, The Book of the Eskimo by Peter Freuchen, and a guide to wild mushroom identification. Although, every time he sent me another mushroom guide, he cautioned me never to actually eat any of them!
There were other topics that he seemed to consider suitable to me, on which he would send me anything that turned up: The Wonderful World of Horses and other volumes of horse pictures (perhaps his belated apology for refusing to let me go anywhere near horses when I was young and loved horses with a mad passion). Books about stained glass and illuminated manuscripts. The novels of James Fenimore Cooper. Forty year old travel guides to Rome, Vienna, and Greece. Books about mythology. I kept as many of them as I could. I had to let go of a shelf or two of books about the history of the Habsburgs. I am really not sure how he got the idea that I was interested in the Hapsburgs. I wish I were a person who had read all those books, but I just couldn't. Also the complete works of Holderlin and Heine and other German poets, in the original German, some in Fraktur, in print so small it could have been engraved on a grain of rice. I wish I could have read them, but it was just never going to happen.
I kept the Rilke, in those funny little editions with the art deco-ish covers that he probably bought when he was a student in Switzerland, some lines cryptically underlined in his own hand, in black ink. Warum ein Engel? Ach es kam die Nacht. Perhaps St. Francis would understand this. It gives me a little glimpse of how my father apparently saw me: someone who loved the Water Rat and Natty Bumppo, was thrilled by arctic exploration, liked horses, ancient cities, tales of the gods, and medieval arts, and who could read Rilke. I hope this gave him some satisfaction.
