Shelley moved into Casa Magni today in 1822.

Casa Magni

Shelley's House. From a drawing. Lerici, Gulf of Spezia, Italy

April 30, 1822, Percy Shelley and family and friends took possession of house.

Escaping....

 Gardening is my escape. I disappear in work and simple pleasures. I don't think about anything. It's the only time that my mind is truly at rest. And I do feel happy there, weeding, planting flowers, getting dirty. Right now, at this moment, I have this mental image in my head, of a younger me, kneeling over a new flowerbed in a house I once lived in and I can almost recreate the feeling of it. I can see it. There are so many moments like that and they are always in gardens with me working. By myself. Most people don't take as much pleasure in weeding as I do. Weeding...

My "happy place" has always been in the garden.

And I know it's my escape.

The spiderwort is going wild, as planned.

 

Emma by Jane Austen is a novel I really like a lot.

By chance and one might say, luck, I read Emma by Jane Austen this last week. It was the one novel by Austen that I had not (really) read. I suppose I flipped through its pages several times and read passages, but not a deep read. Perhaps I thought it a straight comedy and was never in the mood for that. I hardly know or remember. Emma has left a deep impression on me, which may or may not have something to do with the Romantic Period or Percy Shelley or English gardens, I don’t know or care, but I have decided to put aside my previous reading plans and reread all of Jane Austen along with some biographies, letters, and other non-fiction materials. I am going to reread Richard Holmes’ biography of Shelley, too. And it’s spring and summer and I am thinking of gardens and flowers and paintings and the beauty of nature. If I had lived in England, I would have loved a cottage and a garden and country life. I have lived a country life. Emma is a very mature work by Austen, a novel with themes that explore self-reflection, self-awareness, and the how people can move from self-delusion to reality. It should be taught in senior year of high school where young women can discuss these themes and ask themselves questions. I’d love to teach it. There is a harshness to Austen that many overlook. She might have even been more radical than we normally think. No, she didn’t run off with a married poet like Mary Godwin but just maybe Austen had more psychological insights than the former authoress, perhaps because Mary Godwin Shelley was plagued by depression and abandonment issues. There is such clarity to Austen’s work. That was her gift. One just has to read closely.

Easter is about Hope.

Image: The Easter Bonnet ~ Anna Whelan Betts

My garden 2022

 This iris is an old fashioned two tone purple with an orange beard and came from my mother's garden. It was destroyed (after years of nurturing) by the water pipe replacement winter of 2020-2021. The loss was deep as it reminded me of both my mother and husband, both dead. 

And now I realize just how difficult it is going to be to replace this plant since this is an old fashioned Heritage plant. Mother and I had these in our gardens for years and I may not be able to replace the plant.  I do so feel this terrible loss, though I am not sure if it is for the plant or my mother or my husband or all three. Or am I lamenting the passage of Time and the loss of all things eventually. 

It is a beautiful iris. I want replace it. I am going to look carefully in May for any signs of smaller plants that may have been scattered across the lawn and flowerbeds by digging equipment. I do see a few of the white ones pushing out here and there. Maybe one of these survived. I nursed this one for years and it was so beautiful. I had no idea it was a heritage plant, but now looking back at my mother's garden, I should have known better. I've attempted to maintain the plants she gave me over the years and have been successful to a degree. But the iris was her favorite plant. She loved them so. She could not grow them in Greenville, the town we moved from years ago. It never got cold enough.

Speaking of cold, after the last two winters, I will never wish to live anywhere north of where I live in the entire world. If anything I wish to live south of where I live, closer to New Orleans. I need the sun. I need warmth. Winters ruin me.

Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron.

It might surprise people to know that I suffer from Depression. I do not have Major Depressive Disorder but I do know what it is like to experience a major depressive disorder episode. Despite my smiles and good cheer, I tend to write about very dark themes. Loss. Abandonment. The perils and weight of Time. The stress of the past. Melancholy. Even betrayal and suicide or murder. Some of my characters are 'mad' as William Styron became in the summer of 1985. I have never read a book more palpable about depression than this one. Several times while reading it, I felt my body tense and I literally became anxious due to Styron's descriptions of his feelings. I was so depressed in high school after the death of a childhood friend that my teachers became concerned about me and I literally missed 100 days of school that year. Looking back, I felt very similar to what Styron felt but I never became suicidal. (One of the similar traits I possessed was that I did not sleep or talk much. I could not talk. I was disconnected.) Styron makes it clear that melancholia and hypochondria sound alike as words and tend to feel alike and are related emotionally, and I agree with him. Depression and Anxiety are so interconnected that sometimes it is difficult to tell one from the other. A lot of artists and writers suffer from Depression, though so do plumbers and electricians. We just don't hear about them when they commit suicide. Suicide is about pain. And all of this is probably rooted in one's childhood and concerns loss. Loss of what doesn't really matter as long as it is psychologically coupled. I take Prozac for my depression. Sometimes I go off it, but not often. Twenty years now. Depression is wily and sneaky. One is the midst of it before one knows it. Highly recommended read.

Family and the Mississippi Delta

This is my sister and cousin, Freddy, in the summer of 1946, outside my grandmother's house in Moorhead. Laverne has no shoes on. Laughing. A trait that is normal for most kids playing in the hot Delta. That's a little wooden rocking horse flipped up, and there is a sliver of the ever present black maid. My sister is a lot older than me. When one is very young that is significant, but as one gets older, it is not. My mother was married twice and had two sets of children. Laverne is from the older set and I from the younger set. The beautiful thing about our sibling relationship is that there was never any competition. In fact, she 'mothered' me in many ways. I am writing short stories and this photo is part of my research and put here as part of my Writing Notebook. Freddy died two years ago. Another idiosyncratic member of our strange family tribe. He lived in Alaska. His ashes were buried in the Mississippi Delta.

You are not a gadget

 Ben came by the house today and also had our lunch delivered. He stayed  (six) hours and we talked about everything, including Jaron Lanier's book. There was some tech jargon he explained to me, which helped in understanding how MIDI was locked in and what that really meant. Later we got into the values and devaluing of the arts. Just a note. Ben doesn't do social media though he does use the Internet for certain things. But social media has never interested him that much. This is my second read of Lanier's book, which I found so interesting and also kind of frightening. None of my children really do social media much. I began thinking about that and why. I have never really asked them in detail. None of them are on Twitter at all. Probably because of how they live. (?) But I'll have to think about it later. No answers really, just musing. I wanted to post this because I have a feeling I won't get back to the Internet this week. And by the time I come back, I'll be posting another book I am reading and an update on WIP.

I spent a lot of time outside today.

The sun was shining.

Small things. Beautiful things. It's been such a harsh winter.

Lanier, as we all know, is a genius and a very decent human being. He cares about creative people. This book was written over a decade ago and he saw the film industry as it is now, gone the way of the music industry. It all reminded me of the news on Twitter this week over the new four payout system in publishing. I remember when they began basketing royalties, and the three payout system was harsh. I think, in hindsight, I was lucky to have chosen the path I did. Lots of experience, timely checks, and less stress. 

But now I want to write a novel.

Oh, well....

An interesting photo of Picasso.

 Picasso with a cat. (I am looking for the photographer and will update.) Apparently, Picasso loved cats, painted cats, etc. So I may have to read to find out who took this and the date. And yes, I am a cat lady, as they say.

And I knew that I wanted you...

I remember you closing the shutters
And laying down by my side
And the light that was still slipping through
It was painting your body in stripes
I remember the trees summoned down
Like an archangel choir
And the ocean was all we could see
And I knew that I wanted you 

Local Natives

Writing Update 2022 (2)

 

I have a few moments and I thought I would update. Joey also took me to the art museum as planned and like the art student that he always is, made a video of me playing with Warhol's Silver Clouds. No, I am not posting it. It's his work, his video, his project. But it was a fun day. We looked at every single piece of art in that building and ended up spending the entire afternoon there, I mean hours and hours. Great fun. Then we went out to eat. Then we rode around looking at new buildings. Don't ask.

I've been listening to Placebo's new vinyl, which I love. It's sonically beautiful. Joey and I played the CD in the car on the way and talked music, which songs he liked versus the ones I did. We both really like the same ones, our favorites, Forever Chemicals and Sad White Reggae. I thought maybe four new Placebo songs would be added to the writing playlist but I have more. Cringe. But I just could not do without them. I really can't imagine what "Placebo" is thinking  when they look at the charts. They are 25+ years into a career, already put out a compilation album and this piece of work is just stunning. That doesn't happen often. And from an indie band and an indie label. I am really happy for them. It's a fairy tale story though really it's about talent, struggle, and perseverance. In the arts, all arts, being at the right place at the right time is part of it. That's why many arty people work all the time. One reason. The other is they love what they do even when no one is listening or reading or looking or  paying attention at all. 

The novel is coming along, as all novels do if one adds more words than one takes away. But there are many words to go. And I tend to think too much. I've promised certain people not to think myself into a rigamarole, something I am known to do. While writing I have to read, too. Reading stimulates me. I try to stay focused on non-fiction while writing fiction but occasionally I veer off the path and read a novel. Right now, it's two novels. One by Donna Tartt and one by Jennifer Egan. I'll post about them when I finish. Different reads. Very good. I was thinking about tone today when rereading what I had wrote. Both these women have personal styles that function as tone. Tone has been the most difficult aspect for me in this draft. In the first draft, one just attempts to discover the story and organize a plot and well, find out what NOT to do. The rewrites get harder and harder as an author pins down all her devices. And that is where I am. There. In that difficult place.

Silent lights, iris and mimosas, 1913, Henri Matisse

 Post-impressionism. 

Silent lights, iris and mimosas, 1913, Henri Matisse

This is my motto for 2022.

“There's no prayer like desire.” ― Tom Waits