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Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Cleaning off my desk this morning, I come across a hard-bound, faded, old novel.  Published in 1937.  “Now what book is this?” I ask myself.  “Why is it here, cluttering up the place?”  I look at the title, at the author.   They Came Like Swallows by Robert Maxwell.   I know I ordered this book a year or two ago because a writer I admire once mentioned it in passing.  I have no idea what it is about.  I look it up on the Internet:   Through the eyes of two boys and their father, William Maxwell reveals the complex woman who is the unacknowledged source of their happiness--and whose death during the influenza epic of 1918 will devastate them all. They Came Like Swallows tenderly depicts the currents of love and need that run through every family--and whose true depth becomes evident only in moments of tragedy.   Oh. I shiver.   Seems like an excrutiatingly timely book to have landed on my desk, considering the news article I read this morning.  Portentous?  Let’s hope not.  But unlike modern-day profiteers of doom, this book might offer something of real value, by way of art.   I am intensely curious, and wonder, why my desk?  Why this morning? Why wasn't it tucked obscurely away on my bookshelves?  (I think I picked it up off the floor the other day while I was cleaning.)   You want me to read you, you say?  Ah, well, then.  I am kind to dogs and books, alright. . .alright.  I will! comment []12:29:21 PM         I’m going to add “Harbinger of Doom” (aka "Angst Entrepreneur") to my own private Occupational Outlook Handbook.  It’s going to be listed right up there with “Basher of Uppity Women.”  No one ever told me, when I was little, what lucrative careers these were.  Now that I am grown, I haven’t got time for these occupations and won’t plunk down money towards those who engage in them.  The Harbingers can harbinger all they want, but not on my dime.  I’m on to them—especially after reading this article over the weekend.  I may have frittered a few anxious coins away lately, but I’ll be investing the rest of my psychic capital in something else.   Like joy.   It’s simply the anti-patriarchal thing to do.   Every time I take Seneca for a walk, I usually climb up away from the river, up East Avenue, to Red Wing’s Oakwood Cemetery.  As we pass through the stone gate, I always read the inscription engraved inconspicuously into the limestone walls:  “Til Morning Break and the Shadows Fade Away.”  I’ve always thought it lovely, but for years have had no idea what inspired the phrase.   Then the other day I was paging through a Tasha Tudor book on Christmas and the last page was dedicated to one of the writings that had inspired her own philsopy of life.   It was Fra Giovanni’s letter to his friend Countess Allagia Aldobrandeschi, written, appropriately enough, on Christmas Eve 1513. You probably know it, but I offer it up today as a reminder to anyone who has been feeling a bit soul-harbinged lately.   I am your friend and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not got, but there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see - and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look! Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by the covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, touch the angel's hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Our joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts. Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty - beneath its covering - that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage, then, to claim it, that is all. But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are all pilgrims together, wending through unknown country, home. And so, at this time, I greet you. Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.  comment []10:16:43 AM

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