Through A Glass Brightly

Stained Glass Windows in Wells Cathedral, England

Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay, "Experience" (written in 1844) is full of great observations:

"The years teach much which the days never know."

"From the mountain you see the mountain."

"Five minutes of today are worth as much to me, as five minutes in the next millennium."

"Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are."

"The great gifts are not got by analysis. Everything good is on the highway."

"Experience" also contains many beautiful descriptions of color and light. For Emerson, uncertainty and brightness go hand in hand. We live our lives almost not knowing what is happening to us: "Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes . . . All things swim and glitter. Our life is not so much threatened as our perception" (141). It is not lack of light, however, that impairs our inner vision; it is not through a glass darkly that we try to see. Instead, our distorted vision causes all to "glitter." Distortion, but not gloom, not dullness. We are in the light not in the dark.

Emerson unites illusion, perception, and limitation: "Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus" (144). We hold beads of experience to the light, watching them become prisms, deciding which of the many colors we feel most moved by, which bead, which color we will choose. To choose but one hue is to choose a dream, an illusion, but such is our inability to perceive experience in more than one way at a time.

Writing in France a few years later (1857), Gustave Flaubert -- in a section sadly omitted from the final version of his novel -- would picture Madame Bovary standing before the colored windows at Vaubyessard. She looks out at the countryside through variously colored window panes in a passage strangely reminiscent of Emerson's colored beads and lenses. Moving as from dream to dream, Emma Bovary looks at the illusion offered by each pane. Through the blue pane, all seems sad; through the yellow pane everything grows smaller, lighter, and warmer; through the green pane everything she sees appears leaden and frozen. She remains longest in front of the red glass, looking at a landscape that frightens her, until she averts her eyes to the ordinary daylight of a transparent pane.

Like Emerson's image of the many - colored beads, this picture of Madame Bovary offers both variation and restriction. In an expansive description of light and brightness, Emerson illustrates our limited ability to fully understand experience and offers Surprise as a method of perceiving life. He talks of both the uncertainty and the blessedness of Surprise. Our perception may be obscured, and we may be isolated from comprehension of a grand design, but it is, as Emerson portrays it, a panoramic isolation:

"Life is a series of surprises, and would not be worth taking or keeping, if it were not. God delights to isolate us every day, and hide from us the past and the future. We would look about us, but with grand politeness God draws down an impenetrable screen of purest sky, and another behind us of purest sky. You will not remember, God seems to say, and you will not expect." (152)

The reader cannot help but see this "pure" sky as one of the clearest, brightest blue. Despite isolation and limitation, this is not a vision of darkness or despair. It is a climactic image of color and light that dispels the gloom of our imperfect understanding. Emerson offers hope and affirmation amidst uncertainty and fragmentation. A human being, says Emerson, "is a golden impossibility" (152). Through our sleep - filled eyes we can glimpse the truth of our experience, glittering through a colored lens, on the horizon where small but distinct we see something as beautiful as our own natures.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Selected Prose and Poetry, 2nd Edition, Ed. Reginald L. Cookk, (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969) 141 - 161.

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (Norton Critical Edition), Ed. and Trans. Paul de Man, (New York: Norton, 1965), 269 - 70.

P.S.
Next post will be on Saturday, November 28th
Between now and then, be sure to read
my shorter, almost daily blog posts on
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com
(more Bill Bryson, autumnal poetry, etc.)

Candy and Poison

Halloween Haiku
Such little steps
In love of candy
Knocking at my door!

by student,
Patrick McDonough
Community College
of Philadelphia
Fall 1997







[Okay, forgive me. Here's some literary criticism.]

In the Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, French critic Julia Kristeva says that apocalyptic laughter is neither jovial nor joyful: " . . . laughter bursts out, facing abjection, and always originating at the same source, of which Freud had caught a glimpse: the gushing forth of the unconscious the repressed, suppressed pleasure, be it sex or death" (Kristeva 205-06).

This is the kind of laughter in Margaret Atwood's collection of very short stories, Murder in the Dark. One of the opening sketches, "Horror Comics," describes the darkly humorous after-school activities of two twelve-year-old girls. For instance, they like taking comic books from drugstores and reading them on the way home, "dramatizing the different parts, in radio voices with sound effects to show we were above it." Or on winter nights they enjoy throwing snowballs at unsuspecting grownups, "being careful to miss, doubling up with laughter because they didn't even know they were being aimed at" (Atwood 13).

When they accidentally hit a woman, they experience not the contrived horror of the lurid comic books but the true horror of abjection. Though they do not have the vocabulary to express what they have witnessed, the threatening glare of their angry victim does not escape them: "We ran away, shrieking with guilty laughter, and threw ourselves backwards into a snowbank around the corner, holding our stomachs. . . . But we were terrified. It was the look on her face, pure hatred, real after all" (Atwood 13). Theirs is the laughter of fear and abjection, neither "trustful, nor sublime, nor enraptured by preexisting harmony. It is bare, anguished, and as fascinated as it is frightened" (Kristeva 206).

Likewise, the hilarity in these unsettling stories is bare, anguished, fascinating. It turns out that life is not all Tom, Betty, and Susan after all. I wonder if Dick and Jane would ever make poison, like the brother and sister in Atwood's story about "Making Poison"? Even Atwood wonders:

"Why did we make the poison in the first place? I can remember the glee with which we stirred and added, the sense of magic and accomplishment. Making poison is as much fun as making a cake. People like to make poison. If you don't understand this you will never understand anything" (Atwood 10).

[Now, was that so bad?]

P.S.
Next post will be on Saturday, November 14th
Between now and then, be sure to read
my shorter, almost daily blog posts on
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com
(more Margaret Atwood, Bill Bryson, Halloween, etc.)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Tom, Betty & Susan In The Autumn

From My Little Blue Story Book, 1953
It's that neighborhood time of year again, as anyone who was raised on Little Red, Blue, and Green Story Books can tell you. For some it may have been Dick, Jane, and Sally; for others it was Tom, Betty, and Susan. You know who I mean! And you know who you are! Can we ever really forget that mesmerizing presentation of the post - World War II American Dream?

Trick - or - treating, picking apples, raking leaves: our little reading group pals did all these things in a safe, orderly autumnal world. Every autumn it seems that our neighborhood becomes a page right out of those nostalgic Little Books, complete with big old trees, sidewalks, harvest - time flower beds, and pumpkins on the porches. Remember how it was nearly always fall in those stories? Certainly never winter, rarely spring or summer.

When I started first grade back in 1963 (at the romantically named "Eugene Field Elementary"), the school was in the process of upgrading from the 1940s reading series to the newly published 1960s imprints. Already absurdly nostalgic at the age of 6, I somehow discovered the old worn out books from 1948, '53, and '57 -- lying unused on a dusty classroom shelf. I was irresistibly drawn to these old old copies and wanted nothing to do with the new series. However magical the updated editions were, the older books were even more so! I relentlessly implored my teacher to let me use them instead of the newer set. Sensing their artistic appeal to a little girl's imagination, she kindly rescued an entire set from the discard pile just for me.

Oh how I loved those images and that glimpse into the perfect life. What I admired most about Mother was her set of glass (we always had plastic or aluminum) mixing bowls, one in each color: green, yellow, blue, red! Wow! Where did she get those? I always wondered what was wrong with our family that we didn't measure up to those flawless Americans. Betty and Susan always had matching coats and dresses, sweater sets, or a new set of play clothes, whereas we were always wearing hand me down corduroys from our cousins. It was like Robert Frost and the Garden of Eden and Norman Rockwell all rolled into one, except that I was standing just outside the bubble. I was envious but incredibly intrigued.

How could I ever get inside? I would need a mother who didn't go out to work and a father who wore a hat!

Ah well.

Now, of course, no one uses the hopelessly simplistic and outdated "Readers" any more (though collectors can find used copies on the web). Still, a trace of those good old days lingers whenever Halloween rolls around, with plenty of unique costumes, trick - or - treating and all the whimsical trappings your heart desires -- pumpkin soap by the kitchen sink and little pumpkin candles in the window sills, miniature candies, stickers, cookie cutters, spider webs, jack - o - lanterns, even orange twinkle lights! Dick, Jane, and Sally may have gone down in history; yet the ghosts of Tom, Betty, and Susan come each year on the autumn wind to walk home after school and play in the leaves along the way.

A NEW SET OF MATCHING TOWELS FOR THE THREE CHILDREN!

All Illustrations by Ruth Steed
(Bowls & Towels from My Little Green Story Book, 1957)

Superstitions for the Fall: Whiskers, Eyelashes, Dreams, and Wishes

Ceremonious Marcus, A Cat Of Amazing Whiskers

If you have the Agnes Browne soundtrack, today would be a good day to set your CD player to "repeat" and listen to Laura Smith's sad, sad version of "My Bonnie," over and over again (as in over the ocean, over the sea). It is so perfect for this time of year when the mornings are cold and yellow leaves drift down onto the driveway, one or two at a time, confirming autumn's inevitability.

I never tire of listening:

The leaves haven't even started falling
Already there's such a chill in the air
Someone's got a kite on the wind . . .
Well, I've got a tramp's whisker that tells me you still care

I had been puzzling for some time over that mysterious "tramp's whisker" in Smith's song, when I came across a seemingly similar reference in KT Tunstall's "Through the Darkness" (on her CD Eye to the Telescope). Somehow, the time - honored custom of blowing a fallen eyelash off your little finger was unknown to me until I heard Tunstall singing the words "wishes on eyelashes fail." Then, as so often happens when something new enters your frame of reference, I began encountering the eyelash motif everywhere I turned! But the tramp's whisker? No luck. My thought, however, is that it may be a bit of folklore along the same lines of wishing on an eyelash (?).

I found some helpful explanations on The Mudcat Cafe . One writer thought the Tramp's Whisker might be the name of a flower; another claims that it's the real whisker of a lighthouse keeper. There's also the childhood pet theory: that the whisker once belonged to a dear old dog named Tramp or is perhaps a keepsake from a long lost cat. Another contributor writes that "tramp's whisker" is an old expression for some very slight, yet worrying little thing that just won't go away. Most importantly, no matter what the objective correlative, the tramp's whisker remains a homely image of loss and separation.

Another wishful superstition that I was unacquainted with until recently is described by contemporary Scottish poet, Helen Lamb in her poem "Spell of the Bridge." It seems that you should keep quiet when walking over a bridge; otherwise, the bridge might hear your secrets and let them fall into the water:

. . . For the river would carry
Your hopes to the sea
To the net of a stranger
To the silt bed of dreams

Hold the wish on your tongue
As you cross
And on the far side
Let the wish go first

From The Thing That Mattered Most
(Black & White/Scottish Poetry Library, 2006)

I like to read these words and hear these songs on the first cloudy days when the summer goes. Give them a try. They won't exactly cheer you up, but as the seasons change, these wistful figures will enter your heart. Moving hopefully into a misty future, Lamb's character crosses the bridge guarding her wish with care; Tunstall's voice travels through darkness, as she looks over her shoulder, "To see what I'm leaving behind." And Smith's "My Bonnie" is ready to move on, into an icy world of global freezing:

Soon there'll be no difference between the land and the water
I can walk out on the ice to places I've never been
When I get as far as I can go
Oh, I'm gonna turn and throw my cares over my shoulder
Along with your memory
I'll just let it all float down the Gulf Stream

And I'll walk home singing
My bonny lies over the ocean
My bonny lies over the sea
My bonny lies over the ocean
C'mon bring back, bring back my bonny to me

P.S. Yes, it's true, I'm so old - fashioned that I still listen to actual CDs on an actual CD player right here in my kitchen!