daily wisdom

How can you live sweetly amid the vexatious things, the irritating things, the multitude of little worries and frets, which lie all along your way, and which you cannot evade?  You cannot at present change your surroundings.  Whatever kind of life you are to live, must be lived amid precisely the experiences in which you are now moving.  Here you must win your victories and suffer your defeats.  No restlessness or discontent can change your lot.  Others may have other circumstances surrounding them, but here are yours.  You had better make up your mind to accept what you cannot alter.  You can live a beautiful life in the midst of your present circumstances.  -J.R. Miller in Daily Strength for Daily Needs

On Chesil Beach

I've been reading a few pages of On Chesil Beach tonight, a novella by Ian McEwan that I have come to cherish. My beloved sister-in-law recommended it, championing its tragic beauty and insisting that I would certainly appreciate it. I'd read Atonement, so I was familiar with Ian McEwan, and there is nothing nicer than reading something that a family member or friend was impressed or touched by. Not the most uplifting story, in fact, On Chesil Beach is downright depressing. It's the briefest of stories, essentially describing the first evening spent between a newly married couple and its shocking, sudden end. I almost feel silly writing a brief synopsis, because there really aren't appropriate words to adequately express the aching poignancy that pervades the novella. It makes my heart hurt. I'm going to include several passages, some that are quite long, but I just couldn't eliminate any of them.

The first passage is the one that nestled in my mind immediately, and even when I haven't picked up the book in a while, I remember it with amazing clarity. It's such a lovely depiction of innocent first love, that time in the earliest days of a new and exciting romance when you're not quite sure what the other is thinking. You only know that your mind is completely absorbed and enamored by them, and that you can't quite reveal all of yourself yet.

...he found Florence waiting for him in the shadow of the pavilion. She knew his hours, and had taken an early train and walked from Henley toward the Stonor Valley, with a one-inch-to-the-mile map in her hand and a couple of oranges in a canvas satchel. For half an hour she had been watching him as he marked out the far boundary. Loving him from a distance, she said when they kissed. This was one of the exquisite moments of their early love, when they went slowly, arm in arm, back up the glorious avenue, walking in the center of the lane to take full possession. Now that it was inevitable, the prospect of her encounter with his mother and the cottage no longer seemed important. The shadows the lime trees cast were so deep they appeared bluish black in the brilliant light, and the heath was thick with fresh grasses and wildflowers. He showed off his knowledge of their country names and even found, by luck, by the roadside, a clump of Chiltern gentians. They picked just one. They saw a yellow jackhammer, a green finch, and then a sparrowhawk flashed by, cutting a narrow angle around a blackthorn tree. She did not know the names even of common birds like these, but she said she was determined to learn. She was exultant from the beauty of her walk and the clever route she had chosen, leaving the Stonor Valley to go along the narrow farm track into lonely Bix Bottom, past the ruined ivy-covered church of St. James, up the wooded slopes to the common at Maidensgrove, where she discovered an immense expanse of wildflowers, then through the beech woods to Pishill Bank, where a little brick-and-flint church and its churchyard were poised so beautifully on the side of the hill. As she described each place-and he knew them all so well-he imagined her there, on her own, walking toward him for hours, stopping only to frown at her map. All for him. What a gift! And he had never seen her so happy, or so pretty. She had tied back her hair with a scrap of black velvet, she wore black jeans and plimsolls, and a white shirt, through a buttonhole of which she had threaded a rakish dandelion. As they walked toward the cottage she kept tugging on his grass-stained arm for another kiss, though of the lightest sort, and for once he happily, or at least calmly, accepted that they would go no further. After she peeled her remaining orange for them to share along the way, her hand was sticky in his. They were innocently thrilled by her clever surprise, and their lives seemed hilarious and free, and the whole weekend lay before them.

The next few passages are small, just little bits that immediately resonated with me during my first reading.

He drew her closer, until their noses were almost touching and their faces went dark. He said, 'So did you think then it was love at first sight?' His tone was lighthearted and mocking, but she decided to take him seriously. The anxieties she would face were still far off, though occasionally she wondered what it was she was heading toward. A month ago they had told each other they were in love, and that was both a thrill and afterward, for her, a cause of one night of half waking, of vague dread that she had been impetuous and let go of something important, given something away that was not really hers to give. But it was too interesting, too new, too flattering, too deeply comforting to resist, it was a liberation to be in love and say so, and she could only let herself go deeper.

It is shaming sometimes, how the body will not, or cannot, lie about emotion. Who, for decorum's sake, has ever slowed his heart, or muted a blush?

When the reader is given the history of Edward, the earnest groom, we learn of the tragic event that befell his mother. The passage describing her accident is a perfect example of the expertise of the writer.

There is a certain kind of confident traveler who likes to open the carriage door just before the train has stopped in order to step out into the platform with a little running skip. Perhaps by leaving the train before its journey has ended, he asserts his independence-he is no passive lump of freight. Perhaps he invigorates a memory of youthfulness, or is simply in such a hurry that every second matters. The train braked, possibly a little harder than usual, and the door swung out from this traveler's grasp. The heavy metal edge struck Marjorie Mayhew's forehead with sufficient force to fracture her skull and dislocate in an instant her personality, intelligence, and memory. Her coma lasted just under a week. The traveler, described by eyewitnesses as a distinguished-looking City gent in his sixties, with bowler, rolled umbrella and newspaper, scuttled away from the scene-the young woman, pregnant with twins, sprawled on the ground among a few scattered toys-and disappeared forever into the streets of Wycombe, with all his guilt intact, or so Lionel said he hoped.

"...with all his guilt intact."-Those words, and that passage, while very well written, cause me to cringe and twist with sadness.

Finally, the last lines of the novella...I'm not going to write the entire last page, because I would hope anyone who reads my post who hasn't read the book might be tempted to read it. Now, I would be remiss if I didn't make perfectly clear that the story is about two conflicted characters who each have burdens to bear. In other words, they have issues! Particularly Florence! While that fact hangs over the novella like a thick grey cloud, I want to illuminate the beautifully written passages, which certain apply to life and love, no matter the context.

Even in his sixties, a large, stout man with receding white hair and a pink, healthy face, he kept up the long hikes. His daily walk still took in the avenue of limes, and in good weather he would take a circular route to look at the wildflowers on the common at Maidensgrove or the butterflies in the nature reserve in Bix Bottom, returning through the beech woods to Pishill church, where, he thought, he too would one day be buried. Occasionally, he would come to a forking of the paths deep in a beech wood and idly think that this was where she must have paused to consult her map that morning in August, and he would imagine her vividly, only a few feet and forty years away, intent on finding him. Or he would pause by a view over the Stoner Valley and wonder whether this was where she stopped to eat her orange. At last he could admit to himself that he had never met anyone he loved as much, that he had never found anyone, man or woman, who matched her seriousness. Perhaps if he had stayed with her, he would have been more focused and ambitious about his own life, he might have written those history books. It was not his kind of thing at all, but he knew that the Ennismore Quartet was eminent, and was still a revered feather of the classical music scene. He would never attend the concerts, or buy, or even look at, the boxed sets of Beethoven or Schubert. He did not want to see her photograph and discover what the years had wrought, or hear about the details of her life. He preferred to preserve her as she was in his memories, with the dandelion in her buttonhole and the piece of velvet in her hair, the canvas bag across her shoulder, and the beautiful strong-boned face with its wide and artless smile. When he thought of her, it rather amazed him, that he had let that girl with her violin go. Now, of course, he saw that her self-effacing proposal was quite irrelevant. All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them. Love and patience-if only he had had them both at once-would surely have seen them both through.

Those words are hard to follow, so I won't even try..

Solitude

I don't usually find poetry as enthralling as a good novel, though I have always wished that I taken a class or two when I had the chance. I do love Edna St. Vincent Millay (as evidenced by an earlier post), and I've also been captivated by Tennyson and John Donne. One poem that I find most unforgettable, however, came from an artist considerably less distinguished and familiar: Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

I don't know a great deal about Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and I don't want to dwell too much on the little information that I garnered from Wikipedia (certainly not a reputable literary source!), but what is certain is that "Solitude", the poem that inspired this post, is her most well-known poem. Another gem that I discovered courtesy of my mom, the first time I encountered the poem I was in high school. While my memory of that day is fuzzy, I think I had experienced one of those typical melodramatic days so common for a young high school girl, and I had been complaining to my mother about it. She immediately quoted the first lines of "Solitude" and told me that I should find and read the whole poem. Now, I can't count the times I've read the poem. Here it is:

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.

I've always thought that this poem was full of wisdom, practical advice, even, for how to achieve the most happiness out of your life and relationships. At the time of my first reading, I was probably pining away after a silly high school boy. Little did I know that the most successful way to sustain a relationship was to exude happiness and contentment with myself. "Rejoice, and men will seek you; grieve, and they turn and go..." I'm not saying those lines are SPECIFICALLY referring to the nature of a man, because it's really true of everyone. I certainly don't want to belittle or minimize the sadness or loneliness that we often feel, but the inherent truth, so evident, particularly in the second stanza of this poem, is we really must struggle through our hardest times alone, at least in spirit. Even the closest of friends or best of mothers or sweetest of spouses can only go so far to carry our burdens. Ultimately, we have to overcome the inevitable difficulties of life ourselves, before we can return to our natural, happy states. I am certainly not suggesting this is an easy task, rather, that what the poem suggests is a good way to look at life. Know that there will be difficult times, but when you accept them and seek out happiness and fulfillment again, they'll return all the more quickly.

Gilead

Gilead is a novel that I read more than two years ago, and though I don't remember all of its details, I can remember how profoundly touched I was as I slowly made my way through the last pages. Though it falls squarely in the category of serious, Pulitzer-Prize winning novels that I often proudly profess having read, it is more than just a highly acclaimed success. To even refer to it in that way gives me a bad, blasphemous feeling. Not a whole lot "happens" throughout the story-no big action sequences or dramatic events. It is essentially a letter, written by a reverend to his young son, an attempt to share a family history marked by work in the evangelical churches of rural Kansas as well as the contentious yet loving relationships between fathers and sons. The experience of reading the book is truly indescribable. It's as though you don't realize that the words, simple yet beautiful and nuanced, are quietly seeping into your soul, making a deep impression. I found my eyes welling with tears as I finished, and at that moment I didn't quite know why. I suppose it's because it's much more than a letter to a son, but almost more like a prayer of gratefulness for a life that has been difficult, but tremendously rewarding, as any life should be. The following excerpt marks the moment that my tears began, as I sat in a sunny seat on a New Jersey Transit train bound for the city (I always love it when I'm able to remember where I was at the moment of finishing a great book).

I can tell you this, that if I'd married some rosy dame and she had given me ten children and they had each given me ten grandchildren, I'd leave them all, on Christmas Eve, on the coldest night of the world, and walk a thousand miles just for the sight of your face, your mother's face. And if I never found you, my comfort would be in that hope, my lonely and singular hope, which could not exist in the whole of Creation except in my heart and in the heart of the Lord. That is just a way of saying I could never thank God sufficiently for the splendor He has hidden from the world-your mother excepted, of course-and revealed to me in your sweetly ordinary face.

My eyes fill once more as I read the sweet words again...

Les Miserables

I usually pride myself on my unwillingness to "quit" a book that has proved difficult to get through or is prone to long digressions that distract the reader from the central plot. There were times last year when I feared that Les Miserables would meet that fate. The French classic is quite the tome, and while I knew from its earliest pages that it was beautifully written, and utterly deserving of its literary notoriety, it was no easy feat to finish.

I began the novel sometime in March, which I remember distinctly because I visited New York and Princeton then, and I was able to enjoy the reading on the commute that I always cherished when I lived in Manhattan. Needless to say, I continued to plod through it in fits and starts, finally turning to the last page on our family vacation to the Bahamas for Thanksgiving. I don't know that I have ever felt quite so victorious! Not only was I overwhelmed with a certain pride in myself for persevering, I was rewarded immensely by the emotionally satisfying conclusion and utter certainty that I had just finished one of the best novels that I had ever encountered.

The protagonist Jean Valjean will be forever cemented in my memory as an incredible example of humanity, a perfect representative of someone who has struggled against injustice and the inevitable turn of the soul towards blackness and triumphed over it, finding a way to reconcile terrible circumstances with a peaceful life. He is perfect proof for a myriad of life lessons: that one can forget past mistakes; that one can make life better, even if resources are few; that hard work and conscientiousness are virtues that will result in some rewards; that love is powerful enough for sustenance...

There are an abundance of passages and quotes from the novel that I remember stirring my heart while I read, but the few I am going to include now, from the conclusion, are worth cherishing forever.

These lines all occur in the final scenes of the book, when Cosette and Marius visit Valjean, discovering that he is on his deathbed.

"If you take me back, Monsieur Pontmercy, will that make me any different from the man I am? No. God thinks as you and I do, and he has not changed his mind. It is better for me to go. Death is a very sensible arrangement. God knows better than we do what is good for us. That you should be happy, Marius Pontmercy and Cosette, that youth should marry with the morning, that you two children should have lilac and nightingales around you, that your life should be like a lawn bathed in sunshine and glowing with enchantment; and that I, who am no longer good for anything, should now die, that is surely right."

"Because things do not always please us," said Valjean, "that is no reason for reproaching God."

"Cosette, the time has come for me to tell you your mother's name. It was Fantine. You must not forget it, Fantine, and you must bow your head whenever you speak it. She loved you greatly and she suffered greatly. She was as rich in sorrow as you are in happiness. That is how God evens things out. He watches us all from above and knows what he is doing among his splendid stars. And now I must leave you, my children. Love one another always. There is nothing else that matters in this world except love..."

Cosette and Marius fell on their knees on either side of him, stifling their tears. His hands rested on their heads, and did not move again. He lay back with his head turned up to the sky, and the light from the two candlesticks fell upon his face.

The significance of the candlesticks is worth noting. Jean Valjean, after being wrongly accused and serving prison time in the dreadful prison Toulon, escapes and is determined to start anew, despite the damage that has been wreaked upon his humanity while in prison. He is the beneficiary of the hospitality and kindness of a village bishop, the owner of the candlesticks. When Valjean leaves the home of the bishop his criminal urges overpower him and he takes the candlesticks, planning to pawn them for money. He is accidentally apprehended shortly after his departure, and the police take him straight to the bishop's home, demanding whether or not the candlesticks belong to him. The bishop immediately claims that he gave them to Jean Valjean. This generosity and forgiveness, an act of mercy, prove to instigate a rebirth in Jean Valjean's character, and truly make him the man that he turns out to be.