Ninety

I did not go to the gym today.  I did go for a walk through the meadows with my ghost-dog Molly, to see all the consequences of so much water falling from the sky - water burbling down the dirt road, digging dongas, raising pond-lines, making mud and softening up the paths into spongy leaf-clung trails.

Babbling brook coursing down road.

Pond melting.

Actual buds about to burst into blossom!

Leaf-buds with a long way to go still.

Six pairs of geese honking their way home.

On our way from dropping off my car for its service this morning, little balls of ice were mixed in with the rain on the windscreen, and everywhere in the fields there were sad-looking cows and miserable horses standing in the cold and wet.  Tim said, "Oh, I love this, just think, it's the breakfast of all the plants, all this rain, it's the spring's breakfast, and soon everything will be growing and green!"  He is a rather enthusiastic man.

And in the bank, the teller said, "Oh well, another cold and horrible day!", so he told her his "breakfast" story and her eyes lit up and she smiled a great big grin, and when we left she said, "I love that breakfast story!  I'm going to tell everyone who comes in today that they shouldn't worry about the rain anymore. It's the spring's breakfast!" 

And later on Tim found some Tennis biscuits which must have been there since we got back from South Africa at the end of August, and which were hiding on the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard.  We were both very happy at this find, and we made Rooibos tea and ate our tennis biscuits and both floated off into South African nostalgia.  Tennis biscuits are the taste of childhood, the treat in your lunchbox at school, the delicious flavour of getting warm on the beach when you are a little shivering skeleton after staying in the sea too long, and your aunt wraps a big towel around you, gives you a good rub, hands you a tennis biscuit in one shaky hand, and a plastic mug with hot milky tea in the other, heavenly liquid that goes straight to your arteries and floods your body until you glow with it.  And later, when you are a parent, you do something you had never before felt possible, when your toddler generously hands you the soggy remains of his tennis biscuit, expecting you to gratefully eat it, you do. 

They are that good.

89

Oh this is hard going.  My sister loves the rain, and I do too, with all its life-giving abundance and its very wateriness, but when it goes on for days it feels as though the sky is crying and I cry along with the sad clouds.  The thought of having the discipline to write this blog for another 276 days is a heavy black gloom hanging over my head on this bleak day. 

I remember learning about the water cycle at school, and that there was a pretty picture which is probably everyone's first encounter with this phenomenon, looking something like this:

I remember thinking that this was why we got so much rain, because we lived right next to a mountain, Devil's Peak in Cape Town. According to the picture, it only rains over the mountain!  It was a revelation that the water I encountered was not new.  That it just went round and round in this amazing cycle, the same water, just changing form constantly, just like all the energy of the world.

It was the same type of epiphany as when I suddenly understood that the light from stars is actually old light, that the stars shining in our sky, the romantic impossibly numerous stars, might actually be long gone, dead suns.  It is only their little photons which they sent out all that time ago, finally striking the photoreceptors which send the signals to the optic nerve at the back of our eyes and finally to the visual cortex at the very back of the brain which creates the image we see.  Magnificent.  Such beautiful knowledge.

When I was young I loved walking in the rain. My dog and I would go for long solitary (the dog and I were of the same mind in this) rambles through our deserted suburb.  There would be few people out, as not many shared this desire for the knowledge of dripping hedges, singing trees, happy frogs, the luscious smells of wet grass and sodden soil, and your own intricate thoughts which seemed to flow easier with all that flowing on and around you. 

It had begun when I was quite small, four or five, and we would get cabin fever from the wet weather, so my dad would take me for long walks and teach me how to engineer dams in gutters in the back-roads, or in little streams in the veld.  Such streams only existed while the rain came down, then dried up soon after in the South African sun and wind.  Later in life I took my own children for similar walks, and we spent hours making dams with sticks and stones and mud, getting drenched in the process and happy as dripping seals.

We were in the city today and Tim always asks me which way I want him to drive home.  Today I chose Route 1, because we get to go over the Tobin Bridge, the enormously high bridge linking Boston and Chelsea, built between 1948 and 1950.

Tobin Bridge

I love bridges.  Such an incredible end-result of abstract thought, the problem of getting from here to there over a previously impossible obstacle, a chasm, a river, a stretch of ocean. My dad loved them too and always told me (in his protracted way of telling stories, inherited by his grandson Nicholas), how they were made.  He would explain how suspension bridges hold themselves up, or how the cantilevers on bridges like the Tobin work, which Benjamin Baker, the famous British civil engineer, demonstrated like this:

The Tobin Bridge spans the Mystic River, its highest point is 250ft (76m), and when you are travelling southbound on Route 1 over the bridge, you travel more than 100 ft (30m) from the top of the bridge to the tunnel exit into Charlestown.

High winds travel through the bridge by design, and you can feel the lift sometimes on rough days when you are near the toll-booths on the southbound level, the top deck of the bridge. 

It is so high so that ships can go by happily underneath, and its navigable waterway opening measures 340ft (103m) wide by 100ft (30m) high. 

85000 cars go over the Tobin every day, and here is a picture of the very first morning traffic.

Bridges span actual stumbling blocks, but of course bridges are also a wonderful metaphor for how to get over something in life, or be helped to, as in Bridge over Troubled Water, the wonderful song by Simon & Garfunkel. They also show our faith in the human being's ability to create these amazing structures, and the conviction that we have in crossing them, both literally and figuratively.

Footbridge over the Storm River Mouth, South Africa.

88

My dad was this age when he died.  He almost made it to 89, just about a month to go. He was a big strong old tree.  It took a lot of years to fell him.

We were going to get up early this morning to go to the gym, take the rubbish to the dump, and clean the house, but in fact, we got up so late that about half an hour later we had to leave to get to our lunch date in the city in time.

Tim went to California on business and arrived back yesterday evening.  I missed coming home to him.  I said, "Hello!" cheerfully to the house as I came in at the door.  I missed sleeping with his arm wrapped around my waist.  I put a hot-water-bottle with a cushion at my back and pretended it was him.  I missed seeing his face.  He was often in my thoughts and the entire long day of teaching on Friday was filled with little glittering moments of excitement when I remembered that I would see him that evening.  We are very different people, but I am glad every day to be in my thirtieth year together with him.

This evening there was a celebration of poetry at my school, called Le Printemps des Poetes, Springtime of the poets.  It is a concert with poetry and music and art, a francophone event that began in 1999 and takes place mainly in France and Quebec, but there are little celebrations like it all over the world where people speak French, I expect.  Each year there is a different theme.  We have been celebrating for four years now, and it is always astonishing to me to see the talents of all these people, and especially of my students.  One girl sang La Vie en Rose accompanied by a trio, a pianist, double bassist and a trumpeter.  Such passion, it made me cry. 

The theme was The Heart of the Arts, and this is the painting I finished for that:

Ritual

Day 87

"I act as a sponge. I soak it up and squeeze it out in ink every two weeks." Janet Flanner, a columnist who was the New Yorker's Paris correspondent for fifty years.

On the BBC last night while I was brushing my teeth, I heard an interview with Jamal Mahjoub, who writes novels under the pseudonym Parker Bilal, a series of mysteries about a Sudanese detective.   Mahjoub has a Sudanese father and a British mother, lived in Cairo for years and now lives in Barcelona.  He said that being an outsider is actually a good thing, because it makes you much more aware of things, of how people act, how they see you, about all the nuanced differences of your everyday life.  

It made me think about how this is very true.  My whole life has, for one reason or another, been spent mostly as an outsider, not a crazy faraway outsider, but definitely not one of the easygoing "normal" people, if there are any of those.  I am not bragging that I am some amazing original or anything like that, just that certain circumstances have made it so.  And so I have been observant, and somewhat thoughtful.  

And now because I am writing this blog I am often aware of everyday events as potentials for subjects.  It is as though one's awareness is heightened, one experiences life twice, during the day in real time, and then in hindsight, writing about it. 

And though I would dearly love to continue this idea, I can't keep my eyes open.  As Nick used to sing, to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, "What a day, oh what a day!"

The Outsider is close to my heart and I will discuss it, but until then, here are some beautiful images of  my trees:

Lone Ancient Apple Tree in second meadow

Frost flowers (through my windscreen/shield)

The mysterious Big Tree where a huffing puffing creature lives.

 

The edge of the sky.

Laden.

Tree with decorations

86

Eighty-six. How old my mother was when she died.

I went for a walk on the cold beach with my ghost-dog Molly this evening, beautiful waves, my old ocean, and a light on the shining sand that made me gasp in wonder when I turned around to see it.

There were happy friendly dogs chasing each other, or a ball or frisbee, or just running for the joy of it, for the big empty space where you can feel your legs loping, your body singing with the speed of it all.

And when I came back over the little wooden bridge, there were two pairs of Mallards in the water below me, dabbling away, chatting amiably with one another.  All of a sudden there was a swoop of wings and another duck swept over my head and landed in the water.  He started swimming excitedly towards the group, until one of the males quacked loudly at him and he turned around and began swimming hurriedly in the opposite direction.  I wonder what he said to the stranger?  "Bugger-off! These are OUR women!"

Mallards pair off in October and November and stay together until the start of the nesting season, which is in April.  They are like the pigeon, the fox and coyote, which have thrived in urban areas, and because they need a safe spot for their eggs, they will often lay them in window-boxes or on roof-gardens, where the ducklings need human intervention in order to leave the nest!  The ducklings are precocial, which means that they can do more or less whatever the adults do almost as soon as they are born, like swimming, but they can't fly off rooftops quite yet.

Apparently they learn about migration from their parents, because they don't always stay with them until everyone flies off, but they still know the way.  Mallards which are raised in captivity somehow lose that ability, that instinct.  You can't help but wonder about long duck-language conversations about which way is the best, and where is a good place to stop, and "are we there yet?" questions.   

On Thursdays I Skype with my daughters. It is something I always look forward to, so lovely to see and talk to my darley girls, even though I can't hold them.

A few years ago Skype didn't work in Jessica's area, or there was not enough bandwidth. And the phone line was horrendous, so Jess and I would have these frustrating phone conversations where we couldn't really hear one another, or one of us could hear but the other was listening through fuzzy cotton-wool.  If you concentrated extremely hard you could sometimes get the gist of a sentence and make a pertinent answer, but sometimes after a while I would give up and just say, "Really?", or "Mmmhmmm," because I felt it was so tedious and soul-destroying for Jess to have to repeat herself all the time. 

My mother phoned me for a weekly catch-up every Sunday night, and I have continued the tradition, although I get to do it twice a week.  My mother would call and I would spend an hour or so chatting about my children, and myself, because that is what you do with your mother, she wants to hear everything, she is proud of the granddaughter who is doing well in piano-playing, happy to hear which baby has started to clap, sympathises with the latest exploits of the older granddaughter, and laughs at the story of the other baby's first tantrum.  And then I ask her about her week, and hear how she went to Book club, and what she is busy knitting at the moment, about the lace-making which she learned at the tender age of seventy, of her friends who pop in, of outings with my cantankerous old dad whose driving is getting worse.

Today I heard of a very sweet pigeon who has adopted the veterinary surgery where Jess the animal-whisperer works, after they fixed his injury.  He waits on the roof of the church hall near the office, and when they open for the day Frikkie the pigeon marches in and takes over.  Jess did a very good rendition of the sound of his clicking feet on the floor or the counter, and how he cocks his little head to assess the situation.  I could envisage Frikkie, undeterred as he tries to make friends with the decidedly antagonistic parrot,  and how he is equally friendly to and unafraid of man and dog.  A credit to his species.

Talking to Emma later we somehow remember the knitting she had to do for school in Standard Four, when she was eleven, of which I have already written somewhere in this blog. Tim had to learn how to knit because he is left-handed and then he could teach the leftie Emma who by this stage had a mental block against the hapless knitting needles.   Each pupil in her class had to learn the basic steps and then use what they had learned to create a knitted article, like a scarf (very popular) or a jersey/sweater, which some ambitious children attempted.  Emma ended up after a few months with a small rectangle, about the size of a photograph, which I judiciously helped her roll up and sew together into the shape of an owl, if you were very imaginative and noticed the button-eyes and cinched "ear-tufts".

What we hadn't realised was that a "show" had been arranged where the girls all got to model their new articles of clothing, so the parents had to attend and everyone was so proud to see their daughter swanning across the stage in all her hand-made finery, neck wrapped elegantly in the knitted scarf, or flouncing across in the lovely pink jersey she had made, and then there was Emma, stylishly modelling a tiny knitted owl on her outstretched hand. 

Day 85

A blustery day of freezing gales.

High winds and a blizzard on Cape Cod, although the snowstorm sailed right past us this time.

Driving down to school I noticed all the leaves dancing.  Around every corner was a new celebration, all the ancient leaves of brown and russet, which had been lying under their winter blanket of snow, woke from their long sleep to shimmy and spin in the crazy currents of air.  These rusty grandmothers and skeletal grandfathers whirled and fluttered, glistened in the shining sun, spumed like water-spouts then fell about gleefully.

And deep inside the trees, and just under the soil's surface, the green listened, spoke to the pink and white, told the babies, the new generation who are about to blossom, that their grandparents were dancing for them, the dance of spring, listen.......listen.........

The dance of Spring

The man-made thing is this drawing by me.  A woman-made thing, in fact.  And the colours did not come out very well in the photograph.  Much of the white is spring-green.  You will just have to imagine the green, just as we are doing right now, waiting for those buds to plume forth!

Die vier-en-tagtigste dag

Another momentous day.  Tim and Nicholas became naturalized citizens of the United States today, using Whatsapp to take the other four members of their family with them through the process.  Tim said there were over 700 people there and as a result it was much noisier and harder to organise, so the officers were not as friendly as those at my ceremony. The seats were also awfully narrow and hard, so that an adult man couldn't sit up straight in them without touching the person next to him.  This meant that they spent a couple of very uncomfortable hours hunched forward waiting for the event to begin.

So three down, one to go, and hopefully one day the other two and their people will be at one of these shindigs!

Whatsapp is my favourite app, an instant messaging app that has 400 million users per month. It uses a customized version of the open standard Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), costs $1.99, and then forever after you can text your daughters and sons and sisters in foreign lands for free!  Which is a massive saving!

It is the only way Emma and I could communicate when she was in hospital just before Luna was born when I was not allowed in.  Through Whatsapp I have seen bathtimes, the first delicious taste of real food as well as the subsequent meltdown, the weighing of the baby, and daily photographs of my little darlings, which of course do not make up for not actually being on the same continent, let alone in the same town, but which go a little way to assuage the sadness of long distances.  Sometimes we whatsapp about serious topics for ages, when it is not convenient to skype, like the middle of the night when everyone is sleeping. Texting is silent, enabling huge loud conversations to take place in total quiet, over this funny little pocket computer. 
 

Luna in the pink.

Ella in a pink hat.

These are my pictures of my granddaughters from Whatsapp today.  Luna is developing an independence which will test her parents' patience, no doubt, getting very cross when they help her hold the handlebars on the tricycle, for example.  And Ella is her own sweet little person, sitting proudly with her new straight back. 

Blood of my blood.

83

It is -8C  this morning, and it's supposed to be spring. A sparkling sunny morning, as the rainbow-maker on the window causes little rainbows to course around the room, and all the indoor plants radiate their greenery.

But the news is sad, it has now been determined that the Malaysian flight 370 went down in the South Indian Ocean, Russia is arguing with the rest of America and Europe, and it's 25 years since the Exxon Valdez went aground and destroyed the Prince William Sound, killing "as many as 250,000 seabirds, at least 2,800 sea otters, approximately 12 river otters, 300 harbour seals, 247 Bald Eagles, and 22 orcas and an unknown number of salmon and herring." -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill

And your heart takes that deep aching plunge into despair.  What is to be done?  Why is Obama fighting Putin when nothing has been done about Syria? The poor relatives of the passengers on the plane, hoping against hope that their people were still somehow safe and alive.  I myself use oil so I am partially responsible for Exxon Valdez and BP and all the other constant "spills" of the world.  Until I live in a house which is self-sufficient, like this one that Californian students have dreamed up, until I stop driving a car, until I stop using many products which use oil in their manufacture or in their journey to my door, I am as guilty as the next person.  And so, sadness and helplessness.

Otters are the most wonderful creatures, full of life and play, similar to children. The name stems from the old English word "wodr", which  also gave birth to the word, "water".  This is very apt as otters are all semi-aquatic animals, the sea otter spending most of its life in the ocean.

River otters

Sea otter.

 All over the world otters have been hunted for their pelts since the 1700s, almost to extinction.  They are protected now in Europe but the Asian otter is almost extinct.  Their skins were made into coats and mittens especially for the upper classes, in China and in England.  In England, the prized trophy that hunters would take from the otters was the penis bone, which was used as a tie-pin.  This is one of those indescribably stupid and awful things like gavage, that I just don't understand.  Apparently some animals, like otters, have penis-bones, which assist them in mating for a long time, and for men it was probably a status symbol and also a symbol of their own stiff manhood. Just so sad that the otters had to die for that, just like the rhinos for their horns, and the poor little sea-horses used in chinese medicine to cure impotence.

Otters enjoy themselves, playing just for the sake of it, like many other animals. They have been observed forming slides and then all taking turns to slide down into the water, doing it again and again, just like children.  They also have a complicated social system, and live on average about 15 or 16 years.

I heard a story on the radio the other day where two women were interviewed as they had been volunteers in Cordova on Prince William Sound, after the Exxon Mobil spill in Alaska.  They said that every day they had just gone home and cried, the work had been so hard and so long and so many animals had died.  There was  a long silence as they remembered.  And then one of the women said, "But then, one day, about 3 months later, we took all these cages filled with cleaned and healthy otters down to the beach, and opened all the doors, and there was such a happy milling and mewling and frantic rush towards the ocean, and in they all piled and swam and played and were home!  And that was a happy day, that day we cried tears of joy."

What wonderful women.  What marvellous otters.

When I talked to Matthew in Senegal on Sunday he told me that the latest book he is reading is American Gods by Neil Gaiman, and it is now his favourite book.  I have loved several of Gaiman's books but have never read that one.  So I have put it on my list.

Matt mentioned that there is a wonderful part where he talks of dealing with these awful feelings of despair like an oyster deals with an aggravating piece of sand,  "We draw our lines around these moments of pain, and remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered with a smooth, safe, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearl-like, from our souls without real pain."  Which is a lovely way of putting it, because we feel the hurt, we experience the full extent of the pain, whatever it is, and then we deal with it, by covering it up, even though it is still with us, it sits there not able to harm us anymore. (Psychologists need to teach people how to do this, don't they?)

And so I will concentrate on the good, like the good women who helped the otters, the fact that people invent rainbow-makers to delight us, and the radiant green leaves of my inside trees which will soon spread to the world outside, when spring flies in, on its little green wings.   

Day 82

I went for a short walk and hauled wood, yesterday gym and 2.60 miles.

The going down of the sun must have been extremely frightening before the discovery of fire.  If even now, in the 21st century, the bogeymen come out after dark, imagine the dire possibility of sabre-tooths and other nocturnal hunters for our long-ago ancestors.  Now we can switch on electric lights, close the curtains to block out the night, lock our doors and windows, and bask safely in our own little patches of brightness for as long as we want to.

When I was little, I was allowed to read in bed after my bath, and then at a certain time my mother would come upstairs to kiss me goodnight and warn me not to put the light back on to read, because I was supposed to go to sleep.  I didn't put the light back on, but most nights, as soon as she had vanished down the stairs and the coast was clear, I would go and sit on the floor in the hall and read by the light which was always left on there. Such a strange logic. My brother might come out of his room where he was doing his homework occasionally and give me a funny look, or try to make me laugh out loud, but generally I was safe in the knowledge of that silent agreement of siblings not to "tell on" one another.

At about 10.30 or 11 my parents would begin stirring from their chairs where they had been knitting or reading or working on something, and when I saw the lights being turned off in the same nightly sequence, I would tiptoe back to my bed, climb quietly in and expertly feign sleep.  I don't remember ever being caught, and perhaps I conned them completely, but being a parent myself I think they must have discovered what I was doing at some stage. Maybe they just turned a blind eye, because you can't really be angry with someone for reading! 

To go back to film, it is just another version of the stories I craved as that child who would not go to sleep.  When I was little, movies were solemn important occasions and happened very infrequently.  We would dress up in our Sunday best to catch the train into the city where we would go to the grand Alhambra theatre or the more seedy Monte Carlo, on the foreshore.

The beautiful Alhambra Theatre in Riebeeck street in Cape Town, which closed down in 1972

I remember once my sister arranged to meet me at the Alhambra to take me to a movie as a special treat, my elegant big sister, who was 23 or 24 already.  I dressed specially in the dress my mother had made which was of the same fabric as my sister's, and my dad drove me into the city for our Saturday afternoon date.  But of course my sister was late (she was notoriously late and still is, although now I am almost as bad), and there was nowhere to park in the busy street, so my dad just told me to jump out and wait on the pavement (sidewalk in American) for her.  Amazing now to think of that, imagine dropping off a 9 or 10 year old girl in the city of Cape Town to wait on the street for a big sister who might never arrive!

But she did, and when I saw her walking towards me up the street my heart leaped happily, because she had worn the same dress, and when she arrived she put her arm around me and told me we were twins, even though I was a tiny skinny mite and she this tall blonde goddess. 

South Africa didn't have television until I was grown-up, so watching a film was even more magical than for other children my age in the western world who watched tv every day.  Sitting in the theatre on those rare occasions, my best friend Trish and I would always look at each other and say excitedly, "The lights are dimming!" when they weren't really, and then we would roll about laughing at our own silly joke, and all her siblings would think we were ridiculous, but we didn't care because we loved each other and we were so excited and happy to be there, about to watch a wonderful story like Mary Poppins, or The Sound of Music, and to be enchanted. 

And now, all these years later, I can watch a movie at the click of a remote, with  a Netflix subscription which allows me to stream films into my own living room!  My dad would be astonished!

I think I have always been disappointed by movies of books that I have read.  When you read you create a whole world in your head, and then it is sometimes hard to accept someone else's interpretation.

It is difficult to pick a favourite movie, but I have always loved Children of a Lesser God, since I saw it in 1986 in the Odeon Theatre in Grahamstown.  It was the first time I realised that sign language is so beautiful and eloquent.  In some ways it is more expressive and sensual than the spoken word. It is also one of those perfect movies which tells a fascinating story and then loops it all up at the end in a pleasing conclusion.  A narrative that stays with you for years. 

In the 21st century the visual world is ever present, we are constantly bombarded with images.  And none so lusciously presented as those in movies, from such different perspectives: dramas, documentaries, educating us on areas we will probably never visit, crazy action movies, science fiction, and history.  There are creatures which do not actually exist, portrayed in such blatant reality that you cannot quite believe, when the movie is finished and you are back in the real world, that there are no dragons, giants, or blue alien people called Na'vis.

 I believe film informs our memories, enlightens how we perceive the world.

Day 81

Red squirrels are beautiful little creatures. We have several of these quick intelligent small beings in our vicinity.  They are very fast and very bold, and have to fend off the larger grey squirrels which they do with great gusto and inventiveness, twisting and turning around tree-trunks when they are being chased, leading the grey ones on a merry dance.  Our red squirrels sit and scold me from a high branch if I disturb them in their seed-collecting at the bird-feeder.  They have chirrupy high voices like birds.  In America, red squirrels are sometimes called chickarees or fairydiddles, which is the most wonderful word.

American red squirrel with adopted baby

They have an interesting social life too, because they are intensely territorial, but territory can be bequeathed by the mothers, who will "make room" for a daughter to live nearby, which seems like a rather matriarchal society.  The females mate with many males too, which is very unusual in the animal kingdom, where often it is males that mate with many females.  The strangest thing they have been observed doing, in a 20-year study, is to adopt the babies of relatives.  If a mother squirrel notices that one of her aunts or sisters have died, she will adopt one of the babies.  This is known in evolutionary circles as 'Hamilton's law" which explains the reasons for altruism as being beneficial to the altruistic person or creature's genetic continuity. 

And red squirrels love mushrooms, even eating those that are poisonous to humans.  And some they pick and dry on branches for later consumption, or because they taste better. 

The first private screening of a motion picture took place on this day in 1895, a 47-second film by the Lumière brothers, of workers coming out of the gate of the Lumière factory.  Even though people loved the few films after this one, the Lumière brothers never believed that moving pictures would become so popular.  They made three versions of the same scene, with women workers in their bonnets and long skirts, and a dog running about barking.  In one there is a cart-horse and in another there are two horses pulling a cart.  This was how they distinguished the differences: one-horse, two-horses, no-horse.

We went to see a movie tonight called The Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson.  Nick, who is a film student, loves his movies and has twenty reasons why he is a brilliant director, but I have never enjoyed his work, finding it shallow and passionless.  However, I LOVED this movie. 

a scene from the film

It was like a very beautiful little fairytale, with monstrous villains, pretty pure-hearted girls, and two interesting main characters.  I loved his use of the square screen for part of the movie, which Nick tells me is because of the actual film on which it was shot.  I loved how the violence, which is quite unusual for Anderson, is muted, how the central character is so honourable in his own way, and how the entire fantastical tale is wrapped up like one of the delicate confections from the Mendl bakery.

Add caption

Bravo Wes Anderson!

I will continue with this subject tomorrow, because it is a broad topic, and because I am very tired right now. 

Eighty

Lobsters grow all their lives, but their shells are hard so they have to do something called ecdysis, or, in more common language, shedding, quite frequently in the first two years, and then every year or so after that.  This is a very intricate and difficult procedure, involving hours or their lives, the shrinking of appendages by the loss of blood to them, then sucking in water to expand the shell so that it splits in the right place, then lying on its side to allow the shell to become loose, and then slowly peeling out of it.  At this point they apparently look like a toy black rubber lobster. For a while they can't do anything, can't support their weight.  All this is done in the privacy and safety of their burrows.

This is also the time when lobsters mate.  They have the most fascinating social lives, these little creatures that people boil alive.  The female chooses her mate and goes to his den where she releases pheromones.  He comes out to see what is going on, and if she puts her claws on his head he knows she is ready for him.  Then they go into his den.  Over the next several days they are naked and weak together, and mating takes place.  Swimmerets are involved, which is just about the most wonderful word associated with sex.  It actually means swimming legs.  The female incubates the eggs for about 9 to 11 months, which is a very long time for a little thing like that.  What do they talk about in the burrow for all those days?  How does it feel, I wonder?  

And sometimes the world is right there, you are as naked as a lobster during ecdysis. All your feelings sitting on your skin.  And for that brief time that you are soft and vulnerable, there is understanding, compassion for the child with the big eyes who can't sit still, who is incapable of concentrating for longer than 5 minutes, but who is making the most beautiful wire sculpture in your class.  And the child who is so homophobic, who irritated you so much with his"gay" jokes, you suddenly recognise where he is coming from, he is eleven years old, for goodness' sake.

I remember the moment when I realised that not everyone feels the same way, to the same depth.  It is a whole ocean, the world of feelings, and some float on top, others tread water, and still others go so deep that they sometimes almost drown from the weight of their sensibilities.

There was a magazine that I absently picked up in my brother's room when I was about ten or eleven, and while reading it I came across an article on how pâté de foie gras is made.  I read it with incredulity and a growing horror.  It is the most awful process, involving force-feeding of geese and ducks, called "gavage", invented by the french, and still takes place, and still fills me with the same terror I felt that day when I had to get out into air, and climbed out of my window on to the roof, my sanctuary, which is where my brother found me hours later, cold and sick to my soul, having lost my faith in humans in one fell swoop.  He tried to explain it all to me, how the world works, about cruelty, man's inhumanity, but it was so unbelievable, so terrible, and I was suddenly no longer a child. 

My brother and sister were the interpreters of many appalling words and incomprehensible events for me.   

And so I go through life with these times of nakedness, where I stand behind a resigned old man with sagging cheeks in the queue at the grocery store and weep to see his basket with enough food for one, but a bright wedding ring on the ring finger of his wrinkled crooked hand.
 Where I ache for the doomed spring leaves in the future of the cold trees as the winter moths lay their endless inevitable eggs.
Where tears spring to my eyes for a perfect dead skunk on the side of the road.
Where I cannot understand the terrible cruelty of every day.
Where I want to hug the little fat kid nobody wants to sit with, and so I make people sit with her.
Where I feel a magical connection with my children, so real I can almost see it shining.
Where I wish I could bring people who are dead back to life.
Where I check my garden bed for crocuses every day.
Where I am arrested by the presence of beauty, geese honking as they fly in their exquisite chevron lines from here to there.
Where my shell, even when it grows back, is never impermeable.

Day 79

I went for a short walk on the beautiful beach, on the lovely first day of Spring, which began with rain and fog, burnt off into sunshine, then ended with a pretty sunset late in the day.  There were such beautiful waves that about 20 surfers blew the cobwebs off their wetsuits and stepped into exhilaration!  Brrrrrh! Bonjour, le printemps!

Panorama of Good Harbour beach.

I woke up into the new day from a sweet dream about a young fawn coming to see us, walking calmly out of the forest, on its impossibly skinny legs, while its mother waited under the trees, snorting nervously.  The small creature came right up to sniff my outstretched hand, and then Tim's.  The little thing wasn't scared at all, just curious and new, its huge innocent eyes gazing at us, its incredibly sweet face, its short soft coat.  Then it turned, satisfied, and went long-legged back to its mother, who took it right through the pond, not around it, so that the youngster had to swim, and I could see its strong twiggy legs churning the water, with perfect instinct, doing doggie-paddle, or deer-paddle, I suppose, and then out on the other side to bask in the sunshine, which was warm and mellow and dappled there.

And then on to the day.  There were about ten imperatives to do, and the hours seem to slip past so quickly.
I did two loads of washing and hung things and folded others and put them away. 
I played the piano for about an hour, accompanied by a turquoise jug of orange tulips shining on the table at the window.  I made progress on Nocturne in E minor.  There you go, Monsieur Chopin!
I made a good start on my report-cards, of which there are many.  (155!)
I spent quite a long time helping my son edit his grant proposal, until it was polished and shining.
I talked to one of my daughters, but not the other, although we texted one another.  There was also a text from Senegal, so I was in contact with all four today!
I watched the birds, which were happy and various.  I saw that the red-bellied woodpecker has returned to delight us. Also, the quick chipmunks have woken up from their intermittent hibernation.
 I didn't do half the things I thought I could, but it was a good day.

I drew the tulips on the kitchen table.

Tulips from Amsterdam (not really)

seven eight 78

A momentous day.  Filled with mixed emotions. Brimming with feeling.  A long, full day.

We travelled close to 100 miles (160km), all the way to Gardner, where my Naturalization ceremony was held at Wachusett Community College.

For some reason I was chosen to go there, on today's date, and Tim and Nick will go to a different venue, together, next week.  I was initially distressed about that, but it is virtually impossible to change your appointment, you actually have to go in to the USCIS (US citizen and immigration services) building in Lawrence, which is a fair way to go, and try to see someone there who could change it for you.  There is nothing to be done online or over the phone.  Bureaucracy. 

I am also not really one for ceremonies, which is the reason why Tim and I just went one day and were married in the registry office.

So I wasn't really looking forward to this day.  It seemed like something I was just forced to do, and by myself.  Tim of course refused to let me go on my own and he accompanied me, which was lovely, but I wish we could have stood together, next to one another, for this milestone, just as we have for all the others in our lives. 

There were 222 people becoming new Americans. All the USCIS officers were incredibly kind and sweet to everyone.  It was as though they genuinely cared about us all.  It seemed as though they wanted this day to be really special.  

The director of the Lawrence branch of USCIS seemed very genuine too. I was really impressed by how cheering and pleasant they all were.  They must do this so many times, you could understand if they did not have much enthusiasm left for the task, but no, they joked with people, helped put everyone at ease, and smiled and smiled, as if they were so happy that we had finally arrived!

The director told us that he understood how immigrants feel because he is himself a naturalized citizen.  He is Portuguese, and arrived when he was ten years old.  At school, his teacher welcomed him through an interpreter, talking about America being a melting pot.  He had no idea what she could mean, all he could think of was a pot being forgotten on the stove and boiling over maybe.

Some of the examples I found.

She said to him, 'Well, does your mother make soup?"
He thought, "Lady, we're Portuguese, we live on soup!"
"Well, what goes into the soup?" she asked.
"Er... potatoes, carrots.... onions, celery... herbs..."
"Exactly, and all those ingredients together make the soup taste good, don't they?"

It was a sweet albeit clichéd story, which for some inexplicable reason made me weep, and when he was finished talking, he welcomed us, saying "And now today there are 222 new ingredients!"  He also urged us not to give up our cultures, our traditions, our languages, and especially not our foods!  America would be a very boring place if we all became the same, he said.  (Which is a nice theory.)

Eventually, after two hours, a judge from the Supreme court of Massachusetts arrived, a sweet old man with a pink shirt, tan-coloured trousers, white socks and funny brown pull-on shoes. There was some official legal language, and then we all stood to say "I pledge allegiance to the flag of...."
It is weird, this thing with flags, but I will leave that for another day.  And then a woman sang the National Anthem while we all held our hands on our hearts and looked at said flag.  And then there was a televised message from Barack Obama, and we were given our certificates.  The man called my name which was apparently "Anna", which made my heart sink because we had been told to check them for mistakes and if there was something wrong they would have to be redone then and there, which would mean more waiting!  But luckily he had just pronounced the "e" for some reason.    

Afterwards we wanted to have a celebratory lunch, but decided that we would all have one when Matthew goes for his ceremony, hopefully in July sometime, when he is back from Senegal.

Also, I had to get back to school.  I had thought that I would be back in time to teach Stop-motion Animation to my Student Exploration Project (SEP) group, but the ceremony took until 1 o'clock!  So my director had to look after my little class, and when I finally got there they had apparently been practicing for my arrival, and broke into a spirited version of the Star-spangled Banner!  It was so sweet of them that I stood there overflowing with delight, and pride, and love, really.

What a long way I have journeyed today.  Altogether, 219 miles (352km), which is almost the same as driving from Grahamstown to Knysna!

And what a long way we have journeyed to this point in time.  I am happy to be able to vote, and I am sure there are other benefits to being a citizen, but of course my soul looks back at my roots, and there they are, in the sandy soil of Cape Town, reaching into the salty spray of the Indian ocean, deep under the Pecan-nut tree in the garden of that old Settler house, beloved number 16 Cross street, where we all grew.

16 Cross Street, Grahamstown, our very fine house.

Day 77, Sewe-en-sewentig, Soixante-dix-sept

My heart was broken for the first time when I was eighteen years old, and so, instead of going to the University of Cape Town, where I had been accepted, it was decided that I would run away safely to a town 900km away, a little university town called Grahamstown. I would study there instead.  My departure was delayed for three weeks due to illness, and then after a train-journey of stops and starts and having to lug all my baggage (one suitcase was just for books) from the broken-down train to a bus which had finally arrived to rescue us from the middle of nowhere, I arrived late in the town itself.  And so it was dark by the time I reached the residence where I was to live, and I went to bed exhausted and quite lost and alone.

I awoke early to the loud squawks of geese being driven down the road, and thought, "Good grief, I'm really in the country!"   But when I looked expectantly out of my window I could see nothing.  It was very mysterious.  Later on that day I heard them again, and saw that this very large sound came from a much smaller bird than a goose, a drab brown bird with a beautiful sweeping line from back to end of beak.  It looked like a lackluster version of a Sacred Ibis, which I knew from the wetlands of Cape Town.

I found out that it was in fact a Hadeda Ibis, a sweet placid bird that builds nests made of sticks, which look like avant-garde sculptures, the proverbial early bird which catches the worm with its long probing beak, with a calm unhurried outlook on life.  So it is somewhat strange that this outwardly serene plodder over early morning lawns and freshly-dug vegetable patches has the most powerful voice of all the birds on the African continent.

The somewhat awkward Hadeda Ibis

Some people say it squawks like that because it is afraid of flying, others call it the "flying vuvuzela".  Since I first met this species, it has happily spread over the whole of South Africa, even Cape Town.

When the boys were little babies, they used to lie together on the changing mat and we would ask them all the animal sounds they knew, like, "What does the cow say?"  Two little voices would say "Hmmmmmoo!" and giggle at one another. "What does the dog say?" "Wuf!"  "What does the hadeda say?" "Ha-Haaaa!" And they would burst into contagious peals of laughter, that delicious chortling of the very young.

So the man-made thing for today is a poem I wrote a long time ago, when the boys were at pre-primary (or kindergarten, as it is called in America, the beautiful German word used by the inventor of early childhood education having stuck fast).  It was a lovely way to get to school, a long walk across playing fields and down a little hill to the school buildings surrounded by tall trees offering shade and sunshine. 

Silver Lining

Trailing snail-like after my fleet sons
Across the dew-soft morning field
Of early autumn green and rust,
Laden with school-bags and Monday blues,

Three shining rugby balls float suspended
On the cross-bar of the upright posts
Against a heavy somber sky.

Three plump hadedas, sleek-feathered,
Chat softly to each other
On their morning tea-break.

And the little illustration I did for the poem.

76

I ran 2.28 miles today on the machine at the gym.  Yes, we went back to gym, yuk.  But I skipped out of that building afterwards feeling wonderful, so I know it is good for me.

I am reading the most beautifully written book and can't believe that I have never discovered it before.  Of course I have read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.  This book is Dandelion Wine, by the same author, very autobiographical, told from the viewpoint of a twelve-year old boy, Douglas Spaulding, about the magic of childhood and summer and realising you are alive, and the gradual discovery, as one becomes aware, of the realities of the world.  It is written in the most alluring poetic way, and here is an example of its lyricism:

"Dandelion wine.
The words were summer on the tongue.  The wine was summer caught and stoppered.  And now that Douglas knew, he really knew he was alive, and moved turning through the world to touch and see it all, it was only right and proper that some of his new knowledge, some of this special vintage  day would be sealed away for opening on a January day with snow falling fast and the sun unseen for weeks or months and perhaps some of the miracle by then forgotten and in need of renewal.  ...
And there, row upon row, with the soft gleam of flowers opened at morning, with the light of this June sun glowing through a faint skin of dust, would stand the dandelion wine.  Peer through it at the wintry day - the snow melted to grass, the trees were re-inhabited with bird, leaf, and blossoms like a continent of butterflies breathing on the wind.  And peering through, color sky from iron to blue."

Dandelion wine.

I went to a girls school a few suburbs away from my own, and there was a school bus which took us there and back, which I caught on the main road near my house from the age of six.  I was extremely short and tiny for my age until I reached the age of about fifteen, when I suddenly grew into a normal person.  There was a big hibiscus bush growing next to the bus stop, and often the driver would not stop because he hadn't seen me behind the hibiscus, even though I stuck my arm out frantically!  So I would walk disconsolately home to my mother who would have to get in her car and drive the 5km to my school.  It happened so many times that eventually my mother came with me to the bus stop, stopped the bus and gave the driver a severe talking-to.  Unfortunately there were sometimes different drivers and so it did happen again, but much less frequently.  The power of mothers.

View of Devil's Peak from my bus stop.

When I was about nine or ten, we had afternoon sport twice a week, and then we would not be able to take the school bus home, as we finished too late.  So we would have to take the green bus along Main Road, then walk down to the bus terminus at Mowbray Train Station, where we could catch an orange bus, with the romantic logo of the Golden Arrow bus company, to Pinelands.  The trouble was that the road to the station was hard to walk down without being assailed by the sights and smells of so many enticing shopfronts selling all manner of services like shoe repairs and radio and vacuum-cleaner repairs, tailors adapting patterns, convenience stores or cafe storefronts.  Then there were the wonderful smells of the Indian shops, selling samoosas and curry-bunnies, and the fish and chip shop,  and we were always hungry.

But there was a strict school rule (there were many) that you could not be seen in your uniform eating in the street.  We never had any money anyway, but on this occasion, there were four of us and somehow we put enough cash together to buy one bag of slap-chips, a kind of fried potato-chip which was not crisp as you would expect a chip to be, but soft (slap, in Afrikaans) and oozing oil and vinegar.  Utterly delectable to a ten-year old girl!  We merrily shared the greasy delights while prancing down the road to catch the bus at the station, all in our bright blue school uniforms with our white Panama hats of summer.

The next morning at the very end of assembly, during notices, the headmistress, who seemed to constantly have trouble parting her upper and lower jaws, hissed through her teeth that there had been an incident the previous day, in which four girls had disgraced the school by being seen EATING IN PUBLIC!  She added, viciously, "We know WHO you are, so those four girls are requested to meet me after assembly in my office!"  My legs quaked, but I was not standing near any of my friends and therefore could not see how they were feeling.  So of course I believed the headmistress when she said that they knew that it was us, never questioning how they could possibly know our identities or who would have betrayed us.

I dutifully filed silently out of the hall and made my way to the office.  No one else did.

I was questioned and cajoled and threatened but I knew the code of silence.  You never "told on".   But it was while I was standing there all by myself in the worst trouble I had been in since climbing the rope to the high ceiling of the gym, that I had an epiphany which fascinated me so completely that I quite forgot the scolding of the clenched-tooth woman standing before me.

I was alive, hugely alive.  I had eaten the chips and loved them, revelled in their greasy ambrosia and in the lovely sharing of food with friends.

And, I was all alone in the world.

Even though I had a mother and father and family and friends, it was only me who was experiencing this particular day in this singular way.  I would always be like this.  I would suffer alone, I would feel elation alone.  It is a most peculiar feeling, this knowing you are alive, really knowing that you are you and no one else, that you are the only one who will go through your own life-experiences, all those moments of elation and ecstacy, and also the saturating sorrows, with the ordinary days in between. I think it always comes as a sudden shocking revelation to people.

I was punished for all four girls, because I would not give up the names of the others.  My punishment was nothing violent, because little white girls were not beaten.  (I was horrified to discover, when I became a teacher, that beating had always gone on at black schools, and still did, in the 90's, and still does, I expect.)  That was also the punishment which made me realise that they couldn't really do anything to me that I couldn't bear.  As soon as you realise that, you are up and away beyond them.

I had to stand with my face to the wall in the outside corridor which led to the playground at each break-time/recess, so that every girl in the school would walk past and see my disgrace.  Only it wasn't really difficult, standing for half an hour or so, thinking wonderful thoughts, flying off on my imagination and entirely forgetting my surroundings so that the stares of the girls could do nothing to hurt me.  I had to do that for four weeks.

It was four weeks of discovery.

Seventy-five, snakes alive!

Another very beautiful but very cold day!

Long interesting skype conversations with three of our children today, two connecting us with that wonderful rainbow-coloured thread, to parts of Africa, one 3,851 miles away, and the other 7,716 miles distant. The other call was from Boston, 30 miles away.  

I spent ages looking for a photograph I have of a snake eating a frog on our deck.  I was going to base my natural investigation entirely on this snake and its frog victim, but in fact it is now already late and I have not found it, so here are some other snakes I have seen in the meadow:

The beautiful markings of a Milk snake

Garter snake pretending to be a hose-pipe

Brilliant markings.

 Which is why you should always categorise your photographs so that you can easily find them.  Tim has his all done with the wonderful Keywords of Lightroom, and mine are just this nightmarish mess of dates.  If you can't remember when you took a photograph then tough! 

So a few minutes ago Tim just came over and rescued me in his usual knight in shining armour fashion, showing me how to find it in minutes!  I felt stupid and useless but he helped me see how that is silly and that the world is better if you ask for help!  

So here is what I found one day when I came home from school, a snake lying (it's weird that a snake can never sit or stand) on the deck slowly eating a frog.  Part of me was horrified by the slow death of the frog, the other was fascinated by the incredible jaws of the snake detaching themselves in order to swallow this enormous meal, and another bit was delighted that this was all happening right in front of me on my deck, to wake me up after my long day's teaching.

 It is rather gruesome but also amazing, isn't it?  We learn about such things in school, how snakes' jaws are attached to the braincase with tendons and ligaments, giving it a flexibility unlike any other animal, but we rarely see the real thing taking place on our own back decks.  I watched until the frog was completely gone, and although it must have been awful for the poor frog, it did not last terribly long.  And then the snake suddenly looked completely normal and thin again, as though it had this instantaneous metabolism, and went on its way, sated for a while.

Post-prandial constitutional

And here is a dear little frog that has thus far escaped being eaten by a snake.

And while I was searching for the photograph, I came across this picture of my dad on his last visit to our house.  I took him on several little adventures, just he and I, and one of them was on a river boat, the Essex River Queen, which goes from Essex all the way through the meanders until the river mouth mingles with the Atlantic Ocean. They gave everyone a free postcard at the end, and he told me excitedly that he would send his postcard to his sister Margaret in England, telling her of the wonderful trip!  I agreed that that was a lovely idea, not mentioning that his sister Margaret had been dead for years.

The old man and the river.

My father had quite bad dementia by then, as my mother had been the one keeping him together, preserving his sanity, but she had died earlier that year and his mind, which had been slowly unraveling, began to come completely undone.

My brother flew with him from England where he had been staying, and remained for a week, but then he flew back to the UK while my dad stayed on another week.  My father then had to fly back all by himself, which must have been rather nightmarish for the cabin crew.  As it was, he finally came through the Arrivals gates at Heathrow where my brother was waiting for him, and was delighted to see someone he recognised!  His son was there!  But he had forgotten to collect his luggage from the baggage retrieval system!   

He loved everything we did while he was here, loved all the attention I lavished on him because I knew that this was probably his last holiday with me.  He enjoyed it all with the great energy for life which he had always had.  He would try new foods like sushi with my brother and I, having never had it before, or so he said, and so it felt like to him. 

It is an awful thing, to watch your parent go a bit crazy, and then very batty indeed.  It was tragic, because he was always the most dignified and competent of people, and then suddenly to lose all that, and end up on stranger's doorsteps not knowing where he lived.

I miss him terribly, because even though I didn't live in the same city as him for most of my adult life, he was always there for me, for all three of his adored children.  He loved us with a boundless love which did not extend to anyone else, besides my mother.  We were the perfect ones, his darlings.  He was our strong and steadfast rock. 

When I was about twelve I found a litter of newborn kittens which had been dumped and left to die.  They were all dead except for one, this huge life-force pushing the blind, wet little thing to try to crawl, dragging its umbilical cord.  I wrapped it in my long-sleeve and rushed home where my dad showed me how to feed it with a dropper, and helped me to raise her.  She was the sweetest little cat, and was addicted to food, probably because she had suffered that early trauma, so she became rather round, but always stayed small, and her name was Little Fat Cat.  My father and I adored her, and she was a source of love for the whole family, happily sitting on laps and just the dearest little cat personality.  When she was still young, three or four, she was diagnosed with an eosinophilic ulcer which is usually a death sentence.  My dad paid so much money for an operation to save her, and we both nursed her back to health, where she remained for a while, but about six months later the rodent ulcer returned, and we had to put her down.  We drove home very quietly, and I saw tears drip down my big strong dad's face, as tears run down mine now, remembering him.