a {book}room of one's own

i have a dream.
i dream of a space all for me.
this space will include, but not be limited to the following:

• books.
• windows with pastoral, bucolic, boreal, or oceanic scapes.
• light {of the natural kind}.
• 18th-century desk like this one.



as seen on domino




• typewriter.
• computer.
• quill, parchment, and ink.
• fainting couch.
• fireplace.
• a bosom-enhancing dress with coquettish lace collar.
• an eclectic selection of music ranging from Ulrich Snaush to Frédéric Chopin.
• an enviable collection of port, brandy, and scotch.
• a replenished [by my butler, of course] tray of cheeses, crackers, jams, fruits, petie fours, and chocolates.
• bright blooms of peony and bells of ireland - or an abundance of whatever is in bloom.
• a camera/photography station.
  

oh how i dream.
in fact, every night as i sit on the side of my bed lotioning my winter skin, i see a collection of pictures from many who also foster this dream for me. a smartly-dressed female on a ladder amidst stacks of books, an owl sitting on an open book, a card that tells me of my dreams...and i sigh, close my eyes, and wish.

and even if it never comes to fruition, at least i have been with my wish every night - and no economy or disappointment can ever take that away.

while we're on the subject,
i also dream of rooms and rooms of books. i think people used to call them librarys and i want one in my home. in my internet wanderings, i have stumbled upon some really dreamy pictures of what i like to call bookrooms.

above and below courtesy of David Tsay Photography as seen on SFGirl

see some of my flickr favorites for desks that would suffice in my dream...



1. 2007-09-13 - Paris - Louvre - Writing Desk, 2. Writing Desk, 3. Jules Verne's writing desk, 4. I want this writing desk

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.



1. My Writing Desk, 2. me and my writing desk, 3. sunny nook 4. writing desk

le sigh trios.
perchances....
mme.

The end. On Dillard's "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"

It is finished.

Dillard has been the surprise of my year.

I was once introduced to her by a bartender I worked with but because I think he was more interested in having a threesome than talking about spirituality, I cast him into the fires of hell - right along with Dillard. Now that I am a bit more, ahem, mature I realize my heinous and capricious act. When Dillard made her gracious way back into my life via a very dear friend whom i respect quite a bit, Mrs. Jillian, I decided to pay attention.

Dillard has brought me into a world that I would never have known, not being the woodwose or dryad many around me are. Into this world I have entered and left with thanks for hosting such a great party. She gave me chills, she gave me comfort, she gave me fodder for thought, she gave me answers I needed.

The last paragraphs are lingering in my mouth like a buttery worthers...I twist and turn my tongue all around to catch every last morsel. To have read this specific book just as I was stumbling upon the inevitability of my own death was nothing short of a godsend.

She approaches life, death, fecundity, nature just as they are and i find this matter-of-fact point of view refreshing. She never over spiritualizes or stands to be didactic, instead she opts for observation. She takes the reader in her pocket and they get to observe with her. They observe trees, bees, muskrats, creeks, mountains, air...and find within all a deep and lasting comfort in their instinct and stability and learn lessons of mortality, perseverance, and fecundity.

Some excerpts I love:

In chapter 10: Fecundity: "What I have been after all along is not an explanation but a picture. My rage and shock at the pain and death of individuals of my kind is the old, old mystery, as old as man, but forever fresh and completely unanswerable. My reservations about the fecundity and waste of life among other creatures is, however, mere squeamishness. It is true that many of the creatures live and die abominably, but I am not called upon to pass judgment. Nor am I called upon to live in that same way, those creatures who are mercifully unconscious" (179).

In chapter 12: The Horns of the Altar: "I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them, under the wind-rent clouds, upstream and down" (242).

And last, in chapter 13: The Waters of Separation: "You see creatures die, and you know you will die. And one day it occurs to you that you must not need life. Obviously. And then you're gone. I think that dying pray at the last not "please," but "thank you," as a guest thanks his host at the door...Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it or see. And then you walk fearlessly, eating what you must, growing wherever you can, like the monk on the road who knows precisely how vulnerable he is, who takes no comfort among death-forgetting men, and who carries his vision of vastness and might around in his tunic like a live coal which neither burns or warms him, but with which he will not part" (270).

The imagery of saying thank you when I leave has given me unspeakable comfort.

I am in awe of Annie.
~mme.

post script: i just noticed that the google ads on the side of my blog are all about death and life insurance. it's official. i talk about death too much.

the independence of solitude: on emerson's "self reliance"

as you may well know,
i find great comfort in reading.

it is no small thing that the pieces of literature that fall into my willing hands always seem to be serendipitously orchestrated to echo and forte in my mind about the ideas already ruminating inside.

today has been very existentially frustrating; i continue to butt my naive head against the societal wall of wealth and financial security and despite rigorous planning today, tomorrow i will fall into weakness and at the end of the year, there will never be enough. there is never enough. before i start the humble realization that i must redefine 'enough,' i chose instead today to beat myself up for poor planning and the Indian food i bought when we should have eaten at home.

and then the car dies so i cannot get to the grocery store and run my errands. this tiny addition to my physical limitations sent me into a sadness...a familiar, pitying sadness.

but what if it's not pity?
what if something is really seriously wrong with our society to value such things i cannot seem to grasp? (in the words of Alice in Revolutionary Road, "Who made these rules, anyway?!")
or is the something seriously wrong found in my subconscious adherence to such values without taking into account the individuality of my own life.

But then I started my prep work for a tutoring session tomorrow. The reading sent me into the Transcendentalist Americans, and the first two readings I get through make my heart quicken with new hope in the old understanding that we must not succumb to anything in life other than that which is our OWN.

Emerson: Self-Reliance

"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

I see these words through blurs and blinks of resonation and my hungry soul continues its feast:

"The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force. It looses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, vote with a great party either for the government or against it...under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are: of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do you our work, and you shall reinforce yourself."

We cannot be known, fully known to ourselves or others when we hide in society and consistency.

I have many fears. Up on the top ten of those are that I am afraid of being misunderstood. Second to that is the fear of contradicting myself.

And yet again, Emerson breaks through my sadness with words I am relieved to know what other humans ancient have known.

"With consistency, a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you say today. Ah, so you shall be misunderstood...Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood..."

All of the thoughts burning upon my keyboard via my fingers reminds me simply that I have great comfort in Emerson, in Transcendental thought, in study, in self-reliance, in divinity, and in hope.

Today, in this chilly living room listening to Frederic Chopin, hope means:

• I can be satisfied with a life where I never own a house or have a child - if that is my destiny.
• I can survive in a less financially predictable or even stable situation if the trade off is a life work of my personal passions.
• Anything can change.
• My meaning is not derived from my financial acumen.
• I make mistakes. I recover.forces of enchantment: from couragemylove
  i have long since attached myself to this photo. i need to buy it.
  

Ah friends, I am in an internal frenzy. I return to my stacks of Emerson & Thoreau, but must have you know that I forgot the cardinal maxim of writing...to which I admonish all. When I cannot write, I haven't really read.

When I read,
I can, nay- MUST, write.

"Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times,"
mme. bookling.

memento mori

"I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth, which we value, are ubiquitous and blind, that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful, and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives. Every glistening egg is a memento mori" (160).

Timing.
Coincidence.
Destiny.

I am met with these three thoughts as I encountered this passage in Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

For the month of December, my reading has been sporadic at best. As I readied myself for work this morning, rushes of things I could do at home flooded my brain; this angered me because I have been stuck at home, snowed in for almost 2 weeks this month. One would think I could finish all my books and crocheting projects and other such things...but no. The best way for me to get things done at home is to leave home...

But back to my story.
I didn't read much in December.

I always feel a bit disoriented and guilty when I neglect books for longer periods of time than my routine is accustomed to...and yet, had I read more of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, I would have never encountered this passage last night at precisely the moment in which I was meant to.

You see I have been rather pensive lately about the inevitability of death and grotesqueness of life and growth (birth!). Here I am thinking these thoughts and then I open up to chapter 10 : fecundity...and after I looked up the meaning of the word, found myself bound and open-eyed upon the discovery of all Ms. Dillard's musings.

We are born. We seek to integrate all the disparate issues inside of us in an effort to become healthy and whole. We die.

Of course there is a lot of amazing stuff in between, I am not pondering morbidly or being maudlin for effect...but the simple equation of life is grotesque, bountiful, careless, beautiful, and a bit mind blowing.

Well, if nothing else - the new chapter gave me the fever again.
The bookish kind.
And it feels good to be home.

dust to dust,
mme bookling