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The Things We Love
I’ve mentioned once or twice that I’m an avid fan of the novels of mystery writer Louise Penny. A friend of mine introduced me to them several years ago, and at first I was hesitant, wondering how I’d get along with a Francophone Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec, and his adventures in and around the little lost hamlet of Three Pines, somewhere in Québec’s Eastern Townships. It all sounded a bit “foreign” to me, given my almost exclusive devotion, whodunit-wise, to the British variety of same.
Then I read the first couple of books, and I fell in love. With Penny, who’s an extraordinarily good, and very insightful, writer. With Three Pines. And with the eccentric and recurring cast of characters who populate it and the books, who’ve invaded my heart, and who sometimes simultaneously (and at the same time), have me weeping with sorrow, laughing with joy, and crowing with delight. The plots aren’t so bad either. (If you’re interested, I’d strongly suggest reading the books in order, just because of the recurring characters, and the development of each of them throughout the series.
There’s an “aha!” moment for me in almost every book; something I’m not used to in popular fiction, and yet another reason I love these books and their author. It’s usually something that makes me wish I could sit down with Penny for a cream tea (or a stiff drink) and just talk to this woman who is obviously so bright, and who clearly knows a great deal about the motivations of the human heart. I’m going to have to wait a while for the next bit of enlightenment though, as I’m all caught up, and have just completed the current entry in the series.
The moment in this book occurs quite early. One of Chief Superintendent Gamache’s colleagues, who was critically injured in the previous book, is recuperating, and is having a hard time:
I hate my . . . body. I hate that I can’t pick up my kids or play with them, or if I do get onto the floor with them, they have to help me get up. I hate it. I hate that I can’t . . . read them to sleep, and that I get tired so easily, and that I lose my train of thought. I hate that some days I can’t add, and some days I can’t subtract. And some days–“
Isabelle paused, gathering herself. She looked into his eyes.
“I forget their names, patron,” she whispered. “My own children.”
It was no use telling her he understood. Or that it was all right. She’d earned the right to no easy answer.
“And what do you love, Isabelle?”
“Pardon?”
Gamache then quotes Rupert Brooke’s poem The Great Lover:
“White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,
Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;
Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust
Of friendly bread;”
And then Gamache, who has been through the wars himself, says:
There’s more, but I won’t go on. It’s a poem by Rupert Brooke. He was a soldier in the First World War. It helped him to think of the things he loved. It helped me too. I made mental lists and followed the things I love, the people I love, back to sanity. I still do.
It’s not quite as simple as that. Things are never As. Simple. As. That. But focusing on what you love, rather than what you hate, helps. A bit more of the poem:
and many-tasting food;
Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;
And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;
And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,
Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon . . .
I think Rupert Brooke, among the First World War poets, usually gets pretty short shrift. Unlike Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, whose gut-wrenching, unsentimental, and disturbing imagery transports the reader to the trenches in the soldier’s voice and from the soldier’s perspective, Brooke’s poetry exists at a sentimental remove from the action. It’s a meditation. On bravery. On valor. On sacrifice. But above all, on the things he loves:
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England–from The Soldier
I didn’t know, until this morning that Rupert Brooke spent the last two years of his life on the edge of mental illness, recuperating from several simultaneous (and at the same time) failed love affairs, events which led to a nervous collapse and accusations against former friends, and which ended up in a world tour during which he wrote for several newspapers and magazines, traveled the South Seas, probably fathered a child in Tahiti, and got himself engaged and disengaged several times. When he returned to England at the start of the war, he enlisted in the Army, and started sending war poems home. In February 1915 he sailed with the British Expeditionary Forces to the Mediterranean, was bitten by a mosquito, and died of sepsis shortly thereafter.
The Great Lover, which is the poem excerpted in Penny’s book, was written before the war. It’s a paean to love and is sometimes labeled “Keatsian” in its hymning of ecstasy, particularly in the first section. That’s not what I remember about it, though. I remember the litany of simple things set out in the middle of the poem. The things he remembers, the things he thinks about when he wants to bring himself home:
Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon
Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss
Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is
Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen
Unpassioned beauty of a great machine;
The benison of hot water; furs to touch;
The good smell of old clothes; and other such—
The comfortable smell of friendly fingers,
Hair’s fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers
About dead leaves and last year’s ferns. . . .
I have my own list of things I love, and which I recite at times of trouble to begin to sort myself out. Some of them are:
*The first crocus that says Spring is on its way and that the cycle begins anew, independent of anything that’s happening to me
*Freshly-fallen, untouched snow
*My Dad’s teacup with the cow yelling “MOO!” on it
*Christmas tree lights. (Not putting them on. Switching them on.)
*Sunflowers in my garden as their faces follow the sun from East to West
*The total body hug that only my granddaughter can give me
*Our well, which is, against the odds, still bringing up good sweet water from 110 feet below the earth
*A unexpected phone call from an old friend who says “I just wanted to hear your voice.”
*The tail-wagging and slobbering joy our dogs show when I come home
*Watching the birth of the year’s first lamb and seeing its mother nurse it for the first time
*My family, which loves me no matter what a mess I make of things
What do you love? What are the things you think about, to center yourself and bring yourself “back to sanity” when things go sideways?
Published in General
What a beautiful post! So spectacularly intelligent, kindly, and well read. if Ricochet had nothing but things like this it would still be worth the fee, ten times over. Thank you, She.
Thank you, Gary! All that for such a small fee . . .
She, I will scroll through this again and again in the upcoming days. I may comment only a handful of times, but I’ll think of it dozens of times during the day.
Thinking over this one..How about an inaugural experience of a civilized custom, for a start? What a lovely piece…
Great post, @she! I did a similar one on my personal blog. Some of my Favorite Things.
Thanks. Your post is lovely, and what gorgeous photos! I am really impressed by Lady Kikyo’s very obliging pose.
I have been trying to get the perfect shot of Little Alice stalking the birds in the feeders outside the living room window. She sits on the window seat inside, making little trilling and burping noises, with her tail sticking straight up, waiting for that glorious moment (which she’s sure is about to occur) when one of the birds will fly through the glass and straight into her mouth. Every time I even remove the camera from the case, she jumps down onto the floor. Think I may have to set up a tripod with a remote . . .
That cat sat nearly motionless for at least 10 full minutes, watching a bird through the high clerestory window in our family room. I was able to get at least a dozen pretty good pictures of her, and she didn’t move a muscle. She also likes to sit in front of the sliding glass door in the kitchen, chattering to the birds outside and swishing her tail.
What? Not bilingual?
One thing I love and that makes me laugh:
https://www.gocomics.com/breaking-cat-news/
Somehow, “meuh” doesn’t have quite the same defiant, in-your-face, ring to it.
Me too!
Here’s a nice article on Louise Penny that gives a bit more insight into her books. It was written after the publication of the third book in her series. She started out well, and has gotten even better with each one.
My favorite “Three Pines” character is Ruth Zardo, the elderly, eccentric and prize-winning poet. She and Rosa, her foul-mouthed pet duck, often provide the novels’ most comical moments, but just when I’m most laughing at the socially inept and unconscionably rude old hag, she lets fly with a bit of searing wisdom that stops me in my tracks. Just when I think she’s completely lost the plot, she’s suddenly shows that she’s the only one who really understands what’s going on. Just when I think she’s abandoned all attempt at connection with humanity, she shows such gentleness and empathy it takes my breath away. A masterful portrayal.
My wife, my children, my knowledge that others still depend on me, my hope that this hasn’t all been vain striving.
The cow says “meh”?
Only if it’s a Jersey cow…
I was thinking more something like “Arf!” or “Meow!”
My mom likes these books. She has pretty good taste. She picked my dad.
Yeah, see, that’s it. It sounds kind of flat and lackadaisical. French cows, apparently don’t say “moo.” They say “meuh.” Much as French dogs say “ouaf, ouaf,” and French horses say “hiiiii.”
The Hausa language (Northern Nigeria) word for turkey is “talataloe” which is their onomatopoeic rendition of the sound turkeys make.
My grandmother only ever bought Jersey milk, which has the highest fat content and the most cream component. The pint bottles (20-ounce pints) had gold aluminum foil caps (Guernsey milk, next highest-quality had silver caps. Also-ran everyday milk had blue caps. But I digress). The milkman would leave the milk bottles on the window ledge outside Granny’s entry door. If we didn’t get to it soon enough, the birds would sit on the tops of the bottles, peck through the foil caps, and start to drink the cream off the top.
Granny (a stalwart member of the War generation), saved the foil caps in empty cereal boxes and, when she had a bunch of them, she would call up the local Blind Association, who would send someone to collect them. She always told me it was “for the seeing-eye dogs.” When I was very small, I used to imagine the seeing-eye dogs with little gold foil discs glued to each of their eyes, and wonder how that could possibly help anything?
It was years before I discovered/realized that the aluminum from the bottle caps, and any other pieces of candy wrapping or food wrapping foil went for recycling, and that the money went back to the charity to support the training of the dogs.
I don’t think of the Bailiwick of Jersey as being a lackadaisical place.
I love everything about this post! Thank you! When I want my faith restored in humanity, I often pick up a book by Lisa Wingate.
I’ll confess to Rosamunde Pilcher’s books being a cheer-me-up, too…
Thanks for these recommendations. Your comments remind me of a writer I enjoyed when I was younger, Elizabeth Goudge. I must revisit her and see if her novels, which I remember as being about sweetness and forgiveness are as I remember them. Having a look at the Wikipedia entry now:
Yep. That’s pretty much how I remember her.
And here is what she had to say about her last book, The Child from the Sea:
I will have a look at Lisa Wingate and Rosamunde Pilcher.
Lisa Wingate reminds me of why I write. My mom introduced her to me and my sisters with Tending Roses. I feel closer to my mom when I read her books. I have never read Rosamunde Pilcher. What book do I start with?
“The Shell-Seekers” , and then “September” (a sequel). “Coming Home” and her last, by choice: “Winter Solstice”. I love them as much as Miss Austen. Have been through several rounds of paperbacks, and now have hardcover omnibus versions and Kindle. :-) The short stories are collected in: “The Blue Bedroom and Other Stories” and “Flowers in the Rain and Other Stories”; also, several shorter novels. They’re fun, in a quiet way, too. Hope you’ll like them all!
Even the animals in France are full of ennui after their long history and the World Wars.
Some of the things that give me inner peace:
BBQing on a nice day. Beer. Chicken. Playing in the yard. Not a care in the world.
Sculpting. Pretty much any artistic endeavors.
Running on country roads. Nothing for miles except me, clean air and a few cows.
Reading (I wrote a post on it: http://ricochet.com/597876/my-presidential-mission/)
And cheese. Lots of cheese.
Nanda, thank you for the recommendation. The Shell Seekers is available on Kindle for $1.99 right now.
http://ricochet.com/598954/friday-food-and-drink-post-say-cheese/