You wake to an empty house. The Quiet is broken by the sound of a cat tipping his water dish over. Klump, gush. A brief flood of sadness, husband is on a plane somewhere headed in the opposite direction to here. Thoughts drift to the last time you were apart, a few tears burn your eyes. You will join him in a few short days. But today must be started so you rise, and shuffle sleepily down the creaky stairs with your fuzzy overweight feline brushing your legs.
Tea and toast with Getrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. A quick jaunt into Shakespeare and Co. to speak to Sylvia Beach for a moment, she tells you that James Joyce should be in later that day as is his custom. Dishes. Bathroom.
You don your favourite black boots (with the laces) and mud on the sole, wearing your red shirt with snap buttons, your brown cordoroy pants, green sweater and a rust colored hat. No journal today, you want to sit and absorb it all, be present with the sun and the smells and the activity. Sometimes writing pulls you out of the world and into your head, sometimes it does the opposite but you know that today is for being outside and feeling your body move about the world.
You step outside and you can't believe how perfect the day is, how good the sun feels as you tie the sweater around your waist. The woods feel happy and awake, everything is blooming. White trilliums everywhere, pink apple blossoms, yellow wildflowers. The breeze brings the smell of cedar and blue dragon flies float on the current. You find the perfect hole in the bottom of a tree. a door. And you make a note to yourself to bring a pen when you come back tomorrow so you can write a sign that reads "knock first before entering".
You pick some apple blossoms to put in the old green enamel coffee pot. In this moment you think they are the most beautiful thing you have ever seen.
*************
some simple words from E.H.
"It was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old waterproof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a cafe au lait. The waither brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write."
Posted by kerismith at May 25, 2005 11:18 AMI have just moved that feast to Halifax. Visited Shakespeare and Co. last week. How strange it feels to say that. Met with George Whitman,(92 yrs young now)and gave him a book. Was given a book and an invite to tea I was unable to attend. A remarkable experience in a remarkable city.
A Moveable Feast is a book that lingers with you for years. You can forget the details of who said what, but the simple portrait of a writer struggling to make progress in his craft stays with you. It's about being exposed to new wonderful, impressionable things, devouring books, and taking time to think alone.
The other best thing about the book, for me, is the company he comes to find. I think it is so lovely to have true contemporaries, all with different creative orientations, but compatible sensibilities.
I'm still looking for that occasional company, a group creating their own feast of ideas.
Thanks for stirring up old memories. . .
S
Posted by: miscellanea on May 28, 2005 08:56 AMYes, Hemingway did have his moments... I remember reading that book and longing so fiercely to be there myself.
And apple blossoms are beautiful!
Thanks for taking us along for the ride. (ps, my cat loves to knock his water bowl over also.. and glasses, and mugs and anything that might contain pretty liquid)
Posted by: Kristen on May 27, 2005 12:43 AMDaphne,
My husband is a musician, so I am now used to hearing guitar being played on a regular basis, and a lot of flamenco. The absence of it is jarring at first.
I do love the quiet though.
Posted by: Keri Smith on May 26, 2005 08:52 PMI'm curious - did life just feel more 'quiet' and more saddened by absence since the husband joined you at your Magic Cottage because you didn't express this loss before. Isn't it interesting what we come to miss. What we come to feel as such a revelatory and instrumental part of our existence when before, hey before, we were seemingly feeling quite fulfilled! I hear you on the simple act of cleansing and discarding pieces of ephemera. I'm moving too and I look around and wonder why I hold onto so much of what I do. Keep us posted on your exquisite witnessing of life and life abroad!
Posted by: Daphne on May 26, 2005 08:23 PMsuch a nice, 'in love with it all' post, thank you
Posted by: kim on May 26, 2005 10:02 AMWhat a sumptuous post! Your words bring the images so clearly into focus. Thank you!
Posted by: Chris on May 26, 2005 09:35 AMJust what I needed. Wish we could trade spaces. Here in Boston, it's all about rain. And rain. And power outage.
Sigh!
lovely! love the image of the mouse hole
Posted by: joymadison on May 25, 2005 01:56 PMI, too, am in the midst of reading A Moveable Feast. It amazes me how perfectly clear E.H.'s life becomes, how I want to join him at the Louvre on an empty stomach and how silly Ezra Pound can be.
It's a beautiful book. If you havne't read Islands in the Stream, you need to make that the next one on your list. It makes the Carribean simply delicious.
Posted by: Crystal Southern on May 25, 2005 12:47 PM