Walking the Wall

I think there was a conspiracy to get me to cry today. Of course, it could have been a very long weekend, being overly tired, needing to change my hormone patch, or many other reasons–but I choose to believe it was a conspiracy. It started out with a book (I am aware that I have mostly been writing about books of late, but I have been reading some fantastic ones, so what can I say). The Awakening by Kate Chopin was an amazing, poignant piece of writing–all the more amazing that it was written and published by a woman in the late eighteen hundreds and yet could connect to my life on so many levels. It had the feel of Sara Teasdale’s writing for me, when I read her poetry I felt a connection that travelled over so many years, that stood outside time and space and said, "I hear you, I feel what you are writing." The Awakening had that same connection for me, I loved these lines: Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. …But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult" (13)! So much Chopin’s writing felt dynamic and modern, "At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life–that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions" (13)… and, "Perhaps it was the first time she was ready, perhaps the first time her being was tempered to take an impress of the abiding truth" (26). It’s a book all about the nature of the self, how it relates to those around us, how we develop a sense of identity that is true to our selves, and yet functioning (or rising above) the boundaries around us. I won’t say any more as I don’t have any wish to give the book or the ending away, another small book that packs a wallop!

As if that wasn’t enough, I watched In Her Shoes with a friend and the day came full circle ending with red eyes and a blotchy face. What a sad, funny movie about dysfunctional people and preciousness of family in general and sisters in specific. Listening to Maggie struggle to read "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop was a watery eyes episode, but having her read e.e. cummings "I Carry Your Heart" to her sister at the end just finished me off:

        i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
        my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
        i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
        by only me is your doing, my darling)

                                                      i fear
        no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
        no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
        and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
        and whatever a sun will always sing is you

        here is the deepest secret nobody knows
        (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
        and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
        higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
        and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

        i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

 "the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide"…those lines! That is poetry; that is a conspiracy.