I'm with Dench

 Dame Judi has no intention of going quietly into that dark night... “I’m tired of being told I’m too old to try something,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “I should be able to decide for myself if I can’t do things and not have someone tell me I’ll forget my lines, or I’ll trip and fall on the set."

Ingmar Bergman said "Aging is not uncomplicated. Creativity is an extraordinary help against destructive demons."

Entering her seventies, Anne Truitt, American artist, sculpter and writer, was in crisis. Her art wasn't selling and she found herself anxious about her final years and death. Equally disturbing, she found that she was powerless to protect her children from the pain life inflicted on them - illness, early death, divorce and suicide. 

"Her journal [Prospect] becomes the catalyst through which she reconciles her past and future. By the time she has finished her book, at 72, Truitt has learned transforming lessons: that living with insecurity 'is critical to psychological growth' . . . that character changes little over time; that a life, like a sculpture, cannot be brought to a tidy end... that aging is 'the most interesting thing that has ever happened to me.'”

Sometimes I am ensnared by insecurity. 

Recently a 80-year-old friend came to visit with her daughter who hovered over her, had insisted she move into an old-age home, and treated her as if she is feeble and incapable. Her mother smiled and said nothing but when the daughter was out of the room, she acted and talked as a woman clearly capable physically and mentally of knowing her strengths and limitations. I told the daughter (perhaps not wise of me) about my father who was 90 at the time when my five siblings and I arrived at our parents' home for an intervention. He was furious, said his children would not tell him how to live. (Really we were more concerned about our mother but he was involved in that he was taking care of her and didn't have the strength or energy to be her main caregiver.) I felt for him. He was ancient yes but not incapable of making decisions about his final years. 

My neighbour, Madame Rogier is twenty years older than I am and  has been living alone for over forty years. She looks after herself with a little help from her family, sweeps outside the front of her house every day, walks down the hill to tend her garden, and drives into Gaillac every week for groceries. She told me that she'd rather die than be dependent on anyone. 

I feel the same. I have dreams of finding a retreat, somewhere with all the amenities including wifi and where no one will take pity on me or try to direct my days. 

“Something strange is happening to me.” So explained Anne Truitt in a letter to her daughter in the fall of 2003, one year before her death at age 83. “Certain ways in which I have made my work ever since 1961 have simply—very simply, silently and without saying goodbye—departed from me.”

Truitt's outlook on old age and death "steadied by fierce intelligence, adaptability, detachment (learned reluctantly from her mother and keenly from Cicero) and, most strikingly, a passion to cut to the meaning of every experience makes her an optimistic, even exemplary guide through this territory that awaits us all."

I am overwhelmed by everything at the moment, especially when I look in the mirror...

I love George Carlin's ideas about growing old:

Life's journey is not to

arrive at the grave safely

in a well preserved body,

but rather to skid in sideways,

totally worn out, shouting,

".. holy shit ...what a ride!"

Quotes

 “Art versus humanity is not the question, Ulysses. One doesn’t exist without the other. Art is the antidote. Is that enough to make it important? Well yes, I think it is.” 

“We like beauty, don’t we? Something good on the eye cheers us. Does something to us on a cellular level, makes us feel alive and enriched. Beautiful art opens our eyes to the beauty of the world, Ulysses. It repositions our sight and judgment. Captures forever that which is fleeting. A meager stain in the corridors of history, that’s all we are. A little mark of scuff.” 

“But when she had entered the gallery room, the storm shutters around her heart flew open and she knew immediately that this was the life she wanted: Freedom. Possibility. Beauty.”

— Sarah Winman, Still Life

Lost Words

 Time appears to escape me. Time does escape me and I become more and more bewildered about what to do with my life: 

Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Oh Mary Oliver, I wish I was smarter. I wish I could resign myself to my life and its lulls and lack of passion. I have to put all my effort into moving one foot forward and then the other, telling myself that there is still possibilities. 

I am reading "The Dictionary of Lost Words" by Pip Williams and at last I feel a small spark about my reading material. I never stop reading but I seldom feel a spark, give a sigh of contentment. I find it difficult to write even birthday messages.

My daughter turned 36 on October 17th. This is what I managed to squeeze out...

Today is my daughter's birthday. She was born on a Wednesday. 

“Wednesday’s child is full of grace.” 

She was born three days after her father's birthday and so became his belated birthday gift - a gift worth waiting for. And she told him three days ago that at the end of February, she will have a special gift for him. 

She was and will always be my gift too - this now grown up woman who remains full of grace and so much more - wisdom and kindness for sure. 

"When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary

When troubles come and my heart burdened be

Then, I am still and wait here in the silence

Until You come and sit awhile with me."

She tells me that life is an adventure - no matter what goes wrong. She is one of my biggest fan as I am hers.

I cannot find the words to describe my love for her. 

Happy Birthday, my darling Gilly

Flying High

 Whenever I'm feeling low, I think of all the amazing people who love me. As my eldest son said, "Would all these people love you if you really are a worthless piece of shit?" (Perhaps not an exact quote.)

This song by Mary and Kim made my birth day several years ago and I play it when I'm low or if I just want to remember these dear friends. 

I really don't know love at all

"Fans at Rhode Island’s Newport Folk Festival got a lot more than they bargained for Sunday night: a surprise set from folk legend Joni Mitchell.

The 78-year-old singer-songwriter behind “Both Sides Now” and “Big Yellow Taxi” took the stage and performed several songs — her first public performance since suffering a brain aneurysm in 2015, NPR reported."

I love her!

Meanwhile in the heat, I am preparing the house for children. Gill arrives on the 18th of August and Brendan and Michael are arriving September 1st to look after their father after his second operation. Hopefully this will do the trick and he'll be cancer-free. (I was worried because I have to leave for Paris on the 1st and felt like the worst wife in the universe. My boys rescued me and Rob is happy.)

July 23, 2022

Last night I dreamt that Fanny (my friend who died three years ago) and I were in Toronto at Ryerson University taking a history course. Marlene was the professor. Our last class seemed, at first, to be a social event. We were so happy to see each other and then we dispersed for lunch. Fanny and I left together. On our way back, I went into a store - I think it was for tobacco - and when I came out, Fanny was gone so I wandered a bit looking for her and then realised that I'd be late for the afternoon exam and started to run but I was lost. I ran into some building where a tall naked man, his body was painted in camouflage, clutched a baby. He was surprised to see me there and then looked delighted and tried to kiss me. I looked at him as if he was a mad man and told him that I was old enough to be his mother. I left and kept running, worried that Marlene would be worried - maybe even angry at me for being late but I was lost. I asked a young Chinese woman if she knew the way to Ryerson U and she wasn't sure but knew the general direction. We ran together making light conversation. I told her that I lived in France and she said that she always wanted to see France. I thought of inviting her for a visit but didn't. Finally after a number of obstacles and wrong turns, I found the building and ran into it. Marlene and Fanny had been worried about me and I explained what had happened. Marlene put her hands on my shoulders and told me that she had put a lot of work into writing the exam and I missed the chance to write it. 

At some point, on my run, I realised that I hadn't even read over the notes for the course and knew little about the course material so perhaps it was a good thing that I would be late - an excuse for a poorly written examen. 

Don Quixote

 I'm. sorry. Too many distractions. Too many books. And way way too much wallowing... so here's what I have decided to do: fly to London and see a ballet! Now how frivolous is that? (And also catch a glimpse of my extraordinary eldest son, his wild and wonderful wife, and their beautiful son.)

Don Quixote by the Birmingham Ballet. It was wonderful!

More soon. Hopefully.

"I wish I had a river/ I could skate away on"

This Sunday, the last one in May, finds me singing Joni Mitchell. 

Oh, I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I'm so hard to handle
I'm selfish and I'm sad...

I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly

My dream at the moment is to fly somewhere quiet and alone. I would take my writing and try to find a way into it that pleases me, that stirs the heat below my surface until sparks turns to flames and I'm flying a writer's high. I think of Samuel Beckett's lines

“Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back.”

My problem is that I want them back. I feel as if I wasted so much time, that I have left all too late. Where does one find courage? 

"engulfed by a tide of sadness mingled with flashes of pure happiness"

 I am reading "A Single Rose" by Muriel Barbery that takes place in Japan. 

"'Life is painful,' said Rose... 

The Englishwoman looked away, lost in contemplation of the pavilion.

'If a person is not ready to suffer,' she said, 'they are not ready to live.'"

I feel as if my life is almost over though admittedly, I've always felt like this. I did not expect to live this long and I wonder if this thought has shaped my life. I have dared myself to do things that others have judged selfish even reckless. I regret nothing although many of my actions have caused me discomfort even pain, and worse - sometimes I was responsible for another's pain. 

Over thirty years ago, a male friend said that I would always be unsatisfied. I expect too much from life. Do I? I see living as work. There is so much work, drudgery even, doing all that must be done. I am talking about housework, paperwork, personal hygiene, and even the responsibility that I feel for others - especially my children when they were young - and yet, more often than not, these responsibilities brought "flashes of pure happiness". 

I'm now thinking in song...

When Kris Kristofferson wrote "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose," he said that he was "trying to show that  freedom is a double-edged sword and that you may be free, but it can be painful to be that free..."

I love Leonard Cohen's "Bird on a Wire". 

"I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch

He said to me, "you must not ask for so much"

And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door

She cried to me, "hey, why not ask for more?"

Oh, like a bird on the wire

Like a drunk in a midnight choir

I have tried in my way to be free"

I am still trying. A friend once asked me how I'm doing and I replied, "I think I'm happier than I think I am."

A Trembling Camellia

 "I begin to cry, quietly, slowly, a trembling camellia in my breast." 

Is that not the most beautiful image? 

I am reading "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" by Muriel Barbery and I am enthralled. 

In one scene towards the end of the novel: a young man returns to his former apartment and asks the concierge the name of the flowers planted in the garden. She tells him "camellias" and he tells her "when I was in a really bad way I would think about those flowers, and it did me good... it practically saved my life." 

"'Jean, you cannot imagine how happy I am that you came by here today.'"

"'But why?'"

"Because a camellia can change fate."

Other Writers

 I was thinking that my reader(s) may think me lazy because I love quoting other writers and then I remembered Nancy Mairs' "Voice Lessons" and a passage that made me happy because it gave me permission to quote others. (Throughout my life writers have given me permission to think what I think and not what I think I should think.) In this particular passage that I remember had me sighing with relief (because I do love a good quote) Mairs quotes Jane Tompkins ("Me and My Shadow"):

"I find that having released myself from the duty to say things that I am not interested in, in a language I resist, I feel free to entertain other people's voices. Quoting them becomes a pleasure of appreciation rather than the obligatory giving of credit, because when I write in a voice that is not struggling to be heard through a language, I no longer feel that it is not I who am speaking, and so, there is more room for what others have said."

She also quotes Carolyn Heilbrun who I adore: "Lives do not serve as models, only stories do that. And it is a hard thing to make up stories to live by. We can only retell and live by the stories we have read or heard. We live our lives though texts."

I understand better now why I have been devouring books this past year. I am looking for a new novel way to live my final act. 

More food for thought (for me and Lisa)

 Another quote from "The Little Paris Bookshop":

"'Do you know that there's a halfway world between each ending and each new beginning? It's called the hurting time, Jean Perdu. It's a bog; it's where your dreams and worries and forgotten plans gather. Your steps are heavier during that time. Don't underestimate the transition... between farewell and new departure. Give yourself the time you need. Some thresholds are too wide to be taken in one stride.'"

Fauci

 During the pandemic, we agreed to take a kitten into our home. We thought it male and in a bow to Dr. Fauci, we decided to name him after this good doctor. When we learnt that Fauci was a girl, we called her Miss Fauci though most often we drop the Miss. 

I find myself in love with this small creature and wondered why beyond the idea that she is regal and Egyptian (or in my head she is - "Egyptians believed cats were magical creatures, capable of bringing good luck to the people who housed them.") so I did a little research. 

One article noted:

"I believe that a major reason we love cats is because of an uncanny ability that few humans possess: they register our tactile presence in a deeply felt way. They really know how to let us in! They’re right there in the delectable moment receiving our touch.

Delighting in our physical presence, they may begin to purr and perhaps roll on their backs, exposing their vulnerability. As if to say, “I trust you. Give me some love and make me feel good.” Their gift to us is that they receive us deeply, without any troubling cognitions or disturbing memories of less savory moments, such as when we forgot to feed them or clean their litter box. They let all of that go. They’re just here with us right now.

Perhaps you’re blessed to have a partner who receives you in a deep way. What a gift to sense that your partner is really letting you in. But sadly, most of us have blocks to receiving deeply and freely. Perhaps past conflicts or traumas have muddied the waters. Or, we’ve been taught that giving is nobler than receiving and we believe that we’re selfish if we receive uninhibitedly.

Cats teach us that this ain't so. Most likely, we don’t judge cats as being selfish; we relish how openly they let us in. Or, perhaps we think they're selfish, but we don't mind. Humans could use more healthy narcissism in regard to receiving people more deeply.

Research has shown that cats can be very healing for us. A 10-year research study suggests that cat owners were less likely to die of heart attacks than people who have never owned one. The latter group was 40 percent more likely to die from heart attacks and 30 percent more likely to die from cardiovascular disease. Other studies confirm that cats can lower our blood pressure and release dopamine and serotonin, which reduce stress and improve immune functioning.

Cats can also help release oxytocin, which is associated with the feeling of being in love. As we know, love heals, and perhaps an important aspect of this healing is the bonding created by their ability to receive us deeply. I have fond memories of my now deceased cat slowly sauntering toward me and lying on my chest, purring. It’s a precious feeling that puts us into a relaxed state...

Be a cat. Get out of your head, take a deep, easy breath, and be mindfully present with how it feels in your body to receive a hug and affection from a loved one. Whether from a cat or human, letting in love just might heal you."

Habit

 "Habit is a vain and treacherous goddess. She lets nothing disrupt her rule. She smothers one desire after another: the desire to travel, the desire for a better job or a new love. She stops us from living as we would like, because habit prevents us from asking ourselves whether we continue to enjoy doing what we do."        ~  Nina George (The Little Paris Bookshop)

I will think on habit today and return to discuss habit and whether I am enjoying what I do. 

I Want to Dance

"Dance is the hidden language of the soul of the body."        Martha Graham

***

I've decided amid all in this messy world, I must find something of beauty, and the two things that I truly think beautiful are dance and books. Yesterday I finished "The Little Paris Bookshop" by Nina George and  I felt so happy, I'm reading it again to write quotes. 

"With all due respect, what you read is more important in the long term than the man you marry...

"Surrender to the treasures of books instead of entering pointless relationships with men, who neglect you anyway, or going on crazy diets because you're not thin enough for one man and not stupid enough for the next...

Books keep stupidity at bay. And vain hopes. And vain men. They undress you with love, strength and knowledge. It's love from within."

Just Call Me Pathetic...

Lots of thoughts thunk but do they find their way to paper? Rarely.

David Reid suggested that I read "French Braid" by Ann Tyler. He tells me that Tyler loves family and he found this novel curious and interesting. Susan (who is listening to the audio version) says it has no bite. She wants to read a book that gives some insight into her close relationships. I'm with Susan. I need some light right now.

I dwell on dying too often. The world is not a happy one. My baby sister wrote about her happiness in a FaceBook post and questioned herself. How dare she be happy when the world is so unhappy? Another friend who had booked a trip to France cancelled at the last moment. She did not want to leave her family when another world war might happen. How do we live our lives at this time? 

I have begun Ann Patchett's "These Precious Days" - a compilation of essays about her thoughts when the pandemic was raging, still rages. 

"Death always thinks of us eventually. The trick is to find the joy in the interim and make good use of the days we have."

I feel as if I am nearing my expiry date and I don't want my last days (hopefully years) to be filled with doom and gloom. I want to find a way to give and enjoy the time I have left. 

 

Tempus Fugit

 I think about writing all the time. I devour books but do I pick up my pen? Margaret Atwood reminds me that : "If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word."

I'm going to try to write again here - imperfectly - even if it is only a sentence or two. 

Bisous