Often I reach Friday and it’s like the last clawing mile of a long run, but today I feel energetic and excited about this weekend.
I’m going to buckle down to some long put-off chores and I know I’ll feel good checking each one off the list. It’s the last weekend of January too and that feels like a milestone. It’s been a good start to 2012, I think, though it threw me for a loop a few times. Ultimately, I think I was coasting into the New Year and I needed that jarring. I feel even more resolved now than I did at the start of the month.
I had so many “ahh lovely” moments on the blogosphere this week. Anabela started a new series called Repository and it’s all kinds of lovely. I’ve always been tempted to do something more visual with my Friday round-ups, but I want to come up with something different. It’s hard when people like Anabela, Miss Moss and Kate do such a kick-ass job with theirs. I’ll put my thinking cap on!
Some house-keeping: There’s now threaded commenting on blogger (hip hip!) making it easier for me to respond to readers, which I like to do! I still haven’t fully resolved the invisible comment issue and blogger help boards were a rabbit warren of unconfirmed fixes. I think it’s firmly an unresolved issue on their side. If this happens to you please know I’m not rejecting your comments (unless you’re a spammer or self-promoter) but simply not seeing them. Finally, I started using Instagram and if you’re on there you might like to follow me at seenandsaid.
January isn't one of those simple months. I felt myself teetering more than once, losing confidence, letting things I don't believe in upset me. Each time, I managed to pull myself back, to stretch deep in yoga, to reach out to friends, to sleep it off. And so the blues have stayed at bay. But this burst of blues is the good kind... we can keep all of these ones.
My reader is bobbing with various notions of love. And I've always been a strange one when it came to these things, not quite at home with easy, uncomplicated feelings. Today's poem probably betrays too much of how I feel. It's by Sam, of course, and is here in English and French.
what would I do without this world faceless incurious
where to be lasts but an instant where every instant
spills in the void the ignorance of having been
without this wave where in the end
body and shadow together are engulfed
what would I do without this silence where the murmurs die
the pantings the frenzies towards succour towards love
without this sky that soars
above its ballast dust
what would I do what I did yesterday and the day before
peering out of my deadlight looking for another
wandering like me eddying far from all the living
in a convulsive space
among the voices voiceless
that throng my hiddenness
--------------------
que ferais-je sans ce monde sans visage sans questions
où être ne dure qu'un instant où chaque instant
verse dans le vide dans l'oubli d'avoir été
sans cette onde où à la fin
corps et ombre ensemble s'engloutissent
que ferais-je sans ce silence gouffre des murmures
haletant furieux vers le secours vers l'amour
sans ce ciel qui s'élève
sur la poussieère de ses lests
que ferais-je je ferais comme hier comme aujourd'hui
regardant par mon hublot si je ne suis pas seul
à errer et à virer loin de toute vie
dans un espace pantin
sans voix parmi les voix
enfermées avec moi
Thomas O'Brien is my favourite home designer, not least because he seems as much a collector as a designer. And his spaces remind me more of haphazard professor's offices and gentrified old country houses and less of the self-consciously "undecorated" schemes we've been spoon-fed of late.
While I was browsing Aero Studio's Facebook page, I found the above picture. See the leather chair there? That leather chair really wants to live with Janey.
And I've always (always) loved the desk chair in the above photo. Only last night I found this post. It's an Irish chair! I might have known that sooner if I owned this book that I've had wishlisted on Amazon for yonks or if I had paused to wonder why its lines were so familiar and comfortable to me.
I've been changing some things around at home. I'm not the kind to top-down plan a scheme. But I always find a look at O'Brien's interiors sends me in the right direction. His mix of traditional and modern, masculine and neutral, bookish and airy always appeals.
Brodkey's writing is excessively spare, which I'm always drawn to. But what hooked me the most is how well he writes women. I usually look to Irish writers for this (William Trevor in particular, but also Colm Tóibín). It was a surprise to find women laid bare here, in Brodkey's spartan prose.
I think often of the movie Closer. To be honest, I'm not sure I like it, but I think of it often and am intrigued by it. Its characters articulate exactly what they feel when they feel it. Every swaying emotion is told as it's felt. And there's an unflinchingness to it, which also makes it feel wholly artificial to watch; that's simply not how people talk to each other, even our inner dialogue is seldom that blunt.
Brodkey's stories tell of the complexity of love, the bluntness and even primitiveness of subjective thoughts and feelings, our wild vacillations in self-esteem and esteem for those we love. But his delivery; so disciplined, never florid, in contrast to the tumultuous feelings he's telling, called to mind that movie. And I sometimes found myself wishing his characters could muster the same directness.
I don't understand at all how this book is out of print. Excepting the last two stories, which I thought the volume would have been better without, this book left me winded. I'm astonished that I didn't cross paths with it sooner, but I do believe in a certain magical synchronicity of timing with books at certain times of your life.
Every time I return to reading short stories after a spell with novels or non-fiction, I rediscover my complete love of short fiction. These compact stories are like perfectly in-focus photographs. There's no blurry depth of field, every detail is given clarity and meaningfulness, the scene is exposed just as it is and you notice details that are easily overlooked and disregarded in everyday life.
Snow on the ground is the perfect excuse to retreat to the dark of a theatre in the middle of the day.
I'm going to see the new Cronenberg film today, although I'm sure Ms Knightley will do her best to ruin it. Still, I hope that the ultimate manly man combo of Viggo-Fassbender is enough to compensate. The movie will no doubt be followed by lunch and gallivanting. I'm ahead of myself with my spontaneous 3-day weekend, so I can leave the day just that unplanned.
Yesterday, I slept later than usual and lounged at home, reading for a long time before heading out. It was the first time I've worn my Bean boots this year, as we've had so little snow. And I found myself giddy to pull them on. They'll always be my favourite snow boots.
I stayed at the coffee shop long enough to drink two big mugs and found myself in a strange sort of daze. Maybe I was a bit hungover from too many Bellinis the night before. But I was just happy to sit there. Although it was cold, the sun was low and direct so it felt warm to sit close to the front of the coffee shop and watch the street outside. And dogs in snowshoes always make me smile, especially when they're particularly jaunty about it.
I feel 2012 is hitting a straightaway now, after the steep climb to the new year and the jagged turns of those first few weeks. I bought some potted mini daffs and hyacinths to force indoors and am feeling a more even-keeled optimism setting in. And last night, I dreamed about lilacs.
If last week was a week of Wednesdays, this week was threatening to be a week of Mondays, and I just couldn't have that. So I booked today off with no reason or agenda.
I'm going to do lots of writing and puttering about. Finish the book I'm reading. Cry because the book I'm reading is so good and I don't want it to end. Write some e-mails. Drink some coffee and cook dinner for company later on.
Both my passports are being renewed right now and just knowing I can't travel is giving me ants in my pants. So, I probably shouldn't be thinking about candles that conjure Welsh country laneways. Instead, I should focus on those winter nesty feelings I'm also experiencing and do some things around my home.
And before I go, here's a random hit of unabashed pretty. Beautiful dressing tables light up my eyes like I'm a little girl nervously reaching for her Mum's pearls. I can smell her lipstick as she readies for a night out.
Happy weekend, friends!
P.S. A regular reader has alerted me that her comments have not been appearing on my blog. She leaves comments using the name/url option. I never "reject" comments unless they're spam, self-promotion etc. and love hearing from readers, so this is a little upsetting. If anybody has left comments and been concerned they didn't appear, please rest assured it is not an intentional thing on my part. And if you have experienced this, please let me know jane[at]janeflanagan[dot]ca as I'm anxious to troubleshoot and resolve! Thanks.
Being a bookish sort of Flanagan, I don't always wear my love for soft and pretty on my sleeve. But it's true, my stoic, studied ways have been known to give way to softer sentiments. And I think that's evidenced lately by the touches of pink creeping in to my Sunday bests (here and there, not everywhere).
Yesterday, the little arrow ring I ordered from Odette arrived and I love it completely. I also recently indulged in some lingerie from Fortnight—perfection. I'm digging around in my own taste for softer things; I like sweet, but not twee, romance, but not froth. I'm getting used to feeling disarmed, without feeling vulnerable.
I usually tell you something about the poem I pick, or why I picked it. But I'm tired today and know I will fuss too long looking for the right words. So, instead, I'll just give you this. By Mark Strand.
Black Sea
One clear night while the others slept, I climbed
the stairs to the roof of the house and under a sky
strewn with stars I gazed at the sea, at the spread of it,
the rolling crests of it raked by the wind, becoming
like bits of lace tossed in the air. I stood in the long
whispering night, waiting for something, a sign, the approach
of a distant light, and I imagined you coming closer,
the dark waves of your hair mingling with the sea,
and the dark became desire, and desire the arriving light.
The nearness, the momentary warmth of you as I stood
on that lonely height watching the slow swells of the sea
break on the shore and turn briefly into glass and disappear...
Why did I believe you would come out of nowhere? Why with all
that the world offers would you come only because I was here?
Well, that didn't last long; mild weather is back again! Nevertheless, a perfect excuse to admire Katherine Hooker's lovely country apparel. The horse-riding Wicklow woman I have too long repressed loves these with intensity. And the Toronto version of me would make do with that leather armchair.
I'm still shivering from the walk into work this morning. I'd really rather be in bed today. Love these bedding sets from Teixidors, a label spotted at Hollace Cluny on the weekend.
