Spring is beginning to show up in NYC. Sure, it's still in the 40s, occasional the 50s, but it won't be for long. The sun is brighter, the days longer and I can feel Winter's cold grasp giving way to a thaw.
I love the seasons on the East Coast. Even though some of them torment me (Summer) I enjoy marking the passage of time by noting the leaves drying up, falling off trees, the barren branches and bushes of January, and the cusp of warmth in March. It does feel like rebirth, inspires forgiveness, reaching out of one's comfort zone and celebrating that we all have made it through yet another hibernation.
Today I vacuumed our apartment, and the blinds, then wiped them down with a damp cloth to get all that dust off. It felt good. Purging. Spring cleaning is sooooo satisfying. And when we wash the windows, get the two new pieces of furniture my husband just got for us, sell the old, do a deep clean throughout the place and throw open the windows for Spring - it will be fantastic.
The older I get the more I realize how much of life is ritual, finding joy or meaning in repetition. Every week I think "It's time to clean the apartment AGAIN?" but the satisfaction I get in clean sheets, a glimmering bathroom, and the sleek lines of surfaces uncluttered with paperwork is remarkable. When I was younger I didn't give a shit about cleaning. I wanted to be FREE more than anything. My physical environment was not important to me. Now, it's incredible important. I have built a home with my husband which has been extremely meaningful to me. I love the atmosphere of our apartment. It's urban, comfortable, modern, playful, and artistic. When I come home from a long day in the city I think, "THIS is where I want to be".
So as we move into Spring I find myself cleaning, which is meditative, and thinking about change, about moving forward, yet again, into an uncertain future. This economic time is scary, and definitely is affecting most people in the world. Even the uber-rich are feeling this one. What does that mean? How do I step towards the future?
I suppose cleaning my house is preparing for a time of uncertainty and fright. Not all of that is bad - my mother once said in a moment of frustration with me, "You have to do something that frightens you EVERY DAY!" At the time I was 24 (?) and rolled my eyes at another impractical and obviously Puritan value she was imparting to me. My mother definitely believed that pain and suffering was the path to accomplishment. I thought that ridiculous and unnecessary.
We had been walking in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, in the Japanese Tea Garden and come across The Moon Bridge:
She wanted to climb over it and I was frightened. I am not steady on my feet and don't like heights or the feeling that I could easily fall. She got frustrated with me and kept bugging me to just climb it with her. I finally told her I wasn't wearing underwear (which was true) and was in a skirt. That was not the reason why I didn't want to climb the bridge though - it was because I was scared and I wanted to feel safe. Her compromise was to 'spot' me so strangers wouldn't see up my skirt as I climbed over. And I managed fine.
I realize now that she was saying, "You're going to BE scared... don't let that stop you!" She was showing me that fear and worry should not be these things to get in my way, not those things.
So if I have to clean anyway, if I have to feel pain and suffer anyway, why shouldn't it lead to accomplishment, to the future? I realize now that living one's life without pain, without worry and burden, is a luxury of the young, carefree and foolish... do I let those times roll over me, wash me clean, as I do with joy and celebration?
"Do I dare eat a peach?"
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My blog entry was to end here.
I wrote this entry, after breakfast of tea and oatmeal as usual, and this morning began watching a new English cop series "The Wire in the Blood" as I slurped and masticated. What was the name of the first episode? "The Mermaids Singing"
I bring this up because after writing "Do I dare eat a peach" above, a phrase I know is from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot, I decided to copy the poem below and re-read after many years.
And what phrase, do you think, is in the fourth to last stanza of the poem? The same exact stanza as "Do I dare eat a peach?"?
Is that my clever brain? Capturing a phrase I haven't read or have any memory of in at least 15 years? Or is that coincidence?
To whom do the mermaids sing?
T S Eliot (1888-1965)
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
S'io credessi che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza più scosse.
Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo
Non tornò viva alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo. *
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question . . .
Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'
Let us go and make out visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, 'Do I dare?' and, 'Do I dare?
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair -
(They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!'}
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin -
(They will say, 'But how his legs and arms are thin!')
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse
For I have known them all already, known them all -
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all -
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume
And how should I begin?
. . . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet - and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: 'I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all' -
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: 'That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.'
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor -
And this, and so much more? -
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow toward the window, should say:
'That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.'
. . . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendent lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous -
Almost, at times, the Fool.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Another Spring, another lovely awakening of nature in Brooklyn. Cool, crisp breezes, birds chirping almost manically, cats and dogs happily trotting down the street sniffing the air. It make-a me happy.
photos of my cat, Yoda, force-snuggling his brother Eskimo (both of whom were born in our backyard). Yoda just happens to be force-snuggling me right now as I try to type this around his enormous corpus.
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