making note of

A lovely, companionable book that I came across recently is Greene on Capri, A Memoir, published in 2000.  The author is Shirley Hazard.  The Greene is Graham Greene, the marvelous writer, prickly person, and Capri, of course, is the astonishingly beautiful cliff-made island off the coast near Naples Italy.

Shirley Hazard did not make notes of (nor did she tape-record) the conversations she had with Graham Greene. Here is what she says about recall:

Over our years of Capri meetings, I seldom made "notes" after conversation with Graham and Yvonne.  An underlying intention to record changes the nature of things, blighting spontaneity and receptivity: an imposition.  Like the snapping of photographs.  In our appointments diary I sometimes find hieroglyphic reference to the evenings at Gemma, a few words of recall.  One remembers long and well, and without prompting, what is truly interesting--the moments that, pondered, shared, revised, become part of the inward legend.  

(She means by "snapping of photographs" here the substitute activity of looking, not the kind of photographing wherein the photographer/artist shares the life of her subject and, oh, can capture it in a still image so that we can share a bit of the life too [see Sue's wonderful photos in the next blog below here!].  Don't you think so?)  Sketching, for me, feeds my inward legend, my map of significant images.  And you?  How do you recall salient features of people or places that you come across?

sketch while visiting Leelanau

you

rising dove

T and his wife Takako just returned from their home town, where they went to celebrate at their temple the death of T's father.  "My father has been dead for 33 years."  Their priest in Akita, who incidentally is both a Buddhist priest and a medical doctor, talked to T about "you."

In English, in western societies, the word "you" represents you here and now.  In Japanese society "you" represents not only you here and now but also your ancestors.  So, he told T and Takako, you need to appreciate your ancestors.

Today, M's Aunt Betty is passing from the here and now.  Her doctor in Chicago took her off a ventilator and other support this afternoon.  Betty has outlived nearly everyone in her family stories.  Ancestral she will become.  With brothers all around her once again, in the same tense with them again.

spring leaving

Spring field flowers

field sketch

The field has been seeded with wildflowers.  I go there often to sketch; this sketch, done on site, is large, 22x30."  I tried to work quickly, and you can see that some of the pastel marks barely cover the paper.  That day the field was shimmering with the sky, and the horizon wafted between the two.

Jane Blaffer Owen died on the solstice, the longest day of light, the last day of spring, this year.  She befriended me, and so many others, in New Harmony Indiana.  New Harmony will always carry her art, architecture, gardens, restorations, and her spirit.  With grace, she leaves the world.

my summer vacation

Elena's back yard

Two weeks away:  time with my sisters H, N, and twin sister Jt, and with light and ocean, garden flowers and big old cypresses.  We walked a lot, we laughed a lot.  Color all around, carried with us even onto the highways and in the airports.

Coming back in the airplane I watched pools and wafts and points of darkness and lights, moving and changing in and out of patterns.  Fields of night and lights.  A bright crescent moon shone alongside for awhile.

The Emigrants by W. G. Sebald I read, travelled with.  There is a passage about memory reaching back, and forth into the present and perhaps beyond, and that memory meanders, foggy, sometimes clear.  I cannot find the passage.  The book is terrific, a dazzlingly rich field of greys and grey-surrounded points of fact/fiction/memory.  Oh here is the passage, from the fourth and final emigrant memoir, "Max Ferber":

     If I think back nowadays to our childhood in Steinbach (Luisa's memoirs continue at another point), it often seems as if it had been open-ended time, in every direction--indeed, as if it were still going on, right into these lines I am now writing.

This passage goes on for awhile, Luisa remembering the path and the kind of memories of her childhood and adulthood, all within the frame of her son Max's memories, as told to the nameless younger narrator of "Max Ferber" who grows older as we travel with him, we readers.   Luisa is remembering even as her world in her present-day Germany becomes narrower and narrower.  (The passage does not include fogginess; I got that wrong, yet fogginess, greyness are abiding motifs throughout the book.)

What a lot of layers and movement--in fields of color, night, or grey--there are in moments of memory.

away

I've sought out returning geese from my March 10, 2010 entry.  As you can see, away is much the same image as returning geese.  (The haiku by Miura Chora in the same March 10th entry is good for me to read again too.)

away

four leaves of bamboo like a wild goose

for my friend

Away:  a friend has gone.  He will not be returning except when I think of him.  Seeing the four leaves of bamboo as returning or as going away imbues, a bit, this still memorial brushpainting with movement, memory that will move, come and go.