Last evening, Chuck and I dressed up and headed out to visit Rob and Virginia Klein, old friends from the old law firm. Both look hale and hearty as opposed to Chuck’s and my rather chunky physical fattness…. Both Chuck and I are "living the good life" on the too much calories side, but I’m trying to remedy that with walking 10,000 steps with our visiting cousin Barbara!!! We drove home at 10:30 and cheered in the New Year on our back dock with Barbara and drank champagne! Happy New Year was cheered in with 30 minutes of lake side fireworks. Thanks neighbors!!!
Yesterday morning, as I cooked breakfast, words kept going through my mind…. "April is the cruelest month… mixing memory with desire…" I went immediately to Chaucer, where Chaucer opened his world of stories and poetry (Canterbury tales) with "April with his showers sweet, the drout of March has pierced to the root, and bathed every vein in such liquor of which virtue engendered is the flower… then people long to go on pilgrimage…" The world of Canterbury Tales is situated in an inn when pilgrims gather and are asked to tell stories! Some bawdy by Chaucer’s standards. This is a piece of literature that English majors read in full, and students struggled with as it is written in "olde English". But the memory and desire stuff also comes from the "Wasteland" by TS Eliot who wrote on a more pessimistic note:
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain;
Chaucer’s tale is for fun, but Eliot is known for his intense pessimism… when the season turns to spring.. we are stirred to move, but many don’t want to move rather stay under the forgetful snow. Desire stirs up memory, maybe of what we didn’t do, can’t do, or maybe of what we have done and shouldn’t have… All that is to be forgotten as the New Year begins. Today will be a day of memory. Sunday morning television is remembering those who died, most recently the beautiful Princess Leia Carrie Fisher and her mother, Debbie Reynolds,the beautiful mind Gwen Hall, Edward Albee and many many others, gone. So the memory… Now the desire. "What do I want to do?" you ask? I remember my neighbor Bill who said… First be kind. So let us shake off the covers of the past and go out into that shower of rain (or snow!) and be kind. Surprised and with passion! God bless you!