Starting all over again: "Lark Rise to Candleford"

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It’s a remarkable thing when what you’ve been meditating on and practicing, important truths of human nature—identity, humility, sorrow, betrayal, forgiveness, understanding, patience and love—are suddenly demonstrated by people with real faces, in real situations. Never mind that it’s TV, and fictionalized. This is training of the highest order.

In the last few weeks when Don and I got home from work, after we walked the property and then made supper, we sat down with our food to an episode or two of a British “costume” drama. I rarely watch TV. But as my friend Arti at Ripple Effects said not too long ago, How are you holding up while you wait for the third season of “Downton Abbey”? Well, while waiting we queued up several other BBC costume dramas (thanks to our daughter Lesley’s recommendations) on Netflix. (I posted about “Little Dorrit” here; I love not having to wait a week between episodes, or for the next season months later.) Next was “Lark Rise to Candleford,” and now that we have finished it, I want to tell you that this show is affecting me so much that I am channeling characters in my job and relationships.

The Lark Rise series is based on a trilogy of semi-autobiographic novels by Flora Thompson, written in the 1930s and '40s about her life in a rural hamlet in the late 19th century. The setting is Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, England, with serene and sublime rural scenery. Lark Rise is a tiny hamlet of families of farmers and craftspeople, and Candleford is a town eight country miles away where fashion and progress are edging their way in. Young Laura of the hamlet goes off to work at the post office in Candleford as an apprentice to her mother’s cousin, the postmistress Dorcas Lane. Thus begins our witness of relationships between the folk of Lark Rise and the folk of Candleford, a sort of lateral Upstairs Downstairs footpath.

Queenie and Alf of the hamlet Lark Rise

Each character is flawed and deeply developed through the four seasons; they model how to push through problems and meet one another with tough love. No one is spared humiliation or failure. There are wise souls in the hamlet, and there are fools. Likewise, you will find the same mix in Candleford, as in all places. When the hamlet and town folk meet, class distinctions and prejudice surface. Society’s rules get challenged. Neighbors help neighbors at home, and between town and hamlet; they hurt them too. They live Rumi’s advice: “Be generous and grateful. Confess when you’re not" (from his poem "The Well"). And then like the old Jerome Kern song says, they pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and start all over again.

Looking for wisdom, I channel Dorcas Lane, postmistress at the center of Candleford life to whom everyone goes with problems. When a student comes into my office for advice on what to do when she has gotten herself into a mess with a professor, missing class, handing in a paper late, threatening to fail, I ask myself, What would Miss Lane say? You can laugh with me when I tell you that when I do find something to say out of her deep wisdom, I often feel my head tip just so, and my voice lilt like hers. “You have to go meet with him, and see if you can set it right. It might not be too late, mmm?” The other character I channel is Queenie Turrill (in the previous photos, above, played with effortless perfection by Linda Bassett), the elderly Zen beekeeper in Lark Rise who opens her home to anyone who needs her, which they often do. She is the center of the hamlet as Miss Lane is of the town. She teaches me not to take myself too seriously, to live in the moment, and to connect with nature. Both Miss Lane and Queenie have failings. A thread through the series is Miss Lane's "one weakness" which accumulates into many weaknesses. I'm not the center of anyone's universe but my own, but I do have about 700 students who turn to me for advice. I also have a grandson who is listening and watching as his little life unfolds. Sometimes the best advice comes out of one's own failings.

Four seasons, forty episodes, 2008 to 2011, and one actor shared with Downton Abbey: Brendan Coyle (Mr. Bates in “Downton Abbey,” Robert Timmins in “Lark Rise to Candleford”). Another actor, the most important one in the series for me, Julia Sawalha, who plays Dorcas Lane, is shared with BBC’s 1995 six-episode TV series “Pride and Prejudice” (which I've watched a dozen times at least): she was Elizabeth Bennet’s sister Lydia, the air-headed flirt who ran off with Wickham. It's illuminating how Sawalha pulls off extreme traits of idiot recklessness in Lydia and prudent serenity in Miss Lane.

The writing of Bill Gallagher’s screenplays is some of the best I have ever seen on film. Every episode made me weep (and often Don too). At the end of an hour’s watch, Don and I would look at one another, stunned that an easier and more clichéd line or closing had not been written, and that the writing was so intensely satisfying. Insights are astute and deep. This is not only for women. My husband got annoyed whenever the next DVD was delayed. Directed by Charles Palmer.

I welcome suggestions for other series. Next on our queue is "Cranford" but I am sure we'll start this one all over again at some point.

top photo: ChurchCrawler at flickr

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Caravanserai

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Caravanserai

Cords of silken blood flow in the peaks
and passes of my body, a traveling

miracle, while I read the news,
all of which barely reaches me—

economies of elections, wars, and
minerals harvested from asteroids

in the celestial commerce of billionaires.
Numb with armchair trade,

I remember the seduction
of the Silk Road. Quieted, I hear

spirit through the flutes of my bones—
the music of the steppes, the tinkle of pots

on your back. I smell the fust of Turkish
rugs on the floor and know

I would walk a thousand miles
to curl up on felt-covered stone with you

and these other traveling strangers, harbored
inside trusted walls, away from danger.

In the morning we finger sunrise apricots
in a copper breakfast bowl

before recommencing our planetary
journey, a mouthful of sweet chai, and I ask

what you know of the soul’s trade—
its breakdowns, its tinkerings

its thieves and swindlers? And you say,
Tonight we will come again to a caravanserai,

a courtyard of companionship, a warm stop
on the long road. Nothing else matters.


April 2012

Note: One of the thrills of my life was staying with Don, our two children, and my sister in a Caravanserai in Turkey, an outpost along the Silk Road where for centuries caravaners were given three nights free lodging, food and fodder for their animals. It was far from “free” as a hotel when we lodged, but worth every penny to me. These stone fortresses were built in a huge square, with one front portal large enough for camels to pass through. Rooms for sleeping were around the outer edge on the second floor, while service rooms, including a Turkish bath and shops to repair horseshoes, filled the lower floor. In the middle was a courtyard where goods and animals were kept. When we stayed at the Caravanserai in Kuşadası, transformed into a hotel, we dined in the courtyard. The best part of the experience for me was the two-foot thick stone wall that made our room’s window wells large enough for a small child to sleep in. My imagination has never rested since those nights.

Posted for DVerse Open Link Night, hosted this week by Brian Miller. Join the community.

 

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Letters from home

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Maybe it's because of National Poetry Month that I've been reflecting a lot on why I write poems. This blog has changed dramatically since I began in 2006, and these last couple of years it has become almost exclusively a poetry blog. I never intended it! It's just how things want to come out, a sort of shyness, not wanting to say things directly. I don't apologize, but I do realize poetry isn't for everyone. Funny, this write began as prose. I had every intention of writing prose! But it shaped itself into a poem. What is a person to do when a poem asserts itself?

Letters from home

That’s what poems are.

We are migrants from

somewhere that loves us.

Poems come from there.

News of a death,

news of a birth, both

in one letter. We want only

the truth, and nothing

held back. Things that

have come to pass,

and dreams held fast.

Read them again;

read them over again,
softened with time

in the shifting dust

of this foreign place.

April 2012

Note: The painting is Saudade by Brazilian painter José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior, painted in 1899.

The word saudade is a Portuguese-Galacian word that has no true equivalent in the English language. Wiki calls it a "deep emotional state of nostalgic longing" for someone, or something absent. Saudades are woven in the fabric of Brazilian music (I've shared one below). There is a fine, in-depth write about saudade at wiki here. However, I get the feeling that it can never really be understood by anyone who doesn't come from a culture where it is profoundly felt by its entire people. For instance, Brazil has a day of saudade on January 30, out of longing for the Portuguese homeland. I only recently discovered the word, and its melancholy and provenance have put me in a state of saudade for saudade, it is so beautiful. I find this helpful from wiki:

The "Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa" defines saudade (or saudades) as "A somewhat melancholic feeling of incompleteness. It is related to thinking back on situations of privation due to the absence of someone or something, to move away from a place or thing, or to the absence of a set of particular and desirable experiences and pleasures once lived."

The Dictionary from the Royal Galician Academy, on the other hand, defines saudade as an "intimate feeling and mood caused by the longing for something absent that is being missed. This can take different aspects, from concrete realities (a loved one, a friend, the motherland, the homeland...) to the mysterious and transcendant. It's quite prevalent and characteristic of the Galician-Portuguese world, but it can also be found in other cultures."

The similar feeling of morriña is defined as "Feelings and mood of melancholy and depression, particularly when caused by nostalgia for the motherland".

Maria Bethânia sings "Saudade" in Portuguese
(sorry I don't know who the gentleman is with her).

Music is the language of the heart, so for us

who don't know more than a few words of Portuguese,
even without understanding the words
we can feel the melancholy.
But if you're curious like me,
you can put the lyrics, below,
through an online translator.
There is moon, and sea . . .

Saudade a lua brilha na lagoa

Saudade a luz que sobra da pessoa

Saudade igual farol engana o mar

Imita o sol

Saudade sal e dor que o vento traz

Saudade o som do tempo que ressoa

Saudade o céu cinzento a garôa

Saudade desigual

Nunca termina no final

Saudade eterno filme em cartaz

A casa da saudade é o vazio

O acaso da saudade fogo frio

Quem foge da saudade

Preso por um fio

Se afoga em outras águas

Mas do mesmo rio.

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Dancing at dawn

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Dancing at dawn

I sit alone, like a pocketed wheel snail
snugged in sandy dawn, the sun
angling for salmon behind the barn’s thistle weeds;
off to the side the sky is the color of shallow tide
around the moon soon to be a filament
of film clipped on daylight’s floor.
The birds sing all at once and more, without
bounds and oversound the shells
of my ears with sea.
I bob and skim my chest at the edge
of the hot tub, the way seahorses slowly rock
intoxicated with love on YouTube
for us who only swim among the kind
of coral that grows neon in the sky.


April 2012

Poetry should be heard.

And a less "produced" version, after a few helpful comments...

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How to read a poem

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It's the middle of National Poetry Month, time to pause for a lesson. Believe it or not, my grandson is nearly three months old. He's a good teacher, and I should not keep his lessons to myself.

How to read a poem

Take him in your lap.

Look deep into his dark eyes.

Watch his arms while they

loop orbits in space

for no apparent purpose.

Let him ride his invisible

bicycle somewhere far—pumping,

pumping, pumping tiny legs,

making your thighs tremble.

See how still his eyes remain.

Fossick the meaning in his fists

where unknown words

are hidden and twirled.

(Don’t worry about the meaning

of those incomprehensible words now.

You can look for them later, together.)

He is telling you something

of where he has so recently been,

where you are desperately

trying to go in your perfectly

silent and heavy red chair.

He is showing you every truth

he has ever known

in a very small package.

When at last he smiles

in the otherwise motionless

residue following the flailings of his body,

you will understand what he means.

April 2012

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Driving with pink angels

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Driving with pink angels

Pink of the dissolving petals, pouring out of the tree
and pink in the palms of my hands. Pink dangling
tongue over lips,
coffee spilling into my throat;
spring and pink allergic eyes
tearing in the presence of fragrance.

Sing for us, Joni,
with packed pink linens
in your traveling bag.
I do not move
here in this weighted world
but only through our music.

Your pink sunset is my sunrise
ahead of the weekday road, what lowers
my feet into slippers
morning by morning; black crow
wings and a beak tearing pink breakfast;
rise again, pull again, lift the
pink-skinned sun across the sky
into night as satin as your wings.

April in wind, April in rain.
April pansies and hyacinth;
phlox, quince, alyssum;
crystal vase on a black piano,
pink tulips opening, floating
like windblown hair, or
jet trails from California
to Michigan, traveling on
a blue string song.

My body pink under
freshwater pearls; the painted stripe
on rainbow trout in my rivers,
wiggling like ribbons;
hands spilling over ivory stones
in your memory, every song
a fish swimming into my next poem.

Mother, where have you gone,
pink woman of the keys,
white and even like your teeth?
My poisoned hands play jazz
out of your hymns
in this sobbing flesh of ours. Pink mother
with fragrant goodnight lips,
pink moon of hearts
cracked in crater-places
healing under black-winged nights
that rise with the crow
every time I pass.

An angel in pink walks up to me
in my satin wedding gown
with pink ribbon ‘round the waist,
her pearlescent high heeled shoes
bright as the diadems of her eyes,
pink lipstick and raven hair.
The rush of her wings says

Poems live.
Flesh from soul.
Sing, body.
Play the fractured song,
pour Brandywine and redbud,
maple fringe and weigela,
pink as a baby just out
of her mother’s bleeding peony.

April 2012


Poetry should be heard.

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after the lame goat in Rumi's poem

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after the lame goat in Rumi’s poem

not everything is beautiful
said the gods of guilt
and fear

and I understood
suddenly
after the mountain’s
height over the misty blue valley
and its rocks underfoot

that I like this hobbled life
with its three legs of joy
and one of wounds

for the pace
drummed slowly and syncopated
by that one


April 2012 

art note: "composition with a goat" by Marc Chagall
Rumi note: I am referring to the poem "The Lame Goat"

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April wind

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April wind

On a day when April wind
has tumbled clouds into mile-high
snowy hills like in Chinese paintings

I wonder what strength
and precision it costs the honey bee
to aim his hovering windblown tongue

into frail blossoms fluttering open
out of tight Brandywine buds.
And how he does not spill nectar-

drops on me lying on the blanket—
a risk under sky and tree to him, to me
and to the small gold star of a spider

walking ellipses across my gold pillow
suddenly visible in movement
like the satellite we wait and watch for

every night, “There!” as it crawls
toward the sun on the other side
of the world on its articulate path
that looks so random to me.


April 2012 

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How to Bloom: chicks, blossoms, and a Rilke poem

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After a couple of years Don has resurrected the chicken yard with 22 white Leghorns, 2 Barred Rocks (these photographed are a Leghorn and Barred Rock), 4 Aracaunas, 2 Rhode Island Reds, 2 Isa Reds, a white turkey, a bronze turkey, and 12 quail. It is good to have their chirps again, and soon enough, eggs. The quail will lay by June, and the chickens by September.

The ornamental crabapple and many other fruit trees are bursting.

On Easter Sunday morning, I feel this blooming, and marvel, along with Rilke.

How to Bloom

The almond trees in bloom: all we can accomplish here is to ever know ourselves in our earthly appearance.

I endlessly marvel at you, blissful ones—at your demeanor, the way you bear your vanishing adornment with timeless purpose. Ah, to understand how to bloom: then would the heart be carried beyond all milder dangers, to be consoled in the great one.

    ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, from Uncollected Poems

Happy Easter

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Acrobat

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Acrobat

I have nowhere
to put my arms away
for the night and so I avoid
taking them off, which
only causes more problems.

Lying on my back is novel.
I could write a poem in my sleep,
for instance.

Sooner or later, however,
my spine takes on a limb of its own
and the inferior mattress is just too much
there.

I have considered a futon
of the roll-up variety in my Zen arcs.
Head on oblong block. Face open

to the closed eyes of night,
floating along in space
in tandem with the poem
that flies through the air
with the greatest of ease

and gets up and walks
on its hands
come morning.


April 2012

 

Art notes:

top: blue acrobat by Picasso

second: acrobat by Picasso

third: acrobat with flowers by Marc Chagall 

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Tulip

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It is hard to imagine that these supple, sensuous flowers grew wild in the mountains of Central Asia before they were brought to Europe from the Ottoman Empire and became so wildly valuable in the Dutch Golden Age that some single tulip bulbs were worth more then ten times the annual income of a skilled craftsman in 1637. "Tulip mania" is still the term for a maniacal financial bubble. The wealthiest era of the Ottoman Empire is called the "Tulip Era."

I love these flowers myself (though I didn't ransom the farm for them) and decided I had to create a slideshow of my photos in their honor. Most were photographed here on the farm, but some are at my university campus and in Holland, Michigan, where there is a Tulip Time festival every May. Temperatures were hot in March, and tulips are already blooming here (though these photos are from previous years), so I don't know what tulips will be left for Tulip Time. You'll see some little ones dressed up in Dutch costumes at Tulip Time a few years ago.

Happy Birthday to my husband, with whom I lived in the Ottoman Empire once upon a time, . . . oh wait, I guess he isn't that old! It was called Turkey by then.

I've paired Carla Cook singing Duke Ellington's classic "Tulip or Turnip" which really warms up my spring fever. Full screen is best (at YouTube if you can't enlarge it here).

Tell me, tell me, tell me, dreamface,
what am I to you?

Resurrection

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Resurrection pulses through me like a river
pushing aside moments of death. My foot steps
ahead toward the Russian olive, solitary, about
to bloom in the meadow, fresh-mown for summer.

But for now it is spring, the season of risings.
What good are prayers for the already dead? Where
does that love go? I see the raccoon’s den-hole
beside the grass-covered log long fallen,

its dark opening only he can trust. I hear
the watery throat of a cowbird and know it
as the same stream, already across the pasture
where I follow. I watch her fly away, and disappear.


April 2012

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