Friday, January 15, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
December 10, 1955 Content
I have been filled so often lately with a feeling of deep content. Yet there was not that light, giddy feeling I have always associated with being happy. And then one moment I realized the difference, in my experience, between being happy & being content. They often come together but not necessarily so - it seems that when I feel lightly happy there appears not to be a black cloud in the lot - I have moments like that every so often now that our Christmas trip is approaching - this appearance of no problems is, of course, a delusion - whereas this mature sense of contentment I have come to recently consists of acknowledging the problems which naturally arise daily and not being overcome by them but instead enveloping them in my realization of the greater gratitude I feel for the bigger, more important, lasting things - it is like smiling deeply and warmly instead of laughing aloud.
Nov. 18-20, 1955 My First New York Visit
Things I remember of my first New York visit -
19th - a soft snow fell all day - I remember leaving the American Museum of Natural History - the sky a cloudy & luminous evening blue - the street lights lighting up the falling snow & silhouetting the statue of three figures at the foot of the steps - everything was glowing, all sparklingly soft - seemed to me to be the essence of New York or what I imagined N.Y. to be - a typical segment of living in New York - the pleasantness, the excitement, the wonderment of that hour at dusk - the time between daylight hours and the night and all it could hold.
Crossed out: Earlier in the day we turned a corner just short of the Empire State Building - the weather was hanging low as shroud - all above a few hundred feet - I looked up just as we turned the corner
My first view of the E.S.Bldg. was a weirdly disjointed one - I saw only a portion of it high off the ground through the low hanging weather - it seemed ghostly, suspended and not really there at all - weird & wonderful -
12-10-55
Now, three weeks after being in New York, I can still feel some of the magic that is New York. Perhaps it's all imagined - perhaps we have all heard so much about N.Y. merely because of its size & its power that we imagine the magic to be there too - how can I say after spending but 2 days there. I am most anxious to see it in the spring though, when there is magic no matter where you are. I reheard Gordon Jenkins' Manhattan Tower last night and as I read the narration along with the recording it swept over me, strong & sweet - he spoke of sitting in the dark & watching the spring eveningtime settle over the skyline - I would like to see that & I feel as though I have.
19th - a soft snow fell all day - I remember leaving the American Museum of Natural History - the sky a cloudy & luminous evening blue - the street lights lighting up the falling snow & silhouetting the statue of three figures at the foot of the steps - everything was glowing, all sparklingly soft - seemed to me to be the essence of New York or what I imagined N.Y. to be - a typical segment of living in New York - the pleasantness, the excitement, the wonderment of that hour at dusk - the time between daylight hours and the night and all it could hold.
Crossed out: Earlier in the day we turned a corner just short of the Empire State Building - the weather was hanging low as shroud - all above a few hundred feet - I looked up just as we turned the corner
My first view of the E.S.Bldg. was a weirdly disjointed one - I saw only a portion of it high off the ground through the low hanging weather - it seemed ghostly, suspended and not really there at all - weird & wonderful -
12-10-55
Now, three weeks after being in New York, I can still feel some of the magic that is New York. Perhaps it's all imagined - perhaps we have all heard so much about N.Y. merely because of its size & its power that we imagine the magic to be there too - how can I say after spending but 2 days there. I am most anxious to see it in the spring though, when there is magic no matter where you are. I reheard Gordon Jenkins' Manhattan Tower last night and as I read the narration along with the recording it swept over me, strong & sweet - he spoke of sitting in the dark & watching the spring eveningtime settle over the skyline - I would like to see that & I feel as though I have.
11-17-55
Today is my kind of day ('course, I know there are many days in any season about which I'm likely to say that) but today is one of the best. The sun is out for the first time in weeks - there is a high wind up here on our hill - blowing the leaves up and around in spirals, whistling and rattling around our TV aerial, and rushing over house & tree tops with the sound of an express train. Yesterday might have been early spring for all the warmth of it except for the tight brown winter buds where the tender pale green ones would be - but today is wintery - cold-temperature dropped almost 50 degrees - and yesterday's boisterous storm clouds have given way to today's blue sky and scattered sky remnants of their rushing tempestuous predecessors.
Today reminds me of a day long ago in another November when I went hunting with a then-dear friend and killed deliberately for the first, last & only time of my life. It might hve been just as cold as this day but it was sunny, windy, exhilerating and we walked so far and with such vigor and enthusiasm that we removed our jackets when we rested high on a haystack to soak up some solar energy and warmth. That was one of the sweet days that exist as game along the string of my life. And today was another of lesser importance - during my walk with the dog I was filled with joy and large gratitude for having available to me such a pleasant place to walk as the road and fields behind us - like a portion of countryside - a haven from streets & traffic & people complete with fences, woods, trees, small & great, a hill-side of grape-vines, and fallen apples, soft to step on, a place where peace & comfort can unfailingly be found.
Today reminds me of a day long ago in another November when I went hunting with a then-dear friend and killed deliberately for the first, last & only time of my life. It might hve been just as cold as this day but it was sunny, windy, exhilerating and we walked so far and with such vigor and enthusiasm that we removed our jackets when we rested high on a haystack to soak up some solar energy and warmth. That was one of the sweet days that exist as game along the string of my life. And today was another of lesser importance - during my walk with the dog I was filled with joy and large gratitude for having available to me such a pleasant place to walk as the road and fields behind us - like a portion of countryside - a haven from streets & traffic & people complete with fences, woods, trees, small & great, a hill-side of grape-vines, and fallen apples, soft to step on, a place where peace & comfort can unfailingly be found.
Copied From Notes - 10-22-55
Copied from notes made on the spot in Shenandoah National Park - 10-22-55
the day was so rich, golden & shiny - more than the human soul can bear - must peel off & absorb only a small nugget at a time - it was the good music we got on the radio that triggered off this flood of inspiration - was food & drink to me - from which I could subsist for weeks -
(on our hike) the grey rocks were splotched with dark green & turquoise lichen giving the whole jumble the effect of mottled jade.
gap = a mountain pass, cleft or ravine
hollow = surface depression, a channel, basin or valley
knoll = a little round hill, a mound
ridge = a range of hills or mountains
sedges = a genus of grasslike * cyperaceous plants, often growing in dense tufts in marchy places
* distinguished from the grasses by having achenes and solid stems
the day was so rich, golden & shiny - more than the human soul can bear - must peel off & absorb only a small nugget at a time - it was the good music we got on the radio that triggered off this flood of inspiration - was food & drink to me - from which I could subsist for weeks -
(on our hike) the grey rocks were splotched with dark green & turquoise lichen giving the whole jumble the effect of mottled jade.
gap = a mountain pass, cleft or ravine
hollow = surface depression, a channel, basin or valley
knoll = a little round hill, a mound
ridge = a range of hills or mountains
sedges = a genus of grasslike * cyperaceous plants, often growing in dense tufts in marchy places
* distinguished from the grasses by having achenes and solid stems
Sunday, January 10, 2010
11-2-55 A Lot to Write About
There is a lot to write about - there is our weekend in the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah Valley and our weekend at the fabulous Greenbriar and I will start to write down all I remember that is worth remembering. We drove first along the turnpike on our way to Shenandoah National Park the weekend after the fall coloring was to have been at its peak but I do not see how it could have been more beautiful. I don't believe that the falls in Missouri were ever as completely breathtaking as these two falls I have lived near the eastern mountains - they might be but I do not remember. The hillsides were such masses of bright color as to seem almost artificial as manmade displays and yet here was something man had no hand in and could not duplicate - something utterly and naturally lovely here but which would have seemed garish and gaudy had man made it.
Early in the morning mist filled the deep valleys and made soft grey lakes of hollows and when we drove along Skyline Drive haze faintly veiled the distant hills, muting their colors, but when the sun shone down through the leaves at hand and overhead, the brilliance of color was fairly blinding. For a while we were able to get good music on the car radio and that combined with what was all about me was to be almost more than I could bear. Music always sharpens my emotions and my absorption of any surrounding beauty. I was filled to overflowing with the rich, golden lustre of this autumn day. "Oh, Autumn, be less beautiful or be less brief!" The sky was vivid October blue - the yellow leaves of the hickory, the pink gold of the maple, and the red of the oak were turned to pure translucent fire by the sun's rays - each, the blue and the flame, accentuated the other 'til the eye turned to the scattered evergreens for cooling comfort. We spent the night in a cabin and ate our dinner & breakfast in the beautiful lodge of Skyland.
Our hike to the fire tower through the wilds was everything that matters to me - there was the vernal silence, the peace that it brought to the mind, the crunch and crackle of dry leaves underfoot, the rain-like patter of falling pine needles and occasional acorns, the rich smells of fungi, lichen, pine, decaying vegetable matter, fallen leaves and earth, the limitless array of things to inspect and admire on all sides, the variety of color, pattern & texture, of leaf, bark, stone and berry. There was so much that I cannot put down here - so much that I can only store, not on paper, but in my memory, my mind and heart.
There were trees sloped like artists' brushes - dipped in painters' pots.
The ride home from White Sulphur Springs took us up a narrow winding mountain road - I gasped aloud when I caught my first glimpse of that night's full moon - it was unbelievably large-looking, caught between two mountain slopes, looking for all the world like a giant peeled onion - sleek, translucent & greenish-white.
On the way down to the Greenbriar I saw my first complete rainbow - I could follow its arch without break from horizon to horizon.
There are two things I would wither without - music, classical music, and nature - all the components of the outdoors - or whatever you might wish to call it - in my experience each sharpens the other - I see natural things more wholly, more deeply to the accompaniment of music and, with the help of music, when away from nature, I can conjure up in my mind's eye no end of beloved panoramas from a brook in the woods to a mountain view to a peaceful countryside of fields and farms to a restless ocean's edge. "Behold the sea - the beautiful, the opaline, the strong."
Early in the morning mist filled the deep valleys and made soft grey lakes of hollows and when we drove along Skyline Drive haze faintly veiled the distant hills, muting their colors, but when the sun shone down through the leaves at hand and overhead, the brilliance of color was fairly blinding. For a while we were able to get good music on the car radio and that combined with what was all about me was to be almost more than I could bear. Music always sharpens my emotions and my absorption of any surrounding beauty. I was filled to overflowing with the rich, golden lustre of this autumn day. "Oh, Autumn, be less beautiful or be less brief!" The sky was vivid October blue - the yellow leaves of the hickory, the pink gold of the maple, and the red of the oak were turned to pure translucent fire by the sun's rays - each, the blue and the flame, accentuated the other 'til the eye turned to the scattered evergreens for cooling comfort. We spent the night in a cabin and ate our dinner & breakfast in the beautiful lodge of Skyland.
Our hike to the fire tower through the wilds was everything that matters to me - there was the vernal silence, the peace that it brought to the mind, the crunch and crackle of dry leaves underfoot, the rain-like patter of falling pine needles and occasional acorns, the rich smells of fungi, lichen, pine, decaying vegetable matter, fallen leaves and earth, the limitless array of things to inspect and admire on all sides, the variety of color, pattern & texture, of leaf, bark, stone and berry. There was so much that I cannot put down here - so much that I can only store, not on paper, but in my memory, my mind and heart.
There were trees sloped like artists' brushes - dipped in painters' pots.
The ride home from White Sulphur Springs took us up a narrow winding mountain road - I gasped aloud when I caught my first glimpse of that night's full moon - it was unbelievably large-looking, caught between two mountain slopes, looking for all the world like a giant peeled onion - sleek, translucent & greenish-white.
On the way down to the Greenbriar I saw my first complete rainbow - I could follow its arch without break from horizon to horizon.
There are two things I would wither without - music, classical music, and nature - all the components of the outdoors - or whatever you might wish to call it - in my experience each sharpens the other - I see natural things more wholly, more deeply to the accompaniment of music and, with the help of music, when away from nature, I can conjure up in my mind's eye no end of beloved panoramas from a brook in the woods to a mountain view to a peaceful countryside of fields and farms to a restless ocean's edge. "Behold the sea - the beautiful, the opaline, the strong."
December 28, 1962 - Such Heights
I thot of very little but him during the concert - my thots swelled and quieted as did the music - I felt he was (and still may be) the sunshine and warmth of my life, the blossom the fragrance, the sweetness and brightness, all the clarity and hope that was present in my life; he was to me as the sun-dappled forest floor, as the moon and star-silvered rippling waters - without him my life was drab & shapeless - steadier perhaps but oh, so colorless. Oh, God, I thot as I remembered the walk thru autumn-sunny fields, kisses in the brisk fall air, in warm sun & cold wind - I thot of walks along the lake with his arm around my waist, of being held tight against his tallness, strength & love flowing from each to the other. He was all the light there could be - he reached out his hand to touch me and his touch gilded me - I shone & sparkled through his power. Is he to be ever gone from my air and my space - am I to be ever more empty of his sweet presence? Oh, God, we reached such heights; we reached such heights as some will never see, we gave each other moments of such simple, quite pleasure - such pure sparkling essence of love & life as cannot be allowed to be continuous or long lasting - we must come down once more to soil our feet on reality's earth. He gave me such a precious gift - I cannot tell its value for it will enrich me all the days of my life. I thank all the world for it, and for him, the love of my life.
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