Well, at least for a little while, Roy Barrette, in A Countryman’s Journal, has me determined to keep a daily diary, which, I suppose, is different from a journal—or is it? I guess, when it comes down to it, it depends upon the journal or diary keeper, and that is as it should be.
Today is Thanksgiving. At noon, Sam was working on his peanut butter pie crust. As I listened from my Reading Nest in the family room, I thought about how he lavishes attention on the details of such undertakings: quite a different strategy from mine. But again, that is as it should be. I want no more of a one-size-fits-all life, universal instructions, and I-know-better-than-you, micromanagement, trauma responses. Life means to be lived, not controlled.
After Bridget arrived with her yet-to-be-baked cinnamon pull-apart bread, I went out into the rain to spread more birdseed for our winged and furred visitors and to capture some out-of-doors aspects of the day with my Lensbaby Sweet 35. Looking at the back of the camera, I was pleasantly surprised to see the depth of color recorded there: perhaps not true to life, but certainly welcome to an artist, who is tasked with adding to what falls into her lap and creating the gift of art.
I once wrote, under the influence of Madeleine L’Engle, about art being a gift from the artist to the world. My take on such things has been added to, subtracted from, and adapted in the years since L’Engle’s words were an important part of my life, but I consider the notion of art as gift today, because I earlier read Margaret Atwood’s introduction to The Gift by Lewis Hyde (a book that arrived yesterday). I debated with myself about reading or not reading the introduction, but doing so seemed like a good way to begin giving Margaret Atwood another chance.
But I don’t want to share Atwood’s words today. To be honest, they didn’t make much of an impression. Instead, I’ll quote from Roy Barrette (1897–1995), who wrote a newspaper column on “Views of Life and Nature from a Maine Coastal Farm.” In the final essay of A Countryman’s Journal, he shares an excerpt from his own diary entry for August 7, 1945, the day after an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima:
The times are out of joint. We can read in the paper or hear on the radio of vast undertakings and stupendous events ten minutes after they occur, but our neighbor separated from us by a two-inch plaster wall can die in lonely misery and we may never know it. What kind of a world is this? I would like to live in the deep country and know a few people well and work with my hands and fill my soul with the small things, the tangible, understandable things of life. The chorus of birds at dawn on a fresh spring morning. The hot, fragrant smell of baking from the kitchen. The clatter of the mower in the field. Rich yellow cream in an old blue pitcher. My wife’s head on my shoulder on a could winter night with the stars shining frostily through the window.
Perhaps it’s easy to remember to appreciate such simple goods (gifts?) on a day like Thanksgiving, but I think that making such moments the rule rather than the exception is worth the time and effort it takes to make mindfulness second nature.
