Morning sun in my new tulle curtain, which is very pretty but not actually much of a curtain. You can see right through it. It's what brides used to wear: a "veil of illusion," a phrase I loved even as a child, when wedding announcements in the newspaper used to include these details routinely. "A Juliet cap and a veil of illusion" brides wore, and especially when I was a teenager, these elements seemed pregnant with meaning. It was a letdown to realize that "illusion" is just a kind of fabric.
Anyway, yes, that is what we have going on here. Last night I pulled the tulle panel down over the window and went outside to look at it from the driveway. Yep, sure enough, I could see every detail of the room inside, and if a person had been standing there with no clothes on, I'd have seen that, too. I've got to figure something else out before we have company again, but in the meantime, I don't especially mind being seen at my window. In fact, I can sit right here and see the neighbors through their kitchen window --- at least for as long as there aren't any leaves on the dogwood right outside.
Also, no, we don't wash the windows very often. That is certainly not a part of today's agenda.
I'm sitting here in the window with my coffee, looking out at my own driveway, the grass blanched and tamped down with frost, and at Beth and Eddie's house on the other side of the brick wall. Beyond their far brick wall and across the street: Miriah and Jacob's big house with its white columns and the little decorative balcony at the middle upstairs window, above the pedimented front door. Behind them, the neighborhood falls away in a gradual hill, so that what's visible in the farther distance is just treetops empty of everything but sun. Immediately outside, though, the dogwood is in bud. Every twig ends in a hard little knot, a fist or a cyst. It's an old tree, and some branches are dead --- at least, they haven't budded. I'll need to do some pruning come the spring. Some years, too, the bloom is disappointing --- for reasons I've never yet bothered to research, the flowers, when they open, are ecru, not white, so that the whole effect is of a tree blooming a long time ago, caught in a sepia-toned photograph. But then some years it's perfect. What'll it be this year? We'll know when we know.
At 9:14 a.m., I'm the only one up, drinking the first pot of coffee so thoughtfully prepared by the husband last night. All I ever have to do is plug in the percolator. At this point, I've almost forgotten how to make coffee, and if by some chance the coffee isn't made for me, to plug in when I get up, I just have tea instead --- in case you were wondering what sloth actually looks like.
This is the last week of the school break, so some of us are making the most of the slow time. Others of us have been trained to sleep in, to give yet others of us (read: me) time to drink our coffee and wake up before we have to gird ourselves to go outside. Speaking of those others, you might have wondered why there's a pet cover, of the type that generally goes on a sofa, on the daybed in my new office/study, and I'm here to tell you whose daybed that actually is . . .
She does like to loll about looking beautiful, which is why there are layers of cover on that daybed before you ever get to the sheets, and if you're coming to visit and have dog allergies, you won't have to sleep in that bed. We do have others. We have an embarrassment of riches in the way of beds for guests to sleep in, most of the time, which is only another way of saying that once upon a time a number of children lived here, but they don't live here any longer. Lose daughters and sons: gain guest rooms. It's the circle of life.
Since I'm savoring my new space, here's a favorite little strip of wall, literally on my right hand as I sit at my desk:
The bunny was part of an Easter gift/card from the Artgirl, done in a watercolor wash over a pen-and-ink drawing. The framed image below it is a signed W.S. Merwin broadside, given to me (via my mother) by my eighth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Mary Alice Orr, who until her death last year lived in the same retirement community as my mother.
Mrs. Orr wasn't the kind of teacher to set you on fire --- she was very quotable, saying things like, "My dear, you are not stupid. You are merely ignorant," in her cultured Southern voice, but otherwise, as a classroom presence, she was not what you might call inspiring. Nevertheless, she did change my life. She got me out of "circle the direct object" English and into Honors English, where we talked about literature, which is why I'm sitting here in my study gassing on about stuff today. In the days before anybody knew about ADHD, much less how ADHD presents in quiet, daydreamy girls (as quiet daydreaminess, actually, plus an inability to keep up with papers or meet assignment deadlines, story of my life until recently), this was about as miraculous as it got.
Speaking of ADHD, I'm not keeping any kind of reading log here this year. Last year that lasted --- what? Five days? But I will share with you two books I am particularly determined to finish:
Don't get me wrong: they're both great. And they're not especially heavy slogs to read. But I've been reading The Making of Poetry ever since Joshua Hren sent it to me in the summer of 2022, and enough is enough. I am going. to. finish. that. book. I did, yesterday, finish the chapter on Dorothy Wordsworth and her notebooks, so that's something. I think keeping it in my line of vision, in my actual workspace, will help. I'm terrible about putting books down and then forgetting them for months. As it is, I've been reading this book so long that I'm kind of hazy about what I've already read. But I told Brother Bede at the Abbey, who's teaching Romantics this semester, that I was going to lend it to him, so I've got to finish it.
The Sigrid Unset book is very good, too. My husband made friends with Fr. Aidan Nichols while we were in Cambridge and has read many of his books --- he is one of those polymaths, as evidenced here by his references to all kinds of Norwegian sources which he's clearly read. Actually I think he lived in Norway for a time, so that makes sense, but still. I'm at the "I recognize words like and" stage in my own Norwegian language learning. I'm finding his study of Sigrid Undset illuminating, especially the section I'm currently reading, which deals with dominant themes in her fiction. It's just kind of validating, which seems like a self-aggrandizing thing to say, and I hasten to make clear that I am no Sigrid Undset. But reading this section has helped me to see what I'm about, as a fiction writer, with greater clarity --- or maybe it's more accurate to say what I could be about, a direction in which I could tend.
Well, anyway. It's going to be time to let the dog out soon, and after we walk I've got to settle down to some essay-writing. I think I'll go dry my hair and get dressed. Hold the phone.
****
OK, so, here is the evolution of what I'm wearing today, when the temperature is currently 34F, with a projected high of 50, and I plan to spend at least an hour outdoors in the course of the day, as well as working in my rather drafty house.
The base outfit:
*Wool& Maggie dress (S/Long) in Aegean Teal, worn as combination top and slip/base layer
*Secondhand linen skirt --- I forget the brand and the size, both, but I bought it about a year ago, and it's been one of my favorite pieces. I love the shape and drape and the cheery hit of cranberry red.
If it were summertime, I'd just step into some sandals and go. But it's not summertime. It's January. We're above freezing now --- truly, I do not live in the Arctic Circle, and the comedy of talking about "winter clothes" in North Carolina is always present to me. But still. It's 34 Farenheit at this moment, so I gotta put on more clothes.
What I did put on, part the first:
*Yesterday's secondhand redyed bamboo-cotton tights
*Some Darn Tough Socks (hidden)
*Xero Tari boots, bought in the summer of 2022 and worn hard for the last year and a half. One of the best buys ever.
But I still need some more layers up top. What about . . .
*Thrifted green lyocell button shirt.
Never mind my husband's weight log on the mirror. We make great use of our mirrors. I bought this shirt in Goodwill . . . last week? It already seems like two hundred years ago . . . when I went with the Texasgirl and Anastasia, because we all just wanted to get out of the house, and it was raining too hard to do anything else fun.
I love this green shirt. It's sort of a weird fabric --- it picks up water stains easily, and although they wash out, they are quite obvious while they're there. I can see why somebody decided to donate it. But the color is beautiful, and I like the cool minty green against the vibrant red. It's Christmas, but not full-on ugly-sweater CoZ(TM) Christmas. This is sort of a fresh-air Christmas color combination, and it feels good today.
And then because I'm going out with the dog presently, here's some Bag-Lady Chic to finish the look. The other day we were doing Postulant Chic, and here's a maybe-not-unrelated aesthetic, intended mainly for the practical purposes of keeping warm with the heat down inside, as well as staying outside long enough for a good walk in the cold without getting cold:
This cardigan is probably the one thing Coco Chanel would take off before she left the house. Well, maybe the whole outfit is the one thing Coco Chanel would take off before she left the house, but then, manifestly, I am not Coco Chanel. Is this fashion? Not really. But then I don't care much about fashion, as in trends. Is it style? Quite possibly it's not your style --- but that's okay. Your vibe is your vibe. My vibe is mine, and I aim to live happily with it. I'm the person I am. My age, my weight, my comfort zones, and my aesthetic are all part of that person, with whom it is my great desire to live at peace. I mean, it's not like we can get away from each other, me, myself, and I. We might as well like each other**, and like each other just as we come.
**I got an editorial email the other day schooling me on the difference between each other (two people love each other) and one another (three or more people love one another). I did actually know this, and I should have used the correct phrasing in the piece I had written for wide public consumption. But colloquially? Come on. This is just how we all talk, unless we're trying to be pedantic).
So that's always the agenda for the day. Other agenda items:
*Walk the dog
*Do a wall-pilates routine
*Heft some little weights
*Not spend time mindlessly scrolling the internet
*Write at least one short essay (yes, this is doable --- I'd knock out two, but we're doing a "poetry of hymnody" feature, and I think I'm going to have to do some research, so my goal is one essay a day between now and Friday)
*Read a chapter of something. Lately I've been doing a chapter of either the Sigrid Undset book or Making of Poetry during the day, then a chapter of David Copperfield, my current novel reread, as I'm falling asleep at night.
*Look at this poem I drafted yesterday
*Fold some laundry and maybe put sheets back on one bed upstairs.
*Dinner will be leftovers: the chicken-and-black-bean casserole we had last night, plus the ham-and-lentil soup I made on Monday with the Christmas hambone. I've been eating that for lunch, but we really need to eat it up.
I'll just finish this cup of coffee and play my morning games, then on with it. But I'm enjoying my morning sun when it's in your face Maggie-May kind of moment here. It might really show my age, but that don't bother me none. It feels good.
AFTERNOON UPDATE:
The sun has gone behind cloud.
There is all kinds of banging and drilling and stuff going on upstairs. I don't even know what's happening up there, but something sure is.
I've finished one essay, on Charles Wesley's "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling," for our "Hymnody as Poetry" week at the Sun.
I have my resistance bands and my weights right here next to my chair, a convenient location for when I want to exercise, but also don't want to get up. Today: some seated leg lifts and clamshells, for my poor sad hip abductors. But then I did stand up and do various reps with hand weights. I still have to do my wall pilates routine for the day --- so far those have been very easy, almost ridiculously so. But I'm afraid to mark "too easy" in the feedback form at the end of each day's routine, because what if they give me something really hard and I just quit?
So I'm doing the nice little stretches and things, but also picking up weights. I still need to pick up the kettlebells, which are in the sunroom, and work out by carrying them back here and setting them beside my chair with the other weights (see "don't want to get up," above). None of this is going to give me an influencer body any time soon, any more than my hair routines are going to give me influencer hair. But then, per internet instructions everywhere, I am doing me, dude. If there's a category for you-do-you influencers, sign me up. That I can accomplish. Be like me, and do you.
Yeah, okay, the dog has settled down again, so I should probably go back to work.
OH ALSO
I wound up wearing the green shirt unbuttoned, because that looks better. I button it up when I put on my cardigan and coat to go outside, so that I'm warmer, but otherwise: open shirt. That way my teal dress/top shows, which is good because I love this dress, especially the neckline. And the color. And the vertical lines of the shirt break up the horizontal line at my waist, and blah blah blah. Anyway, it's better.
LATER:
*Touched the poem draft, pushing it a little beyond itself, letting it go further afield than I had originally envisioned.
*Did my wall-pilates routine for the day.
*Changed out the tablecloths on the dining-room table, putting on one of the old ones I rediscovered the other day and love --- a sweet little embroidered organza one that was certainly my mother's, maybe a grandmother's. I put one of the red-checked cloths on the kitchen table, and I need to dig out a star for Epiphany, to hang on the light over the table.
*Went out briefly again with the dog.
*Gave some glancing thought to Cowper's "Light Shining in Darkness," which was Barbara Pym's favorite hymn. More than one of her heroines says to herself, in the course of a novel, "God moves in a mysterious way, / His wonders to perform." I might very well write more about Barbara Pym than about William Cowper, but in any case, that's tomorrow's essay. The last is on "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken," one of my own lifelong favorites, though I'm not sure I had really, fully realized before that it's by John Newton, who wrote "Amazing Grace." They feel not just like different hymns, but like entirely different sensibilities.
*I ate the last of the chicken-and-black-bean dish for lunch, so I guess it's soup for dinner. I'm trying to use up what's in the fridge and the larder before I do any more grocery shopping --- though I'm glad tomorrow night is our ritual night out. When we're being particularly abstemious at home, an evening on the town, however modest, comes as a respite in the midst of all our virtue.
*The Viking Son comes home tomorrow, calloo callay, so he can go out on the town with us (in our modest way) if he so desires. That's always fun --- we so often have our liveliest conversations over food and drink, and it'll be good to hear what he's been up to for the last week. What with one thing and another, it really has seemed like an eternity since they all drove away. Not a bad eternity, mind you. Just, you know. A long time.
SOME EVENING PHOTOS:
Here's the dining-room table in its new winter dress. One thing I think I'm committing to for 2024 is to use the pretty things I have, which so often lie hidden away in drawers. I'm not going to rule out buying something if I perceive a need for it, but I really want to use more of what I have --- like this sweet little tablecloth that doesn't fit any table I currently own, but can be called into the light somehow, with a little creativity.
And here's the kitchen table dressed for dinner:
I'm making a point of setting the table with Christmas and Epiphany dishes all this week.
Here too, from this morning, is Dora not barking at the neighbor's dog:
See the other dog? He's way over there in his yard, lying down. At this distance Dora can sniff for kibble in the grass in his presence and not be transported into a frenzy of bloodlust. [Addendum: She knows he's there. She's looked at him and registered his presence, but he's far enough away that he doesn't trigger her beyond her threshold] I hope over time to close the distance somewhat, but for now, this is how close she can get and successfully not lose her tiny predator mind. We do this for five or ten minutes pretty much daily, just practicing not foaming at the mouth, as one does. Eventually we'll drift a tiny bit closer to the fence and see how we do, but the principle in dog training, as in any kind of education for any sentient creature, is to aim for success, not failure. Failure gains you nothing. Success is a daily habit practice, just a little at a time, until the succeeding becomes the settled habit and can stand a little pressure (like in this case, getting closer to the fence and the dog on the other side).
Anyway, we did that today, too. It was about as exciting as this photograph suggests, but that, friends, is exactly what you want.