Scope for the imagination...

... for Knots in the String.

I walked a beach with my husband and our hairy little yak (the womble, pupsicle, tumbleweed – so forth and so on) the other day and we got caught in a dark grey shower of rain off the ocean, helped along by a mean snipy breeze that carried the winter cold off the top of the waves.

We dripped water all the way back to the car and despite the car heating on full blast over the 11km back to the cottage, I took some time to warm through to my bones. I might as well have gone swimming, and I suspect I’d have been warmer.

Anyway, hot drinks and cake, and sitting on top of the heater in the house, I decided the best thing was to curl up on the couch for awhile, to take warm comfort from reading.

I’m re-reading Anne of Green Gables. After chatting about it last week, I felt as if someone had placed a box of chocolates beneath my nose. I found I craved the words, the aphorisms, the descriptive beauty. I go back over word after word after line and paragraph and it’s as though I have my eyes closed and can see every detail with such clarity.

(I really have so much affection for Matthew…)

I dream, because ‘when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worthwhile…’ and so I imagine that Jock and Kate take the ballet world by storm and that Annie gives grace to Richard, who is dying.

I hear the newly burst leaves on the willows shimmying against each other in the nor’easterly blowing in from the sea, and I feel ‘they are talking in their sleep. What nice dreams they must have.’ Surely of spring and the bees supping the willow flowers and of the trees humming an arboreal melody.

I gaze across the top of the book and stare at the computer, at the open file of my current manuscript and think ‘there (is) scope for the imagination…’ I imagine Kate placing one foot in readiness for a pirouette. The terror, her heart pumping.

On Tuesday morning when I wake and prepare for a morning in the ballet studio, I think ‘Isn’t it such a good thing that there are mornings?’ It’s true for someone like me because as the day progresses, I begin to run down like a clockwork toy, so that by late afternoon I’m all bent over and in need of a key to wind me up again. Thus mornings are everything and so at the barre, I work my way through the creak and crack that is my body this year and later revel in steps to The Second Waltz, a piece of music that is a favourite.

I’d never heard it until I attended a performance of The Russian Imperial Ballet and one of the excerpts was a piece choreographed to this music. It was elegant and glamorous, like a scene from My Fair Lady with the men in tailcoats and fine white shirts and the women in flowing layers of soft tulle, so that the tailcoats and the tulle swung out as they waltzed in, out and round. I sat on the edge of my seat, I was so beguiled by the dance and by the music. You know when a piece of music slides down your spine and gives you goosebumps? It was just like that, but unlike Anne, I did not wear puffed sleeves to the performance.

I fly through the narrative of Anne’s story and it’s all over in a such a blink that I wonder if I imagined it. I’m ‘in the depths of despair’, quite lost, wondering what I shall read next. Is there anything as comforting? But then in the pile of Montgomery books, I see the next in the series, Anne of Avonlea, and I’m content.

Apropos:

Such an odd word, isn’t it? I can hear Anne using it in one of her many discourses. But back to comfort…

1. I read the other day on a health report that the reason we return to watch familiar and gentle content or reread comforting books, is because our brains crave release from constant and stressful daily input. In the same way that a young child, unfamiliar with the world as it unfolds before them, will ask for that same favourite story every night. It makes sense to me, being a release from tension, because I’m familiar with the feelings of joy in earlier readings. I tuck myself up with LM. Montgomery, or perhaps with Rosamunde Pilcher, with poetry I love or some of my favourite childrens’ books. The feeling whilst reading and after is like a warm coat on a cold day, like a favourite piece of cake, like a hug from the person one loves most in the world. Like a gentle lick on the hand from one’s pup…

2. I sit on the porch when the temperature is mild, the sunlight bliss, sipping a camomile tea and sampling a Mocha cookie. I added ground coffee (not coffee grounds) to my regular cookie recipe and they are veerrry nice! The seabreeze is in, the koi flags undulating, and small waves break on the shore. I will swim, just in my togs, a neoprene top, my booties and gloves.

Later: I did and I swear I’m rejuvenated as if I have had a transfusion of vigour and contentment. To rid myself of the full wetsuit is the greatest comfort in the world, to paraphrase Anne.

3. There is pleasure too, to be taken in the beautiful blues of lobelia and viola at the front gate. They’ve survived a dry winter, frosts and rather a lot of grey skies. Hero plants!

4. Even more pleasure, maybe even excitement, when collecting my embroideries from wonderful Denise who made them up for me into a needlecase and a pill case.

5. A quiet moment of wonder when the waning gibbous moon filled the sky and the bay lit up like alabaster. Even better, a moonbridge formed – something mystical that always stirs the imagination.

6. A moment of escape, oblivious to the Macchiavellian machinations of the world – barefoot and with leggings rolled up, wandering in and out of the shallows, thinking of nothing. My head is a glorious vacuum.

7. Husband was elsewhere the other evening and I watched a sweet movie on Netflix, My Oxford Year. The perfect story when the world’s a bit awry. I would have sworn it was a British movie as it had the subtle tendresse that the Brits do so well. But no, it’s actually a polished American production.

8. And finally, before I finish, I do have to commend the most wonderful Substack serial.

The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good

Jennifer Granville has been touring France with her nine year old granddaughter and she allowed Edie to write a part of each week’s post – a kind of ‘travels with my (grandmother).’ It’s been delightful and I think it’s a perfect pitch for a movie. You simply must read all three of the entries, and never underestimate a child’s perception!

It seems to me that every day, some horror or other happens or someone makes an ill-informed and arrogant statement on social media, so for me the savage beast must be soothed. We escape in the best way we can, don’t we? It’s called self preservation…

Music this week? Please take as much comfort as you wish from it. It’s yours…