Certain Moments

In amongst all these letters are quotes and poems sent to me, mainly from mum. A quote in a card sent from Twin when nursing a broken heart in 2001.

'For a while she [Mrs Morel] could not control her consciousness; mechanically she went over the last scene, then over it again, certain phrases, certain moments coming each time like a brand red hot down on her soul; and each time she enacted again the past hour, each time the brand came down at the same points, till the mark was burnt in, and the pain burnt in, and at last she came to herself.' D.H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers
love

You pierce my soul

Whilst rereading Persuasion I was reminded of favourite quotes from other books about waiting for love to arrive. Here follows a week of passages prompted by Persuasion. I've already posted some over the time of this blog. They're in the 'Threads of Thinking' cloud under 'desiring love', 'waiting' or 'painful love' if you were interested in reading more.

A Response to Persuasion

Rachel suggested a read along of Persuasion. After having read the final word I felt compelled to write her a letter, and I shall use this as my first post, of possibly many, regarding Persuasion.

Dear Dear Rachel,

Oh thank you for suggesting a Persuasion read along. I've just finished it and felt compelled to write my thoughts down in a letter to you. I write this on the train to work on my first morning of term at 7.30am.
Persuasion has thrilled, delighted, touched, inspired and moved me. This read along will stay with me forever. I didn't want the story to end. I wanted it to all be about Anne and Wentworth and became impatient to return to their story.
I first read Persuasion as a gift from Warmth, within the first year of being together. I think I must have been so caught up with being in a strong relationship that I missed so much of the story and emotions.
Now I read. I remember. I reflect. I am so pleased to have fallen in love with Anne and Wentworth now. Whilst waiting for my ship to sail in, in the middle of 'a little fever of admiration', with a troubled heart, I would have read and re read . Whilst waiting for the 'phone to ring or when it was dawning that another small relationship coming to an end. "Should I have been different? If I had changed my ways would the 'we' of that moment succeeded?" Maybe Anne would have encouraged me to not doubt being the constant 'me' that makes up Rachel.
Jane Austen writes so knowingly about the thrill and turmoil of attraction. Yes it is like 'a thousand feelings rushed on Anne.' Reflections on having met up with a previous boyfriend ring true 'she smiled over the many anxious feelings she had wasted on the subject.' When Mr Elliott notices Anne as she's out walking, and how Wentworth notices Anne is noticed and Anne notices Wentworth notices she's noticed. The cheeky joy and expectation that such occasions would bring.
The sensation when you can sense that something is changing, perhaps the attraction is mutual? 'All the over-powering, blinding, bewildering, first effects of strong surprise were over with her. Still, however, she had enough to feel! It was agitation, pain, pleasure, a something between delight and misery.'
Reading about the concert in the octogon room was also delight and misery for me. The guilt of rearranging meeting a dear friend for the hope of meeting that someone. Oh how well I recognised trying to catch a glimmer of a glance 'It seemed as if she had been one moment too late; and as long as she dared observe, he did not look again.' Or the anxiety of being seen speaking to someone else.
Oh That Letter that leads to these final emotions.

'and grew steadfast and fearless, in the thankfulness of her enjoyment... and always the knowledge of his being there!'

So now, just incase you hadn't guessed, if asked for my favourite Austen I shall now whole heartedly, with immense pride and without any persuasion say 'Yes - Persuasion.'

Thank you. I spend today in the glow of Anne and Wentworth thanking God for Warmth and praying for your Wentworth.

With love to you,

Rachel Anne (yes I share her middle name.)

Romantic Travails

I read Charlotte Grey in 1999 and stored this quote away to give me perspective when fretting over affairs of the heart and to try to make me remember not to bore my friends too much.

'...how absurd and irritating most people found the romantic travails of others. How different her own dilemma was, how much more serious... everyone was convinced that their own plight had a particular poignancy, a special unfairness. She was just like all the other young women; her crisis was as perpetual and comic as theirs.' Sebastian Faulks Charlotte Grey
@

Scarcely Breathing

Virago celebrates love and strong, good relationships yet they also aren't afraid to look at when relationships aren't quite how we hope. Be they between lovers

'At first I clutched at anything I thought might hold together the torn and tearing garment of our relationship; but while I snatched the edges together with a comfort or a promise to myself in one place, the seams burst, the thread raveled out somewhere else. So in the end I did what so many other women, all through time have done in situations beyond them. I became afraid to move inside that garment. It was torn in so many places, that the seams strained so frailly everywhere, that it seemed only by keeping quite still, scarcely breathing, would it hold together.' Nadine Gordimer The Lying Days

or family

'When her mother seemed to have finished, she put down the half-eaten slice of bread and made towards the door. She had to pass her mother to get to it. They looked at each other. Each at that moment expected, and perhaps wanted, an embrace.' Pat Barker Union Street

reflecting

Dr Zhivago: A Love Story

So I've finished Dr. Zhivago. As you may have gathered from reading my comments on your posts I loved many parts of it. The description of nature, I love the faith and as Rachel put it so much more eloquently than me the 'soul'. I've been confused by the issue of 'translation' but have been reminded of the lesson that 'the grass isn't always greener on the other side.'

What I've found hard, and this was the same for me in another great Russian novel Anna Karenina, is the great love. But they're already married I keep thinking and feeling. In this case it's not as if his marriage wasn't happy. A part of me kept thinking 'We're lucky to find one love in life and here's Yury and Lara each have had two loves in their life!'

This passage shows he has a soul and a conscience - but what good are they if we don't change our actions?

"Yury was deceiving Tonya and what he concealed from her was becoming increasingly grave and ilicit. This was something unheard-of between them.
He worshipped Tonya. Her peace of mind meant more to him than anything in the world....
At home he felt like a criminal.....
Had he been unfaithful to her because he preferred another woman? No, he had made no comparison, no choice. He did not believe in 'free love' or in the 'right' to be carried away by his senses. To think or speak in such terms seemed to him degrading...Now he was crushed by the weight of his guilty conscience.
'What next?' he sometimes asked himself, and hoped wretchedly for some impossible, unexpected circumstance to solve his problem for him."

Part of me wonders what would have happenend if they hadn't been in the midst of civil unrest with families being mixed up, people just disappearing. How convenient for their love.

And then we read this letter from Tonya to Yury when she is about to leave for Paris.

"The whole trouble is that I love you and that you don't love me. I keep trying to discover the meaning of this judgement on me, to understand it, to see the reason for it. I look into into myself, I go over our whole life together and everything I know about myself, and I can't find the beginning , and I can't remember what it is I did and how I brought this misfortune on myself...
As for me, I love you. If only you knew how much I love you. I love all that is unusual in you, the inconvenient and as well as the covenient, and all the ordinary things which, in you, are made precious to me by being combined in an extraordinary way;
...God keep you, I must stop. They have come for the letter... O Yura Yura, my darling, my husband, my children's father, what is happening to us? Do you realise that we'll never, never see each other again?"

And my heart and soul ache for her - and I think/feel again 'Yury how can you do this?' And I think about us, the readers, are we condoning such behaviour by reading and re reading this story of deception, hurt and betrayal.

And then we get to the Conclusion and Epilogue (which to begin with I didn't understand and wondered why it was there but then grew to love it and perhaps became one of my favourite parts of the book.) Reading this passage I realised why everyone refers to Dr. Zhivago as 'the greatest love story.'

"Oh, what a love it was, how free, how new, like nothing else on earth!...
It was not out of necessity that they loved each other, 'enslaved by passion', as lovers are described. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their feet. Perhaps their surrounding world, the strangers they met in the street, the landscapes drawn up for them to see on their walks, the rooms in which they lived or met, were even more pleased with their love than they were themselves."

I'm still not sure how I feel about this love story. What are your thoughts?

Leaves

This quote fits into 'another one my mum sent me to do with relationships ending...' As we scuff along in the leaves it seems appropriate, though thankfully I now have Warmth to hold my hand.

'Heart be kind and sign the release
As trees their loss approve.
Learn as leaves must learn to fall
Out of danger out of love'

James Fenton

leaves

I walk down the street

I was saddest about leaving the small area of London I/we'd lived in than the flat. In the last few days it was when walking along the streets near our flat that I felt nostalgic. This poem came to my mind. It's another one from my mother, sent during one of my many 'dating the wrong man' times. So in some ways it doesn't fit with the emotions of moving... but yet it is the fact that I walked down another street that I met Warmth and that now we're moving on together.

1. I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the pavement, I fall in.
I am lost... I am helpless, it isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find my way out.

2. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the pavement.
I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But it isn't my fault.

3. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the pavement.
I see it is there. I still fall in... it's a habit.
My eyes are open
I know where I am
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

4. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the pavement.
I walk around it.

5. I walk down another street.

@
Author Unknown if you know please do let me know.

Scars

Life isn't always sunny, rosy, full of love and romance. Sometimes it hurts and we suffer. In those moments I tend to cry but the words in novels have put my feelings into some sort of coherent thought and have helped me.

'One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or of the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.' F.Scott Fitzgerald Tender is the Night

@

Le Grand Meaulnes

Twin studied Le Grand Meaulnes for French 'A' Level and it was commonly known as 'Le Grand Moan' in our home. This had, unsurprisingly put me off reading it, but thankfully years later something prompted me, and I'm sure I must have been partly intrigued as to why Twin disliked it so much. I enjoyed it. Here's the one passage which stood out to me at that time. I think I wished I would maybe have the confidence to say this if the need arrived.

'If you feel you ought to go, if I came to you at a moment when nothing could make you happy, if it'd necessary for you to leave me now for a time and only come back when you've found peace, then it is I who ask you to go...' Alain Fournier Le Grand Meaulnes

@

The Inheritance of Loss

I don't quite know what to write about The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, apart from the title is perfect. If ever a novel had the right title then this is the novel. Right on page two we have this sentence.
'Could fulfilment ever be felt as deeply as loss?'
We journey with four main characters
'these were four shadow puppets from a fairytale flickering on the lumpy plaster of the wall - a lizard man, a hunch marked cook, a lush-lashed maiden, and a long-tailed wolf dog....'

There are moments of light heartedness, tender touches.
'Ah, the dumpling stage of love-it had set them off on a tumble of endearments and nicknames. They thought of them in quiet moments and placed them before each other like gifts.'
But yet oh the hatred between couples.
'... the dread they had for each other was so severe it was as if they had tapped into a limitless bitterness carrying them beyond the parameters of what any individual is normally capable of feeling. They belonged to this emotion more than to themselves, experienced rage with enough muscle in it for entire nations...'
Reading plays a large part in their lives, especially English authors, and another moment of humour.
'I always said,' she turned to the others in a frivolous fashion, ' that I would save Trollope for my dotage; I knew it would be a perfect slow indulgence when I had nothing much to do and, well, here I am. Old fashioned books is what I like.'
Like all of us they're trying to make sense of, understand who they are, in the country they live in, at this moment in time.
'How many lived in the fake version of their countries, in fake versions of other people's countries? Did their lives feel as unreal to them as his did to him?'
I don't think this review tells the story. Partly as I don't know how to without giving things away. So instead I've tried to show some of the emotions of the novel. My over riding memory is of The Inheritance of Loss. It moved me, it made me feel desperately sad yet there were also glimmers of hope in it and that's what I shall hold onto.

Unseen Quilts

So, in my mind I was going to the V&A Quilt exhbition yesterday and today I would post another Quilt Quote and my thoughts/favourite quilt from it. However with the time I'd left myself and the length of the queue to buy tickets I didn't make it. So here is a Quilt Quote anyway.

'How had she made him? She did not know. She had patched him together, working in the dark. She had made a quilt out of pieces of silk, scraps of velvet, and now that she held it up to the light the stitches showed up large and crude, and they cut across everything.' Monica Ali Brick Lane

@

I hope you're working in the sunlight at the moment.