Californian Days

We live in an age when it isn't easy to distinguish between your natural inclinations and the times.

-----David Remnick, editor of the The New Yorker.

.

Walking down Beaumaris Drive in the middle of the morning, a time when the world is just about to stir, find its groove. I look askance and see an old woman, perhaps in her eighties, diligently attending to the plants in her small square garden. She is immaculately dressed- pale blue cardigan, make-up, a large gold broach- and there is a tremendous look of seriousness on her face, as if knowing how to approach each flower in the right way was not just a matter of the application of a vast accumulation of knowledge and experience that she could draw on at will, but a trying out of all that she instinctively knew. And why make that distinction anyway? To be gritty, obstinant, tender, just in the right measure...the garden was a world in itself and she was no different. To be so thoroughly engrossed in the give and take of the world or the rhythms of the earth was to move beyond self-consciousness.

.

That worldy wisdom, self-absorption, the deep knowledge of and reverence for the details of a life-no matter how narrow a life it is- holds the nomad spellbound. Equally, the stranger, the misfit, and the rootless looks on at this lack of alienation, this roundedness, with a fascinated horror and is simultaneously drawn to and repulsed by the vision of domesticity, shallowness, and stillness. The perfect intensity that can be derived from a command of skills and the deep continuity-resources that only civilisation can make available- dazzles the monolithic mind with its sheer horizontality.

.

There's a finality about the sunshine today. It signals the last of the summer days, the late flowering of possibilities , a final flourish before the onset of the dark and fatalistic winter. It seems as if one is witnessing the world in colour one last time before we slip into a perpetual greyness. The light suggests a perfect ripeness or sweetness but to reach such perfection must also mean that everything can change in an instant.

.

There's a slight chill in the air-not the type that reaches the bones, but one that leaves its impression nevertheless. By 10 0'clock things have evened out and listening to some Gary Jules I wonder if the mellowness is coming from the music, the faded yellow light or if its just the way I'm feeling right now. It's nearly impossible to listen to classical music any more- everything has to be about timeliness now, has to be related to that small patch of time and space that we've experienced. There must have been a thousand days like this before.

.

The sunlight does not so much as illuminate the world as hold it together in a delicately poised totality. Chains of frail light. The last moment contains all others, encapsulates all that was said and unsaid over the long-break. It also mysteriously evokes distant places and times, both familiar and imaginary: a lazy November morning in Lahore, tramping through leafy Richmond suburbs, and wide open Californian streets.

.

Practicality, taken to its limit, reverts to the poetical; Roth can convey a world in all its of particularity and utterly believable depictions are carried on the back of a solid prosaic world of fact, knowledge and experience. So much of the artist's work is in making nothing happen, in creating a space where intelligence can burst though the mundane and sparkle all the more for standing out from all that is intimately familiar. And then there is the type of wisdom that only comes from a cerain level of detachment, the inner dialogue of a lonely self:

.

As she was speaking,she took hold of his arm and now, as she became silent, her grip tightened as though only her hand could continue the burden of her thoughts.

.

Now it was like the laboured conversation among guests at a late hour after there is nothing more to say, nothing but ashes in the fireplace, dishes in the sink, a chill in the room, a return to ordinary estrangement.

.

There isn't any place for the way I feel

-----from Paula Fox, Desperate Characters