Finding the steps of The Lost Generation

According to Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein was the only one who really thought the artists of the 20s were "lost." She had heard the owner of  a mechanic shop scolding one of his young workers by saying "You are all a lost generation." She reiterated this thought to Hemingway one night, agreeing heartily with the sentiment. Hemingway later used the phrase, but he never agreed with it: " . . . I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be . . ."

Yesterday, I decided to walk in the steps of Hemingway based on passages from A Moveable Feast. This memoir covers 1921-1926 of his years in Paris -- years he struggled to write his first novel and yet was happily content in his marriage to his first wife, Hadley, and their humble life together with their son, "Bumby." He was around my age during these years, which were extremely formative for him. It's no wonder that this was the time he chose to memorialize, the time when "we were very poor and very happy." Yet my steps yesterday were not just the steps of Hemingway. They were the steps of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and all who found shelter in the arms of the Left Bank in the years following WWI. I'll let Hemingway's words help narrate my path.

I began by finding the old location of Shakespeare and Company (quite by accident I stumbled upon the street of its original location - by the time Hemingway arrived in Paris, it had moved.) "In those days there was no money to buy books. I borrowed books from the rental library of Shakespeare and Company, which was the library and bookstore of Sylvia Beach at 12 rue de l'Odéon." What he doesn't have room to explain is that Sylvia Beach is responsible for the unification, nuture, publicity, and literal survival of most of the notable writers in Paris at the time -- established and fledging, American, British, and French alike.  She single-handedly published Ulysses (first - before Joyce became greedy and let another company publish the 2nd edition). I am currently reading a fascinating biography on her and this bookshop (which I purchased in the new version of this shop)...I was awe-struck when when I found it. I stood where this picture was taken. That is Sylvia Beach in the doorway.

Then ". . . I walked down by different streets to the Jardin du Luxembourg . . . through the gardens and stop[ped] in at the studio apartment where Gertrude Stein lived at 27 rue de Fleurus." Stein's salon was quite famous and was frequented by writers, artists (Picasso, to name one), and philosophers. Her salon held Cèzannes, Matisses, Picassos....everyone who wanted a start in Paris tried to get an invitation to meet with her. People easily fell out of her favor, though, and Hemingway eventually did. It was quite an experience to stand across the street and imagine all these great artists walk in and out . . . 

Next, I walked "up the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs to the Closerie des Lilas. I sat . . .with the afternoon light coming in over my shoulder and wrote." And had a pricey, but wonderful lunch. It wasn't so famous when Hemingway, Pound, and Fitzgerald frequented it. Both Hemingway and Ezra Pound lived on the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs for a few years - Pound for several. I wasn't sure of the numbers and didn't see any commemorative plaques...still it was nice to walk the street they walked many times a day..."Ezra Pound was always a good friend and was always doing things for people. The studio where he lived with his wife Dorothy on the rue Notre-Dames-des-Champs was as poor as Gertrude Stein's studio was rich. It had very good light and was heated by a stove and it had paintings by Japanese artists that Ezra knew." I then made my way over to 74 Cardinal Lemoine - one of Hemingway's and Hadley's first Paris apartments. "Home in the rue Cardinal Lemoine was a two-room flat that had no hot water and no inside toilet facilities except an antisceptic container, not uncomfortable to anyone who was used to a Michigan outhouse. With a fine view and a good mattress and springs for a comfortable bed on the floor, and pictures we liked on the walls, it was a cheerful, gay flat." It's a cute address now, with a little boutique under it called, aptly, "Under Hemingway."

 My last stop before just wandering the St. Germain area and the Blvd. St. Michel in general was the point of the Ile de la Cité (the oldest part of Paris on which sits Notre Dame). "At the head of the Ile de la Cité below Pont Neuf where there was the statue of Henri Quatre, the island ended in a point like the sharp bow of a ship and there was a small park at the water's edge with fine chesnut trees, huge and spreading, and in the currents and back waters that the Seine made flowing past, there were excellent places to fish."

Today, there is still a lovely park with large, spreading trees. A weeping willow crowns the point, and in place of the fishermen are many cuddly couples.

I think this day will remain one of my favorite days. For it is not often one gets the chance to consciously walk in the steps of those who have created a movement, especially a movement such as that which rose from the ashes of the first world war and the inklings of the destruction mankind has the power to create. Yet, they were not lost. . . and whenever they thought they were, they found themselves in Paris.

"Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it."

All quotes taken from: Hemingway, E. A Moveable Feast. Scribner's and Sons: New York, 1964.

Pilgrimage

There is a sacredness in all this walking -- walking over stones and dirt and layers of bones, walls, pamphlets, shrapnel . . . I've traversed over the Gauls, the beginnings of revolutions, the literary birth of Hemingway and Joyce, and the German occupation. It is too much to be be aware of, too much to hold in one's consciousness. 

This trip is becoming a pilgrimage of sorts . . . one that started to become such after I read Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, his memoirs of his time in Paris in the early-mid 20s. Before I left, I imagined myself retracing his steps, sitting at the cafe where he met F. Scott Fitzgerald, frequenting the bookshop which is now an homage to the bookshop that fostered the Paris community of Modernists and the best minds of the 20th century, sitting on the left bank of the Seine with a baguette, a bottle of wine, and writing. I have done  some of this and will do some of this. Yet there is more. Each spur-of-the-moment decision to walk down one street melds into other decisions . . . some loosely planned, others not. I don't know how much I'll "produce" on this trip, but the emotional, and therefore spiritual, quietness that comes with a journey of purposeful wandering is one that can't help but yield creative musings . . . one quickly discovers why Paris has been both such a haven and catalyst for great art and thought. The city bleeds depth.

As a result, my weekdays have become days of proximal wandering, and my weekends are being reserved for little days trips. For those of you who are reading primarily to keep up with what I'm doing, below is a brief play-by-play of the past three days of sheer wonderfulness.

Friday - I slept in, then took the bus/train in to Paris, near Notre Dame. My first stop was Shakespeare and Company (I'll probably do another post on just this mecca; this is the homage  I mentioned above), where I sat in the reading library overlooking the Seine and Notre Dame and read portions of the collected poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Next I sat on the bank of the Seine with a sandwich and people-watched while I munched. Mid-afternoon I cued up to go into Notre Dame for the Consecration of the Crown of Thorns (a service they have every 1st Friday of the month). It was glorious...the organ, the chants in the most beautiful tenor voice, the incense...next I crossed to the other side of the Seine and found a spot at a cafe for an apertif just before a deluge of rain occured (I successfully managed the odering and paying in French - yeehaw!). Then my day ended by attending a showing of the film Klimt (2006), which was part of the Paris Cinema Festival currently taking place. It was fabulously abstract and dark -- John Malkovich plays the role of Klimt. Love him.

Saturday - After a fabulous brunch, we drove out to Monet's house and gardens . . . oh the beauty . . . the clouds parted and the rain stopped for the exact two hours we spent wandering the most beautiful gardens I've ever seen (with the famous water lily pond). The day ended by going to a birthday party . . . fun times conversing in broken French and English with people in their very young twenties. Yes, good times.

Sunday (today)- We drove out to Alexander Dumas' house (aptly called Monte Cristo). He was such a man of unfathomable imagination and joie de vivre  (sp?). He is the man who gave birth to D'Artagnon and the Three Musketeers, the Man in the Iron Mask, and the Count of Monte Cristo. How does one create such adventures? I haven't the faintest.

So those are my adventures over the past few days . . . I promise not to write every post like this, but thought many of you might like a bit more detail. Tomorrow I'm exploring the rue de l'Odeon and the St. Germain area a bit and attending an author's reading and lecture at Shakespeare and Company. Grin, grin, grin!

To wandering . . . and creating a pilgrimage out of one's wandering.

Vocabulary

So this post has been shared on facebook in quick succession of my last one because I am typing on a French keyboard (pecking, to be exact b/c the keys are in different places to accomodate all the characters), and I could not figure out how to type the @ symbol and therefore could not sign on to FB (until I finally asked today) oh-la-la-la.

Today was yet another adventure in observation and really "getting the lay of the land" so to speak...tower view from Notre Dame, more Seine boating, hoards of walking, avant-garde art gallery, cafe in a garden, French grocery store... you know - the usual. Today my revelation was that I have a very skewed knowledge of French nouns due to the fact that most of my exposure to the French language has been through French art songs and arias. L'oiseau, ombre, papillon, femme, nuit, mer - these are the sort of nouns I know (bird, shadow, butterfly, woman, night, sea). Yet, when asked today if I would like salt and pepper, I hadn't the faintest notion. So, there ya have it. Culture does not trump the common.

I did not include a poem yesterday, so below is one that I did not write, but read in my Writer's Almanac subscription the Saturday before I left. I have reread it many times, for it reflects quite aptly what this time is for me. I wish desperately that I had written it.

The Poet Visits the Museum of Fine Arts

by Mary Oliver

For a long time
     I was not even
        in this world, yet
           every summer

every rose
     opened in perfect sweetness
        and lived
           in gracious repose,

in its own exotic fragrance,
     in its huge willingness to give
        something, from its small self,
           to the entirety of the world.

I think of them, thousands upon thousands,
     in many lands,
        whenever summer came to them,
           rising

out of the patience of patience,
     to leaf and bud and look up
        into the blue sky
           or, with thanks,

into the rain
     that would feed
        their thirsty roots
           latched into the earth—

sandy or hard, Vermont or Arabia,
     what did it matter,
        the answer was simply to rise
           in joyfulness, all their days.

Have I found any better teaching?
     Not ever, not yet.
        Last week I saw my first Botticelli
           and almost fainted,

and if I could I would paint like that
     but am shelved somewhere below, with a few songs
        about roses: teachers, also, of the ways
           toward thanks, and praise.

"The Poet Visits the Museum of Fine Arts" by Mary Oliver, from Thirst. © Beacon Press, 2006.

Paradox

Depsite the fact that I am a product of the 80's and have experienced at a fairly maleable age the technological wonders of our time, one thing consistently continues to amaze me: flying. It is truly the closest thing we have to time travel.  The day before last, I flew from the day of one coast over an ocean, through another's night, and arrived on the other side to a sunrise.Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn" to be precise. And I watched those fingers spread from above the clouds. That is the way to arrive in Paris, my friends. So, for any of you still wondering, I arrived!

After settling in and relaxing yesterday, I decided to begin my Paris epic today with an old friend: Rodin. Ever since my father took me to Paris a decade ago, Rodin's sculptures have stayed with me; and it was today that I identified why. Rodin took the hardest, coldest of mediums and created life -- passionate, searing, vulnerable expressions of need, despair, innocence and vulnerability. His art is living paradox. The museum is under quite a bit of construction at the moment, so most of his marble sculptures were in one large room. I had just come to this paradoxical conclusion when I entered the exhibit and read these words: "Marble  is considered  the material most apt to represent flesh, perhaps because it has an inclination for paradox and virtuouso; hard and cold, marble acquires suppleness and warmth as it is transmuted beneath the artist's chisel..." It is only through the work and warmth of the artist that the beauty is bared - in it's rawest, truest form. Not all his work was in marble, but even in his bronze pieces, the effect is the same. Some images are below...his most famous is perhaps "Le Penseur" ("The Thinker" - not shown).

"Despair"

"The Kiss"

"Adam"

Thoreau-ing thoughts around

This past weekend I decided to make a quick jaunt up to see my grandmother. My goal was to come back with a new poem....I came back with several ideas. So a new poem is TBD (but I'll post an old one up anyway). Regardless, it was a really wonderful mini-trip, well worth the seven hour drive each way.

My grandmother lives on a plot of land that my grandfather purchased in the 60s with some business partners. It's a little hide-away of a "neighborhood" on what used to be the Roanoke River (it was dammed up in the 50s and is now Buggs Island/Kerr Lake - depending on whether you are in NC or VA). When my dad went off to college, my grandpa sold their house in McClean, VA and built their retirement home (a two-story cedar cabin) on this plot of land. This lake is where I learned to fish, waterski, drive (golf-carts, and then cars on the backroads), kill all manner of insects, and appreciate the magic of the North American woods.

I had so many moments at the lake this weekend of thinking That's a poem, but it was hard to write anything down. So I've decided to share three of these moments with you,  and then I'll just let them sit for a bit and see what emerges later.

Sunday morning: I sat on the "beach" alone, half in shade under "the big tree" where all manner of life-vests, chairs, and floats are kept out of the sun's fading rays. On the ground, not too far from my chair were two butterflies - one monarch and one black and blue. They were fluttering their wings, but not flying, which in my book meant that they had just burst from their coccoons and were drying their wings before trying out the bright, big world or... they were dying. I decided they were dying, because that seemed like a better poem. I jotted down some observations about their movement, their struggle, where they chose to flutter their last, and then I walked down to the water to cool off. When I returned, they were gone....so I guess they had learned to fly after all. I then remembered it was under that tree I received my first waterskiing lesson from my grandpa. I've learned to "fly" under that tree as well.

Sunday afternoon: My dad and I pulled out our little "Sunfish" - a small sailboat. We had a wonderful sail and some good conversation. My dad mentioned that he had visited my grandpa's grave on his way down the day before. He said something to the effect of, "You know there are Confederate soldiers buried in that same cemetery, and there is still what was then called the "colored" section. It's amazing how history gets recorded by people's burial sites." We then talked a little about the lake and the Native American history that we were currently floating over. The keen eye can still find arrowheads on the shores of this lake, and I thought that it is amazing how water can cover a multitude of eras which will never be remembered in a burial of earth.

Later that afternoon, I saw my first bald eagle in the wild.

Monday morning: My dad and I had to get the sailboat out of the water and store it again, so we bumped our way down to the shore in Grandmother's golf-cart. Right before we hit the beach, my dad stopped the cart and pointed to a spot in the grass. There, my friends, was the largest snake I've seen since I lived in Africa. He was eyeing my dad, who had jumped out of the cart to get a closer look....boys. We could tell he had something in his mouth, but we weren't sure what until my dad took one step closer, causing the snake to drop his meal and zoom into the brush. I then inched my way over to get a good look, and there, half-eaten and bloody, was a copper-head. After pulling ourselves away, we loaded the boat and started back to the house. As we passed the spot where the snake had dropped the copper-head, we saw that he had come back, reclaimed his venomous lunch and disappeared once more into the brush.

So - three poems? Or maybe one long one...Below is an old poem my dad asked me to post. The tie-in is that it has to do with death and animals. Enjoy.

The Day We Ate My Pet Chicken

They told me halfway through the meal.

I dropped his leg, ran to the toilet.

I had named him and called him mine in the back of our white jeep.

As we bounced down village roads past dripping banana leaves

and women of burden lugging water and babies,

he screeched and lost his feathers while I sang lullabies

and caught those feathers in the air.

He had been a gift to my father from the villagers

Thankful for his visit, his words, their language on his tongue.

Days later, the gift cluckclucked around the yard, haughty and fat with grain.

I was a good little mama, the gardener had said.

I couldn’t bring any part of him back up and so returned to the table.

I shrugged and sat until the licking of bones turned into the clatter of dishes.

I didn’t know if I should mourn when the scraps were given to the dogs.

 

Emily Anne Decker (2009)

Idiomaticness

Last night I went to see a live broadcast of Christopher Plummer in The Tempest. It was enchanting and beautiful, and it reminded me that two of my favorite Shakespearean quotes come from this play:

"We are such stuff / As dreams are made on; and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep."
- Prospero (IV. i)
"O brave new world, / That has such people in't!"
-Miranda (V. i)

These are certainly not Shakespeare's most quoted lines, but they have somehow retained their familiarity, and therefore their influence, in the English language.

The night before last I went to Write Club - a once-a-month gathering of writers and wits who face-off with their expositions addressing universally thematic rivals (ie. Method vs. Madness, Sacred vs. Profane, etc.). As I listened to these writers tackle these topics with (in most cases) a fabulous ripeness of humor and relevance, I thought that it really is interesting, from a linguistic perspective, how much of our communication (and often our most intelligent communication) consists of idioms, colloquialisms, abbreviations, and allusions. We've taken the simplest metaphor - a word - and chained it with others to create metaphors on top of metaphors on top of metaphors. Not suprisingly then is the fact that these tend to be both the most lasting and the most dynamic bits of language.

About a year ago was the the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, and I was involved in an homage of sorts to the lasting effects this version of the Bible has had on our culture since its publication. My portion of the performance consisted of reading an original poem in which I wrote each line using or alluding to an idiom from the KJV. It was a fun and complex feat, despite it being ripe with clichés -- purposely so, of course ;-). It is below.

The Writing on the Wall

When the sweat of my brow seems more like peace offerings

Of sour grapes, and labours of love become like lambs

Led to the slaughter, how will I read the writing on the wall?

Will I join the ranks of blind leading the blind

Who live in a daily surrender to the powers that be,

Never noting their pearls as they are cast before swine?

Or will I sit with the salt of the earth

To whom everything there is a season and all things must pass

From strength to strength thru songs of “Thy will be done.”?

Maybe I’ll wash my hands of fighting the good fight

And eat, drink, and be merry till my fall becomes

Merely a fly in the ointment of faith.

Perhaps I’ll become a voice crying in the wilderness of wolves

In sheep’s clothing, clutching the thorn in my flesh as I yell, “Blessed

Are the peacemakers” while suppressing my thirst for my eye and my tooth.

Or maybe, I’ll harden my heart and bite the dust 

As I bury my face in the sand, moaning a final “woe is me”

While the grit and dust fill my mouth and stop my breath.

Yet, if within myself I find the strength to not be me of little faith,

Or let the wall’s writing put words in my mouth, my heart’s desire just might rise

Out of the ashes and the dust, and erase the writing, etching instead

“Let there be light!”

-Emily Decker (2011)

"The Mango Tree"

I often feel like the moments of sheer uncertainty in my life are the ones in which I end up feeling the most nostalgic. Perhaps my memories, often of my childhood, act as a buffer between the fear of not knowing what lies ahead and the anticipation of the novelty in what lies ahead. I had a fairly idyllic childhood in Ghana, and the memories I've retained of that time surface more when I need additional certainty in my life.

Tonight, I've decided to share one poem I wrote several years ago. It is set in Ghana - I've written a few poems set in Ghana; I'm sure I'll write more. I think it's interesting how the seeds of creativity often seem to stem from places much farther back in my memory than I often anticipate. This poem took me by surprise once I had written it, and even more so once it had been work shopped by others. Perhaps it's the somewhat darker turn at the end - I'll let you come to your own conclusions. Bon nuit.

"The Mango Tree"

The day I found snake skins on my swing,  

draped like discarded clothes thrown on the bed,

Daddy said I couldn’t play in it anymore.

The mambas, shedding and cranky, had taken over my tree.

That season I stayed near the veranda and watched the branches

start to bend with rains and ripe fruit,

sagging like arms stretching to touch toes.

We picked mangoes carefully that year, alert

for a darting flash of bright green against black bark

and sage-colored leaves. I decided the mambas had left,

leaving behind their skins and S-shaped signatures in the dirt.

I was still told to stay away from the tree, so I did,

except for one day. Toting two Barbies and a picnic,

I climbed into the Y halfway up the trunk.

There were noises – my brother crying,

the thump of coconuts hitting the ground.

I heard the wind in the leaves.

When I felt the sting, sharp and burning, I laid my dolls side by side,

rigid and staring up at the light piercing the canopy.

I turned to look at my foot and saw the black ant

crawling up my ankle and the red welt swelling my toe.

I watched the ant travel to my knee, then brushed him away.

Once I’d gathered my dolls and jumped, I looked up:

one silky skin, caught on the knotted branch above my swing,

fluttered in the breeze.

Emily Anne Decker (2009)