When I enter the Asian wing of New York City’s Metropolitan Museum, I am transported to a realm like no other. I turn one way and arrive in a land of bamboo and cranes, or another and travel with philosophers on their long, slow journeys to sit and draw and write and talk.
And suddenly the memory appeared. That taste was the taste of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray . . . my aunt Léonie would give me after dipping it in her infusion of tea . . .
Mrs. Schweer? Who the devil is Mrs. Schweer? I turned in desperation to the internet. Lo, there she was! She’d been written up in Life Magazine, and she’d died at age 105 in the very hospital where I was born. I wrote Mom to confirm.
I’ve been troubled by computer problems and an inconstant internet these past few days. I had to remind myself there was a time when such things were not only unnecessary, but not even available. I had to think: what, then, were the things I used to use?
I no longer own a typewriter, so I looked around for a notebook and a pen. I found them foreign objects, and inefficient. I looked for a dictionary, but had only a small paperback that didn’t contain what I required. I wanted confirmation of something I’d been told: that the etymological root of the word “poet” was “maker.” Without my usual tools to search, I was thrown back on my own experience for proof.
Now and then, as a vestige of my egghead education, I’m compelled to attempt a hard book. So when I was shown The Power of the Center: A Study of Composition in the Visual Arts, I thought, why not? At page 44, I set it down by Finnegans Wake, vowing, MacArthur-like, to return to each.
As the shortest, darkest day of the year approaches, the town of Phoenixville PA will light up the night with the 6th annual Firebird Festival on Saturday, December 12th. The highlight of the Festival is the lighting of the Firebird, a 29 foot tall wooden replica of the mythical Phoenix bird. Area artists spent several weekends constructing the bird sculpture that now sits on Bridge Street, a block away from the town’s retail center. When lit, the firebird will become a huge bonfire to illuminate the darkness of December.
There are close to 200 versions of “White Christmas” available on iTunes. And I think I have inadvertently heard most of them on the radio already this year. For the past several years, come mid-November, two radio stations on my car’s preset list change over to “All Christmas Music! All the Time!"
I will confess that I once got sucked into a season of American Idol: the clash of the titans, Ruben and Clay. So when a friend sent a YouTube clip of Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent, I knew Simon Cowell was the judge to watch. And, as a result of that heads-up, I wasn’t caught entirely flat-footed when my mother said she hoped Susan Boyle would get a chance to sing for the Queen.
I have it on good authority that the snowflake has long been up at the crossroads of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street in New York City. Shop windows are already dressed for the coming holidays, and December 2nd is the date for lighting the Rockefeller Center tree.
