Category: life

The Owl Family’s Debutante

Another spring brings another owl baby. While I can’t tell if it’s the same owl family, it’s interesting that a Great Horned Owl family would use the same tree cavity to make their nest every spring to welcome their newborn(s), year after year.

Here it is, about a month ago, a brand new baby peeking out of the nest. Can you spot baby owl in this picture?

And now a few weeks later, baby has grown to almost the size of mommy owl, and the family has vacated their nest. So, it’s wonderful to see them out on a tree. Baby still has the downy coat on, but what impresses me is mommy owl—I like to think it’s the mother owl staying close to baby, as father owl usually goes to find food—like a sentinel watching closely, looking noble and stoic:

But of course, a mother is always a mother, and baby is always her baby, no matter how big he or she has grown. I’m glad that I was able to capture these endearing moments, albeit a little blurry since they were very far up a tree from a distance. Baby’s on the right in these pictures:

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(Glitches while posting this. Have to repost. Previous post entitled Baby’s Day Out. Issues with the date. This post is published on Saturday May 27, 9:40 am.)

Remembering Gordon Lightfoot: Pussy Willows, Cattails, Soft Winds and Roses

The passing of Gordon Lightfoot yesterday at the age of 84 evokes a stream of nostalgic consciousness. The following is an old post dating back to more than ten years ago. I wrote it after visiting Unionville in Ontario; the profusion of cattails by the pond stirred up memories of listening to Lightfoot’s song. As a tribute to the Canadian music legend, I’m reposting it here.

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Took a short trip to Ontario last week and came home overwhelmed with nostalgia. It all started when I visited the town of Unionville and saw these, crowds and crowds of cattails growing profusely at the pond, the fields, and by the footbridge:

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For some inexplicable reasons, I’m much fond of cattails. The first time I learned about them was from listening to the song by Gordon Lightfoot… before I’d actually seen one.

Some time in the 70’s, for many afternoons I sat in the art room of a high school somewhere in Alberta, working on some art project, but mostly doing nothing at all while listening to Gordon Lightfoot.  Mr. Hannington held a laissez faire art class… we could do just about anything, or nothing.  Usually, there would only be three or four of us in the room.  We would just sit around, chat, daydream, and immerse in the voice of Gordon Lightfoot on the radio.

I didn’t turn out to be an artist, while one of us did.  But I’ve remained partial to cattails, mesmerized by the song and the singer.  Those Lightfoot afternoons in the art room emerged from the depth of hazy memories, the lyrics were the soft winds caressing naked limbs as I walked in this natural reserve in Unionville.

Pussywillows, cattails, soft winds and roses
Rainpools in the woodland, water to my knees
Shivering, quivering, the warm breath of spring
Pussywillows, cat-tails, soft winds and roses

Catbirds and cornfields, daydreams together
Riding on the roadside the dust gets in your eyes
Reveling, disheveling the summer nights can bring
Pussywillows, cattails, soft winds and roses

Slanted rays and colored days, stark blue horizons
Naked limbs and wheat bins, hazy afternoons
Voicing, rejoicing the wine cups do bring
Pussywillows, cattails, soft winds and roses

Harsh nights and candlelights, woodfires a blazin’
Soft lips and fingertips resting in my soul
Treasuring, remembering, the promise of spring
Pussywillows, cattails, soft winds and roses

(To my artist friend CD: Keep the fire burning.)

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Some of you had left comments in that old post. If you’re interested to know what you had said, click on the link to find out.

‘Living’: The Old Becomes New

Living is based on the Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa’s classic Ikiru (1952, meaning of title: ‘to live’). Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro adapted it to make an English version with Bill Nighy in mind when he wrote the screenplay, creating a setting in 1950’s London. Interestingly, Kurosawa himself was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich when he made Ikiru, and with his eloquent camera, transposed the Russian master’s novella into a Japanese story on screen.

With Living, the Japanese-British novelist Ishiguro has succinctly condensed Kurosawa’s 142 minute film into a shorter feature of 102 minutes, helmed by South African director Oliver Hermanus. It’s interesting to note the cross-cultural transferral, for the film is about the universal theme that we all share as a humanity, living a meaningful life in the face of death.

This is one of the less-hyped movies during the 2022 Awards Season, despite the film getting two Oscar nominations: Best Adapted Screenplay for Ishiguro, and Best Actor for Bill Nighy, his first and long due Oscar nod.

It’s timely that I finally get the chance to watch Living now in April, a month that signifies new births. Considering the change in the main character Mr. Williams (Bill Nighy), even the idea of resurrection is apt when taken metaphorically, from death to life, ironically, for a man who has just been diagnosed with terminal illness.

As the head of the public works department at County Hall for numerous years, Williams is contented with following the bureaucratic daily routine by the clock, pushing papers to other departments, or, if the file has to stay in his, stalling it till it becomes extinct.

The camera angles give us a vivid perspective. From the overhead shot above the train station, we see a mass of uniformity, men in dark suit and bowler hat heading to work. Looking down from above, they are small and insignificant. And from the slow motion of them walking, we see the wheel of work turning, ever so slowly, in mundane routine heading to the office and the same vehicle bringing them home at the end of the day.

After Williams gets the confirmed diagnosis of cancer and that he will have just six months to live, there appears the audio motif of a clock ticking; this time, it’s not to remind him of work routine but the limited time of life remaining.

In the wake of the ominous news, Williams’ reactions change from stoically bearing the shock to actively seeking a meaningful existence, and ultimately finding a purpose that he feels can fulfill his life. Nighy’s performance is immersive, reserved, and nuanced, and at times, allowing a ray of deadpan humour to seep through. If the restrained ‘Englishness’ is what the actor naturally possesses, or one that he has fully grasped in his cultural milieu, then it has served him perfectly in this role.

In an online interview, Ishiguro explains this ‘Englishness’ as a metaphor:

A certain type of Englishness becomes a universal metaphor for something that is inside all human beings, the need to conform, perhaps a fear of emotions, the frustration of wanting to express yourself but not being able to break out of your professional role, or the role that society has given you. There were many things I thought we could talk about of the whole human condition by looking at this type of figure.

Many scenes in Living are direct parallels of Kurosawa’s Ikiru with his protagonist Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura). Both men confide their terminal illness not to their son who lives with them, but to a stranger in a restaurant, sharing their last wish, that is, to live life, for a change. The sympathetic listener brings the despondent man to various places for him to ‘live it up’. In both films, we see the same places but in different cultural context, amusement parks, bars, dance hall, strip club, but what Williams and Watanabe find are but superficial, ephemeral flares.

The ultimate change in Williams is sparked by a young, female staff Margaret Harris (Aimee Lou Wood), who needs his reference as she has found a new job. Meeting her by chance on the street, Williams invites her to have a ‘simple’ lunch with him at the Fortnum, where he can write her reference letter. It’s there that we see Williams break out with a genuine smile for the first time, forty-one minutes into the movie. Harris’s youthful and vivacious spirit later inspires Williams to go back to the office as a new man after his few days of escapade, to get down to work and this time, doing something that’s meaningful and benevolent.

A crucial addition in Living, and kudos to Ishiguro, is bringing in a young, new worker, Peter Wakeling (Alex Sharp), to the public works department, first day on his job. From his fresh, untainted eyes, we see the novice civil servant being open and ready to accept whatever the bureaucratic system requires of him. His boss Williams’ new-found purpose and subsequent change at work has left him with an indelible impression. And with co-worker Miss Harris, a warm storyline of budding romance adds flavour to the film, albeit introduced a bit late towards the end.

One poignant scene in both films is the protagonist singing in a bar. For Nighy, this is probably the best cinematic moment for him to leave his mark as a soulful singer, a deep and heartfelt performance in contrast to his farcical ‘Christmas is all around’ in Love Actually (2003). The scene here in Living is when a slightly drunk Williams asks the pianist at a pub to play as he sings ‘The Rowan Tree,’ a Scottish folk song that evokes longing for the past and loved ones gone.

Later, in the remake of Kurosawa’s iconic scene from Ikiru, we see Williams sitting on a swing and hearing his moving reprise of the song, this time sober and clear of what’s waiting for him. As the final credits roll, the mesmerizing voice of Lisa Knapp stirs ripples in my heart long after the visuals end.

‘The Rowan Tree’ sung by Lisa Knapp

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~ ~ ~ 1/2 Ripples

Thoughts at Easter 2023

“Easter, which turns a terrible Friday into Good Friday. It is almost too brilliant for me to contemplate; it is like looking directly into the sun; I am burned and blinded by life.

There are times when I feel that He has withdrawn from me… but Easter is always the answer to My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me!

Easter is the most brilliant of all blessings.”

–––––– Madeleine L’Engle, The Irrational Season

Holy Sonnet 10

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou’art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy’or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

––––––– John Donne

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

–––––––– John 12:24

“… without a few days in hell, no resurrection is possible.”

–––––––– Mary Karr, Lit

And a lighter thought, the all brilliant Madeleine L’Engle again:

Pride is heavy.
It weighs.
It is a fatness of spirit,
an overindulgence in self.
This gluttony is earthbound,
cannot be lifted up.
Help me to fast,
to lose this weight.
Otherwise, O Light one,
how can I rejoice in your
Ascension?

———————

He is risen.

Happy Easter!

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‘The Quiet Girl’ Movie Review: From the literary to the visual

The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin) is the first Irish-language film to be nominated for an Oscar, representing Ireland in the Best International Feature category in this year’s 95th Academy Awards held on March 12th.

In this his debut feature, Irish director Colm Bairéad adapts Claire Keegan’s short story “Foster” in a style that’s akin to the literary source. Together with director of photography Kate McCullough (Normal People, 2020), Bairéad has created on screen a sparse and sensitive rendering of Keegan’s story, camera shots that are calm storytelling and restraints that convey emotional depth. The choice of the 4:3 Academy aspect ratio gives the feeling of a time past, like an old home video preserving a young girl’s memorable experience.

Cáit (Catherine Clinch) is sent away to spend the summer with her mother’s relatives, Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley) and Seán Cinnsealach (Andrew Bennett). Having lived in an impoverished household full of siblings and one more expecting, with a father who takes ‘liquid supper’ before coming home and an overburdened mother, Cáit experiences for the first time in her short stay at the Cinnsealach’s quiet and childless farm home what it means to be cared for, and towards the end, learns that keeping silent can be an act of love.

Just like Keegan’s style of using the minimal to convey much, The Quiet Girl is sparse and sensitive in its visual storytelling. Eibhlín is shown to be kind right from the beginning, Seán less so, hardly acknowledges Cáit. His reticence is nuanced though, a slight turn of his head even when he’s facing the TV and with his back to the child betrays a moment of thought, of self-reflection. Seán’s coming around is endearing, like the moment he leaves a single cookie on the table as he walks by Cáit in the kitchen. Actions speak louder than words.

In the bedroom she’s in, Cáit observes the wallpaper with train images and the boy’s clothing she now wears, as her own suitcase is still in her Da’s car trunk as he has forgotten to leave it with her in his rush to leave. She observes her new environment and the people she’s with, and gets some shocking information when a nosy neighbor spills out the Cinnsealachs’ tragic past to her.

As one who has just read Keegan’s short story and been deeply moved by her writing, I come to this review not to compare how ‘faithful’ the film adaptation is, which it is, but that how some of the ‘cinematic moments’ in the book are transposed on screen.

Writer director Bairéad has added some scenes of Cáit in school and at home at the beginning of the film, enhancing the characterization of the girl, quiet and alone, even at home. While the ponderous visual storytelling deserves praise, I do find in certain moments, Bairéad could have added just a bit more dramatic effects, not for gratuitous purpose, but to elicit a more powerful punch towards the cathartic end.

[The following contains spoiler]

Two examples I have in mind. First is when Seán decides they should stop letting the girl wear the boy’s clothes and that he’ll drive them to town to buy Cáit new clothes for herself. That’s a defining moment bringing up a painful, unspoken past, and stopping their substituting Cáit for the one they had lost. Eibhlín is picking gooseberry at the kitchen table with Cáit. Here’s the excerpt from Keegan’s story about the very moment her husband tells them to go change and get ready to go into town to buy clothes for Cáit:

The woman keeps on picking the gooseberries from the colander, stretching her hand out, but a little more slowly each time, for the next. At one point I think she will stop but she keeps on until she is finished and then she gets up and places the colander on the sink and lets out a sound I’ve never heard anyone make, and slowly goes upstairs.

That sound that the girl has ‘never heard anyone make’ is bone chilling even when I was just reading the words, and would have been a most effective cinematic moment to convey pain and grief. Unfortunately what could have been a stirring moment for viewers did not materialize in that scene.

The second is more crucial, a scene that I take as the climax of the story, the girl’s accident at the well. More intensity in visual storytelling, or even just sound instead of the subtle handling of the incident––not for the sake of mere dramatic effects but to show the gravity of the mishap and its implications–– is needed to elicit more potently the poignant act of silence later when Cáit is determined not to mention the accident to her mother who has sensed something must have happened when the girl comes home sneezing.

The cathartic ending of the film is to be applauded for it has brought out Keegan’s powerful writing most vividly. What’s more heartrending than just reading is that we can see the face of the girl running and hear the final word she utters to Seán as she flies into his embrace. That is the power of film.

~ ~ ~ Ripples

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This is my third post participating in the Reading Ireland Month hosted by Cathy 746 Books.

Previous posts:

“Foster” by Claire Keegan: Short story review

The Banshees of Inisherin: Movie review

‘Foster’ by Claire Keegan

Reading Ireland Month 2023 has led me to the short stories by Claire Keegan. I’m excited for this ‘new discovery’. Keegan’s is the kind of writing I admire, sparse but telling, simple prose revealing deep emotional undercurrents. 

“Foster” the short story written by Keegan first appeared in The New Yorker. It was later published as a standalone work in book form in 2010. Keegan in an interview had stressed that it was not a novella but a long short story. The book cover in the photo is a new edition that came out in 2022.

The story is written from the point of view of a young girl from an impoverished family, both materially and emotionally. She is sent far away to stay with her mother’s sister Edna and her husband John Kinsella for the summer to lift the burden off her busy mother who has a house full of children and one more expecting. The Kinsellas are childless and live in a farm house in rural Wexford county.

The age of the girl isn’t mentioned, most probably around eight or nine. Interesting too that her name isn’t mentioned except just a few times, Petal, maybe giving a sense of the neglect she has been having all her young life. The title is ironic, I find, for the word foster often comes in contradiction in a lesser sense, or secondary, to natural birth parents. But here during her short stay at the Kinsellas, the girl has made new discoveries she has not experienced before, what it means to be loved and cared for, and begins to learn kindness and self-worth. Moreover, she is also exposed to the complexity and the dark range in the adult world, the loss and pain that come with life.

Foster has been adapted into film with the new title The Quiet Girl. It is Ireland’s official entry to the 95thAcademy Awards held this past Sunday, a nominee in the Best International Feature category, with its language being Irish (Gaelic). I still haven’t the chance to watch it, now a must-see movie for me. Hopefully I can watch it soon before the Reading Ireland event ends.

When I read “Foster”, I noticed that Keegan’s style is an exemplar of that writing advice we hear often: show, not tell. In some passages, Keegan instills in my mind visuals like watching a scene in a good film, actions and nuanced expressions speak clearly in depicting the characters with no need for dialogues. A couple of examples:

Here’s when the girl and his father whom she calls Da have a meal with the Kinsellas after he has dropped her off before heading right back home:

When we sit in at the table, Da reaches for the beetroot. He doesn’t use the little serving fork but pitches it onto the plate with his own. It stains the pink ham, bleeds.

Here’s another example, when Edna brings into her house some fresh rhubarb stalks from her garden for the girl’s father to bring home:

My father takes the rhubarb from her, but it is awkward as a baby in his arms. A stalk falls to the floor and then another. He waits for her to pick it up, to hand it to him. She waits for him to do it. Neither one of them will budge. In the end, it’s Kinsella who stoops to lift it.

‘There now,’ he says.

Just this short description has revealed the character and the relational dynamics among the three adults. Furthermore, these two passages also tell much about the girl, deep within her reticence, she is observant, precocious, and the reader can assume too that she must be eager to experience what’s waiting for her in the days ahead living with these two ‘foster parents’ for the summer.

The Kinsellas hold a family secret, one that’s heavy in their heart and mind, albeit unspoken. Again, Keegan’s writing comes through with subtle yet powerful revealing. The girl learns of their past from a nosy neighbour, and that is a moment of awakening for her. What happens later in the climax I will not spoil anyone’s reading pleasure. However, John Kinsella’s kind words to her observing her quiet demeanour earlier in the story, we know the girl will keep close to her heart for a long time:

‘You don’t ever have to say anything,’ he says. ‘Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.

As she mulls over the Kinsella’s hidden past, and her own experience while staying with them, she is now empowered by love and loyalty to keep silent that which needs to be kept in confidence. The girl might be reticent, but the single word she utters ending the story is most poignant and heart-wrenching. Again, Keegan has used the minimal to bring her readers to the depths of pathos and meaning.

~ ~ ~ ~ Ripples

This is my second post in participation in the Reading Ireland Month hosted by Cathy 746 Books.

Previous post: The Banshees of Inisherin Movie Review

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A Warm Winter Day

Today is a balmy 5C (41F) winter day. Sunny with no wind, and the Pond is teeming with life and beauty. For the first time in two months, I take my camera out and soak up the scenery.

The chickadees which flutter even in -20’s temperatures are out in full force. Glad to see woodpeckers too, basking in the sunlight:

Yes, those are buds on the branches!

Glad to see a family of deer out enjoying the afternoon sun. This one comes right up to me, maybe hoping for a snack:

While I’m glad to see the woods teeming with activities, what capture my attention are the ice patches, melting and dripping in the warmth of this mid-winter afternoon:

Buds on tree branches and melting ice in January? Just a mid-winter interlude of hope… like a mirage in the desert. No matter, I’m enjoying every bit of this new year blessing.

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Reading the Season: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s God is in the Manger

Reading the Season is an annual post on Ripple Effects in the midst of the hustle and bustle of Christmas festivities. An interlude to find rest and to ponder on the reason for the season. Lately, I reread the popular fiction All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr; my mind is haunted by the horrors of a world war raged by a madman. And then I came across this book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is in the Manger: Reflections of Advent and Christmas. What a timely discovery!

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a pastor and theologian in WWII Germany. A brilliant intellectual who received his doctorate from the University of Berlin at age 21, Bonhoeffer bravely stood against Hitler, involved in the Resistance, captured, imprisoned, and paid the ultimate price. He was hanged at the Flossenbürg prison on April 9, 1945, just two weeks before the Allies marched in, and three weeks before Hitler took his own life.

Here are a few excerpts from Bonhoeffer’s God is in the Manger:

The lack of mystery in our modern life is our downfall and our poverty… Living without mystery means knowing nothing of the mystery of our own life, nothing of the mystery of another person, nothing of the mystery of the world… It means remaining on the surface, taking the world seriously only to the extent that it can be calculated and exploited, and not going beyond the world of calculation and exploitation. Living without mystery means not seeing the crucial processes of life at all and even denying them.

Replace the word mystery with miracle…

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Only the humble believe him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous that he does wonders where people despair, that he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous… God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.

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God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment.

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For the great and powerful of this world, there are only two places in which their courage fails them, of which they are afraid deep in their souls from which they shy away. These are the manger and the cross of Jesus Christ.

And you think he’s intense and serious, well, yes he is, brilliant in insights and brave to speak truth to power. But from his other writings, there’s also humour, equally enlightening. Here’s a quote taken from Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas. (Click on the link to my read-along post)

If you board the wrong train it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.

Have a restful and joyous Christmas Season!

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Reading the Season in Previous Years:

2021: Sabbath Poems by Wendell Berry

2020: Jack by Marilynne Robinson

2019: ‘A Hidden Life’ – A Film for the Season

2018: A Verse from Madeleine L’Engle’s The Irrational Season

2017: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

2016: Silence by Shusaku Endo

2015: The Book of Ruth

2014: Lila by Marilynne Robinson

2013: Poetry by Madeleine L’Engle

2012: Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis

2011: Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle 

2010: A Widening Light by Luci Shaw

2009: The Irrational Season by Madeleine L’Engle

2008: The Bible and the New York Times by Fleming Rutledge 

2008: A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust: A Movie Reviewer’s Long Take

“Life is too short, and Proust is too long.” ­­– Anatole France, French writer and poet

Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the Nobel laureate Anatole France died in 1924, three years short of seeing the publication of the complete seven volumes of Proust’s autobiographical novel In Search of Lost Time.

My reading journey began in 2013 when I read the first two volumes, Swann’s Way and Within a Budding Grove, as a Read Along on Ripple Effects. For reasons I can’t recall, it took me a few years to get through the third volume The Guermantes Way, finishing at the beginning of 2018. After that, I thought, that would be all for me.

I’m glad I came across Emma’s Book Around the Corner in January of this year to learn that 2022 is the Centenary of Proust’s death (July 10, 1871 – Nov. 18, 1922). That prodded me to finish up the remaining three volumes. Also, since I own the Modern Library six-volume box set, I hate to see it as just a decorative item, however smart it does look.

So glad I finally finish the last three volumes this year in nine months, just in time for the centenary of Proust’s death in November: Vol. IV Sodom and Gomorrah, Vol. V The Captive and The Fugitive (originally in two volumes), and Vol. VI Time Regained. For me, a hobby Proust reader, not until I come to the last volume Time Regained do I realize the significance of the first three volumes and why Proust writes in such minute details about the narrator’s childhood and youthful experiences.

There are many websites and scholastic discussions on this 4,300 page autobiographical novel. Instead of summarizing––an impossible task for me––I’ll pick out those passages or ideas that have stirred up some ripples within me filtered through the lens of a movie reviewer, hopefully offering something that’s different and easy to chew.

At the end of Volume VI there are over 200 pages listing characters, places, and themes. Some of the subjects in the 44 pages of Index to Themes include beauty, brothels, dreams, literature, language, music, painting, politics, the Dreyfus Affair, anti-semitism, war, love, sexuality, old age, death… just to name a few. Imagine you’re standing by a smorgasbord of a huge array of culinary offerings, yes including those that are hard to digest or don’t agree with your system, and you can only eat so much, of course you would pick and choose your favourite foods. So, here’s what’s on my plate at this buffet.

In the last part of Vol. VI: Time Regained, the narrator discovers the crucial dimension of Time. Surely, Time over the years has rendered many people he has had crossed path with in his life frail and infirmed, or lost their good looks due to ageing, and some have died, like Swann. But the subliminal power of memories allows him to relive his childhood experiences once again and see these people reappear in his mind as he had known them in his youth. His memories have preserved them like they have not grown old.

So the end of this long book brings readers back to the beginning. It’s not so much about going back, but rather, bringing the past to the present as the two form a continuation of life. Yes, a virtual back to the future.

A reader bearing with him from the beginning and now reaching this eureka moment can feel the narrator’s joy in discovering this secret chamber deep in his psyche where he, unknowingly, has stored up treasured moments of his past. The length of the book could well be a virtual reality as we see his life unfold at a slow pace, then vicariously feel the joy of the discovery of this hidden, mental treasure trove years later. Sharing such ecstasy with readers has now become the purpose of his writing:

The happiness which I was feeling was a product not of a purely subjective tension of the nerves which isolated me from the past, but on the contrary of an enlargement of my mind, within which the past was re-forming and actualizing itself , giving me –– but alas! only momentarily––something whose value was eternal. This I should have liked to bequeath to those who might have been enriched by my treasure. (VI: 513)

The above quote found towards the end of the long book brings readers back to the beginning. Many movies are just like this, a bookend finish: The last scenes bring viewers back to the beginning scenes, revealing their significance and then move on to wrap up the whole work. That’s the feeling I got when reading the last volume, Time Regained. Proust brings us back to the pleasure of enjoying the madeleine soaked in tea, the ringing of the bell on the garden gate when he was a child waiting impatiently for his mother to see Swann off so she could come up to kiss him goodnight, Combray memories, the Swann and the Guermantes way––precious scenes to go one full circle back to the beginning–––to regain Time, to cherish a life in continuity. Call it the Circle of Life if you will, but to the narrator, the present has never been separated from the past.

Another ripple from my mental pond is how mindful the narrator is in his everyday living. BTW, he is also called Marcel, so I take it as Proust’s own view of things. His exceptional sensitivity and the minute details in his observation and introspection form the signature of his book.

As I read how he’d stop and see things and people with incisive perception, a movie quote comes to mind. Nope, not from any old sage but spoken time and again by a high school wise guy who wants to play hooky for a day. In a very Proustian posture, Ferris Beuller (Matthew Broderick) lies in bed one morning as he considers a good reason for skipping school that day:

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you can miss it.” –– from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, 1986, directed by John Hughes.

Ferris Bueller might not have read Proust, but just shows how relevant Proust can be in contemporary life.

Click here to the next Proust Post:
Proust and the Multiverse

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Past Proust posts on Ripple Effects:

Proust Read Along: Swann’s Way Part I, Combray

Proust Read Along: The Swann and Gatsby Foil

Proust Read Along: Within a Budding Grove

How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton

Try to remember the kind of September…

My few weeks of hiatus from the Pond led me to the bustling city of Toronto. Just the second weekend of September there were over 80 events planned across the city: festivals, concerts, food fares, cultural celebrations… In the downtown core, road closures, frenzy and chaos. The main attraction with international focus of course is the Toronto International Film Festival. Since this is the first in person TIFF after two years of Covid measures, I chose to avoid the huge gatherings and stay closer to nature, far from the madding crowd… I’ll have to wait to watch the selections hopefully later in the year.

Then came the sad news of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, 70 years on the throne, the longest reigning British monarch and the longest female sovereign in history. Politics aside, being born and raised during my formative years in the former British colony of Hong Kong, I much appreciate the freedom to grow up in an environment where East meets West, unlike what Kipling had surmised.

I studied both classical Chinese as well as English literature in school, donning a uniform in cheongsam (do google it if you’re not sure what it is) but wore bell bottom pants when out; grew up watching numerous kung fu movies while following closely all James Bond flicks; savoured home cooked Chinese meals as well as those from international sources; yes, and love the fusion of Hong Kong style western cuisine, street foods and snacks. A prime example is Hong Kong style milk tea with condensed milk, best to pair with a pineapple bun with a piece of ice cold butter in the middle, oh, and egg tarts.

Pineapple bun with butter, egg tarts at back.

Looking back, it was a period when I was free to explore different world views and thinking. I still remember following a classmate to a secondhand bookstore in an obscure alley after school, looking up books on psychology and philosophy; or one time, catching another classmate secretly reading her own book held under her desk during class. When I asked her later out of curiosity what she was reading, no, it wasn’t a comic book or a teen magazine, but Somerset Maugham’s short stories. That was my intro to the wonderful writer.

My nanny loved Chinese operas. She was a versatile, middle age woman who lived in our home and acted almost as my substitute mother. She read Dream of the Red Chamber at night before she slept, daytime too busy for her. I grew up reading Chinese translations of world literature for children and some Enid Blyton, while also saved up enough pocket money to buy my Mad Magazine. I learned to play the piano and listened to The Beatles and The Monkees. The first LP album in our home was My Fair Lady.

What do all these memories have to do with the Queen? For me, it was a period of growing up experiencing both East and West in a British colony that didn’t require its citizens to sing “God Save the Queen,” or demand The Union Jack be hoisted in schools. I’d enjoyed the freedom to explore despite a rigid home environment. If I were to write a memoir some day, it would likely be in the theme of a growing up where East meets West, where the fusion of the two is exciting and appealing, and where opportunities are plentiful, and I was free to live life in an interesting, borderless fusion of cultures.

So, it was the end of an era when the Queen passed. Now the world seems to have grown polarized, tempers flare when people of opposite views confront, and where the ominous observation by Kipling is becoming all the more acute as autocracy begins to prevail.

As I was wandering the lakeshore in Toronto, I caught sight of some lively monarch butterflies. It was a pleasant surprise, as I wasn’t expecting seeing them in such an urban environ. From one Monarch to another, may these monarchs be free and lively as they migrate thousands of miles south, following the instinct endowed by their Creator’s design.

From one Monarch to another:

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Midsummer Colours

As I look through my photos taken in the past few weeks, I find that the prominent colours are yellow and green. We don’t have bright red birds like the cardinal, so, I’ve long settled for yellow, green and blue as my summer colours.

Two goldfinches made my day, vibrant golden yellow. They seemed not to be bothered by my presence as they were too busy with their breakfast:

well except this one with attitude:

Another sort of yellow, unintended, for I was aiming at the wren. Only when I uploaded the photo did I notice the lichen on the stump:

Sometimes, an accidental shot needs not be deleted. Why, this looks like an impressionist painting to me:

This one most symbolic, for the colours yellow and blue remind me of a war-torn country with millions of her people fleeing from their homeland. May this tiny yellow warbler, always so full of life and song, be a symbol of resilience for the ravaged country of Ukraine:

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A Summer Splash

A few days ago, I happened to catch sight of a jolly yellow warbler bathing (or playing) in the water. He plunged right into the shallow stream, splashed around, after that flew up on a branch preening, singing, then splashed right back into the water and do it all over again just for the fun of it.

I’d like to tell you it was a bright, sunny day, inviting a cooling summer splash. But I can’t because it wasn’t. The day was grey, overcast, chilly even and with a thunder storm in the forecast.

This tiny warbler’s joie de vivre defies the gloominess of the day or any imminent storm… a mighty hard lesson to learn from a three inch creature.

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