“Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.”
I had the explosively beautiful Spring chapter of “Jean Gourdon’s Four Days” by Émile Zola all teed up for this week’s reading. Alas, as the temperatures hover in the 30s in my world, and the wind howls, and the rain feels a touch too icy to be properly called rain, I just can’t bring myself to publish it. The vibrance of Zola’s spring imagery deserves better. It deserves May (I hope!).
With the grey cold overstaying its welcome, one can start to feel a little unsettled…a little crazed by another day of the same shivers and the many layers donned. Rather than fight it, I’m going to lean in with a rather unusual story that snares us into the psyche of a woman stewing in her own juices.
Charlotte Perkins Stetson’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” takes place in a country home, rented so that the narrator, a distressed new mother, can recover from her malaise. Through Stetson’s masterful patience, we witness the woman disappear and reappear on the spectrum of sanity, as she is kept almost entirely isolated in one room in the spirit of getting well. Mirroring what we see so often in our own therapy-speak-laden culture, feeding only on the mind’s restlessness to the avoidance of the work of living is destined to backfire.
Please enjoy…
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Living Vicariously: Spring may be taking her sweet time to warm up, but I’m reveling in George Bothamley’s refreshing exhibit of primavera paintings on his excellent Substack Art Every Day. He has sourced a spectacular collection, including many works I was unfamiliar with. Go pick your favorite here. This is mine:
Looking Back: I was reminded recently of a band that commandeered a huge part of my formative years. For teenagers of the 1990s in the Midwest, 10,000 Maniacs were the sound, and “Candy Everybody Wants” was the song. I hadn’t listened to it in decades, and yet, all the lyrics came rushing back, along with oh so many memories. Youth springs eternal.
“The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot, 1922
“The Ransom of Red Chief” by O. Henry, 1907
“The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane, 1897
