The Taming of the Shrew

  "My tongue will tell the anger of my heart,

Or else my heart concealing it will break,

And rather than it shall I will be free

Even to the uttermost as I please in words."

Modern Love

Modern Love
A series of weekly reader-submitted essays that explore the joys and tribulations of love.

In Japanese, there is a term used in ceramics called kintsugi, which means golden joinery. As a philosophy, it views breakage and the subsequent repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.  By addressing the damage, and repairing it with gold, the broken vessel becomes more valuable, not discarded. (From a lovely travel blog called Open Road.)

Domestic Noir

From recent article by on the emerging book genre:

"Can you really trust those who are closest to you?" This is the underlying premise of the latest "hot" crime genre, the domestic or marriage thriller.

Spurred on by the success of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, a number of authors have moved into realm of the domestic thriller where the common concern is the fear of a partner's unknowability. As one recent book in the genre noted, "The most dangerous lies are those closest to home".

(Including by Australia's own Liane Moriaty.)

From a review of new release film, The Girl on the Train. 

"...perhaps has more in common with Before I Go to Sleep, the 2011 debut novel from S.J. Watson, which was filmed in 2014 with Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth and Mark Strong in the leads. Both are what has been termed domestic thrillers (or domestic noir), with a female character at the heart of the story, the drama unfolding around the home, and trust the central issue (well, that and murder, which frankly doesn't help much with the old trust business).

It's a sub-genre that flourished in the early 1990s, and might include the likes of Fatal Attraction and Single White Female or even Joel Edgerton's excellent 2015 Hollywood directing debut The Gift.

Acknowledging his debt to classics of the genre such as Pacific Heights (1990) and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992), he said at the heart of his movie was the question "how well do you know the person you're living with?".

Classic domestic thrillers:

Suspicion, 1941

Fatal Attraction, 1987

Malice, 1993

Gone Girl, 2014

The Gift, 2015

Image from Suspicion starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine.

Essays in love

Love's Secret ~ William Blake

Never seek to tell thy love,   
  Love that never told can be;   
For the gentle wind doth move   
  Silently, invisibly.   
  
I told my love, I told my love,
  I told her all my heart,   
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears.   
  Ah! she did depart!   
  
Soon after she was gone from me,   
  A traveller came by,
Silently, invisibly:   
  He took her with a sigh.

Love

How do I love thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Homekeeping

Sounds more inviting than vacuuming.

"Erin Boyle speaks to the heart and soul of the minimalist lifestyle. With her deft prose and graceful imagery she details not only how we can approach homekeeping more simply, but why—for our own happiness and peace of mind—we absolutely must. Simple Matters is a must-have manual for serenity in the modern world!"

(Anne Sage, lifestyle blogger and author of Sage Living 2015-09-01)

Ode on Solitude

~ Alexander Pope

Happy the man, whose wish and care

A few paternal acres bound,

Content to breathe his native air,

In his own ground.

Whose heards with milk, whose fields with bread,

Whose flocks supply him with attire,

Whose trees in summer yield him shade,

In winter fire.

Blest! who can unconcern'dly find

Hours, days, and years slide soft away,

In health of body, peace of mind,

Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease

Together mix'd; sweet recreation,

And innocence, which most does please,

With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;

Thus unlamented let me dye;

Steal from the world, and not a stone

Tell where I lye.

***

Funny how the children appear to have far more fun-filled days during the school holidays when Dad stays home.  He's not as easily distracted by over-brimming laundry baskets, dirt encrusted floor rugs or general untidiness.  While I would be sorting and tidying as I go, he can devote his singular attention to having a good time.  While I feel slightly awkward being the only one who heads out the door to work in the morning (in the knowledge that this is not just a holiday fix), it is rather splendid to come home to a warm and busy house, the aroma of a cooked meal, children chirriping about what they have done during the day and a glass of wine standing in readiness on the island bench.  It's a perverse role-reversal.  The strange solitude of the working mother.

Love 'ya. See ya'.

St. Valentine's Day

By Wilfred Scawen Blunt

TO-DAY, all day, I rode upon the down,

With hounds and horsemen, a brave company

On this side in its glory lay the sea,

On that the Sussex weald, a sea of brown.

The wind was light, and brightly the sun shone,

And still we gallop'd on from gorse to gorse:

And once, when check'd, a thrush sang, and my horse

Prick'd his quick ears as to a sound unknown.

I knew the Spring was come. I knew it even

Better than all by this, that through my chase

In bush and stone and hill and sea and heaven

I seem'd to see and follow still your face.

Your face my quarry was. For it I rode,

My horse a thing of wings, myself a god.

***

Valentine's Day is no big deal really in this household. An imported custom that doesn't seem authentic and besides, there's no-one here experiencing the first blush of young love.   Yet. Thanks heavens.

No time for luvvy-duvvy stuff either between the old marrieds, what with an early start and late finish respectively.  His steed is a hulking late model SUV. She canters in a city runabout with a child-proof rear seat protector.  The 'chase' is a drive up and down a major city thoroughfare multiple times to deliver and collect children.  Phone calls are made, not to whisper sweet nothings, but to synchronise transport arrangements. 

A love affair of a different sort. 

In two acts

Alone for a Week

By Jane Kenyon

 

I washed a load of clothes

and hung them out to dry.

Then I went up to town

and busied myself all day.

The sleeve of your best shirt

rose ceremonious

when I drove in; our night-

clothes twined and untwined in

a little gust of wind.

For me it was getting late;

for you, where you were, not.

The harvest moon was full

but sparse clouds made its light

not quite reliable.

The bed on your side seemed

as wide and flat as Kansas;

your pillow plump, cool,

and allegorical. . . .

***

 

Parenting around these parts is a two-person act but sometimes. I confess, when there is only one person it goes more smoothly. There are no assumptions about who will wipe the bench or clean the children's teeth.  One can hog the electronic devices to one's heart's content, there are no bathroom queues or collisions in the kitchen.  The bed is a glorious expanse of space that can be filled with a soft, little cuddle-able body.   We live in a state of suspense waiting for your return.  It is quieter and noiser at the same time.  We seem to talk more loudly.

 

It's not the same without Dadda.  Things go bump in the night more than usual. A halogen light bulb always blows when you are away. Some chores are more easily done by someone tall and strong. Books about the minoans and gladiators need a masculine narrator.  We cry when we hear your voice on the phone.  We are glad you are home.  A restive peace returns.  

 

Jane Kenyon, “Alone for a Week” from Collected Poems.

Wedding anniversary

To My Dear and Loving Husband

  ~ Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me, ye women, if you can.

I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,

Or all the riches that the doth hold.

My love is such that rivers cannot quench,

Nor ought anything but love from thee give

Thy love is such I can no way repay;

The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.

Then while we live, in love let’s so persevere

That when we live no more, we may live ever.

***

Thanks for the ferris wheel rides, home delivered pizza, televised rugby and all the other things that drive me nuts.  

Photo by me: Floriade, Canberra. October 2011.

xxx

If music be the food of love...

If music be the food of love, play on;

Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die.

That strain again! it had a dying fall:

O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odour!

Quote Act i. Scene 1. Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare.

It was a busy week-end. I'm still recovering. It started when we went to check out an old upright piano a work colleague was offering to give away.  (A bit worn and in need to service so we continue to hunt for a suitable model.)  Then the under nine cricket season got underway on Saturday with an 8.30 am start.  Not that I have anything to do with it, and neither do the other mothers by all reports.  Attendance was strictly lads and dads.  Little Wanna and I raced off to the Girls Grammar fete... well, actually, the book stall.  Not quite so good this year, or was it that we have moved on from picture books to chapter books and were just more selective? Anyway, the search is half the fun.  We scored ten books including a hard-cover single volume of the complete first series of the Deltora Quest by Emily Rodda, a few BabySitters Club paperbacks and a pop-up fairy book among other gems.    Then we screeched home, grabbed the others and dropped the children at their cousins' house so the Strong Silent One and I could go to see the Bell Shakespeare Company performance of Twelfth Night as a celebratory wedding anniversary outing.   Amazingly we got there early and had half an hour to kill.  So what could be more romantic than popping in to the Civic Library before the show!  He logged on and reserved a book and I found a copy of a novel I had been searching for and we generally mooched about browsing the shelves.  A day happily book-ended. 

A Whimsical Pair

Mr Kartoffel

Mr Kartoffel's a whimsical man;

He drinks his beer from a watering can,

And for no good reason that I can see

He fills his pockets with china tea.

He parts his hair with a knife and fork

And takes his ducks on a Sunday walk.

Says he, "If my wife and I should choose

To wear our stockings outside our shoes,

Plant tulip bulbs in the baby's pram

And eat tobacco instead of jam

And fill the bath with cauliflowers,

That's nobody's business at all but ours."

Says Mrs. K., "I may choose to travel

With a sack of grass or a sack of gravel,

Or paint my toes, one black, one white,

Or sit on a bird's nest half the night -

But whatever I do that is rum or rare,

I rather think that is my affair.

So fill up your pockets with stamps and string,

And let us be ready for anything!"

Says Mr. K. to his whimsical wife,

"How can we face the storms of life,
Unless we are ready for anything?

So if you've provided the stamps and the string,

Let us pump up the saddle and harness the horse

And fill him with carrots and custard and sauce,

Let us leap on him lightly and give him a shove

And it's over the sea and away, my love!"

Marriage is great.  It's been my salvation. My husband is one of those strong, silent types. The perfect foil for my reactive, shoot-from-the-hip personality.  We are very complementary.  He's methodical, I rush. He's function, I'm form.  He finishes things, I start them.  We're both a bit whimsical.

Poem by James Reeves

Penguin creation by Little Wanna

Photo by me

WAGs

Song in a Minor Key

There's a place I know where the birds swing low,
And wayward vines go roaming,
Where the lilacs nod, and a marble god
Is pale, in scented gloaming.
And at sunset there comes a lady fair
Whose eyes are deep with yearning.
By an old, old gate does the lady wait
Her own true love's returning.

But the days go by, and the lilacs die,
And trembling birds seek cover;
Yet the lady stands, with her long white hands
Held out to greet her lover.
And it's there she'll stay till the shadowy day
A monument they grave her.
She will always wait by the same old gate, --
The gate her true love gave her.

Dorothy Parker