"Carpe Diem is engraved on my heart." M.F.K. Fisher
Did you figure out the CRYPTOGRAM last week? I realized that this particular quote, one of my favorites, was a hard one because it did not include any of the clues in it that I gave you.
I hope you solved the puzzle.
Nostalgia lives in my bones. Someone said that you can't be nostalgic for times when you weren't even alive. I disagree. Owens Lee Pomeroy said it well,
"Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense, the past perfect."
A former English teacher like me appreciates that idea.
I scour my parents' photo albums for subjects to paint. The photographs make me nostalgic for that era.They both were good photographers and captured the sweetness and simplicity of the times they lived in as young adults (though there is no mention of the Great Depression). In one album my dad displayed outings with numerous girlfriends with the last third of the book devoted to my mother on a beach in Los Angeles.
They both moved to LA from different parts of the country several years apart, taking photos along the way. My mother came with her parents. My father drove with a couple of buddies. They road on similar roads, at some point both on part of Route 66. They made stops on the Plains for herds of sheep crossing their path, to admire the snow-capped Rockies, to swim in crystal-clear lakes in Utah, to stand above the Rose Bowl, and to gaze up at Mt. Wilson Observatory in the San Gabriel Mountains. Both of their roads led them to Disney Studios where they worked, met, and eventually married.
Their lives were not really the stuff of fairy tales. They had the normal challenges and disagreements of married life, but also a lot of simple fun. I was reminded of those long-ago times while at a writing workshop based around the Last House of M.F.K. Fisher, her ranch-style home at the Audubon Canyon Ranch in Napa Valley. M.F.K. Fisher was a writer about food and the importance of good meals. Her house is a simple one-story building, which Fisher renovated to include a large, deep red bathroom, where she occasionally welcomed guests. The bathroom reminded me of a master bath in an apartment in Paris that was offered to us for rent. The bath, designed in the 1920s, had a daybed where the woman of the house could lounge. The bohemian quality of Fisher's house offers the same feeling of time past from that era, the Lost Generation after World War I. Fisher's house seems spare now with quiet places to write. Fisher's iconic peacock chair sits on a porch overlooking the valley. Last House is a house to write in, full of memories and good food.
In her book, The Art of Eating, she wrote,
"We watched as in a blissful dream the small fat hands moving like magic among bottles and small bowls and spoons and plates, stirring, pouring, turning the pan over the flame just so, just so, with the face bent keen and intent above."
As you read this, don't you feel you are a part of the company watching the cook prepare the meal? Fisher uses a tempo and repetition of similar words throughout the paragraph to invite you in. I can remember moments being in my family's kitchen studying my mother mix, roll out, and shape cookies and pies and cakes. We would wait impatiently for her to finish so that we could lick the remains from the bowl as the aroma of the baking goods filled the house. Moments like these, are where the perfect past and nostalgia are born.
Like the madeleine in Proust's Swann's Way, do you have memories that surface when you see, smell, touch, or taste something?
Read more about M.F.K. Fisher here:
Visit the Last House:
https://www.egret.org/mfk-fishers-last-house
Thank you to Elizabeth Fishel for offering a writer's workshop on Fisher and the art of food.
https://www.elizabethfishel.com
Not too late to sign up this email-a-day to honor Black History Month:
From Mary by email: Well I didn’t come close to solving the cryptogram. That’s something I’m going to have to study more closely, I know there are tricks to solving the puzzle successfully.
ReplyDeleteYour blog this week conjured up memories of coming into my house and smelling dinner cooking of fresh baked cakes or cookies. We were lucky like you in that our mom’s weren’t afraid of hard work and filling the table with delicious food. Thanks for your reflections, it’s always good to think of the past fondly.
Thanks, Mary, for the memories about your mom too.
ReplyDeleteAlthough we've never met our lives are certainly on a similar journey. The quote about nostalgia is perfect. I am writing a second blog that is the timeline of the golf course where I grew up. This writing involves hours of research and reading newspaper clippings of the 1920-30-40 etc. It is absolutely fascinating to read about those times and in the words of the men who were the journalist. The language leans toward war time battle scenes, and yet people were just hitting the golf ball, not going into battle.
ReplyDeleteOn another colorful plain or plane, my parents met in Kansas, but were married after the war and lived in Arcadia, California. My father was a golf pro at Santa Anita Golf Course when I was born. The stories they told were mesmerizing, but times weren't perfect, as you say.
Hi, Letty, You are so right about similar journeys. I moved to Arcadia when I was 5, and graduated from Arcadia High School. Small world! I now live next to a golf course which used to be a sprawling ranch, which sits on the Tatcan tribe's land (they were Miwok speakers). So yes, similar journeys and the histories we live around are fascinating!
DeleteSo glad you came to the Last House Zoom workshop, Martha, and thanks for writing this lovely post about it (and other things). Loved your observation about the "bohemian quality" of the house. We're happy to be offering it again on Saturday, April 24th, from 10 am PST-noon on Zoom. Here's the link to sign up:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.eventbrite.com/e/last-house-writing-workshop-with-elizabeth-fishel-registration-139773942625?aff=ebdssbonlinesearch
Thank you, Elizabeth. Now I look forward to a time when we can go to Last House for a retreat.
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