Flowers from supermarket and snacks & drink for the week from earlier this autumn
Why we? I counted 5 friends and acquaintances who told me they are become 76 this year too
Dear friends and readers,
I turned 76 on November 29th. I’m using the occasion to express and reflect on this transitional state which I feel I’m in but don’t understand that well. I’m not sure what’s changing in me and time continues to separate me from what I was when Jim first died. Julian Barnes calls the time after a beloved person has died, their deathtime in one’s memory. It’s being brought on partly or even largely by my (and most other faculty, whether remunerated or volunteer-retired) inability to bring back enough people into the classrooms in person so as not to have to worry, that this day I may arrive at an empty or nearly empty classroom. For older people the partial cause is Covid is still attacking and killing off older people in visible numbers. So I am looking forward to teaching and taking courses online almost wholly until March, and after March (spring term) mostly online, perhaps until next fall (2023) or the following spring (2024). Maybe looking forward is not the phrase I want.
I’m going to try for a routine myself. By 8:30 this morning I’ll be exercising for half an hour, and sometime mid-day I’ll try for a 20-30 minute walk. Again, I’ll be in a great deal, and most of what I’ll do will be online so I must try to keep myself busy, communicate with people online cordially and exercise. Sleep I can’t force: last night I slept but 4 hours, but when I got up I read Magpie Murders, the novel by Anthony Horowitz. Yes I got the book. It’s a delightful parody of your typical Booker Prize books among other things — I’ll write about the book separately (see below for serial). Come near Xmas I’ll watch the Biederbecke TV series and others I can find that cheer me.
I’ve had a repeat of the experience I’ve often described here: another woman I’d become friends with and visited, visited me, or I went out with (though not since summer 2021) was breaking appointments to the point I finally wrote to her about it in such a way that I knew she’d either fall silent altogether or try to mend the relationship. So now she has silently opted for Choice 1 — the internet slang might be she’ll ghost me again (previous times she has pretended she didn’t get the email, or her phone was out of order just at the time I phoned her). She would never tell me openly how she felt; if at some point she wanted to break it, she never told me or why.
Joanna Trollope in Next of Kin has given me second thoughts: “It was simply that he couldn’t go on loving someone who kept sucking him down into the bog of her own personality problems — or at least, he could love her but he couldn’t live with her [I am thinking of myself as this guilty preying person but don’t think I did that this time, but I probably did in previous relationships] … He didn’t want to emphasize the effect of her defeatism on him, or indeed any other of her deficiencies but he wanted to make her think [again it’s me who am defeatist but one would then have to talk to me to bring this out more] ‘I don’t want never to see you again,’ he planned to say, ‘I just can’t see you for a bit. Not until you’ve got something to give me back'” [so what is it that I should be offering other people back?]
I saw this magnificent painting at the National Gallery this past Wednesday with Betty at the National Gallery — an exhibit of John Singer Sargent’s painting while he was in Spain. He copied several famous painter’s paintings and then produced the long-pent-up depictions of ordinary people in all their depths. The good there is inedible and Betty becomes quickly impatient at these exhibitions but I did see some art worth the gazing
It’s not just external things — I find I am not eager to go anywhere — it was Betty’s idea to go and we had made the appt a while back. I admit I was the one to back out of the second I was to go to (the Phillips Collection) with her this Saturday. But she wrote back very quickly, relieved herself. How relieved I was. I do worry so I won’t get back before dark – darkness arrives not far from 5 pm. “Hello darkness my old friend. What are you doing here at 5 pm!”
Now I wrote about this last time so will not repeat again the terms of or feelings I’m having as I struggle to understand this new phase of widowhood, and spend my time enjoyably and productively (for me this means new learning, new books, discovery of new authors, new topics and writing projects), and cheerfully online with others. Since I last wrote, I’ve gone deeper into Joanna Trollope (read two more books, listening to a third), and started both my women’s and Italian studies for winter and next spring. It’s hard to make a plan and follow it. Tomorrow I will disrupt my new pattern to attend a few of the Renaissance Society of America’s sessions for their yearly AGM (going on virtually these few days). A big help is I do love all the books I’m reading and find the topics I follow of intense interest. As usual I like particularly the secondary (critical and biographical) books.
But my body tires so I cannot exercise or walk was much, and I grow sadder as the day moves into night. This was exacerbated this past week by the insistent holiday statements I see everywhere on the Net and hear too among the occasional acquaintances I meet. I’m told to be very happy and loving amid my family and friends. I can see that my quiet relatively alone state is not uncommon because enough people describe what they are doing truthfully on the corners of FB, twitter and listservs I inhabit. Nonetheless, getting through Thanksgiving and my birthday became a sort of work project where I enlisted acquaintances and friends by posting about how I (we, for Izzy was with me) got through.
An Egyptian goose — each morning when I arrive at twitter — sometimes around 8 am or so — someone I follow who follows me has put on photographs of mid-England parks and birds near where she lives
So here’s what I posted onto FB later last Thursday afternoon (a short version appeared on twitter):
Izzy and I walked across Old Town this afternoon — balmy sunny weather. We used to do this each year after Jim died and before the pandemic. The tree is the Alexandria City tree in the Town Square and the lights are on — though you cannot see them. My strength did give out towards the end. That was 4 years ago and I was reminded of how I felt when we “did” Toronto with our two kind but much younger [than me] friends this past August, but home now. Another half hour we’ll put on a roast chicken for two. We could have gone out to a bought dinner, but I’m glad we have chosen this. From Lady Mary Wortley Montagu:
But when the long hours of public are past,
And we meet with champagne and a chicken at last …We won’t have champagne, orange juice for her and Merlot for me must do us. Now I’ll return to Margaret Atwood’s sardonically funny (funny is not quite the word I want) Penelopiad. I hope all who read this message are having a good day and evening.
Then last this Sunday evening on FB (nutshell on twitter):
Promotional photo of Ada’s on the River looking outward from inside the place at the Potomac
My 76th birthday is in 2 days and so my daughter, Laura, and her husband, Rob, came around 6 to take us out to a new restaurant in a new area of Old Towne, Alexandria: Ada’s on the River. The dinner was delicious and the desert too. I had my first whiskey and ginger ale (two of them) for a very long time. I don’t keep hard liquor in the house lest I drink too much. I liked the walk back afterwards along the Potomac from boardwalk to boardwalk. It’s very rare I am out at night nowadays.
There are still several areas around the Potomac, just near the river, which have been relatively desolate — they were very much so when Jim & I first moved to Alexandria. This is a southern city, originally blighted by slavery for the majority of people, then gross inequality and severe racism and classism structured into all the institutions and gov’t of the area, and while after WW2 and middle 1960s, when conditions began to improve the growth of certain areas has been slow and uncertain — Carter had made a good start with new housing, but Reagan destroyed that. Very expensive housing developments along the edge of this town here and there in the 1990s, some on the river . Recently then — last 20 years all along the river for the first time building up the boardwalks, the places for sailing, areas of recreational fun — so new restaurants and bars.
I shall have to find my own travel plan this summer — next week I’ll call Road Scholar and if the Irish registration is still there, I’ll go with them. I’ll try to do the global retry and pre-TSA stuff at the airport in the spring. There is now a silver line Metro going to Dulles that stops at King Street Station; Izzy has said she will come with me to help me through the machines going out.
In the meantime we four planned for a Christmas time together, a movie (an Agatha Christie type), a dinner at home (cooked by Rob, who’s become quite a cook) and exchange of presents.
What I didn’t tell anyone on FB or twitter was after an hour or so when I’d got home and was watching Magpie Murders (on which see below) I began to cry and cry and cry. I could feel Laura’s reluctance to be there when they first arrived, and know we won’t see them again after Christmas for a long while. It was Rob who walked beside me there and back.
For my birthday itself I took it easy, read favorite books, had yummy soup for lunch, and put this on FB (nutsell on twitter)
I am 76! In my now enclosed porch or sunroom where live my movie (dvds) collection, notebooks, films scripts, companions … all around me my little radio, ipad, pussycat bed by window … I am torn between sending a link to Sondheim’s “I’m still here ….” (as belted out by Elaine Stritch) or Old friends (done by a variety of male singers): favorite line: “What’s to discuss? …”
Izzy took the photo with her cell phone
This is to thank the many people sending me cards, pictures, good wishes, wise sayings … I can’t seem to reach every one to thank each person individually but know that I do thank you and you are helping me to pass a cheerful good day ….
About an hour or so later I listened to and watched Elaine Stritch on YouTube: when I watched I thought of my 27 years as an adjunct lecturer, and remember the line from Elaine Showalter quoted about a heroine in one of Jean Rhys’s novels who stands for all women: Still one man away from welfare ….
Over the long day and evening and next morning I really did get many cheering messages, a lot of them individualized, a few teases, but kindly meant I felt. Two cards, one from my aging aunt, another from a long time old Internet British friend, met three times in Oxford; my cousin, Pat had phoned me too
Then very late in the evening: from Merrily We Roll Along (Jim thought this probably Sondheim’s deepest truest musical) “Old Friends:” now I had to admit I have damn few old friends (or they live far away, a few old acquaintances. This was after the final episode of Magpie Murders
We are coming to the end of the year, its ripe death (as people might say), so I’ll end on citing just one book I feel I drew most joy and learning from across the whole year: Iris Origo’s Images and Shadows, especially when she talked of her writing, art, and the imagination. A new author answering the needs of my heart in a new healthy way, teaching me to see and to help myself, Joanna Trollope (not a comfort read at all after all).
And as with two years ago with David Nicholls’ Us (book and film), I have truly got a great kick out of Magpie Murders, a murder mystery serial in the Agatha Christie tradition, scripted and produced by the inimitable Anthony Horowitz (I am still re-watching Foyle’s War)
Atticus Pund explaining where they are going to Sue Rylands
It’s self-reflexive: it’s Anthony Horowitz meditating the life and work of a mystery writer, a hack out of the Agatha Christie tradition — only Horowitz knows he is no mere hack and has gone beyond the originating subgenre. We have two different levels of story: in one we are with the writer, Alan Conway, his editor, Sue Rylands (Leslie Manville), the head of the publishing company, Conway’s cynical homosexual ex-lover and his embittered sister, Claire; in the other the characters in Conway’s book most of whom correspond to counterpart characters in the series’ real life, often ironically — except for the detective, Atticus Pund (Tim McMullan, originally Timothy Spall was dreamed of) and the editor, Sue Rylands. The same actor will plays at least 2 roles — one person appears in three (if I’m not mistaken). We also see these characters when they are playing characters who existed decades ago and when they are playing contemporary characters (a downright common trope nowadays is a jump in time but rarely this cleverly done and usually with two different look-alike actors).
It’s not too mechanical, too much artifice of this type would cloy. So beyond Atticus Pund and Sue Rylands, Sue’s sister, Katie (Claire Rushbrook) and Sue’s lover, Andreas (Alexandros Logothetis), a teacher of Greek who would like to go live in Crete with Sue, have no counterparts in the 1950s story in the book. The two murderers are played by different actors, they look and are different, though they do the deed in similar fashion. The murderer’s black girlfriend in the 1950s story in the book has no counterpart in the contemporary life story. You might have expected this to be the other way round, but no. In both narratives, the same black actor plays the Anglican vicar.
What’s fascinating is how we move from book (takes place 1950s) back to life (takes place 2022). The camera is following the 1950s characters and car in the book down the road, we reach a bend and turn and now we are with the 2022 characters in life. One moves back and forth starting with the third episode, Atticus Pund; but he is noticed by no one but Sue Rylands, who at first regards him as simply an individual figment of her imagination, but by the end treats him as a person like herself and enters the world of the book to discover how the book ends. The tone throughout is warm and witty
I am now taught how this kind of material — murders growing out of deep bitterness, jealousy, selfishness, sociopathic impulses — a dog is even poisoned — can become absorbing and curiously comforting matter — as in Foyle’s War we have good guys and they win through, with a justice of sorts achieved
So that’s all for tonight as I move into winter. Better to be alive than not (as Elaine Stritch reminds us)
John Singer Sargent: Snow — I wonder if we’ll see any this winter in Alexandria?
Ellen
Under the Sign of Sylvia II 
I finally expressed what I felt over what she did to me two years ago when I bought (paid for 2/3s of Wolf Trap tickets, trapped into it by her), and I allowed her to drive me there: she would not go through the toll (I’d have paid) and lied to my face during the whole of the ordeal there (trying to get in) and back (in the dark!). Then she speeds on a dark Fairfax highway and gets indignant when I say 70+ miles an hour is crazy. Well, I held off for two years. I’m sure I’ll miss her far more than she misses me. It was I who initiated the friendship; I who kept up the phoning at first …
I find it so fortunate for myself that now late in life I am loving the books I read more than I once did. Today I go out — cab to Metro, then with a relatively new friend, Betty (met on zooms from OLLI at AU), Shakespeare’s MAAN, then meal, and then Metro back, and in time for bus.
So the friend I’ve been writing about finally did write, a note of upset, indignant I said she lied (when she did); it may be that she saw nothing of what I did, though that is hard to believe. As written she is more upset that I said she lied than if she did. I wrote back briefly saying I needed to say what I had, and was glad she read it (that she did lie) and (as I said in the second letter) was willing to resume, maybe we could have a phone friendship instead of making appts she couldn’t get herself to keep (when I would re-schedule my life with Izzy), but chary about calling her. If she said call her, I would or she could call me. I would pick up the phone. She’s done neither.
I have no answering mechanism or service. If I’m not there, you have to call back; if I’m there I pick up. Nowadays this is a nuisance, and doesn’t work well as there are endless robocalls. I have no one to help me program my phone to stop having these answers. I often pick up and stay silent until the other person talks. Ive found people on the other side wait for me to say something. I wonder why. After a few minutes I hang up. People tell me it can be hard to reach me. I say email me. Or text me.
I do see that these breakups are maybe something in me too — I’ve found since Jim’s death another aspect of women’s friendships is how few women have any time for them — the women I’ve become friendly are the few who have or are willing to make time for them. MaryLee now has time (widowed) but she continually writes she is too busy — she can’t get herself to do it even if each time we both enjoy it. Or I think we do. Maybe my perception is wrong.
Women characteristically live 14 years more than a male partner (husband) and so here are all these aging women — those who led successful careers and were part of a female group that way are I suppose not alone — they must make hard worked (so to speak) attempts to meet, to keep the relationships up. I don’t think I see quite this type at the OLLIs but I don’t know enough about the people individually It’s as if many of the women I meet when not with a man are bound to act out society’s dismal stereotype of women living alone.
Patterns of non-attendance at RSA: I’m attending virtually and just loving some of it: one session about women’s poetry I finally spoke (it’s taken 25 years after a disaster at an in person RSA in NYC): things dear to my heart and I came away with an idea for a good paper for EC/ASECS next year (to be at Williamsburg which I can get to).
BUT: After all, the RSA was supposed to be in Dublin. Did I say that? at the last moment it was (at real expense) cancelled for fear of Covid. One problem is so many sessions are on against one another becauseit ends today. They piled 3 + days and nights of sessions into 2 + with only 1 session the 1 night. This is like JASNA where they do it deliberately because they are determined to leave extensive time for “socializing” separate groups (so then I have nothing to do) or touring (the last time ditto).
But then a funny thing people began to remark upon by the end of the day: the sessions were poorly attended. I thought maybe I was going to more esoteric ones (women poetry writers was the one I so enjoyed — I felt I had the first real conversation about a subject dear to my heart for years and years), but no — this curious thing — people aren’t showing up to classes in undergraduate colleges, in graduate classes, in the OLLIs. 5 or 6 people beyond the panelists is a lot of people apparently. The keynote lecture got far far fewer than are registered.
What I read one man argue was the participants mean to watch the recordings. I feel it’s harder to connect to others via zooms rather than in person. I find it yet worse when a recording; I find I listen to recorded classes I’ve missed only when I really value the prof’s lecture. I will do that for this Wednesday when I’ll be very sorry to miss the Civil War class but there are very few matinees for the Shakespeare theater and the MAAN I hope to see exactly conflicted.
I read an explanation for why undergraduates aren’t coming in person — they are overwhelmed by their work at jobs. I can understand that — but this phenomena of being indifferent to social meeting is everywhere. I read how important it is to meet and last night I did manage 20 minutes of my aspergers group and felt the better for it. How can we square the idea that people need socializing, to be with people when they are avoiding in person contact. Or indifferent. My daughter told me she goes into the office zero times. It seems to me from what I can discern what happens is such people’s friendship atrophy or they do not make new one.
What is happening to societies just now? The Chinese are going wild with total isolation — understandably … Or do people overvalue in their talk how much they actually value socializing
[…] of my felicitious reading and watching experiences this past year was Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders (both book and film), which features a private detective, Atticus Pund (spelt without accents) in a […]