L’invitation au voyage

Around here, keeping a blog is as much about style as it is substantial. This is why, I think, I will never be a blogger in the sense of a commentator on what is contemporary or political: I cannot subordinate the selfish pleasure of constructing the prose to the necessary requirement of getting blocks of text so swiftly up here, were I to have words on the matters of the day.

This is thought I need to hold in mind when I feel weary at the thought of recording the minutiae of my day-to-day, which have stabilised considerably since the (comparatively) bad dysthymic days of my later twenties. If style’s the thing, then why not set my mind to constructing confections about whatever trivia hold my attention? It’s a safe way to eat a cake made entirely of icing, and you won’t as readers get sick, I hope. Esoterica, hurrah!

I startled myself recently with the thought that it’s ten years since the release of Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Even as I dislike lists that rank music, I am content to say that this is one of the best albums I have heard. Its completeness as a picture of a life lived whole-heartedly and at times tragically, its understated self-insight, its tight ensemble and evocative harmonies are all thrilling. I have been listening to it on this rainy, cold afternoon and singing (in truth, shouting) along, recalling as I do the various times I have matched it to my own experiences. What better dismissal of a toxic companion, for example, than “I don’t want you anymore; you took my joy / You took my joy; I want it back!”?  (I never actually said or sang that at the time, but it was in my mind, by golly.)

The wonderful naming of southern places across the album’s songs reminds me of my own childhood journeys and the way they float, near continually sometimes, to the surface. What distinguishes the lyrics particularly for me, however, is the use of concrete imagery to tell a whole story, as in the title song and “Go Back to Greenville” (performed more recently here), addressed, like “Joy”, to a deadbeat suitor:

Empty bottles and broken glass
Busted down doors and borrowed cash
Borrowed cash — oh! the borrowed cash
Go back to Greenville, just go on back to Greenville.

I don’t think it’s any kind of artistic failing on Williams’s part that her subsequent albums haven’t shone as brightly as this one. It seems a coming together of time, life and technique, a way of writing and a way of being that might belong to its particular context and not be transferable.

A cousin of my father’s telephoned my parents recently. He had found in storage some family photos of their respective fathers, who were brothers, from childhood. Would the harvestparents like copies? Does a mid-century banker have round spectacles, said harvestmother (or something approximating this sentiment), and copies were received. Here is my grandfather, the little chap in the front, with his brothers and their parents, the latter of whom were migrants from Scotland around the turn of the century. Grandfather was born in 1907, so his youth and his brother’s uniform suggests the final years of the Great War. All my great-grandmother’s sons eventually passed six feet in height, so she is not, in fact, as short as she looks.

My grandfather died young of heart disease in 1966 when harvestdad was 24. I feel, said harvestdad on the phone, as if this photo could talk to me, but I can’t hear anything yet. The sons that the little boy would eventually have would be considerably less well groomed in photos than he is in this formal portrait. The brother in the army uniform would later lose his arm in a post-war factory accident, thereafter living with my grandparents, their children and my grandmother’s mother. He was a drinker, who when drunk harassed my grandmother with words she shrugged off with a protective but irritable stoicism that later became a permanent part of her personality.

How fares my own transformation into a household of more than one person? Very well, thus far. My fear, that domestic labour would cleave into unequal parts, seems not to have taken place, due mostly, I think, to our shared feminist consciousness (and yes, that is also what the señor calls it). We talk about what needs to be done, and divide it up fair evenly, with concessions made to the things we most dislike doing. Thus, he irons, dusts and vacuums, but I pick up dog poo.

Differing hours of work mean that each of us still has sufficient time to ourselves not to feel crowded, and the dogs are revelling in the extra pair of hands available for pats (Edwin is not above insinuating himself beneath the idle hand of the good señor). I feel past tensions and regrets ebbing away, and view past failed relationships through a rosy lens of having made good. At the same time, I think it is the señor’s particular combination of qualities meeting my own that has made it possible for us to live together in this way. I cringe at the thought other people might think it was time for me to “settle down”, since the dogs and I have been well settled for years.

The señor’s family, too, are lovely, about which I feel both pleased and relieved. The prospect of having in-laws seems exciting rather than worrying. Since this is one aspect of our relationship over which I have no control, that’s good fortune. They live nearby too, and are generous and vivacious, with a matte layer of deadpan on top.

Today’s domestic harmony has been further enhanced by it being Bone Day. Those of you who have met my dogs will know they are not renowned for their tranquility, nor will they ever be. The days on which the beef bones come out, however, are different. One brisket bone per dog, in their crate, for ninety silent minutes or more. This is, as the señor said, the only time during which we could crate them together and not have them all barking. The labour of cleaning out the residual meat fat from their crates is well worth it for the torpor and satiety that Bone Day brings. Luxe, Calme et Volupté: neither Matisse nor Baudelaire ever had it like this.

Tagged as: domestica, family, home