Tag Archives: Beatrice Allen Page

Mondays With Muddy

23 Monday Jan 2017

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Here is the second to last excerpt from Beatrice Allen Page’s unpublished manuscript, Landscape With Figures:

“People are beginning to pack up and get ready to leave right after Labor Day. The Rosenblums have already gone. Three or four other people said goodbye to me on the beach this afternoon. In another few days I shall be virtually alone again. This is where I came in – but with what a difference! I shall miss the friends I’ve made but I find I no longer dread being alone.

It seems that without quite knowing when or how it came about, I have decided to stay, at least for the time being. And after that? After that all I can say is what I heard someone say quite seriously on the radio a few nights ago: ‘The future lies ahead.’

Indubitably!”

Mondays With Muddy

16 Monday Jan 2017

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We’re nearing the end of my grandmother’s unpublished manuscript. I’m still figuring out what comes next, though I did stumble across some more of her writing that I may choose to post once I’ve had a chance to review it. For now though, here is the next installment from Beatrice Allen Page’s Landscape With Figures:

“The stars are usually still shining – at lest some of them – when I wake up in the early morning now. The sun doesn’t come up until after six o’clock.

I used to wonder how the Greeks decided which particular stars to pick out and arrange in constellations. Now I think I understand; they did it either early in the evening or just before dawn when only the brightest stars were visible to choose from. Orion, for instance, stands out vividly about the time I’m sitting up in bed to drink my coffee.

I have made another observation: the coming of the day does not diminish the brightness of the stars, it diminishes their size. They don’t gradually fade out of sight, they gradually grow smaller as if they were withdrawing into their greater remoteness, until they disappear beyond the range of sight.”

Mondays With Muddy

09 Monday Jan 2017

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This is the next excerpt from Beatrice Allen Page’s unpublished manuscript, Landscape With Figures:

“Some time in the small hours of the night I woke up from a deep sleep. Through the windows, which I always leave with the shades up, I could see a star-filled sky. On an impulse I got up, flung on a robe and slippers and walked down to the middle of the field, where I could get an unobstructed view. It was one of those nights when the stars are exceptionally bright, and there was no sound except the gentle swash of waves on the shore, a whisper of wind, and the incessant fiddling of the field crickets.

I thought of the Psalmist, wakeful at night, burdened with the cares of a kingdom, weary from battle, stepping out of his tent, looking up at the sky, and suddenly released and awed: ‘When I consider thy heavens…the moon and the stars…’ I thought of the Babylonians studying the stars to learn their destiny, and the ancient Greeks immortalizing their mythological heroes in them. I thought of the Mayans keeping watch in their observatories to make their extraordinary calculations. I thought of all the unknown millions of men and women who have stood even as I, down through the centuries, gazing at the panorama of stars, listening to the thundering silence beyond the stars, and feeling a mingling of exaltation and fear. And I was glad of those lowly little crickets whose chirping kept the silence and infinitude from being overwhelming.

It was on just such a night of brilliant stars that I used to imagine the word of the Lord coming unto the prophets. I visualized them standing alone in a boundless open space, on top of a mountain or by the sea or most often in the middle of a vast plain, and out of that silent immensity came the revelation. It began perhaps with a shiver down the spine, then visions and words welling up in their minds, and lastly a compelling urge toward utterance.

Last night I wondered if in those awesome moments they, too, were not grateful for the small, humble, down-to-earth crickets making a joyful noise unto the Lord.”

 

Mondays With Muddy

02 Monday Jan 2017

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Here is the next installment of Beatrice Allen Page’s unpublished manuscript, Landscape With Figures:

“I stood on the beach at the edge of the incoming tide, looking out toward the horizon. It was late morning and an onshore wind was just beginning to whip up. The whole ocean came rushing at me in a succession of waves, not threateningly but with the exhilaration of children racing for the fun of it. Each wave, gathering speed and fullness as it rolled nearer the shore, mounted to its culminating incurve and crashed in a shatter of white spray like a burst of laughter. Then as it flung itself upon the sand, it was magically transformed into a lace mantilla. But only for a moment. It was immediately drawn back into the water, leaving just a wavering, foamy fringe that was promptly covered and absorbed by the next wave completing its course.

As always, the multiplicity of rhythms fascinated me. There was a rhythm in the making and breaking of each individual wave. There was a rhythm in the relationship of the waves to one another in their long rush from the horizon, and also in the sidelong border they made along the beach, not breaking simultaneously but in a successive movement, a kind of arpeggio. And underneath it all was the long, slow pulsation of the incoming tide. I began to feel permeated with all the rhythms as if they were inside me as well as outside.

Then for a second, perhaps only a fraction of a second, there came over me once again that haunting sensation that the scene I was looking at was true but it was not the whole truth, that only an invisible veil separated the two and I could almost…almost…see through it. On the other side of it something stirred as imperceptibly as a bird’s intake of breath before the outpouring of song. Once more I stood on figurative tiptoe, holding myself utterly still, fearful that even the beating of my heart might break the spell.

The moment passed, the nebulous glimpse vanished. The actual scene before my eyes seemed even more beautiful than before but the vision of something ‘other’ had eluded me once again by a hair’s breadth, and once again I was left with a feeling of mingled loss and joy, of wordless wonder which gradually faded as subtly as the color fades out of the sky at sundown. Only the memory of the joy I had felt, not the joy itself, was left.

Now as I write this in the evening, I find that I am left with something more than a memory; I am left with a conviction. I no longer feel I must try to explain away those few fleeting ineffable moments in my life as some kind of psychological illusion. I trust these hints and implications of ‘beyonding’ or a ‘within-ness,’ of a Reality beyond reality that cannot be reached by reason or greater knowledge, not be a more-ness of what we already have and are, but only by a moreoever-ness, a quantum jump (to borrow the phrase again) to another orbit of awareness or being.

I could believe that when Thoreau made his famous remark about the person who keeps pace to the beat of a different drum than his companions hear, he was referring not just to a difference in individual temperament or goals, but to that other orbit or dimension, of which most of us, most of the time, are quite unconscious.”

Mondays With Muddy

19 Monday Dec 2016

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Here is the next installment of Landscape With Figures, the unpublished manuscript of my grandmother, Beatrice Allen Page:

“Came upon a woman sitting on a camp stool by the side of the road, easel set up in front of her, painting the harbor, which was bright blue today and tufted with little white sales. The picture was almost finished and it was clearly the work of a novice although the woman must have been in her sixties.

She had heard my approaching footsteps and as I was about to pass her, she looked up with a disarming smile and said, ‘It’s pretty awful, isn’t it? I’ve only been painting for about six months.’ And then she went right on to save me the embarrassment of an answer: ‘But I just love it. I see so much that I never saw before.’

Her enjoyment and friendliness were catching and we chatted for several minutes before I went on and left her to finish her picture.

I suppose I’ve always been a little scornful of the amateur artist who plays with his or her talent when he’s or she’s in the mood (I wish there were a pronounce that applied to both sexes) and knows nothing of the self-discipline, the hard work, the ‘agony and the ecstasy’ of the professional.

However, when I think of that woman painting her ‘pretty awful’ picture with such zest, I realize I have undervalued the amateur. As the word conveys, and as she remarked, she ‘loved’ what she was doing. Years ago I read somewhere, or perhaps someone said it to me, a sentence that comes back to me now: Whatever is done with love endures.

That woman’s painting will obviously not endure as art but I have a feeling the act of painting it may endure in some indirect way. It is developing her perceptiveness, increasing her joie de vivre. That joy within herself may spill over onto others – some of it spilled onto me. As a result, later in the day when a man beat me to the one available space in a parking lot over in town which he could clearly see I was aiming for, instead of scowling at him, I smiled affably. He in turn, as a result of my amiability, may have behaved more sympathetically toward the employee he had perhaps meant to bawl out, who in turn my have gone home after work and patched up a quarrel with his wife. And so on and so on. Granted I’m being a little fanciful; who is to say that the joy of one human being in painting a picture, no matter how bad, is not a contribution to other lives?”

Mondays With Muddy

19 Monday Dec 2016

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This is the next excerpt of my grandmother’s unpublished manuscript, Landscape with Figures:

“I’ve used the word ‘awareness’ over and over in this journal but with a growing dissatisfaction, partly beccause it has been overused and partly because more and more it seems to me too rational for what I mean. I’ve been trying to think of some analagous word that would pertain not only to the quickening of the mind and feelings but to the senses, the muscles, the whole body; a word that would cover everything from the most sensitive intuitiveness to the ‘knowingness’ that draws the salmon back to its natal waters to spawn, or causes a plant to turn toward the light. A word that would have its head in the stars and its feet on the ground. I wish I could find it.

Speaking of words, I’ve suddenly had a new insight into that word ‘obedience.’ I have always thought of it in terms of obeying the orders of some arbitrary authority, but we also speak of obeying certain principles. To state it in reverse, if you disobey the laws of harmony, you get discord. If you try to disobey the law of gravity by jumping off a high tower with the intention of remaining in mid-air, you fall and get killed. To think of obedience as bringing oneself into accord with natural, or supernatural, forces gives me a quite different feeling about it.”

 

Mondays With Muddy

12 Monday Dec 2016

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Here is the next installment of Beatrice Allen Page’s unpublished manuscript, Landscape With Figures:

“Evening. It has been a strange day. I have not ventured beyond my own yard. If any friends had dropped in on my, they would have found me behaving normally and looking perfectly calm, I think. But inside I have been running furiously to escape the ‘unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace’ following me. Yet at the same time, I was hoping to be caught. There were even times when I turned around to run toward the Pursuer instead of from Him, having first been careful to set up several barriers between us. How ambivalent can one be?

I must have had some naive notion in the back of my head that the conflict was going to be resolved all in one day. If I could not longer keep God out of my life, then I suppose I looked for a sudden ovewhelming conversion or illumination or rebirth. All at once I would be filled with joy and peace and the love that passeth knowledge. I would become Saint Somebody, in short.

Now that the panic of my predicament has worn off, I can think a little more calmly and clearly. I am no longer running, either from or toward. I feel as if I wre beginning a long pilgrimage that will take years, perhaps the rest of my life. I shall very likely get lost many times, and stumble from weariness, and be tempted to turn back – and may well turn back unless I can find more courage and patience, more faith, hope and love than I’ve ever discerned in my character up to date.

There is an old saying that to undertake a journey of a thousand miles, on begins with a single step. Perhaps I took the fist step unwittingly when I was drawn back here. I’m not sure in what direction to take the second step. It is not a journey that can be planned out ahead of time with road maps and advance reservations at comfortable motels. It has, I think, to be moved out like a dance, which is neither an intellectual procedure nor a random miscellany of steps and gestures, but rather the evolvement of one movement out of and into another, all of them related by an underlying intent. It requires discipline and balance and devotion, and the stamina to endure periods of discouragement. Like the dane, moreover, it should never be undertaken in a spirit of plodding drudgery or dogged determination but with a basic bouyancy and trust and sometimes joy in spite of temporary defeats. And like making a dance, it requires constant awareness, the ‘listening attitude’ of Mrs. McCaig, if one is going to hear the music to which one dances.”

Mondays With Muddy

05 Monday Dec 2016

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Here is the next installment of Landscape With Figures, the unpublished manuscript of my grandmother, Beatrice Allen Page:

” When I woke up a little later than usual this morning, there were already floccules of shell-pink and mauve and dove-gray scattered loosely over the pale sky above the ocean, and through my east window I could see coral and luminous gold streaks just above the spot where the sun was due to appear.

A few minutes later I watched a fiery red sun blaze above the horizon. I could only keep my eyes on it for a second at a time as it rose higher and turned to burning gold. Its rays slanted through the pines, gilding the tips of the needles. Whenever a current of air stirred the branches, the spider threads slung between the twigs were revealed by the tiny hyphens of slippery light that shuttled back and forth on the invisable filaments. Down by the edge of the field the leaves of the poplars looked like thousands of shining coins tossed into the air. Everywhere I looked there was a radiance and freshness.

I wished with all my heart there were someone I could thank for it. Gratitude unfocused and unexpressed is almost painful, like a lump in the throat when you hold back tears.

My mind began to play over all the other beauty I have been privileged to enjoy this summer, not only the beauty of earth and sea and sky, but the beauty – and the truth and the goodness and the love – I have seen in human beings. I thought of Mr. Hollis’s utter simplicity and artlessness. I thought of the little girls painting sand dollars with pure delight. I thought of Dr. Rosenblum’s devotion to music and his wife’s devotion to him. I thought of hte look in Laura’s eyes when she said, ‘I love each and every one of my children with my whole heart!’ I thought of that crystal-clear morning when I was sitting down on the ledges and could almost…almost see through the invisible veil…

And suddenly it struck me with amazement and chagrin that I was not unlike the oldest Peabody sister, Elizabeth, who bumped into a tree when walking across Boston Common and explained, ‘I saw it but I did not realize it.’

How could I have seen evidence of God all about me and not have realized it, I wondered. The answer came at once, clearly, and to my dismay: Because I didn’t want to realize it. It was not that I could not believe in God, but that I did not want to. I still don’t want to. I am afraid of what it may reveal to me about myself. I am afraid of finding I have been living in the dark and may be blinded by the light, like the people in Plato’s cave. I am afraid of being called upon to make sacrifices. I don’t want to give up the directing of my own life, my own egoism, my pride and little vanities, my independence. I hate the word ‘obedience.’

I shall not give up without a struggle. It is only late morning as I write this, but combat fatigue is already beginning to set in.”

 

Mondays With Muddy

28 Monday Nov 2016

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This is the next installment of the unpublished manuscript, Landscape with Figures, by my grandmother, Beatrice Allen Page:

“When I set out as usual for a walk this morning, I had no particular destination in mind. It just happened that I was passing the church over by the cove as people were arriving for the service, and on an impulse I went in too.

It is a typical old New England church, painted white and built with a lovely simplicity of line. On the inside there is a center aisle flanked by two sections of semi-circular pews, all of which had little doors a the ends which latched securely with a decisive click. I thought for a moment I’d actually been locked in just in case I changed my mind. As a matter of fact, my presence wasn’t needed that badly – the place was almost full. Most of the people I’ve met this summer attend one of the churches over in town if they attend any. However, this Stoneleigh church draws people from several communities in the area, most them local residents, I surmise, but with a fairly good percentage of summer people mixed in.

The cornerstone of the congregation seemed to be a row of old ladies with fine, strong features who sat stiff and erect in the front left pew. From where I saw on the opposite side, some rows back, I had an oblique view of their profiles. They looked as if thtey might all be Emerson’s sisters petrified by time.

I was surprised when the minister entered; I hadn’t expected him to be so young. I decided he must be fresh out of seminary and that this was his first incumbency or whatever it’s called.

All through the hymns and preliminaries to the sermon I felt self-conscious and vaguely guilty, as if I were an imposter. It is a long time since I’ve been in church except for a wedding or a funeral. My feeling of awkwardness was increased when I suddenly realized I had no money with me. When the offering was taken up, however, my interest in the way it was done made me forget my embarrassment. Instead of passing a plate, the ushers carefully thrust into each pew a pole from which was suspended a mulberry-colored velvet pouch that delicately muffled the clink of coins.

When the minister began his sermon, I tried to concentrate on what he was saying but most of the time I was thinking about him instead. He was a dark-haired, dark-eyed, very personable young man with good diction, and in spite of his youth his delivery was confident without being cocksure. I liked him, even though I didn’t take in much of what he was saying.

But what was he like when he was not in the pulpit, I wondered? Was he a person I could talk with comfortable or would there be too great a gap between our viewpoints? What made him enter the ministry? Did he grow up with a strong religious faith or was it something he had to struggle to acquire or was it something hat struck him our of the blue? Was he primarily interested in saving souls or in making the church relevant to the world we live in? Had he found a treasure forever beyond my reach?

If I had listened carefully to what he was saying, I might have learned the answers to some of my questions, but my mind and gaze wandered from him to the people around me. What were they really thinking about, what did they feel, what did they really believe? Was that ruddy, stocky, well-dressed man, for instance, really absorbed in the minister’s words or barely holding back his impatience to go fishing on this lovely day? And that slightly pained-looking woman in the flowered print dress – was she having trouble understanding the sermon or did her shoes hurt her?

When the service was over, I tried to sidle out inconspicuously but several strangers came up and greeted me cordially and then my friends, the Mitchells, appeared, looking as surprised to see me there as I was to see them. They offered me a ride home which I declined, but I chatted with them for a few minutes as we walked out together. It seems they’ve been attending that church in the summer ever since they started coming to Stoneleigh nine years ago.

As I was turning to go, Frank asked, ‘Why haven’t we seen you here before?’ I couldn’t decide whether it was an honest questions or whether he was teasing me.

‘It’s a good question,’ I laughed, and went on my way thinking that was the end of it.

But this evening the question has come back.  A little while ago I heard the chapel bell over in the village ringing for vesper service. As always, it seemed to me to have a lonely sound and put me in a slightly melancholy mood.

I visualized a little flock of the faithful straggling along the road – the ones who had no time for churchgoing in the morning, such as the domestics who work for the summer people, or the very pious and forlorn who felt a need to attend church both morning and evening. The image depressed me. I thought it was because I felt sorry for them.

Then without my intention or volition the image changed. I was no longer the creator of it, I was a passive spectator. Instead of a scattering of people along the road, I saw thousands and thousands of people stretching way back into the distance, far beyond eye range – a distance in time as well as space – all pressing forward together toward the chapel. The phrase ‘strnagers and pilgrims on the earth’ went through my mind, and to my utter astonishment I realized it was for myself I felt sorry. I felt a pang of envy and of loneliness. I wanted to belong to that procession.

It was then that Frank’s question came back to me and I asked myself; if instead of evading the question, I had answered it honestly, what would I have said?

I suppose my answer would have gone like this: ‘You don’t see me in church because I’m not sure I even believe in God. I’m one of those who are ‘lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot.’ I’l like to believe in God but I can’t.’

And then if he had asked me why I couldn’t, I suppose I’d have brought up the old argument about all the undeserved suffering in the world not jibing with a lovely and omnipotent Deity, along with all the other timeworn intellectual objections to which no one, so far as I know, has ever found or received an explanation any more specific or satisfactory than the one Job got.

That would have been my answer to Frank. But would it have really been an honest answer? A vague uneasiness tells me it would not. But then  what is the answer?”

Mondays With Muddy

21 Monday Nov 2016

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Here is the next excerpt from Beatrice Allen Page’s unpublished manuscript, Landscape With Figures. Her final sentence is exquisite:

“Sometimes an ordinary word, when dropped into a receptive frame of mind, opens up into something quite unsuspected, like those Japanese paper pellets which, when dropped into water, unfold and expand into tiny flowers.

Driving home from town, my glance happened to fall on a sign: Greenwood Lane. Hundreds of streets must be named Greenwood; hundreds of people must bear that surname; it is probably the name of several country inns; it is possibly the brand name of some product. I must have seen and heard it dozens of times.

Yet not until today did I suddenly realize what a lovely, evocative word it is – a fresh, cool, shady word from which to escape the heat, not only in its sense but in its sound. I kept murmering ‘Greenwood’ over and over all the way home and it was amazing how it seemed to alleviate the blistering heat.

It was almost as refreshing as the cool, consoling breeze that arose about sundown to wipe the sweat off the face of the day and unpin the treetops so they could shake their leaves loose with a sigh of relief.”