The Ocean as Primal Dancer

“Beyond human seeing and knowing the meeting of ocean and shoreline must be one of the places where the earth almost breaks through to word.”  - John O’Donohue, Beauty, The Invisible Embrace.

Souls under Water

He writes about ocean, the sounds of which I hear tonight from my lowcountry door.

“Unlike the land, which is fixed in one place, the sea manifests freedom: she is the primal dance that has always moved to its own music. The wild divinity of the ocean infuses the shore with ancient sound.

Who can tell what secrets she searches from the shoreline? What news she whispers to the shore in the gossip of urgent wavelets? This is primal conversation. The place where absolute change rushes against still permanence, where the urgency of Becoming confronts the stillness of Being, where restless desire meets the silence and serenity of stone.

Beyond human seeing and knowing, the meeting of ocean and shoreline must be one of the places where the earth almost breaks through to word…..”

The Ocean at Edingsville Beach

“The ocean remains faithful to the land – it always returns.” – John O’Donohue

Frampton Inlet on Edingsville Beach

John O’Donohue, in his book, Beauty, The Invisible Embrace, calls ocean ‘wild divinity’. Water, he writes, stirs something very deep and ancient in the human heart.

Walking along Edingsville Beach, a rare and pristine island on Edisto, not only am I consistently brought to a place of reverence, but I hear stories. I think of our Lowcountry ancestors who came to this place and crossed this ocean, of John Gordon, Henry Woodward and Ephraim Mikell, those of my own, who sailed in wooden ships in these very waters when this land was still jungle, like most of Edisto Island remains today. To tell these stories again is one of the reasons I am here.

But there is so much more to ocean. “It is beauty charged with danger.” He continues, yet even in its wildest passion, the ocean still holds dignity, it maintains poise. However and wherever it throws itself, it never falls outside of itself… it is always within the shelter of the one rhythm.”

Hope whispers in these waves of winter. The tide always returns.

A Love Story of Rice and Dr. Henry Woodward

The following “Legend” was found in a little red book by E.C. McCants (Dr. Elliot Crayton McCants, PhD 1865-1953) called History Stories and Legends of South Carolina, 1927, The Southern Publishing Co. Dallas, Texas. The book was brought to me by friend on Edisto. Since the early explorer of Carolina, Dr. Henry Woodward, is of great interest to me, and I have never seen this, nor am I able to find this online anywhere, I think it appropriate to copy it here. This is exactly as it is written. The Captain in this story is most likely John Thurber. A historical record of rice can be found here. This is simply a delightful story of ‘moonbeams forming a glittering path across the water’ to love, and one I will now read to the children.

Madagascar is an island in the Indian ocean on the eastern border of Africa. Although the island is African, its people are largely of Malay blood and are an olive-yellow complexion. Owning to its elevation, much of the island has a temperate climate. The principal food crop of the island is rice.

It was in this tropical island, at about the time that the first settlers were landing in Charles Town, that a man and a woman came down near the seashore and began to build a hut. Tall and powerful was the man, for he had been one of the principal warriors of the King, and lithe and well-formed was she, for she was the daughter of the warrior’s King. Well-placed and well satisfied each had been until one day they had met and had loved each other. After that they were both sorrowful, for how could a simple soldier of the king’s army, although he was a valiant soldier, hope to marry the daughter of a king? And yet love takes no account of rulers, whether in African jungles or in the seats of the mighty.

So, having looked upon each other, this young pair met again and again. Sometimes their meetings were by accident. Often they sought each other outide the Malagasy King’s village. And the King began to notice this thing, and soon he looked upon the young warrior coldly and questioned his daughter. And his daughter told him nothing in words, but her hesitations and tremblings told him more than he wished to learn. Then he tested the point of his war spear and arose from his dwelling place and went out toward the habitations of his warriors.

But although the King had said nothing, his daughter had read his face. He had moved quickly, but she had gone more quickly still, so when the King came to the street of the warriors, that one whom he sought had fled. Moreover, when he returned to his house he found that his daughter had also fled. Then he caused his great war drum to be beated, and his warriors gathered about him and he sent them out into the forest two by two’s and three by three’s to search for the two who had departed, but for many days even the most expert of his trackers brought him no news.

In the meantime the man and the woman had passed through the dense forest, and coming to a shallow stream they waded down it, for the stream made a path through the jungle and its current betrayed no footstep: And when night came they crept out upon the bank of the brook and ate of the fruits of the jungle and slept. And in this way, after many days, they came within sight of the sea, and there, on the slopes of the hills overlooking the wide ocean, they halted and began to build a hut, for they were far away from the territory of that King who was father of the woman.

Then, when the hut was completed, the young man hollowed out a canoe in order that he might sail upon the sea and catch fish there. And after a time he dammed a stream that flowed down from the hills and planted a rice field in the valley. But while he was doing these things, the trackers of the King who was the father of the woman sought for the two continually because the King was very angry and would allow his warriors no rest.

And it happened after many days that two of the searchers came to the crest of the hills taht are above the sea. There they saw the hut and the little field and the man and the woman together on the sand near the seashore. And one said to the other, “Shall we go down and spear them where they stand?”

But the other said “No,” for he was a prudent fellow, and not only was he afraid to kill the King’s daughter, but he remembered that the man who stood with her was accustomed to war and not at all likely to wait meekly to be speared. Therefore they returned to the King and told him what they had seen.

Then the King gathered his warriors and they went through the forests and after a hard journey they came to the place. And after the night had fallen they came down and surrounded the hut went into it and fell upon the fugitives while they slept. They bound the man with strips of bark, but because the King loved his daughter he did not tie her, but shut her in the hut and set a guard at the door. Thus the night passed and the morning came.

And in the morning the sun rose red over the eastern sea and the man struggled against the bonds. But the withes did not yield, and the woman, hiding her face, sobbed and shuddered in a corner of the hut. Then the King was pleased because he had the man at his mercy, so he rested and feasted with his warriors. But before the sun a high three-cornered sail appeared on the horizon, and the King and his men watched as the ship as it drew near and took counsel together as to what they should do.

However, the vessel was a small one and their own number was considerable, so they decided to await its arrival, and when it has come to land they saw that it contained Arabs who sometimes visited the island to buy spices, and rice, and slaves. These Arabs landed and made a display of their goods, but the King, not having come to the coast to trade, had nothing to offer in exchange for the wares which the strangers spread before him. When he saw that this was the case, the Arab captain offered to buy the man who lay bound, but the King demurred, for his anger against that man was great and intended to put him to death.

But the Arab argued cunningly. He said that he would take the man to Mozambique, where the Portuquese slavers would buy him. And that these in turn would take him far away to the white man’s land, where he might be fattened and eaten for all that the Arab knew to the contrary. So at last the King bartered the man to the Arab in exchange for a bright cutlass and five yards of cloth. Then the man was loosed from his bonds and was taken on board the vessel and carried away.

After the vessel had gone the King went to the hut and released his daughter. Up to this time she had wept, but now she faced her father dry-eyed.

“What have you done with him,” she demanded. “If you have killed him, I too…”

“He is not dead, ” her father told her. “I have sold him to the Arab. He is going away – across the sea. Come. Forget him!”

Then the woman went down to the water’s edge and looked across the blue water and saw the brown sail of the Arab vessel far away. Then she cried out, but only a sea gull answered her. She stretched out her hands, but her bare palms remained as empty as was the bare sky above her head. And at her feet, lying on its side on the sand, she saw the canoe which the man had fashioned with fire and with adz.

That night, when all were asleep, the woman crept out of the hut. Lying at the door was a small bag of unhusked rice which the warriors had brought with them for food. This she took to the canoe, and she also took a large calabash filled with fresh water. Then she thrust the canoe into the water, and, getting in herself, paddled away. Men had taken her lover beyond the sea; then beyond the sea she would follow him. She had yet to learn how vast is the sea, how great are the distances that lie below the horizon.

The canoe rose and fell on the long swell of the waves. The moon rose, and its beams formed a glittering path across the water. The stars circled over her head. But she did not heed any of these things, for she knew that she had far to go.

When morning dawned the land lay like a blue cloud behind her. She was tired, so she lay down in the canoe and slept. A shark ranged alongside, and disappeared. The sun beat upon her, but she did not waken. Toward noon she sat up, drank some water, and began to paddle onward. Night came, and then morning again.

As the sun rose she saw a ship, and headed the canoe toward it. Little by little the hull of the vessel appeared. She did not doubt its being the Arab’s ship, and she bent to her paddling. The canoe drew nearer the ship and the ship drew nearer the canoe. She could now see men who made gestures in her direction. She waved her hands to them.

After a time a boat was lowered from the ship and approached her. The men in the boat were white. She tried to speak to them, but could not understand their answers. They caught the canoe with a boathook and towed it to the vessel. Then they took her and her bag of rice aboard and cast the canoe adrift. They gave her food and were puzzled at her presence. She ate the food and wondered who they were. Then she wept, for she knew that this was not the ship of the Arabs.

“Let her help the cook,” said the Captain, for he was thrifty. So they put her in the galley to help the cook and her bag of rice went with her.

The vessel stood on its course. It rounded Cape Agulhas and beat northward. The long days passed. Africa was left behind, and the North Atlantic was reached. The Captain began to think of his home in Rhode Island, the crew whistled and sang psalms. And then a West India hurricane fell upon them.

For days they found the storm and at times they were near to sinking, but at last they rode it out. The brigantine had survived, but a mast was gone and the vessel was leaking. For the purpose of making repairs the Captain put in to Charles Town.

Who can say what the thoughts of the woman were during that long voyage. Bit by bit she had learned the English words. Day after day she had cooked and washed and cleaned. So much is known, but the wild thoughts that rose in her savage brain, her hopes, her despairs, her bewilderment as each sun went down in the west and there was yet to be seen nothing but the great waste of heaving water, have left no record.

The ship came into the harbor under skies so fair and breezes so light that a storm seemed an impossible thing, and in front of the town, they dropped an anchor. Fresh from their battle with the hurricane, the sailors were worn out, and yet the ship must be lightened so that the leaks might be reached. Therefore the Captain went into the town to hire negro slaves from their masters to unload the cargo.

While on this errand he met Dr. Henry Woodward and fell into conversation with him. Woodward told the Captain strange tales of how he had lived with the Indians and how he had sailed with the privateersmen, and how, of late, he had bought a strange negro from a Portuguese slaver. This negro, said Woodward, looked more like an Indian than a negro, and yet was no Indian.

Then the Captain told of the woman who he had picked up. This woman also resembled an Indian and yet was no Indian. And finally the Captain told of the canoe and the little bag of rice.

At this Woodward became excited. “Rice, did you say?” he inquired. “I believe rice would thrive in this province, and I would try it had I had the seed and someone teach me how to grow it.”

“Why,” replied the Captain, “the rice is aboard the brigantine and you may have it. Yes, and the woman also, if you will, for doubtless she has seen the grain growing in her own country.”

Then Woodward called his slave and made ready to accompany the Captain to the ship, for he would need the slave to bring the rice home. And when the Captain saw this strange slave of Woodward’s he said, “He is very like the woman, and I doubt it is not that they are of the same nation. Therefore let us bring them face to face.”

So when they had reached the vessel they brought the slave into the presence of the woman, whereupon she gave a great cry and fell upon the deck, and the slave, stooping lifted her up and held her to his breast. And Dr. Henry Woodward, having lived much among savage folk, saw and understood and was touched.

“See now,” he said to them, “you shall go with me and shall not be parted. And the rice you shall fetch and shall plant it and bring it to fruition even as is done in your own country. Thus shall the people of this province be taught. And if you succeed with the rice, then you shall have for yourselves a hut and a plot of ground and no man shall make you afraid.”

So the man put the little bag of rice on his shoulder and took the woman by the hand and they followed Woodward. And they planted the rice, and it prospered, and the people came and saw it, so that they, too, afterward, took the seed that Woodward gave them and planted it. Thus rice became a source of wealth to all of South Carolina. And the man and the woman lived many years on the plot of ground that Woodward gave them, and after they were old they died there and their children buried them.

The Mattress Tree of Edisto Island

“The song and the land are one.” – Bruce Chatwin

Mattress Tree Mourning, November 16, 2009 Edisto Island, SC © C.Hutson-Wrenn

Frank Gadsden died this winter. The full mattress and box springs, the swinging hammock, the one that hung from the limbs of a grand live oak tree on the side of the road for at least a generation, is gone.

The loss of Mattress Point, as some old islanders refer to the place, is no small thing. It was part of the myth of this island paradise. Lying in a hammock is a traditional summertime habit for those who come to the beach for vacation. For visitors to the island, it reminds us of the importance of taking a nap, of putting our feet up, of swinging the day away, “Edislow” style. The idea to string up, in the huge tree in his own front yard, not just a rope Pawley’s-Island-style hammock, but a whole bed, was funny, funky, and clever. It was an example of what poet and sage Nick Lindsay might call “gumption”. It also spoke to us of hospitality in its own way. It said “Come into my living room, my friend. Sit awhile. Hey, even lie here under this great oak tree. Take a nap.” It was a a symbol, then, not only of welcome and hospitality, but of a certain wildness, of taking a creative leap. Is there something in ourselves, when we arrive at this island Paradise that teases us to take some creative leap?

Certainly the swinging bed was not without its controversy. When so many people stopped to photograph and draw the unusual swing, Mr. Gadsden, feeling exploited somehow by the fascination that artists and photographers and just about everyone seemed to feel about this Edisto Island ’sculpture’, began to charge viewers 5 dollars, then 10 dollars for a photograph of the thing. Others complained that the place was an eyesore, for Frank also worked on his lawn mowers and left extra mattresses lying around under the great tree. Oh, and the people! Frank’s friends and family gathered there in summer, to wave to passing cars, to pass the time with each other. In winter, men folk met to play cards around a small table, all day long, warmed by the fire burning in an old oil drum. But it was a place with people and energy, whether you liked it or not.

This spirit is one of the reasons many of us have fallen madly in love with this place. Certainly, Edisto Island is one of the most naturally beautifully places on earth. Thanks to The Edisto Island Open Land Trust and her supporters, the big developers have been held at bay so far, and over half of the island is permanently protected by conservation easements. We realize that Henry David Thoreau was right when he said that “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” But what else is it that makes so many of us love this place?

Jane Jacobs, (The Death and Life of Great American Cities) writer and urbanist, wrote that in cities, the worst possible virus, capable of sucking the life out of a place, was “the great grey blight of dullness”. She was referring to cookie cutter suburbs, too much planning, parking lots, and expressways. Big expensive housing projects for the poor would become blights on a neighborhood if they weren’t, well, interesting. “There are emotions that draw us to cities (places)”, she continued, “and they depend on things being a bit messy….”

Edisto is a wildly interesting place, the natural organic world and the creative spirit of her people in evidence everywhere. There are front porches where people still sit on mismatched chairs; there are whole outdoor living rooms where people entertain themselves by watching other people, one of the evidences that Jane Jacobs believed signaled that a neighborhood was a healthy one.

The song language of the Gullah people is still in the air, too, if you listen. This place sings with a great lyrical rhythm. Highway 174 is now a National Scenic Byway. So, when you are headed to the beach this summer, past the curve in the road where the old mattress hung, remember Frank ‘Tissa’ Gadsden, Sr. who was born on on the 2nd of February in 1944, and died last November, on a Thursday, the 12th. Thank you, Mr. Gadsden for reminding us of so much of what we already knew.

Shadows of the Moon

The “Wolf Moon” in her brightest fullest self arrives at midnight tonight. Named by Native Americans, I understand. I hear my own hungry wolves in the depths of winter.

On Edisto Island, where the vast sky is uninterrupted by street lamps, brilliant moonlight twists over the grass, dancing between moss laden live oaks like tall, lavender ladies. Serendipidously, as I pack my things in North Carolina to head back to Edisto for this night, and to outrun a snowstorm here, I stumble upon a piece of writing by the amazing poet, Mary Oliver, whose work carries me on so many days. This is in her book, West Wind.

“Now only the humorous shadows that the moon makes, playing the corners of furniture, flung and dropped clothing, the backs of books, the architecture of electronics, and so on. The bed that level and soft rise is empty. We are gone.

So, say that dreams, possibilities, emotions, while we are gone from the house, take shape. Say there are thirty at least, one to represent each year, and more leaning in the doorway between the slope of the beach and the pale walls of the rooms, just moon-gazing for a moment or two, before they come into that starry garden, our house at night.

Some of those thirty are as awkward as children, romping and gripping. Others have become birds, clouds, trees dipping their heart-shaped leaves, that long song. Here and there a face that won’t transform — eyes of stone, expressions of pettiness and sulk. And now it is winter, and in the black air the snow is falling in its own sweet leisure, for its own reasons. And now the snow has deepened, and created form: two white ponies. How they gallop in the waves. How they steam, and turn to look for each other. How they love the clouds and the tender, long grass and the horizons and the hills. How they nuzzle, how they nicker, how they reach down, at the unclosable spring in the notch of the pasture, to be replenished.”

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

This poem is by Rumi, and was read out loud to me last weekend by Lauren Artress, who wrote the book (that rocked my world) called Walking a Sacred Path. I attended a weekend workshop with her in Delray Beach, Florida and walked a huge Chartres style labyrinth there many times, with many other people. Walking a labyrinth is a way to quiet the ‘monkey mind’ she says, who refuses to be quiet. I find the walk soothing and illuminating, and walking a labyrinth has an uncanny power to tap intuition and release creative intelligence. And as a practice that is thousands of years old, it fits into my own Lowcountry culture that reveres much that is traditional. The image is also, not to be denied, the shape of a spiral, a seashell, a conch.

Southerners have always held on to our guest rooms and treated guests as though they were visiting angels, which comes, from The Christian Bible, in Hebrews (13:2) which says, “Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels.” The warm and welcoming “Hey honey! Oh, do Stay!” is one of the traits I still really admire about the American South and the Lowcountry of South Carolina.

But seeing the guest room like this, also as metaphor, opens up this principle, which, as Joseph Campbell suggests, is at the heart of all religion. Whatever it takes to make the old traditions new and fresh and alive is what we need. I battled this exact principle in the my dreams last night. How to make friends with the guests I am not crazy about, those guests who are angry and grumpy.

AhHA! They too, I see, are my angels.

Love, Pray, Jump into the River

It is weight that gives meaning to weightlessness. -Isamu Noguchi

Edisto Island, a place of uncommon natural beauty, is poetry. From the twenty miles of serpentine highway to the sea, through Tarzan-and-Jane jungles of dark forest, past the genuine Serpentarium, the land speaks to me of Parzival and the Medieval legends of the Grail. Even the nearby Combahee River, the first one visited by the Spaniards in the year 1520 was named the “River Jordan” by Vasque de Ayllon. The story is that the Native Americans always considered the river a sacred one even before that.

To begin this new year and new decade, I began an in-depth study of metaphor, a principle that is fundamental to the life of an artist. Metaphor makes life meaningful, and is the practice of seeing things and places and ideas as more than they are, as symbolic. It enriches my everyday existence and is the basis of poetry and most of the world’s religious texts, and in the South, the classic Gullah stories of Brer Rabbit, the trickster. Metaphor is the basis of humor – and our ‘funny bone’. And we humans are uniquely attuned to see this ‘under glimmer’.

To look at metaphor, who better to study than the life of the mythologist, Joseph Campbell? Joseph Campbell cracked the world open with his original thinking about myth and spirituality, and he taught us to search for the sacred in the everyday. Religious texts (The Bible) he said, were more meaningful if they were looked at as metaphor rather than history, “mere newspaper accounts”, which, additionally, “could not stand up to science”. That was a fairly radical view in the religious South where I grew up. The world got to know him through the interviews he did with Bill Moyers for PBS in 1988. Joseph Campbell was a man who also believed in the power of art which he also defined as the creation of your own artful life, one of vitality, and true calling. “Follow your bliss” was his teaching, simplified.

How do you do this? He writes, “When skies get dull with no prospect of clearing, run away, change your home town, your name, your job, change anything. No misfortune can be worse than the misfortune of resting permanently static. Take a chance. If you lose you are scarcely worse-of than before; if you win you have at least experience and a new thrill or two gained.” He continues, “Never get into a rut. Never do work that does not help you achieve an ambition worthy of your talents…it is the dull routine where happiness becomes merely a matter of torpid vegetation.” Not making the change and continuing the life that is static is the waste land, Joseph Campbell reminds us, The Waste Land about which T.S. Eliot writes. Campbell, quotes the last line of Sinclair Lewis’ Babbit, in the interview with Bill Moyers, and recites, ‘I have never done the thing that I wanted to do in all my life.’ Joseph Campbell sums it up with, “That is a man who never followed his bliss.”

I stand evidence of this principle today. Just about this time last year, a little brown rabbit repeatedly appeared in my path, at my house in North Carolina. It was the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, saying, ” Follow me. The adventure is awaiting. Follow me down the rabbit hole…” Well, I did just that. I rented my house and down I came, to Edisto Island, to write, to paint, to live in my little RV named Rosy, to take my chances making the dream come true in this place that had called my name. I (metaphorically, of course) jumped into the river. The adventure is four volumes of journals and life lessons, my own version of Eat Pray Love, Liz Gilbert being one of the bright lights of my summer, whose books I deliciously encountered for the first time and devoured. My adventure, of course, included some not so easy life lessons I would not have dreamed of asking myself to learn. It was my battle with the minotaur, the task of the hero. Today, though somewhat embattled, I know that the creative spirit of the universe. in my life, is alive and well. And like Edna St Vincent Millay said about love, “I would not trade this night for food”, I would not trade what I have gained for anything in the world.

On Beauty. And Hope.

Beauty has been bumping into me for weeks. The great Joseph Campbell spoke of ’serendipity’ so often, that great accident of time where something happens at the right time for the right reason, so magically that it feels like angelic presence. As a younger person, and particularly as a child of the very religious Southern United States, in particular, as a child of Presbyterian austerity and frugalism, the idea of beauty as an essential element of my life felt a bit indulgent. But I longed for beauty, felt soothed by beauty, and sought her anyway, hungry for this food for my spirit.

As an older wiser woman, and artist, I now find the confirmation everywhere. For the last few days I have been enjoying roaring bonfires, outside, at my beloved Edisto Island. On New Year’s Eve a few days ago, the clear cold sky opened up to reveal a full and brilliant moon, a blue moon, one of two this month, so rare and special, and as I watched that bright sphere traveled over the night sky, with the dance and crackle of the orange red flames before me, I could only watch in awe of this wonder: cold and hot, red orange and deep blues, and light, light, light, sparkling from the heavens and beneath my feet. I could hear the ocean from my seat there in that cool clear moment, and then, next day, I opened to these words by Saint Augustine :

I asked the earth,
I asked the sea and the deeps,
among the living animals,
the things that creep.
I asked the winds that blow,
I asked the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars,
and to all things that stand at the doors of my flesh
My question was the gaze I turned to them.
Their answer was beauty.

The Path of Christmas

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

-T.S. Eliot, “East Coker” from the “Four Quartets”

Christmas is the celebration of new birth. For the last few days I have been reading the Grail legend, the archetypal human tale about Parzival, the tale that Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth) says is “the founding Myth of Western civilization” because it teaches that each of us must find our way to enlightenment, to the new birth within ourselves. What better story to go with the my own Christian tradition that involves three wise men and a baby born under a starry sky, like those we see so often in these bright heavenly nights, in this land between rivers, which merge in the sea.

Art: A Landscape of Pleasure

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust

'Tic Tac Toe' pigment print 20x20 by C. Hutson-Wrenn, available, $300.

At this moment I am pleasurably enveloped in an ivory colored satin quilt in my own room with a view, at my daughter, Hadley’s, house in Atlanta. Beau, the elegant, velvety, warm blooded, chocolate colored companion that is my dog, is curled around my legs. It is the beginning of Thanksgiving weekend and I am writing in bed, my very favorite place to write, and well, my favorite place, I think, in any house. Certainly I am surrounded by new landscape, about which Proust speaks, away from the Carolina Lowcountry and well, yes, Atlanta is admittedly one of the Great Aunts of the American South. In the spirit of the weekend, I feel renewed and I see again, with new eyes, today, that Proust is just right, oh so right, about what matters.

What a delightful American holiday this is, a day dedicated to gratitude and the splendid pleasures of the table. As I packed yesterday to travel, I tucked into the red leather traveling bag that this beauty loving daughter gave me, another gift from her, a copy of the original Proust Questionnaire, in Marcel Proust’s own handwriting, in French. She gave it to me, because every holiday season for years we’ve circulated a family questionnaire amongst the large and blended family that is mine. The questionnaire we make is usually twenty questions or so, like “If you could have dinner with anyone who would it be?” or, from the original, “What is your idea of happiness?” (Proust’s answer was ” To live in contact with those I love, with the beauties of nature, with a quantity of books and music, and to have, within easy distance, a French theatre – all of which would be mine exactly! – except having access to film now, instead of French Theatre).

Completing the questionnaire is a gift of connection, or listening to each other, the one element that somehow began to be missing as the holiday became so centered around gifts and shopping. Our own family questionnaire has taken a life of its own and now, each Thanksgiving, one family member begins and circulates the questionnaire beginning on Thanksgiving weekend, by email, even though I value those old paper compilations, especially the one my sister did in her own beautiful perfect and loose handwriting, so passionately detailed in the food category. When she died, all the foods she listed as her favorites – and her list ran around the page to fill up the back (it included Duke’s mayonnaise which those from the South will understand) were gathered and cooked and served by my son’s wife at the gathering of family and friends who came to my house after the funeral.

But ah, Proust! – whose passion, curiosity and genius inspires all lovers of the arts. Virginia Woolf, the legendary writer, identified the highly sensual nature of Proust’s prose as the Proustian effect, a rejuvenating energy, the intense pleasure that we find in great art. The root of the word “aesthetic” is to feel, to be alive; it is about art that so dazzles one’s spirit that it consoles: Joy, I think, is the word.

Included in that is to feel overwhelmed with gratitude. For the pleasures of love and food, for the pleasures of grown children who now create the feast, and the birthday celebrations and the blessings of grandchildren. Proust’s own words mark the refrigerator here in Hadley’s oh so sensual home. (It is a fridge magnet her mother gave her). “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy: they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”

The two warm ham biscuits, on a gold rimmed porcelain plate, delivered to my bed as I write, by my amazingly beautiful and talented daughter, illustrates it all. Amen.