how will Pauline escape this latest Peril?
ah . .. . . what wafts of nostalgia for the story . .. . at least we did have a childhood Virginia . . .
imbued with such innocence .. . . but fast forwarding . . . (not TOO fast please) . .. there cannot be too many nonagenarians . . holed up in their fastnesses. . . wishing for better locales some of them no doubt
but in the case of present company obviously content . . .let nothing allow nothing to diminish memory's flow . . . therein lies the savingest grace of all as the ship comes in sight of her harbour . . . among the pleasing aspects are those redolent of reflections. An untroubled mind . . free of all conflict . . . yet alert still to every nuance . . . . . that is a consummation devoutly to be wished . .
happy and to know it . . free of pain. . . every day a bonus . . . and moreover aware. . so so aware of good fortune's smile . .
what the dear departed Ted Sly called the luck of the draw.
Another of Ted's ilk was the late Paul Metzler . . (shot down in his Cat off Rabaul January 1942) . . he'd muse and say when going over the many instances of survival as others drew the short one .. "lucky again".. .. he'd say with telling conviction.
Now though, this short ramble must end with the footnote that those lucky enough to see out year after year and see off companions boon and otherwise it is they for whom we must every day remember to spare a sanguine thought . . . for the cream of that crop we hold up as exemplars . . . (though they modestly shrug and say get orf)
p.s there is uplift of the spirit and beauty all around if the eye is only given the nod to behold. It is not impossible to blot out
the contrary entirely . The late Ted Hughes deflected agonies after the death of Plath by not allowing them to encroach .
There is a particularly fine summation of their lives by Felicity Plunkett, poetry editor at the University of Queensland Press -
"On the wall of Hughes's and Plath's London flat was an image of Isis from an astrological text. The myth of Isis describes her collecting and reassembling the scattered parts of her lover Osiris. This story underpins the astrological meaning of Isis as an expression of bringing together fragments, re-membering and resurrection. She endures; her name repeats the present tense of the verb to be: is, is."
There are two new biographies of Sylvia Plath. Felicity Plunkett says of them - "In their different ways they draw together the scattered evidence of a life, while Plath's republished book,
The Bell Jar, is raw and deathless, like Esther who feels
the old brag of my heart: "I am, I am, I am."
