starrwriter
10-23-2005, 03:15 PM
D. H. LAWRENCE REVISITED
The lonely desert mesas stretched to a line of mountains etched on the stark blue horizon. At an elevation of 7,000 feet the morning air was crisp and cool, even though it was July in New Mexico. I was alone in front of a little shrine that reminded me of a country chapel. It seemed an appropriate metaphor considering whose ashes were buried there -- author D. H. Lawrence, the "priest of love."
To the left was the tomb of Frieda, the fiery German woman who became his wife and soul mate on their free-spirited adventures traveling around the world. With Frieda he explored the deepest mysteries of love and tapped into the wellspring of life, which kept him going long after he should have died from tuberculosis. From her Lawrence learned the secret of knowing all women through tender intimacy with one woman, a lesson lost in the modern age.
I had tried to make that connection with a woman myself, first in a marriage and then in a succession of relationships, but I never found my Frieda. Lawrence's writings had been an inspiration to me since I was a teenager and I had come to New Mexico to see if I could commune with his spirit. Call it a mid-life crisis if you like cliches, but I thought of the trip as a visit with an old friend.
Morning in the land of enchantment was as exhilarating as Lawrence described:
"In the magnificent fierce morning of New Mexico one sprang awake,
a new part of the soul woke up suddenly, and the old world gave way
to a new . . ."
My head was uncommonly clear despite the several beers I drank the previous night at a bar in Taos. The air of the high plateau seemed to breathe new life into my middle-aged, nicotine-stained lungs. I felt like I could run the mile in under six minutes, but I was wise enough not to put this feeling to the test. With age and clogged arteries comes wisdom.
On the leisurely drive to the shrine I stopped at the Rio Grande gorge to watch a group of white-water rafters plunge down the river. The gorge was an oasis of green in the vast gray sagebrush and tumbleweed mesas. The steep walls of the gorge made it resemble an earthquake crack, a wound in the surface of the land that bled the waters of the Rio Grande. I lingered at the rim, fantasizing about diving into the cold water with all my clothes on just for the hell of it. What a rush that would be! But wisdom prevailed again and I drove on to my rendezvous with Lawrence. He wrote:
"I think New Mexico was the greatest experience from the outside world that I have ever had. It certainly changed me forever . . ."
I understood what he meant because I felt the same way about Hawaii. Some places simply get under your skin and you can't imagine living anywhere else. After a vagabond life of travel all over the world, Lawrence and Frieda settled on Kiowa Ranch, the only home they ever owned. The ranch and the surrounding wilderness became his symbolic arena for Life At Large. It was the background setting of philosophical musings he recorded in "Reflections On The Death Of A Porcupine" and other writings.
The ranch is now owned by the University of New Mexico, which allows public access to the D. H. Lawrence Memorial. I entered the shrine through its narrow doorway and paused to let my eyes get accustomed to the dim lightning. Inside it looked more like a pagan altar than a chapel -- something that would have pleased Lawrence, who worshipped the dark gods of the blood.
Above the memorial block imprinted with his initials was a rendering of the Phoenix, a mythological bird that was set afire by the sun and then sprang back to life out of its own ashes. Lawrence was fascinated with this symbol of rebirth from utter destruction, one of many ideas he shared with the philosopher Nietzsche. He also disliked the scientific conception of the sun as a ball of hot gas, preferring to regard it as a god like his Pueblo Indian neighbors.
As I stared at his favorite emblems, I could almost feel Lawrence's presence in the tiny room. I sat crossed-legged on the floor and closed my eyes, recalling the influence he had on my life. His novel "Lady Chatterly's Lover" taught me the vital importance of tenderness in love-making when I was a clumsy young man. The most haunting short story I ever read, "The Rocking Horse Winner," helped turned me away from a life of shallow materialism. Lawrence's travel essays inspired me to see the world while I was still young enough to enjoy it. I also followed his example and became a writer myself. I thought if the son of an illiterate coal miner could do it, then why not me as well?
Like another writer I admired, Henry David Thoreau, Lawrence practiced frugal living and made the most of the little money he was able to earn. He valued his freedom more than money or security and followed Thoreau's advice to do the work you love whether it pays well or not. Lawrence's work was steeped in manna, the spiritual power of the life force, and it came from the core of his being. I always sensed there was more life in his words alone than in the actual lives of a million average people. He was a disciple of the aristocratic order of nature who railed against the modern world as dehumanizing and nihilistic. I think Lawrence would have been considered a holy man in earlier cultures. In his own time his best novel was banned as pornography for its honest description of sex.
After half an hour of meditation that bordered on prayer, I left the shrine and drove back to my hotel in Taos. Along the way I gazed at the yawning expanse of desert, trying to see it through the fresh vision of Lawrence's eyes. I finally decided it was the timeless quality of the desert landscape that captured Lawrence's imagination.
ANTSES IN TIM'S BREAKFAST
My second literary sojourn came after I read "Cross Creek" by Marjorie Rawlings and saw the marvelous film version starring Mary Steenburgen. Rawlings is best known for her novel "The Yearling," which won the Pulitzer Prize and was also made into an award-winning movie in 1947. "Cross Creek" is an autobiographical account of the years Rawlings spent as the owner of an orange grove in remote central Florida during the Great Depression. It details her struggle to become a writer while running the organge grove and tells of how she became a friend of the real swamp people on which she based her characters in "The Yearling."
I like very few women writers, but I was mesmerized by her honesty, her touching sympathy for the plight of the poverty-stricken Florida crackers and her poetic description of the dream-like scenery. "Antses in Tim's breakfast" is a line from the first short story Rawlings wrote while she lived there. The story was about an overly sensitive young couple who worked for her and the ubiquitous presence of insects in backwoods life.
I was visiting my mother at her retirement home in central Florida and I wondered if the tiny town of Cross Creek still existed. My first stop was what is now the Ocala National Forest, the home setting of the actual family slightly fictionalized in "The Yearling." (The boy Jody in the book and movie was really a tomboyish girl.) I learned from a local resident that a 20-foot-long alligator was once killed there, perhaps the largest alligator ever to live in Florida. I was reminded that during my time in the Sunshine State, the alligator was hunted to near extinction and you were lucky to see a 6-footer in the Everglades.
An hour or so later I came to a road sign that said "Cross Creek" -- and I immediately got lost. Eventually I found the town, but it didn't look much like the place Rawlings described -- not a big surprise after 70 years of modernization and massive population growth. Even so, Cross Creek seemed to have escaped the worst effects of over-development I saw elsewhere in Florida. It was still a country town.
I made my way to the Marjorie Rawlings Memorial at the location of her original house. Not much more than a shack to begin with, the house had been restored as a movie set for the filming of "Cross Creek." The orange grove was mostly gone -- a victim of canker virus and increasingly cold winters that had sent orange growers farther south.
Although not a lot remained of the original place, I could feel a certain ambience that Rawlings described in the book. The gothic-looking Spanish moss hanging from tree limbs, the hard-scrabble sandy soil, the faint odor of decay and orange blossoms in the air. She wrote:
"Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time."
(Creepy footnote: At the time I made this sojourn I frequented a certain highway between Daytona Beach and Orlando where serial killer Aileen Warnous was shooting lone male drivers who picked her up hitch-hiking on that road. I often wonder if I would have stopped to give her a lift and met the same fate as her other victims.)
The lonely desert mesas stretched to a line of mountains etched on the stark blue horizon. At an elevation of 7,000 feet the morning air was crisp and cool, even though it was July in New Mexico. I was alone in front of a little shrine that reminded me of a country chapel. It seemed an appropriate metaphor considering whose ashes were buried there -- author D. H. Lawrence, the "priest of love."
To the left was the tomb of Frieda, the fiery German woman who became his wife and soul mate on their free-spirited adventures traveling around the world. With Frieda he explored the deepest mysteries of love and tapped into the wellspring of life, which kept him going long after he should have died from tuberculosis. From her Lawrence learned the secret of knowing all women through tender intimacy with one woman, a lesson lost in the modern age.
I had tried to make that connection with a woman myself, first in a marriage and then in a succession of relationships, but I never found my Frieda. Lawrence's writings had been an inspiration to me since I was a teenager and I had come to New Mexico to see if I could commune with his spirit. Call it a mid-life crisis if you like cliches, but I thought of the trip as a visit with an old friend.
Morning in the land of enchantment was as exhilarating as Lawrence described:
"In the magnificent fierce morning of New Mexico one sprang awake,
a new part of the soul woke up suddenly, and the old world gave way
to a new . . ."
My head was uncommonly clear despite the several beers I drank the previous night at a bar in Taos. The air of the high plateau seemed to breathe new life into my middle-aged, nicotine-stained lungs. I felt like I could run the mile in under six minutes, but I was wise enough not to put this feeling to the test. With age and clogged arteries comes wisdom.
On the leisurely drive to the shrine I stopped at the Rio Grande gorge to watch a group of white-water rafters plunge down the river. The gorge was an oasis of green in the vast gray sagebrush and tumbleweed mesas. The steep walls of the gorge made it resemble an earthquake crack, a wound in the surface of the land that bled the waters of the Rio Grande. I lingered at the rim, fantasizing about diving into the cold water with all my clothes on just for the hell of it. What a rush that would be! But wisdom prevailed again and I drove on to my rendezvous with Lawrence. He wrote:
"I think New Mexico was the greatest experience from the outside world that I have ever had. It certainly changed me forever . . ."
I understood what he meant because I felt the same way about Hawaii. Some places simply get under your skin and you can't imagine living anywhere else. After a vagabond life of travel all over the world, Lawrence and Frieda settled on Kiowa Ranch, the only home they ever owned. The ranch and the surrounding wilderness became his symbolic arena for Life At Large. It was the background setting of philosophical musings he recorded in "Reflections On The Death Of A Porcupine" and other writings.
The ranch is now owned by the University of New Mexico, which allows public access to the D. H. Lawrence Memorial. I entered the shrine through its narrow doorway and paused to let my eyes get accustomed to the dim lightning. Inside it looked more like a pagan altar than a chapel -- something that would have pleased Lawrence, who worshipped the dark gods of the blood.
Above the memorial block imprinted with his initials was a rendering of the Phoenix, a mythological bird that was set afire by the sun and then sprang back to life out of its own ashes. Lawrence was fascinated with this symbol of rebirth from utter destruction, one of many ideas he shared with the philosopher Nietzsche. He also disliked the scientific conception of the sun as a ball of hot gas, preferring to regard it as a god like his Pueblo Indian neighbors.
As I stared at his favorite emblems, I could almost feel Lawrence's presence in the tiny room. I sat crossed-legged on the floor and closed my eyes, recalling the influence he had on my life. His novel "Lady Chatterly's Lover" taught me the vital importance of tenderness in love-making when I was a clumsy young man. The most haunting short story I ever read, "The Rocking Horse Winner," helped turned me away from a life of shallow materialism. Lawrence's travel essays inspired me to see the world while I was still young enough to enjoy it. I also followed his example and became a writer myself. I thought if the son of an illiterate coal miner could do it, then why not me as well?
Like another writer I admired, Henry David Thoreau, Lawrence practiced frugal living and made the most of the little money he was able to earn. He valued his freedom more than money or security and followed Thoreau's advice to do the work you love whether it pays well or not. Lawrence's work was steeped in manna, the spiritual power of the life force, and it came from the core of his being. I always sensed there was more life in his words alone than in the actual lives of a million average people. He was a disciple of the aristocratic order of nature who railed against the modern world as dehumanizing and nihilistic. I think Lawrence would have been considered a holy man in earlier cultures. In his own time his best novel was banned as pornography for its honest description of sex.
After half an hour of meditation that bordered on prayer, I left the shrine and drove back to my hotel in Taos. Along the way I gazed at the yawning expanse of desert, trying to see it through the fresh vision of Lawrence's eyes. I finally decided it was the timeless quality of the desert landscape that captured Lawrence's imagination.
ANTSES IN TIM'S BREAKFAST
My second literary sojourn came after I read "Cross Creek" by Marjorie Rawlings and saw the marvelous film version starring Mary Steenburgen. Rawlings is best known for her novel "The Yearling," which won the Pulitzer Prize and was also made into an award-winning movie in 1947. "Cross Creek" is an autobiographical account of the years Rawlings spent as the owner of an orange grove in remote central Florida during the Great Depression. It details her struggle to become a writer while running the organge grove and tells of how she became a friend of the real swamp people on which she based her characters in "The Yearling."
I like very few women writers, but I was mesmerized by her honesty, her touching sympathy for the plight of the poverty-stricken Florida crackers and her poetic description of the dream-like scenery. "Antses in Tim's breakfast" is a line from the first short story Rawlings wrote while she lived there. The story was about an overly sensitive young couple who worked for her and the ubiquitous presence of insects in backwoods life.
I was visiting my mother at her retirement home in central Florida and I wondered if the tiny town of Cross Creek still existed. My first stop was what is now the Ocala National Forest, the home setting of the actual family slightly fictionalized in "The Yearling." (The boy Jody in the book and movie was really a tomboyish girl.) I learned from a local resident that a 20-foot-long alligator was once killed there, perhaps the largest alligator ever to live in Florida. I was reminded that during my time in the Sunshine State, the alligator was hunted to near extinction and you were lucky to see a 6-footer in the Everglades.
An hour or so later I came to a road sign that said "Cross Creek" -- and I immediately got lost. Eventually I found the town, but it didn't look much like the place Rawlings described -- not a big surprise after 70 years of modernization and massive population growth. Even so, Cross Creek seemed to have escaped the worst effects of over-development I saw elsewhere in Florida. It was still a country town.
I made my way to the Marjorie Rawlings Memorial at the location of her original house. Not much more than a shack to begin with, the house had been restored as a movie set for the filming of "Cross Creek." The orange grove was mostly gone -- a victim of canker virus and increasingly cold winters that had sent orange growers farther south.
Although not a lot remained of the original place, I could feel a certain ambience that Rawlings described in the book. The gothic-looking Spanish moss hanging from tree limbs, the hard-scrabble sandy soil, the faint odor of decay and orange blossoms in the air. She wrote:
"Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time."
(Creepy footnote: At the time I made this sojourn I frequented a certain highway between Daytona Beach and Orlando where serial killer Aileen Warnous was shooting lone male drivers who picked her up hitch-hiking on that road. I often wonder if I would have stopped to give her a lift and met the same fate as her other victims.)