What do you keep in your pocket? Your cell phone, pair of glasses, breath mints, wadded up receipts from Starbucks? Go ahead, check it out. What did you find?
I didn't give it much thought until I discovered what Leo Tolstoy kept in his pocket. Maybe not every day, but at least on the day when Ilya Repin painted his portrait, "Tolstoy Barefoot," as the author walked in the woods near his home at Yasnaya Polyana. A red notebook, tucked snugly in one of the front pockets of his peasant shirt, just in case. Perhaps he's taking a break on page 1000 or so of War and Peace, or beginning his day in solitude; he doesn't leave the house without his notebook. What if a thought, a word, a phrase, pops into his mind, and it's the perfect way to say what he's been trying to say for days. Or what if a squirrel catches his attention, a Russian squirrel with pointed, hairy ears, greedily nibbling on a nut it has just discovered in an almost-forgotten mound of dirt? The intensity with which the animal focuses on his meal, the way he holds it with both hands, body curved forward to protect the precious nut from jealous relatives, reminds Tolstoy of a character he's developing. He reaches for his notebook.
Curious. . . I wonder if one of the world's greatest writers remembered to bring along a pencil. I don't see the outline of one showing through the thin, white material. Is it hiding behind the notebook or perhaps between the pages, holding a spot for the next entry? Following in Tolstoy's footsteps with my own notebook (pink rather than red) crammed into the pocket of my exercise pants, I remember this morning's walk through the park. No pencil. "How can I remember the witty line, the 'just right' words to describe the duck diving head first under the water to nab his breakfast?" I wonder. Repeating it at least 50 times as I round the lake, dash through the woods, across the busy street, up the elevator to our apartment, I snatch the renegade pencil off the table and scribble the line as it gushes out of my mouth.
Vowing that this will never happen again, the picture of another writer begins to surface, this portrait unpainted, but as clear in my thoughts as if it were brushed across a canvas. The woman is in a wooded area, moving intentionally from tree to tree hiding pencils among the branches. Were she not a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and one of my favorite writers, I might wonder what the heck she's doing. But it's Mary Oliver, who can be found most days walking in the woods around Blackwater Pond in Provincetown, Massachusetts, writing about the nature she encounters. She shared in a rare interview* in 1991 that she carried a "3-by-5-inch hand-sewn notebook" to record her lyrical observations. But remembering a pencil?. . . So she stashed a few. Brilliant! Should she leave her pencil on the table back home, she only needs to recall in which of the trees she's hidden one, so she can jot down those "just right" words before they have a chance to escape.
I visualize each writer grabbing both notebook and pencil and heading out the door for a walk. One of them stops in a grove of trees, the other pauses beside a pond. They pull out their notebooks and write words which I have recently read, words which inspire me to continue writing, to keep paper in my pocket and to stash a pencil or two.
"I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness."
-Tolstoy, Family Happiness and Other Stories
"Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields and into the faces of the tulips...Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness." - Oliver, Why I Wake Early
* cited in The Land and Words of Mary Oliver, the Bard of Provincetown, Mary Duenwald, New York Times, July 5, 2009
I didn't give it much thought until I discovered what Leo Tolstoy kept in his pocket. Maybe not every day, but at least on the day when Ilya Repin painted his portrait, "Tolstoy Barefoot," as the author walked in the woods near his home at Yasnaya Polyana. A red notebook, tucked snugly in one of the front pockets of his peasant shirt, just in case. Perhaps he's taking a break on page 1000 or so of War and Peace, or beginning his day in solitude; he doesn't leave the house without his notebook. What if a thought, a word, a phrase, pops into his mind, and it's the perfect way to say what he's been trying to say for days. Or what if a squirrel catches his attention, a Russian squirrel with pointed, hairy ears, greedily nibbling on a nut it has just discovered in an almost-forgotten mound of dirt? The intensity with which the animal focuses on his meal, the way he holds it with both hands, body curved forward to protect the precious nut from jealous relatives, reminds Tolstoy of a character he's developing. He reaches for his notebook.
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| "Tolstoy Barefoot" by Ilya Repin (Russian Museum St. Petersburg) |
Vowing that this will never happen again, the picture of another writer begins to surface, this portrait unpainted, but as clear in my thoughts as if it were brushed across a canvas. The woman is in a wooded area, moving intentionally from tree to tree hiding pencils among the branches. Were she not a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and one of my favorite writers, I might wonder what the heck she's doing. But it's Mary Oliver, who can be found most days walking in the woods around Blackwater Pond in Provincetown, Massachusetts, writing about the nature she encounters. She shared in a rare interview* in 1991 that she carried a "3-by-5-inch hand-sewn notebook" to record her lyrical observations. But remembering a pencil?. . . So she stashed a few. Brilliant! Should she leave her pencil on the table back home, she only needs to recall in which of the trees she's hidden one, so she can jot down those "just right" words before they have a chance to escape.
I visualize each writer grabbing both notebook and pencil and heading out the door for a walk. One of them stops in a grove of trees, the other pauses beside a pond. They pull out their notebooks and write words which I have recently read, words which inspire me to continue writing, to keep paper in my pocket and to stash a pencil or two.
"I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness."
-Tolstoy, Family Happiness and Other Stories
"Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields and into the faces of the tulips...Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness." - Oliver, Why I Wake Early
* cited in The Land and Words of Mary Oliver, the Bard of Provincetown, Mary Duenwald, New York Times, July 5, 2009
What a wonderful choice of quotes, and me, always without a pencil and still looking for that tartan plaid ballpoint I bought in Scotland and put down somewhere. The notebook is always with me--and the camera--and if not, well, there is the palm of one's hand to write on and the memory to save the image to sketch later--when you have found the pencil.
ReplyDeleteHi Kathy,
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you would feel lost without your camera; you take such beautiful pictures. Looking forward to seeing the next ones!