I have written that no one can judge a marriage from the outside, although we all do. Societies. Courts. Neighbors. Co-workers. Casual acquaintances. Celebrities we don’t even know. And we are always wrong.
Even when we’re right, we’re wrong, because our opinions are based on inadequate information. Marriages are too complicated and too subtle. They turn over the years on words said and unsaid, tones, pauses, touches gentle or rough, welcomed or shunned, sex or lack of it, money or lack of it, gestures, expressions, a face turned toward or away. Thousands and thousands of bonding or eroding moments.
Sometimes I wonder if marriages can be understood even from within. This came to mind recently from an email from my friend, Tim, suggesting a piece of music by Max Richter, and a section in a book of poems by Thomas Hardy.
My reply to Tim’s email first.
Sitting at the bedroom window, a bit of Laphroaig at hand—the bottle was almost empty and begging to be so. The sun has just set behind Pickney Island and is heading your way. Actually it is stationary and we are spinning, but it doesn’t seem that way.
I just watched and listened to the Max Richter. Pleasant, but I think that is all. Not equal to his splendidly daring version of The Four Seasons, the score of The Hostiles, The Waves, Return 2. And perhaps others.
I look out at Skull Creek. Completely still. The Spanish moss is hanging motionless. The sky has some gold to the west, but I see mostly gray and sliver and green. I am often amazed that I am alive at my age and living in the presence of such beauty and with Carol. And yet if I am still alive and healthy in two and a half years I will leave this and go to sea. Risking a life that almost all would desire, but risking much less than I did when I sailed out fifty years ago.
To life.
The reference to The Waves is what is relevant to marriage.
Here is a link to a YouTube video.
The words at the very beginning are Virginia Woolf’s suicide note to her husband of almost thirty years, Leonard. If you can’t understand them as spoken:
Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight it any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that—everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.
Although it is not related to marriages, permit me to suggest a second video of music by Max Richter, Return 2, in which I believe the sepia images match the music perfectly.
I have the collected works of Thomas Hardy, but he wrote so much that I also have some volumes of his selected poetry. I recently reread THE POEMS OF THOMAS HARDY SELECTED BY CLAIRE TOMALIN. Of these almost fifty pages out of one hundred and fifty seven are devoted to poems about Emma, Hardy’s first wife, most of them written after her death in 1912. Here is just one.
You can find many more, all full of nostalgia and regret for what has been lost. You imagine a great love, until you read about what from the outside seems not to have been at all a happy marriage.
I find myself wondering what Hardy in his 70s was remembering fondly other than early physical passion or the first real love he knew breaking into his isolation from other humans. Perhaps I read too much of my own life into his.
I have continued to go down to GANNET each morning and get some work done. I go earlier each day to avoid the heat. I have found that 9 am is too late. So is 8. I usually wake at 6 or 6:30 and like to take a glass of juice and a cup of coffee back to bed and read for an hour or so. No longer. I woke at 5:30 this morning and biked down to GANNET a little after 7. Sunrise this morning was 6:27. I completed three of the tasks on my list before drowning in sweat at 8 and biking back home.
No comments:
Post a Comment