I am content to loll in this chair of native grass and think how delightful is the pastime of meditation, how happy is that one who drifts unaware of life's complexities, chasing the blue in the elusive curve of the arching sky. A camel paces slowly by, swinging down the yellow roadway; the slender minaret of a mud village raises an inquiring shaft; a crowd of dark-robed turbaned figures against brown walls form and vanish.
Pilgrims venture forth from their dove-cote towers, sweep and whirl and circle back to their verandas to squat mundanely. A gleaming bronzed body stretches toward the saffron sky of evening, then bends low toward the gliding waters of the Nile, as he empties and fills round dripping buckets of sheep skin.
A flock of brown curly sheep herded by their shepherd pauses -- a lonely group upon a distant rock. Is that what living is? Is that the depth of our understanding of the pulsing mystery of life? Just silhouettes. Ah, me! When I get old, will my collection of memories be merely pictures on the granite walls of my yesterdays? Allah! Allah! Teach me.
Have just had communication from Mark [a Smithy girlfriend] and Clara and it urges me toward next winter. What am I going to do with my life? In Africa, Mr Kelly regarded me with a stern look over his horn-rimmed glasses and demanded an answer to that question. At my vague and rambling vindications for my drifting days, he advised me to march under the white banner of Christianity and spread the light through the black countries of darkest night. I escaped narrowly by confiding to him that I was an infidel, a heathen of the most deadly species. All through China and Japan, I eluded that self-same banner, but I know someday that it will get me. I feel it. I have dark and sinister forebodings. It's like that old song. Mr. love will get you yet.
We had a jolly picnic one day on the [French Riviera] islands of Saint Marguerite and Saint Honorat -- Virginia Speare, Carl and Olive and mother and Gladys and I. Coming home in the white-and-gold motor boat, the afterglow on the snow-covered peaks touched each one in turn with its soft glow. It was the loveliest thing to watch them being lighted one by one like torches.
When we were all circled around the fire and Virginia was speeding toward Nice, Carl came in and announced to us that "Your brother is in love -- I am crazy about her." Continued he: "I want to kiss her!" But the next day, he went away, leaving us a band of seeking pilgrims and never a word said he. He left, lonely forever, for the kings of the sea.
I wish he would marry Virginia. But he won't. There is a brother and a sister in the hotel now. Carl once pointed them out to me, prophesying the same end for us both. None of us will ever marry anyone.
*
I am so excited. A letter from Mark again, says she is coming over in July. Hurrah! Hooray! Hurray! Now cruel destiny which has kept us apart will have to withdraw to the wings. She wants to go home by way of Panama. Oh, boy! To be free to roam the flood, to climb the mountain's crest. She, Mark, feels the same way about labor and matrimony as any untrammeled soul does. Not that I have ever been urged toward either abyss -- no! But I am content to be free, free to be at the feet of the whole world. I'll travel anywhere, in anything. I'll put to sea in a pea green boat, a sampan, or a felucca, whatever Mark's navigating eye encompasses. But 18 days is such a little time. But what's that tiny fragment in all eternity if one is traveling under the airy brand of fancy instead of the iron hand of a schedule?
NOTES AND COMMENTERY
Just silhouettes. Does anything else need to be said? At all?
Well, okay, maybe. For one thing, this is Kathi being fairly introspective, which she rarely is to any large degree and even then, glancingly. And, interestingly, toward the end of the entry, truths are told and fortunes read with utmost accuracy: neither she nor brother Carl ever married. Sister Gladys, yes, once, in a union that did not last, but Kathi and Carl, nope. I guess they already knew who they were. And let’s not forget that they were born on the same day, in the same year. Twins. A fact that is never mentioned in any of her writings and that I only found out last year, via the historical record.
My mother once told me that Carl was gay. She based this on the fact that, after his terrible experience in Russia at the hands of the Cossacks, he stepped off the train in Iowa with his own private cook, a handsome Russian import, and who would do that, in rough-and-tumble Iowa, in 1921, other than a man otherwise inclined? That’s what she said. And that’s the kind of conclusion-jumping person she was, a trait that somehow feels familiar. Nonetheless, who knows?
i'm so glad you like it and take the time to comment. yes, they were very rich. neither kathi nor gladys worked a day in their lives. everything was paid for by their iowa lumber-and-banking baron brother franklin (my grandfather). i wish i knew more about kathi's life and how she led it but i don't. i'm just hoping it was farm-life happy enough.
Erik, this is so fun to read. There were really rich people who had these experiences ( suppose there are still people who have this life). Being a hick from the sticks, fun seeing how others live their life. Still not sure they were as happy as our life on the farm. We didn’t even know about lunch out somewhere.