In the Labyrinth

Donald Hall: One Road

(Photos by Peter Zelei/istockphoto and John Robert Shepard)

This happened across my internet desk one morning, and I stopped everything to read it. The poet Donald Hall wrote a short story about a journey he took post-WWII with his very young bride, driving from Oxford to Greece by way of Yugoslavia. It is one of those effortless pieces of writing that immediately draws you in and holds you captive to the end of the journey. It conveys the desire (and fearlessness) of the young to travel as a form of self-discovery. It is also a detailed travelogue of a world now much changed and a graceful reflection on a life that is only possible from a great distance (Hall wrote this essay when he was 84). Take a moment and enjoy.

"I" December of 1952, my first wife, Kirby, and I left Vienna to drive through the Russian sector of Austria into Yugoslavia. At the border crossing, on a two-lane Macadam road with no other car in sight, we stopped to present documents that permitted us to enter Marshal country. Walking back to our car afterward, we met a man heading in the opposite direction, toward Austria. He had emerged from a big black car, and he looked important, like a diplomat or a capo. Seeing the initials of national origin on our small Morris convertible, he addressed us in English. I held in my hand our confusing travel directions. We asked the man if Zagreb was straight ahead.

No one told us there is only one road in Yugoslavia."

The Challenge of Sharing an Office: Side by Side

My husband and I share an office—a modest rectangular room in a small condo in Boulder, which is noted for its small apartments. Here is how we each occupy our own space. His side is so clean and Zen. Martial arts certificates are in a neat row on the surface of his desk, quiet, waiting. 

And this is my side -- and, to be fair, made more mad by the 1970s mirror-closet doors! Even still, I am probably hiding small birds unseen in nests made of the left-over weaving thrums or behind the pile of books I have yet to read. I know it is a mess, but I enjoy it. 

 

A Few Thoughts on The Swan Maiden Narratives

Rediscovering earlier notes for my article The Swan Maiden's Feathered Robe -- I always like to circle back to these notes because they continue to offer insights. These were notes made from BF LEavy, In Search of the Swan Maiden: A Narrative on Folklore and Gender.

I have long been fascinated by the "Animal Bride" stories for their narrative tension. So often in fairy tales, rites of passage narratives lead to the successful initiation into adulthood and marriage. But Animal Brides prove more of a cautionary tale -- and seem to end as often in misery and unhappy marriages.

One of the more interesting observations I came across in my reading is a quote from Bruce Kapferer in Barbara Fass Leavy's In Search of the Swan Maiden that Animal Bride stories (such as Selkie or Swan Maiden stories where the animal bride is coerced into marriage by the theft of her animal skin) present a paradox of women's lives in the tales:

Women, "believed to be more quickly prone than a man to revert to a state of nature...are nonetheless entrusted with the task of rooting man in culture and raising her children in such a way as to prevent behavior threatening to society as a whole." It's an interesting idea when we recall the marriages of Selkies, Kitsune, Mermaids, and Swan Maidens -- where the seemingly compliant brides actually retain their wild natures under the veneer of domestication and the presumed pull of children. The tension is never resolved in the story -- the domestic and the wild are never integrated, except in the children who possess both human and animal traits -- and more often those children revert to animal form and follow their mother.

If we consider that the body of narratives in any society generally cluster around areas of the greatest social conflict in a community -- rites of passage to adulthood, marriage, and the birth of children -- it makes sense that there will be stories that serve to affirm and encourage the listeners to embrace social expectations, just as there would be tales that would explore the emotional devastation of such unions gone awry -- because they can and do matter in the real lives of the listeners. 

Illustration : Swan Maidens, JM Landin, Themes of Swan Maiden Lore