MindSpinner

I remember reading years ago Beryl Markham’s poetic and gutsy (yes, both) memoir of her life in Africa, West With the Night. Markham made the horizons of a life seem potentially almost limitless. Hers is still one of the most beautifully written memoirs I’ve read (no matter how much of a hand her third husband did or didn’t have in writing it). But as I read, I thought, You’re not telling me the half of it. If you lived and perceived this bravely and beautifully, the personal aspects of your life probably also reflected adventurous courage. So I read a biography, too, to satisfy my curiosity. (I am not an avid reader of biographies, generally. If drama is life with the dull bits cut out, as Alfred Hitchcock said, biography is life with the dull bits intact.) I don’t even remember which biography it was, though it might have been Straight on ‘Til Morning, by Mary Lovell. (That title seems to ring a bell - besides Peter Pan, that is.) Whichever biography it was, it confirmed what I suspected. Markham hadn’t told her readers many of the intimate aspects of her remarkable life, but only what she had distilled as the legacy of her memories. So she gave us memories and vision, but not whom she slept with or even married. I respected her choices because those choices respected people and situations.

I’ve thought about blogging in the light of Markham’s memoir. As a blogger, I think I’d rather be a Beryl Markham than a Stephanie Klein. Not that I’m in any danger whatsoever of being likened to either, but one does like to sort out hypothetical questions. Of course, I have a challenge Markham never faced - a preponderance of dull bits as opposed to solo transatlantic flights, lions, and so forth. So if I manage to shape something worth writing and reading out of my dull bits, or better yet reach out and snatch better bits whenever the gods of endless responsibility glance the other way, I figure I may be accomplishing something courageous, even heroic, too.

The whole project is analogous to ongoing efforts in my backyard garden, which is no less than a life-long attempt to make an Eden out of bad dirt, a lot of weeds, and, currently, a plague of Japanese beetles. So there’s still a lot of bad dirt, and there are still a lot of weeds, and the horrid beetles have stripped the grape vines bare, but there’s the someday shade garden and the stone path, lilies and roses, thyme, rosemary, and lavender, two goldfish in the planter-pot-turned-pond, and, today, a handful of ripe blackberries to eat out of hand. Perhaps this blog is yet one more quest to make life not only habitable but beautiful, dull bits and all.