PLEASE NOTE: This is the last of my posts that you will find here at Blogger. *my juicy little universe* has now officially moved to Substack. Find me here from now on:
https://heidimordhorstwhispershout.substack.com/
My friend Mary Lee gave me this book just before we began preparing in earnest for the much-vaunted* temporary move to Brighton, England, this “junior year abroad,” as another someone I love brilliantly termed it. I would have wanted the book in any case, being generally a Maggie Smith fan, but this particular title feels particularly apt. It feels so apt that I’m going to be reflecting today on nothing BUT the title, since I haven’t yet read a single poem in it. However, it is noteworthy that A SUIT OR A SUITCASE is literally the only poetry book** I brought with me when we flew on August 28.
**This is an outright lie. Of course I brought many poetry books, like two dozen, in a hard-sided suitcase (looking at you, Janet Wong) that Fiona has owned since 1989 (the year that I did not marry her but someone else; see how much there is to unpack?). But the two dozen are MY books, a handful of essential anthologies (looking at you, Pomelo Books), and a minicollection of books I might use for a first “Spooky Poems” workshop for kids, if I can swing it. ASOAS is the only poetry book for ADULTS that I brought with me.
So here I am, on the fourth day of our occupation at No. 2 KittyCat Mews (the alias of our wee semidetached housie complete with walled garden), with suitcases unpacked and deliveries received from IKEA, etc….and so focused have I been on all the things—by which I mean the actual objects—that we consider needful for our little life here, that today is really the first time in weeks that I’m considering how this whole adventure suits me, how well suited I am to resettle once again in a new home 46 years after my first trip abroad in 1980 (to England, as it happens). Now that I have emptied the suitcases, do I have the right clothing? the right suit for the purpose? What is, what are, the purposes? A SUIT OR A SUITCASE…Or is that suitcase as in nutcase? Is a nutcase simply a shell for a nut, like a suitcase is simply a container for suits, like a suit is a simply a case for a body?
The blurb of Maggie’s book starts, “Is the body a suit or suitcase? Do I wear it or does it carry me?” I’m pretty sure that in the course of her book, Maggie’s going to get to an answer which isn’t any answer: “Both and neither; more than either.” At least that’s the answer I’ve been noodling on for some years now, and wow, does upping stakes and moving house focus one’s attention on the condition of one’s essential home, the body!
*Incidentally, “upping stakes” is nomadic for untethering your tent, rolling it up and moving on to the next temporary home. I tried really hard not to make such a big fuss about this temporary relocation as I did about the whole year when we took the kids, aged 4 and 8, to Paris—but all the fuss, the much vaunting, seems to be unavoidable. I have come to understand that my essential home, my body and all its mindful soulful contents, only feels really comfortable with a physical home around it. Oddly, that can be a treehouse or boxcar, a hotel room or guest room, an apartment or cottage, whatever! I can be pretty adventurous, AS LONG AS I am free to “dress” the home as suits me. I need to rearrange and optimize, forage and fix up, innovate and decorate. (The stated intention for KittyCat Mews is WHIMSY; see “The Farmyard” below, using only what I found already in the garden.)
So yes, I needed a couple dozen books, I needed some tablecloths and napkins, I needed the smallest possible reminders of various friends and relations, I needed the tongs I have used for 24 years which are like an extension of my cooking hand. I needed 2 works of art by my children and the hairclips of a particular size which are hard to get and who has time to track them down in Brighton? I am too busy visiting charity shops in search of whimsical mugs and, from the safety of this house, visiting new places, physical and metaphysical, to test my bravery. It’s not so much what I might encounter here that requires bravery; it’s what I’ve left behind, what it feels like I might lose—
and see, it’s taken me all this noodling to get to the crucial question. It’s not “Is the body a suit or suitcase?” but “Am I myself no matter where I am?” The books, the napkins, the tongs, the art, the hairclips are all to remind me who I am, suggesting that there’s some work to do on tethering the interior of the tent.
So here’s an Instadraft in response to Margaret’s Inklings Challenge to try a poem that includes a kenning, “a figurative compound word that takes the place of an ordinary noun.”
anchored inside a circle of tent-stakes
trailing turquoise and green, black, blue and red
I write myself bigger on the inside***
Thanks to Patricia at Reverie for hosting us all today! Looking forward to getting back in the groove this weekend, and to reading the kennings of other Inklings.
***I aspire to be dimensionally transcendental, don’t you?
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