Katherine Mansfield... a small and unexpected pilgrimage

Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others ... Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.
(Journal entry, 14 October 1922)
― Katherine Mansfield, Journal of Katherine Mansfield

 

Gert surprised me by taking me on a small pilgrimage to Fontainebleau, France ... to the grave of my most favourite New Zealand author, born 76 years before me. A much-loved author, a woman I might have modeled my life on if I had known of her when I was young.

She fled New Zealand before she was 20, striking out in a world that was bigger than her 1903 Wellington, New Zealand, world.  She returned home then left again, forever, in 1908 and died in Avon, near Fontainebleu, in 1923 ...aged 34.

She knew so many writers, forming close friendships with D.H.Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, to name two.

Katherine’s friendship with Virginia Woolf was an extraordinary blend of intimacy, rivalry and mutual admiration. Artistically, they were intimates. Culturally they were hemispheres apart.

After Katherine’s death Virginia confided to her diary that Katherine's writing was: “the only writing I have ever been jealous of.”

And so it was. Katherine was bold.  She wrote: I believe the greatest failing of all is to be frightened...  in a letter to her husband, John Middleton Murry, 18 October 1920.

She revolutionised the 20th Century English short story. Her best work shakes itself free of plots and endings and gives the story, for the first time, the expansiveness of the interior life, the poetry of feeling, the blurred edges of personality. She is taught worldwide because of her historical importance but also because her prose offers lessons in entering ordinary lives that are still vivid and strong. And her fiction retains its relevance through its open-endedness—its ability to raise discomforting questions about identity, belonging and desire.

NZEdge.com.

And so, we called by, visiting her grave today.  Said our hellos and photographed that place where she stopped with her wandering, leaving her work to travel the world on her behalf, inspiring others oftentimes ...

But honestly, who wouldn't love her?  That woman who wrote ... The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

The New Baby ...

Or perhaps I should write, the new secondhand baby ...

The Belgian bloke and I were up early and out the door before 8am this morning.  It's Sunday and we had decided to head out to the huge outdoor Sunday market in Waterloo. 

The range of stuff you can find there is remarkable, perhaps even more so for a girl from smalltown New Zealand.  There is so much really ancient stuff.  200+ stalls, laid out in an orderly fashion, allowing you to explore the entire market and not get confused.  There's a delightful mix of genuine antiques, that stuff that looks like it's been pulled directly from someone's cellar or attic without stopping to clean it along the way, and more contemporary 'stuff'.

The new baby may have traveled that middle path, straight from the attic, undusted.  It was quite stiff from lack of use and Gert had the unenviable job of breathing new life into it. 

It's a little orange Standard Ugro and I can't find one online so far and now I'm wondering if it's older than we realised.

Anyway ... anyone who knew me back in those days that were filled with tortuous hours of learning to touch-type on old Olivetti typewriters would now collapse laughing over my delight at playing with this little orange machine ...

I love it.

Hair On Her Teeth ...

I'm just in from an evening out in Antwerpen. 

It's 1am, and I'm still recovering from seeing a young and relatively inexperienced Dutch team beat the pants off an experienced world champion Spanish team ... 5-0.

Extra time was a nail-biting experience simply because it still seemed entirely possible that Holland might score again and that, that would have been too embarassing to watch.

But I have to confess, there is something so good about finding yourself at a cafe in Grote Markt, sitting with a lovely Flemish guy you consider a friend, watching the football on a big-screen there at the cafe where you're attending an official function.

We drank our wine.  Vic put up with my enthusiasm for the game while Gert was off and doing his work there in the crowd.  It was quite the balmy summer's night and the sky was clear. 

The football-watching crowd were divided.  There were some who supported the Spanish however ... and I might be the only person who reports on this truth ... a large number of Belgians here were overjoyed when Holland won.

Really!

Towards the end of the evening, I met a small crowd of 20+ something Belgian blokes as we were leaving.  One of them mistook me for an Australian and it quickly turned into a mocking kind of tournament.

An older woman, a friend of Gert's, leaned over and said admiringly of me, that I was one of those women with hair on her teeth ...

Why yes, that is a compliment here.  I was worried it was about not brushing however it simply means that I'm not someone who can be easily taken down in conversational combat.  (or something like that.  i may have to stand corrected.)

I was quite proud, as the last person who congratulated me on my mocking brilliance was Vinnie Paul, way back when I was 16.  It's been a while.

Anyway, all that to simply write, it's been a lovely evening here in the flatlands of Belgium tonight.

In These Days ...

These days find me consumed by a writing course that I'm doing ...

Consumed.  In a way that I haven't been since those rare occasions when school or uni were teaching me things that I was passionate about. 

Writing was my first love, closely followed by photography, way back in my childhood.  But it was writing that took most of my attention when I lived in New Zealand.  Then I flew, I was teacher for while, I wandered some, and I mostly misplaced my writing ... in one sense. 

In another way, blog-writing arrived and I started out on a different kind of writing.  One that I probably didn't really consider as 'writing' ... it occurs to me now, as I realise I have never stopped writing.  I only stopped writing that novel.  I only packed away my manuscript of interviews with climbers.  I only stopped the book-orientated writing.

But anyway, I am writing again.  I have book I want to finish soon.  It's complicated.  I almost made it simple but that would be silly.  I like complications ... why would I write a simple book. 

All that to say, if you're thinking you have a book in you, if you want to explore the whole process ... from the idea to the publishing (including all the tiny details along the way), then I highly recommend you take Christine Mason Miller's course, The Conscious Booksmith.

It's consuming, and fun, and satisfying, and exciting ... it contains all the elements of a damn fine adventure actually.

Oh!  And adventures.  I'm off road-tripping to France next week.  My Belgian bloke has surprised me with a small pilgrimage, in honour of one of my favourite New Zealand authors.  Really surprised and delighted me.

In July, I'm road-tripping, with Helen, to Italy.  Oh the adventures we have planned.  I shall be blogging that road-trip.

August is Norway and I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to spending time with Ren.

For now ... it's all about waiting for this special couple's little girl to arrive in the world. And there a ballet performance and a poetry reading planned for tomorrow.  Dank u wel, to the lovely Ruth, who organises some of my best adventures here.