From reading

Every couple of months, my wife's friend gives us a small pile of New Yorker magazines. They make a fine nice night's browsing and reading; cartoons, poems, book reviews, articles.

A few weeks ago, I was going through a recent stack and read a poem by an author I did not know. The poem was, Claude Monet, "The Artist's Garden at Vetheuil, 1880", by Ciaran Carson. I really liked it. In fact, I hopped on Thriftbooks and ordered two of his books, blindly.

I have been reading his prose book, Fishing for Amber; alternating essay/chapters of pub myths and Annie Dillard-like esoteric dives into nuggets of the world. Frankly, I have been skipping the pub stories and deeply enjoying, and quoting, the others - all of them loosely connected like Nabakov coincidences.

So he's writing at length about marigolds, Genus calendula in Latin: colors, medicinal properties, etc. And that word, the sound of it, rings a bell. It was my Aunt Clara's "real" name, her Italian name, Calendula. So she was Marigold. Which, poignantly, was the affectionate name my caretaker/brother called my Mom, Marijane, when they were joshing - Marigold.

And then yesterday in the Sunday New York Times an obituary for Ciaran Carson. Of course, his words and books remain, but there is something of the passing serendipitous stranger in this (perhaps one you might meet in a pub), one who you meet once, but who somehow touches you deeply, changes you in an intimate way.

And so, I keep reading.