Sabbatical Journal: 18. A Fireworks Concert; One Week Left

Sunday 19 July. Outdoor concert, back lawn Audley End. 9:05 p.m.

The stage (west) is set against the back of the mansion. With its towers and weather vanes like pennants, the house looks like the Tower of London. Layer of clouds at the west, orange rim between the horizon and the clouds. Otherwise clear. Tchaikovsky's Romeo & Juliet, good sound.

Such picnics! Tables and chairs, baskets, wine, strawberries and cream, trifle, china, champagne glasses, Bailey's samples (as close as we get to cream at home!). Thermoses, coolers, umbrella staked out areas. Bugs. Casual dress, blankets.

Thomas: "Where does the music come from?"

Rolled down my sleeves at 8:30. A sweater would not be out of place.

Mara and the boys: playing catch with a green tennis ball at the fringes. We are in the southeast corner of the audience, in the back.

Fireworks at the end with the 1812 Overture. Smoke blows by in patterns against a clear sky, like a plant or a flower, a weed seed, borne by the wind. Purple, green and red smoke. I can almost picture battle smoke blowing by Audley End years and years ago. Red smoke, perhaps a spider mother laying eggs or babies.

Monday 20 July. After 10 p.m. Thunder, lightning (big, bold flashes) and rain for over an hour.

Reading Glittering Images by Susan Howatch. Page 270 (Fontana, paperback) (Jon Darrow (confessor, abbot of Fordites in Grantchester) to Charles Ashworth, novel's hero):

. . . if you regard him [your early self, the one who did things you can't forgive] with sympathy instead of horror then a different image will begin to appear in the mirror. Love and compassion breed understanding and forgiveness, and once a man's understood himself sufficiently to forgive himself for his mistakes, the unfitness is made whole, the unworthiness is redeemed -- and that's what we want, isn't it, Charles? We want to restore your belief in your own work so that you can find the courage to set aside the glittering image [not the true self] and triumph over this tyrant who's tormented you for so long.

Brian reportedly said, we should never have come. A 180 degree change from last year. Change of mind or just gossip?

We leave a week tomorrow. Cathy working herself silly, but in bed by 10 tonight. (I took a nap from five to seven.) Saturday, I think it was, I felt as I did last year before we left Las Vegas. I don't recall the exact feeling now, but I remember all of a sudden getting the feeling and remembering it from last year. (Another deja vu recently: stepping out of the shower, getting dressed for London, like Dancing at Laughnasa?) I also realize how I do not think much of the U.S., just our remaining time here. Like last year, I did not think much of England before we left New York. That is, I didn't spend much time dwelling on what England would be like, apart from the problems. I was too busy focusing on U.S. problems before we left.

Storm appears to have passed, though still rain . . .

Story, novel idea: our character sketches, e.g., nine children plus parents, small time frame, how you have all those points of view, disagreements, yet love keeps it all together.

Heard of short story that imagines characters in a painting!

Glittering Images again (p.272) Charles: "If I don't feel unfit and unworthy, then I won't be so dependent on people liking and approving me and I won't need the glittering image to secure their liking and approval."

Wednesday 22 July. 8 a.m.

Glittering Images (p.403) (Ashworth): "I wondered dimly how anyone ever survived their families."

p. 415 (from Dr. Romaine, Ashworth's natural father): "It's only the unconsummated passions of this world which go on and on like a never ending gramophone record, and personally I always think it's better to leap into bed and have done with it . . . ."

Thursday 23 July. After 8 a.m. Cool outside, blue sky with clouds.

My parents are up, as is Mara. Everyone else still in bed on the first full day of summer break.

I have an occasional knot in my stomach as we prepare to leave; sad at goodbye, also fearful that we will run out of money somewhere on the way home. I have to keep reminding myself that I must "trust in God." (In quotes because last night my mother said, "As my mother used to say . . ." and my father got after her about this, repeating the phrase, making fun of her. How often does she remark that I take the other side of what she says, but last night I came to her defense. Mer was wise. [Dad wanted Mom to say "As Robert says . . ." which she often does, though he claims never, perhaps never in front of him.] Anyway, in quotes because one of the things I remember that Mer used to often say was, "Trust in God." I can still hear her saying it.)

Of course I remember the same thoughts last year, worrying, when I really looked at what we were doing, about money. How could we afford all this? Forcing myself to suppress the worries and believe that everything would work out; and of course it did. (Miraculously! Fabulously!)

Speaking for myself: I have not once looked back. Never longed to be in Las Vegas, never missed "home"; nothing like that at all. It therefore seems somewhat strange to say that we're going "home," when, of course, we are home right now.

Do I hate Las Vegas, or perhaps just actively dislike it? I know when we first moved there I hated it. Later, however, I grew to like it. There was, after all, the attraction of family, and those magnificent vistas: clouds, mountains, sky. (I often think how much I would enjoy living in a place as green as England, but yesterday, as I read a description, in China Lake by Anthony Hyde, about the Mojave desert, I thought of Santa Fe and roasted chili, and hungered for the desert, at least the Santa Fe version.) After a few years, as family attachments to Las Vegas lessened (people went away to school, etc.) my economic attachments became paramount: the house, the nice income, the job, etc., as well as the prestige that attached to my job. Thus, my place in life since 1968.

It is strange that I have not missed Las Vegas. A sign that it holds no place in my heart.

Finished Glittering Images. Perhaps I am used to stronger action/conflict. It was essentially a slow unravelling of the inner psyche of Charles Ashworth, with a few twists and turns. Written well, but not as wonderful or as great as I would have expected from the jacket blurbs. Some good lines however. I particularly liked at the end, with Father Darrow acting like an exorcist, responding to threats and anger asserted against him: that's the demon of guilt, that's your demon of shame, that's your demon of rage. I felt as if those demons could have been my own and wondered how to exorcise them.

Funny how we form attachments at dinner conversations, going from one side to another.

Robert in tears last night, wants to see Seymours again. They're leaving Friday for holiday in Cornwall.