WHAT DOES ANNE CARRY?
Nonfiction
by
M. Ann Reed
by
M. Ann Reed
My heart – along with her early-childhood love-starved life tempered by the holiness of her heart’s affections, the truth of her imagination, and her unsurpassed empathy for Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott, her capacious heart ready to be a part of all she meets, her imagined kindred spirits, Katie Maurice, Violetta and her readers, her scope for imagination, her big words to express big ideas, her sublime appreciation for beauty, her speechlessness along the “Avenue,” which imagination could not improve and which she renames, The White Way of Delight, her ritual of naming other places such as the Lake of Shining Waters so that they realize her appreciation, the pleasant ache of her true home, Green Gables, her sense of proportion to like babies in moderation, but to consider unbearable twins three times in succession from whom she learns to cure croup, her ability to turn an apology to Mrs. Rachel Lynde into a pleasure, her ability to express Marilla’s deep-down-in-her-heart critical unspoken truths, her bosom friend, Diana, reminder of my childhood friend from Prince Edward Island, who always floats through liquid memory in her soft white dress, her long auburn hair rippling down her back while she forever plays the cello – a Druid, a woodland nymph all spirit and fire and dew who introduced me to Anne.
Anne carries her literary predecessor, Jane Eyre, her literary beneficiary, Harry Potter and, between them, her most relatable, loveable, loquacious character, cordially embracing us, her imagined friends. Oh, yes she had wanted to be called Cordelia! Re-experience her cordial chatter drawing out speechless Matthew Cuthbert: “Which would you rather be if you had the choice – divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?” And when we, perplexed along with Matthew, “don’t exactly know,” Anne kindles and kins him and us with her humble and honest, “Neither do I. I can never decide. . . . it isn’t likely I’ll ever be either.”
She carries the gipsy wind in her hair, the chatter between leaves, bird-song from hollows and meadows, whispers of purring and rustling, her greetings to the Snow Queen, the birches, the dear grey house on the hill, Diana’s garden, a cornucopia of bleeding hearts, crimson peony splendor, fragrant narcissi, thorny-sweet Scotch roses, a rainbow of columbines, lilac-tinted Bouncing Bets, clumps of southernwood, ribbon grass, mint, purple Adam-and-Eve, daffodils, masses of sweet clover, . . . scarlet lightning shooting fiery lances over prim white musk-flowers where sunshine lingers and bees hum, their wings, beguiled into loitering, her wonder if good violets have amethyst souls. Through all of her embracing’s, Anne carries us, not as eavesdroppers, but as kindred spirits in conversation with her and all whom she meets, bringing them and us into her bliss – her dizzying heights of joy, her trembling depths of despair, her love that savors – depends upon – beauty and truth, her protean, improvisational musical chatter full of subject changes and stories that bring out what has been hidden or buried within us: unmet or unfaced hopes in the graveyard of sacred suffering too great for words: the death of a loving mother or father or parent-figure, the hazing of a brother, the water-boarding of a husband, the deporting of friends, the plight of the polar bear and whale and bee. Not even Gilbert Blythe escapes years of suffering – chosen sacred suffering of Anne’s excruciating depths of pain that he had unsuspectingly inflicted upon her, whose tender desire was to be beautiful and to be a bringer of beauty who brings out the beauty in others. Her gift of conversation is that beauty accomplishing just that! When Anne wonders why women cannot become ministers, a suggestion that Mrs. Rachel Lynde claims would be scandalous, and when Anne reflects to Marilla how Mrs. Lynde could pray and preach as well as Superintendent Bell, she brings out Marilla’s drollery, “Yes, I believe she could. She does plenty of unofficial preaching as it is.” Then, when Marilla turns the conversation to how no one in Avonlea has many chances to go amiss when Mrs. Lynde oversees them, Anne’s confidence surges to turn conversation again to her burning mystery: that there are people who bring out her desire to be good and people, such as Mrs. Lynde, who bring out her irresistible desire to be wicked – a desire to do just what she oughtn’t to do. When Anne wonders if she is really bad and unregenerate, Marilla laughs and shares a truth she had never before dared to speak, “If you are, I guess I am, too, Anne, for Rachel often has that very affect on me.” Marilla then punctuates her confession that Rachel would affect others better without nagging by declaring, “There should have been a special commandment against nagging.” How well Anne shows us that conversing is a ritual of our gradual conversion, an art of duet, improvising into being something new, irreplaceable, fulfilling in the moment and beyond into memory. She perfects the art of creating a good memory.
Anne carries us in conversation with her as she must have carried along Lucy Maud Montgomery. Are corporate places in digital spaces the triumph of commerce over conversation? “Who or what are we when we have lost the art of conversation with its demands to listen and be with the other and feel comfortable and even enjoy the slow pace of that art as one drifts with the current of what is said and what remains to be said, when words have not yet become talking points?”* Anne reminds us of who we can still be and become through the ritual joys of conversation. She reminds us that even the Miss Barrys in our lives can be conversed into kindred spirits, “Kindred spirits are not so scarce . . . It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.” Miss Stacy, Mrs. Allen . . . eventually Gilbert Blythe.
Anne carries us where our imaginations long to root, sprout and bloom to see heaven in a wildflower, Sufi-dancing in cherry trees; she carries us with the wind, each memory imprinted upon a white silk prayer flag linked to a larger stream of unending prayer flags intended to fly forever – to move beyond time-frames to make the surrounding space beautiful and bountiful with a life lived over-brimming from affection and appreciation. Yes, Marilla, Anne always knew how to pray!
She carries a prayer beneath all of her words. “Dear old world,” she begins her letter, “you are very lovely and I am glad to be alive in you” – a generous invitation to us to complete her prayer with ours.
_______________________
*Marilyn McEntyre, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies. Grand Rapid, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2009. All other Anne quotations are from L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, London, Penguin Books, Ltd, reprint of 1908 in 1994, reissued 2008.
Anne carries her literary predecessor, Jane Eyre, her literary beneficiary, Harry Potter and, between them, her most relatable, loveable, loquacious character, cordially embracing us, her imagined friends. Oh, yes she had wanted to be called Cordelia! Re-experience her cordial chatter drawing out speechless Matthew Cuthbert: “Which would you rather be if you had the choice – divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?” And when we, perplexed along with Matthew, “don’t exactly know,” Anne kindles and kins him and us with her humble and honest, “Neither do I. I can never decide. . . . it isn’t likely I’ll ever be either.”
She carries the gipsy wind in her hair, the chatter between leaves, bird-song from hollows and meadows, whispers of purring and rustling, her greetings to the Snow Queen, the birches, the dear grey house on the hill, Diana’s garden, a cornucopia of bleeding hearts, crimson peony splendor, fragrant narcissi, thorny-sweet Scotch roses, a rainbow of columbines, lilac-tinted Bouncing Bets, clumps of southernwood, ribbon grass, mint, purple Adam-and-Eve, daffodils, masses of sweet clover, . . . scarlet lightning shooting fiery lances over prim white musk-flowers where sunshine lingers and bees hum, their wings, beguiled into loitering, her wonder if good violets have amethyst souls. Through all of her embracing’s, Anne carries us, not as eavesdroppers, but as kindred spirits in conversation with her and all whom she meets, bringing them and us into her bliss – her dizzying heights of joy, her trembling depths of despair, her love that savors – depends upon – beauty and truth, her protean, improvisational musical chatter full of subject changes and stories that bring out what has been hidden or buried within us: unmet or unfaced hopes in the graveyard of sacred suffering too great for words: the death of a loving mother or father or parent-figure, the hazing of a brother, the water-boarding of a husband, the deporting of friends, the plight of the polar bear and whale and bee. Not even Gilbert Blythe escapes years of suffering – chosen sacred suffering of Anne’s excruciating depths of pain that he had unsuspectingly inflicted upon her, whose tender desire was to be beautiful and to be a bringer of beauty who brings out the beauty in others. Her gift of conversation is that beauty accomplishing just that! When Anne wonders why women cannot become ministers, a suggestion that Mrs. Rachel Lynde claims would be scandalous, and when Anne reflects to Marilla how Mrs. Lynde could pray and preach as well as Superintendent Bell, she brings out Marilla’s drollery, “Yes, I believe she could. She does plenty of unofficial preaching as it is.” Then, when Marilla turns the conversation to how no one in Avonlea has many chances to go amiss when Mrs. Lynde oversees them, Anne’s confidence surges to turn conversation again to her burning mystery: that there are people who bring out her desire to be good and people, such as Mrs. Lynde, who bring out her irresistible desire to be wicked – a desire to do just what she oughtn’t to do. When Anne wonders if she is really bad and unregenerate, Marilla laughs and shares a truth she had never before dared to speak, “If you are, I guess I am, too, Anne, for Rachel often has that very affect on me.” Marilla then punctuates her confession that Rachel would affect others better without nagging by declaring, “There should have been a special commandment against nagging.” How well Anne shows us that conversing is a ritual of our gradual conversion, an art of duet, improvising into being something new, irreplaceable, fulfilling in the moment and beyond into memory. She perfects the art of creating a good memory.
Anne carries us in conversation with her as she must have carried along Lucy Maud Montgomery. Are corporate places in digital spaces the triumph of commerce over conversation? “Who or what are we when we have lost the art of conversation with its demands to listen and be with the other and feel comfortable and even enjoy the slow pace of that art as one drifts with the current of what is said and what remains to be said, when words have not yet become talking points?”* Anne reminds us of who we can still be and become through the ritual joys of conversation. She reminds us that even the Miss Barrys in our lives can be conversed into kindred spirits, “Kindred spirits are not so scarce . . . It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.” Miss Stacy, Mrs. Allen . . . eventually Gilbert Blythe.
Anne carries us where our imaginations long to root, sprout and bloom to see heaven in a wildflower, Sufi-dancing in cherry trees; she carries us with the wind, each memory imprinted upon a white silk prayer flag linked to a larger stream of unending prayer flags intended to fly forever – to move beyond time-frames to make the surrounding space beautiful and bountiful with a life lived over-brimming from affection and appreciation. Yes, Marilla, Anne always knew how to pray!
She carries a prayer beneath all of her words. “Dear old world,” she begins her letter, “you are very lovely and I am glad to be alive in you” – a generous invitation to us to complete her prayer with ours.
_______________________
*Marilyn McEntyre, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies. Grand Rapid, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2009. All other Anne quotations are from L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, London, Penguin Books, Ltd, reprint of 1908 in 1994, reissued 2008.
M. Ann Reed is a poet, Chinese calligrapher-brush painter and professor of English Literature and Theory of Knowledge. She has taught in Malaysia, Ukraine, Bosnia-Herzegovina and China where traditional cultures regard literature a medical art. Her postdoctoral research studies the mending arts of poetry and drama. Her Chinese calligraphy and brush paintings have been exhibited in Portland, Oregon and at the Shenzhen Fine Arts Museum in China. Her poems have been published in various literary journals, including 64 Best Poets of 2018. Her chapbook, making oxygen, remaining inside this pure hollow note, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.
Author's statement: "The essay invites reflection on what the character of Anne offers for our lives today as it aims to be true to the spirit of L. M. Montgomery's character and writing purpose."