Category Archives: Emily Every Day

Let’s see. What to report? Venus in Scorpio. Mars in Leo. This is an unstable placement. Not surprising, Emily is in love. Crazy in love, it sounds like:

#247, 1861

What would I give to see his face?
I’d give — I’d give my life of course —
But that is not enough!
Stop just a minute — let me think!
I’d give my biggest Bobolink!
That makes two — Him — and Life!
You know who “June” is —
I’d give her —
Roses a day from Zanzibar —
And Lily tubes — like Wells —
Bees — by the furlong —
Straits of Blue
Navies of Butterflies — sailed thro’ —
And dappled Cowslip Dells —

Then I have “shares” in Primrose “Banks” —
Daffodil Dowries — spicy “Stocks” —
Dominions — broad as Dew —
Bags of Doubloons — adventurous Bees
Brought me — from Firmamental seas —
And Purple — from Peru —

Now — I have bought it —
“Shylock”? Say!
Sign me the Bond!
“I vow to pay
To Her — who pledges this —
One Hour — of her Sovereign’s Face”!
Ecstatic Contract!
Niggard Grace!
My Kingdom’s worth of Bliss!

First thing she’s ready to sign away is her life. A mere trifle. You might think that is all she has to offer. But no. Powerful Emily has at her disposal all of Nature. Birds. Roses. The entire month of June itself. All these belong to Emily. She encompasses all this. Hers to give away. Nature, its inhabitants and Time. She has everything except the one thing she wants—one hour with the one she loves.

Even more curious is her identification of him as her sovereign. He is the ruler of her heart. (I hear Irma Thomas warming up in the background.) What also catches my attention is how Emily arranges the world. There the great big him at the top. Then her. Then everything else. She rules all of Nature, but he rules her. She has no dominion over the one she loves. Her enormous power to possess dissolves in the face of her beloved.

That must be frustrating to be Queen of all the world and everyone in it, except the one she desires. All that power for . . . what? Nothing. What good is it if she can’t have the one she wants? (That’s a rhetorical question, of course. No answer is required.)

I find this discussion of love in financial and political terms interesting. All this business of banks and stocks and kingdoms is amazingly prescient. To be governed by love. Bought and paid for, too. Yep, it sure seems that way most times. Sometimes I think Emily had a time machine. She’s visiting our world and then going back to the 1860s to write about it. Then she puts it into a time capsule for us to find.

Have to say . . . it embarrasses me a little that she would throw herself after him like this. A modicum of dignity Emily, please.

Here is a remnant from the past. November 3rd, 2009. It had to marinate in the notebook for a bit before making its debut.

#514, c.1862

Her smile was shaped like other smiles —
The Dimples ran along —
And still it hurt you, as some Bird
Did hoist herself, to sing,
Then recollect a Ball, she got —
And hold upon the Twig,
Convulsive, while the Music broke —
Like Beads — among the Bog —

The satsumas are coming ripe. The meyer lemons in my side yard too. The fig tree is nearly lying on its side, so tired of trying to stand up on its own. I’ll have to post that up before too long or I’ll have a fig vine instead of a tree. My yard is so small that it’s hardly worth the name, yet I feel overwhelmed by the amount of work it takes to keep it going.

I pay tiny men to mow the lawn. When Geoff saw the patch of grass that I was referring to as the “lawn”—that I pay someone else to mow because I won’t— he tried hard not to laugh. I had to explain: I don’t cut my own hair, and I don’t mow my own lawn.

How can a smile hurt? When it stops. When the one smiling becomes distracted by some thought other than the one being smiled upon. Is it really that simple? Yes.

Today is the rare alignment, Saturn square Pluto, that all the astro-heads are hopped up about. My reading of it is this: Saturn square Pluto translates as, “Karma meets Transformation.” Or you could say: “Evolve or die.” Or put another way: “Evolve and die.” Or still another way: “Die and then evolve.” Any one of those could apply in this situation.

(Not for nothing, but the Saints play the Rams today. Pray for us sinners . . .)

Emily gave us two poems today. They are linked.

#744, c. 1863

Remorse is Memory — awake —
Her Parties all astir —
A Presence of Departed Acts —
At window — and at Door —

Its Past — set down before the Soul
And lighted with a Match —
Perusal — to facilitate —
And help Belief to stretch —

Remorse is cureless — the Disease
Not even God — can heal —
For ’tis His institution — and
The Adequate of Hell —

Then she gave us this one.

#745, c. 1863

Renunciation — is a piercing Virtue —
The letting go
A Presence — for an Expectation —
Not now —
The putting out of Eyes —
Just Sunrise —
Lest Day —
Day’s Great Progenitor —
Outvie
Renunciation — is the Choosing
Against itself —
Itself to justify
Unto itself —
When larger function —
Make that appear —
Smaller — Covered Vision — Here —

Remorse and Renunciation are cousins. They visit occasionally but not often enough. Remorse is the awareness of one’s own actions and the consequences. It is a sensitivity to the movement of karma in one’s life. It feels like a sickness, but it is “cureless” because nothing can mend past actions. Once you wake up to your own role in the flow of events, you can never shut down that awareness. Can never eradicate it from memory. Not even God himself could make a hell better than the one we make for ourselves with an excruciating awareness of our own responsibility for whatever we’re standing in. Rather, Emily wants us to know that this excruciating self awareness is one of the gifts God gave us. For what? A wider consciousness makes angels of us all. Eventually. Don’t stop here, she says. Keep moving.

Then comes renunciation. This is a more knotty thing. “A piercing virtue.” Oh, that’s hard to live with. It’s the cure that hurts. You must make some kind of sacrifice in order to progress beyond the square you’re standing on. Suffering is a form of vanity, surely. At the very least an unwholesome attachment. The ego loves to define itself to itself by telling its own stories over and over. Whatever it is that you are holding that keeps you where you are, let it go, Em says. Just release your grip. Let it go in the same neutral manner that one day lets go of its claim on earth with the unstoppable movement of the sun. Allow yourself to be new as the day.

There is no progress into a full sense of life, without an unambiguous renunciation of the past. Let it go, Emily instructs us. Not because it is good. Not because it is bad. Only because it is past.