Many Hopes Are Buried Here

 

By Marylin Biggs Schultz

 

Mary Dickens Biggs, grandmother of Marylin Biggs Schultz. Family photo, all rights reserved.

carved into granite
“many hopes are buried here”
broken hearts and lives

About this haiku: “As I begin to compose a haiku, I must appear to be drumming my fingers to a silent tune in my head, but those familiar with this poetic form, will know that I’m counting the syllables required in each line; 5-7-5. I hoped to use the inscription from my grandmother’s gravestone, and as fate would have it, there are seven. Here is my haiku for a dear one I never met but hold in love: Mary Dickens Biggs. (My father is the little boy barely visible in the back.)” -Marylin Biggs Schultz

–posted posthumously for Liz’s mother, Marylin Biggs Schultz                                  (May 21st, 1937 – September 5th, 2019)

_________________________

About Marylin: Marylin (aka oliverowl) was a freelance writer living in Wyoming. She wrote essays for a weekly column in the Ventura Star Tribune, collaborated with her grandson on two picture books for children, and wrote with the Cody Writers. Her previous pieces for redRavine include the travel essay Rollin’ Easy, a Writing Practice, Kindness, and two memoir pieces, Images From The Past  and Two Little Girls & A World At War.

In 2010, Marylin was published in the book, From the Heart — Writing in the Shadow of the Mountain, a collection of work from members of Write On Wyoming (WOW), a group of authors and aspiring writers living in northeastern Wyoming. Her contributions to From the Heart include two works of fiction, To Love Bertie Lou and The Appointment Book, and a collection of haiku, Seasons in Wyoming.

-related to post: haiku 4 (one-a-day) Meets renga 52

Read Full Post »

Frieda Lawrence – ‘Til Death Do We Part

 

Not I, But The Wind, tombstone of Frieda Lawrence, near Taos, New Mexico, February 2007, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

 Emma Maria Frieda Johanna Freiin
(Baroness) von Richthofen

In Memory of twenty five years of incomparable companionship – Angie

Emma Maria Frieda Johanna Freiin (Baroness) von Richthofen was a distant relative of the “Red Baron” Manfred von Richthofen. But she became famous as Frieda Lawrence, wife of the British novelist D. H. Lawrence. Married to David Herbert Lawrence for 18 years, Frieda returned to Taos after his death in Vence, France in 1930, to live with her third husband, Angelo Ravagli.

After Lawrence’s death, she wrote Not I, but the Wind about her nomadic and turbulent years with D. H. Lawrence. It was released by Viking in 1934 and sold for $2.50. The book title is from the poem, Song of a Man Who Has Come Through, and contains many of Lawrence’s unpublished letters. 

In a Time magazine article, D.H.L. – Last Word, published Monday, October 8th, 1934, Frieda admits the relationship was stormy, and that Lawrence would sometimes lash out, and hit her in rage. She did not remain silent. It wasn’t her way:

“I did not want to write this book,” says she. “I wanted to give Lawrence my silence.” Then, with refreshing candor: “Do I want to blow my own trumpet? Yes, I do. . . . I will try to write as honestly as I can. Lies are all very well in their place but the truth seems to me so much more interesting and proud.”

ybonesy and I visited the D. H. Lawrence Memorial in February of 2007 on one of our “free days” at a writing retreat at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House. She read Frieda’s epitaph out loud and we chuckled when she mistook incompatible for incomparable.

It is said that Mabel traded Kiowa (the D. H. Lawrence Ranch) to the Lawrences for the manuscript, Sons and Lovers. And she welcomed them to stay at her home when they were in Taos. But according to the Time article, Mabel’s and Frieda’s relationship was strained:

As for Lawrence’s women worshipers, Frieda put up with them as long, as she could, then made a scene.

One day in Taos, N. Mex., whither they had been invited by Mabel Dodge Sterne Luhan (Lorenzo in Taos), “Mabel came over and told me she didn’t think I was the right woman for Lawrence and other things equally upsetting and I was thoroughly roused and said: ‘Try it then yourself, living with a genius, see what it is like and how easy it is, take him if you can.’

If Frieda’s epitaph is any indication, she found a kindred spirit in Angelo Ravagli. The day we walked the winding path to her headstone was blue and chilled. Ice dripped off the tin roofs. Crows swooped in over the power lines. Dorothy Brett’s blue chair sat motionless in her cabin; the typewriter she used to type D. H.’s manuscripts was gone.

Near the Lawrence’s cabin, knotted branches of Georgia’s pine rose in spiky swirls to the sky. Not much had changed. Time seemed to stand still. We walked step by step over the same land they had walked in the 1920’s. The same sun beat through the oxygen-thin altitude.

I thought of everything I had read and heard, including the uproar over Lady Chatterley’s Lover and D. H.’s rocky relationships with women. Frieda answered those questions, too:

“In his heart of hearts I think he always dreaded women, felt that they were in the end more powerful than men.” And her indignant denial that in Lawrence there was anything of the pornographer: “Passionate people don’t need tricks.”

        

Frieda Lawrence, photograph on her tombstone outside the D. H. Lawrence Memorial, near Taos, New Mexico, February 2007, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Well, not quite. Between the two lovers, flows a river of contradiction. Through letters and words. Even in death.

As Lawrence lay dying he said to her: “Why, oh why, did we quarrel so much?” She answered: “Such as we were, violent creatures, how could we help it?”

-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, March 16th, 2008

-quotes are from the original Time magazine article, D.H.L. – Last Word, Monday, October 8th, 1934

-related to posts: The Name Game (What’s In A Name?), Giants Sat Here

Read Full Post »

The Name Game (What’s In A Name?)

I continue to pore through photographs and tapes of my trip to Georgia and South Carolina last summer.

“What’s taking you so long?” Monkey Mind yells from the wings (grabbing every opportunity to scratch his haunches).

“It’s a slow process, excavating the past,” I soberly reply. “Don’t rush me.”

Family history rises from the rich, black compost – memories, stories, memories of stories, sail by, like wispy transparent dots in front of my eyes. Then sink to the bottom while I digest. Pieces of kelp and seaweed. A crab leg floats by. Sometimes fresh catfish on the grill. Everything is grist for the mill.

When we drove from cemetery to cemetery last June, I listened to my parents recall details of their lives. I taped their voices (a gold mine). I took hundreds of photographs of the things left behind:  ancient magnolias, crumbling brick, historic churches, lazy rivers, proud neighborhoods, rundown houses, antebellum architecture, and chiseled headstones. So many headstones.

My eyes sweep the marble and granite for the slightest hint of who my ancestors were:  dates, places of birth and death, poetic epitaphs. And names.

But what’s in a name?

My sister is the namesake of my great, great Aunt Cassie. One of my brothers is named in honor of my uncle who died less than a month before I was born. Another brother is named after his grandfather and is a III. And yet another is named after his dad and is a Junior (yes, it’s complicated in my family!).

My mother’s middle name is her dad’s first name with -ine on the end (this is common in the South). My grandfather’s middle name doesn’t sound like a birth name at all, but more like a last name. And I want to make a point of asking Mom if his middle name is generational, and is really his mother’s last name.

Whew!

Remember that song, The Name Game written and sung by Shirley Ellis in 1964? (If not, please feel free to refresh your memory by watching the video! It’s a real blast from the past.). The lyrics go something like this:

The name game!

Shirley!
Shirley, Shirley bo Birley Bonana fanna fo Firley
Fee fy mo Mirley, Shirley!

Lincoln!
Lincoln, Lincoln bo Bincoln Bonana fanna fo Fincoln
Fee fy mo Mincoln, Lincoln!

Shirley Ellis used to take requests and make a rhyme out of anybody’s name. It’s crazy, but this song was a HUGE hit when I was a kid. People love to hear the sound of their own names.

The Name Game. Many of us don’t use our real names on our blogs. Others do. But we don’t have to reveal our birth names to talk about where they came from.

Who are you named after? Do you know the historical origin of your last name (or is your last name hyphenated to preserve your mother’s history). What about your first? Do you know another person with the same name? Were you named after someone famous? Or did your parents choose your name because they loved the sound of it. Or wanted to make you stronger (a boy named Sue?).

When we are long gone, our names are the one thing that will live on through time. My great, great grandmother wanted to be remembered by the things she loved. What epitaph would you want next to your name?

   Her Life Was Simple, and Edges,
   Augusta, Georgia, June 2007, all photos
   © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

-posted on red Ravine, Thursday, March 13th, 2008

Read Full Post »