Banquet

This morning, after a snowfall over night, I sat looking out as the light brought the white landscape to life.  It was so beautiful I couldn’t read.  I just kept looking up and staring out the window.  DeWitt Jones, a wonderful photographer, made a video of some of his photographs with a lecture about seeing.  In it, he quotes a line, I think from the New Testament, that stayed with me: “The banquet is laid though no one comes.” He was talking about how beautiful the world is even when there’s no one there to see it, and the words echoed in my head this morning as I looked out over all that big expanse of rolling hills to the east, lying under new snow, perfect and silent, and not a soul visible for miles.  There are people out there, of course, perhaps staring at the morning world over their coffee as I am, perhaps thinking, as I am, how incredibly lucky I am to see this.  The part of the planet I can see from here looks like a feast, a feast of shape and light and life. It seems at once so sturdy, so permanent, and so terribly vulnerable, for all it’s size, to the damage we humans do to the air and water and the earth itself.  We’ve learned to extract and manipulate the resources we want and turn them into waste and poison. Looking out over this big, rich world, it seems so insane that we are harming it. But it’s not those depressing thoughts that stay with me, it’s the sense of looking out on a banquet, a feast for the eyes and heart.

And speaking of banquets, we had a great one Friday night.  Tamar arrived, Dan and Mary and Jasmine joined us, and there was a feast of brisket, polenta, roasted vegetables, cole slaw and apple pie.  After dinner Dan brought down his guitar and gave us a wonderful concert.  The house felt full and warm and merry.  What a treat to have Tamar here! We had five games of scrabble – enough of a fix to hold me until Aviva gets back from Panama in March.  We play scrabble very much the way we play mah jongg – as an excuse to sit and complain about our tiles, to enjoy the occasional good luck or flash of genius, and just to be together. We have played scrabble for years, since we were kids in Amenia and watched our Mom and her friend Chava Rapkin bent over the board in deep concentration. Getting to play with the grown ups was a rite of passage, better than passing the swimming test that meant that you could swim without an adult at the lake.  We play with our own goofy rules.  We’re competitive, we certainly notice who wins and by how much, but we’re most competitive about the total score.  Tamar and I had one game (which she won) where we broke 800 total points, both of us over 400. We help each other, commiserating over too many vowels or no place to put a great word. We play with the dictionary open – and we’ve learned a lot of useless vocabulary and some fascinating etymology over the years.

Tamar is lovely company, and we missed her as soon as she left. Her coming and going made me more aware of how settled we are here, how much this feels like home. The cold and snow feel familiar, expected. The quiet and space are not so stunning. I know which drawer things are in in the kitchen, and the ordinary household chores, the laundry and shopping and cleaning are all easy to do. Cooking here is a joy – especially as Jay does most of it. I made the borscht today, which we had for lunch with Tamar.  Jay made a great tomato sauce with mushrooms, green pepper, and onions that we had over polenta for dinner. Our meals are simple and healthier.  The apple pie Friday night was the first dessert we’d had in quite a while.  This wasn’t a decision we made, just a shift that happened.

Now the weekend is done. Back to the gym tomorrow.