Notes on a Writing Life 43
November 14 2022
Dear all,
I read recently that Pythagoras, in answer to the question “What is the purpose of life on earth?” replied “To observe the heavens.” I didn’t get this directly from Pythagoras, whom I haven’t thought about since learning his theorem at school, but from reading Emmanuel Carrère’s recent thought-provoking book “Yoga” this week…
And there we were, my husband and I in our night clothes, standing in the back yard at 5 am on election day in the US, November 8, to watch the eclipse. It was a total eclipse of the moon in Taurus, as well as a king tide, and it was on this particular day. We didn’t see it, as it was already too far down in the western sky, behind houses, so we didn’t actually observe the ‘blood moon’ obscured by the shadow of the earth. But we ‘observed’ it in another way, I think now. We paid attention to it. We woke as if with an alarm clock, and stumbled out of the house to ‘observe the heavens,’ and here we were, staring up into the sky as we often do, the skies of Florida being usually clear at night. Jupiter, unusually close, has been our bright companion for months now. Over the yard, we see Cassiopeia and the square of Pegasus; above the roof, Saturn, Altair and Deneb.
I’m talking about this here because it can get so easy to be sucked into tension and anxiety about politics and other mundane things. Observing the heavens – like being aware of the tides - gives you a fine sense of perspective, whether you are an astronomer, astrologer, or just a person who wants to understand the universe. A writer, for example. An artist. Someone for whom the bigger picture always counts, who tries to see beyond the obsessive details of life into the grand design.
So, look up when anxiety strikes, as it did in the US this week, as it does in many parts of the world. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…” as Shakespeare’s Cassius says in “Julius Caesar.” But a helpful shift of viewpoint can also come from observing the stars, and the vastness they tell of.
Affectionately, Ros
Book news: My novel “The Third Swimmer” is now available on Kindle Direct at Amazon as well as in print, as my novella “Elena, Leo, Rose” will be very shortly. I’ve also just heard that an old friend, Claudie Hunzinger, has won the Prix Femina in France for her novel, “Un chien a ma table” (A dog at my table). After Annie Ernaux winning the Nobel for Literature – bravo to both!
