I truly believe that the best way to benefit humanity is to make faces in the bus--slightly mad faces, or puttings out of the tongue suddenly at the person opposite. Think of the thrill that gives to countless uneventful lives to whom nothing ever happens. They can tell everyone for weeks that they saw a mad woman on the bus, and they can exaggerate this to almost any extent. This form of charity can be practiced on the way to work.
Caryll Houselander in a letter to Archie Campbell-Murdoch
Of course, nobody but my husband sees me on the way to work, and he might not find it very pleasant.
It reminds me a little bit of the fat girl in the doctor's office in Flannery O'Connor's Revelation, except that she wasn't so entertaining. Revelation is a bit more painful.
AMDG
It makes me think of one of the more appealing aspects of the hippie thing--that sort of lighthearted playful attitude. Unfortunately there was a lot of very dark stuff under that surface, whereas the faith is light all the way through.
ReplyDeleteTrue.
ReplyDeleteAMDG
Maclin, like levitating the pentagon. I had a friend and colleague years ago who said the hippies were great when it was fun, and light hearted and they did things like levitating the pentagon. But when they got into deep ecology.... Grumpy
ReplyDeleteThis was not at all what I expected to hear from her!
ReplyDeleteMore light-hearted, I think, than her usual.
ReplyDeleteAMDG
To be honest, in the little Houselander I've read I've often found it very hard to tell whether or not she's being flippant.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's me then. You know I am always too serious.
ReplyDeleteAMDG
I think your friend was basically right, Grumpy, except that it was less of a sequence than that description suggests--that is, the bad stuff was present alongside the good from the start.
ReplyDeleteI haven't found much in CH's own writings that seemed particularly flippant, but it's clear from her biography that she could be. In her letters, too, apparently, though I haven't read them.