Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Unchanging Eve : Heartbreak Earth : A Carmelite Nun




I was counting up the number of different shades of brown which there are in a late winter garden. Grey, mostly, is just grey, with two or three tones of it only, all equally grey; but brown will range from an almost crimson tint to the first beginnings of the delicious yellow of spring. Even in the small space beyond me, enclosed in the arched circle of the door, I could count the terra-cotta brown of syringa stems, the purplish-brown shoots of a wild rose, and the more deeply purple earth of a burnt-out bonfire. Beyond that again was the plain brown of an old apple tree against the wall, with the warm, weathered brown of its tiles at the top; and beside that, the mauvey-bornw of dead goldenrod stalks and the yellow-brown haze of Michaelmas daisies. I wondered why she had suddenly switched from the Garden of Eden to the middle of the Atlantic, only to find, as I so often do, that she had not switched at all.