Radiant Imperfection
I warned my students. The dreaded London weather. It is imminent. My New York University students had arrived in London in August. Today is October 1st.
No wonder John Keats wrote, “My heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains / My sense…”. He was living in London.
I told them that, daily, they would walk through fog, grey days, early darkness, constant drizzle, and a low-grade wet chill. This will last through March. Days of sun and blue skies may emerge from time to time but on most mornings they will wake to grey wet.
The one and only way of handling this, I advised them, was the way Joan Didion describes handling migraines in her essay “In Bed,” which we had just finished reading and discussing. Accept. Embrace. Lean into it.
I thought of poems that embrace rain like Robert Creeley’s poem ‘The Rain:’
I suggested that we hold the gloom in our arms, let the grey wash over us. Embrace dreary, radiant imperfection. I advised that they imagine themselves to be Charles Dickens or George Eliot or literary characters Sherlock Holmes or Elizabeth Bennet (who does visit London) walking with their capes or long skirts through the thick London shadows. I made it all sound very romantic. Enjoy the melancholy, the aggravation, the weariness.
I thought of Jane Kenyon’s poems which know melancholy and lean into a haunting sadness. In ‘August Rain, After Haying’ she writes:
After class, I myself stepped out onto the Strand into a faint drizzle under a white-ish grey sky. I thought I had prepared myself. Not only had I developed a philosophy of how to manage London gloom after fourteen years of living here but that morning I had been organised: I packed a rain jacket with a hood, umbrella, and other items I knew would make me more comfortable as I navigated my way home. Earpods and spotify poised for action, water resistant boots ready to take on wet pavement, and my glasses sat quietly in my pocket in position to be whipped out if I had to read signs in the distance while walking a possibly unfamiliar route. I even had brought a folding fan for when I felt hot on the tube. But London annoyances took over. I couldn’t listen to music or podcasts properly as the earpods kept slipping out and the umbrella was difficult to manage while holding a few bags. By the time I got home, I was a mess: wet feet, bags ripping, misty glasses, torn fan, and phone about to run out of battery juice. I thought of Robert Frost’s poem where managing aggravation becomes embracing imperfection:
Finally when I sat down at the kitchen table with wet hair, broken bags at my feet, the rain splattering against the window behind me, I had time to reflect on Joan Didion’s essay, my somewhat high-handed speech to my students, and my own experience walking home and thought of Marie Howe’s poem ‘What the Living Do’ addressed to her brother who had died not long before she wrote the poem. I’ll end with this. It speaks for itself:
