The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 8

by Beth Brower

“We will bear our trial with grace.”

There must be a law in Leviticus regarding the acceptable circumstances for the stoning of irritating relations or something very near it, but my Old Testament thoughts were brought to higher ground by the vision of Hawkes in conversation with the lunatic.

“I have experienced something I can’t quite understand.” Hawkes waited, then, “A state I’ve known.” “What do you do with it?” “I wait on the shore of the mystery to see what the tide will bring.”

I have taken my insignificance for granted. One’s anonymity is not a thing to give away.

“I’m going to miss the cat, Emma, only…” “Only?” “He was never ours to begin with. Some things have to be let go. They weren’t made to stay.”

All related thoughts end with the realisation that a good deal of life is watching those we love consider the stupidest of possibilities.

“All things that love the sun are out of doors.”

That every day should leave some part Free for a sabbath of the heart.

“It’s time to leave this room, to go outside,” I whispered. “There is space, there are long roads, your life is elsewhere. It’s time to go.”

Fount, tree and shed are gone, I know not whither, But in one quiet room we three are still together.

(The lot of the eavesdropper is a heavy one. And as much as I think I enjoy knowing secrets, I’ve decided there is a limit to how much I actually wish to know.)

I will, however, allow myself one note. There was a sense that the freedom of all was impacted by Maggie Revel. As if Maggie took the whole of delight on offer to everyone and used it all for her own gain. No room for the enjoyments of others. Her freedom would always come at the cost of someone else’s liberty. Another way to say it: Fire steals away oxygen, and Maggie Devereux Revel is an unapologetic torch.

These long days out of doors feel like coming home to a place to which I’ve always held the key, but was told it should be put away. But, oh! There has been sovereignty of self in this place—of body, of spirit, of the intangible magic which sews the two together. To shout and run. To lie in tall grasses and watch the wind play the sunlight both true and false. To feel the building threat of rain and watch it crash to earth from the tenuous safety beneath a tree rather than from behind a window. I am, I suppose, satiating a long drought. My childhood soul has been left too long abandoned. How do I best find it in London? At times I feel my body has betrayed the girl I was, growing past the lithe limbs hewn in independence. We are to be fit for the purposes of adulthood, I know this. Childhood anticipations are traded with the shouldering of heavier things. But these days, these stones-tossed-in-tall-grass days, have stretched my muscles, recalled past forms, and I am remembering how it is to feel, to follow the instincts of something young yet ancient. To step outside the province of maturity and marvel.

One should go away long enough to know the cotton-soft contentment of coming home.