Meditations: Thomas Traherne(verse)
Little, Geraldine C.
detail. On the contrary, her sensitivities, though selective, are also incredibly acute. As might be expected when a child from a Chicago slum finds herself in the wilds of Texas, Linda is...
...And there was ambience of summer, calm crowning new-thatched cottages, the grace- filled sway of laden wagons lasses in bright aprons led...
...Indeed, the two ultimately merge, the humming of a windmill and of the belts on the big team harvesters becoming indistinguishable from the buzzing of the cicadas...
...The wonderment of the world accord- ing to Linda is this disregard for our usual sense of scale and proportion...
...I liked the high-pitched chants pigs practiced, flicked along dirt lanes...
...It frequently happens, as when Linda talks about her brother's juggling, that there is a disparity between what she says and what we see...
...Often I wandered through each other church the city offered, grand cathedrals in great squares, shadowy in candled grace, ceilings carved ornately like a mantle angels crafted, altars coolly calm, and choirs modulating studied chants...
...But it is almost literally true that her "days of heaven" on the farm are going to end in flames...
...I I II I I I II II 22 December 1978:817...
...Far from knowing what will happen, Linda is in her narration, like most children telling a story, only trying to cope with events over which she has no control...
...Insect heads fill the frame where, in the next shot, the farmer's house may be a little spur on the landscape far in the distance...
...Despite everything that happens, Linda's voice remains im- passive, calm, even witty, as if storytelling were her way to protect herself from the worst of life...
...We get to see into the secret places of the natural word--into the rocky bottom of a fiver bed and the eerie crevice underground where a single germ of wheat is beginning to grow...
...As might be expected when a child from a Chicago slum finds herself in the wilds of Texas, Linda is particularly aware of the beasts and birds of the field...
...It's as if she had that terrible power children covet, and satisfy in stories--the power to have whatever they say come true...
...When a plague of cicadas attacks the wheat, the camera sees enormously their gnawing infestation of the crop...
...After the fire in the fields and a show-down between the farmer and her brother which Geraldine C. Little Meditations: Thomas Ts-aherne What I loved in Credenhill were chants of doves, in crowds, cream-colored on the church roof at Vespers, the way they chimed, calm and muted as the meadows cows stood in, mauve spring light upon them like a mantle thistle-woven, curlews tucking grace notes in satin air...
...It is this holocaust which Linda's narration seems to have predicted, fight down to the wild game starting up from the fields on fire...
...I spun in wonder at the swirling grace all space contained, and in beasts' innocent chants heard other stable sounds, and kings bow in...
...She says that she "met this guy" who told her the world would end in fire: "There'd be flames comin' out o' here an' there.., an' birds flyin' up wit their wings on fire...
...London called, an honor...
...This is the source of most of the disparities we find between what she says and what we see...
...The sphere of sounds is also alive to the same degree...
...The chants most blessed birds hung in His wide church skies roofed, calm, as evening sifted in, a mantle stars scorched through, white coals of grace...
...Winter grace was wind through wasted grasses, icy chants limbs creaked splendidly in glassy mantle streaked, in sun, like Joseph's coat...
...At the same time that there are empty, windy spaces in this film, there are also moments when the screen is filled by an almost microscopic close-up of nature...
...At times that disparity seems almost like magic...
...While we may miss much of what people say, there is scarcely a noise made by nature or machine that we do not catch...
...A church- mouse said his psalms in dust, settling in a far stern stall, less cold than snow's spilled calm...
...And the catastrophe is conpleted when he goes after Bill with a lantern one night in the fields, and sets his own crop ablaze...
...Something she says when first she arrives in Texas seems especially prophetic...
...But of course what looks like prophecy in Linda's narration is at most just a form of premonition...
...There is, moreover, something wonderful in the film's total freedom from normative points of view...
...The beginning of the end comes when Abby is courted by the farmer as they circle the roaring fire at a harvest dance...
...When she says this we are looking at a veritable paradise abounding with deer and fowl completely at peace...
...They result from a kind of understatement with which she fends off disaster...
...The church took flowers in, full sun for warming mantle...
...Happy in whatever place I was, God's gentle mantle sure and light, I sang His sacred chants, holding in my mind the country calm beside the city pace, knowing grace is everywhere the same, all worlds His church...
...This occurs whenever what she says doesn't seem to tell us what is actually happening so much as what will happen...
...Cowled in color, autumn's brilliant mantle spread, Credenhill was golden calm: Christ, speaking through His jeweled church...
Vol. 105 • December 1978 • No. 25
