I spent the past week thinking about what books I will add to my new Goodreads app as my goal for 2022. I have seven so far, and there's no hurry. I'll add a few more as the year moves along.
I also pondered what to call my blog, and I found my answer in the first book I have chosen for 2022:
The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings, by Philip Zaleski & Carol Zaleski.
True to form, I didn't do it exactly as J R R Tolkien suggested - the rebus principle. Each syllable of my name is to be indicated by a picture that suggests its pronunciation. (Page 25)
Although I go by Peg, my real name is Margaret. What pictures popped into my brain?
A garret. Move the first "r" over by the second "r" and that leaves Ma. That's what my one of my daughters calls me, and she has given me a grandchild, so I try to call myself Grandma, although that is really the name of my late mother-in-law and doesn't come as natural to me as Gram or Grammy, the monikers I gave my grandmothers.
I deviated again. I don't suppose Tolkien would care. Although I still picture myself as Ma, I also see myself as Grandma to WTS.
Grandma's Garret it is.
Why a garret, beside the fact that that is the picture presented by my name? What is a garret, anyway? It is "a top-floor or attic room, especially a small, dismal one." (Lexico) Doesn't sound too promising' does it. It was a symbol, to MacDonald, of a brain.
If I know nothing of my own garret, I thought, what is there to secure me against my own brain? Can I tell what it is even now generating? What thought it may present me the next moment, the next month, or a year away? What is at the heart of my brain? What is behind my 'think'? Am I there at all? - who, what am I?
(Lilith, by George MacDonald)
What is behind my think? Do you really want to know?
Do I really want to know?
I can tell you that the garret that is my brain is not dismal at all. I like to try and stretch it and keep it limber. It is, however, cluttered. I don't suppose, if I gave it much thought, I'd have it any other way.
I have a variety of interests. Genealogy, family history, research, crocheting with fine thread, reading, and writing jostle around in my garret.
Two of the books on my '22 list are meant to last the year or thereabouts: George MacDonald by C S Lewis - a daily quote which I will start tomorrow, and the Tanakh, which I started a few days ago.
Fantasy literature was, for the Inklings, a pathway to this higher world and a way of describing, through myth and symbol, its felt presence. Fantasy became the voice of faith. And it made for a cracking good story.
From The Fellowship, as noted above. Page 11.
