“A chord of music, a shared glance, a handshake or a kiss loses significance if it is ended too quickly or held too long.” (XI.29)
Robert Grudin is 85, apparently alive and well and living in the United States. But during the late 1970s for a spell he lived la dulce vida in southern Spain, writing for about three hours in the morning and swimming in the sea with his wife and sons in the afternoon. “To sit down at your desk in the morning and know that you are taking up the work of a thousand mornings . . .” (X.3) This sounds like an excellent example of someone with an easy relationship with time and the art of living, which is the title of his arguably best-known work, the book that emerged from those morning writings in Spain.
In the 25 years since it was given to me as a birthday present, I’ve recommended Time and the Art of Living more often than The Sixteen Pleasures or Mao’s Last Dancer. I've read it straight through only once—but I dip into it at arbitrary spots almost as often as Le Petit Prince or In the Sweet Kitchen. This sporadic attention seems appropriate to the format, which is episodic and nonlinear (“since time refused to sit still for my portrait”), in free-standing nuggets of a sentence or half a page, each codified with chapter and verse. The writing is surgically precise but always nuanced, frequently studded with metaphor and sometimes leavened with wit.
From a central thread, the concept of time, Grudin weaves a tapestry of related strands: commitment, continuity, memory, love, heredity, mor(t)ality. In my life I’ve moved around a fair bit, spending regrettably numerous periods with most of my books in storage. The joy of rediscovering Time and the Art of Living after a long absence is almost enough to make it worth keeping in a box, but on second thought, noooo, it’s to savour alongside a café con leche. By a river. On a desert island.
Bryn Harris has lived and worked in the U.S., Canada, and China. She now writes in a house on a Grand Manan cliff. Bryn’s poetry has been aired on the CBC, published in the Frog Hollow anthology Cadence, and displayed in the Grand Manan Art Gallery (2018) and Museum (2022).
You can find Bryn Harris's poetry in Issue 297 Autumn 2023. Order the issue now:
Order Issue 297 - Autumn 2023 (Canadian Addresses)
Order Issue 297 - Autumn 2023 (International Addresses)
