Think Small.

I can’t really even begin to explain how much I am loving Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre”. I know I’m “late to the boat” with this one (think 165 years late) but previously I’d read Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights” and didn’t overly take to it. Too emo, and gothic for me.

But Charlotte has a little more humour, sentimentality, optimism and joie de voire than her sister - without losing the trademark Bronte bookishness and tendency to overanalyse. You know, they like to mull over things with dark clouds hanging over their heads. Just my kind of gals! In short, I am totes girl-crushing on Charlotte and wish she were around today so we could be BFFs.

There are moments in the book where I pull myself away from it, fighting the magnetic force the pages seem to draw, because it all becomes too much. I so strongly identify with the thoughts and feelings of Jane that it’s like I’m in her body, wriggling her fingers and toes, and everything that’s happening with Mr Rochester is just so breathessly wonderful and painful that I can hardly bare it.

Now THAT is one helluva writer.

I know back in that day women’s worlds were just so much smaller (especially women without means) - their breadth of experience and exposure to world affairs and places and people so limited. And this would inform why Bronte writes with such acute detail about this little cast of characters and their feelings and thoughts. I, on the other hand, - hurrah to feminism! - was blessed with the ability and opportunity to experience and know of much more.

And yet, lately I am enraptured by The Small, and so disheartened by The Big. I think if you look at the work of David Sedaris, and This American Life, and Jane Eyre (three things I have lately been reading) you’ll see there is so much power, depth and beauty to be had by the small and the personal. And perhaps there is more truth to be had than the churn of the 24 hour news cycle (be it television, web or what have you) - which is so filled with vitriolic debate, fake stories, hysterical editorials, rumours, mirror reflections and general rancidness.

"I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and framed a humbler supplication. For change, stimulus. That petition, too, seemed swept off into vague space. ‘Then’, I cried, half desperate, ‘grant me at least a new servitude!’"

I am currently reading Charlotte Bronte’s ‘Jane Eyre’ from which that quote is taken. And although our lives are incredibly different - hers so limited in choice, and mine too abundant, there are passages like above that I innately connect with. I grow restless in Beijing, but it is too optimistic to say I that in looking to the horizons I am seeking a freedom or stimulation that fulfils me. Simply that I look to find a new situation in which to be momentarily charmed and quickly grow dissatisfied. 

But actually I am growing used to or perhaps developing the idea of ‘home’ (a stable core) disengaged from time and physical place. That it is a mixture of coming back to Sydney and seeing my family with the frequency that I do, making the effort to see my very good friends scattered in different parts of the globe, and carrying these relationships - if not in bright and frequently written emails - at least close to my heart. Never once forgetting that they are more true and loyal to me than the excesses and fast-joys of whatever city I happen to be in. And that though we are not in each other’s lives every day (which is a very sad thing) we are still important to one another and that we can and must work hard to overcome this unfortunate handicap.

And that on the other hand all the loose links I make with all the places I go (and the fleeting friendships they offer) too is a type of relationship which works, although only in conjunction with the deeper relationships of the VIPs in my life. In that way, I have breadth as well as depth. A touch of both, both disadvantaged.