Just to be alive is a grand thing.
Agatha Christie on life. (The Commonplace Book Project)
The Commonplace Book Project is a daily post based on Ray Bradbury’s advice to aspiring writers: read a poem, a short story, and an essay every day for 1000 days. These posts start with a quote and go wherever the rabbit hole leads. Follow The 1000 Day MFA publication so you don’t miss a thing.
“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairing, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.” — Agatha Christie, An Autobiography
I took a friend to the hospital tonight and it’s late. I think tonight’s Commonplace Book Project post will be short. That’s okay though. I love Agatha Christie and I won’t mind revisiting her later.
As I write this, I’m watching a movie on Netflix called Agatha and the Truth of Murder. It’s an alternative history fictional story about Christie’s real-life eleven-day disappearance in 1926.
No one knows for sure what happened during those eleven days. She was already well-known and her disappearance caused a furor. She was depressed after the recent death of her mother and her husband’s affair with another woman, which was causing a divorce.
According to this article, she checked into a health spa in Yorkshire and likely just stayed there. Maybe in a fugue state, although most people don’t believe it. Maybe just to get away and, possibly, embarrass her husband. Anyway, she never spoke of it again and the scandal died down.
Agatha and the Truth of Murder imagines that she spent those eleven days solving a real murder. I really enjoyed it. The whole movie is worth watching for the main character’s (a young Christie) response to a man who tells her that women aren’t smart enough to design a golf course.
Christie is the third most translated author in history, coming in after Shakespeare and the Bible. Her Hercule Poirot is the only fictional character to ever be given an obituary in the New York Times. Her play, The Mousetrap, has run continuously in London since 1952. It has the longest initial run of any play in history.
Christie was a remarkable woman with a remarkable career.
I’ve had Agatha Christie, an Autobiography on my reading list for a long time.
Today’s Poem:
And Day Brought Back My Night by Geoffrey Brock
It was so simple: you came back to me And I was happy. Nothing seemed to matter But that. That you had gone away from me And lived for days with him — it didn’t matter. That I had been left to care for our old dog And house alone — couldn’t have mattered less! On all this, you and I and our happy dog Agreed. We slept. The world was worriless.
I woke in the morning, brimming with old joys Till the fact-checker showed up, late, for work And started in: Item: it’s years, not days. Item: you had no dog. Item: she isn’t back, In fact, she just remarried. And oh yes, item: you Left her, remember? I did? I did. (I do.)
Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She is an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, two dementia patients, a good friend, Alfred the cat, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes and is the author of Viral Nation and Rebel Nation and the upcoming novel The Astonishing Maybe. She is the original Ninja Writer.
