Indigo earrings, Toast and Tea

This morning I started reading a novel that a friend from long ago recommended recently. When we were young teenagers, we shared a love of literature, and when she "friended" me on Facebook, I asked what she'd been reading lately. One book she suggested was Amy Sackville's The Still Point.

Today, I delved into the copy that I borrowed from the public library. The epigraph is a quote from T.S. Eliot, whose poetry we read together back in high school, she understanding far better than I. Then, as now, I focused on the small images that I could understand. I'm afraid the bigger meanings are still lost to me.

Like this quote: the still point of the turning world... where past and future are gathered. Today I'm reading a book recommended by Kavita; yesterday I heard from Caroline; last week I ambled through the monuments with Carolyn; and two weeks ago I saw Contagion with Marilyn--all friends from 40 years ago when we were teenagers together, all of whom I'd long ago lost to the dance of time. I guess I'm sitting at the still point of the turning world just now!

Kavita--who pondered such choices long and hard--quoted TSE in our high school yearbook:

And indeed there will be time...
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
                        -T. S. Eliot

We shared many a cup of tea with toast. I still drink my strong black tea as her mother prepared it, with a dash of milk. Among the many books we shared were the works of Virginia Woolf. Amy Sackville's prose reminds me of her.

My favorite phrase so far: indigo, the richest word in the rainbow.

And as it happens, this quote appears in a passage in which the protagonist is making toast and tea!

These indigo-ful earrings are one of the many pairs that Jeanne sent to me. On her note she wrote, All  made by my good friend Tinka who is an artist. All too dangly on me.