THREE YEARS AGO TODAY BUT IT TAKES ME BACK FURTHER STILL

Family home

JOURNAL: EMPTY NOTES, HISTORICAL REFERENCES, ***MY DESK***

I received an email sent in 1969. That was what my inbox told me earlier this morning. It said their was no sender, no message, but someone was trying to reach me in 1969. Later on, when my inbox woke up a bit more it pretended that had never happened, corrected itself by showing me an email sent last night from a service I subscribe to. I want the first message back.

In 1969 my Dad was in France or Belgium, my Mom was in Salt Lake, my sister and I and many of the people I know were still spirits and star dust spread across time and space. Also, the first Led Zeppelin album was released, the Soviet Union was sending space craft out towards Venus, Nixon took office, passenger railroad lines were closing, Elvis was making a comeback, the last Saturday Evening Post was published, the Beatles gave their last public performance, trials are being held on the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Harvard students are rioting, there's secret bombing in Cambodia, not secret bombing in Vietnam, and Charles de Gaulle is voted out of French presidency.

I remember reading about that, Charles de Gaulle being ousted, as a research assistant in university. I was reading the London Times looking for things that might have inspired Monty Python sketches. This past summer my French employer talked about Parisians, the youth, rioting in the streets, throwing pavets/cobblestones. I asked him if he'd been part of it guessing the correct answer that he hadn't. He was never much for joining in, never fit with the crowd like that, he told us. I learned from the London Times that this was the same era in which England was making a bid to join the EU but France was really not in favor of admitting them. There was also an article about an eye doctor who felt that sunglasses were dangerous and would become habit forming.

Everything comes back to Monty Python.

Anyway, as for present updates, my house is lovely, the people in it are perfect, this city is marvelous, I'm making a desk and am obsessed with this one fact, I will soon be starting a job that may last longer than two months, the rain has started, and for the remainder of this day which will be spent working on my desk, cooking, and crocheting, I will be imagining someone in 1969 trying to contact me, somehow magically getting access to email but in a bittersweet twist the technology can't handle the timewarp.

How are you?

THREE YEARS AGO TODAY, AFTER BEETS

JOURNAL: A PILGRIMAGE, A MOON, AND BEAUTIFUL MOUNTAINS

This is my last week living in Paris so I'm getting in all of the last of my 'must do's.' I made a pilgrimage yesterday to see a graffiti memorial outside the former studio of my film idol. Though I've barely dipped a toe in the long list of films Chris Marker has made and worked on, it was watching his film Sans Soleil (1983) in my History of Documentary class that knocked me off my feet and brought me dreaming and gasping to a hopeful place. Here was proof that whatever is going on my my head and heart, the way I see: it has a place in the world. I drank that film desperately. I'm sure there are places where Marker and I diverge on visions and philosophies; I'll never be, never make things like him; but there are moments in his films that light little bursting fires of awe and delight and longing in my soul. Guys, instead of agreeing to the label "cinéma verité"––which is the name of a movement and style in documentary filmmaking which features an observational approach and lets the subjects of the film speak for themselves, the theory of the movement being that this would be a more truthful cinema (hence the name) than earlier documentaries with narrators who told you what was happening therefore controlling the message of the film. He liked "ciné, ma verité" or, in other words, cinema, my truth. Aren't you in love already and fainting in a 19th century swoon? OK, so you may be fainting because of my punctuation but whatever.

My Mom taught us an acre of lullabies and folk songs. When we're all together––Mom, sister, and I––we sing all the folk songs picking out harmonies, the lullabies are pulled out less often. I'd forgotten for a long time about one in particular...Bobby Shafto.

Bobby Shafto's fat and fair,
combing down his yellow hair.
You'll find him most anywhere,
pretty Bobby Shafto.

Bobby Shafto's gone to sea,
silver buckles on his knee.
He'll come back and marry me,
pretty Bobby Shafto.

I always imagined Bobby Shafto was the moon, you'll find him most anywhere. Which is possibly the first dream I ever fell in love with. That sketch doesn't do any justice to my dear Shafto, I need to extend my colored pencil collection or experiment some with water colors.

I was telling someone today they could extrapolate my family from me. Then I was talking about how my nephew, when he was two-ish, would sit amongst us, his family, and looking up at us as we sat around talking, he would circle his eyes with his hands so that he could see the world through frames as well. This was probably around the same time as when he would give us lectures from the giant paperback anthologies he kept carrying around. Sometimes he'd read to us from Washington Irvine, sometimes he'd pull up a cardboard box to act as his podium. Once he got a hold of Shakespeare and we played a game guessing what plays he was telling us about.

It's not as though we're a family of geniuses, hyper-intellectuals, nor do we pressure each other into ambitious pursuits. We're just odd.

My friend asked me if we were frequently giving each other lectures that little Nephew would learn this schtick. This is several years past my high school days when I had the affectation of only liking very large, long books, so can't be that. We possibly give each other some semblance of animated lecture when we've found a great book, YouTube video, or some delicious dish. This last week my Mom was passing along the tip to look up Lisa Stoll playing the alphorn.


 

i'm an ant and my dad is a centipede

This morning I've been remembering that time two years ago when my little nephew took a two hour nap on my chest and my sister was sleeping on the couch next to me and the remote was out of my reach so I was stuck watching whatever was on the food network which is how I discovered the Galloping Gourmet and I was quite overheated because holding babies makes wearing sweaters unnecessary but I didn't want to disturb that sweet, sleeping baby by trying to take off my heavy sweater.

It's one of my favorite memories.

selah

sister: "Will you put the crust in the oven?"
me: "I will if I can play this song."
sister: "As long as it's Sunday appropriate."
me: "It's from Ecclesiastes!"
mom: "Oh no."

no counting

There was this great family dinner moment yesterday where my grandma (really my aunt's mom who only says a few words in English: thank you and potato) says (in Spanish) to my Uncle, "The meat is really good today, what happened?!" A highlight of our Sunday family dinners.

Last week a friend asked me how many family dinners I had left before I moved. "I don't know, I haven't started a countdown."

And I don't want to know.

I want to pretend this will keep going on for always until the day before I move and then I will say goodbye and hug and kiss you all and maybe cry when I'm all by myself (all by myseee-ee-eelf). It's strange to feel so torn, to feel like I'm missing something by leaving in July instead of late August when most of my friends have already moved, and most of the rest–ok one, one friend is moving the week after. I won't be missing any midnight skinny dipping in Mona, or front porch sitting, face yoga, or discussions about returning to an agrarian lifestyle. They'll happen for others probably, but not for the people I've grown accustomed to. This time is passing. The diaspora has already begun, the time is growing near to jump ship.


The reality of my decision to move to North Dakota is hovering around me like some strange dreamlike fog tinged with feelings of excitement, determination, and horror. I don't think I know yet how it will feel to say goodbye to this place I've lived in for six years (and loved for four). This time is passing extremely quickly.

Theory: diaspora pushes you into adulthood

you'll find him most anywhere

When I'm at my sister's I sleep with the window cracked open. Indoors has always seemed stuffy to me so I'm always sitting by windows, opening and shutting them in turn depending on how much I can stand the cold. I can't wait until it's warm enough and I can move my office onto the back porch and sleep outside with my roommates.

My nephew is nearing eight months old and I still think he's the best thing to hit this planet. I love staring at him, watching him bobble his head about, scrunching up his face when he's tired, hearing his baby dinosaur sounds. And a smile from him is the sweetest gift. 

Sometimes I think of how old he is, think back to when he was born, and it's strange. He's so lovely and that time was so confused. Will I look at him when he's in his twenties and at the verge of some momentous life event and remember that time–just before him, right around his birth, all that's happened in the last eight months: my varieties of broken heart, my first days of my last semester at university and then my graduation, my stress, these decisions I'm trying to make. He balances everything out. He's all hope and potential and sweetness. Goodness gracious, I'm an aunt and I can love him like I've never loved anybody else. You might never see me as vulnerable as I will be when dancing around the room hoping to get a smile from him or showering him with kisses or singing every song I know the words to (false, actually, I restrain from singing the Kingston Trio songs I know because my sister doesn't want her child exposed to their adult content and language just yet).

Most of these songs I've learned from my mother, from the treasure trove of songs she sang to us for lullabies and for waking times. This certain one, Bobby Shafto, is based off a real person who broke a woman's heart, and she died from the breaking. But the wonderful thing about lullabies and folk songs that are passed down in oral tradition rather than in writing is that the words will change and then the meanings as well. My mother's voice of comfort never sang about that man in Ireland, to me it was about the moon brushing the dust off the knees of his victorian, threadbare, black smoking suit–it's always been a love song to the moon.

Bobby Shafto's fat and fair
combing down his yellow hair
you'll find him most anywhere
pretty Bobby Shafto


Bobby Shafto's gone to sea
silver buckles on his knee
He'll come back and marry me
pretty Bobby Shafto

the insider scoop

Let me tell you a bit about my family and then you will never ever wonder about my behavior ever again. My mom won a drawing for office supplies so for Christmas we all received paper clips or binder clips. We also all got slide whistles which commenced an odd chorus of swoopy tunes and rattles.

Today I receive the following voicemail from my father who was upstairs in the same house as me: "Well, you may never forget me, but I've already forgotten you. Goodbye."

Tonight, as my sister–who was heading up the stairs to bed and was not discussing musical instruments in any way shape or form with me, her sister, who was becoming frustrated with an on-line job application (aren't they supposed to be simpler?)–says, "P.S. Have I ever told you I own an electric guitar?"
Me: (surprised) Whaaat?
My sister: I own an electric guitar. Good night.

patches.

There is touch of construction going on at the south end of campus which means I now park my bike and have to make a bit of a detour through a little campus park and up a hill and around some buildings until I'm finally going in the direction I want to go.

This afternoon, I decided it's not so bad. I keep running into my uncle, who is a professor, as we now both traverse the hill. It's not often I remember I'm his niece and that's a special thing. We lived so far away when I was a kid, I didn't know what aunt and uncles were like.

But this afternoon he said "Hows my favorite Marge?" and walked me to my bicycle. 

in the middle of loretta young rapping

Feliz Birthday my dearest Henry Blessing!

you might want to explode (from overwhelming greatness) after seeing this duo.

maybe the most important thing I'll ever have to write about

so I have a nephew. He's pretty cute.



There are some fears I've developed over the last year:
1. I'm afraid of birth control
2. because my own hormones are weird enough.
3. I escape into my thoughts or reading when women start having conversations about the more unpleasant aspects of being pregnant and giving birth.
4. Which is strange for me because usually I eat up things women tell me,
5. even the less pretty things,
6. because these are things I should know.
7. But these stories scare me more than reality does.
8. At least I hope so.

I love my sister and seeing her in labor was not scary for me. 
I wondered if I became a doula and was part of lots of births if I would not be so afraid of what has been part of womanhood since Eve. 
When I hear those stories of pregnancy and birth I want to cry with the weight of the pain of it all. It all seems mournful and unfair.
When I saw my sister all I could think is that she is the most beautiful woman on earth. This is my sister who I have adored since my birth. She has been my everything. I know that pout of her lip, her soft sweet voice, her opinionated voice, her careful and patient attention to every detail, the gentle way she does everything, her stubbornness. I wished I had brought some William Carlos Williams poetry to read to her at the hospital. She winked at me while she was in pain.

My sister is the most beautiful woman on the earth. When she was in labor it was not scary; I could often feel how joyful it was that she was giving birth. I would have been always joyful but there were some complications and they drag at your spirits, they do.

While my mother (who is also the most beautiful woman on the earth) and I waited for my sister and the baby to come out of surgery we held each other and my mother told me that as she watches my sister she thinks of how children make you a better person. "You make me a better person," she says as she squeezes me tightly. I think on our relationship and the things we've learned and I rest my head on her shoulder. I also think that it's hard to imagine my sister, who is already amazing, becoming better.







And then they brought out my baby nephew and I saw his little face.
I love him.

dispatch II: a study in being concise.

Today I watched episodes two and three of Monte Python's Flying Circus.

I picked up a stack of papers to grade.

I answered some emails.

Oh.

And I became an aunt.

dispatch

my sister's water broke at 6:30 this morning. I woke up at 8:30 to four missed calls, two voicemails, and a text message. I had a little swell of panic rise up when I saw this, thinking, "oh hell, I've missed the birth" but then realized that I'm not about to start feeling this feeling people call "regret" now, since I've never felt it much about anything else. No, I will not prepare for regret, I will only prepare for momentary sadness and then lots of joy.

I did not miss the birth, however, and have been enjoying a day with my sister, brother-in-law, mom, and sister's best friend. Now my sister's in-laws are here and soon best friend's husband and two kids will be descending upon us as well. It is special to spend a day when we're all intent and focused on each other.

Contractions have been five minutes apart for the last two hours. The midwife says we can stay at home until contractions are two minutes apart and my sister no longer wants to talk to anyone.

So maybe we will play some scrabble. I don't know. But I do know that I am tired and this is something that maybe we will experience again some time in our lives, and maybe some others here have experienced pre-birth and birth and families like this. But this is new for me. And the only thing I would change is that my dad would be here, too.

Here's for a long night.

Grandma

(not a photo of my grandma but a photo of Wild Bill Hickok) 

My Grandma wrote me a letter when I was fifteen that said, "They won't let me stay at the house by myself. They don't trust me, they think I'm going to run off with Wild Bill Hickok." Thus began my adoration for Wild Bill and thus was manifested my Grandma's sense of humor that was barely masking her frustration with her children and with aging. My Mom said at this point she wasn't the mother she remembered but this is the Grandma I knew.

My Grandpa had died three years before. I would see my Grandma spinning the rings on her wedding ring finger and I would wonder if she was thinking of him.

She had spent the summer living with us and when fall came we relinquished her care to my Aunt because it was decided that our winters were too cold and lonely to keep her with us. But I had delighted in having someone who dawdled over meals like I did. And someone had the time to be delighted by me. I could amuse her by trying to balance spoons on my nose or convince her to go driving with newly permitted me by telling her it would be an adventure. Growing up 1100 miles away from all my relatives and being the same age of some of my cousins' kids meant that I'd never had those close grandparent/aunt/uncle relationships. This was my one chance.

She died when I was sixteen, my last grandparent to go. It was June, we drove down for her funeral, slept on the floor of what had been her bedroom and cleaned out her closet. I was bequeathed her beautiful fake fur coat because everyone else in the family felt I was the only one who would actually wear it. I do.

This summer my mother unearthed my Grandma's journals. She's been reading them and soaking up the writings and wit of the Mother she had known. One Sunday I was Skyping with my parents and she said, "I wish I could Skype Mom and Dad in Heaven." If I could invent that, I would. But she tells us about these journals and how she wants to pass them around to her siblings. I stared at the beautiful brown book in her hands and asked her if I could type it up first so there would be a digital copy in case anything got lost. She looked dubious, maybe that's because I am a typical university student who takes on too much. I begged her, "Mom, I love journals, this would be something I would really enjoy doing." My sister took up my case, "She does, Mom. It would work, she could type for half an hour a day, it would be relaxing for her."

I won and I'm happy. I started typing this evening and in just half an hour Grandma made twenty jokes. This is the woman in that large, old photograph who I'd stare at and think, "Now, that's classy. That's what I want to be." This is the woman who once wrote me a letter wishing she could go back to the home she and her husband had built and lived in for sixty years but could not because she could no longer take care of herself. I bet she did dream of running off with Wild Bill Hickok.

conscious stream with lilly pad edits

My mother says I've got bullets and poison darts in my ears. My father is a tightrope walker. Or maybe we just balance on train tracks together and then inspect flattened pennies.

In families where you're tied by love in ways that cannot be unwound you spend your life watching people grow and change and shift. Dynamics change and my mind is unfolding at the possibilities of what lies before us. I will not always be everyone's little rag doll girl. But I will. I will always be that girl but always as well new doors open and I burgeon and blossom into worlds that are removed from mi familia. I watched as my sister went through this process. It was strange, I thought I was watching her go and change into someone I had never known. But that was a lie, she was only getting married, and now I see more of who she is. It took my brother-in-law to bring out some magical tucks of personality ma soeur was holding in deep, dark hiddenness. We can only imagine what fantastical things I'm keeping secret from all of you.

This morning my parents made their departure from visiting us, their chillins. They drive the 1100 miles between here and there in a hearty two day trip. There was some debate about which route they should take this time.
"Have you made hotel reservations for tonight, yet?" my mother asks my father as they get into the car.
"No. I don't even know where we're going yet, dear."
"Oh...OK, well, I guess we'll call you all tonight and let you know where we are," my mom handles this new style of laissez-faire traveling amazingly well.

When I was growing up these trips were full of Nitty Gritty Dirtband, the Kingston Trio, Chick Corea. Michael Nesmith would fall to pieces. Dave Brubeck would be on time. By the end of my sub-18 years, Johnny Mathis and Carly Simon (not just the "you're so vain" years) were creeping in. And now I can never keep the refrain of "Sometimes I wish/ Often I wish/ I never knew/ Some of those secrets of yours" very far from my conscious. Thanks, Carly.

There are so many reasons to shy away from knowledge. This curiosity cat is trying to learn to hold back this summer. Don't look up where sex offenders live in your area, don't ask every question, don't watch that tape, don't make that move. No more dead curious cats. No more curious cats seeing death.

But do poke your pregnant sister's belly. And do try to be there for the birth. Do watch that sweet face that still has that stubbornness made famous in childhood. That childhood I wasn't there for but learned through pictures. I know how her face will be already, her hands on hips, and her saying, "This child is going to be born, dangit!" In just a few weeks we'll all be falling over doting on this little baby.

I just watched Jurassic Park for the first time. That's all.

 

wednesday is garbage day

Last night as I was laying on the grass of the dark midnight air, I could hear people, house by house, rolling their garbage cans out to the street. Some people do this at six o'clock in the evening. Many others were out between 11:30 and 1:00 a.m. checking this task off their list. Maybe this speaks to the age range of my neighborhood. Young families with a million things on their plates. A good amount of twenty-somethings. A humanities professor. One woman was talking on her cellphone. At least I assume that. But who knows, maybe there was a terribly quiet individual replying to all her chatter. 

I was transfixed by the echoing rolls of garbage bins, imagining full summer lives taking place before and after this weekly event. This sound has such a power for me. Maybe because it started in my childhood as a thing that only happened on vacation. In North Dakota where I grew up everyone fended for themselves to provide a garbage can, there were no uniform city utility bins to pick from. And there was no rolling them to the street. No, the garbage truck rolled down your alley and somehow--maybe there was a man attached to this truck--the garbage disappeared. Our garbage cans would always blow away in winter blizzards and we'd have to--that's a bit dishonest--my mother would track them down.

There's such an enormity of things going on around us, what a full engaging thing, this world. The woman on her cell phone reminded me of my mother talking on the phone to one of her sisters, sitting at the kitchen table doodling and taking notes on family happenings. I used to study her doodles and her cursive writing.

This weekend I had a conversation with a friend about seeing multitudes of people and imagining how they had lives outside of yours that carry on regardless of your place in them. It brought me back to this vignette of a film made by the professor for whom I'm working. It is one steady clip filmed on the London Underground with Professor narrating underneath about this very eternal mystery. He speaks of magnitude and of a poem by Wordsworth. Simon Lee: the Old Hunstman. My, is it a beautiful poem that I can't stop thinking about.

and we're off like a herd of turtles!

I reread this a few days ago. I go through my own blog annals to remind myself where I've been and how I've changed/grown. 

It's about a woman I never really knew but I've always admired and about her fancy dresses and costume jewelry. And news programs. It struck me that I've gloried in hat boxes but never in the charm and class and home-loveliness of my own mother. I've been trying to write my feelings on this but it seems I'm full of trite dribble. Let it be known far and wide that there are worlds I'll always wonder about (Milly and her typewriter secretary-ing and fancy shoe boxes) and there is a world I aspire to (my mother's).

my chiasmus summer plans. with baby bookends.

sister is pregnant and i am the happiest sister in the world.
here.
california.
here.
florida.
paraguay.
florida.
here.
california.
here.
sister has a baby boy and i am the happiest aunt in the world.

Dearest Baby that's about to be,
Everyone in this family is blindingly happy with anticipation. 
You're such a miracle and a joy.
Love without bounds,
M.

ritzy rhubarb

This summer calls for rhubarb.

Upper Midwest U.S. grows rhubarb without even trying. It grows better than people. It grows better than weeds. Mow over it and it grows. The beautiful ruby color branching into large ruffly green leaves. So tart it surprises you every bite. So made of summer barefoot in rich, garden earthness.

I don't live there anymore. I have to accept this.

I have hesitated every western summer to purchase rhubarb, even from the farmers' market, because I wasn't there to make sure it had the loving, glorious growing time it needed.

I will trust in local farmers' this summer. I will embrace their rhubarb and welcome all the local sweet, biting tastiness.



I wish I could weave fabric out of memories of the spring where I was nine and the snirt was piling in the gutters, the snow was melting into crusty white ice and large puddles in my back yard and it was lovely enough to play outside wearing that hoodless, oversized, green sweatshirt and those fuchsia boots.That would be the stripe next to the times I would lay in the grass and listen to the bird coo in the evenings and the back screen door swing shut. The garage door you had to slam shut with all your strength and force open by knocking it with your hip. My barefeet on the decomposing sidewalk. That rainbow that went on forever in the warm greyish sky and we all stood in the driveway looking at it. Those plastic clips with the poodles and bows my dad would let me clip into his orange hair. The mornings my mom would don her sun hat, that blue shirt with the leaf pattern; kneel on her green knee cushion and weed. I'd join her and we'd smell like bug spray together and the mosquitoes would circle us and I'd squeal and run away everytime I saw a spider and my mom would wonder what was going to become of me.
Those irises.
Chives.
Humidity.

Someday I'll live in a house and have a garden at my elbow and a healthy lawn to squish my toes in.

I would like that time to also have a husband and maybe even a family but that's a secret you'll never hear me say out loud. À haute voix.