JOURNAL: THERE'S BLOOD ON MY MOTHERBOARD

 My biggest fear continues to be that people will find me boring. Or grow bored with me, I'm not sure if those are the same or two different things.

It's a thing that has haunted me for always. I used to think I could banish it, that I'd beat it and cast it off like a brilliant and powerful amazon (not the corporation) never to be held back again. But now I recognize it will probably always be there. It's become a thing to face, to test--to dance with and romance and then to shy away from again.



There's a lull in building friendships--a great gulf that scares me every time. The initial getting-to-know-facts-and-favorite-colors step is second nature now. The shy young kid who crept around her dorm building freshman year and sat paralyzed unable to speak to anyone in her classes has blossomed a bit. But there's this deep cavernous pit, a moon crater, or perhaps a Kola Superdeep Borehole--a scientific drilling project that I'm afraid of going into because I hate when we come away empty and walk away from each other. Perhaps it's better to look at these as expeditions in the name of science and in the pursuit of truth rather than feeling like I just shared a bit of my soul that I can't get back even though it's been rejected.

How do you even share when your raisons d'être are made of things like cupping your hands in front of your face and blowing at the honeysuckle petals in your hand to watch as they flutter in a puff of tiny brilliant orange specks? Marvels like that are so quiet and small, they're hard to share with most people.   

I'd been pondering this because I've dipped back into a reclusive phase and I'm feeling the need to break out in some way. Last night I was twiddling my thumbs reflecting when I knew what was needed was to film something. Anything. So I took a walk to a hidden little nature preserve I discovered a few months ago with a boy--I'd known for a long time I'd need to go back alone to make it mine. Even then as we'd held hands we felt like two solo units who happened to be there in step with each other. I walked there hoping I'd find it again, find it before it was dark. I found the stairs just as we had then and I climbed down into this beautiful place. And for a minute I filmed the stream as I looked around and breathed in the world. 


22 April 2016 from Marge Bjork on Vimeo.

JOURNAL: REMOVAL FROM REALITY

I would dearly like a day removed from reality, removed from linear time––just the capsule of my bedroom transplanted to the forested mountain wilds. A pile of books around my bedside table and pillows, some black licorice for snacking, and giant windows looking onto a universe where there are no people: that's what I long for. The evening would call for a thick, knit sweater and a crackling fire.

JOURNAL: SPILT BRAIN ON SPLIT LIP*

"Anyone lived in a pretty how town" says e e cummings. In sixth grade I tried to write my name on my papers in a lower case letters. I don't think I knew much of e e cummings poetry, I definitely wasn't much of a poetry fan in those days, but I knew of him and his small e's. My teacher asked me if my name wasn't a proper noun. Proper noun. What a strange term. I went back to capitalizing my name. 

There is another term, ambiguity tolerance, that in the context in which I learned it refers to how well you handle broad instructions on an assignment. Do you prefer itemized rubrics asking for a personal essay that's five pages long, single-spaced, Times New Roman 12 point font, making sure to cover the points of your birth, most embarrassing moment, graduation from high school, and how good you are at sticking to a grocery list? Or do you prefer the looseness of being asked to write a personal essay, taking as long as necessary to fully explain your thoughts?

Or, outside of the classroom, does your heart feel at peace when you read:

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Or, how frustrated do you become with my blog?

My ambiguity tolerance in liberal arts and the kitchen is usually very high. For instance, my ideas for Halloween costumes this year have been: The Beatles' "Revolution #9," Light as a feather/Stiff as a board, or a constellation which was such a concrete idea it quickly transmuted into Outer Space. (Which, in reality, just looks like I'm wearing a giant navy blue mumu and trying to be a wizard.) However, situations that are typically classified as straightforward are highly foggy to me. Like biology and this goals/performance review worksheet I'm to do for work. I've an email here with a list of questions to help me come up with goals. "What career goals do you have? What sorts of training do you need to get there?" Within the confines of the job I'm at now, because they require temps to participate as well, these questions seem the height of ambiguity and therefore must each require three pages of conjecture. Instead, I have a spreadsheet to fill in. This is a part of business that confuses me. "Here, human, tell me your hopes and dreams but in a succinct enough matter that it will fit in these 4 merged spreadsheet cells but compelling enough that we promote you, give you health insurance, and treat you like a human being."

Have I been dropped in an unfamiliar sea? In a place where the sun casts its light so evenly there's no telling cardinal directions and what land awaits me who knows where? Never mind, New Sea, I don't worry, I can swim.

all by all and deep by deep

and more by more they dream their sleep

noone and anyone earth by april

wish by spirit and if by yes.

   

*from The Woman Who Laughed on Calgary by Heather McHugh
anyone lived in a pretty how town by e e cummings

JOURNAL: NEW JOB/ELEPHANT TRAINING

It's finally happened: I train elephants for a living. This new job is in the Business Service Center of an Amazon building so you might be surprised that elephants have anything to do with it, but I'm training them to walk quietly. They're showing some promise, it's very hard for them but soon they'll be ready and we'll be able to let them out on the floors to do the daily copy room runs on each of the floors. Of course they're also receiving training on using prosthetics in order to increase their dexterity but that's run through a different office. I'm in the 'walk softly' office. 

You see, imagine you're hunching over your computer screen and have hit a wall, you look up, and there is an elephant tiptoeing past. Wouldn't you find that inspiring? The hope is that if they walk silently enough they won't disturb anyone concentrating but those who need a break will get a burst of joy at the sight of our highly skilled elephants. It's all very experimental but we're really investing a lot here. We're replacing all of the existing elevators with freight elevators to create a workplace that doesn't discriminate against any of our employees. It's very important to us that the elephants get treated with the same respect and have the same benefits we do.

I've been taking the bus to work every day, soon––maybe tomorrow––I hope to ride my bike there, but so far I'm only taking the bus. It's great to have the reading time, though every once in a while I tear my eyes away from the page and soak in the view of the boats and the houses on the lake sinking away into the foggy morning.

In the afternoons I work with a gaggle of gnomes, teaching them how to sing in four part harmony. I've found this to be a demanding but incredibly rewarding task. Gnomes pitch fits quite easily but they're learning to appreciate the music I have picked out for them. Tomorrow afternoon I've arranged for the gnomes to teach me about their traditional music. I had to get permission for us to get access to the most secret basement level of the building, the gnomes tell me the acoustics get better for their folk ballads the more subterranean you get. They also tell me I'm supposed to dress up like a slimy worm, do you think they're pulling my leg? They're teaching me a lot about being a good sport and not taking myself too seriously.

Where exactly the singing gnomes will fit into this corporate landscape continues to remain unclear but it's important to think laterally and between the lines and boxes. Plus, now that I've started with this band of hellions, I want to teach them how to sing "Catch a falling star" until the day I die. It may take them that long to learn it, anyway. 

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?

JOURNAL: ABOUT READY TO RENOUNCE NOMADISM...FOR NOW

Who knew I would miss Mediterranean beaches so much? It doesn't get much better than swimming in the sea with your mom while she describes to you family vacations from her childhood. On some of the beaches in France they have not sand, but rather small, smooth stones they call galets (pronounced kind of like gallay). They're strange to walk on, especially barefoot on your way down to the clear, blue sea, but much better as they never build up in the bottom of your swimsuit, nor will you be cleaning them out from between your toes for weeks to come. They're ever so smooth from being worn by the waves and when they sky is light grey and the stones are light grey and the sea is invitingly blue...

I took three stones from the beach in Nice. One for my niece, one for my nephew, and one for me. I love rocks. Someday I want to have a framed collection to hang up with beautiful little tags to label each rock: "Found on Aunt and Uncle's driveway," "A moon rock to some, volcanic to others," "A gift from Nephew."

It's near 2:00 a.m. here and I've had a second wind dumped upon me. I've already written pages in my journal and I'm still brain hopping about on ideas and excitement about being on the cusp of moving into my new home. In about 36 hours I'll see the inside for the first time. In about that time we'll all be moving our stuff in with the aid of many generous folk. We've decided it's fate that I haven't been able to see the inside yet. Of course, I took the word of J and E that we should sign on this place, I trust them quite a bit. But in the week I've been here there have been several instances where I almost got to see the house but something fell through. So we did rock paper scissors to decide on bedrooms and I'll see it on moving day. How fascinating that will be.

Still jobless but have a couple of prospects that look ripe and I've applied to more than a dozen others already. I did eight applications on Friday alone. On that same Friday I also discovered a nearby poetry bookshop, so my life is complete. Once I get more writing done here I'm sure I'll dive back into one of the books I picked up at the shop.

I also have a bicycle, a 1971 Peugot women's road bike with mixte handelbars. I got quite lucky with that, the mixte or hybrid handelbars are my favorite. Life is fairly complete. I just have to figure out a weather safe way to park my bicycle at my new house. Landlord says they're for outside or in the basement.

Next week I'll see a cousin and get a library card. Then I can finally read The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. I've already seen the movie starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison a couple of times. I love it dearly. How could I not? It's got a charming ghost. I love those.

Well. You're wonderful, OK? Have a good night.

JOURNAL/ILLUSTRATION/PHOTO: SOUTHERN FRANCE/GOODBYE

You haven't lived until you've tried to hang up laundry to dry in the Mistral winds of southern France. It's like flying a kite if your kite is a giant bed sheet that's out of control.

Mistral (meaning masterly in some dialect that has something to do with French) winds are sustained winds that last for hours or days and range in speed from 40km/25mph to 100km/60mph. 

As I'm pinning everything to the line the clothes and sheets billow into me, over me, and sometimes try to tear away to the heights of the atmosphere as I doggedly hold on to them, keeping them grounded.

Each time I take clothes out, I start by pinning them on the right side of the line, using three times as many pins as normal. When I go back a few hours later, they're all scrunched to the left, twisted amongst each other.

Once I left the laundry basket by the clothes line like I do on calm days. I found it twenty yards away in a corner of the yard.

I was thinking how, being from North Dakota, normally when I experience winds of this velocity, they're cutting and icy, blowing snow and burning your cheeks and fingers. Here the sky is clear, it's a pleasant 75˚ F (24˚ C). I barely know what to make of it.

There are also creature comforts to southern France. I've already stepped on one frog and found another one in my room. And last week we found a gecko in the house, a little tiny gecko. He was on the ceiling and none of us could catch him. Until a couple of days later when I found him in the bathroom I share with the teenage boys.

I share the upstairs of the summer home with the teenage boys. They have their room, I mine, and my shower is separate (and larger) than theirs. The toilet, a real water closet, we share though. The room is two inches wider than the narrow door and has room for a toilet, a standing human, and toilet bowl cleaner. I'm the only one who makes use of the toilet bowl cleaner. Incidentally, since being in France, I've been in elevators as small as this W.C. we share.

One afternoon I walked into the toilet (in Europe that is the name of the room not just the receptical) and saw the gecko skittle behind the cleaner. I shut the door and started the chase. I pounced (short distances, of course) from corner to corner yelling, "I'M TRYING TO HELP YOU!" Which is true because nobody should have to share a toilet with teenage boys. 

I was trying hard not to catch it by the tail, knowing it would rip off and serve no one, then I caught it by the tail and the rest of him scuddled away. The tail wiggled in my fingers, I decided I should keep holding it while I tried to to catch the rest of him, which I eventually did no thanks to the squirming tail. The poor little thing tried to bight me, but couldn't. He's free in the yard somewhere with his newly regenerated tail. I also put the tail in the yard enjoying imagining a lizard growing from the tail. He doesn't know it, but I saved him.

Today was my last day of work. Last of lots of things, not the least of which is doing the kids ironing. I was just delighting in this fact while ironing the young daughter's dress when I was overwhelmed by a sneeze and had to put the dress back in the dirty clothes. And I won't have to wash it. No, no, it won't be me who washes it! This makes me exceedingly happy. See, below is a happy face that happens to be my own:

 

Oh they don't warn you. They don't warn you when you're little and reading every book you can get your hands on and dreaming of your own adventures and world travels that once you step out the door, away from your home, millions of tiny holes will be ripped in your heart, first, for your home and then for every place you go, person you meet, and goodbye you say. 

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.


 

because of my excessive fondness for strange juxtapositions and journals:

THIS IS THE SECOND DAY OF APRIL 2011
it is mostly cloudy and I will appreciate it-clocked in at 11:03

4 April 2011
FROM B&N TODAY
Stories and poems for extremely intelligent children of all ages (a book) (on shelf next to Best of Women's Erotica 2)

7 April 2011
"P A T I E N T   S P R A Y E D"

8A
butter
plumb sauce
produce

24 April 2011
There are so many things I hear in church and related activities that sound extremely apocryphal. 

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.