When I was home this past December, my stepmother assigned me the task of helping my dad go through and get rid of stuff in the closet of his office. When I think back to everything that happened during that vacation, the trips that I took, friends I saw, conversations I had or tried to have, my happiest thoughts are of time spent on that bloody closet.
My father's intellectual capacities seem to be declining quickly. I already knew that he could no longer remember phone conversations the that we have or even that they had happened after the fact. I was unprepared for just how much the present moment escapes him. Maybe it is not that the actual present moment escapes him. Rather, it is that he continues to exist almost solely in the present moment and has trouble remembering the ones just past.
Either way, conversations about anything but the distant past seemed to move at a glacial speed, if at all. Ask him what he was doing when President Roosevelt died and out comes a great story. Ask him what he had for dinner or just ordered at a restaurant and he has no idea.
It is with this in mind, that we ventured into his office. In addition to separating things for goodwill, one of the major jobs was to find and shred old financial documents. Once upon a time in the not too distant past, my father had a fair number of investments. In the process of his decline, he lost a lot of money. We don't know where it all went, but by the time we realized how bad things had gotten and my stepmother finally took over his finances a great deal had been lost to shady brokers, market declines, charities, political causes, vitamin salesmen, mail order smoked salmon and God knows what else. What was left to be gotten rid of were folders, binders and old cardboard boxes full of a paper trail of now lost wealth.
On days that I was home, the scene was set with myself alternately poking about in the closet and sitting on the floor shredding. My dad would sit in a chair slowly reading through a box of old class notes. The shredder served as a rallying cry to my father. He would hear it and then come to the office to make sure that I wasn't destroying something important. Invariably he would ask me if I had brought the machine with me. I would tell him that it belonged to his wife, and he would settle into the chair to continue his slow sifting through notes and newspaper clippings.
There were some exciting finds in the labyrinthine closet. My favorite was a letter that he had written to his Aunt Mildred in 1960 when Kennedy was elected. There was also a great stash of forgotten food stuffs buried throughout the closet. I removed 3 expired tins of fish, 4 cans of soup, an expired jar of peanut butter, a box of instant mashed potatoes and a bag of potato chips, mercifully unopened. There was also a 6" X 12" filled entirely with return address labels and other thank you gifts from charities including six unopened American flags.
In the recycled envelopes with tax returns from the 1980's and canceled checks, I found record of a loan that my mother took on after the divorce. My father had cosigned. I also found a three ring binder detailing his father's slow decline from Alzheimer's. I could only read as far as the first letter from my uncle describing some of his symptoms and the infamous incident when he disappeared into the woods in Wisconsin, which resulted in a massive search with a local team and dogs. This was the end of my grandfather's summers in Wisconsin, one of the few places he remembered.
Amongst the recyclables were incredible stacks of investment and health magazines. At one time organized into labeled binders, all of them had my father's tell tale underlining throughout to show that he had read them and what he had found important or useful. I threw these magazines out with relish just as I shredded the record of the loan, I shredded the history of my father's obsessions: investment and avoiding his father's fate through living a better life. Anyone could see how futile both of those exercises turned out to be.
In the days that I worked and thinned out the closet, I got rid of a box of unused candles, bags of clothing, 4 trash bags of shredded papers and a few carloads of recycling. My dad got through about 1 box of old class notes. I kept asking him if he thought he would use it again. He would say, "Oh, I guess not." Then he would part with a few sheets of paper but decide to keep some others. At one point, I asked him what he was reading. He said is was an article about Nixon, but really it was about Bush II.
Somehow, even with the emotional baggage of so much that I was finding, this was a happy time for me. We were doing something together. We barely spoke, but it was alright. We've always been quiet, except for talking about political things or family gossip. This is just how we both are; sometimes socially inhibited but with a lot of pent up passion that spills forth into the things we really care about. We both like to putter, read and run. We enjoy planting things and looking at trees. Though not easily aroused, we both have volcanic tempers but love very deeply and loyally. These things seem to be the essence of my father, and I am sorry that it has taken his stripping bear, his slow deconstruction for me to realize just who he really is underneath all that he had seemed to be for so long.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Self Censorship and Verbal Constipation
I have been lacking in motivation to write anything for a while, not only blog entries but letters to friends, statements of intent, job inquiries or even a private articulation of my own thoughts on the world. Normally overflowing with words, my mind has been dammed up.
As I was driving down Figueroa the other day away from the library, I found my thoughts returning to the time of my repatriation after two years of study in the U.K. One of the major things I noticed in myself upon my return was a deficit in a certain type self-censorship which would allow me to function more smoothly in this society. It isn't just the containment and non-expression of certain thoughts, it is the cutting off of those thoughts before they are even able to properly form. (Now that I have regained this ability, how hard it is for me to articulate what was then so strikingly present in my daily existence!)
I feel that in many ways the parameters for certain pursuits are so much more highly prescribed in our society than in Britain. Fachs, or categories, for singers are much more flexible in Britain. There is much more individuality in dress. A greater variety of weights, shapes, sizes and ethnicities are presented as beautiful by the popular media in Britain. More lifestyles are considered mainstream. I feel that American society is constructed to convey a continual judgmentalism against almost everyone and almost everything to make them feel inferior or insecure. Whether it is to sell products or to stifle thought, the effect produces a certain numbness, a certain detachment and self-censorship to avoid those negative consequences. "I will be happy/accepted/lovable when I can loose that last 10 pounds/buy that new TV/secure that new post. "
Perhaps it is that my own self-censorship has kicked in and is rapidly out of control. How many times do I wear something dull that I do not enjoy in an attempt to fit in? How many things have I bought recently in an attempt not to look like I don't need those extra jobs I've been applying for? How many times do I stifle the expression of my own opinions about my country that I love so because I am afraid of being put on the no fly list and having my activities inconvenienced? (Would you believe that in London, I was a moderate!)
For New Year's, I made only one resolution: to work to be more honest, and to be more honest with myself if honesty with others is not practical. Behind this wall of verbal constipation lie my true reasons for not writing to my friends overseas. I miss the open, honest and mentally present ways that we shared our lives, and I fear that I have lost the capacity within myself to be that honest and open person. I fear that they will see what a shallow thinking American I've become in an attempt to ease my daily life in this image factory of L.A.
That wall also conceals worries about my country that I was so ready to return to. Forever the armchair political analyst, I see our collective course towards the future as hopeless and insane. Obama is only a nicer face and a slight slackening of the pace of our societal march towards the same doom as before. I read. I think. I collect information. I see that the many of the ways of life of my friends in the midwest are drawing to a close as viable options for survival. I believe that my own way is only a few steps behind theirs because of my currently geographical location. In my mind the only hope for true change is a word that I do not wish to articulate. Here is the self censorship!
I am a pacifist. I don't believe in war. I seek to let go of the violence which exists within myself. I believe in God, and I strive to be a christian in the most elemental form of the word, someone who follows the teaching of Jesus. But I fear our country cannot begin to again serve its people without the most fundamental of changes. Thanks to our Supreme Court, corporations now seem to have more rights than individual human beings, and the madness of society will expand into this new frontier. This march of despotism, of slavery to corporate masters, of the looting of society for the benefit of the few continues, and it will not stop through any of the channels legally open to citizens.
When I was visiting my place of origin in the midwest, I spoke about the problems of our country with the father of one of my oldest friends. He emigrated from Egypt in the mid-1970's as a Coptic Orthodox Christian searching for a better life for himself and his descendants. He once served in the Egyptian Army by removing dead bodies from a battlefield during the Six Days War. He seems to harbor a distrust of muslims, but he does not believe in war. In our conversation he used the word for the only solution as he sees it, the word that I can hardly type even now. Revolution.
As I was driving down Figueroa the other day away from the library, I found my thoughts returning to the time of my repatriation after two years of study in the U.K. One of the major things I noticed in myself upon my return was a deficit in a certain type self-censorship which would allow me to function more smoothly in this society. It isn't just the containment and non-expression of certain thoughts, it is the cutting off of those thoughts before they are even able to properly form. (Now that I have regained this ability, how hard it is for me to articulate what was then so strikingly present in my daily existence!)
I feel that in many ways the parameters for certain pursuits are so much more highly prescribed in our society than in Britain. Fachs, or categories, for singers are much more flexible in Britain. There is much more individuality in dress. A greater variety of weights, shapes, sizes and ethnicities are presented as beautiful by the popular media in Britain. More lifestyles are considered mainstream. I feel that American society is constructed to convey a continual judgmentalism against almost everyone and almost everything to make them feel inferior or insecure. Whether it is to sell products or to stifle thought, the effect produces a certain numbness, a certain detachment and self-censorship to avoid those negative consequences. "I will be happy/accepted/lovable when I can loose that last 10 pounds/buy that new TV/secure that new post. "
Perhaps it is that my own self-censorship has kicked in and is rapidly out of control. How many times do I wear something dull that I do not enjoy in an attempt to fit in? How many things have I bought recently in an attempt not to look like I don't need those extra jobs I've been applying for? How many times do I stifle the expression of my own opinions about my country that I love so because I am afraid of being put on the no fly list and having my activities inconvenienced? (Would you believe that in London, I was a moderate!)
For New Year's, I made only one resolution: to work to be more honest, and to be more honest with myself if honesty with others is not practical. Behind this wall of verbal constipation lie my true reasons for not writing to my friends overseas. I miss the open, honest and mentally present ways that we shared our lives, and I fear that I have lost the capacity within myself to be that honest and open person. I fear that they will see what a shallow thinking American I've become in an attempt to ease my daily life in this image factory of L.A.
That wall also conceals worries about my country that I was so ready to return to. Forever the armchair political analyst, I see our collective course towards the future as hopeless and insane. Obama is only a nicer face and a slight slackening of the pace of our societal march towards the same doom as before. I read. I think. I collect information. I see that the many of the ways of life of my friends in the midwest are drawing to a close as viable options for survival. I believe that my own way is only a few steps behind theirs because of my currently geographical location. In my mind the only hope for true change is a word that I do not wish to articulate. Here is the self censorship!
I am a pacifist. I don't believe in war. I seek to let go of the violence which exists within myself. I believe in God, and I strive to be a christian in the most elemental form of the word, someone who follows the teaching of Jesus. But I fear our country cannot begin to again serve its people without the most fundamental of changes. Thanks to our Supreme Court, corporations now seem to have more rights than individual human beings, and the madness of society will expand into this new frontier. This march of despotism, of slavery to corporate masters, of the looting of society for the benefit of the few continues, and it will not stop through any of the channels legally open to citizens.
When I was visiting my place of origin in the midwest, I spoke about the problems of our country with the father of one of my oldest friends. He emigrated from Egypt in the mid-1970's as a Coptic Orthodox Christian searching for a better life for himself and his descendants. He once served in the Egyptian Army by removing dead bodies from a battlefield during the Six Days War. He seems to harbor a distrust of muslims, but he does not believe in war. In our conversation he used the word for the only solution as he sees it, the word that I can hardly type even now. Revolution.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Happy Birthday
Today is my dad's 75th birthday. At first when I called to wish him a Happy Birthday, he couldn't quite do the math to figure out his age. After I reminded him of how old he is, he seemed to remember it throughout the conversation.
Talking to my dad over the phone is getting more difficult. He remembers many things about me and where I live, but his own daily activities and plans are becoming hazier and harder to discuss. Even talking about politics at a rudimentary level was more difficult today. Who is John Boehner? Where is his district? After asserting that Marcy Kaptur is his congressman, which she is, he then told me that her district goes all the way to the Indiana line, which it does not. It actually goes in the opposite direction along the lake and encompasses Sandusky. These slips are in the realm that was previously unimaginable for my father. Even when I was in high school, he might have left the oven on all day, come home to some small, charred shape on a pan and have no recollection of what it might have been or why he had put it in the oven, but he could tell you every intricacy of state and local political information.
In an attempt to find something else to talk about, I googled my grandfather, and much to my amazement, his full name brought up quite a bit about him. I came across a description of an archival collection at Northwestern University with documents pertaining to his tenure and work there. The PDF started with a biography that was accurate and gave me some information that I had not known before. Within the results I even came upon a sight that boasted pictures the matched my grandfather's name. Some were the facebook type photos of modern people with the same name or a kitten in a football helmet, but two of the photos were actually of my grandfather!
My dad was able to latch onto bits of information as I read it to him. He would either say that a name or some information was familiar or he would help to fill in some detail or connection with what he had been doing in his life while his father was busy with some accomplishment that graces his resume even in death.
My grandfather was a well respected and very successful man by all the standards of the world. Until I had read this official biography by his employer of over thirty years, I had not quite realized how much so. Despite his brilliance, hard work and great success, he was struck by the same problem that is now stealing my father's mind, struck at the very time that he should have been enjoying the fruits of his labor.
The year my parents were married was the year my grandfather retired. I was born the year after, the first grandchild. By the time I was five or six we knew that my grandfather had this problem. My grandmother had become suspicious when he started paying his bills twice. The former Associate Dean, Professor of Marketing was paying his own bills twice. When I was 7, my grandfather was 75, and he still knew me then. By the time I was ten, he was a bit foggy on who I was exactly. Tall for my age, even then I resembled my grandmother who had passed away a few years before. Waking from a nap he could mistake me for her without his glasses, yet outside playing with a friend he would refer to the two of us corporately as "the boys," a reference to his own two sons.
A large part of my childhood was spent watching my grandfather decline and my father taking care of him, as much as he could. Also an academic, my father would take my grandfather to his old lake cottage in Wisconsin, a place he still remembered, and they would spend the summers there together, my father "doing research" and my grandfather puttering around. One summer my grandfather painted all of the decent wood and wicker chairs white. There had been a can of white paint in the garage. I suggested to my dad that he leave some paint stripper out next and then some wood refinisher, since he wouldn't remember and could then restore the chairs. My dad didn't think that was a good idea.
Gradually and painfully my grandfather slipped away. My father, the good and dutiful man, didn't have the heart to even pull the feeding tube when he finally entered a completely vegetative state one month before his death. He finally passed away when I was 17.
Later in the day after our conversation and my bit of Internet research, I sat in a staff meeting at work staring out the window and doing a little math. What was my grandfather like at my father's current age? How old were they both when diagnosed? If I project my grandfather's case onto my father, how much more time do I have left with him? How much longer will he know me? How much longer can we have some semblance of a conversation?
And when this subsided, I thought about my own life choices and wondered how much this has effected them, remembering that I dropped out of my doctoral program only a few months after I found out about my father's diagnosis. Not that I believe that their choice of academic lives led to their manifestation of the same disease. Rather, I am overwhelmed by the seeming meaninglessness of such achievement and of academic pursuits, especially when it is lost so cruelly and so quickly. Did they enjoy their work or did they look forward to enjoying their lives later? Their academic lives and capabilities, that part of them that took up the largest portion of their vitality and strength, was the first thing to go. What can that mean?
Talking to my dad over the phone is getting more difficult. He remembers many things about me and where I live, but his own daily activities and plans are becoming hazier and harder to discuss. Even talking about politics at a rudimentary level was more difficult today. Who is John Boehner? Where is his district? After asserting that Marcy Kaptur is his congressman, which she is, he then told me that her district goes all the way to the Indiana line, which it does not. It actually goes in the opposite direction along the lake and encompasses Sandusky. These slips are in the realm that was previously unimaginable for my father. Even when I was in high school, he might have left the oven on all day, come home to some small, charred shape on a pan and have no recollection of what it might have been or why he had put it in the oven, but he could tell you every intricacy of state and local political information.
In an attempt to find something else to talk about, I googled my grandfather, and much to my amazement, his full name brought up quite a bit about him. I came across a description of an archival collection at Northwestern University with documents pertaining to his tenure and work there. The PDF started with a biography that was accurate and gave me some information that I had not known before. Within the results I even came upon a sight that boasted pictures the matched my grandfather's name. Some were the facebook type photos of modern people with the same name or a kitten in a football helmet, but two of the photos were actually of my grandfather!
My dad was able to latch onto bits of information as I read it to him. He would either say that a name or some information was familiar or he would help to fill in some detail or connection with what he had been doing in his life while his father was busy with some accomplishment that graces his resume even in death.
My grandfather was a well respected and very successful man by all the standards of the world. Until I had read this official biography by his employer of over thirty years, I had not quite realized how much so. Despite his brilliance, hard work and great success, he was struck by the same problem that is now stealing my father's mind, struck at the very time that he should have been enjoying the fruits of his labor.
The year my parents were married was the year my grandfather retired. I was born the year after, the first grandchild. By the time I was five or six we knew that my grandfather had this problem. My grandmother had become suspicious when he started paying his bills twice. The former Associate Dean, Professor of Marketing was paying his own bills twice. When I was 7, my grandfather was 75, and he still knew me then. By the time I was ten, he was a bit foggy on who I was exactly. Tall for my age, even then I resembled my grandmother who had passed away a few years before. Waking from a nap he could mistake me for her without his glasses, yet outside playing with a friend he would refer to the two of us corporately as "the boys," a reference to his own two sons.
A large part of my childhood was spent watching my grandfather decline and my father taking care of him, as much as he could. Also an academic, my father would take my grandfather to his old lake cottage in Wisconsin, a place he still remembered, and they would spend the summers there together, my father "doing research" and my grandfather puttering around. One summer my grandfather painted all of the decent wood and wicker chairs white. There had been a can of white paint in the garage. I suggested to my dad that he leave some paint stripper out next and then some wood refinisher, since he wouldn't remember and could then restore the chairs. My dad didn't think that was a good idea.
Gradually and painfully my grandfather slipped away. My father, the good and dutiful man, didn't have the heart to even pull the feeding tube when he finally entered a completely vegetative state one month before his death. He finally passed away when I was 17.
Later in the day after our conversation and my bit of Internet research, I sat in a staff meeting at work staring out the window and doing a little math. What was my grandfather like at my father's current age? How old were they both when diagnosed? If I project my grandfather's case onto my father, how much more time do I have left with him? How much longer will he know me? How much longer can we have some semblance of a conversation?
And when this subsided, I thought about my own life choices and wondered how much this has effected them, remembering that I dropped out of my doctoral program only a few months after I found out about my father's diagnosis. Not that I believe that their choice of academic lives led to their manifestation of the same disease. Rather, I am overwhelmed by the seeming meaninglessness of such achievement and of academic pursuits, especially when it is lost so cruelly and so quickly. Did they enjoy their work or did they look forward to enjoying their lives later? Their academic lives and capabilities, that part of them that took up the largest portion of their vitality and strength, was the first thing to go. What can that mean?
Saturday, October 10, 2009
What is left behind
One morning last week I called my father, a retired political scientist in the earlier stages of Alzheimers. He never remembers that I have called after the fact, but in the moment he is always happy to talk, or rather these days listen more than not.
In my ramblings about my life so far away in California, I mentioned that I had made inquiries about singing on a concert series at the Richard Nixon Library and Memorial. My father, who is reported to have once danced a gig in front of the television set at the news of Nixon's resignation, had forgotten that Nixon had died. When I reminded him that he passed away during the Clinton Presidency, he jovially said that he guessed he hadn't heard much from him in a while.
There is always a lot of talk in my extended family about Alzheimers, as my father is the fourth in the family to manifest these same symptoms. Many of my relatives have said that the losses in the earlier stages of Alzheimers often leave some fundamental essence of that person exposed. My great-aunt Mildred saw beauty in everything, and would tell you about it repeatedly since she could forget that she had already called your attention to the same thing 10 minutes before. My grandfather clung passionately to trying to remember certain facts, first the date of his wife's death and then the fact that she had died. Much later, he expressed a wish to find another woman, a wish that suggested there had been someone else in his heart as well.
Growing up, I always felt that my father's picture should be next to the word "inhibited" in the dictionary. We never talked about feelings, only politics or family gossip. The only passion he showed was for politics, but even that was tempered by his professor's mindset that compelled him to lecture more than converse or listen. As we were talking about the Nixon library last week, some thought came to his head and he started a sentence as we once had talked only to have the idea escape him after two or three words. I did my best to fill in the gaps. Although he no longer grasps the details in the issues of politics, he still enjoys the sport and his joy is evident in his laughter when hearing me talk about the latest antics of John Boehner or some recent fallen Republican.
In his inability to express his thoughts or even form them fully, he is able to share only his 'love of the game.' He also says 'I love you' to me more now than ever before. Although still the consummate partisan, he no longer seems so bothered that his wife is a Republican. (Long before he fell in love with this strong woman, I was raised to believe that Republicans were practically another species.) I hope that he is able to more freely share his love with her as well, especially as she is the one who's daily acts are a testament of love for him.
In my ramblings about my life so far away in California, I mentioned that I had made inquiries about singing on a concert series at the Richard Nixon Library and Memorial. My father, who is reported to have once danced a gig in front of the television set at the news of Nixon's resignation, had forgotten that Nixon had died. When I reminded him that he passed away during the Clinton Presidency, he jovially said that he guessed he hadn't heard much from him in a while.
There is always a lot of talk in my extended family about Alzheimers, as my father is the fourth in the family to manifest these same symptoms. Many of my relatives have said that the losses in the earlier stages of Alzheimers often leave some fundamental essence of that person exposed. My great-aunt Mildred saw beauty in everything, and would tell you about it repeatedly since she could forget that she had already called your attention to the same thing 10 minutes before. My grandfather clung passionately to trying to remember certain facts, first the date of his wife's death and then the fact that she had died. Much later, he expressed a wish to find another woman, a wish that suggested there had been someone else in his heart as well.
Growing up, I always felt that my father's picture should be next to the word "inhibited" in the dictionary. We never talked about feelings, only politics or family gossip. The only passion he showed was for politics, but even that was tempered by his professor's mindset that compelled him to lecture more than converse or listen. As we were talking about the Nixon library last week, some thought came to his head and he started a sentence as we once had talked only to have the idea escape him after two or three words. I did my best to fill in the gaps. Although he no longer grasps the details in the issues of politics, he still enjoys the sport and his joy is evident in his laughter when hearing me talk about the latest antics of John Boehner or some recent fallen Republican.
In his inability to express his thoughts or even form them fully, he is able to share only his 'love of the game.' He also says 'I love you' to me more now than ever before. Although still the consummate partisan, he no longer seems so bothered that his wife is a Republican. (Long before he fell in love with this strong woman, I was raised to believe that Republicans were practically another species.) I hope that he is able to more freely share his love with her as well, especially as she is the one who's daily acts are a testament of love for him.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
The hills are alive... with fire
From my home in Pasadena, I can stand in my back yard and look at the Eagle Rock. Over the past few days, I have watched the giant pyrocumulous clouds blossoming from behind the surrounding mountains. The air is thick with dust and ash, and this morning my car and basil plants were covered. After much hand wringing while listening to my favorite radio station personalities, it seems that Mount Wilson, the observatory and the broadcast towers for the majority of LA's radio stations will now be saved, where yesterday they were anticipating being off the air at any moment.
As I look at the ash and fear for my lungs, this situation reminds me of the ash and dust of another September eight years ago when I lived near and worked in New York. Then dust and ash coated everything and everyone. The day after, I could smell it where I lived an hour away in NJ. The mass of associations aroused from that time by these new fires overwhelms me in its scope, variety and quantity.
I am easily lost in these recollections. My boyfriend often bears the brunt of my ramblings and tends to go silent when I fall into stories and legends of that disaster. These memories are important to me and not something that I share lightly or with people I do not know well. Whatever degree or amount of truth I have retained are illustrative of my own history and perspective as well as the actual event.
For a while I hated to hear most other people talk about what happened in NYC. They seemed to me to fall into three categories: the opportunists, the justifiers and sentimental wallowers who wished to use the tragedy as a cloak to give their own actions some greater meaning.
The most prominent opportunists in my mind were at my place of work in lower Manhattan. They had been there and certainly knew what they were talking about. At first they had to talk about it. This was dealing with life, it was catharsis, it was a means of healing a community directly effected. As the one year anniversary passed and beyond, it seemed to me to become something else. The leadership so enjoyed the notoriety and status that came from their extreme proximity to the event that they seemed unable to let it go. Every sermon had some mention of the towers that were no more. The first "dust, dust, everywhere dust" text, became a mantra substituted for meaning. Their overall corporation seemed to profit by the disaster, and they were even accused of price gouging by the New York Times in the immediate aftermath.
The justifiers are those who sins are now recounted daily by the same news media that turned a blatant blind eye to their crimes when they began. The justifiers wrapped themselves in false cloaks of righteousness and patriotism with the ash of the towers as their own jet fuel to decimate and steal from populations on the other side of the globe who possessed what they desired.
In dealing with members of my third group through the years, the sentimental wallowers, I simply go silent. Maybe their gestures really are well meaning, but they always ring untrue in my ears. Examples include people, years later, dedicating bad pieces of music to the memory of those lost in hopes that such a dedication might win them favor or get their mediocre compositions a bit more attention. Most are people who seem to have no connection to New York, the east, or anyone who was lost or even there, people who sanctimoniously pay homage in public.
In thinking about my lover's silence, I wonder if he sees me as a number three; someone searching to make up for my own lack by piggybacking on a tragedy experienced primarily by others. I don't think that I belong to this group. Though thankfully I was not so affected as many people I knew were, I too have lists of stories and vivid things all tied into that time, things that have been brought to the surface eight years later by only a large quantity of pollutants in the air and waking up to find my plants lightly covered in ash.
Is a blog a place to let all of that out? All of the first hand experiences and stories of others, descriptions of sights and smells, feelings of failure when I might have better handled a young student who had just lost her father, other students taking a hiatus from music lessons to go to grief counseling, the sights on a Sunday morning in lower Manhattan before we were allowed back into our proper church, the smells, the view from the ferry, peoples faces on a silent train as most of us traveled back into the city for the first time since the loss of its tallest towers, battery park dwellers returning home on the subway with Siamese cats in boxes.
This is the tip of a personal iceberg of memory, an iceberg that these horribly destructive fires have inadvertently triggered in this misplaced east coast transplant.
As I look at the ash and fear for my lungs, this situation reminds me of the ash and dust of another September eight years ago when I lived near and worked in New York. Then dust and ash coated everything and everyone. The day after, I could smell it where I lived an hour away in NJ. The mass of associations aroused from that time by these new fires overwhelms me in its scope, variety and quantity.
I am easily lost in these recollections. My boyfriend often bears the brunt of my ramblings and tends to go silent when I fall into stories and legends of that disaster. These memories are important to me and not something that I share lightly or with people I do not know well. Whatever degree or amount of truth I have retained are illustrative of my own history and perspective as well as the actual event.
For a while I hated to hear most other people talk about what happened in NYC. They seemed to me to fall into three categories: the opportunists, the justifiers and sentimental wallowers who wished to use the tragedy as a cloak to give their own actions some greater meaning.
The most prominent opportunists in my mind were at my place of work in lower Manhattan. They had been there and certainly knew what they were talking about. At first they had to talk about it. This was dealing with life, it was catharsis, it was a means of healing a community directly effected. As the one year anniversary passed and beyond, it seemed to me to become something else. The leadership so enjoyed the notoriety and status that came from their extreme proximity to the event that they seemed unable to let it go. Every sermon had some mention of the towers that were no more. The first "dust, dust, everywhere dust" text, became a mantra substituted for meaning. Their overall corporation seemed to profit by the disaster, and they were even accused of price gouging by the New York Times in the immediate aftermath.
The justifiers are those who sins are now recounted daily by the same news media that turned a blatant blind eye to their crimes when they began. The justifiers wrapped themselves in false cloaks of righteousness and patriotism with the ash of the towers as their own jet fuel to decimate and steal from populations on the other side of the globe who possessed what they desired.
In dealing with members of my third group through the years, the sentimental wallowers, I simply go silent. Maybe their gestures really are well meaning, but they always ring untrue in my ears. Examples include people, years later, dedicating bad pieces of music to the memory of those lost in hopes that such a dedication might win them favor or get their mediocre compositions a bit more attention. Most are people who seem to have no connection to New York, the east, or anyone who was lost or even there, people who sanctimoniously pay homage in public.
In thinking about my lover's silence, I wonder if he sees me as a number three; someone searching to make up for my own lack by piggybacking on a tragedy experienced primarily by others. I don't think that I belong to this group. Though thankfully I was not so affected as many people I knew were, I too have lists of stories and vivid things all tied into that time, things that have been brought to the surface eight years later by only a large quantity of pollutants in the air and waking up to find my plants lightly covered in ash.
Is a blog a place to let all of that out? All of the first hand experiences and stories of others, descriptions of sights and smells, feelings of failure when I might have better handled a young student who had just lost her father, other students taking a hiatus from music lessons to go to grief counseling, the sights on a Sunday morning in lower Manhattan before we were allowed back into our proper church, the smells, the view from the ferry, peoples faces on a silent train as most of us traveled back into the city for the first time since the loss of its tallest towers, battery park dwellers returning home on the subway with Siamese cats in boxes.
This is the tip of a personal iceberg of memory, an iceberg that these horribly destructive fires have inadvertently triggered in this misplaced east coast transplant.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Keeping My Light Under the Proverbial Bushel
I am a fence sitter, or at least that is a judgment of others that I have found to be true. Possessed of decent abilities in many areas, I have had a hard time making full commitments to many of my undertakings. Take, for instance, this blog. I have thought of writing a blog for a long time and now I am finally doing it, but I haven't told bloody anyone that it is here. (OK, one person, but he is an old friend, a writer and will probably forgive me if he finds time to read it and sees it as somehow offensive.)
My fear of telling anyone about this blog is a lot like my reasons for not doing many things. If I tell them, they might learn too much about me. (Ignoring the fact that such undertakings are fundamentally exhibitionistic to begin with.) My coworkers might see it and guess, or read blatantly, about my true feelings towards my work. (Although not necessarily bad, I fear that someone might try to use this information against me.) People might tell me I am a bad writer. (Fair enough, I attended conservatories rather than colleges of letters and sciences.) They might loose respect for me, but this of course assumes that there was some there to begin with. Maybe my ideas are good, but I don't want to broadcast them until they are perfected. (So they wait in solitude for perfection to magically rain down upon them.)
On and on it goes. Paralysis by analysis. Yet, in this pattern I see so much of my life and so many of my frustrations. A trained singer, I have more excuses than anyone for not doing certain auditions - and amazingly they resemble my reasons for telling no one about this blog. My years of sacrifice and work to become the performer that I now am are invalidated because I run backwards in fear towards what I had before, dreaming that it is somehow safer. Is it really safer to give up or endlessly defer my dreams? Safer to believe all of the bad things I've been told about my singing through the years but none of the good?
Somewhere inside me, slowly and deep down, action is beginning to stir and I think I will be trying for a few more auditions this Fall. The trick is to care about the preparation, the breath, the craft and form and to let the arrow land where it may, to let my small words land where they may and as they choose. And maybe I will tell a few more people about this blog as well.
My fear of telling anyone about this blog is a lot like my reasons for not doing many things. If I tell them, they might learn too much about me. (Ignoring the fact that such undertakings are fundamentally exhibitionistic to begin with.) My coworkers might see it and guess, or read blatantly, about my true feelings towards my work. (Although not necessarily bad, I fear that someone might try to use this information against me.) People might tell me I am a bad writer. (Fair enough, I attended conservatories rather than colleges of letters and sciences.) They might loose respect for me, but this of course assumes that there was some there to begin with. Maybe my ideas are good, but I don't want to broadcast them until they are perfected. (So they wait in solitude for perfection to magically rain down upon them.)
On and on it goes. Paralysis by analysis. Yet, in this pattern I see so much of my life and so many of my frustrations. A trained singer, I have more excuses than anyone for not doing certain auditions - and amazingly they resemble my reasons for telling no one about this blog. My years of sacrifice and work to become the performer that I now am are invalidated because I run backwards in fear towards what I had before, dreaming that it is somehow safer. Is it really safer to give up or endlessly defer my dreams? Safer to believe all of the bad things I've been told about my singing through the years but none of the good?
Somewhere inside me, slowly and deep down, action is beginning to stir and I think I will be trying for a few more auditions this Fall. The trick is to care about the preparation, the breath, the craft and form and to let the arrow land where it may, to let my small words land where they may and as they choose. And maybe I will tell a few more people about this blog as well.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Death certificates
Through a number of coincidences and lucky happenings, I came into possession of a number of digitized copies of documents pertaining to the history of my family. My maternal grandfather was the first of his siblings to be born in the United States, and his family is the closest link that I have to something of the realm of euro imagination and speculation.
The documents include such things that my mother had possessed in one form or another at some time, the death certificates of her great-grandparents and census records from 1920 and 1930. My acquisitions also include the passenger records from the ship that first brought my great-grandfather across and then from the ship that brought his wife and my grandfather's two older siblings.
Though the underlying story is hardly unusual, these documents lead me to marvel at the personal qualities of my forbears. My great-grandfather came across in 1904. My mother's oldest first cousin says that he had training as a carpenter in Holland before he returned to Hungary and met my great-grandmother, but in the new world he was a laborer. By 1910 he had saved enough money to send for his wife and two children in style by buying them a state room on a ship. What must it have taken for him to cross the ocean at the age of 26, leaving behind a wife with one child and another on the way? What was my great-grandmother like to have left her tiny village with two small children, ages 4 and 6 in tow, illiterate even in her own language? What type of steel did she posses to have gone first to Italy to get a boat and when turned away then traveled to Germany where they finally boarded the President Lincoln in Hamburg bound for this promised land so far away?
As I muse on their fortitude, my own struggles and demons seem so small in comparison. I think of how they came here so that I, and the other hundred or so of their great-grandchildren, might have my own struggles and opportunities, so unlike theirs.
In reading through the blanks of my great-grandfather's death certificate from 1926, I am also struck by the equanimity of death. Here was a man, as brave in my imagination as any fictional hero, dead at the age of 50 from a stomach cancer which had apparently plagued him for 10 years. "Occupation: Labor working in stone quarry." How did he continue working in a stone quarry for a decade with such an ailment? How did he buy a house and 4 acres of land for his family while working in such a lowly job?
There is a juxtaposition here I would like to make. Another great-grandfather of mine was a veterinarian in rural Indiana, another was a state senator and physician and another an English teacher and local politician. Despite their worldly status, each of their exits were marked by just such a document to be remembered by those succeeding generations who might take such scant clues to wonder about the character of each man. Though the others left far more written documentation of their lives and were shown far more worldly appreciation that this one, yet somehow my mind returns to this brave and mysterious man again and again. Bravery shown by scant facts, missing details with a world of color to be filled in by those who exist because of his choices.
The documents include such things that my mother had possessed in one form or another at some time, the death certificates of her great-grandparents and census records from 1920 and 1930. My acquisitions also include the passenger records from the ship that first brought my great-grandfather across and then from the ship that brought his wife and my grandfather's two older siblings.
Though the underlying story is hardly unusual, these documents lead me to marvel at the personal qualities of my forbears. My great-grandfather came across in 1904. My mother's oldest first cousin says that he had training as a carpenter in Holland before he returned to Hungary and met my great-grandmother, but in the new world he was a laborer. By 1910 he had saved enough money to send for his wife and two children in style by buying them a state room on a ship. What must it have taken for him to cross the ocean at the age of 26, leaving behind a wife with one child and another on the way? What was my great-grandmother like to have left her tiny village with two small children, ages 4 and 6 in tow, illiterate even in her own language? What type of steel did she posses to have gone first to Italy to get a boat and when turned away then traveled to Germany where they finally boarded the President Lincoln in Hamburg bound for this promised land so far away?
As I muse on their fortitude, my own struggles and demons seem so small in comparison. I think of how they came here so that I, and the other hundred or so of their great-grandchildren, might have my own struggles and opportunities, so unlike theirs.
In reading through the blanks of my great-grandfather's death certificate from 1926, I am also struck by the equanimity of death. Here was a man, as brave in my imagination as any fictional hero, dead at the age of 50 from a stomach cancer which had apparently plagued him for 10 years. "Occupation: Labor working in stone quarry." How did he continue working in a stone quarry for a decade with such an ailment? How did he buy a house and 4 acres of land for his family while working in such a lowly job?
There is a juxtaposition here I would like to make. Another great-grandfather of mine was a veterinarian in rural Indiana, another was a state senator and physician and another an English teacher and local politician. Despite their worldly status, each of their exits were marked by just such a document to be remembered by those succeeding generations who might take such scant clues to wonder about the character of each man. Though the others left far more written documentation of their lives and were shown far more worldly appreciation that this one, yet somehow my mind returns to this brave and mysterious man again and again. Bravery shown by scant facts, missing details with a world of color to be filled in by those who exist because of his choices.
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