So.

I've been away for what feels like forever, but was in fact only eleven days. Brian and I went to visit my parents in Massachusetts for a week, then spent three days down in North Carolina visiting with my maternal grandmother. Do you want to see pictures? Of course you do.



Before we left, Brian and I talked about whether or not we should pack the camera. We went back and forth, and when we got to Massachusetts and the camera wasn't in my bag, I figured we'd decided against it, after all. Then, three days before we were set to go home, I found the camera in Brian's backpack. So this is the first picture I took of our trip, one week in. You'll just have to imagine all the fun that came before.

While we were in North Carolina, we visited Old Salem, a Moravian settlement that's been restored into a hybrid living museum/posh neighborhood.


It was one of my favorite places to visit as a kid.


The houses are all really cool and old, and you can still see the numbers that they carved into the beams as they were making the houses. It was kind of like a proto-Ikea: they assembled everything in one place, then put it together as a community, clip clap clop, just like that.


Anyway, it was fun, and a little humbling to simultaneously revisit my own past and that of this long ago community, to sit with their well made buildings and books and furniture, and think about my frivolous and largely idle life.




Plus, I saw a really cool bug. You can't really see it in that photo, but I promise that it's there.

Childrearing

I've decided that I should myself as I would a wayward child: discipline, structure, and a generous application of dessert treats as rewards. Writing (for the fun of it, to remind myself it *is* fun) every day for at least a half an hour upon waking, enforced hygiene (brush your hair one hundred strokes and shower at least every other day). If I haven't grown up to be the adult I would have liked, then by golly I will raise her myself.

In other news, I may have finally gone insane.

Achilles came to Troyland

The man on the right is my grandfather. The man on the left is, I'm guessing, someone he trained with at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. On the back of the photo, in my grandpa's messy handwriting, he's identified as "Lt Krause."

My grandfather took a fair number of photos of his days in the army. I can't help but wonder, looking at photos like this one and of smoke breaks and swimming holes and men and artillery, what happened to the other men. Did they make it home? Are they still alive today?



By the same token, I can't help but wonder about my grandfather. I know the basics, of course. I knew him, I remember him. I saw the man he grew up to be and I know how and when he died. But my grandfather -- who he was before I knew him, who he was when I knew him but never thought to wonder: who was he?

I guess the wondering is part of that bigger questioning: what makes us who we are?

If I had a day job, I'd keep it.

I don't know why, but I've been having trouble writing lately. It doesn't matter if it's for my own private paper diary, this here blog, paid web-work or just a grocery list. I'm just blocked.

When I was a kid, I loved drawing. "It makes my brain feel good," I'd tell my mother. And it did -- like nothing else ever. Drawing was the only thing that made me feel fully engaged, fully present in the moment. It was good, and I was good at it, the best in my class, except for that one new kid in third grade who drew really good spaceships. But he vanished the following year, so no harm done.

I wonder sometimes if I should have pursued art, gone to school and learned illustration, or just kept drawing until I figured out where it might take me. I think that's why 'personality type' tests depress me -- there's this feeling of inevitability to being a type: I could never have turned out any differently. This is the best of all possible worlds.

The other day, my cousin Molly and I visited the Lucas Arts office complex here in San Francisco (one of Brian's ju-jitsu buddies was doing some freelance work there and generously offered to squire us around). It awakened an odd mix of feelings, mostly frustration. Why didn't I ever think to go in to special effects, I wondered. Why don't I write rip-roaring adventures, the kind that burrow into the popular imagination? What's wrong with me, that I can't seem to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, when I've been grown up for some time now. Where's my freakin' Yoda? And why do I waste my time thinking thoughts like that, when it's the doers that I envy? Wouldn't doing be the best antidote for this paralitic broody melancholy?

So I'm drawing when I can't write. Then, if I feel ready to write all of a sudden, I'm already sitting there, pen in hand.

Anyway. In the meantime here's a picture I drew of our visit. No cameras allowed at Lucas Arts!

γνῶθι σεαυτόν

Why do I find this result depressing?


Because I'm a Enneagram Type Four, and we're self absorbed, melancholy bastards, that's why.

Happy Birthday, Robert Graves

She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.

I first read this poem in high school. I'd just devoured I, Claudius and Claudius the God, and I wanted to be Robert Graves when I grew up. It was, quite simply, the most shockingly sexy thing I'd ever read [and I'd read Clan of the Cave Bear!].

Higher Quality Memories

My great grandfather Alfred Heininger
Originally uploaded by Nora Sawyer

I kind of like te effect I get from taking cellphone snapshots of old photos I like. But I have to say, there's something to be said for this scanning business. Here's that photo of my great-grandfather again (click the picture to see it larger).He's all dressed up for World War I. Luckily the war ended soon after this photo was taken.

Ghosts and Houses

The last few nights, I've been spooked at bedtime, reluctant to sleep in my darkened room. I've been leaving the bedside lamp on. It bothers me and makes it hard to fall asleep, but without it I start to imagine all sorts of things, like torsos, headless and legless, crawling up onto the bed, or strange figures watching from the foot. I never see anything, mind you, but the thought alone is enough.

When I first got here, when grandma was still in the hospital, I slept the sleep of the unimaginative, knocking out as soon as my head hit the pillow and not stirring until late every morning. And for the longest time that held steady, even when dad was here and the sounds of him stirring about at night sent my imagination scurrying.

But now, I lie awake forever, alert to every sound, catching shapes and shadows from the corner of my eye. Maybe it's the steady dredging of family photos and memorabilia -- staring into the faces of long-dead ancestors, reading their letters and asking questions that my grandfather would know, but isn't here to answer.


For instance: Is that a parrot in the top right corner? Were we once a bird-owning family? And whose summer home is that, who's at the piano?


I find myself wondering, are we a happy family? It's a funny question, and not one I'm comfortable asking my grandmother. In fact, I'm not entirely comfortable asking myself.


The pastoral landscape of my childhood could and did conceal any number of long-dead battlegrounds. But whose life doesn't stand on foundations that shift and creak sometimes in the wind? Tolstoy said that happy families are all alike and unhappy families unique, but I wonder if happy families might not be just as complex and distinctive as unhappy ones, their unique troubles soothed into another narrative, their private struggles forming the hills and valleys upon which future generations stand.

Were they happy then? Are we happy now?


I think it depends on what story you decide to tell.

Losing and Forgetting

My grandmother's always losing things. The first day I was back up here, it was her glasses; she and I were getting ready for a walk, and she materialized beside me in a pair of huge, circa nineteen-seventy-two frames. "My prescription needs changing," she said. "These are good for now."

"Ok," I said, and we went for a walk, her in her big frames and over sized angora coat with large ivory buttons, and me in a tee shirt and jeans, because it was in the high seventies and quite pleasant, really.

Later that night, when it was time for bed, I walked in to find grandma, half undressed, rooting through closets and drawers. "I can't find my glasses," she said.

"Are these them?" I asked, holding up the large frames she'd worn all evening.

"Those are my old ones. They're okay, but they make me dizzy after a bit."

She and I sorted and searched for a half an hour, finding more old glasses, some in cases marked with the address of her optometrist in Washington D.C (which makes them at least as old as me), and bits of African sculpture socked away in drawers, and various other bits of flotsam and treasure that come from living eighty siz years and never throwing things away.

Finally, I convinced her it was time for bed. "We'll look again in the morning," I said.

"Perhaps I left them in the backyard and the mower ran them over," she said, looking worriedly out the window.

"Maybe," I said, thinking she'd probably lost or broken her glasses weeks ago, that a new pair had been ordered and that this search was probably one of those futile echoes that tends to plague her now that she's grown old and prone to worry and forgetfulness.

The next morning, I had a hard time getting her out of bed. "Is it morning, or afternoon?" she asked at 9:30 when I opened her curtains to let the sunlight in.

"It's morning. You've slept late, but it's time for breakfast now."

I went downstairs, and listened to her stirring above me. She's gotten a lot more independent than when she was first out of the hospital, and I've been trying to give her privacy and room. She's used to doing things on her own, I figure, and probably doesn't want a great gallumphing granddaughter shadowing her every move. After a half hour had passed, I went upstairs again.

"I can't find my glasses."

"I know, we can look after breakfast."

"But haven't I had breakfast?"

"No, not yet. The table's set and ready to go." My stomach was rumbling. I'd been up since eight.

"I wonder if I left my glasses in the shower..."

Downstairs, I straightened the front room, listening to her footsteps as she searched from room to room and wondering how on earth I'd corral this woman, this unstoppable, independent mother who raised five children and cared for my grandfather when he had Alzheimer's and who hiked the length of Vermont when she was a teenager. How do you convince someone that they're no longer the authority on their own lives?

And then, under a sofa cushion, I found her glasses, the one's I'd nearly convinced myself didn't actually exist. "See there?" I said to myself. "Give grandma more credit. Grandma still knows what's what."

After a joyful reunion with the right glasses, my grandmother finally made her way down to breakfast.

"Are you sure it's not lunchtime?" she asked as I bustled around, getting tea and orange juice.

"It nearly is, grandma, but we haven't had breakfast yet."

"But your flight didn't get in until the afternoon."

"That was yesterday."

"Oh. Right."

And then we ate our breakfast, and then we went for a walk.

Poetry Thursday: Rupert Brooke

Menelaus and Helen

I
Hot through Troy's ruin Menelaus broke
To Priam's palace, sword in hand, to sate
On that adulterous whore a ten years' hate
And a king's honour. Through red death, and smoke,
And cries, and then by quieter ways he strode,
Till the still innermost chamber fronted him.
He swung his sword, and crashed into the dim
Luxurious bower, flaming like a god.
High sat white Helen, lonely and serene.
He had not remembered that she was so fair,
And that her neck curved down in such a way;
And he felt tired. He flung the sword away,
And kissed her feet, and knelt before her there,
The perfect Knight before the perfect Queen.

II
So far the poet. How should he behold
That journey home, the long connubial years?
He does not tell you how white Helen bears
Child on legitimate child, becomes a scold,
Haggard with virtue. Menelaus bold
Waxed garrulous, and sacked a hundred Troys
'Twixt noon and supper. And her golden voice
Got shrill as he grew deafer. And both were old.
Often he wonders why on earth he went
Troyward, or why poor Paris ever came.
Oft she weeps, gummy-eyed and impotent;
Her dry shanks twitch at Paris' mumbled name.
So Menelaus nagged; and Helen cried;
And Paris slept on by Scamander side.


Ok, so I'm a bit obsessed with the Trojan War. Which translates fairly naturally rather roundaboutly into a mild obsession with Rupert Brooke. It lessens a bit, as I get older and my affinity for youth and tragedy and tragic beauty wanes, but there'll always be room in my heart (and my lectures) for ol' Rupert.

So, Brian and I are in the studio today, and, as usual, he has the TV on while he's working, while I, as usual, have my headphones on and the music turned up as far as I can so that I can write and ignore him.

Until M*A*S*H comes on, that is. M*A*S*H is a show I used to sneak off to watch in our all but TV-free household, a bit of childhood memory-ville I find particularly hard to tune out. Especially when it awakens my other obsessions. As with this particular episode, which opens with Klinger lying out in the Korean countryside, reading Rupert Brooke.

"I love Rupert Brooke," I said to Brian.

"Hm?"

"He's so tragic. He died on the way to the battle of Gallipoli, you know."

"How?"

".....Rhumatic fever? I think? Maybe?"

"Romantic fever?"

"That's more likely."

It was sepsis from an infected mosquito bite, actually.

Be Careful What You Wish For

It's freezing. Brr.


I want my seasonably hot weather back.

Too darn

It's hot. I always say that I miss the summer heat but really? Not so much. Not when it's actually here. The only times I like it are a: after dark, and b: when we're here in Brian's basement. Speaking of the Brian: how many times can he watch the same Sopranos episode? A: a lot.

This is becoming an annual tradition: the weather's hot for a few days, and I write a blog post about how we San Franciscans have a deal with the Powers That Be: a few earthquakes, the occasional heaping of scorn from the Bible Belt, and in return we get weather that hardly ever falls below 50 or rises above 70. Is that too much to ask?

Apparently.

Up in the air

I'm at the airport, killing time before my flight home, which has been delayed two and a half hours. You'd think that would be a good time to catch up on work or personal writing, but instead it's mostly been spent trolling airport gift shops, fondling the smoked salmon and books of Northwest Coast art. And now blogging. Productivity: not my strong point.

We had a good visit. My grandmother seems better everyday, which makes for a funny combination of feelings -- relief, of course, that her health continues to improve, with a touch of awkwardness. What to do, when she needs me less? And how to know when to step in, and when to allow her privacy? It's an odd balancing act, and one that nothing in my life thus far has really prepared me for.

Anyway. Home again. I'll heading back to Vancouver in July, when my darling seester will be up from CT. If anyone actually stamped my passport at the border (why don't they?), it'd be looking pretty fancy.

Anyway, that's enough for now. I'm gonna go try and find me some airport art to look at.

Even More Family Photos

My grandfather, beatnik phase

My father, eccentric phase.

More Family Photos

My grandparents (and my grandfather's reflection) at their wedding.

Grandma, my dad and I found this in an album last night, after Grandma's birthday dinner.

"You look so young!" I said. "How old were you?"

"Twenty five?" said grandma.

"That is young."

"Twenty four? Twenty three? Twenty two?"

We all laughed. "Young!"

Family Secrets: More Prosaic Than You Might Expect

It's 8:31, and Grandma should've been up about a half an hour ago (no reason, really. She just set her alarm for 8 AM last night when I was putting her to bed). About a minute ago, I heard her stirring upstairs, so I went up, glass of water in hand, to help her get dressed and ready to face the day. As I walked into her room, she shuffled out of the bathroom and crawled back into bed. "Could I get fifteen more minutes?"

Could it be she's not really a morning person? Apparently, my up-at-six-and-off-to-exercise grandma and sluggabed me have more in common than previously suspected.

In other news, I've started moving like my grandmother. Last night, as I straightened the kitchen and again this morning, as I opened the blinds and made coffee, I found myself moving slowly, placing my feet precisely as if I were a much smaller and more fragile than I actually am.

I need to go out someplace and dance around like a clumsy maniac.

I've been trying to casually work this into a blog post, but it just won't cooperate.

So there's this urban legend I heard once, about this woman who's in an ice cream shop when she notices Jack Nicholson is standing next to her. She plays it cool, completes the ice-cream-for-money exchange, and heads outside -- only to discover that she no longer has her ice cream with her. As she's standing there trying to figure out what on earth has happened, Jack Nicholson walks out of the shop, sidles up to her and whispers, "It's in your purse."

So anyway, last Tuesday found me in the airport, passport and boarding pass in hand, waiting for my delayed flight to Vancouver. I'd just left an embarrasingly smooshy face message on Brian's voicemail when I truned around to discover myself right next to a small family who'd just disesmbarked from the plane I was going to take up to Canada & were sorting out their strollers and such. The mother looked familiar. I checked out the baby. Familiar. I checked out the dad. Familiar.

Ohmigod, y'all. It was Maggie Mason.

I stood there, openmouthed for a moment or so, then rushed away, all star struck and much too shy to say "helloIhaveyourbookandwowyouguysarecuteinreallife." And then I spent fifteen minutes trying to figure out what on earth I'd done with my passport (I'd stuck it between the pages of my book in all the excitement).

In other news, The Ice Cream for Money Exchange is totally the name of my new band.

Some family photos

My grandmother and my aunt Carol, hiding behind the rhubarb leaves


One thing I always do when visiting my grandparents is pore through all the family albums. It's just a more elaborate kind of narcissism, I suppose, but I've always been somewhat soothed by looking at these sort of reflections out into the past.

It seems to soothe my grandma, too. She's in the early stages of dementia, and is often scared or sad, but I brought in some albums yesterday, and she and I had a lot of fun talking about her mom and dad, and her uncle Bruno (a dentist who made a set of bridgework for his elderly beagle), and the long hair my uncle Brian sported for "just a short while" in the 1970's, and how my dad's bedroom was filled with so many gadgets that it was hard to find the bed (note to grandma: nothing's changed on that front).

I've been taking pictures of some of the photos I especially like with my cell phone camera. I feel like a bit of a sneak thief, but I actually really like the look of these snapshots-of-snapshots.


Grandma in hat, on boat. My aunt Carol's there in the background.



My grandparents on the steps at camp, sometime in the late 60's. My great grandmother Erna Heininger next to my grandma. That's the top of my great-uncle Clem's head there in front of my grandpa.

Me and my dad, circa 1982 (ish?).

My sister and me. Mary's on the porch at camp. I'm smack dab in the middle of the awkward stage.

My grandma with her mother.

Smallness and Bigness

I'm in Vancouver, visiting my grandmother, who's in the hospital. It's been making for strange, tiring days that I'm going to have to sit on for a bit before I try to write for public consumption. This is a piece about my grandma that I wrote for her birthday last year. I found it tonight whilst rooting around in my grandmother's mementos looking for things to bring in to the hospital with me tomorrow.


“Grandmama Erika weighs less than nothing,” my sister told me once when we were little. “Literally.” And while that’s not entirely accurate, one could be forgiven for thinking it’s true. Granddaddy Alan once told me she that the only way that Grandmama could top one hundred pounds would be for her to put on all her winter clothes at once and dunk herself in the lake. I’ve been taller than she is forever now -- a giantess enfolding her small shoulders in my large and unwieldy arms every time we meet. My grandmother seems made of smallness.

You’d be wrong, however, to assume a corresponding fragility. Soon after Brian and I first moved to San Francisco, we headed up to Vancouver for an American Thanksgiving in Canada. Grandmama Erika had just entered her eighties, older than she’d ever been before (which is the way that these things work, I suppose), and on the flight up I was afraid that she’d be ancient. I was afraid I’d find her reduced somehow.

I needn’t have worried. Grandmama was the same as ever, guiding us on walks through the neighborhood and rooting out family photos and other artifacts for me to examine. By the time Brian and I tottered down to breakfast in the mornings, she would have already attended an exercise class, or met with some social group or other. Coffee would be percolating on the stove, and bowls with whole grain cereal and a banana on the side would be set out on the table.

Many of my memories of Grandmama’s house involve food: sitting in the morning sun at breakfast; lunches of walnut bread and soup and tofu; the three of us – Grandmama, Brian and I -- watching a coyote poke through the backyard as we clear up our dishes.

Grandmama’s kitchen is a warm room, built to suit its cook perfectly, with workspaces and cabinets and sinks exactly where you’d want them. There’s an appreciation for food here, both for the way it tastes and the nutrients it contains. Meals with Grandmama incorporate every food group, and ingredients in their most natural state, unprocessed feasts imparting energy rather than lassitude.

And so we were perpetually up for adventure, for walks in the park and all around Vancouver. At the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, she entertained Brian and me with anecdotes about the construction of the museum and the artists that she and granddaddy had known. Outside, she blazed trails through overgrowth and up hillsides as we investigated the Haida House complex. Standing by an eroded memorial pole, I turned to watch Brian and Grandmama as they walked around a large structure. Eagles were circling overhead in the large overcast sky, and Grandmama’s red coat stood out sharply against the gray clouds, small but bright.

Toons for Tuesday

Ok, so it's not exactly Tuesday. And this isn't exactly a cartoon. And I haven't exactly been regular about posting cartoons, either. But look! I made this! On me tablet.



I'm glad to be using the tablet again. Because it was my last big purchase before New College stopped paying me, my relationship with it has been a little fraught these past few months: a constant cycle of guilt-and-non-use. Luckily, it's a fun toy, and now that we've broken that cycle, I forsee many happily wasted hours spent doodling on the laptop. Hurrah!