While digging about on Ancestry.com, the genealogical website which accesses millions of records in a flash, I have found that I have membership in several families. While revelations can be misconstrued or mislabeled, it pleases me to think that my mother was related to history in terms and names found in books. My father treated her as though he had rescued a mouse who had been run over by his bicycle, and that would pitifully limp about while he shook the shoebox and yelled at it to get better.
She thought she was nothing. A mistake. From the age of two, when I understood not so much who he was, but had decided that this angry man who came home around dinner time should find someplace else to go, find another family to bother as if any other group of people would welcome an unpredictable knot of problems into their midst. Oh sure, they might say, come on in, we don't have enough frustration and demeaning remarks, there should be more. Would you like to throw a plate? Nooo, you're not really drunk or volatile; we understand. Have another beer, what about a sandwich? No, it's not a plate of hot food. Whoa! You missed that time; here, try for the wall. Every freaking day.
I have little access to records of his parentage, and it would be helpful if I knew the languages of his immigrant family who didn't seem to know what to do with him, either. Most of them were quiet, gentle, humorous people who seemed to have landed from an entirely different planet based on food, where candy was kept in cedar chests, there were always hard anise cookies, and they were so glad to see you, a parade was announced for the neighborhood. Daj buzie. Except for the fact that the neighbors remembered my father, and would look at us kids and Mom with pathos bordering on panic as if they wanted to say, run, run for your lives!
So, digging through Mom's lines, according to Ancestry, has supplied a number of surprises that arrive like pop-up book pages on a flat screen. First of all, there is very little if any German, the family takes a turn into France where generations did things like bake for Napoleon's army, or maybe burn villages. Her family came from the Netherlands, Wales, Scotland, Finland, and Norway, places I had not heard that were connected to us, with names that seemed mythical as if her fairy godmother tinked her in the head with a sparkler and said, Look where you came from.
The Folgers who started the coffee business, Hamilton Fish, a Secretary of State; Ben Franklin, Henry the VIII, the Plantagenets, Mayflower Pilgrims, the colonist Robert Hunter, and the King of Castile were behind Dorothy Mae. This was getting fantastic to me, that world history was entwined through my grandmother, who believed in the curative powers of cabbage and wieners.
I am still in the process of finding relatives and bloodlines, yet have started questioning the validity of Ancestry. Now, this is how it works: they present the records, you are the one to match dates and names and boy howdy, you can tell when a handwritten record was deciphered into various dates by guessing what shape that number was supposed to be. Fives become sixes, sevens look like ones, so as far as dates go, pick the one that makes sense and aligns with the family having children. People appear after their parents were beyond child-bearing years, or as replacements named after an earlier sibling who died. It gives me a headache, and after an hour of who did what to who, the whole thing gets tangled into a ball of worms.
Clarity is key, yet as you and I know, clarity is as tangible and real as a blue sky; once humans open their mouths or write down a record, it becomes fabulous and suited to the purveyor's background; frogs and toads jumping out of people's throats makes more sense. So, here I am delving amid the Tewdyrw Welsh, imagining everyone speaking like Richard Burton and wearing doublets. Back, back, another set of parents, another set of parents, it's the 700's, another set of parents, keep going, how the heck do they know who was who; now it's the 300's and a Roman-sounding name pops up. Tacticus Tegid of Britain. Well, let's follow Tacticus and see where he came from; already his name had stood out among the dd's and y's that Welsh names are rife with, but now all the vowels are floating off as if those people had one typewriter with 18 broken keys.
Gwyrddofen Ap Amwerydd is my 58th great grandfather from the year 79 A.D.,
and I wonder how the heck they know that for weren't things written rarely, on rocks? I hear a ka-ching as Ancestry takes my $20 for the month and gleefully spins a cache of pingpong balls with vowel-less names taken from Neolithicity and You to toss at my curiosity. But I am going to get my twenty bucks worth of research for the month and plug onward.
About 70 A.D., things get magical, as if the Lucky Charms leprechaun had jumped off the box of cereal and granted me three wishes plus a pot of gold doubloons. By this time, I am guessing I am talking to sheep or a smart turnip. But a name turns up with a "Ben" in the middle, Avallach Ben Llud, meaning the son of Llud; now, getting ready for a Jewish wedding as our family is, I have learned a lot about Judaism and the significance of names. Avallach is the son of Beli Llud Mawr, King of the Britons, who had married Anna of Arimathea; they had met in Rome, and Beli invited the Roman Christians to come visit Britain. Anna, accordingly, is the daughter of Joseph Ben Matthat of Arimathea by his first wife, his brother's widow Escha.
Her sister is Mary the Blessed Mother. She's my 66th great aunt. Jesus is my first cousin, 67 times removed. What really stirred my soup is that clicking on Mary's family members says, in print, that Heavenly God the Father was one of her husbands and that He is my 66th great grand uncle. Birth, Omnipresent; Death, Omnipresent.
It must be remembered that Ancestry is Christian-based, that the Mormons believe that your family life is eternal, and part of their faith is to help everyone find out where they came from. So listing God, (on the site it's GOD, like he's yelling at you), seems like valid fact. If they had listed dust from the Alpha Centauri system as a far-off grandparent, I would be no less surprised. I will tell you now that I am not Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or Buddhist; there is someone out there, that I believe, and I guess the closest thing you could say is that I'm agnostic. Having God for an uncle makes me uncomfortable, like there should be Old Testament carvings above my door to keep the Angel of Death satisfied that no Egyptians are within.
I was steeped, fermented, aged, and packed in the styrofoam of Catholicism which keeps people isolated and away from other religions. After going to my friend's Episcopalian choir practice, my father made me go to confession, where the priest asked if I learned anything, if I did, to forget about it, and not to do it again. Jews were a historical Biblical tribe that followed Moses through the desert for forty years; picture my shock when finding out the kid I sat next to in homeroom was Elias Bernstein, a Jew. A real Jew that wasn't mummified or wearing breastplates; he was more concerned with his scores in the school's Golf Club. Wow, I thought as I brushed by him, I touched a real Jew.
Now the scheme is about finding the validity of this genealogical adventure; yes, these were real people, yes they had families. Jesus is listed as having a wife and children. Why not? These families had descendants, which must be in the billions, but if you have had similar results, please let me know. It is just too weird, as if a dog had showed up at my door with a human leg in it's mouth.
But the clincher is this: my religious fanatic father, who made Mr. T's necklaces seem paltry compared with all the medals, scapulars, and rosaries that he wore around his own neck; my father who made me go to confession when he found out I ate a hot dog on a Friday, this man who ranted about purity, the Blessed Mother, had everything blue because that was supposedly the color of her cloak, not because he was red/green colorblind; and railed about my Mom's lack of religious fervor, was actually living with a descendant of Mary, who I can guess wouldn't put up with his weekly breaking of household objects. I still cannot stand anything blue; even if the cat throws up Super Supper, it's a better color than blue. There are times when I look at the sky and am grateful for the rose and gold sunset. Turquoise, okay. Close to purple, fine. Royal blue makes my stomach ache.
My son has instructed me that under no circumstances am I to reveal a Jewish thread to his future father-in-law, who would dance on tables and crow joyously if Bri had a drop of Jew in him through me, his mother. I went back farther, and the names Moses, Noah, Aaron, and Kohen blink back at me, as well I do at them. Brian is wearing a yarmulke for the orthodox ceremony, I am trying to get him to wear a kilt with the Coburn plaid, which would be honoring my Mom, in a way. Perfectly.
How can you manage everything that you are supposed to remember? It's suppertime in the Western Hemisphere, and I think a hot dog would be just enough, even though it's not Friday. I'll remember things tomorrow, there's enough going on today.
You are the descendant of everything that has existed upon this spinning sphere, for it is said that all life generated from the dust of passing comets, meteorites, the clouds of ammonia and nitrogen that first resided in our first atmosphere. The planet formed when gases and dust from the explosion spun and congealed; that spinning increased as when a skater pulls in their arms and now we have night and day. Water came; biology entered, crawled onto the rocks, and hissed at the other creatures emerging, probably fought over whose castle was whose, and became fanged. Perhaps this has gone on for epochs, the tides rising and falling still older than anything.
Be kind, be nice. That's all. It's the best I can remember to do, I am not getting lariated into anyone's beliefs, nor tragic malarkey regarding stepping on cracks, breaking your mother's back and thus ending up in hell. If it works for you, fine; as long as it keeps you on a balance beam of self-awareness and of the impact it may have on others different than you. There will be surprises along the way, just do the best you can.
Sleep well, the summer air is warm but not intolerable, making for a memory of people taking blankets up on flat roof or outside in the grass to sleep. The sky is melting into the symphony of colors presented at the end of each clear day, beginning with yellow golds reflected upon the downtown skyline. Pick up a book and read, write a note for a future friend; piece together puzzles that tell you who you are; then let it go, a sylph caught on a breath of evening. It's a story that floats through layers of time, whose stratification dissolves when you turn the pages of your life. Good night.
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Slow Your Going
This morning a dashing young friend told of a favorite bicycle ride that they would take, straight down a country road; well that wasn't the end of it. They live amid farmhouses and large tracts of land, now growing green in a riot of summer; a bicycle ride will clear your head if only because you are breathing more oxygen to pump those leg muscles. Some of this clarifying elixir may make it to your brain, and create a stronger alertness, sharpen colors, and bestow the olfactory senses of a pointer.
I would ride my bike down my street when I was nine, and particularly during autumn notice what everyone was cooking for dinner that night. Knocking on the door would have not been out of the question; pot roasts simmered, chickens roasted, pork and sauerkraut wafted from the Clementowski's house. The cool air just at the end of a fall afternoon honed the kitchen incense into a salt and pepper symphony; by the time my bike turned up the driveway, I had enjoyed each household's offerings as if I were a guest.
Prior to living in the town with sidewalks and nearby stores, we had lived in an area with maybe four neighbors stretched out by miles and half miles, ending with a sheep farm and a quarry at one end, dairy farms and cornfields at the other. The story of the country bicycle ride tuned my fork, as it were, for, sure; a bicycle ride out where little traffic exists is exhilarating, mid green things and occasional hundred year old trees, but. This rider did not stay on the road, they got off the bike and walked it over fields and clods of plowed furrows to a copse, to sit and breathe, to listen to birdsong. What caught my own memory was that as they tramped over the field's rough ground, they looked for things "of interest".
Me too. I didn't sit in the woods, not brave enough alone; but through any of the acres of land surrounding our house, I looked, and you learn about things by first looking. Toads, spitbugs, grasshoppers, fluff from a mother rabbit to make a nest for her kits; a woodchuck skull, snakeskin, an empty shell from a wood snail; goatsbeard, teasels, butterfly weed, milkweed pods, elf dock, purple asters; fossils from Devonian oceans, obsidian, gneiss, quartzite; feathers, wooly bear caterpillars, garter snakes, corn snakes, coachwhips and rat snakes that looked large enough to entwine both my seven year old self and the bike. Snakes were okay, the sudden movement would startle, but then the patterns or reflection of light off undulating scales would fascinate.
The abundance of life was taken for granted, for that is how it was and in my small head, the way it would be forever. Now I know better, through invasive species pushing the natives out of the way, through the development of farmland to town to city or manufacturing plant. Where I lived is now a headquarters for National Fuel; a godawful drag race track is now the other side of the woods, and NiMo has installed the stilted monsters that carry powerlines from Niagara Falls to the east coast. The ground cherries are gone, the wild raspberries also; the price of the land escalated, turning the dairy farms into upper crust cul-de-sacs. No more mooing from a lost cow in the night, no more fresh, cold water from the natural spring on Wuller's property.
By losing wild fields, we also lose the barrier zones that cushion the forest from the buildings; there are two, immense abandoned malls in the area, and the debris ends up in landfills or honest to goodness, is shuttled on semi trucks from destination to destination. If the shards of concrete and reinforcement wire are refused at one site, it is taken to another, states away. Or another. Or dumped into the ocean. Meanwhile, to hear the lullaby of crickets or the song of a finch, a drive out to the country will take you at least thirty minutes as compared to the flinging of a screen window, open to the rules of nature.
I have felt the bullet sharp click of a grasshopper's legs taking flight from my palm; chickadees have plucked seed from my hand, brushing against my face with their wings; I have held the cool dryness that is snake, fallen in the crick, made a painting with ink from Coprinus mushrooms. Look when you walk over grass, or a field turned inside out as it waits for seed, find something of interest if only the rising damp smell of earth. Walk about, learn what's underfoot. It's a strong lesson from a young cyclist.
Night is closing, supper is waiting to be scumbled together; I hear footsteps in my mind, slogging over rows of field, breathing the rays of an autumn sun, then pushing down on the pedals to get home after grabbing a stem of asters or goldenrod for Mom. Sleep as the winds blow through tall grasses, over lake waters, through branches where sparrows have bedded for the night; be accountable for how you treat the earth. You don't have to become a crusader, only toss some seed for the birds, pick up a piece of litter, dispose of chemicals carefully. Weave your own song through your dreams, so the single notes of one blend with others to make a composition, together. We are in this together; you, I, the animals, the plants, fungi, protists, and monera; I count rocks as well. The kingdom of rocks. I'll explain it someday.
Dream, then. Dream of the song of stones.
I would ride my bike down my street when I was nine, and particularly during autumn notice what everyone was cooking for dinner that night. Knocking on the door would have not been out of the question; pot roasts simmered, chickens roasted, pork and sauerkraut wafted from the Clementowski's house. The cool air just at the end of a fall afternoon honed the kitchen incense into a salt and pepper symphony; by the time my bike turned up the driveway, I had enjoyed each household's offerings as if I were a guest.
Prior to living in the town with sidewalks and nearby stores, we had lived in an area with maybe four neighbors stretched out by miles and half miles, ending with a sheep farm and a quarry at one end, dairy farms and cornfields at the other. The story of the country bicycle ride tuned my fork, as it were, for, sure; a bicycle ride out where little traffic exists is exhilarating, mid green things and occasional hundred year old trees, but. This rider did not stay on the road, they got off the bike and walked it over fields and clods of plowed furrows to a copse, to sit and breathe, to listen to birdsong. What caught my own memory was that as they tramped over the field's rough ground, they looked for things "of interest".
Me too. I didn't sit in the woods, not brave enough alone; but through any of the acres of land surrounding our house, I looked, and you learn about things by first looking. Toads, spitbugs, grasshoppers, fluff from a mother rabbit to make a nest for her kits; a woodchuck skull, snakeskin, an empty shell from a wood snail; goatsbeard, teasels, butterfly weed, milkweed pods, elf dock, purple asters; fossils from Devonian oceans, obsidian, gneiss, quartzite; feathers, wooly bear caterpillars, garter snakes, corn snakes, coachwhips and rat snakes that looked large enough to entwine both my seven year old self and the bike. Snakes were okay, the sudden movement would startle, but then the patterns or reflection of light off undulating scales would fascinate.
The abundance of life was taken for granted, for that is how it was and in my small head, the way it would be forever. Now I know better, through invasive species pushing the natives out of the way, through the development of farmland to town to city or manufacturing plant. Where I lived is now a headquarters for National Fuel; a godawful drag race track is now the other side of the woods, and NiMo has installed the stilted monsters that carry powerlines from Niagara Falls to the east coast. The ground cherries are gone, the wild raspberries also; the price of the land escalated, turning the dairy farms into upper crust cul-de-sacs. No more mooing from a lost cow in the night, no more fresh, cold water from the natural spring on Wuller's property.
By losing wild fields, we also lose the barrier zones that cushion the forest from the buildings; there are two, immense abandoned malls in the area, and the debris ends up in landfills or honest to goodness, is shuttled on semi trucks from destination to destination. If the shards of concrete and reinforcement wire are refused at one site, it is taken to another, states away. Or another. Or dumped into the ocean. Meanwhile, to hear the lullaby of crickets or the song of a finch, a drive out to the country will take you at least thirty minutes as compared to the flinging of a screen window, open to the rules of nature.
I have felt the bullet sharp click of a grasshopper's legs taking flight from my palm; chickadees have plucked seed from my hand, brushing against my face with their wings; I have held the cool dryness that is snake, fallen in the crick, made a painting with ink from Coprinus mushrooms. Look when you walk over grass, or a field turned inside out as it waits for seed, find something of interest if only the rising damp smell of earth. Walk about, learn what's underfoot. It's a strong lesson from a young cyclist.
Night is closing, supper is waiting to be scumbled together; I hear footsteps in my mind, slogging over rows of field, breathing the rays of an autumn sun, then pushing down on the pedals to get home after grabbing a stem of asters or goldenrod for Mom. Sleep as the winds blow through tall grasses, over lake waters, through branches where sparrows have bedded for the night; be accountable for how you treat the earth. You don't have to become a crusader, only toss some seed for the birds, pick up a piece of litter, dispose of chemicals carefully. Weave your own song through your dreams, so the single notes of one blend with others to make a composition, together. We are in this together; you, I, the animals, the plants, fungi, protists, and monera; I count rocks as well. The kingdom of rocks. I'll explain it someday.
Dream, then. Dream of the song of stones.
Sunday, July 19, 2015
By Heart
Can you say the alphabet of your language by heart? Do you know the recipe for brownies by heart? Going to the store and buying a package of Little Debbies doesn't count, people, but remembering how to get there does. By heart. This is what it means: from your heart. Why on earth from that organ associated more with emotion than any other, including the digestive system, (a 'gut feeling' is based on the fact that 95% of your serotonin is in your intestine), is it connected with memory? Pull up a gyro, my dears.
Not only did the Greeks consider it the center of emotion, but the heart was also said to house intelligence and memory. You remembered in your heart, so recitation or knowing was said to be "by heart"; you remembered a story by heart. Ask a child to recite something, and they will look to the ground, as if the task is an impossibility; start them off with "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall..." and their expression changes to joyous recognition. I know that! I can do this! Most of them know nursery rhymes without the realization that they have indeed memorized the lines. It is not an impossible wall to surmount, and once they understand it, will bubble up with rhyme after rhyme, unstoppable and happy with a talent they didn't know they had.
Remembering the words to be said out loud shares an intimate part of you, the phrases are usually in rhythm whether poem or prose, similar to the pulsations of the heart as it pushes blood through your body, supplying the metabolic processes with oxygen. Memory fills the spoken word with the personality of the one who is remembering, giving the audience language by which to understand wisdom. An open door to a place in their heart, if only for a little while. Like sharing half a sandwich with a hungry soul, the act nourishes and pleases, satiating the innate human need for communication and recognition which resides in our heart's desire.
New debate in the past few years wonders if the Greeks were closer to knowing more about the heart than our current theory, with many claiming that the heart does have memory. Neurons, those connective tissues of the brain, have been found in the physical heart as well; some folks are touting that as evidence of knowing, that there is sentient thought in four chambers. Well, who knows? But neurons transfer energy, not thought or feelings. Yet there are stories of transplant patients experiencing new patterns formerly found in the original owner's background. Recognition of relatives unbeknownst to the recipient, fears, awareness of a second personality, and intuitions have been recorded as pointing to the possibility of something further going on.
Recorded. Re- means "again", cor comes from the Greek word for "heart"; to record, then, is to tell it again by heart. Have you ever? I'm sure you have. My talent when little was to draw; I was so shy that I would draw pictures of things rather than ask for them, so getting up and reciting something wasn't going to happen until I was made to learn the Ten Commandments and had to recite them for catechism class when making my First Communion. Idolatry? Adultery? Covet? Words way beyond my vocabulary, but they were Biblical, so I imagined recitation was earning my way to heaven.
But, what do you know by heart? Did you say the words to anyone, or was it for your own accomplishment? I don't recite, but I know by heart several poems by Coleridge, Yeats, Emerson, and Carroll. It's a secret hobby that no one has been allowed to visit, just me, yet it is a happy achievement when I get one down. In another two days, I will know "Lucifer by Starlight", but for love nor money can the battle be won with "anyone lived in a pretty how town" by Cummings, which is one of the most beautiful poems met. How can "Xanadu" be little problem, but this much shorter verse frustrate for years?
So tell, who smiled when you stood before them and sang your sentences out, lined up numbers, alphabetted, or told a joke? That smile told that you made them proud, and for a moment, you shared a doorway of history and understanding. Good for you.
Storms are predicted this evening, and apparently I slept through a whangdoodle of one last night; I hope this one comes early enough to see, for the rains and winds whip 'round the brick corners of the building, whistling and pulling at windows. I love to read during a storm, and more, to draw or paint.
Crackling lightning and subsequent thunder lend a Frankensteinian atmosphere to the creation of art, particularly portraiture, as it is punctuated by the heavy rain into a statement of success.
In film studies, the course book advised that rain or water in the scene indicated new beginnings for the protagonist, as a baptism or symbolic washing away leading to change. As storms push debris down gutters or streams rise, or you look how far it is to the car, slow yourself. Let the rain pelt your face if for only a second, dousing away the day of it's convolutions, leaving an essence of what was without the complications put forth by dissent, hurt, or anger. No rain? Wash your face and hands, then. You'll feel better.
Let night come to assuage your own heart, remember a phrase or familiar cascade of words you once said to set your compass right in navigable waters. Words become stories, plays, novels, oaths, and truths to share a bit of ourselves with the world, to look in the mirror at who we are. To remember. By heart. Ever on. Second star to the right.
Not only did the Greeks consider it the center of emotion, but the heart was also said to house intelligence and memory. You remembered in your heart, so recitation or knowing was said to be "by heart"; you remembered a story by heart. Ask a child to recite something, and they will look to the ground, as if the task is an impossibility; start them off with "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall..." and their expression changes to joyous recognition. I know that! I can do this! Most of them know nursery rhymes without the realization that they have indeed memorized the lines. It is not an impossible wall to surmount, and once they understand it, will bubble up with rhyme after rhyme, unstoppable and happy with a talent they didn't know they had.
Remembering the words to be said out loud shares an intimate part of you, the phrases are usually in rhythm whether poem or prose, similar to the pulsations of the heart as it pushes blood through your body, supplying the metabolic processes with oxygen. Memory fills the spoken word with the personality of the one who is remembering, giving the audience language by which to understand wisdom. An open door to a place in their heart, if only for a little while. Like sharing half a sandwich with a hungry soul, the act nourishes and pleases, satiating the innate human need for communication and recognition which resides in our heart's desire.
New debate in the past few years wonders if the Greeks were closer to knowing more about the heart than our current theory, with many claiming that the heart does have memory. Neurons, those connective tissues of the brain, have been found in the physical heart as well; some folks are touting that as evidence of knowing, that there is sentient thought in four chambers. Well, who knows? But neurons transfer energy, not thought or feelings. Yet there are stories of transplant patients experiencing new patterns formerly found in the original owner's background. Recognition of relatives unbeknownst to the recipient, fears, awareness of a second personality, and intuitions have been recorded as pointing to the possibility of something further going on.
Recorded. Re- means "again", cor comes from the Greek word for "heart"; to record, then, is to tell it again by heart. Have you ever? I'm sure you have. My talent when little was to draw; I was so shy that I would draw pictures of things rather than ask for them, so getting up and reciting something wasn't going to happen until I was made to learn the Ten Commandments and had to recite them for catechism class when making my First Communion. Idolatry? Adultery? Covet? Words way beyond my vocabulary, but they were Biblical, so I imagined recitation was earning my way to heaven.
But, what do you know by heart? Did you say the words to anyone, or was it for your own accomplishment? I don't recite, but I know by heart several poems by Coleridge, Yeats, Emerson, and Carroll. It's a secret hobby that no one has been allowed to visit, just me, yet it is a happy achievement when I get one down. In another two days, I will know "Lucifer by Starlight", but for love nor money can the battle be won with "anyone lived in a pretty how town" by Cummings, which is one of the most beautiful poems met. How can "Xanadu" be little problem, but this much shorter verse frustrate for years?
So tell, who smiled when you stood before them and sang your sentences out, lined up numbers, alphabetted, or told a joke? That smile told that you made them proud, and for a moment, you shared a doorway of history and understanding. Good for you.
Storms are predicted this evening, and apparently I slept through a whangdoodle of one last night; I hope this one comes early enough to see, for the rains and winds whip 'round the brick corners of the building, whistling and pulling at windows. I love to read during a storm, and more, to draw or paint.
Crackling lightning and subsequent thunder lend a Frankensteinian atmosphere to the creation of art, particularly portraiture, as it is punctuated by the heavy rain into a statement of success.
In film studies, the course book advised that rain or water in the scene indicated new beginnings for the protagonist, as a baptism or symbolic washing away leading to change. As storms push debris down gutters or streams rise, or you look how far it is to the car, slow yourself. Let the rain pelt your face if for only a second, dousing away the day of it's convolutions, leaving an essence of what was without the complications put forth by dissent, hurt, or anger. No rain? Wash your face and hands, then. You'll feel better.
Let night come to assuage your own heart, remember a phrase or familiar cascade of words you once said to set your compass right in navigable waters. Words become stories, plays, novels, oaths, and truths to share a bit of ourselves with the world, to look in the mirror at who we are. To remember. By heart. Ever on. Second star to the right.
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Metamorphosis: At It Again
A quarter, three jimmies, red, blue, and green; napkins wadded above the visors, a half-melted gelatin candy, an E-Z Pass, and a dead Japanese beetle, which is an ornament of significance; all were found in the newer car as I wiped the interior down. Now, how does a dead bug gain status as a Message? Because twelve years ago, when I bought the red car, one was jammed in an impossible spot unless I got a knitting needle to pry it out. He was pretty, shiny green with tan wings, and dead as twenty door nails, so I forgot the issue of body removal and liked that he was there, a scarab, an omen.
This new deceased bug is fairly fresh, for you could still wiggle a leg without it snapping off--calm down, I wanted to see if he was alive-ish. But you tell me, what are the chances of finding another in the next purchased car after driving the first bug around town for twelve years? How many Japanese beetles have you found in your car? That's right; zero. A Sign, sings I. What is even more spectacular was that he was found as I cleaned the area between windshield and dash in order to plant the wood snail shell upon it.
The replacement title had arrived at five p.m. the prior day, after the salvage yards had closed and locked their gates. I had found a junkyard within a mile of the car seller's house, and could walk there after dropping off my old car, my dear old car. The problem, besides not finding the original title that I had Put In A Safe Place in order to turn in my junker, was that I was transferring plates and had nowhere to store an unlicensed car without it getting towed. No title equals no plates; no plates means that the car I had purchased sat in the seller's driveway for ten days. He was very, very good about it, stating that it had been in the driveway for months already, what was a few more days?
So, the sequence of events began to roll once again; title with me to first take the old car to salvage, and there, atop junkyard layers of oil, bent metal, pieces of cars mashed into a hard, tarry ground, say goodbye. Thank you. That car got me through college and dark winter nights coming out to the campus parking lot; it took me up mountains, over barely graded gullies, and on roads to Boston. It only didn't start once, and that was after I had left the headlights on. Another time, hurrying into work, I left the engine running and came out seven hours later to a still engaged car with enough gas left to get home.
I abandoned the old car, but it felt like walking away from a faithful pet watching you go; I paused at the exit of the yard to check time; down between the few valiant blades of grass and plantain leaf pushing through the gunk lay a yellow coil, a wood snail's old shell. It went into a pocket and I walked the mile to the newer acquisition, rationalizing that the older car was dangerous, put in a good run, and was ready to go. Truly, it was. But I felt as if I had put my grandmother into a burlap sack with a brick and heaved her into a horde of Mongols. Organ transplants, I told myself and the car, the Chevy, shall live on in other chassis; especially the fuel lines and brake system just done last fall.
The new car is a jolly hoot, masculine, and now named Rudy for Rudolph Valentino. I've zipped around in it a bit and still find it a mystery as to how to turn the radio off so that it stays off and doesn't come on every time the engine is started. I'll figure it out. There are a few paint chips that need filling in; I can do that. It's a nine year old car with 50,000 miles on it and the owner had kept a written record of everything. This relationship will be lovely, I do believe; there is an elegance to this toaster-shaped vehicle and strangers have already walked by and said, "Nice wheels." Go, Rudy.
This past Sunday was the couple's wedding shower for my son and daughter-in-art at a park next to a beach; they've been together for a number of years and both sides of the families are thrilled to be gaining additions. The ceremony will be held outside and Orthodox; a glass will be smashed, plates broken (I get to do that), the bride and groom carried in chairs. Even though they are as comfortable as a pair of old gloves with each other, both are excited with an electricity and recognition of taking the relationship into another chapter. Like trading in an enjoyable, satisfactory old car that one is quite happy about for a newer choice in hopes of growth and safety, a haven from what's out there in the world.
Many doubt that they would have ever split, and I agree; yet this opening of another door has stories and possibilities; a public commitment put out there as visible evidence of a promise. Dana's family is warm, smart, and unafraid; Brian has been welcomed with their open hearts for which I am more than pleased. The gathering brought two sides of the family together, and I got to meet with my own in-laws from my married past. It felt good to be loved and to love, to celebrate a joyous beginning.
My new car will be fine, Brian and Dana are fine; after the immense display of fireworks from the day before, the moon shone carrot red, a brilliant orange through residual ashes in the atmosphere, a ball of fire with auspicious meaning; a genesis for the continuation of life as a promise of loving, lending stability, support, trust, the impending misunderstandings, forgiveness, and compromise in their hopes for themselves and each other.
The dark has finally seeped over the horizon, transforming the ordinary into the haunted, the mystical. A smashing rain had hit sideways, and the population is still shaking out water drops from sleeves and shoes; myself, I am investigating my own changes and what will be done; quite an opportunity has arisen and requires thought. Sleep, then, in the release of the cool night, your fortune cookie chances await to renew and invent; the threads will tie themselves together in the layers below consciousness, in the city of dreams. You are more than what waking day allows. Ten o'clock; all is well.
This new deceased bug is fairly fresh, for you could still wiggle a leg without it snapping off--calm down, I wanted to see if he was alive-ish. But you tell me, what are the chances of finding another in the next purchased car after driving the first bug around town for twelve years? How many Japanese beetles have you found in your car? That's right; zero. A Sign, sings I. What is even more spectacular was that he was found as I cleaned the area between windshield and dash in order to plant the wood snail shell upon it.
The replacement title had arrived at five p.m. the prior day, after the salvage yards had closed and locked their gates. I had found a junkyard within a mile of the car seller's house, and could walk there after dropping off my old car, my dear old car. The problem, besides not finding the original title that I had Put In A Safe Place in order to turn in my junker, was that I was transferring plates and had nowhere to store an unlicensed car without it getting towed. No title equals no plates; no plates means that the car I had purchased sat in the seller's driveway for ten days. He was very, very good about it, stating that it had been in the driveway for months already, what was a few more days?
So, the sequence of events began to roll once again; title with me to first take the old car to salvage, and there, atop junkyard layers of oil, bent metal, pieces of cars mashed into a hard, tarry ground, say goodbye. Thank you. That car got me through college and dark winter nights coming out to the campus parking lot; it took me up mountains, over barely graded gullies, and on roads to Boston. It only didn't start once, and that was after I had left the headlights on. Another time, hurrying into work, I left the engine running and came out seven hours later to a still engaged car with enough gas left to get home.
I abandoned the old car, but it felt like walking away from a faithful pet watching you go; I paused at the exit of the yard to check time; down between the few valiant blades of grass and plantain leaf pushing through the gunk lay a yellow coil, a wood snail's old shell. It went into a pocket and I walked the mile to the newer acquisition, rationalizing that the older car was dangerous, put in a good run, and was ready to go. Truly, it was. But I felt as if I had put my grandmother into a burlap sack with a brick and heaved her into a horde of Mongols. Organ transplants, I told myself and the car, the Chevy, shall live on in other chassis; especially the fuel lines and brake system just done last fall.
The new car is a jolly hoot, masculine, and now named Rudy for Rudolph Valentino. I've zipped around in it a bit and still find it a mystery as to how to turn the radio off so that it stays off and doesn't come on every time the engine is started. I'll figure it out. There are a few paint chips that need filling in; I can do that. It's a nine year old car with 50,000 miles on it and the owner had kept a written record of everything. This relationship will be lovely, I do believe; there is an elegance to this toaster-shaped vehicle and strangers have already walked by and said, "Nice wheels." Go, Rudy.
This past Sunday was the couple's wedding shower for my son and daughter-in-art at a park next to a beach; they've been together for a number of years and both sides of the families are thrilled to be gaining additions. The ceremony will be held outside and Orthodox; a glass will be smashed, plates broken (I get to do that), the bride and groom carried in chairs. Even though they are as comfortable as a pair of old gloves with each other, both are excited with an electricity and recognition of taking the relationship into another chapter. Like trading in an enjoyable, satisfactory old car that one is quite happy about for a newer choice in hopes of growth and safety, a haven from what's out there in the world.
Many doubt that they would have ever split, and I agree; yet this opening of another door has stories and possibilities; a public commitment put out there as visible evidence of a promise. Dana's family is warm, smart, and unafraid; Brian has been welcomed with their open hearts for which I am more than pleased. The gathering brought two sides of the family together, and I got to meet with my own in-laws from my married past. It felt good to be loved and to love, to celebrate a joyous beginning.
My new car will be fine, Brian and Dana are fine; after the immense display of fireworks from the day before, the moon shone carrot red, a brilliant orange through residual ashes in the atmosphere, a ball of fire with auspicious meaning; a genesis for the continuation of life as a promise of loving, lending stability, support, trust, the impending misunderstandings, forgiveness, and compromise in their hopes for themselves and each other.
The dark has finally seeped over the horizon, transforming the ordinary into the haunted, the mystical. A smashing rain had hit sideways, and the population is still shaking out water drops from sleeves and shoes; myself, I am investigating my own changes and what will be done; quite an opportunity has arisen and requires thought. Sleep, then, in the release of the cool night, your fortune cookie chances await to renew and invent; the threads will tie themselves together in the layers below consciousness, in the city of dreams. You are more than what waking day allows. Ten o'clock; all is well.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
