I am clearly a master of discipline. Not only did I not finish the SOLC challenge (8 days shy--feel the burn), but it's now taken me over TWO MONTHS to return to my poor abandoned blog. SIGH SIGH.
Anyway, onward and upward!
What spurred a glorious return? Cleaning my room, of course. (Procrastination from one task can be relieved by procrastinating from another. It's a fail-safe method.)
In cleaning my room, I cam across a little wooden box that floats around among my belongings, which I stumble upon every few months. And each time, I sit down and page through its contents to find and read a couple of selections. I found this box among my grandmother's jewelry shortly after her death, and it contains letters, cards, and poems from my grandfather, dating from their late courtship to early marriage.
This little treasure is particularly noteworthy (blogworthy, in fact) because my grandmother--and, I believe, my grandfather, though I never knew him--was a far cry from emotional or sentimental. She felt strongly about people and things, but rarely expressed herself outside of intellectual and (mostly, hehe) rational discussion. So it's strange and powerful to peer quietly into this layer of herself that she exposed to no one but her husband, and vice versa. (I often wonder where the other half of the correspondence is...) From what I've read thus far, he was equally surprised:
"Say then, my beloved,
'We are lucky that we love'
--that two such as we can
admit even briefly to something
irrational and inexplicable
that we have at last found
--or made--something much bigger
and better than we could ever hope for
rationally."
When I first found the box, I sat down to read through everything, but that didn't happen. I don't remember why, but I probably got caught up with one piece in particular. But I think I prefer the way I've taken to reading these letters and poems--just two or three at a time, every once in a while. Sometimes I reread things I've already read, sometimes (like finding the piece above today), they're new.
Aside from the general romanticism, I love that I share this thing--this love of writing, and this love of intimate correspondence--with relations two generations away, one of whom I never met. Aside from some academic papers, I don't think my grandfather ever published anything, but he wrote beautifully and poetically, not out of an ivory tower but out of a heart that, perhaps, couldn't find a means of relaying such emotions in speech or action. Something else we have in common: no one could accuse me of being unemotional, but I can be much more transparent in writing than in person. (Why do you suppose I have this nifty blog?)
It's strange to have such a narrow but deep knowledge of someone. My grandfather died two years before I was born, and there is a good deal I don't know about him. My grandmother rarely talked about him--when she did, it was anecdotal and brief--and my father spoke of him even less. Some of what I know points to a man who was far from love letters and poetry, but this is the picture I have of him in this box. This is what has lasted: words of love and humor to his wife, a photograph of him laughing in the Cape Cod sunshine, a poem about the moon. This is not the whole man, but it is one that has survived now, thirty years after his death. Like the versions of my own father, it is not the only one--everyone who knew him has their own version, pieces of memories and scraps of stories--but this is mine. A fraction of an angle at best, but it is what I have, and what my children will know of him. When all is said and done, I don't think he'll mind that.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Friday, March 23, 2012
I Got Nothin' (Slice 23)
It's been a really long day--4:00am wakeup for a 4:45 taxi to the airport for my flight to Philly; then getting in and set at the hotel, 6+ hours putting together the booth, dinner with some high school friends--and I am super tired and achy (see reference to awake time and manual labor), so I really don't have it in me to blog tonight. This is my slice: I am exhausted, and hoping for my usual conference adrenaline infusion to get me going tomorrow.
Yup. That's it.
Yup. That's it.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Famous (Slice 22)
I've lived on my own, as an adult, independent from my mother (inasmuch as daughters ever are) for 6 years now, but some things still catch me off guard. One is that I am "famous" among my friends and community here for being a good baker and cook. Certain things--cinnamon rolls, snickerdoodles--are known as "mine" (use it in a sentence: "Those snickerdoodles from Hannaford were terrible--since I've had Chandra's, I can't eat any other kind.").
When I was growing up, even once I was a teenager and could, generally speaking, cook and bake without burning the house down or measuring out three cups of eggs, I still wasn't known for it, because my mother was the famous one. So it was more of a, "Oh, Chandra, you bake, too--just like your mom! How sweet!"
It's strange to take ownership of things that you know aren't really yours, but for all intents and purposes are. If I tell people here that these recipes are really my mother's, that I learned baking from the middle of a kitchen floor, gazing upward toward flour-covered counters and a whirring KitchenAid, they nod and say that's nice, but the snickerdoodles remain mine.
This is, perhaps, a silly little example, but it's a tile in the larger mosaic of us growing into real people, becoming our parents (despite our best efforts), and becoming an ever-changing identity. And it's strange how little things like cinnamon rolls are pieces of lasting identity, even when much else changes. I could lose 100 pounds, be brought into the witness protection program, become a lawyer, move to Thailand, learn to like math--but Christmas morning, you would still find me getting up early to roll out risen dough. And maybe by then, as I place cross-sectioned spirals in greased pans, I'll finally think of them as mine.
When I was growing up, even once I was a teenager and could, generally speaking, cook and bake without burning the house down or measuring out three cups of eggs, I still wasn't known for it, because my mother was the famous one. So it was more of a, "Oh, Chandra, you bake, too--just like your mom! How sweet!"
It's strange to take ownership of things that you know aren't really yours, but for all intents and purposes are. If I tell people here that these recipes are really my mother's, that I learned baking from the middle of a kitchen floor, gazing upward toward flour-covered counters and a whirring KitchenAid, they nod and say that's nice, but the snickerdoodles remain mine.
This is, perhaps, a silly little example, but it's a tile in the larger mosaic of us growing into real people, becoming our parents (despite our best efforts), and becoming an ever-changing identity. And it's strange how little things like cinnamon rolls are pieces of lasting identity, even when much else changes. I could lose 100 pounds, be brought into the witness protection program, become a lawyer, move to Thailand, learn to like math--but Christmas morning, you would still find me getting up early to roll out risen dough. And maybe by then, as I place cross-sectioned spirals in greased pans, I'll finally think of them as mine.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Real Drafts (Slice 21)
I suppose it's only fitting, considering the name of this nifty blog of mine, that I post some drafts every once in a while.
If there were a non-distracting way to Track Changes, I would do it on everything I write. I'm fascinated by revisions, by what gets scrapped and what's held to. And I figured I'd do this tonight, and pulled up a poem I wrote several years ago--interesting ideas, but terribly, sing-songily rhymy. But lo and behold, I had already revised that. It's still not spot-on, but it's leagues better than I remembered.
So I went looking for something else, and found a pretty basic experiencial piece I wrote when some friends and I spent Easter weekend at Myrtle Beach. Most of it, as you'll see, got scrapped--in fact, the word probably needs to be reinvention, not revision. Amusingly, I didn't think about that I'd traded one poet's phrase for another until afterwards--T. S. Eliot shouldn't feel slighted, my heart still belongs to him and Mr. Prufrock, but since the first time I read it I have loved e. e.'s line from [maggie and millie and molly and may], and it just accidentally fell into place here.
Draft 1: April 2004 (possibly with mild edits since)
If there were a non-distracting way to Track Changes, I would do it on everything I write. I'm fascinated by revisions, by what gets scrapped and what's held to. And I figured I'd do this tonight, and pulled up a poem I wrote several years ago--interesting ideas, but terribly, sing-songily rhymy. But lo and behold, I had already revised that. It's still not spot-on, but it's leagues better than I remembered.
So I went looking for something else, and found a pretty basic experiencial piece I wrote when some friends and I spent Easter weekend at Myrtle Beach. Most of it, as you'll see, got scrapped--in fact, the word probably needs to be reinvention, not revision. Amusingly, I didn't think about that I'd traded one poet's phrase for another until afterwards--T. S. Eliot shouldn't feel slighted, my heart still belongs to him and Mr. Prufrock, but since the first time I read it I have loved e. e.'s line from [maggie and millie and molly and may], and it just accidentally fell into place here.
Draft 1: April 2004 (possibly with mild edits since)
Myrtle Beach on Dead Saturday
I wake up early at beaches.
It’s something automatic.
7:30 pulls me from a nightmarish
scenario of waking at noon,
cursing the day.
I come down to the beach
unshowered, sweatshirted,
to avoid the crowds.
My sandy-footed comrades
on the beach are not the tourists:
the young couple walking dogs—
his small and white, hers big and black.
the teenagers gently, silently running
in loose-fitting sweats.
the shell-searching parents dabbling
where toddlers soak up salt and sand
into every crack and pore.
These are not the tourists.
These—we—are the beachers.
Like whales we hear the roar
in the night and lumber through
our unconscious to wake up in sand,
pleasantly stuck and unable to leave.
But the rescuers—
the cell phones, the dead-
lines, the Monday mornings,
the all-too human voices
wake us, and we drown.
Draft 2: March 21, 2012
Whatever We Lose
Within the sound
of crashing waves,
I come out of panicked sleep,
fearful of lateness.
I leave silently,
unshowered,
sweat-shirted,
fearful of missing the singular
hour of daylight, quiet, peace.
The beach is not empty,
but I have beaten the tourists.
This early, tourists still
curse at coffeepots
and ponder tide charts.
This early, it is only
beachers, naturals--
e. e. cummings said
we seek lost things
and find our own selves.
Like whales we hear the roar
and lumber through
our unconscious
to wake up in sand,
pleasantly stuck,
unable to leave.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
The Art of Redemption (Slice 20)
I'm glad I don't work the math of the universe. I'm glad I'm not the one keeping accounts or working the books. The times when I think I could run things better, I'm kidding myself.
Because I like things clean. I don't like things unfinished or up in the air. So when I'm feeling like I should go unearth something, I can be almost assured that it's a God thing, because left to my own devices, I'd leave things underground. A funeral plot is pretty neat and tidy until you bring in the backhoe.
But at divine prompting, I did some digging yesterday (no, not Martin--separate and much more involved thing). I don't know what was special about yesterday, and maybe it wasn't anything but the first time God could get my attention about it. But it was enough to make me sit down and write a letter and, furthermore, click send.
It wasn't much, really. Not on the scale of masterful correspondence in the history of the world. It was a simple reestablishment of communication, an unpolluted apology, a wish of wellness, an unassuming sign-off. Nothing much. Pieces of sentences, parts of stories. And I've spent today checking in about every 18 minutes to see if I had a reply.
I spent some time talking with a friend about it tonight, saying that I realized that unearthing the past was often a messy thing. Perhaps, rather than clean forgiveness or cleaner silence, I would be met with expletives and refusals. (This seemed unlikely, but you never know--5 years is a long time for two people to change.) I said that I was prepared to deal with the mess--the I had owned to the making of it, and I would claim it's clean-up as mine, too.
But I returned to find a similarly simple note waiting for me. Pieces of sentences, parts of stories. An acknowledgement and thanks, a summary of life lived in the interim and questions about mine.
And just like that--through the work of plain words--something that was dead lives. It's still too fragile to hold much promise--like signs of life coming from a comatose patient, it's impossible to predict what will change by tomorrow. But what a strange God who pursues us, who is not satisfied with leaving things in death, but weaves our lives in and out and back into other people's, knowing that there is perfection in the mess and beauty in the broken.
I've written this before I've written my reply. Maybe to make it more real, to release poetry before returning to reality. Maybe to prove it happened if renewed life is short. But God is in the art of redemption, not just of souls, but all of our selves, and tonight He's just plain showing off.
Because I like things clean. I don't like things unfinished or up in the air. So when I'm feeling like I should go unearth something, I can be almost assured that it's a God thing, because left to my own devices, I'd leave things underground. A funeral plot is pretty neat and tidy until you bring in the backhoe.
But at divine prompting, I did some digging yesterday (no, not Martin--separate and much more involved thing). I don't know what was special about yesterday, and maybe it wasn't anything but the first time God could get my attention about it. But it was enough to make me sit down and write a letter and, furthermore, click send.
It wasn't much, really. Not on the scale of masterful correspondence in the history of the world. It was a simple reestablishment of communication, an unpolluted apology, a wish of wellness, an unassuming sign-off. Nothing much. Pieces of sentences, parts of stories. And I've spent today checking in about every 18 minutes to see if I had a reply.
I spent some time talking with a friend about it tonight, saying that I realized that unearthing the past was often a messy thing. Perhaps, rather than clean forgiveness or cleaner silence, I would be met with expletives and refusals. (This seemed unlikely, but you never know--5 years is a long time for two people to change.) I said that I was prepared to deal with the mess--the I had owned to the making of it, and I would claim it's clean-up as mine, too.
But I returned to find a similarly simple note waiting for me. Pieces of sentences, parts of stories. An acknowledgement and thanks, a summary of life lived in the interim and questions about mine.
And just like that--through the work of plain words--something that was dead lives. It's still too fragile to hold much promise--like signs of life coming from a comatose patient, it's impossible to predict what will change by tomorrow. But what a strange God who pursues us, who is not satisfied with leaving things in death, but weaves our lives in and out and back into other people's, knowing that there is perfection in the mess and beauty in the broken.
I've written this before I've written my reply. Maybe to make it more real, to release poetry before returning to reality. Maybe to prove it happened if renewed life is short. But God is in the art of redemption, not just of souls, but all of our selves, and tonight He's just plain showing off.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Other People Growing Up (Slice 19)
I'm not sure where this post will go. It started off as a dusting off of an older piece of writing, about times when I've said thing I shouldn't, or didn't say things that I needed to. It's a good piece--one of my favorites--and really didn't require enough brushing up today for me to feel like it was really slicing.
But in the piece, I reference some childhood memories, which brought me to pulling up Facebook and looking up some names from elementary and middle school. The school where I went from Pre-K through high school had a pretty high turnover rate from middle to high school, so a good deal of people who I was fairly close to (and some, less so) up through eighth grade have no long since fallen off my radar. In the early days of Facebook, several manically friended me or vice versa, but we have, since, re-cut those false ties.
At any rate, this all got me thinking (and Facebook stalking) about how other people grow up, especially when you're not around to see it. Some faces I recognized immediately, almost unchanged from junior high. The awkwardness and chubby cheeks that I assumed would fade were still clearly present, and it was like I was looking in an old yearbook. Others were a much bigger stretch--such that I can only be somewhat sure I found the right Martin Ryan, there being so many of them.
Martin's the one who got me thinking in this direction, truth be told. Of the people I'd like a second shot with, he'd be high up on my list. Don't get me wrong, nothing romantic, but he was one of those kids who was really smart and really interesting as a fifth-grader, and didn't care that those things made him a social pariah in the politics of junior high. Had I gotten over myself and been friends with him, I think I would have been a better person for it. It wasn't that I was ever mean to him--I don't recall being mean, anyway--but I was never particularly nice, let alone friendly. I bet he became a fascinating guy as an adult, assuming high school didn't get the best of him (as it did for many of us). And if the profile I found is the same Martin I knew--it's close enough that I'd buy it, anyway--then let's just say he grew out of his awkward gangliness and big glasses. Good for him--I'm honestly glad, and I hope that his life dramatically improved upon getting out of middle school (again, as it did for many of us). I hope he's living proof that the weirdest kids in junior high make the most interesting adults, and that his friends and family now make it hard for him to remember how hard life was in 1995.
Like I say, I don't know where this was going, but it's what I've been thinking about for the last hour or so, thus, SLICE.
But in the piece, I reference some childhood memories, which brought me to pulling up Facebook and looking up some names from elementary and middle school. The school where I went from Pre-K through high school had a pretty high turnover rate from middle to high school, so a good deal of people who I was fairly close to (and some, less so) up through eighth grade have no long since fallen off my radar. In the early days of Facebook, several manically friended me or vice versa, but we have, since, re-cut those false ties.
At any rate, this all got me thinking (and Facebook stalking) about how other people grow up, especially when you're not around to see it. Some faces I recognized immediately, almost unchanged from junior high. The awkwardness and chubby cheeks that I assumed would fade were still clearly present, and it was like I was looking in an old yearbook. Others were a much bigger stretch--such that I can only be somewhat sure I found the right Martin Ryan, there being so many of them.
Martin's the one who got me thinking in this direction, truth be told. Of the people I'd like a second shot with, he'd be high up on my list. Don't get me wrong, nothing romantic, but he was one of those kids who was really smart and really interesting as a fifth-grader, and didn't care that those things made him a social pariah in the politics of junior high. Had I gotten over myself and been friends with him, I think I would have been a better person for it. It wasn't that I was ever mean to him--I don't recall being mean, anyway--but I was never particularly nice, let alone friendly. I bet he became a fascinating guy as an adult, assuming high school didn't get the best of him (as it did for many of us). And if the profile I found is the same Martin I knew--it's close enough that I'd buy it, anyway--then let's just say he grew out of his awkward gangliness and big glasses. Good for him--I'm honestly glad, and I hope that his life dramatically improved upon getting out of middle school (again, as it did for many of us). I hope he's living proof that the weirdest kids in junior high make the most interesting adults, and that his friends and family now make it hard for him to remember how hard life was in 1995.
Like I say, I don't know where this was going, but it's what I've been thinking about for the last hour or so, thus, SLICE.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
The Ram Jumped On Top (Slice 18)
Kolaches (pron. "KOHL-ah-chz") all in a row! From the top: poppyseed, apricot, and cherry.
I know I've said this before, but this time for real: I am SUPER tired, and definitely making myself go to bed ASAP in order to not feel like I'm running on fumes all week! So I will simply say that I did, in fact, make those kolaches today. I'll wear red tomorrow to celebrate St. Joseph's Day, I'm bringing kolaches to work, and now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go learn how to say this Czech proverb for the day:
| ||
"On St. Joseph's Day, the ram jumped on top and thanked the farmers."
...We're a strange people, us Bohemies...
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