tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26332969781493262052024-02-07T19:27:44.952-05:00The Daily ProcrastinatorCharlottehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16202435691083267050noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633296978149326205.post-1960848854158858972017-03-19T22:31:00.002-04:002019-01-07T20:14:09.223-05:00Lesbos<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Like the mountain hyacinth, the purple flower<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">That the shepherds trample to the ground…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Sappho’s
voice must have been beautiful, though we can only guess. Her verse was meant
to be sung, accompanied by the lyre, which looks something like a small, curved
harp. She would have been seated before her audience, with the graceful instrument
poised between her thighs, braced between armpit and breast, while her fingers plucked
and stroked the strings above. How Sappho’s music sounded we will never know, only
that her poetry is known to have made grown men weep. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The muses have filled my life<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">with delight.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">And when I die I shall not be forgotten.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Of
nine volumes written on papyrus scrolls and placed for safekeeping in the great
library of Alexandria, only 250 fragments of Sappho remain. Fewer than 70 of
those contain complete lines and some are just a few words, or just a single
word. We can only imagine such beauty, the way a forensic scientist might be
forced extrapolate a whole face, a whole identity, from a single molar. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13.0pt;">Here
now, again, Muses leaving the golden...<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The famous poet Sappho lived and died on the Greek island of Lesbos and now to millennia have passed and Lesbos gives us the most famous gravedigger of our time, the translator, Moustafa Dowa. Moustafa had never seen a dead body before he came to
Lesbos. He had moved to Greece to study the classics; he knew Cairo, he knew
Athens, he knew three languages, but he did not know death. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The moon is down. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The Pleiades. Midnight. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The hours flow on,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I lie, alone.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In Lesbos,
he had planned to be of service as a translator for the thousands of Syrians,
Afghans, and Iraqis, who cross the Aegean Sea from Turkey, crowding into open
boats and rubber dinghies, risking their lives on the turbulent water for a chance to reach safety. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Like the sweet apple reddening high on a branch<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">High on the highest, the apple pickers forgot—<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Or not forgotten, but one they couldn’t reach…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Before long, Moustafa sees the truth: the dead here need more
help than the living. Moustafa brings a man to the morgue to help identify his
sister. Forty-five bodies are stacked in a refrigerator, men and women
together, some are naked. The morgue is full, the cemetery is full, and the
dead keep coming. Some are carried to shore by survivors, others wash ashore
battered by the rocks, disfigured by the sea, dismembered, without names. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Of all the stars, the loveliest…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #02141f; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The town discusses the situation and Moustafa is given an
olive grove. He digs the graves and teaches himself how to prepare the bodies for a proper Islamic burial. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #02141f; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13.0pt;">I did 57 funerals in seven days. In one day I did 11</span></i><span style="color: #02141f; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13.0pt;">. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #02141f; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13.0pt;"> Moustafa buries a
three-year-old boy alongside his brother and their parents after their boat
capsizes. The child’s name is Adam Abu Jazar. He buries a small, headless girl
who can’t be more than a year old; Moustafa crouches in the grave with her for a
few minutes, unable to move. Her grave marker bears the inscription, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Unknown</i>, followed by the coroner’s file
number, the date she washed ashore, and her presumed age.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #02141f; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13.0pt;">Hesperus, you bring back again<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #02141f; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13.0pt;">What the dawn light scatters,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #02141f; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13.0pt;">Bringing the sheep: bringing the kid<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #02141f; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13.0pt;">Bringing the little child back to its mother.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #02141f; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13.0pt;"> One day there is just a
foot, the foot of a 30-year-old man. On a white table, Moustafa
ritually bathes the foot as he would the whole body, from right to left, top to
bottom, three times. Usually family members perform this ritual.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #02141f; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13.0pt;">Bismillah. In the name of Allah, the most Gracious, the most
Merciful.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #02141f; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13.0pt;">Moustafa binds the foot in a white shroud.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #02141f; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13.0pt;">Allahu Akbar. God is great.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #02141f; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13.0pt;">He
buries the foot, without a casket, facing the olive trees and, further away, Mecca. Moustafa offers his prayer as all Muslims do, in song. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #02141f; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13.0pt;">Allah, forgive our living and our dead, those present among us
and those absent, our young and our old, our men and our women…</span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #02141f; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13.0pt;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #02141f; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13.0pt;"><o:p> Moustafa takes the precious fragments and imagines them whole, in the place where Sappho sang, </o:p></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">And I say to you someone will remember us...</span></i></div>
Charlottehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16202435691083267050noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633296978149326205.post-82411788274333687372016-11-02T15:09:00.000-04:002016-11-06T11:59:40.373-05:00Investigating My Mother's Disappearance<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My mother wears tiny, elegant black velvet slippers embroidered with carved glass beads, but otherwise she favors loafers, and dull, earthy shades of khaki ("shit tones," is how she describes her palate). She hardly ever gets dressed anymore, so she might be in her nightgown—my mother is very specific about nightgowns. Sleeveless, lightweight, with the hemline reaching exactly to her knees. She's tiny, so she often has to shorten her nightgowns by hand. Her nightgowns are pretty, pale pinks and blues, and some are trimmed with tiny seed pearls, eyelet, or satin ribbon. Isn't it curious, that counterpoint of femininity and camouflage, night and day? I hadn't noticed before.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> She craves strong, pungent flavors: sardines, lox, raw mussels on the half shell, sauerkraut, spicy chicken wings, mustard—not ketchup, red wine, liver braised with onions and vinegar, bleu cheese, Kalamata olives in brine.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> When her stomach is upset, she drinks beef broth, but </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">when she has a cold, she always wants chicken soup. I prepare it the Armenian way, with a raw egg yolk and the juice of a lemon. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> She drinks her coffee black with no sugar, two mugs every morning, while she reads The New York Times. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In warm weather, she enjoys an Armenian drink called</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">tahn</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, an iced mixture of plain yogurt thinned with water.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> My mother prefers specific fruits: pomegranates, blackberries, Concord grapes. She avoids bland, insipid sweets, such as shortbread, but she loves licorice, crystallized ginger, and tart key lime pie. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> These little details, these specks of information, are important clues. I'm sure no one else possesses her exact constellation of habits and preferences. But of course you should know that her name is Roxanne—<i>Araxie</i>, in Armenian. She's been shrinking for years; now she's really quite small, about the size of a child of 9 or 10—but of course very old and stooped, although she prefers to lie down lately. Her eyes are a deep, penetrating brown, with an owlish gaze. Those eyes convey all her emotion, even when her words don't. And she has a Bronx accent.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> I'm not really a careless person. In fact for decades I don't recall losing anything more cherished than a single earring and, I suppose, my youth. Not until I was 51, the year my mother vanished.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Here my mother would interrupt me. </span><i style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm not lost, </i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">she'd say,</span><i style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"> I'm just dead</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. She was always the practical one. But I won't back down on this. I can retrace my steps exactly.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> I would tell a Private Eye that I sat at your bedside on the fifth floor of Princeton Hospital just before one a.m. on December 18, 2013. I was holding your left hand, which was quite warm. And a little swollen because your kidneys were failing. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Every breath you took was followed by a surprisingly loud, shameless gurgle, and an even longer silence. The silence was stretching, and your mouth was stretched in a long oval, like a fish out of water. Of course I couldn't help noticing your resemblance to my father. I would have been sharing this observation with you, except now it was actually happening to you, and we couldn't compare notes anymore.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> <i>Do you believe this,</i> I wanted to say. <i>Did you ever imagine you'd end up like this?</i> But there was no answer, not even in my imagination. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> There was another deathbed moment you shared with my father. When your blank, fixed features contracted in a deep spasm, with brows knit, a vertical furrow appeared between your eyes—in all your life there had never been such a crease! It may have been a grimace of pain, but it looked even more like concentration.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> I had understood my father's grimace, years earlier, as the result of his effort to stop all systems, once and for all. The heart is so used to beating that to stop altogether must require almost as much strength as pumping. In his expression, I saw the harnessing of all his body's dwindling energies. When you winced like that I knew you would die very soon, but I couldn't keep my eyes open for another second.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> It's so hard to get comfortable in the hospital; the chair was so much lower than the bed, and even though I'd lowered the bedrail it was still dividing us. I couldn't seem to get close enough, but I managed to rest my head against your thigh. I focused on the solidity of your leg under my head rather than the coarse texture of the hospital blanket between us. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">With closed eyes, I timed the seconds between each gasp...12, 13, 14.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> When I woke up with a jolt you were gone. You had gripped my hand hard with your last strength. I felt it—or imagined I did. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> I stood up and leaned across your body, pressing my fingers against the side of your throat. There was the faintest reverberation under the skin, and a succession of images flickered through my mind. <i>A runner crosses the finish line and continues to run a few extra strides, stumbling a little, before coming to a full stop. After a performance, the drummer places his sticks against the rim of the drum and there is a tremor. Nighttime, raindrops.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Once I was sure there was no more pulse I sat down beside you again and waited for the change. Before too long your skin turned a waxen yellow and it was no longer possible to imagine you were living. I hadn't let go of your hand and I would continue holding it for quite a while. I would sit with you till there was no more warmth. The absurd idea came to me that I might be transferring my own heat to you and, if so, we might hold this pose forever; but it was of no consequence. As long as your hand was warm, I held on.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So right there, in those few minutes between closing my eyes and opening them, my mother had vanished. She vanished while I held her hand. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> My mother doesn't believe in God, she believes in annihilation. She told me often that death is The End. She said it a little smugly, to be honest, as if she was the more rational, reasonable person who refused to be duped or mollified. But it's not reasonable to vanish.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I'm sure you would see that now if you were still here. And even the PI, if he were to materialize, would help me search. </span>Charlottehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16202435691083267050noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633296978149326205.post-10970389560889362992014-11-21T12:46:00.002-05:002015-11-25T14:11:23.816-05:00In ArabicWhen I was learning numbers, it was hard for me to recognize <i>sifr</i>.<br />
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One and nine look like themselves, as you can see, except they lean a bit to the left. Two, three, and six look like variations of our number seven, four looks like our three, five like our zero, and seven and eight resemble the letter V and its inverse. I learned by relating each number to something familiar.<br />
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Till I learned sifr, I had been accustomed to the expansiveness of zero and its reassuring visual reference to infinity, where 'all' and 'nothing' connect. But in Arabic, zero isn't an endless loop whose generous curves skim the line above and the line below. Arabic represents zero with a speck—a speck that's come unmoored from its lines and lists a bit to the left. A trivial mark, sifr could easily go unnoticed, in the way nothingness does. At the same time, sifr is a full stop, the same way a period ends a sentence.<br />
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Only because of its very foreignness and irreducibility has sifr stayed with me. It's the only number I can remember now.<br />
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What a beautiful word for such a miserable speck. <i>Sifr</i>. It starts like the moist hiss of a wave breaking on a shore, the anticipation rolling into a prolonged purr before trailing off into the fulfillment of silence. Listen:<br />
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We whisper it like a sweet nothing, and this is fitting because sifr is absence. As long as we remember the disappeared, absence is our constant companion. We even make room for it, pushing grief aside and assembling memories like a welcoming committee.<br />
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Our word 'cipher' comes from the Arabic sifr, but conveys the paradox of non-being more explicitly with its double meaning, 'nonentity' and 'a key to a secret, coded language.' How do we make the inexplicable meaningful and how do we find meaning in emptiness? If absence always relates to presence—to what <i>once was</i> and now is not, or what <i>might be</i> but now is not—the reverse must also be true: in some way, being always signifies non-being.<br />
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Four thousand years ago, <i>nfr</i> was the word Egyptians used to signify not only 'zero,' but also 'beauty' and 'complete.' Its hieroglyph is an abstraction of the human windpipe, heart, and lungs,<br />
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and was used in the construction of the pyramids as a reference point to indicate 'above' or 'below.' Without it we are disoriented, above and below have no meaning and all directions share the same empty space.<br />
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I think of all this now because I have begun to notice that I miss my mother more, not less, as time separates us. I'm preoccupied by her absence and find myself searching for a different alphabet, a secret language, that will allow communication between living and dead, above and below. Finally we are left with something indivisible, beyond symmetry, more a living part of our being than our pumping blood or the air we breathe, but at the same time independent from us. Zero multiplied by even the greatest number is still zero. Over and over, the closest I get to my mother's presence is when I'm conscious of her absence.Charlottehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16202435691083267050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633296978149326205.post-52917152770606942422014-09-14T23:32:00.000-04:002014-09-22T09:09:21.710-04:00Flotsam<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I'm in the kitchen, filling a shopping bag with black-and-white photographs—of people I don't know posing in places I've never been—pretending to be unmoved. I'm a grownup, after all, with a life of my own, and I want to unclutter and unfetter. I'm wise enough to recognize that it's the memories of my father I cherish, not objects. And so it becomes easier to discard all the flotsam. All of it's flotsam now. Although I admit I do love the heavy gold ring that my father always wore and that I rarely take off. But even if I lost the ring or pictures of my father that I particularly love, I know these things are not my father. They're just reminders—miraculously tangible reminders—of someone I won't see again.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I regard each photo my father took before stuffing it into the bag, and when the bag is full I jiggle the contents around so I can cram more in. Her face bobs up out of the flotsam, a smiling stranger. Instead of pushing her down, I edge more of the picture out. She's young and quite lovely, looks intelligent. Instead of pushing her down, I arrange her just so, get my camera, and take her picture. Then I continue to fill up the bag.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> My father took all but two of the pictures, so when I come across a photograph of him peering down into his Rolleiflex, I pause. I guess he's just taking a light reading, but he's standing in an open field, dressed in his habitual suit and tie, with elegant cufflinks, and at first glance he seems to be taking a picture of a paper bag. His face is barely visible; it's clearly another throw-away picture. I shove the photograph into the bag and observe the way he seems to pop out, like a jack-in-the-box. I get my camera again. This time I photograph my father in the bag, photographing a bag.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> And then I give in.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> And I take out all the pictures, one by one.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> This is my father's profile. Without a doubt, this is my father's shadow. See how textured his shadow is, with long, dry grass and pebbles embedded in the hard dirt? Feel the blackness bristle? It's a picture of my father, but also a picture of his absence. The index finger lifts—to beckon, to point, to pause? A vaporous shadow wafts from his head like the mist of a migrating soul, escaping in wisps, like thought or heat. Breath, life. But it's just a tree casting a dappled shadow. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> It's tempting to rearrange the photographs to resemble a clear narrative. This man has a boring face but he's so attractive. His mouth, and the proportions of each feature to the others, the precise way his ear is poised above his jawline, a pictograph of <i>listening</i>, directly across from his flared nostril, <i>breathing</i>. The way the fleshy chin, below, balances his bristling hair and sharp gaze, above. A gaze that penetrates something we can't see. (The thought forms, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>No one has ever looked at me that way</i>.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> I might be tempted to put these pictures last, the sharp photo followed by the overexposed one. Suggesting, perhaps, how we fade away, but also how we endure. But then the impact of this tide of images would diminish. Its force comes from its mystery, the collection of apparently random moments.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> In black-and-white, sculpture looks more natural in its surroundings, no longer incongruous, as if a nude old man were really reclining on a boulder in the middle of a plaza, thinking hard about something, disinterested in passersby. The scalloped curtains hanging in the balcony windows contrast with his bare flesh, making the old man appear more naked and alive, and the windows more empty. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I'm not sure, but this may have been the dilapidated villa where my father and his students stayed while they studied art history in Rome. It hardly matters to me, those details I miss. Never mind that I don't know the story of the house or its inhabitants. That's the part of the wreckage that sinks first. What floats to the surface is just this moment in life when my father paused. When we see what he saw.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> One might look at these cacti as as an ode to memory and the passing of time—and continuity—before and after, and now long after. The photographer made a decision to return to the tree after its bloom had faded. He was telling himself a story. Now I tell a story.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> A story that is his story, but also not. He must have known this woman and this garden. In my story, this is a picture of an old woman posing in a garden of statues. She has no past or future, she simply poses, plantlike, sculptural. </span><br />
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This may or may not have been the pet goose of my father's first wife, in Italy. It's purpose is fading, out of context, or maybe it's being restored to a purer existence, free of association. But that's a lie. As long as there is someone to look at it, it will mean something. It's a picture of a goose and a moment in my father's life which has passed, but which we can still experience in this form. Like the way a star's light travels to us long after its death. </div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I love this picture because of the glasses. Are they dirty or simply so illuminated that the subject's eyes are obscured. What's reflected? He sees out, but we can't see in. I like the way my father cropped this picture down to its essential components, a face and glasses, an impenetrable gaze.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I imagine my father directing this nervous young girl to sit just so, and the girl's mechanical compliance becomes a turning point. She experiences the thrill of how it feels to be looked at, really seen.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Spanish moss hangs from the trees on Ossabaw Island, catching most of the light. Although the trees' growth is slowed, they manage to survive anyway, quite beautifully. Spanish moss isn't parasitic, nor is it really a moss or even a lichen, but something called an epiphyte, which is rootless and takes its nourishment from air and rainfall. The Latin name, which might have mildly interested my father, as a Latinist, is <i>Tillandsia usneoides</i>, but it's more commonly called 'air plant.' A home to rat snakes, several varieties of bats, and jumping spiders. Such facts were uninteresting to my father. What interested him was a different kind of drama—not nature, but something resulting from his own interpretation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> We're always so fascinated by ruins. Why do we find them so beautiful? Instead of being frightened by the demise of a civilization, we'e awed. We are awed to participate in history, to witness something that connects us to what is long gone. We're awed as much by the ravage of time as by the fact that, for the moment, we survive.</span><br />
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<br />Charlottehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16202435691083267050noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633296978149326205.post-5644638070004044782014-03-20T10:01:00.000-04:002018-09-17T21:49:24.306-04:00Magpie<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
When I let Curt inside, he snickers and tells me he almost picked up some gravel just now on the way up the path. Every night for years Curt used to come to my parents' house after dark and throw pebbles at my window, and every night I crept downstairs and let him in. More than once he scaled the chimney and climbed in through my bedroom window, more than 20 years ago.<br />
<br />
Curt sits down at the dining room table and strokes one of my mother's slim Siamese cats. They're mine now, along with the house, since my mother died last year. At first the cats stayed in my mother's room, just meowing and waiting for her return. Now they follow me around.<br />
<br />
Curt's 6'4 and although it's something I love about him, I always forget just what a giant he is until he's up close. The ceiling is too low; he's too big for my flimsy chairs and wobbly dining table. He overwhelms the crowded, messy room. I love it.<br />
<br />
He pets one of my mother's cats and tells me that in Australia his mother had a very large cat until recently. It was fond of preying on magpies, which are about the same size as cats. Even after the cat grew old and slowed down, it still chased the birds. But then one day it was devoured by magpies. First they picked out the cat's eyes, Curt says, and then they picked the rest of it clean.<br />
<br />
Curt smiles at me awhile, massaging the neck of my mother's cat, whose blue eyes close with pleasure.<br />
<br />
I experience his love most keenly when he punishes me; it's taken me some time to remember our routine, to remember <i>that's why he's here</i>. Nothing as pedestrian as physical violence or even sex. We start off gently, slowly. He is charming and attentive, a true gentleman. When he disappears, as cleanly as a soap bubble, I wait him out. Because when he reappears, he's always a step closer. Until he's inside my head.<br />
<br />
A psychologist wrote somewhere that other people are only real for us when they are frustrating, which could explain why opposites attract, and why the divorce rate is so high. So I could excuse myself because I'm hardwired. I think of everything about him that drives me nuts—he's uncompromising, he's moody and judgmental, he's obsessive, dismissive, selfish, bombastic, unpredictable—and then I picture his face at it's most contemptuous. All I want then is to kiss him into submission, to make him laugh, or come, or love me.<br />
<br />
The Australian Magpie is one of the few animal species able to recognize its own reflection in a mirror. No wonder it gouges out the eyes of its prey.<br />
<br />
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<br />Charlottehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16202435691083267050noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633296978149326205.post-33665482458767822002013-07-05T15:54:00.000-04:002013-12-25T01:14:06.922-05:00Pin Prick<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The vertigo, if that's what happens when you leave your body, used to occur only when I drove my mother to her doctor's office on Tuesday mornings. At the precise moment I recall the name of her blood test, usually as I turn right onto Terhune Road, it starts. It's no use trying to avoid it. Even when I don’t think about it, or when I take a different route, my mother always asks me.<br />
<br />
"Charlotte, I can never remember, what's this blood test called again?"<br />
<br />
I tell her the three letters and she frowns.<br />
<br />
"That's right, INR. Just like the Latin inscription on the cross. Why can't I ever remember it? Your father would have remembered."<br />
<br />
I can hear her talking to me—my hearing is normal—but the trees on either side of the road blur. The sensation of driving a car, which up till then I had taken for granted, is an alien experience, how I might have imagined it would feel to be jettisoned through the chute of a galactic green wormhole without actually moving at all.<br />
<br />
After this happens two or three times, I find myself anticipating the shift, and I begin to notice more. I will try to describe what is so extraordinary about the experience but, because it's visceral rather than intellectual, it's difficult to recapture in words.<br />
<br />
The trees are still trees; in my rear-view mirror I recognize the row of immense black trunks jammed into the earth, with their vast green canopies branching out above and interlacing like a tunnel. But I'm also aware of the intricate root system holding each tree in place, spreading in all directions beneath the surface of what we see, delicate and necessary, almost unbearably detailed and private.<br />
<br />
Possibly because of this mirrored perception, there is a pause. I'm a still object in a moving vehicle; I am in the moving car, while the tree is in the spinning earth, and now a line connects us. For a fraction of infinity there is only this line.<br />
<br />
Everyone probably experiences something like it on a daily basis, only we don't dwell on it. It must be wrong to acknowledge it because people so rarely do. But why? Because it's indescribable or unmanageable, or because it makes us feel incongruent with familiar concepts of time and space, or because we experience a congress that may at last be impossible to sunder? Anyway, we try not to notice.<br />
<br />
<br />
I try not to notice at first, but I’m afraid. All too often, fear is no real match for curiosity.<br />
<br />
<br />
"Are you cold? Should I close the windows?" The voice, mine, sounds false, raised over the din of wind rushing past the bullet of our moving car.<br />
<br />
I see goosebumps rising on my mother’s arm, little hairs bristle.<br />
<br />
"No, I like it," she says and turns away, toward the unasked-for pleasure, the open window. I hear her flat shame, at having had to speak of it, inflected with stubbornness. Her white hair that hangs almost to her shoulders is swept up in the gale and my mother closes her eyelids.<br />
<br />
Something of the moment will sustain us long afterwards, like a finger holding down a piano key.<br />
<br />
<br />
The lot is full so I decide to let my mother out at the curb and continue to circle the office complex till I find a parking space. Before pulling away, I watch my mother reach for the railing where a flight of steps leads to the entrance. My mother’s hands float out slightly, as if she is weightless, or poised on a tightrope. She is dwarfed by the floppy canvas handbag that dangles from her arm, and a tuft of her white hair remains uplifted, like a periscope. <br />
<br />
I scan the parking lot filled with cars and drive slowly, imagining how I’ll smooth my mother’s hair in the waiting room. Maybe I’ll suggest a haircut. As I pull into a parking space, I launch into the future.<br />
<br />
Soon, my mother will sit on the high chair in the lab, where her feet dangle above the floor. The image will amuse me, even though it is an image of submission, and I will take a picture with my cell phone, so I can try to pinpoint the source of my unease, I'll tell myself, when I have time later. During the click of the camera, I will feel the independent arrangement of my surroundings holding still, as if captured. It is a false impression, of course, and I imagine this is how power might feel, if such a thing exists.<br />
<br />
Mechanically, my mother will extend her hand; it’s small and light brown, and surprisingly smooth. She will probably ask the nurse.<br />
<br />
“What’s this called? A finger prick?”<br />
<br />
“Finger stick.<br />
<br />
<br />
Inevitability. It means everything that will happen has happened already. Backwards and forwards in every direction, that line that connects is also cancelling. It's just a dot from our usual perspective, a pin prick, so easy to overlook. But with a slight shift, everything is connected and there is only black.<br />
<br />
I recall the gust of wind, without apprehending its beginning or end, imagining it is just another line in which we barely notice the subtle convergence of all points. The feeling of this is different from the thought. How can I show you?<br />
<br />
I was wrong; my anxiety during these moments isn't really about leaving my body. It’s a woozy apprehension of what it means to be eternal, a ceaseless, concurrent process of being and negation.<br />
<br />
The nurse will squeeze the tip of my mother’s middle finger and prick it with a blade, catching a drop of her blood on a paper swab before it wells up. My mother flinches but continues to watch her open hand. I can’t look.<br />
<br />
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<br />Charlottehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16202435691083267050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633296978149326205.post-27641717713333493592013-05-29T11:43:00.001-04:002013-07-24T19:16:00.957-04:00Lady's Choice<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>Still she stays with a love of some kind</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i> It's the lady's choice</i></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<i> The hissing of summer lawns</i></div>
-Joni Mitchell</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My backyard<span style="font-size: xx-small; text-align: start;">—</span>see bust on right, to scale</td></tr>
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It seems like a metaphor for something else, but it's true: if you walked down my street last Monday, you would have seen me sitting on a stool on my front lawn, sweating in the sun with a pair of scissors. <i>Cutting the grass. </i>Or you might not have seen me from the street because, when I was sitting on a stool, the grass was over my head.</div>
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You might have seen an elderly woman with big, owlish eyes dressed in a nightgown, calling out to me from behind the screen door, "I think you're very foolish."</div>
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You would have heard me yelling back, "Well, the feeling's mutual," before I realized I was agreeing with her. </div>
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This was after I had kvetched to my neighbor, a family friend, who lent me her old-fashioned push-lawn-mower. The rusty blades twisted and swirled like a DNA double helix, inspiring confidence in its elemental form and function.</div>
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"I've had this for 40 years," she said. "It never lets me down." </div>
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I broke it after making just two passes—just like my mother said I would. Before I could offer to pay her for a new mower, she squinted at my backyard and said, "I'll bring a shovel."</div>
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Even the Crazy Cat Lady who lives across the street, who has a kitchen sink, an old car, and a baby stroller displayed on her front lawn, <i>she</i> mows her grass. Superman's mother, who lives down the street in a split-level and never smiles, mows <i>her</i> lawn. Like my mother, these women are both in their 80s. But unlike my mother, they live alone, their children long gone. Other people cut their grass.<br />
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My mother forbids me to mow the lawn. </div>
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"Why?" you ask. "Why?" I ask her.</div>
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"Because you'll run over the electric cord and electrocute yourself."</div>
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"No, I won't."</div>
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"Well, it's too difficult. The grass is too high and you'll break the machine--and I simply can't afford a new one."</div>
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"Okay, let's just hire someone to cut the grass."</div>
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My mother looks at me like I've asked her to commit suicide. "I know how to do it," she says. "I'll cut it myself."</div>
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She's 86 and frail (when she's not mad) and we both know I would never let her mow the lawn. Still, I hear myself whining, "But <i>when</i>?"</div>
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Would I feel any less like a petulant child if I just gave up? What, I ask myself over and over, would the Dalai Lama do? Actually, he giggles and speaks Yiddish.</div>
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<i>Cut the grass, don't cut the grass, just be nice to your mother.</i></div>
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So, it's settled. I'm the most <i>UN</i>spiritual person ever in the whole fucking history of the human race. </div>
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My ex drops off our daughter, who is 14, and his son BB, who is four years old. My beautiful, sulky daughter sits on the front steps and reads. BB has big, adoring brown eyes and, because he is not a teenager, he still loves me. I find him another pair of scissors and he helps me cut the grass. </div>
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My daughter sighs dramatically. "Mother, you are so weird," she says. </div>
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"You think I'm weird—look at your grandmother."</div>
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"She drives you crazy, doesn't she? Just like you drive me crazy." <i>Ouch.</i></div>
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My mother gives me a shopping list:</div>
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10 bags garden soil @ $6.99 each</div>
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1 bag dessicated cow manure</div>
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2 4x4 frames for raised beds</div>
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I'm sure there are telepathic beams shooting out of my eyes telling her she's out of her fucking mind, and I'm pretty sure her owl eyes are reflecting them back at me because before I know what I'm doing, I'm driving us to the nursery. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">White peony growing under the weeds</td></tr>
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Charlottehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16202435691083267050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633296978149326205.post-39127340138853410452012-07-01T13:34:00.001-04:002012-07-12T23:28:11.148-04:00Phantom Pain<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8p08uHADvic9mUG4T8fCREZfPXwWLx2yO4cRi5Wr4jvixjwO4j9LvNwnDNnbC-bT0ydd3uJQdrQV5mIy19CaX_u1Wp1cO8QoM-lLAqSWApGDR1kqQ5GyoM6is1VGh3iGez50V-H2OCaI/s1600/Lei+Leihua+Phantom+Pain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8p08uHADvic9mUG4T8fCREZfPXwWLx2yO4cRi5Wr4jvixjwO4j9LvNwnDNnbC-bT0ydd3uJQdrQV5mIy19CaX_u1Wp1cO8QoM-lLAqSWApGDR1kqQ5GyoM6is1VGh3iGez50V-H2OCaI/s320/Lei+Leihua+Phantom+Pain.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Phantom Pain," by Lihua Lei</td></tr>
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I was born without a thumb and index finger on my right hand, and then my luck got worse. On my 18th birthday, my best friend in the whole world, Dahlia, took me out for burgers and drinks at Andy's Tavern. So far, so good, right? After a pitcher of Margueritas and some shots of tequila I made Dahlia eat the worm at the bottom of the bottle. We decided to leave her truck in the parking lot and walk back to her house. She said, <i>Better safe than sorry.</i><br />
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Cutting across the field between Richter Road and the highway, I remember the air was so cold it hurt just to breathe. I remember thinking it felt like I was freezing from the inside out, and wondered why I couldn't walk a straight line, if it was because I was too drunk or too cold.<br />
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We'd almost crossed the interstate when Dahlia sat down, kind of squatting, right on the dotted line. There wasn't much traffic that time of night, no cars right at that moment, but her hands were pressed up to her ears like she was trying to block out the sound of semis, or like she was getting ready to sing harmony, which she actually did in our high school a cappella group, and she said, "Why does my fuckin' head hurt so much? I think I'm gonna throw up." Next thing I know, I'm waking up at Memorial with a headache and gauze packed around the stump where my right hand used to be, and Dahlia's dead.<br />
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I blamed myself for awhile, you know? Thought that the drinking might have made her sick, or the tequila worm made her hallucinate, but it turns out she had something from birth, an aneurysm, a cerebral hemorrhage, and her time was just up. Boy, can you imagine? Like she was programmed to self-destruct on my birthday. <br />
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I remember nothing about the accident, but the cops think the car must have hit some black ice, and when it jumped the divider a big shard from the windshield severed most of my hand at the wrist. I hear the driver was dinged up some, needed some stitches, but nothing too bad, and I didn't have so much as a scratch on me, except the hand. Nobody pressed charges. The driver wasn't drunk and no one wanted to put the blame on us, considering Dahlia was dead and I lost my hand.<br />
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The phantom pain started almost right away with a burning sensation where my fingertips should have been, all five fingertips. The doctors said phantom pain was normal, but they couldn't figure out how I could be feeling something in a part of me that never, ever existed. They think maybe we're hardwired to be perfect, like each one of us is born with an ideal map of who we're supposed to be, so I feel pain in a place that only ever existed as an idea.<br />
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The pain comes and goes, but it comes back worse. Instead of burning, I feel like my fingers are being forced into these unnatural positions, all twisted up and cramped. The pain makes me sweat, makes me want to bawl my eyes out, but instead I think about Dahlia.<br />
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She sort of comes over me, like a cool breeze. I can't see or hear her—I'm not crazy—but I feel her presence just as sure as I feel that pain in my fingers. <br />
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Dahlia was, in every way, better than me. She was pretty and skinny, with soft, blond, wavy hair, she got good grades and boyfriends, and could sing like an angel. I'm what my ma calls "big-boned," with mousy brown hair and no talents anyone could name. Dahlia said my talent was my strength, the way I take shit from no one, the way no one can hurt me or figure out what I think. We were friends since the first grade, inseparable. <br />
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Sometimes, when I was hurting, when I just felt bad about myself and no one knew but her, we'd sit on Dahlia's bed and she'd put her arm around me and hum. Like a lullaby, but not a real song, just something she'd make up on the spot. Sometimes she'd kiss me. Her tongue was soft and made me feel like I was melting. Once she put my hand on her, my messed up hand, and she rubbed my three fingertips over the front of her shirt till her nipple got hard. We never talked about it, but she did that for me because she loved me. She believed in me and wanted me to believe in myself.<br />
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The physical therapy they have me doing now is with mirrors. My good hand goes into one side of a mirror box and my stump goes in the other. When I look at the mirror on the good side and see the free movement of my fingers, it looks like the phantom hand is reflected with five perfect fingers. When I spread the fingers of my good hand, my phantom fingers unclench. I guess seeing is believing.<br />
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When that cool-breeze feeling comes over me, I never fight it, even when it feels like I'm about to freeze solid. I just breathe Dahlia in, drink deep and let her in. Sometimes when it hurts, I picture myself as her mirror box, where she can be whole again. Instead of seeing Dahlia on the highway at night, hunched over with her hands on her head and the white dotted line splitting her down the middle, she fills me up and reaches my farthest points, further than I can imagine. When the pain goes away, I feel washed out, empty. To be honest, I feel guilty, like maybe Dahlia wasn't ever real.<br />
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Inspired by this article <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/06/27/155862376/phantom-finger-points-to-secrets-in-the-human-brain?utm_source=fp&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20120629">http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/06/27/155862376/phantom-finger-points-to-secrets-in-the-human-brain?utm_source=fp&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20120629</a> Phantom Finger Points to Secrets in the Human Brain</div>Charlottehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16202435691083267050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633296978149326205.post-26941065394591390522012-01-30T21:44:00.001-05:002013-05-17T15:59:11.211-04:00God's Pocket<div class="MsoNormal">
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God’s Pocket was as far as possible from the sea, about 15 minutes by car to the crashing breakers of South Beach or 20 minutes in the other direction to Lambert’s Cove where there was barely a ripple. In the meadowed heart of the island our clothes hung, like crisp flags of conquest, blowing on a clothesline strung between two scrub oaks. Pressing my face into a rough towel, I had expected a scent—soft, fresh, perhaps sweet—but smelled instead some musky mixture of pollen and sea air.</div>
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The house was just a short walk from the duck pond and Alley’s General Store, where we picked up our mail, a newspaper and an occasional can of Habitant pea soup that had come all the way from Quebec. A little further on was The Grange, a grand post-and-beam structure built in 1859. That’s where we paid for our beach- and dump-stickers, where, on Saturday, we would go to the Farmer’s Market and where, in the evening, we shared the task of opening out folding chairs to watch old black-and-white movies, like “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Some Like it Hot.” </div>
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Sitting on a hard chair with my ass asleep, hypnotized by the droning oscillation of fans that didn’t so much cool the air as momentarily relieve the heat, I would feel my sunburn flush in the dark, stinging my cheeks and shoulders. My fingers were greasy, plunged inside a paper bag of homemade popcorn. I liked to lick the salt from my fingers.</div>
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I was a young girl, maybe 12 or 13, observing Marilyn Monroe and Rudolph Valentino for the first time. In that quaint room they were as mouthwatering as tomatoes warm off the vine, as exotic as the scalloped edges of a pattypan squash.</div>
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We’d walk back to God’s Pocket after a double-feature, in the dark, through the stars and under a moon that glowed like the afterimage of a fresh thumbprint, bright now but soon fading, past banks of orange tiger lilies, withered at night, and towering mounds of shadowy hydrangeas that would be bright blue again at sunrise. The grownups trained the slim rays of their flashlights down at the road ahead of them, as if they were inscribing a map of the island’s potholes. </div>
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When I held the flashlight, I aimed it up at the moon and waited for my light to reach it and return to me. Instead, the thin beam dispersed just over our heads and lit the hovering fog that was quietly descending.</div>
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What was inside God’s Pocket? A wide-plank floor, pumpkin-colored, sensuous and gleaming from more than a century of footfall. A lovely round window, like a porthole, by the staircase. A narrow bed beneath a dormer window, my child-body sinking with relief into a too-soft mattress, the sheets lightly scented with mildew and bleach. </div>
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Lights out meant no light at all—no difference between open eyes and closed, just blinking black. Wide-eyed, I would imagine the nearest lighthouse and its revolving beam, illuminating the spent flower heads and blue hydrangeas, routing out from its hiding place every earwig and earthworm, its spotlight penetrating straight down to the bottom of the sea. </div>
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Sleep came quickly, sweet and childish. Most mornings the wooden floor was bathed in sunlight, foretelling a day that would be spent at the beach. Or rarely, when rain lashed at the window and the floor boards were cool and dark, a day curled up on the couch with a book and a mug of tea, or patiently adjusting the rabbit ears on the TV to get reception on one of the three channels.</div>
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I would have been delighted to spend every sunny day at Lambert’s Cove. To get there required a 10-minute walk along a narrow, gradually rising forest path, dark and sun-dappled, and punctuated by random clouds of gnats. To get there was to emerge suddenly in open sunlight above the sea, with white sand beneath, shimmering sky above, beach plums and tall grass around a little pond down below the dunes, almost behind you. </div>
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Before me lies Lambert’s Cove: its white shore curves to embrace the ocean, calms any turmoil. The water glimmers in an abundance of light. If there are people, I don’t see them. This is my place, all the way to the horizon and beyond. All I see and feel is mine. The wind blows for me, the sun warms me. I take off my flip flops to run better over the scalding sand, drop my beach bag, pull off my t-shirt and run straight up to the frothy lip of the water's edge. Stepping onto a margin of pebbles in the shallow water, and taking step after step beyond them, my feet will sink slightly, into the soft, creamy sand and stop in just the place where the water laps at my breasts. </div>
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Mine was the perfect spot, between waving tentacles of seaweed and a domed boulder—the rock was round and heaving, black and slick, almost submerged at high tide, exposed and nearly golden when the tide was out. I could find that particular spot with my eyes closed. Find it and just give up everything: give up gravity, lose the connection, just tip back and float. Close my eyes and make of myself an offering. The urgent call of gulls, the heat of the sun, all loose limbs supported by the living presence of water, solid and yet not, a body suspended above the earth, rocking gently, back and forth, like the rhythm of breath. My eyes are closed, gazing at a translucent red vista that is neither light nor dark. Salt on my tongue, sea salt, sweat. </div>
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This is a place I once loved. When I grew up I used to dream, on fitful nights, that I was on Martha’s Vineyard, driving by the red clay cliffs belonging to the Wampanoag Tribe, past Aquinnah Light and on to Lobsterville, across from Menemsha, where the roseate terns come every year to breed. Only when it began to rain did I realize there was no place for me to stay. I understand those dreams as the thrashing of small hopes.</div>
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Now in middle age when I dream of Martha’s Vineyard, I’m on the upper deck of the ferry headed toward Vineyard Haven. I see the harbor in the distance, and further on is the lighthouse, where the shoreline sweeps around to the mansions of West Chop, structures whose elegant white columns, at once gracious and forbidding, stand sentinel. My hands grip the ferry’s cold metal railing and I peer over the edge into the churning wake, until I open my eyes. </div>
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God’s Pocket has seen another generation of footfall, and more, since I was last there. The post office moved years ago, and Alley’s now sells shiny blue-and-white mugs imprinted with their logo.</div>
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My father and my uncle are buried in the West Tisbury Cemetery and my mother will be buried there, some day. There’s room enough for me, if I want.</div>
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It’s not just that I can’t go back, or that I can’t turn time back—I don’t want to return. I feel claustrophobic when I remember my longing for solitude. I feel imprisoned by solitude when I recall my singular desire for the island’s beauty. </div>
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My island is my unrequited love. I’d been so certain it was just a matter of time. Just as it is when you love a man who won't love you—when you think of him constantly, when you know what is best about him and you cherish him as much for his faults, when for so long you have believed in him, believed that this secret love will be returned—love as real and solid as a boulder, constant as the sea—you yearn for your heart’s home, and you wait. You’re sure you will find a way back, a way in, till you notice, as if by accident, that you’re all alone, and you always have been.<br />
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A friend of mine shared a writing prompt she was given in her Creative Nonfiction class: <i><b>Write about a place that has tremendous significance for you; begin from the point of view of innocence and end from the point of view of experience.</b></i> I was surprised where this took me; I'd set out to write about a place I've loved and longed for my whole life. What emerged was quite different, almost sinister at times, and led me to an unexpected conclusion...a contemplation about hope and disappointment, the journey from youth to aging and death. Try it. See where it takes you.<br />
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Twenty-four hours later, and I'm thinking, "Hmmm. What if people don't know what pattypan squash is?"<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSvIGIhoyuPdubyQdLo01YxFt4G2XiWd7Ev3Wf4C_u41Mp0R7NeY9hFhS5YH0QpqMoc6lOTfVXkkYjzZPpI2CYp6K4_bceoVqIx7hIgKeUmqfT_5sWuB-ZY0D-b36YxNJ0pkmNd3I1lr8/s1600/pattypans.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSvIGIhoyuPdubyQdLo01YxFt4G2XiWd7Ev3Wf4C_u41Mp0R7NeY9hFhS5YH0QpqMoc6lOTfVXkkYjzZPpI2CYp6K4_bceoVqIx7hIgKeUmqfT_5sWuB-ZY0D-b36YxNJ0pkmNd3I1lr8/s1600/pattypans.jpg" /></a></div>
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For those of you who've never seen or tasted it, pattypan squash is round and flat, with rippling edges. It tastes great when prepared simply: lightly fried in olive oil and garlic and sprinkled with a little kosher salt, or if the squash is on the large side, halved and then fried, and served with a dollop of homemade tomato sauce (using some of those mouthwatering homegrown tomatoes). <br />
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Charlottehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16202435691083267050noreply@blogger.com2