Amongst ourselves

I've been thinking and writing a lot these days of home.



The other weekend, waiting for a friend in New York, I was very struck by the observation that even in the city I find myself surrounded by hay. It's not that there was hay pervading my childhood, but I've come to associate it with home, since they got the horses. Now the smell of hay - musty, grassy, and warm - makes me think of being curled up on the couch with my folks.

My father commented recently that I only ever write about the bad stuff. It gave me pause. It just really hadn't, I think, occurred to me to divide life into good things and bad things.

I've been working more on my Archaeology of Wonder essays lately. One is about the woods I grew up amidst - the methods my family and I utilized to navigate our relationship to it. The other is about the time, as a toddler, I almost drowned.

Here's how it came about.  I was walking up my driveway with Melissa and Felisa on a recent visit from them.  Felisa had never been to my home before, so I was telling her stories about the woods.  As we passed by the pipe I was sucked through as a 15-month-old, I told the story that my family always tells amongst ourselves about how it happened.

It's a short story, really more of a skeleton of a story than anything.  Something in its manner reminds me of the schematics of myths that are in Edith Hamilton's Mythology.  I guess I had neglected to tell them the story before; they had a stronger response to it than I had anticipated.  I figure that, since the primary mode through which I know this event is through our truncated little sketch of a family story, my response to it is mitigated by the way it's told.

It made me think about the soothing role of repetition.  It made me think about narrative and trauma, and about how we might align ourselves to different narrative threads throughout our lives.

I know that the idea that I'm writing about this thing that happened makes my parents uncomfortable.  I wonder if perhaps it is harder for them because the trauma of the event was post-linguistic.  For me it was pre-linguistic, so any story I tell myself about it remains just that - a story, no more or less moving than a novel.

I have never had an interest in those wretched water slides though.  I can't think of an amusement more horrifying.

"a feeling as infinite as an open accordion"

Rosario, 2004. By Margarida Correia

During my last several conversations with my mother, she has remarked that I must be feeling nostalgic lately. I've been asking her to tell me stories from when I was a child - whether it's a story of some friend who fell and got a concussion, or whether she remembers my brother and I ever fighting (she doesn't). I've been wanting to know those little particular histories.

I spent yesterday by myself, doing a variety of things that would seem to support her charge (although she wouldn't call it an accusation, I find that I respond to it with a degree of defensiveness).


I opened up and dusted off my clarinet for the first time in 13 years. I played for hours.


I went to the ArtSpace tag sale, where I discussed Nancy Drew with a small girl and her mother. The girl, in a manner entirely reminiscent of my own experiences of family tag sales, demanded of her mother "You're not selling those, are you?! You said that they were ours!"

I opened one of the books to find a scene I remember from when I was a child in which Nancy disguises herself by coloring her trademark blonde hair with mascara (successfully, if you can imagine such a thing!).


I went to Integrity 'n Music, one of my favorite places to visit, where I was treated to the always-impressive Jackie McLean Youth Jazz Orchestra. I found there, among other things, Court and Spark - an album that was woven firmly through the entirety of my first two decades. I sang it through twice - I've always liked the way my voice bends around those songs. It was a sweet and pleasant hour-and-a-half.

And yet, I'm not sure it's exactly nostalgia that spurns these activities. It's true that I'm seeking to solidify my experience in the present and I know I'm concerned (me with my imperfect memory) with having some kind of document of my days. But I think there is something more to my impulse than the desperate grasping for proof of existence.

In Svetlana Boym's formidable The Future of Nostalgia, she traces a history of the malady. Nostalgia came into existence during a paradigmatic shift that effected much of the world. In the 18th century - that period of constant exploration, rapid colonization, and concerted nation-building - people responded to the universalization of experience, of space, and of time (think of the popularization of clocks, of the systematization of map-making) with a keen longing for the particular. As Boym suggests, "Nostalgia, as a historical emotion, is a longing for that shrinking 'space of experience' that no longer fits the new horizon of expectations" (10).

Perhaps what I'm feeling is not nostalgia alone, but something akin to Kant's ideal melancholy - that which enables one to be particularly attuned to the dilemmas of life.


Then again, maybe I do just want another chance to be seven, to thumb my way through a card catalogue, and to be aware of those moments through which I pass.

"time's rolling smithy smoke"

We made the signs for the Separatist Road celebration. This was a task that, I think, I, Sarah, Patrick, and Josh undertook years ago - maybe 15 years ago. As I was explaining the project to Jillian and Faith - who the key players were (Mena and Robert were to have staring roles in the signs; and Nora for nostalgia's sake), the kind of humor ("only a jerk would park on the corner!") that we were aiming at - I felt this rush of gratitude for the extended family my parents shaped for us.

There are so many other things running through my head, but I think I'll just leave them, for now. How lovely - for sign-making to be significant!

[Also, a very happy birthday to my brilliant and beautiful friend, Sarah!]