"a sparrow at night don't mean it's morning."

by Jillian Vento

My parents’ house, the same house in which I grew up, is situated half way up the highest hill in our town. We lived in the midst of a dense deciduous forest. Patrick and I would play in the woods or down the hill in the stream that went beneath (and sometimes flooded above) our driveway.

The driveway itself is an old Town road. Woodland cuts North up through the trees and across the hill on which my house sits, snug amongst the Sugar Maples. The old Woodland continues beyond my house, gets lost and obscured in the woods a bit, and then emerges as an active, if unpaved road several miles out.



When we were young, Pat and I (and, later, Nora) were sent outside a fair amount. We would meander our way through the woods, to the swamp or to the stream. We would wander up the hill to the cliffs. After some time, we would hear it: the simulated owl’s hoot that one parent or other would let out, expecting us to echo back. It was our honing mechanism.

The woods are filled with sounds. It’s a tightly packed euphony: trees that creak in winter under the weight of ice or snow, animals that scamper through last autumn’s dead leaves, wind through trees and over rocks, water carving its way down the hill, and the owls.

Even as a child I was enamored with the owls. When, in Twin Peaks, various characters warn the “the owls are not what they seem,” rather than feeling alarmed by that kind of sylvan scopophilia, I felt comforted by the idea that these birds could be nocturnal sentinels.



One of my father’s favorite tasks is filling the bird feeders in the yard and off the porch. After he’s funneled the feed into the containers – some of them wooden, some of them copper and glass, some plastic and wire mesh – he stands back on the porch and surveys the field. He points out the woodpeckers, the blue jays, the sparrows. He pelts the occasional squirrel with a snowball.

My father protects those precious creatures. I mean precious in the sense Catholics mean it when they talk about the precious body or the precious blood. I mean that material form that takes on the qualities of the miraculous. Birds.

Impossibly crossed feet. Impossibly hollow bones. Impossibly delicate babies.

I suppose part of it started when we lived in the house on Storrs Road, by the lake. It was on the second floor of an early 19th-century farm house that had been converted in the 70s to apartments. We had a small porch and long stairway that we lined with flowers (a magnificent fuchsia that year) and tomatoes and basil. The sparrow built her nest in the eve of the small overhang that covered our doorway. In the mornings and evenings we would avoid opening the door very much at all so as not to scare her off. You would stand in the kitchen and elicit in me peal upon peal of laughter by imitating the babies.

It's still too sad to represent properly. After several days and no plaintive cries from the nest, I asked you to look in, to bury them somewhere. I couldn't even stand to look. And you did it for me.



I'm working up to something, here, but I can't just yet.

Polaroid RIP

I never owned Polaroid camera. We had other things at my parents' house: a cute and dear brownie camera, a nice 35mm Canon, even sundry cheap point and clicks for my siblings and me. But there was something about Polaroids that didn't suit my mother's photographic inclinations. She's never said as much, but I think there was something she considered crass about Polaroids - their indulgence of instant gratification (although, I think what actually happens here is more subtle and complicated...), their room for captions, their smell, even.

But I liked them. I liked the smell (my mother and I often differed in our olfactory judgments - she wondered how on earth I could possibly like the smell of gasoline, for instance). I liked the tension between quick gratification and delayed pleasure that those moments spent waiting for the image to emerge engendered. I liked the look-shake-look pacing of it all.

And I liked the kinder, more impressionistic image that resulted. This could have had something to do with my poor eyesight. I still remember how alarming it was when I first got glasses (at 7) and the world became sharp. All of it turned promptly from soft and indistinct to sharp - the things I saw and the headaches I had. Trees suddenly had individual leaves; signs had words on them; sounds in the woods had animals dashing. Still, this vividness sometimes seemed to me to be utterly overwhelming. In the woods, I would sometimes take my glasses off and rely on the suggested messages of my poor eyesight, rather than the firm dictations of the world through my glasses. When I could see the disappointed expression of a parent, I would take them off and a furrowed brow would blur. Maybe there was something appealing about the vagueness of Polaroids.


by director Andrei Tarkovsky

There's a lot about Polaroids that make them poignant. In their popular form, they're one-of-a-kind. They're not little gems in the same way Daguerreotypes are, but they are singular. Even when you can peel back the jacket of a Polaroid and press and press and press, it fades a little each time, or you move it as you press and it smudges. Or the paper wrinkles. At any rate, there are endless opportunities for punctum. They change in your hands. They're used as tests for proper photos (I can't help but feel an affinity with anything so used for practice).


20x24

What I can remember of it

The first figure skating tests I proctored were in UConn's old ice rink. It was exposed to the elements except for a boat-shaped roof and metal bleachers that were not, on that day, filled with the people that might have done better to block the wind a bit.



I had a knack for it - teaching children how to skate - because I worked hard (very hard) for every skill or jump or edge or spin that I mastered. I taught in those days in exchange for ice time. I spent a couple hours with the very little ones - toddlers, usually - who were always wrapped in bundle upon bundle.

The very first thing we taught them was how to fall.

Earlier this month, I stopped home for my brother's birthday (and for Jane Austen on PBS). I was standing at the woodstove with the dog and my mother said, in an off-handed way, "Chris Bowman died."

They called him Bowman the Showman:


When Chris Bowman skated this program, which is still a joy to watch, I was actively training as a figure skater. Very actively. Everyday actively. Going home and training more actively. Reading USFSA rule books actively.

I would read for homework standing with the arches of my feet pressed against the base of the desk. I had bunk beds at the time. I slept on the top bunk so that, before I went to sleep each night, I could drape my spine over the edge until its bend would approximate 90 degrees.

It was in the early 90s that my mother and her friend Holly took me to see the Stars on Ice tour. Holly was the adventurous one of the three of us, convincing us to sneak down to some unoccupied third-row seats. She also convinced us to go backstage without passes.

At that point I was already almost my full height. (I grew fast and early and coaches were always muttering things like "You'd better hope you don't get any taller" or "drink some coffee - stop growing.") It was backstage, meeting these people that I realized how short they really are - and how doomed my already dubious skating aspirations were.



It was the edge of an era for skating. They were about to do away with the very practice that gave the sport its name:


I was not a showman. I loved figures. They played to my obsessive streak. (In case it's not clear from the clip, you're expected to skate exactly in the rut of your last run, presuming, of course that your last run was perfect. I spent hours and hours practicing this, establishing the muscle memory of a perfect arch.)

Despite my desire to be a showier, more physically adventurous skater, this is the program I remember best.
Torvill and Dean "Oscar Tango":

[Just a quick aside: how could you possibly think, as a commentator, that it was a good idea to yap through that program, which was so clearly about hearing blades on ice? Just let the Brits be postmodern.

The roof of the old UConn rink - now renovated into an ugly arena - gave the place strange acoustics. I knew all the boys who used to drive the zamboni, so they would let me on the ice at the end of the night, after it was cleaned for the next day. I would go out to the center, do a couple figures, and then stomp my blades. The whole place reverberated with the sound.]

You'd think, with all that practice falling, and with all that practice negotiating perfection, that life, now, that all of this would be easier.

settling

I have a bit of a fraught relationship to New Year resolutions. As a young girl, I would resolve to be more kind (a totally unnecessary goal) or to work harder at school (again, I was already earnest enough as to render this completely silly). By the time I started taking Latin (I was ten), I would mutter things like - "New Year resolutions are irrelevant - they're based on the Julian calendar, which is arbitrary and impirialistic." I spent much of high school not eating, thereby making extraneous any kind of resolution about dieting.

[When I imagine my earnestness as a child, I sound something like Marjane Satrapi imagines she sounded:]


Last year, I decided to revisit the idea of resolving myself to something. I went against my character, though, and decided to resolve to do something that would make my life more joyful: it was to see more live music. [Some quick highlights: Santogold, Neko Case, Aa, Wolf Parade, Band of Horses, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Cat Power, Shearwater, Grizzly Bear, Okkervil River, The National, Feist, Richard Thompson, Carl Blau, Ian Thomas, Camera Obscura, Duran/Schloss/Mitri, Yo La Tengo, Bill Callahan, Sir Richard Bishop, Richard Buckner, Damien Jurado, Ladybug Mecca, the Mountain Goats, Vic Spills, Burnt Sugar, Modest Mouse, The Winterpills, Mates of State, the Drones, Saul Williams, et al, et al, et al.] For what it's worth, it worked. It made my life feel more full; it created a context in which I found myself able to revel about beauty and creativity.

I thought I would continue the practice of making a resolution that would result in the sense that I lead a more complete life. I had been making all kinds of grand proclamations over the past two weeks not settling in 2008.


settling clerks, clearing deposits with systematic zeal

I thought to myself, and I may have repeated to others, that in 2008 I will not settle for acquaintances that are unsatisfactory. I will not settle - or pay a rent in - a city in which I don't want to live. I will not put myself into situations that are not fulfilling (and certainly not into situations that are derogatory). I will not be complacent in the face of my own mediocrity.

But it dawned on me, as I was looking at the etymology of "settle" for this entry. I haven't reconciled myself in 2007. To wit:
- I wanted to be a more active poet, so I created a writing group, I started a blog, I made a couple dozen submissions, I attended every reading I could schedule in, I talked with writers every chance I got, I read voraciously, I drafted a book. I DRAFTED A BOOK.
- I was uncertain about the career path I am taking and so I made arrangements to teach college courses, I have actively researched other possibilities, and I have found other aspects of my life around which to center my identity.
- I felt incomplete and underdeveloped returning to Connecticut. [Stalling, here, for time before an embarrassing confession...] Looking around my house, which I have inhabited for just shy of a year, I notice that I have not settled. Not in the least. I have neglected to get the two or three additional bookshelves I require. I haven't reupholstered the couch. I have art and mirrors leaning against the walls on which they would look best hung. (Truly, they're placed exactly below where they ought to hang; all it would require is a hammer and some nails - I've got those; I even know where they are.)

What, then, to do but to build off this restlessness, this reluctance to set false roots.

And so: 2008 is the year of (still) not settling. Not, at least, until I find that with which I can reconcile myself, content.

to stand on something vaguely sinister

Like, I imagine, any person that holds a degree in Art History, I go to museums when I travel. I've found that the larger the museum, the more alarmed people seem to be when they watch me walk across a Carl Andre. I've made a ritual of it. I search out the modern/contemporary wing and I walk across the tiles. I'm sure other people must do it (do you?), I've just never seen it.



Maybe one of these days, I'll curl up in a ball atop one.

Each time, this act produces a knot at the back of my throat. Each time, I end up crying later in the day. I think it has something to do with the tension between minimalism and post-minimalism. It has something to do with Ana Mendieta, whose work I love and who is conspicuously absent from many of these museums. (The week she died, protesters held banners demanding "Where is Ana Mendieta?") And it has something to do with museums, in general, those odd refactories of cultural memory.

The most recent time, I was in Chicago, at the Art Institute. I was listening, on repeat, to Westfall, by Okkervil River.

"more weight"

I still remember the first time I read The Crucible. I'm not sure exactly how old I was, but it was at some point before my sister Nora was born (which would make me younger than 10). I was in my new bedroom. The addition my parents had put on the house was unfinished. (It was only recently that they told me, frankly, that they had run out of money before the addition was completed. I, again, to be frank, have no idea how they had money for an addition in the first place, but there you have it.)

The room had that feeling of a space - the hollow of a rectangular prism - empty of experience. Ripe for potential - I suppose it could have been, but to me it felt just blank. And so, it isn't surprising, in retrospect, that I might carry books into such a room as a youngster.



On of the first nights I spent in that room my parents were still participating in the wine tasting group. I was young enough then to lurk about, crawling under the table and kyping dregs from everyone's glasses. Well, after that, I crept back to my new room at the cold end of the house. (My parents' house is heated, primarily, by a woodstove at the opposite end.) I turned on the lights, as yet uncovered by fixtures, I curled up on my mattress (on the floor, then), and I opened an old, musty copy of The Crucible.



And Giles Corey said "more weight." He died slow, that way, in order to preserve property. He could have died fast in the noose, but instead he died a Christian, slow and able to leave the farm to his sons. "More weight."

Pressed like grain.

Made meal of.

When I close my eyes and imagine myself, I still see (watch me measure my own body like some 19th century anthropometrist) the 5'8"/118-pound body I inhabited for so many years. And so, it is with complete alarm that I heard, tonight, my friend Anthony say, "Don't you dare ever - EVER - lose weight."

GIFT: a handkerchief of my own sewing; my poison

The Real Art Ways holiday staff party was last night. It had been a very, very long day and it was with dread that I anticipated attending it. Regarless, I had baked an Italian Almond Cake for it the night before and picked and wrapped (quite well, I think) a little cadeau for the Yankee Swap.

My plan, intitially, was to attend for an hour or so, and then to duck out before the Yankee Swap, to which I was having an increasingly visceral reaction, occurred.



The etymology of gift is lengthy and overlapping. In several northern European languages the word means "poison." In others it means "that which is given," "dowry," and the like. But my favorite was the language that combined the two meanings: Faroese, in which gift means both "poison" and "married." I had to think about it a bit. The connection between "gift" and "married" is pretty clear: a woman's dowry was a donation of sorts to the man she would marry, therefore, metonymously, she was a gift.

But poison?



It took me some time to work this out, but here's what I've come up with:
In The Gift, Marcel Mauss characterizes gifts thus: "In short, [the exchange of gifts] represents an intermingling. Souls are mixed with things; things with souls. Lives are mingled together, and this is how, among persons and things so intermingled, each emerges from their own sphere and mixes together. This is precisely what contract and exchange are." If we take Mauss at his word, then, the exchange of gifts is a corruption of the soul.

From here, a small jump. The more common etymological connotation for the word gift is "dowry." If we consider what it might mean for a woman to make a gift of herself, that is (drawing again on Mauss) intermingling her soul with her self-as-object, we can begin to see a light in which marriage is poison.



In the end, I stayed at the soirée for some time. I love the people with whom I work - they are talented and smart and viciously funny. And there was a very nice sparkling rosé. I gave the giftling for which I had swapped to Barbara after the game had finished. It made me feel better. (But was I, in a way, bribing myself to stay in so doing?)

[Mostly unrelated, but interesting tidbit...Best definition of "gift": a white speck on the finger nails, supposed to portend a gift.]