Just when you thought it was safe: 1,600 words.
I've been on a bit of a roll lately, in terms of not updating, but recent events have thrown me savagely off course. Friday I dealt myself a long paper cut to the ankle (with an advertising flyer) on the dawn side of 8:30 AM. Like all paper cuts, it brought to my attention the thin layer of normality (my skin, in this case) that separates us from the pulsing, oozing unknown (blood and lymph); unlike previous cuts, it further suggested the sinister involvement of Commerce in some conspiracy against those things that make us truly human (skin, blood, and lymph, to tangle our metaphors). As an event, it thrust me into a deep melancholy. Thus confronted with my mortality, I turned to Art, but after several hours wielding my brush in defiance of the thin, papery forces of darkness, there were no more cabinets to repaint, and that brings us to this entry.
It has been six weeks.
I did in fact drive my mother to Baton Rouge, as promised, and consented to remain there myself for two whole days, not counting arrival and departure. It rained on and off for the drive there - not only did we drive more slowly, but when we arrived we sat in our car in the driveway for about 10 minutes until the rain slackened enough that it was worth walking eight feet to the door - and I counted nine dead armadillos (eight coming back). Things were usual insofar as Mom and I stayed at Aunt Billie's and ate a lot of seafood, but there were a few key innovations. First and most important, I had a car key in my pocket and the ability to set my own departure date. I cannot overemphasize the importance of that fact. I felt like… a visitor, not a prisoner. Second, we were totally the wet blankets of the group, or rather Mom joined me in my usual wet-blanketage. Our host (in her 60s) was out late at concerts two nights out of the three, and her daughter (late-30s?) kept trying to get us to come (I swear to you) to clubs with her, asking me to hang out with her friends, etc. Oh yes, relative in whose presence I am uncomfortable, I would be delighted to go be six times as uncomfortable with some total strangers! That sounds awesome!
On the other hand, I did take some interest in family affairs, which is difference #3. The Baton Rouge side is the truly Southern portion of my family, meaning that they have recipes in local societies' cookbooks, get into heated disputes with traffic cops over offenses their equally elderly friends commit, chat up everyone in the restaurant - the owner, a personal friend, but also the waiter who moonlights at their tennis club, and in one case a random, unknown man who happened to pass our table - and have all sorts of loosely connected anecdotes about acquaintances they insist are common to speaker and listener. (Also they revert to mild trashiness with minimal prodding, but we'll get there.) So, tired of hearing stories about people I've never met, I sat down with some computer paper and enlisted their help in drawing a family tree.
Y'all, label your photographs, and keep good notes on yourself. Otherwise you end up being remembered like the one teenager (a great-great uncle, or brother of my mother's maternal grandfather) who died accidentally after finally convincing his brother to let him help out at the lumberyard: he had lots of hair. Still worse, his nameless twin "died in a fire." There's a lot of sadness pooled around the edges of my extended family, same as yours,1 but unlike you I had a great-grandfather named for William mother-Jennings Bryan, namely Jennings Bryan Carroll. That would explain, Galileo-style, my extreme unwillingness to be crucified on a cross of gold, if not my fondness for evolutionary theory.
The novelty there is countered by the extremely religious branch of my family, which unsurprisingly insists on having children out of wedlock in their teens. It's one thing (i.e., scary) to be fiercely Christian, but must they be so stereotypical? Honestly, who conceives a child on prom night? Quit helping me judge you, ultra-Christian cousins!
A last difference, though not a true #4: in some Southern way, my family has secured use of the River House (always said with capitals), a little two-bedroom affair with white columns across the porch and pecan trees in the yard. It sits down across River Road from the levee, less than 15 minutes from downtown Baton Rouge yet most definitely in the country. The River House belongs in Lifetime movies; it's exactly the sort of place to which a woman might retire, exhausted by life, in order to have the sort of revelation that would inspire her to leave her abusive husband back in the city and marry that nice man with the pickup truck and the goats (the neighbors keep goats), settling down to a life of fresh pecan pies and fall bonfires. Fishing off the levee, etc. But they could also use it for the story of a young girl who, believing the lies of some fast boy who drives past one day while she's out tending the goats, winds up working on a riverboat, a single parent to a little boy and too ashamed to ask her family for help, before returning home to nurse her dying grandmother and falling in love with that nice man with the pickup truck and the cows, settling down to a life of fresh tomatoes and wildflowers in spring. Watching the gambling boats from the levee, etc. You could also use it for book jackets: folksy memoirs, early-to-mid-century-coming-of-age, or grotesque backwoods horrorshow.
This was the first time I'd been to Louisiana since starting grad school, and comparing the flatness of the delta to the flatness of Chicago, I realized it isn't that Louisiana is flat; it's that it's sinking. Evanston has no topographical interest of any kind, really, but it's all even in a healthy way, like you could farm it and wind up with corn. Louisiana looks like something crucial leached out of the soil, so that the dirt sags under its own weight and can't quite reach the level of the sidewalks. Louisiana looks like you would spend a long day in the fields planting your very last seeds, and later that summer your crops and your children would both die. That's not true, of course - Louisiana has several major agricultural exports - but that's sure how it looks. Louisiana: even the dirt is faintly tragic. Or possibly, Louisiana: Rachel will never forgive you for containing her relatives.
I had a good ten days by myself in Atlanta before Mom returned from New Mexico (she arrived with 1) a desire to move to New Mexico (expected); 2) some hand-dyed wool for me (very nice); 3) a story about painted chickens). In that time I did a bit of work for a former neighbor/ex-employee of Mom's, reading grant applications for a particular DFCS initiative. Because I am not very nice, I was more deeply bothered by the atrocious writing in some proposals than by the various problems facing the disadvantaged children they claimed to serve. Although the work was boring and editorially provoking, the job as a whole was cushy in the extreme. I made over $1500 in nine days, and every day we had a catered lunch, free water and soft drinks, and free candy. The last day there was even cake. Going to work set me back a bit in my FFXing,2 but I don't mind.
The group of readers is supposed to be varied, for fairness, which here translated to, oh, 8.3% male, 8.3% under 30, and at least 83% experienced in social work. I didn't talk to the other readers much, since they largely knew one another (and I couldn't be sure my particular style of commentary was welcome), but they were friendly enough, and not shy about expressing their boredom. I did have one of those moments, however, when the lone male dared to make some sort of comment about the stupidity of America's language policies as they affect education, thus drawing me out on the subject of NATIONAL LANGUAGE POLICY and leading to both of our (slow and painful) deaths. Well, actually, we wound up talking about the migrations of the Celts as they are visible in the current distribution of bagpipes in Europe, but still, Nature should have given me a bright warning pattern.
I post. Coming soon-er-ish, you may expect weaving news, a series of book reviews, a closely-reasoned argument proving that my friend Ryan should be famous, and… some links, maybe? Seems like I always have some links at hand.
1. Also, I'd like to retract my statement in History of Disaster that no one in my family died of influenza in 1918. Betty Gibson, first wife of Francis Asbury Reid, they tell me you insisted on helping your sick neighbors, and that's how you caught the flu that killed you. My apologies. (I also hear that your children resented your role in your own death.)
2. The return to the Playstation2 is vislius's fault, oddly enough. While in Athens for the wedding, she turned to me at one point (the context is forgotten, alas) and threw me, as one would a gang sign, the blitzball-victory/praise-be-to-Yevon gesture. This particular play-through has a South Slavic theme (Tidus -> Stojan; the ice aeon is Marzanna, etc.), and I've spent untold hours leveling up, with the result that no beast alive stands a chance against me (and no femme unsent Guado-human hybrid, for that matter).
It has been six weeks.
I did in fact drive my mother to Baton Rouge, as promised, and consented to remain there myself for two whole days, not counting arrival and departure. It rained on and off for the drive there - not only did we drive more slowly, but when we arrived we sat in our car in the driveway for about 10 minutes until the rain slackened enough that it was worth walking eight feet to the door - and I counted nine dead armadillos (eight coming back). Things were usual insofar as Mom and I stayed at Aunt Billie's and ate a lot of seafood, but there were a few key innovations. First and most important, I had a car key in my pocket and the ability to set my own departure date. I cannot overemphasize the importance of that fact. I felt like… a visitor, not a prisoner. Second, we were totally the wet blankets of the group, or rather Mom joined me in my usual wet-blanketage. Our host (in her 60s) was out late at concerts two nights out of the three, and her daughter (late-30s?) kept trying to get us to come (I swear to you) to clubs with her, asking me to hang out with her friends, etc. Oh yes, relative in whose presence I am uncomfortable, I would be delighted to go be six times as uncomfortable with some total strangers! That sounds awesome!
On the other hand, I did take some interest in family affairs, which is difference #3. The Baton Rouge side is the truly Southern portion of my family, meaning that they have recipes in local societies' cookbooks, get into heated disputes with traffic cops over offenses their equally elderly friends commit, chat up everyone in the restaurant - the owner, a personal friend, but also the waiter who moonlights at their tennis club, and in one case a random, unknown man who happened to pass our table - and have all sorts of loosely connected anecdotes about acquaintances they insist are common to speaker and listener. (Also they revert to mild trashiness with minimal prodding, but we'll get there.) So, tired of hearing stories about people I've never met, I sat down with some computer paper and enlisted their help in drawing a family tree.
Y'all, label your photographs, and keep good notes on yourself. Otherwise you end up being remembered like the one teenager (a great-great uncle, or brother of my mother's maternal grandfather) who died accidentally after finally convincing his brother to let him help out at the lumberyard: he had lots of hair. Still worse, his nameless twin "died in a fire." There's a lot of sadness pooled around the edges of my extended family, same as yours,1 but unlike you I had a great-grandfather named for William mother-Jennings Bryan, namely Jennings Bryan Carroll. That would explain, Galileo-style, my extreme unwillingness to be crucified on a cross of gold, if not my fondness for evolutionary theory.
The novelty there is countered by the extremely religious branch of my family, which unsurprisingly insists on having children out of wedlock in their teens. It's one thing (i.e., scary) to be fiercely Christian, but must they be so stereotypical? Honestly, who conceives a child on prom night? Quit helping me judge you, ultra-Christian cousins!
A last difference, though not a true #4: in some Southern way, my family has secured use of the River House (always said with capitals), a little two-bedroom affair with white columns across the porch and pecan trees in the yard. It sits down across River Road from the levee, less than 15 minutes from downtown Baton Rouge yet most definitely in the country. The River House belongs in Lifetime movies; it's exactly the sort of place to which a woman might retire, exhausted by life, in order to have the sort of revelation that would inspire her to leave her abusive husband back in the city and marry that nice man with the pickup truck and the goats (the neighbors keep goats), settling down to a life of fresh pecan pies and fall bonfires. Fishing off the levee, etc. But they could also use it for the story of a young girl who, believing the lies of some fast boy who drives past one day while she's out tending the goats, winds up working on a riverboat, a single parent to a little boy and too ashamed to ask her family for help, before returning home to nurse her dying grandmother and falling in love with that nice man with the pickup truck and the cows, settling down to a life of fresh tomatoes and wildflowers in spring. Watching the gambling boats from the levee, etc. You could also use it for book jackets: folksy memoirs, early-to-mid-century-coming-of-age, or grotesque backwoods horrorshow.
This was the first time I'd been to Louisiana since starting grad school, and comparing the flatness of the delta to the flatness of Chicago, I realized it isn't that Louisiana is flat; it's that it's sinking. Evanston has no topographical interest of any kind, really, but it's all even in a healthy way, like you could farm it and wind up with corn. Louisiana looks like something crucial leached out of the soil, so that the dirt sags under its own weight and can't quite reach the level of the sidewalks. Louisiana looks like you would spend a long day in the fields planting your very last seeds, and later that summer your crops and your children would both die. That's not true, of course - Louisiana has several major agricultural exports - but that's sure how it looks. Louisiana: even the dirt is faintly tragic. Or possibly, Louisiana: Rachel will never forgive you for containing her relatives.
I had a good ten days by myself in Atlanta before Mom returned from New Mexico (she arrived with 1) a desire to move to New Mexico (expected); 2) some hand-dyed wool for me (very nice); 3) a story about painted chickens). In that time I did a bit of work for a former neighbor/ex-employee of Mom's, reading grant applications for a particular DFCS initiative. Because I am not very nice, I was more deeply bothered by the atrocious writing in some proposals than by the various problems facing the disadvantaged children they claimed to serve. Although the work was boring and editorially provoking, the job as a whole was cushy in the extreme. I made over $1500 in nine days, and every day we had a catered lunch, free water and soft drinks, and free candy. The last day there was even cake. Going to work set me back a bit in my FFXing,2 but I don't mind.
The group of readers is supposed to be varied, for fairness, which here translated to, oh, 8.3% male, 8.3% under 30, and at least 83% experienced in social work. I didn't talk to the other readers much, since they largely knew one another (and I couldn't be sure my particular style of commentary was welcome), but they were friendly enough, and not shy about expressing their boredom. I did have one of those moments, however, when the lone male dared to make some sort of comment about the stupidity of America's language policies as they affect education, thus drawing me out on the subject of NATIONAL LANGUAGE POLICY and leading to both of our (slow and painful) deaths. Well, actually, we wound up talking about the migrations of the Celts as they are visible in the current distribution of bagpipes in Europe, but still, Nature should have given me a bright warning pattern.
I post. Coming soon-er-ish, you may expect weaving news, a series of book reviews, a closely-reasoned argument proving that my friend Ryan should be famous, and… some links, maybe? Seems like I always have some links at hand.
1. Also, I'd like to retract my statement in History of Disaster that no one in my family died of influenza in 1918. Betty Gibson, first wife of Francis Asbury Reid, they tell me you insisted on helping your sick neighbors, and that's how you caught the flu that killed you. My apologies. (I also hear that your children resented your role in your own death.)
2. The return to the Playstation2 is vislius's fault, oddly enough. While in Athens for the wedding, she turned to me at one point (the context is forgotten, alas) and threw me, as one would a gang sign, the blitzball-victory/praise-be-to-Yevon gesture. This particular play-through has a South Slavic theme (Tidus -> Stojan; the ice aeon is Marzanna, etc.), and I've spent untold hours leveling up, with the result that no beast alive stands a chance against me (and no femme unsent Guado-human hybrid, for that matter).