A Family

By Erin R. Van Genderen Photo by Judy Pak

My husband and I will have been married for nine months this month. That’s enough time to grow a baby, to start a family in a real, grown-up sense of the phrase. And I get that question a lot as a stay-at-home military wife.

“When are you going to start a family?”

A few days out of the week I help out an elderly couple in town who have experienced several medical mishaps in the last few years. Mr. and Mrs. Bond are still mentally sharp and living in their own home despite their declining health, and I’m only there to make sure a meal is cooked, things are tidy, pills get taken and blood pressure gets measured, and everyone gets into bed without issue.

They are frail, with Bible-page skin and fingers like bird bones. They have matching armchairs next to one another in their sitting room. They have family photographs on every wall and covering the refrigerator.

And even though Lillie’s voice is more of a whisper now and often too faint to register through Kendall’s hearing aids, she still calls him “honey.” They clasp hands at mealtime and offer up a prayer asking for blessing over the food and claiming thankfulness for all the many gifts they have received.

As tempting as it is to consider them fragile and naïve, childlike in their near-helpless old age, I can remember that they were once like me when I see these things. When Kendall lets go of his walker long enough to lift Lillie’s legs and swivel her onto her side of the bed, then tucks her in and kisses her cheek, I see a love that comes from more than fifty-seven years of life together. When he gets down on his knees to pull her chair, with her in it, closer to the dinner table, then struggles back to his seat with both hands on the tabletop, I see years of sacrifice, for better or worse.

Their marriage, more than half a century old, retains the respect and care of a relationship that many my age have still yet to taste.

So when I am asked when my husband and I will get around to “starting a family,” I get a little ruffled. Even though it’s just the two of us, in the end it will be just the two of us — and for now, just the two of us is all of the family that we need.

New trip, new you? Travel and the opportunity for change

A paradox:  the thing that frightens me most in the world is flying.  The rumbling engines, buried somewhere in the gut of a monster whose insides I cannot see; the finality of the cabin door closing; the complete and total trust in two strangers in the pilot’s seat, not to mention the myriad more on the ground, making sure two planes don’t meet nose to nose at 500 miles per hour, making sure the runway is clear but not slick, the wings free of ice and the fuel tank full. The deceptively fluffy clouds and their turbulence filled interiors.  The 36,000 feet that separate me from the ground. And yet, my favorite place in the world is an airport.  Any airport will do, although some, of course, are better than others.  London’s Heathrow is a marvel.  San Francisco’s new terminal has free Google Chromebooks, an organic juice bar and a yoga room.  But it is not these things that make me love airports.  I’ve never known, in fact, what it is, knowing merely the likes that, while exemplary, fall short of explaining the love:  the antiseptic smell; the ten issues of Cosmo, all trumpeting sex tips in different languages; the permission to eat crappy food (because everyone, in an airport, gives themselves that permission).  I didn’t know where the love came from, though, until I was on a bus from Lisbon, in Portugal, to Seville, in Spain’s Andalucia.

“Zack,” I said to my boyfriend, who was nodding off in the seat next to me.  I poked him.  “Zack, I had an epiphany.”

He opened one eye.  “Yeah?”

I’d been thinking of the time we’d just spent in Lisbon, and the last time I’d been on a bus several days earlier, to Lisbon from Porto in the north.  As much as I enjoyed walking around the glowing white streets of Lisbon, sampling the tart cherry liquor and chocolate salami, the part where my head tingled, where my palms sweat slightly and I tapped my toes---that was earlier.  That was on the bus, and it was happening again.  To Zack, I said, “I don’t like traveling because of the places I go.  I like traveling because of the opportunity for change, because of the hope of transferring locales, of the possibility the unknown offers.   I like the places themselves, of course, but it’s more about the change---the possibility for it, and then, hopefully, the reality of it---that’s the part I love.”

I settled back into my seat, satisfied.  Airports, then, were the ultimate place of opportunity: hundreds and thousands of possibilities for changes, branching upward and outward into the endless sky from the terminal filled hub, in which I sat, and waited, and savored.

Happiness expert Gretchen Rubin (if there can be such a thing), writes that, “To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.”

While many people think of vacations as fulfilling the first element---what feels better, really, than laying on a beach with a cocktail in hand, or sampling gelatos on a stroll through Rome---I’ve always, without realizing, thought of it as accomplishing the last element: the atmosphere of growth.  Each place, with its different things to do, see, eat, smell, taste, hate, and love, offers the possibility of making me different, ever so slightly.  Each place offers me the opportunity to change---hopefully, to grow---as a person.

“Do you think that’s universally true?” Zack asked, having now awoken enough to engage.  “Does a trip to remote Africa offer the same potential for change as a cruise in the Bahamas?”

I pondered the question.  Do, as he asked, the trips of the “feeling good” variety provide the same atmosphere of growth that I so desired?  Did travel inherently offer opportunity for change, or is that potential limited to a certain kind of trip?

My best trips, the ones that I savor in memory for months and years after, are the ones that have been the hardest.  There were the two months I spent in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, where I burst into tears at least three chaotic, crowded border crossings, felt dirty constantly, and was 100% positive I was going to die at least five times (you may not want to trust my odds predictions).  I felt more changed at the end of it, but also simply more satisfied.  When I look back on it, the colors are brighter, the smells richer, the interactions more readily accessible in the banks of my mind (there is, of course, something else to be said for knowing, as with a place like Syria, that you went at a specific point in history; that it will be fundamentally changed should ever you return).

Does this mean that the trips that I primarily simply indulge in simple pleasures are less worthwhile?  I don’t think so.  There is something to be said for the change inspired by allowing yourself to just be, of acknowledging the value of pleasure, of saying, I have no where to go other than here, no one to indulge other than myself.  This kind of environment offers its own opportunity for change, for reflection, for growth---although sometimes, I think there is merit in not seeking growth at all.

And sometimes, it’s better to be in an airport: the great joy in being safe on the ground, and knowing that, soon enough, you’ll take flight.

All Hours Are Not Created Equal

I have been struck lately by the way in which different hours in the day and different periods in life seem to have very different weight. The morning hours speed by before I can even catch hold of them, while afternoon hours march on ever so slowly. Unfortunately, those slippery morning hours are my most productive, so I am forever trying to figure out how to tackle the bulk of my to-do list before they slip away. Monday time feels so very different from Friday time, and then, weekend time is another thing altogether.

And when I think of time on the scale of a lifetime, I am amazed at how the briefest moments can rise above the rest in technicolor memory, while all the rest seem fuzzy in black and white. I must have spent hundreds (thousands?) of hours researching and writing papers as a student, but I can’t pin down any one of those hours in particular. Each was a tiny drop in the bucket toward the slow and steady process of learning to make an argument, tell a story, or craft a sentence. Those hours were only significant because they were many.

Instead, I remember a handful of conversations on couches or in coffee shops and the brief exchanges of empathy that made all the rest of it easier. I remember the food and drinks shared as a currency of love and friendship and understanding. I remember a certain slant of sunlight hitting the table, finally, one spring afternoon.

In comparison to many months and years spent living in one place, it feels like just a few weeks spent traveling changed everything.

There must have been hundreds of walks along the same path to and from campus, but on one in particular, a classmate caught up with me and not so very long after, it seems, became my husband. We’ve been married nearly six months now, and sometimes it seems like only a moment has passed. On the other hand, I wonder whether perhaps we’ve always been together.

The hardest thing about time, I think, is knowing in the moment which of those moments count and which will fade quickly, which to hang onto tightly and which to let go of gracefully.

A Year

I’ve been in the same place for a year.  I know because the lease is up.  It’s one of those weird tricks of time that it feels shorter and longer all at the same time.  Shorter because I can vividly remember the beginning: Slowly moving in, unpacking things I hadn’t seen in over a year, little treasures and mementos, my furniture unpacked from storage and graciously carted the hour and a half journey by my parents, the elation at being in our own place and the shock that we ended up here in the middle of nowhere. Longer because there’s been so many memories made between then and now: visits from family, traveling around the state, eating at the local diner.  There’ve been new jobs and adventures, afternoons spent playing video games and sipping cocktails and quiet nights sitting and reading together.

A year ago I dropped my husband off at work, and drove the thirty miles to our new home. I found the key where the landlord said it was hidden, unlocked the front door and walked in.  I walked through all the rooms, making sure they were just as I remembered. I open and shut cabinets, peered into the refrigerator, flipped light switches, and then I danced around in the living room like a total spaz.  My husband and I had been living with family members for a year and a half, having our own place again was Christmas morning to me.  Family (both his and mine) are amazing, but there’s so much freedom when it’s your own.

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A year ago I was excited to be moving into a place of our own.  But I was also a little lost.  I didn’t know what I wanted to do or what I was going to do, I was still job searching, scouring the internet for a job I could do from my new home. I was also still a little broken; I hid it well, but deep down things weren’t peachy. I was upset about the way I came to be back in the states, I felt the universe had forced my hand and I didn’t understand why. I was afraid to examine the feelings too closely so I shuttered them deep within and ignored the fact that I couldn’t speak about the fact that our plans, my plans, went up in a cloud of smoke. I ignored the fact that I wasn’t sleeping well.

Soon I found a job, one that I could do online with a company I respect.  Not long after that I found the Equals Record, summoned up my courage and sent a fan-girlesque letter to Elisabeth and Miya. Slowly I started hanging pictures on the walls and setting out knick-knacks. I settled in to this strange new existence and accepted that maybe things do always happen for a reason, and maybe this was the reason. Maybe I needed time away, time spent in a quiet rural area, time spent with just my husband for company.  Maybe I needed the time to slowly heal and accept, and then I needed the time after that to celebrate and see the possibilities again.  I needed mornings spent sipping mimosas, afternoons full of video games, and evenings spent writing thoughts on a page.  I needed the room and the place. I didn’t know it, but I found both a year ago.

Ten Years Ago

By Madeleine Forbes Ten years ago I said goodbye to my parents at Heathrow Airport. I remember they bought me breakfast, a dry croissant that stuck to the roof of my mouth. Later, I wrote in my diary that I felt “removed, relaxed, a slight sick feeling in my stomach”. I did not cry, I noted proudly, until I was walking through the tunnel from the gate.

I was eighteen years old and it was the first time I had ever been on a plane.

I feel sad when I think about that time. Sad for all the things I thought might happen that never did. The possibilities that once seemed to stretch over the horizon have gradually dissolved. That’s not a complaint, it’s just the way life is. With every year that passes, opportunities pass too. I will not, in all probability, have published my first novel before I’m thirty. I’m too old to be a prodigy, and unlikely to be a millionaire at any point: I’ve made too many choices in other directions. Ten years ago these were still things that had yet to be decided.

I thought I was an adult. I had stayed out all night at grimy raves in East London. I had been assistant director of a play which we took to the Edinburgh Fringe festival, sleeping in bunks in a hostel in the depths of the city. I’d spent three days in Paris with a boy I loved, who had subsequently broken my heart. I thought that one of the things that the trip would achieve would be finally moving on from him.

I had been waitressing and working front of house at a children’s theatre, so I was financially independent. Kind of. I had saved for the trip myself but as I was still living with my parents and paying no rent or bills, I now see this for the delusion it was. I knew how to roll a joint, flirt, write essays, and drive a car. I had secured a place at Oxford University to read English Literature, and now I was off on my requisite gap year travels. I was going to become a Well Rounded Person and Find Myself, and write some kind of Great Work in the process.

So when the volunteer program in Northern India, which I’d written about lovingly on my university applications, fell through, I was unfazed. I’d read a lot of Lonely Planets by then and Southeast Asia sounded easy. A piece of cake. I don’t remember feeling any fear as I found the cheapest flight, which happened to feature a change of planes in Kuwait. In 2003 the second gulf war was just starting and I remember that I was worried a US invasion of Iraq might disrupt my plans. I felt kind of glamorous as I speculated about it, as though I had already gained something of what I wanted from traveling, without actually having gone anywhere.

I had nothing booked and no contacts. I read and read, my way of making sense of the world back then when I still trusted words above all else. I had memorized almost every aspect of my potential route, train connections and visa requirements and areas to avoid. I had a tiny first aid kit and a travel towel and a money belt and a mosquito net. I had reduced my possessions, as advised by the Lonely Planet, to the bare minimum. I had I think one pair of shorts, one pair of trousers, a couple of t shirts. I planned to be away for at least six months.

As things turned out, the boy I was getting over is the same one I’m planning our wedding with now. I thought I was starting my career as a writer, filling notebook after notebook with smudges and stains from the cheap blotchy biros I bought on the road. This year, finally writing again, I finished the stack of blank books I brought home with me, like little neon tiles, adorned with kitschy asian cartoons. It was like picking up a baton from eighteen year old me.

There was that long patch in between. A decade, in fact. When I tried out wanting other things. I tried so hard I went full circle and had to go away again. That’s another story, involving bicycles, wild boar and a Uruguyan nomad, and that’s how I find myself here.

All those miles later, back where I started. Eighteen and stupid. I didn’t understand anything then, and yet I knew more than I thought I did. In a funny way, I already knew everything.

The Art of Returning

I have fallen in love, unconditional love, with so many places. Various weeks or months into living in a new location, I often declare it “home.” This is not a sense of growing roots or settling, but rather a feeling of comfort and belonging. To give a few examples---I claim my home town of Boulder, Colorado, to be heaven-on-earth [thus, my true love], I claim I fell in love with living abroad in Nicaragua, I claim I found my career in Uganda and Rwanda, I claim I felt more secure and loved in Washington, DC than anywhere else thus far in my journey, and, finally, I claim I re-found happiness and bliss during a year long journey in Mexico City. All of these places are homes. 

This story has two parts: 1) the magic, wonder, and awe of a huge, vibrant, culturally-infused city and 2) the impressionable and open place in which I existed when I found myself living in Mexico City.

I have a theory that you should try to return to places you fell in love with through living there within a year of leaving. That amount of time allows the freshness to remain in relationships and in most cases halts significant enough changes in the city landscape, such that you won’t recognize your favorite blocks, cafes, or parks. Within nine months of leaving Mexico, I returned for the first time, yet I could already feel the changes---I missed my friends and many had already moved on to new experiences as well, my Spanish faltered, but above all, I already felt far away from the person I had embodied when I lived there. The context of this blog post is my second return trip, which comes exactly two years, or better put---a whirlwind of life---after the first visit.

Returning to a place is always accompanied by so many questions ranging from the more mundane (Will my favorite park still look the same? Will the coffee shop on the corner still be there? Will I remember how to get to my old apartment?) to the deeper, more existential questions (Will I still love the city? Will I regain the sense of freedom I had when I lived here? Will I still feel like I belong here? Will I feel like I could live here again?). For those of us who have moved between cities and countries, it is always heartbreaking to leave while at the same time inspiring to move and settle into a new community. In the back of my mind, I imagine past homes as places I can always return to, like visiting old friends or family. They become pieces of me scattered in the world that I can collect, if I return to walk the same streets and share coffee in the same parks with the same friends. Of course, I could easily, fall back in love with the bold, colorful buildings, dry summer days, bustling city parks, and long fun-filled nights. Who couldn’t?

Part I: The city that left an impression

Roxanne Varzi, the author of Warring Souls, describes cities as landscapes that individuals walk through, writing their own versions of the city as they walk. In her eyes, the individual experiences a sense of poetry in the city that they write as they walk and inhabit the space. Returning to Mexico City meant revising and adding to the story that I had written years before. Walking around certain parks and on certain streets brought back dormant emotions, some of which exist in the past, and I briefly visited them, and others, re-ignited bringing me back to the joyfully open and tenderly vivid experiences of the past. Re-writing the poetry, as Varzi would call it, requires openness to re-experience a city and to then reconcile new experiences with what you fell in love with in the past.

The magnitude of the city still leaves an impression, from the top of the tallest building in the centro historico, you can witness the city stretching on in every direction. Although your eyes can sense the cars and people 43 stories below, it is nearly impossible to comprehend over 22 million people sharing this space. It is breath taking. Every element feels more vibrant, buildings burst with colors, food with flavors unimaginable in my Boston life, salsa dancing with a sense of glee. Even the light cast by the sun setting over the zocalo feels more radiant. Returning doesn’t change these elements, in fact they feel more alive and more intense---almost as if the point is to confirm my stories and memories.

Part II: The girl ready to be molded

As vulnerable as it is to write about why we make major life decisions, it is important in the context of this marvelous city. I moved to Mexico City mostly because I was ready to spend a significant amount of time abroad and I had a friend living there. The combination of those two simple facts landed me in this particular city. Moving had meant uprooting a world and home I had created in DC---of close friends, a wonderful job, and a boyfriend of a number of years. The year passed as I healed, taking the training wheels off and experiencing a new sense of freedom and fulfillment in living abroad.

Although my memory would like to re-write the story of Mexico City as full of magic and glee, the year did not pass without challenges, questions, and heartache, as ripping out roots often causes. Some questions which are not and cannot be answered by moving or even the passing of time. Yet, returning after a number of years away caught me off guard, as many of the same questions of uncertainty surfaced, as though triggered by spaces I used to inhabit. Past insecurities gently haunted me, illuminating today’s struggles that mirror those from a few years ago that my current self had attempted to grow and learn from. But, there they were in their gut-wrenching openness.

----

Silently walking, questioning my life, Varzi’s words rang true---as I rewrote the stories and the memories, capturing them in my current space, not just in the magical, gleeful past. This is a long term relationship, with this enchanting city, and I can only imagine the new stories my future self will write.

From Higher Learning to Simply Earning

Dear Sibyl,

I've been teaching upper elementary school for over a decade.  I usually love teaching, although I have gone through some tough situations that have shifted my view from teaching as a calling, to teaching as a job. My question is: my enthusiasm for teaching upper grades is waning, and I'm wondering if a grade change is what I need to bring back my passion for teaching, or is it just gone? What do you think?

From,

On The Fence

Dear On the Fence,

You’ve hit on a central question to many people in the workforce today: “Does my job need to be my calling?  If not, then how do I get through it?  If so, how the hell do I get out of this job?”

Let’s set that huge question aside for a minute and just talk about your circumstances.  It sounds like, even though you no longer feel jazzed about teaching, you are currently looking for ways to bring the magic back.  You’ve been burned by some bad experiences, and are wanting to turn things around before you get too jaded.

This is completely possible.  It will require a good amount of change, but if you can be open to the changes, it could be beautiful.  You can still be a teacher and not do exactly what you are doing now.  I encourage you to consider ALL the options: a grade change, a school change, an entire genre change---you are a teacher, but do you need to teach in schools?  What do you love to teach, and is there a market of people who would be interested in learning that from you?

Take your career to couple’s therapy.  Sit down with a pad of paper and a pen (not a computer---the brain works differently long hand), set your watch for a 50 minute session, and write, stream-of-consciousness, a conversation between your Teacher Self and your On The Fence Self.  Go ahead, ask TS all your hardest questions, answer “Yeah, but what about the time. . .”, and hash it all out.  Notice what voice Teacher Self takes on.  Is it a tone you recognize from another part of your life?  Are there action steps you can take to salvage the relationship?  Can you seek out training, a teacher support group, or go to some of the galvanizing events groups like Yes World provide to support people doing good in the world?

Let’s say, at the end of all this soul searching, you and Teacher Self decide to break up.  You want to discover your true/new calling.  You won’t be alone.  More and more people are spending their nights and weekends working on the things they are passionate about, either to eventually make their living off of those things, or just because it feeds their everyday experience that much more.

You can’t stay on the fence forever.  At some point, you’ll have to jump one way or another, and my advice to you is to do so with both feet, whatever direction you choose.  You might find yourself dismantling the fence, slat by slat, despite the splinters incurred, in order to find a new, less polarizing way to live.

Love,

Sibyl

Submit your own quandary to Sibyl here. 

Landmarks

I’m pants at directions.  I’m pretty sure that’s British slang for really bad, if not, well I’ve never been to Great Britain so you’ll just have to excuse my ignorance.  International colloquialism aside, I’m really pretty terrible at directions, both giving them and following.  If you’re ever giving me directions, and you hope to actually have me make it to the destination, kindly avoid saying things like ‘Turn North after two miles’.  I have no concept of either which way is north or how far two miles is. The only time I know which way is east or west is if the sun is either rising or setting. There’s an old scene in a Muppet movie when someone tells the Muppets to turn left at the fork in the road.  You can probably guess the next part, the Muppets drive a little ways until they see an actual fork, a giant utensil sticking into the ground, and then they make the turn.  Those are the kind of directions I could follow.

I like landmarks.   They’re how I make my way from point A to point B and how I describe where I’ve been. My memory records locations like others remember dates.  I may not remember the year or even the month, but like any good wanderer, I can remember where I was.  When I heard Mother Teresa died: in the parking lot of my grade school. When the twin towers came down: College at mandatory language tutoring.  The first time I slow danced with a boy, my first taste of alcohol, the first time I kissed my husband.

I remember the where; like little snapshots in my brain. Polaroid pictures of significant moments that have made up my life and likely quite a few insignificant ones.  I can see the view, where I was, who I was with, and my surroundings. The images often have invisible aspects too, how I felt, my perception of the event or moment.  Perhaps there is some deep psychological or physiological reason or correlation; a left brain versus right brain debate.  Maybe Katherine’s research into memory and narrative would have an explanation.  Or perhaps all the artistic talent that I see in my family tree filtered into my DNA after-all, leaving my brain to prefer visuals and images over statistics or dates.

Whatever the case, the snapshots of my memory are there to show me where I’ve been.

They are the Landmarks of my life.

Alchemy

I’ve been thinking about this Joseph Campbell quote: “If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's.” As artists, we really don’t know what effect our work will have once we put it into the world. Whether working for a client, collaborating, or preparing for a solo show, that uncertainty is always there. As artists, we have to be confident enough to make work that is honest about who we are and the world we inhabit. We never know if we are good enough; there is not a set path for how to succeed or even a clear definition of what success means. Embracing that uncertainty and going forth honestly anyway is our job, the same way that when I waitress my job is to set aside my ego and serve the customer as well as I can, even when they are annoying and the kitchen is slow and I am so tired and I have my period and I just want to go home.

The worst part is, when you’re a waitress you know that it makes sense that in a city with a lot of people, there are lots of restaurants, because everyone needs to eat. But as an artist living in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction™, a lot of times it just seems like there is already enough art! You can buy a printed copy of any great painting, illustrated book, or amazing poster you like. Why make more? When I think about the sheer number of artists making things and trying to make a name for themselves, it boggles my mind. Throw in some heaping self-doubt and it’s enough to make you want to stop trying altogether.

I thought of this overabundance of art when I heard about Meriç Algün Ringborg recent show at Art in General, The Library of Unborrowed Books, in which she culled a selection of books from the Center for Fiction’s library. The piece, following the same guidelines as her 2012 show at the Stockholm Public Library, “comprise[d] all the books from a selected library that have never been borrowed.”

The show is a little embarrassing for the books. Claire Barliant of the New Yorker writes that “while [she] browsed [she] found [her]self searching for flaws in the books that might have made them undesirable” to others, which sounds like online dating. The Center for Fiction’s tumblr is ostensibly supportive, but incorrectly refers to Ringborg with male pronouns, so perhaps there’s a little buried resentment on their end.

But Michele Filgate of the Paris Review finds that the show made the books more attractive, writing, “there’s something about displaying the books as art that made me want to page through each and every novel. It’s as if all of the words put together are trying to say, We are necessary; we have stories to share.”

Although the mass of artists living today can be daunting, it is also be powerful. If there are that many of us who want to approach problems creatively, there are ways to harness that creative power to make the world a better place, and that is exciting.

The truth is, most of my artist friends think about a lot of the same questions I do. I see the different ways that we try to make ourselves and the world better through art, whether it be through an overtly political message or simply a celebration of creativity over consumption. Nobody has it all figured out, but everyone is trying.

Artists like El Anatsui (go see his awe-inspiring show at the Brooklyn Art Museum!) and Chakaia Booker (read more about her here) are especially exciting to me, because of their approach to materials. They take objects that most people think of as ugly and disposable, and make them into gorgeous sculptures. It’s not just that this is a surprising thing to do, it’s also that their work acknowledges the world we find ourselves in, with all of its industrialized waste and ugliness, and finds beauty there. The detritus and tires and metal scraps that make up Booker and Anatsui's work are not so different from the unborrowed books in Ringborg’s piece. All three artists find value in objects that other people have ignored. That’s what art does. It takes the parts of ourselves, our worlds, our perceptions that we thought were the most unlovable, the most obscure, or just too obvious to bother with, and transforms them into something to share with pride.

Further Reading:

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Paris Review: Borrowed Time

New Yorker: The Art of Browsing

Ringborg's Website: Meriç Algün Ringborg

Center for Fiction: The Library of Unborrowed Books

ltr">El Anatsui

Defiant Beauty

Marriage Equality

This week, the Supreme Court is hearing cases that will determine the constitutionality of DOMA and the legality of Prop 8. It saddens us that we have to even write this, but we believe in the fundamental equality of all human beings. Love is love is love. Here are three pieces from our archives on the subject: Renee explores the difference between Civil Unions and Marriages: The Same, But Not Equal

Nora ponders what she and her wife will tell their son about marriage inequality: On Inequality

Miya argues that marriage equality is about families, and has ideas about what laws should come from this battle. Family Equality and the Legacy of the Struggle

Please read, enjoy, discuss, and share.

Meet the Local: Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Meet the Local is a series designed to uncover the differences (and similarities) in how we think and live in different parts of the world.  Over the upcoming months, I’ll ask locals from places all over the world the same set of getting-to-know-you questions.  This week, meet Neno, who was born in Sarajevo and has lived there ever since, including four years spent largely underground during the siege.

What do you like about the place you live?

I like, first of all, the people.  The people and the size of the city.  Sarajevo is a quite good city to live because it’s quite a small city---it’s only 400,000 people---so you know everyone.  It’s like one big family.  And also the history, the culture.  But mainly the people.  The people are very friendly in this city, so you can always count on someone helping you in the city.  I like that feeling.

 What don’t you like so much?

I don’t like politics in the city, and the politicians.  It’s affecting the every day life---we could have better public transport, we could have more investments, we could improve many things in this city.  But unfortunately we have a lot of bureaucracy.  We have three governments, and three presidents.  It’s a small country---only four million people---so to make one decision when you have three presidents. . . it’s quite impossible.  Nothing gets done.

What do you normally eat for breakfast?

I drink tea, or sometimes coffee.  Then scrambled eggs, with cheese.  No pies!  Because people think we are eating the pies for the breakfast.  The pies are more for the lunch or for the dinner.  People think we are eating pies every day, but it’s very, very heavy on your stomach.  It’s more like a fast food things.  I eat pies only maybe two times in a week.

What do you do for a living?  How important is your job to your sense of self?

I’m a student of political sciences and diplomacy and international relations, getting my masters.  I lead walking tours when I have free time from my studies.  I think I will stay in tourism.  I’m studying political sciences, so people always think I will be involved in political life but I think I like history, I like the political philosophy, but I don’t see myself in a political life.  I want to send a message from this city, this country.  I think we have more to offer than just the recent history.  That’s the reason I started doing walking tours.  Unfortunately, this country still has a reputation as a war torn country.  When you say Bosnia, the first image people have is the war in Bosnia, Sarajevo under siege, but I truly believe this country is a country with a long and rich history, friendly people---I think we have a lot to offer.

My job is very important to my sense of self.  It’s very difficult life in this country.  You know, I’m 27 years old and I’m still living with my parents.  But in some ways, I have freedom because I earn all of my money.  So for my self-confidence, it’s very important that I also earn something.  Most people live with their parents till they are married, because they are close with their family, but also because of the economy.  It’s a very high unemployment rate---43% at the moment.  So unfortunately people can’t afford to have their own flat.  And also Sarajevo is a very small city, so even if I rented a flat, I would go every day to my mother’s to eat something.  So at the moment, I think it’s better to stay with my family.

What do you do for fun?

I like to hike, when it’s sunny weather, in the [1984 Sarajevo Winter] Olympic mountains.  I also like photography---I like to walk around and take photos.  I like to bicycle---there’s one part of the city that has bicycle infrastructure, so I go there and I bicycle.  I also like bowling, so I go there with my friends for bowling very often.  I also like to read, and to travel.

How often do you see your family?  Tell me what you did the last time you saw them.

I live with my family.  We are very close, because I was here during the siege so we were always together then.  The sense of community in this country is very strong.  The people are close to each other; the neighbors are close to each other.  The siege made us closer, because we survived together the most horrible moments. I think the siege of the city affected people in a positive but also negative way.  I think that people in this country appreciate small things more.  Maybe like some other countries or the younger generations in this country, one small thing is nothing.  For example, I like to eat everything.  I’m not choosy, but I have a niece, and she was born after the war.  And we all have a Sunday lunch together and she is so picky---I don’t like that, I don’t like that---and I get so frustrated, like, you need to eat everything, because you don’t know the feeling of when you have nothing to eat at all.  I appreciate the food.  I try to enjoy small things.  But also the war had negative effects---like, I never celebrate New Year’s Eve on open squares.  I don’t like fireworks.  Whenever I hear fireworks, I get flashbacks, because it’s the same sound as the shells exploding.

What’s your biggest dream for your life?

To travel around the world.  Now, I’ve traveled almost all of Europe, except the UK and Ireland.  Personally, I think that’s the best spent money.  When you learn about other cultures, you start to appreciate more about your own culture, and your own life.  But after traveling, to again always return to this country.  No place like home, no place like home.  I experienced the worst things in this country, so why not stay?  I think this country deserves a better future with smart and educated people.  We will not have a bright future if all the smart and educated people leave the country.  So we need to stay, and we need to fight for the changes.

 If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?  Why?

I like Spain and Portugal.  The people are very similar to us here---they’re also very friendly, very open.  They also have not very good economy, like this country, but they’re like, let’s enjoy life!  Things will improve!  I can imagine myself living in Lisbon for one or two years, but like I told you, I then want to come back to Sarajevo.

What are you most proud of?

I’m proud of my family.  I’m proud of my mother, my father.  Because I think they directed me in a good way, they raised me to be a good guy.  My mother for me is like a big hero because I was with her during all of the wartime.  She was also working every single day, walking back and forth through the snipers, because she needed to do something, to occupy her mind, to not be in a basement all the time.  She was working not to lose her mind, and a little bit to keep her job position. She was working for free.  Sometimes she got paid in cigarettes.

How happy would you say you are?  Why?

I am very happy because I have a good family.  I have my mother, my father, my sister, my niece.  It’s a very small family, but we are very close to each other.  That’s my biggest happiness.  Also, I’m happy because I live in Sarajevo.

To read the answers of a local Londoner, click here to meet Carleen.

XXIX. Savoie

The past four months have been the loneliest I’ve ever experienced, no thanks to me. My reaction to life in a new country has been to hole myself up and reject most social interaction---hardly a path to happiness, but what do I know when I have never lived away from home for so long before.

On the eve of my departure, Marie and I exchange e-mail addresses. We’ve been living together since January but our interaction has been fairly limited---she has her parents house to go back to every weekend, not to mention her ongoing three-way relationship keeping her busy. When we’re both in Chambéry, I spend my time in class, walking around the hills north of our apartment, or shut in my room. Our conversations, which have been pleasant and fun, are when we both happen to be in the tiny kitchen having breakfast at the same time. Most have centered around Nutella.

Marie and I hug and she hands me a slip of paper with her address along with a small gift, a pair of earrings that will faire ressortir le vert de tes yeux, bring out the green in my eyes. The simple gesture, like so many others I’ve experienced in the week leading up to my departure, makes me wish I could go back to the beginning and start all over. I wish I’d had the courage to be real friends with you, I want to say. But I don’t.

I tuck the piece of paper into one of my books knowing that I’ll probably never take it out again. Years have since passed, and like the red poppies that I once collected outside Clémence’s house in Normandie and pressed inside the pages of one of my journals, I have no idea where that slip of paper is now. But it’s nice to know that it’s somewhere, and if I ever feel like looking, I might be able to find it again.

Swept Away

Hello Sibyl,

Last summer while at the Paris airport on a layover, I met a guy who was also there on a layover.  We emailed and texted and he came to visit me in Amsterdam in November, and again in December (he lives in Venezuela). During these first visits, he opened up and told me that since meeting me he was thinking about a future with me and that he has never done that before.  We fell in love, discussed marriage and where we could both live together (he has a 5 year old son, so cannot move here, and after a recent visit, I know I could never live in Venezuela).

Once he was home (in January), I mentioned something about the future, and he said he could not talk about it.  I wrote him a long email explaining that HE was the one who brought up the future and talked about plans, etc.  He said he was sorry, but just needs more time, and for me to please be patient.  

I do understand we need to be patient and get to know each other better, but it seems like he has changed.  He used to be very open about sharing feelings and affections, but now seems to have pulled back (I visited him 2 weeks ago in Venezuela).  Plus i wonder if there is a future between us given the distance and the fact that it would be difficult to find someplace to live together.

I wonder if I should end it now or just enjoy the times when we see each other?

Thank you very much and kind regards,

Futuretripper

Dear Futuretripper,

In the short time since I started this column, I have received several quandaries like yours.  They are from women who are disappointed by the men in their lives, but claiming that they love them, and hoping for a future with them still.  Here is what is missing in these letters: any indication of what there is to be loved about these men, why they are worthy of such undying love, and what makes them eligible to be a good life partner.

From your letter, it's clear that the two of you had an immediate connection that went very deep, and made both of you want to hang on it to forever, by planning a future together.  However, other than the fact that he's a father, and he lives far away from you in a place that you never want to live in, what have you told me about this man?

Paraphrasing The Little Prince, I want to know what his voice sounds like, what games he loves best, and if he collects butterflies.  I want to know why he is worth the struggle of a long-distance romance.  Just the fact that he changed his mind and no longer wants to talk about the future with you is not enough to end the relationship, as most people have trouble with commitment.  However, it does seem like there is some denial of the reality of the issues the two of you are facing, if you chose to go forward with this relationship long-term.

You had a lovely Before-Sunrise-esque connection with this man.  However, not every connection one makes with another person needs to be followed to the fullest extent.  Some people, no matter how deeply we feel we are cosmically drawn to them, are meant to just be brief interludes in our lives.  It's hard to make meaning of those experiences and let them go, but otherwise, it is like trying to hold the ocean in your hands.

Of course, there is a chance that you do indeed have a future with your cross-continent lover.  However, my advice to you is to hang back, and give the relationship room to grow.  You need to let it breathe, and see what transpires in the space between the two of you---which for you, is a lot of space!  Just let that be the reality.  Don't force anything, and use the time you used to spend planning the future reflecting instead on why this man is so special, and what he can really offer to your life.

And then write back and tell me of all his stunning substance, and how it resonates with who you are and what you need.  But please, if you find that you only like this man for nebulous reasons, and if he doesn't seem to really want all that you are willing to give him, release your hands, and let him float on.

Love,

Sibyl

Submit your own quandary to Sibyl here. 

On Reading Fiction and Ethics

By Carrie Anne TiptonIllustration by Akiko Kato

I have many faults; some are known fully to me, and many, I am sure, are felt more expansively by others. But this one virtue I have in spades: empathy. Such a strongly-buttressed wall of my interior house, it has, ever since I was a child, prevented me from being able to read descriptions and view depictions of people being unkind to one another; in fact it is almost impossible for me to stomach any graphic rendering of suffering at all. I enter easily into others’ pain, a trait I can only attribute not to some oustanding moral fibre, but rather to my childhood gorging on fiction—which trains the mind and soul to inhabit the skin of another in a way that little else can.

It has always been difficult for me to comprehend the willing and cognizant visitation of pain on an innocent party: given a choice, why choose to hurt? So on that bitter cold Chicago afternoon, riding the schoolbus home from fourth grade, I did not understand why the young boy a few seats ahead of me cracked his window, casually tore pages out of a paperback, and sent them lofting away on the wind. That was someone’s book, I thought to myself, aghast and angry and pained, for my little mind grasped that he had perpetrated two sins: one against the book and another against its owner. To be fair, he first held the volume up high and asked if it belonged to anyone before cheerfully ravaging it. I remember the scene now as he brandished the tattered, faded copy of C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair above his head, whole for the last few seconds of its life while he waited in vain for its owner to claim it.

I recall thinking quite vividly, How strange that he should have found a copy of the very book that I have in my backpack (for I was once again working my way through the Chronicles of Narnia). Thought number two: I’m so glad that mine is zipped away in the outer pocket. I didn’t think to doublecheck, naively gazing on at what I thought a complete coincidence.

When a thief takes something outright, to kill or to destroy, one is chagrined. But when a thief half-steals, with the half-permission of the thing’s owner helping him along, the burden of pain doubles with a measure of shame. At home, the vision still seared into my head of great chunks of paperback hurtling against the grey winter sky, I realized the pocket was unzipped after all. It was mine. He took mine. He ripped mine. He savaged mine. It had been mine. It was still mine, in all its pieces on the sidewalk blocks away. We didn’t have much money. The copy had belonged to my mother.

I’m sure I cried. My mother also felt my pain keenly (this makes sense: another great reader of fiction, she) and sensed the book’s pain sharply too. Soon she had ordered another copy. I remember her shaking her head and asking no-one in particular, why would someone do such a thing? As I write this I turn around and see on my shelf six faded and tattered volumes of the seven-book Chronicles, tucked into a shabby old case, and a glossy fourth volume nearby that doesn’t fit into the case. And together, they make me wonder: if he had read books, if he were in the practice of walking in the roads trod by make-believe people, would he have so readily hurt a living person and a living book all at the same time?

I will read to my child.

Lessons of Loss

This week I had the unpleasant task of mailing a sympathy card.  It was destined for one of my dearest friends whose grandmother had recently passed away.  I addressed the envelope and signed my husband and my names beneath the pre-written message. That was the easy part. Writing a personal note was harder. What words could I write that would give comfort?  Were there any?  If not, what could I write? In the end I settled for a simple note of friendship and tried to convey the two messages that I felt were the most important: I love you & I’m thinking of you. I mailed the card, but kept thinking about loss. That’s normally a subject I avoid contemplating at all costs. I know most people don’t dwell on grief or death, but my avoidance is, I think, a little more profound and includes even abstract or philosophical consideration. Without sounding like I crawled out of a Victorian novel, I can at times be prone to melancholy. It’s easy for me to sink into the dark and grey and wallow there, hence the avoidance. But last week, I didn’t wallow or sink, even as my mind kept spinning back, touching on two stories and their accompanying lessons about loss. I figured the lessons wanted to be written.

When I was in junior high, my maternal grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. There were blessings hidden in the diagnosis and many moments of joy and laughter and memories that I would never trade. But there were also moments of pain, sadness, and confusion---especially for a kid like me with strong emotions and no experience with loss. I remember one such moment, sitting on my yellow canopy bed and crying out my sadness and confusion. My mom was there of course, consoling me as mother’s do and generally talking me down.  I don’t remember what I said, only her response.  I imagine my line was something inane about being sad that my grandmother was sick and might die, but I really don’t know for sure. What I remember with extreme clarity was the next moment as my mother said: I don’t want granny to be sick or die either, she’s my mom. I understood the working of our family tree, and I knew that my grandmother was my mother’s mom, but until that moment, I hadn’t considered anyone else’s grief. In the way that your world view can shift in an instant, I remember that moment as the clouds parting and a light bulb shining as well as a ton of bricks falling. I suddenly had a new understanding and a different way of seeing things beyond my own emotions or grief.  Almost 20 years later, that memory and the accompanying lesson as still so clear, as is the only response I could make in my stunned state: I never thought of it like that.

A decade later when my paternal grandfather passed away that earlier lesson was not forgotten.  I was an adult by that time, a college student in love with my boyfriend, a man who would later become the Mr. to my Mrs. Perhaps that’s why so many of my thoughts and a great deal of my empathy was focused on my grandmother. Throughout the days of preparation and then the visitation and funeral she was stoic, focusing on the next task and what needed to be done.  Her eyes were dry right up until the moment a soldier placed a folded American flag into her hands. Thinking of that moment still stings my eyes. I thought then, as I do now, the simple question: How?  How can you possibly say goodbye to someone like that, someone you spent so much time with? My grandparents were married for 59 years. How is it possible?  I know the platitudes ‘One day at a time’ and ‘You do what you have to do’, but I truly have no understanding of how.  In the moments as my grandmother held that flag in her lap and watched his casket descend into the earth, I can’t imagine she knew either.

As I sent off my sympathy card, I thought of these two stories, and the small lessons they taught me about loss.  No one really understands, there are no magic words, but there is empathy.

Re-writing Our Narratives

“Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.” – Luis Buñuel

Over glasses of wine with good friends, I felt my newly acquired academic vocabulary sneak into normal catch-up banter. As I shared the details of events that transpired since I last saw my friends, I referred to “my narrative,” “story-telling,” and “memory.” These words permeate each line of my master’s thesis and much of my graduate school studies. Throughout the past year, I have searched for every line of academic literature on memory and the role it plays in defining the story of an individual as well as its cohesive and divisive power within a community and society. It is an academic search, with a personal quest at its heart.

The blurry lines of my thesis refer to the difficult, painful memories that feel hesitant and, at times, unspoken in Rwanda. The individual stories of a past marked by suffering give way to a national narrative for the country. In his most recent book, Phil Clark discusses the idea of “truth-shaping,” which draws on the fluid nature of memories---allowing them to be molded into a cohesive narrative. The idea of blending stories into a narrative brings me to the essence and power of storytelling. What is told? Who tells it? What is kept for oneself or even silenced? What memories are shaped into a new narrative? How does this process take place?

To borrow words from Pierre Janet;

“Memory is an action: essentially it is the action of telling a story.”

While the case study of my thesis considers the Rwandan conflict and subsequent process of healing and rebuilding, the theories of the role of memory, separated from the conflict, transcend into my own life, infusing into my own story. The internal reflection stimulated by the notion of truth-shaping and allowing memories to take a more fluid nature, inspires a yearning to re-write my own stories and critical moments that define how I got to where I am.

What if I could reframe my memories, drawing on the positive, the lessons, the growth, and build upon whatever heartbreak lies within them? It seems that as an individual I could reach a place of deeper healing and, perhaps, create a more positive narrative that would not only impact how I saw the past, but how I could envision the future.

Farewell Manhattan

by Amy Ferguson I’ve lived on the island of Manhattan for eight and a half years. It still amazes me that it’s been that long. You see I was an unlikely New Yorker. When I was younger and I visited here I didn’t have that magical New York City movie moment that so many people have. The moment when the light changes and everything moves in slow motion and you get this epiphany, this “I have to live here” feeling in your bones. That never happened for me. Instead, I reluctantly moved here for a depressingly low paying internship when I was 25. My plan was to stick around for a couple of years, have a quintessential New York experience and then get the hell out. But that’s not what happened. No, somehow when I wasn’t looking this place became my home.

In a few weeks I’ll be leaving Manhattan and moving to Brooklyn. I know it doesn’t sound like much of a move, only about five miles away, and I’m certainly not the first person to make it. But it marks the end of an era for me, the end of my time as a Manhattanite.

The island of Manhattan is relatively small when you think about it. But so much has happened to me in those 23.7 square miles that no matter where I find myself, I find memories. Around every corner, tucked in every neighborhood are places that mean something. Places where things happened to me.

The tiny studio I rented on Carmine with the awkward floor plan and the closet in the kitchen. Or the garden apartment on West 85th with the exposed brick and the to-die-for backyard. The way West 11th Street looked blanketed in white during my first New York snowstorm. The view of Midtown from the Reservoir, still my favorite place to go for a run, where I huffed and puffed through my first ever mile. The cozy candlelit restaurant on Greenwhich Ave where a relationship began. A shady park bench at the corner of Sixth and Bleecker where another one ended.

Everywhere I look I see little snippets of my past. Moments captured. Because in Manhattan your life doesn’t happen here or there, it kind of just happens everywhere.  This entire island was my home.

So I bid you farewell, dear Manhattan. I’ll miss you. But Brooklyn measures in at whopping 81.8 square miles and like any good New Yorker I’m always craving more space.

Snow Fall(ing)

I can count the number of times I’ve seen snow on two gloved hands. It happens in Portland maybe once a year. When it does---or might and, usually, doesn’t---it’s the talk of the town. Schoolteachers make announcements to their classrooms and snow becomes the only topic of polite chatter in the grocery store checkout. “Looks like it’s going to snow, huh?” The day before its arrival we all watch the sky, every one of us an amateur meteorologist. The cloud cover holds the moisture, but too much won’t let in the cold.

Snow isn’t a unique kind of weather in Oregon. It’s just the rarest form of rain. On the way to “snow” are “the in-betweens,” softer circles of slush hitting the windshields on cars headed home. As kids, we’d sit at the windows, hoping against hope for a snow day. “Will it stick?” The flakes fell and dissolved on contact.

The real snow only ever came at night. Eerie golden spotlights lit the bare tree branches, the snowflakes swirling around streetlamps like gnats in the summer. The mornings were nothing short of magic, but it all melted by noon.

My first snow in New England was something different altogether. I was walking to the bus in mid-November when the sky was blue and a few stubborn leaves still clung to the elm trees. Out of nowhere came the tiniest flurries, the flakes not so much falling as suspended. All around me they were appearing and disappearing, like dust shook out from a rug.

The snow was unlike anything I’d ever seen---unexpected but completely certain. It felt like something was only beginning. It felt like falling in love.

Making My Time Worthwhile

I am no stranger to leading a quiet life. My junior year of high school was spent moving between bed and couch after a crippling case of mono left me unable to do much except journal and wish for more sleep. My life from that point on has involved much less “doing” and much more “resting” than it ever had before; I have learned to value quietness and contemplation, in addition to big dreams and grand accomplishments. Still, even after eight years of this new life, I find myself struggling on a regular basis with my own need to be doing something that looks and feels “worthwhile” and “productive” with my quiet time.

Days before Christmas, my husband and I took a romantic trip to the labor and delivery unit of our local hospital to figure out why my then-28-weeks-pregnant self was contracting regularly. Although we never got many conclusive answers, we didn’t have a baby that week either, and eight weeks later I am still pregnant—and still contracting.

These last two months have seen me confined to the couch for a new reason: pregnancy complications. Once again, I’ve found myself spinning through the same old doubts and worries, letting the same anxieties creep back in to my head and my heart.

A week or two ago, I decided to put together a to-do list comprised of productive, worthwhile things that I could do from my resting place on the couch. For a few days, I worked industriously on my list, checking things off and feeling proud.

And then, one day, I was tired. The contractions had kept me up for most of the night before, and I was physically and mentally exhausted. I sleep-walked through the morning, doing little bits of nothing here and there, my sluggish brain unable to keep up with much of anything.

Halfway through the day, I found myself locked in a round of internal self-castigation. Look at you, wasting your whole day, said the nagging voice in the back of my mind. Can’t you do anything that would be worth something?

Suddenly, instead of just feeling overwhelmed and defeated, I found myself rising up against that nagging voice. Isn’t it worth something to care for myself, and for my baby? I found myself asking. Isn’t it worth something to take some time to cherish my body so that it can stay strong and do what it needs to? Isn’t it worth something, sometimes, just to rest?

I have always struggled with this idea—that resting, taking care of myself, can in and of itself be a worthwhile task. That I don’t have to be filling every single quiet hour with efficiency and the kinds of accomplishments that can be crossed off my beloved to-do lists.

That day, I created a note on my computer and wrote these words as a reminder to myself: “I don’t have to be curing cancer in my resting time. I can be doing whatever I need.”

Sometimes, what I need is to be busy, to be getting a lot done. But sometimes, what I need is just to go easy on myself. To give myself a little grace. To let go of all my often-unrealistic expectations and just be.

In a society that values busyness and accomplishment, that can be a difficult pill to swallow. But still, I imagine that if I ever get the art of “simply being” down someday, I will be a better person for it.

Do you struggle with allowing yourself time to rest and rejuvenate?

XXVIII. Normandie

Toward the end of my stay that August, Clémence starts running with me on my loops around the Norman countryside. She can only make it through the warm-up lap, a slow jog around the apple orchard behind the house, and is absolutely exhausted by the end of the ten minutes. She gasps for air and holds her skinny knees for support as we slow to a walk.

As tall, thin women, on first glance Clémence and I seem like we are built similarly, but our bodies are in fact drastically different. Hers is skin and bones with a layer of soft flesh in between---pretty typical for a French high school girl whose exercise is generally limited to whatever walking she happens to do that day and whose diet includes a steadily growing nicotine addiction. I run miles every day and can easily inhale plates of pasta in a single sitting before cross country meets.

Not as sexy, maybe. But as I flex my legs, feel the muscles in my stomach under my hand, I decide I’d rather be hard than soft.