"Sometimes going back is exile too." (John Ash, "Returns")
February 8, 2009
How can this turn into that? How can six months of this become six months of that?
A little over three months in this, then off to Africa, then back for the grand slam of an Upper Peninsula, lakeside winter--having done all this the difficult transition back into the mother country--
She has not been much of a mother these past years; but she is, in theory, the Mother Ship. Home. Had it been New York, cosmopolitan center of many peoples, many tongues, that would have been an easy transition. Had it been New England, it might have been rockier, but the East Coast-ness of it, the emphasis on certain things that are supposed to connect us to the world at large--"sophistication," real or pretended, worldliness (that is, a knowledge of other peoples and places)...it would have been only mildly foreign. Speaking to fellow citizens-- Hmmm. They are strangers. Coming "home"? I felt like I had come home to a foreign country.
It has taken nearly a year to begin even this.
February 11
Years ago, my father read me the story of a wolverine who was orphaned and had to struggle to survive in harsh conditions. It was a square, red book, one of those old-fashioned books which children today, not being in a reading culture, would find too difficult, too full of big words; and the pictures of the wolverines were etchings of real wolverines, thick furred portly fellows who, when backed into a corner, showed a remarkable array of very sharp teeth. They lived in snowy, deep woods, in places like this; and, as a little girl, I was very concerned about the fate of this brave animal.
My father nicknamed me "Pokey," because I was dreamy, lost in my own childish imaginings, and had my own meandering rhythms. I was not quick. I was not a wolverine; but for a while I could imagine that I, too, was out in the north woods, braving the snowstorms, holding my own with the eagles and wolves and hungry bears.
February 13
The life of an only child--your life. A preparation, a schooling in loneliness? a way of embracing the rewards of solitude? It does prepare one for this kind of climate; or perhaps it exacerbates the keening of the winds around the house, the silence of nighttime, the comfort of home tucked into insulation of snow. A way of embracing cats.
Don't, you think, don't go out there...
February 14
Valentine's Day passes mercifully. Tempted only by the heart-shaped red beeswax candles at the co-op, but not for $6.48, thank you very much! Looked for flowering plants and exchanged remarks with a rather attractive older man (my age, I suppose) with a Bluetooth module in his ear: we allowed as how the Burpee Seed packs displayed at the huge warehouse DIY center, Menard's, were a comfort somehow. I found moonflowers--
"What are those?"
"Oh," I said spreading my hand, "they're about this big. White. They don''t open up until 4 in the afternoon, and they stay open in the evening. They smell wonderful. I remember my father used to grow them."
Taciturn. Faint smile.
I turn the corner, looking for potting soil that doesn't contain Supergro! or some such nonsense mixed in with it. I remember the old run-down farm, with the gate across the dirt drive... Where did those vines grow? Intertwined with the Heavenly Blues, whose velvet morning glory cores twisted up late afternoon as the creamy moonflower buds unwound, smooth, breathing a faint scent like jasmine-- No doubt it wasn't very late, just dusk or a little after, when it was time for wee ones like myself to be tucked into bed; in those close summer evenings of rural Maryland, my father sat with me while I ate my cereal, while we listened to the crickets and the katydids begin and while we still smelt the summer flowers.
At EconoFoods, another suburban vastness, local Michigan poet friend, R., drifts past me in a Stan Brackage mode, as I come out bearing groceries.
"Where are you headed?"
That quiet, one beat-- "Oh, I was going to buy a bottle of wine."
"Don't forget to get Emily flowers."
"I already got them yesterday--for her birthday."
"Didn't you just have one recently?"
We exchange birthday pleasantries, and, to my horror, I catch myself asking what sign he is. His smile is wry. I remember then that tomorrow, February 15th, was my father's birthday.
"Oh, Aquarius?"
How someone stays with you, even as childhood has long past. Over 50 years gone--in the cataclysm of a single collision. Had he lived he would be 113 years old. Not only does he remain with me, sometimes as clear as yesterday and the smell of moonflowers; but I wonder, is the birthday why he has been so much in my thoughts? or is he simply the ground that has called the tune, set my living?
It is he that I miss; memories of my mother only make me feel guilty.
February 15:
From the doyen of quick info fixes (Wikipedia), it is noted that a wolverine sighting was confirmed in 2008, in Michigan near Ulby--the first in about two centuries: "It is unknown whether that particular animal was a state native or if it migrated or had been released by humans."
Ulby, upon inspection I find, is just north of Detroit.
In the interstices of winter--actually upon arriving back from a between-semester break, my landlord, colleague at the university, and neighbor lost his wife in childbirth. It is an undeniable tragedy. The ramifications are complex in this day and age of divorce and remarriage: a newborn, a daughter a little over one year old, and the dead woman's two children by a previous marriage whose biological father still lives in town. All the middle class friends and neighbors are shaking their heads--WHO, they ask, who dies in childbirth these days? But they do. They do, indeed. In poverty, here and abroad, in so-called third world countries. Such comments reveal an insularity, a stunning lack of awareness of the rest of the world and its suffering.
The two older children were scooped up and packed off to their"real" father's; and I fear it will be these two who suffer, as the stepfather, as far as I could see, was very good with them. He provided a structure and subsequent sense of safety that the more disorganized parent(s) did not. The newborn wolverine child, however, has 20 women who, through La Leche League, come to the house in turn, every three hours, to breast feed him. Every day someone arrives with a meal and some attempt at conversation: both neighborhood and university have organized this; and my neighbor who has, unsolicited, been clearing my walk and driveway, now has extended his operations to clearing the widower's.
When I spoke to the father, standing in the drive swathed in a hip carrier with the older child in it, legs dangling down (baby in the van already), he said he didn't know of anywhere else where this--the breast-feeding schedule--is being done. "Africa," I replied.
True. Africa and now Marquette.
March 2: Email to E.D. riffing on the subject of his two online chronicles, observing, as he once said, the reputed Chinese curse, "may you live in interesting times.":
Moi: As I have said before, sometimes BW and SW merge, one an "I" witness, the other and EYE witness.
Think I mentioned: Went to Negaunee with my Jordanian friend, a paleoclimatologist named L., to buy wine glasses (I had none, just mason jars) and a braided rug for the cold floor of my loo. Negaunee (surely a Chippewa name) was a mining town, now the bizarre combo of recently laid off 300 miners (iron ore, I think) heralded by the neat, if not monotonous, rows of four-roomed company housing with no one stirring, then the equally unseen more comfy in their elaborate Victorian homes, some with turrets, and one (now the Board of Ed.) with a widow's walk on top. One wonders what the walk is for, since we are inland, and looking out on the lake for incoming sailors is probably not the intended option. Is it decorative? Was it to go up and see if men came out of the mine or remained buried underground in some kind of mining disaster? On one side of one of the public buildings is the PUBLIC LIBRARY; on the other side of the same building it's the POLICE station, and farther up on the same side it transforms into TOWN HALL.
I say to L., I should donate some books. Thought occurs: I should drop off some copies of my MEXICAN WAR book. Truth or consequences: a right wing blogger, I found out, has been besmirching my authorial name--indeed, the name of the whole Facts on File american wars series--for influencing young minds before they are old enough to defend themselves.
What I neglected to mention is that, for that last seven years, friend R. has been conducting poetry workshops in the Negaunee Middle School. The Kenneth Koch of the U.P., he has drawn from these children, such stunning stuff:
What are these kids like? I asked him a while ago
"Poor," said the poet, himself living on the edge as adjunct, editor, scriptwriter and father of three boys.
The main street is full of antiques stores, and a very nice bakery. Apparently this town is also known, in hard times, for its crystal meth labs. One blew up not too long ago, with interesting results.
Sometimes I feel like that train you refer to (Lincoln's to the capitol; Obama's similar one) is like the long funeral cortege that Whitman wrote about in "When Lilacs at the door last bloomed..." You know, the ponderous ride past an inherently flawed nation that, like some bad joke, sat up in its coffin and is now settling back in, making its ponderous way home. We stand by and wave.
Mar 18:
How could nearly two weeks slink on by without notice? The mountain of papers to grade, students whose several frustrations must be deflected. Teaching here is a martial art: students badly, terribly educated, virtually inarticulate on paper except for the rare bird who, startlingly, appears in your class--there must be some mistake! what is he/she doing here? Public education in this country in tatters and the blame lays squarely at the feet of the greedy who run the place, the religious nutcases who cling to creationism, sipping salvation through a straw, the climate change deniers...
My friend, P.'s, bumper sticker: Gravity is only a theory. So, fly then! I want to tell them.
The snowdrifts--long since hardened in the cold into snow hillocks--the drifts are finally loosing rivulets of water and sand under their muddy crusts, dwindling, dwindling... Warm weather--40s, 50s--though everyone here says we will have a few snow storms before the beast of winter lurches back into its lair to sleep off the coming warmth ...
"I can't believe it's been five months!" exclaims L. when I run into her at the top of the Landmark hotel, eating a sirloin and looking out on the lake. It is speckled white, long streaks of blue, still with a long white arm of snow reaching out over a mere fraction of 1/5 of the world's drinking water; and the air is clear. It is nearly seven o'clock at night and the sun has still not set.
I stop by the Peter White Library--much and deservedly decorated for being a fine small town library. The bulletin board advertises summer courses at the university including one that might just keep you here this summer--something about foraging in the woods, woodscraft under the tutelage of an Ojibway teacher; and the Marquette Astronomy Club where you can join for a mere $15.00 a year...
March 20--well, actually 12:29 AM March 21...Spring equinox, I believe. It is bloody snowing again!
March 28--Something called "Earth Hour" being celebrated--no, observed--globally as time zone by time zone, cities turn off all but the essential lights to call attention to the need for attention to climate change. I turn off the computer, the lights, putter around by candlelight. At precisely 8:30 PM, which is when it gets dark around here, the city of Marquette turns on all its streetlights--round globes of light pollution--with nary a thought as to how the frozen tundra will be affected if things are not turned around. At precisely 9:00 PM, I hop into my department chair's loaner and drive a half an hour to the airport to pick up L., who has just come in from a conference in much warmer climes.
April 19, Sunday.
Email from R:
B:
This is Spring in the UP! At least it's not snowing. Enjoyed Some Like It Hot this morning. I remember watching it with my father on the late show. It has sentimental value. Jack Lemmon was terrific. Nobody's perfect was last line of the film, spoken by Joe E. Brown when Lemmon reveals he's not a girl and a man, ripping off wig. It's also
on Billy Wilder's tombstone.
To which I responded:
Love it! Yes, spring and I had a former drag queen--a shrimp of a guy, not Lemonesque, let alone faux Monroe--cleaning my house on trial. He managed to dump a bucket of waste water, from cleaning my floors, into the toilet and stopped that sucker right up. All day long, trying to rouse landlord and plumber: did you know that NO ONE
can come in, even in an emergency, and fix anything without the landlord's permission in this bloody town?
Finally got permish and plumber came--said there was a rag way down which he couldn't fish out, and I bunch of tampons from the precious occupant. Lost a whole day's work and my temper.
Rest of the house looks nice, though.
Laud sing cuckoo!
April 20 -22 Neige, dammit! Neige. Two days so far--wet, sloppy, water running everywhere underneath the weight of it.
